Mayonnaise Sandwich

Pet Chickens

2010-03-17T06:02:00.001-07:00

I had the greatest grandparents EVER. There are few things I would fight over, but I would cage fight anyone who suggested otherwise. Each grandparent provided me with different things I needed to grow up relatively sane, but my father's parents provided me with something unique: farm animals.

Nanny and Grandaddy farmed forty acres in Drew, Mississippi. After my parents' divorce, they would drive 25 miles to meet my mom and pick me up and take me to the farm for the weekend. There I learned key skills like how to call bobwhites, catch catfish, and pick figs. I don't use any of those skills currently, but they are ready to be whipped out as needed.

Their house was a steady stream of basically feral cats that my grandfather could get to sit beside him and be petted. My job was to name them. Smokey, Midnight, Spunky (the Mike Tyson of the cat world),plus innumerable visitors. One of those visitors regularly had kittens in the back storage building, and those kittens were regularly eaten by some wild animal. In fifth grade, I wrote an essay about the decapitation of the kittens that would probably get me referred to a psychologist today, but at the time I was fascinated by the fact that coyotes came in the yard overnight to catch them.

My grandfather was particularly indulgent of my desire to have pets. Lots of pets. One of my earliest memories is going to the hardware store on Main Street where there was a big box of baby chicks and being told to choose one. I grabbed a loud, polka-dot chicken and spent the next weekend loving him to death. I carried him around by his HEAD. My mother was horrified, but my grandmother was rooting for him to die. This was because I had trained him to ride around on my head, but anytime I sat him on her, he would crap. Like crap his whole body weight.

Of course, Spotty grew up. And I must have caused him brain damage because he grew up MEAN. My grandparents ended up with an attack chicken. He chased off all the farm cats. He would fly up, spurs out, into the face of a dog the size of a German Shepherd. He terrorized the bantam chickens. He chased cars. If a rooster can be evil,he was evil. By the time he was grown, the only thing he was scared of was a broom. When Nanny would go out to hang the laundry, she would carry a broom in her hand and she would have to watch under the sheets to make sure he was not doing some special forces sneak up on her. If he was, she would drop the basket and swing at him like Babe Ruth. Whenever, we would need to go to the car, Grandaddy would open the door and tell us to RUN. He chased my father up a tree and we had to go and sweep Spotty away. Grandaddy, who was perhaps the most sincere Christian I have ever known, used to look at Spotty and say he should take him into the ring as a fighting rooster. Finally, though, Spotty did the unthinkable. He attacked me. I was out in the yard playing, and he came up and drug his CLAWS down the back of my leg. I had a scar for years.

The next weekend when I went to my grandparents, Spotty was gone. I asked Grandaddy where Spotty was and he told me he had given him to the "colored man" (this is 1974) down the road who needed a rooster. The next visit when I asked about Spotty, I found out that Spotty was no more. Apparently when he killed two of the man's "setting hens" instead of fertilizing some eggs, Spotty was fried for Sunday dinner.

Dreams and space walks

2010-01-07T17:31:00.000-08:00

Oh, it only takes 5 months to come up with something to say. I have a nasty case of bronchitis right now, and I am taking way too many drugs for it. Finally after 4 days of not sleeping longer than 45 minutes at a stretch, someone told me, "Oh, the steroids are doing that." Hm, guess that is why the drugstore gives you a list of all the side effects to read and maybe I should not be so anxious to recycle it next time. So, tonight I am not going to take the steroid before bed and pray that I get sleep.

Here is the problem with sleep, though. I DREAM. My dreams are so complicated and detailed that sometimes I wish I could wake up with a flow chart describing them because they rarely have anything to do with reality, and I am pretty sure that Freud wouldn't touch them and he would just send me to a padded room. For example, last night. Last night, I dreamed that I was a nurse. Fine, I completely stink at sympathetic care, BUT I was wearing one of those cool little white hats that nurses don't wear anymore. The weird part was I was a nurse who followed an anarchist band of people around and helped all the people that their destruction hurt. The leader of this band was a boy who lived down the street from me when I was a kid, and his name was Glen Campbell in the time when the other Glen Campbell of Rhinestone Cowboy was famous. Glen was a child that I am betting would get lots of IQ tests that proved he was brilliant today while at the same time recommending Prozac or Ritalin or some such, but growing up I just thought he was a little bit crazy in the best possible way because he knew all the words to Pink Floyd's "The Wall." It is perfectly logical that Glen would be the leader of this anarchist group because he and I used to play a game where we would throw knives at each other's feet and place our foot where the knife was until we would end up in the middle splits and the person to fall over first "lost." Glen and I climbed many trees, played many a game of hide and seek, and then when I moved away, we lost touch. I saw Glen 8 years later, he acted like he didn't know me. Broke my heart because Glen had been the first boy to ever ask me to couple skate and the first boy to pop my bra strap the very day I first wore one. So, anyway, I am following this anarchist gang around and the main objective of this group was to eliminate the Marlboro Man. I don't know why, either, but whenever a cigarette sign got blown up, fireworks went off, and I could watch them from the tower that was only accessible through my friend Melissa's parents' closet. All of this is happening in Leland, Mississippi.

And then I had a new nightmare. I dreamed I was an astronaut, which is ridiculous because I have absolutely ZERO interest in how most scientific stuff works. So, of course I was on the space shuttle and I had to a space walk and my cord connecting me to the space shuttle got cut so until I woke up for the eighth time that night, I was slowly dying in space. Awful. However, the zombies of several months ago have not returned, so I will take my blessings.

When I was little, I watched a movie of the week about the nuns that got killed in El Salvador in the early 1980s. This was the first step on a path that I am still stumbling down where I am sure that I am supposed to some kind of mission work. It doesn't necessarily have to be religious, but the problem is that the idea of danger is kind of irrelevant, too. When I told my mom that I wanted to go and help these nuns, my mother pointed out 1) I am not Catholic 2) the nuns are dead 3) you aren't allowed to go to El Salvador while under my care. So, my new crazy plan is I want to go to somewhere and teach English. Our book club is reading this book called Half the Sky, and there are all these horrible stories aboout how women are mistreated around the world, and I realized that I really want to take a couple of months to go somewhere and teach English. My problem is I read the paper and think, "I should go to Yemen." I have not suggested this to my husband yet, but I imagine he will respond much as my mother did.

That is all. Can't promise I will write again within the next five months.

Turning 40 and empty nests

2009-08-16T16:47:00.000-07:00

This year I turn 40. I have been dreading this for a good five years now, so I am fully confident that when I get to the other side of that number I will realize that life has not ended and I am just in a new marketing demographic. The part that makes it tough for me is that it is also the year that I get an empty house. The youngest goes to kindergarten, the middle one is wrapping up his elementary career,and the oldest to middle school. It signals an end to a period of life that seems to have lasted forever, being a full-time stay-at-home mom. I just realized that I have been caring for kids for as long as it took me to get from kindergarten to college, and that was an eternity when it was going on and still seems like it was too two days longer than forever to get through. Now I realize that in an additional twelve years, I might be a grandmother (please,no), but I really will be an empty nester. Since Stefan is twelve years older than me, that will be the year he can also seriously consider retirement.

I am all over the map about this because somewhere in all of this caring for other people, I disappeared. Of course I dreamed about getting married and having kids, but somehow it never occurred to me that that would be ALL I did. I have never held a "real" job, made a major purchase on my own, or even traveled to a place that was where only I wanted to go. I have had a fabulous life for which I am completely grateful, but it is time to make it more mine and less everyone else's. So that is what I am dedicating the next twelve years to - being selfish, getting a big girl job, shoving the chicks out of the nest, and traveling somewhere that does not come with the Disney Channel.

Speaking of chicks leaving, I am at a complete loss as to why the Bunny is so thrilled about going to middle school. Does a LOCKER contain that much allure? She has studied her combination with far more dedication than she did one test in elementary school. Does she not know what is coming next? All the weird growth that is about to happen all over her body? That her hormones are about to take her on a ride bigger than any roller coaster? That her peers will start forming wolf packs that roam the halls looking for the weak to devour? That her hair is about to become a SERIOUS ISSUE? Nope, not the bunny. She has always been delightfully indifferent to her peers' opinions on most things and suddenly she is lying out outfits for the week. She has a secret crush, her first crush since preschool. Her father choked when I told him that, but I reassured him that she has excellent taste in men since she is following her mother's role model. I stare at awe at this person who still truly loves me, but she really doesn't seem to need me like she did.

Meanwhile, her brothers' are completely indifferent to the beginning of school. Monkey Boy refused a haircut, so he will be Cousin It the first few days so people will be able to recognize him. Boo's only concern was that he can't remember his kindergarten teacher's name. I have pushed him suddenly to learn how to write, but once again, my husband's genes have overcome mine and he will have handwriting indecipherable in any language. They are also like their father that once they leave my presence, they completely forget my existence. The great thing about this is when they DO see me again, it is always with a look of delight that they had forgotten something they like so much. Which is, of course, why disappearing for twelve years really was worth it.

Low level Weirdness....

2009-07-17T12:41:00.000-07:00

Went to Mississippi again. It was not weird, which makes it weird. Met no crazy people, but that may have been because I only associated with people I have known for more than 20 years. After that length of time, you kind of lose your sensitivity to their particular weirdness.

But there was one person - I discovered that someone I know in Greenville is a vegan. This is sort of like finding Mormon missionaries in Kabul. I imagine the difficulties are approximately the same. I have known this man for approximately 25 years, but until the visit, I never realized how much I liked him. It isn't often you can meet a man who can take a conversation from an ashram in India to a urinal story involving Lamar Alexander and Ross Barnett. Ross Barnett was MS's famously racist governor from the 1960s who pledged to keep Ole Miss lily white and which resulted in the National Guard visiting Oxford. Mississippi, of course, named its' capitol city's water source after him. Anyway, he was telling a story about when he was growing up he went from having CNN's Ted Turner as a big brother at boarding school to having Mr. Plaid President-want-to-be Lamar Alexander as his fraternity big brother. Well, because his family has roots so deep in Mississippi that they probably walked the real Natchez Trace, his family knew everyone, including Mr. Barnett. So, he (I need to come up with some distinctive name, so I will call him Walker) is standing at the Cotton Bowl with Lamar peeing in the 1960s. Well, he looks over and Mr. Barnett is peeing on the other side. So, after making introductions along the lines of "Politician meet future politician," Ross, without skipping a beat, swaps hands he is using for his package and reaches across Walker to shake Lamar's hand. Lamar waited until after soap. Makes me like Lamar just a tiny bit. Anyway, in addition to Walker knowing the universe in Mississippi, he has also traveled a lot, including time on an ashram where he became familiar with the Swami who moved to Oregon with all his Rolls Royces and attempted to poison the town's drinking water. Walker "didn't like him."

So, the other day I made my mom cry. This is not new, but she gets really, really upset about how much I hate Greenville. She tells me I will never be happy anywhere I live, which is completely possible, but I do, honestly, strongly dislike my hometown. Talking with hubby and friend one night, we were talking about how much we liked college vs. high school. Hubby and friend's wife were in favor of high school, and I said, "I would rather eat my own eyeballs than go back to that time." What I have come to realize is that I always felt like people around me growing up were only interested in their tiny little portion of the world, and anything that disturbed that or was different or forced them to change was BAD. Girls making good grades is BAD. Religious curiosity is BAD. Voting Democrat if you are white is EVIL. There were a couple of times when I heard and saw stuff this visit that were so racist and ignorant that it took my breath away. That was appalling, but more appalling to me was my unwillingness to address those comments and attitudes. I was completely willing to walk away, which made me feel like I was back in 1986 and living there again.

This sounds so judgmental, and I know I am, but it really isn't a Mississippi overall thing. It is the only place I know all the bugs and trees. I spend hours trying to figure out how I can justify to my husband the need to buy land and plant a pecan orchard in Mississippi. He can't do it because it would mean he never had another bit of dietary roughage and he is quite proud of his colon's health. And it is hot. And he doesn't understand one word anyone says to him. We were sitting on our porch at the Shack Up Inn, and I said, "I can't believe I have nothing to do." And he said, "Sitting here in silence and sweating IS doing something." So, that is what I did this trip. Sweated. Is that the past tense of "to sweat"?

Oh, here is a project for you. When you travel, always be sure to check out the magazine rack in the gas stations. You can learn so much about the community that shops there from it. One place in Tennessee where we stopped apparently likes only these things: 1) Female genitalia. Lots of porn magazines focused below the waist. Boobie fans are out of luck. 2) Marijuana. I learned there are 4 magazines that specialize in it. 3) Ty Pennington, the host of Extreme Makeover. They keep back issues in case your collection is not complete. 4) The stars of Disney. These were arranged between the titties and the marijuana, which kind of frightened me. 5) Hairstyling magazines like you find at Supercuts. That was it. Not one monster truck, hunting, cooking, travel, or current events magazine, but I now know that Selena Gomez broke up with her boyfriend AND there are lots of animal names used for girl parts, but which are necessary to know for understanding the covers of the gentleman's publications. So, while you are waiting for your child to choose the sugar bomb that will make him talk without breathing for 2 hours in the car, you might want to learn something new from the magazine rack.

Topless bathers and peeing in the ocean

2009-06-11T07:20:00.000-07:00

We are back from yet another trek across the ocean. Growing up, I never went on vacation really. Going to Jackson only happened twice in my memory, and that was only 1.5 hours away. You went to see your relatives an hour away once a year. The only times I left Mississippi were when I went to visit my father, and among my group of friends, I was exotic because I was the only one who had ever been north of the Mason-Dixon line. I went to the beach twice before age 18. None of this is a complaint, but rather an observation as to how different the lives of my children are from my own. When you ask Bunny where she wants to go next year for vacation, the answer is inevitably, "Venice." None of my children consider going to Europe every single year a vacation. It is just a long trip to see the family with the perk of 8 straight hours of watching TV on a plane without mommy making them stop to eat, blink or sleep. And a grandmother who will let you eat 5 pieces of cake at one sitting. So, I find this somewhat disturbing to hear the five-year-old say, "Spain is hot and boring." WHAT? I don't know how to cope with this - all this travel is inevitably making them smarter and more worldly, but will there come a day when they look at something amazing and don't feel a sense of awe anymore? I think soon we will have to take them either the "supersights" route to the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State building, and the Taj Mahal, or the natural route like Victoria Falls or the Grand Canyon before they are impressed. They have no sense of 1,000 year old history being really old and rare. They don't even know how crappy the beaches of Spain are compared to Florida's because they have NEVER BEEN THERE. Well, Miami Beach doesn't count because that is just as weird as going to Spain.

As to the Spanish beaches and European beaches in general, I think it is important to clear up a misconception. All the women going topless. Honestly, think about this. How many women do you know that are not on a reality show that you really want to see the breasts of? As a woman, do you want to expose even more of your body for critique? As I sit happily on the beach in my burkha (well, the European equivalent, a one-piece suit, EVERYONE wears a bikini, including the men), I must admit I do a lot of looking at boobies. I am generally happy with my own, so this is mainly to determine if 1) this person has given birth 2) this person has original boobies 3) how many layers of support garments are necessary to restrain those bubbies. However, 99% of the time, it is just boring. European women have outstanding body self-esteem, and they really don't care much about how they look either in or out of a swimsuit. Almost all the beautiful people keep theirs covered, as well as all the natives. And I am kind of wondering how you handle it when you go on vacation with friends. When your best friend whips off her top and she has mogambo boobies, is your husband/boyfriend not allowed to notice? And if he does notice, how does he not look repeatedly? I have a suspician at to why all the sunglasses on men in Spain are black. Sometimes, you get a stunner on the beach. I have no idea how old this person was, but if you have ever seen one of those people that they periodically find buried in the bogs of Denmark, you get the idea. Well, this woman was in good shape, about 60 years old (I am guessing) and she had breasts that looked like leather. When she lay on her back they would kind of be stretched taut because all the moisture had been sucked out of her skin years ago, and there was no give. After an accidental glance, my husband was so disturbed he wouldn't even turn his body that way. I am just grateful that the European fondness for weenie bikinis on men seems to be passing. The Spaniards missed the message, but the lily white British men are avoiding it at least, for which I am grateful.

Just wondering. When your son asks if he can pee in the ocean, and he is ten-years-old, should it not follow that means you sit to do it, not that you stand with you back to the crowd and squirt toward the horizon? Is this something I should have to explain?

Spain is lovely. Spain is brown. Spain loves to put plastic greenhouses on every possible surface. Spain is still a country where goat herding is a profession. Spain has signs at every exit to the interstate pointing out you can not ride horses on the interstate. Spain has no sand on their beaches, just tiny rocks. Spain has crappy pizza but great orange ice cream. Spain has a radio station where they play every song from your 1980s prom in rotation. Spanish people love children. Spanish people shut down civilization for a two-hour nap everyday. Spanish people don't hate Americans and don't pretend they can't speak English. Even if you drive to the highest point in the Sierra Nevada, it is still brown. Southern Spain has not one freaking thing to see after you go to Grenada. Gypsies are scary. I lay on the beach and fantasized about going to Morocco. Southern Spain is, sadly, a place that I really have no desire to go to again.

After 13 years of marriage, don't you think one of the two people would remember the date before 10 p.m.? Clearly, my husband is not under pressure to come up with something romantic.

I have to stop reading books. Of course, that would mean I have to watch yodeling on the German TV, BUT it would keep me from going off on crazy tangents. Whatever book I am reading directly impacts my behavior. Survivalist novels result in my hoarding food. Victorian novels will causes words like "prithee" and "verily" to be said at some point. Zombie novels are just too horrifying to comprehend. On this trip, I read a whole bunch of novels that caused me to 1) want to be a cop 2) become obsessed with British imperialism and resolve to determine what the status of the Irish Republican movement is 3) consider dog breeding as a job 4) attempt to understand medieval alchemy 5) willing to accept almost any conspiracy theory out there that doesn't involve Jews or the Romanov dynasty and my person favorite, trying to determine if bilocation is possible. You know when you are simultaneously in two places at once? All the good medieval Saints did it. So, supposedly this event happens when both sides of your brain are both turned on and listening or are "in convergence." No, I don't believe it, but now that the obsession to become a crack shot with a rifle has passed, I am going to go and study the mysteries of the mind. If I show up for a visit unexpectedly, just ask me if it is really me or just my shadow self. Later. All those hoarded dirty clothes followed me from Spain.

Survival of the Fittest

2009-05-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

Has anyone else noticed that the world falls apart in May? Everything except taxes and Christmas happens then. I have been busier the past two weeks than I am in some months. And it is all busy work - signing things, driving to events, moving piles from one place to another (snow shovel under house, box of pool crap out from under house). And then stuff starts GROWING. I have these illusions of having a green thumb, but only in a survival of the fittest sort of way. I am about to dig up my 6th dead dogwood that I have personally planted and promptly killed. I plant stuff and if it lives, great. If not, I don't mourn. However, whatever I seem to plant that does live tends to take over the other three closest plants. So far, I have learned not to plant miniature roses (mine is now about a four food wide bush and took over my herb garden), elderberry (who cares if birds love it? it is bigger than most of my trees and that is after hacking it to the ground yearly) and oregano, which is completely indifferent to dog urine and is therefore inedible but has essentially become ground cover. My rosemary bush could supply an Italian village because it failed to get the message that it doesn't like clay soil. Every year I plant stuff in my little garden and about 90% of that goes to feeding bugs, but the next year I come back and plop more stuff in and repeat the cycle. This year I decided to start tomatoes from seeds. This was surprisingly easy, except what do you do with 10 yellow tomato plants? Do what I did - stick them in the ground, promptly kill 7, then go to the store and buy 6 more tomato plants to replace them. And this year I planted some zucchini, my husband's favorite vegetable right after okra and mustard greens (got those darlings, too). My lettuce is growing nicely and I have lots of peas. My cherry tree may break under the fruit. And the best thing about all of this? They will ALL be ripe while we are out of the country, so the bugs literally will get to eat them. One year we actually wanted our cherries so we covered the tree with a net. A bird still got in and ate EVERY SINGLE ONE and sacrificed at least half of his feathers during his escape. I was mad, but that didn't last long because I had to go and drink a beer so I could have residue to kill slugs. I am so happy beer kills slugs. It is the best of all worlds. I drink enough to make me happy, then use the rest to kill my archenemy. This year I am also growing a very healthy crop of poison ivy. Both daughter and I are allergic to it, so it is someone else's responsibility.My husband, being German, can't identify it so he went out there and pulled up the last batch with his bare hands (honey! There was some vine growing up the tree, but I pulled it all down!), but unfortunately he won't do that for me anymore, so I have to hire "Yard Boy" to come and do it. He will do just about anything for me for $10 an hour, and he is teaching me about "sexting" (no, not to me, just how common it is among teenagers and how my children can sneak things past me) and all the nifty things my phone can do (it has a calendar! it can take pictures!). I love spring. Except for the fact I have to go and battle some weeds now and plant these little plants I grew from seed but don't know what they are. Except they aren't pumpkins.

