Flotsam

• The first thing I did upon arrival at my departure gate was look around surreptitiously for potential BlogHers (BlogsHer?)—nerdy, petrified-looking women. There were none. So imagine my surprise when this slender, sylph-like creature asks whether I’m me, which I am, and reveals that she writes online as well. She’d had a baby three weeks ago, and yet her stomach was…flat. Last month when I visited my sister-in-law who was then 17 weeks pregnant with twins, our bellies were roughly identical, and I am SEVENTEEN MONTHS postpartum. So naturally my tentatively-voiced question for this flat-bellied woman was whether she had used a surrogate. She hadn’t. Luckily, she was very nice about it, and we ended up sharing a car to the hotel with two strangers and a Russian-accented driver who no longer worked for the car company but had been called in out of desperation, to deal with the glut of Lady Bloggers.
• Standing in line to check in at reception, I saw an illustrated penis flash by. Porn Skirt! Heather was one of the people I wanted to meet, as we share a Handbag Sickness, but she was on her way out, so we just waved and then I took my luggage upstairs, where I suddenly realized that I had flown into Chicago to see a bunch of STRANGERS, oh my god. I unpacked, and went down to the lobby, where everyone was hugging one other. I pretended to be busy with my phone. Important business! No time for hugging! And then I WAS busy with my phone, as I received yet another rejection from a large publishing house. Now I was pretending to be busy AND pretending not to be bereft. I was reminded of my first day of college, when I walked around pretending to be very busy with my cigarette while everyone hugged one another. While they hugged, I smoked, and convinced myself that friendship was overrated anyway, as I was at Sarah Lawrence to THROW MYSELF INTO MY STUDIES.
• I ran into Aurelia, and we discussed ADD, health care reform, and clotting disorders—you know, small talk. I saw Amy, whose baby is even cuter in person, believe it or not, and she gave me a hug, which startled me so much that I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. We’d talked over email, and yet I was surprised anyway. This would be a theme all weekend. People were nice to me, and I was shocked! People had seen my site, and I was shocked! You would think I was kept in a cave, beaten daily and deprived of human affection, the way I reacted to the smallest bits of kindness, but no. That’s just how I roll.
• I went back to my room, at loose ends, and ordered room service. I think at this point I was still convinced I had made a mistake in coming, and when Scott called I acted as if I were homesick at summer camp. Bear in mind that it had been about six hours since I left my apartment.
• I got myself ready for the People’s Party. As I was leaving my room, someone said my name, and it was Alana. We’d never met before, but we’d written a bit, and you know those people who make you instantly comfortable? Alana was one of them. I adore her. Here she is Saturday, at the CheeseburgHer party:

• The People’s Party was loud and crowded and hot, and everything spilled out into the lobby. Alana wisely got a bit of gin into me before leading me around to be introduced to people, and what do you know! I was having a marvelous time. Metalia showed me her cunningly bedazzled iPhone case; I met Isabel, who was, again, SHOCKINGLY friendly, and what kept striking me was how easy it was to feel I’d known many of these people for years, because I suppose in a way I had.
• Linda was a perfect example, as once I started talking to her I could have continued for quite some time, and (sorry!) probably did. I should tell you that she seems more demure in person, I think because not ONCE did she mention cockpunching.
• By the time I went to bed, I was exhausted and exhilarated, and the soft, lofty mattress was so marvelous that I fell asleep on my back and woke up not having moved an inch. Straight away the next morning, I began my very own Life List. So far it has only one item: OWN SHERATON BED OR SIMILAR.

Four years ago today, I posted a faux interview with Barbara Walters, my very first entry. I am entering my fifth year of inchoate navel gazing, here at Flotsam. It frankly astounds me that I have managed to keep it up this long, my work ethic being what it isn’t, and I was so impressed with myself that Scott and I celebrated with a mini vacation.

Well, that’s not precisely true. We happened to have a free night at an unbearably fancy hotel downtown, thanks to our March of for Babies fundraising. And my mother happened to be visiting. And Saturday she happened to be available to watch Simone.

So there is really no connection at all between our vacation and this website’s birthday, but segues are hard, and I am tired, so let’s pretend.


It was wonderful. My proposal went out to editors on Thursday, and if ever I needed relaxation, well…YES. The bed, besides being luxuriously baby free, was fluffy and strewn with fat down pillows, and I somehow slept until 9:00 this morning, which I haven’t done in maybe a year or two. And I could have kept going! Why, I am pretty sure that if I’d put my mind to it, I could still be asleep right now.

But gracious, hotels are expensive. We ate as frugally as possible from the room service menu—two grilled cheese sandwiches, one lobster bisque, one glass wine, one soda—and dinner still totaled $70. I had toyed with the idea of a cocktail, but I was pretty sure my credit score wasn’t high enough. Granted, the grilled cheese sandwiches had ancient cheddar, tomato jam, and truffle honey, but still, it was grilled cheese. I would hate to see what they charge for fishsticks.

