"Sweet Like Sugar"

I haven't seen the Spiderman, Iron Man, or Batman movies of recent years.

I don't applaud politicians who promise to change our lives.

I don't get all weepy over photos of my grandmother sitting in a big leather chair, doing her tatting.

I sometimes think members of the military are in it for the job--you know, so their families can eat--more than to sacrifice themselves defending their particular country's version of "values of freedom."

You see, I'm not much given to hero worship.

In fact, I chafe at the easy manner in which the word "hero" is thrown around, at the craving people have to laud something, no matter how vapid, at the compulsion to exhalt the world by slapping onto it such a label. People are people; sometimes they shine; sometimes they drain. We are all of us just us'ns, and to try to sort everyone onto tiers is exhausting, purposeless.

Flawed and full of smells, we are just us, we people.

That noted, I have to admit that often this is more of a principle than a reality for me. I do admire some others. I do look down on certain schmoes. I do vaunt others.

...but my rankings are not on a scale of heroic. That feels too cinematic and contrived. That feels like a one-armed Matt Damon on a zip line, whizzing through a jungle to retrieve a secret code before the bomb explodes in a lair where Cameron Diaz is being held by agitated guerillas. To tell you true, I'm equally put off by the Readers' Digestian notion of "everyday heroes"--those people who saved puppies and started foundations and knitted mittens. Misread me not: they have done good things. However, I don't think it's too much to ask that all people attempt, in their own ways, to be their best selves, to do the things they think they can in the world. If we keep the bar set at the point of Reasonable Expectations for Humanity, then these everyday heroes are actually just doing what they should be. Comedian Chris Rock has a riff on this idea wherein he rails at talk show audiences that clap wildly for any African-American man who sits on stage and announces proudly, "I work for my kids. We throw the ball around on weekends." Because expectatations have slid so low, the audience and the man greet his announcement with praise, with a feeling of "What a hero!" Chris Rock is quick to holler, however, "Don't. applaud. that. man. for. doing. exactly. what. he's. supposed. to. be. doing. Don't treat him like he saved the planet because he managed to show up."

At best, Us Good 'Uns display a certain integrity or follow the ordinates on a particular moral compass (which, notably for me, don't have to align with traditional views of "moral"; a person can be an admirable degenerate, so long as he or she is true to an impulse that remains essentially benign). At worst, the Us Bad 'Uns bring to life a desire to hurt weaker, smaller, younger, softer.

Everything in between is just people being us.

Therefore, as you have probably seen coming, I get particular gratification out of bumping into something special, someone who stops me short and makes me inhale sharply.

Surprise me, Sailor.

To wit:

In the midst of a stretch of trying days--and not in any overt way, wherein I feel granted the right to collapse and weep on the duvet, clutching Kleenex to clavicle, but more in an ongoing, grinding way where I try not to carve the words "Help me" into the living room wall with a bloody whisk--I have found soppy comfort in a thing. In the midst of a week when I rushed forward when I should have held steady, when I lost several nights' sleep with an agitated boychild, when I wonder if the family isn't maybe being slowly offed by a carbon monixide leak (or why else do we all feel this way?),

I touched a good thing.

And if I ever forget to slow down and touch a good thing, may they box me up and put the casket on the pyre. Better yet: bypass the casket.

The good thing was a she, young and blue-eyed, with a charming bit of a lisp. She helped me refind a sense of possibility during a weekend where everything was dark and negative, a weekend when I was ready to go out and buy a VW van just so I could drive off into the sunset in it, cranking Neil Young and savoring the melancholy of dusk.

This girl is nine; she wants to be an actress; she likes to catch tadpoles; she is my daughter's good friend; she has Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes. Mostly, she's just a white kid growing up in a middle class family in the Midwest. She has seen High School Musical the requisite number of times.