Vacation torture

2009-03-31T10:36:00.000-07:00

If I had lined up every male on the planet 20 years ago and said which one are you least likely to marry, I am pretty sure that my husband would have been that person. Or at least in the small cluster of people that included Kalahari bushmen, Communist Special Forces, and dog chefs of Korea. This is not a negative toward him, but I am pretty sure I would not have given him the time of day because I was shallow as a birdbath. He is the polar opposite of me - not spontaneous, responsible, eats yogurt willingly, puts himself to bed when sick, doesn't like ceiling fans, and is completely indifferent to People magazine. He is what I would like to be more like, but I have decided that I am serving my purpose by letting him live vicariously through me and my escapades. When we were first starting to date, I think he pretty much decided that I was drunk between the ages of 18 and 21, had avoided all contact with nature, went through men like others go through toilet paper, and only read mystery thrillers. There is a chunk (not a grain) of truth in that, so it delights me when I can prove him wrong about ANYTHING or rattle him. Mainly because he is always right. Because he is always right and so methodical that entire decades can pass without a major decision, I love to rock his world. I have managed to do it a few times - the surprise that is Boo, telling him I ran track in high school and seriously thought about going to the United States Military Academy. He hates spur of the moment decisions, which brings me to the whole point of this post. Vacation planning.

We go to visit his family in Germany every year. He grew up in a lovely, charming village in the north of Germany that is primarily an agricultural region. We saw everything remotely interesting 15 years ago, so each summer is a challenge for me to entertain myself. It is impossible to carry the amount of books that Bunny and I need. His parents insist on watching lip-synching leider (folk music) shows with the occasional bike race (note to self - bike racing is more boring to watch than golf or bowling) thrown in which rules out TV even if it is only basic German cable. The local bookstores do not carry any English language journals so it is the equivalent of stepping into a time capsule for the three weeks we are there - I have no idea of what is going on in the world unless he tells me. His mother brightens my day with her cooking so I come home fatter if not happier. One of my favorite activities while there is being a "schnecker jaeger" or slug hunter when I walk around with my salt dispenser. His parents used to have a huge garden so I could at least dig potatoes, but they took the garden away from me about 8 years ago because it was easier to go to the market. My husband knows I do this trip for him and because I love the theoretical concept of grandparents spending lots of time with their grandchildren, so every other year he throws me a bone of a real vacation.

This is vacation year. For unknown reasons, I decided that he was going to do it all. This has been sort of like asking Dick Cheney to mind his own business in terms of difficulty for me. I make graphs of opening times and prices for museums before trips and doctoral dissertations are written based on less research than I put into a vacation. So, he started looking. Every time he came close to making a decision, I would throw out a new country. We tentatively decided on Greece since we knew we would eat the food, it had beaches, and it was fairly cheap. I was strongly advocating for Norway or Morocco, but he more strongly resisted. Germany loves the package vacation and we were going to squelch our individuality and go on a package tour where you got the hotel and food and a beach for the low, low, price...So, husband spends lots of time looking for the perfect place. Then I tell him, I don't know if I want to go to Greece. I want to go to Turkey. In fact, I start looking for HOUSES in Turkey because I don't want a package deal anymore. We figure out that for one week it would be a giant pain in the posterior, so we go back to Turkish package deals. I learned that Russians love Turkish package deals and there were so many complaints about loud, drunk Russians we went back to Crete as the plan. Many, many, many hours into his labor, I get on the internet and say, "Look! Spain is cheaper!!!" He isn't convinced, but then he says, "Grenada! Alhambara!" and we were done. So, smart man that he is he immediately booked the tickets before I could change my mind again. I decided that no matter how miserable I am, I will be able to eat olives and good sausages and drink sherry every day, so I will probably make it. I will just have to avoid the British package travelers. Here is how to find a British female tourist on the beach. There is a better than average chance that she is the topless one smoking a cigarette while lying on her back and dragging her breasts out of her armpits (in their defense, they shave all appropriate areas). In America, she would be in a mumu, but in Europe she will be in a thong. When we went to Crete a few years ago, I realized that I don't like package tourists so I am going to struggle with my prejudices.

So, I am now going to add Spanish to the languages that I need to know but don't. At least I can count to 10 which is more than I had in Italy.

Barfing on Your Shoes

2009-03-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

So, if something has a $325 price tag on it, isn't it reasonable to suppose you won't get it if you offer $60? Two weeks ago I went to a silent auction to support Monkey Boy's soccer team. They had all this stuff, absolutely none of it I needed or even wanted. However, there was one item that I thought, "Well, I need to drive the price up on this one since right now there is a $300 difference between list price and sell price." And, thus I began my run down the pathway to hell.

Much to my horror and despite two hours passing during which every single person in that room let me down, I left the auction as the owner of an exercise Boot Camp. I have been in hysterics ever since. I can make myself laugh out loud whenever I think about this. With the exception of pedophiles, food from Taco Bell, and the hunting of elephants, there is not much on this planet that I hate more than exercise. I GUARANTEE that if hell is what you hate most, I will be mopping while on a treadmill while chatting with someone who wants to talk about programming languages. I hate exercise. The only things that would make me exercise is 1) the threat of having to wear a bathing suit on Oprah 2) them having to remove a wall to get my fat butt out of the house when I was dead if I don't lose weight or 3) paying for said exercise.

So, I downloaded the nifty packet that comes with LOTS! OF! EXCLAMATION! POINTS! and threats. If someone else wakes up with a hangover and doesn't show up, then *I* get to do extra sprints. If someone in my class turns up dead and that classmate has skipped a class, I guarantee you should consider me a suspect. The only thing that gets me out of this class is THUNDER. Snow, rain, dead family members, and boils on my butt are not excuses. AND we get to do it M-F, with for those willing, a FREE!!! Saturday class thrown in. Oh, the joy. And I have to write down every single bite of food I put in my mouth. I guess I need to eat all my Girl Scout cookies this weekend before they give me the log book.

So, they give you four free classes so you can get in touch with your inner masochist early. I went to one of the warm-up classes yesterday. A woman who was way too happy was leading the 6:00 class (note to all - those people are crazier than me) asked me if I was excited to take this class and I said honestly, "I would rather have dental work done without medication." She blinked a couple of times and left me. So, I got to be the fat, slow, old girl at the class yesterday. I did not die and I am able to walk without moaning today, and I am going back tomorrow morning. And be the slow, fat girl again. I am hopeful for a couple of things - the promise of dropping a clothing size that the literature promises and that elusive "high" that other people seem to get when they exercise. The only "high" that I have ever felt when exercising was when it stopped and I could lie on my back and watch the pretty clouds pass overhead. My friend, Chris, compared a good exercise high to great sex, but I know for a fact he is insane so I am going to ignore him. Have you ever seen a runner smiling? Except after they have stopped? Nope, me either. They all look like they are trying to have a painful bowel movement.

I am done now. Pray for me over the next month.

The youngest...

2009-02-14T12:40:00.000-08:00

No good mother will ever admit that she loves one child more than another, and since I like to think I am a good mother, I don't love one of my children more than another. I love whichever child with whom I can get some alone time. I love one child for theological reasons, another for the humor, and then there is Boo. Boo has been known as many things - the mistake, the extra gift, the love baby, the Valium baby, the child that has created pregnancies in others. He is all of those. He is also the child about whom I am the most emotionally fragile. He is the child who has been to the hospital twice and actually been scary sick. He is the child who I can not ever see any bad in anything he does and can love his way out of anything with me. After he was born, I literally felt like the final piece of my heart was in place. His sole flaw is he does not want to wipe his butt, and it is not like you can let him "cry it out" on the toilet because he will sit there for 45 minutes waiting for you, and I have decided that I would rather wipe his butt than deal with a child with hemorrhoids. He also does not like anyone to see him naked. A friend recently recounted a story where she walked in on him and her daughter, and the daughter was naked, and Boo announced, "I don't like to be naked around other people." Even on German beaches where there is not a covered butt on a child for 100 yards, he would be fully dressed and completely happy. I am banking on that because with his ferocious skills at manipulating women, we would have a difficult life after puberty set in.

Last night, he announced, "I am tired" and went to bed by himself at 8:15. This is sort of the equivalent of Newt Gingrinch showing up somewhere in a tiara and high heels. It doesn't happen. So, he sleeps until 6:18 a.m. when he wakes up just like he does ever day of his life. To the minute. He lies in bed beside me (Husband is out of town) and tells me he is thirsty, hungry, sick, unhappy, etc., until finally I concede defeat and we get up at 7:30. I carry him downstairs and lay him on the couch and he immediately falls right back asleep and sleeps for three more hours. He has never once in his entire life from infancy on gone back to sleep immediately after waking up. He surfaces for around 2 hours and consumes a slice of bread and tells me he wants to go back to sleep. I have by this point called the doctor and asked "Is it possible for a child to sleep too much?" The short answer is no, but in my mind he has already had cancer, diabetes, and a brain tumor today. I think it is the flu, though, and I am not digging the thought of that one, except he doesn't have fever, and I didn't get the shot for him because I have never actually known a child to get the flu.

That is all. I am going to go and watch him sleep.

Children stupid actions

2009-02-09T04:57:00.000-08:00

So, life has been dull lately, for which I am amazingly grateful. The highlight of the last two weeks was the fact that I have REALLY disciplined my children for the first time. I am not talking about the psychotic mommy screaming at them which you know will be the bread-and-butter of future "My mom is insane" stories and which still reduces them to tears but has zero long term impact, but where there is a slim chance they will remember it. At least one of my children will, at least. My middle child who is the one making the majority of the stupid personal decisions (I can quickly think of at least 3 times with squealing brakes and shattered looking faces on drivers when he ignored the fact it was a street) is also the one who seems to retain the message the longest. I am not an overprotective mother, but I do like to have the vaguest idea of where my kids are, even if it is simply "outside." The other day Monkey Boy went outside and my only instruction was tell me where he was going. If you go inside somewhere, tell me. Of course, he did not do this. I knew he was one of two places, but there is that embarrassing phone call to the wrong parent (oh, 2 hours after I should have made it?), "Do you have my kid?" and they don't. I finally called the correct parent and told her, "Tell him to run. He is in trouble." My son is FAST and he ran in screaming "I KNOW! I FORGOT TO CALL!" So, he lost all screen time (video, tv, computer) for 4 days which culminated in him literally lying on the couch moaning, "Can I do ANY chore to make this end sooner?"

Meanwhile, Bunny got herself grounded for two weeks. She is almost a pre-teen, which means that she is starting to think about lying. A lot. Nothing makes me crazier than a liar. Except a liar who blames the mistake on her five-year-old brother. So, she has been grounded for two weeks. She is oblivious. She is secretly defiant. She sits and "reads" while Boo watches TV. She tells Monkey Boy how to navigate a page (which is sort of like telling A-Rod how to play baseball). Next time she is grounded, I am going to add "NO Books." If she can read, she isn't being punished.

Yesterday I told her I was going to show her something on the computer. She happily bounced upstairs, just so I could go through a power point presentation on the perils of methamphetamine, lingering long over the rotten teeth and abscesses in the arms from shooting up. She was begging me to quit, but, oh, no, I had a platform. My poor kids - I have been on a two year tirade about drugs and sex, and I feel fairly confident that they are going to see through many smoke screens that might get thrown up in their faces. Of course, this has been a long time coming.

I have always been offended by calling parts "weenies" and "down there" and so I have always used the technical language. This has come back to bite me, one instance in particular. My children were sitting in Target (they were 3 and 4) in a shopping cart. We were waiting to check out on a particularly busy day, so they decided it was time to talk anatomy in the LOUDEST POSSIBLE VOICES. DS: Do you have a PENIS? DD: No, I have a VAGINA. Girls have VAGINAS, boys have PENISES!!!!!" The woman in front of me was standing straighter and straighter while the mother behind me was openly laughing. DS went through a period where he was always checking to make sure his "package" (there I go with an euphemism, but it is a blog for all) was still there. I don't know why boys do this, but he spent a good 6 months holding his friend. I tried to ignore it or do the "this is for private time" thing, but I should have just told the washing machine for all it mattered. Anyway, Christmas Eve rolled around. It was the family service. He trotted down to the front alter to listen to the story and stood by the storyteller so he could see. He immediately checked to make sure he had brought his stuff with him. My church looks very much like a European cathedral, and it has the accompanying acoustics. Anyway, I watched this for about 5 minutes in total mortification until I couldn't stand it and he didn't respond to the flailing hands of his mother at all. So finally I went and snatched him up and whispered in his ear, "Get you hand out of your pants!" And which point he screamed and the whole church got to hear, "I LIKE TO TOUCH MY PENIS!!!!!" Yes, I will tell this to his prom date, first girlfriend, future wife.

Husband dear is trying to woo me to Europe this year. For most people, they don't view this as a trial, but he comes from a very beautiful, extremely boring (and rainy) part of Deutschland. This year he has promised an "extra" vacation where we actually go somewhere fun and warm and with ANYTHING to do. Whenever we go to Eutin, one of my highlights is going into the back yard with salt and killing slugs. Yes, I actually look forward to this because I am slug-phobic and killing them soothes a deep part of my soul. And I am happy to concede that my mother-in-law is a far better cook than me.

So, this year he is dangling Crete in front of me. I am quite happy about this, but I don't expect it to happen. However, he is giving me time to plan my trip. Every time a place is suggested, I go and strip the library shelves and spend six months in preparation, watching, reading, organizing, etc. I make plan books that list the opening times/dates of museums, the highlights you must see, the restaurants we need to eat. I would have been fantastic as a planner of D-Day. By the time we get to the vacation spot, there is no opportunity for saying "Oh, I didn't know that!" I can be led astray by pretty flowers and shiny things or fried foods, but for the most part, I love planning our lives completely on a trip. I am so type A about this, I HONEST TO GOD had us be the first car in the Disneyland parking lot. And I started screaming at them to "GET OUT OF THE CAR NOW!!!" because cars were coming in after us and we would not be first in line at the breakfast buffet with Chip and Dale. We were done with Disneyland in two hours because of the extreme amount of planning. The next day I did not plan and we were unable to get on the Dumbo ride because we went there oh, whenever...So, right now I am immersed in Minotaurs, caves, beaches, Minoan archeology, etc. Even if we don't go, it has distracted me from my disobedient children.

The Samsonite Children

2009-01-19T14:37:00.000-08:00

I love to travel. I love to travel so much that I will give up almost anything to go somewhere else. The only thing I need in that "somewhere else" is a place to sleep. I don't care about the quality, the pillows, the sanitation. Just need to know it exists. I think this stems from growing up in Mississippi where a trip is anything longer than 45 minutes. I don't think I had gone to Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, more than 5 times before I went there for college. I never actually went to Memphis except to get on a plane. My parents' divorce worked to my advantage because Daddy clumped his visitation into long periods, so I got to go to wherever he was stationed - West Point, NY (cadets!!!), Shippensburg, PA (Amish!!!!), and San Antonio, Texas (pinatas!!!!). He even got a year of me while in Germany. The point of all of this is I had long, long, long periods of nothing with brief flares of adventure.

One of my favorite things about my husband is even though he is one of the least spontaneous people I know, he loves to travel as much as I do. We work well as a team. He needs the promise of food; I need the promise of rest. Together we can do all. Except we had kids. Kids have a few more needs than sleep and food. Regular schedules and all of that. Not mine. We broke them of that very young. My oldest was probably 8 years old before she realized that most people never go to Europe and most people her age go on vacation without using a plane. She honestly thought a vacation required a 24 hour endurance march before hand. My middle child has fallen asleep TWICE on the floor during waits to go through customs. He also has never slept on a transatlantic flight. As soon as they could walk, they were given a backpack with wheels and told to pull it and anything they needed to eat or play with better be in that bag.

The "big two" have traveled cross-country with me (without husband) where one of them was in a stroller and the other was strapped in a carseat on one of those foldable suitcase rolling thingies. While we lived in Europe, they sold these cool little skateboards that you could attach to the back of your stroller so an older kid could ride standing up and the younger one could sit. Bunny quickly learned how to put 3/4s of her body into the basket under the stroller, her knees remaining on the board, and take a nap. She was photographed by stunned onlookers in at least 5 countries doing this.

So, because we go almost every year to Europe, I am going to give you tips on how to prepare for each country we have visited.

Poland. - Krakow has something called cobblestones. They also have lots of inner city nature. Like giant slugs and pigeons that are all prone to diarrhea. And big hills. And no handicapped accessibility. And the men and women go in different doors to get to the toilet and end up in the same place. There is absolutely nothing on the menu that my children would eat so they lived on a diet of bread.

London (separate from England)

London has rude people who don't care about how long it takes to put your stroller on a bus. They will start driving with half of your family on the bus and half off. Also, in London, they don't have any protective cording around priceless sculptures in museums, so yes, your kids can touch them. That is when the alarms go off. Modern art museums are perfect for preschoolers. You can do shape searches. However, installation art can be a problem if part of it involves a TV loop where a woman goes from simulating an orgasm to talking to you. My daughter stood transfixed for fifteen minutes and wanted to know why the lady kept crying. The acoustics in the British Museum are concert worthy, and loud hooting echoes really well. And all the guards at the Tower of London are used to being fondled by small children. And your child screaming, "Where is Paddington Bear?" as you hurdle through the Paddington Station is generally considered funny, no matter how loud. The London Eye (the ferris wheel) is the best thing you can ever take a kid on in London.

England (well, Newcastle)

All the nice people in England live in Newcastle. Maybe it is because they make good beer. They are very indulgent of children. They find it charming when your 6-year-old daughter eats 5 sausages in one sitting. They don't mind when your children barf all over the hotel floor (cleaning standards aren't as high there, so this requires a bigger effort on the part of the staff). The subway conductors take your word for the fact you have lost your ticket. They will reimburse you for all the children's tickets you didn't need to buy that you did and apologize for the worker who sold it to you. You don't actually have to get off the bus. Ever. You can stay on the continual loop until your kids wake up from their nap. Just like London, you can buy an entire prepared meal in a grocery store. Cheese by the slice.

Cyprus - Greek people love kids. They don't blink when you walk in a restuarant with them. Your children do not have to remain in their seats. You can convince your child that octopus is a french fry. Sometimes. Mosaics are not as fascinating to kids as they are to adults. The people with tops on on the beach are the Greeks and the Americans. The British are the ones with cigarettes. The French are the ones whose boobies don't slide off of their chests into their armpits. It is worth it to rent an umbrella on the beach.

Sweden - I love Sweden. Sweden is the most child-friendly place in Europe. However, they never knew what to do with my children because Swedish children don't have temper tantrums in restaurants. Generally, there is not a kids' menu and they will make something for your kid and not charge you. If they do, it is minimal. You can live a completely cash free life in Sweden. Credit cards everywhere. If you go to the grocery store, watch your kids because there tends to be bins of candy at the end of the checkout line and your kids can eat an AMAZING amount of candy while you are looking the other way. And the grocery stores do not have bathrooms. Ever. Nor do any of the stores. You are not allowed to pee anywhere in Sweden. But when you get to go to the bathroom, be prepared. Every bathroom has an emergency cord you can pull which will set off an alarm and bring someone to rescue you. Your child will do this the minute you pull down your pants. Every single time. You turn it off by pulling it again. I left a lot of alarms blinking before I figured that out.

