I'm thinking about getting a tattoo. Or shaving my head. Or maybe getting something pierced.
I've always been dutiful.
A dutiful student who didn't cheat, didn't sleep during even the most boring classes, didn't play hooky, and got the grades to get into and graduate from college.
A dutiful daughter who respected her parents and tried to make their lives easier as they advanced in years, and who took their advice about not giving away the milk for free or nobody will buy the cow (Who exactly came up with that flattering piece of advice? Couldn't they have said something more like if a man can find enough wildflowers, he won't need to plant a garden? Or if he can get free honey, he won't need a queen bee? Why did women have to be the cow in this scenario?) I also did things in the order they preferred--dating, engagement, wedding, moving in together, and then children.
A dutiful wife who has never even thought of straying in 29 years of marriage. Who packed her husbands bags and sent him off with a smile on business trips, adventure excursions with his buddies, and weekends in the mountains while I stayed home with four small children. Who has turned the other cheek to his families' behavior so many times I can now do a full 360 degrees with my head like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
A dutiful mother who always, always, always put her children's wants and needs in front of her own. Who diapered and nursed, wiped and powdered, carried and rocked, punished and rewarded, listened and learned for the last twenty-six years. Who did homeroom mom, fund-raising, crafts, CCD meetings, sleepovers, treasure hunts, Back-to-School nights, party treats, costumes, car pools, designated driver for the of age drinkers, luaus, field-trips, chaperoning, and homework-checking.
Dutiful, dutiful, dutiful.
Now, I am 51 years old, my children are grown with lives of their own, my parents have both died, I've lost touch with most friends over the years as I concentrated on my husband and children, and my husband has spent the past 29 years out in the world, building relationships, friendships, and businesses that keep him fully occupied.
What I wanted more than anything in life was for my husband to be successful and my daughters to grow into independent, happy adults and it has happened. Unfortunately, I forgot to include myself in those goals and now that the nest is almost empty, I can't figure out who I am if I'm not the one gathering twigs for shelter and chewing up worms to nourish someone.
I shall have to drop the unneeded twigs and spit out the unwanted worms and re-invent myself.
The question is--into what?
I don't have the answer to that, but one thing I know is I am tired of caring what other people think, of following written and unwritten rules that make sense only to the people who made them up, and mostly, of being dutiful.
I want to be baaaaaaad.
I feel like putting leftovers into Tupperware and not burping the air out. I feel like throwing an aluminum can into the regular trash instead of the recycling--on purpose. I want to let the grass in the yard grow knee high just to see the neighbors' dirty looks. Check underneath the table of the next restaurant I go to and you might find my chewed gum or you might see me order a banana split and when the skinny people eating leaves and twigs at the nearby tables look down their noses' at my gluttony, I'll slowly and deliberately lick the bowl. I want to wear white before Memorial Day and show up at a funeral in red. Dare me to swim immediately after eating and run around the house holding scissors and just watch me go.
I want to shock my friends by showing up at their house without bringing a bottle of wine or a baked good. Shock my family by taking the last piece of pie without asking if anyone else wants it. I may even stop putting the parking brake on when parked in my own driveway. The next time someone asks if I mind without really caring if I do, instead of saying, "No, of course not," I'll answer, "Yes, I bloody well do mind!" even if I don't (Forgive me, I've been obsessed with watching British miniseries on Netflix lately--Cranford, Upstairs Downstairs, Downton Abbey--and now everything in my head comes with a British accent. As for "bloody" Ron Weasley uses it in Harry Potter, so it can't be too vulgar a curse word, can it? Ooooh, I can add use the word "bloody" in my blog to my list of shocking behaviors!) .
I want to leave dishes in the sink and clothes in the washer. Drink regular coffee after five p.m. Bend the corner of a page down on the book I'm reading to mark my place. Wink at the butcher when he hands me my pork chops. Leave empty rolls on the toilet paper holders. Ruffle up the hand towels and then walk away. Feed stray cats. Pet stray dogs. Write a picture book in bad rhyme. Eat the collection of chemicals known as a Twinkie. Wear torn underwear even though I know I might get in an accident.