The minibar was sorely tempting, and if the prices had been less shocking I would have snatched up an adorable miniaturized bottle of something to take home. Less adorable and more…bizarre, were the two “intimacy kits” available for purchase, one of which came in a plastic case the size of a credit card emblazoned with the phrase “INTIMACY KIT” and containing, along with condoms and lube, “two obstetrical towelettes.” (Obstetrical, no less!) The second kit, according to the price list, was in fact a “Female Intimacy Kit,” (emphasis mine), and comprised condoms, lubrication, and a small, stoutly phallic vibrator, all zippered up in a palm sized nylon box. I had no idea.

Also bizarre, but delightfully so, was the program guide on the gigantic television. After the title of each movie or show was a short description, and by short, I mean about two words. We found these endlessly amusing, and when I finally managed to stop gasping with laughter, I decided I would like to be the person whose job it is to think these up.

Here is Fight Club:

And an episode of House:

(In the above you will also notice that My Big Fat Greek Wedding is described simply as “Family Upset.”)

Others included “Pollock: Troubled painter,” “Terms of Endearment: Mother and daughter,” and my favorite:

Now I feel refreshed, and full of zeal, or zest, or something with a “z” that means “ready to make a whole lot of lists and maybe clean out a drawer or two.” I must finish unpacking the suitcase from my trip to Switzerland (yes, the one I took in early May), so that I can pack it for BlogHer, which is only four days from now. I ought to do laundry, and attempt to get the stain out of my favorite shirt. In the morning Simone goes back to the ophthalmologist, where I shall try valiantly to distract the doctor from the bite marks all over my baby’s lenses. I get my hair cut on Wednesday, and Simone has an appointment with the pediatrician for her S-H-O-T-S. And, of course, I have a lot of book-related pacing and fretting to do.
A busy week all around.

When I was little—say, seven—I had a favorite daydream. I daydreamed quite a bit, back then, playing somewhat elaborate scenes out in my head while in the car, at school, or swinging absentmindedly on the playground. Many of these were excessively dramatic and involved my death and subsequent funeral, or more mundanely, a busy morning getting my many children ready for school. But in my favorite and most often replayed fantasy of all, I went to the mailbox, and there, at long last, was an envelope from the publisher to whom I had sent my manuscript. Inside was a typed letter (I never imagined that the “typed letter” part of my daydream would eventually seem quaint and old fashioned), and I unfolded it with shaking fingers.

They were delighted to inform me! DELIGHTED TO INFORM ME! I was going to be an author!

Next there was screaming, and happy tears, and sharing of the news, and then, if I recall correctly, things skip ahead a bit, and once again the mail plays a vital role as a large box is delivered, and squatting on the floor in my living room I open the flaps and lift out the first copies of my very own book.

NERD, you’re thinking. My GOD, what a nerd she was! And it’s totally true. But I turned that scenario over in my head with the same wistful reverence I would imagine some children felt envisioning their future wedding, or discovery of latent superpowers.

Obviously, getting an agent is not the same thing as getting that typed letter, but it’s not exactly liver pâté, either. It means that a professional, whose job it is to know these things, thinks there is enough of a chance that my book might actually end up in an honest to god STORE someday that she is willing to devote time to developing and submitting my proposal in anticipation of a future commission. And it’s not like I met her at a bus stop, where she handed me a grimy handmade business card she pulled from the folds of a trenchcoat just after she offered to put my name in lights. No! She’s very reputable, and I was introduced to her by a friend (to whom I have now promised a kidney, should the need ever arise, so Simone’s had better hold out because I no longer have a spare). And not only is she genuinely excited about the project and awfully likable, but she gets it, and that is everything, I think.

Her name is Danielle, as everyone knows by now, because I am unable to say the phrase “My agent,” and instead have mostly been saying either “My…lady,” or “My…that is, Danielle.” (Then I think, does that sound too familiar? Like I’m the kind of asshole who calls famous people they’ve met only in passing by their first names? But you try saying “my agent” without internally rolling your eyes at yourself, or blushing, or generally feeling absurd).

To tell you the truth, I thought I knew exactly what the outcome of my proposal’s maiden voyage would be. I thought it would be number three or four. I knew the boxcar and diseased pigeon and my eventual demise near a cart-return were unlikely, but I was quite certain it wasn’t going to end the way it did, either. I’ve been feeling a little emperor’s-new-clothes-y about my writing for a while now, and in the past few years I have been rejected for a couple of things that, quite honestly, I thought I was certain NOT to be rejected for. It gives a girl a complex. Now, though, I feel like a cartoon Buddha of contentment, and I think I’ve been more productive in the past week than in the last several months altogether.