We have gotten calmer about traveling with the arrival of #3. I will save some stories about travel with 3 for the next blog. I am running out of stuff to say.

Fire Ants vs. Me

2009-01-03T18:49:00.000-08:00

So, we survived Christmas. We went to Mississippi. We survived Mississippi. So, we went to New Orleans. All I can say about New Orleans is it loses some of its charm when you travel with small children and you have to continually be on the lookout to prevent their awareness of the things that many people come to New Orleans to see. "Mama, what does it mean when it says the Men are prettier than the girls?" "Why are those women in this picture licking each other?" "Mom, why is that person singing out loud in the middle of the day?" "What does it mean to suck their heads and eat their tails?" There are also the great moments - the beauty of the Garden district, all the live oak trees that were made to be climbed, the sheer otherworldliness of the French Quarter. It made me be proud to be Southern again, even though New Orleans is another planet from the Mississippi Delta. However, it DOES have one thing in common with my beloved Mississippi - FIRE ANTS.

Growing up, my mother loved to scare/thrill me with stories of African Killer Bees. I remember always thinking, "This is the year they attack!" However, it never happened. But the fire ants did come. And they do kill people. For some very horrible reason they like nursing homes and I believe at least two people have expired from fire ants bites. Anyway, fire ants are BAD. I have been stung by bees, wasps, and yellow jackets. I will take them any day over a fire ant, mainly because you generally only get one of the flying nasties. The fire ants bring all their relatives and near neighbors. And they don't die after they bite. The first time I was really bitten by fire ants was in college. It was dark. I was out with a friend, being generally irresponsible, when I realized I had to pee. And there were no options on the Natchez Trace at night, like all self-sufficient women out there, I decided to just use the side of the road. The problem was I had consumed just enough irresponsibility to have delayed reaction time. And that delayed reaction time was way too much between when I started using the fire ant pile for my personal latrine and when I realized that I was covered with fire ants and they did not like being aquatic ants. I had 62 bites between my knees and my toes (sandals and all, you know). No shoe the next day. Which brings me to the point of the story. There are fire ants in downtown New Orleans and they found me. In broad daylight. I found this out as I was walking through the French Market, and I am pretty sure I looked like I had been voodoo cursed with all the sudden jumping and slapping of myself and the occasional moan. I would have been screaming expletives except I had the children with me, but since I was inhibiting their full shopping experience of tourist crap, I probably could have cursed like a drunk sailor and they would not have noticed. I didn't get that many bites, but I learned it is better to be bitten on the toe than on the tender insides of your knees. And, like many a visitor to New Orleans, I barely made it back to my car before I was yanking off my clothes, but as my friend Adrienne referred to it, I am glad they died before they got to my personal French Quarter.

Where did he come from???

2008-12-13T17:46:00.000-08:00

So, one of the great mysteries of science to me is how can a female body produces a male child. And how those boy children can come out and look not one iota like their mother and be pod people of their father. In the big picture I am really grateful because managing my daughter/twin is going to be emotionally exhausting enough, and taking care of the boys is simply a source of amusement.

Every child is special. Every mother loves every child equally. However, every child does not serve the same purpose in a family. Monkey Boy is my primary source of entertainment. Literally, since the moment I saw his little jewels on the ultrasound screen, I have been walking around saying, "How did that happen?" Before and shortly after his birth, I had 3 different situations from 3 unique cultures which told me he was special. First of all, before we knew who he was, a woman from India put her hands on my stomach and said, "Oh, this is a very special little boy." Then when he was born, the water never broke. In old-fashioned times, this is called being "born under the caul" and in Celtic traditions meant he was a blessed child. Finally, a Chinese friend of mine did his horoscope which involved spinning a book, flipping a bunch of pages, making "HMMMM" noises, and ultimately declaring Monkey's future the best he has ever seen. He was born under all the right stars. I firmly believe that he is special, mainly because he is still alive. This is because through no effort of my own, but it is because he has a Grade A, high ranking guardian angel.

You know how you read about children in the paper and you think, "Well, what kind of parent doesn't notice their child is on top of the china cabinet?" The answer to that is that person is me. If you don't know your child can climb vertical surfaces and has suction toes, you don't expect to find them hiding on closet shelves, or looking in your second floor windows from a tree at age THREE. You expect there to be a learning curve. Nope, Monkey Boy has never, ever injured himself beyond a single bandaid injury despite glorious feats of stupidity.

Classic example. We see a stunt rider on a bicycle. I know things are over. Monkey is not yet five, but he is riding his bike everywhere. One day the doorbell rings. I had no idea M.B. was outside, but he was there standing on my doorstep crying with bloody knees and a bike lying in the yard. I scoop up my injured little boy and ask him what happened. His reply, "I rode down the front (brick) steps." "Well, what did you learn?" "I don't have the right kind of bike." He has also managed to climb up the stairs of our jungle gym set with his bike so he can ride down the bumpy slide. (Mom: WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Boy child: I HAVE ON MY HELMET!) We have had to pass rules like you can't climb higher than a second floor window. I have personally been to every neighbor on my street to tell them that if my child injures himself on their property or rides into his/her car, I know they didn't do it.

He thinks school, religion, and girls are all jokes and a waste of his time. School is when you doodle, religion is something he can't wait to quit, and girls are not even worth thinking about. Hair is only something you deal with twice a year, and washing it is silly since it just gets dirty again. I see dreadlocks in his future. His dream job changes, but right now it is be a professional soccer star for awhile before going to graduate school and becoming a scientist that wins a Nobel prize.

I am pretty much the only female that is infallible. His father has the information he actually wants, but Mama is the source of joy. All other people are just a waste of his time. He doesn't mind them, but they don't really serve a purpose and so he can be very rude and ingore them. He is sweet to little kids, but he probably won't notice if they are male or female. He can tell you the score of some random World Cup game from 4 years ago, but he has no idea when he last changed his underwear. (His sister just asked him, and his reply: I don't know. I haven't worn underwear for a month.) He is a glorious pile of farts, facts, cuddles and elbows. Every day for Monkey Boy is a day full of promise, and every day for me WITH Monkey Boy is a day full of sunshine.

Uses for Old Boyfriends

2008-12-07T09:17:00.000-08:00

I haven't been writing in awhile because I have been trying to live a dull life. It has gone really well, except for my obsession with Facebook. Frequently you hear all about how the computer and on-line communities have caused real relationships to fail to develop. I am the counterargument. At this point in my life, I have the attention span of a guinea pig and zero time for meaningful conversations. My whole life I have been blessed with an excess of friends, most of whom never have managed to escape my Christmas card list. I have tons of people I want to be in touch with but I don't have any time to do so. Enter Facebook. Through it, I have managed to stay in touch with more people with less time. I have refound elementary school friends, archrivals, sorority sisters, people to whom I taught TV theme songs, a couple of folks I didn't realize were as strange as they are... I can quickly scan a friend's page and find out if anything interesting has happened to them and move on without discussing any details. Facebook is perfect for those seeking shallow encounters. But there is one problem. Ex-boyfriends

My whole life I have liked boys. I remember my PRESCHOOL favorite boy, my first grade, second grade, etc. My poor first-grade boyfriend I managed to find in a cotton field at a Blues Festival, and all I can say is I am glad he is unlikely to remember that encounter because he was so much worse off than I was. Liking boys and having a boyfriend are two entirely different things, and I didn't manage to acquire one of my very own until 10th grade, but after that I had a fairly steady supply until my husband. Once I acquired him, I had to stop collecting obviously. But I do have a strict ex-boyfriend rule: We can break up, but you can never leave. I have just lovely relationships with almost any boy I have ever dated/had a crush on/talked to for a long time. One of my favorite ex-boyfriends is providing the future spouse for my child. He has three gorgeous boys, and I have generously told Bunny she can have any one of them. Another ex-boyfriend is actually responsible for explaining stock markets and world news to me. Another ex-boyfriend is the source of all musical suggestions. Yet another is the science go-to guy. Each of these was lacking in some essential quality that my husband possesses, so even though I am fondly attached to all of them, it is sort of like the way you feel about your grandmother's furniture. Sure, it was good for a nap when you were little, but you don't actually want that furniture in the house. However, like I said, they can't leave. The main reason for this is my childhood hobby, funeral planning.

Like most little girls from Mississippi, I grew up playing wedding. Imagine the cutest boy from Leland Middle School or Sean Cassidy, draw an elaborate picture of your dress, winnow down the list of friends worth enough for bridesmaid status, and play pretend wedding. It was fun and satisfactory to a degree, but not nearly as much fun as what I really liked to do, playing funeral. I have been writing my wills since I was in third grade, making lists of who gets what stuffed animal. My actual will has a codicil where my best friend, Shelley, gets my pink rotary phone with the glow-in-the-dark funeral advertisement on the handset. She was determined it not be a family heirloom. Anyway, back to funerals. I am ashamed to admit it, but I would love to attend my actual funeral. Shortly into my marriage, I explained to my beloved what exactly my funeral would entail. Detailed explanations. However, it is now time to revisit those decisions.

I always thought I wanted to be cremated and dumped into a volcano, thrown into the Mississippi River, or something. I also wanted everyone to sit around and tell stupid stories about me and write them all down for my children, just in case they remember me as some saintly figure. HA. Now, however, I want a green funeral. You know where you become fodder for trees? I love the idea of being buried somewhere in some crappy, non-hermetically sealed box and having a Christmas tree farm planted on top of me. No, I am from Mississippi, so I want a pecan farm. And, the part that I want my ex-boyfriends for is I want them to be pall bearers. Several of them have failed to inform their wives of the central role I played in their lives, so they would probably have to mention coming to the funeral, but I just love the symbolism of them dumping me in the ground. Just like they dumped me (or, occasionally, visa versa). That way all my relatives will be free to wail and throw roses in the hole and comfort my little angels and my distraught husband who will probably still be trying to figure out where I stored Daniel's socks and how to turn on the dryer and who will, if he truly loved me, be unable to focus on getting me in the ground and other such funeral details (hence, the detailed to do list). Wouldn't you love to be there for that? Which is, again, why I love Facebook. I only had four ex-boyfriends that I was confident I could beg to help me (I want to do it like Camille in the opera - slow, drawn-out, dramatic, then boom, I am dead, so I can have time to explain my plans but die before I have to comfort anyone), but Facebook has helped me acquire at least one more and a couple I can possible call on for backup. I haven't cleared this with my husband, so he might not actually like the drama of it all, but it definitely appeals to me. But if the show gets scheduled anytime soon, which I am NOT hoping for, I will let you know so you can beg an invite.

Selfish needs and motorized transport

2008-10-21T16:19:00.001-07:00

When I started this blog, I intended it to be a place where I wrote about funny stuff that happened to me and to nurture the illusion that I would actually write something "real" someday. All I can say to that now is "bleh." I can't even remember the last really funny thing that happened to me. I am pretty sure that funny stuff HAS happened, but I think there is a good chance I would not notice. All I want to do lately is bolt and run. Not just from caring for all the crippled folks around (wait, watching a four year old with a full leg cast run is funny, maybe I should make a video), but from anything that vaguely resembles responsibility. I am so overcome with selfish desires right now. Now, I am not talking about standard desires (a clean house, obedient children), I want really selfish stuff that I have never had ANY interest in. All-inclusive vacations, shiny stuff that supports genoicide in Africa, pretty things that look good in Vogue on anorexic people, foods with the first three ingredients to be: butter, cream, sugar. All of this stuff is so foreign to me, yet I want, want, want. I am going to use that as my gauge of when I am happy again, when my desires return to normal: olive bar purchases, a bubble bath, new houseshoes, a complete collection of Bare Naked Ladies CDs.

We are off on a trip again, this time to see my Aunt Becky who I generally refer to as "the family member I have never disliked." This is a good thing since it is my daughter's first name. She married a man named "Boots" who is loved almost as much as she is by my children, and they have a dachshund named Spike who could get work as a footbal lineman. He can take down a full grown person once he hits full speed and he can get Boo airborne. Today Boo was crying after a Spike flight, and when I went outside he was saying, "My leg, my leg!" I had this moment of terror that I was going to have a two cast kid (now THAT would be a funny video), but once I picked the magnolia pod out of his knee he was mobile once more. There is a precedent for this because when I was in high school I had surgery on my right foot for which I needed crutches. Being a stupid teenager, I decided it was a perfect time to learn to ride a motorbike. Unfortunately, I did not get adequate steering directions so I immediately drove into a freshly plowed cotton field, where I went airborne, had the bike land on my good ankle resulting in a massive sprain and making it impossible to walk for a couple of days. And Bunny, true to form, yanked out a couple of teeth when I was in a situation where I could do nothing about it since searching for kleenex at high speeds is probably up there with texting on the list of stupid ideas. She still believes in the tooth fairy (or claims to) and she looked at me and said, "This is a MOLAR. I think it is worth more, DON'T YOU THINK SO, MOMMY?" Five bucks for two. How was that for a run-on paragraph?

Today we went to the "Little White House" where FDR died. I was very impressed with the interpreter's ability to keep a straight face when she said that FDR had not had an affair. Yeah, whatever, she had a bedroom and Eleanor didn't? Figure that one out, ranger lady. I also learned that it would be a very, very bad idea to ever give my mother a motorized wheelchair because once she gets a little speed going, I think she becomes Bo Duke behind the wheel of General Lee. Things like curbs and feet were just soooooo irrelevant. Not that she has tortured me enough or anything, but she now has a torn rotator cuff which may mean surgery. Did no one get the memo that I am NOT GOOD AT NURSING CARE? On the other hand, it would mean a night off while she was in the hospital. This isn't outpatient, right?

I Must Change My Reading Habits!

2008-10-17T06:27:00.001-07:00

I think my life must have really begun the day I learned to read. It is what I do to make me happy, put me to sleep, pass time in the bathroom, and get me through long trips. However, I have always had a problem with reading right before bed because most times whatever is the last thing I read before sleep will somehow appear in my very vivid dreams. I can't tell you how many times in my dreams I have been kidnapped or shown up for school in a Victorian gown as opposed to the normal naked.

Lately, in a vain attempt to keep up with popular culture, I have been reading novels popular with the teenage set. The whole Twilight series was consumed in a little over a week. Now, I am trying to catch up on the zombie phase a couple of years after its popularity peak. I have been reading a book called World War Z, An Oral History of the Zombie Wars. This was not a good plan. Last night I actually laid in my bed and looked around my room and thought, "Hmmm, what could I crush a zombie skull with?" Back in the old days, zombies supposedly could be stopped with salt, but according to the new theories, their brains must be destroyed. Decapitation isn't enough unless you also burn their heads. You can't drown zombies, or stab zombies or even pull them apart. A bullet through the brain is what is required.

Before I explain more about my zombie obsession, I must tell you about the other attempt I have made to join in with the popular culture. I love Facebook with a crazy passion. It is as good as email, but with pictures and updates. It lets you reconnect with friends without the real responsibility of true friendship. I am a huge fan of shallow relationships. I have found lots of people that I used to like but had lost touch with, acquired some "new" friends, found all my exboyfriends and crushes so they can't sneak up on me, and acutally found a way to connect with the teenagers I volunteer with through my church that doesn't make them feel weird. I guess I am speaking in their language for a change. Anyway, that brings me to John/Hunter.

During college, I had a lovely boyfriend, who is now a facebook friend, of course. His best friend was John, who sort of epitomized my idea of what cool was supposed to be in college. As a result, I rarely talked to him because I was convinced he thought I was a dork. I guess he didn't because I am now his facebook friend, and I take consolation in the fact that he has possibly sold out even more than I did. At graduation, I honestly thought I would go and live on some organic lavender farm and milk goats and have solar panels, etc. Instead, I am happily middle class, a room mom, and drive a minivan. I frequently have periods of discontent about this, but I cope. However, John lives in a gated neighborhood and is a psychiatrist. I would have called you a liar if you had ever told me he would do this twenty years ago. Anyway, I am finally to the point. John has put Hunter S. Thompson's face as his face on his facebook page which he finally posted two days ago.

So, after sending John/Hunter a message, I sat down to read the Zombie Wars (can't drown them, either). Fall asleep. The wars begin! It was a terrifying dream about Hunter and I trying to fight the zombie hordes. I woke up yesterday exhausted. Now, you would THINK this would make me stop reading the zombie book, but, no, I must find out how civilization makes it. Last night, I read again. Again, I dream about zombies, Hunter (who now has a tank), me (I have a shovel), and just when I thought he has left me dreams forever, the President of Iran was back, trying to woo with me his wife-beater t-shirt and his killer zombie skills. I am so grateful that I have no reason to psychoanalyze this dream, but I really would like to know why these two particular people (Hunter/John and Mr. Iran) won't leave my dreams. I am fully confident I don't have a real interest in them while I am awake, yet I am totally enthralled with their zombie destruction skills while asleep. I want to know why I got a shovel and they got tanks and bombs. I even had a dream conversation with Mr. Iran last night about whether nuclear weapons will destroy zombies. The only thing I know for sure is I am returning that book to the library today. If my other dream boyfriends, John Adams and Emperor Claudius show up, I am going to work on developing an addiction to No-Doz and confining myself to Jane Austen novels.

In Praise of the Average Child

2008-09-20T14:14:00.000-07:00

One time one of my best friends, Shelley, was doing a project for grad school. She asked, "What are you most afraid of?" I am pretty sure she wanted something like global warming or poverty, but I answered, "Not having kids." Having children has always pretty much summed up what I wanted from life, and every man I ever dated was evaluated LITERALLY on the first date as to whether he had father material. Fortunately, I managed to pick a husband who was oblivious of all the tests he was required to pass, and he has helped me create three amazing small people.

I supposed I should have been more honest with my friend and said my real source of terror was "Not having a daughter." Even though I have two boys who are as necessary to my life as the air I breathe, it is my daughter who was? is? the culmination of my life's goals. Before we found out the gender of the baby, I told Hubby Dear that if it wasn't a girl, we were going to keep going until we had one, stole one, found one on the street corner. He was the opposite of the "Man needs son" stereotype because he was so relieved our daughter came first. The pressure was off him.

When they handed Bunny to us, I remember feeling like I couldn't breathe. I could not believe that I had created this absolutely unattractive, giant, bald baby that looked exactly like my husband's brother at birth. Then she opened her eyes and looked at me, and it was all over. I have always heard people say "he is an old soul," but our daughter had "old eyes." I honestly believed she already knew more than I would ever learn. The first logical thought I had beyond "DANG! THAT IS A HUGE BABY!" was, "I know why Jewish women volunteered to go with their children to gas chambers." What a joyful introduction to motherhood those thoughts were.

Bunny spent the first hour or two of her life just looking and, in particular, staring at us, and her intense abilities to focus continued for many months. All babies study things intently, especially things like window panes and ceiling fans, but with her it was more like she was watching things we couldn't see. I read somewhere that babies can still see angels, and the more they connect to the world, the more they forget heaven. I truly believed that she was talking to heavenly creatures that I could no longer experience. To this day, she still fervently believes in all things magical, and she has a depth of spirituality that it took me two decades or more to develop.

As she has grown up, I naturally have learned to love her more. Because school was always so easy for me and Hubby was a college professor, I just assumed that my children would find school a piece of cake. Bunny has shown me that you should never assume anything. School was never easy for her, and even now she struggles to make a C in many subjects. Intelligence isn't the question because she already is a true scholar about First Ladies, and I am pretty sure she was the first Eleanor of Aquitaine most people had ever had trick-or treat at their home. Wait until Elizabeth I shows up this year. I imagine she will surprise a few folks this year, too. It is just everything that interests her isn't a part of school or ever evaluated. In addition, she is continuously confronted with the slightly younger brother who thinks school is a joke, plays on a select soccer team, is always faster at understanding and mastering things, and who has never had to struggle for anything in his life.

