"I Did Not Either Go Back Three Days Later and Stage These Photos, So Hesh Up with Your Badgering Questions Already"

Check out my science experiment this week:

When a body falls in the forest, and no one's around to hear it, it does make a sound, and that sound is "Great Johnny Appleseed, but OWWWWWWWWWWWWW!"

This scientific breakthrough happened the other day when I was out for a run on one of my favorite sections of The Superior Hiking Trail. I love trail running for multitudinous reasons, but one of them is that the varied terrain breaks a run the hell up, so that I can be out there for more than an hour and not even realize it's time to turn around (contrast this to a run in town, where I spend the last mile counting down: "Fifty-Second Street. Fifty-First Street. Fiftieth Street. Ah, hell, is this only Forty-Ninth Street?") A side benefit of trail running (aside from rock-hard quads capable of opening a No. 10 can of peaches) is that the varied terrain provides all good reasons for sloggish runner to go rewy, rewy slowly.

With all those roots and rocks jutting up, caution is clearly in order.

What is The Suck, however, is when a sloggish runner who is "running" in a way that actually resembles a quick hike because she is being so very careful about rocks and roots

still takes a mo-fo of a tumble, thanks to biffing her toe on a semi-exposed piece of Nature.

Yup, the other day my body hurled--backwards, by the time I finished pirouetting--into the prickly brush, making contact with at least three more squads of rocks as it gradually skidded to a stop.

"OWWWWW!" does, indeed, echo loudly in an empty forest. As do a few of Yosemite Sam's finer expletives, particularly those ending in "-frackin'sassafrass."

Taking stock, as I lay there, I first checked for witnesses (it being several weeks before the local trail ultra-marathon, I'd already passed a couple of gel-squishing 135-lb full-grown wiry males out on 40-mile training runs). Fortunately, no one was around, so there was no need for me to spit the ferns out of my mouth to facilitate a sheepish explanation of, "Em. Lost a contact lens. Oh, and also: I ran 50 miles yesterday, so I’m only having a short 20-mile recovery run today. But keep at it, you pusses."

Alone in the now-silent woods, I felt around for my head.

Praise Marie Antoinette: it was there!

As well, I still had roughly four limbs extruding from my torso, and as luck would have it, two of them hung out above my waist (Hey, wait. a. minute. I actually have four appendages hanging out above my waistline alone—although two of them are capable of hanging just to my waist while the other two can stretch nearly to my knees. It's your guess which two are my breasts).

All that new math aside, I felt around and sighed in relief when I realized I also still had two hands--thanks for doing the feeling around, dudes!--along with some leggish things stretched out in front of me. When I bent the leggish things, I saw one of the kneeish things there in the middle was properly scraped up and having a good bleed.

Yes, I realize one of the biggest drawbacks of social media is that anyone with a boo-boo can broadcast it to the world. I also realize this could totally be Conan O'Brien's knee.

Here's the moment in a mini-crisis when I often surprise myself: in my general self perception, I tend to think that I'm infinitely open to getting wound up and milking the drama from any possible moment (such as the time, on a day called yesterday, when I got a hangnail and was convinced its removal would require radiation). In reality, though, I actually tend to keep my spirit together in moments of crisis or OWWWWW (case in point: one of my all-time favorite students was raised without advantages, so she spent her mid-twenties learning things most of us mastered as kids…you know, like reading and writing; she also didn’t know how to swim, so I determined to teach her. The first time we were in the pool, her natural athletic abilities kicked in, and she was stroking around in no time. We headed for the deep end. Did I mention she has a seizure disorder? Yea, okay, so in the deep end, the movement of the water and the weird fluorescent lights brought on a seizure, and while I would have thought I’d get all shrieky and limp when faced with her jerking, sinking body, all I really felt was a sense of calm resolution and "NOT ON MY WATCH" wash over me, as I swam to her, dove down and grabbed her, swam her rigid form to the edge, and called repeatedly for the distracted life guard to help me pull her out and to get flotation devices to put under her head so she didn’t crack her skull).

After taking a moment to collect myself there under the sugar maples, I realized I was only bleeding from three places (knee, shoulder, hand) and couldn’t do much about it until I got home. So why not enjoy the rest of my run, as I had to cover the ground to get back to my car anyhow?

I hit the backtrack button on my Ipod, having, during the fall, missed out on the last few informative sentences of the Savage Love podcast (sentences that, upon relistening, went, “I have no problem with you having a centaur fetish; I just feel sorry for you because it’s not a fantasy that can ever actually get played out in real life. ‘Cuz the closest you can come in real life is a guy in a centaur costume, and when everything interesting is packed inside a costume like that, it’s never going to be fulfilling.”). Thusly heartened, I started to run again.

Four minutes later?

Wearing a cap, and being careful to watch the path for roots and rocks, I didn't notice the birch tree blocking the path—suspended between two other trees—just at head level.

(why didn't any of the paparazzi skulking in the foliage call out a warning to me?)

BLAMMMMM. My forehead plowed into the thing at five Large American Miles Per Hour.

Frick.

I was actually thrown several feet into, you got it, another stand of ferns. I actually didn’t know what had happened until I found myself sitting there. Gently, I shook my head and tried to focus my vision. Oh. My. Lawsy.

My eyes had been knocked loose. Even after a minute of trying to clear my vision, everything was blurry and out of focus. I would never see right again. How would I read? How would I drive?

Then I saw my glasses sitting next to me on the ground.

Never mind.

Once I put them on--gingerly, as my noggin was a’screamin'--the world got clearer and, once again, I found myself in a moment internal inquiry: “Do you need to have a little cry right now? Because it feels like you might need a little cry.”


Again, however, Self turned all calmish and replied, pretty quietly, “Naw. I don’t think that’s going to help. I think we should get up now and go to a place of Band-aids and hugs.”

So we did.

When I got home fifteen minutes later, ready to tell Groom about my wee trail adventures, he pre-empted my story with a, “Are you okay? You look really rough.” I’d known my skull was rattled and that I was worried I was going to go all Natasha Richardson or Sweet Baby Lime on him, and I knew I was bleeding, but I hadn’t realized how much dirt was covering my body. Seriously, some women would have paid hundreds of dollars for a mud wrap like I had just gotten for free. Later, when I rinsed off, I realized I might have needed Ibuprofen, but, damn, my pores were tight.

In the days since my wrassle with the woods, my neck has been stiff and painful, even mid-way down my spinal column (my neck extends very far). Plus, the jarring of my top and bottom teeth against each other during the impact chipped a nano-tidbit off one of the lower teeth. I need to file that baby.

Maybe into a fang.


What I've learned from all this is that emory boards (and mojitos) are wonderful tools for coping.

Even more profoundly, I've learned that Nature and exercise are, like the thing I tripped over in the forest, the Root of All Evil.

"They Say They'll Be Done in Four Weeks..."

"Can't Touch This"

On my first day of college twenty-four years ago, I heaved into my arms a laundry bag holding Kermit the Frog (a stuffed version, mind you; the live one was on location in Hollywood), Howard Jones cassette tapes, and aerosol cans of Aquanet. A bit tremulously, I walked into my freshman dorm.

Naturally, the dorm was located on the far outreaches of campus, and my room was on the top floor, farthest away from the main doors. Any exercise I got in the ensuing nine months was due to the trek I had to make to get back to my room (or from the repetitive elbow lifts associated with hefting a beer).

That first day, though, because the dorm was teeming with parents, the college put on the shine a little bit and actually opened up the sole elevator. That one and only time, we were able to step aboard with our heavy loads and enjoy the quick trip up four floors. Once the last parent drove away at dusk, however, the elevator was shut down with a clank.

As my laundry bag and I stepped into the mythical parentally-inspired elevator that day, I joined another nervous-looking student and her handlers. Small talk set in, and my fellow student, one Shannon, asked, “So are y’all from Minnesota?”

People. I. could. hardly. believe. the. glamour. of. my. new. life.

This person had a Southern accent.

I was going to be attending school with students who were, like, cosmopolitan.

By extension, this meant I, too, was glamourous and cosmopolitan, kind of like how my shoulder pads always felt just a tidge bigger when I watched Joan Collins on DYNASTY. It was glamour enhancement by association.

As the weeks and months ticked by, my first impression was born out: not only did Shannon have a Southern accent, but she also had attended a private girls school (just like Phoebe Cates did in 1983's PRIVATE SCHOOL!! It was so handy to have seen a movie that gave me insight into the realities of Shannon's life before college: clearly, her days had been full of handsome lads--like Matthew Modine--from the neighboring boys' school playing cross-dressing pranks on the girls, all to a soundtrack of Rick Springfield and Bow Wow Wow!!!); even more, when not engaged in peeping shower scenes to the tune of "I Want Candy," Shannon had actually been part of debutante culture and knew what the word “cotillion” meant!!!!! Holy exclamation point, but the girl was chichi!!!!!!

As even more months ticked by, turning into sophomore year, I ended up living in a sextet with ChiChi Shannon, during which time I discovered she was outrageously down home. Certainly, she was from a different background, but most importantly, she was just a girl, moving into womanhood (er, womynhood; any chick worth her Birkenstocks attending a small, liberal arts college in the 1980s would never co-opt “men” into a word for creatures as fabulous, independent, and distinct as womyn). As we made Ramen noodles together, cried about roommate frustrations together, walked to class together, I got it. In all the essential ways, we were the same.

And so college spun on to graduation in 1989.

Since then, I have kept in contact with a slew of college pals, attending weddings and reunions, raising kids in parallel lives.

Shannon has not. In fact, after a few years, she never attended a reunion or had much contact with anyone. She got busy living in D.C., doing things like trying to get medical coverage for children. Nice excuse. So no one had seen her.

Until a few weeks ago.

Then, she—bravely--set foot on campus for the first time in twenty years at our, get this bit of irony, 20-year Reunion.

When I spotted her and launched into the requisite hugging of her body and licking of her face, she finally managed to gasp out, “I’ll never forget that you were the first person I met freshman year. We got into the dorm elevator together, and I knew it was a different world when I learned you were from MONTANA. I mean, wow, I didn’t know people from Montana. I couldn’t believe I was meeting people from Montana. I knew college was going to be something.”

There it was. We were back in the elevator together, open to mutual dazzlement.

That single moment from my first day of college, ultimately, summed up my entire college experience--and continues to sum up why the Reunions are so amazing. A group of smart, talented people, all very different, are drawn together by the excitement, the potential, of mutual dazzlement. And it never fails to deliver.

Invariably, at Reunion, I end up rubbing my eyes with my fists, trying to clear away tears of laughter. Invariably, I end up meeting people with whom I graduated but whom I never knew during college. Invariably, I end up wishing I'd known them all along and that they lived next door to me now--so that I might dash over, ring their bell, and yell "Hold me, College Boy!" when the world becomes too much. Once the embrace would break, a little awkwardly, I'd ask for a bagel. With strawberry cream cheese. If they have it. Please.

But because the magic of Reunion is tied into it happening infrequently (clearly, the excitement of seeing me everyday would wear thin quickly; for one, the cost of cream cheese would add up, day after day, year after year, as, for two, would my semi-creepy insistence on a deep, emotional hug with someone who lives next door and really just wants to mow his lawn), I revel in its intensity, in the spurts of conversation with people who had Paul Wellstone as a professor, who mainlined No-Doz when writing papers, who constructed shantytowns on campus in anti-apartheid protest, who filed into the chapel to listen to Garrison Keillor tell stories.

