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Dining for Redemption
Back in a previous life, when I was taking a (wonderful) childbirth and newborn care course here in Manhattan, the subject of cloth vs. disposable diapers came up. My teacher echoed something my most ecologically extreme friend once said: diapers are a disaster no matter what you do- if you aren't contributing to landfill, you're using enormous amounts of water, electricity and soap. She advocated instead that we all think about participating in sustainable agricultural efforts.
I have a powerful "each to his own" feeling about the diaper debate, but I did just learn about a local "Community Supported Agriculture" (CSA) movement in the New York City area that might edge me closer towards cleaner, dare I say, more virtuous living. The Just Food web site gives people access to CSA farms, where they can buy "shares" in a farm's harvest during the winter. Throughout the growing season (June through November) participants get to pick up fresh produce every week. In New York City, you collect your box of certified organic produce a local distribution sites. Farm shares cost about fifteen dollars per week, and for that you get 7-10 types of vegetables, which should satisfy 2-3 people.
Has anyone tried this service, or anything like it? I'm terribly tempted to try it, but I must confess my culinary imagination, skills and patience are rather limited, and there are a number of foods I simply don't go for. I have a sense that the autumn weeks might be heavy on the butternut squash I dislike, and that the season would start too late for the ramps I have recently learned to covet. Sadly, my good intentions get hung up when I realize my freedom of choice is limited.
Still, I would love to know if it works, and perhaps spreading the word about Community Supported Agriculture will help mitigate, if not eradicate some of my own ecological shortcomings, giving me a little virtue by proxy.
posted by Elise at 10:43 AM
7 Comments
The Art of War
"When you have a child, you have power over your parents because you can control access. You can shut them down any time for any reason."
A friend tossed this out quite casually one of those bleak post-Thanksgiving afternoons, when the fact that it gets dark early really comes home because it makes holiday shopping that much more exhausting. It was coffee time and we were growling about family in the way one does when Christmas is coming.
I had never imagined such power. For a few moments, while she described how her child had given her an everlasting ace in the hole, I was dazzled and comforted. My companion made so much sense, and spoke with such confidence and this notion of control was so appealing that I felt a mercenary shiver. I would follow her example once I had my kid in hand, and people would tremble at the prospect of ruffling my feathers.
Alas, my poor spine. I do not know if my friend has ever had to invoke her secret weapon and threaten to withhold her child from her relatives to get them to behave, but I seriously wonder, if it came down to it, if I could show that much backbone.
By now it should be obvious why my Christmastime coffee conversation was so much in my mind. I've just wrapped up a week of family obligations, which have been at turns pleasurable and onerous. In the interests of discretion, I will not name names, but I will say that somewhere between one and three relatives exhibited startlingly bad table manners. Felix doesn't count. He can't chew.
It would be something of an understatement to say that I did not want to go on some of these outings, that I dread them and the plastic smile I have to assume. But I also understand that once there is a baby (or as some of my relatives insist on referring to mine, all evidence to the contrary, a "TINY baby"), Dread Family Visits join death and taxes on the short list of inevitables. I can't deny these relatives, even when they commit innocent, if annoying, transgressions that set my teeth on edge.
One gentleman, for example:
-tells me I am holding my kid's head wrong
-likes to correct anything that could pass for a medical term "There's no such thing as infant acne. That is a completely inappropriate thing to say."
-Waves his fingers in front of Felix trying to ensure the kid can "track" things.
-Otherwise sits a certain distance away from the baby, hollering "FELIX," and seems sad that, while the kid doesn't seem to know his own name, the dog will bark.
These are but little things, though when compounded with the other irritations of the last few days, I admit I came close to biting someone. But I do wonder, how far would I have to be pushed before threatening to deny anyone my kid. Even when my mother promises to corrupt Felix (by which I assume she means she will tempt him with M&M Peanut and chorizo) I can't imagine a situation in which I would cut her off. The way she loves him makes her too vulnerable. I control Felix and that gives me power so absolute, I could never use it casually. It must exist only for dire, unimaginable, unspeakable circumstances.
