Coiff-o-Rama

A Hair Retrospective

It all started innocently enough with a little flip 'do . . .




And a bad home hair cut courtesy of the Mom Salon could always be covered up with Lithuanian folk regalia . . .




But wait! What's this?



Could it be the beginning of the "awkward phase?" I appear to have been blinded by the reflection from my satin Members Only jacket. It's also caused my left eye to swell up and I think I lost a couple of teeth, too. Thank God I'm wearing my lucky unicorn tee shirt and there's a rainbow behind me.


Sadly, the comb-over and fugly glasses are not much of an improvement:


"No photos, pleez."


My only saving grace at age thirteen was that I was allowed to get contacts.


Who is the dog in this picture?


Oh, hai, spiral perm:





"I don't need no stinkin' hairdo. Pass me another Rolling Rock."

That's better.



Hello, nineties.



"Halp! I had a baby and I'm skeert."


All's well that ends well.

(Except that I'm starting to Feel Bad About My Neck)

This post was brought to you as the result of a gauntlet that was laid down by my bloggy friend, Janet. Go check out her stellar hair retrospective here. And while you're at it, hop over to JCK's, as well. All the cool kids are doing it, and you should, too.

Unfortunately, I did not have photos of my modified mullet or mall bangs at my disposal for this post. If and when I come across those pictures, I will be sure to post them to the interwebs, because isn't that why Al Gore invented this technology, after all?

The Astroturf Is Always Greener

We officially kicked off the Great House Quest of 2008 this weekend. Is there anything more thrilling than legally snooping around in other people's homes?

I thought it would be nothing short of hilarious if I asked the realtor to swing by an ATM before we got started so I could take out some cash. You know, for the house?

But I was able to restrain myself, if only because I want to be viewed as a matoor and responsible adult who can take a mortgage and the accompanying responsibility seriously.

But how funny would that have been? How funny, I ask you?

We didn't see anything that struck us as being "The One." In fact, I was a tad disillusioned with the kind of house we could buy for the amount we are willing to spend, even in this "buyer's" market.

Then on Sunday, I attended a wedding shower inside of a what looked to be a castle and, well, it put a bit of a damper on the whole house hunting business, if you know what I mean.

This house was like the Hope Diamond of new home construction for the twenty-first century, my peeps. I felt imposterish just standing inside, like I might be asked to don a loaner dinner jacket at any moment.

I am talking about a home theater, complete with rows of leather chairs! I'm talking about a study with a view to the fully stocked wine cellar via a window built into the floor! I'm talking about a spiral staircase and a master bathroom larger than my entire house!

And I wanted it. Oh, I wanted it baaaaaaaaaaaaad.

What made me want it even more was the knowledge that its owner was someone who I grew up with and in whose parents' bungalow basement I attended countless birthday parties. Where I was perfectly content to eat hot dogs, drink Kool-Aid, and play Twister.

We both came from the same humble roots, yet one of us lives in a castle and the other one, a hut.

(Why must I be the one with the hut?)

I was covetous, but I also felt not good enough inside of this house. Self-conscious about my outfit, my unmanicured hands, and my springy gray flyaway hairs. Too short, too pudgy, blah, blah, blah.

Does being surrounded by beauty elicit a desire to be beautiful, too? It felt that way to me yesterday afternoon.

(But if that's the case, then why don't I feel like Frumpy McFrumpypants in front of, say, a blazing sunset?)

As much as I coveted the house (and would by no means turn it down if it was offered to me), I realize that I might very well feel spectacularly ill at ease in such an environment.

I'm sure I would quickly tire of working out in my own personal gym, where the face towels are rolled up like little burritos just waiting to drink up my golden sweat. (right?)

I would be wracked with guilt at my undeserved bounty, unable to enjoy or reach any of the top cupboards in my chef's kitchen. (right?)

I would lie awake at night, wondering what kind of disaster was about to befall me, because surely such largesse cannot be had without a price? (A few million dollarz, is what I'm guessing.)

Or, who am I kidding, I might feel right at home.

Ah, but money doesn't buy happiness, right?

Right?

Still, after living in the cramped quarters we've lovingly called home for the past seven years, I'm thinking that an attached garage, an eat-in kitchen (oh, the decadence!), four bedrooms and a glamour bath could buy mine.

(Ish.)

