Smells Like Happy

Surprised By Love

I'm skeptical of hype. If everybody's looking right, I generally look left. That's partly due to my contrarian nature and partly due to the idea that interesting things happen when nobody's watching and, on the other hand, predictable things of questionable motive happen when everyone is watching. Sometimes this tendency protects me from annoyance and sometimes it deprives me of joy, or at least makes me a latecomer to the party. This is all an overly analytical way of leading up to my point, which is that I finally read the entire Harry Potter series, and HOLY MUNDUNGUS, I LOVED IT.

LOVED. LOOOOVED. Are you getting this? LOOOOOOOOVED.

OK, it's true: I'm one who falls hard for, um, lots of things. Where overexuberance is the charge, I will not only confess but also gladly emblazon my chest with a scarlet O.

I loved this series so much that I've been sad ever since I closed the last book. The story line was so engrossing and the characters were so knowable. (It's plot-driven fiction, for sure, but the characters are quite well developed.) Go read the books if you haven't yet. Just take my word for it and keep going -- they get progressively darker and the stakes get progressively higher.

Of course, if you think that such a popular series is inherently unworthy reading, that it must be too commercial and unsophisticated to meet your towering literary standards, then you are a snob. And also probably late for tea with A.S. Byatt. (P.S. Don't be a snob.) (P.P.S. Maybe skip the MFA.)

Alas, it's time for me to move on. I've had a couple of weeks to get Harry and that world out of my system but it hasn't been easy. Surely people who love to read understand what I mean, right? I was at dinner with a friend who is an occasional reader and I confessed that it took me these two weeks to feel excited about reading anything else; my friend did very little to hide her reaction of bewilderment. Oh, come ON. Like I'm the only one who ever doodled "Mrs. Atticus Finch" on her notebook and wondered how Scout and Jem will react to having me as a stepmother?

Anyway, Amazon left a box of sustenance at my door today. I'm on to "Then We Came to The End" by Joshua Ferris, the first chapter of which I've already enjoyed thanks to my husband's new Kindle. (Also love.)

What are you reading? Give me your recommendations. Help me through Harry rehab, lest I run back to book five for a late-night fix.

A Little Therapy

Whenever you need to feel better about the pathetic state of the world -- impending nuclear war, erosion of freedoms, death of all that's good and decent, et cetera, ad infinitum -- here's what you do: You invite a toddler to spend the weekend, squeeze her fleshy little upper arm every hour (give or take ten minutes), and color. With crayons.

 

This is Alise. If you don't know Alise, please read this. It's the best way to quickly acquaint yourself.

But if you can't be bothered to read her fascinating ideas on children's privacy rights with respect to popular blogging practices, I'll tell you this: She's the daughter of my friends Mindy and John. She's also a double PhD who wrote two dissertations: "Mass Media and the Rise of the Infant World View," followed by "The Secret Lives of Puppets: Social Darwinism At Play." Both successfully defended.

Of course, that's a lot of work to do before turning 2, so she had never visited Washington, D.C. We took her around the city and showed her a monument or two. We also took her to the Cherry Blossom Festival parade, where Abby Cadabby was scheduled to appear. Abby is apparently a member of the cast of Sesame Street and a fairy godmother in training. Alise very much respects Abby's theories on the function of folk magic belief among human children, and I think she was hoping for a minute alone with Abby to discuss those theories. So she was really disappointed when Abby and all the other Sesame Street people just walked by and waved like we were all drooling, empty-headed babies. How insulting! "I'd expect that from Elmo and Cookie Monster," Alise said, shaking her head, "but not Abby."

But we approached the situation philosophically; Abby Cadabby has to make a paycheck like everybody else. Alise said she'll try to engage Abby in written correspondence, which might enable Abby to respond on her own time when The Man isn't forcing her to pander to babies with hypnotic, doe-eyed expressions.

We tried to show Alise the cherry blossoms but, alas, they bloomed a little early this year. We settled for tulips at something called the Tulip Library, which was FULL of hundreds of brilliantly colored tulips -- and did not at all amount to settling, in my opinion.

Alise said she'd never seen such springtime magnificence as we saw in the Tulip Library, and that this was unlike any library she'd ever closed down at 1 a.m. after a long night of studying.

