Lord of the Flies: Neighborhood Drama

Around the time we moved, LE decided he wanted to go outside and play in the street with the other kids. I told him he could when he was a little bit older, mostly because I'd seen all the kids on the street were a couple of years older, and I don't really know at what age you're supposed to start letting your kids go all free-range.

All day when the movers were here, he was bugging me to go outside. Seriously, few people can repeat the same things over and over as effectively as a 5-year-old, except perhaps Rain Man and most dogs. And then I got busy with doing something, and noticed that not only was one of the cats gone, the kid was gone too.

Turned out the cat had gotten onto the roof somehow, and the kid had simply let himself outside to play. It was kind of my first guess where he'd gone, so I didn't actually get that worried. I was so relieved not having to listen to him ask me over and over and over and over and over and over if he could go and play, and why why why why why why why why why why couldn't he go outside to play, I just went with it and left him out there.

I found the cat, too. Obviously. Or you would have heard about that in my ongoing tales of minor mishaps.

Things looked fine from up on the new balcony that overlooks the street now. Besides that, about 10 other mothers were watching their kids fiercely from their own balconies. There are a lot of women in my neighborhood who seem to do very little on hot summer days than sit around on their balconies. It must be nice but I'm glad I'm not them.

I figured all would be well. Azeri Teyze shouted down to LE, "Where's your mother?" and I said, "I'm here! He escaped." She looked up at me and said, "He's a very little boy!" and I said, "I know!" LE looked up and waved and said, "Hi, Mama!" and I said, "You scared the shit out me, not telling me where you were going," and he said, "Sorry, Mama," and ran off after his Calliou ball he'd thoughtfully brought down with him, clearly not in the mood for the lecture I was all ready to call down to him. Whatever. I had a lot to do. Plus he still says his "r"s kind of like "w"s and it kills me, partly because he's starting to say his "r"s right.

Ours is a dead-end street, by the way. I'm not as spectacularly bad of a mom as I would like to be. Every night after school LE goes to play with the kids in the street, and comes home ravenous and streaked with filth. I think it's cool. It seems super-healthy and cheerful somehow.

I also like sneaking out to watch what he does with the other kids. For the most part, they're really nice. They peripherally include him in their games, making him be the guy who has run off and fetch the stray ball, and sometimes they let him have a go at whatever they're doing. LE is too little to realize it sucks to be the guy who has to go fetch the balls that roll away.

Invariably, they play football. I despair somewhat at their lack of imagination, though they do a bit of role-playing, with taking dives and having fake fights and pretending to be their favorite players. They argue constantly.

Male posturing. International and inter-species.

LE holds his own. It's hilarious and sad and adorable. He postures and pretends to be a bully, gesturing like a minibus driver and tossing around light swear words like "lan," which the older boys think is cute and pinch his cheeks, and the younger ones hold him to it and bully him back. There's one kid who's a little mean, that does the, "Aren't you cute?" cheek-slapping a little too hard, or postures back at him, but when LE is taken aback the older kids step in and rub his head and distract him with something before he starts crying. Big kids here are naturally good with little kids like that. LE likes that mean kid the best.

Sometimes on the weekends the other kids LE's age come out to play. They cling to whatever adult brings them out, and don't even know how to kick the ball properly. LE still tries to include them, though, and they sometimes all go off together to play something besides football. Usually it involves running in circles around the house next door. LE never knows if they're chasing someone or running away from someone, or even which one they're chasing or running away from, but he doesn't give a shit.

Fuck Calliou.

LE always takes his Calliou ball out to play, and often his winter gloves when he wants to be the goalie. He doesn't like the regular ball the big kids use, because it hurts when it hits him in the face. All the kids humor him and use the Calliou ball.

Poor Piggy.

The slightly younger kids, probably the ones who had to be Piggy before LE came along, have allowed LE into their splinter group. They're probably just happy there's someone else to be Piggy. One of them is a chunky kid about 7 who can't keep up with the others and often has a tube of Chococrem or Balparmak, which he's happy to share. The other is graceful and coordinated and seems to be on the verge of getting in with the 9-11 year old bunch.

Madness, of the complete and utter variety.