It would be much easier if I had my friend's guts and urge to control her family, if I worried less about repercussions and hurting people. As it is, I am stuck with the old standby solutions of ranting, and peculiar wishful strategizing. When my mother-in-law heard of one of these unfortunate assignations she said: "Well, you deserve a drink before you go. No! Don't! Save it for when you get home. If you feed Felix after you have a glass of wine, he may get sleepy. What you want him to do is wake up screaming so you can go home early."
Right on cue, he turned on the waterworks.
posted by Elise at 7:42 PM
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Bye-Bye, Bye-Bye, Bye-Bye
- Oh look, there's a dazed couple carrying around an unspeakably small baby in a car seat. Her shirt is completely unbuttoned, showing off a bra so new and white it glows under the fluorescent lighting.
- And here's a nervous fellow taking his third cell phone call in as many minutes. He's got a Moses basket tucked under his arm (sans baby) and is tossing additional necessities into it. He freezes, bottle in hand. "We need a what? What is that?"
- Don't look now, but Mistress Efficiency is barreling our way. Even her shopping cart is well organized. She holds a single unwrinkled shopping list; her lipstick is unsmudged, she has not spilled food on her unborn child and looks quite elegant in her maternity pinstripe suit.
- Mistress Efficiency is followed by her mother, Matron Bounty, picking up the slack with a second cart.
There's enough wildlife on display at the Buy Buy Baby on 25th Street in Manhattan for a David Attenborough documentary. I'm standing around, feeling a little exposed, wondering what my behavior says about me. On the plus side, this is my fourth trip, and I'm not crying yet.
My previous excursions were undertaken when I was, admittedly, under strain. The first time, I went in with a close friend who was armed with a well-researched list and a mission. When I realized how much work I needed to do before I even attempted to penetrate the smorgasbord of kid things, I made my excuses and burst into tears on Seventh Avenue. Months later I was shepherded in by my good friend G., who was worried that I didn't have anything. While I had a brief, private freak-out in the bathroom, I emerged with some necessities and renewed love for G. My third essay was crazed. I was five days out of the hospital and needed stuff and...
Was I wandering around with my shirt open in February? This woman's bra is a hell of a lot nicer than mine was.
Anyway, a trip to Buy Buy Baby is rather like going to the airport. Some people aren't traveling- they're just hanging around for their friends. Others are reluctant to get on board but it's too late to change their minds. Some are so thrilled they can't wait to take off; a few are terrified to the point of paralysis, and others are taking care of business- the flight (or the trip to the baby emporium)- is purely incidental, a way to get where they're going. Under one gigantic roof, dozens of little dramas bounce around, oblivious to one another. Unlike an airport, however, there's no bar on hand to ease one's pre-flight jitters, and the knocked-up aren't encouraged to hit the bottle hard anyway.
For pregnant people and new parents, nothing is more obvious than that you are on a strange trip. You don't know where you're going, what will happen, what you will need, and you won't even know when you've arrived at your destination, but you're supposed to feel some solace in these enormous stores (all Buy Buy Baby outposts are 35,000-60,00 square feet). There is, however, questionable comfort in having innumerable choices.
Buy Buy Baby is not a place you want to visit alone. It is hard to navigate without some kind of support, even if you're looking for something ostensibly amusing... an exersaucer, for instance.
One exersaucer- big, unattractive, generally noisy creatures, beloved by babies everywhere- is bad enough, but an enormous spread of them is horrifying. At Buy Buy Baby, every single product is displayed in great, uninflected volume, so unless one knows exactly what one is looking for, the choices are overwhelming. And don't even entertain the idea that you will be able to make selections guided by good taste or aesthetics- that will only lead to sorrow. If you don't already know the name and model of the product you need, you must embrace shopping as an exercise in randomness. Perhaps you will get the right thing, but probably not. I'm standing in a forest of primary colored plastic wondering why I didn't do exersaucer research before dragging my kid and my dog and my friend on this odyssey?
