An Open Letter to James Frey So I heard Oprah gave you a real spanking. Bummer, man.

I didn't even want to talk about you at all, but I have all these Writers around (if I may borrow your capitalization scheme) and they just won't let it rest. Some of them are starting to talk some real smack about the rest of us nonfiction writers. I don't blame you for giving into the temptation to work the system. You wanted to break through, and it didn't sell as a novel. Call it a memoir and everybody loves you. You're an addict, whether you think you are or not; you are. You made a stupid choice and got immediate gratification. That's what addicts do. Nan Talese hooked you up, and you guys pulled a big fucking score.

But, dude, you really left the rest of us holding the Bag. That's not okay with me. I don't agree to clean up your Mess. You've made it harder for the rest of us. Since you got caught, I've entertained countless conversations with Morons who are gloating about the end of the memoir. You killed a Genre, they say. I don't think you're all that powerful, but I'd still like to kick you right in those front teeth that didn't actually get a root canal without anaesthesia. I'm a little woman and not even much of a Drinker, but I'm mad enough to take you. There are so-called writers in the world who are hostile to creative nonfiction, to personal writing, to writing about "gross" and "depraved" topics. They are filling up my Inbox. They are telling me that "those people" are just seeking attention and being rewarded beyond all reasonable measure because Americans love a horrorshow. They make me feel like William Castle, like some barker at a donkey show.

You are not a Survivor. You're a punk. You make cheap shots at recovery and people's struggles, and you don't even have the lived experience to back it up. And now every other writer with a real story to tell and a gift for telling it is going to have to walk behind you like an elephant trainer, sweeping up your dung.


P.S. None of this is because I believed in you and I feel like a fool. I just started reading your book, and if the best you can give me is details of your imaginary vomit, I may stop.

He's proud of Texas! Governor Rick Perry would not be amused to learn how much fun we have with his TV commercials here at Chez Baldo. From what I can gather he has no sense of humor whatsoever--just a lot of hair spray.

Some of y'all don't know Rick Perry from your butt. I envy you people. He's the former Gov. Bush's little blow-dried lapdog. He is Mr. Entitlement.

Once a state trooper pulled his Official Government Canyonero over for speeding, and he famously reponded to the tough-as-nails officer (who was a woman, if it matters), "Do you know who I am?" She as famously responded, "Yes, I do, Mr. Perry. And you were speeding, sir." Love. It.

He's pillaging our public education, which is a sore spot for the Baldofamily. You know, we're those lazy vultures known as Teachers. We don't like it when blowdried douchebags make our work more difficult. We do, however, give him credit for not being a total asshole during that whole Katrina affair, although a lot of people got their backs up when he started appealing to other states to help with the influx of people. That I forgive, because throwing open the doors of your public schools to thousands of homeless children does have a ripple effect on public services.

Anyhow, I'm getting away from my point here. And that point is that Rick Perry is as gay as a fresh spring breeze (though as much in the closet as a lonely forgotten cedar block), and try as he might to appear studly and macho and like a Tough Texan Horseback Riding Ranch Guy (achieving this image can make a presidency regardless of whether you're actually as dumb as a bowl of cottage cheese), he just looks like he's come-hithering the camera. He tosses his famous hair at the camera and snarls, "I'm proud of Texas! How 'bout you?"

After Baldo is in bed J. and I will sit down with bowls of ice cream and wait for these commercials the way some people wait for Lost. Oh, we have so much fun. I have perfected the Rick Perry Hair Toss. "Ride me, stud!" I snarl. I have, after all, seen Rick Perry in the flesh (he visited my department once at UT-Austin, flanked by cybernetic security operatives and enveloped in a faint cloud of Final Net). Once his wife, Anita, visited J.'s campus, and I offered to pay her student escort (a delightful precocious middle-schooler whom I once chaperoned at ACL) $20 if she'd ask Mrs. Perry what it was like to be married to the gayest Republican in Texas. "I'd do it for free!" the student beamed. I love these kids. They really are our future.

advice If you are hung over, do not play Let's Go Fishin'. Especially if your child likes to take out all the fish and then watch the base spin and spin and spin and spin...