They spend a lot of time trying to figure out LE's nationality. They've seen him with me, which must mean he's foreign. Except he speaks Turkish. It blows their minds. Yesterday, they all saw when LE's grandparents dropped him off, that they all were Turkish. They asked him his surname and declared him Turkish. LE explained that he's also American. Then he shouted up for me to give him a glass of water. "Come upstairs," I told him. "Just use the basket!" he replied. "What basket?" I answered. The other kids' mothers lower baskets of food and water and toys on demand.

Today as we came home from school, the kids were playing a different game, with Nerf guns. LE was hesitant to join, but he also wanted me to go away. Clearly I have become wicked uncool. I kissed his cheek anyway because he still lets me, and went upstairs. By the time I got to the balcony he seemed to have worked things out. He shouted up to me that he wanted his Iron Man wristband, and as he left the group to come upstairs and get it, he told the other kids he had a big surprise for them. A few times. They ignored him but he didn't care.

This whole Lord of the Flies street thing is deeply pleasing and deeply devastating at the same time.

When I went out to get LE for dinner, he was nowhere to be seen. So I went to turn off the stove and drain the ravioli. When I went back out, LE was standing behind a car weeping bitterly. It wasn't a hurt crying (I'm forever shocked I can recognize what kind of crying it is), and I called to him to come up, but he refused. An older boy was trying to gentle him out of crying. The LE decided to come in. I opened the apartment door for him, but before he could come up, I heard a gaggle of women gather downstairs around him.

Shit.

Um, not on my street.

So I put on the sort of top one might wear outside (the it's-1,000-degrees-in-the-house-braless-tank wasn't gonna cut it), and went down to make a show of being an overprotective mom. Three women had LE all gathered up trying to comfort him, while another two were off bawling out the other kids and trying to find out what they had done. A third bustled out with some terlik for me because I wasn't wearing shoes. LE's crying had reached the point of hiccuping and he was hard to understand, but it turned out all that had happened was that the kids had told him he couldn't play whatever Nerf thing they were up to.

Callous as it might be, I found them completely justified in this, as usually they alter their games to include LE. He's kind of like an annoying little brother for them, and I think they're pretty cool about it. As much as I dislike the whole Lord of the Flies thing he's suddenly cast himself into, that's life and it's only going to get worse, and more unfair, and meaner and bloodier. At least he still wants to wrap his skinny, smelly little arms around me.

The neighborhood moms, though, were all crushed that he was crying. Not that I blame them. LE when he is crying is gorgeous and heartbreaking, with the trembling pout and fat tears and dirt-streaked suntanned cheeks. There was a chorus of exclamation to this effect from everyone around us and from several balconies every time he buried his perfect wet snotty face in my neck.

Fuck yeah!

Once home, he forgot about it in minutes because Tom and Jerry is always on YouTube. He even let me show him Ren and Stimpy. I explained to him that sometimes things are going to happen like that with other kids because he's still little, and that it'll make him feel like crying but he can't always cry about stuff like that. He hiccuped that it was bullshit they did that. He also reminded me to return the terlik to the neighbor after he went to sleep. Then he passed out to Shel Silverstien after having seconds on ravioli and a scrubby bath.

Later on, I found a Nerf bullet on the balcony and threw it down to the kids in the street. One of the mothers leaned out asked if she could come up, and she did, bearing a plate of homemade pastries. She apologized her kid had done that, and I told her I think her kid is great for letting LE play with them.

And thus, order was restored to the street. I hope. Goodness knows I'm always doing or saying something wrong around here.

Sorry, Bee

Dear Bee Who Stung My Toe Today,

There you were in the grass just doing what bees do.

And then you got into my sandal and stung the fuck out of my toe. I don't know how you managed it. You must have hit a vein or something because it hurt like the dickens and half my foot looks bruised now.

It's not like I haven't been stung by bees before. I was once the object of a pissed-off, undersmoked hive and like five of your brethren got me all at once and all it did was get me a little bit high for the rest of the day.

I know your kind have been dying off and disappearing mysteriously from this world. And I can tell from the goo hanging off the end of your stinger that you didn't make it through the toe-attack. You're probably dead now.

And I'm so, so sorry you thought I was the enemy and that you died trying to kill me. I wish we could have talked it over first.

Deepest regrets,

Stranger.

Vehicular Safety: We Fucking Love It!

Chapter 1: My Exploded Elbow

Waited for her chance.

