Boomer Mom / Suburban Malaise

Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:32:29 GMT

Another snow day. No school today. It's easier to look outside and take a picture than show the inside of the house, which is enormous mess! Wet boots, mittens, coats, scarves, etc. Our next door neighbor, a teacher who also got the day off, invited the neighborhood kids over for a pancake lunch. Quiet prevails, for the time being. I took my other photos off this site (and now I can't get them back on). I'm thinking of transferring this blog to TypePad so I can link to a photo album. I tried to upload my RadioLand logs to TypePad. TypePad suggested using RadioLand's "export" feature. A disaster! Nothing came over. I simply am not good enough at coding (in fact, I'm terrible at it) to get much done on my own. I like the people at Salon blogs, but technically I need something easier and a format that takes more graphics.

While I've been e-mailing the help desk at TypePad, I've been trying to reach a neurologist. My GP insists that I do something preventative for my migraines. I take zomig for the headaches when they come, which stops them, but now I have to see a neurologist. I'm thinking of trying botox, which is approved for migraine treatment. It sounds too good to be true, to have no headaches and look younger (well, a little younger) at the same time. Karen bought up some excellent points about conventional versus alternative medicine in her post. Unfortunately, in terms of preventing the headaches, neither kind of medicine has worked for me so far!

Tue, 27 Jan 2004 14:14:44 GMT

I woke up with another migraine this morning! Clearly this is some sort of bad karma. I did some terrible thing in a previous life.

Yet another winter storm is coming (the falling barometric pressure probably helped trigger my headache), the house is a mess, tomorrow will not doubt be a snow day with the schools closed and a parade of dripping children (my own and the neighbors) running in and out of the house. I took some Zomig for the headache and I suppose I should clean up . . . although by tomorrow the house will be just as messy.

Mon, 26 Jan 2004 03:18:10 GMT

A friend and I took our kids to see Cheaper by the Dozen today, a film about domesticity run amok. In this comedy, the Baker family, Tom, Kate and their twelve kids, falls to pieces when Tom takes a posh coaching job and they move to a snooty neighborhood in suburban Chicago. Kate writes a book (about having 12 kids, what else?) and goes on a book tour. Although the film cuts her some slack about needing a life of her own outside her family, the underlying message still is that home just isn't home without mom. The kids do bad in school, the oldest son gets kicked off the football team, one child runs away and a frog named Beanie dies. If mom hadn't gone on that darned book tour none of this would have happened. For all the talk about "family" and "caring" in this film, this family has a desolate quality. Don't they have any friends or relatives to help out? Couldn't Tom's employers give him some family time? Like many American families, they have to fend for themselves, but never ask why they get so little support. They internalize their failure to cope and idealize the idea of the "family" even more. And who gets stuck carrying the load? Mom.

After I got home, I turned on TCM and caught the end of Hitchcock's Rear Window. In this film, there are no families. Jimmy Stewart plays L.B. Jefferies, an injured photographer in a wheelchair who is unable to commit himself fully to his fiancée, Lisa (Grace Kelly). They snoop on the lives of their single neighbors in the courtyard of their apartment building in Greenwich Village, (along with his housekeeper, shown above). The only married couple we see is an unhappy one. When the wife goes missing, Lisa suspects the worst sets out to solve the mystery of her disappearance. Most of commentary on Rear Window focuses on its voyeuristic aspects. Maybe that it isn't always such a bad thing. The tenants tolerate each other's eccentricities and, as Lisa's concern for the wife shows, they look out for each other. It's a much more appealing place to live then the bleak suburb in America's "heartland" where the Baker family lives in lonely chaos.

Sun, 25 Jan 2004 17:36:22 GMT

Here's a more benign view of the backyard than yesterday's gloomy photo. It may look deceptively rural, but there's actually a busy highway not far from our development. The sound of traffic is a constant hum, but the sense of space is nice. There were strange looking animal footprints in the snow when I went out yesterday. I got excited, was it a bear? Deer? Bigfoot? My husband, who is an ex-Eagle Scout, went out and examined them and gave me the bad news. Just rabbit tracks . . . the snow melted and made their tracks look bigger. The rabbits live underneath our deck. They're a nuisance, since they eat any vegetables we've tried to grow, but we're too soft-hearted to do anything about them.

Sat, 24 Jan 2004 20:16:13 GMT

I hadn't intended to keep this ominous looking photograph of the backyard up, but I can't seem to delete it, so stay it will. I can't stop playing around with the layer modes in Photoshop. The actual photo of the backyard and the long-outgrown swingset seemed so boring, so everyday, so much like my life that I tried to change it. But maybe the boring and everyday is where the true mystery of life resides.

We're supposed to have a snowfall this weekend here in New Jersey. Whenever there's even a hint of snow, everyone responds by shopping. The supermarkets are jammed, as is the local Barnes and Noble where, (by sheer conincidence) I happened to be browsing around this morning. Everyone needs that last minute book or DVD in case they're snowed in. I guess this is what it means to live in a "culture of consumption." But if it makes us feel better, is it really all that bad?

Fri, 23 Jan 2004 14:02:07 GMT

I was feeling particularly broke yesterday, so I put up some of the books I used for a grad course last fall for sale online. I sold them almost immediately to a new group of hapless students. The subject matter was the usual grist for today's academic mill: postcolonialism, sexuality, "re-readings" of American history. As I packed up the books, I couldn't help feeling sorry for the students being forced to read such well-meaning, but badly written books. Unfortunately, in the process of packing up the books (I didn't expect them to sell so fast), I forgot a dentist's appointment and their office says if I do it again (this is not the first time), I'll have to pay!

Wed, 21 Jan 2004 20:20:28 GMT

I woke up this morning with an excruciating migraine, which has left me completely depleted. My only solace was the fact that TCM was running Barbara Stanwyck movies all afternoon. The film on TV in the photo above is a 1950 film called To Please A Lady. Clark Gable plays a race car driver named Mike Brannan who Stanwyck, as Regina "Reggie" Forbes, (a crusading journalist) believes was responsible for a rival driver's death. Do I have to tell you the rest?

This film reflects America's return to domesticity after WWII. Both daredevil Mike, and spunky career girl Reggie have to give up their independent ways and settle down to humdrum married life. Adolphe Menjou, pictured here, is Reggie's crusty, father-figure editor. Both Stanwyck and Gable look past their prime and frumpy in this film. There's no real chemistry between them and they wander through its scenes as if they'd wandered into a postwar future where they're not quite sure they belong. Menjou, as this photo shows, remains his dapper pre-war self.

Tue, 20 Jan 2004 03:38:28 GMT

Given the chance to go back into Manhattan alone today, I hopped a New Jersey Transit train into the city. It was freezing again and the streets were icy. A brutal day in the city, despite the sunshine. This post-Christmas time is just about my favorite time of year in New York. The light is starting to get bright again, despite the cold. The sun is still low in the sky, so there are lots of dramatic darks and lights and the buildings are even more dimensional. There are less tourists. New York just gets down to business. I took this photo outside the Apple Store in Soho. It's a handy place to know about, (even for Windows users) because it has a decent public restrooms, which are otherwise non-existent in this part of the city. Miserable as the weather was, I'm glad I went in and wandered around in the cold. The city always rejuvenates me.