Edgy June Cleaver

2011-01-08T13:06:00.001-07:00

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Gone Daddy Gone

2010-09-21T16:05:00.001-06:00

for real. Really.

http://www.edgyjunecleaver.com

Movin' On Up!

2010-09-15T05:44:00.004-06:00

So 'member when I said I was dreaming about babies and was blathering about new things and new beginnings and stuff last week?

Well here it is!

June's new addy!

Bitter Table For One!

2010-09-14T10:00:00.004-06:00

my girlfriends are here

I’ve been to the gym three out of the last four days. Where the Hell are my results? The number on the scale hasn’t budged, and I still can’t button my skinny jeans or pull them over my fat ass for that matter.

Don’t I sound like a typical 21st century American? I want results instantly and if I don’t get them I’ll make it happen. Thank goodness I don’t have the money to plop down in the direction of a plastic surgeon with a vacuum and scalpel I hope I wouldn’t even be tempted. The other ridiculous choice is this machine I saw this weekend. You stand on it and it vibrates you whole body really hard, “burning fat”. Oh what the Hell ever. The Girl and I immediately flashed on those vibrating machines with the waist bands. And you know what was really sad? Someone was seriously entertaining buying one. In this economy? Really? Dude, join a health club and employ a few people. People have way too much money. I would like to think I would use all that money to employ a trainer to baby-sit my exercise regime and my food choices.

And the other option behind Door Number 3: Puking and diet pills. Worse than the surgeon in long term side effects. What’s really alarming about that option is the fastest growing population of anorexics and bulimics are in my age group or so I read in nursing research a couple of years ago. Wow, just wow. If you missed the Dorm Barforama with your besties in 1983 here’s your second big chance! And God knows I hate being like everyone else so I guess I’ll stick to the gym and find a diet plan that works for me and doesn’t make me feel like I’m missing out on food I enjoy. This whole getting fat thing has made June bitter bitter bitter.

Or maybe it’s not the fat part that’s making me bitter. Maybe it’s the getting-my-ass-kicked-on-the-cross-country-ski-machine-by-a-woman-easily-in-her-seventies part that is making me bitter.

Granny better watch out. I’m gonna do level three for fifteen minutes tomorrow and then I’m going to faint and then I’m gonna have a moon pie.

0630

2010-09-13T16:21:00.002-06:00

Do you ever have those moments of pure unadulterated joy after an epiphany? I did this morning after I was greeted at the dark hour of 0630 by angry voices arguing over hair gel. Beav was quite upset a large dollop of gel had been scooped from his gel and started accusing Wally. At first, Wally took it in stride and laughed at him: “Dude, I don’t have any hair why would I use your gel?” But Beav wouldn’t leave it alone and just kept at his brother with increasingly heated accusations which naturally escalated Wally. I had to knock on the bathroom door because I truly thought it was going to come to blows. I also wanted to break it up because I couldn’t believe they were arguing over hair gel. Had they not been so grouchy and I hadn’t been half asleep myself I would have said something smart like: “Ladies, please, inside voices.” Instead I looked at the gel and shrugged my shoulders and told Beav to chill out and get ready for school. They were still fussing at each other when I walked downstairs to leave the house.

As I was sitting in the car beginning to fume over how much I hated to hear them fight with each other and over hair gel of all things…the realization of how these sorts of spats would be an almost daily occurrence if I had daughters. It was then the joy and peace that surpasses all understanding swept through me and made me whisper the following prayer for the thousandth time:

Thank you for sparing me teenage girls.

Grill Zombie and other adventures in the suburbs

2010-09-11T05:59:00.001-06:00

Marge is here

Have I mentioned how much I dislike cooking? I would rather scrub a toilet than cook. I’m not sure why I have such a strong emotion about cooking and blame my lazy nature. But really, cooking doesn’t interest me all that much. Food interests me. There are a few things I can make well but we can eat them every day. What I like to cook is old fashioned heavy sauces with lots of cream and butter. But like I said yesterday--

--Moo.

The Exploding Cheese Incident this week brought to light just how much I hate to cook. I was completely distracted by the pork in the oven which wasn’t cooking but was drying out and turning into something more suited for footwear. It was my self-inflicted ire which distracted me and made me forget the rule about hot glass and cold metal. And I was right about those pork chops: dry and tough. But everyone ate them out of fear.

And don’t tell me: “Oh honey, bless your heart you just need to learn how to cook and then you would enjoy it.” And I would say: “Oh honey, I know how to cook. I just don’t enjoy it.”

In fact, I used to lie and tell people I didn’t know how to cook. It worked on TG for almost six years until a few weeks ago we were at our second favorite French restaurant and the vichyssoise was like sipping clotted cream with a spoon. I was terribly disappointed and all the sudden the martini started talking: “This is awful; I can do so much better than this! This soup needs leeks and dill to finish it off.” My proclamation was met with raised eyebrows.

“You have a vichyssoise recipe?”
“Uh huh”
“Is it as good as your quiche?”
“Probably”
“You’ve been holding out on me, haven’t you?”
“Um, I guess so. Just because I can do it doesn’t mean I like to do it.”

The gig is up and I’ve been outed as someone who cooks. Not only have I been outed as someone who cooks but the responsibility is now more or less mine most nights as TG’s hours have changed.

Oh. The. Horror.

You see, if it were just me, I would be happy with grapes and microwave popcorn on the rare nights I didn’t go out or have left overs from going out.

I can readily admit I enjoy cooking winter types of food. I don’t mind putting a very large piece of meat in the crock pot with vegetables and calling it soup or stew. I like to make chili and soup. My roasted chicken is always good, too. But summer cooking calls on a more imaginative cook to avoid heating up the kitchen thus the house. “So grill, June. Grill.” Was the girl’s remark to me the other night. And I had to explain to her

Why June Doesn’t Grill

Because I am afraid. Very very afraid.

Not the meat part. I do know people who are squeebed out by raw meat and can’t touch it or cook it. But, hello? I’m a nurse? It’s the lighting of the grill. Now before all my kind readers take up a collection to buy June and TG a nice self-igniting gas grill, put your checkbooks away and log off paypal because we have one. My fear is so deep set; I’m even tripped out about turning the switch on this one. Rationally, I know it’s probably safer than any of the gas ranges in any of the crappy rent houses I lived in during and just after college.

When I was a little girl, me, my sister and mom watched Marcus Welby, MD, religiously every Sunday night. I enjoyed the medical stuff and my sister enjoyed it because of this guy. ------------------>

the original Dr. McDreamy found here

And well…duh…James Brolin was so hot on that motorcycle, a new breed of doctor, with his sideburns, bell bottoms and his blatant 60’s prime time style sexuality.

Anyhow, there was an episode in the 70’s (it was in color so it was definitely the 70‘s) and a woman was hostessing a BBQ. It must have been a particularly festive party, too. My mom wore shorts or slacks when we had people in for grilled meat. This woman had on her 100% petroleum based polyester maxi dress with long flowing sleeves and to complete her groovy ensemble she had her hair (or a wig) stacked way way way wayway way up on her head secured--no doubt--with two or three cans of Aqua Net. Mrs. Maxi Dress is prancing around the kitchen and she goes into the backyard with her big tray of steaks or what have you and tries to light the grill. And tries again. She even leans her face down to see if something is the matter and can’t see anything so she puts more lighter fluid on the charcoal, steps back and throws a lit match and

POOF!!!!!

Up in flames, burnt beyond recognition. The end. Her life is over. Bye bye.

It could happen to anyone, especially me because I always cook dinner in long flowing maxi dresses with drapy sleeves made by our friends at the DuPont Corporation and my hair saturated with highly flammable hair spray.

And because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life like a mummy with gauze wrapped around my face and hands, struggling to talk; I won’t grill.

So what’s for dinner?

Probably mac and cheese if they are lucky.

I Say Moo to the MuuMuu

2010-09-10T08:19:00.004-06:00

The Girl has informed me the critter taking bites out of our tomatoes is a “tomato slug” I of course think this is some sort of mysterious Midwestern code for “raccoon” but she feels a raccoon would eat the whole tomato. Sometimes at night, I’ve seen raccoons walking down the street and they are so big they look like a gang of unruly preschoolers. They take a bite from a tomato and leave the rest behind to mock me.

I discovered yesterday we have a yard cow. And she is me. Moo.

I’m rededicating my life to the gym and possibly a diet program. I’ve never had to do a diet program. The only diet program I’ve ever been on is the “Eat Whatever the Hell You Want” diet. Since I quit smoking a couple of years ago and am creeping up on the big 5-0 coupled with new job which is mostly behind a desk, the numbers on the scale are getting bigger and my favorite jeans are smaller.

It was depressing getting ready for an evening out last night because I looked like Hell in everything I tried on and am becoming precariously close to not fitting into clothing from my all time favorite store. The only thing that cheered me up was squishing my lard ass into spanx and my new blue eye shadow.

Which I rocked. The eye shadow that is.

Excuse Me While I Offend Everyone I know

2010-09-09T06:26:00.001-06:00

It’s been peaceful around here the last week. No one is asking for large sums of money for camp or computer equipment or remembering a project at 11 pm and they need specific gel pens and graph paper; nor are they wrecking cars or staying out until 3am and coming in suspiciously smelling of alcohol.

Now if Wally and Beav would just keep it together we would have the perfect household.

I jest. I jest. If I came in smelling of alcohol it would be about six hours before 3 am and TG doesn’t have to ask me for Jesus camp money, she could just pay for it herself and she has gel pins and graph paper.

It’s nice to be a boring mom of a teenager who does his homework and will speak to me over and above a grunt or grimace. It feels good to have a young adult who is engaged in a job. Yeah it’s a crap McJob but it’s a job and he’s happy so there you have it. And it’s peaceful having a dog that doesn’t start asking for dinner at 4:30 because the time has changed and it’s almost dark.

The only hiccup in this scenario is something is eating my tomatoes and it isn’t human. I’m not sure what it is but it can climb or burrow under the fence we built to keep Kipper out of the garden. Too bad I’m a law abiding citizen otherwise I would set up a little camp site next to the garden and keep watch over my late ripening heirlooms and when I saw the menace eating my produce I would shoot it. Dead. With a gun.

I’m not all about the NRA and my right to bear arms. Guns scare me and strangers with guns scare me more. I have a few friends in Texas who I know keep an arsenal in their homes and probably carry under their coats and in their trucks. And frankly I would trust any of them with their weapons drunk or sober. I’m glad those types have guns because they have taken the time to learn how to safely discharge a weapon and probably aren’t going to shoot an innocent stranger. Hell, a couple of them would probably balk at the idea of shooting a raccoon. Bloody fat help they would be in this situation. I just won’t ask them. Anyhow, if I did shoot my garden nemesis I would no doubt be arrested for it and that would cost way more than buying a bushel of heirloom tomatoes from one of the many Boutique Farmer’s Markets in town. I’m a little peeved over this law, too. I mean what about urban chickens being threatened by foxes. If I’m allowed to keep chickens, I should be allowed to kill unwanted wild life that encroaches on my property. Ok, maybe not kill it but scare it off because I doubt I could hit the broadside of a barn. But Wally…he’s a pretty good marksman, he could get the little bugger. . .

If we lived in Fort Worth Texas this probably wouldn’t be an issue, the cops would probably come over and high five me because I killed a raccoon eating my backyard crops. Hell, those guys roughed up gay guys on the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the gay rights movements so killing a varmint within the city limits is fair game. (so to speak, I‘m gonna let that pun just bask in its punny glory). They might even want to take it home for supper.

Have I trotted out enough politically incorrect stereotypes? I think I have a few to go but I‘ll stop with that one. I need to put the computer away and run over to Walmart, just to take a look around the sporting goods section. For a soccer ball. You know a soccer ball. For Wally.

Gosh I hope a gun and ammo doesn’t fall in my basket next to that soccer ball.

Addendum: 20 minutes later:

Karma…

I noticed the time as I typed that last sentence and had to dash downstairs to put dinner in the oven. Beav made queso dip to take to Young Life tonight and it’s in a glass Pyrex dish on top of the stove. It’s getting a little too toasty on the top and starting to boil. I didn’t bother to look if the burner was on under it and assumed it was still cooking because it was on the stove which lives over the the now hot oven. I grab two pot holders and pull it off and place it on a room temperature trivet.

Yeah…it went boom and I’m really lucky I didn’t get cheese on my cute new blouse or glass in my face. Of course Beav isn’t speaking to me because now he can’t take his “World Famous Queso” to the party. I offered to dash to the store so we could redo it. I offered to buy a cheese cake at fancy grocery store…but no…not good enough. So I’ve ruined his life.

All because I was talking smack about harming tiny woodland creatures who are just trying to get fill their bellies before winter.

Karma: 5,329,222,221,565,353----

June: -0

coonie found here

Herding Ducks

2010-09-08T06:33:00.001-06:00

image here

When I signed my job description in July, it did not include the words: “Must herd ducks”. So color me stunned much of my job includes just this sort of activity.

Have you ever tried to herd ducks? One day when I was about 12 or 13 and bored out of my mind I tried to herd a flock of ducks living near our lake house. My method was completely improvised and probably based on something I read in a Laura Ingalls Wilder book as I stretched out my arms and did a creeping walk just on their heels, no doubt quacking at them, too. I would chase after two or three and try to gather them with a group of three others. For about a minute it would work and I would have a cohesive flock of six or more ducks and I was all yeah, I’ve got the ducks in a herd! I did it! Until one or two of them would lose interest and wander in one direction away from the flock and another would wander in the opposite direction and pretty soon I didn’t have a single-minded group but a mess of ducks wandering and running in circles.

Today kind of felt like I was thirteen all over again…except my poor self-esteem and lagging self-confidence aren’t crippling and I’m not quite as awkward and dorky. And the ducks were doctors.

Looking back over today and remembering a summer day 36 years ago?

The ducks were more cooperative.

I Have A Dream

2010-09-07T05:51:00.000-06:00

I have a reoccurring dream; I’m carrying a baby, a healthy happy baby who is genuinely glad to be with me and not squirming or struggling to be laid down. I am always walking along a body of water, sometimes it is a rushing river, sometimes it is ocean front. But it is always crystalline blue. Usually at some point near the water I cross a bridge, always a big sturdy bridge. Today, I finally decided to interpret all these symbols because I’m dreaming this over and over again and last night’s version of Baby on a Bridge was particularly colorful and vivid.

My favorite dream dictionary is at swoon.com. Which is a site linked to--of all things--Glamour magazine. The women’s magazine in my opinion which is perhaps the most irritating and trite magazine in the world. But I like my ruts deep and wide and way back in 1998 I found this site and have stuck to it. Once I had a reprint of a Dream Dictionary which was published around 1910. It appealed to me because the author seemed like a quaint old man who was in complete denial that Freud was developing psychoanalytical theory based on dream symbols. But it didn’t serve me well because if I dreamt of flying an airplanes close to the ground I was out of luck; however if I dreamt of struggling with a button hook while riding in a carriage I could have easily sussed out just what sweet Morpheus was trying to tell me. Too bad I can’t remember what the button hook meant, I’m sure if was something about a suitor presenting falsehoods to my father or something like that.

My dream is about a new idea which comes to me easily and assures me prosperity.

Well isn’t that just the best news! So watch this space. Just watch it.

And follow that link when it appears.

Whispering Bees

2010-09-06T05:49:00.003-06:00

And another thing.

Yesterday the Mexican Oregano was covered with honey bees, and even though I was hacking through their brunch and they were landing on my arms, they didn’t sting me.

Does this make me a Bee Whisperer? Is there a movie in this phenomenon?

“Sharon Stone as The Bee Whisperer!”

Could there be a more boring movie?

The Bee Whisperer would make A River Runs Through It,and The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button seem like rollicking fast paced car chase blockbusters.

Sowhaddidyoudo?

2010-09-05T17:58:00.003-06:00

That picture is worth about 500 words. My weekend has been busy but not crazy busy because I don’t do crazy busy at home because my job is 98% of the time crazy busy. And to continue multi-tasking at home is a sickness as far as I'm concerned.

I really don’t have that much to say because it was just mundane busy stuff, nothing exciting. I made two gallons of infused oil. Perhaps the most involved project I’ve done in a long time. It's involved because of the harvesting, cleaning, grrrr-ing the herbs and prepping the jars and oil. It doesn't help that I can't stand our food processor. It's terrifically complicated and the first time I used it, I spent 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get the freakin' top(s) off. Breaking into Fort Knox would have been easier than opening the damn food processor. It's like a four step process and drives me wild after about the third repetition. But the best part of the oil project is when I get to clean up all the oil I've sloshed and dripped and spilled all over the kitchen. I'm a pro at spilling. (To further digress, the first time I typed this I wrote: "spelling" and we all know I aint' no kinda pro at spelling)

As I went about each one of these tasks first on the back porch and then in the kitchen my brain felt like that photograph: all muddled with eight things going on at once while I was trying think of something to blog about and everything I came up with was boring as Hell.

The most exciting thing that happened this weekend was Kipper went for coffee with us and didn’t make too big of an ass out of himself whining and yipping at other dogs. He loves other dogs and resembles Sonny the coo-coo bird when he sees one.

(thanks youtube)

It’s rather embarrassing and people probably think we keep the dog chained to a rock in a tiny backyard completely isolated from people, food, and other dogs. Either that or he doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together. I'm thinking of hanging a sign on him when we go out with him that informs people he is a few bulbs short.

Yesterday Beav wanted to spend some of his birthday cash and wants to keep it old school with CDs so I took him to two of the used record stores I know about. We ran across a couple more but didn’t stop because he has his “Back-To-School Cold” (why can’t we all just wash our hands?) and wasn’t feeling 100% and we were both hungry and on our way to a little taqueria I know which has some of the hottest green chili ever and it was just what his cold needed. Spending most of yesterday with him one on one was good and made me realize he is becoming a young adult capable of adult conversation on far ranging subjects.

But he’s still a kid, today he mouthed off at me when I told him to slow down in a parking lot. “But I’m a guy, and guys like to go fast! I’ve got the ‘guy gene’.”

Oh what the fuck ever, I’ve got the keys to the car and you might not get to drive until your 25 and your frontal lobe has developed a little more. And then it‘s gonna be a 1981 Honda Civic four banger.

But I resisted saying that and just gritted my teeth and dug my fingers into the side of seat. Praying we made it home before I tore open the upholstery or chided him while hanging on for dear life.

You probably had to be there...

2010-09-03T05:58:00.001-06:00

image found here

On Tuesday afternoon I received the following text message:

Trixie
Company is in the house. I’m setting up the beer and nacho bar in
my best Bobby Spencer outfit. We’re gonna have a great day! See you tomorrow
OOXX Trixie.

Company. Yay. If you take some time and look at the pictures of satisfied customers as they flash on The Joint Comission’s website the smiles are forced and probably fueled by handful of xanax and a mouthful of scotch. Because that’s how The Joint Commission makes me feel and Tuesday afternoon I started to feel the Ebola virus coming on. I swear my eyeballs looked bloody. But I sucked it up and went to work, praying all the way no one would bother to ask me questions.

“Trixie” is one of my co-workers and isn’t it convenient that she already has a nickname and I don’t have to assign her one for the ‘net. She came up with this name for her alter ego who is a little bit slutty a little bit ghetto and a whole lot Filters Off 24/7. I love Trixie. She’s the perfect example of what the balance of taking your job seriously without losing the ability to laugh looks like. She also refers to Bobby Spencer in her text because I have nicknamed one of our co-workers this because she is apparently very adept in high heels. Bobby ran a crash cart down the hall after a staff meeting the other day while wearing 4.5 inch heels. It was a thing of beauty and the poor woman will never live it down. Fortunately, the victim survived and her ankles survived.

“Fern” was on the desk Tuesday, I’m glad it wasn’t me because I am not the real charge nurse. “Fern” (not her real name, duh) is the second non d’plume for the “Real Charge Nurse”. She was first known to me as “Amazon Barbie” when I was “Martha” (for Martha Stewart who I adore! I renamed myself because Martha no longer fits) But it seems about a year or so ago, an elderly man with just a dab of dementia marched up to the desk barked out the following comment: “What is your job anyway? All I ever see you do is sit next to this computer like a houseplant.” I swear to God, she said he said this to her. And Fern may be a houseplant sitting next a computer all day but she doesn’t lie, especially about funny things said by demented people. And who knew that houseplants could multitask the way our Fern does! My houseplant doesn’t multitask.

I love Fern, she’s one of my favorite people which is sort of narcissistic because we share a brain. Seriously, we share a brain and because we share a brain, we share offspring, too. Only she’s ~~saddled~~ blessed with three of the ~~monsters~~ darlings. She too has boys who have only just learned the miracle of running water and enunciating clearly when speaking so everyone can understand and not just fellow teenaged boys. She also has a young adult who has lost all motor ability to clean up after herself! Amazing the parallels! Our medical director thought we were being “cute” when we told him we shared a brain. But about five minutes into unit rounds the first day I was training for my old job-that-is-now-my-new-job, he got this funny look on his face and realized we weren’t kidding or being “cute”. I think he’s just a little afraid of us, too. That we are both about a foot taller than he is doesn’t help the poor dear‘s situation. But its not a bad thing to keep the little man guessing. It’s also pretty awesome to share a brain with Fern. I’m not sure she feels the same about me because she’s about five thousand times smarter than I am. But we do educate one another about nursey things. In fact, I explained to her the indications, side effects and dosages of Abilify right after it came on the market. Only I did it completely in Ebonics while doing my best impression of The Ladies Man. Oh come on people! Get your politically correct panties out of a wad! It was funny! Politically incorrect on so many different levels--making fun of psychotics and Ebonics, yeah I freely own that--but really? What a stupid name for an antipsychotic! It’s just begging to be made fun of: “This medicine will abilify me to differentiate between what is real and that which is not.” Was one of the lines in the riffs. In fact, our riff was so funny that we took it home to our families and now whenever Fern or June sees an Abilify commercial we riff on it.

The tone for a rather--at times--ribald work environment is set by all of us because we are just that kind of team. Once upon a time before The Joint Commission Of American Hospitals or God or the Chief Nursing Officer or the housekeeper (probably the housekeeper, they have all the power) took exception to our collection of “dolls” prominently displayed in the nurses station, we had a whole array of Hawaiian dolls, both boys and girls and a mermaid doll. People from all over the hospital and multiple departments knew about our dolls and would contribute to them. They would send visitors to us to cheer them up if the visitors were having a rough time of it. And it worked! Always made them laugh! We even had one that looked like our then medical director, balding pudgy guy with a ukulele and a grass skirt. It was brilliant. My favorite Rehab talisman was a stuffed monkey our case manager (like a social worker. Her nickname is “Cujo” which is pretty self explanatory. I’m afraid of her and I don’t scare that easily) had stolen from her then eleven year old daughter. The monkey would make monkey noises if you slapped it against a hard surface like the desk. It was a magnificent stress reliever. When I was doing relief charge, it lived not on the shelf next to my head but in a drawer next to me so I could take it out and hold my very long arm away from me and slap it repeatedly on the desk whenever I talked to particular people who were either acting like assclowns or stupid assclowns. One day Trixie told me I had a phone call and got the monkey out of the desk drawer for me before I even picked up the phone. Because on Rehab, if we aren’t anything else we are finely tuned machine and can anticipates one another’s needs.

It was about this time the unit down the hall from us received a really expensive make over and we started the hospital wide trend of referring to it as “Beverly Hills” or “The Bev” or “90210”. Therefore, we being the unit sadly in need of a remodel, referred to ourselves as “Compton” or the “hood”. We even had a rap song about the differences in the units complete with grunts and posing. I can’t remember how it went but the nurse manager from the other unit was not amused when she found out about our rap and The whole Beverly Hills thing. What would she have done if she saw our mock gang signs we threw at one another when we talked to her on the phone? Or announced we were going over to The Bev for supplies. Oh and they never remodeled us they just moved us to another part of the hospital so they could further gentrify the entire floor. The hospital she is like a big city. Still Compton after all these years.

So I wasn’t surprised when Trixie announced her intent to serve beer to the surveyors. I’m just relieved she remembered to put lids on the beverages so we didn’t get dinged for open drink containers. Dinged for that would make Nurse Bitchy McCranky-Pants bitchier.

If that’s even possible.

Collectors vs Horders

2010-09-02T06:06:00.001-06:00

The Girl has a new favorite television show and she’s getting me hooked, too, Pickers . Its Antique Roadshow meets Horders. These guys from Iowa head out in their van and travel all over the Midwest and South. Despite the fact I’m not into the antiques they find: old cars and car parts and signs what has me hooked are the characters they meet and the mesmerizing nature of all the crap, treasures, junk and stuff people collect over the span of several life times. It’s a little overwhelming to think about all that stuff just sitting in barns and sheds and attics and basements. A lot of the stuff featured on the Pickers was made during The Great Depression when people supposedly didn’t have any money to buy stuff so why is there so much of it? This doesn’t follow my limited understanding of supply and demand economics.

But anyway, we look upon junked out places with new eyes after watching a season’s worth of Mike and Frank’s adventures on the road, and this weekend was no different. The place we stayed in the mountains has been in the same spot since, 1900 and has a charming rustic vibe to it. There were a few old cars sitting around the property and stuff just piled under a couple of the old cabins. It is also an antique store with more stuff crammed into that you can imagine. Tables and tables of figurines and tiny vases and stacks of saucers and plates and baskets of god only know what. Three rooms stuffed to the rafters with things for sale. It was so full and busy I didn’t know where to look first and TG was so overwhelmed she went outside to talk to April, Kip’s new girlfriend. But I stuck it out and snapped pictures of things which were randomly grouped together and either made comical or poignant tableaus. What had me awestruck was where in the Hell did all this crap come from and why do we keep making stuff when there are mounds of stuff just sitting in barns all over the American south? Why were little angel or puppy or kitten or bird figurines made to begin with?

The other night, Frank and Mike were going through an old barn with a guy easily in his 80’s. This guy had forgotten what was even there and it was like he rediscovered his stuff all over again but he wouldn’t part with it. Maybe I’m way too puritanical but I’m thinking if you don’t know you have it, you don’t need it. And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know hording is a sickness. I can’t even watch Horders because those people are so terribly ill it makes my stomach turn. But I seriously wanted to put this old guy on the couch and find out what was it he was trying to relive or what kind of hole in his life was he trying to fill with that stuff in his barn? Stuff he didn’t even bother with anymore. He was almost wistful as he came across things he had once loved and grief caught in his voice as he told the guys he couldn’t sell this or that artifact.

And I also started wondering if you piled up all the stuff hidden away in barns, sheds, storage units, basements, closets and attics along with all the unsold stuff already in antique shops, thrift stores, discount stores and tag sales would the pile be as big as Venus or just the Earth. I’m voting Venus. My nephew said it best a couple of years ago when the economy fell down and went boom. “I’ll start worrying about the economy when Americans stop buying useless stuff.”

Watching the guys pick and going into places like that makes me want to throw my stuff out and parse living down to four changes of clothes three pairs of shoes, a sauce pan, two place settings and four glasses.

If I winnow my life down to that, I’ve got a long way to go. Maybe I should call our new TV boyfriends to come over and pick through our treasures.

When Good Things Happen

2010-09-01T06:10:00.001-06:00

This summer I’ve been lucky enough to come in contact with several heroes and they probably don’t even realize what their courage has meant to a stranger.

1. The guy with the bumper sticker which read something like: “Questions about Islam? Call--” That his car hadn’t been beaten with sticks by angry bigots is amazing. Talk about walking your walk and living your faith. I wonder how many Christians would have the courage to drive down Iraqi streets with Jesus stickers on their cars. Unoccupied Iraq I’m not talking in armored hummers but just regular old cars. I sure has heck wouldn’t put myself up for martyrdom.

2. The waitress at Village Inn. This young woman was expecting a baby a few weeks ago and hadn’t worked for a number of weeks. A couple of the regulars asked about her baby and she had the tenacity to rehearse the story of a child born with an overwhelming defect (the same one we thought Beav had) who was simply not viable and how they had to let her child go. If this had been me? I would have had to start my life over again some place else because telling that story would have been too painful to bear.

3. My young stroke patient. All I can say is if I had a dense stroke at my age, I would have been placed on a suicide watch and refused to eat or move or do anything so I could just die, rather than be trapped in a useless body. Because regaining strength and agility after such a stroke is extraordinarily hard work. Harder than training for a triathlon. Her tenacity to keep on going is bigger than the tenacity it took any one of the soldiers ever decorated with the Medal of Valor.

