There are so many blessed lists to read every day on the Internet, on anything and everything you can possibly think of. It’s all so confusing and intimidating. Do I really, really need to eat those 7 foods every day to live past next year? I was so ashamed to learn that I only implemented 4 of the 27 ESSENTIAL child safety measures in my home while my kids were babies. Jesse and Nick are ruined. Why did that hiker magazine publish a list of the 14 most secret and amazing backcountry sites that no one knows about? Am I allowed to use the list? It’s so wrong. I know I’m missing something.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about myself over the past 47 years, it’s that I’m a joiner, and not like a power tool but like a lemming, a very low skill lemming. Accordingly, here is my list of 10 reasons why I don’t like numbered lists:

1. There appears to be no rule for how long lists are allowed to be. They should always be nice simple numbers, preferably on a metric scale and thus divisible by 5 or 10. Why would anyone publish a help list of, say, 17 items? It makes no sense to me to use any prime number of two digits or more. Why isn’t there some kind of list protocol equivalent to OSI or whatever those internet protocols are called? We could call it the LIP, list interface protocol.

2. I usually feel like lists are longer than they ought to be, like there’s filler or duplication. I don’t know why someone would add filler to get to a list of 14 items, when you can leave out the crap and do 10.

3. I don’t have the attention span to read most lists all the way. I usually drop out by 6 or 7. It makes me feel like I have ADHD, or list depression.

4. This is a filler item to make my list longer, because I’m running out of ideas.

5. I feel like lots of lists are written by needy people, which annoys me and makes me grumpy. It’s basically the author saying, I have so much advice for you! I am full of amazing insight and ideas! Look at me look at me! I made a list because I’m too lazy to write a whole piece about each item and also I might lose your attention before you realize how awesome I am! (Except for this list of mine, which is different because I’m not needy.)

6. My experience is that many lists are snarky in a way that implicates me. I don’t need to be told that I’m part of a large cohort of dorks. I already know that. Stop wasting my time.

7. List sharing makes me feel so left out. I’ve never really fit in, and now everyone’s into lists and I just don’t really get it. Everyone’s so cool and I’m such a dork and a loser. God, I’m lonely.

In a fey moment, Anthony and I decided to get the kids iPad minis for Christmas. We should have given them pajamas and socks instead. There would have been more collective joy in the long run.

Since 12/25/2013 I’ve been listening to a constant refrain of “can I play with my iPad?”, like the buzzing noise of plague locusts. Then there are constant demands for help, incessant requests for new games, and a lot of bitching about game results.

The iPad minis also generate some quiet moments for me, which I treasure and NEED. So it’s really my fault, because I say yes to their use much more than I should. So sue me.

It took just 6 weeks for Jesse to break hers, via a series of temper tantrums over whatever thing was bothering her, as well as a Tourette’s-ian need to drop the device experimentally onto any hard surface that presented itself to her attention. That test protocol achieved expected results when Jesse discovered last night that the screen is cracked all over. Then she performed a separate empirical test of how much emotional melting-down and ululating I can tolerate without turning into a yeti. A lot, apparently, but not as much as she wanted.

I tried explaining the cost of these devices, but my kids rarely see cash in this age of debit cards, so they can’t evaluate relative quantity as viscerally as I got to as a kid. I don’t have a stack of twenties sitting around. I also tried the food comparison perspective. (One iPad mini) + (1 failed safety cover) = (2 weeks of food for our entire family). EVEN THOUGH I SHOP AT WHOLE FOODS.

That emphatic closer, which I thought was compelling, got me nothing. Jesse gave me a teenage “whatever” glare. I think all Nick heard was a Peanuts adult (wa-wah, wa-wah).

I went to the Apple Store this morning and discovered that iPad mini screens won’t be repaired by Apple because they’re so fully integrated. All I can do is buy a replacement from Apple at cost for about 200 bucks or try to find some third party willing to take my money for a maybe-destroy-the-iPad repair attempt.

