1. Clowns
2. Jason Bourne
3. Me

(Just so we’re clear, I use “falls” in a general way to cover, “intentionally falling down a short flight of circus stairs in order to get laughs from children,” “being thrown down dark stairways by assassins like yourself,” and, “slipping on too-long pajama bottoms with a.) no premeditated intent to fall, or b.) anyone threatening pursuing you from the bedroom behind you…and why would there be because it’s 11AM on a Tuesday and you live on a residential street?”)

As with previous sports I’ve played, I assumed my best bet on my first try falling down a flight of stairs would be to copy the style of people who were already pros,  and, since I tend to be good at things that require more force and less finesse, stair falling would seem like a natural fit. With my plan in place and confidence on my side, I slipped on the top step of our stairs.

My form, I feel, left something to be desired.

It must have been a lack of focus.

I tried to fix Jason Bourne’s bounce-back elasticity in my mind, but I think – and I’m just speculating here – that I went down less like a graceful cat (a well-muscled, dirty-blonde cat with lightning reflexes, amnesia, and a tenacious thirst for the truth) and more like, um…a bag of hammers.

To be more clear, hammers with no thirst for truth, attractive martial arts skills or the ability to kill someone with a hardback book. Just hammers. In a bag.

And not a nice bag designed for hammers, like with tool loops. More like a burlap hammer sack.

This was disappointing, to say the least.

(To be fair to the hammers, if they could get themselves together post-fall, they might not need a book to kill someone, being hammers and all. But still.)

I was not even able to bring an amusing prat fall quality to the proceedings, which was additionally unsatisfying.

Nor did I stand up and make it clear to the crowd (not present) and judges (ditto) that I was done with my effort and proud of it by raising both arms above my head like a tiny gymnast who has never tasted an almond croissant or seen the outside of a gym. No. I lay at the bottom of the stairs for a moment and said something interview-worthy like, “Aaaahhh,” before starting to go into shock.

This is not what you want in a competitive athlete or your star assassin. It’s probable that I am out of the running for Cirque du Soleil as well.

It did occur to me later that I ought to have jumped up and kept going, staunching the flow of blood with vodka and sports socks stolen from the convenience store I dodged into to avoid my attacker. But the closest convenience store is up a very steep hill from our house which is just excessively tiring. I mean, really. And the guy who works there is super nice, so I just can’t see stealing their liquor. Maybe if I were in Russia, where crime and vodka are more plentiful. Maybe then.

Also, I have a hard time classifying my pajama pants as an “attacker” per se, despite their catalytic role in the whole incident. They’re from the Gap.

Oh – did I mention I was covered in coffee? My coffee. Not some cool, assassin trick coffee. Keurig coffee. From a yellow plastic Crate & Barrel mug circa 1974. I think that mug really took the last bit of edge off the venture. I’m cutting that from future attempts.

So all in all, not a great experience, my first complete stair fall. It resulted in some non-life-threatening injuries, some irritating x-rays and no death-by-book for anyone else. I can’t say I’m proud of my performance, which is what we’re all really looking for in our sports, win or lose, right?

On the up side, it sets the bar very low for my next trip down. The addition of any flair (or killing of assassins) whatsoever would be improving on my current personal best. From here on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, there is, literally, nowhere to go but up. So there’s that.

I feel a little bit better

• I sent in our taxes for the first time on time. (To be clear, mine used to be on time. But this very small person who lives with us aka “our child” + this thing we live in aka “our house,” and this man who comes and goes and is so pleasant to me = extreme paperwork increase.)
• Possibly creating a new requirement for public sector jobs in Newark, the mayor of Newark saved a woman from a burning building. Newark can definitely use some DIY heroism. More impressive than sending in taxes? Sure, OK.
• I narrowly escaped seeing 21 Jump Street in a theater. Which is almost the same as narrowly escaping death at the hands of a fire in Newark, right? No, OK, it’s not, but still: it would have added to the week’s sucking.
• San Francisco had a few real, honest to God thunderstorms. (It rains here all the time but usually it’s just annoyingly damp.) No one much cares except for this shot of the lightning on the Bay Bridge. And by “on the bridge,” I mean on the bridge. All up on it.
• I have listened to the very clever Ladybug Picnic in a vintage Sesame Street loop for hours on end. It’s catchy. So catchy, it pops into your head first thing when you wake up at 4:30 in the morning. Awesome. Go watch it. You’re welcome. (The man who did it, Bud Luckey, is the guy behind the brilliant Boundin’ at Pixar, btw.)

