Rattled: Insights from the house of confusion, communication | savannahnow.com

Published today in the Savannah Morning News

I’m not sure whether Mercury was in retrograde or whether His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama perhaps stubbed his toe. Something happened yesterday, and the butterfly effect fanned the flames in my house of communication.

I went to Darien last week and did a bunch of interviews, only to have my voice recorder corrupt the files before I could transcribe them. The morning I thought was going to be productive was spent rescheduling interviews in which I’ll have to coach my subjects time and again: “Pretend you didn’t tell me this. Can’t you say it more colorfully like the last time? Was the shrimp good, or did it, in fact, make you smack your mama?”

It never ceases to hurt when technology that was meant to make our lives easier is but an unsupportive brace on a serpentine spine. Just last week I updated my one-and-only Mac to Snow Leopard from plain old Leopard. It’s just a CD install, a $20 upgrade meant to allow me to then install Microsoft Office. I went to get Elliot at day care only to discover the install failed, the CD was stuck in the drive, and the old system software was giving me the finger. So, my voice recorder’s bird was just the icing on the cake.

After three quarters of a wedge of brie and more salami than my cholesterol medicine deems appropriate, I took a nap. I’d have to get Elliot soon, and there was no way I wanted him to see me cheesed to the gills and muttering about my career going down the toilet thanks to a $35 piece of equipment from RCA. I’d regroup, carry some worry stones in my pockets, and take him to the park.

It started well at first. The park is a piece of rawhide for Elliot’s inner wolf. I let him out of the car, and he heads into mass of kids covering the entire surface of a merry-go-round. Elliot even enjoys pushing but inevitably falls to the ground once or twice like a hampster who has got his wheel going too fast.

While this is going on, I take a seat by a picnic table and notice how I’ve graduated to one of the outer rings of playground mommies. The innermost are standing in the mulch with the kids. Some of them are pregnant again, and I can’t even imagine a second. I am a whole swatch of grass away from the chaos caressing polished stones in my coat pockets. Elliot’s fallen again and calls mama this time.

We escape the fray for the calm of the baseball diamond. A couple kids are drawing in the red dirt with sticks. It’s nice until Elliot gets in the middle of two adult men kicking a soccer ball. He has to move their cone thing and wear it like a hat. I remove the cone, and it crashes the hard drive that is my son. He spits, falls to the ground, screams some MS-DOS commands that I don’t understand, and forces me to carry him to the car like an ungreased tin man.

It’s a long walk to the car, and I explain that he wasn’t playing nicely. Tantrums mean we go home. I’ll play nicely. I’ll play nicely, he says. Nope. You don’t show your tush, spit like a camel and get to stay at the park. I put my son in the car seat, and he’s essentially gone into the Macintosh spinning rainbow wheel mode. Nothing is getting in or out of him.

He’s screaming enough to make himself choke, and I make a great sacrifice by inserting the Barney Christmas CD. I don’t like Barney, he tells me. Great! Me neither. I take it out. I like Barney! I like Barney! We go back and forth inserting and removing the CD a few times until I say forget it and play Lindsey Buckingham’s Big Love. Elliot calms a bit, because he’s waiting for the dog barking at the end. I use this time to suggest he say the months of the year. I don’t like it, he says. The months are your thing! Come on: January! I get nothing except I want Barney. If you’d just give Lindsey a chance. Wait! The dogs are at the end of Holiday Road!

Finally, we’re on the final approach. I ask who do you like better: Cookie Monster or Grover? He snarfs a bit and then cries, January.

Rattled: Published Today in The Savannah Morning News

Elliot and I have this “Benjamin Button” thing going on. We are tackling the same issues at different stages in our lives, and it ain’t pretty.

It’s hard to believe, but Elliot is two weeks shy of 3! That bumbling Winny the Pooh movement of a toddler has given way so that he’s starting to look like Christopher Robin. He’s climbing solo above our heads on the jungle gym. He’s saying please, thank you and you’re welcome without being asked. I admit, Elliot is still in diapers, but that’s my fault. It’s kind of like putting a giant plastic saucer under the peace lily sitting on the heirloom coffee table. OK, no it’s not, but I’m trying.