I can feel this rebellious spirit rising up in me and it scares me. I don't know where it might lead. Is it possible that if I surrender to it, one day I might find myself truly crossing the line and wearing socks with sandals?
Only time will tell.
Let's just keep my rebellious stirrings our little secret for now. Wouldn't want to create widespread panic.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Do Baby Zombies Eat Your Face Or Can They Only Reach Your Ankles?
I live in perhaps the oddest house I personally have ever seen. It's a farmhouse and the original rooms were built over two hundred years ago. Bits and pieces have been added throughout the years and sometimes I feel like I'm living in The Burrow--the Weasley's tottering home in Harry Potter.
The house has four floors. Let's start in the basement, shall we? The original basement was an approximately 15 by 10 foot room with beams running through the very low ceiling and a walk-in fireplace. Previous owners added a large cinderblock room under an addition which we finished to make a large rec room. Unfortunately, to get to this carpeted, paneled, rec room with it's pool table, sofa beds, and TV, you have to pass through the creepy old basement with it's rickety stairs, cement walls and floor, and exposed wires and pipes running the length of the ceiling. There isn't much we can do about it because we can't cover up these pipes and wires in case we need access. Feeling that this root cellar like atmosphere wasn't deterrent enough for our guests, we added a frequently used litter box to the mix. I have no idea how our daughters convinced any of their friends to venture down into this area to reach the playroom when they were little, but they did, and the basement has been the site of more parties, play-dates, and sleepovers than I can count. When you consider the fact that any little girl who had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night had to pass through here alone on her way, I'd say the Catholic Church should add this to it's list of miracles.
On the main floor, you have the dining room and living room, which made up the original house. A previous owner added a kitchen, family room and laundry room off the dining room and added a powder room under the stairs, which puts it right in the dining room. It's always a nice touch to be able to hear the sound of urination and a toilet flushing at your dinner parties. This powder room was the site of the unmentionable spinning party guest incident. Another nice touch to have that story in the back of your mind during meals around the dining room table.
Open a closet door in the dining room and you will find not a storage place for linens, but a spiral staircase leading to the master bedroom. The staircase is narrow and is unused because the same previous owner built a closet in the master bedroom that required lowering the ceiling in the staircase. A normal staircase was also built between the living room and dining room and I'm guessing that took place after the owners tried to pivot a dresser or headboard up the spiral one and got it stuck. There used to be a window in the wall of the now powder room, so they just put hinges on it and made it into a small storage cabinet.
On what we call the second floor (even though technically, it's the third) is the master bedroom, the master bath, and another bedroom. When you come up the stairs from the first floor, you are presented with the choice of three doors (It's just like Let's Make a Deal!). To your left, is the door to the master bedroom, immediately to your right is the door to the master bath, and slightly down the hall to the right is the door to the second bedroom. How is this possible when the house has four bedrooms? Well, someone throughout the years designed the layout of the house so that to get to the two bedrooms and bath on the third floor, you have to either go through the master bedroom or master bathroom. You can imagine the complications of that. If someone is taking a shower in that bathroom and someone else is asleep or changing in the master bedroom, you are stuck in the hall waiting for entry. This also means the master bath not only has the door to this hallway, but has a second door leading to the stairs to the top floor. I can't tell you how many guests have shared that they sat down on the toilet only to look up and realize there was a door wide open right in front of them.
The master bath had the only shower with the third floor bath containing only a claw foot tub, so you can imagine life with six people (four of them being teenage girls) and only one shower. Our stubborn insistence on keeping parts of history plus the herculean effort involved in carrying a cast iron tub down two flights of stairs kept us from putting a shower in even though it was greatly needed. Now, that three of the girls have moved out and are only occasional visitors, we, of course, came to our senses and we are in the process of installing a shower in that bathroom. It only took us twenty-two years of no one using the tub to realize, hey, maybe a second shower would be a good idea. It's no wonder our daughters know every spot on the ceiling when they spend so much time rolling their eyes at my husband and me for our inability to see the obvious.