Heroes are kind of few and far between in this bossy stick finger pointing world we live in today. But I think courage is like kindness and valor can be paid forward, too. If we all behave a little more bravely towards the roadblocks in our lives, the big stuff, and the really hard stuff won’t be so overwhelming. People treating one another with kindness fall in the category of heroes, too. Which leads me to hero number four:

One of my favorite commercials--an insurance company, too I am soMadison Avenue's little patsy-- is the one about paying it forward. People practicing acts of kindness towards strangers and how one begets another and another. But it works and I was lucky enough to watch kindness spiral out of control one afternoon in our neighborhood Walmart.

4. The People Of Walmart: I was approaching the stop walk and a car many feet away, slowed and the stopped smiling and motioning me across the walk. I entered the store and the greeter’s genuine smile made me notice how beautiful she looked in red lipstick and so I told her this. After she thanked me for the compliment, the greeter turned and noticed a woman younger and stronger than herself struggling with a basket so she found one that wasn‘t jammed into another. This woman proceeded into the fruits and veg section where a young mother, distracted by a toddler, dropped a large bag of oranges that bounced and rolled akimbo. The older woman left her cart and gathered the oranges and handed them to the appreciative young mother. Later, I was standing in one of the impossibly long checkout lines and I noticed this young mother, in an equally long line, allow someone ahead of her because they had fewer items. I was awestruck for just a few minutes at the ease in which humans treat one another with kindness and how it really does spiral out of control.

My Daughter Summer

2010-08-31T11:27:00.004-06:00

Isn’t this the saddest little flower you’ve ever seen? Kind of reflects my inner life when I think about what day it is. The last day of August. The last day. Indian summer officially starts tomorrow, and frankly it feels like it has started today. I’m on the back porch in a sweater because the breeze is a little chilly. The light golden and the sun more tentatively warm than full on hot. I wish I were filled with breathless excitement over the new season about to come upon me. Admittedly, autumn is sweet here, lovely sunny warm days with a subtext of coolness; fog in the mornings and crisp nights. We do get snow in late October and fourteen years ago we had over three feet of snow in late September. It was freakishly early so we were all in our shorts and sweat shirts by the next week. I have absolutely no romantic memories of that storm because it was Hell when it happened; the snow was so heavy it blew up the electric transformers in our end of Stepford Knolls and we didn’t have power for four days; which was especially fun with a six year old and a two year old. No school for the oldest, the school was in the ‘hood and without power as well. Looking back, I’m not sure how I entertained the little ~~monsters~~ dears. I know I used a ton of babysitting co-op hours so they could hang at friends’ houses that did have power and they spent a lot of time bundled up, playing in the snow. I didn’t go as far as David Sedaris’ mother who locked her kids outside and watched them from the warm kitchen while drinking from a coffee mug of gin. My kitchen wasn’t warm and I’m pretty sure we didn’t have any gin so that plan wasn’t viable at my house. I did weep at the kitchen table because I was losing hundreds of dollars of groceries we could ill afford to lose that fall.

And the first snow always comes as such a terrible surprise. Like I’ve just discovered I live in a climate where it stands every chance of snowing from October until May. Always, without fail, I am all “WTF???” when snow is predicted. In fact, my reaction to snow is more predictable than actually getting snow. I’m never prepared, don’t know where my boots are or gloves…the Beav and Wally don’t have coats that fit them properly so I’m one of those Anti-Uber Moms at the store snatching up jackets while my kids are shivering in the car or at home waiting for me to return with their jackets so they can leave the house. Last year, if you recall, I was the wild-eyed lady who almost crashed her car getting to the tire store on October 28th when we had our first big snow. God was looking out after me because the tires came in under budget and I didn’t kill anyone on the way to the tire store. That sort of blessing bears remembering.

This fall, I have promised myself to just Woman up and have the gloves, hats, boots and jackets ready for winter before she knocks me down like a playground bully. In the meantime, today I will be cutting flowers and deadheading the spent blossoms, beating down weeds and fretting over still green tomatoes. I’ve also scheduled in a session of reading in the sun gather the last bits of Vitamin D before I become like Persephone and pine for my lost daughter and favorite child named Summer.

My Personal Conspiracy Theory

2010-08-30T18:48:00.012-06:00

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Dear humans who read mommy’s blog:
I think she and other mommy are trying to kill me. Seriously, this is NOT A JOKE. Yesterday, they gave me a big car ride. Now I like a car ride every now and then and sometimes the car ride isn’t to the place where a human puts something in my butt and then talks to mommies about how my heart is too big and I don’t have much longer or we go to the place where the nice lady washes off my yummy smells. Yesterday’s car ride was a big one. A whole long nap’s worth of car ride. And we went to this place.
And I had a hot dog but it wasn’t after they told me about it and I could smell them and I had to wait.

The next car ride was short, like coming home from the neighbors after I take myself for a walk, and we ended up at this place.

It was really nice until Other Mommy decided I wanted to take a swim and she tried to put my feet in water!!!! I’m a herder! Not a water dog!!! Is she insane??? And then the other one, she just laughed at my horrible plight and even splashed me with water!Call the SPCA!! Waiting for a hot dog and swimming?? Will the inhumanity ever end? Thank goodness they decided to leave me alone and just let me smell all the good smells at this place. When what did I see while was smelling but just the most beautiful dog I’ve ever seen in my life. I even went for a swim this morning just so she would notice me, so we would, you know, have something in common we could chat about the next time we meet. April. April April April…I will dream of her tonight...Other Mom made fun of me and said: “Dude, whining after a woman has never worked. You need to work on your delivery.” But by this morning, she wanted me, oh yeah…she barked as we were leaving. I probably should have taken that swim yesterday instead of today. Isn’t that like a long tall blonde? Playing hard to get. Women…sheesh!

So yeah, me and my girls we took a hike. (This is the other instance I think they were trying to kill me) Yup, I even went--au naturale--no leash. No LEASH dudes!! They were so setting me up for “the kill” I think they wanted me to run away! Every other time I'm walking with them I'm on a leash...but hey, I took the oppertunity to be free and enjoy myself. My last few minutes on this Earth in my dog body. I decided to make them feel like they still had control over me. They would call if I got too far away--what they considered too far away, but really, how far was too far WHEN SOMEONE IS TRYING TO KILL YOU? I would play their cat and mouse game and come back a little closer. Besides by the time they called? The smells were boring. We walked up a really big hill and back down it and up another one and back down and up and down and up and down. I think they were waiting for me to keel over. In fact, at one point when I got to close to the edge of the road: “Kipper, if you fall down there and break your neck I’m not sure how we will pack you out, so come over to me.”

See? If that isn’t proof those two weren’t hatching some diabolical scheme to off me I don’t know what is! Maybe this will be proof: Look closely at the water dish in the back of the MINI van: It’s empty. I had just emptied it and no one, NO ONE refilled it until we came home after a big nap’s worth of time.

But the most damning evidence? Guess where I went before I even got to come home and rub my good mountain smells all over my bed? The bath place. Where there is WATER. And a lady who touches my butt.

Peace out everyone and remember me when you see some poor old dog on a walk or having a hot dog. It’s been a tough two days. I think I need a nap.

Love, Kipper Q. Dogg

"Myellow? Are you there? Is this thing on??"

2010-08-28T09:06:00.004-06:00

image here

Yesterday, I got an email from Ms A with her new phone number. It seems she has joined the 21st century and is consolidating her phone service and going cellular. My first thought was: Finally! This was the woman who refused to carry a cell phone, had one, never could find it, didn’t know the number…Which was terribly hard on someone like me who hasn’t had a land line in six years and has developed the cell phone habit. And that’s what it is really, a habit. For years I was able to meet up with people without having to call them minutes before arrival; find restaurants, shops and homes without the benefit of a telephone. As a teenager, I was even able to rendezvous with my mother if we went our separate ways shopping. Now it takes a phone call across Target from son to mother explaining where we are both are in relation to the front door. So what the heck happened? I would like to blame the “need” I have for a cell phone on a shift in the Earth’s space/time continuum but that would be too simple. Lazy is more the answer.

I had privately rolled my eyes at Ms. A because she didn’t have a cell phone. I mean, really! How did she manage to keep up with her two teenagers and her man? She had to be at home next to the phone if she wanted to speak to anyone. So to say I was delighted and smug when I read:

Hi All, I’ve moved up with the times and am bidding adieu to
the old times--a home land line. . .”

Was a gross understatement.

I was planning my sarcastic and pithy reply as I reached for my phone to change the contact number.

What happened next was pure Karma for being a smug Mean Girl.

I unlocked my phone and opened my contacts.
I opened Ms. A.
I clicked options
I scrolled
I scrolled
I scrolled
I scrolled
I re scrolled about sixty eight more times looking for a place to edit her phone number.
Not there.
I could erase the contact but I didn’t want to do that I just wanted to change the frakkin’ home number! I mean really…what the heck was “wrong” with this phone that it didn’t have that function. And I know I’ve changed numbers before because I accidentally changed Wally’s number by a digit and had to call Beav for his number a couple of years ago…more mumbling ensues. More scrolling and clearing and ending and I was almost to the point of just erasing her, after writing down her work number with paper and penso I could ask Wally to change it for me…when what did I see next to the last digit of her dear old land line--a number I was starting to feel sentimental about because she’s had it since returning from Central America to embark on a new and scary life post marriage--

A blinking cursor.

Like a 90 year old woman sitting at her new computer in 1996, I sigh a deep sigh of relief because I could manage this new fangled contraption I held in my hand and by God, I knew what Blinky The Cursor meant. I nervously tapped the clear button and watched a number disappear. Emboldened I tapped it nine more times until all the old numbers miraculously disappeared and Viola! I entered the new number and pushed "save". What's really cool, is this morning I checked and it is still in my phone! Is this a great century or what!

Needless to say, I didn’t send my sarcastic reply.

Uh oh it's haiku time

2010-08-26T06:00:00.004-06:00

Oldest Friend once quipped she was pulled from a graduate poetry program "kicking and screaming". And she's a good poet!

Late Summer

Sun changes her slant
Butterflies taking their leave
Summer feels nappish

I've never been pulled out of anything kicking and screaming but I imagine this attempt at poetry could change that. Will Blogger pull an account for writing bad haiku?

Does this knife in my back make my butt look big?

2010-08-25T06:11:00.003-06:00

image here

Something disturbing happened yesterday in the dressing room at Nordstrom’s Rack. Fortunately, it wasn’t as disturbing as seeing the backs of my thighs in a mirror. Actually, short of someone committing a violent act in the dressing room, I can’t think of anything as disturbing as the backs of my thighs flashing in a fluorescent light enhanced mirror. What I did witness wasn’t criminal but it was despicable and was perpetrated with intent to harm. And it all happened with in the span of maybe a minute.

The Girl was in the dressing booth and I was stationed outside the door to give her choices thumbs up or thumb down. She was popping in and out at the doorway to turn this way and that if she liked it or she barely open the door for a split second and shake her head disappearing behind the door, like a ghost in an ill-fitting or poorly chosen garment, before I could offer my opinion. This dressing room ritual is something Walker forgot to mention in her encyclopedia of women’s myths and rituals. This same donning and doffing ritual was playing out next door to us, too. A twenty-something woman was standing outside the door next to us. Her friend--behind the door was chattering nonstop how happy she was she fit into a particular size now. . .wasn’t it wonderful she was beginning to look good in clothes and feel good in clothes. . .but she just wasn’t sure if the things she had with her really looked that good and if they matched. She was clearly a little overwhelmed with all the selection she had now she was smaller. Her friend was frumpy and ill-kempt and--frankly--fat. I’m not acting out of prejudice against large women here. On the contrary, if this woman waiting outside the door had been skinny she would still be frumpy and ill-kempt. That she had on a polyester dress a size or two too small just added to her list of fashion don’ts. And her friend was a larger woman, too. Although from the sound of it, Friend was losing weight.

Disappearing weight girl popped out of the dressing room with an extremely flattering skirt on in a lovely shade of blue and a wretched mismatched top over it. “So, so what do you think…I mean I’m not sure…does this match?”

Her friend leaned back, narrowed her eyes and thought for a few seconds, tilting her head to the left and then to the right until she nodded and enthusiastically assured her weight losing friend “Of course it matched! Don’t be silly!” Diet girl disappeared behind her door and I noticed Friend rolled her eyes and sighed a little too loudly. The eye narrowing aroused my suspicion and the sigh confirmed this vivacious young woman who was a couple sizes smaller had brought not a friend but a Ferenemy shopping.

The voices in my head were moaning: “Oh honey noOOoooo!!“ and I wanted to devise a split second scheme to get her friend out of the way so I could give a head up that the blouse she had on looked like ass and her “friend knew it. I found myself glancing at Ferenemy shaking my head in reproach and when I caught her eye and she turned away there was no doubt in my mind, Sister knew she was busted. An outfit or so later, the enthusiastic dieter left with her “friend” briskly chatting about how these clothes would be good for now because she had plateau and knew it would be a matter of time before she lost more weight. This chatter went on, nonstop at what seemed the speed of sound while they left the dressing rooms and away from my ear shot. My heart felt sick for this young woman. Yeah, she was a chatter box but her hard work deserved positive recognition and she had no idea there was a knife sticking in her back.

On the way home from The Rack with The Girl’s beautiful new jacket and blouses and my (score!) cute blouse and (yawn) sheets and (double yawn) socks I couldn’t stop thinking about all the girls and later women I have been friends with and in many cases still friends with. A few of us have had our snits and out set-to’s and in one case we stopped being friends in high school for God-only-knows-why but now we‘re friends again. I even had the sad experience of “divorcing” a friend a number of years ago because her negativity was such a weight on my shoulders I couldn’t stand to even talk to her. I’ve even had frenemies. Hell, I had--what felt like at times--an entire subdivision of them. But I took care of that because not only did Ward get the house, kids and the station wagon; he got the neighbor ladies; way back in aught zero. And my oh my my my did I give them something to talk about: leaving my husband because I was unsure of my sexual identity. Looking back now, I bet my desperate act disguised as courage scared the crap out of a couple of them. But aside from Stepford, I’ve never had a ferenemy. Co-workers who make me impatient and set my teeth on edge are one thing (it’s not hard to make me grind my teeth impatiently, I have a very short fuse) but choosing to be friends with someone you essentially don’t like and want to hurt is another thing. Couched in those terms it’s really kind of sick.

I don’t understand why women treat each other this way. What is the point of sabotaging someone out of jealousy? Does it change your own life or circumstance? No, if anything it leaves a big black mark on your book o’ karma which ultimately moves you further away from the ideal you see your “friend“ possesses. Maybe I’m mystified by this kind of behavior because I see myself as part of a sisterhood and it wouldn’t occur to me to humiliate or lie to one of my “sisters”. But in the larger scheme: Friends are a precious and privileged commodity. Why would I squander and abuse a friendship?

Don Corleones urged his sons to hold their friends close and their enemies closer. So what did he tell them to do with their frenemies? Maybe he advised a trip The Rack and lying to them: “Oh yeah, that skirt matches that blouse, it looks great!”

And Another Thing!

2010-08-24T06:21:00.001-06:00

The only saving grace about the Really Big Store we visited on Sunday is it’s in a funky working class neighborhood instead of Stepford and the people watching was fabulous. As you will recall from my last exciting installment, we were well caffeinated so my monkey brain was working like a monkey brain on crack. Before we left the house that morning I almost picked up the camera so I could take pictures of cute dogs and flowers in our favorite ‘hood. It’s probably better that I didn’t have the camera because I would have made an ass out of myself taking pictures of the characters in front of the store.

Two guys were standing with us each wearing work stained clothes and beat up shoes. A Raymond Carver story ready to happen. One guy walked with a cane and had an anchor tattoo on the inner part of his lower right forearm. It was a bad tattoo, not jailhouse bad but bad just the same. I was pretty surprised he didn’t have a Vet’s cap on because he had the look of a Vietnam vet who’s life had beat the crap out of him of him but he was standing up and ready to take more. That is more, just after he bought a case of glass cleaner.

Intense Chinese guy brushed passed us as we approached the store, all upset that it didn’t open for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes!! If he had had pearls to clutch he would have snapped them off his neck. Which would have been ok because he could replace them after he picked up a box of onions.

Just after the Carver characters joined our little Warehouse family, a very large man with a braid down his back rolled into the parking lot riding a pimped out Harley. This guy’s soundtrack must be Born To Be Wild. He had the leather saddle bags festooned with studs, the raised chopper handlebars with festive leather tassels that looked just like the sparkly pink and purple one’s we would beg for when we pimped out our banana seated bikes back in the ‘70s. As I watched him swing into a parking place and dismount from his bike, I wondered how he was going to get a big screen T.V. and a box of ramen home on his bike.

Just before the store opened a family joined the queue. He was scrubbed within an inch of his life wearing a freshly laundered (you could smell the Downy) pearl snapped Western shirt, clean wranglers and the most fascinating cowboy boots I’ve ever seen: pointed toe red and white harlequin patterned painted faux ostrich leather. The only reason I knew this guy wasn’t the grooviest hipster in a band was because his skin was hardened by the sun and the wind. And he was speaking Spanish. Hipsters probably only speak French to one another or if they are feeling ironic, Pig Latin. As it was he is probably the most secure man on the planet to wear such boots. Thirty years ago, those boots would have been my Punk Rock statement and I would have worked them with my aqua bowling shirt, black mini skirt and sporty mullet. I’m still thinking about those boots. In fact, just last night me and TG sighed all over the idea of such boots. Meanwhile the woman with him had a Walk of Shame outfit on: skinny jeans, spangly top, teetering sparkly metallic sandals and accessorized this outfit with a toddler. But I don’t think she was walking the walk. I think she got up out of bed an hour or so before they left the house and put that outfit on selected from her closet and not from the bedroom floor. They were standing close to one another in the intimate repose of family as they passed the baby back and forth so their feet were close together and the juxtaposition of their shoes so unalike but standing so close together was suprising and beautiful. It would have been a wonderful picture.

Which lead me on a thought tangent of how I’m pretty shy about taking people’s pictures. I’ve lucked into some really beautiful people pictures and as time goes on, I am increasingly bold about pointing my camera at people. But how would I ask to take a picture of their shoes? “Excuse me but your footwear is extremely ironic, can I photograph you? Or “Excuse me but your boots are very unusual and your wife’s sandals are not quite what I would wear on a Sunday morning at a grocery store, can I take your picture?” I could lie and tell them I was in school working on a photo project. I could also tell them the truth: I was a freak on too much coffee and so their footwear was infinitely interesting at that moment.

C8H10N4O2

2010-08-23T03:28:00.002-06:00

Yesterday morning we cruised across town to my favorite coffee place in our favorite neighborhood before the monthly trip to Really Big Store Where You Can Buy A Case Of Tylenol Or Diamonds. I hate going to this place and I avoid it as carefully as I avoid cooking and balancing my checkbook. Everything is just so darn oversized and big! Even the shopping carts are oversized. And of course they are because a regular cart wouldn’t hold the 2000 pack of toilet paper.

The Girl was well caffeinated and five minutes before the store opened she had lined up the cart in front of the door and was rolling it back and forth, leaning into it like a contestant for one of those shoppers’ sweepstakes; the type where you run into a store and have five minutes to fill your cart. Girl was super charged and revving up her cart. I swear I heard her make car noises.

I was a little concerned about TG yesterday, too because when we walked into the warehouse I asked if we had won the lottery the night before, because if we did, I was buying diamonds. You must know TG is very sensible about money so I was gobsmacked when she remarked: “If we won the lottery we are NOT buying diamonds here. We are chartering an airplane and going to Tiffany’s in New York for our diamonds.” I just stopped and stared at her like she had three heads.

“You can’t seriously mean that? That would be a stupid waste of money when there is a perfectly good Tiffany’s just down the street from here!”

Sister girl needs to watch the coffee intake; it’s impairing her judgment.

Waiting For The To Go Signal

2010-08-22T11:30:00.001-06:00

Seven thousand years ago in the early ‘90s Nora Ephron said something like you could be in the room next to your children attempting suiicide but if you are engaged in something you love chances are they will need something of you. I botched the quote but you get the idea.

Anyhow, I had one of those days yesterday. Friday night at 10:30, I said good night to Beav and he announced to me: “I have Frisbee Golf in the morning.” Good Mother would have said, “Oh honey, that is so neat you are doing that again and I know you had a great time last year!” I was Good Mother earlier this week when I asked if he was going to play this year. But the other night, Bad Mother put her hands on either side of her forehead and let out a big Oscar worthy sigh and said: “Al-right. What time? It better not be crazy early because I’m really tired and have been up at 5 every morning.” As the words were leaving my mouth, Good Mother was whacking me over the head with a bossy stick: “What time do you think your little darling was up every day this week? Just sixty minutes after you, is what!” After Beav metaphorically patted me on the head and assured me it was at ten I was placated and took myself, Good Mother and Bad Mother to bed.

So guess what time my eyes popped open and refused to shut again. Just guess.

Uh huh. Six-thirty.

What am I 80? And incapable of sleeping past seven?

So after laying in bed for about an hour, I got up, fed the dog, and messed around on the net, sent The Girl an LOLcat text from Kipper about the RABBIT we saw eating blossoms off the butterfly bush; and looked several times at the menacing pile of receipts I need to sort through only to look away from them again in a futile attempt at denial that my checkbook needs to be balanced.

About an hour after Beav’s alarm sounded and thirty minutes before we needed to leave so I marched upstairs, dressed, put my scanky hair in a twist and marched across the hall to Beav’s room.

knockknockknock “It’s a little after nine, time to get up.”

“mmmrrfffff mmmmrrrrfff ffrfmmm ffmmfmffrr“

“Are you going? Cuz if you are we need to leave in about 30 minutes.”

“mmmmffrrffmm“

So I marched downstairs and tried to decide what I was going to do. Repeatedly attempting to get him up for Frisbee Golf did not make the short list. Or even the long one.

1. I could go out for coffee. I was dressed. Mind you dressed just a hair’s breadth away from ending up on the People of Walmart site but I wasn’t going to Walmart so it didn‘t matter…Besides the second I sat down with a trashy magazine at my favorite coffee place someone would call me all wild voiced demanding to know where I was because “I have to be somewhere REALLY IMPORTANT AND YOU AREN’T HOME.”

2. I could work in the garden. The flowers needed to be trimmed up, cucumbers inspected and the fact I don’t have red tomatoes on August 21st--a troubling and tragic situation--needed to be fussed over. I also needed to smile over my cheerful zinnias.

3. I could balance the checkboo---OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD NO! TURN AWAY FROM THE LIGHT JUNE! TURN AWAY FROM THE LIGHT! [don’t worry Dad, I know how much money I have and it’s enough]

4. I could clean the kitchen. But there’s a yucky pan I don’t feel like doing and that would be noisy and wake the little darlings up which would then probably interrupt my cleaning because someone would need a ride somewhere. And then I would complain about having to stop what I was doing…which could lead to the two part harmony song called: “If I Had A Car” (sung to “If I Had A Hammer” it’s a real catchy tune). Which then leads to me reminding them if everyone had a car no one would have food or light because we would all have to sit quietly with our hands folded neatly, trying to forget the hunger pains we were experiencing in the dark because our monthly auto insurance bill would preclude us from paying the electric bill or buying groceries.

5. I could write. Because I must. And people at my house want me to write and enjoy what I write so they don’t interrupt me and if they need me they say so and give me a few minutes. I’m not sure how this respect came about but it has and I am very thankful. I know it didn’t come about because I would grumble at them or snarl. One day, Wally was lurking around and I was fiddling with something. I looked up at him and was all wild-eyed: “I know! I know! You want to go!!” He got this Dali Lama look on his face and said: “Mom, I know you’re writing. I can wait.”

After I got back from taking Wally to his friends’ house I searched high and low for the pod.

I just hate holding patterns. I would rather they breathe down my neck when I’m doing something than wait for them to start breathing down my neck. Waiting to see if they need me. It’s an odd state of being and I think only being a parent allows you to understand what I mean. It’s one of the many things about mothering that makes me twitchy and impatient with myself. But I managed to get all Dali Lama on myself and so I:

Made myself coffee, deadheaded the flowers, pulled the weeds, harvested a cucumber and fussed over the not ripening tomatoes, sighed over my festive zinnias, cleaned the kitchen and wrote a little something.

But I did not balance the checkbook because this Puritan girl’s work ethic only goes so far.

The Cadillac Of Mini Vans

2010-08-21T09:39:00.002-06:00

image found here

Last January, after 19.5 years of motherhood I started driving a van. I had resisted up until this year because I didn’t like them and didn’t have kids who were apt to need rides with eighty pounds of equipment and four of their team members. In fact, I distained mini vans. I thought they were the ugliest cliché of a post modern suburban life style. The ultimate sign you had sold your life out to The Children. I’ll never forget the day we found The Fabulous House in the Suburbs because as we were leaving Stepford Knolls, I noticed every vehicle whizzing by us was a mini van. I looked at Ward and said: “For the love of God don’t let me buy a mini van.” Nope, no mini van for me. No SUV for me, either. I drove a station wagon. Until the Mitsubishi that Wally killed, it was my favorite car. It was fast, easy to maneuver and I could get three extra kids in it if the “way back” seat was flipped up. So barely I slid around the cliché. Only one other housewife in Stepford Knolls drove a station wagon and it was an awesome retro Mercedes touring wagon. Being van free gave me rebel cred.

One of the most foolish things I ever did was giving up the station wagon during the divorce. Ward insisted he have custody of the boys and so I was the Disneyland Mommy and really didn’t need a big ole car! Nope, I took the two door convertible because he needed the station wagon for “his“ sons. [insert face palm here] The two door thing lasted about six months before I traded it for my beloved gas hog SUV.

I didn’t have to drive my mom’s van. I could have traded it in or sold it. But the appeal of not having a car payment--something I’ve enjoyed for about six years--was more appealing than satisfying my vanity. Whoa back up the bus! Something more important than my over inflated ego? Fancy that. Despite the pining, dreaming, lusting, and sighing over a British racing car green over green MINI Cooper S hardtop with both winter and premium packages for about 3 years, I resisted. Hence the van is now referred to as the MINI van. (You say “MINI“loud and whisper “van“) I still sigh over them when I see them in traffic, they are just the most adorable cars, like puppies that never loose the fluffy sweet puppy look. Besides, me and TG would look cute in a MINI.

This isn’t saying we don’t look hot in the MINI van. Especially with Dad’s “Bass Master” sticker picturing a leaping fish in the back window, it just adds to the irony of it all. I keep threatening to get some of those stupid family decals, too. Two women: one shorter with curly hair, one taller with straight hair, two very tall and skinny male figures in baggy pants and caps plus a decrepit and scruffy looking dog with a blank stare and a big tongue hanging out of his mouth. To add to the confusion: my bumper would feature a Darwin fish on one side of the license and a bumper sticker about What Would Jesus Do on the other. Realistically, I’m reluctant to put anything about Jesus on my bumper because then I can’t yell at cars because that behavior would leave no doubt the depth of my hypocrisy on any given day. Without the Jesus bumper sticker people just think I’m a godless heathen with an anger management problem and they pray for my soul after I‘ve yelled at them so it‘s a win-win situation: I get to yell at cars and get bonus prayers for my soul, too.

To be honest, the MINI van is actually a very nice car with leather seats and electric everything. It’s the nicest car I’ve ever had and the price was just so right. I drive it thankfully and only curse it when I have to parallel park.

A couple of months ago we were going downtown to our favorite restaurant and I was riffing on the fact we were in a mini van, and how we were making mini van’s hip for the rest of the world. And weren’t we something else. . . And then I flashed on Get Shorty and how Chili confidently explained his odd car choice to Martin Weir as “The Cadillac of mini vans” and whaddya know the dark green vans started showing up all over Hollywood. Because Chili was just that cool. By this time we had pulled into our parking place and were getting out when I noticed the car pulling in next to us: a brand new black mini van. “See what did I say? We started a trend and all the cool lesbians will be driving mini vans!“ I was expecting a Mommy and Daddy to get out of their van but was amazed when two painfully fashionable and dapper young men emerged from the van.

Uh huh…told ya’ so. The MINI of mini vans is what I’m driving.

"If it was completely different, school would be great."

2010-08-20T05:23:00.003-06:00

I found the books here

If you read my blog regularly you know Beav is back in school this week and I think it’s insanely early to be starting school. One reason it’s too early is the weather; it’s hot this time of year and most of the school isn’t air conditioned. I don’t know about your but I always found a close and overly warm room most conducive to learning. But The Beav is taking this whole back-to school thing like a man, going to bed at a reasonable hour and getting up on time. It seems like yesterday he was the little boy on the kindergarten playground in his jammies. Four years ago he was the kid who looked like he slept in his clothes to save time in the morning. (I let him but the negotiating lynch pin was he had to brush his teeth. I chose my battles with this one) But last year was a magic year, not only did he get up on time without a bunch of drama, he volunteered to shower without being begged. The angels who live with us were able to unplug their noses and sing hallelujah.

