And should you find yourself thinking or, dare I say, speaking about something negatively, you must stop in your tracks.  Go for a walk on wet sand.  Sing a tune like no one is listening.  Dance naked with your friends in the woods after a long, long day of shopping.

Though sometimes our opinions are stubborn.  That’s when I pull out all stops.  I roll on a bed of marbles that were dipped in the discarded shower water of a Unitarian minister.

And if by then you haven’t erased all the poison of dissatisfaction from your mind, you need therapy, or, an exorcism or maybe just a good dentist.

But when exorcists, therapists and dentists fail, there are always puppies and kittens.  Cute and fluffy.  Cuddly and nice.  Indisputably soft.  Puppies and kittens, I say.  Puppies and kittens for everyone.

So I went on the retreat.

And I like the idea of meditation.  Mostly because it doesn’t involve laundry.  But I haven’t discovered meditation in the way much of America has, usually tied to yoga.  I tried it once at the YMCA, a decade or so ago, and it just made me want to run around the track.  I figured that anything that made me want to exercise over doing it should fall in the not-a-good-fit category.

Then came the momitation portion of the program.  I was ready.  We were given a phrase to inhale on and exhale on.  I can’t remember the words, but we were breathing in stress and breathing out a smile.  Or maybe we were breathing in quiet.  But the important thing is IT WORKED.  I liked it. I wasn’t momgging.  I momcturing or momtching.  I wasn’t even momssiping.  I was momhaleing.  And it was nice.

The retreat leader said the aim was to breathe into ourselves.  I was just relieved that I didn’t have to breathe into my vagina because that’s what they always do in movies where moms go on a retreat.  Then again, would Lutherans ever breathe into their vaginas?  It’s just not a very German thing to do.  At least not in Wittenburg in 1517, but more later on how the vagina went TOTALLY unmentioned in the Protestant Reformation.

Our leader explained that the purpose of the breathing was to get us get in touch with ourselves.  And there I was, seriously.  Back on the campus of the state college where I passed far too many minutes of each school day BREATHING a lot like this.  It’s a theater major thing.  They had to come up with something.  We were paying tuition.  And, come on, Julliard was probably doing it, too.

And I felt that way.  That twenty-something, pre-career, pre-wife, pre-mother way.  It was me!  Hello, me!  Remember me?  Hey, Me!  Meet me!  Nice waistline, Me.  Whatever is your secret?  Oh, stop it, Me!  Me, you are too kind.  And for a few seconds, I thought ME! ME! ME!  cause that’s what we need more of, right?  Me time.  Me dreams.  me-me-me-me-me-me-memeeeeee.  Now and me.  Me now.

I liked it.

But I have this very bad habit of stepping outside of myself.  Instead of soaking in the rose-infused waters of meness, or splashing around in a me-puddle, or showering in the cleansing power of me, I (me) began to observe not just me, but the other me that was talking to me.  And it became so silly.

Then of course, I had to think of you.  And by you I mean you.  I thought of my blog.  My readers.  That pesky habit of, what kind of blog with this be? reared its self-reflective, self-oriented head.  So, I thought of my readers.  My commenting friends.  The unknown visitors who are nothing but numbers and plots on a map.  The referrals from Google, Facebook, Twitter, other blogs and the PORN, PORN, PORN that tries to attach to my site every day like porn is wont to do.  I was breathing in my tiny percentage of the ENTIRE WORLD.  Slovenians, masses of them, on Google hunts for “Linda Blair” ending up at Saving Private Mommy.com.  And the Google searches for SHAVING Private Mommy who ended up reading about margaritas and peaces signs.  Poor, perverts!  And my breaths got bigger metaphorically, wow, we were really going.  The whole world and me BREATHING.  Even the spammers from China and Russia and Italy.  Riding the inhale and surfing out on a smile.

It was weird.

Great retreat, though.

Momfulness: Mothering with Mindfulness, Compassion, and Grace

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I went to accompany the wild four-year-old to the bathroom for the third false alarm.  And, without going into the details of the sounds I heard from a human in a neighboring stall, I heard lots of sounds.  Sounds that were quite dramatic in the pooping arena.  Loud, long, and sputtering.  Very impressive if you were a director of a German scheisse video, not that I would know anything about that.  Like an American teen, I only know what I learn on South Park.  But these sounds, however dramatic and apocalyptic, are normal, and not only do I understand that my stall neighbor had to make them (heck, I make them, too, not to the extent of the ladies at the HIGH PERFORMING MAGNET SCHOOL, but I make them too), so I would never judge a tooting fellow bathroom goer.  We all have butts.  And they all toot, especially as they relieve themselves of things.