While she's been in Girl's circle of friends for the last few years, and we've had her over for playdates and birthday parties, we'd never ventured with her into the larger commitment known as Preadolescent Sleepover. Because, er, you know, it's a little intimidating to be the adult in charge of someone who could potentially die if you're not paying attention.

However, now that Friend A is nine, nearing an age where a certain amount of self-care is a valid expectation, we decided to extend the invitation, something which, gratifyingly, was greeted with shrieks and hugs and statements that she had never been so excited in her whole life, about anything. It probably helped that we were also offering up pizza and a ride ON THE CITY BUS downtown to watch the yearly Christmas parade with us, before the actual sleeping over even commenced. Not only had Friend A never ridden on a city bus, she had never been to a live parade before. There was quivering.

Seriously, you can't help liking her a little bit already, can you?

When her mother (in a separate post, I could probably make a case for this woman--with four kids, an out-of-town husband, an oldest daughter down with daily migraines, unable to get an appointment at the Mayo Clinic due to villainous paperwork--as heroic) dropped her off, they gave me the training I would need: I met the meter and the whole kit used for bolus doses; I met the pocketful of carmel rice cakes; I met the Ziploc baggie of glucose tabs (most effective and dramatic in the case of plummeting numbers); I heard her numbers ("she's been at over 300 this week...running high because she's so excited for this sleepover...but today she has a new site for her pump and new insulin, so she's evening out...call anytime...anytime"); I was told the schedule for blood tests (after dinner, right at bedtime, two or three hours after bedtime, and then we'd see). My head spinning a little, we were ready to chow and dig for bus fare.

So Friend A had a piece of pizza, got really big eyes during the bus ride (especially when a man in a wheelchair got on, and the huge mechanical ramp unfolded, and then the bus driver had to clip in his chair five different ways), and danced and jumped during the parade. At one point, when people on a float had tossed out candy, and all the other kids were unwrapping their suckers, Friend A turned to me, holding up a small mint, and asked, "Can I have this? It's less than one carb, so I won't need to dose." Jokingly, as I told her yes, I said, "Honey, I sooo don't have a grip on all this stuff; I have to believe anything you tell me." Her immediate, vehement response was, "I. take. it. very. seriously."

At that moment, it was all I could do not to hug the very breaf out of her body.


A few hours later, home, watching a movie, snacking, readying for bed, she checked her blood levels ("two-two-two," she told me), called her mom, dosed herself, and ran, giggling, up the stairs. As I tucked her in, I admitted to her that I was nervous to come in and wake her up in a few hours: "First off, we have a household policy never to wake a sleeping child, but also, since you're not my kid, and you're not used to me in the night, I worry that you're going to be scared when you wake up and think, 'Hey, whose big face is hovering above me?'"

Friend A nodded and admitted, "I'm probably going to be mad at you, actually. Because I'm tired, I'm pretty mean when I get woken up for a night time check."

"Hohboy," I sighed back at her. "Well, how about this: if you're really crabby when I wake you up, I'm going to start telling you things like how I'll buy you a pony in the morning and then we'll go get you some new roller blades and $500 worth of clothes at the mall, and then we'll go to the waterpark, if only you're nice to me?"

Having a complete bead on me, knowing I'm full of malarkey, Friend A grinned and said, "Deal."

Thus, once the rustling sounds in the girls' room ceased, the waiting began. Despite being outrageously tired from Paco's recent nights of no sleep, I decided to stay up and noodle around for a few hours instead of going to bed and then having to drag my own cranky self out of it a few hours later. 'Cause when you have to promise to buy yourself a pony, it doesn't feel special at all.

At almost one a.m., I crept in, ready for battle. Juggling her meter and kit, a tupperware full of rice cakes, and a bag of glucose tablets, I prepared to stroke her hair until her angry eyes opened.

However, Friend A, keyed up by the unfamiliar situation, woke immediately; she sat up, shivering, and rubbed her eyes. "Okay, honey, here's your stuff."