The master bedroom has a closet with another spiral staircase leading to . . . nowhere. Previous occupants eliminated the exit at the top of the stairs by putting in a hardwood floor in the bedroom. The third floor used to be an attic, but was made into two bedrooms and a shared bath when the roof was raised by dormers.
In the long history of the occupants of our house, one thing was constant until we moved in---each family who lived here had five children. We, alas, broke the tradition by stopping at four. But even so, there have been many, many babies and young children living here throughout the centuries.
I personally am an open-minded person and don't believe in nor negate the possibility of ghosts walking among us, aliens flying above us, or intelligent life existing in Hollywood. I don't pretend to have absolute knowledge of whether these things are real or not. I can say that, despite living in this old house for twenty-two years, I have never felt an evil presence (other than my in-laws) nor have I seen anything out of the ordinary (well, I have, but I'm speaking in paranormal terms here, not my everyday abnormal living, breathing human sightings).
But others claim that they have experienced things while in our humble home. One case was of a couple who came to feed our cats while we were away. As the wife was opening cat food cans, the husband picked up the baby monitor from the kitchen counter and flicked it on. He casually mentioned to his wife that the kids sounded like they were having a good time upstairs. She froze and reminded him that the reason they were there in the first place was because no one was home. They listened to the sound of children's voices and he suggested that perhaps the part of the monitor that picks up sound was turned off and the receiving part, which he held in his hands, was picking up a signal from a neighbor's monitor. That can happen only if the transmitting part is turned off. She begged him to go upstairs and see if it was turned off. He refused and they dumped cat food onto plates and got out of there. They called us to tell us what happened and when we got home, we checked the monitor. It was turned on upstairs. We also reminded our friends that there were no other children living within the monitor's range. Many times over the years, we turned on the monitor to hear the same lullaby playing. It wasn't playing in our house and it was always the same one.
But baby monitors aren't reliable and there could be any number of explanations. So let's share our next story.
We asked two construction worker friends of ours to do some remodeling in our bedroom closet while we were away on vacation. These are tough, burly, hockey fan kind of guys. When we arrived home from vacation, excited to see the finished closet, we were shocked to see the work half done and tools lying abandoned on the floor, paint cans left open and drying, and general disarray. We'd had these guys do work for us before and knew that they were reliable about cleaning up after themselves.
A call to one of the workers resulted in an explanation of sorts. He said they had been making good progress on the closet when he casually mentioned to his co-worker that he wished I would pick up the baby because the crying was giving him a headache. His co-worker agreed before they both froze at the realization that I wasn't going to be picking up any baby since I and my babies were in another state. They stepped out into the bedroom and both were absolutely positive that the source of the crying was within the house and right up the stairs. They dropped their tools and pushed and shoved each other to be the first down the stairs and out of the house. Both refused to return until we were at home and could assure them that they weren't about to be slimed or have their faces eaten off by a zombie toddler.
I will say that when they did come back, the job was finished in no time. It's the fastest I've ever seen construction workers move.
Perhaps I should share this story with all future workers I hire. I could even rig a tape recorder to play a tape of a baby occasionally crying in case they are tempted to slack off a bit. I could program the lights to go on and off by themselves, have doors slowly creaking open . . .
Well, if it doesn't get my new wallpaper hung faster, it might at least discourage the in-laws from dropping by.
Of course, if there really were ghostly presences in my house, the time that my in-laws have already spent here probably convinced them to move to the light and cross over. Whatever unfinished business was keeping them here was probably forgotten as they came to the same conclusion I have--moving to the light is preferable than living in the hell of having my in-laws in the same house.