By Sunday, after three days of conviviating wildly, my heart is full, and I stand back from my life, once again, and can't believe its glamour: because I am allowed to know such people.

Then I realize I'm hungover and haven't slept but twelve hours in three nights, and it's time to go home. Plus, I need a latte. However, for the next few months, whenever the world gets to be too much, I can simply click on the mental slideshow of that weekend, and I will feel the dazzle.

Dimming the lights now. Click:

At some point in the next few months, Beautiful Man here and his family will travel to Madagascar to adopt two more children. When my dad died six years ago, this Beautiful Man empathized with my grief. When he was 18, he had never drunk before. We remedied that. Nowadays, he certainly doesn't drink, but he rides horses.

Poopsie on the Left was my roomie through college; I did a semester in Ireland with her; I lived with her after we graduated; I did a reading in her wedding; I learned huge amounts about the world during her divorce; she has, on occasion, held my heart in her hands and kept it from splintering. Five years ago, at our last reunion? She was piecing herself together post-divorce; at the same time, the fella on the right here was imminently divorcing. Now? They've just signed the closing papers on a condo in Chicago.

The chica on the left has done everything cool in the world, including living and working in Antarctica; the one on the right is my bestest dance partner ever. During the course of the weekend, inspired by the notion of a BIG LOVE life of polygamy, where we all get to share a communal backyard with a pool, I began suggesting possible Sister Wives to Groom. These two made the cut. The one on the left here could change theh oil in my Mom-Van, which is always a boon in a Sister Wife.

I have no idea what was so funny. But it probaby involved the punchline "Pigfu**er."

During college, I never did that experimental thing of loving on girls. Good news for the frustrated: twenty years later is not too late to start kissing girls. I know a guy here in town who recently got divorced because his wife realized that very fact.

This buddy here is descended from elves and has the best taste in music ever. One of my best memories of him from freshman year is of him walking around campus, a little boom box on his shoulder (not that he couldn't have managed a bigger one, for he might look lithe, but he is VERY STRONG), listening to The Replacements' song "Kiss Me On The Bus." I also remember him pointing out to me, as a fellow Titian, this quote from Gulliver's Travels: "It is observed, that the red haired of both sexes are more libidinous and mischievous than the rest, whom yet they much exceed in strength and activity."

You don't know the half of it, Mr. Swift.

The guy to my right here graduated a few years before I, but he was back on campus with his band to play one night of Reunion. Even my shoulder blades were sore the next day, from the thrashing around. Incidentally, I nominated him as a candidate for Brother Husband. He could play calming music for all 27 kids at The Compound. If he really wants, we'll even let him be Prophet.

Kum-by-yah. My Lord.


I look at my Girl (in the middle) and two of the daughters of my college pals, and I'm forced to muse: "Crikey. In nine years, they're going to get on an elevator with someone who has a Southern accent!"

Did you ever notice how 9-10 year old girls really like hearts and pink? And butterflies and San Diego?

By the time Paco and his compatriot get to college, we'll be hauling their laundry bags out of our hovercars and stocking their mini-fridges with stashes of Tang and freeze-dried ice cream.

-----------

Click. Lights back on now. The slideshow is over.

Time to go to work now--powered by a happy, flowy feeling of gratitude.

Maybe I'll meet someone with a Southern accent today.

For--as I learned when I was 18--anything is possible.

"Ode to Sampson: I Type At You, My Vigor Diminished"

Do not even ask me to hold a kettle ball for you right now, much less to swing it around and jack up my triceps.

As long as we're on the point, incidentally, how come you're always asking me to hold your kettle balls?

At any rate, I couldn't heft even the lightest of your ubiquitous kettle balls, for I am vewwwwy weak, and all my muscles are shrively.

You see, the source of my strength underwent a heat-induced chopping today, and, no, I am not referring to hot flashes, although I understand that particular pleasure loiters just around a very dark corner and down a long, menacing alley.

Rather, it's been, like, a kajillion degrees here during the hours of ye olde daytime, and the humidity has been at ninety-seventy-twelve percent. With such conditions in force, what sweaty, limp, and crabby redhead wouldn't trot in to see a perky stylist named Rosie at the nearest air-conditioned Aveda salon?

...all of which (em, right about here, please do a little smeary motion with your hands in front of your face, and also make a little "woo-dee-woo-hoo" noise down in your larynx, the effect of which is time transport, back to the year 1997 or so) reminds me of a story about my bestie girlpal named Pamm.

See, back in 1997, Pammy had some ovarian cyst problems. And it wasn't even humid then.

Her ovary was cystic to the point where mean doctors with anger issues planned to attack her with three-foot needles and lance the boil.

In a certain way, and thanks to laproscopy, it was to be a fairly non-invasive surgery.

However, since Pammy's body manages to turn everything from bee stings to dairy ingestion into cause for high drama, she was justified in worrying about complications.

Once you anticipate complications, even before you get to see Doc Lancelot, you get a leeetle bit, um, nervous. Anxiety-ridden. Barfy in the mouth.

Pal that I am, my solution to Pamm's emotional angst the day of her surgery was the time-honored technique known as "I am distracting you now, so look at these dancing puppets!"

Specifically, my distraction before the surgery was to tap into another body-based angst, one termed in the medical books Eff-All If I Wasn't Born With No Metabolism. Indeed, Pammy and I had always been able to bond over the fact that someone in a Honda Accord could drive by, eating a cake donut, and we'd gain four pounds.

So here's the puppet I trotted out for her during her pre-surgery anxiety: knowing she had to drink a gallon of vile bowel cleanser before the lancing (in case her intestines suffered a nick), I urged her to weigh herself first...drink the stuff...do a lot of reading of The New Yorker whilst on the toilet...and then weigh herself right before the surgery. "Nothing," I hollered at her, "will ever again give you such rapid and dramatic weight-loss results, even if it's hawked to you on a late-night infomercial by one of the trainers from THE BIGGEST LOSER, a show that isn't even on tv yet because it's only 1997! Empty your bowels, Love, and then take those numbers from the scale into the operating room with you!! Do it!! Glory in the power of those pounds peeling off...er, flushing away!!!"

Damn if she didn't lose six pounds that afternoon. The poo came out, and Pammy went supermodel, moved to Brazil, and married a soccer player.


Okay, now do the smeary hand thing in front of your face again, and make those woo-dee-doodle sounds in your throat, 'cause we're flashing forward to the epoch known as Right Now.


HI! How are you? Dizzy? Choose a focal point on the wall, and stare at it to center yourself. It's 2009 now and, most importantly, Bush is out of the White House. Isn't it nice here?

Back in 1997, my buddy Pamm lost weight from her innards. Sort of like that--but not--today I lost some weight, too; it didn't happen because I had a cyst but because my entire self was spontaneously combusting thanks to that tart named Summer. Check out my "hell, but I need to cool down before I strangle the innocents" rapid weight loss technique, which I believe the French call Une Chop de la Tete:




Yup. Lost two pounds.

From my head.






Point of pride: only one of the dropped pounds was from poo (it squozed out of my ear when I laughed too hard at a passing clown).

The other lost pound? Entirely follicular.

"If Imagination Were Actually Given Full Rein"

By jinkies and holy Marco Polo, but I'm tired.

We got back from our two weeks of travel the other night, and as of today, I almost feel hydrated and centered again. Mos' def, travels full of weddings and college reunions are hot-doggoliciously fun, but coming home from them requires a state-licensed detox program: detoxing from, yes, a progression of drinks, but even more, detox from public love, intense conversations, sleeping in a new place every night or two, and, during all that, teaching two classes online (surreal moment: answering questions about the newly-updated Modern Language Association's research citation guidelines while sitting in a McDonald's Playplace in New Hampton, Iowa).

Compounding my sense of "Who am I?" and "Mommy, won't you just hug The Jocey, for she is tapped out?" these last couple of days is the fact that we came home to a deconstructed kitchen (ooh, yes, there will be photos or video to follow, as it's amazing to see the bones of one's house and smell the air that's been trapped in that wood since 1913!).

Thus, even though we're home now, the regular flow of our daily living is, quite literally, being redirected, with us doing dishes in the bathtub and cooking dinner on the front steps on a camp stove. The fridge is next to the piano for the duration of the remodel, so everytime I take out the jug of milk, I also tickle out a wee bit of "Heart and Soul" on them ivories.

Speaking of heart, soul, and things I've fallen in love with, I have to share one of the fifty-thwillion highlights of our trip. Our last day in St. Louis, we went to The City Museum, a place so awesome that, as one of my friends noted, "Half of this stuff is normally illegal in the United States." Quite simply, I would say it's a place for both kids and adults, but it is absolutely on my list of the Top Five Things I've Ever Dragged My Kids To.

This is me, now, holding out a beckoning finger, inviting you to save the $12 entry fee and come on inside:



Sorry if the background noise overwhelms my voice. I am generally a wilting violet, you know, the sound of whose speech barely reaches beyond her own lips, so it was difficult for me to crank up my personal decibels, lest I collapse in a waifish faint.




For me, the best thing about this little snippet is that Groomeo is holding a magic wand (the glue had yet to dry) during the whole thing. Certainly, he has always held me sway with his magic, but to see him darting in there like some Mystical Fairy hired by Butt Pushers, Inc., brings out his charm for the entire viewing public.



Ostensibly, I'm showing you the outside of the museum here. But my hidden agenda was to make you yack. Didja? Huh? Didja barf? If so, what did you clean it up with?

These questions, along with memories of museums and imagination gone wild and hugs and laughter, will sustain me as I crouch beside the bathtub tonight, scouring a skillet that I've lathered up with Pantene.

"This Gives Me Even Greater License to Drink, Right?"

I'm at my 20-year college reunion right now, so typing time is tight. I'll simply say the beauty of attending such an event is this: I am assured I'm not the only one my age with a paunch and thinning hair. However, to my credit, and unlike many of my peers, I have not chosen to grow facial hair as a counterbalance to the loss of head-top hair.

In other news: the contractors working on the kitchen remodel have lost the plans--you know, the ones that were full of hand-written notes about small changes; as well, even though they filed for a building permit three weeks ago, it hasn't come through yet, so they've been working without one now for two weeks. Any steps of the process that require inspection, such as some work on the heating pipes they did, cannot happen until the permit comes through; thus, progress has slowed. Also, the architect feels pretty sure the bathroom he designed is fine (we're adding in a half-bath, too), but he'd feel even better if it were measured one more time...so in the interim, that means the cabinet-maker can't start making the cabinets, as any change in bathroom size will affect cabinet size.

In short, the remodel, with its various derailments, seems right on track, ja?

And all of this means I should drink a whole lot of Surly Beer at the class of 1989's social hour tonight, right?

Help me with my rationalizations here, people.

"June 2009: St. Louis, Missouri: A Wedding So Lovely I Sometimes Was Able to Ignore the Humidity"

Back in 1993-1994, Groom worked as a student naturalist at an environmental learning center in Northern Minnesota; during that year, he accrued a passle of friends who have hung together over the years.

One of them, John, got married last weekend in St. Louis. Groom's first memories of John, back at the environmental ed center in the early 1990's, were of John trying to teach himself how to play the banjo--specifically, that Kermit the Frog song called "The Rainbow Connection." For weeks, John worked on a few notes...then would stumble...mutter a curse, and start the #^%#@@# song over again. Rather than throttle John for playing the first measure of "The Rainbow Connection" exactly one kabillion times in a row for three weeks straight, the group of student naturalists decided, through gritted teeth, to view these efforts as part of his eccentric charm.

