Perfectly Disgraceful

Inadvertent values lesson

The weather was beautiful and we had to be near the river anyway, so thinking I would be an excellent mother and take my kids outside instead of avoiding the heat in an air-conditioned house, I threw together what passed for a picnic. We walked through the Azalea Garden near the Art Museum over to the river. We ended up near what looked like a bit of canal or something, separated from the Schuylkill by a tiny island. It was lovely and shady and bucolic, with birds fluttering about. We didn't approach it on purpose, but a fledgling robin hopped a few times to get away from us, and fell right into the canal.

I really wish I hadn't looked to see what happened to the robin. I really wish I had assumed that it was just fine. But I did look and the damn thing had hopped into the icky stagnant water. It tried to swim a bit and got right up next to the wall of the canal, where there was no place for it to gain perch.

I thought, I'll get a stick that the robin can grab onto and lift it out! Bad idea. It could not or would not grab onto the stick. Things got worse, it became waterlogged and frantic. You know how you're not supposed to panic when you're in deep water because that's how you drown? Well, the fledgling's parents had obviously neglected to impart this lesson.

I then thrashed at the water in a futile attempt to push the robin over to the other side, where it could have climbed out. No success. At the this point the bird was mostly underwater, occasionally opening its little beak to gasp for air. I still can't get that image out of my head.

The Older Child and I dragged a fallen branch to the canal to try to, I don't know what, lift the robin out, give it some purchase, something. It was sort of occurring to me at this point that one of us was likely to fall into the disgusting water, probably the Younger Child, causing an even greater disaster, yet I didn't my utterly futile flailing of the large heavy branch. I realized the next day, when every muscle in my back ached, how crazy my efforts must have been.

All three of us were leaning over the edge of the canal watching the demise of that damn robin. I don't know how none of us fell in. I now wish I had just jumped in at first, the water looked very shallow, but it was so gross, and it didn't seem like it would be difficult to save the bird. I was also kind of afraid of being pecked and scratched. I wish I had dumped everything out of the picnic bag and used it to net the robin. But again, the grossness deterred me.

I'm now left wondering if I shouldn't have just left well enough alone. Maybe the robin could have gotten out on its own. Maybe I made things worse. I probably shouldn't have looked over the edge and just walked away assuming that everything was fine. II don't even know if my girls will take away a decent lesson from this. What is the lesson? That it's good to throw yourself into helping others? Or that it's futile in the end? I think they already know that their mother is kind of crazy.

The Older Child and I are still upset about the robin. The Younger Child kept assuring me that there were plenty more robins hopping around. Cold comfort.

   

Copyright 2009 Patia Stephens 

Happy birthday, Rex

 

Love,

Perfectly & the Disgraceful Children

At the beach

Or, as Philadelphians say, downashore.

Eight days is not enough. I need to find a way to spend a lot more time here.

 

 

Birthday party

There were calla lilies. I didn't even know I liked calla lilies until I saw them at Whole Foods and thought it would be amusing to have a vase of them. Now I love them, they're so over the top.

 

Dress dithering

I still haven't decided whether to keep the maxi-dress or not. I really like it, but it may not be all that flattering to crucial parts of my body. I might try another size to see if that helps. I know certain people who live in my house think that it's too fancy for anything but a wedding. However, I want to live in the kind of world where one can wear a dress like that just about anywhere.

 

But the real dithering is about what to wear to the party this weekend. Have you not heard? I'm turning 40 and celebrating with a big party featuring prosecco and pâté. Darling, you should come! Anyway, it occurred to me, along about the time I decided to invest in a few cases of prosecco, that the black sequined shift I purchased from the Banana (for about 10% of its original price) would be the perfect over-the-top dress for what I hope will be an over-the-top occasion. Reader, you can imagine my disappointment when I tried it on this week and realized that it's a little too big. I may wear it anyway, but one of my rules to live by is that clothes should fit well and if they don't, they should not be worn. Granted, I break this rule pretty often as my budget does not afford all the tailoring I would like.

 

In the other corner we have the recently purchased H&M low-cut cocktail dress that seems to me to be a knock-off of a cross between Nicole Miller and BCBG. It fits well, shows off my figure, it's cute, but it features a sort of Hawaiian-y fabric, green with hot pink and purple flowers, that I'm not quite sure is very Disgraceful. Also, the fabric is sadly cheap, but what can you expect from H&M?

 

Luckily, thanks to my investments from my last two big occasions, I have the perfect shoes to wear with either dress.

 

I have gone on several shopping expeditions to find the Perfect Dress for this Very Big Occasion, but I've returned empty-handed. And really, is there anything more depressing than not having the opportunity to go further into debt when purchasing a gorgeous new dress? No, there isn't.

 

P.S. I'm not posting any pictures until after the event because I would like this to be a surprise.

Twilight hole

I fell into a burning ring of Twilight...