The house has four floors. Let's start in the basement, shall we? The original basement was an approximately 15 by 10 foot room with beams running through the very low ceiling and a walk-in fireplace. Previous owners added a large cinderblock room under an addition which we finished to make a large rec room. Unfortunately, to get to this carpeted, paneled, rec room with it's pool table, sofa beds, and TV, you have to pass through the creepy old basement with it's rickety stairs, cement walls and floor, and exposed wires and pipes running the length of the ceiling. There isn't much we can do about it because we can't cover up these pipes and wires in case we need access. Feeling that this root cellar like atmosphere wasn't deterrent enough for our guests, we added a frequently used litter box to the mix. I have no idea how our daughters convinced any of their friends to venture down into this area to reach the playroom when they were little, but they did, and the basement has been the site of more parties, play-dates, and sleepovers than I can count. When you consider the fact that any little girl who had to use the bathroom in the middle of the night had to pass through here alone on her way, I'd say the Catholic Church should add this to it's list of miracles.
On the main floor, you have the dining room and living room, which made up the original house. A previous owner added a kitchen, family room and laundry room off the dining room and added a powder room under the stairs, which puts it right in the dining room. It's always a nice touch to be able to hear the sound of urination and a toilet flushing at your dinner parties. This powder room was the site of the unmentionable spinning party guest incident. Another nice touch to have that story in the back of your mind during meals around the dining room table.
Open a closet door in the dining room and you will find not a storage place for linens, but a spiral staircase leading to the master bedroom. The staircase is narrow and is unused because the same previous owner built a closet in the master bedroom that required lowering the ceiling in the staircase. A normal staircase was also built between the living room and dining room and I'm guessing that took place after the owners tried to pivot a dresser or headboard up the spiral one and got it stuck. There used to be a window in the wall of the now powder room, so they just put hinges on it and made it into a small storage cabinet.
On what we call the second floor (even though technically, it's the third) is the master bedroom, the master bath, and another bedroom. When you come up the stairs from the first floor, you are presented with the choice of three doors (It's just like Let's Make a Deal!). To your left, is the door to the master bedroom, immediately to your right is the door to the master bath, and slightly down the hall to the right is the door to the second bedroom. How is this possible when the house has four bedrooms? Well, someone throughout the years designed the layout of the house so that to get to the two bedrooms and bath on the third floor, you have to either go through the master bedroom or master bathroom. You can imagine the complications of that. If someone is taking a shower in that bathroom and someone else is asleep or changing in the master bedroom, you are stuck in the hall waiting for entry. This also means the master bath not only has the door to this hallway, but has a second door leading to the stairs to the top floor. I can't tell you how many guests have shared that they sat down on the toilet only to look up and realize there was a door wide open right in front of them.
The master bath had the only shower with the third floor bath containing only a claw foot tub, so you can imagine life with six people (four of them being teenage girls) and only one shower. Our stubborn insistence on keeping parts of history plus the herculean effort involved in carrying a cast iron tub down two flights of stairs kept us from putting a shower in even though it was greatly needed. Now, that three of the girls have moved out and are only occasional visitors, we, of course, came to our senses and we are in the process of installing a shower in that bathroom. It only took us twenty-two years of no one using the tub to realize, hey, maybe a second shower would be a good idea. It's no wonder our daughters know every spot on the ceiling when they spend so much time rolling their eyes at my husband and me for our inability to see the obvious.
The master bedroom has a closet with another spiral staircase leading to . . . nowhere. Previous occupants eliminated the exit at the top of the stairs by putting in a hardwood floor in the bedroom. The third floor used to be an attic, but was made into two bedrooms and a shared bath when the roof was raised by dormers.
In the long history of the occupants of our house, one thing was constant until we moved in---each family who lived here had five children. We, alas, broke the tradition by stopping at four. But even so, there have been many, many babies and young children living here throughout the centuries.