It's not clear if John ever mastered a fluent run through of that song--perhaps because he also decided that year to learn to dye yarn and weave so's he could make a Navajo blanket...which then was relegated to the closet when he decided to learn to tan a deer hide using its own brains.

You get the picture. The point, though, is not that John is all about starts; the point is that John has unending enthusiasm and curiosity and passion and energy. In anything that matters, such as friendship and love, he has consistency and follow-through in tumbling heaps.

For me, personally, one of my favorite memories of John has to do with my own wedding, which took place in 1999 at the very environmental learning center where he and my Groom first met. After the ceremony and a little bingo and some ginormous plates of roast pork, Groom and I danced our way through the reception. Towards the end of the night, when I was a fair bit tired of all the socializing, shoeless because my feet hurt so much, Johnny grabbed me off a chair and turned me slowly around the now-empty dance floor. As we spun, he whispered to me about how awe-inspiring love made public was; he eased me out of my own wedding with a feeling of joy.

It was, therefore, a karmic pleasure to share in John's own joy this past weekend, when he--now in his early 40's--celebrated his own wedding. I don't know his new wife, Jan, very well, but I can say she's worthy of every bit of John's delights, and, by God, if he ever starts a Navajo blanket in her presence, she'll make sure he finishes the thing.

Here's a little pictorial tour of our wedding-related days in St. Louis:


The student naturalists have grown up and reproduced and now hang out at farmer's markets. Here Paco, who dotes on little guys, feeds Baby Forest (the son of another student naturalist from back when).

What I really like about this photo is that it illustrates how Groom, some years back, mastered dandling babies on his knee while simultaneously spacing out entirely.


Baby Forest, Mama Ella, and Paco cool off in the wading pool, taking a moment to stare at the sky and wonder if it's a bird, a plane, or a piece of St. Louis' gooey butter cake flying overhead.


Dudes, if you ever go to St. Louis, go to Gus' Pretzel Shop, where you can get a bag of 25 pretzels the size of your palm for $10.00. Yea, I KNOW.

John spies his bride as she walks down the aisle towards him. The look in his eyes of naked adoration and absolute rightness gives me hope for a whole lot of things in the world.

Every ceremony needs a little musical breather in the middle. Them vows can get heavym so it's good to have some moments when the couple can stand quietly in a clutch.

Baby Forest's daddy (he has a name, and it is Michael) played and sang, just as he has for nearly all of the crew of original student naturalists when they've married.

As with the moment when the groom spies the bride, this picture also encapsulates the best of what a marriage can be--that business of having someone to walk down the path with you, slowly, in dreamy step, while all else falls away.

Even when we've made an effort (the kids saw an iron the day of the wedding for the first time in their lives and clamored to know what this new technology was called), we're pretty much a raggle-taggle family. I like to think it keeps us "approachable."

Note to everyone: if you're having a reception, and there are going to be kids there, get about 15 hula hoops. By the way, isn't Girl's new St. Louis haircut all cutie-pie on her? We actually took her to an upscale Aveda salon, as a special treat; so imagine my gasp when I went to pay for the cut and was told "Nine dollars, please. Yup. Our kids' cuts are nine dollars." GOODBYE, Great Clips, you big, dumb cheez-whiz of a place that charges $15! I'm totally driving back to St. Louis next time Girl needs a trim!!

John's brother made this cake. AND THREE OTHERS. I'm planning on writing in to the Food Network to get him on one of their cake challenge shows. Like he couldn't make Pluto out of buttercream for the Disney challenge?

Love this picture. See what I mean that Jan's a worthy mate?


John took a moment to address all those who had gathered at the reception. There were thanks. There was some speechifying about how he and Jan, some months back, had started focusing on the project of planning their wedding, on the day they visited the park and the gazebo and decided to hold it right there. Then John speechified some more about other projects they'd undertaken a few months back.

Like conceiving a baby.

Just when you've thrown a hella good wedding, you realize what will really make the crowd go wild, and it's called "the reveal of a baby braising inside the bride's cream-clad oven."


Okay, MOST of the crowd went wild at their announcment. Paco looks skeptical, doesn't he? I think he's worried his Pokemon trading card hours might take a hit if he has yet another baby to follow around and feed.

John was too busy hugging a hundred people to make this photo-op. But here's part of the original crew of student naturalists (and a few hangers-on),

happy,

healthy,

thriving--

a living rainbow connection.

"Home, Trashed Home"

As the countdown to the demolition of our kitchen ticked away, we continued our own initial destruction, tearing out cabinets and removing ceiling tiles; it got to the point where little in the room needed to be kept functional or pristine, and then Groom really cut loose. He hung bowling pins from the rafters and gave Paco a baseball bat. "Hit stuff" was the order.


Yea, everyone needs a daddy like that.


Then, this past Tuesday morning, with the kindergarten crew having done its best with a bat, the actual demolition crew came in and started working out their own anger issues on our kitchen.

"This is fun," swore the foreman to me, wiping sweat off his forehead. Hell yea. We filled his thermos with coffee and then pulled away in our mini-van, leaving them to their fun as we headed south.

The demolition dovetailed nicely with a two-week road trip we'd planned, first to St. Louis (where I am right now, as I type) and then back up to Minnesota next week for my 20-year college reunion (which is really odd, since I'm only 24). We're viewing camping as training for the rest of our summer, once we get back home, when we won't have a kitchen for at least 8 weeks. Groom will flip pancakes on the camp stove, and I'll be all about pork chops in the crock pot (one time I messed up and made crock in the pork pot, and let me tell you, that required extra scouring).

This looks so peaceful, but I've decided "tent" should actually be called "place that is simultaneously hot and cold, where my hips hurt and my arms fall asleep all night--and that's before the garbage trucks, inexplicably run by a Christian organization, come and empty the dumpsters near our campsite at 5:45 a.m."

We're in St. Louis now and today attended the rehearsal of a wedding that will be held this Sunday. Don't fear: we were invited to both.

As I think about the restricted eating that awaits us once we get back to Duluth, I am outrageously happy that the reception meal after the wedding will be barbeque. I plan to cram enough into to get me through the summer without having to restock my stomach.

"Not Occurring in Nature"

A convergence of events led to the following string of photos.

First, my city is revamping its entire school system (in a really logical fashion that is entirely in the best interests of the children because its end result will be at least 32 kids in EVERY classroom and not just in most of them), and the immediate effect of that revamping on my kids' particular school was that their school year finished a day earlier than other schools in the district so as to begin the remodeling pronto.

Secondly, my sister had long ago planned a trip to visit us during the last week of school, once her own teaching year was finished, so that she could come to Duluth and go to school with her niece and nephew. For her, this experience would be entitled Inner City Bilingual Teacher Observes Upper Middle Class Nordic Children At Play.

Thirdly, my sister asked, before her visit, what her niece and nephew (aka Girl and Paco Niblet) might want to do, in terms of experiences, that would cement her status as The Auntie of All Time.

Fourthly, the demolition of our kitchen begins tomorrow, which means we have needed to pack up that entire room (along with moving the furniture in other rooms to compensate for walls coming down/being moved). Packing up an entire kitchen while still living in it is The Suck with Sprinkles on Top.

All of these things taken together meant we had a bit of extra non-school-day time during my sister's visit with which to do Auntie of All Time activities...along with a strong need to clear the house and make some time for kitchen packing.

The plan was this: Auntie and Jocelyn would take the kids--for the first time ever--to The Mall of America and The Waterpark of America. We committed ourselves to two days of artifical lights, recycled air, and being surrounded by plastic objects in primary colors.


Auntie and Girl wonder what just happened to them


Niblet lives out a superhero fantasy...in a world where superheroes have tubes in their ears and therefore wear swim caps...and in which all water depths are just above the superhero's nostrils, resulting in a life vest costume


Speaking of Paco living out a fantasy, there was also this one, thanks to Mall of America having a Lego Store. Interesting sidenote: this Bobo Fett (or whoever the hell he is...help me out here, 38-year-old white guys!) then picked up Niblet and tossed him straight into the Pretzel Time stand


Once he recovered from the pretzel toss, Niblet went back in time, to The Land of the Lost, where Chaka no like fire and Paco do like Legos


Mall of America has an amusement park in its middle. The Mama of All Time rides the swings with Girl. That's my back, in the greenish/bluish shirt. Some of the rest of me was in that shirt, too, like my arms and collar bone


Getting an ice cream float at the cafe in The American Girl Place was way big fun. Dolls Molly and Emily enjoyed their pink lemonade, especially because they are the WWII dolls, and so, what with rationing, they hadn't had sweets in ever-so-long. Girl REALLY enjoyed her float once she spilled it all over herself, causing Auntie to declare, "I guess I'm just going to need to buy you a new shirt"


Shortly after buying Girl a new shirt, Auntie also declared that the Molly doll needed a matching outfit. Yea, it's a particular kind of mental illness that The American Girl Place engenders. I totally get it at the same time that I'm kind of horrified by it

Oh, but Auntie was only getting started. The Mall of America also features a Build-a-Bear Workshop, something else Paco and Girl had never experienced. They both swear the Build-a-Bear store was the best part of the whole trip. Paco created a monkey named Chico Bon Bon who has a karate suit and a Batman costume; Girl created a puppy named Scruffy who wears capris and a frog shirt. Jocelyn created a monster, complete with bolts on his neck and a lightning strike that brought him to life. I call him Jeeves


This is what a trip to Mall of America looks like when Auntie of All Time gets back home and holds the fist full of receipts. She only cried for a minute

Later that night, after wiping away Auntie's tears, we remembered that you can always just make your own fun


And for those of you who love an O. Henry-like twist at the end: Her brain forever altered by the Legos and floats and stuffed animals, Jocelyn found herself compelled to smash all symbols of rampant consumerism. Slowly, slowly she raised the sledgehammer.

Just don't ask where Auntie is now.

Wait! What's that I hear from under the floor boards?

Thu-thump. Thu-thump. Thu-thump.

"If You Like This, You Should Read the One About The Time My Bra Fell Out of My Ear at a Bat Mitzvah. That's 'My Ear,' Not 'My Rear”


Mostly, I’m glad my antics didn’t break her water.

I have a friend in the neighborhood, you see, who is in her 28th week of pregnancy; part of her MO when pregnant is to have the baby early because she only has half a uterus (somehow, her uterus is bisected and, thus, has only half the capacity of a normal one; however, I'll be danged if uterine tissue isn’t crazy-stretchy, kind of like those weird spiky hair balls you can hold in your hand or stretch over your head, and if the image of a spiky hairball as an internal organ isn’t the mental image of your day, then, pray tell, what possibly has topped it?).

Because it’s starting to get a bit tight inside Neighbor Big Bump--even with the stretchy spike ball that is her uterus--and because she has a history of going into labor early, no one takes it lightly when she has an afternoon of Braxton-Hicks contractions, as she did last week. Once she stopped cleaning the garage, though, and lay down for awhile, the contractions stopped, which was quite fortuitous since our baby shower for her was to be held two days later,

and nothing’s more of a downer at a baby shower than the appearance of the actual baby. Hell, PeeWee, at the neighborhood shower we all just wanted to eat scones and watch Neighbor Big Bump open gifts. We didn’t sign up for placental extraction as part of the gig—although I must admit that the spoon from the fruit salad could have done a bang-up job at curetting that half-a-uterus, after the baby landed in the taco dip and added vernix to the sour cream.


So it was cool those contractions stopped, and we could eat without fear of meconium in the muffins.