And so it inevitably comes down to not being prepared. No, no, it doesn't matter which, if any, exersaucer I select, but it feels as if I should be armed with hard information, or at least instinct for guidance. With all baby items, now that everything claims to have special properties that will make the child well-adjusted (or smart or peaceful or coordinated or confident or financially savvy), the threat of making the wrong choice feels worse than standard shopper's folly. Is this what's worrying the unintentional exhibitionist staring at the wall of bottle systems? Only Mistress Efficiency walks with confidence, stocking up on well-researched items. Certainly I could do the work and show up, ready to spend wisely and well, but I hate to have another item added to the litany of "shoulds" that runs through my head most evenings around seven o'clock when I fear the day has been squandered.
Ultimately, my problem with Buy Buy Baby (apart from the name) is that it isn't much fun. Buying toys and clothes, bottles and even babyproofing supplies should be amusing, intriguing at least. But this place, and stores like it trade on insecurity and hope that anxious parents will buy everything in sight to forestall disasters. This is retail therapy for the Zoloft set, not the lotus eaters.
Since I try not to tumble into either category, I'm a bit stuck, unable to care enough to do the research but not capable of making a random selection. In the end, I leave with detergent and (not enough) diapers, my caravan of kid, dog and friend in tow. I'm not in tears, I don't want to find the nearest bar, and I'm glad my shirt is on. For now, for the moment, I don't need that airport-terminal feeling because I am going home, and since Felix doesn't know the joys of the exersaucer, I don't mind depriving him of them indefinitely.
posted by Elise at 5:43 PM
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Noir Mama
Would you take the rap for your kid?
This is one of the questions I hope never to have to investigate seriously. Fun is fun, though, and I find, now that I have Felix, it is easy to tumble into musing about the fantastic, so simple to entertain strange imaginings about what kinds of things one would do for one's child.
The sun was out on Mother's Day but the television movie programmers preferred a rather more overcast schedule. Three of the highlights on the channel with the best film library around were stories of maternal sacrifice and suffering: Stella Dallas (the 1937 version with Barbara Stanwyck), Douglas Sirk's Eastmancolor Imitation of Life (1954) and Joan Crawford's 1945 masterwork Mildred Pierce.
This is my first post-natal viewing of Mildred. The story is as sordid as any canonic Film Noir, and is packed with the standard elements of the genre: murder, sex, cigarettes, deception, fatalism… and, of course, a femme fatale. What's interesting about this femme is that she's a child. Mildred Pierce is her mother.
Children in film noir tend to fall into two categories: the ones who do stupid murderous things (see The Reckless Moment (1949), its contemporary remake The Deep End (2001), and The Big Sleep (1946)) and the ones who do evil murderous things. Mildred Pierce's daughter, Veda, is decidedly the latter category. She is everything dreadful in a child: craven, selfish, cruel, whiney, social climbing, racist, demanding, competitive (she steals her mother's boyfriend), criminal. Of course, Mildred loves this monster who holds her in contempt, adores this child more than her other daughter- a happy, earthy kid. Veda wants only to destroy her mother, and Mildred seizes the opportunity to oblige. After all, she made her daughter what she is- built her from scratch.
Mildred's willingness to give up everything for her kids, Veda especially, feels familiar- particularly if one is at all sensitive to the sorts of issues that get raised so often in the swamp of parenting books, morning chat shows and letters to the editor. Listen to how Mildred lays down the law in an early argument with her husband (a weak depressive sort who is cheating on her with his gin rummy partner):
"You might as well get this straight right now once and for all. Those kids come first in this house. Before either one of us. Maybe that's right and maybe it's wrong, but that's the way it is."
Mildred's savage attachment produces a bad seed. The film is full of failed love affairs- its heroine has spectacularly bad taste in men- but the dark center of the movie is Mildred's failed romance with her daughter. She loves and loves this child, who would eat her alive if she seemed tasty. (Veda is a gorgeous nasty version of the "hero" in one of my least-favorite children's books of all time, The Giving Tree.) And in the wake of Veda's rejection, Mildred- in spite of her beauty, business success, money and obvious power over men- prepares to sacrifice her life for her daughter.