But you see, I had about two shots of tequila in my system plus a float of Grand Marnier and some triple sec gloriously splashing in my stomach and infusing my bloodstream with, OH SHIT, the GIGGLES!  Yes, I got the giggles.  In the midst of thinking how I terrible it would be to laugh, I got the Drama Department Syndrome.  (In drama classes you do a lot of quiet visualization and sometimes you just have to laugh.  And the more serious the teacher gets, and the more hippy, quiet, and appropriate everyone else gets, the more you laugh.)  Well, the same is true of flatulence, only inversely.  The LOUDER the butt gets, the more you are scandalized which causes you to contemplate how inappropriate it would be to laugh which FORCES you too laugh.   Until you are in hysterics.  Side-by-side in the stall, with your bathroom neighbor, simultaneously laughing, one of you through your mouth, the other through her ass.

I tried to talk to my daughter so it would sound like I was laughing at her, “Stop it Larissa, you’re so funny.”  Thankfully, she didn’t blow my cover.

But then I started thinking about how I was in hysterics at Office Depot earlier in the day, when the salesclerk said her corporate mandated, “Hi, how are you?” entirely through her nose, like she was playing a very long, bad note on the clarinet.  And the subtext for the “Hi, how are you?” was probably, “I’m trying hard not to fall into a boredom coma and I’m constipated.”  So I lost it in her line.   And had to leave after 30 seconds of semi-stifled hysterics and tears to enter the REALLY LONG line where the sales clerk was talking about tech triumphs and band camp to the lady couple who wanted not one, but two of his business cards for future reference.  You never know when you’ll need help selecting file folders.

So I thought of Office Depot and how I couldn’t control myself.  And I laughed more.  And tequila.

So when the bathroom sound-maker exited her stall with shocking confidence and NO SIGNS of humiliation, and she joined me at the sink area, I thought, “Poor lady.  I see her humanity.  It’s not easy to fart up a bathroom and come out and show your face afterward.  Poor thing.  I would NEVER laugh at her now.”

And with the mere thought of the word never, the forces of social fear and good tequila joined to blast another fifteen-second giggle from my throat.

And you feel bad for her?  Poor me!  She had a loud evening in the bathroom, but I to have to live with the fact that I have the mentality of a stoned eighth grader.  How truly awful, yet so funny.

Back at the table we experienced the usual margarita behavior.  Serious husband looks sideways at giggly wife who laughs when the the three-year-old lies face down on the bench, with her fingers in her ears and sings “Deck the Halls” on January 8th.   My husband is mortified.  And I am giggling.

And so I write this as the margarita fades on my psyche, like a lazy sunset, bringing in a good night and, later, a morning headache.  At least, through all of this, I didn’t think to ask how much we spent.  Phew.  That would not have been funny.

Shop Greta for goods on any spot in the alcohol spectrum!

Mambo Mixers: Recipes for 50 Luscious Latin Cocktails and 20 Tantalizing Tapas

Writing Under the Influence: Alcoholism and the Alcoholic Perception from Hemingway to Berryman

Set of 5 – Stainless Steel 6 Oz. Flasks

Alcoholics Anonymous: Big Book, First Edition

And my indecision pains me.  It’s like I’m deciding whether or not to bank my baby’s umbilical chord or spend the extra $127 for the safest, trendiest car seat.

The problem is not the Kindle, but the Nook, the Sony eReader.  And, of course, the iPad, which is in the veborten price range for me.  And yet.  The problem is, one product, like one person, one politician or one vacation destination, can’t be all things to all people.  One product is ideal for reading in a cave.  Another is perfect for the bright sun of the Galapagos Islands.  Another is perfect for reading pictures aloud to your children.  But none are good for the library.  And I am the last person who wants to kill the book.  Or the library.  The clean, well-lighted place for people to gather and read for free, until the shadowy overdue fines come in for the kill.  How can I download my books if I will have the inky blood of the printed page all over my hands?  My filthy, touch-screen hands.

I read an article in the New Yorker that said the fonts of eReaders are not funny.  That is, books are less funny on the eReader.  And I believe him.  The printed page has a dead-pan delivery.  Comic success comes from a proper delivery.  But backlighting is the slick, super-techno, sapphire-studded counterpart to ink on paper.  It’s Kim Kardashian trying to pretend she’s a book.  It’s Bruce Jenner trying to pretend he’s a young man.  It’s Bruce Jenner’s surgeon trying to pretend that plastic surgery is cosmetic.