I personally am an open-minded person and don't believe in nor negate the possibility of ghosts walking among us, aliens flying above us, or intelligent life existing in Hollywood. I don't pretend to have absolute knowledge of whether these things are real or not. I can say that, despite living in this old house for twenty-two years, I have never felt an evil presence (other than my in-laws) nor have I seen anything out of the ordinary (well, I have, but I'm speaking in paranormal terms here, not my everyday abnormal living, breathing human sightings).
But others claim that they have experienced things while in our humble home. One case was of a couple who came to feed our cats while we were away. As the wife was opening cat food cans, the husband picked up the baby monitor from the kitchen counter and flicked it on. He casually mentioned to his wife that the kids sounded like they were having a good time upstairs. She froze and reminded him that the reason they were there in the first place was because no one was home. They listened to the sound of children's voices and he suggested that perhaps the part of the monitor that picks up sound was turned off and the receiving part, which he held in his hands, was picking up a signal from a neighbor's monitor. That can happen only if the transmitting part is turned off. She begged him to go upstairs and see if it was turned off. He refused and they dumped cat food onto plates and got out of there. They called us to tell us what happened and when we got home, we checked the monitor. It was turned on upstairs. We also reminded our friends that there were no other children living within the monitor's range. Many times over the years, we turned on the monitor to hear the same lullaby playing. It wasn't playing in our house and it was always the same one.
But baby monitors aren't reliable and there could be any number of explanations. So let's share our next story.
We asked two construction worker friends of ours to do some remodeling in our bedroom closet while we were away on vacation. These are tough, burly, hockey fan kind of guys. When we arrived home from vacation, excited to see the finished closet, we were shocked to see the work half done and tools lying abandoned on the floor, paint cans left open and drying, and general disarray. We'd had these guys do work for us before and knew that they were reliable about cleaning up after themselves.
A call to one of the workers resulted in an explanation of sorts. He said they had been making good progress on the closet when he casually mentioned to his co-worker that he wished I would pick up the baby because the crying was giving him a headache. His co-worker agreed before they both froze at the realization that I wasn't going to be picking up any baby since I and my babies were in another state. They stepped out into the bedroom and both were absolutely positive that the source of the crying was within the house and right up the stairs. They dropped their tools and pushed and shoved each other to be the first down the stairs and out of the house. Both refused to return until we were at home and could assure them that they weren't about to be slimed or have their faces eaten off by a zombie toddler.
I will say that when they did come back, the job was finished in no time. It's the fastest I've ever seen construction workers move.
Perhaps I should share this story with all future workers I hire. I could even rig a tape recorder to play a tape of a baby occasionally crying in case they are tempted to slack off a bit. I could program the lights to go on and off by themselves, have doors slowly creaking open . . .
Well, if it doesn't get my new wallpaper hung faster, it might at least discourage the in-laws from dropping by.
Of course, if there really were ghostly presences in my house, the time that my in-laws have already spent here probably convinced them to move to the light and cross over. Whatever unfinished business was keeping them here was probably forgotten as they came to the same conclusion I have--moving to the light is preferable than living in the hell of having my in-laws in the same house.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Wedding Plans, Barrel Racers, and Blood Oaths
I am honestly curious about something. Is my life normal? I mean, do most other people have the day-in day-out craziness and non-stop circus atmosphere that is my life? I'm not complaining. I know that I have a very good life in many ways--I don't have any flesh-eating diseases, none of my family members have ever appeared on Jerry Springer, I don't have to drive to the state prison to visit any of my children, and none of my in-laws live with me. But there is a constant swirl of insanity in my life and every once in awhile, I wonder if every one else lives in their own constant swirl of insanity, too.
My daughter C and her fiance E were in town for ten days for a whirlwind wedding planning visit. My daughter A came in to go to appointments with us. Ten days of trying on dresses, visiting prospective reception sites, meetings with a wedding planner, talking and talking about where, how, when, and who. C was sick when she got here, so within a few days, so were E and daughter M, who lives at home. M is finishing up her junior year of high school, so we wedged some end of year events into the schedule, too. There was all the usual shopping, cooking, and cleaning that goes with having house-guests, plus a dog who is still biting the rash on his tail where fur used to be, plus visits with their old friends from high school, plus appointments with family doctors to take care of while in town, and since it was Memorial Day weekend, barbecue food needed to be prepared and enjoyed.
