I keep wanting to post

But then I start looking through pictures of our trip instead.

Bill and I went to the Big Apple Film Festival's screening of Other People's Houses today, the film my friend Emilie made with Bill's help (and mine! I wrangled toddlers and held the boom part-time). It was great to see the film as part of a shorts screening, especially to see what other people are doing with much bigger budgets, and I felt really proud of what we did on a shoestring and a intense three-day shoot. Also very happy to see Emilie up there on the panel at the end, with like eleven guys, and I'm not kidding, and I tried to take phone pictures for dramatic illustration, but I forgot that my phone was set on video, so instead I have meaningless two-second clips which I can't post because I'm bad at the internet.

Also: Doing Nanowrimo again, am now six days and ten thousand words in, not to JINX IT. JINX! HEX! CURSE! Saw Anne Elliott of Anne Elliott fame at the screening today; she's done Nanowrimo before -- "How's it going?" she asked, knowing that I couldn't possibly answer. "Just...making it up as I go along," I said, nonchalant, then confessed in a lower tone, "It's great." She too let her breath out. "It is, isn't it?"

Today's celebrity sightings: 

At the festival: Haley Joel Osment. Totally cute, didn't pull rank in the bathroom line. Adorbs. In person, he actually blinks. It's disconcerting.

Walking downtown on Mott Street as we're coming back from vegetarian dim sum: John Leguizamo. TAKE THAT, PARIS. Not only that, but we weren't the only people who noticed him and knew who he was. And left him alone.

Instant Grandmother (by Satia Renee)

October 2007 and Rob has a gig on Halloween night, as usual. This year, however, he wants to wear something. Not a full costume because that would interfere with his effectively running sound but he’s decided that a pair of devil or demon horns, nothing too large, would be costume enough. So off we go to Party City where my son Joe works. Bonus because I love nothing more than dropping in on where one of my children works unexpectedly and since Joe no longer lives at home it is all the more fun to surprise him like this.

Joe is unflappable. It’s actually fun to get him riled up about things because he simply is too cool. He is Joe Cool personified and when he sees me and then Rob he comes over to do his job, showing us where we can find some horns and even suggests which cash register we should use.

Now that I think of it, maybe he was just trying to get us out of there as quickly as possible. “Here. Here are the horns now choose and go to that register over there because she’s the one who will get you two crazy people out of here as quickly as possible. And please please please don’t say or do anything that will embarrass me between here and there.”

He’s unflappable but he also embarrasses easily although you have to know the signs to know it’s happening.

At the register the girl behind the counter rings us up, gives us the “employee family” discount, and there’s something about how her face lights up when she realizes that we are Joe’s family that I notice. Her name is Erin and she’s all giggly girl as she rings us up and then waves to us as we move towards the door.

Walking across the parking lot, I observe to Rob, “I think that girl likes Joe.” No comment. “Do you think they’re dating?” After all, Joe doesn’t live at home so how would I know what’s going on? God knows he wouldn’t tell me anything; after all, I am his mother.

“I hope not,” Rob says.

“Why not?”

“Didn’t you notice she’s pregnant?”

Blink. I hadn’t. I hadn’t noticed at all. I had noticed her smile, how her eyes sparkled, and how shiny her hair was, straight and caramel brown. But pregnant? Really?

“No I didn’t,” I mutter. Then three beats, or rather three steps because we were still walking, and I stop, grab Rob’s arm. “Oh shit. You don’t suppose it’s Joe’s baby do you?”

Rob just laughs at me, takes my hand, and steers me back to the car.

This year, 2010, I will share part of my Halloween with my granddaughter, Brianna. It’s very exciting because Bibi, as we all call her and which she will probably make us stop calling her at some more sophisticated stage in her life, is going to be 3 so this is the first year she really knows what is going on, she even chose her costume. Ask her what she’s going to be and she’ll tell you:  whheetch, full of whisper and delight.