It does get better When I was all crazy and my kid was all screamy, mothers used to tell me, "It gets better. You'll see." And since I was all crazy, I'd pounce: When? When? Six months? A year? Two years? Four years? I wanted specifics. I never got them.

We are better. We do not yet meet the Victorian standard of mother-child beatitude. I am not thrilled beyond belief every moment of the day. Who is? Nobody. But are we better? Yes, we are better. All of us. I don't know if we will ever be As Good as Other People. But we are good for who we are. We apologize when we mess up. We take care of each other. We will never pronounce Our Struggles Behind Us, but we will keep struggling, because that is what human beings do with their challenges.

I got a phone call the other day from the acupuncturist who treated Baldo during his High Holy Eczema phase. "We just wanted to see how he's doing," he said. "We miss him."

You miss him?

"We miss him." The triumvirate of Hippie Dudes misses him. They used to write "Sir Baldo" on the labels of the murky herbal tinctures they gave us. They liked the way he'd blaze through the door of the clinic talking a mile a minute. When you can converse meaningfully with a child, it is a pleasure. It is not always a pleasure when you are trying to merge in freeway traffic and your freakishly verbal kid is nattering about chain-bucket dredgers, or when it is 5:00 in the morning and a small voice is telling you to get up and go play Magic School Bus in the living room. But it is true that the Hippie Dudes miss him, and as Baldo grows up I will miss things about his young childhood, as well. A few of them, anyhow.

This morning we were goofing around, and I picked him up and held him in my arms like a baby. Because music was on, I automatically started to do my colic dance. My body remembers it. His body does too. Being together as we were during his infancy, both of us miserable, has soldered us together as human beings. In some ways I think we have bonded more profoundly as mother and child than we would have if things had been "perfect." Happiness isn't the only thing that can bring people together. People also come together to survive. The survival instinct is a wonderful thing, an exalted thing, even if it is sometimes ugly to see. It is what gives people their resilience, their character. Fighting the fight isn't the same thing as "realizing I'd been given a precious gift!" or whatever that bullshit is. Fighting the fight hurts. It's exhausting and horrible, and it does not and should not make people happy. It makes people tired and desperate. And when people are in that state, they need whatever help they can get their hands on. Some of us will fight our whole lives with children who are sick, with relationships that are broken, with poverty, with mental illness, and they should never be told, "Oh, you're so strong," or "I don't know how you do it." Or the worst: "Aren't you thankful?" People are not thankful for the things in life that cause us pain. Human nature forbids it.

It doesn't go away. But it does get better.

an unexpected consequence of drought It's so dry here that there's static electricity everywhere. I do not enjoy the look on a kid's face when he realizes he can get electric shocks just by walking around. That one's hard to explain. Still working on that one.

I reached up to turn the light off in our living room and got enough of a shock to make me scream like a leetle girl. Simultaneously, the shock caused all of our electronic toys (that would be a total of two) to start going off. That was weird. I get an electric shock, and the next thing I realize the Smart Kitchen is telling me, "Let's fry an egg," and Baldo and J. and I are all looking at each other warily.

A note: Yes, we have a talking Smart Kitchen. It's made out of toxic plastic and it talks and I despise it, but it was $2.99 at the thrift store and for almost six months I just made sure it never had any batteries. For six months that worked. That's the only time I've ever put one over on Baldo. A random guy even helped me get it out to my car from the store, and meanwhile he was witnessing to me in Spanish, so maybe he could cross that off his to-do list for the day. Now my kid makes pretend coffee, and it is The Shiznit.

nota bene Ordinarily I avoid talking about national politics (I'm usually out of my depth, and my readership is bipartisan) but I wanted to point out this article about U.S. Circuit Court judge James H. Payne, who owned stock in corporations involved in his court cases. Which is illegal. Just for the three or four of you who are still unconvinced about the thoroughgoing corruption in the Bush administration.