You may have noticed that I refer to Neighbor Big Bump’s pregnancies and how predictably they unfold as though I’m drawing upon a fair amount of evidence. I mean, it’s kind of unusual to have a labor MO.

For clarification, here is Neighbor Big Bump’s current family configuration:


What you don’t see in this photo are the two miscarriages, or the embryo conceived in a fertility clinic that ended up testing positive for a form of trisomy before implantation…not that this neighbor couple has trouble conceiving naturally, but you may have noticed that what they conceive are boys. And Neighbor Big Bump—perhaps due to her own father leaving her family when she was young and being raised by a single mother, perhaps due to having only brothers herself, perhaps due to getting through the toughest moments of her life encircled by fierce girlfriends—has always felt deeply in her soul that she is meant to have a daughter. After looking into adoption and feeling that its risks and costs weren’t for their family, Neighbor Big Bump had drawn upon an inheritance, as well as maxing out a credit card, and used a fertility clinic in an attempt at gender manipulation.

The embryo that was conceived there, the one that ended up with the trisomy issue?

Male.

(how they knew that, I have no idea)

At this point in their lives, this family is just happy they’re all healthy and smart and glad that the contractions last week stopped so that they weren’t suddenly dealing with the unimaginable result of a labor at 28 weeks. It was time to celebrate. The baby shower did just that.

I like to think that I upped the entertainment when the shower was drawing to a close. As I worked at cleaning up the community center during wind-down chat and goodbyes, I suddenly had a surreal moment, witnessed only by Neighbor Big Bump, who happened to glance away from her conversation at just the moment when I looked down at the ground in front of me and thought, ”Bwahh? What just fell out of the leg of my pants? It looks like…it is…my underwear…?”

Then, a nanosecond later, I thought, “But, strangely, it’s not the underwear I’m wearing today. I remember I put green lady lacies on today, so how can it be that a very distinct pair of my pink undies is now on the floor at my feet?”

At the moment I sussed out that the pink undies must have been lying in wait inside my jeans since the last time they went through the wash together, and that they had gradually been working their way out of my pants leg for the previous three hours, I also looked up and saw Neighbor Big Bump’s incredulous look.

“Is that a headband, and did it actually just fall out of your pants?” she called across the room.

“Er, no. It’s my underwear.” I have always veered towards headbandish underwear, and if that’s my only fault (“if” being the operative word here), then I’m doing okay, I thought defensively.

“YOUR UNDERWEAR?” she yelled, starting to laugh in a potentially-water-breaking manner.

Her laughter continued, especially as she had me recap for the entire crowd what had just happened—all while I stood there, holding my pink smalls. And I do love telling a story with props:


It was fitting that my rogue undies were pink,

a harbinger of things to come.

You see, this time, with her seventh pregnancy and eighth conception,






she’s having a girl.

"Ain't We Lucky We Got 'Em"


During the 1980's, I attended junior high, high school, and college. To recap that, for those of you Distractites who are reading this with one eye locked onto The Housewives of East St. Louis, I was an adolescent of the '80s. Thus, all of my worst hormonal moments of wracked self-esteem were accompanied by the soundtrack of Kajagoogoo singing "Too Shy" and featured me, in a regrettable Flashdance/Madonna fusion, wearing a slashed-up sweatshirt and fingerless lace gloves.

Continuing to employ our magical time machine (borrowed from J.J. Abrams, who, now that he's done creating an alternate timeline in the new STAR TREK movie, doesn't need it 'til the sequel) and spiral backwards through the annals of history , we can hop another decade and dial in to the fact that, if Jocelyn was an angst-ridden teen in the '80s, she was also a child of the '70s.

And the cool thing about the elementary school years plus the vibe of the 1970's? We kids were free to be you and me, baby.

Even things that, objectively, might have sucked seemed okay and fun because--high five, Tricky Dick--it was the '70s, and nobody could pin me down!!

Think of it this way: in an era when Carol Burnett wore curtain rods inside her dress; when Hee-Haw taught me to sing "Pffft, You Were Gone"; when guest stars Ruth Buzzi and Jim Nabors were on "The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour"; when that high-spirited charmer, Little Joe, made Hoss roll his eyes in exasperation on "Bonanza"; when Schneider was both building superintendent AND family counselor on "One Day at a Time"; and when a visiting fundamentalist clergyman made a fool of himself on Walton's Mountain after drinking moonshine...well, life couldn't be anything but good.


Hmmmmmm.

It occurs to me that the previous paragraph might give the impression that all I did was watch television during the 1970's, much like you are right now as you read this (prediction about your show: I'm pretty sure Kaison's husband is going to leave her...for 10-to-life...and Cassoulet's line of messenger bags "to hold re-ups and pistols" is going to fail, so turn off The Housewives already, and train both eyes on the computer monitor, you slacker blog reader). Indeed, given that I was "firing up the colortini and watching the pictures fly through the air," how challenging was it, we must wonder, for me to be carefree and tra-la-la when my days were comprised of little more than watching child prodigy Gary Coleman ask his rich, white benefactor, "Whatchu talkin'bout, Mr. D?"

That's a fair question. Honestly, I spent at least five years of the 1970's in front of the television. As well, I spent two years making crank calls on a rotary phone (when the party line wasn't tying up the line), asking one Mr. Thomas Morton of 1405 Poly Drive why, if his fridge was running, he didn't go catch it!!! What's more, I spent a cumulative six months of the '70s walking to the Kwik Way to buy Wacky Wafers with the dime I'd just earned for scrubbing the toilet. Then I spent the other two-and-a-half years of that decade outside, riding my bike around the neighborhood with a pack of kids, playing Cops 'N Robbers and wondering at what point Lisa Mackin, then twelve, would start actually wearing a shirt when she came out to play (...speaking of late developers...not that we were, but I'm guessing that if you're sitting there watching one of those vapid Housewives shows, at least some small part of your development is arrested, so let's just agree that we all need to put on our shirts now and grow up).

I'll have you know, too, that I also sometimes turned off the television to go to my friend Ruby's house, where we'd try to make muscles in our arms by doing curls with the soup cans in her pantry. Or sometimes I went to Girl Scouts or ballet class or trick-or-treating, especially to THE MOST-AWESOME-HOUSE-EVER that handed out cans of 7-UP on Halloween.

And if you've never seen a house hand out soda pop, then you need to get a passport and travel a little bit, Jonah, 'cause it's a sight to behold. The shutters actually morph into arms.

Perhaps most notably, one other thing I did when not watching Peter Falk's crazy eye and fumbling gait on "Columbo" was go out in the backyard and scoop up dog poop.

It had to be done, right? And since my parents were busy with singing and earning pay checks and watching "Maude," it was left to us kids to do the deed. My sister earned her escape through babysitting jobs and a declared love of CATS (not the musical, so fie on you, Andrew Lloyd Webber, you Danielle Steel of Broadway!). Mostly it was my brother and me, out back, shovels in hand, scooping the poop.

Get this, however: you know how things have changed since the 1970's, like how people no longer wear hot pants or dumb hats or leg warmers or any of those embarrassing fashion follies that mark that long-ago decade as atrocious?

Crap. Never mind.

Well, anyhow, some things have changed since the '70s. I mean, "Facts of Life" is off the air, for one, and that popular, stuck-up Blair is now a homeschooling hardcore Christian who declares on her Website "...the author of my story is my heavenly Father."

Also, people play Space Invaders less often (strangely, though, Pong continues to rule), and the Marlboro Man stopped riding a horse and lighting up when he died of lung cancer. Or maybe a few days after he died. But eventually, he stopped.

Clearly, then, the world has become a vastly different place in the last 30-odd years. For me, as I think back to my childhood, I see that the main thing that's changed, outside of the exciting process called Jocelyn's Growing Boobies, is the aforementioned dog poop.

Remember the dog poop of the '70s? Oh, yes, you do.

If your memory is honest, you're picturing something white and crusty.

This leads me to my point: what ever happened to the white dog poop of the '70s?

I've been pondering this for some time now, feeling nostalgic for the calcified, fossilized dog poop of my youth. Sure, when backyard poop scooping happened, there were also some fresher, browner specimens, much like today's modern dog poop, but mixed in were always a goodly amount of the dessicated whites.

Solving this mystery is easy enough, I suppose. With new public policies and social contracts in place, people now pick up their dogs' warm, steaming emissions virtually as they are evacuated, often using that oogy "hand in a plastic bag" approach.

Thus, the poop just goes away, never having its rightful chance to weather the elements and age into art. For those of us who are deeply nostalgic, this is a serious cultural loss. Seriously, I have a 9-year-old daughter who looks blankly at me when I start waxing romantic about white dog poop. "Whatchu talkin'bout, Mrs. J?" she asks.

Lest you feel dragged into the black hole of my woe, I have good news.


A few weeks ago, after he attended the local Wednesday night trail race--a series of races, in fact, which take place at different trail systems around the area every spring and fall--my Groom came home and announced, breathlessly (not from the running but from good tidings!), "I found it!! I found the white dog poop from the '70s. It's out there. We can go see it, if you want. It's about half an hour from here, on the 'Bull Run' course that goes down for about two miles before it then goes straight up for about two miles. Remember that place and how you kind of passed out there that year you ran the race? Anyhow, it's where the white dog poop lives in this new millenium! I found it. It's out there, and I have the coordinates. Knowing how excited you'd be, I left the car idling, so pack up the kids and get in. Let's go get a gyro and sit by the white dog poop while we eat!!!"

You know what, though? Just like it was a bad idea to go back and drive by my elementary school a few years ago--the place was too small, too stripped of emotion, too clinical for my heart's rememberance--I knew instinctively that it would be wrong to go visit the White Poop of the '70s. Somehow, seeing it now, with grown-up eyes and tzatziki sauce on my chin, would

diminish a cherished piece of my experience,

re-open a time of yearnings that have since comfortably relaxed,

force me to question the validity of other hallowed memories from that time (could it be "Good Times" wasn't actually a critical social exegesis?),

and undermine a personal mythology that still, decades later, makes me want to don a white disco suit, hold my pet rock close, and cheer for Mark Spitz to win just one more gold medal.


Indeed, some things are best left unscooped.

"Instead of Being a Gumshoe, I Chew Gum and Buy Shoes"


I'm trying to figure out why I don't feel like sitting down and writing a post this week. Perhaps it's because I just finished a year (my 19th) of teaching writing, because I have been spending every evening the last two weeks compiling and editing a 100 page student publication, or because summer classes start today. At any rate, it sure is easier to yammer than type.



After running a cholesterol check on Paco's blood, we had to change our choice for lunch.



To have given birth to the perfect comedic foil is one of life's special joys.

That, and shoving His Nibs into the dishwasher hole when he ignores every last bit of the crap I fling his way.

"Preeeeeeepare Ye The Way of The Froth"

"I Can't Even Look at These Photos Without Needing to Roll My Body in Pancake Batter and Flip Myself into the Non-Existent Arms of the Badly-Combed-Over, Green-Suited Fisher-Price Man Who Worked Changing the Stoplight From Red to Green in the Toy Village of My Youth"

To summarize that title: for me, much of the zest of life is tied up in food and toys. If Buzz Lightyear could hobble up to me, holding a cob of corn dripping with butter, I'd take him to infinity--and beyond. If a Chatty Cathy doll could toss me a quesadilla, frisbee style, I'd pee myself. Or if a Lego dinosaur could stomp up and present me with a bowl of potato chips he'd crisped with his own breath, I'd call him Son and send him to camp.