Back-to-school also means two other things: forms to fill out and being nickle and dimed to death. Five bucks here, fifteen bucks there, twenty over there. And this is after I shelled out a Benjamin and Grant and Lincoln last week for fees. Fortunately, after fifteen years of this particular rodeo I know to plan for the slow fiscal bleed that marks the middle of August.

One of the yearly forms I must complete makes me cranky. The Reading Permission Slip. Maybe I’m like a crack mom or too lenient or neglectful or something but I trust my son’s teachers to make prudent decisions about the reading curriculum and don’t feel a need to sign a permission slip for my son to read bits and pieces of the European and American canons. It’s not like Screw magazine is suddenly relevant to a high school English class. Ok…not relevant in a scholastic sense. And with Wally? I was just happy he was reading a book that wasn’t a graphic novel. Last year, I embarrassed Beav to death because I wrote a ranty message on the bottom of his reading permission slip. I told her how sorry I was his literature teacher worked in a district which smothered creativity and extolled censorship as a virtue. This year, I asked if he would like me to review his American Literature reading list and pick out the things I thought were boring and useless to high school sophomores for a “Can Not Read” list for his teacher. He chuckled and then assured me this wasn’t necessary. Can you imagine the look on the teacher’s face? Dear Ms. Teacher, James Fennimore Cooper is counter to our religious and soul felt belief literature should be well written and relevant. Yours sincerely, June Cleaver. I also have to give him permission to watch PG 13 films used to support pieces of literature they study. My guess is the parents bitched up about PG 13 films have kids who spend time at their friends’ houses drinking stolen beer and watching soft core porn on Cinamax.

This year the form that induced multiple eye rolls was the standard emergency contact form which also includes who isn’t supposed to pick up your kid. I think this is mandatory information for kids who aren’t old enough to buy cigarettes drive cars or don’t have the intellectual or emotional capacity to say no or whack job Lolita types who favor “older” men. But for this sixteen year old? I mean really, the kid makes better decisions than his parents. But despite my whining about the rules and procedures I do what I’m told. So I’m dutifully and by rote filling in my numbers, Ward and Alexis’ contact information and TG’s numbers when I get to the last line which asks me “who else will be allowed to pick up your ‘child‘?”

I was so tempted to write: “Everyone but creepy guys in vans who promise puppies and candy, Catholic priests or Crack dealers may give my son a ride home. And if he gets a ride home with a creepy guy, priest or dealer makes sure they are going somewhere to watch PG 13 movies and read smutty novels”

I think I may do this his senior year just to see if anyone notices.

Victus Obscurum

2010-08-19T06:20:00.004-06:00

mmmm salty goodness found here

I realized yesterday I might have an eating disorder when I found myself in the basement huddled over a bag of potato chips I had uncovered from its hiding place. When I’m feeling snackish it is necessary for me to sneak downstairs and nosh in secret being mindful of loud crunchy noises and keeping an eye out on the door for interlopers. I will even lie to the offspring if they ask me: “Do we have anymore chips and salsa? “ I bat my eyelashes and look at them dead in the eye shaking my head as I’m picturing the bag of chips and cans of salsa. My hiding places depend upon my sons’ inherited Male Pattern Blindness and so I put ice cream and sorbet behind the frozen vegetables and snack food behind boring things like large boxes of healthy cereal. But I must confess this sneaking around makes me feel weird like I’m some sort of food obsessed woman who isn’t “allowed” to eat snacks because I’ll throw them up after eating two bags of chips and two boxes of cookies in one sitting; or my BMI is 50% and I was told to lose weight or die. Luckily the idea of barfing makes me a little urpy and I‘m keeping my BMI well below 50%. Over eating and bulimia aren‘t the disorders I suffer. My eating disorders are Wally and Beav and if I didn’t hide the chips, cookies and ice cream I would never have the luxury of even getting to make unhealthy food choices.

Hmmm…maybe I should liberate the chips and sorbet from captivity to help nudge off my spare ten pounds. I bet my snacks would be gone within two hours after I left them out in the open. The only thing left would be the empty packages, a few crumbs on the floor and dirty spoons in the sink. The poor dears have those gross and fine motor skill deficits that cause a person to have an inability to throw empty packages away or put dirty dishes in the dishwasher. I probably should have them seen by a physical therapist for this, huh. Oh well their disability will just make them stronger.

Is there SSI for this sort of thing?

See Wally Think. Think Wally Think.

2010-08-18T11:18:00.003-06:00

Yesterday I called Wally, thinking it would be a good break from uncharacteristic Chaotic Hell that was work, and oh boy was that a mistake. The kid is all wound up. Tight like a freakin’ clock or an old man who watches too much Fox News. Which is exactly who he reminds me of just now: some old coot who watches Fox News and believes every damn word uttered. This is not to say I wouldn’t be upset if he sounded like some old hippie who was watching Rachel Maddow, either. And I sound like an old coot when I say things like: “Can’t trust the damn media, they just all want to sell ya’ their brand of politics and the flavor or the day…why can’t they just report the news, dammit. “ [insert rocking chair at full stop here so I can shake my fist in the air but careful my arm fat doesn’t hit me in the cheek]

Wally is terribly upset that “Obama is letting the Muslims build a masque at Ground Zero. “ Hey at least he worries about something other than his hair…

Who is this kid and how did I end up with such a conservative xenophobic atheist? (I believe the conservative and xenophobe part would be cured if he believed in something bigger outside of himself)

Obama is not building a mosque at Ground Zero. Its a few blocks away and it’s a Community Center. I’ve only been to one mosque but shooting hoops in the middle of it would have been frowned upon. This has a basketball court and other stuff plus a chapel. (Wally would now accuse me of being brainwashed by the “liberal media”. Um yeah…I’m completely hypnotized by Maddow…)

Forgive me but maybe I'm just so fucking worn out with bad news and stupid people that I can't get excited or upset about anything anymore. Just about everything that happens outside of my job or my home elicits a “whatever” response from me. And it’s not because my life is so horrible and difficult I can’t think of anyone but myself and I don't have the strength to worry about one group of loud mouths oppressing a group of people who don't share their beliefs. I’m just sick to death of worrying about it and getting angry about the oppression and small mindedness of it all. On both sides of the fence, too. And all the worrying, bitching, moaning and fist shaking I do doesn't change a fucking thing. All I can think to do is say a prayer that some how some where some time one of these loud people who think they embody the life of Christ with their protests wakes up and realizes it's all the same God who I'm pretty sure doesn't want us killing each other or hating one another in his name or any of his other names. And then say another prayer that all the people who think people who believe in a creative force or a God external to their own physical beings are stupid, misinformed, sheep, ignorant or dangerous (I’ve been called all those things by atheists) and realize that for the future of the Earth and human beings it would be more beneficial to just shrug off the differences and realize it doesn’t matter if we came from God or the earth or both or from a space ship. What matters is ultimately we take care of one another for the sake of human kind.

The Short And Long Of It

2010-08-17T22:50:00.003-06:00

For the last eighteen months I’ve been attempting to grow out my hair. Over the last thirty years, My hair has been from my the top of my back to buzzed off a la Jamie Lee Curtis or Annie Lennox. Six years ago, I went from shoulder length to extremely short and have kept it pretty much off my ears ever since. But a eighteen months ago, I looked at myself in the mirror and decided it was time to stop with the short hair because I looked like everyone’s favorite bull dyke gym. Lipstick and earrings just made me look like Ms. Clodhopper failed at femming it up a little. If you’ve never grown a short hair cut out (or a bad one for that matter) it can feel as if time stands still. So I made myself a promise to do this for at least a year before giving up getting a short hair cut out of desperation and defeat. I have spent hours contemplating how long it’s going to be when. My hair grows pretty fast, about a half inch a month, so I was able to set goals for myself to help quell the frustration and move me away from the shears. I suppose all the ~~obsessing~~ thinking I do about my hair’s length along with estimating how fast it’s going to grow before I hit a milestone length makes me pretty freakin’ shallow. Good thing I’m thinking about quantum physics and world politics when I’m not estimating hair growth. *

The milestones I‘ve reached so far: (I have pictures at each milestone but I’ll spare everyone)

A little tiny bit of hair over my ears (July ‘09)
The ability to put a bit of hair behind my ears (October ‘09)
The ability to pull back my hair in a band (December ‘09 but it looked stupid)
A pony tail (February ‘10 again it was an anemic little thing but worked on the beach)
A chignon (June ‘10)
The most recent milestone was reached this week: Abby had to cut my hair while it was lying on my shoulders rather than pull it up in the air when she trimmed the ends.
By February of 2011 I want to toss all my hair behind my shoulders.

I find a hair toss to be a helpful gesture which can signify a dramatic flounce away from a subject or dismissing someone who is a bother or even a flirty move. But if that North Korean Dr. Evil guy or Bat Shit Crazy Iranian president blow us up before then I’m gonna be pissed. So pissed I’ll shrug my shoulders up around my ears and toss it like that. Which isn’t going to be nearly as satisfying. Barring total nuclear annihilation, I should have hair half way down my back before December 21st 2112 the scheduled day the world ends. And if the amount of time I’ve spent thinking about this along with the creation of a 538 word document describing my hair’s growth is any indication of the importance all of this; my life will be complete.

It’s good to have goals.

*The only thought I've ever entertained about Quantum Physics was: “Wow that sounds all hard and complicated, so I’m gonna think about my hair!”

Rick Rollin' Those Boys

2010-08-16T21:11:00.003-06:00

See Beav drive. Drive Beav drive. See serious Beav? Lighten up Beav. Lighten up.

Granted, he needs to be serious behind the wheel of the MINI van but he also needs to lighten up a little bit the rest of the time. Wally could use a laugh or eight, too. So I’m dying to play a prank on my sons. Wally is understandably sick to death with the waiting for his BCT date and acting like a thirteen year old girl on her period and Beav is just too damn serious all the time. I’m thinking I’ll download a really ridiculous ring tone to their phones. The tricky part is getting possession of the phones. Maybe just before Wally takes a shower I’ll pretend my phone is dead or lost (two very plausible scenarios) and download something really corny, maybe an old Captain and Tennille song or some other schlock 70’s popular tune. I know exactly what song Beav is getting and I can use the same excuse on him but the only wrinkle is his phone is always on vibrate. Not only will I need to download Rick Ashtly’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” but change the sound settings. I’ll need to work fast and the timing; Beav will be trickiest because he could dial out and notice the sound change which would ruin my fun.

As they say in Texas: “Watch this, cuz this is gonna be cool!” Mind you this statement is usually followed by a fiery car crash or a trip to the county ER.

I figure these two have it coming what with the way they ruined my body; routinely empty the refrigerator and my checking account; not to mention the slow consumption of my brain over the years.

The Secret Life Of Mom

2010-08-15T09:59:00.003-06:00

I found Lady GaGa here

Yesterday while I was having my hair color updated I text messaged TG a formal dinner invitation. I was so caught up in my own spontaneity that I forgot to check with Beav to see if he had made plans. That was stupid and almost led to a lot of disappointment on my part because he wanted to be at Young Life movie night (Zoolander! Yay! That's my boy!)and I wanted to be on the complete opposite side of town at a restaurant eating overpriced appetizers in a chi-chi room filled with The Incredibly Young And Hip. Because I'm not 100% selfish and TG is 100% understanding we took a rain check and Beav had a movie and poker night with his friends. (We'll discuss the movie and card game choice at another time)

On the way home from Stepford I played a especially chosen and burned CD for The Girl. I thought she was going to squeal (maybe she did?) when the opening strains of "Just Dance" came out of the speakers. Lady Gaga's song induces people, all sorts of people, including my very self-conscious older son, soldiers in Afghanistan and older women in Sephora stop whatever it is they are doing and dance. Because everyone needs a daily dance break. Ellen DeGeneres started this on her show and if you watch the audience, they anticipate it because the joy they feel and the unmitigated joy she exudes is infectious. I think it's vital for mental health. It doesn't matter if you can't keep the rhythm or you look like Paula Abdul. Just stop what you are doing and dance.

We car danced to Lady GaGa all the way home and when we made it home after our Lady GaGa break we rearranged the speakers for better surround sound and turned the music up very very very loud and danced to everything from Lady GaGa and Moby to Neko Case and Marc Anthony. It was about a million times more fun and fifty times more spontaneous than dinner out.

I missed Beav's phone call--made per my stern instruction--telling me what time to pick him up. Bad mom. And I heard about it when he called back, annoyed asking where I was. But hey, he didn't leave a message and I'm not telepathic. He calmed down in the twenty minutes it took to get to the Stepford Young Life house and then he asked the 365 thousand dollar question I was praying he would ask:

"So what did you and TG do tonight?"

"Nothing. Just hung out, watched a little television."

Deadpan. I should be in the cold. CIA. International woman of mystery. Boy doesn't know what he's missin' when's he not at home.

OoooOOOohhhhh NoooOOOOoooooo!!!!

2010-08-14T11:17:00.001-06:00

Sorry about the wailing and gnashing of teeth but school starts on Monday and one of us is in full blown pout and whine mode because school means a schedule and deadlines and supposed to's and have to's and shoulds and watching the clock and setting an alarm five days a week which is just gross, hateful and dumb. No more lounging around watching television all afternoon or staying up on the computer until the wee hours.

Gah. Back to school! I mean really? It's the freakin' middle of August! School? What-EVER. What the Hell? I think there is a republican conspiracy against summer and just hanging out with friends.

Beav on the other hand seems excited about school starting, a little apprehensive because he has to deal with his nemesis Algebra but excited about getting his sophomore year started. He's probably happy to be getting away from his 49 going on 15 mom.

I remember when I was excited school was starting. Standing at the gate of the elementary school, those first years balancing a baby or a toddler on my hip while the big self important older brother marched into school disappearing to do mysterious older brother things. Then the little brother joined him for one glorious year they were in the same school. Most of my mommy friends cried the day their youngest child marched into the elementary school. I did a little happy dance. Beav was a challenge to entertain.

I didn't cry until last year when Beav started high school. Let's hope I can keep it together when he goes away to college in a few years.

Seriously? I am NOT Obsessed

2010-08-12T20:22:00.003-06:00

So me and The Girl had a deep and thought provoking conversations tonight while I was snuggling up with Kipper. He was breathing hard per his usual and so I him Kipper once he was dead I was going to get a Yard Cow and let it lay on the bed just like he was. The Girl laughed and mocked this idea. Mocked the idea of the Yard Cow becoming a House Cow.

"You can't house break a cow!"

"Sure you can! If you can house break this silly dog you can house train anything!"

"When I finish this game [she was playing mahjong] I'm gonna look this up, I bet you can't do it."

I love the internets. Love. Google pointed her in just the right direction here.

What's really amazing is the site's author describes Kipper to a P. Just substitute the word "Cow" with the word "Kipper":

Cows love you. They are harmless, they look nice, they don't need a box to crap
in, they keep the grass down and they are so trusting and stupid that you cannot
but lose your heart to them. They will listen to your problems and never ask a
thing in return. They will be your friend forever. And when get tired of them,
you can kill them and eat them. Perfect.

Except for the killing and eating part. Kipper does his share of digging
holes in the grass, doesn't need a litter box and is trusting and stupid.
He listens to our problems and can keep a secret.

I was terribly intrigued by this idea of the Yard Cow becoming a House Cow and so further research revealed that the trick to house breaking a cow is to have your cat demonstrate how to use a litter box a few times so the cat trains the cow. Simple!

But not so simple at my house because we aren't cat people. Which is an understatement as to the depth of emotions I have about cats as an effort to keep the Cat People hate mail out of my email account. But yeah, truth told. I hate cats.

So much so I will have to put down my dream of a House Cow and move on to something else. Like a House Goat.

w00t! w00t!

2010-08-11T20:46:00.004-06:00

W00t! W00t!

Yay baby! Party at the Vatican! Beer bongs with the cardinals! Hookers for the guards cuz the Big Hatted guy is on vacay!!

Firsts

2010-08-10T21:06:00.004-06:00

The last three days have been filled with a few firsts and revisits. Me, Wally and Beav took a trip to SW Colorado just for the hell of it. I did absolutely no forward planning except for booking a hotel res and glancing at a map. Usually I have a plan months in advance. Restaurants that appeal to me, sites I want to see. Everything is thought of just in case. Just in case what I'm not sure. I always have an obsessively constructed packing list, too. Not this time. Nope. And yeah I forgot stuff: ipod charger and hair dryer, notebook and reading materials but really I managed. I bore the cross of not drying my hair or having the ipod to entertain me. I even survived without a book or anotebook. I did remember the computer so I could write.
Since I moved to Colorado in 1987 I've been to the SW edge of the state once and that was a quick trip to a wedding in the mountains. So Durango was like a new town for me. I'm a little ashamed I haven't bothered with the mountains in about five years. Sad isn't it? I've been half way across the globe but haven't taken a forty mile trip to the west into the foothills. Surprise surprise it's pretty just outside of my town! Who knew! And there is river rafting close to home and hiking too. But I had to plan a trip 350 miles away for river rafting and hiking. I text messaged the girl about two hours into our trip and gushed all over the place about how she and I plus dog should go to the mountains for the day some weekend.

Speaking of river rafting. I went rafting in early June 1987 on the Colorado River. It wasn’t mellow water and it wasn’t fun. I was terrified and had the mantra of "rock head rock head rock head" going through my mind the entire time. It didn't help that our guide plus all the riders except me were either drunk or high or both. Good times. Good times. So whenever I meet people for the first time and they ask if I camp or enjoy river sports I look at them like they have grown an extra head, clutch imaginary pearls around my neck and screech, NO!

We took a short float trip Monday morning and it was a blast. Mind you, it's late in the season and the Animas River was "mellow" but it was just a hoot and a half to be out on the water and swim a little, too. I think I'll go again but maybe earlier in the season when the water is a little more exciting. It helped to have a completely sober guide and sober raft mates. The guide laughed when I told him about my experience and knew exactly what I was talking about. River Rats are known for their party attitudes.

After our float trip we drove up the hill and took a hike. Five miles in five miles out. That's ten miles, a one and a zero. That’s a lot for me, too. The last time I hiked--aside from a two mile dog walk--Y2K. I attempted a fourteener and lost my lunch, breakfast, dinner and god knows what else once we were at 13k. I assumed it was just the altitude and thought I couldn't tolerate it. Turns out it was probably the altitude plus the vicodan I had been taking post oral surgery. The cigarettes didn’t help at 13K either. As I got older and continued to smoke I was terrified of having a heart attack on the side of a hill. But whaddya know, my pulmonary health must be restored because despite being winded from walking from 8000 to 9000 feet my heart didn‘t skip beats, an elephant didn‘t sit on my chest and I didn‘t die. The hike we took was my favorite kind of hike: varied terrain that goes in and out of conifer forest, aspen groves and alpine meadows. I love alpine meadows. I could just lie down and nap in an alpine meadow. In fact, I think doing just that should be on the bucket list. Luckily, I was able to walk this morning and on our way home we stopped at a couple of trail heads along Wolf Creek pass and hiked a half mile up to a lovely water fall and then stopped at another trail head near the top of the continental divide. We hiked maybe a mile in and discovered we were at the crest of the ski area and found a field of strawberries that were just starting to ripen. I left a few for the bears but not many.

Further down the road, I made friends with a genuine yard cow!! We switched drivers in the San Luis Valley and stopped at a local milk/cheese farm store. We turned into the drive way and there she was tethered to the fence in the front yard. Cleo was prettiest little fawn colored cow in the world. She was gentle, too. My life is now really complete because I made friends with a yard cow. What a summer! Elephants and a cow! Does life get any better than this?

I didn't barf riding shotgun over Wolf Creek pass like I did twenty years ago. Beav drove it too. Too bad about the upholstery over the passenger window where the OMG straps should have been. He was pretty impressed with himself when we went back over it today and he was the passenger reaching for the OMG strap. There were a couple of times I had my own eyes closed this afternoon as we made those hairpin turns.

The most amazing first! The sons didn't argue with one another one. Single. Time. No one acted like an asshat. Not even me! No one whined or complained! Not even me!! And I can always find something to whine about. This is a first for us. How sweet, everyone's all grown up now. Gone are the days of knocking each other's teeth out and being confined to separate corners of a station wagon.

Three More Reasons I Stand Every Chance Of Not Being Mother Of The Year

2010-08-08T08:44:00.003-06:00

Three Reasons Why June Will Not Be Mother Of The Year

2. Exactly two minutes after picking up one of Beav's friends whom I had never met I sarcastically referred to something as "fucking awsome". Luckily the kid laughed and didn't ask to be let out of the car so he could go home and pray for me.

1. My schtick is getting old and tired. I asked Beav on Friday if he wanted to go anywhere or did he just want to pick up his birthday "hookers and blow". His immediate response was: "Can we wait til next year?" After I laughed he gives me a cagey look and says: "I knew you were going to say something like that so I was thinking of something funny to say." Looks like June has jumped the shark with this kid.

3. Friday night, I text messaged Wally the following: "big rave on 7th and Santa Fe by the galleries, we were just there its free chek it out." I was inviting my 20 year old son to dance in the street with half naked women (and men) waving glow sticks and being tempted to take XTC cut with god knows what and drink so much water he becomes water intoxicated and ends up face down in an ED or worse face down on the street... (to clarify, Wally thinks drugs are a stupid waste of time so this was really the least of my worries) It turns out, they cruised by the dance and through the gallery district but couldn't find a place to park. Perhaps we should have coordinated better and saved our rock star parking place The Girl had scored when we arrived at the monthly Art Walk several hours before. By the time I thought to text him we were already raising a toast to Ms. A for a successful debut as a collage artist.

I'm hoping our quick trip to the Las Animas river will stuff the ballot box in my favor. Until Tuesday!

Luft Balloon

2010-08-07T04:31:00.004-06:00

image here

Yesterday I was laying in the sun and happened to look up into the flawless blue sky and noticed a white balloon shimmering many feet above. The irredescent white balloon was moving quickly , dancing in the cross breezes with a glittery silver string dangling beneath it. I wondered how small I must have appeared from that distance above the earth and I contemplated what it must feel like to float and fly above the Earth at such a great distance. For the millionth time, I wished I could fly. Just raise myself off the ground floating and swooping with my arms to my sides or out like wings. When I was a child I would have dreams of flying like this and in one particular dream I was flying over the playground propelling myself faster or slower at will, turning somersaults and flips as I went along. The feeling of absolute freedom is still with me when I recall that dream.

A book I cherished when I was that age also came to mind: The Wednesday Witch. A little girl found a tiny witch in her doll house and the witch would come to life on Wednesday's, taking the girl on adventures. One such adventure included riding a cannister vacuum high in the night sky over the girl's neighborhood and across her city. It was an enchanting fantasy for me and the creepy factor of finding a doll that would come alive and kidnap a child never occurred to me until yesterday.

I remember twirlling round and round and falling to the ground, eyes closed for a few seconds to continue the sensation of spinning so I could imagine I was actually flying through the air. My favorite time to do this was night because I wanted to open my eyes and be amongst the stars. It was always greatly disappointing to be bound by stubborn gravity. My next attempt at flying was the whole mind over matter thing. I must have read about Yogi's levitating or some such thing because I spent time willing myself to levitate just a little above the ground. Flying would have been great but I would have been satisfied with hovering a bit over the ground but that even proved more than my brain could muster. Just for the lark of it, I gave it another try yesterday afternoon, closing my eyes and freeing my mind hoping I would feel the weight of the earth drop away from me as I floated up and away from the yard and into the sky so I could grab the balloon and bring it back to earth with me when I was tired of flying. A souvenir of my adventure.

I imagine the visage of a flying middle-aged woman clad only in a bathing suit wouldn't have been as charming a picture as an eight year old on the back of a canister vacuum. Lucky thing I stayed on the ground.

Happy Birthday Mr. Busy!

2010-08-06T07:36:00.002-06:00

I warned Beav I would be blogging about his birthday. I’m suspicious he reads my blog because he knows his online name and the other psueds I use…unless he is spying on me and hacking into my computer and reading documents. Which would be sad because my life is pretty boring. His only request was: No infant pictures. So much for honoring his request.

Sixteen today, what a milestone. But every birthday he has feels like a milestone because of his rough start. When he was 22 weeks gestation we weren’t sure he was going to even survive birth much less surgery or a NICU stay. Miraculously, he was flawless at birth. Yes, he “crumped” at twelve hours and did indeed require the NICU for a few days and oxygen at home. But that was actually the better case scenario for my little boy. OF referred to the NICU as “the casino” because of the absense of natural light and constant alarms and bells and voices. I do wonder what Beav remembers precognitive about his rough start. Now I tease him that his periodic low oxygen saturation meant his IQ is only 140 rather than 190. But despite the rough start he grew and grew and grew and grew.

Here he is at 1. We knew he would suck his thumb because we had seen every inch of him, inside and out during the troubled pregnancy. Isn’t he sweet? My parents took he and Wally for pictures and Beav had had just enough and needed a nap.

That he was going to take a nap was blessing enough. Beav was one of those baby’s who wasn’t satisfied with the current developmental leap they had made. If he had rolled over, once was enough and sitting up must be obtained instantly after rolling over. He always seemed so frustrated with his body and his mind not moving as quickly as he desired, not doing everything he wanted it to do. Not being able to keep up with his older brother. When he slept, it was with one eye open because he didn’t want to miss a thing. Beav was into everything and extremely busy. Hence his nickname: Mr. Busy. He was a naughty little thing, too. You can see it in his eye and just after the picture was taken he jumped off the chair. His first Parkour move! Makes a mother proud after she recovers from the heart attack and realizes her kid hasn’t broken both legs.

Mr. Busy didn’t have much to say. His brother talked for him so he didn’t see any need for conversation because his basic needs were being met. He still doesn’t talk much. I imagine fishing with he and my dad would be absolutely scintillating except for the silence of two taciturn men. But in this picture his brother is away with my parents, having done a very grown up thing and flown alone to Texas. We took a trip to the mountains and out of the blue I heard this little voice from the back seat:

“Knock Knock”

I turn around stunned. I was about to take this boy to a speech pathologist for a work up. Because he seemed bright enough but he didn’t talk. . .

“Who’s there, Beav?”

“Sheep”

I give Ward a sidelong glance and I turn around and like a CIA operative who is sussing out where the microfilm is I say:

“Sheep who?”

The little mite leans forward in his car seat and gleefully says:

“Baaaaaaa!!!!!!”

After he repeated the joke we were further introduced to the inner workings of Beav’s brain. He had a lot to say and narrated the scene passing outside the car windows until we arrived at our hotel.

I
I worried Beav didn’t have any of his own interests and my mom out and out fretted about it. Fortunately, I knew it would be a matter of time and Beav would find his passion. And he did at the ripe old age of four. Airplanes.

Beav still loves airplanes and is very sad he is too tall to be a fighter pilot. I think I have him convinced being a C130 pilot is way better because they bring troops, letters from home, care packages, food, medicines and supplies. Besides that, they get to “drive” 747’s!

Yes, I used the word “drive” because I was under the influence of his driving when we were having this conversation. And like a big doink I said: “And after your military career you can ‘drive’ a 747!“ The kid loves his Gs. He kept putting his foot into the MINI van like it was a four banger so we would lurch really hard forward and then when he braked it was the reverse process. I finally leaned over and patted him on the leg: “That’s mama’s little fighter pilot, isn’t it!”

And I got a rare belly laugh out of him, too. Sometimes he is like an old man all serious and thoughtful. I guess this is what happens when your parents divorce five years into your life. But maybe he was going to be serious and thoughtful anyhow. He does need to lighten up a little.

Fortunately, I see cracks in his surface and the little boy shines through. We live near a large and SECRETIVE-shhhhh don’t tell anyone but we have top secret airplanes--air force base and at least once a month F-16s fly over. It’s actually pretty thrilling and gives me a rush to watch them zoom over and then disappear leaving a big noise behind. The other day I heard one approach and then I heard Beav leap out of his chair he dashed to his window and came running across the hall into my room. I looked up at him, an excited smile on my face: “Did you see it? Did you see it?”

His own eyes were shining with excitement a smile about to crack: “I got a glimpse, three of them in formation. It was so cool.”

Yeah it was cool. Thanks for showing me the magic in airplanes, Beav. Happy Birthday!

Now for the love of God, don’t kill the gas pedal, the MINI van will move, I promise!

