April 2007 - Posts

• Fly Girl

  Sometimes, your kids surprise you in the best ways. On a recent flight to Seattle, Magnolia suddenly became "friendly airport kid." She made her way around the gate area, making observations about everyone. "Hey, she has flip-flops on . . . it's not really time for flop-flops yet!!" "Look, Mommy, she's laying down on the floor!" "Hey, he looks like Daddy kind of, except he's bigger!" Everyone laughed. Clad in her silver fluffy skirt and bright red tights and radiating her new "love everyone" personality, she was named "Little Miss Sunshine" by the flight attendants. She was so good, even I couldn't believe it — especially after the hell we've been going through with the whole paci thing.     She might have pissed off one passenger, though. On one of her many walks to the bathroom (remember: she was just potty-trained, which means she feels she must sit on a public toilet every ten minutes), she started a sunshiny conversation with the lady in front of us.   Magnolia: "Hi!" Lady in front of us: "Well, hello." M: "Um, this is my Daddy. Do you have a Daddy?" Lady: "I used to, but he's not here any more." M: "Oh, well . . . when are you gonna get a new Daddy?" (Nice to know she sees parents as totally replaceable). The woman chuckled and we started to feel a little uncomfortable, so we started trying to reel in our friendly little daughter.   But, before we contained her in our row she had one last thing to say/shout.   M: "You know what? Your hair is kind of messy!" And she laughed and pointed at the lady's hair!   Humiliating or hilarious? I'm trying to figure it out.   I did have a little talk about saying the right things to people when you notice things about them. That conversation totally confused our two-and-a-half-year-old, so I wish I had just left the situation alone. Luckily, the hair comment was made in the final thirty minutes of a seven-hour trip. And, the woman's hair was pretty messy. Maggie tells us all the time when our hair is messy and we all laugh. So I think we're in a new phase of parenting: the phase where our child might be cute and friendly, but also could occasionally be rude and forward and embarrassing. Either way, she ruled on the airplane. She only said she wanted to get off two times. And she wore her seat belt. And she fell asleep in my arms before we landed.   See this post in its original format here. + DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT Posted Apr 26 2007, 04:41 PM by editors with no comments Filed under: mates of state, band on the diaper run

• Pacified

  The snowman is melting. If we let her, Magnolia would watch the snowman melt all day long, like old people on their porches watch the grass grow. She explains to us over and over that he will melt all the way down. It will get warm and the snowman will melt. Once when we were driving in the tour van and she was watching the Frosty the Snowman movie with her headphones on, she suddenly started crying and screaming. We couldn't figure out what was wrong until I looked at the DVD player and realized that Frosty had melted. This might have been a little traumatic for her at the time. But now somehow she is able to make the connection that sun melts snow and snowmen are made of snow. And she is totally enthralled in this process. She is similarly fascinated when butter melts on toast.   Magnolia decided last night (a.k.a. the day before we are due to fly to Seattle and go on tour for a week, sleep in hotels, fly on airplanes, etc.) that she wanted to mail her pacifiers to babies who need them. She said she was ready to start being a big kid. In the past month, she has potty-trained herself and now, after a year of our unsuccessful attempts to remove the plastic from her mouth, she has decided it's time. The binky has been causing her front two teeth to stick out and has been making her breath smell absolutely foul in the morning (the smell is termed "paci breath" in our family). And we've gotten pretty sick of other parents passing judgment when they find out our very verbal two-and-a-half-year-old still uses a pacifier.   We were pretty overjoyed that she came up with the notion to get rid of all pacifiers on the spot and to mail them in an envelope to "babies everywhere" last night. At the time, she seemed to clearly understand that once she sent them away, they would not come back at bedtime. But of course, now the withdrawal has begun. Last night, she had to sleep in our bed (something we gave up a year ago due to severe lack of sleep on my part), and she woke up every hour and cried. So you can imagine the amount of crankiness we've been dealing with today. Plus, I didn't sleep at all. If I don't get any sleep, I am capable of adult tantrums. Then when I just put her down for her much-needed nap, she screamed, pounded the floor and acted like the baby that she doesn't want to be anymore — for over an hour.   What Magnolia didn't know yet was that, when you give your pacifiers away, the paci fairy comes. So Magnolia earned some new dress-up princess clothes from the "paci fairy," and she spends her overtired minutes putting them on, taking them off, putting them on, taking them off, etc. And although she needs help, she thinks she doesn't. So I get yelled at every time I help her pull the pink taffeta fluff over the princess tiara. At one point, Magnolia broke down and told me to "go find more pacis in the house right now!" And when I came back, she had already cried herself to sleep. I might go buy a pacifier for the plane ride tomorrow. No one will be able to bear an overtired, paci-grieving toddler on a six-hour flight.   Oh, and we bought a house! We thought about going back to San Francisco, or moving to Chicago or Austin, but we came to the conclusion that touring on the east coast is easier, it's nice to have grandparents nearby (free babysitting) and we can't quite afford living in the heart of any big cities yet. So we're still in Connecticut, only a lot closer to New York. And now we're off to Seattle.   Next week: A very surprising plane ride.   See this post in its original format here. + DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT Posted Apr 19 2007, 04:31 PM by editors with no comments Filed under: mates of state, band on the diaper run