You might, then, gather that I am a huge fan of Groom's final portfolio project in his digital photography class this semester. Having to choose a "theme" around which to shoot ten photos...and not wanting to go cliched or cheesy...Groomy decided to make photos of "What They're Up to When We're Not Looking."

The scope of that theme could have reached vast and wide, even into Mel Gibson's underwear, but, wisely, His Groomitude remained tightly-focused and turned out the following ten Playmobil/food-based photos:


The Great Coffee Siphoning Caper

Strawberry Catapult

Cheerio Diver Surfacing

Scaling the Everest That Is Called, in My Language, "Banana Bread"

Give Me Pineapple, or Give Me Honeydew

Cracker Cabinet (I'm not showing the companion photo entitled "Honkey Ho-Ho's")

When You're a Skeleton, Och, But The Cheese Goes Right Through You


Robert Falcon Scott's Polar Expedition Could Have Benefited From Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream, Especially Right About the Time They Were All Penning Their Farewell Notes to Their Wives and Gnawing on Their Own Pinky Finger Bones

Underage, Under the Influence, and on the Counter

Par-TAAAAAAY!

These photos encapsulate what I've always felt about my husband: it's amazing that someone can see so clearly into my brain and my soul--places where beach balls are made of cream puffs; skateboards glide on crescent rolls; plastic horses deliver curry; and S & M Barbies work with licorice whips.

And, of course, Groom himself is both my plaything and a real dish.

"Gallery in the Galley"

In which I blather again--oh, holy Jeebus, yes--and then some more.



If you can't tolerate the video, or if it just makes you cry too much, the upshot is:

my husband can't get a critique of his art work.

So that means you should give him one.

"In the End, Only Quentin Tarantino Could Do It Justice: Part IV"



Silence.

More of that.

Then some silence.

After two minutes, Groom finally put down his bowl of ice cream and meandered over to my prone form. Holding his spoon up to my mouth and noting that it fogged up with my breath, he returned to his snack and enjoyed the unaccustomed silence.

The next day, I came to. By then, Groomeo had set up a borrowed squirrel trap near Banana Alley in our kitchen and also bought a rat trap, which he set in the oven drawer.

Occasionally, over the next few days, he would stand at the back kitchen door and wave out to me in the little lean-to I had pitched in out in the raspberry patch. It was a small space, certainly, but it provided enough room for me, a sleeping bag, and Tuppy--not that I needed Tuppy, what with the great out of doors known as God’s Toilet all around me, but I’d brought my little chamber pot pal along for company and sanity saving, a la Tom Hanks and Wilson in CASTAWAY.

My, but Tuppy was cute once I drew a face on him. I spent many an hour back there amongst the raspberries, marveling at the clarity of his complexion, rubbing his back, asking him about his childhood in the factory.

Oh, all right, I didn’t really move out to the raspberry patch, but I sure as Stuart Little shadowed Groom more tightly than usual after the RAT pronouncement—no mean feat, since I always spend a fair amount of time latched onto his skin. It is, after all, very, very soft.

Indeed, we had a Velcro marriage for a few weeks, as we waited for the traps to spring and my soul to be released from bondage.

A visual metaphor for the marriage during this time.

The live trap proved no help, as the beast in the kitchen was small enough to get inside to eat the peanut butter…yet big enough to keep the trap door from snapping closed behind him as he ate.

How did I know he was male, you ask? Did I ever undertake any gender-typing examination, you wonder?

Effing screaming hellbats of yore, no I did not. However, I did find out later that he was actually very scrawny. And, in my experience (which includes the time I glanced at a jar of Jif and gained four pounds), anything that can eat loads of peanut butter every night and remain underweight is unquestionably male.

Eventually, then, we gave up on the live squirrel trap. It was up to the rat trap to bring home the glory and allow a foot of physical space to come between Groom and me. That “tight all the time” business was a bit too middle school even for my juvenile sensibility. We’d be walking around with our hands slipped into the back pockets of each other’s Levi 501’s, and suddenly I’d be possessed with the urge to yell out, randomly, “Hey, Mr. Murphy! That was a really tough pop quiz you gave in geometry yesterday!!”

One night, as we lay sleeping upstairs, we heard a loud clank down in the kitchen. Sitting up simultaneously, due to the Velcro, we managed to look at each other in a fashion both bleary and alarmed.

Is it Santa? I wondered to myself, hopefully. I did need new socks.

Alas, no. The sound had been that of a rat trap snapping shut inside an oven drawer. Peeling away the Velcro, I helpfully shoved Groom out of the bed, murmuring, “Go get ‘em, Tiger. And don’t forget to wear gloves when you deal with it. The Plague has been awaiting its chance to resurge.”

Two minutes later, Groom’s feet trudged back up the stairs, and he climbed back into bed with a “Rat bastard sprang the trap but got away.”

How very O.J. Simpson of him.

True to fashion, Groom was snoring thirty seconds later. To my credit, it only took me two more hours before I stopped listening for the sound of tiny scrabbling feet on the stair case.

The cool thing about rats, though, is that they’re slow learners.

Two nights later, we heard the same metallic clank; I gave the same shove; but this time, Groom was gone for some time.

In fact, I was listening to the third song sung by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Joey Bishop by the time he returned.

“Well,” he said, coming into the bedroom. “That was really gross.”

Because Groom is both of Norwegian extraction and an emergency First Responder, he doesn’t shake easily, I realized immediately that the fewer details I knew, the better the rest of my life would be. “So, um, it’s dead?”

“Yea. And it was gross.” He actually shuddered.

“It was ginormous, right, because how could it be small if it had all the world’s darkness powered by universal energies of malevolence and then packed into one body?” I needed to know.

“No, actually it was scrawny.” Despite the peanut butter. “But long.” Like a pole vaulter.

“Where’d you put it?” I asked, needing to know where not to look.

“Don’t worry. You won’t ever see it where I put it.”

Was it in the dishwasher, then? Perhaps the washing machine?

“So it’s over. It’s actually over.”

And it was. The only remnants of that night, in fact, are memories of my fear and my love of Tuppy, who still sleeps under my side of the bed

…and the fact that I can never see Groom in only his boxers and a pair of gardening gloves without having an adrenaline surge.


But that’s a whole ‘nother story.

"Clearly, Because This is Part III of What Could Have Been a Two-Sentence Story, The Director of This Overblown Epic is Kevin Costner"

Thus, from then on, I couldn’t sleep on the couch. I couldn’t stay on the main floor after Groom went up to bed. Part of our marriage vows is that he will never leave me alone in the presence—real or implied—of a rodent, just as I will never leave him alone in the presence of a woman wearing a wig, a polyester track suit and chunky gold jewelry who has just squawked, “I tell you this, hand to heart: you’ve never experienced delicious dining until you’ve been on a Disney cruise.”

Sticking to the agreement, every night, he toted me up the stairs with him at 10:30 p.m., right about when I was waking up for the day…and when my bladder was ready to do some serious and repeated unloading.

You know me not at all if you doubt that I actually tried taking the screen off the window in our bedroom, so that I could hang my rear out the hole and pee down the front of the house during the night time hours. Unfortunately, the house had been built in 1892, when windows were designed upon a presumption of Outhouse Existence and People Who Are Not Damn Pampered Wussies. So no luck.


Note the distinct lack of urine trickling out the upstairs window.

I also tried to get my substantial posterior angled so that I could use the Girl’s widdle portable potty up in the bedroom. Woefully, after it got snagged on my thigh that one time and drenched me with an outpouring of just-released still-warms, I abandoned that strategy.

The solution came in the form of one of our finest modern inventions (provided you are willing to embrace the notion that chemicals and toxins constantly leeching into your food constitutes a fine example of ingenuity): Tupperware.

We had a good-sized tupperware bowl, just waiting to be initiated as Chamber Pot of the 21st Century.

Tuppy and I got tight there, for a month or so. Tuppy ruled. Tuppy cradled. Tuppy caught. Tuppy also challenged my husband’s love for me, as he’d wake up every morning only to be greeted with the impressive inches of my night’s work, right there, next to the bed. I’d blanch with him and grumble, “Yea, I know. But I need you to walk with me as I carry this down to the bathroom to dump it out. Rodents aren’t afraid of urine, even that of a woman as powerful as I. Just, er, look up at the ceiling as you walk down the stairs. That’s not at all dangerous. Maybe whistle a little.”

Tuppy and I continued bonding for several weeks. During this time, Groom and I came to a gradual acceptance that the scat we were tracking went beyond shrew or vole in size and heft. This hunch became a certainty one evening when, having braved an extra half hour on the couch by myself, I glanced towards the kitchen and saw a large blur, somewhat like the Tasmanian Devil, whirring across the doorway.

Screaming, I ran up the stairs, planted my foot firmly into Tuppy, who sat on the floor, awaiting my nocturnal visits, and hobbled frantically over Groom, who was reading in the bed. “There’s…an…enormous…horrifying…beast…dancing…with bloodlust in its eyes...calling on all dark magic…in the kitchen!” I managed to whoof out.

Naturally, when Groom went down to look, the kitchen was all innocence and light. He found nothing.

Except a spoon and a bowl of ice cream, which he was savoring entirely too casually upon his return to the bedroom--where I sat, a quaking mass of raw nerves. Licking fudge off his upper lip, he remarked, “Well. So. I’ve been thinking about it. And I'd say we should get a live-squirrel trap. We need something big for what we’re dealing with.”

Recoiling, I shrieked, “YOU. THINK. WE. HAVE. A. SQUIRREL. COMING. INTO. THE. KITCHEN. EATING. MY. BANANAS. AND. POOPING????”

“No,” he responded, digging into the bowl for another bite. “I think we have a rat.”

---------

Heck, yea, there's a Part IV coming. Truth be told, I'm in manic grading week, looking ahead to final exams, and so I'm drawing out this story in an attempt to get over the end-of-semester hump.

Just wait until the end of next fall semester, when I plan to turn a story about a stubbed toe into a seven-part series of posts that detail in 97 sentences every aspect of the moment I shouted, "Oh, that really hurt!"

"...And If the Coen Brothers Won't Direct It, Don't You Think Jonathan Demme Could Tap into the Necessary Pathos?"


Part II:

Subconsciously, of course, I had an inkling about the culprit.

Them was animal scats.

Looking at Former Naturalist Groom, I pled, “You used to teach Small Mammals class…so what creature emitted this junk?”

In our marriage, this question is the equivalent of “Does this make me look fat?” in other marriages. The poor male needed to be very, very careful how he answered.

You see, it’s possible I have a wee issue with things rodential. I had missed classes in college due to encountering squirrels on the path; I had called the police when a bat got into my house; I had experienced a mini-nervous breakdown in junior high when the end of my neighbor’s hamster’s tail broke off in her hand (and this, before that same hamster killed and partially ate his compatriot the time I pet sat).

Groom was aware of both my history and my desire for honesty. Thus, he didn’t want to affirm or deny the possibility that a creature with clawed, scrabbly feet, a pointed tale, and a lust for blood might reside within our house.

Cleverly, he drew upon his history of teaching diplomacy to student naturalists and answered my question as he would have the “Does this make me look fat?” query:

“Well, what do you think?”

What I thought was that it was time to pack my bags and head to a hotel until a team of eleventy-seven pest control professionals had rid the house of every possible rodent, even if they had to inject the place with clouds of toxic gasses that would subsequently cause the fetus in my belly to grow three eyes.