Killer Heels

2010-08-05T20:14:00.002-06:00

I’ve been involved with The Girl for about six years now and was pretty sure she had heard all my “stories” at least twice and was past the point of feigning interest and was now at the point of holding her hand up and saying, “I’ve heard this before.” But the other night I surprised us both with a story she had never heard. And I thought my canon was exhausted half way through our second date. It all started when I was getting ready to go out with my crazy nurse friends and she noted I had on high heels.

“They aren’t that high”
“You never wear heels.”
“I know. I can’t.”
“You can’t? Why?”
“Well aside from the fact I look like a big drag queen in high heels. My left ankle is toast.”

She looked at me amazed, not knowing this about me so I launched into a long story about why I don’t wear high heels. When I was twenty I was on a date with a guy. He was a nice guy, uber Star Wars nerd, wicked smart so I wanted to impress this young man with my wit, good sense and grace. We went to the movies, Empire Strikes Back and immersed ourselves into the galaxy far far away. One of us was so immersed she didn’t notice her left foot had fallen asleep and when she got up from her chair she turned on her completely paralysed and numb left foot and crumbled on the floor like a Storm Trooper struck by a light saber. I’m groping around on the floor, trying to recover the contents of my purse and my dignity as he is helping me up. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of this and I remember he stifled a laugh and when I saw him laughing I decided to laugh it off, too. Of course, he asked what happened and if I was ok. “Just fine” I lied as I stepped on my left as my entire leg begged me for the love of the Empire just sit down, take those damn shoes off and hop to the car and home. Instead, I continued to walk up the steps to the exit and yes, I would love it if you pulled the car up to the front. Silently, I was sobbing in pain as I waited for him. A sensible girl would have said: “You know Gary, I’m such a klutz and I’m really hurt, can we call it a night, I need to ice my ankle.” Yeah but that girl wasn’t me. I was too self-conscious so I went along for the rest of the evening. Besides that we had reservations at my favorite restaurant: Jennivine. A lovely little room in an old house with a decently priced price fix menu. Frankly, I didn’t want to miss this meal because it was an expensive restaurant and I longed for the food they served. It was down the street from the restaurant I worked and we would trade food so I knew what I missing. I wish I could remember what we talked about and had for dinner. I probably drank several glasses of wine to blot out the eye bleeding pain rocketing up my leg . And then another couple glasses of wine to help me forget just how swollen my foot and leg was becoming. Fortunately, he didn’t ask me if I wanted to go dancing. I probably would have gone just to be polite. It’s so much important to be polite and not draw attention to yourself even if you’re going to be crippled and thirty years later blogging from a wheelchair. After dinner he drove me home and we said good night in front of my building. Sucking back tears, I merrily waved as he pulled away and then crept through the security door, sat on the bottom step to remove my shoes and take a look at my ankle. It wasn’t pretty, either. Swollen roughly three times the size of my right and with blue, black and red streaks climbing my leg. I couldn’t walk at this point and crawled, literally crawled up the stairs. My roommate was in her jammies ready for bed. I limped into the living room and burst into tears: “I think I broke my ankle!” (and I wonder where my kid gets the drama thing?) She took a look at it like she knew what she was looking at and I took a look at it like I knew what I was looking at and we came to the conclusion based on the late hour, the night of the week and appearance and lack of health insurance it wasn’t broken. Ah the resilence of the young. I was waiting tables the next afternoon and dancing a week or so later. Mind you I only wore three inch heels for the dancing. I never saw uber Luke Skywalker again. I’m not sure why. He probably liked his women able to stay upright when they were sober.

So this leaves me wondering what else TG doesn’t know about me. Poor thing is going to have to wade through a bunch of repeats to discover the new bits and pieces.

I love the 'net these are almost the same killer heels

And Another Thing About Our Dog...

2010-08-04T05:58:00.002-06:00

Its official: Kipper is retarded. The other night, I dropped a raw brussel sprout on the floor and he snapped it up like a piece of cheese. This wasn’t an isolated brussel sprout incident either because later he gave me the sad dog eyes to beseech me for another sprout and then he ran into the kitchen and started sniffing the floor where he found the first one.

So maybe he isn’t retarded but just really weird.

He fits right in with the rest of us doesn’t he?

Once upon a time, there was a white dog, a washing machine and an elephant named Freckles

2010-08-03T14:49:00.004-06:00

Yesterday was one of those days that felt like three days. And not because it was boring, either. To begin with I had only a short predawn nap and had accomplished a few things over night. I did some housekeeping, balanced the checkbook (ouch! June stay away from the mall already!) I also watched a movie from start to finish without interruption commercial or otherwise. Too bad it wasn’t an entirely relaxing movie experience because it’s two in the morning and the film had a wonky soundtrack to it that meant the dialogue was very soft and quiet and the music WAS VERY LOUD so I was constantly moving the volume around, rewinding so I could hear and jamming my finger over the minus button so I didn’t wake up The Girl. At least, I got my exercise and a few adrenaline jolts, right?

You know about breakfast and moon pies. I didn’t mention while we were at breakfast we again discussed the feasibility of moving to Texas after Beav graduates from high school. We did come to the conclusion if we do move it will be problematic to our travel bugs to actually have goats, chickens or a yard cow. The Girl sagely suggested the only wise solution to this was a Yard Elephant. Which would be made of awesome and no one would venture down our road unannounced. Keeping Freckles (I’ve already named him) out of the pool will be problematic so he will need a pond to call his own. I’m guessing elephants can fend for themselves while people are away. It’s not like a chicken hawk or fox or javalina pig would carry off our yard elephant like they would chickens. Thank goodness we got that settled over breakfast, right?

Wally decided yesterday was the day to do laundry because the Army wasn’t calling him back (grrrr…don’t make my kids promises and then fail to keep them…that’s my job!) and the washing machine just sort of whirled down to a complete stop and was making an ominous loud buzzing noise.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank The Girl’s Papa for noting her ken mechanical sensibilities and helping her develop gifts because three hours later she was finished fixing it and we were not six hundred bucks poorer and still had time to go out for dinner per our original plan. Had I been alone with Wally we would have called Sears and The Girl would have returned from work to find me weeping over a bill. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In the midst of a mini flood in the laundry room I had to prove the towel I grabbed wasn’t a “good” towel. My line of logic was any towel was a perfect towel for the job in the face of a big gush of water issuing forth from the bottom of the washing machine. (Yes Dad, the breaker was off and the machine unplugged before the bottom was opened) It took about 15 seconds and free flowing water for her to see the bleach stain on the towel and agree it was just fine to put it on the floor. After many failed diagnosis TG found the reason for the clogged drain. Jesus smiled on us because it wasn’t the drain leading out of the house but rather a bunch of left over goodies from our pockets in the washing machine drain. Mostly my leftover work goodies like IV line caps, needle caps, alcohol wipes and empty pill packages.

Meanwhile, TG is almost finished with her repair job and discovers the back yard gate is open. She was on her way to the breaker box to restart the washer to check the integrity of her genius. (Yes Dad, the floor was completely dry and the wires were even dried off with a towel but not a good towel because that would be a crime against towels and womankind everywhere) She sticks her head back into the house and asks my least favorite question:

“Is the dog with you?”

Fuckity. The dog escaped from the backyard. My family has become a well oiled machine when we have a breach in the back yard dog compound. It’s like someone hollers: “Dog Escape!!” and everyone knows their position. TG took one bike in one direction, Wally takes the other bike the opposite direction and I run down the path towards the park, staying close to the house and MINI van so I can pick up the dog we apparently are holding prisoner in a grassy backyard . All of us are armed with cell phones.

Kip hadn’t been gone very long because fifteen minutes before the alarm was sounded, I had heard him yelping at a passing dog. He is a lot slower than he once was and is really supposed to be dead so I was guessing he wasn’t a mile away at the golf course like last year. After about five minutes of panting through the park I got the much hoped for phone call: “Do you have a white dog?” My first inclination is to ask: “Is he dead?” But I always hold back because most people wouldn’t think it was funny unless you knew Kipper or me and my gallows humor.

“I do, is he fluffy, friendly and named Kipper?

“He is”

“Oh thank you! Thank you! He’s old and not terribly healthy. Does he seem ok?”

“He …I thought it was a ‘she’ because of the pink toe nails…but yeah, he seems ok.”

“So where are you?” (Another dreaded question because God knows where he is: Limon? Watkins? Downtown? Cheyenne Mountain?)

The dog wasn’t very far away and I knew either Wally or TG would be passing the bridge at any minute because we have Operation Save The Dog From Himself down like a special ops team. Sure enough, as I was talking to my new boyfriend Brad, TG rolled up on the bike and I could hear her saying: “Hey, that’s my dog!”

Brad wasn’t going to be fooled into surrendering the dog to just anyone (bless him):

“Do you know someone named The Girl, riding a bike? She’s in a white tee shirt.”
Once we established Kipper was not being taken off by a stranger for a Korean dinner party or vivisection at the medical school, Brad asked me:

“Is your dog deaf? I heard people calling his name but he didn‘t notice.”

Oh he noticed all right. He wasn’t ready to return to the yard at Cleaver Prison Camp For Dogs. The smells on the outside are just too good to give up.

I’m really thankful Brad didn’t ask why his toe nails were pink. I don’t like to sully my karma with lying about having a silly twelve year old daughter at home and the truth is too embarrassing.

We earned our pre dinner martini last night. The dog can explain to you why his toe nails are pink. My lips are sealed.

Bless Her Heart

2010-08-02T11:59:00.007-06:00

We went out to breakfast mid-morning today and after breakfast we went to the little Russian grocery store about a mile from here. Our ‘hood sounds like it would be all tree lined and charming like Queens where you see little old Jewish women pushing shopping carts. But it’s not, it’s an inner tier suburb with old strip malls built around the time Nixon was president. We have Arabic, Ethiopian, Indian and Russian markets within a mile of our home and two miles away is an Asian store the size of Walmart. TG wanted to make a German style cucumber and onion salad so we needed specific vinegar. Not just any old white vinegar or apple cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar but a strong German vinegar. First of all, I didn’t know you could get stronger vinegar. This stuff is strong so what she doesn’t use in the salad I’m going to keep in the first aid kit to cleanse wounds and with my paints to clean brushes. While she was looking for the vinegar I was naturally ~~salivating~~ hankering after the sweets and cookies.

And I scored. Really scored with Russian Moon Pies. On the way home TG asked me what was in them. I confessed I didn’t know but it looked like they possessed every a Moon Pie does but the banana flavoring and that little touch of lemon in the cookie. It was at this point she let out a sad sad truth about herself that almost broke my Texas born heart into tiny Rhode Island sized pieces.

“I’ve never had a Moon Pie.”

Bless her heart.

image here

Sunday In The Yard With June

2010-08-01T12:14:00.009-06:00

Today was one of those days I wished we lived closer to family. Our reward for spending two hours weeding the neglected garden, flower beds and yard was harvesting all of these:

I’m not sure what we’re going to do with fourteen cucumbers but if I lived closer to the family they would mysteriously appear on front porches or we would be bringing salad to dinner tonight (after we invited ourselves over).

Dessert would be these little morsels:

The perfect apple for my dad, too. A little sour but not too firm. Otherwise it could prove to be the $20K apple if he bit into it wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time I cost him a lot of money.

August, summer is winding down. School starts in 18 days. We may find out tomorrow when Wally leaves. I’m sentimental already. And it looks like rain.

Apple Picking Time

2010-07-31T11:49:00.004-06:00

Kipper went for a walk this morning, dragging me behind him holding onto a cord we laughingly call a lead. Actually when he goes for a walk it’s more like going for a sniff because he keeps his nose squarely down towards the ground to gather as much information as possible usually missing rabbits and squirrels he could bark and bolt after. We don’t go very far any more because he’s ailing and I don’t want him to die or anything on his walk. It was lovely in the park today, not too hot (why I took the hairy beast out) just the perfect mid-summer morning. Along the way I noticed two women picking peaches from a tree. We were spared a late freeze and the sunny hot summer we’ve had has been good to the fruit trees. I stopped and asked if the squirrels had spared any. They laughed and said there were plenty offering me a couple. Unfortunately, the peaches were picked too early, hard as a rock but I said thanks and offered some of our apples. Our tree is loaded with them and I managed to pick about a dozen or so of the small and sweet fruit. They aren’t firm and sour enough for an apple pie but perfect for apple butter and sauce. The lady who belonged to the peach tree declined the offer but the other woman who was also just out for a walk was intrigued and finally after a short conversation about apple sauce and butter recipes she took me up on my offer promising to stop by tomorrow morning for a bag of apples. I hope there are some left because the squirrels manage to knock off and take small bites out of at least--I exaggerate not--one hundred or so a day. Another reason why squirrels are my backyard nemesis those nasty little buggers take one bite out of these lovely pieces of fruit and then drop them, going on to the next. Wasteful. I suppose if I were depending on my tree for dried fruit next winter I would painstakingly cut around the squirrel bites but instead I just work on my softball pitch over the fence so the raccoons can enjoy them. It’s a daily task to keep hornets at bay so I’m getting quite the arm if I say so myself.

I hope hilarity doesn’t ensue when I’m up on the ladder this afternoon picking apples for my new friend Helen.

My Holy Grail

2010-07-30T05:45:00.002-06:00

image found here

I’ve been on a mission for the last few years to find the perfect white pasta bowl. Somehow they have eluded me and all I can find are bowls either too big or too small or too deep or too shallow. One of the worst specimens has a picture of some sort of Mario Brother’s character in the bottom of the bowl and he has a finger in the air to indicate you have just finished a big bowl of pasta. Gee thanks, I would have never known pasta is an Italian meal! Who knew!! But the most ridiculous bowls are the ones which actually have the word “Pasta” written in the bottom of the bowl. Just so I know EXACTLY what I should eat in those bowls. Better yet, the bowls tell me what I have eaten in case I didn’t realize I was eating pasta or had forgotten I had eaten pasta. Ok, given my behavior over the last day or so having a visual cue might help me a little with the whole memory thing.

The perfect bowl is a little shallow, too shallow to slurp soup or milk but not shallow it would be confused with a plate. It must be exactly soft white. Not cream, not yellow or green or puce. It must be completely free of any embellishment: no cute little olives or jaunty blue stripes or dots or squiggles in the bottom of the bowl or along the top or on the rim. Speaking of rims, the ultimate bowl possesses a lovely rim around it. A rim just big enough for a small garnish of basil or a tiny mound of grated parmesan or red pepper flakes. The rim makes the bowl easy to handle, not too hot on the hands when it’s full of yummy hot pasta.

I’ve looked everywhere for these bowls: from garage sales, Goodwill to Pottery Barn and Neimans. I finally found them last week and they have been deemed Bolognese worthy. Angels sang as I put my hands on them and picked them and examined them at eye level. Turning them around and checking for the perfect heft. They were the most perfect speciman I had found and in my price range. The only thing missing is the rim. For six bucks a bowl, I can live with that.

Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket and maybe I’ll find this pair of boots under my under my pillow.

The Lesson In A Smile

2010-07-28T22:06:00.009-06:00

I’m not sure who I had living in my heart yesterday but she was not walking a path of peace and loving kindness. You see this doddering fat older man with an overflowing cart of crap he didn’t need cut me off as I was going to be the very next person in the line behind someone with only three items. I was all “Score!” and chest bumping myself because I had also found a great parking place near the front doors and was able to finagle the big boat van into it without a lot of parking and reparking. I found everything I needed easily without any questioning prices or comparisions and I stayed on task the whole way through so when this guy obliviously toddled in front of me and it harshed my whole mellow. I needed that mellow because almost up until that point, I had spent the afternoon nagging my sons to just do their chores and stop whining about it. In fact, the drama surrounding the dishwasher and light cleaning duties were why I was being so pushy because I stopped at the store on my way to a little celebration at the salt mines and stood every chance of being late.

So I got stuck behind this guy who probably didn’t have a life because why would some one wear ratty looking sweat pants in 90 degree heat with beat up old shower shoes and why else would anyone move that slow unless they didn’t have someplace to go. Like me. I had somewhere to go. Of course all my tappy-footed fuming and glaring at him through my sunglasses thinking all sorts of uncharitable thoughts about how rude he was to just walk in front of me without noticing I had fewer items. And how dare he miss the fact I was moving quickly because my life is much more important and meaningful than his so I should be allowed to go ahead of him. Finally, I was obviously dressed for something other than a trip to Walmart. Because, really? If I wear a fancy blouse and silk cigarette pants to shop at Walmart, I must be worse off than he is… And then my uncharitable voice went for the passive-aggressive and I called one of my coworkers and told her in a very loud voice I would be late because the lines at the store were really long and someone was rude enough to cut in front of me. The cashier looked over at me when I was talking to my friend, just a quick glance, probably noticing my cart wasn’t terribly full and no doubt noticing my impatient demeanor and automatically bracing herself for an abrupt and rude customer.

When this man finally finished his transaction, dithering over his change and receipt and then pausing to exchange pleasantries with the cashier it was my turn and the clock in my head stopped ticking: goingtobelategoingtobelategoingtobelate. I could breathe a little easier and it was my turn. I looked up at the cashier noticing her beautiful smile and a warm spirit radiating through it. I was suddenly swept up in her quiet energy and felt myself further slow down and a spontaneous genuine smile spread across my face. smile and not a polite return-of-the-smile smile. I noticed her name was a lovely old fashioned name you don’t see very often and asked if she went by the shortened version or the long version. She told me she didn’t like the shortened version very much and pronounced it slowly making it even prettier. Grace went by another name yesterday and it was Beatrice.

After I slithered back to the car, thoroughly ashamed of my childish behavior. Murmering a little prayer of “Sorry I’m such an asshat God. Can you help me?“ I switched on the radio. A song was playing which described how someone had been lost and doing bad things discovered grace and his life was turned around and away from that person he had been before. The way this guy described his life he had been a pretty bad guy, not just suffering from a momentary lapse of human kindness. It made me remember I can moment by moment change my heart and my outlook. I also realized grace doesn’t have to be gigantic or have long term life changing repricutions, and no matter how big or small, the moment just after I have been transformed by God’s grace I am shiny like a baby just out of a bath. A baby who usually runs out of the bath and within five minutes or so is besmirched with the grim of day to day living as a human being.

Thank you Beatrice, I needed this wake up call. Yesterday was hardly the worst day of my life but it wasn’t terribly easy either. The lesson in your smile will be what I remember and not my petty disappointments.

Mrs. Forgetful Strikes Again

2010-07-28T08:57:00.005-06:00

I just spent 15 minutes looking for my coffee. Good thing stuff like this doesn't scare me or send me running to the doctor for an MRI and some of that medicine I give people who are forgetful...you know the name of it...yeah, that stuff...begins with an A...never mind, I'll think of it later.

Anyhow, I'm not worried because I've always been forgetful. When I was a kid it was because I had my "head in the clouds". When I was a youngER woman it was because I was sleep deprived. One of Ms A's kids nicknamed me Mrs. Forgetful one afternoon I kept missing a turn into a parking lot at Chuckie Cheese. He kept chanting: "Mrs. Forgetful Strikes Again!" each time I missed the entrance to the stupid pizza place. That was more divine interverntion than cognitive deficit so I didn't have to be exposed to the weird plushies and bad pizza. But I digress...

Aricept…yeah that’s it.

What was I writing about? Oh yeah, being forgetful. The other day I couldn't remember how to perform a simple math operation involving decimal points and percentages. That's just sad. Especially since I remembered Forgetful Jones was forgetting his horse Buster before I even reviewed the video. And I know all the words to "I Think I Love You" and "Brandy".

Which leads me on this tangent; I wonder what it's going to be like in nursing homes when everyone there grew up not on the rowdy sounds of Glenn Miller's swing music but rather Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird".

Will I be the old woman in the back of the day room, pantomime lighter hoisted high in the air, swaying back and forth to music only I can hear, chanting the battle cry of 1978? "Freebird! Freebird"

God I hope so.

This Is What Happens When June Leaves The House

2010-07-26T20:13:00.008-06:00

you can see more of this great photography here

I thought this weekend was going to be awesome and I was right. Friday night I went out with three of my co-workers, it was just so SATC with the lemon drop cocktails, high heels and hot outfits. But we are way more interesting than Carrie and friends. Our new mom friend, E rounded up a few of us for drinks because: “I never go anywhere anymore unless it’s work and I‘m sick of staying at home.”

If you wanted to play the SATC name game you could call her Miranda. She resembles Miranda in that she’s tallish with chin length hair and has a uterus. But E is funny and without the bitter and markedly un-funny brittleness of Miranda. She’s also about a million and ten times more interesting than Miranda. E also really loves her boyfriend and doesn’t treat him like crap. It helps her Boy is more Aiden than Steve.

M. “Our Lady Of The Bouncy Ponytail” came a little late but was very much present before she got there. She is like Charlotte physically: gamine, cute and smart. A lot smarter than Charlotte. M just read a book with the title--I kid you not--Why Men Love Bitches to try and understand why her boyfriend started having meltdowns about her “rushing” him into marriage. She reely admits (but not too much) she isn't sure she wants to marry him and she knows she isn’t ready to get married. Cute, gamine, smart but not desperate like Charlotte. \So far the advice in the book has worked because M’s Boy has simmered the Hell down and has become the boy she was dating six months ago.

So before anyone starts thinking…I’m thinking of myself as the Bushnell character…stop…take a breath and look next to Carrie. I’m her weird little gay boyfriend with the big glasses and the bright suits. Total misfit with these babes. They keep me around because I'm funny. Or at least think I'm hilarious.

Last but certainly not least, there’s our MILF friend (she had a co-starring role in a blog last summer) Uh…huh…she is Samantha but this time Samantha landed Mr. Big. Our S actually funny and doesn’t pose or speak in smirky pronouncements that pretend to be biting when really they are yawn inducing. She’s also one of the most generous and down to earth women I know. Our Samantha is the real deal. S is also a new gramma at the ripe old age of 45 and proud to be The Hot Gramma. And boy howdy, she won’t let you forget she’s The Hot Gramma. S has probably the most perfectly augmented breasts I’ve ever seen in real life (IN HER CLOTHING…OMG I work with this woman!! Gawd, get your minds’ out of the gutter!) But we did almost get a full frontal of them, given the cut of her extremely cut top. When we met outside of the restaurant, I gave her a hug and confessed.

“So don’t hate me if I forget to look you in the eye, because damn…your breasts? Sort of hard to miss.”

“Oh don’t worry about it, I paid enough for them I want people to look at ’em. Why I have ’em!”

E joins us, gives both of us hugs and says,” S those are some breasts you’ve got there!”

“I told her that I was going to have a hard time looking her in the eye.”

“June, I’m going to have a hard time looking her in the eye! And girls have never really occurred to me as an option!” Clearly, E was already mesmerized by The Breasts, too.

Later after a couple of yummy Lemon drop Martinis we are seated and had met our waiter we were left on our own to muse about this young man who was incredibly monotone and a bit shall we say…stiff?

“June did you notice how when we gave him our order he didn’t even look at us but stared at S’s breasts?”

I narrowed my eyes and smiled an evil grin: “I did notice that. I wonder if he will look at us at all.”

“But Oh my gawd, he was so boring, he needs to you know…LOOSEN UP! Yay!! I mean talk to us, be friendly. Have a conversation with us!” S let go with one of her patent party girl moves that never fails to make me laugh even during the weirdest moments at work.

You can only imagine what happened over the next few hours, every time we called him to the table, S would bend over just a little bit and lean forward. Every time she did this patented Pin Up Girl move he would stammer and his affect would become even more flat. We had made an unspoken pact with one another to mess with this kid.

We acted like complete Mean Girls and squealing with laughter every time he took he and his discomfort away from the table with yet another drink order and sushi request. And after an hour of waiter torture M joined us. When she sat down with us, I thought this waiter was either going to have a seizure or run away crying like a scared little girl because M isn’t just pretty, she is Hollywood pretty. Luminous comes to mind when you see her. Not only is she pretty and smart but she reads people like Lady Cleo on the psychic network so after ordering her drink she turned to S and pointedly said:

“Dude, he is totally NOT looking at your face. You knew that didn’t you? I mean has he stopped looking at your boobs, at all?”

We all squealed with laughter again but while I was laughing I sort of felt sorry for him because I think he was hypnotized by her boobs and was in some kind of Tata induced trance which rendered him speechless. Or at least I hoped that’s what it was because if it wasn’t.

Dude was boring.

Mrs. Kravitz

2010-07-24T15:23:00.004-06:00

image found here

I was deadheading the salvia today when I remembered a conversation I had with one of my neighbors a month or so ago We had been home for about four days, I was still unsure what time zone I was in much less what day of the week it was so I was a little rough around the edges from the jet lag. The flowers had bolted while we were gone and were close to their peak even before we left for our trip in early June. While we had been away the weather had been too hot too fast especially in the south bed. My salvia was spent, the big pink showy things that threaten to take over each year were done, and the dianthuses bordering the front walk were done, too. Rather than let them go to seed naturally, like I would in late August, I gave them all drastic haircuts murmuring little prayers that I wasn’t killing the plants and they would bloom again before next May or June. I’m crouched down in my perennials, surrounded by the hum of bees, enjoying a hot dry morning when I hear a familiar but not entirely welcome voice from the public path adjacent to our south yard. Our neighbor, Mrs. Kravitz and her husband George, were walking their elderly and fat golden retriever.

“Oh your flowers were so pretty! Why are you doing that to them” Mrs. K said, her voice dripping with judgment because that’s how she always sounds.

“So they bloom again. They bolted while we were away, just like my radishes and salad greens. Too hot too fast this year.” I looked up at her squinting against the sunlight and really wishing I didn’t have to be nice to this woman.

“Are you sure about that? I’ve never heard of Salvia coming back.” I swear I could hear her tongue click against her teeth. She couldn’t stand The Girl and I and really wanted to see us fail at this whole redoing a distressed house thing because we are the scourge of the earth and everything Jesus hates. Whenever she sees us her disappointment that we are gay and not just like her family radiates through her hypocritical eyes and threatens to beat us over the head. I wish I could say I can’t stand this woman but really what I feel for her is beyond the emotion of hatred. I feel sadness she is so incredibly intolerant of us not only because we are queer but because we are democrats and we are not Catholic. That’s a lot of criteria we fall short in. She is a Christian in bigots clothing. During election season, they had an anti-reproductive rights campaign sign in their yard and she approached our next door neighbor and told C she was going to hell if C didn’t vote yes on this particular referendum. (I never got a chance to ask her how many babies they were going to adopt…) A couple of months later Mrs. K rushed over to C’s house and was terribly upset she might sell it to “that homosexual couple who were looking at it last week.” When C told me about this, I saw red. The following Sunday was the open house and how I wished I knew a bunch of drag queens and really Nelly queens so I could round them up for a tour of the house. The evil fantasy of squealing over dressed drag queens tripping up the front walk made me cackle like an evil genius. A couple of years ago, she and George refused to go to their across the street neighbor’s wake because he died an AIDS related death. And they pointedly said this is why they weren’t going. They can barely bring themselves to speak to me when I‘m outside and I always without fail give them a cheery hello, trying to take the high road. Because someday I’m going to get a chance to tell her about the Jesus I know who believes in loving your neighbor. But the icing on the cake was definitely last month when she stood on my property dispensing gardening advice and her yard is a boring mess of weeds and petunias. All of this flashed though my mind as I looked up at her, praying God would speak through me and silence Edgy June Cleaver.

Isn’t it wonderful we are gifted with filters and the ability to speak internally because this is what Evil June said before nice June spoke up:

Actually you stupid judgmental woman, I’m not sure if they will bloom or not because all I know about gardening is what I learned from a handful of magazine articles and gardening last summer. So you know what? If I’m wrong you can come over here and tell me just how wrong I am, which I’m sure you won’t hesitate doing. So now just move along with your self-righteous self and feel assured you are the perfect specimen of human

“Mrs. Kravitz, it’s going to be interesting to see if they come back isn’t it? These are all perennials so my guess is they will be back bigger and better in a week or so. You and George have a nice day.” I beamed at her as I turned back to my work willing her to disappear.

It’s been tempting the last couple of weeks to make her a big bouquet of Salvia and just lay it on her doorstep as a neighborly gesture of good will. It was also tempting to ask if we could borrow their extremely gay rainbow paper party ball thingy I can see from the street in their garage. It would have been nice to hang on our porch this June 28th to celebrate the 41st anniversary of the beginning of The Gay Rights Movement.

But I didn’t. Maybe next year if it’s still in their garage and I’ll even give her a bundle of salvia in return for the loan.