Then we went back home and cleared our heads with a power nap followed by some intense coloring.

Dude, coloring is therapeutic. For people like me, anyway -- I just stay inside the lines that are already drawn and I pick whatever color I feel like. Purple eyes! Green noses! I don't think, I just do, and I feel like a carefree kid again. But Alise is a passionate colorer. She disregards useless conventions such as lines. "How can you create art within the confines of someone else's framework?" she asked. And I had to admit that she might be right.

Then I asked for a red crayon, and do you know what she did? She handed me a green. Point taken, young master. Point taken.

But Alise wasn't all seriousness. We found a bit of Curious George programming on TV and she was so happy about it that she was reduced to baby talk ("Jooj!") just like she reduces me to baby talk ("Aliiiiiiiiisey!"). We all have our buttons.

Then she grabbed a phone charger, ran up and down the hall a few times, and showed that she can be a wild child with the best of 'em.

RAWWWR. It's like that scene in "School of Rock" when the Jack Black character takes the Joan Cusack character -- the principal -- to a bar. He gets her good 'n' drunk so she forgets her primness and starts babbling about Stevie Nicks and belting out "Edge of Seventeen." If only Alise's academic advisors could have seen this!

We had a toddler in our house for only two days, but those were some nice days, let me tell you. She was a breath of fresh air and totally made me forget that poor children go hungry and doggies get hit by cars. Her upper arm? Sweet Jesus. Just try to give it a squeeze while maintaining coherent thought. I challenge you.

When Mindy and John weren't within earshot, I offered Alise a deal: Stay here. Stay here and we will let you play in the office with which you are so fascinated. It's yours! You can go out on the patio whenever you want, as long as you wear some kind of safety harness, and we'll dance to Vampire Weekend every day until you get sick of it.

"Oatmeal every morning?"

"Yes! Yes, and those cheesy goldfish crackers too. For lunch."

"I prefer the Dole fruit bars. And I get to climb on the coffee table whenever I want?"

"Of course! We'll put rubber bumpers on the corners."

"Don't insult me."

"Sorry, it's just... your muscle tone and coordination. They're still developing. But whatever, no bumpers. Do we have a deal?"

She thought for a moment. "Look, it sounds nice -- and I totally appreciate the coffee table thing -- but I'm afraid it's just not possible."

I sighed. "Nana?"

"Yep," she nodded. "You're nice, but you're no Nana."

So Alise, Mindy and John returned to their home and their Nana and GrandBob. And I sit here with nothing but memories and her leftover YoBaby (vanilla and banana) to comfort me as I wonder what else I could have done to sweeten the deal.

Sigh. I guess we'll always have D.C.

That's Democrazy, Yo.

So here we are. April 15. Have you paid your taxes? Oh, GOOD. Because now the country can pay for a bunch of stuff, like infrastructure and social services. And even though you probably don't feel like you authorized those expenditures, you sort of did. You elected the people who authorized them. And in our representative government, that's the way it works. Yay democracy!

Except here. In Washington, D.C., the city that perhaps represents better than any other city all that this nation stands for, we have no representative government. And BOY, did I pay some taxes, yo. Yay democracy!

Oh. Wait.

We have no senators. We have no voting congressional representatives at all. We have Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is allowed to sit at the table with the big kids and raise her hand when she has something polite to say. But when it comes to voting and actually, you know, mattering, she has to keep her hands firmly in her lap.

Did you know this? You probably did, even if you didn't realize it. That's what happened to me when we were considering moving here. "One hundred senators, two for each state, but D.C. isn't a state, so... oh. OH."

If you care, you can read a little more about it here. And if it really gets your undies in a bundle and you happen to live in one of the states whose senators are using all kinds of funny filibustering hijinks (silly boys!) to block legislation that would give li'l D.C. voting representation, you can maybe call those senators. Tell them to quit playing games or you'll go to the press with proof of their, uh, mafia ties? Indecent liaisons with high-priced hookers? Undocumented lawn care specialists? Indecent liaisons with low-priced hookers? Third nipple? Just keep shouting them out until you hit a nerve.