Someone interrupted a conversation about other things recently to tell me that I was falling in love with my son. Happily, I agree with the comment, but in realizing how attached I am to my child, I now see something in Mildred Pierce that makes it a bleaker noir than I ever gave it credit for being.* The sadness of the story doesn't lie in that romantic cynicism you can find in so many movies where everyone is tough and nihilistic. The kicker is blunt: Mildred's daughter doesn't love her, and Mildred can find no consolation.
My idle question about taking the rap for my kid isn't anything I need to figure out. It's just one of those little new-parent torments that occur to one during late-night feedings when one tests one's inner strength by prodding at one's softest spots. This feeling I have for my child is unique and so muscular in its hold on me. I can't imagine how it would feel if it weren't reciprocated just a little bit, and now, in a way that was never evident before, I understand what makes Mildred tick.
*Some of other favorite, super-nihlistic American noirs that aren't about children are: In a Lonely Place, Double Indemnity, Sweet Smell of Success, The Killers, Force of Evil, Ace in the Hole
And here's a handful of some favorite noirs that have more of a romantic-cynicism: Gilda, Gun Crazy, Out of the Past, The Big Heat, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, Touch of Evil
posted by Elise at 1:02 PM
82 Comments
Unnerving
I do realize it is normal to lose considerable amounts of hair a couple of months after having a child. I'm told this hair is extra hair, acquired during pregnancy and as such was nothing I should feel at all attached to or entitled to keep.
No one has commented that I'm looking a little straggly, but I wonder if I'm not leaving a trail of long, dark blonde strands behind me as I go about my business, and brushing my hair is, well, something creepy.
No one has said how long this will go on, and while I am of course pleased that this is nothing to be alarmed about, I have to say, the rather wide range of peculiar and extreme symptoms that are considered unremarkable while pregnant and in the post-partum period makes one wonder if one will ever find one's body familiar and predictable again. ("I seem to be growing a tail." "Oh, don;t worry about that. I'll drop off at some point.")
Spring has arrived, but the feeling that I am shedding is making me uncomfortable.
But now I must run because Felix seems to be trying to roll over and needs an audience.
posted by Elise at 8:17 AM
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Playground Wallflower
There is no question that people with children delight in torturing those who are pregnant or merely mulling over the idea of having kids. There are certain phrases that are universal to these needling sessions:
"You got to go to a restaurant? With kids you never get to eat out."
"After you have a baby you won't get to go to the movies any more."
"You'll never be able to go on a grown-up vacation with children."
Since these pronouncements tended to come from people who ate out, saw movies and clearly chose not to travel, it was hard to think too much of them; but one friend did manage to cast a dark cloud on my kid plans.
Above all maternal requirements, S. despises playground time. She isn't pressed into service there now, but she made no bones about saying that it is boring beyond belief. She always longed for greater effervescence on these prolonged excursions and felt that if people were more inclined to show up with thermoses of mixed drinks, liveliness and conviviality would replace the tedium.
Having spent some time negotiating junglegyms with various children not my own, I tend to agree that the entire experience could be helped with a little lubrication. Not forgotten is one particularly trying afternoon spent on a western-themed playground. I was an invited guest of a couple with toddlers, and excursion would have driven me to drink were it not too early on a Sunday to be served. It is difficult to illustrate the misery of the day. No conversation was possible because the parents I was accompanying were either chatting with other parents or supervising their children. There was none of that getting-to-know-you cheer with the other parents, who were skeptical of my childless presence, and the toddlers themselves were playing with people their own size and had no use for me. I felt very much like the beleaguered family dogs that dozed, tied up on the outside of the fence that surrounded the playground (they're are strictly verboten on city playgrounds). That Sunday I was, quite literally bored to tears.
I don't suppose my suffering was somehow unique. According to a little article in a recent issue of the increasingly desperate New York Magazine, playgrounds are full of all the intrigue, competitiveness, scandal and hair pulling that created the delicate fabric of that era called Middle School. Apparently, the city's play yards veritably bubble with social complications, competitions, snobbery, snubbery, "popular girl" benches, and that hot-button teenage girl character that made the rounds on the talk show circuit a few years ago the "Queen Bee."