With unimaginable efficiency, she stabbed her finger, failed to draw blood, lanced it again, squeezed, put the resultant drop onto the slide, inserted it into the meter, licked her bleeding finger, and waited for the number.

A big 63 popped up.

Even I knew "low" when I saw it; only the next day did I look up the technical definition of "hypoglycemic." Immediately, Friend A said, "I have to eat something" and cracked into the rice cakes. Silent except for the crunching, we sat in the dark. "Now I need a tablet, too," she announced, and continued chewing.

When she was done, I asked, "Hey, girlie? That was kind of a low number. Do you think I should check you again in a few hours?"

And here's where she got me forever. The soft, sleepy, clinically-efficient nine-year-old in a sleeping bag responded, "I don't know. Maybe you should call my mom."

Certainly, the mom-to-mom phone call at 1 a.m. is no one's favorite duty. Fortunately, Friend A's mother is worthy of such a daughter and snapped to attention quickly. "Yes, that's low. She needs to eat." She did. "She needs to eat more. Do you have a granola bar? If you can get a granola bar into her, she'll be fine 'til morning. Was she really crabby with you? She gets like that when she's really low; her brain isn't firing right, you know. "

Yes, I had a granola bar. No, she hadn't been the slightest bit crabby. Oh, holy Richard Simmons, but her brain had been firing just fine.

We decided that, in the middle of the night, when you're nine and hypoglycemic, it's sometimes best to hear from Mom that you need to eat more. After a quick phone conversation and goodbye, Friend A and I sat again in the darkness, listening to her munch.

After the last swallow, she plopped back down onto her pillow and cashed out. Moments later, head plopped onto my own pillow, I took a few minutes to consider

how there is something heroic--something that qualifies as "above and beyond"--in a kid who lives stoically with chronic illness,

how jaw-dropping it is to see matter-of-factness in a little person who doesn't get to take her body for granted,

how much I respect that she doesn't inveigh against her blood, her pancreas, or the fact that her innards have a notion to defeat her,

how resolute she will have to be for the rest of her life--even during her college years, when she moves away from home, when everyone around her is engaged in a season of purposeful neglect of schedules and health and accountability--to even have a rest of her life,

how she gets to be her own best hero,

how I no longer needed a VW van at sunset

because I had a date to go buy a pony at sunrise.

"And People Say Kids Don't Pick Up After Themselves"

With the friendliest of intentions, one of our neighbors handed us a stack of magazines the other week.

They were very good magazines, but the realities of life mean it would be three years before we would ever actually read them. Clearly, while some of them could be donated to the rack at the gym, many of them just needed to go to recycling.

As I made a stack of Get Rid of These Magazines, a curious little face popped up from under the counter. Holy hell, but that startled me! What was it? A monkey loose from the zoo? A Killer Bee? A Tse-Tse fly? An airborne blood pathogen? A magical sprite?

Yes, a sprite. Of sorts. Which I realized only after I took out my handy-dandy fly swatter/monkey catcher kit and starting whacking wildly at the curious face.

"MOOOOOOM! Stooopppp! You're hitting me," the face hollered.

What. the.

When had monkeys learned to holler? Evolution is so cool.

It was Paco. Sensing an opportunity, he had crawled into the room and been watching me mutter and stack and start heaving magazines into the recycling bin.

"Could I have a couple of those?" he asked.

"Do you have matches?" I countered.

An innocent "no" came my way.

No dummy, I then asked, "Do you have a Bic lighter?"

"You mean one of those clicky things that makes a flame?" the innocent voice queried. "No, I don't have one of those."

"Do you have gasoline or a scythe or low-level explosives?" I needed to confirm.

"Not right now," he conceded. "But I do have scissors. Can I use scissors?"

Yes. Scissors fall under The Parental Umbrella of Approved Tools to Use In Conjunction with Newsprint, Recipe Cards, and Magazines.

Quickly, however, the boy realized that, compared to the claws that grow naturally on the ends of his fingers, scissors are clunky and ineffective.