Eat Pray Love My Ass

2010-07-23T17:08:00.006-06:00

(image taken from the World Market Explore website, I refuse to link it keep reading and you'll know why)

I dropped into Cost Plus World Market today and Eat Pray Love greeted me at the door. It seems that Elizabeth-fucking-Gilbert has completely sold out while jumping the shark. There’s a picture of Julia Roberts as our plucky and adventurous but albeit heartbroken hero all set to explore Italy, India and Bali. And a big sign about taking a look at the Eat Pray Love shop!!! And it really makes me mad. I mean irrationally stabby. Like I was so mad I left the store and forgot my purchases, mad. Gilbert’s nickname at the ashram was well earned: “Groceries” given to her by a well meaning fellow pilgrim who did not return to the US to sell out. Her nickname was funny in India because she was always hungry but now it’s fitting because obviously she’s still perpetually hungry for more more MORE! MORE MONEY! MORE MEDIA ATTENTION!!!

What pisses me off most about Groceries is not that she is another Oprah enterprise or she sold the rights to her book as a film or is now shilling crap made in Malaysia, Italy and India under the guise of “folk art” but rather she is reducing the spiritual aspects of her journey. Everyone from her Master in New York to that woman entrepreneur in Bali (I hate this book so much I refuse to look up the name of this character because god forbid Groceries gets another hit through Google or Wiki) is now reduced to a cash enterprise for her. The way she is exploiting them, their own spiritual journeys and experiences make me sick. It’s like Judas selling out Jesus with a kiss for a gold coin. I really do wonder how her Master and those people at the ashram feel about her. I hope they shun her for the money grubbing cow she is. The other thing that makes me angry is I was completely fooled by her until I realized--while she was in India--she was nothing but a whiny assed baby who thought her life was over because she was divorced at the ripe old age of thirty and couldn’t hold a yoga pose or meditate longer than 30 seconds. She couldn’t hold the yoga poses because she was too busy practicing her selling out poses and she couldn’t meditate and clear her mind for longer than thirty seconds because her monkey brain was too full of herself. Cow.

The other thing which makes me crazy angry: if she’s so damn perfect, why isn’t she announcing to the world she is starting a micro loan program in Bali for women to start their own businesses? Why isn’t she selling her crap through Global Exchange an online free trade shop which sells scarves and stuff? Which leads me to another point of her hyprocrasy that crap in World Market isn't free trade but it's made my child slaves in sweat shops. Again: if you are going to be so extremely spiritual and extremely conscious of the world around you. Put your money where your mouth is.

I hope she chokes on her super special basket of Italian goodies or gets tangled up in one of her scarves made by child slaves. What would really be great is if Hell froze over and somehow she heard about my rant and contacted me just to prove to me I was wrong and she had invested money in the people who have propelled her to cultural stardom hasn't sold her out and she is only selling free trade items. That would rock. And I could also tell her directly how much I hated her overly self-conscious and facile book.

So I’m raving at The Girl about this today when she came home from lunch. (That will teach her to come home for lunch, now won’t it?) Nice Jesus and not the angry-turning-over-the-merchant’s-tables in the temple Jesus was living in TG’s heart because she offered up this excuse:

“You know her last book wasn’t very good so maybe she needed the money.”

“Dude, not an excuse. Who could blow through that much money--maybe Lindsey Lohan (enphasis on "blow"--besides it's is a movie starring Julia Roberts. Maybe she could have…you know…WRITTEN A DECENT BOOK if she needed money. Or a compilation of photographs from her travels. Nope she came home and became Oprah’s Toddy.”

Unfortunately, TG couldn’t come up with any more reasons for this travesty of marketing and self promotion. And so in the true fashion of a hypocrite I started shooting off ideas for products which would be appropriate for Edgy June Cleaver:

Edgy June Cleaver Dictionary and Thesaurus
Edgy June Cleaver aprons or dish towels with embroidered pictures of my retarded dog.
Edgy June Cleaver Vodka available on those really hard to face parenting days and if you aren’t a drinker: Edgy June Cleaver moleskin notebooks to hurl in the general direction of your rotten kids.
Sharon Stone will play me in the film, too. Really it's the only obvious choice.

So when the time comes for me to become a Global Enterprise remind me of my little rant before I put Oprah on speed dial and start touring sweatshops in Viet Nam and Cambodia.

Mrs. Cleaver You've Got A Stupid Dog

2010-07-21T16:24:00.006-06:00

(to the tune of "Mrs.Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter")
Mrs. Cleaver you have a stupid do-og
stu-pid do-og
Dogs as dumb as him are something’ rare
But it’s sad, so sad he can’t find his way
Out of a blanket on his head.

Yup, it's official. Kipper isn't the brightest bulb in the box and the elevator doesn't get to the top in this one. Good thing he's sweet...when he isn't barking at a doorbell on television, howling when the phone rings, barking when someone enthusiasticlly says the word squirrel or thinking the blanket on his head is another signal for "naptime". The only thing he did do? He tipped the cup over the cookie and he used his front paw rather than nosing it over.

I should probably check him for those thumbs a little more often.

When Good Sons Do Bad Things

2010-07-21T12:51:00.003-06:00

I love it when I can steal projects from other sites. I found my latest project Ihere. I’ll let you know how it goes later today. My guess is the results will be similar. Besides, teasing the dog is way more fun and interesting than accomplishing what I need to accomplish today. And I have 37 months to finish Beav’s scrapbook which is still in the visualization stage because As God as my witness: my younger child will have an actual baby book and not a bound volume with crap stuffed into like I had. And it’s only 75 or so today versus the triple digits on my last day off. And it’s not like I can accomplish anything until I actually put things away and clean things up because right now it looks like a crazy person on their way to being featured on “Horders” works down there! Because there are still a few DNA strands from my father’s good solid hard working Quaker ancestors: I have made a deal with the studio: I will clean you if it rains today. Which is a step towards the whole scrap booking thing. A step much like Tom Kelly’s when he thought to himself: “I’m gonna make a car for the moon!” The back porch and the back yard at this point are much more seductive.

I did complete a project lurking in the basement today. A couple of weeks ago I started infusing olive oil with some of our herbs and drying a mix of herbs to be grr-ed by the food processor. I had to laugh because the herb mix looked more like pot than it did culinary herbs before I attacked it. While growing marijuana would be easy in my garden, I‘m not Nancy Botwin and prefer my life to be led on this side of the law. The olive oil thing is a lot less glamorous than it sounds. It’s mostly messy. So messy, it takes longer to clean up after myself than it does to triple strain the olive oil and make the labels. The more accurate name for this project is Cleaning The Kitchen. Cleaning the kitchen is on my chore list in Hell.

After I finished patting myself on the back for finishing something on this beautiful lazy day, I remembered the cup of peach yogurt I had put in the frig freezer and this would be the time to reward myself for a Job Well Done. So I sang my little tra-la-la song (like Pooh’s honey song only pitiful because I’m a middle-aged woman and not a cute, ageless, cartoon stuffed bear) and opened up the freezer and reached to the place I had put it.

Nothing. Not there. Just a bag full of vegetables, a bowl of ice, hot dog buns and dinner rolls. I looked on the door: nope, not under the little bags of lime juice, lemon juice or egg whites…I looked again, repeating the steps several times, my heart sinking to my toes. I did find the top secret mango sorbet but there was only enough for a wee bit and I was saving that for The Girl. I was incredulous!! Who ate my yogurt? My yogurt that I put in the freezer specifically for my own enjoyment. I know it wasn’t TG because she doesn’t like peach yogurt. And I know it wasn’t Kipper because if he had access to the freezer the only left would have been empty bags; and I checked him this morning and he still hasn’t--much to his chagrin--grown opposable thumbs.

Jesus wants me to say I didn’t have revenge in my heart as I thought of my two “Little Angels” asleep in their beds; all cozy and peaceful in their boy smell…sleeping the morning away…ONE OF THEM WITH A BELLY FULL OF FROZEN YOGURT. But I resisted the temptation to awaken either of them for two reasons: even I’m not that psychotic and --most importantly--chances were great I would then have to drive someone somewhere and I really couldn’t muster up the energy to actually put on something other than my pajamas, brush my hair and leave the house before afternoon. And damn! I thought I had it hidden better than that, too. I was counting on the blight they share with every man I’ve ever known. The dreaded “Male Pattern Blindness” means I can pretty much count on things like ice cream, sorbet, or chocolate chips to be under the peas or behind the mixed veg packs because why the hell would you pick up anything or move anything to find something. It must not exist if it isn’t in your immediate line of vision, right? Hah! We fooled them for two weeks and they didn’t discover the caramel ice cream in the back. I had it so well hidden that they would have only discovered it if one of them had made themselves vegetables to eat and boy howdy that ice cream would have been satisfying on that particularly cold day in Hell.

I must refine my hunting and gathering skills. The enemy has breached my food stores. In the meantime it’s time to see just how retarded Kip is while I’m waiting for my strawberry yogurt to freeze.

Life Is Scary...Let's Go Shopping!

2010-07-19T12:41:00.007-06:00

Isn't this just the most awesome picture? I found it .here. It looks like TG and me this week as we gallivant from one thing to the next. I'm really not a social butterfly and we have a small circle of friends versus a herd of chums who spend every waking moment of leisure with one another. Which I think of as one of the many "Lesbian Behavioral Traits" and one I lump in the category of cats and sensible shoes: not for me. I don't like spending that much time with anyone except maybe myself and then she gets a little whiny and self serving and preachy and obsessive a lot of the time and you have to pointedly glare at her and say something like: "STFU, K? You're not only annoying but you are super boring, too!"

So between the necessity of a job, our surprising social events, the teenager and young adult rodeo that seems to be my household; I'm running headlong into a big project that I've invested actual real money into so I can't turn back or quit because I'm scared. And whenever I invest actual money into a dream the first thing I want to do is go shopping. Just like those precious slogan tee shirts say: "Life is scary, let's go shopping."

So I want to grab TG and go shopping like these jaunty girls swinging their hat boxes. TG isn't exactly a clothes horse (not room for two in a relationship) but she likes to go shopping and she has beautiful taste. Her bubbling enthusiasm and sense of fun is infectious, too. It's especially fun to watch her in places that play dance music because she is prone to stop what she is doing and dance. In the aisles of any given store. And when she dances, she doesn't dance like she normally does, it's a caricature of how white people dance. I have witnessed the stopping in tracks and dancing in two foreign countries, and three separate states. The Khmer stall keepers in Psar Chaa didn't think we were funny as danced to Lady Gaga in the middle of their market.

See the disapproving stare?

But usually people just give us a wane smile as they move on with their lives…quickly away from the obviously deranged dancing middle-aged women. She did induce one of the Sephora goddesses to dance with her a week or so ago. This woman was a gorgeous sixy-something and could bust a move. Sometimes, I pretend to be all eye-rolly but really I'm charmed. The funniest thing she does when she shops is pointedly keeping her hands in her pockets. The woman stops at the door of the shop and you can hear the dialogue: “Now Girl, keep your hands in your pockets so you don‘t touch anything.” I asked her about the whole pockets thing and she told me: "I have to or I'll just touch everything and I don't want to break stuff." TG has the most remarkable self-insight into her behavior. That we all had such insight…therapists would be forming bread lines because I watched her stores when she forgot her rule and she really does have to touch everything while she whispers to herself: "oOooohhhh that's nice...I like that...ohhhh I like that..." It isn't particularly dangerous if we are looking at sweaters or blouses or lawn mowers but the other day she made me really nervous in Crate and Barrel. I had to ask her to put her hands in her pockets but she didn't because she was too busy swinging the little brass watering can back and forth . I gave her a "mom stare"and then belly laughed at her as she was about to swing the damn thing into a giant wine glass with a microscopically thin stem standing in the middle row of the precarious Pyramid of Big Glasses That Would Shatter Into A Million Pieces If Dropped. In fact, I think Crate And Barrel should be renamed that: "Pretty Things That Break Easily". I feel much safer with her when we are in the Cephalon section…but it just occurred to me if we actually bought one those behemoth pans I would have to carry it so she wouldn’t be tempted to take out a display of glassware and china with one big swing of a frying pan as she sang to herself and grooved to “Rock That Body“ or Ke$ha.

Yeah, I think we need to work in a trip to the mall this week because she’s just so damn fun. And frankly, I need to dance.

Housewife Posse

2010-07-17T15:14:00.005-06:00

She looks in the mirror and stares at the wrinkles that weren't there yesterday
And thinks of the young man that she almost married
What would he think if he saw her this way?

She picks up her apron in little girl-fashion as something comes into her mind
Slowly starts dancing rememb'ring her girlhood
And all of the boys she had waiting in line

Oh, such are the dreams of the everyday housewife
You see ev'rywhere any time of the day
An everyday housewife who gave up the good life for me

The photograph album she takes from the closet and slowly turns the page
And carefully picks up the crumbling flower
The first one he gave her now withered with age

She closes her eyes and touches the house dress that suddenly disappears
And just for the moment she's wearing the gown
That broke all their minds back so many years

Oh, such are the dreams of the everyday housewife
You see ev'rywhere any time of the day
An everyday housewife who gave up the good life for me

Oh, such are the dreams of the everyday housewife
You see ev'rywhere any time of the day
An everyday housewife who gave up the good life for me

I know…I know…totally sexist. Totally. The line: “she picks up her apron in little girl-fashion” makes me shutter like Sideshow Bob when he sees Bart Simpson. But I remember hearing this song when I was a little girl and being completely entranced by this secret society of Housewives and I wanted to be a part of it when I was five. It was the ultimate girls club. I’ve more or less been in this girls club for twenty years. There is a sense of ease in this club, setting our own hours and making the household rules. But up until ten years ago it was really hard and really boring. The hardest part was the constant interruptions. I felt much like one of these damsels in distress in the picture above (It's a photo I took in San Francisco a few years ago) The marauders in the background are our children and husbands. I don’t think Ms.A and I had an uninterrupted conversation the first five years of our friendship. Much less a conversation that followed a steady stream of thought because somebody needed their butt wiped, their nose wiped or their hair patted. Oh. My. God. It’s amazing we knew as much about one another as we did. Given most of our conversations went something like:

“So E told me the curriculum is about to be decided and it looks like trees and flow--Billy, NO!!! NO!!! You and Wally may not climb up the stairs like that!” “What were we talking about?”

“Flowers? Oh, did you get the primroses or the hybrid tea roses for the garden?” “Beav, if you want a cookie ask. Ask Ms. A politely with a please and a thank you, don’t just grab”

“Did I tell you theMr. found that Bulgarian tea we like…Where’s my baby [The Prince of Darkness was his nickname at the time]? Where did little Prince of Darkness go? Billy? Have you seen your brother? …

If reading that stream-of-consciousness didn’t make your head hurt, try living it. I lived those disjointed post preschool pre ~~cocktail~~nap conversations.

But now we have real conversations and speak in complete sentences. Like grown ups. The only time we are interrupted is if Kipper is barking in the background and I have to pause and tell him to simmer down or knock it off or hush. I’ve enjoyed our long conversations and our leisurely walks and coffee dates but alas, another child is on the way and we are naming her The New Career. Ms. A has a sweet new job that’s a cross between Nina in the film Office Space and the chick featured in Cake‘s “Short Skirt and Long Jacket“ song from eons ago. I’m very happy for her and she is just one of several friends who are starting careers again in their 50’s. It’s exciting and amazing to watch. But…but…but…what about me????

sigh sigh sigh

I’ve no one to have coffee with now. My Housewife Posse are all employed outside their homes from 9 to 5 Monday through Friday and will be having cases of the Mondays, looking forward to Hump Day, TGIF and asking themselves if they are working hard or hardly working. And what do ya’ know? Me too! I’m going to be working consistently three weekdays with few weekends like a normal person. What the hell happened here? Posse when poof!

I guess I’m gonna have to get busy and you know…reinvent myself, too. I might as well because there isn’t anyone available for coffee next Wednesday.

Musings From The Back Porch or No, Really I'm Writing Today

2010-07-07T13:24:00.006-06:00

This is my last day off of five, a mini vacation at home (I refuse to use that stupid computer generated word that begins with an “S”). I did manage to accomplish a few things and had some fun, too. Just this minute I’m on the porch enjoying our unseasonably cool day, reminiscent last year. I’m also contemplating ways to legally kill the squirrels that are knocking all the apples off my tree. This is the first year we’ve had apples and now most of them are ending up, green, hard, sour with the seeds picked out all over the ground. Have I mentioned how much I loathe squirrels? When we lived near a large city park, the squirrels almost outnumbered the people and they were bold and aggressive. I would cheer if I almost hit one and then when the boys were older and into a gross out stage I would act like I was going to hit them if they were in the road, just swerve a little and tap the accelerator. I’ve never actually hit one, though. Don’t worry, I’m not running up the street to Walmart for a small rifle so I can shoot the buggers. Having never shot a rifle I would probably kill the dog or a neighbor aiming for a squirrel. Wally’s a pretty good shot; he could do it for me. . .

Anyhow, the gardening is done; I’ve battled the dandelions and weird groundcover succulent looking things today. I contemplated taking a machete to the Bee Balm that is threatening to eat the front flower bed and our living room but TG likes it and so I’ll pull it out in October. I also harvested more carrots and two, TWO small golden beets. I’m waiting for TG to come home for lunch so we can have them with a salad of mixed greens and a vinaigrette I invented this morning. I’m very proud of this dressing: its balsamic vinegar, my herbs d’Provence infused olive oil, fresh pepper, garlic, a mixture of ground tarragon, chives, and oregano, topped off with a dollop of honey and yellow curry. This is an epic event because I really don’t like to cook and Kraft Mac-n-Cheese feels like a lot of damn work. My lunch was a roasted tomato drizzled with the dressing and topped with a sprinkling of Swiss cheese. Again, an epic event because the tomato didn’t come in a package or from a restaurant or as a result of The Girl. Not that I want a cookie for fixing lunch (although a cookie would be nice right now). I must confess I do like working with the fresh ingredients that come from our garden. It’s immensely satisfying to walk outside and pick things to eat. Which is why I am very excited our city has changed the zoning and is allowing people to keep chickens and pigmy goats in their backyards. Wow! Maybe someday we can have a Yard Cow and an elephant! I love elephants and fed one in Cambodia last month. Made my life complete! And when I stop foolin’ around and actually write the novel living in my head, there will be a yard cow based on a story I heard from an old friend of Ward’s.

I hadn’t even heard of a pigmy goat until we were in Texas last April. My stepmother’s brother (Step Uncle?) is a rancher in south Texas and told us during the drought people got rid of their cattle and started raising these goats. I asked him if he had become attached to any of them. He gave me a curious side long glance and quietly said: “Up until I take them to slaughter. “ Yeah, just as I suspected, he thinks they are adorable, too. Probably names them, worries after them like pets if it’s too hot or too cold or too rainy. They are cute little things, and always look at you like you’ve just said something wise which had never occurred to them and could you please elaborate on your philosophies and ideas. In other words, these little animals looked intrigued. My guess is they have an IQ lower than the average retarded dog but they still look intelligent. I’m not sure what we would do with this goat. Probably tie it up just on the other side of our fence in the green space and let it graze on the weeds. Little Goat would also eliminate the need to mow. Hopefully if the coyotes carried it off they would have the decency to eat it far far from the back fence so I wouldn’t have to clean up a carcass. Or listen to the crows as they fussed with one another over the carrion.

The coyotes are the most compelling reason why I haven’t found plans for a tiny chicken coop. Well there’s that and the dog. I have a hard enough time wrangling a wily old dog much less a clutch of chickens. But we could get those pretty little hens with the fancy feathers and free range them in our backyard. The poo would be great for the garden, too. Too bad I would be fighting the dog for the eggs and ultimately probably the chickens. So my adventure in urban animal husbandry is going to have to wait until the dog is dead.

This could be sooner rather than later because I’m going to leave him out for the aforementioned hungry coyotes if he doesn’t leave the damn trash can alone. I would like to blame his naughty behavior on the fireworks this past weekend but the fireworks are over and the behavior continues. Because I would actually miss the old goofball dog, the only other solution we came up with is just strewing the trash on the kitchen floor because that’s where it ends up anyhow. So last night before we went out for an hour or so, I put the trashcan on the back porch. TG thought she was pretty freakin’ funny when she calls downstairs to me: “Well the dog didn’t get into the trash but the squirrels did…Not really!” If I printed what I said before she alerted me to her joke, everyone’s net nanny’s would go “ping”.

But the idea of chickens has enormous appeal to me. When we heard this fortuitous news the other night, TG just looked at me and mouthed the word: “NO”. Butbutbut she is the one who in a moment of tropical fever or tequila induced insanity told me she would like to move to Mexico and raise chickens in the jungle a few miles from the coast. And then this spring we discussed the goats in everyone’s yard along I-10 in south Texas and again the idea of chickens was raised. I suppose wintering the chickens here would be an issue. I’m not too keen on the idea of leaving one of the cars outside so they can stay in the garage. The health department would look askance at us keeping them in the basement. Another dream dashed against the rocks of reality.

I suppose I’ll just buy my eggs at the store like most people. And mow the lawn. And dream of an elephant of my own.

image found here

Happiness Is

2010-07-04T15:43:00.007-06:00

Today is one of those perfect days. The sun is out and it isn’t super hot like it has been so the dark clouds around us might yield rain, something we haven’t had in a week or so. My water bill and my vegetables will be most appreciative. Whenever I’m finished working in the yard, I always reward myself with flower arrangements. It feels completely decadent to have a house full of cut flowers. My perennial garden is amazing and we are blessed with monarch butterflies as well as honeybees. There is a working farm nearby and I wonder if they are keeping bees which would rock to find local honey. A few weeks ago, we were discussing the lovely alchemy of keeping bees and wouldn’t it be an interesting thing to do. Deadly in her case because she’s very allergic, but in theory it would be so very Zen. Handling bees you must absolutely be in the moment. I have a hard time being in the moment so tasks and jobs feel mysterious and sacred to me. Bees and butterflies are two signs of a healthy garden. I’m not sure I could stand the bliss if I had frogs, too. Poor frogs are dying off all over the world. We did see huge frogs at Angkor Wat in the reflecting pool and heard them at night and in the early morning at our hotel outside of the city.

Tending the garden, yard and flowers never fails to make me smile; even when it’s hot dry and dusty. This year’s beds aren’t as lush and varied as last year’s when we had a wet and temperate summer. But I am a little concerned about the front flower bed, everything bloomed way too early and is now dormant. I’m wrestling with setting more things out, annuals and such. I do have zinnias (the most cheerful flower, according to Oldest Friend) which will bloom in a week or so but otherwise the terraced bed looks a little woebegone and sad. Even the 4 O’Clocks are being stubborn and refusing to grow and bloom. Much to be joyful about today despite my worries.

My step-mother’s granddaughter (my--what--step-niece?) is an amazing artist and keeps a lovely blog, today she listed pictures of things that make her happy. This being a perfect day it was easy to find things that make me happy. Here are eleven (I like prime numbers) as they occurred to me.

Summer days when it’s not blazing hot, dry and windy so the back porch is “Command Central”

My flowers

The Girl is making chicken and polenta for dinner tonight and C from next door is coming over, maybe with her new beau who isn’t terribly handsome but he adores her and thinks she is the most amazing woman on the planet.

My Oil d’Provence (an infusion of my own herbs d’Provence in olive oil) was a huge success.

Tending the vegetable garden and worrying over the delicate tomato plants which were set out a little late and on a very hot day. Finding big sweet carrots, sweet peas, three habanera peppers, four cucumber blossoms and the golden beets which will be ready any day now. I’m boiling them and serving them on their greens cold with a pungent blue cheese and pine nuts. I. Can’t. Wait. I have fantasized about this beet salad for a year.

Getting to spend the whole day with TG.

Honey bees.

Butterflies.

The dog hasn’t turned over the trash can or escaped from the backyard today.

Wally let me take a picture of him.

Frogs And Snails and Puppy Dog's Tails

2010-07-02T22:50:00.006-06:00

Twenty years ago tonight, about this time I was sitting in our stifling hot living room in a wee bungalow listening to the rain as the fifteen day record setting heat was finally broken. I also felt my contractions start as the weather changed. Our dear friend and neighbor, B, was sitting up with me. She wasn’t sleeping well, the heat coupled with a recent lay-off was insomnia making. I appreciated the company, too. I had been home waiting to have a baby for four days and I was bored even though I was relieved to be on maternity after struggling to continue working. I was a NICU/New Born nurse at the time and had to shuttle between the nursery, the mom's rooms and the labor deck. Each unit was positioned down a long long hall and the distance from the nursery and the labor deck was getting longer with each passing hour as my edematous sausage legs and I trudged the stuffy hot hallway as I checked on the babies and moms. I insisted on having the walking job: hoping the activity would stimulate labor so I could just pick up my bag and drive to the hospital down the street. My sweet patients--most of them Spanish speakers--were prone to leaping from the rocking chairs in their hospital rooms so I could sit in my “delicate” and “advanced” condition. They would cluck and carry on about how huge I was and ask me if I was delivering twins. It never failed to make me laugh despite my misery. B and I discussed my last week at work, the grace these Mexican women brought to my life with their ability to care for their caregiver. We talked about how I had been disappointed I wasn’t having a girl. How much I had wanted a girl but I had come to terms with a boy. Because a girl was going to turn 13 and suddenly hate my guts for a decade a so; a son would only hate me for a year or two. I would try to live vicariously through a daughter: pushing and prodding until she was a puking anorexic mess on a therapist’s couch. I didn't tell her how impossibly young I felt in the face of having a child because I couldn't tangibly name what it was that made me feel so terribly young and unprepared. When I look at that picture of me and Wally, he seventeen days old and me younger than my nephew is now, I am alternatively consumed with relief I am twenty years older and seized with a desire to turn back the clock and fix terrible mistakes. But what frightened me most, that night, how would I relate to a boy? I, being so innately feminine and female…what would we talk about?

I was a quick study: We talked about Bear and how much he loved Wally and about road construction, dump trucks, ambulances, fire trucks, trains and dinosaurs. Snails and puppy dog tails stuff. But it wasn't all fun and games and rubber and steel for Wally. He was a deep thinker, that one. He was about two when he had an epiphany at dinner. Wally thoughtfully and reverently intoned:

“My Dad is not a fire dog.”

A big existential moment, to separate one’s parent into the category of human from beast.

I’m not sure how successful we have been staying in the human category. I know I’ve moved back and forth between the two. Tonight I said as much when I reminisced about sitting up the night before he was born. Wally was polite and indulged me as I told him the story of that evening with B. I also told him how thankful I was I had boys even though I wasn’t sure how well I had done relating and how parenting was a really hard education into adulthood for me. We were in the car when I told him all of this. That forced intimacy of a car ride at night made it easier to talk to him about these things. That, and he was a captive audience, too and listened probably because I was giving him a ride some place. He rarely asks for a ride so I volunteered to pick him up later,too. It won’t be the first time I’ve stayed up late waiting for him. I was doing just that, twenty years ago.

"There Is Never Enough Time To Do All The Nothing You Want"

2010-06-29T15:07:00.005-06:00

image here

“What I heard then was the melody of children at play.” Nabokov

I love summer. Lovelovelovelove Summer. I love how the sun comes up around five and it isn’t dark until nine at night. I like the sound of the cicadas. I remember the crickets and frogs from Texas, a sound rare here. The trees are lush and green; flowers are in full bloom and it is blissfully hot. Everything looks healthy and robust. I like the way wind sounds as it brushes the cottonwood leaves. It’s my favorite time of the year and yet only lasts twelve short weeks. Last summer I discovered rising early every summer day away from the hospital allowed me time to accomplish more “nothing”. Too bad this summer is the exception. Not only am I accomplishing absolutely nothing but I’m sleeping in like a teenager. I did manage to knock back the weeds, deadhead the flowers and plant a few more things after we returned from our vacation. But that was with help and only because the yard, garden and flowerbeds were in rough shape after two weeks of neglect. But suddenly, I’m seized with a complete lack of interest in doing anything other than lying in the sun on the lounge chair and reading. Mind you last summer I did this, too but only after my chores and projects were accomplished. My summer work ethic has flown far far away. I hope it’s landed and someone is putting it to good use.

