The Kind They Serve at McDonald's

I woke up remembering the french fry incident, and then I couldn't get back to sleep.

Last night Peter and I met Aliza and our group of friends for a celebration. We were celebrating my birthday, Justine's birthday, Peter's and my wedding anniversary and Justine and Florian's wedding anniversary. Also Rosh Hashana, because, why not? We went to Cafe Cluny which I love, partly because the people who work there are uncharacteristically human for a bistro of its ilk, and partly because it's right around the corner from me. I put on makeup and my high-heeled boots. I was very excited.

I love this particular group of friends because they're hilarious and smart and they love you no matter how stupid, boring or juvenile you become after tippling one too many. I mean, I hope they still love me. After last night.

There's a moment when you sort of peak under the influence. In that moment, your razor wit clocks lightning speed and you can carry on three conversations at one time, which you want to do because you love each and every person at this table with all your heart.

I think I started sliding over to the dark side in the middle of my entree. I may be giving myself too much credit, it may have happened before that. But I guess I'd had two glasses of Malbec at that point. Someone observed that my salmon was mashed all over my plate into a kind of stew with the braised vegetables. I explained an innate guiding principle I have when it comes to eating, and of course, life: work first, enjoy later. So I habitually cut up all the food on my plate before eating any of it. I went on to tell a very dull story about my brother Luke and myself at the breakfast table in 1977, cutting up our pancakes all at one time, and how appalled my father was, etc., etc.

Yes, so I told the whole numbing story while my polite friends politely listened and politely reacted and changed the subject. It wasn't long before I was going on at length about a book written by some friends of mine, which is about your astrological sign and how it affects your sexual preferences and behaviors. By trying to remember what the book said about the different signs, I think I managed to insult everyone at the table at least once.

I also managed to slip in at least one horrific exaggeration about Peter, while he was sitting right there, listening. It's something I do all the time. Last night, it was something about his upcoming colonoscopy and how he won't shut up about the arduous and potentially vile day of preparation involved. In reality, he has only mentioned it a handful of times. Actually, he has hardly talked about it at all. But then I realized that I was doing it as I was doing it, and called myself on it to the whole table. I apologized to Peter and to them, and, so that I might keep digging my hole deeper, I explained that I was given to exaggeration as a way of making myself seem more interesting. I have a fear of not being interesting, I told them, to which they were obliged to say, "don't be ridiculous, of course you're interesting."

Okay. So Jen and I were sharing an order of fries. They were the divine McDonald's kind of fries. I think we were just about at the bottom when I turned away, no doubt hurling some inappropriate comment at someone, and when I turned back, the fries were gone. Horrified, I said to Jen, "were we finished with those?" She wasn't sure, she thought there were some left, at the very least five or six stubby ones bathed in salt. We were outraged. How could a busboy just swoop in and remove them? There were more and we weren't finished. Just then our lovely Waitress appeared - she was already silently hating us - and feigning humility, I whined about the premature confiscation. She responded by coming back with an entire new order of fries. I scarfed like half of them, and had four or five hanging out of my mouth as the profiteroles were served.

I mean, where is the dignity? Where is the dignity?

And it really went downhill from there. I can't think of anything too specific because apparently I was in quite a muddle. All I know is that there was profiterole on my blouse when I got home.

Her Name Rhymed With Mimberly

To go back to a subject I touched on in an earlier posting, I am increasingly aware of this Mommy Crush phenomenon. Okay, maybe it's just me and it's not a phenomenon at all. But I meet these women in the playground, and they're so ... pretty. And cool. And good, natural moms. With charming, natural laughs. And I think, gee, I'd like to throw back a few tequila shots with this woman. Then when I go back to the playground I look for them, and try to remember their kids' names, (Ryan? Dylan? Tristan? Justin? Max?). I usually never remember to ask adults their names.

Back in July, one of my playground crushes seemed as though it was about to go to the next level: the playdate. I was invited - I mean, Eden was invited - to the home of a little girl whose name I won't reveal, but suffice it to say it's the first name of a famous screen actress from the 1930s and rhymes with Maloollah. I'd had a bit of a crush on the mommy, she being so energetic and smart-seeming. And the little girl whose name rhymes with Maloollah is so sweet and cheerful, so I was really looking forward to this get-together.

The 90 minutes Eden and I spent at their sprawling Perry Street loft flew by like hours. I sat cross-legged on the floor near the girls at play and asked the mommy the kinds of innocuous questions you ask people at parties and things, the kinds of questions that could lead to more personal dialogue if the askee is willing to open up a bit. But I don't know, this mommy just wouldn't go there, and that was fine, except that she didn't ask me one bloody question about myself, not one, not even a bland impersonal one just to kill some time. So it was up to me to keep the conversation alive by lobbing out openers with potential, questions that might lead somewhere - though as time went by it became increasingly clear that, once we had exhausted the endlessly fascinating topic of nap time, the only place this conversation was going was to my private hell of polite desperation, in which I frantically searched for things to talk about with this stranger, whose daughter was ignoring my daughter while my daughter ignored her, the one with the name that rhymes with Maloollah, right back.

Once again, I overinvested in the imagined potential of a relationship and was disappointed when I actually got to know the person, then had to spend time and energy shaking it off. This is the danger of the mommy crush - or any kind of crush at all.

Another Day of Inadequate Parenting

Recently I decided that enough is enough. We would put a stop to our passive complicity with the oil companies and shop for locally grown produce. We would eat locally, be insufferably righteous globally. So today I dragged my daughter and my husband to the Union Square Greenmarket for as much overpriced, politically correct produce as we could afford.

If you have never seen smug vegetables before, here's the mother lode. The tomatoes are total divas. How many New York Times Eating In articles, how many wistful paeans on All Things Considered, how photo ops with Nigella Lawson holding them up in front of her bodacious ta-tas? Those tomatoes are so obvious. Give me a shallot. Peel me a grape. But enough with the showboaty heirlooms. I'm so over it.

We sampled, we pored over, we purchased fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, juice and jam. By the time we reached the $10 pheasant sausage, I started to wonder: who the hell have I become? I used to own and occasionally wear a "Die Yuppie Scum" t-shirt. I used to vote Communist. Am I now the enemy? Because there I was, sampling an Upstate New York Pinot Grigio, pushing my Lucky Wang-clad daughter in her Maclaren, wearing my Marc Jacobs-by-way-of-Audrey-Hepburn shades and my John Varvatos laceless Converse All-Stars. And I thought, Oh. My. God.

But what do I do now? Where do I go from here? Have I always been a lightweight? Have I always been so easily undone by vanity? Do I really like all these things I dress myself in, or am I a slave to something else, like my insecurities about what other people see when they look at me? And then I think, no, I really do want that tartan jacket that's in the window at Intermix ($259.) I like it. I want it. I like it.

The point is. Am I yuppie scum? Do I deserve to die? Am I setting a horribly shallow example for my golden child to follow? Is it so horrible to eat well, to dress well? Aren't these sensual pleasures also the privileges of being human? For this lifetime, anyway, I was given a human brain and a human encasing. So why not fully be human? Why be ashamed of these qualities that are so much a part of the human experience?

And why do I default to shame? Well, that's another posting entirely.

And why am I not kinder, more generous with my time, more invested in this planet's state of affairs? Perhaps what I have become is not selfish or vain but lazily self-involved - so accustomed to tending to my own problems that my passion for justice has drifted to a drafty corner somewhere in the recesses of my heart.