It’s raining today in Southern California and so, as I stared out into the sogginess this wet, grey afternoon, my thoughts naturally turned towards tertiary syphilis.

No they didn’t. They turned towards lifts* (elevators); all the lifts I’ve known. Elevators pop up in my life (and down – for, after all, what pops up must pop down) at highly-wrought/unusual/important moments. I think it’s the nature of elevators to do this to everyone. To be on an elevator you are often on your way to somewhere in a building big or important enough to have an elevator: an appointment; an interview etc. A lot of emotion happens in lifts whether you are alone or not.

Here are some things I’ve thought – sometimes out loud – in elevator situations (different ones):

I hope I am dressed appropriately for this occasion. I wonder if there’ll be anything to drink.

*

I hope I’m not barren.

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………..Oh! So THAT’S what he meant. Damn, see then I should have said _________ (insert something retrospectively pithy and devastatingly smart.)

*

OK, this is it. Play it cool, Samigirl. Keep your head. You can do it yes you can yes you CAN!

*

Weep, weep, weep oh!oh!oh! weep, weep, weep. Oh, yes , I could use a tissue, thank-you, you’re very kind. Nope, I’m fine, it’s fine. No really. Boohoohoohoohoo.

*

A ladder! Damn! Will there be anything to drink, I wonder?

*

It can’t be about the essay. Oh God. I wonder if he wants an affair! Everybody says he’s a right letch and this is the classic way it’s done, isn’t it? An email with a cryptic message; last tutorial spot of the day….What will I do if he makes a move? Can I knee him? What if I get nervous and knee him before he’s even done anything? Would he fail me for that?

Same elevator, 15 minutes later, somewhat puzzled at my own slight sense of anti-climax: I wonder what an affair would be like? God, What am I thinking? Stopitstopitstopit! What’s wrong with me??

Several floors down and indignantly, Well, what IS wrong with me? Why DIDN’T he try and seduce me? I know for a fact he’s tried it on with L. He tries it on with everyone! Mutter.
(It’s true. I do mutter in my thoughts, and I rhubarb too.)

*

Ow! Ow! (hospital elevator)

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Mmmmmmmmmmmm! Oh Golly!

Several floors later: It’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it…Oooooh! My word!

*

No inner dialogue. Nothing; only the sounds of perspiration beading on my forehead, on the back of my neck, and my stomach twisting stickily, sickily into a Gordion knot for which there can be no unwinding, only the sword’s slice. For it is written.

*

8…9…10…11… pause… where’s 12? Oh my God I’m stuck in here! I’m going to die die I tell me DIE! …12…13…14… Idiot. Mutter.

*

67…68…69…This is boring and I have to stand way too close to shorts-wearing people I don’t know. Eeew! I can practically feel their leg hair. Why did I have to wear shorts too? … Oh! My ears popped! Ooh, I LOVE this!… 70…71…

*

I wonder if there’ll be something to drink.

*

I wonder if there’ll be something to eat/drink.

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* For trans-Atlantic equity I’ve used the terms interchangeably for the duration length of the post.

PS: If anyone’s looking for something new to listen to, get yourself a copy of this. Carla Bruni is a French/Italian supermodel but don’t let that put you off. In this album she’s put poems by Auden, Dickinson, Yeats, C. Rossetti, Parker and De La Mare to music. It’s a quiet album and her voice adds alternately wistfulness, melancholy and a breathy haunting quality to the songs. I like it a lot. It sounds like a terrible idea to have a supermodel sing poetry to her own music but I think it works out well. In America it’s only available as an import at the moment and the price is therefore a bit steep, but it’s the same price as everything else in Europe. Definitely worth it, in my humble.

I’m doing this post because, at some point, every parent of daughters is going to have to get their inner rage at Bratz dolls out. If you have no females under four feet six in your lives then you might not know about Bratz dolls. They’re the Paris Hiltons of the doll world. They dress like hookers, have “attitude” and are fashion-maaaaad, girlfriend! They have Bratz hair salons, nail salons, dog-grooming salons and boutique shops. When their web-site (http://www.bratz.com/) is loading, the message is “Please wait – it takes time to look this good!” That’s dully sassy coming from a teenager but are our under 10s expected to talk like this too? Are they meant to have such a precious, entitled, image-ever-aware attitude? isn’t there a lower age bar for this kind of thing any more?