Turns out, what Groom thought was that the drawer was full of something clearly larger than mouse emissions and that they had come from a shrew or a vole. His reasoned reaction entailed not a week in a hotel but rather getting some traps, yet—hello, Einstein Trump--traps do not even come with a swimming pool or air conditioning or cable tv, so where was the fun in that?

Harrumphing, I watched from the corner, arms crossed, while he set a handful of traps later that day. As I harrumphed, I realized that the traps were all in the kitchen, and the kitchen was an essential part of my nocturnal route to the bathroom. I couldn’t get to Bathroom without Kitchen. Hmmm. Suddenly, having considered the logistics and realizing Kitchen Bypass = exploding bladder, I found myself on the horns of a dilemma.

Harrumphing even more, I distracted myself by musing about The Strange Case of the Half-Eaten Banana, a mystery that had been unfolding inside my work bag that week. Every night, I would put a banana into my satchel and lean the bag against the back kitchen door, where I could grab it on my way out the next morning. Strangely, a couple of times that week, when I would get to my office and fish around my bag for the banana, I’d find it already half eaten. Pretty high-larious practical joke, O Uninspired Family, is what I’d been thinking up until the day of Rodent Squizz in the Oven Drawer.




But.

Now.

Gnawed-upon bananas and masses of excrement beneath the cookie baker and no place to relieve myself—all these traumas mixed together in my psyche, as I faced the truth of wildlife afoot inside my home.

And it wore a tiny t-shirt reading “I Defecate for Potassium!”

---------------

Part III pending...

“Still Negotiating with James Cameron to Direct, But Since He's Kind of a Crusty Wanker, I'm Working a Side Deal with the Coen Brothers”


We used to live about one hundred yards from our current home, in a house that had one bathroom, which was located on the main floor, off the kitchen.

I got pregnant while we lived there.

The father of the baby was my husband.

Whew.



At any rate, right about Month 7 of that pregnancy, I started sleeping on the couch in the living room, as the eight-times-a-night trudge up and down the staircase from the bedroom to the bathroom had begun to wear down footpads, knee cartilage, and morale. On the couch, though, I was mere feet away from the embrace of the bathroom. Plus, it was easier to sleep sitting upright on the couch, a technique that helped fight off heartburn, which was another hazard of late pregnancy. So there I was, night after night, beached on the couch, clutching my Tums, my tp, my bowl full of Moose Tracks ice cream, and my belly (third hazard of the last trimester: round ligament pain).


I wish I could tell you twelve babies walked out of me shortly after this photo was taken. But no, I was the prow of a ship thanks to only one damn baby. However, in my defense, he weighed 60 pounds.


Although I was lumbering, the system was elegant.


Then I opened the drawer underneath the oven one day and found it full of

--How you say it?--

fecal matter.

Looking quizzically at Groom, I asked, “Is there something you need to tell me?”

He avowed innocence, crossing his heart, batting his charming blues, taking me into the bathroom and providing evidence that he had made deposits in the traditional place. Recently.

My attention then shifted to Girl, then two years old. At that point, she was pretty well potty-trained. Yet she had the look of an imp crossbred with a rascal sprinkled liberally with scamp. What’s more, her rear end, in its occasional personified state, might have spotted that under-oven drawer and fancied it just the right height for some toiletual unleashing. When I showed her the problem in the drawer, she hugged my knees tightly and swore, “No, Mommy. I pwomise I awways make my tinkles in da widdle potty in da bat-room.” Ever a sucker for a knee hug (note to Groom), I bought her story.

Next, it occurred to me that I was in the grip of some pretty fierce hormones, and perhaps they were amnesia-inducing. Being generally bleary, I needed to entertain the idea that I might have wandered off the couch one night and, thinking I was in the bathroom, squatted in the oven drawer. Stranger things had happened. Like the time my bra wound up hammered to the wall of a bikers’ clubhouse in Denmark. Logically, isn’t pooping in an oven drawer a natural extension of radically misplacing lingerie in a public place?

However, with a fourth hazard of late pregnancy being reluctant bowels, I felt pretty certain the crime was not mine.

-----------------

Part II forthcoming...

"Won't Someone Come Vacuum, Though?"

"Kindergarten Sous Chef"

If I do no other good in this life, at least I have had a part in creating this one:



He didn't want to speak because the onion fumes irritated his mouth--this in addition to his eyes and nose, but he didn't have a "gaping maw" goggle on hand.

Since he's certainly not getting off the hook as my kitchen helper, I guess we know what to get him next Christmas.

A mouth plug.

“Try Honoring Thy Child for Damn Once”

While I like to pretend that I channel Julie Andrews as Maria Von Trapp and yodel through life as though I’m about nothing more than playclothes for the children and enjoying myself high on a hill with a lonely goat-herd,

the truth is I do get irritated sometimes.

Early in life, I got irritated when my brother and sister would sit on me or trespass into my personal space. In retrospect, I’m irritated that so many photos of me pinned beneath my siblings exist because this meant my mom continued taking pictures instead of intervening to help me get a single breaf in my body.

Not that, um, I have any photos of my own children in distress that I insisted on taking because it cracked me up.


Later, I got irritated when a junior high counselor looked at my 5’ 6” body at 120 pounds and called my parents in for a meeting to ask, “So, do you think her weight might be a problem?” The deeper piss was that I then had to sit there and endure the three adults in that meeting finding grounds for agreement--as though that wouldn’t still be affecting me, hmmm, let’s see…doing the math…carry the two…30 years later.

Past that, I got irritated in high school when a pushy police officer (no sense of boundaries at all) confiscated the bottle of sloe gin I’d just stashed—at no small risk to myself, considering the prickers—under a yucca plant on the edge of town.

Even later, I got irritated in college when I received my one and only “C.” I got the grade in Russian Literature for a paper over which I’d labored, an essay that examined the symbolism of hair in the Russian novel. Apparently, the professor didn’t buy my thesis, which argued: “Ineluctably, Russians use vodka to cope with the reality of pervasively bad hair, which ranges from scraggly beards to horrific dye-jobs.”

In my twenties, irritation set in when the gay bar with the best music and every possible good vibration would close at 2 a.m. when I was nowhere near ready to be done dancing. Small solace was the fact that the Wendy’s drive-thru was still open at that hour, so I could savor the balm of eating $1 chicken nuggets while propping my bare feet up on the dashboard.

A new kind of irritation was born along with Girl, whose longest stretch of sleep in the first ten months, whether being held, nursed, or driven around, was 45 minutes. Certain that it couldn’t be worse the second time around, I was stunned when Paco was born and trained me into genuine irritation with his 20 minute spurts of sleep.

In recent years, my irritations have centered around: the works of best-selling putter-of-words-on-the-page-but-notice-I’m-not-actually-calling-her-a-writer Jodi Picoult (I only threw one of her books once, and even though the sound of it hitting the radiator woke Groom with a start, I’m pretty sure my restraint qualifies me as surprisingly tolerant, as the book actually deserved a bonfire); the Fox Network; a president who derailed anything I still believed the U.S. stood for; and overcooked pasta.

Oh, yes, and one more thing: parents who actively try not to see or know their own kids.

It’s a rare breed, this type of parent, and (to generalize completely) all too often it’s fathers who opt out. Caveat: pretty much, the fathers I hang with rock the parenthood, especially His Groomishness, who has been our stay-at-home for the last nine years; however, in my many and varied eavesdropping spy pursuits in public places, I have observed Fathers Whom I Do Not Know Personally failing to step up. For example, let’s say two-year-old Jo-Jo is at the library, playing at the train table in the kids’ area under the watch of his father. So long as he’s by himself, Jo-Jo works happily on forging an unnaturally-close bond with a locomotive named Thomas, going so far as to bathe the engine in saliva; during this time of contented individual play, Dad can and should keep his head buried in Distracted Codger magazine. However, when another child approaches the table, and Jo-Jo then throws his torso across the table full of engines, covering them possessively and shouting out “No, me no share. You no touchie,” and Dad doesn’t stir or look up to correct his child’s behavior, I get irritated. I rather want to sidle up to Dad and note, “Say, this looks like a time when you could let your kid know that he doesn’t own the world. What he’s doing over there is a kind of passive bullying, you know.”

This little scenario plays out in many venues, but the underlying point—that Parent On Duty just can’t be bothered—gets in my craw, and the words “Heave off your ass, LazyPappy, and take charge of your kid” burble around in my mouth.

Twenty-seven guesses, then, as to how I responded during a quick phone conversation I had the other day, when I called to RSVP for Paco/Niblet to attend a classmate’s birthday party.

Me: “Hi, this is Paco’s mother. My son is in your son’s kindergarten class and received the invitation today for Sonny’s bowling party on Friday night. Thank you so much, and you can count on Paco being there. He’s really excited!”

Sonny’s Dad: “Real good then.”

Me: “So, yes, he’ll be there, and as long as I have you on the line, I was hoping you could give me a few ideas of what Sonny is into, so we could get him a present he’ll really enjoy.”

Sonny’s Dad, dismissively: “That’s more his mom’s department. Call back after 5:00 when she’s home from work.”

Me, starting to gently and repetitively pound my head against the wall: “Oh, yes, I see, of course. As it turns out, though, we were about to head out for an afternoon of running errands, and I was hoping we could pick up something this afternoon while we’re out, so even some general ideas…”

Sonny’s Dad, brusquely: “Like I said, I wouldn’t know.”

Me, still thinking I might force an admission out of this man that he’d actually met his own child, even in passing, say, in the bathroom: “I’d guess since he’s turning six, maybe some Legos would be appealing, or would it be nice for you all to have some more outdoor toys? Do these seem to be things Sonny might enjoy?”

Sonny’s Dad, clearly peeved now: “It looks like you might just have to get him whatever you think.”

At that moment, I reached up and grabbed my tongue between two of my fingers and held it still, lest it begin flapping angrily, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you do share a house with the boy, don’t you? And since I know you do, might it be possible that you’ve ever had to swear loudly when you’ve tripped over a random, misplaced toy on the floor--as you’ve stomped from your plasma tv in the den towards the kitchen to retrieve yet another beer from the fridge—and when you’ve looked down to see what the offending object is, you’ve noticed that it’s something that the child begot of your own loins plays with some times? Then, as you have plucked it out of your foot, have you ever noticed something specific about it, such as the word ‘Pokemon’ or ‘Star Wars’ printed across it? Assuming any of this has ever happened, could you be bothered to take one second out of your day right now and mutter those words at me so that I don’t spend my money on a badminton set when all Sonny really wants is an Ariel Barbie?”

Me, releasing my tongue and wiping my fingers on my pants: “Yes, indeed. It would seem we’ll have to wing it on this one since Sonny’s preferences remain a mystery to everyone. Thank you so much for your time.”

Douchenozzle.

Ultimately, Paco chose something for Sonny that he, himself, would like (a newly-released trading card game). Two days later, at the bowling alley, when Sonny opened the gift, he hugged Paco and exclaimed, “Cool! I totally wanted this!”

Right about then, Sonny’s Dad, having swung by the party for a few minutes--as such irritating fathers do--wandered up to Paco, tousled his hair absentmindedly, and commented, “Happy birthday, son. Darned if you don’t look more like me every day.”

"I Find Myself Hard to Tolerate for Seven Whole Minutes, So You're Not to Be Faulted for Skipping the Video and Just Going Straight to the Question; However, Skipping the Video Means You Will Not Be Hearing Styx Today--Unless You're Humming 'Babe, I'm Leaving/I Must Be On My Way' As You Click Over to Another Blog"



The upshot is this: I need to re-invigorate my Ipod playlist so that I am motivated to run faster than a snapping turtle whose feet are caught in a mixture of quicksand and molasses.