It was great having them home and a lot of fun, but exhausting. A drove back to Pittsburgh on Saturday and by the time we got back from dropping C and E at the airport Monday night, all I wanted to do was float on a raft in the pool until I was as wrinkled as Grandma Moses.
Before I could even get home, I got a call from M saying that she needed me to go with her to a craft store for supplies for a school project. We pulled in the driveway at 5:30, and since the store closed at 6, pulled right back out again. Shopping was followed by dinner which was followed by trying to put the house back into some semblance of order.
Then the fun began. I received a text from C saying that they had made it to their layover in Minnesota and were taking off for the final leg of the journey back to North Dakota, but the pilot said there were severe thunderstorms in their path. She informed me, by text, that they were going to try to fly through the eye of the storm. And that was it. Then I got to wait, nervously gnawing at fingernails that don't have much room left for gnawing.
My oldest daughter then called to talk about her upcoming visit home (she is flying in today for a wedding this weekend) and while we were discussing details, I got a text from A that went like this, "Can I ask you a weird question?" No parent ever wants to get a text like that. A graduated from Pitt in April, but is staying out there for another year while her boyfriend finishes up his teaching degree. I cautiously replied, "Okay," and waited for the shoe to drop. She texted back, "Would you mind if I go to Canada tomorrow?" I guess for some people that isn't an odd question, but for us, it came from so far out in left field, it was in the bleachers. I told oldest daughter J that I had to go so I could call A and find out what she was talking about.
When I reached her, A told me that some sorority sisters were driving up to Canada the next day to stay for just one night to see Niagara Falls and wanted her to go with them. I got her to agree that she wouldn't get "Oh Canada" tattooed anywhere on her body, wouldn't go over the falls in a barrel or anything else, and wouldn't elope while there, and then gave her my blessing to take the trip. Of course, she was sitting in a bar doing birthday shots with her roommate when we talked, so I'm not sure she knew what she was agreeing to and I won't be surprised if she comes home married to a Canadian barrel racer with an American flag tattoo from a drunken misreading of my instructions.
Once I handled that situation, my youngest told me that she was having problems printing out a pamphlet for a psychology class assignment that was due the next day. She had completed the work, but the printer wasn't co-operating. I agreed to check the printer in an hour to make sure the pamphlets had printed and went back to writing. She went to bed since it was after 11 and she had school the next day.
I got another text from C at 12:20 saying, "Back in Minn two hours later. Probably here for the night." I called and she said they got about a half hour outside Grand Forks and had to turn around because of the storms. I asked if the airline was going to put them up at a hotel and she said no, they wanted them to hang out at the airport while they decided what to do.
Ding, ding, 1:02 and another text. "Looks like we're reboarding soon, looking at the radar, I think there is a gap in the storms, we're going to try to go through." Be still my heart. I called and asked if there was an option to spend the night and fly the next day, but she said there were no seats available on any flights. I hung up and looked at Barnaby, who now has a puff of fur at the base of his tail, a long section of what looks like pink playdoh, and then an odd little tuft that survived at the very top, and even he looked nervous. But then again, that's his usual expression.
I left my home office to check the printer and found nothing sitting in the tray. In the chair next to the printer, I saw four printed documents and a page that was crumbled as though it had come out of a paper jam. Hmm, curious. I absolutely love technology, but there is nothing as frustrating as technology that won't do what it's supposed to do. I used M's laptop to send the page to the printer again and it started shooting out pages with bits and pieces of text, but not the whole thing. I canceled and tried again with the same result. Oh, well, I thought, I'll just save it to a memory stick and print it on the one in my office. Except the laptop refused to recognize the memory stick. I tried for a half hour, but no luck. So I decided to email the pamphlet as an attachment to myself and and then print it in my office. In order to attach a doc, you have to close it first, so I did. Then I opened her email account and when I went to attach the doc, I couldn't find it anywhere. Another half hour went by as I searched for it, including in recent documents, and I finally found it in a sub-folder of another sub-folder.