Bratz are incredibly popular and are outselling Barbie as the pre-teen doll of choice. I was never much of a Barbie fan but at least she had careers and maybe even a few adventures. Bratz dolls don’t have adventures, they have appointments.

Barbie is slightly better by a squeak – although even she has a “Fly Girl” line now – but she’s just so pinkpinkpinkeverything’sfluffyandperfectandpink that wee girls are conditioned into a sort of pinkypinkysugar-thinking: the normal pink part of their femininity is grossly over-developed at the expense of imagination. Barbie’s web site’s greeting IS actually “Think Pink!”. (http://barbie.everythinggirl.com/) To be fair, the marketers lay all their cards on the table when they push slogans like that – there can be no doubt amongst parents about what they have planned for our little girls.
Everything is supplied with Barbie and Bratz – hair-dryers, electronic diaries, fully accessorized bathrooms, pools, offices, bedrooms, all sorts. Your play story has already been worked out for you by Mattel; Barbie just wanders from one pre-arranged situation to the next. There is no need for imagination; that part of a girl’s development atrophies.

It’s called PSE – Pink Spongiform Encephalitis – or, in its human form, Bratzfeldt Jakopink Disease: The pinkening of the pre-teen mind; the creating of cotton candy floss brains such that, when young girls are run over through not being able to chew gum AND cross the street to the sale! safely, the pathologists have to wear white caps and twiddle the brains out with 12 inch food-standard sticks. They’re already wearing the white coats, so that’s OK.

I could go on and on all day about these cynical plastic morons but, Brittney and Paris aside (Didja see how I played that one for the laughs there, folks? Didja? Didja?), when it comes to Bratz dolls there is enough rage out there for everyone. My pals SafeT Inspector and The Bearded One, both daddies to little girls, have mentioned them with despair in recent posts. (They’re linked in sidebar – Wordpress hates me and won’t let me do proper in-text links) I don’t want to hog all the frustration ‘cos it does a number on one’s ability to keep one’s eyebrows from spontaneously combusting in fury about what consumer culure is so baldly, brazenly trying to do to our little girls: to create tiny little super-consumers earlier and earlier, with little idea of life beyond the mall but a very good idea of how they want to accessorize to go there.

It’s not a happy thought but I half-suspect these dolls were created to facilitate a new layer of bonding between mothers and daughters. “Mommy loves to shop and now so do I! Giggle.” Hearing “I just liiive to shop!” coming out of Joan Rivers mouth is a bit amusing… ‘k, it’s not – but hearing it from an 8-year old is just kinda Chuckie-creepy. It settles in your brain far too close to the the neurons that store unwanted info on child beauty pageants and – making another surprise! appearance in this post – Miss Pointless Hilton. This new layer of mother-daughter bonding-through-consumerism corrodes the other layers.

Right, it’s out. A goodly bit of the blood has cleared from my vision after that. When the inevitable happens and a wee chum gives the girls a Bratz for their birthday or some such, I might be able to chisel out a jagged stony grimace of gratitude on my face now. I might be able to crouch down and eyeball my children only once, hissing darkly “never, ever let me see that thing before I’ve been pre-mellowed by at least two cups of tea and a pint of gin,” wild-eyeing it with all the maternal tenderness of a puppy-eating Shakespearean witch. I might. Or one morning, the children might awaken to discover their Bratz doll hasn’t slept in her black satin pimp sheets at all, and that there’s a fresh roughly 8″ long mound in the garden. That might well happen. When the red mist falls…