Studly

The P-Dawg picked out his son's outfit this morning:



He said it looked "studly."

Tomorrow I will post a picture of the P-Dawg and the J-Dog both in their studly hoodies.

A question for those of you with small children: At what age do you feel comfortable letting your child play alone in a "childproof" room? We didn't let the V-meister stack two blocks together without adult supervision, but we have a much more relaxed attitude with the J-dog, who has even been known to nuke his own Gerber graduate toddler meals from time to time.*

Lately, I've been letting him play upstairs in his room while I do important work elsewhere in the house. Sometimes I even forget to turn the baby monitor on.

But today, the little J-Dog wandered into the Utopia that is the V-meister's room and hit paydirt by upending her Valentine's Day goodie bag. I found him up there a few minutes ago EATING A SEASHELL.

So now I'm thinking that twenty-two months may be a bit too early to loosen the reigns and will resume helicopter parenting mode.

(Incidentally, the J-Dog is PO'd at me now because I wouldn't let him sit on my keyboard as I tried to type this post. He's standing at the front picture window crying for Da-DEE, who will be home from work in approximately eight hours.)

Good luck with that, little buddy.

I hope you all have a warm and fuzzy weekend!

*Of course not.

Artsy Fartsy Thursday Thirteen

It's a wonder I haven't done Thursday Thirteen before because I love me a list. I make To Do lists every day, complete with a check box next to each item.

When a task has been completed, I put a check in the corresponding box and then I rewrite the list, minus the completed item. This is called a neurosis.

Today's list is brought to you by Stuff Hanging On My Walls:

1. Owl Girl


The P-Dawg gave me this print for my birthday last year. It's by a Japanese printmaker named Akiyama. It is my understanding that owls give a lot of people the heebie-jeebies, but I love them, at least when they are only one dimensional. The owls in this print are supposed to be protecting the girl with a single red earring.

2. Crate and Barrel Tea Light Holders



3. Guy With Blue Hat


This is a Japanese print the P-Dawg gifted to himself.

4. Flowers


My parents gave us this painting as a wedding gift. It was done by a relative of mine, whose name is Rimas. You read correctly! A bit of trivia: You can make almost any Lithuanian girl's name into a boy's name by adding an "s" at the end. You are most welcome.

5. February


Art for the month of February on my kitchen calendar. If you suspect that each day has been crossed out up to the 21st, you guessed correctly.

6. Frank Lloyd Wright Chair


A framed poster from my old office. Ugly.

7. The Moon in the V-Meister's Room


An eerily real looking moon that can go through all of the lunar phases with the click of a remote control button. Leaving the remote controller in your pre-schooler's room overnight is not recommended.

8. Curious George Triptych



9. Yet Another Japanese Print


10. Flea Market Find


11. Wedding Day


12. The One and Only Cross-Stitch I Have Ever Done


I did this when I was ten or so. By force.

13. Pots and Pans


Why did I think it would be fun to post thirteen photos that take ONE LIFETIME to upload to Blogger? The V-meister is now ready to begin completing college applications and all I have to show for it is a Thursday Thirteen meme of stuff from my hut. Huh.

Hut for Sale; Desperate Hutwife Not Included

Oh right, my blog!

I've been bizzy.

Last weekend was a veritable Lithuaniapalooza. What that means is cultural festivities out the wazoo in commemoration of the motherland's 90th year of independence.

How is it possible that Lithuania could be celebrating ninety years of independence, you ask, when I just told you last week she only busted out from behind the Iron Curtain in 1991?

Lithuania has two independence days - February 16th is the first one, when we told the czar to bite us back in 1918, and March 11th, 1991 is when we shed the dread communist mantle once and for all.

The upside of being relentlessly bullied by evil empires is two separate excuses to party like it's 1999. But we like to place the emphasis on our first independence day because it sends a clear message that sez, "Suck it, commies! Let's pretend the last fifty or so years never happened."

So I spent most of the weekend rehearsing for and participating in the Lithuanianpalooza, where my extreme choir sang and even the little V-meister recited a poem and sang a song along with her little pre-school friends. The rest of the time during the program, she looked like this:



Next:

With the real estate market in our area totally tanking, the P-Dawg and I decided now would be the ideal time to put our hut up for sale, and so I spent most of Monday running around like a madwoman, shoving random clutter, clothing, toys, and the odd child under beds and into closets in preparation for our listing agent's visit.