I think my generation is the second generation to enjoy summer, free of gritty hard work. I grew up in the suburbs so it wasn‘t like I had to work on a farm, either. Always the suburbs, the halcyon place of comfort and ease. Especially during the summer: no school, a few chores and plenty of time to wander the wild spaces just on the other side of the fence or swim in the local pool, cruise the neighborhood on my bike, or lounge around the boat dock. The only thing I had to worry about was going to the swimming pool, getting a ride to the library, which trashy reruns was I going to watch and if I was eating dinner at my friend’s house or my house. My father’s generation worked from a young age, either odd jobs in town or on the farm. When I am sentimental about my childhood it is summer I remember. Not winter, spring or back-to-school autumns. Playing hide and seek in the Big Thicket just on the other side of our yard in SE Texas; when it was safe to let your seven year old out of your line of sight, untethered by a cell phone with GPS, barefooted no less. My child’s memory thinks we wandered miles from home but if I were to return to this place I would find it much more compact and nearby. That is, if it were there to explore. The Big Thicket is almost completely gone except for a few acres the Indians managed to hold away from the developers. That wild space in summer taught me the names of flowers and that I must be immune from poison ivy and oak because it was rampant in the piney woods. I stopped wandering around barefooted after a snake bite (in our front yard) when I was eight. But it’s still an act of God’s grace in action OF (oldest friend) and I didn’t turn over a rock and awaken a dozing rattle snake in New Mexico. Blessed be, not even a scorpion sting, only a honey bee sting. Perhaps I had my due with a venomous snake bite? I was almost a teenager when we moved back to Texas and a creek ran close to our home with a marshy bit of woods but I was too old for that and preferred just walking the neighborhood streets with a friend or two. This, and one of my good friends had a pool in her backyard Wandering the creek was for little kids. But once my incarceration at the lake began, I would wander around the fields near our land. I hated going to the lake with my parents; it was made bearable if a friend came along. My two best friends’ parents were convinced their daughters were taking advantage of my parents. Years later, I explained to one of my friends’ mom (the friend with the pool) that T didn’t eat much and it kept me from driving my mother insane. One would think, that my love affair with summer would have made weekends at the lake even sweeter. Or that a lake was way better than a swimming pool. Not so much.

There was plenty of nothing to do that first summer at the lake. For me at least. I certainly wasn’t going to build a retaining wall or help pour cement for the boat dock. Or move dirt from one pile to the other. I was way way too busy being miserable to help with the work. I think by August we had a television in the trailer. If I remember correctly it a miniscule black and white set with a terrible antenna. Maybe. We did have a radio but my father had me convinced the only station it would get was an AM Country station. What, being SO FAR from the city and all. I think I was in my thirties when I figured out he had lied to me so I wouldn’t bother touching the radio to find another more suitable station. That first summer at the lake, I read War And Peace. I was thirteen and I read Tolstoy. That’s freakin’ bored. And I wrote probably the most anachronistic historical romance ever written by a young girl. I found a copy of it when we moved to The Fabulous House In The Suburbs. I very systematically ripped the spiral notebook into tiny pieces, a time consuming task which offered up plenty of time for me to wince and throw up a little in my mouth as I read each astoundingly bad word. Dad foolishly tried to get me interested in fishing. Again. A few years before, he tried to take the family fishing. I was not having any part of it and so noisy no one was catching fish until he rigged my line and for forty years (yes, 40 not 4) I thought I had caught that fish. “Catching” the fish probably only kept me quiet for an hour or so but that’s better than nothing. So he thought maybe I was a grown up enough to enjoy down time, sitting in a boat at dawn staring at the water and a small piece of nylon string. Because, yeah, that is way way more interesting than watching a snowy version of the Match Game or reading Tolstoy at the decent hour of ll:30 in the morning. And to my credit, I tried but I stopped trying because I did have a few minutes of mature, empathetic clarity, and felt sorry for Dad because it seemed like all he did was untangle my line. Is it any wonder the second and third summer we had a lake place, my parents let me stay with my sister in Southern California for a few weeks? I’m sure their ears stopped ringing from the complaints, sighs and whining after about ten days of being blissfully teenager angst free. I never asked them what they did while I was gone that month: I probably don’t want to know.

One of the best summer’s ever was the summer of ‘82. My hours as a nurses' assistant at the hospital had been reduced and I was living with my best friend, her boyfriend and Jack. That July, BF-boyfriend and I camped our way to the Texas coast, with stops in Austin and San Antonio. BF couldn’t go; she was starting her career as a nurse that summer. It was also the summer I read Lolita with Jack. We took turns reading it out loud to each other. This came about because I had been reading Tess Of The d’Urbervilles and was so depressed by it, my three housemates took it away from me, sick of my tears and rants about the injustice of it all. I‘m not sure why Jack thought Humbert Humbert‘s fantasies of a young girl were going to make it all better. I wish I could ask him. That summer was the beginning of Jack’s untimely and premature march towards a senseless and completely preventable death. Because he is gone, the memories are a little sweeter and more precious. I’m thankful the two most painful episodes in my life happened in the summer months because I know they were made more bearable by the simplicity and generosity of the season. Besides that, the painful stuff always seemed to happen just before school started again and the new school year made everything new in one episode and the other episode just gave me courage to start a new life one autumn.

Final Thoughts On The Whole Thing

2010-06-19T16:06:00.005-06:00

I think we have been home for almost 48 hours and I'm still unsure what day it is. The jet lag feels like the first six weeks of my sons' lives when I slept in fits and starts for no longer than two hours and to top it all off: I have very stubborn bug bites (thankfully nothing more exotic or persistant than sand fleas from the beach)so I'm a bit of an itchy sleep deprived mess. But a happy sleep deprived itchy mess because I got the best news while I was away: the candidate they originally picked for the job I wanted did not respond to their offer and after a week they decided to give it to me! w00t! With a touch of a raise, too! Our last day (Wednesday? Tuesday? wha-?) was especially celebratory.

When The Girl announced she made the executive decision we were staying in a five star hotel versus a three star guest house part of me was a little: OMG just how much is this going to cost and the other part of me was "phew! luxury after the big long bus ride!" Luxury beats economy when you are a Pretty Pretty Princess. Luxury beats economy in the third world when you have saved money for almost a year for a really big holiday. I've never stayed in such a beautiful place, either. I'm a princess but I'm cheap and the idea of going to a spa style hotel and spending four figures on a hotel and pampering treatments makes my stomach and head hurt simultaneously, I like my creature comforts but I have also become a sensible princess. But really who could resist this.

Added to these beautiful surroundings was an amazing restaurant that did everything right at $-$$. Not to mention, TG had worked her negotiating magic and had procured us some extra deals. The big down size is I'm now ruined for any other hotel experience. The only disappointing thing about this experience was the FCC was never a Foreign Correspondents Club like the one in PP. So instead of rubbing elbows with grizzled, road worn journalists, content to tip back their tumblers of scotch as they mulled over the scene they witnessed in Bangkok; tapping out stories on laptops or trading stories about coups covered back in the '80's. Nah, the only people we rubbed elbows with were other "holiday makers." The "FCC" thing was all for show. And showy it was.

Part of me feels "white" guilt over staying in luxurious places on our vacation. Yesterday morning as we made our way across town in the triple digit heat to finish buying trinkets and such for friends and family, we walked past the Angkor Children's Hospital and I peaked inside the gate and witnessed the day long wait. Women and children sitting outside in the Big Heat on concrete chairs waiting to be seen by practitioners. It's the only place in the region which offers immunizations. My source told me people travel as far as Battenbang (about 100km) to see a pediatrician. We were told the hospital receives enough vaccine to immunize 100 children a day and people come before dawn to be seen hoping to be seen. The very idea of sitting in the heat after riding on a bus all night long with a toddler and a baby exhausted me. The heat exhausted me as it was and all I was doing was messing around buying scarves and spices and had a swimming pool and a cold beer waiting for me.

It was easy for me to sit on that hotel balcony and ruminate over what could be done to help the people in the country deal with their horrendous trash problems, water problems, public health issues. Sure, they burned the paper trash but their ditches were filled with plastic products, most of which appeared to be empty beverage bottles. Thankfully they weren't burning the plastic bottles. But why haven't large waste management companies started working with the government to organize recycling services in the provinces? This would eliminate the trash filled ditches, not to mention the jobs and the materials the recycled plastic could provide. So easy for me to sit back and fix it; my ethnocentricism really started to show. It's also easy to forget this country's democracy is only fifteen years old. That last night as we checked in with security, the guard was a bit bored and it wasn't very busy so he was chatting with us. He asked us what we thought of the Khmer people, did they smile, were they helpful and friendly? We gave him a hearty yes to all his questions. I think a traveler in the US would fall over dead if a TSA agent asked such questions. Our national assumption is we are the best brightest, bravest, richest and strongest country on the planet so we don't feel like we have to work a little longer and try a little harder. It's the sort of arrogance I'm hoping I no longer suffer after this eye opening vacation.

(to add to my "guilt" I just met a young nurse from Tennessee who just spent ten days in remote villages teaching hygene and the like...yeah, I need to come back and give back)

M.O.T.S.

2010-06-15T19:46:00.003-06:00

"More Of The Same" This was our assignment for the last four days. I spent four days watching the sky over the Gulf of Thailand, the clouds taking turn forming dragons, apsara dancers, long boats, wats and a few poodles. Funny, how the clouds took on the shape of those things engrained in the culture of the place. Yesterday afternoon, The Girl pointed out a band of clouds near the horizon were the demons and gods churning the sea of milk. I promise, the clouds did at times look like Angkor Wat. My favorite cloud was the dragon being ridden by a Siamese warrior. And no, I haven't been nipping the Mekong Bug Juice. I think we are leaving Cambodia in the nick of time, the rainy season is starting. We had a night long deluge and both of us awakened at the same time, with the same thought: what about the road. There are low parts of the road and low bridges, our journey might be made even more interesting by having to ford standing water. We just made a pit stop about an hour outside of PP (to the north) and it was raining cats, dogs, pigs and water buffalo. Of course, my rain jacket is in my backpack in the luggage hold. But the bus driver almost pulled under the restaurant patio so we didn't get wet. TG finally ate a bug, brave thing that she is. The cricket she sampled was sweet. It was courtesy of the cutest kid, about 13 who shared his snack with her because she bought an older woman trapped beneath a sleeping toddler some water. I had thought all this spider eating, bug imbibing stuff was for the benefit of the tourists but it isn't: people really do eat the bugs. TG's new friend demonstrated one must pull the wings off the cricket first and then eat it in one big bite. She compared the coating to the sesame flavoring Spider Rolls have. All day, our little world rolled through the countryside, honking at cars, cows and bikes along the way. The ditches around the houses were filling and it's fortunate they are on stilts. I can't imagine what this country looks like in July. I'm almost phobic about muddy water (read the leeches episode in On The Banks Of Plum Creek too many times) so I would be hard pressed to venture in such a country during rainy season. Snakes and leeches and pointy stuff to cut me. I sound like such a pussy. If there had been mud puddles in PP, I wouldn't have left the bench in the waiting area.

PP wasn't as overwhelming today as it was a few days ago. TG ventured into the Russian Market across from the station and bought some local fry. I stayed put and made friends with a Buddhist nun. That is, I shared bread and grins with her. I know we both prayed for the obviously demented old woman begging. The woman approached me and I shook my head several times as she was persistant. Tried to kneel before the Buddhist nun but couldn't and instead bowed three times in prayer while holding her hand out. The nun shook her head and pushed her away. This woman had a handbag with her and despite her thin and frail build she looked cared for. It was also obvious she was lost and probably confused. I felt the hackles on the back of my neck raising--why was she alone, didn't she have family?--when a worried young woman rushed into the station area and gently led the woman away and casting back an apologetic look for the people her mother had begged from.

On the way into PP, I had put away the camera and missed Best Picture Of All Time. We had just entered the outskirts of PP and all the sudden we come to a dead stop in the middle of the road; horns are tooting and honking around us. TG stands up and looks over the tops of the seats: "No one's moving big traffic jam.: Our very game and brave bus driver inches his way to the left and begins to make a turn when suddenly everyone who speaks Khmer (that would be everyone except four of the passengers) are furiously screaming at the bus driver. One woman, obviously from the country with a leathery sun darkened face and an assortment of missing teeth, marches down the aisle and is admonishing (?) the driver, pointing and exclaiming when everyone else joins in and the bus is alive with voices no doubt telling the driver what to do. Usually at home, when there is a problem on public transit, the passengers become quieter so the driver can concentrate. I started to laugh because it was just so hilarious, we had busses and trucks and motor bikes and bicycles in this mass of wheeled vehicles going every which direction when all the sudden an ox cart pulling two stunned farmers is coming toward sthe bus as we were making a left turn. Priceless. Worth the cost of the ticket here. Pulitzer material.

The other priceless shot I missed this morning was one I could have taken but wouldn't have in a million years. We had stopped at a small village outside Snookie and a water buffalo was grazing in a ditch just outside my window. I had my camera raised and was snapping a picture (under exposed, I'm still learning) and had lowered to adjust the settings when I noticed a large group of people coming down the road towards the bus. There were three older adults and a few young women, two had small babies in arms. One young woman, was dressed to the nines, and had a large rice sack with her, no doubt her belongings. She was collecting her things and got on the bus and was seated just behind us. I could hear her calling out to her family and urging her baby to wave at them. I pulled the camera down when I saw each member of her family wiping away tears. She was leaving home. Her sisters wrapped their arms around one another, waving and wiping tears from their cheeks, her father bowed and beamed up at the bus, the babies waved and her mother cried. The young women was excited and knew the boy she was sitting with; he had boarded the stop before. Their conversation was enthusiastic and they laughed at things her baby said. Perhaps this was a wedding trip of some sort for them or they had been visiting their respective villages and were on their way home to PP. He married her despite the fact she had another man's child. Or they had decided it was time to leave home and he spent a few days with his family down the road before leaving home. They were tired of farming and she was promised a factory job and he was going to help in his cousin's garage... I could invent one hundred stories. The sisters were older and had the look of young matrons; soft around the middle but still young, maybe they were crying because they weren't leaving their village, maybe she carried their dreams with them to the big city just down National Highway 4, two hours and one world away from home.

Feelin' Groovy

2010-06-12T03:43:00.003-06:00

Friday was the first day of our Beach Holiday. And what a treat it was to lay beside a tranquil and warm body of water for six hours, reading, chatting and swimming. Saturday was more of the same, a few more people joined us so we didn't have the beach to ourselves but had there been a coup or a disaster we would have been in good hands with the United States Navy in port and a few of our sailors were lounging about the beach not creating too much ruckus (so much for the rumors about sailors on shore leave). These days have been a great reward after our treks through temples, battling dust, enthusiastic hard sell vendors and a big bus ride. I can't say the bus trip here was arduous. Arduous would imply we had to get out of the bus to push it across a flooded stream, wait hours for herds of sheep or cows to cross, share our seats with chickens or pervs, defend ourselves against bandits. Like the bus trip in that ridiculous movie from the 80's Romancing The Stone. Nothing so exciting happened on our trip. It was just long and dusty and well...long. But good things come to those who wait and good things they are.

The Girl has mad Google Foo and found our groovy hotel online and managed to book it way way off rack price. Good travel ju-ju that one she has. Our hotel is so groovy that Jackie Kennedy stayed here for five days in 1967. Just a few short years before Kissinger decided to have a snit and bomb the crap out of this beautiful country because the king wouldn't cooperate with him and help attack Vietnam. Because that's how we play: You don't share your toys with you, we are going to just break all of them so no one gets to play. And who can blame KIng Sihanouk. He didn't want a war, he wanted to Par-Tay with the Big Boys and be a movie star or direct films or be an International Man of Mystery. So he built this big hotel and invited Rock Stars and Famous Widows. And they came and they tossed back cocktails and smoked a lot of dope and enjoyed the beautiful warm water just outside their door until we started dropping bombs and then Pol Pot started disappearing all the cool kids and the party ended until 2008 when someone had the cash and good grace to revamp and renew this lovely place.

But hey, a vision is a vision and groovy visions like the Independence Hotel are unstoppable. SihanoukVille is lousy with guest houses and small hotels but has very little to offer the...ahem...more...discerning travelers like me and The Girl who are more than willing to do a ten hour bus trip to hit a beach but prefer a key card over a key, demand a swimming pool and really enjoy fresh towels every day. The history, vibe and a room bigger than our old Crack Shacks is just a bonus. Not only is this place nice it's over the top. Sleek minimalist designs that evoke both the middle of the last century and an Asian Zen quietude. The beautiful private beach is 109 steps down from the hotel lobby. The beach is clean with enough shady palapas, comfortable chairs ands--yesterday--a complete absence of college aged people trying to get laid, recovering from hangovers or working on their next hangover. I've been there and done that and really don't need to watch another generation of young adults act like asshats. I have my own wincingly embarrassing memories to keep me up at night, thanks so much.

Besides the quiet, it's a sexy building made of undulating rooms and curves rather than angles. Thomas Crown would have slept here after breaking the bank in Bangkok, 007 would have totally chilled here after foiling a nefarious threat to the free world. No doubt lolling around the giant pool or soaking up Gulf of Thailand sun with a nubile young woman named after a body part and a food based adjective.

And now I'm chilling here after foiling my sons' nefarious plot to take over my brain and break my bank. But 007 I'm not: the only thing nubile about me is my imagination and my attitude and The Girl is --thankfully--not named Vulva Plenty. Although you have to admit registering in a hotel with a non English speaking concierge would be pretty hilarious, especially if you had to repeat your name several times to help them with the pronunciation.

The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round

2010-06-11T20:06:00.010-06:00

Thursday started for us at dawn when we said good bye to our hosts in Siem Reap and started the The Big Bus Aventure. We clamored on board and noted our fellow travelers weren't old women with chickens for market but bleary-eyed college students. I guess the good news was we weren’t on “the chicken bus” and the bad news is I was spending the day with teenagers. Fortunately, it was early so they were quiet and my guess was they hadn’t been to bed yet or had scant sleep the night before. We wound our way through early morning traffic; I was surprised there was so much traffic before seven in the morning. The bus station was a large parking lot, littered with people waiting for busses to run and vendors selling baguettes and drinks. The bread here is the best bread I’ve ever had. Probably because Siem Reap’s weather reminds me of living in a proofer: Hot and damp but not hot enough to actually bake. We found our bus, loaded our extremely heavy backpacks and The Girl went in search of baguettes and cheese for our journey. I wasn’t really sure what to expect: had the rainy season started to the south and the road under a few inches of water? What would we see? Would the villages be horrible or picturesque? Would I die of boredom on a ten hour bus trip? Most importantly, the bus was leaving late…would we make our connection in Phenon Phen?

The ditches were full in places but the road was dry
Lots of cows.
Both.
Absolutely not
Yes and we even waited for a bus later than our own.

We had covered a few miles on National Highway 6 a few days before when we were making our way through the temples. I knew what to expect: small houses on stilts, cows and people working at various tasks along the road. Our bus was comfortable, cool enough without being over air conditioned. The scenary flashed outside my window like a dream at times and a green blur at others. The Khmer pop music playing in the background was the perfect accompaniment for the countryside to unfold and tell a story of a day in Cambodia. A few of the songs were very catchy and at times I felt like we should sway, sing along and perhaps wave lighters in the air as a tribute to the moving lyrics and power ballad cords. Stirring stuff. Too bad I hadn’t a clue what was being sung.

As the landscape rolled past me, I snapped picture after picture trying to capture exactly what it was I was seeing. Sometimes I captured the scene but most of the time I was so close but so far away. The voyeur in me loved watching the lives pass as we made our way through the country: children on their way to school, helping in the fields, men tinkering or planting, Women working in the small garden plots, babies tied to their sides. I watched groups of women sitting in circles, performing small detail oriented tasks, the younger women always turned towards the oldest who sat higher than the rest. Sometimes they looked deep in thought other times they had the easier continence of telling stories or gossiping with one another. The small shops in each village held a clutch of men who were working side by side fixing things or loading trucks. Each village had a small primary school (at the least) and by the time we were out of Siem Reap, morning school had started and the bicycles were neatly parked by the classroom doors. The schools were low slung one story buildings, built around a common area and almost always next door to the village temple which were always the most ornate and largest buildings in the village. The school windows were unfettered by glass with only simple shutters to protect the classrooms from wind and water. I imagined the afternoons in the classrooms were stifling. By ten, you could see kids playing in the common area: boys on one side of the playground and girls on the other. I’m not sure if this was the rule or just the universal way children are until they are teenagers. The games they appeared to play were just like the games our own children play. Some of the schools were in more prosperous villages than others and had real playgrounds with the old fashioned equipment my generation grew up with before it was considered too dangerous to have a merry-go-round and climbing bars.

Many of the villages seemed to specialize in one craft or task. One village had wood and wooden building materials; everything from firewood to furniture. Another specialized in cement and stone masonry. Masons were working on decorative images of Buddha and some of the characters featured in the bas reliefs we had just seen in Angkor: Garuda and Apsara dancers. A few days before we went though a village which specialized in sticky rice cooked in hollowed bamboo shoots. Stand after stand of this special rice was featured on the side of the road. It was amazing the women recouped their outlay on rice and bamboo. But then they probably gathered their own bamboo and grew their own rice. Every available spot of land appeared to have rice growing on it and as we moved further south it seemed like the rains were beginning and the rice fields had become paddies. Rice as it is growing is a surreal shade of green, too.

As the day progressed the microcosmic worlds I witnessed progressed, too. At lunch time, people were gathered sharing a meal; often it was simply a man and a women. One couple were seated close together, heads almost touching, laughing about something together; the intimacy evoked in those few seconds is remarkable to me. It also brought home the idea there is joy to be had even if you are a sustenance farmer in the middle of a developing country. Probably more joy than most of us in the cities know. These homes were without evidence of electricity and I know they don’t have running water. Their lives are uncluttered by the things I take for granted: just now I’m typing on a computer, television playing in the background and Air Con humming to keep the cloying night heat and bugs outside. This is not to say I’m romanticizing living conditions I witnessed. Some of the farms were unspeakably littered with trash and often surrounded by a moat of nasty looking water. By and large the filthiest places were adjacent to larger towns and perhaps the most desperate living conditions I witnessed were outside Phenom Phen. It was in these places the people looked dirty, unhealthy and poorly fed. It puzzles me why this would be the case: the larger towns had health clinics, large schools and a temple or monastery at the center of the activity. Why did those people appear hungry? And when I say dirty, I mean truly unkempt. On the most rudimentary farms, the children had cleanish hair and the women appeared recently bathed and their simple sarong skirts and tee shirts were well cared for. I’m actually very troubled by what I witnessed in PP’s outskirts. The city itself wasn't much better and it was a busy, mad and desultory place.

As we pulled into the bus station the Tuk-Tuk drivers and tax drivers rushed the side of the bus, screaming at us to purchase rides from them, pounding on the sides. It reminded me of pictures I've seen of riots in the Middle East as the mob descends on American military convoys or press convoys. These guys were like piranhas and made the kids at the temples look like Doctor fish. The city was a disorienting experience and I felt so very green and gullible. Like I had just come in from the provinces. I can't even wrap my head around what this city must feel like to someone who has spent their life on one of the farms in the country. It must seem like Hell. I haven’t been overwhelmed by a city since 1984 when I walked up the stairs from Penn Station and into Midtown Manhattan. I was 23 and it was one of the most intimidating moments of my life: I was completely alone in an alien place. This is how I felt in PP. I’m so glad we weren’t staying there or looking for a place to stay because I would have simply withered into a puddle of babbling frightened goo on the side of the street. Changing busses was nerve-wracking on it’s own.

The rest stops were like episodes of Bizarre Food. The Cambodian delicacies offered to us included crickets, worms, freshwater snails and crab (from the rice paddies), deep fried bat on a stick (no, really). I expected to see Andrew Kimmern around the corner snacking on the bat and crabs. The most exotic thing I tried Thursday was sticky rice, banana and a little coconut milk congealed and baked in a banana leaf. It was a little bland but filling and I would eat it again if I could douse it with Khmer ketchup (“Mild Hot Sauce). Just walking through these mini markets was a day’s worth of memories and images.

After leaving the mad crush of Phenom Phen we crept our way up into the mountains. I couldn’t take pictures because the bus we were on was like a school bus and the windows were small and had large bars across them. I’m hoping for a different bus on the way back to Siem Reap next week because the countryside was breathtaking, a cross between Switzerland and Maui. The farms were well tended and clean, the cows were fat and healthy looking. I’m not an outdoorsy person by any stretch of the imagination but this place made me want to strike out on my own, walking stick in hand and climbing the mountains just to witness the views from the top. I wanted to rest in the lush fields and climb the tall trees. Never mind the wild boar, snakes, insects and land mines. There was large monastery in these mountains and just imagining the quiet in such a sacred place gave me a great sense of peace and was a drought for the degradation and frenzy of the capital city.

As we moved closer to our destination, I could feel the anticipation mount in the Khmer people on the bus. They knew we were getting closer and started talking more to one another, excited to be either returning home from the capital or beginning a sea side holiday. Our first glimpses of the Gulf of Thailand were unforgettable: the mountains rising on side and a lovely light blue sea, off in the distance on the other. It was a little gift before we entered Sihanoukville, a miniature version of Phen Phen.

“Snookie” is a beach town and it is geared for “Broads, Booze and Boys”. This place feels ready for action as you enter into the downtown, each side of the main drag flanked with tall spindly guesthouses and open air restaurants. Twenty odd years ago I would have welcomed this scene and been the first off the bus looking for the all night Beach Rave (it’s on Serendipity Beach, in case you ever want to go) and a cold Angkor Beer ready to groove to the pounding music and let my freak flag fly! ‘Snookie is a gritty beach town. Really gritty. Like Atlantic City before the casinos gritty (I’ve seen pictures). Like Progresso Mexico gritty. Ok…maybe not thatgritty. Even after PP and Snookie, Progresso remains the grittiest scariest place I’ve ever spent a night. The third rate carnival that was in town that night just iced the cake which was decorated with disheveled cross dressing boy hustlers who were turning tricks in the “hotel” we were staying. When we told people where we were staying in Snookie if they were at all familiar with the town their unanimous response was: “Why there? It’s really far from everything. Don’t you want to be in the middle of town? Close to the beach bars?” Um…no…because when I look out my window in the morning I want to see this.

Nose To Nose With Buddha And Having Local Fry

2010-06-08T21:01:00.008-06:00

Yesterday and today are our "free days" in Siem Reap. We finished our Saturday through Monday three day tour of the temples early Monday afternoon. I think the high point of the Temple Tour was stopping at a Buddhist Temple near Buphuon Temple. The Buddha was one of the largest we had seen and dated from the late 19th Century. That this beautiful statue had survived Pol Pot was miraculous. The elderly women, three nuns and a laywoman, had also managed to survive those terrible years, too. I paid tribute to the Buddha and laid a few dollars where other’s had given offerings. I’m not one of these women who seek out that woo-woo metaphysical Power of Womyn. I think the whole “Goddess Within” movement is, frankly, a bunch of BS and a bastardization of several cultures. But the feminine energy. The Woman Energy I felt at this temple was palpable. After I paid tribute to Buddha: I turned to walk away and one of the nun’s, ancient with Betel stained teeth, grinned widely at me and motioned for me to approach the alter again and she waved The Girl up as well. We both bowed before them and the women gathered around us: bowing, waving incense and chanting joyful sounding sing song verses over us. It was easily one of the most sacred moments I have experienced in many years. When they were finished they tied red yarn bracelets to our right wrists. Our guide told us they offered us prayers of peace, prosperity and joy. I was extremely touched they allowed us, both Western and Christian, to partake in such blessings. I think Tida--our guide--was moved we were interested in doing such a thing. She has a sense of reverence for the stories each temple tells and touches her own spirituality each time she visits. Sharing the temples is something she wants to do and the temples still take Tida’s breath away. I was even more proud of my red yarn bracelet after she told us this.

Tida’s story unfolded over the course of three days and I think she is easily one of the most remarkable women I’ve ever met. Her father had been a physician and lied to the Khmer Rouge: told them he was just an assistant and then refused to go to the “retraining” school (aka The Killing Fields) but would gladly become a farmer. Her elder brother and sister didn’t fare so well. They were professionals and were disappeared when she was very young. We aren’t quite sure how Tida managed but she resisted her mother’s pleas to quit school at 16 and marry like the other girls in her village. Tida managed to make enough money to finish twelve years of school and learn English. She put her self through three years of university and trained to be a licensed guide through UNESCO. She did marry but is divorced with a daughter who lives with her parents, a day’s journey away. Tida has no interest in marrying again: “I can go anywhere and do what I want if I’m not married.” Her next goal is to learn yet another language. I have no doubt she will accomplish this. The Girl and I were amused Tida was a favorite with all the young men working at the Angkor complex. You could hear their hearts speed up when she spoke to them. Our driver Kriss is hopelessly in love with her and watching the two of them was a Rom Com waiting to happen but Tida is not budging so they’ve only met cute and disagree cute and haven’t arrived to the hook up cute place.