As usual of late, more traffic on Pinterest from yours truly (follow me: you’ll like it, I swear), and the family of sites I’m growing up from little seedlings for parents, expectant parents and people who want to/have to give them presents (thank you very much, all of you nice gift givers).

And yet again, no tweeting. I just can’t do it. Steve Martin and Alain de Botton (for Pete’s sake…) have set the bar too high.

For next week: do you think people who have no interest in Buddhism would have an interest in Buddhism if someone like me, who also had no interest in Buddhism, wrote them an introduction without any resonant bells or breathing? OK, well, some breathing. I do want you to make it through the thing. Just not heavy breathing. We’ll see if this coming week brings that to fruition. I promise I’ll try and be smart alecky.

Have a nice weekend!

There’s a lot to dislike about all Walgreens. Every store pretty much stocks the same thing, including no Lifesavers. Which is weird. And possibly un-American. Except for that one Walgreens in the Financial District. Which is even weirder, given that kids don’t make up a big segment of the financial services industry. (Unless they do and I just don’t know about it. Which would certainly explain this whole recession thing.) They also apparently believe that little girls’ bangs are on their own because they don’t stock child-size barrettes. Or any good greeting cards. Or the caramels and chews only assortment from Russell Stover.

I digress.

I’ve boiled my Walgreens’ failure down to this: their only selling point is that they are open. All the time. Which is an awfully narrow business proposition, but there it is. The doors are unlocked and staff is present. That’s all they’re going for.

It’s like a restaurant whose sign just says, “Food.” If you are hungry enough, you will go there. If you would like an interesting menu, a polite staff, timely service, or warm food, you may well be out of luck. They told you right up front: they serve food. It might be burned toast. It could be overcooked peas. But they’re not wrong: it is food. And they promised nothing more.

Here’s how you can tell you’re at MY Walgreens:

• Do they lock up a random assortment of all their products, requiring you to press a broken-looking button next to your deodorant, which, when it does work, summons an employee to come and unlock your Secret from plastic prison?
• Is the entrance surrounded by people talking to themselves and teenagers who look like they would rob you of your recently paroled shampoo without batting an eyelash?
• Does the pharmacy have no record of your prescription when you show up to collect it even when your doctor @$(*&! confirmed that it was received? Yes.
• Is there always a wait to collect that bad news even when there is only one person ahead of you because the only people who frequent my Walgreens do not understand their insurance (including if they have any) or their doctor or plain English or all of the above, and the pharmacy assistant is willing – God bless her misguided soul – to try to address these much-bigger-than-a-five-minute-conversation problems at the checkout window instead of referring them to the clearly labeled Patient Consultation window to the left?
• Is all of this adding up to a tornado of soul-blasting inefficiency? Yes. Yes, it is.

But they are open. So I guess that makes up for the nerve-numbingly frustrating experience of going there.

It took me a while to realize that all of these things, while clearly – CLEARLY – super valuable, were not the true essence of the 24th Street Walgreens. Now that I finally get their, “Look, we’re open, OK?” thing, I have high hopes that I will be able to adjust my expectations and all future visits will feel like a success when the doors part in front of me. I aim to stop attaching my satisfaction to whether I am able to walk out with my prescription or whether it took 20 minutes of waiting behind an obese young woman with spiral pigtails discussing the finer points of probiotics with a checkout clerk to find out that I will not be walking out with it, and just rest in the happy knowledge that they were, in fact, open.

Or maybe I’ll just start going to that other Walgreens in my old neighborhood again. At least they’re closed sometimes.

American journalist Pamela Druckerman moved to Paris to live with her British husband. They had kids. She noticed that French children behaved differently than American children, was curious about the apparent differences in parenting that led to that, and she wrote a book - Bringing Up Bébé  - about her semi-formal investigation into the question. American parenting being what it is – always on the lookout for the next thing and let’s charitably call it, “not very laid back” – there has been a defensive uproar to the charge (not made by Druckerman) that French parents are better.

I happen to like the French – and their country, their cheese, their fully-funded daycare system, and, er, their cheese – and have never really understood the American love (Paris!)/hate (The French!) relationship with them. Maybe that’s why I remained engaged and un-offended while reading the book.