 Somewhere in my Wonder Woman moving adventures I must have bashed my elbow. In fact, I've been a complete klutz lately, and am fairly well-covered with bruises, mainly, I believe, from bumping into furniture that's in unfamiliar places. I've managed to fall and land hard on the same knee no less than threee times in the last month: one running-for-a-bus-incident, one free-tequila-shots incident, and again last week when Spider got her revenge for the washing machine thing by dropping a greasy roasted chicken carcass on the tile floor and I slipped on the grease.

 The knee has turned colors I didn't even know I had, and there's an unfamiliar bump on there. The last time I fell on it, I almost cried and I almost puked it hurt so much.

Anyway.

Fuck yeah! Who needs goddamned medical care?

The elbow, which I don't remember bashing, just hurt for awhile but then it started to swell and it got all red and hot. The doctor at the school clinic got mad at me for not coming in sooner, just like he did when I'd had diarrhea for two weeks. Both times I was like, "Dude, I'm American and I'm used to not having health insurance. We don't mess with doctors for ridiculous hypochondriac issues like the shits and swollen, burning elbows."

So the elbow got a little bit better, but clearly there is something exploded and squishy in there. It's annoying the hell out of me because that's the elbow I lean on. So I checked with Doctor Google and decided I should go see a real doctor.

Look, I'm calling it my exploded elbow to make it sound cool. The fact is, it's bursitis, which sounds to me like something only old people should have and I'm not dealing well with having it.

Fuck.

My elbow is way less hairy, really.

Anyway, the doctor gave me a super-cool bandage and an explanation that bursitis is because of an inflamed bursa. Which helps a little bit, thinking of an inflamed Bursa in my elbow, even though I'm pretty sure that shit is exploded. Or maybe I just really, really want to believe that, because bursitis sounds, well, fucking lame.

Chapter 2: Vehicular Safety

LE and I took the minibus home from the hospital. There weren't any seats and even though he still has a hard time standing up and remembering to hold on to something on the minibus, his two months of perpetual growth-spurts have made him tall enough no one gives us a seat anymore unless he actually falls down. Occasionally a kind stranger offers him a lap, and he's gotten where he's cool with accpeting that.

Just trust this guy with your life every day, okay?

In cars, I'm pretty fanatic about attempting to encourage some sort of vehicular safety. I'm American. I can't help it. If there's no booster for him, he at least has to wear a lapbelt. If the seatbelts are cut off or otherwise not funtioning, like in taxis or his dad's new car, he at least has to be reminded a million times to sit back on the seat and not climb around or stand in the middle hanging between the two front seats.

The minibus, well, it's a fucking joke and it occurred to me today how little I care. In summer, the best seat is in the front passenger seat next to the driver with the window open. Ample room for our stuff, and a clear path to the windshield.

But today, clearly the best place was on the cushion on the floor in front of the money box. I'm surprised no one else had snagged it.

It was super-safe because the cushion wasn't secured to anything, which meant I could move it closer to the bar so LE could hold on and not get thrown on fast turns, or end up under the driver's gear-shifting arm as we barreled downhill.

Whatever. It's all relative, even safety.

Truth be told, I've always thought safety is fucking boring anyway.

A Sophomoric Snicker

I can't believe I've been walking by this place for over a year and just noticed it the other day.

According to Seslisözlük, Şit (Seth) may have taken second place over Peker in the Worst Ever Turkish Names in English Contest.

Kunt still wins, though.

Spectacularly Bad Mom, Of Sorts

I don't care for it when people refer to themselves as their pets' parents. And let it be known that before this Incident I'd already started making moves to find a home for Havuç and Spider. They're lovely but I can't deal with them anymore.

Yesterday, having done my job acceptably well and visited the school where I'm suddenly supposed to register LE under this fucked up new law and talked about everything with the vice principal and gotten us home early and done the shopping and given the kid a Popsicle and done a load of laundry and ordered the heavy things from Sarıyer Market and bathed the kid, I was feeling pretty fucking good about everything when I started a second load of laundry and was ready to tackle dinner.

I'd promised the boy sucuk for dinner, which is easy to cook even though our gas isn't hooked up yet but the electric burner is working fine. So we had some time to hang out and watch crap on YouTube.

Havuç was meowing a lot in the bathroom but he's very meow-y so I don't care, usually.

So I went back there to change my clothes and there was an unpleasant rowling sound coming from the washer, with Havuç sitting there looking upset.

PleaseletherbebehindthemachinePleaseletherbebehindthemachinePleaseletherbebehindthemachine...

Nope. I shut the machine off and waited for the magnetic latch to click back open.