• Fur Real

  PETA asked us a year ago if we wanted to be part of their anti-fur campaign. We aren't vegans, so we aren't perfect animal rights activists, but we do believe that the fur industry is really unnecessary and cruel. (Watch a video of me and Jason talking about this here.) So we finally got around to posing for a picture for them. We posed naked, or rather, almost naked — our pants were pulled down but they were still on. It was funny. The photographer felt uncomfortable telling me when to cover my "er, um, nipples". We really thought no one would even notice that we did this, but we had a lot of backlash, as well as many supportive comments. I guess that means the effect was positive, since it got people talking. Plus, this might be the first time in history that people talking about our band focused something other than our marriage. Some of the mean comments have included how we look like trolls, and how we are hypocrites because I have a diamond on my finger and the diamond industry is equally as horrible. I don't remember  the good comments. That's a fault of mine. I hear the negative ones over and over but I can't remember the nice words. Whatever. . . we were trying to do something we felt strongly about.   As we're debating our nude PETA photo, we notice something ironic in the very room we are sitting in. We're staying with my parents until our new house is ready, and Magnolia is eating her breakfast next to something she (and her parents) are a little frightened of. Hint: it's not the TV or the enormous Elmo. Check it out.      We never got asked to advertise our objections to hunting, so for the record, we object. And also for the record, my father hasn't shot anything in a long time. He has finally started leaning toward us "bleeding heart liberals," right Dad? Anyway, if we took naked pictures in protest of everything we didn't agree with, we'd be walking around buck naked all the time.   Next time: Magnolia faces her pacifier addiction, and we get ready to rock the west coast!   See this post in its original format here.   + DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT Posted Apr 12 2007, 04:18 PM by editors with no comments Filed under: mates of state, band on the diaper run

• This American Life

  We are playing with the "This American Life" tour at the famous and beautiful Chicago Theater. It is beautiful. Last night, we played an equally incredible theater in Minneapolis. The whole time we were in Minnesota, all anyone could talk about was the four feet of snow expected to start that evening, which would supposedly lead to our being stranded there and having to cancel the Chicago show. I asked Ira Glass what he would have done if no other performers had made it through the snow. He simply replied, "I would have done the show by myself." (Jason and me in the Chicago Theater)   The authors on this tour are now my favorites. They are all a little older and more experienced than I am, and they all have the social gift of restraint and quick wit. I, on the other hand, blab until (with luck) something interesting comes out. Dan Savage is funny and sweet and has given us parenting advice (he says to have a second baby soon). He notices pretty architecture even though he has a near-broken leg from snowboarding. David Rakoff is the most friendly. He's also highly intelligent and I hope he never catches me reading People. David even carried my heavy bag one night when we all walked from the venue to the hotel and we talked about how musty-smelling thrift stores make people like myself have to uh . . . use the bathroom. I'm tempted to tell him I love him. Sarah Vowell is quiet, but I love her dry wit. When I do hear her talk, she always has something witty and memorable to say. On  the first page of her book Assassination Vacation, she talks about the assassination of Abe Lincoln by the slave-lovin' John Wilkes Booth. I am actually related to John Wilkes Booth. Seriously. My Gramma studied our geneology and, along with the guy who invented Morse Code, we are in the same family tree as Lincoln 's murderer. I considered mentioning this to Sarah in hopes of sparking a conversation, but then I realized that it might be what people call a skeleton in the closet. Jonathan Goldstein is laid-back. He's off the tour now, but I feel like if he were still here, we'd be friends by now. I liked him. Oh, and Chris Wilcha rules. I think that guy is the most like us. He's the producer of This American Life, the TV show. He's nervous, too, to be in front of this audience. But his work is brilliant and he has a daughter a year younger than Magnolia. (Could he be a Mate-ster?) He mentioned he'd like to do a video for us and we about wet ourselves. Eventually, this tour will make us feel smarter. It's like playing soccer against a better team; you play better defense and you are more calculated in your offense because the stakes have been raised. We feel like we will make better music and perhaps tell better stories.   I am backstage and I just got off the phone with Magnolia. Here is our conversation: "HI Mommy. What are you doing? "I'm getting ready to play music. What are you doing?" "I'm playing with Beat. (Beat is her aunt, my sister Kristin, who has a slightly small head and was nicknamed Beetlejuice and then Beat for short)." "What are you playing? "ARE YOU THERE, MOMMY??" (She likes imitating the cellphone generation and shrieking, "Can you hear me now?") "Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me?" "Yes I can hear you. I was just checking if you were still there. ARE YOU STILL THERE, MOMMY?" "Yes, I'm still here." "Oh, actually I'm hungry and I"m gonna go eat right now." "What are you gonna eat for dinner?" "Um, spaghetti and then Beat will give me some candy . . . "Oh, you must have been a good girl." "No, I'm a good boy. Say I'm a good boy, Mommy" "Good boy. I miss you." "I miss you too. ARE YOU THERE, MOMMY?" "Yes. I'm here still. Do you want to say hi to Daddy?" "Yes. I want to talk to Daddy now." "I love you. I will see you tomorrow." "LOOOVE YOOOOOUUUU. SEE YOU TOMOOOORROW!" Then she had the exact same conversation with Jason. Next time: we pose (naked) for PETA! (David Rakoff, Jason, Dan Savage, Chris Wilcha, Jane Feltes and me (looking fat, I might add) on the "This American Life" tour)   See this post in its original format here.   + DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT Posted Apr 05 2007, 02:47 PM by editors with no comments Filed under: mates of state, band on the diaper run