While you ponder what kind of evil genius stirred the molasses into that quicksand and then plunked a turtle into the whole thing, could you suggest a few get-up-and-go songs?

"Pas De Deux"

During my youth, I took ballet and modern dance lessons for 9 years from a delicate woman named Miss June.

Because it was part of her job, Miss June spent those years chiding my solid self to "just tuck in your tummy as tight as you can, dear,"

and to this day, I still wish I'd had the wherewithal and presence of mind to reply, as I gestured to the scars behind her ears,

"Kind of like you had the skin on your face tucked and tightened, Miss June?"

"Shouldn't I Get An 'A' Just for Enrolling?"

Every semester, I am asked by students--with increasing frequency as the term chugs along--if I have any extra credit activities for them.

When they ask this, it's very hard for me not to start the hollerin'.

Here's what I have discovered over the years:

1) the students who will actually complete and submit the extra credit activity are those who are already earning an "A";

2) coming up with, answering questions about, and grading an extra credit activity will require more time on my part than the sum total of all the students' efforts;

3) I find the idea of "extra credit" in college to be antithetical to everything the place is supposed to be about (exercising personal choice and motivation to apply oneself to attaining the gem that is higher education--not that I did this myself so much during my time at The Ivory Tower, but at least I accepted the basic premise and placed no blame on anyone but Chuck Woolery and his damned unfailing charisma when I was unable to attend class due to an all-consuming need to watch "Love Connection" instead of attending my 18th Century Novels class).

Of course, realistically, I know college, particularly for many community college students, is often fueled by the sentiment of "I didn't have anything else going on, so I came here for awhile"--and I mean this in both the "...so that's why I'm going for my A.A. degree" and the "...so that's why I came to your class today" ways--than a diligent tread toward knowledge.

But still. Extra credit in college grates on me. I have, thus, developed a little speech over the years that I toss into the faces of those unsuspecting students who wander up to the lecturn after class and ask, with bewildering innocence, "I know I didn't come to class for about eight weeks, and I didn't turn in two of the four papers, and I know the semester ends in two days, but what I really want to know is if you offer any extra credit because I really, really need this class to graduate, and so I'd like to pull my 'F' up to a 'B' by Friday. How can we make that happen?"

Surprisingly, my speech of response does not start with the words, "I swear I could shake you silly right now, Gomer." Rather, I give Wide-Eyed Absentee a few pat sentences about how the successful college career is built upon a premise of thoughtful work turned in consistently, on the date it is due.

Then, only in my head and never, not ever, in real life (except one time with a frat boy named Calvin who was drunk anyways), I slap their porcelain cheeks 'til blood flows into their Trapper Keepers.

At least, for more than a decade, the Extra Credit minuet played out in this way, semester after semester. They bowed; I curtsied; they dipped; I beheaded.

Finally, though, a few years ago, I caved.

But on my own terms. If they want extra credit, me thought, I shall design something that the schmoes who really need it might actually do. I shall design something that requires them to have listened at least once. I shall design something that requires forethought and planning on their parts. I shall design something that pleases me, that allows me to cackle in their faces. I shall turn the desperate into my playthings.

In such fashion, the "Extra Credit for Wearing Kleenex Boxes on Your Feet When You Come to Class" assignment was born.

As random as this seems, the idea does grow--extremely tangentially--out of some classroom material. See, the first paper of the semester is a Division/Classification essay, in which students are asked to examine "types of something" or "parts of something." They get to choose their own topic, and then they need to come up with an "organizing principle" from which they then define their categories or components. To get things started, I do a little example up on the projector:


First, I show them a possible topic; then I express the organizing principle, come up with three types of drivers based on that principle, and, with a flourish and a spin, finish by tossing out a thesis for them.


Just in case the first example didn't stick, I give them another. (sidenote: they like this topic quite a bit, as, all too often, it ties into their own lives; invariably, there are knowing glances exchanged in the third row when I read aloud the various types of dysfunctional romances. This semester, one female student even put her head in her hands and muttered, "Oh, Kevin. You were so wrong for me.")

Of course, two examples rarely do the trick. A third, more-official breakdown of the assignment caps things off. Actually handing them a copy to take home and not just presuming they've copied my examples off the projector, I can feel assured that they have the information firmly tucked away...someplace, in some folder, somewhere ("maybe it's under my bed?") where they'll never find it again or reference it when writing their own essay. But I have xeroxed; I have tried.



It is out of this printed example that the Kleenex Box Assignment grew. First, I explain the introduction and placement of the thesis, and then I launch into the body paragraphs and how to provide specific examples to back up each point. For the case of "obsessive wack-jobs" in terms of bodily perceptions, I trot out the fabled, perhaps apocryphal, example of Howard Hughes in his later years, when, lost in lunacy, reluctant to be dirtied by the touch of others, feeling it was cleaner for his person to remain untouched, he refused to cut his hair, fingernails...and toenails.

Naturally, if one doesn't cut one's toenails for years and years, and they extend for two inches or more,

one might need to get creative about footwear, right?

One might, in fact, need the wide open spaces offered by forgiving Kleenex boxes, right? You feel me?

From thence it came, my sole extra credit assignment: Before the end of the semester, if you come shuffling into class wearing Kleenex boxes on your feet a la Howard Hughes, I will give you five points.

A startling number of students come sliding into the classroom on final exam day, hoping those five points will compensate for a 500 point deficit. For those who protest their feet are too big, I direct them to the open-toed sandal box option. A few years ago, one particularly creative lass not only had the boxes on her feet, but she also made herself a dress out of all the tissues. She looked like Tinkerbell on acid, and it delighted me no end.

Thus, every semester, as desperate Kleenex box wearers sit for two hours and type their final exams, hoping that five extra points might hike their grade up to passing, I kick back,

survey the room,

chuckle a little evilly,

and blow my nose with great gusto.

"Thus Sprach Jocey-thustra"

I've been framed.

"I Can Help You Birth Your Baby, But Please Don't Ask Me to File Your Taxes"


From the teaching life:

I have had a student sit in my office and sob about how she was stuck living with her no-account boyfriend who used their money for anything but rent, who hated the fact that she’d chosen to go to college, who sabotaged her every effort to change her life. However, she sniffed as she wiped mascara off her cheeks, she had no money to move out and was feeling too proud to call her parents and ask for help. During all this, I handed over Kleenex after Kleenex, patted her on the shoulders, and told her, from my perspective as a parent, that it would be an honor for my children to come to me with their pain and allow me to be of help in escaping negative life situations. That afternoon, she left my office, wrote her parents a letter, and they immediately floated her a loan for her own apartment. They also helped her pay for her textbooks and got her a new fuel pump in her car. Less than a day later, she emailed me and thanked me for acting as a “mother figure” when she needed on. Since I’m pretty sure I’m only 24, that thank you was more sobering than uplifting, but I took her point. Last week, she emailed me from Mexico, where she's on vacation. She's very sorry she forgot to take the quiz.

I have had a student turn in a three-page essay that was one continuous sentence, without a whit of punctuation in it until the bottom of page three, where a lone period reared up. When I returned the paper to the student with the comment of, “I can’t grade this until you show me some sentence boundaries and add in the necessary punctuation,” he responded with a bleary, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I have had a student come into my office for a required one-on-one conference and tell me, dry-eyed, about how he and his wife had become addicted to meth the year before, after the whole family was involved in a car crash, in which their 3-year-old son was killed. On the day of our meeting, this student had been clean for six months and was trying to turn his life around, despite his wife’s continued addiction. It was all I could do not to gather him unto my bosom and rock him like a baby. Because he was 26, and because I hardly knew him, that would have been infinitely creepy, though, so I simply told him, repeatedly, “I don’t have words for how much I respect you.”

I have had a student stand in my office for 45 minutes, monologuing like an evil genius, about how he and his girlfriend and their baby were going to get off welfare so they could afford a better car. When he finally wrapped up and left, one of my colleagues (it was a shared office space) called out across the room, “You are a saint. I was ready to kill him after 10 minutes.”

I have had a student write a series of journals throughout the semester that capitalized upon the liberties of “freewriting” to the point that every entry contained the words “I wake up every day with morning wood” or “Being hung like a donkey is hard work…” No, son: grading your writing was hard work.

I have had a student who, as part of her efforts to leave a significant position in organized gang life, was forced to submit to ritualized torture sessions periodically. In the face of this, she never missed a class but rather limped in after her weekends "away" and handed me her homework, no excuses.

I have had a student who worked as a stripper to pay her tuition. She managed to get herself off crack and stay off it, even when male patrons insulted her to the core. When she was raped by a former boyfriend, however, her life began a slow descent into panic, and she fought retain a kernel of her self through writing.

I have had a student who, with two tours of Iraq under her belt, just wanted to be a firefighter. As someone who lived in an apartment, she begged to come over and do yard work for me, so she could wear a 50-pound pack as she shoveled and, thusly, get into shape for the CPAT, a physical fitness test required by firefighting departments. After priming herself all summer, she came up short of the $250 required to take the test as part of the interview, so she now works part-time making soup at a restaurant in town and part-time straightening merchandise at Target.

I have had Mindy.

I have had a student who stayed after class to tell me she knew I was treating her differently because I was white, and she was black.

I have had a student stay after class to thank me for never making him feel like the only black person in a room full of whites.

I have had a student from China who, shaky in her English skills, had someone write out her final exam essay for her ahead of time; she then memorized that draft and typed it up, straight out of her head, during the final exam period.

I have had a student (raised as part of the Christian Coalition in Colorado Springs) tell me I could save myself by reading John 3:16 (at which point I quoted it to him), that AIDS was only inflicted upon those who deserve it, and that he had these feelings inside of him that made him feel unclean.

I have had a student come to my office and ask me if I could give her a passing grade, despite her lack of attendance or work submitted, because she was bipolar.

I have had a bipolar student—someone who never missed an assignment or class—meet me at my office door at 7:55 a.m., quivering, and announce, “I’m tweaking right now. I’m not okay. I think I’m going to hurt myself. Is there anyone who can help me?” Although 24 other students awaited me in the classroom, I assured her we had more than enough time to get her to a counselor.

I have had 90 papers submitted on the same day by students who then inquire, “Will we get them back next time?”

I have had a student who, every time I walked past his desk, would slip me a note. Usually they read something like, “I want to become a lounge performer in Las Vegas.”

I have had a beloved student die.

I have had her daughter, also a student, call me and bawl and bawl, telling me, “My mom loved you so much. I need you to come stand by me at the memorial.”

I have had hundreds of students shuffle into the classroom wearing empty Kleenex boxes on their feet as shoes—for extra credit. Long story.

I have had a colleague snarl at me in a departmental meeting, “I’ve been teaching for twenty years, and if the administration thinks I’m going to hand over my teaching materials to a young pup like you, they’ve got another thing coming.”

I have had a dean give me an evaluation so passive-aggressive that I had to go back to my office after it and cry for half an hour.
-------------------

Clearly, I have a job that is often emotional and taxing and vexing.

How can it be, then, that the most challenging thing I've ever encountered in my career


has been filling out an expense report?

"If You Would Be Kind Enough to Ignore My Oily Skin, Greasy Hair, and Hawkish Profile"

Although last night I was on the treadmill at the Y, running like the cops were chasing me and trying to confiscate my plastic glass of watery keg beer, listening to .38 Special sing "Fantasy Girl," the truth is I'm no longer young.