Or perhaps it’s not the French thing. Perhaps, as so often happens, the loudest yelling got the most press and the subject at hand, namely what was actually in the book, was lost in the fray.

Here’s the thing: I liked the book. I think you could too. So let’s clear up some of the basic arguments that have been leveled against it so you can get on with enjoying it.

First and foremost, nowhere does Druckerman state that French parents are better nor does she stage an attack on American parents. The defensiveness and anger of journalists, reviewers and commenters about what a great nation America is, how much better than France, and what amazing parents we all are feels irrelevant to me: no one said we weren’t. (It probably hasn’t helped that the book was introduced by The Wall Street Journal in an excerpt inaccurately titled – by them, not the author – “Why French Parents Are Superior.”)

Druckerman is no more “tell[ing] American parents that we’re doing it all wrong” than any other pregnancy or parenting book on the market, most of which highlight what you might do instead of what you are doing. If anything, Druckerman is less hard on American parents and more ambivalent about which path is best than many American books. Have you flipped through the page after page of rigid, judgmental suggestions in What To Expect When You’re Expecting or Super Baby Food lately?

The frustrations Druckerman expresses – out of control children in public spaces, the incompatibility of toddlers with restaurants – are ones we stateside parents express all the time. So why are so many mothers taking issue with her looking for a way to address some of those issues? Perhaps because we are instinctively defensive when we feel an outsider is taking issue with us. That is, it’s OK is we dish about our own relatives (or gender or race) but we bristle when others do. If that’s the case, let’s keep in mind that, although her thoughts are about the French, Druckerman is an American too. She is not taking sides against us.

Or perhaps it’s critics’ basic dislike of the French model she observes. To them, I would say, “It’s OK that it’s not your cup of café au lait. Move on. But mischaracterizing the book or the author as having done something reprehensible in even suggesting that we might consider a foreign alternative is like picking a fight with your boyfriend to justify moving out. Just go. It’s all right that you don’t want to take any of this advice. God knows there’s plenty more out there.”

Second, Ms. Druckerman having written a piece several years ago for Marie Claire on sorting out a menage a trois for her husband’s 40th birthday seems irrelevant to me.* On the contrary, that piece too displayed a clarity and candor (and a refreshingly domestic tone, unlike most American journalism on the subject of sex) that I found appealing. Having a sex life and being willing to write about it doesn’t, to my mind, disqualify a writer from also writing about parenting.

The furor over Druckerman having asked Marie Claire to remove the most prominent links to that piece only validates her apparent concern that readers would be so distracted by her having a racy (but not very) sexual past that we would be unable to judge her book on parenting on its merits alone. It’s just not that big a deal.

Third, the charge that Ms. Druckerman is focusing on the upper middle class of Parisians and that the book is therefore not a comprehensive representation of all parents in France is silly. I would encourage critics to produce any book on parenting that surveys and speaks to an entire nation’s population.

You can get back to me. I’ll wait.

Nothing? Yeah. I figured.

Let’s keep in mind that the audience for Bringing Up Bébé is of the same class in America: parenting philosophies self-select to the upper classes on both sides of the Atlantic. If you have the time and resources to develop a philosophy of anything (let alone write extensive comments or a book on them), you are in the middle and upper classes. Working two jobs and barely getting by do not allow for a lot of time with Dr. Sears or Ms. Druckerman.

Fourth, Forbes, among others, published a “rebuttal” calling into question the wisdom of French parenting based on America’s higher incidence of entrepreneurialism and billionaires. (I use quotes because a rebuttal implies that there was an initial attack, which I don’t believe that there was.) Again, this seems like a red herring to me. Within this kind of casually anecdotal logic, you might suggest that, given the US’s infant mortality rate – a stunning and embarassing 34th, behind Cuba and Japan – we should reconsider communism or acquiring an emporer to correct our childbirth problem. (France placed 9th, by the way.)

Yes, French schools are notoriously rigid. Yes, it is possible that that rigidity does not lend itself to the inventive, realize-your-dream thinking that is foundational to America’s national character. Yes, French parents’ early childhood focus on a “cadre” (or “frame”) may feel too impersonal or strict for many American parents. On the other hand, that same school system provides well-regulated, affordable childcare and preschool, something shamefully absent in the United States, and that cadre appears to produce better-behaved small children

The ongoing argument between Europe’s educational model (best typified in the semi-socialist Scandinavian countries where taxes are exorbitant but everyone is educated and no one carries student debt) and the American model (where education is uneven at best, providing amazing opportunities for self-realization for some and no meaningful opportunities or funding for many) will continue. It’s a difficult problem and a complex comparison. But it is not the subject of this book. Druckerman’s observations are limited to pregnancy and early childhood: the playground, home life with small children, day care and preschool.