(No. Don't do that. That's blackmail! Blackmail is not nice. But effective. But not nice! Try threatening to TP their houses with that super-cheap, one-ply crap from Costco the night before a good rain. NOT SO FUNNY NOW, IS IT, SENATOR.)

Who Are These People?

I know I'm not the only one receiving a flood of spam allegedly from Russian girls who want to have my baby.

"I Think that there has come time when each person in this world reflects to create happy family for a birth in the future of remarkable children which will be surrounded with caress and care of parents."

It goes on, and it's signed "Russian girl IRINA." The suspicious JPEG pinned neatly to the top of the email suggests that IRINA wants to show me her ample bosoms and maybe eyeliner application skills. But I know that she, who probably isn't even a she, really just wants to hijack my computer. The goal is probably to slow things down and cause me mild inconvenience until I do a system restore.

If you're trying to bring down the financial institutions of the Western world or steal my credit card number, I see how that can be accomplished with nefarious programming. I get it. You're really into jihad, or you really want a new big-screen TV. But who spends days programming viruses that mildly inconvenience a few people?

I've been saying that a lot lately, in various situations: Who are these people?

My parents visited this past weekend, fluffy white dogs in tow. And during our visit to Mount Vernon, some woman beckoned a security officer and told him that one of our dogs had pooed on the presidential lawn and that we had not cleaned up. The dog had not pooed anywhere. At all. And I had to fight the urge to track down this lying woman and command both dogs to poo on her face. I successfully fought the urge, because I am not one of those people. But she, apparently, is.

Who makes up shit about dog shit?

Last week, we watched the 4.5-hour mindfuck that is "Bush's War," a PBS documentary about the run-up to and execution of the Iraq War. The documentary is brilliant and shocking and deeply reported; it's the facts that pour into your ears and mix into a combustible solution of lies and then explode your head into a billion pieces all over the living room couch. I'm one of those annoying People Who Do Not Allow Talking during certain programs, but again, I couldn't stop asking The Mouse: Who are these people? These people who run our government and hijack our government and send boys to die in a hot, dry, sandy hell for the privilege of escorting a private contractor's load of supplies?

"Nightmare at Guantanamo Bay" on 60 Minutes pushed me past my limit.

I know that a lot of people have outrage overload, which is why we don't act all that outraged. Once you hit overload, you acclimate. If the madness of the world won't go away, your brain has to somehow make that madness normal. And normal isn't so bad, right? It's just the way things are.

But when a little computer programming mischief makes me question human nature, I think that's a sign that I've gone beyond outrage overload. I've reached outrage fatigue.

A few weeks ago, I was talking to an acquaintance about how The Mouse and I eloped. She asked why, I glossed over the religion thing, and she pressed for more. I groaned inwardly, because -- although I don't know her well -- I know that she is an avid church goer.

"Why wouldn't you get baptized?"

"Because I don't believe in it."

"Well, what are you?"

"Atheist."

"Oh...... Really?"

She spent the next few minutes attempting to uncover the rotten root of my godlessness somewhere deep in my past. I spent the next few minutes doing everything I could to tiptoe around the issue. I do not debate the merits and demerits of religion with strangers, rarely even with people I know. It's a one-way street to a flooded cul-de-sac. But the result this time was that I tiptoed too lightly, was overly deferential, and she interpreted my views as things that I resent, things that hold me back, things that make me sad. She looked at me sorrowfully, as one might look at a heartbroken child, and told me that her god would give me blessings.

I despise feeling misunderstood, but I let it go. It wasn't her fault.

Today, I was telling a good friend that I sometimes feel that transcendent happiness may be more accessible to people like that acquaintance -- people who believe in a god or a divine purpose or an afterlife. I do not want blind faith, I find it dangerous and counterintuitive. But I do admit that blind faith in some omniscient, omnipotent divine being might be quite handy in the battle against outrage. Why be outraged if everything has a purpose that we can't know?

That's overly simplified, of course. Most of my religious friends will say they are also outraged at the world because they believe in free will, and the world is full of assholes who exercise free will in a most despicable manner.

Which puts us all, once again, in the same pitching boat. A boat that has been commandeered by a gang of people we don't know, don't recognize. Who are these people?