"But they're all corrupt, Marrit, and the Democrats are no better."

Well, that's awfully defeatist.

a realization If my son ever saw Extreme Makeover: Home Editionit would be like three-year-old pornography to him: cheesy host; brief and extremely didactic story in which Good, Suffering People are justly rewarded; crawler excavators; lumber; people with tool belts; commercials for things vastly beyond our budget.

He must never see Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

How to get more sex from your wife without really trying One of the supposed universalities about parenting young children in a partnered relationship is that you're Not Getting Enough. I recently took a survey from the Kinsey Institute (which was very interesting), and it began with a series of questions intended to suss out whether I was a woman in a long-term relationship, whether I had children, and whether I was satisfied with my sex life. (Newsflash: Women who are in long-term relationships and have children are unsatisfied with their sex lives! Film at eleven!)

Presumably this research will measure our attitudes and habits (since that's what Kinsey does), but I'll go a step beyond. I will tell you how to have more sex immediately.

You will clean up the kitchen.

But I hate cleaning up the kitchen! Can't I just whine for some ass and get it?

No.

Awwww! Dammit!

Sorry. However, when you have finished cleaning the kitchen, you will have whatever you want sexually and you will have a clean kitchen, and that will make you The Richest Man in Bedford Falls, George Bailey.

I was recently reading the online ravings of a very depressed Internet friend who is entirely dissatisfied with her life, her marriage, and everything. She can barely get through the day. She's on Prozac. She feels worthless, sucked dry from raising her kids, unproductive. She asked her husband to clean up the kitchen one evening. "I'm too tired," he said.

Jackass, you walk right back in there and clean the kitchen. I don't care how tired you are. You clean the kitchen. If I can't convince you to clean the kitchen, and she can't convince you to clean the kitchen, then perhaps your dick will convince you to clean the kitchen.

Hey, wait a minute. Are you suggesting some kind of sex-for-cleaning exchange? Doesn't that kind of logic turn people into commodities?

No, I am not. See, here's the funny thing. Women want to have sex anyway. We like to do that stuff. And we want to have sex with a useful person who has cleaned a kitchen or otherwise contributed to the basic maintenance of the household (instead of sitting on the couch playing X-box and scratching himself). Because people who can clean kitchens are hot. People who cannot or will not clean kitchens are not hot.

Some kinds of attempts to initiate sex are not hot. I once had the terrible misfortune of living in a very crappy apartment in Boston with these tiny thin walls, and one day as I was reading somebody's Sunday Times--okay, it wasn't actually mine--I could hear the guy next door whining, "Oh, come on. It's my birthday, dammit." That is not hot. I was tempted to put down my coffee and pound on the wall: "Hey, man! That approach isn't going to work! Quit bugging her and go clean the kitchen!" When your partner is a mother and small people are always whining at her, that approach will keep you from having sex for an extended period of time. If you are lucky, she will hand you a piece of string cheese to shut you up. She will not fuck you. I repeat: She will not fuck you. By acting like a toddler, you have killed whatever passion still exists inside your woman. She might put you in time-out. She will treat you like a child because you are acting like one. She will say, "I'm sorry, but I can't understand you unless you use your big-kid voice."

Another tip: Do not approach the mother of your child/ren while she is cleaning vomit out of the car. This hasn't happened to me, but it's a true story. Yes, I realize she's bent over and really hot, but you simply must accept that she is cleaning up Kid Puke, and that means Not Now, Honey. There are chunks of mango in her floormat. She's going to have to handle that. Now. If you really want to get some, you could say, "Here, let me help you clean up that puke" and get a towel. And can you imagine what might possibly happen if you did? That would be great, wouldn't it? And at the same time you would have a puke-free car in half the time! Everybody wins!