People, faced with vaguely dull, low-stakes activities like swing-pushing and jungle gym-spotting are particularly susceptible to social pettiness. Adding a touch of the soap opera to otherwise blah daily outings must make quite the difference. Instead of wanting to chew their limbs off to escape, these women can create intrigue among compatriots and study every comment for hidden insults, while deluding themselves that their superiority is earned by having made better parenting choices.
These articles irk me because they contribute to a really weird portrait of contemporary mothers, singling them out as regressive and catty. Perhaps it is just my rather jaundiced view of people, but I think everyone is capable of being cliquish and self-righteous. It is a quirk of the contemporary press that it that wants to pathologize the behavior of mothers, when really the whole world is prone to being cruel and snarky. Am I deluding myself in saying this? Please tell me that everyone, not just mothers, has the potential for elitist ostracism. To think otherwise would make one feel a little, well, doomed.
I have yet to enter a playground with Felix, but the rumor that this is an unavoidable snake pit makes one tremble a bit. One of the benefits I've enjoyed while being a nominal grown-up is relative freedom from early adolescent social dynamics. It would indeed be saddening to feel my old seventh-grade self rearing her rumpled head again. For now I'll comfort myself with the thought that the mean mommies are the cynical invention of a desperate magazine. If it isn't, I'll have to take a cue from Kay Thompson's Eloise who proclaims: "Being bored is not allowed," and make the best of things, but I'm not sure I can bring myself to pack a personal flask for these outings and be the lone tipsy mom by the swingset. Between Felix and me, one of us should be able to make it home upright, and I don't fit in the stroller.
posted by Elise at 7:56 PM
8 Comments
Stumbling Into Mother's Day
So Mother's Day has never meant very much to me nor, I suspect, me to it. My own mother dislikes the holiday because extra holidays mean extra obligations when there's too much to do in the first place. Of course there were the obligatory calls to my grandmother, but she was a sourpuss par excellence, and these chats always began with a dismissal of the holiday as being something that Other People (who? who knows?) might like, but she was not falling for it.
But for obvious reasons, I'm awake to the pre-Mother's Day buzz that is ringing in my formerly deaf ears. There, on the television is a peculiar advertisement for a special Mother's Day bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken; Time Out: New York suggests buying flowers (for happy mothers) or the book What No One Tells the Mom (for the murky ones); and I'm receiving potloads of email from companies with gift suggestions that are simultaneously practical and weird. (Since when do clogs convey any appreciation of the maternal?)
Through all of this I find myself irked. All evidence to the contrary, I don't really feel like a mother, and I dread the holiday a little, the same way I don't much care for Valentine's Day. It wants me to feel something; it wants me to buy something; and it wants me to expect something (not necessarily in that order), and since I have a hard enough time feeling like a mother privately, it is hard to imagine making a public statement of it.
Still, after looking at the history of the holiday, I don't feel quite as mean-spirited as I have in the past. Mother's Day isn't really the ugly spawn of a greedy greeting card industry. In part, it is a spin-off from the UK holiday Mothering Sunday- though the "mother" in that case is the church- which is celebrated during Lent. In the US, Mother's Day was largely the invention of Julia Ward Howe (author of the lyrics to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic;" the Atlantic Monthly paid what must have been the considerable sum of five dollars for them in 1862), who conceived it as a day of peace in the wake of the Civil War. This alone is interesting. Since Felix, I have never been less sanguine and at peace with the world. I frequently boil with fits of rage, cringe with my own ineptitude. I admit that I secretly (not anymore) creep up on my snoozing kid and place a hand on his chest, hoping he will still be breathing, praying the neurotic prod won’t wake him. This all happens behind what I hope is a blithe, lively exterior.
I think there is actually something of a tradition of maternal disquiet. I've been dipping into the fascinating book, Never Marry a Woman With Big Feet: Women in Proverbs From Around the World, and finding adages that, while not really comforting, are strangely familiar feeling. Here's a tiny sampling, and I hope one or another of them either speaks to you or provides a moment's amusement.
