Skipping Town

Monday: new stove arrives. Tuesday: new boiler. Glorious heat. Heating guy called our old boiler "medieval" and a "carbon-monoxide machine," for which parts aren't even made anymore since they don't meet any safety standards. Probably good we got a new one. But Lucia now cannot go to college. Thursday: Andrew discovers pool of water under basement stairs. Plumber comes at 6pm; says we should turn off water for the night. No water, no heat. Also, some tubing thing from the (ancient) dryer, which Andrew had duct-taped, fell down again. We're ignoring it. Friday: Plumber finds problem pipe behind wall in basement bathroom. Replaces pipe. No more leak, and we have heat and water. But now Greta cannot go to college. This is why some people are happily lifetime renters. I finally get it.

Dearest Grets, What a little joy you are. You’re walking now, full steam ahead—you started just a couple of days after your birthday, spent a few days taking a few tentative steps here and there, and then just settled into the world of walking without looking back. You have a bow-legged, determined stride, and you can’t quite keep up with yourself—you’re impatient to be done with the unsteadiness of a new walker. You’re ready to run. You try to run. You cannot yet run. You take so many spills every day it’s sometimes difficult to watch. You’re not talking yet, but you’re making yourself heard. You gesture and screech for what you want; you express your displeasure clearly when Lucia takes something from you or keeps you from something you’re after. You’ve thrown bona fide tantrums when we take you out of the bathtub—you love bathtime. You’re coming into your own. You love reading. You have favorite books and don’t hesitate to toddler over with one of them, press it into ...

Before Thanksgiving: our ancient oven died in a dramatic burst of flames. After Thanksgiving: our ancient furnace died in a quiet and brutal lack of heat. We are now ovenless and heatless. We've been cooking things on the stovetop, and tonight we bought space heaters for the girls' rooms. And Andrew leaves tomorrow, early in the morning, for a week-long business trip. Homeownership. Wheee....

Dear Little One, You have been three for a month now, and all I can say is that to be with you these days is to be constantly surprised. You are not the same person you were three months ago, or even one month ago; you are changing so much, so quickly, that it’s almost hard to believe. Suddenly, you want to dress yourself, and choose your own pjs. You come up with elaborate games and activities. You are drawing recognizable shapes, and you can write an L. But more than all this is how you’re changing socially. You’ve been coming out of your shell for a while now, but lately it’s been shockingly apparent. We had a few kids over this week for playgroup, and though you always look forward to playgroup, usually you turn shy when so many people come over. Not this time. You played the whole time with the other kids, shrieking and laughing as you all chased each other around the house, you and another little girl playing with your doll, standing with the other kids to have sandwich...

Last night, I made my very first return to Manhattan since moving to New Jersey. My return was done in style—Andrew and I went to the National Book Awards! Andrew’s company always has a table, and usually his team’s big partners are invited, but because of Sandy this year, there were empty seats, so Andrew got to bring me. I wore a lovely gray cocktail dress that’s been hanging in my closet for about five years with the tags still on, and I bought spectacular new sparkly shoes, got my nails and hair done, and generally tried my best to not look like the harried, banana-covered person I usually am. The event was at Cipriani, very fancy, with literary luminaries sitting nearby—one of the fiction judges even sat at our table. At the after-party, I walked right past Lorrie Moore and managed to tell her I still remembered something she said at a reading about ten years ago—that you should never marry someone who thinks writing is cute. “Actually,” she said, “I think I said you sh...

After one year and two weeks of breastfeeding, Greta is weaned. Last Friday, I just decided it was time. Greta is drinking cow’s milk, she’s eating a ton, and she was nursing out of habit, not any real need. So I just—stopped. I didn’t really intend to do it cold turkey, and if she’d protested, I would have kept going and phased it out gradually. But this wasn’t the case. At her morning naptime, I gave her her pacifier and blankie, snuggled her close, sang her a song, and put her in her crib. She went to sleep without a peep. Same thing for her afternoon nap, and then at bedtime. I did nurse her late that night, but the next day, that was it. She’s more or less stopped waking up during the night now (though she’s been getting up quite early, like 5:30 or 6), and she goes right to sleep at naptime and bedtime. It’s like she doesn’t even remember breastfeeding was something she used to do. Sniff. I was ready to stop, but Greta is my baby, and weaning her means I have to (sort...