And you know what's strange? These are guys who purport to be self-examined people, who buy fair-trade coffee, who listen to Fugazi. They are working hard to be useful world citizens. And they are not getting ass because they're not cleaning the kitchen.

Another tip: If you could somehow become Jon Stewart, that would also help. Every mother I know wants to get with Jon Stewart. He is smart and articulate and he can probably clean up the kitchen. I was having a discussion about sexuality with a group of hot nasty moms, and we all agreed to share Jon Stewart. By my count Jon Stewart is having tantric Internet fantasy sex with ten women. One woman writes, "That is possibly the only desire that I share with both my sister *and* my mom." We want to push our partners into traffic and share Jon Stewart with nine other women. Learn from this man.

gross (TMI) and messy I'll blow my nose on anything. I just blew my nose on a pull-up that was sitting on my desk (long story as to why there was a pull-up on my desk) and when I couldn't find my trash can, I just put it back, nose-blown, on my desk. This is probably why my house looks like the Circle Jerks are living in it. Everything gets put in random places: shoes in the yard, kitchenware in the bathtub, training pants on my desk. I guess I stopped fighting it about six months ago, and now I probably spend an entire hour a day (cumulatively) looking for things that have been misplaced. It's a terrible waste of time.

I did finally throw the pull-up away, but then I had to fish it out and blow my nose on it again.

um...what? Three cheers for researchers at Brown Medical School for publishing results from the most confusing study ever about maternal mental health and the well-being of children.

"Mom's stress impacts her view of child's behavior" is the headline, and the findings suggest that mothers who used drugs before or during pregnancy--as well as mothers who are stressed--view their children's temperament or behavior as more "difficult."

Come again?

I'm not a scientist, but what the fuck? First of all, who are these "moms who are exposed to a lot of stress in parenting"? Everybody is, but the researchers don't explain their criteria for inclusion. Is the stress related to circumstances extrinsic to motherhood? And here you can take your pick: Poverty, neighborhood crime rate, Hurricane Katrina? Are they worried about gestational diabetes? Are there pregnancies considered medically high-risk? History of stillbirth? Antenatal depression? Stressed about avian flu pandemic? War in Iraq? Abused at home? No health insurance? Who are these people?

And here's my own personal favorite wrinkle. The study compared "extreme reactivity" in infants at one month of age and then again at four months of age on the basis of "an infant's posture, movement, irritability, and consolability." "Stressed" mothers judged their children as "more reactive" because the mothers are stressed. The converse--that mothers in the study may be stressed because their children are more reactive, as in the case of colic, gastroesophageal reflux, or other pain-causing conditions--is not considered.

According to the reseachers, "moms should seek out help and utilize help out there to be happy, successful, well-adjusted parents." Okay, so be sure to get help! What do you mean, "I can't get help"? You can't just walk into a doctor's office and get help? You can't just walk off the job and go to counseling for free? Do these people have colleagues in the sociology department who could perhaps explain to them the difficulties of modern life?

And by the way, ladies, don't use cocaine, because cocaine use has some relationship to this study, but search me for what it is.

SafeDate I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about SafeDate, which I saw advertised on a billboard as I was running Highly Important Errands. The billboard asked me how I knew my date was "safe"--should I "ask his mother"? It threw me off my errand game (you know, "Library opens at ten, appointment over here at 10:30, and there's construction on this street..."), and that's unforgivable.

Basically SafeDate is a background-check service. Naturally it assumes in its appeal to female clients that only men are dangerous daters, which rankles me as the mother of one male and the partner of another. It also assumes that dangerous dates can be found and weeded out by address checks, Federal District Criminal Searches, and stuff like that. Anyone who's ever had a weird date, a stalker, a rapist, or some other pervert can tell you tout suite that when they are men (and they aren't always) you also have to watch your ass around nice fraternity men, youth-group members, government interns, Boy Scouts, and all kinds of other people who tend not to run afoul of the letter of the law (if not its spirit). Does SafeDate have any awareness of the reporting rates of sexual assault? Or do they assume that the people who get busted for property crimes and drug offenses are the same people who abuse women, and they are all easily identifiable Bad People you can avoid by paying $69.95 for "Comprehensive SafeDate certification"?