And the hook that got me involved in this indecisive madness is the price.  An $89 Kindle is gateway price, like a pot brownie at an eighth-grade party.  Twenty percent of Americans will eat a pot brownie or its equivalent by age 15.* But what happens when the brownie-eaters start freebasing cocaine?  And how meaningful that metaphor is:   I decided that I needed the WHITE Kindle.  Because it’s white that’s why.  And it’s $100 more for the white, upgraded model.  I’m probably a bit too Mac-ed out, but if my technology isn’t white, I don’t feel like Steve Jobs made it.  And a faux Steve Jobs product, like a fake fireplace in a three-star hotel, beats the truth of a fireplace-free wall at the Dayz Inn.  So now it’s going to cost $100 more for me to feel good about the terror of relinquishing the tactile adventure of the paperback.

And the future of the book is in my hands.  Or in my Kindle if my credit card raises my limit.  (Dear creditors:  DON’T.)  What will become of me?  And of the book?  We, the book and I, are both here on this planet trying to survive.  But advertisement happens, and the desire to find THE thing that makes our experience the MOST AWESOME is very powerful.  And by the guidance of Consumer Reports, we think we can make decisions that both God and Allah can agree on.  And Frodo will then throw the bad guy wearing the ring into the lava.  And the Harry Potter series will end happily, meaning his devotees won’t start hating their lives.

But we have to make the RIGHT choice.  That’s a lot of pressure.

*Greta does not support the eating or smoking of pot brownies.  She has never smoked any dessert, and she thinks all drugs, save the Top Shelf Margarita, are terrible.

(pause)

So, no, I can’t blog because it just wouldn’t make for a good post.  I have no Dime Store wisdom.  No observation.  No greater truth to discover, reveal and belch out all over your poor computer screen.  It’s just me and my malaise.  Ho-hum.

And I don’t have the energy to be around anyone except my husband who has both the strength and detachment to take it.  And my kids might be tolerable, especially if they make me laugh.  But the rest of society I am not fit to associate with.

And I don’t have the emotional fitness to play the simple societal games, like agreeing with Genevieve that my opinion of this, that and them are wrong.  I have no strength to be terribly positive about anything, really, except maybe her next project or the fact that her daughter is sweet and will be fine.

So I will hibernate underneath my laptop.  And I will blanket myself with solitude and peer out to the world via some one-way Facebook relating.  And I will not look for awesomeness in my world, but for peace of mind.  That may, one day, lead to my being fit to agree with everyone else about all the things that they think.  And I can re-enter society, with cheerfulness plastered to my face and my tongue leashed, heeled, and taking dumps in all the right places.

Anyone else have days like these?

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And at some point even the most courteous baby-launcher is tempted to break into dithyramb about The Great Delivery and how the mystery came to life for them.  How many hours they transitioned or meditated and how many of their friends lit candles on their behalf, or how the C-section was just inevitable (I’m SORRY), and necessary to save the life of the baby (I DESIRE your vaginal birth) and how next time they’re going VBAC (I really am a good person, even though I know the anesthesiologist by name).  Yes, childbirth is a sacred-ish ritual of sorts.  And some uteri have all but pinned gold medals to their labia for the righteous births they piloted.  But in the end, it starts to sound the same.  And birth style is a grain of sand of importance in the Jupiter-sized life of a human being.

Nonetheless, I’m feeling an urge, a persistent tickle, to share my birth stories with everyone.  The stories of ALL THREE of my children, with time-marked segments between every landmark along Labor Trail.  I will compare, contrast, conclude, kvell and queef.  And I hope you’ll enjoy my story and realize its significance for you, should you somehow find my uterus housed in your pelvis and you are obliged to give rebirth to my children.  And I will attempt to translate it into a language that the Disinterested Ears of Labor Stories can understand.

• KID 1:  blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, JERRY SPRINGER, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, NURSE: “HAVE YOUR HUSBAND FEED YOU GRAPES,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, OUUUCCCCH, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.  BABY.

• KID 2:  ICE CREAM.  EPIDURAL.  BABY.

• KID 3:  PITOCIN.  EPIDURAL.   BABY.

Please see me with any questions.

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So today mum will be the word.  And I will have to walk through the world like a Pvt. Mummy as opposed to Pvt. Mommy.  I will be dead to me.  An oral amputee.  Silenced, gagged, and shrouded in a spiral litigious gauze, away from the all-too-generous venue of the internet, and the souls who kindly and generously agree to receive my one-way stream of spew, like pleasant smelling flight attendants courteously holding airplane barf bags.

