Pet Chickens

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

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

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....

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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???

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

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

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!

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

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?

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

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

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.