I sent the email, went back to my office, and opened the file. But since my daughter typed it on a PC and I have a Mac, there were updates and patches and blood oaths that had to take place before my Mac would consider giving the print order. And once it was printing, since it was a tri-fold pamphlet with printing on both sides, it took me awhile to figure out which way to put the paper back in and what to ask the printer to do before I got it right. Plus there were the obvious questions of how many does she need, do I fold them, and why does this teacher hate me, too.
I finally finished with the pamphlet at 2 a.m. (spending most of that time wondering about the possibility of this whole thing being the actual psychology assignment--"See how far you can push subject before he/she snaps"). My eyes were bleary, I was having trouble making my legs move, and I had ink stains on my fingers, but I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep until I knew that C and E had landed safely. Being a writer, I must admit to having a bit of an active imagination, so of course I was picturing lightning strikes, turbulence, and C screaming, "I should have never left my mommy!" At 2:30 a.m., she finally texted, "Landed in Grand Forks, thank goodness." I replied and then stumbled off to bed to recharge for whatever awaited me in the morning, including a possible Canadian son-in-law.
I wish that I could say that this was a rare rogue wave in an otherwise calm sea, but this kind of stuff happens to me about as regularly as waves hit a beach. So I just want to know, is anyone else out there treading water or are you all floating on a raft, trailing your fingers in the cool water, sipping from a drink with an umbrella in it?
I could really use one of those umbrella drinks right now.
My daughter C and her fiance E were in town for ten days for a whirlwind wedding planning visit. My daughter A came in to go to appointments with us. Ten days of trying on dresses, visiting prospective reception sites, meetings with a wedding planner, talking and talking about where, how, when, and who. C was sick when she got here, so within a few days, so were E and daughter M, who lives at home. M is finishing up her junior year of high school, so we wedged some end of year events into the schedule, too. There was all the usual shopping, cooking, and cleaning that goes with having house-guests, plus a dog who is still biting the rash on his tail where fur used to be, plus visits with their old friends from high school, plus appointments with family doctors to take care of while in town, and since it was Memorial Day weekend, barbecue food needed to be prepared and enjoyed.
It was great having them home and a lot of fun, but exhausting. A drove back to Pittsburgh on Saturday and by the time we got back from dropping C and E at the airport Monday night, all I wanted to do was float on a raft in the pool until I was as wrinkled as Grandma Moses.
Before I could even get home, I got a call from M saying that she needed me to go with her to a craft store for supplies for a school project. We pulled in the driveway at 5:30, and since the store closed at 6, pulled right back out again. Shopping was followed by dinner which was followed by trying to put the house back into some semblance of order.
Then the fun began. I received a text from C saying that they had made it to their layover in Minnesota and were taking off for the final leg of the journey back to North Dakota, but the pilot said there were severe thunderstorms in their path. She informed me, by text, that they were going to try to fly through the eye of the storm. And that was it. Then I got to wait, nervously gnawing at fingernails that don't have much room left for gnawing.
My oldest daughter then called to talk about her upcoming visit home (she is flying in today for a wedding this weekend) and while we were discussing details, I got a text from A that went like this, "Can I ask you a weird question?" No parent ever wants to get a text like that. A graduated from Pitt in April, but is staying out there for another year while her boyfriend finishes up his teaching degree. I cautiously replied, "Okay," and waited for the shoe to drop. She texted back, "Would you mind if I go to Canada tomorrow?" I guess for some people that isn't an odd question, but for us, it came from so far out in left field, it was in the bleachers. I told oldest daughter J that I had to go so I could call A and find out what she was talking about.