But silence will be a refreshing turn for Greta.  And silence gives way to reflection, and, thus, wisdom.   This makes me think of the song we sang under the baton of the best kindergarten teacher in the world, Mrs.  Zabloski.  Back in a time when teachers wore pink lipstick and had Folger’s breath (before lattes came to the US), and the mainstays of kindergarten were paste, rhythm sticks, and reading assignments like this:  pam, fan, man, can.

A wise old owl

Sat in an oak.

The more he sat

The less he spoke.

The less he spoke

The more he heard,

‘Why can’t we be like that

Wise, old bird?’

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Yankee doodling. Not so dandy.

We’ve been remiss in taking our children to experience and enjoy America’s pastime:  baseball.  You know this when your eight-year-old daughter asks if the nimble gentlemen in the bright white pants are playing softball.

Cousin JT gave us some tickets, so we went under the lights of the Oakland Coliseum and watched the A’s take on that team from New York whose name I can’t even say at this point.  And our daughters received a thorough indoctrination into the sport of spectatorship.  They learned that hot chocolate costs $5 even when they run out whipped cream, and that Daddy really appreciates Mommy when she surprises him with beer.

They also learned that Yankee fans (cursed be my fingers for typing that) have a lot of what they like to call moxie, and they’ve brought it with them across 3000 miles, via covered wagon or American Airlines, to scream, “GO YANKEES,” in A’s territory.   And when an Oakland A strikes out they yell, “SIT DOWN, LOSER.”

And then an A’s fan starts booing like, like a foghorn.  A sustained, guttural, primal boo.  And then the Yankee fan yells, in the way a reasonable Yankee fan would yell were he not in Oakland, California, “A’S SUCK.”  So, the Foghorn Booer’s girlfriend with the gauged ears replies, “SHUT THE FUCK UP.”  To which the New Yorker replies, “A’s SUCK.”  And then the gauged girlfriend yells, “FUCK YOU.”  And then she grabs her Foghorn Booer lover around his head and holds him close to her all-American bosom.

And later the Foghorn Booer yells, “FUCK YOU, A-ROD,” as if the man at bat had never allegedly cheated on his wife with the most iconic woman of my teens and twenties M A D O N N A.  If you can’t respect a philanderer for supposedly bagging Madge, when can you?

All the while, one of the box seat holders above is tooting a green soccer horn to which the Yankee fans behind you, different ones this time, respond, “SHUT UP.”  And the horn continues.  Followed by another “SHUT UP.”  And again.   And again.  And one more time, until you realize that a shouted SHUT UP is far more irritating than a soccer horn at a baseball game.  Or a Yankee at an A’s game.

And then the A’s begin to lose, like everyone who plays the Yankees does, and then all of sudden much of the stadium is cheering for the Yankees, and you realize that everyone loves a winner and a Yankee, or everyone has one aunt from New York or has lived themselves there for a few years or a long time, but had to get out because YANKEE FANS ARE REALLY ANNOYING.  Though for a moment, you consider being a Yankee fan just so you can live in the peace of perpetual victory that only Yankee fans know.

I’ve had enough Yankees in one game, to last me the full baseball seasons of six lifetimes.  No more Yankee fans for me. Quit putting the Y over the N.  Add a space.  And enough with the pin stripes.  No thank you very much.

And our girls did not want to leave at the seven inning stretch, but stayed with their beleaguered A’s until the team’s last licks in the 9th.  And our girls hoped for another plate of nachos.  And they were denied.  As were the A’s, and the few green and gold fans left who didn’t flee to beat traffic or become pinstriped turncoats.

And our girls can’t wait to go again.

"Jewelry makes me less combative." -Greta

When I receive an invitation to a party for CRappy Clothing, Hella Rot Jewelry or the longstanding SLAVON and Clamspray, I run for cover and immediately develop a near deadly case of greasy hair that must be washed vigorously, rinsed and repeated excessively on the night of the ‘party.’  It’s not that I don’t like getting together with the ladies and drinking wine and competing with the working moms in a gentlewomanly game of You Have It Harder Than I Do.  And I like buying things.  The problem is, I don’t like multi-level marketing.

And before you scream and split hairs and want to hurl an overpriced, jungle-patterned suit in my face, hear me out.  I don’t love the following things about what one may or may not want to call a pyramid scheme.

Products are overpriced because selling clothing via a party to which only a few people (mostly friends, family and neighbors) are invited is a highly inefficient way to generate sales or income.  This is true, no matter how good the artichoke dip is.  And if that’s not enough, the sales rep present is making only a bit of money, but her friend of a friend of a colleague of a realtor of a teacher of 2000 people ago is making bank because she is at the top of the ‘recruiting’ pyramid.  An individual’s sales benefit the tree of people who recruited him or her to the business and the people who recruited them, and so on.