Bare-handed, he tore the stuff apart.

Then, after he shredded it beyond repair (and as a boyfriend once did to my heart), the boy--curiously--felt the need to cradle the remnants for a brief period.

A quiet moment to consider the damage...

...and then--Hand to Heave and Martha Stewart!--an unaccountable need to clean up struck.

Seriously. What 6-year-old boy wants to tidy up? (not coincidentally, did you happen to read a previous post about this kid called "My Fine, Gay Son"?)

Reassuringly, midway through the clean-up, Paco realized he was actually a trash compactor, one that used its head.

...and its feet. High-end trash compactors have feet these days, you see.

Spic and span. Tidy and tight.

But what to do with the bag of scraps?

Sighing in defeat, I handed over the Bic lighter.

"Still At It"

Since I have stacks of papers this week--both revisions and new essays--I'm going to continue to milk the anniversary in this post.

Here are a couple of videos wherein I babble about our weekend. The first video has ice and gives you a spin of the kitchen.




This next video has a picture booklet and a quilt. Buckle up:

"Bestill"

My dad was the person who taught me to be comfortable with silence. We could get in the car and drive for twenty minutes without a word being spoken. While his and my mother's relationship ultimately cracked under the weight of that silence, for me, the daughter, his quiet felt benign, reassuring, a safe place to be.

Even more, when he did speak, his words carried weight. A handful of my favorite memories, in fact, center around moments when he engaged in verbal expression. One time, after I'd won a forensics tournament out of town, returning from the meet late at night, I left my trophy on the dining room table. By the time I woke up later that day, my dad had left me a note, telling me he was so proud, he was "busting his buttons." Another time, after I'd behaved badly, he sat across from my hungover self and told me he was "deeply disappointed." Many years later, during the night when a bat flew into my house, and I had a fairly apeshit "I'm all alone, and the bat is trying to kill me" meltdown for three hours in my bathroom, I managed to grab my phone (with the bat only gnawing off one of my fingers above the knuckle as I reached for the receiver) and call my parents, over a thousand miles away. When I sobbed and sobbed that a killer beast was out there, and all I had were tampons for friends and nail files for weapons, my dad, casting about, counseled, "What you need to do is try to reach way down inside yourself now and find something you don't think you have. Dig deep, and you'll find something you need." He was right. We hung up, and I dug deep, finding inside myself the numbers 911, which I punched into the phone with great bravery.

Perhaps my fondest conversation with my dad occurred about a decade before his death. Chatting on the phone, we stumbled across the subject of my sister and me and our many differences. Trying to qualify the nature of the differences, my dad remarked that my sister took after his side of the family, where a certain dourness and pessimism sometimes manifested itself. “She reminds me of myself,” he noted, continuing, “and you don’t. You’re more, well, effervescent.”

There it was: one of those moments we hope for with our parents, those moments when they give us a word, an adjective, a feeling of being seen, and it signifies everything. It signifies that our parents see us as separate, as differentiated beings, that they have thought about us, that they have taken stock of us, that we are far enough away from them that the space has cleared everyone’s vision. Because such words, such adjectives, are born from the lifelong process of symbiosis to independence, they have power. Plus, anytime someone describes me to myself, I believe him.

It wasn’t even so much that I wanted to think of myself as “effervescent”—-although it was a welcome label—-but rather, it was more that I wanted to think of my dad thinking of me that way. Sometimes, from then on, I effervesced just for him.

It surprised me, then, to learn—-repeatedly--that a pipping personality didn’t reap greater rewards, in the larger scope of the world. Certainly, I didn’t expect to be voted into office on the Effervescence Platform, nor did I expect the medical field to approach me, asking me to donate to the Effervescence Transfusion Bank. But I did think being smiley and liking sunshine might have snagged me a boyfriend.

Fer damn crap smeared on a thrice-read Jane Austen novel.