I give my time and my money to causes I believe in. But even those efforts can feel hollow. And I don't know what to do about that. Sometimes I long to see outrage on the faces of others. I ache to hear it in their voices and feel it in their words. There's nothing so unifying or comforting among humans as a shared extreme emotion.

So if you want to come over, we can take the elevator to the roof. We can scream angry, improvised poetry through the night air. We'll be able to see the White House and the Capitol Building and the monuments to the people who died for purposes both right and wrong, but our words will likely reach only the next block where the same homeless man sleeps on the same park bench every night. We can scream at them, WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE, WHO ARE YOU, and no one will answer. We won't have changed anything, least of all the propensity for bored, pimply-faced teenaged boys to write silly email viruses. People will still lie about dog shit and weapons of mass destruction, and then volunteer the idealists to take the bullet. In the shadowy corners of our government, people will still be tortured and denied due process and sometimes killed.

But maybe we will feel better for having screamed side by side. For having defied the isolation that comes from watching 30-second clips of enraging news stories that are bookended by commercials for cars and bacon burgers and shampoo. For having connected in an honest, feeling way that seems increasingly infrequent but is as important as ever.

I don't know about you, but I really need that.

You Just Might Learn Something

I have some amazing friends. I'm not saying they're more amazing than your friends. I'm just saying... they might be.

Anyway, these friends of mine do some cool stuff. And when I think you might like to know about these cool things -- or I just want you to BUY something from my friends -- I'm going to share them with you.

So my friend Beth Finke. She wrote this wonderful book called "Hanni and Beth: Safe and Sound." It's a nonfiction children's book about Beth's relationship with Hanni, her guide dog, and I recommend that you parent-types pick it up as a bedtime read. The illustrations are beautiful -- all soft and done in oils. My sense is that kids will love it because it's about a dog (KIDS LOVE DOGS), but it covers the life of a dog and her human in a way that most kids have never heard. I think all of you librarian types (and I know I have a few of you as readers) should put it on your shelves. The School Library Journal agrees.

I learned a lot about guide dogs from Beth's book. For example, you're not supposed to address a guide dog when the dog is working. Did you know that? I didn't, but I do now. Which is why I'll never again give Beth a big ol' kiss on the cheek and then stoop down and shout, "HI HANNI!" while I hysterically clap my hands and stomp my feet. And Beth will never again have to scold me.

Hopefully, anyway. I have a hard time ignoring dogs, and I'm not nearly as well trained as Hanni is.

In Case You Haven't Seen It

Star Wars, as recapped by a 3-year-old.

Thanks, Ward.

Lessons in Customer Service: When All Else Fails, Be Maddeningly Polite

"Hi. I need to schedule a pickup."

"Yes, miss. I can help you with this. When does the package need to be picked up?"

"As soon as possible. It was supposed to be picked up Wednesday but nobody picked it up."

"Oh! I am very sorry for the inconvenience. What is the tracking number?"

"[Blah, blah, blah, several digits]."

"Yes, miss, very sorry for the inconvenience. I am showing that this package will be delivered today by 5 p.m."

"Uh... no. It won't. Because it hasn't been picked up yet."

"Oh. Yes. Very sorry for the inconvenience. Can you please hold?"

"Sure."

....

"Yes, miss. What I can do is schedule a pickup for you, miss. Is this something you would like me to do?"

"Uh, yes. Very much so."

"Yes, very sorry for the inconvenience. We can pick it up Saturday. Is this acceptable?"

"That's fine."

"OK, miss. Very sorry for the inconvenience. We will pick it up tomorrow. Your confirmation number for the pickup is 5--"

"I'm sorry, what is 5?"

"The pickup confirmation."

"Oh, OK. Go ahead."

"5."

"Yes...?"

"............"

"Wait, what is 5? The time you're confirming that you'll pick it up? 5 p.m.?"

"No, miss. Very sorry for the inconvenience. Your confirmation number is 5."

"5."

"Yes."

"5...?"

"5."

"5-5...?"

"5."

"Wait, what are we talking about? It's 5? Just 5? What do I do with '5'?"