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In a piece of unrelated reportage, The Problem Household had a lovely Valentine’s Day. The kids were sweet and chocolately and went to bed early with no fuss so mummy and daddy could have a nice quiet Valentine’s meal. We stayed in to avoid crowded restaurants and prix fixe menus and I cooked. The meal had steak in it so it was a success from the Problem Husband’s point of view; and it had pudding so I liked it too.
I love my husband more than I can say. We have an unconventional relationship, very. Aside from the ludicrous age difference, we coexist in unusual ways that I suspect many wouldn’t understand, so I won’t be baring any of them here. He is an odd duck, I’m an odd duck and our marriage reflects that. But we are odd ducks in ways the other doesn’t mind and are as comfortable in each others brains as slouchy cardigans and tea and toast by a mental fire. We built our relationship from the ground up, customising it to suit us, rather than pretzeling ourselves to fit somebody else’s idea of what love and marriage are about. We would have failed absolutely and miserably if we’d tried to conform to any shape of marriage other than the one we’ve made up for ourselves. But, 11 years on, we still sit and talk every night for hours. We can lose afternoons in inanity or serious discussion and often both at once. We’re wildly different from each other, and he’s way smarter than I am, but our minds fit together like substrate and catalyst molecules; we respect each other – usually – well, a fair bit – but he is wrong about many things and I do have to ’splain him stuff, particularly on why he’s quite wrong to hold various political beliefs; but we laugh a lot and I am happier than I’ve ever been. His mind sparkles and he challenges and teaches mine more than anyone I’ve ever met. He’s my best friend and I love him deeply. Sometimes he can be a right irritating old git though. I amn’t; I’m always perfect. Despite my perfection and his occasional misguidedness we grow better together every year. People are funny creatures and I would never have predicted the relationship I have with himself, but it’s the most satisfying and challenging of my life and I love him to the marrow of my bones.

Blimey, I’m a soppy one today. We’ll fight tomorrow and I’ll bash out something outraged and bitter. That should get the blog back on an even keel, ‘cos we don’t often do romantic memotions here on PCB and it all seems to be awash in mush today.

PS: To the person who came by via a Google for :”my child wont eat or drink due to size of tonsils”, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. You see my children have normal sized tonsils and are obviously genetically superior specimens, tonsilly speaking. It might be difficult for you, as a loved one, to hear that about your child but don’t be down-hearted! It doesn’t make your children any less nice than mine you understand but when all’s said and done – your child has dangerously big tonsils and mine don’t! Na-na na-na na-na.

That nana bit was very wrong of me and you seem like a nice, concerned parent. *Burning with shame*

All my site meter told me was that you’re from Britain somewhere so, if you’re thinking of going for the tonsilectomy, I’d suggest going private even if you have to sell some of the child’s other organs to do so. I’m not saying the care’s any better than with the NHS but they have Perks and cute wee individual jars of marmalade with your toast in the morning. They alone are worth a kidney.

Nope, see, my children are genetically programmed not to have severe tonsilitis til they’re in their mid-teens and at the whining acme of their whole lives; when their self-pity is bottomless and their unbelievable disdain for their daddy and me is topless. (I can see a post with the 3 keywords “topless”, “hairnets” and “twiddle” is going to garner me a fresh new crop of the finest sort of Googlers)

The abrupt end.

Once upon a time there was a little gopher called Jemima. Her neighbour, Jeremy, was a gophim and they didn’t really get along. In fact, in the dark tunnels under the scorched California earth, often they would try and ambush each other with deadly intent in the manner of Kato and Inspector Clouseau, only less hilariously so. Up on the surface, a trembling copselet of flowers here or there, or a few barely audible squeaks were all that indicated the epic struggle beneath.

One day, after a tussle, as both gopher and gophim lay bleeding and exhausted in the dim light of the tunnel, a mole with a deerstalker and a pair of penny-rounders passed by.

“Good day to you, thar, ya bleeders,” he said, for he was indeed Oirish.

“I’m a very busy mole but m’heeart is woise and true so if you’re needin’ a bit of advoice about how to be getting along and living in hermony like, Oi can spare you a bit of me valuable toime.”

“Well, see now, Mister Mole, it’s him,” said Jemima, pointing at the scuffed and wounded Jeremy, and wondering why she too was now speaking in a County Roscommon accent.

“He’s an ersehole so he is, and he infuriates me so my stomach is as a boiling cauldron of rancid chip fat into which a grubby grey oice-cube’s bin thrown”.

“Ah, choild, but why… why is he an ersehole? Why does he vex you so?” said the neat little chap, who they now noticed was wearing a smoking jacket and white gloves but no trousers, like in Disney.