So paranoid was I about the state of our lair, that I was practically tripping over myself to offer our agent my take on things that could be improved before we put the house on the market. Because, above all, I aim to please.

As we were doing our walk-thru, I would bound in front of the pack (the pack being the agent, the P-Dawg, the V-meister, and the J-Dog) to enter the room in question before anyone else did so that I could properly lament the sorry state of affairs and make totally unbidden and impossible promises like, "I was thinking we could just knock this wall out, you know, to make the room look bigger? And a new paint job, of course, and curtains, and why don't I just box up all the kids' toys and send them back to China right now!?"

I was pathetic. But the agent made only minor suggestions for bathroom and kitchen updates and, of course, advised us to get rid of all the junk I had thrown in the basement and shoved under beds and into closets in my foolhardy attempt to foil her.

Also of note:

The V-meister has yet another ear infection. We made the much dreaded trip to the pediatrician's office this morning. The V-meister quite enjoys the Ped's office, but it frankly makes me rather sick.

I like to go in armed with anti-bacterial wipes to disinfect any and all surfaces we may potentially come into contact with and also hover around the kids like a hummingbird on crack to ensure that nobody gets any ideas about licking the wall (J-dog!) or, you know, touching anything. By the time we get home, I'm totally wiped out, twitchy, and convinced that I picked up the flesh eating bacteria.

This ear infection, however, seems a lot less dastardly than the Great Ear Infection of 2007, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it stays that way.

And now I'm off to begin polishing the floors with my toothbrush.

Too Much

Remember when this blog used to be fun?

For a few days, it was looking like Rimarama might be ready to return, but she's back in the cave today. There is a darkish cloud hovering above my little word lately, and I can't get out from under it.

I attended two funerals last week - one for my grandmother, the other for a friend's father.

Last night, a man hung himself from a tree next to the V-meister's Montessori school and was discovered this morning by parents arriving to drop their children off for school. (Thankfully, none of the children saw the body or know what happened.)

Take all of the above, add a few heartbreaking blog posts I recently came across, throw in the vague sense of impending doom that has been a constant companion throughout most of my adult existence, and you have a very anxious, cranky, and heavyhearted little woman.

I'm panicky, scattered, and paralyzed with fear that if I'm not vigilant, the worst will happen. I know this is no way to live, but I'm not sure how to begin changing it.

I don't care how low the odds are of something horrible happening to my family, the mere fact that they exist is reason enough for me to retreat into my fearful center, from where I nag and bitch and bark anxious, frenzied orders to the people I love the most.

Despite death having literally crossed the doorstep, there was a Valentine's Day party in the church hall after school today, and I couldn't stand still long enough to have a conversation for the need to make sure the J-dog wasn't about to fall headlong down the stairs or stick his finger in an electrical socket or choke on a piece of hard candy. The sight of the V-meister leaving the "Duck Duck Goose" circle in resignation (or maybe just plain boredom) after being passed over one too many times almost brought me to tears.

This is not a healthy way to be.

A few months ago, when I posted about fear mongering in the media, Janet of Three and Holding suggested a book by Eckhart Tolle called The Power of Now. I recently began reading it, and it led me to another book - A Course In Miracles.

This book's background seems to be clouded in mystery. I don't understand how, exactly, it came to be, or who is really speaking through it, but I find it strangely compelling. Have any of you heard of this book or read it?

I want very much to live in the present, without fear.

So I am going to audit the course in miracles and see where it takes me.

I'll keep you posted (heh).


P.S. This entire post was dictated to me by a voice inside my head.*

*Not really

Home

Several years ago, my mother convinced my grandmother to write down what she remembered of her family's flight from their native Lithuania during World War II.

The following are a few excerpts from her reluctant memoir, translated from the Lithuanian by my mother ("G"). Her narrative begins in 1943 with Lithuania under German occupation and the Soviet front encroaching.

*******************************************************************************
V and I were married in November, 1942. In August 1943, I went with my daughter, G, (10 months old) to stay on my parents' farm because it was no longer safe in the city. The Soviet army was very near.

One evening, as the war front was approaching, V came to the farm and said the German army was taking any young Lithuanian men they could find. They had already come to his parents' home, but fortunately, he had not been there at the time.