"When nobody picks up your package tomorrow and you have to call to tell us that nobody picked it up, you can give us confirmation number '5'."

"Right. Five."

"Yes."

"When nobody comes tomorrow."

"Yes, miss. Very sorry for the inconvenience."

"Oh, me too."

iLove My Husband

Here's some typical holiday conversation in our house:

"[Our birthday/Christmas/Elephant Appreciation Day/National Hairball Awareness Day] is next week. Are we doing presents?"

"I don't know... We DID just [go on that trip/buy that couch/cash out our 401(k)s to support our Velvet Elvis-collecting habit]. Maybe that should count as our gifts?"

"Agreed."

Valentine's Day usually fits into that scenario. But this year, I suggested that we use it as an excuse to buy each other gifts, because I love buying people gifts and I also don't entirely mind being on the receiving end. So we set a price ceiling and then went about our secret planning, which basically amounted to me scouring the web and wishing that The Mouse actually wanted something -- ANYTHING IN THE WORLD -- that fits within the set price range. The only things he wants are a Vespa, a Kindle, a MacBook Air, his own luxury hotel, an African safari and a supermodel.

I got the closest things I could find: two books showcasing luxury hotels, which was meant to be a cool gift but could actually come off as meaning here are two beautifully bound keepsakes of stunning photographs of the things you will never be able to afford. XOXOXO.

But at least I followed the rules. He did not. And for that, I am eternally grateful:

It's so much better than I could have imagined. I wish I could tell you that it's not great, because that's what I wanted to hear. Every time my friend Sharon pulled out her iPhone and offered to let me take it for a spin, I could only stick my fingers in my ears, squeeze my eyes shut and repeat, "PUT IT AWAY, PUT IT AWAY, NO NO NO I CAN'T LOOK." Because I knew I was dangerously close to the edge, and even a taste would send me careening over the cliff into the Cult of iPhone.

I wish I could tell you that it's OK, it's just a phone, and does it really need all of those goddamned buttons? But I can't lie to you. The truth is that it's a phenomenal feat of computer engineering, it's thirteen thousand times more than just a phone, and all of those goddamned buttons are TOUCHSCREEN GATEWAYS TO HEAVEN that make me repent sins I haven't even committed just so I can be bathed in their beautiful LCD light.

Don't hate me. I've already spent the afternoon begging my beloved WG to come back to me because iPhone envy, no matter how understandable, should never destroy friendships. Save that kind of friendship-destroying envy for when I purchase my third luxury hotel.

But keep in mind, that's exactly the time I will need you most. Because by then, my husband will be able to afford his own supermodel.

High

I spent two hours on Sunday standing on the corner of 14th and U Streets holding an Obama sign as high as my arms would reach. You'd think this would be easy, because a sign is a piece of paper. But you would be wrong about the first part. When your arms are roughly as strong and taught as al dente linguini, holding anything --nothing -- above your head for two hours is quite difficult. The wind was gusting to fifteen thousand mph, and eventually I couldn't feel my fingers. I started to wonder just how far I'd go for Obama. Aching shoulders? Runny nose? FROSTBITE?

I'm slightly more cynical than Pollyannaish. But I have to tell you that standing on that street corner while hundreds of people drove by, honking and pumping their fists in the air and shouting, "Obama!" gave me so many warm and gooey feelings that I thought my insides had liquefied.

People of all colors and ages stopped to ask for buttons and posters. Pedestrians clapped and cheered. Bus drivers and cab drivers peppered the air with the sound of horns. And then rainbows filled the horizon, the sick were suddenly healed, and all the people in the D.C. metro area spontaneously broke into a chorus of "The Star-Spangled Banner." With angels singing backup.

But honestly, it was really nice. Really, really nice. Even nicer than Slice of Pink's Banana Carmel Chocolate Spice Pie, which I made today. (And trust me, people: That's saying a lot. That pie is a circular piece of heaven.)

I urge you all to go support your candidate and then come home and enjoy a delicious bakeless pie. Because the combination of a democracy high followed by a sugar high? The only thing I can imagine taking me any higher is a 30-minute slow-motion video of puppies running through fields of wildflowers. And since I don't have one of those on hand, I may have to eat another piece of pie.