She is not particularly coordinated, she possesses the artistic skills of her father, and she has the attention span and inability to multitask of her mother. She is just the average kid. She is not the prettiest, tallest, or sweetest. I have always struggled to find a way to communicate to her how absolutely marvelous she is, and how even if all of her friends can swim better, make better grades, draw more elaborately, sing better, and have cuter clothes and cooler parents, she is still the most amazing person I have ever met. She will probably never finish first, play the winning play, or be the star of any show, but she has taught me how to look beyond the flashy, obvious things kids do to find her real worth. She is able to forgive her own flaws in ways I still haven't mastered for myself. She remembers we should call her grandmother to cheer her up. She is the one who notices that the birds are using the dog's dish to take a bath. She can hold a group of toddlers in her thrall when she reads a book. She is never demanding and has more patience with me than I deserve. She is the only one of my children who cares about third world orphans or how to start a laundry machine ("I will need to know this someday, Mom!"). So, as a result of having the blessing of being her mom, I am always going to make an effort to find the kids who never shine the brightest and talk to them. If my daughter is any indication, they will be far more interesting anyway.

Is it possible to have a phobia of buses?

2008-09-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

So, I have nothing new to report. Decided to control my ADD by eating an entire bag of York peppermint patties that were also chock full of BRIGHT ORANGE mint filling, so I also got my carcinogenic food colorings in there.

The other day I was thinking, and for once, it was an almost complete thought. It was a thought of how much I hate buses. Not in theory. In theory, I like them. I used them daily the year we live in Sweden, but to get me to use them most other places, I would have to be like Mr. T on the A-team and have to be tranquilized. I have valid reasons for this aversion. During college, I was one of the last people of the previous generation to not have a car. Periodically, my mother would issue edicts declaring that I needed to come home. This did not mean I could count on her to come get me; it simply meant I needed to be in Greenville by Friday night. Most weekends I could find someone to bum a ride with, but on those awful weekends that I couldn't, it meant the bus. The DELTA BUS line. It is really only about a 2 hour drive to Jackson from Greenville, but because it is the only means of public transportation for a vast amount of the state, it is required to stop at every four way intersection or largish gas station in the delta plus an extensive layover in Vicksburg, so generally it took a minimum of 4 hours. I was without one single exception during my many rides, the only "minority" on the bus. I am glad I did it for that reason, but the last trip I went on I woke up to some completely random stranger getting ready to kiss his drunken, drippy lips on me. Some random woman on the bus came to my defense and followed me around the Vicksburg terminal to keep potential molester away from me. I bought her Krystal burgers since she told me she would "protect me."

I recovered from this somewhat, except I noticed that I refused to ride the buses in NYC when I was a nanny. This was in the height of the crack/ice addictions time, and I would rather (and I did) sit near a man talking to his fingers and smoking crack on the subway than get on a bus. However, once again I was required to conquer the Greyhound Demon. When I was a nanny, I temporarily lost my mind (recurring pattern for the next 18 years) and got engaged to my best friend. Not Hubby, my best friend now, a previous best friend. Anyway, I decided that I would go from North Carolina to see him in Tennessee via Greyhound. It literally took 23 hours to get from Roanoke, Virginia to Clarksville, Tennessee. In the intervening hours, I visited towns I have still not found on the map- Brigadoon, Virginia, Butt Crack, North Carolina, and my personal favorite, Knoxville, Tennessee. I was dumped in Knoxville's bus station at 3 a.m. I had been entertained during the trip by the little boy who's mother fell asleep immediately after her butt hit the cushion. Everytime my head would fall forward, he would literally stick his finger between the seats and into my ear. He pulled out enough hair to stuff a voodoo doll. Finally, a soldier who had just been dishonorably discharged and was going home to confront his girlfriend who was sleeping with another man sat beside me, and I got to get my hair pulled out while advising this man that killing the man who was boinking his girl was just a bad plan. If I asked the little boy to stop, his mother would wake up and slap him, which would make him cry, which induced guilt.

So, we are dumped into Knoxville. Knoxville's bus station is not charming. It is even less charming when all the homeless people are using it for their bedroom and bathing facility. I decide that I will go to the bathroom since I had been holding it awhile so I wouldn't have to go in the bus bathroom that clearly had not been cleaned or aired out since the person vomited in it.

So, as I am hovering over the toilet seat (can't sit - this is pre the age of enlightenment about AIDS), I realize that there is literally a crazy (not PC - a mentally ill person not receiving proper care) person is in the stall next to me. She is getting increasingly irate over the fact someone had broken the 13th Commandment and gotten AN ORANGE COMMUNIST MEDAL for it. And she COULD NOT BELIEVE THIS COULD HAPPEN IN AMERICA. I am terrified to leave the stall. Finally, I bolt. I climb on the bus, only to have my friend, the con sailor, decide that I am right. He doesn't need his cheating ho, he is going to try to charm me for the next three hours. Yank - there goes another hunk of my hair. Then, I realize that the woman who is worried about the negative effects of Communism is sitting in front of me and she is still unhappy about it. She begins to cry, which makes me completely unafraid of her. And I realized that she was wearing an Andy Warhol wig, and it made me sad and sympathetic, too. It was the bus ride from hell. It was Knoxville's first nail in the coffin and I am still not convinced that this town isn't full of homeless, mentally ill right-wingers. I am starting to move away from the homeless belief, but the rest is still there. And I won't ride buses unless they have the word "tour" painted on their sides.

Stupid Computer Stalkers

2008-09-05T16:42:00.000-07:00

I took a test today to see what my problem is. Not that it is caring for a house and 4 people, or anything, but it really must be an "outside" problem. And, the diagnosis is...I am suffering from adult ADD. Now this is based completely on a 20 question survey on the internet, but it wasn't like it was a waffling answer, it was a "yeah, you are an unfocused, undisciplined, needs to be medicated person. Seek help immediately" and a tiny little stick figure of me. Of course, I was horrified and I went and asked my mother and husband, and they were both like, "Yeah, obviously." Hubby made it worse by pointing out he told me this a year ago, but I thought he was being sarcastic then. I have always defined myself through academics, and I had no idea you could read well and have ADD. However, the "symptoms" do match what I have better than the gall bladder ones. So, if it turns out that I am not mentally ill but chemically challenged, I will be happy. Two years ago on Desperate Housewives, one of the wives started taking Ritalin because it let her get stuff done and at the time I thought, "Gimme, gimme, gimme." So, if it turns out that I am ADD, I will view Lynnette from DH as my personal Oracle of Delphi.

How to Waste Money

2008-08-28T17:43:00.000-07:00

Two words: music lessons. I have managed to give birth to three children completely devoid of musical talent. I spent 2 years giving money to a lovely lady so that my children could slaughter the piano (yes, you can make a piano sound bad) and so that they could scream at me all the other days when they had to practice. To their defense, they now can clearly tell what is "good" music, or at least they haven't subjected me to an excess of Miley Cyrus. The youngest, Boo, requests the Beach Boys. Louder. Bunny, the girl child, is the most conventional of my children, and is in the throes of an Abba binge. She got the soundtrack to Momma Mia, which comes with the lyrics, so we spend a lot of time singing, "Take A Chance on Me!" Loudly. Monkey Boy only likes LOUD ROCK MUSIC. For example, his favorite bands are Led Zeppelin and White Stripes. He actually put a Led Zeppelin song down on his "What You Need to Know About Me" questionnaire for the first day of school. Between his music, sports and fabulous hair, he is going to be a babe magnet. If he ever stops whining. Okay, he will be a babe magnet when his voice changes I have been praying for since about 10 minutes after his birth because the pitch of his whine is one that reverberates in your brain hours after he stops making noise. Monkey Boy was the only one of our newborns to complain about his arrival. The other two came out and said, "Wah!" and were done. Bunny spent the first few hours staring at the light, and Boo went to sleep. Monkey Boy complained and complained and complained. Of course, a woman who had a breathing style like Darth Vader was delivering next door, so I cried along with him in rhythm with her exhales and inhales. I was happier when her child was born than when mine was.

Oh, I am not sure what the technical definition of Munchausen's syndrome is, and whether if you don't want to be sick you can still have it. Let me explain. Every time I am put in a long-term stressful situation, I develop an illness. I don't develop a headache, I get really sick. In fact I managed to convince one of my doctors not once, but twice, that I had a brain tumor. In his defense, I had completely different symptoms both times, and each time after I had gotten some big test (a MRI, a CAT scan) that came back negative. I have managed to do this to my new doctor now. I have been having intense stomach pains for about 6 months that come and go periodically, and even though my husband could trivialize them as PMS, they have no relationship to any of that. This month they reached a new plateau where I couldn't talk very much while they were going on and I actually asked hubby to come home from work and be nice to me. The only thing that worked was starving myself and remaining in fetal position. So, new doctor sent me to get TWO gall bladder tests that revealed that not only is my gallbladder healthy, but it is working overtime, and so, once again, I have managed to make myself ill via stress. And guess what? Now that I know I get to keep my gallbladder, I have no pain. I suppose I should be grateful because each "major illness" is not as horrible as the one before, so maybe by the time this is done, my stress will be of the rough skin/hangnail variety.

So, today I had an experience that made me a little sad. My youngest was coming home from school, and he wanted to hold my hand. My hands were full, and I needed to shift stuff so I could have an empty hand. While he was walking beside me, he was running his fingers up and down my arm and as soon as he could slip his hand in mine, he gave me the most beatific smile. I felt really sad because this is my last year as a full-time mom, and the lovebabies are getting just scraps of me whenever I can focus for longer than 10 seconds which happens only on the second Tuesday of the month. The older my children get, the more I enjoy being around them, but the converse side is I am not sure they would say the same. I am pretty sure that my 12 year-old future son will realize that his mother who never shaves her legs because it takes concentration is not as beautiful as she was when he was in preschool. Right now he is wearing his father's glasses and for the first time I can see the man he will become. And my daughter is already telling me my clothes are bad. When she isn't stealing them.

Since I don't have a gallbladder problem, I have also decided that I don't have depression. I am just eating that entire jar of potato chips because it is the company's fault for making them tasty.

Whenever I have a chance to do a lot of reading, I tend to go on "tears" where I only read about that subject. A few years ago I read a book about Los Alamos' founding, so I actually checked out a book on chaos theory. And then when I read about breaking the Enigma code during World War II, I decided that I wanted to learn about secret codes. I know NOTHING about either because I couldn't even understand the dedicatory quote and just called it quits early. So, in the past month I have read all four of the Twilight series (if you know any teenage girl you wish to speak to, you should read these books) which are a love story between a vampire and a human. Fortunately, I already knew everything there was to know about vampires from my previous childhood obsession with them, but somehow it led me to reading about Israeli spies. So, I now have a library book about the history of the Mossad on my shelf, and I read the Jerusalem Post today. It was very National Enquirer because they are obsessed with finding this missing, abused child, and I was thinking, "Have you visited a refugee camp?" but it was as sordid as New York Post. I meant to get to Al-Jazeera's English page because I wanted to see if I can figure out why the Lebanese don't like the Jordanians, and whether all this horrid stuff about the Egyptian Secret Police is true (Guatanoma Bay is preferred to Egyptian prisons), but I didn't to it. I have decided to try and understand the whole Arab-Israeli conflict better because it is key to every foreign policy out there.

I have to go and scream at Monkey Boy now and tell him to stop playing ball since he was supposed to be asleep 45 minutes ago and it is loud. And I won't promise another blog post anytime soon. It is that concentration thing, and I need to make sure I don't have any more new diseases.

Exercise for the Handicapped

2008-08-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

Well, to say I have been busy the last few weeks would be an understatement, but I decided to wait until I stopped hyperventilating to write. My mother is here, and it hasn't been the unmitigated disaster I supposed, but let's just say the stress level here is sort of equivalent to the Korean or Iraqi/Iranian borders. We are making it though without the help of chemical or police interventions thus far. And today I taught her how to use a swifter in a wheelchair. If she can mop, she can stay.

The toughest part for me is having to stop being a 50s housewife. My husband likes to deal with all the "stuff" and I like to tend to the kids and bake. It is a beautiful relationship because it works, but unfortunately I can't take on that role with my mom. I have learned how to be patient and assertive and cry on demand, but I am trying to do the assertive more. For example, today I told her job that I refuse to let her "quit" until I get insurance to fully and completely explain the repercussions of this, and since that insurance office is held by an imaginary person who doesn't call back, they can just keep paying her for not working, even if the poor babies in the classroom aren't being taught. And I intend to start paying attention to the stuff around here, too, even if I have no intention of actually tending to it.

Guess what? My hometown of Greenville was mentioned 3!!! times in yesterday's NYTimes book review, or rather, three people from my hometown were mentioned positively in the paper. We have lots of "old" famous writers - Shelby Foote, Walker Percy, etc., but the most famous local running around right now is Julia Reed, who is the lead writer at Vogue Magazine. She has a new cookbook/memoir out called Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns, and other Southern Specialties. There is a line in there that I am going to adopt as my motto, "She ain't much in a parlor, but she is hell in a tonk." And everything she says about Pepperidge Farm Thin White bread is true. It is worth the search.

The other thing interesting to me, at least, about this whole caregiver thing is how I have really become aware of the complete lack of gifts I have in this department. I can plow through a to do list, but I can only nurture people who I gave birth to. My husband who had a sickly youth (his mother is fantastically nurturing in the health department) never gets sick anymore. When I asked him why, he said, "Because it is too scary." I guess it is because when I get sick, I want to have someone bring me a glass of water and then not make any sound at all until I am well. No patting of hands, warm soup, etc. Just leave me alone. And, if you need more than that yourself, you better give me clear instructions as to your needs because it will never, ever occur to me. And my mother, bless her, is the exact opposite. She thrives when she is in my company. I finally had to tell her that my fantasy vacation is to go somewhere for 3 days and no one talk to me. When she is better, I am going on a retreat with a bunch of monks. I am trying to find one with a cave, just because I think if I am in a cave, it will be even less likely that someone will come and bug me.

Do you all remember a few years ago when that book The 5 Languages of Love came out? I don't remember them all, but I know that MY language of love is acts of service. My husband will always be rewarded more for mopping my floor than for buying me sparkly things. My sons and my mother are all physical touch love language people. This makes me stark raving nuts. I like the hello/goodbye hug but lots of contact makes me cranky. My youngest child is following his brother's path in that he likes to physically be in contact me the whole time he sleeps. Son #1 almost never immediately sticking his hand up my shirt when he tried to talk to me, but he has FINALLY realized that it politically incorrect to fondle your mother in public. And it can't just be a foot gently touching me for Boy #2. He has to hold on to me and breath up my nostrils. When I try to escape, he murmurs, "oh, mommy, I love you. I love to touch you." This would be creepy except I know the boy is a babe magnet and will soon drop me cold, so I try to enjoy it right now. The whole point of this is I was trying to decide if this was always the case, or a new development in my personality, the anti-touch thing. Well, hubby dear is not complaining, so I decided to ask my college boyfriend about this, and he said, "You weren't particularly cuddly." I find this hilarious, so I think my acutal shirt will say, "Not cuddly, but hell in a tonk."

Blessings Look Different Nowadays

2008-07-16T19:39:00.000-07:00

I unpacked 15 boxes today! Actually found a place for every single thing that came out! And I made sure one of them was the liquor box. I have known where it was for sometime, but I did not have it high on my "to do" list, but I was delighted to find out that I have 3 different kinds of whiskey in my house. I like to drink an occasional glass of wine or a cold beer, but those have yeast, and I am not allergic to yeast, so once it was pointed out that whiskey does not have yeast, it was just time to go back to the original drink of choice. I felt a small amount of guilt packing the liquor away in my grandmother's sideboard since she was a teetotaler until the end when the doctor told her that a shot of vodka a day might be good for her heart. She refused to make this better by mixing it with juice, so my mother went and bought her some apple flavor, but she decided since it tasted so much better that it made it even more sinful. I also remember because she was so embarrassed by this medicine, that she sent my poor grandfather who was going through chemotherapy, bald as a rock, and wobbly as can be to the liquor store. As he wove back in forth with his cane trying to get to the door, I remember thinking "He looks like he is drunk, and it is 9 a.m. Like people aren't going to talk about that more." The real issue was no one would ever think Grandaddy would do something like that, but Nanny was mean enough that if she had gone into the liquor store, people would immediately have said she was so cantankerous because she was a closet drunk and was just hiding it.

I have mastered a new skill - the slightly hysterical, overburdened, only you (the listener) can help voice. This is a great tool when dealing with bureaucracy. It is even more effective if you sit with such an angry look on your face that your four-year-old thinks you are mad at him and starts to cry and stands by the phone and asks repeatedly, also with increasing hysteria and volume, "What is wrong, Mommy? Are you okay, Mommy? Mommy, mommy, mommy???!!!???" And then starts crying even louder. I used this trick this morning on the person who I later learned is part of the approval process of my mother getting another week in inpatient rehab, and I am pretty sure she will approve Mama another week for my mother's own safety since they are clearly going to be releasing her to a person who needs high dosage Xanax. Also useful for getting specific rather than vague answers out of various medical care providers.

I am actually doing much better, since I realized that we don't REALLY need that dining room for a dining room and it will make an excellent bedroom. But, then I was horrified to learn that insurance does not like to pay for "durable goods" i.e. a wheelchair, a medical toilet, straightjacket, etc. I went to a support group meeting for caregivers tonight, and even though every person in that room was oh, 30 years older than me, and had their own crisis care situation, they were so happy to give me advice on everything that now I know where the best deals on medical supplies are (answer: Goodwill), but I also learned there are SIZES in everything from the aforementioned toilets to undergarments, etc. And I learned where my mother can go and play bingo, including places that might even giver her a ride. She is doing GREAT and is starting to make significant progress, or at least what counts as progress with a stroke victim. So, until she does something funny, I am done talking about my crisis with my mother. Of course, this means I will be going to MS again within the next 7 days....

Guess What I Found!!!

2008-07-10T14:50:00.001-07:00

Now I am in the midst of unpacking, wondering where, when, why I have all this crap, contemplating arson, when I found a TREASURE. I am not a journal keeper mainly because it requires a repetitive action and I have the attention span of a gnat, but I AM a list maker. So, I found a journal that I began in 1987 that has only 3 entries. The first is about my grandfather dying, the second is a list of every boy I ever kissed from 1985 on, followed by a second list with ratings that I maintained through college, song associations for them, and most importantly a KEY and a GRADE. A heart means I actually liked them, a D for intoxication, and a star if I thought it was a decent kiss. No one has all three, I am sad to report. The third page, the true phenomenon, is the poem that I wrote about my obsessions. Tennyson, Sidney, and even Allen Ginsburg need to never worry that I am going to try to have the same job title as them. The funny part for me is that I called these guys "obsessions," and for the ones I can figure out who they are, it was pretty much stalking on my part and no action. Here is an excerpt:

My new love has left for school
It's probably for the best
Cause with those eyes of baby blue,
I'd fail the moral test.

I have ABSOLUTELY no idea who this stanza was about, but I have six more stanzas for which I have figured the name of three. And the other stanzas are FAR, FAR WORSE. There is a line that rhymes with PEW. I think I will have to consult my friends from high school and see if they can remember. And I clearly need to develop some dignity and burn this poem in case it ever should be found by one of my children. I am having more fun with the ratings, trying to remember the where/when/why these poor schmucks deserved passing or failing grades. And these songs - imagine the very worst roller skating song from the 80s and I probably have a dedication for it for one of my ex-flings.

One of the best things about growing up in Mississippi is none of these boys expected anything beyond a kiss, no matter how much alcohol either he or I had consumed. I don't think that is the case today, so I have to make sure that my daughter is not left unsupervised in case she attempts poetry.

Another treasure that returned from Mississippi is what my mother called the "Birth Conrol Jesus," a bad print that used to hang over the couch in my grandmother's house. My mother always said that it was the single most effective thing to guarantee that things never went too far, because if you saw Jesus out of the corner of your eye while snogging with your boyfriend, you just had to stop. I also acquired a giant Elvis poster while in St. Louis, and I am trying to figure out how to fit the Heavenly and the earthly King into the decorating scheme around here. Once I get them hung, I will let you know.

Mama is doing okay. I am calmer. I needed the belly laugh of that ratings list.