For Mothers:
- Mother is God number two. (Malawi)
- God could not be everywhere; therefore he made mothers. (USA)
- The mother is the mother, the rest is just air. (Morocco)
- There is only one pretty child in the world and every mother has it. (Israel, USA)
- No temple is more beautiful than one's mother. (India)
- See the mother, comprehend the daughter. (Afghanistan)
- The only generous love is the love of a mother. (Greece)
- Even if the son fries her an egg on his hand, he can't repay his mother. (Russia)
- The porcupine caressed her children and said: 'May God take care of your silken skin.' (Turkey)
- Dear God, don't send the child what his mother is afraid will happen to him. (Greece)
For those with difficult Mothers-in-Law:
- A tooth, sharpened for the daughter-in-law, will bite the son. (Russia)
- Always sweep where your mother-in-law looks. (USA, Dominican Republic, Israel)
- Daughters-in-law become mothers-in-law. (USA)
And a personal one, for mothers of big kids, simultaneously but independently coined for me by two friends named Fred, after Felix was born:
Nine pounds six ounces is the answer to any argument you will ever have. (New York)
Finally, in the original spirit of the day, I've included Mrs. Howe's 1870 Proclamation. It's quite moving, but I admit I wonder whether it would affect me so much if I didn't have Felix. Best wishes, and here's to as much peace as we can all muster- internally and in the world at large.
Cheers...
Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation (1870)
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or tears!
Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have taught them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of the devastated earth, a voice goes up with our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood not not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail & commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesars but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
posted by Elise at 9:46 AM
2 Comments
How to Be a Bore
There are millions of stories in the Naked City, each one just as capable of being tedious as the next. Don't think that just because you're a new parent you have cornered the market on being dull, no, no. With very little practice, anyone can be domineering and enervating. So if you've got a very young child, you can't rest on your laurels. Just because everyone assumes people with infants are hideously boring wrecks doesn't mean there isn't stiff competition out there.
Some weeks ago, I ventured out for dinner with a mixed-crowd, parents, some non-parents and was amazed at how very much like a snake pit the round table seemed. Every conversational gambit that got tossed out threatened to induce obvious eye-rolling from various edges of the table. The subtext (if rolled eyes can have one) took one of several forms:
"Of course she's talking about [poop, sleep, strollers, doctors, surgery, analgesics, massage] she's one of those horrible new mothers."
"Of course he's going on about [poop, sleep, squeaky toys, attachment issues] he's got a dog."
"Of course she can't shut up about [poop, sleep, foot massage, running shoes, the chiropracter, dietary supplements], she's training for the marathon."
"If I hear another word about [poop, sleep, sun salutes, why sugar is evil, the reflexologist], I'm going to have to strangle yoga girl."
You see? Anyone can put the table to sleep. The whole meal made me rather self-conscious. High school in Manhattan was a cocktail party training ground. I practiced hard to develop the Art of the Zinger and the Quick Anecdote, and my ego still has scars from being hastily dismissed for not being entertaining enough. One of the fears that plagued me while I was pregnant was that I might lose my mind and become the kind of new mother that everyone complains about, the kind of woman who can't talk of anything beyond the wonders of her child, the pleasures and angst of breastfeeding, or the daily diaper count. I cringed when someone asked me how I delivered Felix because I could feel the folks around me start to rustle in their seats. I gave the short answer.
But I really shouldn't have worried. Sadly, being a bore demonstrates great power. It takes guts to dominate a table with nonsensical blather, intimate obsessions, and bossy monologues. Really, no one, no one at all wants to hear about the excretory practices of strangers unless the story is particularly spectacular, and no one wants to be preached at about the evils of certain types of food at a tasty restaurant.
Given that the tendency to exhaust one's companions resides in everyone, why does the new mother have such a bad reputation? Is it because it is easy to single out her kind as being unglamorous or spoiled or insular or condemned to baby talk? She is not so very different from everyone else (see the conversation topics above), which is to say, she may be fascinating or she may be something of a soporific.
The problem is that being a bore isn't considered such a bad thing. It is. In acting classes and parenting books alike, there is the constant recommendation to listen to the people around you. Only in hearing what other people have to say can you form an appropriate and clever response. Bring back the Zinger, I say. I just had a kid and I'm craving entertainment.
posted by Elise at 12:27 PM
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