“Are you kidding me??” I snapped at poor J.J. from the Genius Bar. He didn’t look like a genius to me. I glared at him as his eyes wandered innocently around the store, la la la, but I didn’t curse even once. Good Carla, good. Bad Apple, bad.

I huddled with Anthony afterwards and he authorized me to make the following offer to Jesse: You can have a replacement iPad mini, or you can have a big birthday party this year, but not both.

I’m hoping desperately that she chooses the party, because then I don’t have to deal with this shit anymore. I’m also hoping desperately that she chooses the iPad mini, because then I don’t have to go through the hassle of putting on a big party.

Either way, I’m probably f#*%ed.

Last week I was all cheerful and upbeat. Not to worry. I’m back to grumpy and bleak. Jesse gave herself a hack-up haircut yesterday. It’s probably the 4th or 5th time since the first occasion when she was four.

We were having a boring Sunday. I woke up under the weather and with another bad rash from the swimming pool, so I was lazing about on the sofa feeling like crap and indulging my own needs. As a result, the children circled me like starving sharks coming in for a clean kill, needy emotional teeth bared. Then Jesse coughed on my face.

The face-cough is on my least-favorite-tics list. Jesse suddenly puts her face right next to mine and issues a bark-like cough right on my face. Often there’s spittle. Bonus! There’s no real explaining when or why, though no doubt it’s about stress and anxiety, and possibly hostility toward mama. Words can’t capture the feeling of invasion and insult her face-cough tic creates.

The tic thing seems to be an awful lot like OCD, which Jesse also struggles with. I could give her meds for these disorders, but I don’t want Jesse to explore that option until she’s an adult, if she still needs it. The best long-term “cure”, if there is one, is to exercise self control. That’s much harder than the words suggest, especially when you’re little and feeling a burning, burning, desperate need to do your tic and you don’t yet understand fully what the hell is going wrong in your brain. It probably feels just like sick diarrhea about to rip out of your feverish viral ass, or vomit you’re fighting to keep down, and the only way you’re going to be able to move on is to let it rip.

But if you want to win the tic battle, you have to face the fire and walk through it, eyes wide open. You have to say no to yourself, over and over again. You have to keep the shit and vomit in, until the wave passes. When you’re little, like Jesse, you also get to have mom and dad tell you not to do it, over and over again. Correcting and disciplining Jesse for her tics sucks. She’s working hard on this stuff, and I don’t expect her to be perfect. But I can’t let her get away with a tic, not once. I have to call her on it, every time, and ask her to muster the strength to keep beating this demon back. That’s her best chance for long-term success, and it’s a lot of pressure for a little girl.

So I sent her to her room when she coughed on me. Before she ran upstairs she crushed some play-do eggs in frustration, and as an added irritant Nick started bawling about it. He was being a jackass, fight-picking and overreacting, but Jesse takes that stuff to heart and gets down on herself. She slammed her door and I heard a variety of complaining and mewling sounds for a while. This was normal. Then silence, also normal. Eventually she crept out of her room and I heard her little pixie voice speaking quietly on the stairs. “Oh nooo. I cut my hair. Mommy?”

That was unexpected, but not novel. I’d been down this road before.

“Good for you,” I said. “Do you like how it turned out?”

I heard mewling whiny noises as a little blur sped down the stairs and across the room, landing under the dining room table in a fetal ball. She wouldn’t show me her face, so I went into the kitchen to chop up an apple. She finally agreed to join me for a snack, and her chair was perfectly placed for viewing. I eyed the blank spot around her left ear where hair used to be, thinking to myself, it’s only a couple inches. I can fix this without channeling Flock of Seagulls, and Jesse won’t have to wait 6 months to stop being lop-sided (that was her Kindergarten cut).

She started. “I’m sorry I cut my hair without your permission, mommy.”

I didn’t expect that. We’ve never talked about “permission” for that. So I replied, “you don’t need my permission. It’s your hair. You can do what you want with it, even cut it.” Then I asked the Big Question. “Why did you cut your hair, Jesse?”

I can imagine a lot of mundane answers that would be irritating but also funny. Jesse’s answer wasn’t one of those. She looked down; she sounded ashamed but firm. “I was punishing myself. I deserved it because I coughed on you and made Nick cry.”