Oh, all right.

I did date a guy through my 20’s, and then I truly, madly, deeply dated another guy—-one who left my two liters of effervescence out on the counter with the cap off and made all the bubbles go flat. He de-carbonated me in a way that no one ever had before, not even the boys on the high school bus who moo-ed at my sister and me.

He made my sizzle fizzle.

And then my grandma died, and the doc found a lump in my breast.

I was thirty-one.

Thirty-one wasn’t my favorite year.

Fortunately, I still had girlfriends who called, just when I was pacing the circle of my small kitchen for the 123rd time in an hour, gnawing on my cuticles, and they opened with, “Oh, honey. I just heard. Talk to me.” Even when I would have to set down the phone to grab another handful of Kleenex, they would stay on the line, shouting things like, “From the amount of snot you’re emitting, you do seem well-hydrated. And that’s something, right?” Also, I had family who knew how to circle ‘round gently and never look me straight in my teary eyes. Instead, they gave me food and invited me to participate in the yearly post-hunting butchering of the deer, and they talked at and around me.

Eventually, the molasses movement of seconds turned into minutes finally adding up into hours and days, and then months went by. My grandma was buried; the lump was benign; the former boyfriend had a new girl.

Just after the new year, one of my hunting cousins sent me an email, asking if I’d like to drive North to come visit them and, by the way, if I would be at all interested in letting him serve as my “agent in the field,” romantically.

Flattened, completely without zest or hope, my response was worthy of my father’s side of the family: “Go ahead, if you want to, but I won’t expect anything from it.”

Turns out my cousin already had someone in mind, a 28-year-old guy he worked with in a very small town of about 300. One day, sitting in the office, looking across at this 28-year-old, my cousin started musing, “How’s Guy ever going to find someone in this bohunk town?” A moment later, he thought back to Thanksgiving and the deer butchering and the conversations we’d had, which resulted in, “For that matter, how’s Jocelyn ever going to find someone in the bohunk town she’s living in?”

His head swiveled back and forth, and his thoughts rammed into each other. He approached Guy, who agreed, “Sure, you can be my agent in the field. But this cousin of yours, since she lives more than five hours away, she’d have to really knock my socks off for me to start seeing her.” Fair enough. Next, my cousin approached me.

It was agreed: I’d drive the five hours North and, while visiting my cousin’s family, meet Guy. In the past, imbued with effervescence, I’d greeted any opportunity to meet a potential partner with gusto and a knee-jerk, involuntary planning of our lives together. This time, I didn’t think much of the whole thing.

So we’d see.

That February, over Presidents' Day weekend, I visited. I got to hold my cousin’s baby a lot and watch his 4-year-old ice skate. One afternoon, we swung through the campus where Cousin worked. As we drove away, he said, casually, “Oh, that man back there who was leaning down, talking to people through their car window? The one in the red hat? That was Guy.”



Cousin, perhaps, didn’t understand that such information would have been welcome, say, two minutes earlier. Cousin is a man.

That night, the guy in the red hat strolled into Cousin's house, there for The Meeting, there for dinner. He carried a six-pack of homebrew.

I liked him already.

In short order, I learned that Guy not only wore a red hat and was quite tall. I also learned he really liked making bread, reading the Atlantic Monthly, and running on trails. I learned that he was an anthropology major who'd minored in Environmental Science. I learned that his Desert Island food would be cheese (dropped from a helicopter once a month, to supplement the fish and coconunts he would be living on otherwise); his Desert Island album would be Van Morrison's Moondance; his Desert Island book would be some sort of reference book, all the better if it contained maps.

I learned that, while the idea of him hadn't infused me with bubbles, the reality of him was creating a few tiny pops.

Dinner lasted five hours. As soon as he left, my previously-cool cousin and his wife, who had discreetly retired to the kitchen 8 feet away after dessert, were all nerves. They gave me all of thirty seconds after the door closed behind Guy before yelling, "SO? SO?????"