The next morning, it was so hard leaving so many people dear to me: mother, father, brothers, sisters. The orchard was full of ripe cherries we had no time to pick. I still see everything so clearly, although many years have passed since that morning.

The war front was getting so close, we did not even wait for the bread my mother was baking for our trip. As we were climbing into the wagon, she tied a scarf around her little granddaughter and handed me a bowl of scrambled eggs for breakfast.

As we pulled away from the farm, my mother knelt by the gate and prayed. I kept looking back and cried until I had no more tears.

The farm was about 8 kilometers from the German border. It was a beautiful morning. We were four wagon loads of families. We were hoping to reach a train station in Germany, sell our horses and wagons, and move away from the war front by train.

We encountered many other people on the road fleeing. Sometimes planes would shoot and drop bombs on these groups of refugees, but we were very lucky and were not hit.

. . . Sometimes good-hearted German farmers would let us spend the night. One family let me and G sleep inside their home, while the rest of our group slept in the barn. That night the Soviets bombed the nearby town. I was so frightened, that I would have preferred being in the barn with the others. Through the cracks in the barn wall, they saw the planes dropping bombs and the town burning.

My grandparents eventually made it to Insterburg, where they sold their horses and wagon and boarded the first in a series of trains they hoped would take them as far away from the war front as possible. They often slept on railway station floors, once living for a week in the Vienna train station, which was bombed shortly after they left.

They spent the winter at a refugee camp in Kaufenburg (Austria?), crowded into barracks with countless other refugees. My grandmother was in the beginning of her second pregnancy when she left Lithuania, and in the spring of 1945, my uncle, V, was born in the "hospital" barrack of this refugee camp.

. . . Frequently at night in bed, I thought about my parents, brothers, and sisters. We knew nothing about what had happened to them. It had been a whole year since we had been to church. Each day was the same as the day before.

The Soviet army was very close now, but the Germans would not let us go because they needed the men for their factory, which was manufacturing tanks. We could see the fires at the war front in the evenings and were anxious to flee. Finally, everyone was allowed to go. In mid April, we left Kaufenburg.

After leaving the refugee camp at Kaufenburg, the family took another series of trains, this time, in open-air wagons. There were several close calls during which they almost became separated (not an uncommon occurence). They ended up in the town of Illertisen, where they were taken in by a German family.

We arrived in Illertisen in the evening, with little V crying terribly because he was hungry and I had nothing to give him but tea. I couldn't nurse him almost from the time he was born. We lived with a German family there until August, 1945.

Soon after we came here, the Americans arrived. One evening we heard shooting outside. All of us ran to the basement. The German woman and I pulled out our rosaries and started praying. American soldiers entered the basement with guns pointed at us and shouted to put our hands up. After looking around, they left. The Germans were thanking God the war was finally ending. It was May, 1945.

We began inquiring after the family we had left behind in Lithuania. If someone went to visit a neighboring refugee camp, we would give them a list of names. We found out that my parents, brothers, and sisters had been deported to Siberia because the Soviets were taking over the farms for collectivization. This was agonizing news.

My parents died in Siberia. My sister eventually wrote to tell me that my mother was still alive to receive a package of clothing and a photograph of our family that we had sent. She was very sick, but so happy to see the photo of us.

My grandparents eventually emigrated to America in 1947, when a relative already living in Brooklyn, New York, agreed to sponsor them until they could get on their feet. There was nothing for them to return to - Lithuania had been forcibly annexed to the Soviet Union and its borders were closed. My grandmother's parents' farm had been taken over and the family members that had stayed behind had been deported to the Siberian gulags (work camps).

Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union in March of 1991, but my grandparents never returned.

************************************************************************************

My grandmother passed away last week, and I was naively astounded by the initial weight of my grief.

She had been living with my parents for the past ten years, and I was lucky enough to see her several times a week. Still, I have regrets about words that could have been spoken and time that could have been more wisely spent.

I still expect to see her rounding the corner towards my parents' kitchen with her teacup and rosary in hand, and I still wake each morning to a few seconds of suspended time during which she is still in my world.

I would love to sit with her just once more and listen, this time fully present and engaged, to the stories of her youth - stories that she told with more frequency and urgency during these last few years when her past began more and more to encroach on the present.