Sometimes I think there’s no path to Jesse’s adulthood that won’t break me. Self-destructive behavior is a birthright for my lot, coupled with a good measure of self-loathing and addiction. We’ve gotten Jesse to stop hitting herself for now, but she’s always ready to beat herself up in some way or another. When I look in the crystal ball, I feel like I have only a few years left before more serious problems start appearing. Drugs, alcohol, self-abuse, sex, who knows. I know she’ll surprise me.

Dr. Abrams thinks I should be more optimistic. After all, Jesse’s family is walking through the fire with her, and we’re facing our collective demons together. But I’m decidedly NOT feeling good about it all tonight. I have the passion and commitment, but I’m not sure I have the stamina or the skill set Jesse needs to make it through her life whole.

It’s human nature to give it a go anyway, right? So we sat over the apple and talked about it, going through the motions of parent and child. We chatted about not hurting ourselves, about forgiveness and imperfection, about discipline versus “punishment.” We talked about love and self-love. We planned how I’d fix the cut, and then we went about the business of doing that.

Jesse has a very short and sassy bob now. I’ll try to add a picture here soon. She has silky straight hair that flounces about beautifully when it’s short, so this new do helps her look more cheerful and light-hearted. Here’s wishing it sinks in.

Last night in the bath Nick had a funny look on his face, while his hands did something under the bubbles.

“Everything okay, buddy?” I asked.

“What is this hard thing?”

Where?

“In my penis.”

Eh? Show me, I said, trying to act all laid back while cringing inside.

“Right here.” He showed me his very tiny scrotum. “Oooh. There are TWO hard things,” he announced with a look in his eyes, somewhere between curiosity and deep concern. “What are they?” I tried to hide my wincing.

Thus commenced my four-year-old’s introduction to reproductive ideas.

I want to be anatomically correct in this sort of chatter, and not too euphemistic (except when I am), but I’m not ready to talk sex with the kids yet. Sometimes I think I worry too much about the right way to introduce them to the complex social and cultural and personal and reproductive issues that percolate around genitalia.

Last month Jesse asked, “how does the piece of the daddy that becomes part of the baby get inside the mommy’s body?” I didn’t even evade. “I’m not ready to tell you that yet, Jesse. Also I think it’ll freak you out.” Oddly enough, she accepted that and let it go, which tells me she’s already making some good guesses in her head.

It was easier for me to walk this early path with Jesse because she’s a girl, and I’m a girl, so there you go. I know how our business works and where it is. Nick is more awkward for me, but I gave it a go last night. I explained what I think those hard things are called. I told him to repeat the relevant words, like “scrotum,” “testicles,” and “sperm.” (Very cute, by the way. “Scwo-dem? Testicows?”) We chatted a bit about what their function is, only no details about how to share, god help me. The conversation petered out fairly quickly, for which I was thankful.

As the bath was winding down, Anthony wandered into the bathroom. I told him what Nick had discovered. I was feeling a little pensive and uneasy. I asked him, what would you say to Nick if he asked you about the little hard things in his penis?

“Oh those? Those are just your balls.” Anthony shrugged nonchalantly and wandered back out.

When Nick’s not at preschool (15 very brief hours a week) or on a weekend adventure with dad and Jesse, he’s with me. He follows me around wherever I go, so I call him my third butt cheek. He doesn’t seem to mind, and it’s got to be better than Poopoo Boy, which is what I called him before he potty trained. It’s good to be loved by me.

Nick has a powerful imagination, and an emphatic persistence that can break anyone down. Here’s an approximation of what it’s like to hang out with Nick for any length of time.

Will you play with me? Mommy will you play with me? Let’s play with hard buddies. Do you want to play dragons or dinosaurs? Okay! Do you want to be electrocution dragon or 3-headed dragon?

Why do you call him that, Nick? He has 5 heads.

I dunno. That’s his name. So do you want to be 3-headed dragon? Okay! Are you a good guy or a mean guy? Do you want to be the good guy?