My response was positive, but guarded. He seemed nice. I would see more of him. If he wanted to.

But all the little broken pieces inside of me weren't quite realigned yet. I wasn't going to put myself forward this time. I couldn't take another dashing.

Fortunately, a few days later, Guy asked my cousin for my email address. It had been mutual. Apparently, his strongest first impression of me was that I had a lot of hair. He thought he "could get lost in it."


What ensued was a modern epistolary courtship. For three weeks, we sent messages back and forth, discovering that writing is an excellent way to get to know someone: the small talk is non-existent; the conversations get to meaty matters right away; there is no body language to read or misread, no annoying laugh to cringe from.

After three weeks, Guy announced he was ready to "jump off the comfortable dock" and into the potentially-frigid waters of face-to-face. Thus, during my Spring Break in March, I headed North again, for our first real date.

As we sat in a dingy bar, having burgers and beers, conversation flowed. Snow fell.

Like 14" of it.

When it came time to take Guy to his house before driving back to my cousin's place, my car got stuck. In the snow. At Guy's house. He didn't seem to mind. His roommates were friendly. I stayed over.

I had no choice.

What I learned in those days of my Spring Break was that Guy liked to listen to me read aloud--and if that's not an activity of the infatuated, I don't know what is. He also proved that he's very good at necking.

And, about three days in, after he'd had a bath one night, Guy came back into his bedroom, where I lounged. "Brrrrrr," he exclaimed. "My feet are cold!"

"Why are they so cold? You just got out of the bath tub," I noted.

"They're freezing because. you. knocked. my. socks. off" was the answer.

Suddenly, right then, right there: there it was. The effervescence was back, the flatness banished.

It was all going to be all right.

Not too long afterward, as I stared very hard at the ceiling, I admitted I had fallen in love. He had the right answer.

By the end of my Spring Break week, five days after our first date, we had talked about what kind of wedding we wanted.

Four months later, one July morning, as I slept on a futon on the floor, he crawled in with a plate of pancakes and a Betsy Bowen woodcut entitled "Fox on a Journey."

And he asked me to marry him.


In quick order, we planned a wedding for the following May.

In even quicker order, like, the night we got engaged, I got pregnant. Three months after that, I had a miscarriage. Four days after that, we found out I'd been carrying twins, and one was still hanging on.

We moved the wedding to that November 13th, not nine months after we first played the Desert Island game over dinner. Guy became Groom right there at the environmental learning center where I'd first not-quite-spotted-him in his red hat. The bleeding from the miscarriage had stopped three days earlier. I sobbed through the vows.

Four months later, Jocelyn and Groom became Jocelyn and Groom and Girl.

All of that wonder unfolded in 1999. Not given to dreaming about the future before then, I have since been granted beauties I couldn't possibly have imagined.

He likes to touch me. He likes me to touch him.
He cooks dinner every night.
He has been our stay-at-home parent since Girl was born.
At promptly 8:00 every night, he brings me a drink.
He is unfazed by my random bursts of tears.
He is whimsical. He is dry. He is perceptive.
He sees that my ability to talk to people is as valuable as his ability to do everything else.
He likes to play cribbage.
He knows how to give me directions that make sense, like "go straight until you see the big rock shaped like Richard Nixon's head."
He takes my ideas and makes them happen.
He just brewed a new batch of beer.

And, like my father, he is gentle. Like my father, he has a thousand-watt smile.

Like my father, he is given to quiet, most comfortable in stillness.

Thus, ten years in to the marriage, we often sit and watch the world flit by

holding hands in companionable silence.

"Just Jam It All into the Inbox and Yell 'F*** It' A Lot"

There is a National Association of Professional Organizers.

In the Denver area, a professional organizer makes $75/hour.

My sister, overwhelmed and anxious in the face of her stacks of belongings, uses a professional organizer. In fact, she's committed to drawing upon the inheritance from our dad's and grandmother's estates to pay this organizer until the job is done.