It was around then I completely lost it. The cat looked all twisted up and without even touching her I sprang to action, certain some neural column was broken and this was the Worst Thing Ever.

I said a lot of bad words.

I tried to figure out how to deal with this.

I called the vet, who luckily was still open.

Then I dumped the kid at our lovely neighbor's, gave her some money for the grocery delivery that was on its way, left a note on our door for the delivery guys, wrapped the wet cat in a towel and bustled down to the vet. On the way, I saw the delivery guys in their truck and tried to wave them down to tell them which apartment to go to, but obviously I looked insane and they snootily waved me off and drove on.

The cat was fine. In shock, but fine. A swelling in her tail that has since passed and the blood must have come from her nose or mouth because she'd gone through 1 or 2 rather powerful spin cycles. The vet shot her up with something for the shock and again, I was wishing he'd give me some too. He gave her an anti-inflammatory for the tail, too.

It's okay if you think it's a little bit funny. I would too if it hadn't been my fault.

Spider is fine. She took a dump on the kitchen floor so she and Havuç spent the rest of the night in the bathroom. I'm sure Havuç was cool with that because he's been falling in love with Spider a little bit. Snippy snippy time.

Clearly I have no business owning cats.

Grafitti

The best thing about this little bit of graffiti is that Erdoğan's upper lip kind of looks like balls.

Between suddenly wanting to ban abortion and his stupid ideas about education, I despise him a little more than usual.

Thank you, random bar wall artist, for making my day.

I Am Fucking Wonderwoman

The move to the flat downstairs has been impending for several weeks now. First there was this and that and the other thing and I'd planned to move gradually over the course of the last month but that didn't happen. As soon as I saw things weren't happening, I was all like, "Fuck it" and decided to approach the move not with my usual American way of careful planning, but instead with the Turkish way of "Whatever. It'll get done when it gets done and it's gonna suck no matter which way I do it." Which was cool because there was definitely no plan from anyone else involved in the move, either.

Remember last month when I organized all those toys? Well, that has been undone like twice over since then, mostly when LE had his BFF over for a visit and they dragged out every single goddamned toy in the house and threw them everywhere and lined up some of them up across every doorway and down the hall in what they claimed was some sort of cat trap. The cat trap didn't work at all, but it was a good idea in theory.

The cat trap contains only scary toys, like weapons and dogs and dinosaurs.

Then I bribed them with a tiny piece of chocolate apiece to clean the shit up and they totally did it. Hence the toys were cast back into chaos. Anyway.

I'm totally fucking Wonderwoman. Or just wishing maybe.

The move finally came down to this weekend, when I'd done nothing ahead of time except worry a bit and organize the toys. Means I had to pack up the entire house and haul it downstairs inside of three days. And put everything down there in such a way that the movers won't have to kick it all too much out of their way when they're hauling the furniture.

I might be fucking Wonderwoman but I'll be damned if I'm gonna strap the fridge to my back and haul it downstairs.

So yesterday, I tried to get as much stuff into the new house as I could before it got dark. We'll have no electricity, water, gas, or Internet in the new house just yet.

Some heavy stuff.

In case you're wondering why I'm fucking Wonderwoman, it's not just because she's hot. It's because I carried all this shit downstairs yesterday.

Some fucking stuff.

Some stuff in the new bathroom.

The kitchen is done, plus some more fucking stuff.

Ok, the cleaner carried some dishes down. But then she wanted to go home and I didn't blame her. Somewhere in the middle of hauling shit I got really glad I wasn't moving upstairs. Or somewhere far, like across the street.

The kitchen is finished and the cupboards are neatly filled.

At some point, moving takes over your entire brain. All your crap just becomes shit you have to move, and you're thinking about how and when the moving of that particular useless piece of crap is going to take place. You look your stuff and wonder where it came from and why you have it, and maybe could it just go to the curb? A friend of mine is moving now too, which not only means we can't help each other move, it also means we can discuss at length our moving-related woes. His problem was eggs. I realized eggs are one of my problems too. Why the fuck did we buy eggs when we have to move? I decided to have eggs for lunch because who the fuck wants to screw around with moving eggs?

Fortunately, even an unplanned move makes it so there are essential things left in my house. In my case, it was a dishwasher full of dirty dishes that allowed me to cook and eat eggs with utensils and a pan. And salt. Salt is something you should always move last. Also toilet paper.