Nick, I don’t want to play dying games today. Can we do no killing, and no eating prey?

Okay mommy. There will be NO turning to dust in my game today. Here comes the mean guy giant squid, GRRRWWAAAH. He is stealing your babies! He is going to eat them! Electrocute him! PHHWWGGAAAA!! You defeated him!

(10 endless minutes later:) I’m going to get some coffee. I’ll be right back.

Mommy? Mommy? Where are you? Will you play with me? Here is electrocution dragon. Now let’s have races. These snakes are The POWERS, and if you hit them you will be turned into a power. So now, wait, waaaait. I will race first. PHRAAAAGFAA, I hit the snake and now (he rummages through his mythical creatures bucket), I am a GRIFFIN! Do you see mommy? Isn’t that amazing? Okay it’s your turn.

(15 minutes into this inane game:) Do you want to play with your iPad, Nick?

Yeah!! Where is it? Mommy can you come upstairs with me to get it? I’m scared.

No. Man up. I’m checking my emails.

(3 minutes later:) Mommy, can you help me? I need more ducks to unlock the next levels. I cannot do it, I don’t know how.

Play something different then.

Pleeeease?? Mommy, can you find me the show where the people become DINOSAURS?? I’m hungry and thirsty. Can I have pirate booty and apple juice?

(5 minutes later, post-snack:) Okay mommy, let’s play dragons now. Here is electrocution dragon. He will be the bad guy. Where is my tiny Yoda? He will be captured, and you have to rescue him with the angry birds.

(20 minutes into this vapid game:) I’m gonna do some laundry, Nick.

Can I come with you? Will you play with me mommy? When will you be done working? When you are done, will you play with me? Do you want to put on a timer, and when it is done you can play with me?

(Post-laundry:) Do you want to read a book, Nick?

Ummmm, noooo, not really… I know! Read this to me! (He presents a massive dinosaur encyclopedia). Read EVERY PAGE, mommy.

(15 minutes and 32 dinosaurs later:) Mommy, here is electrocution dragon. You be the good guy. Mommy? Why are you putting the pillow on your head?

I don’t want to play dragons anymore, Nick.

Okay. Uuh, I know! Let’s play DINOSAURS instead! Here, you be the long necks, and I am the giganotasaurus. GGGRRRAAAWWRRRRAA! (He arranges a dozen dino figurines around the prone body of a brachiosaurus.) Look mommy, he caught the long neck and now all the predators are eating.

Nick, I said I don’t want to play dying and eating prey games today.

(He looks at me like I’m simple, shrugs with his hands turned up in dramatic frustration.) But mommy. They are meat eaters.

Nick, what if today we practice drawing or writing your name? You could color!

Nooo, I don’t think so, mommy.

I don’t want to play hard buddies anymore. Don’t you ever get bored?

No. Hmmm. I know mommy. What if we play race cars! If you hit the snake with your race car, then you will be UPGRADED and become an angry bird!

Okay pause the game, mommy, I have to go potty. It is an EMERGENCY! Can you come with me mommy? I have to poop. Does the seat go up or down? I forgot. Help with my pants, it’s an EMERGENCY! Mommy can you stay with me while I poop? I need privacy so please close the door. But don’t leave. Mommy? Are you still there? Wow that is a really really big poop. The water splashed on my butt, mommy, is that okay? Mommy, I’m all done. Now you can wipe my butt.

Mommy pull up my pants. Okay, unfreeze the game. Do you want to be upgraded to an angry bird?

* ****

EE TEE SEE EE TEE SEE. Reality is both more annoying (because the quantity of Nick is immense) and more cute (because his “R”s and “L”s still sound more like “W”s).

Nick is so ridiculously cheerful most of the time. He’s grown up in the shadow of Jesse’s dark moods, giving up a lot of attention to her sometimes desperate needs. He’s displayed a patience and innate goodness that I never expected in such a little person, and he’s a huge part of her healing. So I feel somehow duty-bound to spend these hours with him while Jesse’s at school, indulging his beautiful imagination beyond all reasonable boundaries of my own patience and boredom.