Someday my kid will be dating people, and I gather he'll be dating women by the way he gawps at little girls on the playground, as if they're some species of Weird and Magical Creatures, like unicorns. (By the way, I find this hilarious and entirely innocent.) You want to know if he's okay to date, you better damn well "ask his mother."

oh, please In my television watching (I assure you I am discriminating) I observed a State Farm commercial with a couple and a baby, and they were all, like, "Since we have a baby, it's important for us to save on car insurance." And I was convinced that the people who wrote and executed that ad must all be from a distant planet where there are no babies and people are hatched from pods. I'm not saying, "These are people without kids" because even people without kids (and you know I love y'all) have at least heard of or seen an infant and they understand that human beings begin life small and helpless, and that parents of a very small person don't sit around caring about their car insurance right then and now.

It's more like, "Fuck, do we still have car insurance?" Or "You paid that, right?" Or "Oh, yeah. I'm totally going to pay that" and then you didn't pay it because you sort of couldn't right then because of your broke ass, or you could pay it but you just fucking forgot because you got twenty minutes of sleep and you ate some really ancient summer sausage for breakfast because you could get to it with one hand while you were holding the baby.

I talk to a lot of people who have infants (the majority are strangers I accost) and they never say, "Gee, I was just thinking how important it is to save on my car insurance."

I could imagine a pregnant woman looking at her premiums and saying, "Jesus Christ, I need to find some cheap fucking car insurance," or maybe she's entitled to even start freaking out about her car insurance for no apparent reason (pregnancy is strange at times, innit?), but holy shit, if I ever see another set of television parents doing something real parents couldn't possibly do, I'm going to make like the Reverend Donald Wildmon and start boycotting shit. Can you imagine the collective power of parents? Unreal. Those Mommy Wars motherfuckers really know what they're doing by keeping us apart.

he's the cheeky one

Where's Baldo?

We'll Never Find Another Love Like Yours

a very important announcement I wanted to let you all know that I have a new Official Theme Song: "Rock n' Roll Queen" by The Subways.

Everybody needs an Official Theme Song. If you don't have one, you should pick one now. It makes everything you do cooler. You go get the mail, and it's really bitchin because your Official Theme Song is playing for you, right? Like, I'm making this batch of playdough yesterday, and it's really off the hook because we made turquoise, and it came out just right, and we're driving our little machines through it, digging and shit, and it's all so rock and roll. If you are a baseball player, your Official Theme Song will play as you approach the plate. But if you're just some burnout, like I am, it will play while you make playdough. And that's okay.

we've been yoked to the plough since time first began Either my neighbor has hired the World's Sketchiest Chevy-Van Plumbers, or we're being tailed by the Feds, and they're watching us play with Lincoln Logs. I'm thinking about taking them some Ex-Lax cookies. Or maybe I'm just a little jacked-up about this domestic surveillance business. Let's see if I can find that tinfoil hat. It's around here somewhere, I am sure.

My son has discovered Dropkick Murphys. I thought it was the bagpipe ("It's very musical," he agreed) but he says he "likes the words" and asked me to repeat "Worker's Song" several times. And so our craft activity this afternoon will be making his first tinfoil hat. Anybody got a pattern for a toddler-sized tinfoil hat? We can wear our matching hats to anti-globalization rallies. (Mom and Dad, I swear he's picking this stuff up on his own somehow.)

Semi-relatedly, a study published in Pediatrics attests that children are no safer riding in SUVs than they are in smaller passenger cars.