I am sick of Mississippi

2008-07-09T09:41:00.000-07:00

Guess what! I have been to Mississippi AGAIN. I know for a fact that I have now spent more time in MS in the past year than I have spent in the past ten years combined. We managed to leave St. Louis, for the most part in one piece, way past the desired time, but surrounded by those we had come to love. We arrived back in Knoxville and we were immediately surrounded by people we love at this end. We began to unload the rental truck, the storage unit, etc. Of course, the air conditioner was broken and couldn't be fixed for a week. Got up the next morning for the "real" movers to bring the stuff in. They showed up, and about an hour and a half later, as I am watching my dining chairs leave the truck, I get a phone call telling me my mother is having a stroke and is in the emergency room. So, because I simply can't leave at that moment, and I don't think I will be of any use, I decide to wait until the next day to go.

Next morning when I get up to leave, the engine light comes on. I end up having to rent a car. For some reason, the drive from here, even though it is only an hour longer, seems to take days and days. I arrive just as dusk is setting in, and when you drive through the delta at that time, the bugs sound just like rain on your windshield. Bought a mega-pack of bologna to feed some starving dog with the hope that it will send me some good karma. Dog was happier, but it didn't work.

My mother has had a stroke that resulted in her being paralyzed on her right side. This is horrifying, BUT it is amazing how something like this can knock your perspective around so you can find the good in stuff you would never consider. Here is the good. She can talk. She even makes sense when she talks. Some movement is coming back in her right leg. At the beginning of the week when she couldn't understand everything so well, we spent A LOT of time watching What Not to Wear (I think I need to nominate myself), but by the time I left yesterday, she could follow Law & Order. She is now in a rehab facility, where she will only be able to stay for two weeks in a best case scenario. At that point, I will have to go back to MS, move her out of her apartment, move her here to Knoxville, and well, just see. When I got home last night, husband had tons of questions that started with, "What is going to happen...." and I just stared blankly at him. People are always told they should not worry about tomorrow and just enjoy the moment, and that is what I have learned to do. I will make future plans, but I really can't do it until I know how rehab works. And, thanks to the great state of MS's insurance plans, I have absolutely no idea what will happen afterwards in terms of what they will pay. I am completely flying blind. There are these popular t-shirts in Greenville that say, "Put on Your Big Girl Panties and Stop Whining." So, I have tried to do that, because if I let the tiniest emotion out be it anger, frustration, or tears, I am pretty sure I will have a breakdown in my peach has a bruise on it. For example, yesterday when I was leaving, I realized that my mother doesn't have anyone to do her laundry for her until I come back, so what will happen if she needs a new t-shirt? I hate being an only child - always have, but I really hate it now. However, I am kind of enjoying the power thing - I actually know my mother will keep her promise to quit smoking since unless she learns to teleport, she will not be able to buy any, and since I have the checkbook......power is good.

I am sure that something funny will happen soon, but I have to wait for my children to do something stupid.

Zombies and Freezer Cleaning

2008-06-25T13:52:00.000-07:00

Well, we have less than 72 hours left here in the Midwest metropolis of St. Louis, and I am holding up surprisingly well. I have put a moratorium on packing because there are so many boxes piled all over my house that I can't figure out what to do. And, all these boxes are stressing my dog out so much, he is licking all the fur off of his body and developing nervous twitches, so I am chasing him with a broom and dustpan to scoop up the chunks of hair. Don't feel too sorry for him, though, because my guilt about him is being assuaged with giving him quality dog food. Of course, because I am moving, it means I have to clean out the refrigerator, so he is getting lots of people food, too. However, the hot dog I gave him the other day was clearly past its prime because he took it, started gagging, and threw it down on Bunny's art project. She was not pleased. And, the kids are not digging this move, either, mainly because Mommy is only coming in one form - SCREAMING mommy. I wake up freaked out, and it only escalates through the day. And, then, the poor little puppies come and mention the fact they are hungry/thirsty, and I SCREAM, "Can't you take care of it yourself?" In addition to the main food groups of pretzels, apple sauce, vanilla wafers, and canned beans which they can serve themselves, they now pour their own drinks. The other day, my four-year-old climbed up on a cabinet, got a cup, opened the fridge, and poured himself some milk. He was pleased about all of it except the half gallon of soymilk on the floor, but it did remind me that they are not Brazilian street kids and I shouldn't expect them to fend for themselves all the time. Hubby dear is not very excited about my cooking offerings, "What do you mean you don't want Andouille sausage, sweet potato fries, egg rolls, and potato latkes for supper? They are all in the freezer, aren't they? Who cares if they match or cause indigestion?"

So, we have been having a sleeping issue around here lately. The main one is my kids are reading books that are too sophisticated for them, which is resulting in them being freaked out about stuff. For example, do you children worry about Minotaurs? Revenants? Mine do, because they have been reading too many fantasy stories lately. I told my children that zombies are afraid of salt, so Bunny coated her bed with salt and Monkey Boy uses a shaker as his comfort item during sleep. Now, a neighbor who I normally adore, mentioned that salt is not effective for all zombies, so I will have to figure out what to do about the other types. I can't make fun of them, though, because I slept with a foot long, glow-in-the-dark crucifix for two years. And my mother took me to see Amityville Horror when it came out (I was in third grade), and just in case you don't remember, the little girl had an imaginary friend named Lucy who turned out to be a demonic pig. Guess what my imaginary friend's name was? Lucy. That is right. I was then convinced that Satan was personally after me and if I missed one Sunday School session, he was coming in my bedroom window to steal my soul. I was hoping the crucifix worked on both demons and vampires. Zombies weren't a concern, but I have also never seen a zombie movie because I tend to absorb new fears visually.

Off to pack!

Oh, to have a Valium prescription

2008-06-18T20:21:00.000-07:00

Went to Mississippi again. Managed to make it down in, oh, 10 hours. Mom asked to see the kids, and as she had cared for my dog for the past month, I decided to humor her and drag them along. What I learned - the piercing whine of, "I have to pee," is even worse than the one complaining of "how long, I am hungry, I hate this song, I am bored, X hit me." And the great thing is, it can go on for many exits. It is amazing how a kid that doens't have to pee at one exit, has to pee once you get on the on ramp and you have to get off at the next one. Well, this got tiresome after oh, 100 miles into the 350 mile trip, so the whine changed to, "Why CAN'T I have anything to drink? I can see the bottle RIGHT THERE. Please, please, please pass me some. I promise to not have to pee if you just let me have one little drink."

When I was in high school, my father was stationed at the United States Military Academy. My parents' divorce wasn't great, but my mother always had no problem with visitation. Basically, one week after school finished, I was sent to Daddy to return one week before school started. They never bothered with holidays/weekends. West Point, NY, 4,000 cadets and me. True, they all left soon after I arrived, but for a few glorious days, it was me and a bunch of men in uniform moving in formation. I loved it, and because of these trips, my accent is not as thick as is used to be. Anyway, I remember after one of these visits, when I returned home, I realized something. New York City radio stations NEVER talk about "pork belly futures". And they never advertise herbicides, fungicides, or insecticides. And no one ever wore a baseball hat advertising seed companies. And, most importantly, no one got to watch this on a regular basis:

crop dusting

I am so immune to them that I didn't even notice until the kids yelled about the crashing plane.

Mississippi isn't perfect, but I realize that one way it is totally in my skull is I only relax in places that are completely flat. And Mississippi definitely doesn't look like this:

Sirens

Why? Well, water doesn't flow in Mississippi. It slides. And there isn't one freaking rock in that state that wasn't brought in from somewhere else. Our gulf coast beach was imported because there are no rocks nearby to make sand.

Our water looks like this:

swamps

or like this:

Catfish ponds

Just so you know, they typically drive a tractor around the pond spraying dogfood in there and the lake looks like it is alive.

Because I am obsessed with beauty pageants a bit right now, I have to tell you a story about one. Growing up, watching beauty pageants was a ritual for me. Loved them. But then one year, Miss Mississippi was in the finals, and her question was about her unusual hobby. It was grappling. Drawing a blank? Here is an instructional video. Skip about 3 minutes in.

Fishing Mississippi style

Oh, and it is flooding a bit in Greenville, too.

floods

The guy doing this is the most irritating person I have seen awhile, but it has some good images of Mississippi.

Delta video

We are going to be moving and I think it is possible I will ignore this blog even more than I have been lately.

The Perfect Boy Birthday Party and a Circus

2008-06-09T12:42:00.001-07:00

Monkey Boy just had his 9th birthday party. I will not be a mother who says that time flies because I honestly have no memory of life before my kids. I am not sure if there is a relation to the amount of bourbon that went down in the years before the kids, but I don't remember a pre-mother identity. Monkey Boy invited 7? 8? masses? of boys for a Construct/Destruct birthday party. First of all, the boys were given a huge pile of cardboard boxes, a bunch of tape, and told to just use it for whatever. This went well for about 45 minutes, then it degenerated into a free-for-all that involved screaming at the sisters, violence, and water guns. After they were completely soaked, they were given electonics and their very own screwdrivers (love dollar general - a whole set for a buck) and told to figure out how things work. For some, it involved smashing, for others, it was systematic organization of screws and reducing it to the smallest parts. They didn't learn a dang thing, but I now have lost of toxic electronic parts to figure out what to do with them. All in all, it was by far the cheapest part ever. Monkey Boy and his compatriots were busy for 2 solid hours and I didn't have to deal with people in stuffed suits giving me bad pizza.

Yesterday the big two and some friends and I went to the circus. I haven't been to the circus in forever, mainly because I take a hard stance against performing wild animals. I don't mind dogs doing tricks, but I don't think that elephant really wants to stand on that ball. This circus had dogs, horses, and goats, and all the animals looked happy. And, it had the Flying Wallendas! My mom used to tell me about the Flying Wallendas and their gruesome fall, so I was all pumped to see them. And they have a VERY ATTRACTIVE batch of genes. And if you put ANYONE on a trapeze, I will watch. I still mourn the loss of Circus of the Stars and Erik Estrada being shot out of a cannon, and I would watch it again if it came back. They had a fantastic clown (who was a Wallenda cousin), and St. Louis has a local circus school and those kids are professional. These kids can jump onto the back of a moving horse, jump rope on the back of said horse, etc. I was wishing I had stuck my kids in it because then I could live through them. They have exercise classes for adults. Can you imagine crunches on a trapeze. The pain...The kids' favorite act was this man who could juggle his children with his feet. Seriously. He is like a sixth generation foot juggler, and I am not sure Monkey has plans for college anymore. It was great.

Off to Mississippi tomorrow morning. No storms forcasted. No illnesses. Just a dog pickup. This time I plan to count the dead armadillos. I am betting I hit 100.

I Get To Be the Fried Chicken Queen!

2008-06-04T19:40:00.000-07:00

So, two of my favorite books about the south are Queen of the Turtle Derby by Julia Reed, the head writer at Vogue and who also happens to be from my home town, and the Sweet Potato Queen's Book of Love by some lady from Jackson whose name I am blanking at the moment. Anyway, both of these women love the concept of getting to be a queen and wear a tiara, especially if you can do it for something stupid or give it to yourself. Now, not to degrade those women out there who are former beauty queens, Mardi Gras presentees, or debutantes, but DANG. Y'all just didn't pick the right events. I want to share with you REAL beauty queens. And check out their tiaras. Why would you WANT to be Miss America? She gets just a crappy, one-tier tiara, not like these gorgeous pieces of hair fluff. I am just not sure if I would really want to be a sawmill or meat pie queen.

Queens

And the funny thing is, most of these women are actually attractive. But how can you use "Cracklin Queen" on your resume? Yes, I was the queen of deep fried pig skin, and she didn't even get a CROWN. No sparkles, either. I bet she didn't have any real competition. I remember one time I was in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania, for the summer and I happened to be at their county fair watching the beauty pageant, and well, some of those young ladies looked like they fell face first off the back of a tractor, and their gowns had NO SPARKLES. If you don't like shiny stuff, don't try to be a beauty queen. Go for the fluffiest sheep award. Beauty queens must have shiny stuff, good posture, no fat flipping over the top of their underwear, and really, really good hair. And colored eye shadow. Yet another example of how the South doesn't need to rise again since we are already far above other parts of the nation in our beauty queen training. Can you imagine asking someone in say, Idaho, about beauty pageant advice? Now, as I peruse these queens, I find it hard to pick which one I am most jealous of, so I would love if you would put in my comment box which crown you want to claim, or if you are male and so inclined, who is your favorite. Thanks to the blog Deep Fried Kudzu for sending me to these lovely girls.

And I was having a pretty good day today, until my husband pointed out that my yeast allergy prevents me from drinking beer. Oh, well, at least there was not an allergic reaction to grapes.

Time to learn the Baltics!

2008-06-02T15:01:00.000-07:00

You aren't supposed to freak out over Lithuania. It is the other two - Estonia and Latvia. Here is the Estonia link on Youtube and the Latvian link is the pirates on the right. I still have the pirate song embedded in my brain.

Estonia

I am starving here. Right before I left, in yet another visit with the snake venom doctor, I gave up a gallon of blood for allergy tests. The results were available when we came back, and it will be possible to eat, but the fun is gone. The foods I am allergic to and can eat no more than twice a week: yeast (no more bread, pretzels, etc.), bananas, garlic, dairy. I have to give immediately and forever more - rice. Rice is considered a hypoallegenic food, but I know for a fact that it makes me feel like a run-over armadillo whenever I eat it. I always assumed it was the accompanying beans. And, if I trust my new internet knowledge, rice can be a scary one to have because from one exposure to the next, you can go from gut cramps to anaphylactic shock (or however you spell that word). And all I want in the whole wide world is a piece of cheese toast. I know it could be worse - I could be allergic to pickles, or wheat, or soy, or nuts, or (ahem) mayonnaise, but dang, it is making life complicated. I had no idea that yeast was in so much stuff. And rice. I love food labels.

Guess where I am going this week? Mississippi to pick up Pete, the wonder dog. He has been shedding all over my mother's place of abode and rearranging pillows, and even though she knows he is awfully darn cute, she is sick of his hair in her food. Joy, joy, joy another eight hours in the car.

Oh! I am planning the best birthday ever for monkey boy. It is called the Build and Destroy Party. I originally had visions of wood and nails, but I have modified it to duct tape and cardboard. The boys are going to be given their own personal roll of duct tape, and a huge pile of cardboard boxes, a couple of pair of scissors, and then be ignored for 45 minutes. When they finish their peacefully, team-organized, masterpiece, they will each receive their own set of screwdrivers ($1 at dollar tree) and a Goodwill appliance that they can spend the next part of the party taking apart and maybe? putting back together. And Monkey doesn't even want a cake. He wants an ice cream bar. I am loving this party. Whenever I show up at a business to beg for boxes, I always find a man, tell him the theme, and he happily starts looking for cardboard. Nothing like endorsed destruction and creativity combined to get the testosterone pumping. And, just because I am clearly nuts, Monkey is getting his own personal pocket knife because he wants to take up whittling. His sister is already ordering furniture for her doll house, and he agrees to provide it.

Boo's cute quote of the day, in response to "where do all these kisses come from?" My stomach is just full of them, and I have to give some away.

Regardless of what my husband thinks or my own children's opinions, they are living with my forever. Well, that is not true. My first "run away" threat happened today. Monkey got mad at me when I told him he couldn't read a book until he did his schoolwork, and so I was labeled as MEAN, and he was leaving. I remember doing this to my mother, and she packed my suitcase with roller skates, but Monkey boy only made it to the tree in front of our house. He came back later and said he didn't run because he was too hungry. If it was always so easy. The funny thing is, his sister who generally considers him to be a boil on the butt of humanity, was in tears and went searching for him. She was appalled that I just kept eating my yeasy, cheese, and rice free hotdog and was not properly distraught.

Egad.

2008-05-29T15:11:00.000-07:00

WE'RE BACK!!! As much as I hate to admit it since I went to neither the donkey park nor the banana museum (which I sadly think is no more, but I still wish I had their banana weathervane), I would actually rank this as trip #2 in terms of okayness. The other would be our wedding. However, we did have to get there. We are such rule abiders, so we rushed to get to the airport two hours in advance, only to be told that our flight had been delayed by four hours. Arrive in Newark, to be met by the lovely representative, who told us that we were not, in fact, going to Amsterdam, but instead to Portugal, where we would have an extra 6 hour layover. I was already so tired I could weep. Fortunately, the three little melons slept significant portions of the trip, so they were revved and ready to go in Lisbon. We paid a jillion dollars to store our luggage temporarily, and took the bus into town where we walked around. Lisbon is lovely, but there is only one direction - up. The whole time I was there, I kept thinking about Candide, the French novel, which is the only source of knowledge that I have about Lisbon, and that was "the best of all world" during the earthquakes. Lots of tiled houses which were pretty. Same ice cream they sell in Germany.

Arrive in Germany in time for the two hour drive to our rental house. By the time we get there, Monkey Boy has gone into slightly psychotic exhaustion mode where he is unable to stop talking or moving. Finally, at 2 o'clock a.m. after almost 24 hours of travel, the angels slept. However, Boo showed up literally with the sun at 4 a.m. to tell us the day had started since the sun was now awake. I immediately changed from like to dislike of our house since none of the rooms where the children slept had curtains so they were all early birds. I quickly taught them how to turn on the TV and what channels would teach them how to speak Telly Tubby German.

We stayed at that house for a week then moved to the farm. The farm was run by two delightful people, Rolf and Antje. The only bad thing I can say about this place is that it caused us to have to be decontaminated on the way back (nasty little box on the customs declaration about did you touch farm animals?). Basically, that meant those people that are gaurding us against food terrorism had to wash every pair of shoes we owned, which meant I had to pull all of our used underwear out of them where they were shoved in the nether, unreachable regions of our suitcases. Gak.

Monkey Boy has found his calling. He can milk goats like a shepherd. Bunny was indifferent to it, she was much more into mixing the feed for the horses, pigs, chickens and goats. I have discovered that I am totally and completely allergic to goats. Can't go near them. The people who run this farm don't actually raise any of these animals for meat. They have pigs because they are sweet. The pigs were kind of cute. Hairy little buggers, though, and I think I am going to have to rethink my intense relationship with bacon. Boo was all about the collecting of eggs. Bunny fell off the pony, but got back on. We rode repeatedly in the scoop of a tractor.

And, the miracle of miracles, it didn't rain in Germany. This is like saying there is no sand in Saudi Arabia. It just is an impossibility. We actually went to the beach and Bunny played in the Baltic Sea, something I have still failed to do. The best thing about the no rain thing though is the snails were not out. You know how Indiana Jones hates snakes? And how Winston in the novel 1984 sold out to keep the rats and mice away? That is me and snails. Actually, it is more broad. It is me and snails, slugs, moray eels, leeches, ticks, etc. If it would keep the slugs from coming closer, and I was in a lifeboat type situation, I would totally throw my husband out of the boat to keep them away. Last summer while camping, the boys were playing in a creek. Boo stood up and Monkey said, "What are those black things?" I started screaming at hubby dear to fix this situation now, but he pointed out that he had a flicker of flame after 45 minutes of puffing, and those leeches could just suck his youngest dry. Monkey calmly turned around, got a stick and started flicking. He got a gift as a result, because I would have just thrown Boo into the van and driven in search of a park ranger rather than touch a leech. There is nothing in the world that makes me happier than killing snails. If I was a Jainist (I think those are the ones who say you have to keep your mouth shut so you don't accidentally ingest a gnat?), I would definitely be bumped down a few levels during each reincarnation. I will pour big jars of salt on the tiniest little slug, sacrifice a premium beer for drowning, etc. Slugs keep me from farming.

The worst part of going to Germany this summer was I didn't take the right books. Usually I pack a pile of mindless drivel, but this time I took National Book Award winners. Yeah, whatever, I was begging for money to buy 10 dollar Time magazines by day 3. I did manage to read 1 quality book while I was there. It was called Gilead, and it did win the National Book Award, and it was beautiful. It got to the point that I was underlining stuff because the language choices were so perfect. I started a novel by Neil Gaiman, which I think would be classified as fantasy, and I had not read anything in that genre since age 15. I did this primarily because my friend Adrienne is such a big fan, and he appears in her dreams, and he is definitely hotter than any of my world leaders (Note to self - be grateful that Angela Merkel, the German leader, has failed to appear).