My grandmother was remarkably lucid and in good health for a person of her age, but in the weeks before she passed away, she would often say that she sensed her parents' farm close by and felt almost as if she could get there on foot.

She was right in believing she was getting close to home.

One of the things that gives me the greatest peace now is the image, in my mind's eye, of her mother rushing to greet her at the gate.



The Family before Sailing for America


My Uncle and Mother on the Boat to America

***********************************************************************************

Thank you to all of you who emailed or left comments expressing your sympathy. I had closed comments on the post about my grandmother's death, not realizing how comforting your words would be. And so I thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Pause

My beloved Grandmother passed away rather suddenly this weekend, and so I need to take a little time off.

-R

Mrs. Dalloway Redux

Standing in line at the local tea shop (where the signage boasts "Tea is Now Fashionable"), I recognized behind me the voice of Dr. C., a former college professor of mine.

When I was a cloud hopping undergraduate English major, she was my number one teacher crush. I couldn't even utter a word aloud in her classroom without first rehearsing my thoughts in their earnest and hopeful entirety countless times inside my head. Any complements received for my occasional and tentative opinions would leave me blushing scarlet, and her comments in the margins of my essays were obsessed over with the same fervor I might have dedicated to a love note.

My roommates and I (black turtleneck wearing English majors all) had looked to her as a shining example of a woman who had it all, striking what seemed to us the perfect balance between sparkling academic career and enviable family life.

At the time we were her students, her children were about the same age as mine are now. She lived in a red brick house on a tree-lined street in a neighborhood that managed to be both bohemian and bourgeois. We imagined Dr. C and her handsome attorney husband drinking whiskey-laced tea and reciting T.S. Eliot to each other nightly before collapsing into passionate, intellectual embraces.

Oh, to be as smart, as witty, as lucky as Dr. C.

She was now casually conversing with a companion and completely unaware of the smitten former student standing a few inches away, prickles of nervous perspiration stinging my armpits.

I ached to turn around, to re-introduce myself, to show her, despite myself, pictures of my kids. I was curious to know if she still remembered me or my friends thirteen years and hundreds of students later.

But I paid for my overpriced tea and walked out.

I guess I'm not all cartwheels and karate chops when faced with the embodiment of my former hopes and dreams.

Striking up conversation would have begged the inevitable question, "What are you up to now?", and I knew I couldn't craft a reply that wouldn't belie a certain measure of shame at having opted out of academia and the creative life.

A certain measure of shame, let's face it, that I'm not gainfully employed in any way at all.

I would have doubtless stammered out my usual line about having done the corporate grind before quitting to raise a family, making sure to mention the part-time freelance work I haven't taken on in months, lest she make the mistaken assumption that I am only raising kids.

God help me, I might have even mentioned my blog.

And that, I think, is what's nagging me now. Knowing in my heart of hearts that mother work is worthy, I wish I didn't feel the need to be apologetic still.

My haste to explain to anyone who'll listen that this current life station is but temporary is a case in point. I'm torn between proudly owning this identity, even if it turns out to be the apex and culmination of my life's work, and dismissing it as a mere interval en route to other dreams.

Part of me believes, though many have fallen away, that some former aspirations are still within my reach. Another part feels, in the quiet moments of transcendent domesticity Dr. C. once alluded to during a discussion of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, that here and now I am my Self.

But I would never tell you that if we were talking face to face.

And it occurs to me now that, of all people, Dr. C. might be the last to expect a fumbled apology for the current tangent of my life, and not just because she had a lot less vested in me as her student than I did in her as my mentor.

I have vague memories of her rushing in late to our classroom, with just seconds to spare before the unspoken "fifteen minutes and we're out" rule was to take effect. Had she been held up by a sick child, an unscheduled daycare pick-up, the need to take a moment to cry behind closed office doors? Who knows what she went through for the sake of presenting that exalted image my friends and I greedily swallowed whole.

I wish I could say that I will begin answering the million dollar question without the slightest tinge of guilt. There may come a time when I don't need to - whether because I'm gainfully employed, or because I will have reached a point in life and personal evolution that it will no longer matter.

But even as I entertain thoughts of all that my future may still hold, I am slipping towards acceptance of the notion that my masterpieces need not be words on paper, but rather flesh and blood, and that my great opus won't be bound and published, but lived out day-to-day.