Lately we’ve had a lot of these moments where you say, “Did you hear what he just said? Did you see what he just did.” In the car he keeps assuring himself of our genders. You’re a woman, mama? Yes, I’m a woman. Da-da, you a man? I’m a little boy? Every night for the last week or so it’s been the same. Then the other day he switched it up. Mama, you have boobs? Yup. Sure do. Daddy no have boobs. He has a belly. True dat, son. I don’t have boobs, mama. Right, again, Elroy.

Elliot’s gotten into comfortable routines at home that mimic our own. He brushes his teeth, washes his hands. When his hands go through shirt sleeves, he’s confident they’ll come out the cuffs. There’s no panic over the way I lift his entire body to get his pants up. Tantrums are becoming rare. When he has them, they leave without word like the UPS guy. Elliot seems as mystified as we are at the comings and goings of anger that roll like tumble weeds. For quite a while I’ve been attributing this to him growing up, but that can’t be true. If it is, what the heck is happening to me?

I’ve started clothes shopping more over the last year. After spending seven years working at a plant nursery where jeans and T-shirts were the uniform, and then having a kid, my wardrobe had some evolving to do. Only now there are pieces of clothing for sale, and I don’t even know what they are! I went to Kohl’s for the first time today, and I was seduced by the lines put out by Jennifer Lopez and Vera Wang. Vera makes these things that look like jeans, but they are really stretchy like tights. Oh, and they are sized small, medium and large. I picked a medium (right) and inside the dressing room became half woman and half little boy.

Just one leg at a time, I told myself. Wait, somebody help me get these things up my legs. They’re too long, I wanted to scream. There’s 3 feet of bunched up spandex around my ankles! Should the crotch be mid-thigh? Maybe they are meant to be worn commando, because two cheeks worth of granny panty balled up in the seat isn’t sexy. Getting them off was like taking the wrapper off two Slim Jims.

The sequined tops that I tried on next, well. I may have tried to put the moves on Ben Affleck while watching Argo, but I’m no Jenny from the block. No matter how I straightened my back and pinned back my shoulders, it wouldn’t happen. I gave up when I accidentally put my right breast through an arm hole.

I am happy to report that Elliot continues to be a wonderful sleeper. I, on the other hand, am waking up three and four times a night. The cats hear my eye lashes move and start revving their engines. That used to make me lay awake and wonder which animal might be my spirit guide. For the longest time, I was sure it was a white rabbit, but now I’ve learned it’s a jaguar.

So now I lay awake and imagine a jaguar attacking a defenseless bunny alongside some crudite. The horror causes me to get up and walk directly into the end of our bedroom’s half-open door, stumble backward and kick an empty Tinker-toy cylinder across the floor. That’s when I cuss and go to the bathroom for a Prevacid.

Once I’m back in bed, I look at the ceiling fan and imagine what my friends around Savannah are doing. Just as I’m about to fall asleep, I choke on my saliva and that starts the process again. I need some juice.

Christine Lucas writes about being a first-time mom and adventures with baby. Contact Christine at christineslucas@yahoo.com

Savannah charities reach out to families of infants in need | savannahnow.com

Dayla, 2 days old, warmed by a blanket donated by Threads of Love’s Savannah Chapter. The Telfair Birthplace, St. Joseph’s/ Candler

Savannah charities reach out to families of infants in need | savannahnow.com.

Savannah boy attacked by pit bull gets visit from Animal Planet star | savannahnow.com

Savannah boy attacked by pit bull gets visit from Animal Planet star | savannahnow.com.

Licensed to Tell You Where To Go…And Take You There Myself

I am 37 years old, and I have just passed the test to become a City of Savannah Tour Guide. The business cards have been ordered. I just can’t wait to get out there and tell you all where to go. Wait. Did that come out wrong? What I mean is that Savannah is a fantastic city, but you want to get the most from it. You don’t want a city that just sits there and looks at you. You want a city that pinches your ass and says, “Hey baby; look what I got over here.” You’re not sure you want that kind of city? Let me be clear (Obama speak…forgive me.), you do want that kind of city. Savannah has more butter-filled nooks than your favorite English muffin, and by golly, you must find them. You must rub those wonderful finds on you like cocoa butter and glitter.

The City of Savannah wants tourists here, and the tour guide licensing process ensures that we know what to tell you. A 112-page study guide makes those approaching fffffffffffforty (Excuse me. Acid reflux.) recall our school anxiety dreams where there was always a social studies test and we never could find the darn text book. Don’t be fooled by the fact that it is multiple choice. So are the Olsen twins. You can still get fucked. Behind the courtyard walls at the Davenport House, a Federal-style abode saved by the Historic Savannah Foundation in 1955, licensed tour guides recount how many times they had to take the exam before passing. “If you pass the first time, you’re a genius,” one told me. At the time,  I thought maybe I am a genius.