But since I had no lowbrow books, I had to watch lowbrow TV. One night my husband stayed to visit with his family, the kids went to sleep, and I watched 3 straight hours of MTV. I discovered that MTV no longer plays videos. Instead, I became deeply engrossed in the lives of Tila Tequila and Bret Michaels, both of whom should be forced to have sterilizations to protect the world. However, I also learned that Germany should never, ever criticize American culture. At one point, before I embraced my reality TV loving self, I counted 4 channels where people were singing folk songs (in drindels!), 2 where they were talking about music, 2 where they were teaching you how to plant stuff, and a bunch of handball. MTV was logical at this point.

Now the highlight of my trip was, hands down, the Eurovision contest. For all the non-Europeans out there, imagine watching American Idol tryouts where those folks are the finalists. I will never, ever judge the Miss America pageant harshly again. The basic premise is all the countries in Europe send the best from their country to compete. This has resulted in the discovery of ABBA, Katrina and the Waves (Walking on Sunshine). However, it is telling that in 53 years, those are the only two names worth remembering. Out of the 43 countires that tried out, 26 get to be in the final. Italy and Austria have decided to retain some dignity and decline to participate. However, every time a former Soviet bloc breaks up, then you get a bunch of new guys. Here were my favorites:

http://www.eurovision.tv

Pay particular attention to the eliminees, Lithuania and Ireland. Turkey puppets!

Bosnia

Can't believe I missed the chicken the first time around.

Spain

Azerbijan

France

And the French had a problem with the fact he didn't sing in French.

The ones that made me not beat my head repeatedly on the floor:

Greece

Ukraine

and the guy who won. Don't get the ice skating part, but the director of Billboard thinks he might be American's first Russian superstar. You have been warned.

Russia

They did these weird introductions before each country. I think the guy is David Archueleta on methamphetamine.

I have to go now, but just type in Eurovision on youtube and you get those other lovelies like Iceland and Romania.

Enjoy.

Not here for awhile

2008-05-07T18:00:00.000-07:00

In case you perambulate by here on occasion, I just wanted to let you know that we are off to visit the in-laws for almost 3 weeks day after tomorrow. Yes, it is Germany. Yes, it is beautiful. However, this is probably the 12th time I have been there, and well, we have done it all, multiple times. This is also the first time we will be traveling with Daniel when he has opinions, so it is not going to be fun. Last time over the ocean, I watched a penguin video 8 times. And, he won't eat any of the food, and he is one of those obnoxious kids who can't stop opening and closing the trays. However, we are diaper free this time. Back to the boredom of Eutin. It is to the point that I get excited when Saturday versus Wednesday market comes because the olive man comes on Saturday. My husband's family lives in THE MOST BORING PLACE IN GERMANY. You have to drive 2 hours to get to something even remotely what any German would consider worth seeing. Yes, there is a beach 20 minutes away, but you have to pay to go on it, and I just finished shoving our winter coats into the suitcases. I pack wool socks and hats for summer vacation. Stefan's family has had a very "sick" year, so we will be doing lots of supportive listening. Well, Stefan will do that. I will sit there with a look of bafflement on my face. It is kind of funny because just like Americans do to non-English speakers, his dad sometimes thinks if he just says it LOUDER I will understand. Nope, I am pretty clueless even if you shout at me. I can promise that I will come back 5 pounds fatter. My mother-in-law could saute dogfood, and you would ask for seconds. However, this IS the year that I am going to demand to go to the donkey amusement park and the banana museum. They are the only two things left. We have been through the U-Boat, seen the mummified bog people, visited the zoo in Hamburg a billion times, etc. And, aren't I lucky? We will be there in time for herring season. My joy overwhelms me. However, we will also be there for strawberry season, which is worth the plane ticket price. German strawberries are so amazing, and they taste nothing like the ones you buy here. And, last but far from least, we will be staying at a farm part of the time. Isabel has already announced that she plans to ask if she can muck a stall, and apparently, Daniel wants to learn how to "pick eggs." There is also a litter of baby pigs, so here is your German word for the day. A piglet is a Ferkel in German. Try to make sure you use it in a sentence properly. See you in 20 days or so.

Outrunning Tornadoes and Classy Weddings

2008-05-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I went to Mississippi again last weekend, and, of course, it can't be just a trip down and back. I was helping my mother do the finishing touches of moving into an apartment, so she ran me ragged. First I had to get there though! On the way down, I had to drive through 7 hours of thunderstorms. I love, love, love bad weather. A good time for me is the Weather Channel and one of their programs like Killer Storms. Me and a bunch of tornado videos equals a great time. Every time a hurricane comes, I immediately want to go and watch. At least until Katrina. I went to the MS Gulf Coast about a month after Katrina and the devastation was so overwhelming, I was glad that I didn't have to actually be in a hurricane. Hurricanes are exciting, but not nearly so much as tornadoes. My mother has this tornado fixation, too, and she has told me tornado stories my whole life. My very first memory of my paternal grandparents is them telling me to stop laughing because we were all hiding behind a door. In MS, older houses are built off the ground as "air conditioning," and as a result, don't have foundations. I think this no foundation problem is what makes trailers so deadly, so basically we were in the house equivalent of a trailer. The tornado supposedly went through the back yard, destroyed an out building, and managed to lay a full grown tree horizontally across the front porch without damaging the roof. My mom tells another story about when I was young child and I slept through a tornado that spun our car around a few times in the road. Don't remember that one, but I do remember the elementary school tornado drill that turned serious. In MS, you do tornado drills like others do fire drills. This means you go out to the hall, tuck your head between your knees, put your arms across your head. You do it three or four times a year. In second grade, we had a huge storm, during which we did a tornado "drill." We were just all sitting and chatting, when all of a sudden, the teachers started yelling at us, telling us "Heads down NOW!" A bit of befuddlement among the kids, but instant 150 kids sobbing hysterically when the teachers assumed the position. Teachers NEVER did the drill. We were a mass of screaming, sobbing babies wanting our mamas. The tornado came about 8 miles away, but it was still pretty scary. My other tornado memory is my mother sticking me in a half bath with a bird, a cat, and a full-grown Labrador. I stood on the sink,holding the cage over my head, while the cat and the dog attacked each other. My mom stood outside and watched

Then the trip last Friday. I am driving down the road in this blinding rain, bobbing along, when I decide I should maybe listen to the weather on the radio. The people on the radio are freaking out about this tornado that they were sure was already on the ground and approaching a F3 level (this is not good since F5 is the tops). It was in some place called Earle,Arkansas. I had no idea where Earle was, but I was pretty sure it was ahead of me in that scary, dark cloud. I start calling everyone I know asking them to find Earle for me. Of course, no one is home, except my dear friend, Elsie, who is quite happy being computer ignorant. She finds Earle, the mile marker I am at, and says it is about 10 miles ahead. I figure it is moving away, so I am somewhat consoled except for the freaked out weather woman on the radio saying, "It is completely enshrouded in rain, so you won't be able to see it coming. Wind has hit 125 miles per hour. SEEK SHELTER NOW." Elsie, meanwhile, it saying, "You need to pull off at a gas station and seek shelter." I am feeling a little rattled, so I start yelling back, "There are no expletive, expletive, expletive shelters around here. It is a bunch of COTTON FIELDS AND DOUBLE WIDES. I DON'T EVEN HAVE A DITCH TO HIDE IN." After I practice yoga breathing for awhile, I start to calm down. Until I look to my right and this is what I see.

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I can't get it to link, so you will have to cut and paste. Now, I am going WAY over the speed limit, and I keep looking and I keep thinking, That is so not a tornado landing in that field about 100 yards from me. Then I realize that yes, in fact, that cloud is spinning, and it is coming down in a point. I tell Elsie (I think it was her I was screaming at at this point), "Oh, there is a tornado pulling out the cloud exactly to my right." "SEEK SHELTER!!!!" Now, the only thing that keeps me from completely freaking out is the fact my dog who is sitting beside me continues to nap. I figure his doggie danger internal warning system would warn me if death was imminent. Apparently, he wasn't worried except for the fact my yelling at Elsie was preventing deep sleep. Even if you were agnostic, you would have been praying at this point. I had no idea my van could go that fast, but I figured that until it touched the ground, I had a chance. I have never been so scared in all my life, including during childbirth, my wedding,and all amusement park rides.

Speaking of weddings, I went to one in MS. It was, of course, beautiful. Now, I must accept the fact that I am old. People whose diapers I changed are now going on honeymoons. All through high school, I babysat the Myers girls. There were four of them, all visions of loveliness. Their mother, Katherine, was everything I wanted to be when I grew up. Skinny, blond, a tennis player, a great mom, classy. She took me in and loved me all the way through high school. In fact, it was my original plan in high school and college to name my first daughter after her. Sorry, Katherine. Between the Myers girls and the Scerra girls for whom I was a nanny, I had basically never babysat a boy. So, when Monkey Boy popped out and he came with dangly parts, I was clueless. It is probably why he is such an odd, wonderful little duck. He is a boy, and I have no advice or insights to offer him. It will probably serve him well in the long term by keeping him out of therapy. So, Myers girl#3 got married this weekend. She married into a famiy that seems to be equally lovely (the kids are all attractive), she seems happy, etc. Marin, Myers girl #3, was always the "smart" one and the "quiet" one (the others were smart, too, but it wasn't as easy for them), and I was a bit surprised she was the first one to settle down. Now, the only way Marin will ever weigh 100 pounds is if she had quadruplets and develops gestational diabetes. She is just an itty bitty, little thing. Now, her sisters and family love her, but they managed to forget to feed and water the poor darlin all day, and on your wedding day nutrition seems so irrelevent. So, the sweet thing just swooned smack dab in the middle of the ceremony, and hubby got to be Prince Charming before the "I dos" were finished. Poor thing. One sister (her maid of honor) stood there thinking, "I wish she would hurry up and pass out and get this over with." One of the other sisters "helped" by positioning the bridesmaids so at least we couldn't see the passed out little angel. All of them say she could get out of this if she so desired because she clearly was not able to be focused during the ceremony. Her mother said we need to hurry and put it on You Tube. Now this sounds kind of awful, but I hope my children love each other as much as the Myers girls love each other and their Mama loves them. Except for the fainting bride bit, it was a beautiful wedding. I got to be "cake girl" which delighted me, despite my long standing derision of that position. I always thought of it as the job you offered your ugly cousin/great aunt/college roommate unworthy of being a bridesmaid. I was totally happy.

So, now the chaos begins. We leave for Germany on Friday for a long overdue visit with Stefan's family. They have struggled a bit over there with health stuff, and it is nice to know that our arrival is viewed as a big old spot of sunshine on a cloudy day. We are not staying at Honey's parents' house for the first time, and are instead renting two different houses. I googled vacation homes and sent some links to hubby. One ended up being the house of his childhood best friend, so he will already know where everything is stored since it still has the same furniture. The other place for the later part of the trip is a farm. It will be Baby Boo's perfect vacation - they have ponies, chickens, baby pigs, and a rooster named Jakob. I think we will have a nice time, and I will eat my mother-in-law's beautiful, beautiful cakes.

The trip back was fine except for the billion years it seemed to take. Then, at 11:00, hubby dear called and told me that a dear, dear friend in Knoxville had been killed. Shanti had been Bunny's babysitter when she was tiny. Her husband is a coworker of hubby's, and Shanti used to babysit Isabel while I pretended to learn German. Bunny would eat a full meal, then walk into her house, climb up in the high chair and sit there with an open mouth like a baby bird until Shanti shoved some lentils and rice in the gullet. She and her husband were out for an evening stroll, walking across a cross walk, when she was hit by a driver who "didn't even see her." I am just stunned, and I can't imagine how her family is coping. Her husband was missed by 6 inches. Shanti was a tiny little thing, so I can see how she might not have been seen, but there were 2 people there! Shanti never learned to speak good English, so I finally told her to speak Hindi with Bunny. Bunny was never a big talker as a young child. In fact, I am convinced the reason she learned to talk is so she could order Monkey Boy around. She would walk up and say a word, "Elephant" "Blueberry" "construction worker" and never say it again. Now, one day when I went to pick her up at Shanti's house, she was just jabbering a way. I thought it was baby babble, but Shanti was clearly responding to her. I finally said, "Is she saying something?" Shanti says, "Oh, yes, she is telling me all about the birds on teh feeder." She had never said a sentence to me, but she is CONVERSING in Hindi? Now, I had a party trick. We would stick Bunny in the middle of the room, and I would tell her to do stuff in English, her father in German, and Shanti in Hindi, and she would do it. It was enormously entertaining. Of course, we complicated it further by moving to Sweden and sticking her in Swedish preschool. It is all good because she supposedly has a unique form of dyslexia that doesn't influence her ability to read, but is enough that it will supposedly prevent her from learning foreign languages. Clearly a faulty test. Shanti loved my children as her own, and I can't believe she is gone. I will miss her.

Later

Scary People in Uniforms

2008-04-26T19:33:00.000-07:00

So, tomorrow the tribe and I are going to go and watch a WWII reenactment. Let me tell you - the tribe is NOT excited, except for the female general and the second oldest of the troops. He is excited about the MOVING TANKS. That are going to shoot off BIG BANGS. We hope. We went to another WWII reenactment in Oak Ridge, TN, a year ago, and it didn't have tanks. It did have people dressed up in German uniforms running around shouting "Schnell! Schnell! Achtung!" (Fast, fast, watch out!). We were quite well placed since we got to see the captured American soldiers escape. Tomorrow will be more exciting because there will be British, Germans, Italians, Americans, Canadians, and RUSSIANS. Oh, the joy of it all. Lots of loud bangs and cursing in multiple languages. The girl recruit is desperately trying to get ill or find anywhere else to be.

I am embarrassed to admit how much I love these reenactments. I wouldn't plan a trip around it, but I would make sure that it is included in my options. I love to watch people make bullets, tan hides, rotate a possum on a spit. I drug the kids a few years ago to see a French and Indian War reenactment, and girl soldier FREAKED OUT. Maybe it was the 20 or so Native American reenactors that suddenly ran towards her half naked waving guns and tomahawks. A few years ago (well, let's say 18?), I was on a college field trip. We had been to Rodney, MS, which is another place that has a lot of freak lines radiating out from it. It is a ghost town. Like streets and banks and stores and churches and graveyards with empty caskets lying open in it. It is very, very weird. Eudora Welty wrote about, as did Rick Bass, and it is well worth the side trip if you are ever lost on the Natchez Trace in South Mississippi. Anyway, a bunch of my classmates were driving back, and for some unknown reason, we were passing the only (I think) nuclear power plant in Mississippi. We were looking for a picnic spot, and there is a state park there. Anyway, as we drive by, a man in full Confederate calvary comes charging over the bank at the side of the road on a big old horse, followed by a bunch of screaming men in gray uniforms. It was definitely surreal, but sort of what you would expect after a day in Rodney. So, we set around eating our sandwiches, watching the Confederates lose the first of many skirmishes leading up to Vicksburg.

So, in the past year or so, I have found out quite a bit about my relatives up the family tree. I could be a Daughter of the Confederacy through 3 of the 4 grandparent branches, and the 4th, I could probably get in because he was the county slave-catcher for Clarksdale, MS. I double checked that one on my trip down South in January, and it was right there in the library. Yuck. Anyway, one of my (four?) great -grandfathers joined up before the war even started, and within a couple of months, my second great-whatever-grandfather had joined him. The two of them fought all the way through the war and pretty much hit every major battle in TN and Georgia. One of them was captured 3 times! and escaped 3 times! He also managed to be at the surrender in Appamatox, which in Southern confederate history, if you care at all about it, is a VERY BIG DEAL. This is verified, too, because I went to a teacher's convention in Columbia, TN. In Columbia, if you have a daughter so inclined and you register the day the opportunity opens, she can go and learn to dance the waltz, learn the language of fans, etc., and literally learn to be a southern belle. And at this convention, we went on a progressive dinner, which was quite fun. Wine and cheese at James K. Polk's house, then on somewhere else forgettable, to the main course at the headquarters of the SONS OF THE CONFEDERATE VETERANS NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS. It may have been the Sons of the Confederacy. Both exist, but I am too lazy to figure out which one this was. I can not even begin to tell you how wrong this was. They have a dixie flag flying outside, but they did at least put it below the American Flag. The part that I found really weird is the planners thought this was okay. Memphis, TN, sent the largest contingency of ESL teachers, and they were predominantly minority. I remember this Memphis teacher in front of me, saying, "You have got be kidding." when we pulled up. The headquarters were nice, the hosts lovely, but it was such a shrine. All the pictures on the wall of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, JEB Stuart, etc. Anyway, back to my family. I told the president that I thought I had relatives who fought in the Civil War, and so he plugged in his last name into his database, and presto! I had a list of everything this man had done for all 4 years of the war. The funny thing is, my family apparently didn't own any slaves. Or at least the ones who fought didn't. I guess they were very committed to States Rights', which many people have told me was the REAL reason the war was fought. I try not to repetitively bang my head when that conversation starts.

Baby Boo, who like his siblings, has decided that he will sleep with his mommy the year he is four, told me yesterday, with a tone of great world weariness, "Mommy, I think I am going to be a baker. I am going to make pies, and cakes, and cookies, and MUFFINS. CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFINS." I asked him if wanted to work in a zoo, but, "No, I think it is best that I am a baker." Where did he learn this way of speech? Bunny, who has long struggled with her apathy towards sports, has suddenly decided that she is a soccer star. This has made her immediately younger brother decide that she might have value in his world, as long as she understands that she will never be as good as him. He has also proven that hell CAN freeze, because he has finally decided it is time for a haircut. This is his first one since last September.

Oh, I decided that the snake venom isn't working. it is just masking the giant, throbbing infection that is my brain.

Playing my Favorite MInd Game.

2008-04-23T14:37:00.000-07:00

So, you know that "what if" game you play with yourself sometimes? "What if I had another baby?" "What if I dyed my hair blonde?" "What if we went to Pensacoula insted of Destin?" kind of game? Well, this is my very, very favorite game. Except I like to add a twist, to make it more 6 degrees of Separation like. I like to imagine how events completely out of my control change my life. For example, here is my favorite. A friend of mine, Shelley (she gets to keep her name - she has never embarrassed herself in my presence that I can use to lord it over her for decades to come), considered changing schools our sophmore year in college to go to some place in Ohio or somewhere. Anyway, she ultimately didn't, and she and I roomed together our junior and senior years and various other times since. Now, when Shelley was making this decision, we were just "hallmates." Fellow battlers of giant cockroaches. These are MS cockroaches. As long as your middle finger. They make noises when they move. And I think they fly. They are actually waterbugs, but they look like roaches. Shelley killed one in her hair once, and I can't think of anyone braver on the planet. I would have been psychotic. Back to the story. Shelley did not transfer. After college, she went her way, I mine. I honestly thought we might lose touch, but noooo, we both end up in the Hudson River Valley on a temporary basis. So, the rest of my life is summed up this way,in a phone conversation:

Shelley : What are you going to do next?
Me: I don't know. What about you?
Shelley: I am thinking grad school.
Me: Okay, where are you going?
Shelley: Tennessee. Want to come?
Me: Okay.

I put a lot of thought into my life at that point. But, off to TENN we went, where we lived in a bat cave (basement) where we literally had plants growing out of the carpet and your shoes would get covered in some mildewy substance if you closed the closet doors and the light fixture fell out of the ceiling and we had TWO separate neighbors who were very, very vocal in the amorous adventures. One was a screamer, the other was a headboard banger. It was very, very, very loud. Shelley and I used to sit on my bed and mimic them, but they didn't notice. Kind of drowned each other out. Eventually, I got the worst job of all time, a mathematical technical typist (right above dog euthanizer and cremation boiler cleaner), met Stefan, and well, I am just glad that Shelley didn't go to Oberlin.

So, take a moment and think about how someone else's random choice has changed your life. Kind of cool isn't it? Maybe there is something to that Purpose Driven Life guy. But, I don't think so. He wears Hawaiian shirts and he lives not in Hawaii.