Progress

Whenever I come back from a trip outside the U.S., I'm always struck by details of American life that I hadn't much noticed before. Yesterday, on my way to meet The Mouse for lunch in D.C.'s Chinatown, I realized that skyscrapers block the sun. BLOCK THE SUN. Not to get all John Muir on you, but isn't that sort of odd? Blocking large swaths of land from the sun and covering them with concrete means that nothing will grow there. For much of human history, if nothing would grow on the land, there would be nothing for people to eat. And if there were nothing for people to eat, they would starve and die. But instead, we grew really big brains and used them to build really big buildings, transport crops from elsewhere, and otherwise conquer the Earth and all of the limitations it imposed. Progress.

This all stands in contrast to my experiences of the last two weeks. Down in tiny Samara, on the Pacific side of Costa Rica, we spent two very slow and quiet weeks living as the Earth dictated. We slathered on lotion to block the sun's rays. We napped in the hottest part of the day when it was too hot to do anything else. We swam during high tide. Swatted flies that competed for our lunch, grew accustomed to the ants that crawled in our room. Awoke with the birds and slept when the sun set. Initially, the change-up of my normally self-directed routine made me restless. But in the end, I fell into step with nature's constant -- and often inconvenient -- rhythm. For us, it was a step back to a simpler time that existed many, many generations ago in our own homeland.

Three years ago, a friend spent a summer in Samara teaching English. When I told him today that two American car rental companies have set up offices in Samara, he was shocked. Pablo, the Costa Rican man who took us to a nearby island for snorkeling last week, told us that Samara did not have any white people roaming its streets five to ten years ago. "It's good and it's bad," he said. "The tourism is good for our economy and it gives us jobs, but it also introduces our children to new people with new ideas and new ways of thinking. That's not always good."

We could see the wariness on locals' faces. Not resentment so much as resignation -- an understanding that their conflicting feelings don't even matter because the change they're witnessing is inevitable. It's an unstoppable process that has already been thrust into motion. Italians, Americans, Germans, Canadians -- they're all snapping up property and building roomy houses and comfy motels to hold more of their kind. They hire locals to cook and clean and transport and guard, thus providing jobs to fuel the local economy. But they also drive up prices. And as Pablo told us, "People here were getting along just fine before tourism."

Samara is still relatively unknown to tourists. But as vacationers seek out spots that are quieter and less touristy than Tamarindo or Jaco, they'll trickle into Samara with increasing regularity. And to accommodate those tourists, Samara may grow to resemble the very areas that those travelers are trying to avoid. And then one day, when Samara perhaps has a Burger King and a Subway and a giant, all-inclusive resort, travelers will move on to the next beach town that is purer, less contaminated with the world they are trying to escape. They may leave behind a town that attracts only tourists who are less interested in cultural exchange than in packaged experiences that sample fragments of local life but never push them out of their comfort zones. A town that has changed irreversibly.

I love visiting other countries and cultures. It challenges my own ways of thinking and shakes up my routines and notions about the world. It makes me a better global citizen. But as much as we gain from our sojourns into other worlds, we leave behind traces of our own societies' values. We show up in our fashionable clothing with our ultra-portable laptops, shiny cameras and North Face gear, and we impart our ideas of progress. But is progress equal to to having more money to acquire more things? Is it the ability to buy a Coca-Cola on every corner? Is progress an ethic that values work more than leisure? The existence of farming conglomerates that grow, distribute and sell produce for lower prices?

Or are we merely teaching, by example, how to live in fruitless pursuit of the material happiness that is marketed to us? Are we, in effect, telling people who are happy and self-sufficient that they're measuring themselves by the wrong standards? That they're actually unhappy and poor and didn't even know it?

I don't know the answer. Maybe these changes are uncomfortable only for the one generation that lives to see life clearly on both sides of such progress -- the before and the after. Maybe the dark and the light of human nature -- the greed and the beautiful desire to achieve for achievement's sake -- conspire to make such change inevitable.

I know it's not black and white. But I think that exploring the shades of grey would make all travelers a little more aware of the exchange we take part in with every border we cross. And wouldn't that be progress?