The thing about being overwhelmed by stacks of crap is that the feeling doesn't go away easily or for pay, necessarily. At the very least, we might need a great aunt to die in the next few years. See, my sister's garage holds her teaching materials. And she's taught for more than twenty years, at four different grade levels, in four different countries. Plus, she seriously loves her some kiddie lit.

Friends, there are milk crates and shelving units and big plastic tubs in my sister's garage. There is the intention of organization. But it ain't there yet.

In fact, we might need all remaining relations to kick off before Kirsten's garage is entirely inventoried and ordered. It would help if those relations could please get richer before they die.

Despite hiring a personal organizer, my sister has been needing further outside assistance. Cleverly, she did the math (carrying the one) and realized it would be cheaper to fly me to Denver than to pay her organizer for equivalent hours. With the plan that I'd come for a weekend and help her get organized, she bought me a ticket.

Just to double the oomph of the whole thing, though--and a clear sign of her desperation--she also booked her personal organizer for 4 hours one of the mornings of my visit. Even though we all worked with great diligence, I'm not sure my sister got her $500 worth.

And that amount doesn't even figure in the lateral filing cabinet she was instructed to get, nor the new bookshelf I told her she needed. Or the in and outboxes. Or the six new plastic tubs. Or the picture boxes.

Or the graduated metal desktop organizer.

We pretty much had to take a moment in Target and thank our dad for working so hard all his life and having the foresight to set up some paperwork that brought his leavin's to us, after he passed.

One day, Kirsten and I spent some time in the garage, going through her bins of books. She only had every Beverly Cleary book two times over. Ultimately, we got rid of four milk crates of kid books.

She only got a little teary twice during this process. Then she announced it was time to be done. We needed to watch some HGTV shows. We were people who were hunting for houses. Internationally.

The next day, the professional organizer came. She wore camouflage pants, which made me fear and respect her even more than her well-slicked hair did.

Professional Organizer is going through a divorce.

Apparently, some things can't be stored in a box with a lid, no matter how well labeled.

She had a plan for our morning. She and Kirsten set up a filing system for the new lateral filing cabinet, which Kirst and I had spent a few hours putting together the night before.

It helped that Kirsten knew where her three tools (flathead screwdriver, Phillips screwdriver, hammer) were. It also helped that we had a vast repertoire of cusses.

We only broke one of the two drawers during the process.

But you hardly notice the absence of the broken drawer (the glue was still drying), do you? That's what a Vanna White flourish will do for any situation: mask and distract.

The next morning, when the organizer came, the drawer was in place. We appeared, so long as one didn't probe or test the glue, competent.

Then Professional Organizer opened the drawers and noted that they were wrong--that this shelving was made for legal-sized documents, not 8 1/2 x 11" papers.

Kirsten called a handyman. He will come next week and saw some new slots into the drawers, at which time all the bins of newly-filed papers will be put into them. Until then, the whole desk area looks a little undone. A little disorganized.

But the papers are in file folders. And everything is labeled. Almost makes a person think Professional Organizer's marriage could work out after all.

While they worked on papers, I tackled the upstairs closet, which was full of All Kinds of Everything, including a broken cuckoo clock.

Everything came out, and I followed Professional Organizer's three-step process (she went to class for this, incidentally, so the information you're about to read is probably patented and trademarked):

1) Gather together like items (such as all photos) in a heap;

2) Go through and decide what you need to keep and what you need to get rid of;

3) Deposit things you need to keep into a containment system. Get rid of the rest.

I know.

So, after jotting down a few notes on my palm, I did just that. Actually having my sister go through things and get them into a system, however, would take weeks. So I regrouped stuff, asked her a few questions (only one of which made her cry), and made it tub ready. In the future, she should go through the tubs and make further decisions or do more detailed organizing.