My brain is atrophying in ways I never imagined, but I suppose it’s growing new pathways too. Before Nick, I never would have thought of doing what I’m going to do now: I’m going to make a phalanx of dragons protecting their play-do eggs, and then I’m going to grab the hot wheels car launcher I poached off a racing loop Santa brought, and I’ll shoot cars through the air at the dragons, who will be protected by a force field wall that keeps them safe. Nick just added that the stretchy rubber butterflies will also attack and anything they touch will BURN. The Pilates ball is a giant mountain in the way! Total bedlam.

Nick and I can keep this game up for at least an hour, if I have the stamina for it. It sucks, AND it’s awesome.

I’ve always had floaters in my eyes, ever since I was very little. I used to sit quietly and watch them shimmer across my field of vision, twisting fuzzy threads that moved peacefully like seahorses. I’d try to follow them but they were elusive, always drifting just faster than my eyes could turn in their sockets. I never talked about them. Now I have an especially huge floater in my left eye after some kind of gel detachment. It’s ridiculously annoying but apparently it’s with me until the day I go blind or die. I can make it dance by moving my eyes back and forth and around and around. I’m trying to stop this habit in public places, because I think it may make me seem a little bit wrong.

I’ve always seen the world as a sort of quivering, disorganized, pixelated thing. If I look at a blank surface, like a wall or the sky, it’s especially obvious. I don’t see a smooth surface, I see little dots vibrating, like a seething mass of randomized molecules. It used to bother me, but now I don’t mind it at all. If I’m bored, I can always liven things up for myself by staring at a wall.

I thought (or hoped) this is how the world looks to everyone, until I finally told Anthony about it some time in the last few years. He played it straight, of course. “No, Carla. That’s not normal.” And then he looked at me sidewise.

Maybe the quivering is related to whatever makes me have so many floaters, or maybe it’s neurological. I also experience slow-downs and smells. Sometimes, everything seems to go slow-mo for a short moment, and I hear voices in a particular cadence, like a chanting sing-song. The voices are usually (but not always) real; the way I’m hearing them isn’t. Also in those moments I often smell a chemical perfume-like stench, not quite vile but unpleasant (and no, it wasn’t because I was farting).

I finally told Anthony about that stuff recently too (“That’s weird, Carla”), and then I was able to start chatting about it with just about anyone willing to be bored by me. It’s amazing how I convinced myself these things weren’t that odd, even while I kept them secret for more than 40 years. And now that I’ve talked about the slow-mo/voices thing openly, it doesn’t happen as much anymore, raising a question about whether a trip through the DSM might shed light on what’s going on in my head.

I wish I had been able to tell someone about my perceptions when I was little. I would have felt better. Or probably more accurately, I wish there had been an adult who listened to me. I look at my children now and wonder what strange things they see and can’t describe to me. Have they tried, and I dismissed it as fantasy or play? Are they keeping secrets of the strange things they see?

I refuse to believe that I’m in a tiny minority on this front. I’m very ordinary, and therefore I conclude that every human has some unique interface with what’s around her. Maybe we would all benefit from sharing the strange things we see. Maybe we’d find kindred spirits. The world might be more magical, more beautiful, and no less real for it.

In our late 20’s, Anthony and I went through a rough patch. We’d been married a couple years, but we’d pretty much been together since our sophomore year in college. I think now that it was a trying time, though I don’t remember thinking of it that way when we were in the moment. Anthony was working full-time on his Ph.D. I was in my early years of lawyering and was in the office 6 days a week at least. I worked a lot of hours. We partied hard and drank too much. We golfed together.

That last bit is a true crucible of a relationship, from a lot of angles. Thoughts for another day.

Anthony and I fought all the time over big things and small, mostly small. I can’t think of a single issue we argued about that was important. But the fighting was becoming definitional, draining the joy out of us. One night after another conversation devolved into nattering at each other, Anthony said it aloud as we lay in bed: “Maybe we should separate, or get some counseling. All we do is fight.”