(The mischaracterizations in these pieces of what Druckerman actually says does not aid their case.**)

Finally, and importantly, Bringing Up Bébé does not pretend to be a comprehensive socio-psychological survey of French and American parenting. Much of the criticism suggests that many readers believe it is – or ought to be – before they’re willing to consider any of the author’s input.

Bringing Up Bébé is part autobiography, part anecdote and part ad hoc research. Druckerman interviews doctors, caregivers, researchers and parenting experts (such as they are), in addition to parents themselves, but the book does not pretend to be more than an informal survey. She falls somewhere on the spectrum between Malcolm Gladwell (aggregating, filtering and commenting on other people’s research, see: Outliers, The Tipping Point, and Blink) and Adam Gopnik (Paris to the Moon’s essays on life with children in Paris).

As a mother and journalist, Druckerman does, I think, an admirable job of teasing out the unspoken but accepted cultural principles of child-rearing in France. That her book is not the footnoted final word on all matters of difference between the two countries’ systems of child-rearing – and which is definitively better – does not make it a bad book, an offensive one or disqualify it from my bookshelf.

Likewise, I did not reject Tina Fey’s autobiography for not providing me with a concrete, research-based roadmap to success in television comedy, nor am I offended that Gladwell draws his own conclusions about the research he relates. Yes, these are lighter weight approaches than primary research might present (which would have its own slant on things and, I venture, also draw critical bile from disagreeing parents). Yes, sometimes I disagree with their conclusions, but I didn’t go into reading these books with an expectation that their observations would be comprehensive, fully backed up and agreed to by experts or line up exactly with what I have observed or would have done myself. On the contrary, it’s the differences and subjectivity in their observations – their humanity – that makes them readable, interesting and potentially useful.

Bottom line, all this publicity is great for the book, so it probably needs no defense: people are talking about it, and buying it, and, as writer myself, I’m glad of that, and I’m sure Druckerman will brook the mischaracterizations just fine and laugh all the way to the bank (such as it is these days in publishing).

For those of you who have not read the book but are considering it, please do. Despite the many vocal and offended critics, there is nothing irresponsible in it, nor does it  prescribe a whole-hearted embrace of all things French, from formula feeding to fromage. I don’t believe, nor does Ms. Druckerman, as evident from her own choices, that raising children entirely in the French model is the correct choice. Primarily, Bringing Up Bébé is a bright, interesting read and and there’s quite a lot of insight in it that I’ve been glad to have. Especially the part about a cheese course every day at lunch. We’re definitely starting that tomorrow. There are some things that, as a responsible parent, you just have to do for the good of your child.

____________________________________________________________________________

Footnotes and References

*Slate’s Rachael Larimore on Marie Claire and her follow-up.

**A piece in The New York Times: ”The French leave their babies crying on their own if they’re not sleeping through the night by the time they’re 4 months old.” On the contrary, Druckerman notes that this wait is brief – very brief: a “pause” she calls it – and nothing like the “cry it out” solutions that many American parents publicly eschew but privately take on in desperation after a year or more of interrupted sleep. 

Erika Brown Ekiel’s article at Forbes.com deliberately – and provocatively – mischaracterizes an entire segment of the book with, “Most of the parents Druckerman profiles discourage their children from standing out, speaking up or getting in the way of their parents’ good time. The advice they dole out is focused on keeping one’s child in his place, rather than enabling him to imagine and construct one of his own.” Again, on the contrary, Druckerman’s subject parents provide a structure within which children are free to stand out and imagine, albeit without the constant, hovering assistance of their parents. And the “good time” she references escapes me: Druckerman writes about French mothers’ efforts to transcend guilt about being a bad mother for, say, having a job, or time to eat an adult meal. 

An actual interview with Druckerman at the Huffington Post - unlike much of the coverage. 

A more balanced write-up at NPR.com.