And I’m delighted because on St Patrick’s Day my son Joe married Erin and I became the grandmother of a Bibi. And Bibi doesn’t know but every year except for one, I was dressed up as a witch for Halloween. But she will know, someday, when she’s old enough to believe that once-upon-a-time her Gigi was a little girl too.

Her someday believing will come more easily than my own. How did I become a grandmother? And no fair, I didn’t get a chance to get adjusted to the idea of it. I mean, sure I wasn’t surprised when Joe told me he was dating Erin. To be honest, I wasn’t thrilled either. I mean this was his first serious relationship so why did it have to be with someone who has baggage? (Yes, I thought of Bibi as baggage. Rather, I thought of her birth-father as baggage. From day one, Bibi with her pixie eyes and crazy giggles charmed me although I honestly resisted.)

Of course, I rationalized and realized that it was only the first serious relationship so how likely was it going to end up being a permanent one? I didn’t have to think about being a grandmother let alone worry about it. No way this would or could last.

Oops.

So on the afternoon of St Patrick’s Day of 2010 I became a grandmother. Just like that. And this December Bibi and I will celebrate her first birthday as my granddaughter although she will be turning three years old. I’m still wrapping my mind around it. It’s too cliché for me to say I look in the mirror and I don’t look like a grandmother let alone feel like one.  But I love watching her figure things out and I sometimes frown at the parenting choices my son makes for her. I’m sorry that her birth father is not in the picture but I’m grateful there’s no unnecessary drama that can come with so many parents.

My son has embraced being a husband and father with the kind of unflappable grace I would expect from him. In the meantime, I’m still getting used to being an instant grandmother, add Bibi and mix. 

But hey! That’s nothing! On Cinco de Mayo Rob became a husband, son-in-law, step-father, and step-grandfather all at once.

Talk about shocking!

(Satia Renee is a writer and a blogger. She's also my very awesome stepsister. Which makes me an instant step-step-grandmother? AUGH.)

Here

I'm back. 

I know how to write about being unhappy. How do I write about being happy? How do I write about the joy and relief I experienced in Europe, realizing that New York is not the only place on Earth I'm fit to live? I feel like being happy in public is unseemly; that to feel pleasure while others suffer is disgusting; certainly, in the Jewish tradition, being at all happy about anything is totally asking for it. And yet. I feel good, better than I have in two or three years now. I feel settled and calm. New York is a really hard place to live year after year; there are a lot of people yelling at you all the time. I'm tired of fighting for resources every day: space on the sidewalk, a place to stand on the train; fighting for mental space, against the constant ads, in elevators and taxis and the Red Mango on 14th Street, monitors flashing information while everyone stands around checking their phones. Scaffolding, dog shit, the mentally ill, the entitled tourist; me, muttering under my breath because people don't move fast enough on the sidewalk. I was glad to get away from it, to walk around new avenues and imagine my life as something different than what it's always been. 

I'm doing Nanowrimo again this year, a last minute decision, as last year's was. 2009's novel went nowhere, but I'm glad I wrote it anyway. I really loved those characters; I loved living inside them for the month. It was like making a bunch of new friends, which is also how Bill described Amsterdam, London, and Paris. This year's thing-in-progress is weird. I started a day late so I'm still a thousand words behind, but I'm about to hit it again before I fall asleep, which will be soon. 

I want to keep blogging while I'm writing whatever this 50,000 words is going to be, but that's a lot of words per day. Also, I feel good. I don't feel like writing about my crazy mother; I kind of feel like it doesn't matter. (Meds talking? I'm listening.) Lots of people suffer and die; it's not a novel thing to do. I used to be annoyed that every short story I read in a magazine was about death or someone having an affair, until I got older and realized that that's most of your adult life: death, and people having affairs. People neglect themselves all the time; they let their wounds fester until they die of infection -- that's their choice, and it's okay. They were going to die eventually anyway.

And this is the type of thing I write when I'm happy.

Posing in Paris, where I am going to move as soon as my cats and shrink and friends agree to move with me: