My oldest child started kindergarten in 1990. I have had at least one daughter in public school ever since. I've spent a lot of time in classrooms over the years, as a homeroom mom numerous times, as a writing workshop teacher, reading my own books to kids, and doing other volunteer work. I was even asked to fill in as a substitute teacher at a Catholic school several times when they were shorthanded (must have been really shorthanded).
I've gotten to know a lot of teachers pretty well and appreciate the work they do. Several of my family members are teachers and my daughter A's boyfriend (Hi, T!) is one year away from becoming a teacher. So I don't want you to take this as an indictment of all teachers. Most of them are quite lovely people.
But there are those teachers who haunt the halls of your children's schools who are, beyond a shadow of doubt, sadists.
I'm not talking about the ones who are tough on their students.
I'm talking about the ones who have it in for the parents.
This post is about those teachers who send home a list of supplies for a fourth grade book project that are nicer than the ones most professionals own. When I was little, we made a book by glueing scraps of material onto cardboard we had cut from a box and then threading yarn through holes that we punched in the spine. Now, when it's time for your child's words of wisdom to be gathered into a book, you'll need a fourteen dollar goat's hair brush with medium bristles and an angled head so she can use it one time to brush glue onto a ten dollar piece of custom grayboard and then leave it to harden into a lump that even a goat wouldn't recognize.
Of course, these required supplies can't be found in the five local art or craft stores that you search. You'll end up only finding them in an online specialty shop, then crossing your fingers that they arrive in time as your child reminds you every day that she needs them by Friday or she'll be the only one who doesn't have what the teacher told them to bring. Of course, once the supplies do arrive and your child takes them in, she comes home to tell you that half the class brought in synthetic brushes from the dollar store and the teacher didn't say a word.
I'm all for fun and interesting projects that engage student's minds and imaginations, just not ones that take more of my time and money to accomplish than planning my wedding did.
We've made it through all sorts of these projects from dioramas of world wars to music videos about dictators to a shoebox replication of George Washington's parlor using a combination of popsicle sticks and dollhouse furniture, but there is one category that is far, far worse than any other---the cooking projects.
At least once a year, from grade school through high school, one teacher would decide that a wonderful way to incorporate a lesson or book about a particular country would be to have each student prepare a dish enjoyed by the population of that country. These sadists then hand out recipes to the students to be prepared at home and shared with the class in a celebration of learning. It has not escaped my notice that the teacher's pet usually gets assigned the exhausting chore of only bringing in paper plates.
I enjoy cooking. I am actually a pretty competent cook. But that is with ingredients I recognize and measurements that are on my kitchen tools. Year after year I would receive recipes that were about as recognizable to me as the instructions necessary for disabling a bomb and with almost as many ways for it all to go very wrong.
This past week, my daughter M remembered on Wednesday night that she needed to bring in a homemade chocolate squidgy roll for a British celebration on Friday. In M's defense, she had been very sick all week and is usually much better about giving me notice. My daughter C and her fiance were in town for the week along with daughter A and we had been in accelerated wedding planning mode, visiting possible reception sites and shopping for the all-important wedding gown. Between a sick dog, houseguests, and wedding appointments, I was reduced to licking candy bar wrappers from the floor of the car in case there was a morsel of sugar or caffeine to be had. I was exhausted. Now I had to bake a squidgy roll? I had never even heard of such a thing. Did I need to find a seafood shop that sold squid? Did people actually eat chocolate on squid?
Turns out a chocolate squidgy roll is a type of sponge cake and no squid needed to die for this assignment. I didn't recognize the measurements, but since they were in milliliters, I knew I could convert them easily enough. The recipe called for basic ingredients that I already had in my pantry, except for the castor sugar. Googling it revealed that castor sugar is just a superfine sugar that blends easier to make meringues and cream fillings. Okay, no problem. My local grocery store should have this in their baking aisle.
Except they didn't. So in between appointments, I stopped at a craft store that has a large selection of specialty baking items, but they didn't have it either. I repeatedly called another shop that I thought might have it, but no one ever answered the phone. Not a good sign. I looked it up online and found out that I could take regular sugar and grind it up in my food processor, but it would likely scratch the plastic to bits. I wasn't excited about that option, so I kept looking. I finally found a store that carried superfine sugar and I was ready to proceed. Of course, I still had appointments to juggle and guests to feed, so it was nine p.m. Thursday night before I was able to attempt my squidgy roll. M was still sick and I didn't want her to contaminate her classmates' food, so she just observed instead of being a hands-on assistant. C helped instead. We were making two of the cakes since they needed to feed twenty-one students and a teacher.
Milk and cocoa needed to brought gently to an acceptable warmth, then set aside. Eight eggs needed to be separated and then the yolks beat by hand with the special sugar until reaching a proper degree of creaminess (or until you develop carpal tunnel). Mix the cocoa concoction with the egg/sugar combo, then whip the egg whites until they are stiff enough to poke your eye out and fold them in. Spread the batter on a jelly roll pan that has been greased and lined with parchment paper and stick in the preheated oven. Whip the heavy cream by hand, then spread over the cooled sponge cake. Now for the fun part---carefully roll the cake from end to end so you have a delightful log of cake with a spiral of cream in the middle.
Only the cake didn't want to stay in one piece as it was rolled and moist sections came off on my fingertips. My log looked like beavers had been gnawing at it. The recipe called for the remainder of the whipped cream to be piped on top of the log and then artfully decorated with sliced strawberries before shaving chocolate over the whole dessert. Does this sound like an assignment a high school student can accomplish on her own? Maybe if your high school offers Cordon Bleu classes as required courses, but not a student from our high school.
I hid the worst of the bald spots on the two cakes under the cream, strawberries, and chocolate, shoveled it all into a container, stuck it in the refrigerator, cleaned up the assortment of bowls, measuring devices, pots, pans, and utensils, then stumbled from the kitchen and fell into bed.
The next afternoon, I waited for M to get home from school so I could hear the praise from her teacher that would make the effort worthwhile. She carried in the tupperware container and opened it to show me that one and a half squidgy lay untouched. I asked what had happened and she said that with twenty students bringing in food (and one lucky parent's child bringing in paper plates) there was just too much for it all to be eaten. I asked if at least the teacher had liked it and was informed that the teacher doesn't eat sugar, so she hadn't tried it. Well, I said, at least she must have acknowledged how much effort went into the final product and given you a good grade on it. This wasn't for a grade, she replied, just an assignment for fun. I reached for another candy bar wrapper to lick.
Sadists, I tell you. Rubbing their hands together and cackling as they think up more and more complicated punishments for parents. M is my youngest and she has one more year of this. I'm not sure I can make it. The only thing keeping me sane is the knowledge that I've never been asked to cook anything for one of my daughters' college level courses.
At least not yet.
Please don't study Japanese, M. If I can massacre a squidgy roll, just imagine what I would do to an innocent little springroll. The possibilities haunt me.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Sometimes One Plus One Equals Chaos
Have you ever had a friend or relative who over-reacted to everything? Each bump in the road was the end of the world, each bout with the common cold was the plaque, every small accomplishment was worthy of national press coverage, and every basic need was an emergency that had to be taken care of immediately?
My dog Barnaby is the drama queen in our family (or technically drama king).
We had a beautiful yellow lab for ten years named Honey Bear. We brought him home when our third daughter wasn't quite two and our fourth daughter hadn't even been born yet. He was an adorable puppy whose feet were too big for his body and whose tongue was always lolling out of his mouth. It was our girls first experience with training a dog, which was evidenced by my oldest daughter trying to convince the puppy not to chew a pillow by reasoning with him like this, "You shouldn't chew that, puppy, because it's my mommy's furniture and she'll get mad," instead of just saying, "No, no."
Honey Bear was loving, and protective, and put up with so much tugging and hugging and dress-up from our girls that he should have won doggie awards. He had his share of quirkiness (he wouldn't have fit in our family if he didn't) like loving water so much that he once dented the metal fence around our pool trying to force his way in, and looking forward to our annual Easter egg hunt so he could find a few on his own and carefully peel the shell with his teeth to get to the yummy egg inside. When he developed heart problems at age ten and passed away in my arms, a part of my soul died with him.
The house was too quiet without Honey Bear's nails click-clacking on the hardwood floors, so we decided to get a new puppy. It would have been too painful to raise a Honey Bear II, so we agreed to go in a totally different direction and get a little white Bichon Frise. We chose a female and named her Isabella, but she quickly became Bella to all of us (this was in 2001, so we weren't honoring vampires). Bella is a laid-back dog who hardly ever barks and when she does, it's a deep-throated ba-roo, like a beagle. Her eyes are as black as coal and the craziest thing she has ever done is chew on rocks when we were doing some digging in the backyard. Seriously, just the thought of scraping my teeth on the hard surface of a rock makes me cringe, but Bella loved digging them up and chewing on them. She doesn't know that Bichons have a long history as pampered show dogs and is most happy when she is half covered in dirt.
We were happily living with our quiet, sweet little dog and a handful of stray cats we'd taken in. Common sense would tell you to enjoy the situation and don't rock the boat, but my family will always rock the boat no matter how many times it tips over on us. We decided to get another Bichon to keep Bella company. After all, who wouldn't love two adorable, calm little dogs to cuddle? We got a male and named him Barnaby.
My vet, who also owns the kennel where the dogs stay while we are on vacation, calls Barnaby "sensitive" and says it takes a special owner to raise a dog like Barn. He is being very generous and very politically correct.
The real story is that Barn is a hot mess. He is nothing like easy-going Bella. You would think they are two different breeds of dog. He doesn't even have her soft ba-roo; he has a high pitched yap of a bark and he uses it when he's happy, sad, scared, confused, lonely, hungry, or awake. We have had him for eight years now and not a day goes by that I don't laugh at his antics.
Barnaby is afraid of everything. He is afraid of his dry food bowl and will only eat the food if it's tipped out onto the floor. He is afraid of his canned food and will only eat it if you hold the plate with your feet so it can't move and startle him. Anything that blows onto or is left sitting in our yard is cause for non-stop barking and avoidance of the area until it is moved or we touch it to show him it isn't dangerous. This includes such known dog-killers as a paper bag, an open umbrella, a cooler, or a bag of fertilizer. He is absolutely terrified by the magazine page with the boy with the "got milk" mustache and the shopping bags from trendy stores that have half-dressed men and women on them, like Aeropostale or Abercrombie and Fitch. Freaks him out every time. We have to hide them.
Everything is an emergency with Barn. Bella nudges her empty water bowl and then waits. Nudges and then waits. Barn nudges, then overturns, then bangs it into the wall, all without a pause, as though he has just spent two days crossing the desert without a drop to drink. Even when you say, "Just a minute, Barn," so he knows you are coming, the onslaught continues. When he has to go out, he whines and dances so you know he needs to go this very second, and the thirty seconds it took you to cross the room were twenty-nine too many for him.
He is afraid to miss out on anything. His attention is torn in so many directions and he has trouble choosing which one is the most interesting. He wants to be outside with my husband, but what if I'm doing something interesting inside and he's missing it? He wants to be by my side, but he also wants to be with Bella and we are in different rooms, so he needs to travel back and forth, back and forth. He has the worst case of ADD I've ever seen in a dog.
He loves to go for rides in the car, but going for a ride makes him so excited that he throws up every time. He runs to the window and whines for it to be lowered, but once it is, he runs to the other window, wanting that one down as well, in case there is something that smells more interesting out that side. Between the whining, vomiting, and running from window to window, Bella only wants one thing--to climb in the front by me where she can sleep in peace.
Bella has had ear infections, hot spots, and various ailments, but she rarely ever lets us know about them. We stumble upon them at regular vet visits or through a slight wince while she is being pet. Barn, on the other hand, is apoplectic about every flea bite. This past weekend, Barn got a hot spot on his tail (which is kind of like a person getting poison ivy). We immediately cleaned it with lukewarm water and put ointment on to ease the pain and itchiness. We then took him to the vet for an injection and have used the pills and spray the vet gave us faithfully since. I feel terrible for him, partly because I hate to see him in discomfort, but also because I know how much this is rattling him. He is shaking like a leaf, keeps trying to bite his tail, fur is falling out, he is unconsolable when I leave his side long enough to use the bathroom even though someone else sits with him, and he wants me to carry him everywhere. The drama of the situation is so much more intense than if Bella had the exact same ailment.
There is nothing funny about a dog in pain or discomfort and I wince every time I have to treat his boo-boo, touching him as gently as I would a newborn baby. He is my baby and I feel his pain deeply. I've gone with only brief patches of sleep the past three nights to take care of him. But it is slightly comical to compare his "I'm at death's door" attitude about common ailments next to Bella's stoic life-goes-on response. It's especially funny to note the similarities to a human male's reaction to illness and injuries versus human females. I've always been the "Bella" in our family, pushing through pain and illness to take care of everyone while my husband needs the world to stop if he has the sniffles, just like Barn.
In spite of all his neurotic behaviors, Barnaby is also one of the funniest dogs you'll ever see. He is the life of any room he is in. He is not only adorable to look at, but has tons of personality. When he walks, he takes two or three normal steps and then hitches one leg up into a cute little skip for a step, then back to normal. He is a bundle of energy and loves to chase a bouncy ball around the room, inevitably losing it under furniture and then lying with his nose tucked under the edge of the couch or table until someone rescues it for him. When he is picked up by someone he doesn't know, he keeps his four legs stiff and straight as though he was a stuffed animal or a possum playing dead. He has spent so much time around cats that he often thinks he is one, including sitting on the back of the couch pawing at my husband's head until he gets the attention he craves.
He is afraid to climb a set of stairs, so he climbs at an angle from left to right until he reaches the halfway point, which puts him all the way to the right side of that step, then walks to the left side, turns in a full circle so he is facing up, and completes the climb. He hates the water, but hates it even worse when we are in the pool and too far away from him, so we put him on a raft to keep him dry, yet in the midst of the fun. His behavior and high energy make him seem like a puppy still, but so does his size--he eats the same amount as Bella, but burns it off too quickly to fatten up, usually while running in circles around her as she patiently walks through the yard like the princess she is. Bella mothers Barn and puts up with his hijinks with as much patience as Honey Bear put up with my young daughters' hijinks, but every so often, she looks at me with those baleful eyes as though asking, "What did I ever do to deserve this?"
There are days when Barnaby's barking drives me crazy and days when I'm tempted to lace his food with Benedryl just to calm him down, but for the most part, he is a good fit for our crazy family. It's nice to have a dog to point to and say, "Look what he's doing now!" to distract your company while you discreetly blow broccoli from your nose into a tissue or move your mother-in-law's toe so you can reach the ice cream in the freezer you are about to serve them for dessert.
My dog Barnaby is the drama queen in our family (or technically drama king).
We had a beautiful yellow lab for ten years named Honey Bear. We brought him home when our third daughter wasn't quite two and our fourth daughter hadn't even been born yet. He was an adorable puppy whose feet were too big for his body and whose tongue was always lolling out of his mouth. It was our girls first experience with training a dog, which was evidenced by my oldest daughter trying to convince the puppy not to chew a pillow by reasoning with him like this, "You shouldn't chew that, puppy, because it's my mommy's furniture and she'll get mad," instead of just saying, "No, no."
Honey Bear was loving, and protective, and put up with so much tugging and hugging and dress-up from our girls that he should have won doggie awards. He had his share of quirkiness (he wouldn't have fit in our family if he didn't) like loving water so much that he once dented the metal fence around our pool trying to force his way in, and looking forward to our annual Easter egg hunt so he could find a few on his own and carefully peel the shell with his teeth to get to the yummy egg inside. When he developed heart problems at age ten and passed away in my arms, a part of my soul died with him.
The house was too quiet without Honey Bear's nails click-clacking on the hardwood floors, so we decided to get a new puppy. It would have been too painful to raise a Honey Bear II, so we agreed to go in a totally different direction and get a little white Bichon Frise. We chose a female and named her Isabella, but she quickly became Bella to all of us (this was in 2001, so we weren't honoring vampires). Bella is a laid-back dog who hardly ever barks and when she does, it's a deep-throated ba-roo, like a beagle. Her eyes are as black as coal and the craziest thing she has ever done is chew on rocks when we were doing some digging in the backyard. Seriously, just the thought of scraping my teeth on the hard surface of a rock makes me cringe, but Bella loved digging them up and chewing on them. She doesn't know that Bichons have a long history as pampered show dogs and is most happy when she is half covered in dirt.
We were happily living with our quiet, sweet little dog and a handful of stray cats we'd taken in. Common sense would tell you to enjoy the situation and don't rock the boat, but my family will always rock the boat no matter how many times it tips over on us. We decided to get another Bichon to keep Bella company. After all, who wouldn't love two adorable, calm little dogs to cuddle? We got a male and named him Barnaby.
My vet, who also owns the kennel where the dogs stay while we are on vacation, calls Barnaby "sensitive" and says it takes a special owner to raise a dog like Barn. He is being very generous and very politically correct.
The real story is that Barn is a hot mess. He is nothing like easy-going Bella. You would think they are two different breeds of dog. He doesn't even have her soft ba-roo; he has a high pitched yap of a bark and he uses it when he's happy, sad, scared, confused, lonely, hungry, or awake. We have had him for eight years now and not a day goes by that I don't laugh at his antics.
Barnaby is afraid of everything. He is afraid of his dry food bowl and will only eat the food if it's tipped out onto the floor. He is afraid of his canned food and will only eat it if you hold the plate with your feet so it can't move and startle him. Anything that blows onto or is left sitting in our yard is cause for non-stop barking and avoidance of the area until it is moved or we touch it to show him it isn't dangerous. This includes such known dog-killers as a paper bag, an open umbrella, a cooler, or a bag of fertilizer. He is absolutely terrified by the magazine page with the boy with the "got milk" mustache and the shopping bags from trendy stores that have half-dressed men and women on them, like Aeropostale or Abercrombie and Fitch. Freaks him out every time. We have to hide them.
Everything is an emergency with Barn. Bella nudges her empty water bowl and then waits. Nudges and then waits. Barn nudges, then overturns, then bangs it into the wall, all without a pause, as though he has just spent two days crossing the desert without a drop to drink. Even when you say, "Just a minute, Barn," so he knows you are coming, the onslaught continues. When he has to go out, he whines and dances so you know he needs to go this very second, and the thirty seconds it took you to cross the room were twenty-nine too many for him.
He is afraid to miss out on anything. His attention is torn in so many directions and he has trouble choosing which one is the most interesting. He wants to be outside with my husband, but what if I'm doing something interesting inside and he's missing it? He wants to be by my side, but he also wants to be with Bella and we are in different rooms, so he needs to travel back and forth, back and forth. He has the worst case of ADD I've ever seen in a dog.
He loves to go for rides in the car, but going for a ride makes him so excited that he throws up every time. He runs to the window and whines for it to be lowered, but once it is, he runs to the other window, wanting that one down as well, in case there is something that smells more interesting out that side. Between the whining, vomiting, and running from window to window, Bella only wants one thing--to climb in the front by me where she can sleep in peace.
Bella has had ear infections, hot spots, and various ailments, but she rarely ever lets us know about them. We stumble upon them at regular vet visits or through a slight wince while she is being pet. Barn, on the other hand, is apoplectic about every flea bite. This past weekend, Barn got a hot spot on his tail (which is kind of like a person getting poison ivy). We immediately cleaned it with lukewarm water and put ointment on to ease the pain and itchiness. We then took him to the vet for an injection and have used the pills and spray the vet gave us faithfully since. I feel terrible for him, partly because I hate to see him in discomfort, but also because I know how much this is rattling him. He is shaking like a leaf, keeps trying to bite his tail, fur is falling out, he is unconsolable when I leave his side long enough to use the bathroom even though someone else sits with him, and he wants me to carry him everywhere. The drama of the situation is so much more intense than if Bella had the exact same ailment.
There is nothing funny about a dog in pain or discomfort and I wince every time I have to treat his boo-boo, touching him as gently as I would a newborn baby. He is my baby and I feel his pain deeply. I've gone with only brief patches of sleep the past three nights to take care of him. But it is slightly comical to compare his "I'm at death's door" attitude about common ailments next to Bella's stoic life-goes-on response. It's especially funny to note the similarities to a human male's reaction to illness and injuries versus human females. I've always been the "Bella" in our family, pushing through pain and illness to take care of everyone while my husband needs the world to stop if he has the sniffles, just like Barn.
In spite of all his neurotic behaviors, Barnaby is also one of the funniest dogs you'll ever see. He is the life of any room he is in. He is not only adorable to look at, but has tons of personality. When he walks, he takes two or three normal steps and then hitches one leg up into a cute little skip for a step, then back to normal. He is a bundle of energy and loves to chase a bouncy ball around the room, inevitably losing it under furniture and then lying with his nose tucked under the edge of the couch or table until someone rescues it for him. When he is picked up by someone he doesn't know, he keeps his four legs stiff and straight as though he was a stuffed animal or a possum playing dead. He has spent so much time around cats that he often thinks he is one, including sitting on the back of the couch pawing at my husband's head until he gets the attention he craves.
He is afraid to climb a set of stairs, so he climbs at an angle from left to right until he reaches the halfway point, which puts him all the way to the right side of that step, then walks to the left side, turns in a full circle so he is facing up, and completes the climb. He hates the water, but hates it even worse when we are in the pool and too far away from him, so we put him on a raft to keep him dry, yet in the midst of the fun. His behavior and high energy make him seem like a puppy still, but so does his size--he eats the same amount as Bella, but burns it off too quickly to fatten up, usually while running in circles around her as she patiently walks through the yard like the princess she is. Bella mothers Barn and puts up with his hijinks with as much patience as Honey Bear put up with my young daughters' hijinks, but every so often, she looks at me with those baleful eyes as though asking, "What did I ever do to deserve this?"
There are days when Barnaby's barking drives me crazy and days when I'm tempted to lace his food with Benedryl just to calm him down, but for the most part, he is a good fit for our crazy family. It's nice to have a dog to point to and say, "Look what he's doing now!" to distract your company while you discreetly blow broccoli from your nose into a tissue or move your mother-in-law's toe so you can reach the ice cream in the freezer you are about to serve them for dessert.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Growling Bears, Spinning Party Guests, and Bobbing Hearts
Today, I thought I would share with you a few random experiences that I have had over the years, experiences that have made me the model of sanity that I am.
Once, two delivery men refused to bring the furniture I ordered into the house and would only leave it on the back porch because they saw a bag of dog food sitting near the door and as one of them put it, "That don't say Kibbles and Bits, that says Kibbles and Chunks."
When I was a little girl, my family used to go camping each summer in tents by a lake in the Adirondack Mountains. The campsite had outhouses that all the campers shared. Sometime around the age of seven or eight, I woke up in the night and had to pee. I left the tent and started up the path to the outhouse, but stopped when I heard growling. Thinking that it was a bear, I squatted down and wet myself. Turns out it was only my grandpa snoring in the neighboring tent. Oops.
On those same camping trips, at the age of five, I was so scared of water that my father used to bribe me by paying me a nickel if I would wade in up to my knees and then squat down until my shorts got wet. I could have saved him the money. All he had to do was have my grandpa snore and my shorts would have gotten wet for free.
On my honeymoon, my first trip outside the States, Herbie and I took a cruise. Many of the waitstaff on the cruise were Indonesian. On the last night of the cruise, I wanted to personally thank each of our waiters. I pointed to a group of waiters and asked the head waiter what our waiter's name was. He said, in a heavy accent, "Which one," and I said, "That one," and pointed again. He said, "Which one," and I said, "That one right there. The one on the left." We did this one more time before someone at the table was merciful enough to tell me, through his laughter, that the head waiter was telling me the guy's name was Rishwan.
I have told my family for years that sometimes when I laugh with food in my mouth, the food will shoot up the holes in the roof of my mouth and end up in my nose. I can blow my nose and there in the tissue is turkey or licorice or whatever I was eating. They never believed me and refused to look at the simple proof in the tissue (go figure). A few weeks ago, we were out to dinner with my oldest daughter when she was surprised by a laugh as she ate. She looked at me, blew her nose, and sure enough, broccoli florets. Don't doubt momma when she tells you she can suck food up into her nose from her mouth.
Sometimes when I get the hiccups, they turn into the burp-ups where each hiccup is a disgusting sounding burp. One of my daughters has inherited this great gift. When I lived with my parents and this happened, my father would say, "Leave the room." When it happens to my daughter, my husband says, "Good one!" The times, they are a changing.
Once, while out on our motorboat, the engine died, stranding the six of us far from shore with no other boats in sight. We reached for the oars and found that we had left them on the inflatable raft at the dock. With no other options in sight, we grabbed our waterskis, hung over the side of the boat, and used them to paddle. As we finally reached the busier part of the lake, several boats passed us, pointing and laughing, but not coming closer to offer help. At first, I was angry that they didn't assist us in our time of need, but when I thought about how we looked, I realized I probably would have steered clear of us, too. It's always best not to get too close to crazy.
The first time my parents asked my future husband to go on a trip with us, it was in a motorhome. As we drove, my mother opened the freezer to take something out for dinner, causing a shower of ice to fly toward her. She proceeded to jump up and down, wiping at the front of her blouse, and chanting, "Ice went down my hoo-hoos, ice went down my hoo-hoos." He married me anyway.
In college, I played the lead in a play that was a type of melodrama. I had a big dramatic scene where I picked up a "baby" wrapped in blankets and gave a monologue about the cruelties in my life. In one of the performances, the audience started laughing during my heartfelt speech and continued until I finished and exited the stage. I was crushed. Until my fellow actors told me I had been holding the doll upside down with her head clearly visible hanging out of the bottom of the blankets. Luckily, that prepared me for what NOT to do as a mother later on. (okay, so I occasionally picked up one of my babies by the wrong end, but at least there wasn't an audience to witness it)
In the middle of a backyard party at our house with about a hundred guests, an older woman we didn't know very well approached my husband, told him she'd had an accident in our powder room, and then got in her car and left. He found me and we approached the bathroom cautiously, as though it was a crime scene. Turns out she hadn't had the kind of accident I had when I thought I heard a bear, she'd had the kind some people have when they actually see a bear. We immediately called for backup. Doors to the house were locked and anyone pounding on one with a desire to use the bathroom was sent away with wild, panicked excuses. Two daughters guarded the doors, one rushed to light candles and spray anything that would spray, another stood clutching my arm as I shouted instructions between bouts of gagging, and the last daughter, the hero of this piece, helped her father take care of business. She only showed signs of cracking when she asked, "Was she spinning in circles when she did this because it's even on the walls." We made that daughter's boyfriend come in when we were done to sniff around and make sure we had wiped out the smell before we let any of the other party guests come in--see what bonuses come with being an almost member of our family! Seriously, does this kind of thing happen to other people because it would really help me hang onto a shred of my sanity if I knew this was a common occurrence. I have given lots of parties over the years and this was a first for me. I sincerely hope that's one party activity that doesn't become a tradition. I couldn't make myself use that powder room for weeks.
And lastly, one Halloween I went for my annual gynecologist appointment (I know, you're scared already, but be brave). As I lay there assuming the position, the doctor asked me a question. I raised my head slightly to answer her and saw, between my stirruped legs, two hearts bobbing in the air. I shook my head and looked closer and saw that the doctor, in the spirit of Halloween, was wearing one of those headbands that have objects attached to springs, and those pink hearts were bobbing up and down as she asked me intimate details about my body. To add to the surreal atmosphere, when she was finished, she snapped off her gloves, rolled her stool around next to my head, and hearts still bobbing with every word, told me she had found a problem that would need to be checked out with a CT scan and which would almost definitely require major surgery. As it turns out, the problem she found was cancer. So when people ask me how I handled the diagnosis, instead of the words, I remember those two hearts springing left and right, forward and back, and I say, "It wasn't as bad as you would think."
Once, two delivery men refused to bring the furniture I ordered into the house and would only leave it on the back porch because they saw a bag of dog food sitting near the door and as one of them put it, "That don't say Kibbles and Bits, that says Kibbles and Chunks."
When I was a little girl, my family used to go camping each summer in tents by a lake in the Adirondack Mountains. The campsite had outhouses that all the campers shared. Sometime around the age of seven or eight, I woke up in the night and had to pee. I left the tent and started up the path to the outhouse, but stopped when I heard growling. Thinking that it was a bear, I squatted down and wet myself. Turns out it was only my grandpa snoring in the neighboring tent. Oops.
On those same camping trips, at the age of five, I was so scared of water that my father used to bribe me by paying me a nickel if I would wade in up to my knees and then squat down until my shorts got wet. I could have saved him the money. All he had to do was have my grandpa snore and my shorts would have gotten wet for free.
On my honeymoon, my first trip outside the States, Herbie and I took a cruise. Many of the waitstaff on the cruise were Indonesian. On the last night of the cruise, I wanted to personally thank each of our waiters. I pointed to a group of waiters and asked the head waiter what our waiter's name was. He said, in a heavy accent, "Which one," and I said, "That one," and pointed again. He said, "Which one," and I said, "That one right there. The one on the left." We did this one more time before someone at the table was merciful enough to tell me, through his laughter, that the head waiter was telling me the guy's name was Rishwan.
I have told my family for years that sometimes when I laugh with food in my mouth, the food will shoot up the holes in the roof of my mouth and end up in my nose. I can blow my nose and there in the tissue is turkey or licorice or whatever I was eating. They never believed me and refused to look at the simple proof in the tissue (go figure). A few weeks ago, we were out to dinner with my oldest daughter when she was surprised by a laugh as she ate. She looked at me, blew her nose, and sure enough, broccoli florets. Don't doubt momma when she tells you she can suck food up into her nose from her mouth.
Sometimes when I get the hiccups, they turn into the burp-ups where each hiccup is a disgusting sounding burp. One of my daughters has inherited this great gift. When I lived with my parents and this happened, my father would say, "Leave the room." When it happens to my daughter, my husband says, "Good one!" The times, they are a changing.
Once, while out on our motorboat, the engine died, stranding the six of us far from shore with no other boats in sight. We reached for the oars and found that we had left them on the inflatable raft at the dock. With no other options in sight, we grabbed our waterskis, hung over the side of the boat, and used them to paddle. As we finally reached the busier part of the lake, several boats passed us, pointing and laughing, but not coming closer to offer help. At first, I was angry that they didn't assist us in our time of need, but when I thought about how we looked, I realized I probably would have steered clear of us, too. It's always best not to get too close to crazy.
The first time my parents asked my future husband to go on a trip with us, it was in a motorhome. As we drove, my mother opened the freezer to take something out for dinner, causing a shower of ice to fly toward her. She proceeded to jump up and down, wiping at the front of her blouse, and chanting, "Ice went down my hoo-hoos, ice went down my hoo-hoos." He married me anyway.
In college, I played the lead in a play that was a type of melodrama. I had a big dramatic scene where I picked up a "baby" wrapped in blankets and gave a monologue about the cruelties in my life. In one of the performances, the audience started laughing during my heartfelt speech and continued until I finished and exited the stage. I was crushed. Until my fellow actors told me I had been holding the doll upside down with her head clearly visible hanging out of the bottom of the blankets. Luckily, that prepared me for what NOT to do as a mother later on. (okay, so I occasionally picked up one of my babies by the wrong end, but at least there wasn't an audience to witness it)
In the middle of a backyard party at our house with about a hundred guests, an older woman we didn't know very well approached my husband, told him she'd had an accident in our powder room, and then got in her car and left. He found me and we approached the bathroom cautiously, as though it was a crime scene. Turns out she hadn't had the kind of accident I had when I thought I heard a bear, she'd had the kind some people have when they actually see a bear. We immediately called for backup. Doors to the house were locked and anyone pounding on one with a desire to use the bathroom was sent away with wild, panicked excuses. Two daughters guarded the doors, one rushed to light candles and spray anything that would spray, another stood clutching my arm as I shouted instructions between bouts of gagging, and the last daughter, the hero of this piece, helped her father take care of business. She only showed signs of cracking when she asked, "Was she spinning in circles when she did this because it's even on the walls." We made that daughter's boyfriend come in when we were done to sniff around and make sure we had wiped out the smell before we let any of the other party guests come in--see what bonuses come with being an almost member of our family! Seriously, does this kind of thing happen to other people because it would really help me hang onto a shred of my sanity if I knew this was a common occurrence. I have given lots of parties over the years and this was a first for me. I sincerely hope that's one party activity that doesn't become a tradition. I couldn't make myself use that powder room for weeks.
And lastly, one Halloween I went for my annual gynecologist appointment (I know, you're scared already, but be brave). As I lay there assuming the position, the doctor asked me a question. I raised my head slightly to answer her and saw, between my stirruped legs, two hearts bobbing in the air. I shook my head and looked closer and saw that the doctor, in the spirit of Halloween, was wearing one of those headbands that have objects attached to springs, and those pink hearts were bobbing up and down as she asked me intimate details about my body. To add to the surreal atmosphere, when she was finished, she snapped off her gloves, rolled her stool around next to my head, and hearts still bobbing with every word, told me she had found a problem that would need to be checked out with a CT scan and which would almost definitely require major surgery. As it turns out, the problem she found was cancer. So when people ask me how I handled the diagnosis, instead of the words, I remember those two hearts springing left and right, forward and back, and I say, "It wasn't as bad as you would think."
Monday, May 9, 2011
Hello, Mom? Is Shrimp Scampi First Or Second Base?
So I've been thinking a lot about prom and how things have changed since I was a young-un. Of course, back then Ma and Pa had to get out the wagon to take us across the prairie to the one room school house . . .
I grew up in a small town where even if you didn't know everyone in the school, you knew their name and knew of them. We didn't have a Junior Prom and a Senior Prom, we had a Junior/Senior Prom which both grades attended. It was always held in the high school gymnasium where a committee spent weeks making flowers out of tissue paper and trying to find a unique way to cover the basketball hoops. We had themes based on popular songs like "Stairway to Heaven" and the decorations matched the theme as much as possible (We built a fake staircase that twisted up to the gym ceiling as though "heaven" was in the second floor biology lab).
In those days, boys asked girls to prom. Period. If a boy didn't ask you, you didn't go and no one went solo. In fact, the tickets were sold by the couple, not the person. They were mimeographed sheets of paper that had been cut up into tickets and when you bought one, they wrote the boy and girl's names on the bottom of the ticket. I think a ticket cost $25 and we thought that was highway robbery, but all those tissue paper flowers had to be paid for somehow.
Some girls bought new dresses for prom, but most either borrowed one, wore a hand-me-down from a relative, or their mothers made a dress for them. Even the girls who bought one spent less than fifty dollars on it. We did our own hair and nails or had a friend do it for us. We wore the high heels we already owned for special occasions and no one dyed their shoes to match their gowns.
Your date would ask what color your dress was so he could buy flowers to match. Most girls got a small corsage to pin on their dress. The luckier ones got a wrist corsage. The ultimate at that time was a small bouquet that resembled a miniature bridal bouquet (I think it had the weird name of "nosegay") and very few girls received those. Most of the flowers were carnations, although sometimes a rose or two was mixed in if your date was flashy. My dates weren't flashy.
On the big night, your date would pick you up in his parent's car (usually a station wagon) and take you out to dinner. The only food waiting for you in the gymnasium was food donated by parents that ran the gamut from chips and pretzels to brownies and cookies, so dinner at a restaurant was an unwritten rule of prom night and girls bragged about which restaurant their date had chosen. Imagine the awkwardness of the dinner conversation when it's you and a boy who you've known most of your life, but have never talked to before.
Plus, you have to add in the advice your mother gave you before you left that you should order something nice, but not too nice because then your date might expect something in return. This advice led to thoughts like, "Hmmm, I've always wanted to try the lasagna, but that's $12.50 which translates to ten or fifteen minutes of necking. No way this guy's getting a steak dinner worth of wrestling in his back seat. I'm not eating steak until I'm married. He's not bad looking, and since he had his braces taken off, my lips should be safe for a kiss or two, so I think I'll go with the $9.00 chicken parmesan."
At the dance itself, the gym was suddenly magical with its twinkly lights and twisted streamers. A local band had been hired to perform and everyone crowded the floor to shift their weight from one foot to the other in true seventies dance style. Boys had to be dragged out for fast dances, but did the dragging on the slow ones since for some, it was their first chance to actually touch a girl their age. Every couple on the dance floor moved the same--girls' arms around boys' necks, boys' arms around girls' waists, no space between bodies, all leaning left, then leaning right, with an occasional change in the direction of the spinning as the only variety. We were about as animated as zombies.
When the prom ended, there were a variety of entertainment options. Some flocked to parties to continue the drinking they had started on the way to prom. Others dropped their dates off at their door with a quick kiss and a thank you for a lovely evening. Still others found a hidden spot in a local cornfield to park and negotiate what a dinner of chicken parm is really worth.
I have watched all four of my daughters navigate the complexities of present day proms and I can tell you that prom has been taking steroids.
First of all, while there are those who already have a significant other and are set for a date, so many others find dates through committee. If your friend has a boyfriend, she asks him which of his friends want to go to prom and then his list is matched with her list of friends until everyone has a suitable date. This, of course, involves negotiations and compromise. It also means boys don't have to actually ask a girl until they already know that the answer will be yes. Sometimes a more outgoing girl will just stand up before class and ask who still needs a prom date and then will match up the people who raise their hands, either with each other, or with people outside that class who she knows are still searching. It's all so civilized and democratic. It's also about as romantic as union negotiations.
Once a date has been procured, the search for a dress is on. I've already described that adventure in a previous post, but there are also appointments for hair, manicure, pedicure, waxing, exfoliating, dermabrasion, spray tan, and maybe other procedures I don't want to know about. These days, a girl has to have more things creamed, sprayed, and removed for prom night than I had done for my wedding day. Hey, I shaved my legs and put on deodorant--what more do you want? If my date/husband isn't attracted to me unless I allow hot wax to be poured onto various body parts, he'd better be willing to have the same thing done in the same areas and be willing to go first.
Proms these days aren't held in the school gym. They are held in banquet halls and country clubs and nightclubs. A buffet dinner is served and there isn't any prom decorating committee folding tissues into flowers since the venue provides live flowers. There's no homemade stairway winding up into the biology lab, there are balloon covered trellises. Real linens, china, crystal, and silver have replaced the paper plates, plastic cups, and brightly colored paper napkins of my prom days. No awkward dinner for two beforehand, now you share the meal with all those seated at your table. And don't plan on picking up your date in Dad's car because even a limo isn't enough these days--it has to be a stretch Hummer that seats twenty or a party bus that holds twelve couples. And what chance do you have to take your date parking in a cornfield for some smooching when you're in one of those?
My strongest memory of prom is of my date in my junior year. He was a senior who I had never actually talked to before. We had a nice time, shared a quick kiss goodnight, and I thought that was that. He graduated, joined the Navy, and I moved on to my senior year. Then out of the blue, he called to say he was home on leave and to ask if I would have dinner with him. I thought it would be fun to see how he was doing and I accepted.
He picked me up and immediately I could tell he was no longer the shy, quiet guy who had taken me to prom. He seemed more confidant and very edgy. He talked a lot on the drive to the restaurant. We had a nice dinner and then went to see a movie. About halfway through the film, he put his arm around me and I let him, not seeing any harm in it (he did buy me dinner, after all, and I had the chicken PLUS a piece of cake for dessert). When we were walking across the parking lot to his car, he stopped and planted a big, sloppy kiss on me. Now I wasn't as comfortable. He was a nice enough guy, I thought, but I wasn't attracted to him and he was only home on leave. We got in the car and as we were driving, he opened the glove box, took out a baggie of pills and asked me if I wanted one before popping one in his mouth. I was a naive little country girl, but even I knew these weren't tic-tacs.
He turned the radio up really loud and said he knew a good place at a local farm where we could park and "talk" for awhile. There are two reasons to go into a cornfield--one is to pick corn and the other isn't to talk. I just wanted out of the car at that point. I made excuses why I really had to get home and he started telling me how much he had missed me and thought about me while he was at basic training. He said he couldn't get me off his mind, which I thought was really strange since we hadn't had a relationship or anything, just a few casual dates. When we reached my house, he just kept driving. His talking became even more slurred and rambling and I knew I wasn't going into a cornfield or anywhere else with this guy. At a red light a few blocks past my house, I jumped out of the car and ran into the backyard of the nearest house and kept running through backyards until I reached my own. After locking the door, I peered out the front window and saw his car stop in front of my house, sit idling for a few minutes, and then pull away. I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest.
The next day, the phone rang and when I answered, it was his mother calling me to ask if I had seen or heard from him. I said I had gone out with him the night before, but hadn't been in touch since. She said, "Oh, my, so he's in town?" I said, "He was last night. Haven't you seen him since he came home on leave?" She answered, "He isn't home on leave. He went AWOL. I knew he was missing you because he talks about you a lot in phone calls and letters. I had a feeling you might have been the reason he took off." I promised her that I would call if I saw or heard from him again, which I was praying wouldn't happen. It didn't. I have no idea what became of him. I hope, wherever he is, he is happy and well.
Because of him, when I get up in the morning and look in the mirror to see another wrinkle creasing my forehead, another silver hair mixed with the blonde, bags under my eyes big enough to pack lunch in, and another chin resting on my chest, I tell myself, "Yeah, okay, but once upon a time, a man went AWOL just to buy you dinner and have a chance to take you parking in a cornfield," and it's a little easier keeping my chin up, or in my case, chins up.
And as scary as it was, it was certainly more romantic than a union negotiation.
I grew up in a small town where even if you didn't know everyone in the school, you knew their name and knew of them. We didn't have a Junior Prom and a Senior Prom, we had a Junior/Senior Prom which both grades attended. It was always held in the high school gymnasium where a committee spent weeks making flowers out of tissue paper and trying to find a unique way to cover the basketball hoops. We had themes based on popular songs like "Stairway to Heaven" and the decorations matched the theme as much as possible (We built a fake staircase that twisted up to the gym ceiling as though "heaven" was in the second floor biology lab).
In those days, boys asked girls to prom. Period. If a boy didn't ask you, you didn't go and no one went solo. In fact, the tickets were sold by the couple, not the person. They were mimeographed sheets of paper that had been cut up into tickets and when you bought one, they wrote the boy and girl's names on the bottom of the ticket. I think a ticket cost $25 and we thought that was highway robbery, but all those tissue paper flowers had to be paid for somehow.
Some girls bought new dresses for prom, but most either borrowed one, wore a hand-me-down from a relative, or their mothers made a dress for them. Even the girls who bought one spent less than fifty dollars on it. We did our own hair and nails or had a friend do it for us. We wore the high heels we already owned for special occasions and no one dyed their shoes to match their gowns.
Your date would ask what color your dress was so he could buy flowers to match. Most girls got a small corsage to pin on their dress. The luckier ones got a wrist corsage. The ultimate at that time was a small bouquet that resembled a miniature bridal bouquet (I think it had the weird name of "nosegay") and very few girls received those. Most of the flowers were carnations, although sometimes a rose or two was mixed in if your date was flashy. My dates weren't flashy.
On the big night, your date would pick you up in his parent's car (usually a station wagon) and take you out to dinner. The only food waiting for you in the gymnasium was food donated by parents that ran the gamut from chips and pretzels to brownies and cookies, so dinner at a restaurant was an unwritten rule of prom night and girls bragged about which restaurant their date had chosen. Imagine the awkwardness of the dinner conversation when it's you and a boy who you've known most of your life, but have never talked to before.
Plus, you have to add in the advice your mother gave you before you left that you should order something nice, but not too nice because then your date might expect something in return. This advice led to thoughts like, "Hmmm, I've always wanted to try the lasagna, but that's $12.50 which translates to ten or fifteen minutes of necking. No way this guy's getting a steak dinner worth of wrestling in his back seat. I'm not eating steak until I'm married. He's not bad looking, and since he had his braces taken off, my lips should be safe for a kiss or two, so I think I'll go with the $9.00 chicken parmesan."
At the dance itself, the gym was suddenly magical with its twinkly lights and twisted streamers. A local band had been hired to perform and everyone crowded the floor to shift their weight from one foot to the other in true seventies dance style. Boys had to be dragged out for fast dances, but did the dragging on the slow ones since for some, it was their first chance to actually touch a girl their age. Every couple on the dance floor moved the same--girls' arms around boys' necks, boys' arms around girls' waists, no space between bodies, all leaning left, then leaning right, with an occasional change in the direction of the spinning as the only variety. We were about as animated as zombies.
When the prom ended, there were a variety of entertainment options. Some flocked to parties to continue the drinking they had started on the way to prom. Others dropped their dates off at their door with a quick kiss and a thank you for a lovely evening. Still others found a hidden spot in a local cornfield to park and negotiate what a dinner of chicken parm is really worth.
I have watched all four of my daughters navigate the complexities of present day proms and I can tell you that prom has been taking steroids.
First of all, while there are those who already have a significant other and are set for a date, so many others find dates through committee. If your friend has a boyfriend, she asks him which of his friends want to go to prom and then his list is matched with her list of friends until everyone has a suitable date. This, of course, involves negotiations and compromise. It also means boys don't have to actually ask a girl until they already know that the answer will be yes. Sometimes a more outgoing girl will just stand up before class and ask who still needs a prom date and then will match up the people who raise their hands, either with each other, or with people outside that class who she knows are still searching. It's all so civilized and democratic. It's also about as romantic as union negotiations.
Once a date has been procured, the search for a dress is on. I've already described that adventure in a previous post, but there are also appointments for hair, manicure, pedicure, waxing, exfoliating, dermabrasion, spray tan, and maybe other procedures I don't want to know about. These days, a girl has to have more things creamed, sprayed, and removed for prom night than I had done for my wedding day. Hey, I shaved my legs and put on deodorant--what more do you want? If my date/husband isn't attracted to me unless I allow hot wax to be poured onto various body parts, he'd better be willing to have the same thing done in the same areas and be willing to go first.
Proms these days aren't held in the school gym. They are held in banquet halls and country clubs and nightclubs. A buffet dinner is served and there isn't any prom decorating committee folding tissues into flowers since the venue provides live flowers. There's no homemade stairway winding up into the biology lab, there are balloon covered trellises. Real linens, china, crystal, and silver have replaced the paper plates, plastic cups, and brightly colored paper napkins of my prom days. No awkward dinner for two beforehand, now you share the meal with all those seated at your table. And don't plan on picking up your date in Dad's car because even a limo isn't enough these days--it has to be a stretch Hummer that seats twenty or a party bus that holds twelve couples. And what chance do you have to take your date parking in a cornfield for some smooching when you're in one of those?
My strongest memory of prom is of my date in my junior year. He was a senior who I had never actually talked to before. We had a nice time, shared a quick kiss goodnight, and I thought that was that. He graduated, joined the Navy, and I moved on to my senior year. Then out of the blue, he called to say he was home on leave and to ask if I would have dinner with him. I thought it would be fun to see how he was doing and I accepted.
He picked me up and immediately I could tell he was no longer the shy, quiet guy who had taken me to prom. He seemed more confidant and very edgy. He talked a lot on the drive to the restaurant. We had a nice dinner and then went to see a movie. About halfway through the film, he put his arm around me and I let him, not seeing any harm in it (he did buy me dinner, after all, and I had the chicken PLUS a piece of cake for dessert). When we were walking across the parking lot to his car, he stopped and planted a big, sloppy kiss on me. Now I wasn't as comfortable. He was a nice enough guy, I thought, but I wasn't attracted to him and he was only home on leave. We got in the car and as we were driving, he opened the glove box, took out a baggie of pills and asked me if I wanted one before popping one in his mouth. I was a naive little country girl, but even I knew these weren't tic-tacs.
He turned the radio up really loud and said he knew a good place at a local farm where we could park and "talk" for awhile. There are two reasons to go into a cornfield--one is to pick corn and the other isn't to talk. I just wanted out of the car at that point. I made excuses why I really had to get home and he started telling me how much he had missed me and thought about me while he was at basic training. He said he couldn't get me off his mind, which I thought was really strange since we hadn't had a relationship or anything, just a few casual dates. When we reached my house, he just kept driving. His talking became even more slurred and rambling and I knew I wasn't going into a cornfield or anywhere else with this guy. At a red light a few blocks past my house, I jumped out of the car and ran into the backyard of the nearest house and kept running through backyards until I reached my own. After locking the door, I peered out the front window and saw his car stop in front of my house, sit idling for a few minutes, and then pull away. I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest.
The next day, the phone rang and when I answered, it was his mother calling me to ask if I had seen or heard from him. I said I had gone out with him the night before, but hadn't been in touch since. She said, "Oh, my, so he's in town?" I said, "He was last night. Haven't you seen him since he came home on leave?" She answered, "He isn't home on leave. He went AWOL. I knew he was missing you because he talks about you a lot in phone calls and letters. I had a feeling you might have been the reason he took off." I promised her that I would call if I saw or heard from him again, which I was praying wouldn't happen. It didn't. I have no idea what became of him. I hope, wherever he is, he is happy and well.
Because of him, when I get up in the morning and look in the mirror to see another wrinkle creasing my forehead, another silver hair mixed with the blonde, bags under my eyes big enough to pack lunch in, and another chin resting on my chest, I tell myself, "Yeah, okay, but once upon a time, a man went AWOL just to buy you dinner and have a chance to take you parking in a cornfield," and it's a little easier keeping my chin up, or in my case, chins up.
And as scary as it was, it was certainly more romantic than a union negotiation.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Hobos, Old Man Booty, And Cat Vomit
I'm a bad blogger. A bad, bad blogger. I shall say The Blogger's Oath fifty times before I go to sleep tonight as penance for not writing for so long (Is there a blogger's oath?).
In my defense, the last couple of weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. First, I traveled to the writer's conference. Then, it was a week of preparing for prom night--not only dealing with dress, hair, shoes, jewelry, nails, flowers, etc., but also the fact that ten girls were coming back to my house for a sleepover following the festivities, so I also had to prepare sleeping arrangements, food, and drink (water and soda only, thank you very much). It's a lot of work, but so much fun to have the house full of teenage girls in gowns, gossiping about their dates and the dance itself, and then to wake up to bobby pins everywhere from the deconstruction of ten up-dos. (And guess what? I get to do it all again in a few weeks because the boy my daughter took to Junior Prom invited her to Senior Prom.) Plus this past weekend, we traveled to Pittsburgh to attend my daughter A's graduation from college--YAY! I'm a woman on the move these days.
Getting my daughter M ready for the prom was interesting. The two of us went to a local hair salon for her special 'do. She asked me to go with her to help explain what she wanted. It should have been an exciting time of preparation for a fun event. It was not. During the whole time we were there, the salon had the TV tuned in to an Oprah episode where she was talking to a young boy who had spent several years locked in a closet and was basically tortured by his family. Not likely to put you in a partying mood. Then, a male senior citizen walked by me and I noticed that he had money sticking out of his back pocket about to fall. I told him about it, he thanked me and stuck it in his front pocket, then wiggled his butt in my face and asked me if I saw anything else there I liked. I did not. Really, really not.
The prom was Friday night and on Monday, my husband, my daughter M, and I traveled to Florida to visit my oldest daughter J. J is an aerospace engineer who works on the space shuttle Endeavor. We originally made plans for the visit so we could watch the shuttle launch, but the launch was postponed. We can't go down then, so we decided to keep our plans and spend the week sightseeing in Florida. The day we arrived, J arranged for us to attend a private function where we met the astronauts who had just flown on Discovery's last mission. It was amazing to get to shake their hands, talk with them, and get pictures signed. I was humbled by the dedication and sacrifice these individuals make and was a little tongue-tied. My husband--not so much. He said, "Nice chucks," to one astronaut who was wearing sneakers and then told him to have a safe flight---despite the fact that they had just returned from their last flight ever. Oh, well. His isn't the only red face. I thanked an astronaut "for all you do" and he thanked me for all I do in return, thinking I was one of the employees who maintain the shuttle. Rather than hold up the line explaining that I didn't do anything other than raise a smart daughter who helps keep the shuttle functioning, I just smiled and stammered, "You're welcome."
We also spent several days at the beach. My youngest daughter M, who is seventeen and gorgeous, came back from the beach one afternoon and told me she'd felt uncomfortable tossing a football with her dad and sister since, as she put it, "Two hobos were staring at me." I laughed for a half hour, not at the sad plight of homeless men or the creepiness of them staring at my young daughter, but because all I could picture was two guys sitting on the beach in top hats with sticks thrown over their shoulders supporting a bandana full of their belongings as cigar stubs dangled from the corner of their mouths. I couldn't remember the last time I heard anyone use the word hobo and I told her so. The next day we visited the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum in St. Augustine and there was a plate made of cigar bands by, yup, hobos. And then we were watching a popular sitcom on TV and one of the songs had the word hobo in it. On one of the pages of the book I read that night was a sentence with hobo in it. I guess hobos are making a comeback. We should all take the wads of extra cash we have laying around and invest in companies that make bandanas. We'll make millions! Wouldn't it be odd if you avoided becoming a hobo by investing in supplies that hobos use?
This past weekend we were at A's graduation. We paid tens of thousands of dollars in four years of tuition so we could spend Sunday at a two hour ceremony in the morning where the speaker talked about himself and his accomplishments with barely a mention of the graduates, followed by a three hour ceremony in the afternoon where a twenty minute introduction of the speaker was followed by a half hour talk by the speaker about the speaker. I think someone thought they were at a political fundraising function instead of a graduation. All that was followed by a five hour car ride home. I lost all feeling from my neck to my knees, but my daughter A graduated Magna Cum Laude and is qualified to psychoanalyze me, which should be a full-time job. She now has the degree to answer the question Am I Crazy? and it only cost me sixty thousand dollars. Plus, by the time she hit puberty, she was telling everyone who would listen that I'm crazy, so I must be crazy to spend all that money to hear her reaffirm her beliefs. Or something like that.
I'm back home at last and my pets are punishing me for leaving them so often and for so long. The older dog just stares at me with baleful eyes if I call her or give her a command. The younger one is trying the helpless baby approach to getting attention and suddenly must be lifted up the stairs and onto the couch despite the fact that he has no problem doing it on his own when he thinks I'm not looking. The cats take turns climbing on me and sharpening their claws on my clothes and skin, giving each other a nod when it's time to trade places. This isn't just my guilt talking--there is an actual plan to punish me afoot. Speaking of afoot, M must be included in the punishment since one of the cats threw up on her bare foot last night. With a whole house and seven acres to throw up in, tell me that wasn't deliberate.
Life has slowed down to its normal craziness, so I'll try to post regularly again. I wouldn't want any of you to have to resort to coming up with elaborate plans to punish me the way my pets have. I can only take so many baleful stares and my clothes have so many claw holes that if you hold them in front of a light, you can see a whole galaxy of stars shining on the wall.
In my defense, the last couple of weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. First, I traveled to the writer's conference. Then, it was a week of preparing for prom night--not only dealing with dress, hair, shoes, jewelry, nails, flowers, etc., but also the fact that ten girls were coming back to my house for a sleepover following the festivities, so I also had to prepare sleeping arrangements, food, and drink (water and soda only, thank you very much). It's a lot of work, but so much fun to have the house full of teenage girls in gowns, gossiping about their dates and the dance itself, and then to wake up to bobby pins everywhere from the deconstruction of ten up-dos. (And guess what? I get to do it all again in a few weeks because the boy my daughter took to Junior Prom invited her to Senior Prom.) Plus this past weekend, we traveled to Pittsburgh to attend my daughter A's graduation from college--YAY! I'm a woman on the move these days.
Getting my daughter M ready for the prom was interesting. The two of us went to a local hair salon for her special 'do. She asked me to go with her to help explain what she wanted. It should have been an exciting time of preparation for a fun event. It was not. During the whole time we were there, the salon had the TV tuned in to an Oprah episode where she was talking to a young boy who had spent several years locked in a closet and was basically tortured by his family. Not likely to put you in a partying mood. Then, a male senior citizen walked by me and I noticed that he had money sticking out of his back pocket about to fall. I told him about it, he thanked me and stuck it in his front pocket, then wiggled his butt in my face and asked me if I saw anything else there I liked. I did not. Really, really not.
The prom was Friday night and on Monday, my husband, my daughter M, and I traveled to Florida to visit my oldest daughter J. J is an aerospace engineer who works on the space shuttle Endeavor. We originally made plans for the visit so we could watch the shuttle launch, but the launch was postponed. We can't go down then, so we decided to keep our plans and spend the week sightseeing in Florida. The day we arrived, J arranged for us to attend a private function where we met the astronauts who had just flown on Discovery's last mission. It was amazing to get to shake their hands, talk with them, and get pictures signed. I was humbled by the dedication and sacrifice these individuals make and was a little tongue-tied. My husband--not so much. He said, "Nice chucks," to one astronaut who was wearing sneakers and then told him to have a safe flight---despite the fact that they had just returned from their last flight ever. Oh, well. His isn't the only red face. I thanked an astronaut "for all you do" and he thanked me for all I do in return, thinking I was one of the employees who maintain the shuttle. Rather than hold up the line explaining that I didn't do anything other than raise a smart daughter who helps keep the shuttle functioning, I just smiled and stammered, "You're welcome."
We also spent several days at the beach. My youngest daughter M, who is seventeen and gorgeous, came back from the beach one afternoon and told me she'd felt uncomfortable tossing a football with her dad and sister since, as she put it, "Two hobos were staring at me." I laughed for a half hour, not at the sad plight of homeless men or the creepiness of them staring at my young daughter, but because all I could picture was two guys sitting on the beach in top hats with sticks thrown over their shoulders supporting a bandana full of their belongings as cigar stubs dangled from the corner of their mouths. I couldn't remember the last time I heard anyone use the word hobo and I told her so. The next day we visited the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum in St. Augustine and there was a plate made of cigar bands by, yup, hobos. And then we were watching a popular sitcom on TV and one of the songs had the word hobo in it. On one of the pages of the book I read that night was a sentence with hobo in it. I guess hobos are making a comeback. We should all take the wads of extra cash we have laying around and invest in companies that make bandanas. We'll make millions! Wouldn't it be odd if you avoided becoming a hobo by investing in supplies that hobos use?
This past weekend we were at A's graduation. We paid tens of thousands of dollars in four years of tuition so we could spend Sunday at a two hour ceremony in the morning where the speaker talked about himself and his accomplishments with barely a mention of the graduates, followed by a three hour ceremony in the afternoon where a twenty minute introduction of the speaker was followed by a half hour talk by the speaker about the speaker. I think someone thought they were at a political fundraising function instead of a graduation. All that was followed by a five hour car ride home. I lost all feeling from my neck to my knees, but my daughter A graduated Magna Cum Laude and is qualified to psychoanalyze me, which should be a full-time job. She now has the degree to answer the question Am I Crazy? and it only cost me sixty thousand dollars. Plus, by the time she hit puberty, she was telling everyone who would listen that I'm crazy, so I must be crazy to spend all that money to hear her reaffirm her beliefs. Or something like that.
I'm back home at last and my pets are punishing me for leaving them so often and for so long. The older dog just stares at me with baleful eyes if I call her or give her a command. The younger one is trying the helpless baby approach to getting attention and suddenly must be lifted up the stairs and onto the couch despite the fact that he has no problem doing it on his own when he thinks I'm not looking. The cats take turns climbing on me and sharpening their claws on my clothes and skin, giving each other a nod when it's time to trade places. This isn't just my guilt talking--there is an actual plan to punish me afoot. Speaking of afoot, M must be included in the punishment since one of the cats threw up on her bare foot last night. With a whole house and seven acres to throw up in, tell me that wasn't deliberate.
Life has slowed down to its normal craziness, so I'll try to post regularly again. I wouldn't want any of you to have to resort to coming up with elaborate plans to punish me the way my pets have. I can only take so many baleful stares and my clothes have so many claw holes that if you hold them in front of a light, you can see a whole galaxy of stars shining on the wall.
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