Trying not to notice the lack of trousers on the mole, despite the fact that he himself had no clothes on save his god-given fur, Jeremy cut in,

“It’s true, but I am an ersehole; Oi can’t help mehself. My mammy and daddy before me were erseholes and we’ve been wrang’uns al the way back through history. But she, that Jermoima hoor, is a numptie who irritates each and every follicle of my body until I’m screaming to get out of my own fur. We two were meant to be at war and to not be would be a denoial of our very natures. It is written, so must we foight ’til one must surely doi.”

He sounded a bit more Dubliney.

“Oi see,” said the mole thoughtfully, leaning back and lighting a strange pipe with many curious shapes carved into its ebon stem. He took a few puffs and sat in silence for many minutes, occasionally re-lighting his poipe, pipe and muttering “Oi see, uh-huh…(long pause)…Mh-hmm. Oi see.”

Jeremy and Jemima, still too puffed and bruised to get up, glanced at each other in puzzlement from time to time, wondering what this mysterious wee creature with no breeks might say next.

After a long time had passed, for most of which the mole appeared to be sleeping, the peculiar little critter arose and said,

“Oi have the solution to all yer troubles, see! Oi come from a long loine of seer moles who possess wisdom beyond the far mountains where…” he paused, “Hey now, the snow appears to be melting as Oi’m doing me Far-Seein’ thing… well… Oi never! Huh… And…where was Oi m’dears? …Oh, and into the very souls of rodents, m’far-seein’ goes there too.”

“What is it?” cried Jeremy, jumping to his feet. “Tell us, O Mole Who Is Well Met! Tell us the solution to all our troubles, for we are tired of battle but don’t know how to stop!”

“Yes, do, Gentle Mole, Sweetest ‘Mongst Rodents!” exclaimed Jemima, now inexplicably talking in a Bedfordshire accent.

“Perhaps now we’ll be able to live as neighbours should, trading our roots’n’ bulbs with each other, not pinching ‘em; and ride-sharing; and getting together once a year for peace festivals with guitars and cheap Goth jewellery stalls, and food on sticks. Do, do tell us, DO, you dear little fellow!”

The Mole, smiled kindly and, with impossible twinkly oldness at the eager young pups before him, said, “First you must stop all this gopher/gophim gobshoite. Shake hands now and cease first this ludicrous battle of the sexes. Troi asking her out on a date, Jeremy lad, go wan!”

Jeremy blushed furiously saying, “All roight, Oi haaave always loiked that little wrinkle by her left whiskers, and Oi do loikes a foiesty lassie, loike… But what else? How can we stop our senseless hatred, one troibe for another? And how can we get those damn sand-gophers to give us the oil we need for our frivolous, unthinking loifestoiles? We chust can’t agree on how dat’s to be done and Oi’ve got moi bran’ new four-bih-four arroiving Tuesday week, like.”

“Relax, wee Son Of Alasdair, wee Daughter of Evelyn, I will give you the key to solve all your stroife. Hehrmony shall be yours, and peace reign ferever. Here’s what you do: Gurgle. Gurgle splee, something unpronouncable, gulg,” said the wise mole.

“Oh. Plehggle!” said Jemima, in cut glass Queen’s English.

“Plshforl” said Jeremy.

And that is where the story ends, dear readers. See what the venerable wee mole couldn’t quite see with his Far-Seein’, peer as he might, was that global warming had caused the snow caps to melt, high in the California mountains, leading to unseasonable water torrents and flooding all over the garden under which the story is set.

The wise mole’s secrets passed with him and we shall never know them because we ersed arsed around when we had the liberty to work on them and now we face even moightier (Damn!) mightier challenges to our very survival as a species and we won’t have the time to figure out how to be nice to each other. Noone will emerge unscathed from climate change, and many more stories will end like this: not with a bang, but with a gurgle, and maybe a shattered pair of penny-rounders.

I am just the disembodied Narrative Voice here at Problemchildbride but as soon as I figure out how to locate my incorporeal wrists I’ll be right off to slit them at the horror and shame at what we’ve done.

What? You wanted a happy ending? Can’t happen. We’ve seen the height of civilisation and we still couldn’t make it work. Now it’s all going down the plughole.

Shoite.