It’s a well known fact I like to watch people and there are certainly lots of different people to watch. The children at each temple with their pleas to buy a scarf, cold drink, bracelets, books, flutes, puppets and other what-not are all very sweet and extremely incessant. A few of them try to tug at the old heart strings: “Buy from me so I can go to school. . .” We happened to know school is free when you are eight so this didn’t work with us. I imagine it works with many people. There were so many of them I felt like if I did buy from one of them I would be swarmed and never heard from again, buried under flutes and scarves and puppets and cold bottles of water. So you ran the gauntlet and waved them off with “no thank you’s” and “not today” sorts of replies.

We did have additional guides at the first temple we toured: Beng Mealea, an example of a temple that hasn’t been rebuilt. The young boys greeted us in the center of the temple and led us on a “special” tour, oblivious to our advanced ages and well used knees. But it was worth it, they knew were all the good stuff was: bas relief fragments, tree root sculptures and things our guide hadn’t seen before. All of this was done free of charge: they were just killing time exploring and practicing their English before afternoon school. This was their home, their kingdom and their playground. They could rehearse the history because they had spent so much time hearing the history in several different languages. The oldest boasted he spoke a little German and French as well as English. It was a lovely welcome into the Khmer culture, people who have welcomed us each step of the way.

The other tourists aren’t too dreadful; the usual American Frat Boy hijinks in Pub Street, beautiful young Western women, scantily clad and then upset when they garner leers and catcalls (WTF did they expect?) ; middle-aged folks like us somewhere between cruise ship and intrepid mentality; young families from Australia and certainly NOT America because the tuk-tuks don‘t have care seats and the little precious dears might eat something with dirt on it or have a less than pristine experience. There are a couple of billboards around town reminding people--Western men specifically--if they abuse a child not only will they be arrested in Cambodia but they will be turned over to their home governments. We’ve only seen one blatant example of this sort of “tourist”. He was outside of Bayon and was trying to gain the attention of a young woman: “You really should untie your hair, it’s too beautiful to be hidden.” was his oily, British come on. It made my stomach turn and I will go to my grave kicking myself for not marching up to him and demanding he bugger off or I would alert the officials. I did notice an older woman was hovering close by. But this young woman was obviously uncomfortable. Later, at the temple, while I was being blessed I prayed for forgiveness and protection for the girls Sir Perv was coming in contact with. And yeah, I confess I later whispered a beggy evil prayer that I would see him again and step on his toe or spit on him because I’m not quite to the level of Buddha and Jesus and don’t walk the path of peace when it comes to people exploiting other human beings.

Fortunately we haven’t exploited our gastrointestinal systems with the "local fry". Yet. Buddha knows I’ve tried: iced tea, iced coffee and every flavor of amok available from the dodgiest of market stalls to Air Con luxurious restaurants. But the best food we’ve had was at this restaurant outside the last temple we toured. Of course I don’t remember the name of it and can’t find the picture of the menu but trust me it was an Anthony Bourdain meal: interesting but straightforward “Local Fry” made especially for us by a woman and her two eldest daughters while the younger girls played quietly and tormented their baby brother. Ahhh the international language of siblings. Nice to know in a place so foreign to me some things remain same-same.

Oxens and Tuk Tuks and Monks? Oh My!

2010-06-04T04:02:00.001-06:00

The night air was heavy, diesel scented and most welcome after being inside for almost 24 hours. Our close connection went seamlessly in Seoul and the five hour flight was easy except I was sick of being on airplanes and ready to Be There. Siem Reap’s airport is tiny but extremely efficient or at least seems so since this is the shoulder season and there were four Westerners on the plane. The other passengers were locals returning home and relief workers from Korea traveling to do an annual assignment at the orphanage just outside of town. It was extremely dark, no moon or stars and we tripped our way down the stairs onto the tarmac where the locals all just sort of mingled and stopped for a smoke (!) and a chat before going inside to clear customs, no one was terribly pressed to go inside so their was an air of a cocktail party dwindling down as the last guests are leaving. It was all so terribly relaxed, no one was barking at us to stay in single file and forget about taking a bathroom break because in the Land of the Free and the Brave once you return to home soil you are guilty until proven innocent. Not here, I could have wandered off to the side and bushwhacked my way to the highway. I fought this urge and stood in line to have my visa verified and my passport stamped. There weren’t any heavily armed members of the military (a la Los Angeles) and the scanner missed my 3 oz tube of red chili paste which was not in a plastic bag but rather randomly and accidentally tucked in a crevice of my backpack which resembled a clown car with it’s three days worth of clothing and toiletries. It was nice to be innocent before proven guilty.

Our driver--Kriss--was waiting outside for us and while we had a hard time finding him, he didn’t miss us: how could he? We were the only Western women on the plane. I liked him immediately and has a dry sense of humor which we caught a glimpse of as he told the story of his only trip in an airplane: an old Russian prop jet with faulty landing gear flown from here to the mountains in the NW. And again as we wound our way through a dark jungle on rutted roads to the hotel when he asked: “Where did you hear about this place?” I know we are going to be in good hands because he made sure we would be safe before leaving, checking the hotel and the men in the reception area before leaving and as we were winding around on the dirt roads in the dark he told us it wouldn’t be safe to walk after dark. (OMG, do you think? More likely you run into an oxen than a bad guy but still…DARK…Jungle…)

The hotel is exactly how it was presented on the website. The only things they left out were the lucky geckos and standoffish owner. Laurent. French. Even I can do the math on this one. Our breakfast is included and one thing I’ve learned is sometimes this isn’t a big thing. Our breakfast is a big thing. I had the most wonderful croissants: bite sized morsels of buttery goodness dipped in a delightful honey that tasted like flowers.

The Girl didn’t sleep well last night, I slept like the dead and awakened at my usual time. She is a good sport and a hearty soul so she got up with me and after breakfast we wandered around the hotel grounds and down the road. I met the oxen who lived down the road. One smaller oxen was very curious about me and started creeping towards me. I was very surprised to say the least. She was already a few feet behind the others and fell even further behind, thinking it would be a good idea to meet the tourist. I pulled the camera up to my face to snap a picture and with that she stopped in her tracks, long enough to take note her companions were getting further away so she took off running. Like a small child who has been dawdling behind the others and races to catch up before anyone notices she is missing. After the herd went through, a Buddhist monk walked by carrying a bronze vessel. I didn’t take a picture of him because it felt disrespectful and besides that he glared at me. I’m not sure if Buddha would have glared at me but this guy did. I’m thinking not all of the young men who are committed by their families to join a monastery for a couple of years are terribly thrilled with the idea.

It’s terribly hot but we knew this would be the case when we booked the trip last December. But really, it’s not any more hot than SE Texas in August. And we have air conditioning. But seriously? I have sweat like I sweat this morning in many years. Every inch of my body was glowing. One of the shop girls had on a pair of black jeans and a long sleeved cotton turtle neck. I was melting just looking at her. The people in the market and on the streets will speak to you and ask you to look at their things or if you need a ride but it isn’t anything as annoying as the young men in Mexico or Turkey who promise you the sun, moon and stars while exclaiming I am the most beautiful woman they have seen all day! Yeah, whatever buddy.

I even bargained a little. I hate bargaining. It makes me feel like a miserly sort who doesn’t want to pay her fair share. But the bargaining is expected so I played along and ended up getting most of the gifts I wanted to take back with me plus a couple of things for myself.

After shopping we took ourselves to a spa I had read about for a “detoxifying facial”. It was a great way to spend an hour but the treatment was so much more than a facial. At one point, the technician, with her super human hands, had me sit up on the edge of the table and stood--on the table--behind me, her knees on either side of my spine as she pulled by shoulders back. It sounds brutal but it felt amazing.

The highlight of the day was our Eight Dollar tour of Siem Reap from Mr. Sony’s tuk-tuk. He took us all over the place, past the New Market where the locals buy their food and provisions, near the very posh hotels and country club and along the river where the people live in shacks suspended over the dreadfully polluted water, At times it felt like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride but it was at a slow speed and the tuk tuk drivers, kids on motor bikes and trucks all seemed able to read one another’s minds and we didn’t see a single near miss.

Tomorrow is our first day exploring the temple complex.
The Girl is going to eat bugs.
I’m going to let flesh eating fish nibble at the dead skin on my feet.

Good times. Good times.

On The Road With Ellie Mae

2010-06-03T03:41:00.002-06:00

My inner Hick was showing this morning, She always rears her tow-headed close set eye self in big cities I’ve never lived. The place I live has a bit of a sprawl to it but nothing like Los Angeles. We broke through the clouds and there were rooftops and roads which seemed endless. When ever I fly into a city thinking about how many people each large building houses overwhelms me and makes me realize how small I really am. LAX is one of the few airports in the middle of a large city which adds to my disorientation when I first arrive after having been in the lovely blue void above the earth, having had nothing to see except brown, green yellow patchwork or in this case the ruffled edges of the canyons and desert. This morning I awakened just in time to see the Grand Canyon. I’ve only been to see it once when I was about five and have flown over it several times. Flying above the desert beyond the canyon and into California is peaceful. The topography is varied in ways you can only see from the air and aren’t aware of when you are in the middle of it. I think the art created by the wind shifting the sand is best appreciated from above. That the city of angels was covered in morning clouds added to the abruptness of the change in scene. The weather this morning in Southern California was more like a balmy day in San Francisco; a little humid and coolish. My favorite type. We didn’t have enough time to leave the airport and venture to Hermosa Beach like I had hoped but we had a leisurely lunch and I explored Tom Bradley International Terminal: slack-jawed, with an Ellie Mae Clampett dialogue running through my head.

Oh the places you could go from that airport! Taipei! Dubai! Tel Aviv! Frankfurt! Mexico City! Santiago! It was all so marvelous to think of such places tied together by one--relatively--small place. We were watching the people in line: Israelis speaking Hebrew which sounds beautiful even it‘s a list of the day‘s errands and marketing; , beautiful Middle-Eastern women dressed impeccably in Western dresses (I wondered if they would veil once they arrived in Dubai) , large Asian families as varied in dress as any family at an airport in the Midwest. The Girl astutely noted how the six degrees of separation could probably be played with any number of the quell waiting to go through security. I loved hearing the assortment of languages around me. I remembered the first time that happened to me.

Years ago, my sister lived in Los Angeles, on a hill overlooking the Pacific ocean that featured Catalina
\\Island on clear days. It was breathtaking even for a 13 year old who worked nonstop to hide Ellie Mae under a veneer of distain and disinterest. When it was time to return home, I remember being in awe of the people in the airport. My world was pretty limited to Upper Middle Class White Folks. So seeing Africans and Asians was heady stuff. The day I left LA, my flight was late or we were early and had extra time so we walked to the international area and wandered around the terminal watching the people. I remember it was the first time I had seen a woman in a sari and I thought it was the most elegant thing I had ever seen: a silk evening gown you just wore like a skirt and a blouse. I still sigh a tiny sigh when I see a woman in a sari.

Now I’m seated in Business Class, having just finished my Bi-Bim-Bab that came with a tube of Hot Red Pepper Paste , freeze dried anchovies and boiled pumpkin. Having never had traditional Korean food (outside of BBQ) it was a very good meal. I’m sure the well seasoned road warriors out of Seoul find the food just terrible and say things like we say: “Oh God why do they bother at all!” I passed on the tube of hot pepper paste and the only reason I don’t have a picture of my Bi-Bim-Bab brochure is I can’t figure out a delicate way to actually photograph it. “Lookit lookit, it’s got a pitcher of my food on it. Dang, we ain’t in Colarada no more are we, Girl! Hooo doggies!”

We didn’t book our trip in Business Class and I’m not sure how it happened but what a rare treat. I’m thinking it’s paybacks for the last few days at home. The last night reached a crescendo when I got a call asking if I had a very sweet white dog named Kipper.

Kipper was supposed to be next door. He was three blocks away and when we picked him up, he was terribly proud he had ran so far and wasn’t coughing and panting. My guess is he slept all day today; fresh and tired from his own adventure.

Jelly Side Down

2010-06-01T15:19:00.005-06:00

the cute head Pocket Toast Pal was found here

If I do say so myself, I believe I deserve this vacation. Between The Girl breaking her arm last week; my own really nasty sinus infection; The Beav confessing, after six months of the rest of us playing “where’s Wally’s bike”, he sold it (without permission) and then racked up $300 in extra text messaging charges; and Wally’s adventures at the bank I ‘m pretty well done. Stick a fork in me and call me toast. I asked my Spare Girl--a single mom with probably the most spirited teenagers on the planet--if it was August yet because this summer is shaping up to be…um…challenging to say the least.

So here I am sick, whiney and pitiful. Good thing I’m alone. Because I’m not sure I even want to be in my own company. The jelly topping on the toast is today I found out I didn’t get the job I was asked to apply for. It was a good job and a good fit. I cried after I talked to the nursing recruiter and later my boss had the grace to ask me if I was going to be alright with this decision because the important thing is “you are happy in what you do.“ I will never forget that gift. Yes, some days are harder than most but everyday is an adventure and everyday I learn something new either about the human body, psyche or myself. It doesn’t get any better than that. Unless you count I get to work with a great team of nurses.

And Beav asked how he can pay me back the money. (window washing and garage cleaning plus moving the lady next door)
And Wally appeared to really listen when I told him for the third or fourth time how to balance a checkbook. But that’s a moot point because he no longer has a bank account to jack up. (he is into me large and will also be washing windows, cleaning garages and moving the lady door.
And in less than twenty-four hours I leave my life for a couple of weeks and see how the other half lives.

The lower half that is.

My guess is witnessing physical poverty unlike anything I’ve ever seen will cure my poverty of gratitude and faith. And if it doesn’t, I’m guessing this guy will kick my ass. In the spirit of love. Just like Christ would.

Next stop Siem Reap. I’m the one with my mouth hanging open in awe and wonder over the bas reliefs.

The Invisible Distance

2010-05-25T19:28:00.004-06:00

. . .surely grace flowed between us as we flung away certainty, and said yes to the unknown, out at the edge of light, where it ends, or becomes more brilliant. --Andre Dubus

I’m borrowing the title of this blog entry; it’s a title of an unpublished essay written by my Oldest Friend. The Dubus quote opens it and I thought it was fitting for my own story of migration. Something that’s been on my mind a lot lately as I see the end of school years looming ahead on the horizon and we can decide, without a need to consider anyone else, where to live. I was relating this to OF a couple of weeks ago and her exquisite answer was: “Would you really leave. . .after Beav graduates? I don't think you realize how rooted you might be there. No doubt the long winter has worn you down. I remember in Kearney having to cut all the spring flowers in bloom because of a freak late frost. I have read these lines over and over and my answer is simple.

I don’t know but I think. I think I want to find out what it means to migrate rather than run away. I want to see if the light is more brilliant on the edge of the unknown just like my oldest friend has done. Oldest Friend lives terribly far away from me but she is--in these ballyhoo technological times--a phone call, skype or email away from me. OF migrated a few years ago to New Zealand. A big brave move on her part. NZ is so incredibly far away so when I told her we would be visiting Cambodia early June I realized I would only be a quarter world away from her rather than half a world. She feels like people have forgotten her but she is never far from my thoughts. Now she is working on a PhD exploring migration. This process is an academic migration for her to and she is setting out in the wilderness of different disciplnes vastly different from the comfortable enclave of Creative Writing. We met when I was nine and she was almost eight. OF’s family migrated all over the world and now she herself is one prone to migration. Both our families had reluctantly moved to Albuquerque for the sake of Dads’ career. It’s just what you did in the 60’s and 70’s if you were climbing the government ladder. OF lived across the street from us and I’ll never forget the day she came over to see if I would like to play. Her mother had sent her over and when I look back on this; how ballsy of her to just show up. What if I hadn’t been interested in books and ballet and dolls? What if I had been some sort of Tomboy or a psychopath who tortured kittens? If that had been the case, our migration story would have never unfolded. She would have stayed at her house avoiding her mother’s vodka infused wrath, reading books and writing stories; while I played ball with the boys or hid in my closet safe from my sister’s mood swings, venturing out only to torture kittens. Divine providence for me, I loved to dance and make up stories and use my imagination over and above toys; as did she! OF made those three years on that wind swept and naked mesa bearable. Later, she made my early days of motherhood bearable and the last year of my marriage survivable. Once my sister and I were laughing about Albuquerque---that fake laugh-so-you-don‘t-cry-laughter--and Mom stepped into the conversation: “Oh girls, I think those were the best years of our lives! Your dad and I felt like we had made it!”
“Where the Hell were you living? Dad worked all the time, Sister suffered her first major depression and we lived in the middle of a terrible desert that was either too hot, too cold and always without fail, windy.” My mother’s cluelessness took my breath away. Since that time, one of my beggy prayers is the boys let me know just how crappy their lives are, if they are crappy.

I spent half a semester in a writing class exploring those years and how and I spent a year in therapy trying to figure them out. I remember telling my therapist it was like someone had taken an atom bomb to my family; Sister--in her defense--found herself dropped from a fairly backwards small town school in the South into a progressive school in the West. A recipe for rebellion that had the added flavor of the social upheaval of 1970 sprinkled all the way through it. But over and over again, the one thing that surfaced in both my writing and my therapy: OF was the anchor that tethered me. Rather, she helped offer me an escape from the terrible arguments between Sister and Mom; Mom’s own depression, Dad’s necessary absence, my own feelings I had been dropped into the wrong family. I know I was her life line as well; her family was in a greater disarray than my own. When I look back on those years, it makes me cry to think about OF’s own Mother and the losing battle she had with alcohol. J was such an intelligent and talented woman but she was sick and her sickness became the fulcrum of the family’s malaise. Being so young I was only becoming aware something was deeply wrong with her shortly before we moved back to Texas. A few years ago, I wept over the memory of an afternoon at OF’s house and J’s unspeakably humiliating behavior towards her children. I can’t remember what happened afterward this particular episode but I’m sure we left in a confused rush and tried to lose ourselves on the mesa: a place I hated because of its emptiness but loved for its refuge. The winter of 1971-72 was particularly difficult at my house: the arguments between Sister and Parents were at a fevered pitch; mom spent a lot of time on the couch. It was dark and snowy. One afternoon, I’m not sure why, but me and OF decided to walk into the mesa and were going to see if we could get lost. We walked away from our back wall (we were still the last street in the city at that time) and into the mesa towards the foothills. I remember stopping almost a mile from the houses, at the base of a road which ran from one side of the mesa to the other--Tramway Road--and still, despite snow that was blowing and swirling, I could see that stupid house. It was hopeless, I couldn’t leave them, and they would always be there in the distance.

Years later, I purposefully moved away from Them and yet I could still see and feel them in the distance. Always. That’s the amazing thing about migration. You take bits and pieces of that first family with you, no matter how intact or fractured it might have been. Just like the people who have migrated from us via death, they live with you. That home lives in you. I have a mesa that lives in me. Whenever I’m stressed or overwhelmed I dream about the mesa. Sometimes it’s the prairie outside of Lubbock and other times it is the mesa in New Mexico. As an adult I have learned to appreciate and embrace the inherent spirits of those vacant mesas outside Albuquerque and love the sage filled mesas of Taos County which have become almost a spiritual refuge for me. Hindsight has taught me it was a gift to live on the edge of suburbia because we had that magnificent wild place to spin our stories and create separate different lives for ourselves. We spent entire days in the mesa, exploring arroyos, catching horned toads and shouting into the wind. Before Albuquerque, my wild space was the Big Thicket near Houston Texas the antithesis of the vacuous mesa. I believe William Gass wrote an essay many years ago about the importance of wild spaces in children’s lives. I feel like a poster girl for such theories because I know spending the day in the woods or on the mesa helped my imagination fly. As much as I hate to admit it, rediscovering the mesa, albeit in Northern New Mexico, taught me there was a lot of there there. So much that I can’t stop writing about it or thinking about it or finding new ways to frame the experience of discovering the first member of my tribe: the woman who helped me mold my imagination; challenge the exploration of my gifts; and make me think about and learn from the Big Medicine lessons in our lives. Migration is Big Medicine.

I contemplate and dream about migration whenever I feel stagnate in some aspect of my life and sometimes its my children or my career that throws me into a rant about selling everything we own and leaving without a forwarding address to just get the Hell away from this place; ninety nine percent of the time I am that Thing blocking my path. Travel serves as migration away from the things which frustrate me about my life which is probably why “re-entry” is hard for me. Because when I get back: the same things wait for me. A career that no longer delights me and teenagers which are threatening to bleed my soul through my right ear. I have only myself to blame for these two things which makes it all the more teeth grindingly difficult to face all over again after two measly weeks away from my daily routines.

Sometimes migration, forced or voluntary, physical or psychic takes us to ourselves: our true selves; not the person Mommy or Daddy or society wanted us to be. That happened to me years ago as a young adult. But usually, migration is simple movement because in the immortal words of Buckaroo Banzai: “No matter where you go, there you are.”

Contrary to What My Family Believes...

2010-05-24T14:44:00.003-06:00

...I ain't dead yet. No sirree DAWG! I iz alive and barkin' and beggin' for all sorts of head scratches and bits of food. The moms got me some new medicine a couple of weeks ago and I feel like a young pup! Hooah! as my boy would say. Good thing this medicine worked and it takes like hot meat from the outside stove because I was a gonner. Lemme tell you, I could barely move around for the coughing. I sure was gonna miss everyone, too. Me and my boy Buddy have way too many dogs to bark at, squirrels to chase, bunnies to nom and Magpies who need payback.

Mommy called the payback thing: Karma. So today I was taking my second after breakfast nap (I didn't say I was all better, Ima old dog with the Cee Ahtch Eff and need frequent naps) when all the sudden Mommy appears at the door with a treat! A treat!! Yeah! ThatiswhatIamtalkinabout Yay! If Buddy had been over we would be doin' chest bumps! But as I'm hoisting this old body up off the cool grass I notice a big bunch of sticks that reminded me of the time I moved the woodpile into the middle of the yard because that was a better place for it and I was bored when I was a puppy...good times...good times...anyhow, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the big pile of sticks. So I decide the treat can wait and start ambling towards the sticks when Mommy starts screaming at me like she did when I had the little Not-A-Bunny-But-Like-A-Bunny in my mouth.
"Kipper get away! Get. Away. Now." she used her big mean Mom voice I hear when I've run away or one of my boys does something he isn't supposed to do.
Shoot, she always ruins the fun, doesn't she? Resistance was futile as she hauled me into to the house by my collar. Giving her the dying dog look with a little gack cough didn't change her mind,and making myself weigh as much as the mastiff down the street didn't work either. I don't understand Mommy, she gives me chicken skin, pop corn and crackers if I ask for them but she wouldn't let me sniff the baby birds in the nest near my favorite pee tree. Because I really just wanted to, you know, sniff them. It's not like I'm a cat and I've been told I have a 'soft mouth'. So I'm in the house and what's an old dog like me supposed to do? I got my favorite blue baby 'saur and walked from the front of the house to the back about eleventy million times hoping and thinking someone would lose their patience with me and just let me back outside. I was hoping Other Mom would come home and not see the big pile of sticks in the back yard and just let me outside so I could further, you know, investigate the situation with the fragrant birds. Didn't happen and no matter how hard I stared at the big window that opens, it wouldn't open.

Mommy talked into the little black box thing and found someone to come and take care of the birds and the nest. I tried to tell her I would be happy to take care of them but she wasn't paying any attention to me. Then told my other boy to take me upstairs when the doorbell rang. Upstairs? When the doorbell rings? That is so not my style or my job? My job is to make sure everyone who comes into the house gives me an ear scratch and possibly a belly rub! And this is the thanks a dying dog gets for his decade's worth of love and devotion. I have to go upstairs to bed and miss all the excitement. So I stayed put by the back door and was real quiet hoping I would become invisible. I was about to fall asleep when I noticed my two arch enemies poking their heads into the big pile of sticks where the little birds were! Those little birds belonged to my enemies! I had the perfect oppertunity to avenge the years of taunting and abuse I had suffered at their wings so I let Mommy know just how I felt and tried to say: "OH THE INJUSTICE OF THIS WORLD!! THOSE EVIL FOOD STEALING BIRDS THAT TEASE ME CAN PLAY WITH THE LITTLE BIRDS WHY CAN'T I?"

That's when Mommy leaned down and gave me an ear scratch while she explained Karma to me. "It's Karma, old boy, What goes around comes around...those naughty birds won't tease you anymore, now will they? Serves them right, losing their six children to bird rescue after the way they treated you. I bet they won't tag team your food and water ever again!"

I hope she's right because I'm feeling better but the old ticker isn't what it used to be and I can't be running after those pesky things. What a day. What a day and a half! I need a nap.

If you're in the 'hood give a holler over the fence and I'll bark back! For the time bein' at least. Can't keep this old dog down. Nope not the poison berries, the big moving car or the garage door or even the Cee Ahtch Eff with "pro-found card eomaglea"

Love,

Kipper the big-hearted dog and that ain't no metaphor, neither.

Mother's day

2010-05-10T13:17:00.008-06:00

Yesterday was Mother’s Day and I had to work which really wasn’t any big deal because it wasn’t like Ward had thought to take Beav out and help him find something for me and Wally doesn’t have any money. Beav was busy all weekend with his Ultimate Frisbee tournament and Wally was just busy being nineteen. So yeah, there wasn’t a brunch missed or presents that had to wait until late last night. But they did call me while I was at work and even Wally’s friend--I’m electing to nickname Eddie Haskell--wished me a Happy Mother’s Day. Despite a lack of boy prezzies, the Universe gave me the gift of an unscheduled morning as Beav spent the night at Ward’s while Wally was at Eddie’s.

I didn’t bother to sleep in but instead got up after TG left for work at OMGyouhavegottobekiddingme o’clock; puttered around the house and then hit the yard after it was warm enough to forego a jacket and hat. Ms. A has reported to me we are going to have another summer like the last: damp and coolish. I can’t say I’m completely disappointed as it will just mean fewer tomatoes and the possibility of growing giant broccoli. The peas I didn’t think would grow are about three inches tall, too. My hot MILF friend suggested I find a four year old to plant them for me but I didn’t have to go to such extremes after all. Hopefully by the time we are home from Cambodia I will have peas to harvest. Today, I did have radishes, salad greens and spinach to harvest. It was pretty darn exciting to begin separating my little radish plants and discover six ready to eat. It took about five minutes for the serotonin to kick in and a small smile to spread across my face as I pulled the relentless little weeds which have poked their evil little heads up in my garden. I was almost giggling with joy as I separated the radish plants. Usually little jobs like that make me impatient and can lead me down a short path to Frustrationville but today it was satisfying to gently untangle the little plants, which threaten to choke one another, and replant them further apart so they can breathe and grow.

As I was sitting on the ground in the garden, gently pulling apart the plants and contemplating what I was going to do with all that Oregano and delicate French Tarragon, I realized how therapeutic creating my beds and garden had been for me last spring. I think working my hands in the dirt, turning soil, planting and tending my new perennials and shrubs last spring helped me move through the loss of my mother. My gardens aren’t a tribute to her and she didn’t really enjoy gardening all that much. We always had nice flower beds and well tended lawns but that was just what you did. She didn’t spend hours with seed catalogs or plant charts figuring out what would go where. Nor did we have a bounty of flowers to cut and bring into the house or give as gifts or tributes to others. The beds and the lawn were just what you did as part of taking care of a house. I’m not sure where I got this yin to garden and grow things. I’m pretty sure it was born out of the same duty I felt to this house. Only my duty turned to passion. Kismet. And a serendipitous event which probably saved my heart last spring and summer as I moved through the fresh and raw grief of losing a mother. I thought about her all morning as I moved from the garden to the flower beds. She would have enjoyed the salad I was going to make tonight and I know she would have offered suggestions for the tulips I cut and just sort of jammed in small bottles. Twirling her hands over and around them so they were arranged just so because she was gifted like that. Gifted in ways I’ll never be. Thinking about the gifts I didn’t inherit from her made me a little jealous and sad when she was alive. Until recently, remembering them made me feel lonely and a little lost inside. I must confess, when I do sit at the sewing machine if I ask for her guidance the sewing always goes better. Better. Not great. Not even up to a level of Ruth Mediocre. But much better than ripitout and startallover. Perhaps teaching myself how to garden, through trial and error versus classes and reading, has helped assuage the lost feeling because I’ve discovered my own gift, one she didn’t possess. Or even care to possess.

I am a planner but I couldn’t have planned this expansive gift of healing the yard and garden has given me. Nor could I have conceived who happy I would be with a new step-family my father has harvested by simply allowing his heart to grow and open as a result of his own grief.