You may recall my dithering about whether to allow the Older Child (perhaps I should now refer to her as Eleven?) to read Twilight. Even though I lost that battle and she already read it, I decided to try reading it out loud to her. I couldn't do it. The dialogue was so painfully bad that I couldn't read it without being sarcastic. The chuckling! There is so much freaking chuckling in the Twilight books. Now tell me, how often do you run into chuckling in this day and age? And how often do teenagers chuckle? Please. And then there is the smirking. So much smirking. Yes, teenagers probably do spend half the day smirking, but I think the fatally sincere Edward is found smirking far too often. As my friend Linda said, "There is nothing worse than a writer who can't just stick to "said." "

I gave up on reading Twilight out loud and decided to skim through it to make sure it wasn't totally inappropriate, which is a little like closing the barn door after the cows have gotten out, but whatever. Four hours later it was 3:00 in the a.m. and I couldn't put the damn book down. I have no idea what happened.

I spent all of Memorial Day weekend in a disoriented Welbutrin start-up haze ignoring my children and reading the first two Twilight books. I had to skim through much of the books to avoid chuckle-induced nausea, but I still couldn't stop reading. However, I am a wee bit concerned that the Welbutrin fog may mean the books have indelibly imprinted on my soggy brain, much likes the werewolves and their mates.

After I finished the second book, on Sunday, I put out an all-points Facebook bulletin seeking Book Three (I know they all have names like Crescent Moon or whatever, but I think of them as Twilights 1 - 4), but no one came to my rescue. I trekked over to Target on Monday. No Book Threes. Then I realized I couldn't purchase a paperback version and I really wasn't willing to shell out for a hardback.  Eleven came to my rescue! She borrowed the copy her teacher had made available to her combined fourth and fifth grade class! Yay! Also, WTF? I guess her school is even less interested in censorship than I am.

While I was impatiently drumming my jittery (Welbutrin start-up side-effect) fingers waiting for Book Three, I needed another teen-age angst fix. We have a lot of books in our house. A LOT. Some might say TOO MANY. However, very few of them have anything to do with teen angst. I was reduced to reading Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse, which was nicely full of angst, not to mention sex and the Riviera, but probably would have done well to have a few vampires thrown in.

It was also around this time that a friend linked to this SHOCKING EXPOSE of the cultural Mormonism in the books. Warning, the link is very funny, but also kind of a buzzkill. I enjoyed the books more without getting any of the unsubtle Mormon subtext. I wish I hadn't read that blog until after I finished the book. It's fascinating, but the writer really hates the books and I don't. Although I am rather embarrassed that I enjoyed them so much.

I still don't get it why I fell into the Twilight hole. The books are poorly written. But I found the characters engrossing (I keep thinking about them!) and the pacing brilliant. Or perhaps brilliant is to strong a word, because I did keep wondering how a writer who doesn't seem all that smart could write books that I couldn't put down.

This lead to a whole discussion, mostly in my head, of literary vs. middlebrow vs. lowbrow books. When choosing fiction, I tend toward the literary. Not the super extra literary, more like the upper middle brow. Again, Linda came to the rescue in defining my literary tastes, when I go outsider the mildly literary realm, "what I like is kinda-trash written by really smart, literate people." And Stephanie Meyers just does not seem like a smart literate person-- to me. I know that's terribly snobby, but I don't care. I just don't get why these book had such a hold over me.

A nice side effect of my Twilight hole may be a renewed interest in fiction. I've spent the last ten years reading much more non-fiction, mostly essays, than fiction. Which seems strange to me as my entire literate life until recently had been spent deeply immersed in fiction. I still think of myself as a fiction reader, even though I often go months without reading anything that isn't online or the New Yorker. I would like to get back to what still seems like my real life, being engrossed in novel after novel. If it took a few weeks of being a Twilight junkie to get me back on the lit wagon, well, I owe a big thank you to the vampires.

Toddling along

Oh my goodness, my bloggy turned one year old yesterday! This was my very first post.

 

Three-year-old auteur

Friends in the real-for-real may have already seen this on Facebook, but I love it so much that I must share with everyone.

Three-Year-Old Auteur from Perfectly Disgraceful on Vimeo.

This is what eleven looks like

Sweet, but very messy.

 

Dress questions

My darlings, I apologize for the extended absence. I blame faulty brain wiring. Chemical help seems to be working.

But that is entirely trivial. The important issue is: do I want a maxi dress? Also, why must they be called maxi dresses? The name is off-putting. Also also, where would I wear a maxi dress? The one I am considering is on the dressy side.

The pitiful state of my summer wardrobe forced me into a break-the-budget visit to H&M today where I found a beautiful floral maxi dress for the low low sum of $50. This is the dress in question.

When searching for a pic of the dress, I was stymied by H&M's entirely useless flash-requiring website. For shame, H&M. Google to the rescue! A Danish beauty is also enamored of the dress and supplied handy photos (note that my petite bosom will not fill the dress like Miss Jeanette's does).

My shamefully vain question about the dress has to do with the length. Reader, I think I have nice legs, do I really want to cover them up in the summer? Even with such a cute dress? I await your answers.