We are still without internet or TV, but on Tuesday night we managed to watch the returns through a convoluted setup of cell phone—wifi hotspot—iPad—streaming CNN. The image and sound didn’t always align, and for long spells the screen would be black, jumping back to life with surprising announcements like CNN PROJECTION: OBAMA WILL WIN ELECTION. Hooray! I voted at a church near our house Tuesday afternoon. I went at lunchtime, and there was no line, and I gave my name and checked the little electronic boxes and walked home on a beautiful fall day, crunching leaves, moved not so much by the election itself but by the fact that I had gone through the ritual without even a thought of being harassed or hurt, that the most dangerous thing about my voting that day was the possibility that one of the girls would wake up from their naps while I was gone and Andrew was on a conference call. We’re lucky, and what a relief that this election proved that reason, respect, and inclusiveness pr...

We got a snowstorm last night, a good three or so inches of snow. Lucia was beyond excited yesterday when the first flakes started falling. She was excited about the snow—but she was also certain that this meant Santa was coming imminently. Ever since Halloween ended, and I explained that Thanksgiving and Christmas were coming up, she’s been exclaiming “Santa is coming!! I want Santa Claus!” at random moments. I’m not sure where she’s picked up this fascination/excitement over Santa. I’ve mentioned Santa to her a few times, but I haven’t made a big deal out of it (it’s only November 8!), so she either remembers last year’s Christmas (unlikely) or is just picking up on the pervasive cultural explosion of Christmas now that the Halloween stuff is gone from windows and stores. Anyway, when she woke up to see the world covered in snow this morning, she squealed and shouted that she wanted to go outside to make snowballs. First, though, she had preschool. I took someone’s helping-mommy...

At two this afternoon, we finally lost power. It seemed like a fated thing, long overdue, after hearing the laments of still-power-less neighbors from the other half of the block for the past seven days. I was rocking Greta when suddenly there was silence—her white-noise machine just died. I heard a beep of something shutting down. From the kitchen, silence. And so, tonight, we went trick-or-treating in pitch blackness. All we could see of the (few) trick-or-treaters who ventured to our block were flashlight beams; the only signal candy-offering houses could give was a candle or lantern in the window. It was truly eerie, the street absolutely dark; Lucia kept pointing out the stars in the sky. We left a bowl of candy on our porch while we were out, and our house was truly Halloween-y: yesterday we carved our two biggest pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns, and their glowing, jagged-tooth faces looked spectacular against the fully dark night. Lucia was very brave in these extrao...

***Today, November 10, we got our internet back--it went out the day of the storm. I wrote some blog posts over the past two weeks and will post them now. Blogger allows me to retroactively date them.*** Today is my and Andrew’s five-year wedding anniversary. To mark the day, here is our marriage so far, in numbers: 5 years of marriage 1 real wedding 3 exchanges of vows (legal; symbolic; official Catholic) 2 kids 2 cars (now 1) 6 apartments in 6 cities (Citrus Heights, CA; Sacramento, CA; Roseville, CA; New York, NY [temporary housing]; Brooklyn, NY; Maplewood, NJ) 3 states (CA, NY, NJ) 2 interstate moves (CA to NY, NY to NJ) countless weekend trips (pre-kids) 3 trips to the ER (Andrew: kidney stones, sliced finger; Lucia: tick) 1 major surgery (Margo: C-section) 1 historic election (2008) 2 hurricanes (Irene, Sandy) Immeasurable happiness. Happy anniversary, dearest!

Somehow, we got through the storm unscathed. We never lost power, and all of the beautiful trees in our yard stayed standing. We are lucky. Next door, and down the rest of the block, power is still out. (Two neighbors have strung extension cords to our outdoor outlets.) A gigantic tree a little ways down our street was uprooted and is still blocking the road; it took down an entire power-line pole, and the line was still live yesterday. Just up the street from us, as well as over one block, enormous trees were uprooted and fell over onto houses. A neighbor told us that a couple of blocks away, a tree split a house's second and third stories in half. So, we are lucky. Friends came over yesterday to charge phones and warm up (she's eight months pregnant; they have two other kids; still no power). We, on the other hand, went to Home Depot to buy paint--Andrew's office is closed for the rest of the week so we decided to undertake a home-improvement project, painting the "r...