That misconception was cleared up for me when I stood in the Transportation Office waiting for my third try at the test to be graded. An efficient but deadpan woman named Elaine explained – after telling me I had squeaked by –, “You really made some stupid mistakes.” Her candor was refreshing, if not soul scarring. (The city knows better than to try and pinch Elaine’s ass.) She was right, too. Remember how teachers would say, “Read the questions, people.” We looked at them like they were jackasses. Of course we’re going to read the questions. We’re not idiots. Turns out I could have read the questions better. For example, suspension is not the same thing as revoked. But I passed, bitches. Having had to take the test more than once just means that I wanted it badly enough. I can’t wait to tell you where to go!

WHERE TO GO

Check out out my piece on The Distillery in this week’s Connect Savannah with characteristically brilliant photos by Geoff Johnson!

Visit Geoff’s site for more fine images.

Half-rubber a game of the ages in Savannah and Charleston | savannahnow.com

Half-rubber a game of the ages in Savannah and Charleston | savannahnow.com.

Declining Twitter Sex Invites Sparks Press Release

Savannah writer Christine Lucas has been experiencing a recent decline in Twitter sex invites, and word came today that Christine’s rear is extra hot these days. While invites in the past were declined immediately by the writer due to her moral code and good taste, the decline constitutes action by one so impressed with her own tush. In an interview with a pretend 24-hour news network, Christine was quoted as saying that she wasn’t overly concerned about the decrease in Twitter interest, and the writer pointed to recent weather trends in the Southeast as possible causes.

“Well, it’s been so hot lately. I haven’t really gone outside much.”

Childhood Ambition and Water Boobs (They Act as a Floatation Device)

It is something when you look back. I wasn’t one of those young girls who always want to be a mom. I wasn’t someone who ached for a child. I remember how I loved Joey though. I focused on his eyes and the freckles which dotted his smooth cheeks. I liked the smell of him, the plastic that made up his face and hands. I liked that you could take his jacket off and untie his shoe laces. I liked that when a tear formed under his armpit, my mom sewed it again. As an infant, I was a pretty good mom. I was responsible, and I never ever colored on his face. Not once!

The thing is that I never wanted to sacrifice the way I’d seen my mom and other moms do. At an early age, I knew I was going to do something really big, bigger than just having kids. I wasn’t sure what big meant, but it was going to be fantastic. It would be super-dooper, and there would be some jealous people in my Kindergarten class one day. Yes, without a doubt, being a mom would certainly hold me back during Show-and-Tell. I would be famous. I had good aim.

I was pretty proud of my "boobs" here. Sure, the water gun packs a punch, but
the boobs gave me the confidence to go after my older sister.

Show-and-Tell was more difficult than I ever imagined. The competition. I knew I had to up my game the day that Kathleen Kane brought her mother’s recently removed gallstones. I found my mom at the kitchen sink after school that day. Was there something she had recently had surgically removed, something in a jar or tiny plastic bag like the one Kathleen had used? My mom explained that there was nothing she could think of but I could ask my dad when he got home from work. I was so damn jealous of those gall stones. Everybody always wanted to sit next to Kathleen after that. Girls wanted to braid her gorgeous curls, and the blue in her dresses always matched that of her eyes.

Things happen in your life though, things that make you forever grateful. I still have Joey, and I have a real boy named Elliot to go with him. I am doing something really big. Being a mother isn’t holding me back; it’s a welcome counter weight. Show-and-Tell is still dog-eat-dog, and without my son I might fall over. I might make a call one dark, rainy night – from one of the world’s last remaining phone booths. Cause, you know, sometimes I catch myself thinking: Gallstones can’t be that hard to get.

Rattled: Pediatrician goes part-time: A tribute | savannahnow.com

Today’s column is a salute to Dr. Robert Shelley of Savannah’s Pediatric Associates.

Rattled: Pediatrician goes part-time: A tribute | savannahnow.com.

Featured in November 2011′s Georgia Magazine: Oelschig’s Greenhouses, Generations of Growing

Reprinted with permission from Georgia Magazine. Click on individual pages to enlarge.