And in most cases, the bulk of the money exchanged in a pyramid is not through the actual sale of the products, but through people purchasing an often expensive ‘starter kit’ to sell the products.  The company profits mostly from people buying the opportunity to make money, not from people buying the product itself.  Yes, purchase the position of sales rep and they’ll call you a manager, but you’ll really be the customer.  THAT’S TOTAL FREAKING BULLSHIT.

That would be like the waiters at our local pub, O’Flannegans, giving themselves bad service.  You never give yourself bad service.  That’s why God invented customers.  And you don’t sell things to yourself either.  That’s called employment masturbation, and I’m sure there’s a Church in Rome against it.

Now people do make money at the top of the pyramid.  And once the market is at a saturation point, the new recruits who buy their start-up kits are left with start-up kits.  That’s not only immoral (though legal), but it’s VERY, VERY CHEESY.

And I don’t usually like the salespeople of these parties because more often than not, they are a mani-pedied mom at school who semi-snubs you with regularity until she gets her ‘starter kit,’ and then she would crawl naked through glass and cross the freeway blindfolded for a chance to talk to you, because now you’re her cute and perky BFF.  But she blows her cover by saying every six seconds, “You should host a trunk show!”

So I hate parties like this and I don’t want to be the person who doesn’t buy anything or drink the Koolaid, yet still eats the pizza.   But my friend Kathy, who is obsessively and compulsively fun, urged me to attend a party she was hosting (for a sales rep), not in order to make a purchase, but for the unique opportunity to mock the event.  Her words.  She knows how to lure a Greta.  So I went.

And I had a delightful time chatting with Kathy’s mother-in-law and the friendly dentist with great teeth and great pants.  And the sales rep present was rather adorable and likable for a snake who wants me to buy a starter kit.

And after not quite enough wine to warrant a cab ride home, I left the party having thoroughly enjoyed myself.  And on my way out, my friend offered me a Ziploc pouch.  The pouch contained the colorful necklace that I was eyeing in the catalogue.

Oh my god.

Yes I was.  Salivating over a necklace despite its filthy pyramid origins.  And while I protested, because it was absolutely unacceptable to take a gift from a party about which I was sufficiently bitter, I TOOK IT.  And there I was.  With multi-level market blood on my hands.

And then I felt like a heel for being a cynic.  I mean, yeah, it’s immoral and stupid and cheesy, but, hey, free necklace.  Free CUTE necklace.  And for $39.95 I was bought.  Purchased.  My bitterness was sponsored and stripped of me by my cheerful, generous friend who was ambushing her party-goers with gifts.

And so I was reminded that we all have price.  And for the amount on the sticker, our souls can be wrapped in tissue, bagged and sent off with a simple, “Have a pleasant day, Madam.”

Who knew my price would come from a cheesy, sleazy pyramid, and look OUTSTANDING with a plain white shirt and black shoes and slacks?

• If a blogger friends you on Facebook and you don’t want to be friends, don’t accept the friendship.  Friend counts are important to your self-esteem, but at what cost to your sensibilities?

• If you hate that bloggers tout their blog posts on Facebook, unfriend them.  Block them.  Light a candle and curse their names.  Including the ‘doctom’.  Sure, your soul will be blackened, but hopefully a giant piano will fall on their laptops and they will unable to blog forevermore.  Amen.

• If you hate reading a blog called, for example, savingprivatemommy.com, don’t go to savingprivatemommy.com.  Go to Amazon.com and apply a tourniquet of retail therapy.  Or, for the ultimate in protection against blog injuries:  Potterybarn.com.  Grab your credit card and charge like it’s the first three minutes of Armageddon.  And the defibrillating sticker shock of cute, overpriced veneer will get your heart pumping again.

• If you must keep checking a particular blog because you must read how stupid that blogger is, do so.  Then get mad and break a window.  You will get a bill.  And the blogger will get a hit.  Bloggers like hits like whores like fishnets, as both make them look better and, thus, might someday help them earn some Starbucks money.

• If you just truly can’t stand that bloggers exist because of their unrelenting, unedited mediocrity, then go buy a book through a major publishing house.  Read it.  And then buy another one.  And after that, another one.  And I promise you, there will be SO MUCH READING MATERIAL, that you won’t have time to even CLICK on a blog because you’ll be swimming like an Olympian in a pool of prize-winning prose.  And the sharks of Bloggy Ocean will be kept at bay.  Where the literary windsurfers are.

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