I don’t know how much you all know about the process from here. I didn’t know a damn thing, and every time someone whose website I read writes a book, they post about it well after the fact, long past the proposal and agent, after the deal is done. Which may well be the sensible way to go about things, but I am terrible at sensible, and besides, you’re the wind beneath my wings and all that, and I like having the company.

So, next! The proposal gets sent to a short list of editors—think a single dinghy rather than a flotilla—and then we wait some more.

And in case you are wondering what a person does after they get the news that they have a real honest-to-god…book representative, I’ll tell you: I called my husband, sent a couple of emails, and then went to a diner to have a tuna melt and a glass of iced tea. I considered telling the waiter, but decided against it, because he would have been confused when I said “I have a…you know,” and then blushed madly while he guessed “Question? Secret? Parasite?” Eventually I would have had to spell out “l-i-t-e-r-a-r-y a-g-e-n-t” on a napkin, and I didn’t have a pen with me, so I said nothing. But I ate every single one of my French fries in celebration.

So, does your baby eat? Because mine still doesn’t, not with any consistency. Sure, she has her good days, like the Thursday she ate a WHOLE ENTIRE CHICKEN FINGER (happily, the most nutritious part of the chicken), but in general it is a battle, and one I am waging poorly.

The situation is not helped by the varying opinions on how much a 13-to-17-month-old baby ought to be consuming in a day. [Speaking of 13-to-17-month-old babies, I have tired of explaining Simone's actual and adjusted ages, and now when someone asks how old she is, I simply express her age as a range. I assume people think I can’t remember, that I've only managed to narrow the date of her birth to a four month window, or maybe that we found her in the woods and "13-to-17 months" is the closest estimate we could come up with by counting her rings.]

Anyhow, her pediatrician is concerned, but her pulmonologist says she’s doing splendidly. The pulmonologist is easily pleased—if baby is keeping her blood oxygenated and her toes pink, he’s full of praise for us. This is the difference between a critical care specialist and a general practice pediatrician, by the way—the height of the bar your baby must clear. Simone was just allowed to discontinue Pulmicort until winter, so by pulmonologist standards, she is some kind of respiratory rock star. As for the fact that she still gets most of her nutrition via bottle, he says “It would be stranger if she DIDN’T have any eating issues after being on the vent for two months.” He doesn’t pull any punches, Simone’s pulmonologist, and at every appointment reminds us how astounded he is that Simone didn’t die. “I’ve read her chart,” he said as he first entered her NICU room to introduce himself, “And frankly I’m surprised she’s here at all.”

But I’d like to start setting the bar a little higher, now, start inching closer to treating Simone like a Regular Old Baby. The problem being that I have no idea what one expects of Regular Old Babies. I do own a book about them, but I rarely open it, because it has been singularly unhelpful. For instance, the typical day’s menu it gives for a child Simone’s age:

BREAKFAST: 3 egg whites, yogurt smoothie, bran muffin, coffee (decaf), 6-8 oz. juice

MORNING SNACK: Wheel of gouda, piece of toast with peanut butter, two apples

LUNCH: Whole chicken breast, spinach salad, Bananas Foster

AFTERNOON SNACK: 12 oz milk, slice of pie, pkg. Lil’ Smokies

DINNER: Filet mignon or Turducken, baked potato, 1 cup chili, whole avocado, Big Gulp

I’m typing that from memory, so it may not be 100% accurate, but you get the general idea. It is a lot of food.

So what I’m wondering—and this is where you come in, people—is this: If you have a baby between the ages of 13 and 17 months, or HAVE had a baby between the ages of 13 and 17 months, what does it eat in a day? And does it still make an unholy—though enthusiastic—mess when given a sippy cup?

Yesterday, around noon, I was sitting in my car after a morning as tediously horrible as any I have ever had. This morning had involved a trip to the godforsaken St. Paul police impound lot, which is located in down the most depressing, trash-strewn road imaginable. You drive past junkyards and heaps of dirt, and at the end is a hallway made of chain-link fencing, and you must walk this hallway on the way to the door, just to underscore the fact that yes, your car was towed, and it is ALL YOUR FAULT, because you suck at adulthood. Also, you look fat in those jeans. Whore.
Maybe I’m reading a little more into that fence hallway than is there, but I don’t think so.

Anyhow, I was in my car afterward feeling Beaten Down By The Man, when my cell phone rang and it was Scott, asking if I wanted to go to Iowa for the weekend.
“Yes,” I said, “Yes I do.” And three hours later we were on the road.

We’re here now, at my in-laws’ house, where Simone has just had her very first encounter with a kiddie pool:

More later.