Short story short, in order to return an item I bought last month, I had to ring them up and “schedule” a UPS pick-up for the box. I use quotation marks because the schedule in question was “tomorrow.” Any time tomorrow. All times tomorrow. Between the hours of 7AM and 8PM. This was in lieu of my dropping off the package at my extremely local UPS depot. No, that would not do. No drop-off. Only pick-up.

How does this company survive out here?

Fortunately, we now live above street level with an outdoor landing below our front door. I took A. to the park, left the package out of view on the landing and a Post-It on our front door. I left another Post-It on the box itself (“UPS!!”), so our guy would know it wasn’t just recycling I’d thrown out there as if I have no standards.

When I came home, our driver had left me a note too:

Brilliant.

PRIME from thismustbetheplace on Vimeo.

Watch larger version over at Vimeo.

What’s not to love about New York?

You’re either a.) snoring, or b.) all excited because you think I might join you later in a rousing game of D&D because I know what an operating system is.

Stop it, both of you. It’s just a thing. I upgraded. No big deal. We all do it.

I’d say the birds and the bees do it, but they don’t because they’re smart enough not to mess with a good thing and not force themselves to re-learn all their keystrokes because they want to get on iCloud already so they can see all their photos online as soon as you take them on their phones. (Which you can’t, by the way, on iCloud. #)(*#$!)

Back on track: the big deal here – and I’m preaching to a subset of a subset of, like, six people from the snoring and D&D categories but please don’t fall asleep until you’re sure you’re not one of them – is that the new calendar program is going to put me in a mental institution.

Not because it doesn’t work (which it mostly does), but because some retro-minded numbskull in Cupertino designed its header to look like one of those old desk-size paper calendars executives used in 1941 when they had one appointment a week and a bombshell of a secretary they were underpaying and schtupping between high balls. Or so Mad Men would have me believe.

The border is the electronic version of Corinthian leather, apparently. Brown definitely. Tacky? Yes, mostly. And here’s what’s making me nuts: you know those little tiny tabs of torn paper that get left behind when you tear off sheets of paper at the perforation? It #$)(*#$IY@# @#U@IY$#$IY has those. On my screen. Those little bits that I used to tug at obsessively until I could get back to a pristine edge when I worked in old-school publishing and one of those desk calendars came with my office? Yeah. Those bits are there. On my screen. All the time. And there is not one goddam thing I can do about it.

I thought Apple was my OCD buddy, my anal design friend, my snickering behind our snarky hands at the imperfect UI crowd pal. No. They’re not. Now they’re  killing me and I need a drink. And I’ll be having it alone up at the bar without my Apple buddy, so if you see me, just take a seat and let’s just not talk about this further, because it hurts me on the inside.

It’s not only the capital “D”s that have me worried, although they do. I think if someone is going to use capital letters, we should all sit up straight and listen. Ditto lots of exclamation points. No one would use those without cause, don’t you agree? Especially not in today’s online world, where one’s reach is so wide. Misusing a loud voice to so many would be downright IRRESPONSIBLE!!!

Sarcasm aside, what I’m really worried about here is that R., my heretofore beloved, attended our last scheduled meeting with our advisor alone. I thought they were discussing one thing. Perhaps they were discussing another. Perhaps this is their way of letting me know what our next meeting will be about. At our last collective session, I did suggest that we start sending out agenda notes beforehand so we could be more focused during our time together. I was thinking more along the lines of, “Retirement savings: how to move Emma’s investments from her previous employer’s accounts,” but perhaps they were thinking more along the lines of, “1.) Do you know where your suitcase is, and b.) do you have a good lawyer?”

Or perhaps my very suggestion that we stay a bit more tightly on-subject precipitated this. Perhaps it rubbed the other two the wrong way. Really the wrong way. Like I was just trying to stop brushing our hair against the cowlick and they got tired of the whole cowlick thing as a whole and tracked down the flamethrower to keep it down once and for all.

Like that.

Hmmm.

This is really making me think twice about asking for agendas.

Also about our financial planner’s abilities in the tact department.

Oh – and about my relationship. That too.

But mostly about the agenda thing. I’m a really organized person. If I have to let that go, I’m not going to lie: it’s gonna sting, and not just a little bit either.

It’s been a couple of months of sorting things out to get everything over to our new home and looking good, but we’re finally up and running and we’re happy to be at WordPress.

If you encounter something that looks funny – besides the writing itself, thank you very much! – or just can’t find something you liked on the old site, please send a note.

Have a great afternoon and enjoy the new site!