When I reached her, A told me that some sorority sisters were driving up to Canada the next day to stay for just one night to see Niagara Falls and wanted her to go with them. I got her to agree that she wouldn't get "Oh Canada" tattooed anywhere on her body, wouldn't go over the falls in a barrel or anything else, and wouldn't elope while there, and then gave her my blessing to take the trip. Of course, she was sitting in a bar doing birthday shots with her roommate when we talked, so I'm not sure she knew what she was agreeing to and I won't be surprised if she comes home married to a Canadian barrel racer with an American flag tattoo from a drunken misreading of my instructions.
Once I handled that situation, my youngest told me that she was having problems printing out a pamphlet for a psychology class assignment that was due the next day. She had completed the work, but the printer wasn't co-operating. I agreed to check the printer in an hour to make sure the pamphlets had printed and went back to writing. She went to bed since it was after 11 and she had school the next day.
I got another text from C at 12:20 saying, "Back in Minn two hours later. Probably here for the night." I called and she said they got about a half hour outside Grand Forks and had to turn around because of the storms. I asked if the airline was going to put them up at a hotel and she said no, they wanted them to hang out at the airport while they decided what to do.
Ding, ding, 1:02 and another text. "Looks like we're reboarding soon, looking at the radar, I think there is a gap in the storms, we're going to try to go through." Be still my heart. I called and asked if there was an option to spend the night and fly the next day, but she said there were no seats available on any flights. I hung up and looked at Barnaby, who now has a puff of fur at the base of his tail, a long section of what looks like pink playdoh, and then an odd little tuft that survived at the very top, and even he looked nervous. But then again, that's his usual expression.
I left my home office to check the printer and found nothing sitting in the tray. In the chair next to the printer, I saw four printed documents and a page that was crumbled as though it had come out of a paper jam. Hmm, curious. I absolutely love technology, but there is nothing as frustrating as technology that won't do what it's supposed to do. I used M's laptop to send the page to the printer again and it started shooting out pages with bits and pieces of text, but not the whole thing. I canceled and tried again with the same result. Oh, well, I thought, I'll just save it to a memory stick and print it on the one in my office. Except the laptop refused to recognize the memory stick. I tried for a half hour, but no luck. So I decided to email the pamphlet as an attachment to myself and and then print it in my office. In order to attach a doc, you have to close it first, so I did. Then I opened her email account and when I went to attach the doc, I couldn't find it anywhere. Another half hour went by as I searched for it, including in recent documents, and I finally found it in a sub-folder of another sub-folder.
I sent the email, went back to my office, and opened the file. But since my daughter typed it on a PC and I have a Mac, there were updates and patches and blood oaths that had to take place before my Mac would consider giving the print order. And once it was printing, since it was a tri-fold pamphlet with printing on both sides, it took me awhile to figure out which way to put the paper back in and what to ask the printer to do before I got it right. Plus there were the obvious questions of how many does she need, do I fold them, and why does this teacher hate me, too.
I finally finished with the pamphlet at 2 a.m. (spending most of that time wondering about the possibility of this whole thing being the actual psychology assignment--"See how far you can push subject before he/she snaps"). My eyes were bleary, I was having trouble making my legs move, and I had ink stains on my fingers, but I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep until I knew that C and E had landed safely. Being a writer, I must admit to having a bit of an active imagination, so of course I was picturing lightning strikes, turbulence, and C screaming, "I should have never left my mommy!" At 2:30 a.m., she finally texted, "Landed in Grand Forks, thank goodness." I replied and then stumbled off to bed to recharge for whatever awaited me in the morning, including a possible Canadian son-in-law.
I wish that I could say that this was a rare rogue wave in an otherwise calm sea, but this kind of stuff happens to me about as regularly as waves hit a beach. So I just want to know, is anyone else out there treading water or are you all floating on a raft, trailing your fingers in the cool water, sipping from a drink with an umbrella in it?
I could really use one of those umbrella drinks right now.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Squid, Goat's Hair, and The Parent/Teacher Relationship
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.
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.
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.
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