In fact, recently, a very kind optometrist (a young woman with eggs so viable I could hear them chattering about their new platform wedges and skin so smooth you could smash a piece of silly putty onto her cheek and then peel it off without there being a single line--or bit of newsprint--on it) put her hand on my knee (ROWWWR!) and gently asked, "So, are you feeling like you're ready to make the move to bifocals?"

In a certain way, that's a moment, right? That's a moment of "Hell, I is old." On the other hand, for me it wasn't that earth shattering, as I have crazyass eyes so bad that I was put into bifocals at age 7 and kept there until I changed to contacts in junior high.

As 1970's songbird Charlene might croon, "I've been to bifocal/But I've never been to me."

At this point in my life, I've been to bifocal, and I've been to me, and it wasn't nearly as sunny there as I'd hoped, so now I'm going back to bifocal.

Naturally, if one is getting new lenses, one should also, clearly, get new frames.

Frame shopping is the fun part of being legally blind (the downside part is when, without your glasses on, you don't recognize which of your two children is the male one. 'Cause then you try to braid his hair before school one day, only to find, strangely, that it's really short and can't be braided, which then makes you wonder if mean kids at school circled your "daughter" and chopped off all her locks in some group hazing ritual, and that's why she's been left shorn and bereft of her crowning glory, and you feel a little sob catching in your throat as you bravely strangle out some assurances that her beauty comes from within, until suddenly a little voice pipes up and says, "Mom. MOM. I'm the boy. I always have short hair").

In short, what I'm trying to say here is WOO-HOO, I got to go frame shopping this week!

Except, wait an echolocating minute, I can't actually see what I look like when I try on frames in the store. In case you didn't catch it before: I'm legally blind. Without my glasses, I don't even recognize which one is my own house; I have to start with the house on the corner and go up to each successive house on the block and feel out the numbers nailed to the front next to the door, until I get to the magical numbers that are my own address. One time, though, I started doing the feeling thing and didn't realize the neighbor lady was standing right there on her front step, and I was actually grabbing her breasts and trying to figure out if they made a "4."

Oddly, they read more the shape of a 38C.

She and I have been very, very good friends since that day.

As I was saying, before you starting interrupting with all these distractions, Gentle Reader, is that I can't actually see what I look like when I'm trying on glasses frames; thus, I have to take along a compatriot and even, in recent years, a digital camera. One time, when a friend of mine was taking pictures of me trying on different frames, and the flash went off repeatedly in the store, a crowd gathered; eventually a large woman in a flowing scarf emerged from the pack and tentatively asked for my autograph. Writing directly on her scarf, I signed, "Life has been hard without Ronnie, but at least I still have my china. Best--Nancy Reagan." She thanked me and backed away, so I guess the joke was ultimately on me because what the hell that I managed to pass as Nancy Reagan, and I wasn't even wearing red?

Anyhow, this week, Groomy went along, and so did Niblet, and of course there were the nice ladies who work in the store and who each own 27 pairs of frames themselves, so I had ample feedback.

However.

Once we narrowed it down to two final contenders, we reached an impasse. We were so stuck that The Nice Ladies finally said, "Let's just pop both pairs in a baggie and let you take them home for a few days. With an expensive decision like this, you should be really sure."

HOOHAH, but the fun of trying on frames had just entered a new dimension, one called Now I Get to Walk Around the Neighborhood For a Couple of Hours and Take a Survey of Everyone's Opinion, and If We're Doing a Survey, That Means Girl Gets to Come Along and Bring a Clipboard and Record the Votes Which, In a Way, is the Best Birthday Present I Could Ever Give Her.

22 votes later, we had a winner--not a clear winner, mind you, as the votes split about 2/3 for one pair and 1/3 for the other. In some ways, the two frames are alike, for they're both greenish and rectangularish. In other ways, though, they differ. Which pair do you think should have won?

Oh, and I would remind you, at this juncture, of the title of my post.

This is Picture A of the pair we called "Ridges":



Dude, yea, I know the writing on the lens is soooo awesome and helps the overall effect! In fact, when I get real lenses put in my new frames, and they leave off that writing, I fully plan to get a little tattoo on my upper cheek that mimics those words exactly, so I can rock that look for always.

And here is Picture B of "Ridges":



All right, I'm going to switch it up now, so if you need a palate cleanser, rub your eyes and give them a cracker.

This is Picture A of the frames we called "Circles":



And Picture B of "Circles":



I have, in fact, placed the order for one of these two pairs. If you guess the correct frames, I will send you exactly one kabillion dollars plus, for a limited time only, as a shout out to glasses and being blind, a "Twelve Days of Christmas" shotglass pack:




Oh, yea, and turtle wax and Rice-a-Roni.

Plus a Ginsu knife.

And a Snuggie.

"She Ought to Be in Pictures"

Nine years ago, a piece of my heart started to live outside of my body. Or, as my pal Pammy puts it, "Having children is like being held hostage by the world; you'll do anything the universe demands to assure their safe passage."


Girl slides safely out of my passage.

In her first year of life, she slept in her own vomit on New Year's Eve (more killer parenting tips available soon in the paperback release of my book If Baby Is Still Breathing in the Morning, Then You ARE a Good Mommy, No Matter What Social Services Tries to Report), which burned the skin off her cheek...

...perhaps as payback for her having screamed for eight hours one night at a campsite in Yellowstone Park. That night, at 3 a.m., Groom finally bundled her into the car and drove her around the park for several hours until they both conked out at a scenic overlook. To this day, the words "Norris Geyser Basin" are synonymous in our household with "that could not possibly have sucked more."
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A year later, she was heading towards two:


Pigtails kept the hair out of her raging double ear infection. And after three nights of no sleep for anyone, we ripped those ruby slippers off her feet and stuffed them right up the Tin Man's rusty, er, tailpipe.

-------------------------

Then she was two:


The transformative event of her life happened, and her vocation--no, not playing slots at the casino--was discovered. The arrival of Baby Brother Paco/Niblet gave her a purpose. She continues to serve as ballast to his tipsy keel.
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After she hit three:


Part imp, part back rest, she twirled and cavorted, sold us plastic food at her grocery store, changed outfits 17 times a day, and slept through the night for the first time.

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As a four-year-old:


Under threat of, "Either hold still and let me brush your hair, or we'll snip it into a no-maintenance pixie cut," she announced, "I think we should cut it, then, because I don't have holding still in me."

Life's greatest privilege remained propping up her best buddy.

...unless Lawrence Welk was on, and there was polka-ing to be done. Then, as she jumped up to dance, he could fall with a thud, for all she cared.

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When she was five:

Her demonstrative love interferred with mealtime...


...while her solidity propped up the very trees.
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She was six, and:

She built a town in Canada...


and crept up to "boo" her harem of one.

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Amazingly, suddenly she was seven:

And she was all courage,

and capability,

and unflappable serenity.

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Next came eight:

a year of honing balance,

making static dynamic,

and mastering the absorbed arpeggio.
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And now she is nine:


...the embodiment of lovely.

What's more:

The baby who didn't sleep is now a girl who checks her alarm clock through the night, lest she miss her bus.

The toddler with an ear infection swims laps, makes assists on the soccer field, monkeys around the jungle gym, and jumps rope backwards.

The delighted two-year-old who held an infant brother now chooses his clothes and gets him dressed before leaning to me and whispering conspiratorially, "He's in a bit of a mood, isn't he?"

The wee elf of twirling and clothes changes now monologues, "I'm not so much of a fashion girl--not that liking fashion is bad; I just don't care if my clothes match." A breath later, she asks if we can go shopping for ballet flats and notes that if Paco wants some, too, he should get some, perhaps a shiny, metallic pair.

The pixie-ish preschooler treasures long tresses and insists, "I read in an American Girl book that a 'sleeping braid' will keep the knots out."

The solid, loving kindergartener still carries her brother from room to room and brings him bandaids. At school, her teacher chose her from the class for the Citizenship award while we all marvel that she jotted down "misspell" correctly on her weekly pretest, when no one else did.

The first grader who built and crept now studies maps of Stonybrook, Connecticut, the fictional town of the Babysitter's Club series, quizzing me nightly on which is Mallory's house. She no longer scares anyone--unless it's 7 p.m. on a Monday, and she's just home from Girl Scouts and has four pages of homework but would rather do somersaults in the living room. Her mood teeters on a ledge, and Kleenex may be needed.

The courageous, capable, unflappable seven-year-old continues to impress. I am ageing easily, knowing that she will one day be handling my estate and shunting me into the best of homes. What's more, I feel certain she will bring me ham for dinner on Sundays, if her career as an Event Organizer doesn't offer a conflict that week.

At eight, she had found her center but tipped occasionally towards goofy and abstracted. Indeed, we still have to ask her, when she gets the giggles, if she needs to hit the bathroom, lest she require a change of underwear. Her reading habit continues to demand feeding, which is a delight--and, surprisingly, a despair, as she sometimes leaves her best playmate craving the sister who used to entertain him for hours. Mournfully, he will call out her nickname, "DeeDee, don't you want to play Animal School?" to which she'll respond, only half listening, "After I'm done with this book."



Ultimately, all of this means that she is more and more a whole unto herself--a distinct thread in the family fabric rather than an indistiguishable part of the larger weaving.

At times, this can feel like a loss, as though already we are experiencing an unraveling.

Mostly, though, her increased demarcation allows me to see her better; were she completely enmeshed, I would ascribe to her my own traits and view her as sharing my color and texture, missing so much that is uniquely her and not me:

her vividness
her poise
her confidence
her sound judgment
her certainty

her purity of soul

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Thus, I live with a piece of my heart--nine years old now--next to me, not in me,

and I cannot fully express how blessed I feel to release her into the world.

"I Have Called Upon Your Goodwill and Patience Frequently In the Past, But Never Moreso Than Now, When I Have a New Toy"

I woke up on my birthday last week and was gifted with a digital video camera, already loaded with this message:



Don't worry. Groom knows he is the whitest boy on the planet when it comes to carrying a tune and/or dancing. Since he excels at all else, it is only fair that he be fallible. Note, however, how well he plays up his deficiency, hammering out and sustaining even the sharpest note. That, in itself, is a talent (kind of like how Rush Limbaugh pretends, through sheer bravado, that he has a brain).

Later that day, Niblet began establishing his relationship with the camera and asked to film me:



There's a strange light from the window behind in this clip, but let's pretend it's the angel what lives inside me, coming out for a wink. And aren't we all wondering, based on this rendition, what kind of "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" I could coo out for Obama, thus tapping into the subtext of our years-long torrid affair? (not that such a thing would ever happen because His Nibs is much too smart and genuine to ever take for granted the peach that is Michelle, and if he did, I would have to gauge out my eyes with a flagpole, what with every last belief having been rattled).

Shortly thereafter, PacoTacoHaco/Niblet wanted to try out the song himself, standing next to one of his creature creations, a guy named "Eye-o":




Even better, in the intervening days, Niblet has taken over the camera and started staging stop-motion Lego films:



Sure, he's six, so he has little patience for the multiple incremental movements a longer film would require, but it's still a really cool start to his future career, when he will join the Wallace & Gromit production team. Until then, he'll live in our basement and have seriously pasty skin.

During the years of pasty skin and basement dwelling, I'll take him a platter of pancakes every night--to keep his cinematic energies from flagging--and once a year, on his birthday, I'll put a candle in the stack of pancakes and sing him that damn song.

Rolling his eyes, he'll mentally storyboard a stop-action video in which his mother is decapitated by a light saber.