I was paralyzed. I stared up at the dark ceiling, and for a moment I couldn’t decide which would be worse, living apart from Anthony or having to go to a marriage counselor. There had to be another option.

What we came up with was quite brilliant, I think, and a fair reflection of Anthony’s pragmatism mixed with my desperation to sidestep the therapy-or-lose-Anthony algorithm. We decided to (1) stop fighting, and (2) fake being happy around each other.

The rules were simple. When we woke up in the morning, we had to smile and say good morning, whether we wanted to or not. Same smile rule when we said good bye or hello throughout the day. If we caught ourselves fighting, we had to stop. We were allowed to tell each other when we were breaking the rules. We had to comply with the other person’s directive to put a smile on or to cut that fighting shit out. No fair defending yourself or claiming exceptions.

It really didn’t take long for things to sort themselves out. The smile rule became comic relief quickly, because we looked very silly with a rictus smile glued on our faces. So the fake smiles became real again soon enough, and the happiness was real too. The fighting took longer to cure, because we had formed some bad habits together. But we must have listened to each other, because the constant bickering was gone soon enough too.

I often think back to that episode in our life together and wonder how in the world we did it, without any help. It would be easy to say that “love” carried us through, but if I think hard enough I really can’t wrap my head clearly around what that flat-voweled four-letter word is supposed to convey. I think what made it work was something more basic, something like respect or diplomacy, because we each had to respect the other’s directives and discover some boundaries on what we could reasonably expect of each other—

Oh god, shut up, Carla. Everything I was just saying is a bunch of mumbo jumbo words, and whenever I start sounding like that I know it’s time for a self-head-slap. It’s exactly the kind of blubbing that can trash a healthy relationship, and exactly the kind of talk talk I couldn’t bear to face in counseling. Honestly, Anthony and I just needed to stop fighting and start faking happy. We already could hold a conversation and tolerate each others’ farts with good humor. Once you clear those hurdles in a relationship, it’s all easy, isn’t it?

I was swallowed alive by cinema in my 20’s, which would have been in the early 90’s. We lived in Washington, DC at the time, and there was still a collection of theatres all over town that played all sorts of movies. I had a soft spot for trash action flicks, but also we got to just about every indie and foreign film that came to town. We backloaded as well, renting old classics to watch with friends, working our way through Bergman and Kurosawa, drunkenly reviewing the movies amongst ourselves, branching out into early Japanese anime, and so on and so on. During the summer, we’d watch 7 or 8 movies a week, taking in double features to avoid heading home to our sweltering, ac- free apartment.

Then everything changed. In my imagination, it began with stadium seating and The Matrix. Most everything I watch now feels derivative, doctored, loud. All the CGI effects and surround sound overwhelm me. 3D is dismaying, a migraine waiting to happen. Young indie films aren’t compelling anymore either; the feelings they express are things I’m past now. I’m a grumpy old cynical fart.

I have movie PTSD, and I’ve been grumbling about it for a long time now.

But we saw “Her” last night at the Oriental theatre. I haven’t been there before, which is pretty lame since I’ve lived in Milwaukee more than 7 years. The Oriental is an old renovated theatre, very beautiful and ornate – think gold painted crown moldings and elephants, and the show was introduced by a dude playing a pipe organ that sunk down into the basement.

There’s no stadium seating, and I didn’t notice surround sound. It was a relief not to be bombarded. Her was a perfect movie in this quieter setting. There was no obvious CGI in the film, except for stuff that was supposed to actually be computer imagery. I’m sure the cityscapes were CGI, but for me that’s the same as studio lot background paintings. At least the human humanoids were actual human actors, and talented ones at that.

No one died. No one was beaten or tortured, or even threatened. There wasn’t a spot of blood. No one yelled. Nothing exploded. There wasn’t a single car chase. The characters were all decent people and AIs. The tension in the film was from what really ordinary people experience–just relationships and talk talk and dreams of being more.

There was sex-related stuff, and a naked pregnant lady, but that was actually comic relief and strange. And also not violent.

I didn’t feel grumpy after seeing “Her”. I want more movies like that.