Once again the Universe has proven to me the heart is limitless and there is always room for one more or three more or in this case about ten more people. Two weeks ago, we went to south Texas for a party celebrating Dad and Marcia’s wedding. What a lovely family he has given us, too. We got to meet, and in a small way, get to know Marcia’s children, grandchildren and her own siblings. It was also a chance for me to get to know Marcia whom my own mother loved very much. We spent most of a day, sitting quietly together in the backyard, a soft breeze cooling the sunshine for us as I asked her question after question about her family and her children and her life. Poor woman must have felt interrogated or like she was having to pass a test or something but really I was just curious and frankly hungry to know this woman who has made my father so deeply happy. I thought Mom’s death was going to be the death of Dad but instead he chose a path of renewal and rebirth. I wanted to become close to the woman who had the ability to do this. Again, hoping this gift of love and inclusion would rub off on me. Dad has become a different person with Marcia. There is a joie de vivre I have never witnessed in him which is what someone who has worked hard all their life should experience in the autumn of life. Another case for the existence of Karma.

The day after TG returned home I accompanied Dad, Marcia and our old family friends on a tour of the Franciscan Missions in South San Antonio. I tagged along behind them snapping pictures and gawking at old stones and icons. Being the only “youngster” on the outing allowed me to observe my father and step-mother. They reminisced about the many other times they had seen these places; each a separate lifetime ago, each respectful of the other’s memory, both secure in the idea they were making a new memory together which neither negates or trumps the past experience. Which made me realize it’s ok to love--and I mean love--Marcia in that place I had my own mother. It’s not replacing my mother or her memory but just adding to my heart.

Mall Rat

2010-05-02T20:14:00.003-06:00

Beav had a Young Life thing to go today in Stepford so I took myself to Stepford Mall. I was really excited about going, too. To begin with it was a great excuse to NOT finish the laundry or clean the house or go to the gym. But it also felt like some sort of event. And it‘s not like I‘ve been sitting at home staring into space for the last week or so. Or shoveling coal in the mines. We spent a week in Texas looking at all sorts of wonderful things. And my return to work didn‘t make me want to hack up a lung or gouge my eyes out so I couldn‘t work ever again. I’m no stranger to the mall, I was there a couple of weeks ago buying something to wear for my stepmother and father’s party in Texas. And I can’t make some claim I don’t like going to the mall so I don’t shop. Wow! I can’t imagine the email Dad would send fact checking that statement. One would have thought my fourth hour class, senior year was held at the local mall. I enjoy shopping most of the time and I had such an air of expectation today because I was buying things for other people--not my kids people either--versus the painful process of trying to buy myself clothes. Once upon a time I was skinny and now I’m all doughy and middle-aged and frankly bordering on fat so buying clothes isn’t fun anymore. Besides that, all the sudden the clothes at places like Express or The Limited look trampy and the ensembles at Talbot’s are looking good. Today, a wave of depression swept over me seconds after I said: “ohhhhh I like that green dress” in the direction of a Talbot’s window display. I think this makes me officially old. I might as well get out the polyester pant suits, buy three packs of high waisted gramma panties and call myself done, right? Thank goodness Anthropologie has some cute things--palate cleansers as it were--that weren’t too precious or young and would look ok on an almost fifty year old. If the almost fifty year old weren’t bordering on fat. If the almost fifty year old could justify spending $158 on a cotton picque dress. If this almost fifty year old didn’t need to buy a silk sleep sack, waterproof walking shoes and a camera bag. I know that adorable little dress, which reminds me of something my mom would have have worn ro a barbeque in 1968, won’t keep the bed bugs off of me, protect my toes from ancient rocks, or allow me to easily access my camera in SE Asia next month. Two things I hate about being a grown up: the ability to prioritize needs and a sense of fiscal responsibility. Twenty five years ago? I would have bought the silly dress and limped through a trip with stubbed toes, prayed we didn’t have bed bugs in our hotel room and dined on ramen this week so I could have that dress.

This afternoon, I assumed the rest of the world is on a spending diet so it was an ugly surprise the parking lot looked like the day after Christmas. What the heck? There’s a recession on! Greece and Portugal just killed our stock market; we are engaged in two wars and Iran is acting goofy! Gas is about to go through the roof after a big accident off the Gulf coast! Why were so many people shopping? Maybe the weather? It’s May 2nd and we are still in sweaters and jackets with a threat of snow hanging over us, folks aren‘t working in the yard but pining after Ed Hardy shirts and shorts? I had plenty of time to think about all of this as I circled and circled and circled trying to find a place to park. I was thinking about the recession as I trekked towards the mall and remembered something my nephew (here after referred to as The Secret Squirrel) said about the economy: “When people stop buying all this useless shit they don’t need…that’s a depression.” The Secret Squirrel hit that right. But I did notice most people walking to their cars weren’t groaning under the burden of packages. While I’m hiking in from the back forty and spinning thoughts about Greece, junk bonds and the recession a young couple walked towards me. She was crying and hanging onto their toddler; he had a pained and defeated expression on his face, his body tense with anger, fists clenched as he swung his arms while he walked in long deliberate strides: “We are flat broke, that’s why we can’t do it. Broke. I don’t know what I can do to make you understand this. . .” They were dressed in modest and nondescript clothing and they didn’t have any packages or bags except a small Hallmark sack and it swung back and forth, a mocking and falsely cheerful footnote to their conversation. At first his tone and body language scared me but there was an air of reserve about him which told me he wouldn‘t hurt his wife and child. He wasn’t a big man but he had the bearing of someone in the military, muscular and cropped hair. I felt crushed inside: what if he was one of the many veterans who couldn’t find a job…Why the hell were they at the mall to begin with it they were so broke…Why are they so broke..Does one of them have a problem with compulsive spending…What did she want to buy? Was it for their baby?…They better not be buying Mother’s Day gifts because their mothers’ need to help them… Was she going to be safe in the car and at home with him?…My gut told me he wasn’t an abusive man but a man who was upset he couldn’t give his family all they wanted. My impressions and thoughts morphed into silent tears which spilled down my cheeks.

I had to sit on a bench before I started shopping so I could collect myself and have my daily menopausal weep. The young man’s desperate pain was not a foreign emotion for me; a knot of remembrance settled into my stomach and because I can’t turn the caregiver thing off, I wanted to rush after them, cramming all the cash I had on me into her hand; mumbling something about knowing what it‘s like to be “flat broke“. But I didn’t do it because the second after the impulse occurred to me, such an action felt incrediblely intrusive and ultimately embarrassing. So I opted for the Wayne Dyer solution: stopped what I was doing (except for the weeping) and imagined them both surrounded by a healing white light and then I prayed for grace and then I offered up one of those beggy Santa prayers: “Please God I don’t need a thing: give those kids everything they need and then some. Anything extra you had for me: send it their way. I have plenty.” I’m glad I didn’t force money on them because God can give them way more than the measly forty bucks I had in my wallet.

After I told God thanks for letting me treat him like Cosmic Santa, I dried my eyes and continued with my little shopping expedition: Borders (prezzie), Vickies (prezzies), Nordy’s (lippy for me) and Anthro (just for a peek, cuz I had extra time) But in each store I saw other people like those kids, while they weren’t arguing with one another they seemed a little tortured by those things they couldn’t have and going through the motions of enjoying the beautiful and amazing things at The Mall. The majority of the shoppers were joyless (except for the folks in the Apple Store). A few wore lost, vacant looks as they stumbled along their way. Brain’s numb from the excess of our world and the lifestyles of the White Suburban Middle-Class. In hindsight, it probably wasn’t my fiscal responsibility that kept me from buying an overpriced dress I don’t need but the sad and lost people cruising the mall on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Waiting For Anne

2010-04-21T20:31:00.003-06:00

I’ve been sick for what feels like a week when it’s only been for a few days so I haven’t been writing like I usually do. I did spend most of Sunday in the yard and gardens. It was so immensely satisfying to clean up my lovely plants so the new growth was revealed. A few things didn’t make: a couple of relatively hardy things which really surprises me when meanwhile my Pinks wintered over and a couple of delicate hard to grow perennials are thriving. The fruit trees have started to bloom and Wally even noticed how beautiful they were on his run this afternoon. We are leaving for Texas on Thursday and when we return it will be just the right time to clear mulch and prepare soil for the expanded veg bed. I’ve ordered golden beets and English cucumber from Burbee along with the usual suspects: Cosmos, Zinnias and Hollyhocks. My friend, Charlie, has a small green house and has started our heirloom tomato plants. Sometimes, I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve such generous friends. I will gift him and his wife a large tin of my special herbs d’Provence blend and a couple bottles of tarragon and rosemary oil. I’m already looking forward to playing with the herbs. I swear, the weeds are worse this year and I spent two hours pulling stupid little weeds out of the rocks and out of the garden. It seemed like they would sprout up behind me as I walked away. If I were really talented I would do a CAD piece a la where I’m walking away as dandelions sprout up behind me. The dogs (Buddy was visiting Sunday while his mama went on a ski date) enjoyed each other’s company while I worked. Those two yard apes crack us up. They charge the fence whenever a dog walks by (frequently on a warm weekend afternoon) and act like they are going to kick some dog ass any minute. After they have finished “taking names” they run around one another in a sort of victory dance. If they were people, I swear those two would be trash talking at the fence and then doing airborne chest bumps like a couple of fraternity brothers on a bender. I must say, spending the day in the yard was a two-edged sword. The sun was good for me but the pollen, not so much.

I actually called in sick to work not one but two days. I never call in. My paid time off is too precious and is really just for vacations, right? Screw using it for actual sick leave! Had there been someone to replace me on Thursday I would have stayed home sick that day, too. I slept most of the two days I was supposed to be working. On Friday I resurrected myself from bed just in time to pick up Beav from school and managed to pull it together and go to Annie LeMott’s reading at the our big and famous indie bookstore. A couple of times I just wanted to slide off my chair and curl up on the floor for a little nap. Not feeling well saved me from spending any money. I sat on the floor in a corner waiting for my number and wrote in my journal. Writing in public makes me feel extremely pretentious and a little fake. Complete projection on my part because I think most people who sit and write in public are completely fake and pretentious. Writing is a private act and in order for it to be work worth reading it must be preformed in quiet isolation. So no one can see--at times--my desperation.

The reading was at the downtown version of our well known indie bookstore for the reading Friday night, plopped on the floor with my notebook out and head buried deep in my own thoughts and almost oblivious to the people around me. I felt like a “wadded up piece of paper” and really didn’t want to engage with the other LaMott fans. Besides, this bookstore intimated the Hell out of me what with the uber librarian type clerks. It’s not like they treat those of us from the suburbs like a hick at the Saks jewelry counter they are nice and helpful folks. The customers are mostly well-heeled “downtown types” equally intimidating to me. My assumption is all the customers and all the clerks hold a couple of MS degrees and a PhD or two so I feel like I can’t intellectually keep up with them and I just duck my head and go to the back of the line and sit on the floor with my moleskine and scribble madly hoping I don’t look as goofy as I feel. The other night as I was scribbling, I realized when Anne LaMott wrote Bird by Bird she didn’t have a degree. I’m not sure if she does now, either. This cheered me because there isn’t anything that makes me more discouraged than the back flap of a book lauding the author’s work at University Of Iowa, Princeton or Brown. So I it gave me hope that a college drop out was READING at this fancy bookstore and I was going to hear her read. Finally after six years of admiring her from afar.

I found LaMott late, I didn’t read her blog at Salon nor did I read Operating Instructions Wally is just a year younger than her son, Sam, and I didn’t read books about babies when Beav came along. But a few years later, I did read Bird by Bird and it changed my feelings about my own writing and made me realize, just like nursing, I am called to write. And all you have to do is read the archives of this blog to see how I feel about LaMott’s Christianity and her idea of Grace. I was very nervous about even speaking to her if I had the chance. My biggest fear is I would have some sort of fan girl melt down resembling a ten year old girl at a Jason Bieber concert. The notebook was my shield against getting all worked up with the people around me. Because the people around me, were complete fan girls and it was a little embarrassing.

As I waited for the reading, I started reminiscing about the other signings I had attended. The first one was Rita Mae Brown and I was mesmerized by her. Of course, the book was forgettable but it was still a big experience for me to hear her soft accent intoning the details of her fictive universe. Next up was William Least Heat Moon. I was so crazy about Blue Highways I carried a copy of it around with me for a few months and talked Ward into taking a small dirt road off a highway near Missoula Montana because a placed named “Rivulet” was at the end of the road. I wanted to see a town called Rivulet and it felt like something Moon would have done. Rivulet was a ghost down with a few shacks but the road through the deep forest was worth it. Besides, Rivulet is one of my favorite words. A few years later, Velkram Seth read from his book which followed a A Suitable Boy and it was a delightfully personal experience. There were very few people there and he had conversations with each one of us. He was completely charmed by my story of cutting his 1400 page novel into two pieces because the hardcover edition I had was just too heavy. His disappointment I didn’t bring it to be signed was endearing. My least satisfying experience at a signing was Joyce Carol Oates. Such a strange little woman who seemed to work at appearing affected and otherworldly. Oh if you are so utterly precious and ethereal spare us your drama by staying at home.

I do like to watch the people at these things; despite not wanting to engage with them. My fears of being an overwrought fan girl were in vain because the very idea of carrying on like a couple of the women who had been there since lunch time (it was six-ish) to be the first in line made me want to reach for a vodka martini with a Xanax garnish. The woman sitting next to me was in her seventies and terribly elegant: tall, willowy with her lovely white hair pulled into a chignon. She moved and looked like a dancer. She was sweet and did try to talk to me a couple of times but I wasn’t forthcoming. Mostly because at that moment a wave of malaise had swept over me and I wanted to lie down on the floor in the fetal position and sleep. I imagined this ballerina beside had once been Balanchine’s mistress; never fully recovering from the brief but passionate affair. When the affair ended, devastated, she left dance and moved to Marrakesh where she organized the first micro loan group. Sure, we would exchange phone numbers and after one coffee date she would realize I was too ordinary and offered nothing to her life and would then find it necessary to spend a few months avoiding me while I continued to try and set things up with her, blind to her disinterest in a friendship with me. Behind me were the quintessential 30-something housewives, over earnest and over thinking. These women make me wistful that I didn’t enjoy my children when they were little; they make me wishful for my youth. These women were way more self-confident than I was at they age, too. Not one single hand wringing comment over preschool. The last woman to enter the room had the most self-assured and thoroughly together continence I’ve ever witnessed. She was like Harrison’s character Dalva in the flesh. Her hair was wildly curly and swept back in a simple pony tail and she had on the hottest red Frye cowboy boots I’ve ever seen in my life. Had I not been sick I think I would have tackled her and stolen her boots; forget the reading.

Surrounding this crowd of adoring women and the few men who were good sports were pictures of the writers who had read at the bookstore before. The first picture my eyes landed on was of David Sedaris. Of course. Because I want to be the lesbian version of Sedaris. Regrettably, I’m almost the lesbian version of his mother sans cigarettes and alcohol. I do have terrible fantasies about just letting myself go, drinking gin out of a white coffee cup and locking my kids out of the house in the snow so I can be alone. I’m not sure I’m qualified to be the lesbian version of Sedaris because my childhood wasn’t messed up enough either. Nor did anything funny like the Miss Coppertone contests happen. There was not a photo of Raymond Carver, one writer I regret discovering shortly after he died. Carver is the reason why attending readings by favorite authors is important to me. The tenuous quality of life is one of the lessons I’m learning this year. It is becoming important to me to seize opportunities when I can do and see those things which matter to me. Seeing LaMott read is one of those things.

I am happy to see I didn’t cry or squeal or say something asinine or stalker-ish which has resulted in a restraining order against me in Marin County when she approached me (as she did many people) and asked if she could sign my book. She looked me straight in the eye and fully engaged with me for about thirty seconds with a presence that seemed natural without pretense or force. I could feel her pray a silent prayer for me. She was probably begging God to please not let me breath on her.

2010-04-14T17:16:00.009-06:00

This is my first garden report of the season. To say I'm excited I have things returning to life and blooming and actually coming up is an understatement. I'm pretty gobsmacked some things are actually coming back, too.

I have spinach which has perrenialized. It tastes a little bitter but that's ok, winter makes me bitter, too and I don't have to live outside in the dirt.

I have daffodils!

Hyacinths!

The apple tree is budding!

And I didn't kill the lilac!

What I want to know is why the Hell can a four year old grow peas in a styrofoam cup but I can't get them to grow outside in the dirt? A question for the sages.

What My Hands Remember

2010-04-08T10:07:00.004-06:00

My hands are mannish and rough. If the rest of me were not visible you would name me as Crone rather than Mother. But even as Maid I had old hands. My hands are wizened by years of hand washing and hand holding and they are not strangers to work or dirt or other hands. They have been the first hands held by countless new humans, fresh from the peaceful lair called womb. Tiny hands gripping my mawkish, oversized crooked index fingers. I hope my hand was the first of many held, for safety, strength and passion. The trust those new humans put into my hands was pure reflex response: put something in a baby’s palm and watch how the fingers close around it. One of the many subtle signs of fully functioning human-ness: you can hold hands at birth.

My hands are care worn, like my heart. My heart and hands are covered with sunspots, wrinkles, finely etched crevices from the burdens they have carried. These Icabod Crane fingers are part of a last hand held. Ugly but strong they sought the hand of the dying to offer up comfort or courage to take those last breaths. A human touch to ease the passage but whose ease is still unknown: mine or theirs? Some have gripped with powerful strength afraid to let go of this familiar plane of consciousness no matter how hostile it has become. Others offered me a quiescent clasp of mottled warmth more to assuage my own regret and sense of loss knowing they must travel to the next place and reunite with near forgotten hands, eager to welcome them and love them once more.

That’s a meditation I wrote as a response to Luis Alberto Urrea’s writing prompt he offered on his fan page at Facebook. What a gift to have a 21st century master respond to my writing. I don’t even care if he tells me to never ever EVER write anything aside a shopping list, my name or a mortgage check again. This prompt: “What My Hands Remember” could be the first step towards moving my life’s work into the right brain place of the metaphysics of Care, and away from the left brain place of tasks and deadlines. The weight of burn out I’m suffering threatens to reduce my patients to disease states rather than fellow human beings who are suffering. I hope this sticks because I am rapidly becoming the nurse I have absolutely no respect for and frankly hold in contempt: The nurse who doesn’t care. Yeah, the job is done, it’s done correctly but it’s done by an automaton and not a flesh bearing warm blooded human with a soul.

“Today's Blessing: ‘I have come out of that landscape, that mud, that silence, to roam, to go singing through the world.’ Neruda”

Naruda always manages to say it just right and I stumbled on this lovely line today which describes how I felt last night contemplating the prompt. Only I’m not a poet and couldn’t frame my emotions in such a beautiful image.

I’m not sure if I’m to the point of “singing through the world” but I’m humming and the tune is catchy.

Watch Out For That Clown Doll Holding The Window Envelope!

2010-04-07T16:15:00.005-06:00

Today a conversation started about the fear of window envelopes. Seriously, someone mentioned they were irrationally afraid of these things coming for them in the mail. I share this fear because once upon a time in my more hapless days I would receive them regularly and they were usually asking where the hell their money was or explaining the many ways my credit sucked. Nowadays, I get window envelops and they are usually trying to look important and scary when really they want me to borrow more money or save on insurance. The only thing I owe is a mortgage but my heart still leaps into my throat and I open these envelops quickly with shaky hands. I’m wondering if I can sue those stupid asshats at BOA for causing this phobic reaction. I’m figuring it’s good for a few million of their bailout monies. This whole Fear The Envelope thing made me realize I’m sort of an anxious type because I’m afraid of a lot of ridiculous things.

I’m afraid I’ll be driving on an overpass (one of the crazy high one’s in Dallas Fort Worth or San Antonio) and the road will inexplicably end, hurling me and mine into oblivion where we will be smashed on the road surface below: with only dental records to prove we existed.

I’m terrified to pass a semi truck on the right because the minute I am in the trucker’s blind spot she will fall asleep and swerve into me throwing us into the ditch where we will lay for hours until help arrives.

I’m terrified when a semi passes me on the left. See the above scenario.

It freaks me out to come home and the dog isn’t yapping at me from behind the garage door. Because if he isn’t barking-- like someone is pulling his tail--he is certainly dead.

I’m terrified of snakes. I don’t just mean afraid of seeing snakes in the yard or the field. I’m afraid of pictures of snakes. When the kids were too small to go into the reptile house by themselves I wouldn’t take them in because I would have a panic attack the second I walked into the door. I can’t imagine what is going to happen when I inevitably pick up a small grass snake rather than a handful of leaves of mulch in the garden. Two weeks after we moved into the house, a bull snake -- 25 feet long and 4 feet around--was spotted crawling towards our house. We had trash trees, and all sorts of dead stuff back in those days. I called animal control much to the uproarious laughter of my friends and coworkers who told me I should have just tossed it over the back fence. Um…that would mean I actually went into the backyard with the snake. I would attempt to disarm a terrorist before I actually touched a snake. When I was a kid, my terror is what kept up and out of the water when I would water ski because I was sure my father would no doubt put me down in a churning bed of angry water moccasins. I finally stopped water skiing because I didn’t enjoy it and could avoid the whole snake thing. (Please DO NOT leave comments about your favorite snake story and yeah, I probably exaggerated the size of the bull snake)

I’m unreasonably afraid of the dark when I’m alone. I have to have a light on when I walk through a room unless someone is with me. I can’t go through a darkened room. I’m also afraid to sleep in a dark room with the door closed if I’m alone.

I can’t leave my feet out from under the covers. When I was a child I was convinced there were monsters living under the bed and they would snap my toes off in the night. It unnerves me to have my feet uncovered.

Thunder and lightening. It’s loud and bright and electricity that could kill us all.

Encountering a UFO late at night on the highway between here and Texas. No doubt all those unsupervised late nights of listening to this guy rotted my brain and sense of reason.

I dislike clowns but am really afraid of clown dolls. Like the doll from Poltergeist or that awesome USPS commercial where the carrier is supposed to rescue the family from the clown doll. But really who isn’t afraid of clowns.

And if you aren’t afraid of clowns? That’s scary.

Spring Threatens

2010-04-06T13:08:00.004-06:00

image found here
This morning, I took Wally downtown for a job fair. It was tricky to find and in one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city and one of the places referred to as "The 'Hood". It was the first black neighborhood in the city and the houses were all built sometime during the last few years of the 19th century. Once upon a time it was a stop over for jazz musicians, porters and waiters on the cross country trains and then the thrill seeking Beats. Our little city had it's own artsy Harlem. But then the trains stopped running as frequently... Twenty plus years ago, I stumbled into this neighborhood and the once festive store fronts and club entrances were either boarded up or in shambles. The houses had sagging porches, peeling paint and trash in the yards. The cars lining the streets were as dilapidated as the buildings and houses. I had a few co-workers who lived there and they told me I was foolish to go down there and stay there even if it was an accident because any given time you could hear people shouting at each other, gun fire and squealing tires. I’m still naive enough to think a white woman would have only garnered curious stares rather than attracting violence. A few years after that, community groups started a re-gentrification project, the gang violence was under a little better control and a sense of pride had returned to the neighborhood. My co-worker who had once been so negative about the place was now passionate about saving her home and making it something to be proud of. The old jazz clubs re-opened and the soul food restaurants started advertising. The light rail moved in and the neighbors could get work on the other side of town and the white folks from the SE could come and gawk and spend their money. Ward, me and the boys went down there one Sunday afternoon many years ago. It was a chance to ride the train--something the boys loved--and a novel way for me and Ward to see something other than our Fabulous Suburb. Besides the restaurant I wanted to try was one of the oldest restaurants in town.

The train wound its way through the deserted Sunday afternoon streets in the financial district downtown before moving past the train yards and to Five Points. We got off the train at the end of the line. We stumbled off the train a little disoriented; neither of us had been down there on foot. We walked a couple of blocks along the main street and I spied the houses down the side streets, most of them still looked a little shabby but more hopeful with old mass plantings of heavily scented purple and yellow iris, old spirea, snow ball and forsythia heavy with blooms all surrounded by patches of bright green grass. We stood on the raised platform and looked around below us. The street was empty but the businesses had an efficient rather than derelict air about them. There were a few men sitting on the sidewalks in the shades of awnings, some were asleep some sitting on their haunches and staring at us. There was a kid standing near the train stop and he was hunched over with his hands jammed into the pockets of his over ample pants. We stepped off the platform and I started walking towards the young man. Ward was about to stop me but I was too far ahead. This kid didn’t give me a chance to ask him a question before he was questioning me.
“Whatchu want?” He leaned back, took his hands out his pants and crossed them over his chest like some kind of Biggy Small wannabe. I think he was trying to intimidate me but he didn’t realize I had a long history of working with gang bangers, junkies and your average street thug so nothing shook me up too much. Especially on a Sunday afternoon, in a city with the reputation of being more Cow Town than Mean Streets.
“I’m looking for Mamma’s; it’s supposed to be around here.”
“Over der. Good food , too. “ He relaxed a little and continued to size me up, his head nodding up and down, still unsure I wasn’t a cop or a warrant officer or a social worker or a bounty hunter disguised as a white suburban housewife.
I tossed thanks over my shoulder as I walked towards the family and we approached the poorly marked restaurant with a rickety and decrepit door.

We walked into the restaurant and the contrast between the bright afternoon and the dark room temporally blinded us; my guess is we all looked stunned for a few seconds. Once my eyes adjusted I noted we were the only people in the restaurant except an elderly gentleman and an older woman in a smock apron. The room was simple and painted a industrial/institutional green. Each table had four chairs and red checkered oil cloths. Near the back, the only thing on the wall was a picture of Jesus. Predictably, it was white Jesus. The people were sitting at the table under the picture of Christ. The man addressed us after he stood up using a cane for support. He had a suspicious tremor in his voice, and probably had good reason to distrust white people. He was old enough to remember the danger of making eye contact with a white woman or not duck his head in the direction of a white man.
“You folks lost?”
“No sir, we heard about your restaurant and would like to have Sunday dinner here if you are still open.” Ward was respectful but direct and completely nonplussed by this adventure I had taken us on. His parents had been incredibly liberal and politically active in the 1950’s and 60’s. Had they not had teenagers at home, my guess is they would have been registering voters in Alabama and Georgia; marching on Washington, the whole deal.
“We open?” he turned his entire body towards the seated woman who was looking us up and down and up and down again.
“We open.” Was her quiet answer. She heaved herself up and went into the kitchen.

All I remember before we had our delicious food as the kids were thankfully and remarkably well behaved; and the buzz from the window air conditioner was so loud if you had wanted to tell secrets you didn’t dare. I do remember the man coming to our table asking why we had bothered to come all the way across town for dinner. We explained we had heard what was happening in the neighborhood and wanted to see it. His daughter (the chief) came out every few minutes and joined in the conversation, warming up to the idea of white folks coming in for lunch. He told us there were still people living in the houses they were born, some close to one hundred . He was proud of his home, a pretty place with old iris blooming in the yard and big leafy trees along red stone sidewalks. The roasted chicken was smothered in gravy; the greens were smoking hot with cayenne, the mashed potatoes buttery and the corn bread sweet. My then three year old ate a quarter of a chicken and his picky eating older brother had almost that. The food was simple and straight forward but there was enough different about it I felt like I had stepped into another part of the country when I got off the train.

I grew up in Texas but don’t remember eating southern style food as a kid. Years ago, my black co-workers thought it was because I was a racist until they figured out I had never had opportunity to try it. So they would bring crazy things for me to try just to see if I would eat them and then have a big laugh over the white girl from Texas who loved chitins but didn’t much care for the pickled pigs’ feet and gushed over mixed greens. I can still hear one of them saying: “Baby, those ain’t nothing’ but weeds that grows in the ditch!” (I remembered that line when I fixed our collards last summer) So my palate had a bit of a swagger to it that afternoon at Mamma’s.

Today, I drove down that same street and the restaurant is still there. The front has been repainted and the tiny sign has been replaced with a fancy new sign. It cheered me to see one of the oldest restaurants in town was still open. The notorious jazz clubs from the thirties and forties were there, too. I wondered if the now famous jazz names would stop in and jam after their real gigs, like they did fifty years ago. Inviting benches lined the sidewalk and invited people to sit and watch the world go by. It wasn’t terribly early in the morning nor was it cold but their weren’t kids skulking around on the corners or older guys sitting against buildings like there had been in the past. I drove the side streets and the yards were clean, the houses were painted and had many had been carefully restored. The Queen Anne style homes rivaled the one’s I had seen in San Francisco a couple of years ago. All of the yards had shrubs and plants threatening to bloom and there were even a few scraggly and ancient cherry trees already in bloom. Spring was threatening to return to Five Points. I knew I was going back one sunny spring day armed with my appetite and my camera.