I'd got partway through cooking eggs when I realized there was no spatula. I started digging around the kitchen looking for a viable alternative, like two forks. Lucky for me, there was a spatula in the dishwasher and I was pretty sure the moving gods were smiling on me.

Spatula is the arm of the gods!

At some point yesterday, a fucking cat (I suspect Havuç) dragged one of my favorite wool sweaters out of the closet and chewed a hole in the arm. Fucking cats. That's the third sweater they've killed. I still kind of hate them a little bit. Why the wool sweaters, cats, why?

But then I realized I didn't have to  move the sweater so I forgot about it pretty fast.

Cats are no help with moving.

Get a job, fucking cat!

The cats have been a constant source of despair and angst lately. I'm wondering what the hell I'm going to do with them when I go out of town for a month, plus they're fuckers who chew things up and get into everything and destroy things wantonly and without purpose. They're crawling on me constantly, or trying to. But then Spider does something cute like standing up to be pet and I realized I could cover the chairs they've murdered with pillowcases and I feel like I might be able to keep them a little while longer.

Get out of my face, cat!

The cats are causing me to question some larger commitment issues I've been thinking about lately. Like maybe one reason my marriage failed was because I was thinking all along I could dump it off at this cat farm in Zekeriyaköy I've heard of.

I'm fucking tired from being Wonderwoman, all right? So it's totally okay if I mix metaphors.

And just for that I'm going to leave out a whole bunch of other juicy shit I've been thinking about and doing lately, so hah! Aside my from the move, my life has been extremely fucking cool. You can't even imagine. So there.

After the spatula incident, it became clear the gods of moving were smiling on me. It was like "Ask and you shall receive" all day today. For example, I found a cupboard full of small fragile things and I was all, "Jeez, I wish I had a small box to put all these things into," and then I reached into the next cupboard and found an empty shoebox with an even smaller empty shoebox inside of it and was like, "Fuck yeah!" It was like I had reached moving Nirvana.

And you were wondering why I have so much stuff. It's because I've saved some stuff from past moves that might come in handy for future moves. I've also saved a bunch of other crap in case I might need it someday. Thanks, Past Tense Stranger!

I also have all this Atatürk stuff. I've made a pile of my ex's stuff on the living room floor, which I plan to tell him to take tomorrow or I'll leave it out for the gypsies. I couldn't bring myself to put all the Atatürk stuff in with his crap. Not just because he'd get all insulted or something. Also because I feel like if I have Atatürk stuff around the house, people might think we're normal, LE and I. It's a clever ruse. And secretly, our Atatürk kitsch has camp value for me. Heh.

We still need this one.

Anyway, today I counted my trips down and up the stairs. 55. That's right. 55. Granted a lot of it was light stuff like lamps and plants, but still. 55. Calves are a bit sore, but my ass feels like you could bounce a penny off it.

The heavy shit, plus a whole bunch of other shit.

Added to this pile of shit, too.

Last year, when I was first thinking of getting divorced for real, I went to my co-worker who had just finished an ugly divorce and who had kids not much older than LE. I'd meant to ask her about stuff I should be looking for that would tell me my kid might not be handling it. Instead, she became a fireball of support that I could do this thing and we ended up talking about what shits our husbands had been. Another friend hooked me up with my lawyer and if it weren't for certain people like these friends, I never would have been able to even envision getting divorced. They'll never know exactly the extent of my gratitude.

On Facebook the other night, I mentioned enjoying the smell of my armpits after moving by myself all day, and the divorced co-worker reminded me how many more times I would be saying "by myself" and how it would keep feeling cooler and I'll be damned if she wasn't totally right.

Bathroom full of more shit I moved by myself.

More shit in the kitchen I moved by myself today.

A million wall hangings I moved by myself.

Plants too.

And a lamp.

So probably after I finish writing this post it's gonna take me like 10 minutes to drag my sorry stiff ass out of this chair and into the kitchen for a muscle relaxant and then into the bed for another big day. Brown burly fellows are going to haul the furniture for me to the new flat, and put it in its place.

Somewhere in all of this I need a plumber and an electrician. Plus LE has to get registered for school, a whole 'nother can of worms.

And because I didn't organize any of my stuff-- I even took some full trash cans down there, thinking of my aunt and her military moving stories-- unpacking it all will take like a year or so.

Because I'm doing it all by myself.

Fucking Wonderwoman. Thank you very much.