That blog Stuff White People LIke? I pretty much liked it all. They say that white people wear New Balance tennis shoes because of our guilt over child labor Nike shoes. Guess what? That is EXACTLY why I wear only New Balance. They have been stalking me.

The penitentiary educational experience.

2008-04-22T15:53:00.001-07:00

So, now that I am all happy and healthy, I am sort of out of ideas about what to write about, so I thought I would tell you about a field trip from high school that my class went on.

I went to a small (49 in graduating class), non-denominational Christian school. I can honestly say that it was AWFUL. For me, personally, everything was awful about it. I had some good friends, but the education was the pits. I have talked to some classmates since we graduated who don't have the burning hatred that I did/do, but it was a huge waste of my time. I had 4 good teachers in 4 years, 2 of which were science (funny, huh, in a conservative, Christian school?), a math teacher that made Napoleon look mellow, and an UNBELIEVABLY awesome Church History teacher. Basically, after one year with him, history on the college level was a joke. Here is an example of a test from THE POPE (he ruled our lives, the world, etc.). "Tell me about Martin Luther, including history, influences, and impact. Seven pages front and back (handwritten) will PASS you." To this day, I can tell you LOTS about the Protestant Reformation, and I can tell you pretty much how every Protestant denomination evolved. I loved this class, this teacher, this experience.

Anyway, back to my class. We individually weren't bad, but collectively, we were a nightmare. Our poor history teacher, Mrs. Miller, thought it would be a good idea to take a trip to Vicksburg, since it was American History and all. If you ever have seen a PBS show where they show the locusts decimating a field, that is pretty much what the kleptomaniacs did to the gift shop in the Old Courthouse, while the charming Daughters of the Confederacy were naively asking, "May I help you, darling?" OH! And every time a flat surface was found, someone would start breakdancing. History, schmistory. After we returned, our class had any and all future fun opportunities taken away from us, until.... Civics and Government time! The 1-2 punch of junior year. What I took away: Anyone born between 1968-1975 can sing the Preamble to the Constitution thanks to School House Rock, and I don't want to go to prison.

See, that was our last field trip. After you took these classes, the buses were loaded and off to Parchman we went. Parchman was at one time the second deadliest prison in America, barely below angola in Louisiana. And, Mississippi has long been an enthusiastic supporter of the death penalty. Parchman is kind of freaky. It doesn't really have fences around it, nor does it have guard towers. It is smack dab in the middle of probably a 1000 acres of field, and you would have to run a mile in any direction before you could find a lick of cover to hide behind.

So, we roll in. The first thing they do is give us "guides." Your guides in Parchman are all convicted murderers. No arsonists or armed robbers for you.... Anyway, THUMPER gets on the bus, and like a homing pigeon zooms in on the meanest, awfulest boy in our class. this is a boy who caused nightmares and I am still not sure could have been redeemed. So, THUMPER plops down by Andrew (not his name), and says, "Give me your watch." Andrew says, "Expletive, nah." THUMPER says, "Do you remember why I am here? I can take you outside right now and show you how I got my nickname." Thumper gets a new watch. Andrew has a new best friend. Thumper repeatedly tells Andrew that if he ever comes to prison, he would be someone's boyfriend with 10 minutes because he has shown he is weak. I loved Thumper and followed him like a dog all day.

Many of us were somewhat "wild" in the love to party sense, but not wild enough to be prepared for Parchman. We got the full-on show. When we went to Death Row to see the electric chair, we were told to say away from the cells, since the prisoners might decide to use us as target practice. I think the threat of having crap thrown at you should be considered as a form of crowd control. Death Row was awful, quiet, and very, very clean. It is terrible looking at someone you know will die, and probably did something unbelievably awful to deserve it.

Then we were taken to the highest level of lockdown. This was my personal waterloo. Looking down a long row of cells, several stories high, the prisoners banging their food trays, and if, God forbid, you looked at them, the tongue gymnastics you would get! Still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

This was also 1986. AIDS was just really starting to register on the awareness of MS, and it was still in the stage where how you caught it was not completely clear. But they took us to AIDS camp. Prisoners are loosely clustered by crime, unless at the time you were gay. Then you were sent to the gay camp. Ostensibly, this was to protect the prisoners who were gay, but well, I imagine a lot of people came out with AIDS that didn't arrive with it. For me, this was also a surreal experience. Basically, it was pretty easy to grow up in MS and not ever meet anyone who was homosexual. But as soon as we got in this camp, all the prisoners lined up on both sides of the sidewalk, and we basically had to walk the guantlet. The girls were completely safe, but those baseball and football players, they KNEW what future awaited them if they ever came to prison. It was GREAT. Reverse sexism. I know of one classmate, who was a particular favorite because of his round, firm buns, who has completely blocked this whole experience. Fortunately, I reminded him.

Well, after this unbelievable trip, we were loaded up. Andrew got his watch back, but he was actually nice for the 2 hours it too to return. I wouldn't be surprised if that was still a record for the longest period of kindness in his life. Thumper got paroled for good behavior.

So, dear readers, here is my question. Would you let YOUR child/sibling go on a field trip to a prison? I learned a lot, so my kids would TOTALLY have their heinies planted on a seat. Way more informative than a science museum or the zoo. Don't have to worry about the kids you are chaperoning running off, either. And there isn't any gift shop to buy souvenirs.

Oh, wait! Found something funny! A blog called Stuff White People Like. The computer won't let me cut and paste it this moment...

Snakes and Quakes

2008-04-19T17:58:00.000-07:00

So, you would think the sane person would READ about the snake before ingesting its venom. But, remember, I think Herbert Hoover is fantasy material (people, have you LOOKED AT HIM? Looks wise, he is only above Lincoln and Rutherford Hayes, and plumper than both.), so clearly I am not the sharpest stick around. So, after two days of venom, I called the doctor to basically beg for antibiotics because I was in pain equal to what a woman feels right before delivery and she hasn't take a drug. I know this feeling, and I wasn't seeing a "reward" looming on the other side of the fog of pain. The nurse calmly says, "Oh, the venom will intensify all the bad stuff, but it should start kicking in around noon today." Guess what? Approximately 3 hours later, the ball of agony that was the left side of my face dissipated. I was exhausted and promptly took a 3 hour nap, but today I felt good enough to wash dishes. Hubby Dear gave me the biggest smile. He has been positively a saint, which I don't deserve. If you are sick and I didn't give birth to you, then the nursing you will get from me is of the medieval type. Probably better not to receive it since it might make you worse. If you can issue an order like, "I need a barf bucket, a bottle of flat coke and an aspirin," then your needs can be met. If you said, "Rub my back, it might make me feel better," I would ask you what time you wanted your massage scheduled. On the other hand, when I am sick, I expect no care or sympathy from anyone, and if you offer it, I will think you have a hidden agenda.

Anyway, back to my snake venom. So, in a particularly hallucinatory state, I googled the South American bushmaster snake. Here is what I learned. If it bites you, you die. Clearly, I am not dead, but I wonder HOW IN THE WORLD someone figured out that this particularly nasty snake was good for sinus infections on the LEFT side (if it is on the right, I think you get tree bark). And who did they test it on? Did the single aboriginal Bolivian who survived say, "Ah! Remember that pain in my left eye/side of the face? Well, when I regained consciousness and a heartbeat, I wasn't stuffy anymore! I knew my sinus cavities would be better when it felt like someone was driving a stake between my shoulder blades." I am pretty sure that it involved animal testing, but better a rat than me. A woman I know here said, "Oh, you could hand that medicine to a chemist and she couldn't find the venom it is so diluted." So, have I just been faith healed because some perky nurse convinced me that I would be at High Noon? Homeopathy is weird but it seems to have worked (if the 15 hours a sleep a day weren't really the solution), but next time, I want the mold growth known as Penicillin. For the time being, I will just comfort myself that I survived and I didn't do anything to aid the overdiagnosis of antibiotics. I am still loopy. I showed up for a birthday party a week early, can't follow a sitcom plot line, and had to sit on the floor to fold clothes. But, I *think* I am on the way back after 3 weeks of feeling like poo on a biscuit. No, I have no idea what that saying means, but it does evoke how I felt.

Oh, we had an earthquake! Or rather, Southern Illinois had an earthquake, but we got to feel it. This is actually the 3rd earthquake I felt - one in NY, one in TN, and this one, which was definitely the biggest. I woke up and everything was shaking. Darling Hubby jumped out of bed, turned around in circles a few times (literally) and then held on the bed. If felt like it went on forever. The dog had been barking to warn us, but we ignored him. Robbers, take note. Pete only growls at people in uniform, so dress casual. According to a naturalist at the zoo, all the birds were sitting on the ground right before it happened, and the zoo's animals all made distress sounds after the quake ended. Wish I had heard that! I, in my venom/snot/fever state, asked, "Is Boo having a seizure? He is lying on my feet?" Hubby said, "He is on your pillow, Stephanie." You would THINK I would notice someone breathing up my nose from three inches away, but apparently not. I think my 4-year-old can shake a house. It was very, very, very, cool. But clearly with our responses, we would have died in San Francisco.

Oh! I am too lazy to go and find pictuers of the MS River in Greenville right now, but if you google it, and find one, just imagine the river is twice the size it should be. But the levees are holding (I think...)

Snake Venom

2008-04-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

So, one of my big plans for the year I was here in St. Louis was to "live small." You know all that stuff - not shop, buy local and from non-chains, drive less, blah, blah, blah. I AM A FAILURE. First of all, Monkey Boy plays "select" soccer, which requires probably 100 miles of driving a week. Secondly, we chose to live "in the city" because we thought that would make us closer to everything. WRONG. Everything is in the suburbs. So, we have made a huge contribution to the ozone problem.

However, the other way I was going to change things was I was going to wean myself off of medicine. Believe me, if I had cancer, I would be getting chemotherapy. However, for anything less, I decided that I wanted to try all the wacko stuff out there. And I have - alternative types of massage (eh, not really working), acupuncture (that stuff works!), acupressure for Bunny's asthma (I think that works). Anyway, I have a massive sinus infection. I have been sick for 3 weeks, but I finally broke down and went to a doctor. Like a MD. But this guy is a big believer in homeopathy, so did I get a prescription for an antibiotic??? Noooooo. The nurse practictioner and he had this conversation and decided on my treatment. So, I was given a billion tiny pills to take to cure it. I am thinking - "tree bark, ground roots, lizard guts," but no.... I got SNAKE VENOM. POISONOUS snake venom. Of course, it is diluted and refined to the point that a chemist probably wouldn't recognize it, but still, there is a little bit of anxiety when I have to drink my dissolved snake venom. Sip it over 4 hours to be exact. I, of course, promptly bought a bottle of Mucinex to take too. That said, today is the first day that I am not so far beyond miserable, but I can't tell you if it is the bushmaster venom, the mega-doses of Vitamin C, or the 15 hours of sleep I got yesterday. Baby Boo has a double ear infection and Monkey Boy is sick, too, so everyone wanted to nap, so we were always laying down together.

Oh! I imagine most of you don't know about MY steamy dreams. Hubby Dear knows about these dreams and is not threatened AT ALL. Mainly because they are even less realistic than dreams about Antonio Banderas or movie stars. See, my "dream lovers" are always world leaders, usually dead ones. It started with the President of Iran, then the Roman Emperor Claudius showed up and threw him out, then it was John Adams, and now, yet another President. Last night, I broke up with Calvin Coolidge so I could hook up with Herbert Hoover. Egad. I must stop teaching my children history and reading the paper. I am just waiting for Genghis Khan, Henry VIII, Idi Amin, Osama Bin Laden, Dick Cheney....I guess I should be grateful for the ones that HAVE made an appearance because it could be worse.

The American Way of Reading...

2008-04-11T06:23:00.000-07:00

So, once you have a blog, you have to spend time thinking about that blog. I need to remove instead of add things to my life to think about. So, this post may be a bit dull.

Do you ever read something and think, "Wow! This is absolutely amazing and I need to make everyone I know do this, too? Well, I am having 2 of those experiences right now. The first is I am (re)reading the children's book "A Wind in the Door" by Madeleine L'Engle to Monkey Boy. The first book, A Wrinkle in Time, freaked out Bunny, so she refused to participate this time. Boo flops around and I am waiting for him to run through the house shouting "Mitochondria!" Remember those? From Biology? I do, but I have no idea what they do (powerhouses??). Anyway, L'Engle writes the MOST amazing children's books that help kids to think about good and evil, plus they have lots of magic, theology, and big words thrown in. This one seems to be about how you can personally prevent evil from happening, which I think is something all kids should have a good dose of. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Great way to get some quality time with your kids, and if you never read it as a kid, go buy it TODAY.

The second book I am reading is called Persepolis, and it is an adult (not porn, just for grown-ups) comic book that is teaching me all about the Iranian revolution, about which I know SQUAT, but it seems to be a good thing to know since well, it might well be our next war. So, my brain is throbbing from Shah information and what the Islamic revolution was really about. The author/main character is the same age as me, so she really puts into perspective what "wacky" and a "bad" childhood are really about. My experience of the Iranian revolution was that little hostage counter number in the upper left corner above harry Reasoner's head.

Oh! And here is the real point of this post. I have a rather embarrassing confession to make - I am a regular reader of Reader's Digest, and I like it. It is far, far better to read in the bathroom than People Magazine, and you will never, ever be updated on the state of Hollywood's underwear. I have learned a lot from them - the importance of prostrate exams, the way the electoral college works, and 2 months before 9/11, they had a big old article about how Osama Bin Laden was the most dangerous man on the planet. Plus, it has a fairly conservative bent, and I need to have some of that in my life so I can talk to more people about things other than the weather. So, in classic American fashion, I am going to give you the "easy" version of an "easy" magazine - the digested version of REader's Digest for the month of April.

Names your parents didn't give you which proved they actually loved you, unlikethe celebrity parents of these kids: Kal-el, Audio Science, Bluebell Madonna, Daisy Boo, Pilot Inspektor, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily, God'iss Love Stone, Jermajesty. Don't hate your name too much, do you?

Eat dairy products to prevent gum disease, which will help with everything from not getting Alzheimer's to preventing heart attacks.

If you haven't read a book by Kinky Friedman, he is fantastic. One of his titles was Elvis, Jesus, and Coca-Cola (about the three most popular things around). He also had a band in the 70s called Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys. He ran for governor of Texas last year and got over 10% of the vote. Hmmm, maybe he would be fun for vice-president....

Did you know the Lexus LS600 can parallel park itself?

A couple of great quotes:

We pick politicians by how they look on TV and Miss America on where she stands on the issues. Isn't that a little backwards? - Jay Leno

America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy - John Updike

Anyone who believes the competitive spirit in America is dead has never been in a supermarket when the cashier opens another checkout line. - Ann Landers

Things to google - One Laptop Per Child

Mike's Math - teaches you how to do 624 squared in your head.

Sobering thought for the day - 12 million African kids have been orphaned by AIDS alone. America would freak out if we had 1,000.

Great Headlines:

Butte Blast Blamed on Leaking Gas.

State Hires Single Gender School Official (what, there is an active transsexual job market??)

New Yorker Finds Roommate Dead, Second Time in a Year. (Here's betting he lives alone for awhile)

An organization called Room to Read which donates books to 3rd world school libraries.

And, to show that I DO teach patriotism even though I homeschool, this website: operationnationalanthem.com. The other day, I yelled at Alexander because he didn't take off his hat during the national anthem, and he had no idea he was supposed to. So, quick lesson on proper behavior during national anthem. As a side note, the Brazilian national anthem is unbelievably long. They sing ALL the verses, not just the first.

Where I want to go now: Coyote Buttes area of Arizona.

New proof that required a scientific study, but which any person on the street could have told you: Let teenagers start school later (9 as opposed to 7:30, and violence goes down, attendance and grades go up because they have enough rest.)

Want to talk to a "real" person when you call a 1-800 number? Pick the Spanish option - the operators speak English AND they aren't as busy! Woo-woo! Or, even better if you are really mad, call the international the international service number COLLECT. Don't call from your own phone. You may be in their database as a "customer," where someone else's number is a "potential." They want to talk to them more than you! Or, check out www.gethuman.com, which gives you the "number codes" to get to a person. You will be served, madam. Am I not a good friend to you all?

So, my favorite article: What's Your American IQ? I am going to give you the hard quuestions only, not the ones that have to do with Madonna and "culture" icons.

1. Name the four presidents on Mt. Rushmore. Extra credit: What was his major accomplishment?

2. If the United States paid off its national debt today, each citizen would owe his or her Chinese counterpart:

a) $1,362
b) $2,891
c) $4,000

Pick the worst one.

What state drinks the most beer per capita? No, it isn't Missouri or Florida or some Southern state - it is the population mecca that is North Dakota.

Who got to vote first? Black men or white women?

What state has the southernmost, northernmost, easternmost, and westernmost point?? Dont' cheat and use a map.

Would you rather eat scrapple, lutefisk, or johnnycakes? If you know the ingredients, this is an easy one.

And the real challenge, fill in the blanks on the Declaration of Independence (I am surging with patriotism today!!!)

When in the Course of >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> it becomes necessary for one people to >>>>>>>>>> the polical bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the popwers of the earth the seaparate and >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> station to which the >>>>>>>>>>> of >>>>>>>>>>>and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be ___________________, that all men are created ___________, that they are endowed by their ___________________ with certain unalienable _____________, that among these are ___________________, ___________________, and the purusit of ______________________.

Who wrote it? Thomas Jefferson. He was 33 years old. Clearly, I am a patriotic slacker. I did okay on over half, but I was lost in the middle.

Happy day all! I did 100 jumping jacks, 80 sit-ups and over 50 pushups before 6;45 this morning and I NEVER WILL DO IT AGAIN. Unless, it will prevent an alien invasion, save a child's life, or cure cancer. Removing cellulite is no longer a motivation. Have a great day! I think the length of this one gets me out of a couple of days' work.

Good things, bad things...

2008-04-09T11:55:00.000-07:00

So, I am a bit at a loss of things to write about, but then people just start dumping stuff in my lap. First of all, here is my happy thing of the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D85yrIgA4Nk&feature=related

World peace through animals!!!!

Then, my "neighborhood" newspaper arrived. And there was an editorial about homeschooling. Normally, I try to treat this like childbirth, religious faith, and marriage, if you figure out something that works for you, even if it would be the last thing I would ever do, I should probably keep my mouth shut. However, I am busily constructing my soapbox right now.

In case you didn't know this, we are homeschooling the kids. That is a very generous WE. Stefan has assembled a solar system kit for me which somehow has come to include a red plastic elephant. Daniel, our little throbbing brain, said, "That big one is Jupiter!" Huh? Too much Interplanet Janet, clearly.

The primary reason we are doing homeschool this year is because we are living in an area where public schools are not an option. And, as the product to a certain degree of private schools, I will never, ever, ever send my kids to private school if there is another option. So, homeschool it is. For the most part, I have loved it, and the kids seem to be calmer and more balanced than ever. We have had the most amazing discussions about very heavy topics - the meaning of the Preamble, consumerism, failure to vote, why unicorns don't exist, etc. They have been allowed to pursue their own interests, which has resulted in Isabel's obsession with the First Families (particularly, First ladies. We have read every book offered about them in 3 separate library systems. Today, she told me that only one of James Garfield's female children survived to adulthood. I have not verified this.)

Anyway, back to my soapbox. With religion, childbirth, and education, the thing that makes me crazy is when people don't think about it. For me, at least, the easiest choice is rarely the best choice, and I am always happier when I can chew and think about something before I decide to do it. It usually ends up better.

Anyway, back to the editorial: Here is the quote given, which I have NOT verified:

Who said, "A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism, and loyalty to the state."

a) The commissar of education in the former Soviet Union.
b) The minister of education for the government of Communist China.
c) Adolph Hitler
d. Justice H. Walter Croskey of California Court of Appeals.

The answer is d, in case it wasn't obvious. For those of you who might have missed Arnold Schwarznegger pontificating on it, California has recently made it illegal to homeschool if one of the parents doesn't have a teaching license. Failure to comply can result in having your kids' taken away from you. I hope there are more requirements than a dearth of standardized testing, but it isn't clear yet. Anyway, if the quote alone doesn't make you scream, then think about the ramifications of that statement. I know that I personally hope that those 3 elements are not even on my child's teacher's list of top 10. True, I want my children to learn to observe traffic laws, respect the political office even if they don't respect the holder of the office, and not to be ashamed to be an American. What I WANT the schools to teach is reading, writing, and independent thinking. I would argue that they have not done as good a job in those subjects, much less the real things like critical thinking, effective communication, common sense, etc. EGAD. No wonder the schools don't work! Is this judge even aware some of the best leaders we have had never even set foot in school? And they sure weren't being taught those three issues! And the repercussions? Removing a child in placing him/her in foster care is said to be considered the psychological equivalent of being raised by two chronically schizophrenic parents. Parents are CONSTANTLY being held accountable for every ill in society, and parent who choose to home school are clearly not picking the easy path and are taking on extra responsibility. Your kid can't add? Only myself to blame. Ugh. I don't really need anything from you, my beloved friends and readers, except for what you have given me. An opportunity to scream at bureaucracy.

Till then, I feel better.

Environmental Porn

2008-04-08T13:40:00.000-07:00

Egad. Until my friend Laura sent this to me, I never knew such a concept could exist. I consider myself an environmentalist, but it never occurred to me that there were pornographic options involved in saving the planet? I think if the right marketing is done, every single person in Hollywood and every male under age 30? might learn to love trees A LOT MORE.

Here is the link. I have not gone through it completely because the word "adult" freaks me out and I don't want my computer to ever learn about it. So,if it offends, my apologies!

http://www.grist.org/feature/2008/03/28/index.html?source=friend

Oh, exciting news! I get to go to a Mississippi WEDDING in two weeks. It will be nothing like the funeral, I am sure, because I don't have one single funny wedding story, except for Ohio, and that one still makes my skin crawl so I can't tell it yet. All I can say is it has made me terrified of that state and I run from the tourists in the Smoky Mountains. You can spot those from the midwest from afar - they have on new socks and sensible shoes. And hats. They always seem to wear hats. I guess all that wheat/corn farming has made them deeply aware of the sun. But, I really try NOT to be prejudiced, but Ohio tourists really, really tempt me to be judgmental.

April Fool's and a blog name

2008-04-03T14:53:00.000-07:00

Why Mayonnaise Sandwich I was reasonably asked the other day? Because it was a central cooking ingredient in much of my family's cooking. The other key ingredients for most of our cooking: bacon grease, salt, white cornmeal, salt, corn oil. Green Beans? Through in a spoonful of bacon grease. Frying something? Liquify the grease, dip it in corn meal, and presto - guaranteed yummy food. When I was pregnant with my kids, I would have been happy to only eat these five things all day, everyday. I also craved things like sweet potatoes, watermelon, and collard greens. I prefer to think that it was my body crying out for some basic vitamin, instead of some warped DNA.

Hubby dear got me good for April Fool's. First, he said, "Hillary dropped out." I believed him, and you would think my defenses would be up. Not ten minutes later, he said, "Monkey Boy (child #2) wants a haircut today." I should have KNOWN that was a whopper, since Monkey Boy has announced he will only cut his hair once a year, and he isn't "ready yet." I told him he should just go ahead and grow it out for Locks of Love at this point, or we can start making dredlocks. He doesn't appreciate my suggestions.

Guess what??? I relived my childhood: On YouTube, I watched Captain Caveman, Isis and Shazaam, Plasticman, He-Man, Shamoo, and the Archies. I am going to see if they have old issues of Soap and Logan's Run there, too. Maybe some good Afterschool Specials. My kids thought Thundarr the Barbarian should still be around.

Retired Vigilantes

2008-04-02T08:42:00.000-07:00

Our local paper which is by far the best paper of any town I have lived in has special sections called "Suburban Journals" which focus on smaller ares of the city. Our section covers an area that ranges from inner city, through Little Bosnia, through perhaps one of the most conservative ares of this very Democratic town. Within the journal, there is an area where you can call in, leave your opinion, and they will dutifully type it up for the next issue. This "Town Talk" is by far my favorite section because people will say things they would never write. So, this was my favorite from yesterday. I showed it to my husband, and he didn't laugh, mainly because he pronounced "hos" as "hose (like the garden tool)" so he was kind of clueless.

Here it is, the recorded opinion of AARP Rambo.

Read this and beweare. This is a comment for all you nasty hos, who think you're going to start jumping in and out of cars in the 7700 block of South Broadway Park. I don't work anymore so I have nothing better to do than to watch you getting in cars. I'm going to be watching you. I'm going to be watching you. I'm going to be watching you. You don't know who I am, but I know who you are. Beward. Go someplace else. Stay away from our area.

Or what? Clearly, the thought of people knowing their profession has not stopped the car jumpers. And what should we beware of? Should the drivers or the jumpers be wary? Now, of course, since I have no idea of where this is, I want to drive there and see if I can figure out who this watcher is. Would he write this about loitering students, too? Or is the watching the fun part? Is he hoping for more than jumping? Is he hoping to see Jerry Springer action below his window? And, why did I assume this was a man? Maybe it is a morally outraged former female librarian?

Medicine for the Masses

2008-03-31T16:09:00.000-07:00

I love my acupuncturist. However, the other day he handed me a jar of Chinese herbs which he said were to counteract my "excess energy flow." He then said, "We more commonly call them the anti-bitch bills."

I came home and told my hubby about my new daily antidote. He asked me if they came in bulk.

How to Decorate a Funeral Home

2008-03-29T09:37:00.001-07:00

In case you don't know this, I am pretty obsessed with funerals. Actually, with the planning of funerals. For this reason, it is okay to allow me to attend a funeral of one of your loved ones, but you should never, ever, ever allow me to have a voice in the preparations. My mother has finally figured this out after my participation in my grandmother's and stepfather's, so I am confident her instructions for her own end will be very, very specific and leave no room for my interpretations.

First of all, I must offer a disclaimer. The funeral home provided a lovely service. They brought dignity and respect to Ramsey's funeral, which I would not have been able to provide if left alone. Mainly because I am obsessed with funeral home decorations and how easy it is to be inappropriate. So, let's start with the yard art.

Just in case you can't tell, the dog is a BOBBLEHEAD. His head was just going with the breeze. And in the spirit of Easter, there was also a second Easter Bunny nearby.

Which begs the questions: What do you do for Halloween? Do you put Santa out front?

And, how exactly, do the copulating frogs fit in?

Nothing, however, prepared me for the interior. Each successive room provided more treasures. As you come in, you are greeted by her:

For some people it is clowns; for me, it is china dolls. And she wasn't alone.

It is really important that you notice the wallpaper, so you would be aware of how it tastefully is carried over into the bathroom.

That's right, folks, each of those flowers were carefully cut out, glued to the wall, and then shown growing out of the handpainted vase.

And, if in your old age you decide to start rolling yards again, consider crashing a funeral or two for supplies.

And, I am always a big fan of decorations that involve glitter and shiny paint.

Angels will be watching over you throughout your visit.

That's all, but I think it is enough.

Resurrecting Drowned Flies

2008-03-27T08:39:00.000-07:00

I just found out that I am almost world famous! I have sent a party trick on a trip around the world!

Last fall, we were over at a friend's house for dinner. The Vikings had just arrived, and we were all sitting around making polite chit chat. This was made more difficult because it was in English, and four of those present were mathematicians. All of these mathematicians are perfectly able to function in public situations, but it was still just a bit dull listening to discussions of math conferences, moving in, etc.

The weather was gorgeous, so we were sitting outside. It was windy enough that the mosquitoes were not attacking, but the breeze seemed to be causing the flies to kamikaze into all of our glasses of wine. After flicking one too many glasses of wine and dying flies into the grass, I remembered the only useful thing Mama's second husband ever taught me other than how to find muskrats. This was how to resurrect flies.

Yes, I know, it isn't particularly useful or desirable to help flies have a revival, but it gave me an opportunity to display my social skills. The next time a fly started swimming, I asked them to let it be, and I would bring it back. They were highly doubtful, as was I. I had only seen it done with Budweiser, and I was considering the possibility of a 30-year-old memory having been a trick on a little kid.

So, fly dies. We give him a few extra moments to see if he is really dead in the Vouvray. We dump it out on the table, and then we cover it with a pile of salt. Everyone is staring at it, and nothing is happening. Low level of panic sets in, but then, a mini-avalanche in the salt! A leg pokes through, then a wing. It is a zombie fly!! Fly drunkenly zooms away, and a conversation with lots of multisyllabic scientific terms ensues that I vaguely remember hearing last in ninth grade biology.

I promptly forgot about this event until last night. A partial horde of Vikings comes to our house, and they bring a mathematician from Spain whom I have never met. He walks in and announces, "You are famous in my neighborhood!" Turns out that Geir Arne, one of the Vikings, had performed my fly resurrection trick at a math conference (they never provide real entertainment at these events) in Barcelona, and Spanish Mathematician had gone home and taught his two boys. His sons had then taught other neighborhood boys, resulting in phone calls from parents about these new, oh-so-useful hobbies. Regardless, I am proud that fly resurrection will never be a dying art now that it has been accepted in the European Union.

Let's Hear It For Small Towns!

2008-03-24T19:06:00.000-07:00

Just an update for the curious, the criminals must stay in jail because they can't make bail. And, Mama has, of course, made not one, but two more connections that may result in Scary Man being snapped up and added jail time for inept criminals. Apparently, she was talking to the principal of her school and telling him the scoop. One of the places that a check was written was to a bar/dance club where stepdad would really have stood out in the crowd. Turns out that the bar owner was friends with the principal and they had ALREADY had a conversation about this returned check that went something like this, "Hey, do you know RR (stepdad)?" Principal: "Yeah, he is a wobbly, old white man with a beard." (Not exact quote, but the essentials). Bar Owner then gives a pretty darn precise description of Scary Man. In a separate discussion on Easter Sunday, one of Mama's friends was telling the story at a big, family gathering. A friend of Mama's friend's cousin (follow me?) says, "What was that name? She stole money from my brother in SOUTH CAROLINA." If this was a made-up story, I would give it a failing grade for being too unrealistic.

Shacking Up in the Delta

2008-03-21T21:07:00.000-07:00

The last time I came to the Delta was at the end of January. Hubby dear is on sabbatical in St. Louis, and there are 3 Scandinavian men at the university doing math, and two of them have significant others. So, I led 4 of the 5 on a “Freaks of the South” tour, and let me tell you, Mississippi and New Orleans PERFORMED. Clarksdale, MS, was phenomenal. We stayed at a lovely little place called The Shack Up Inn , and the pictures you see don’t even begin to capture the allure. When we drove up to “check in,” the Vikings thought I was simply turning around in an abandoned dump. They were quite speechless, but then they fell in love. My kids thought it was the best hotel I had ever taken them to, except those with waffle makers. On my roof was a bicycle tire. On my front porch was a ratty old sofa more commonly found in a frat house. I had a beer bottle collection and a piano in my shack. The dog, Pete, ran around barking and peeing on everything, and I knew there was absolutely no way he could harm anything.

The Shack Up Inn is part of a larger property called Hopson Plantation. Hopson Plantation used to be one of the biggest farms in the North Delta, and it was the site of the first mechanized cotton picking in Mississippi. The large plantation commissary has been converted to a bar that is quite the hopping spot for local blues, but on the night we were there, we were the only guests. The inside is fantastic and worth a visit in itself for all its blues memorabilia.

Anyway, we were met by James, one of the actual owners of the SUI, and his loyal customer/friend, whose name was, naturally, Harlan. Harlan told us he was a greeter at Wal-Mart. My BS radar started dinging since he was awfully well-dressed for a Wal-Mart employee, but the Vikings began asking him what exactly that entailed, and he started telling them he had won all these awards for being the best greeter in the district and how Wal-Mart was great for him. Finally, he said, “I am really not a Wal-Mart greeter. I am actually in the chicken manure collection and distribution business.” As the beer dribbles out my nose, Elin sweetly asks, “What is manure?”

Then we get THE CARD:. Harlan’s business card reads:

USED CARS LAND WHISKEY MANURE NAILS
FLY SWATTERS RACING FORMS BONGOS
Harlan ******* (can’t be sure I can tell this)
WARS FOUGHT WOMEN SEDUCED REVOLUTIONS STARTED
TIGERS TAMED ASSASSINATIONS PLOTTED BARS EMPTIED
GOVERNMENTS RUN LAMPS LIT UPRISINGS QUELLED
ORGIES ORGANIZED GLASSWARE BROKEN QUEERS QUERIED

And that would seem to sum up the night, except I had left my children back at the “shack” watching a movie. It was not even 100 yards away, and I told them where I was going, and I would be back in EXACTLY 30 minutes. I left them the phone and the dog and a movie rolling on the DVD. Apparently, the big ones decided they needed me, but when Bunny came looking for me, she was unable to find me. So, being the reasonable ten-year-old she is, she called her father. I believe the conversation went something like this, “Hi, Papa. We are fine. Mama left us in the cabin while she went to the bar, and now we can’t find her.”

The next day continued the surreal Mississippi life. At breakfast, the owner of the restaurant came and popped open his barcolounger right behind us, opened his mouth really wide, and went to sleep. The woman at the cute gift shop offered to host a Barbeque for the Vikings if they could stay for just one more day since all her friends just loved new people.

When we finally left for Greenville to pick up my Mama, it was very late and almost nowhere except fast food was open. For anyone who has ever been to Mississippi, particularly the Delta, you quickly realize how little integration has happened, especially when it comes to eating establishments. You can either eat in a white restaurant or a black one, but there really isn’t much mixing at the table away from Burger King. I have been away from MS for many years now, and I had kind of forgotten this. So, when I saw the ex-gas station with the beautiful word “tamales” painted on its side, I didn’t think twice about going in. However, I am pretty sure we were the first white people in there perhaps ever, and, if not, the first batch with people that were non-English speakers. We were conversation stoppers, but the lovely woman in the kitchen made a dozen tamales really fast JUST FOR ME. In addition to what may have been the best tamales ever, our reconfigured gas staion came with Peach, Strawberry and Grape Nehi Soda, a pool table with authentic local characters wearing old-fashioned hats, blow-up malt liquor bottles, and a toilet with no seat. It was the closest I have been to a perfect meal in ages.

Mississippi can be such a beautiful place.

Termites and Identity Fraud

2008-03-21T09:43:00.000-07:00

Before I start telling all of you about my latest whacked-out encounter with my beloved homestate, I think it is necessary to give you some background information about my less beloved hometown of Greenville. You know those energy lines that New Age folk believe converge over places like Stonehenge and Sedona, Arizona? There are more lines, called Freak Lines, and they radiate out from here. Almost every neurotic behavior, survival skill, or good story I know or possess is directly related to this freakopolis.

Here are some random pieces of knowledge that prove this. Benazhir Bhutto bought her first pair of blue jeans in Greenville. The woman who Emmett Till whistled at and whose death pretty much started the Civil Rights Movement now lives up the street from my Mama. Mooning barges on the Mississippi is a primary source of entertainment. The water is the color of pee.

Anyway, here goes the latest story about Greenville. My stepfather died last week, which is definitely a sad occasion, but I am pretty sure he is feeling much, much better. I came down to stay with Mama through all this, and I am still here. She has been a little wackier than normal, but nothing that my immunity shots will not protect me from. So, the real story begins with a phone call. Mama, who has never owned an answering machine because that is what Caller ID is for, looks down and sees the name of her dying husband on the caller ID. She knows there is not a hotline from heaven, and she sure as heck knows he isn't calling to chat, so she picks it up.

It is a woman I will call Pam, since that is her name. Pam is a supposed friend, who has periodically been running errands for them, keeping stepdad company while Mama works, tending to the dog, etc. and so forth. Mama chats with her a minute, but after she hangs up, she says, "We need to go to the bank." Yep, you guessed it. "Someone" has been using my stepfather's account and has been shopping. This person has set up a handy-dandy payment plan using stepdad's account to buy some new stuff, get internet, and chat on their nifty new cell phone. Fortunately, this person is an idiot, and her daughter who was in on it all is even a bigger idiot, but I will come back to in a minute after I tell you about the termites.

The actual funeral was as good as any funeral can be, and Mama seems relatively sane after everyone departs, so she sends me off to spend the night with my beloved and the three munchkins at a hotel. The next morning, I get a call from A CRAZY LADY. It is my mother, screaming, "There are BUGS! Bugs EVERYWHERE! Bugs up MY NOSE! Bugs UNDER THE COVERS! COME NOW!" I think various expletives, but the real thought is, "Crap. My mother has started dropping acid at 60." So, off I run in my night shirt, dirty jeans, and high heels which were conveniently clustered together.

Get to the house. Mama is sitting in the car, in her underwear and night shirt, with a cigarette in her mouth, another in her hand, sobbing and twitching. She sure looks like a drug addict right now, but I go inside, and DANG! there were bugs! Like 10,000 of them! A swarm of termites had gotten in the house and picked my mama's head to be the landing pad. Of course, this is really funny to me, which just pleased Mama even more, let me tell you. Mama tells me that she KNOWS they are termites because she had already chased down the next-door neighbor (in her underwear and nightshirt) to get him to tell her what they were. He apparently told her, "Don't you want to get dressed now?" She told him, "After you get all those damn bugs off my clothes, I will."

So, after we responsibly deal with the termites by simply closing the door and walking away, we go to bank. We now have piles of paper with forged checks, credit card receipts, overdrawn notices, etc. that we can take to the police station. On the way, we decide to ride by and see if Pam is still in town. Sure enough, she is. Mama stops and runs into a store, and while she is gone, Pam calls on her cell phone that I think my stepfather bought for her. Mama calls back, and she says, "Why did you ride by?" Mama makes up some crazy story that takes the entire time to get to the police station where she is going to be swearing out a warrant for the woman's arrest. She honestly says to Pam, "Well, we are almost to where we are going, I will chat with you later."

Police say come back in 45 minutes to sign papers. Mama decides to leave me at home with the kids and goes back on her own. In Greenville, there are absolutely NO DEGREES of separation. If that person standing next to you isn't a relative, neighbor, former classmate, former student, relative of former student, former boyfriend, relative of former boyfriend of my mother's, or doesn't know one of the above, then that person is from out of town. Anyway, one of the three random strangers in Greenville overhears Mama, and says, "Oh, I know where that person cashes her checks. Hold on." So, he speed dials from his cell phone the seedy pool hall, and tells him the situation. Not FIVE minutes later, pool hall dude calls back and says, "She is here. She even has one of his checks for me to cash." Police drive down there, and pick up daughter. Daughter calls Mama. Pool Hall Man looks at Trashy Mama and says, "Oh, she does it, too!" Daughter lies about her name, a charge by police is added. Trashy Mama says, "Oh, he was paying me for services." Yeah, moron, tell the police you are a prosititute. Let's just say that we know she is lying, particularly because she gives details of where services were supposedly provided. If she had actually been in the hot tub at my parents' house, as claimed, then she would be in the hospital with some skanky skin disease or she would have at least smelled. So, Mama stays until they show up, she waves sweetly to them as they walk past, and the funeral festivities seem to end on a high note because since the judge is in that no degrees of separation (he was the law partner of my stepfather's daddy) and would have a conflict of interest, she and daughter can't be arraigned until the other judge gets back from his vacation next week.

You would THINK this is the end, but you must remember I am still inGreenville. Last night, THE CALL comes. From stepdad's funded phone number at the arrested people's house. From the son-in-law/husband of the stupid thieves. Problem is, he IS crazy. Like crazy where the police investigator goes, "oooooh," when you say his name. Like as Mama put it, "Where the government gives you a check for being crazy." Needless to say, I wig out. My liberal ideals are GONE. Call the police! Load the guns in the attic! Hide the children! We get 3 cops (assistant chief is, naturally, another no-degree connection), a report, and documentation for possible restraining orders. Sleep, finally, at 2 a.m.

Well, I guess that is all so far. Welcome to my blog! And remember, I still have over 48 hours here, .....