That's probably not going to happen. The Amazing Race might be on that day.

There's also a lot of Bejeweled Blitz to play on Facebook.

Here's the final look of the closet, when I was done.

As I worked in the closet room, which houses my sister's books, I realized her book mania was spilling over. Every shelf had stacks of books with no home, stacks that obscured the books behind. I lobbied for a new bookshelf.

Worn down, powerless, amenable, my sister agreed. Two nice young men at Target hefted the thing into the car, sideways, across the front seat. I rode in the back and called Kirsten "Jeeves."

Once home, we had to turn to Flathead, Phillips, and Hammer one more time. We didn't break anything.

Of course, a few pieces went on backwards.

WHAT? The shelf still holds books, no matter how backasswardly it was assembled. Don't get all poncey and superior on me.

The back of the shelf was supposed to be attached with forty screws.

Kirsten decided eight would do.

These guys are just waiting to bust out the flimsy back door of their new home.

There were about ten more stacks, not seen in these photos. They were at Starbucks.

The end result. Please do not comment that there appears to be an unhung clock on the chair. I don't have time to write about how Kirst won't actually put nails in her walls, which leaves all pictures (and clocks) leaning against their intended place. She's lived there 2.5 years. One step at a time, my friends. One step. at. a. time.

Another end result, despite files remaining unfiled, the garage remaining unorganized, and my sister's wallet being seriously deflated,

is that I spent time with one of the two people on the planet who will know me cradle to grave.

We ate teriyaki bowls. She took me to Whole Foods and to its inbred cousin, Sprouts. She smiled tolerantly when I squealed over the quality of the napkins at the Whole Foods gelato counter, napkins that could serve as a night-time diaper on a three-month-old. She shared candy bars with me. She showed me how to use the remote. She burned me six CD's of songs out of her Itunes. She took me two Jazzercise (which is another twelve posts in itself) and to three running trails.

She gave me a big hug at the aiport and asked when she can fly me back out, to help with the garage.



As a result of this whole trip, now I have a friend in Austin, Texas, who's planning to give me a ticket to visit her.

Seems she still has the dress she wore when she graduated from college twenty years ago. It doesn't fit.

Also, her Christmas decorations are already out.

Because they were never put away after last year.

I am delighted by her tousled state of affairs, if it means I get to see her.

And I'm considering--seriously--doing some training and starting a side career as a professional organizer. We could use the money (especially if I precede my sister in death; if I've earned some supplemental income, I'll be able to bequeath her enough to hire Professional Organizer for the twelve hours it would take to go through her stacks of sweatshirts).

Before I can start this new career, though, I'm gonna need some camouflage pants.

"Hello, PetCo? I'd Like to Cancel My Line of Credit"


When I met him, my husband was a naturalist.


Raise your hand if your first thought, after reading that sentence, went a little something like "Jocelyn's husband was a nudist????"

Now put your hand down, Tinkerbell. You're all alone in front of your computer, after all, which means it's kind of queer to keep sitting there with your handing waving around, as though Mrs. Hwiggens will call on you eventually and let you shout out--wrongly--that "12 x 12 is 142!!!"

Indeed, put down your hand now. Straighten your shoulder pads, and wet down your forelock. Stop trying to learn your times tables (as if you can learn anything new at your age). Come back to the story.

When I met him, my husband was a naturalist. This meant he taught outdoorsy stuff at an environmental education center: white-tailed deer; beaver; water ecology; rock climbing; snowshoeing; the ropes course. Before working at the center an hour and a half north of Duluth, he had worked at a center in the Adirondacks in New York, at Florissant Fossil Beds and Mesa Verde in Colorado, and on a barrier island off of North Carolina. To this day, he has strong memories of each place, of communities of friends; of helping to slaughter a pig; of appearing in National Geographic in his full park ranger gear; of grits.

Interestingly, he is a naturalist who doesn't care for animals ("I like the flora, not the fauna," he explains). Most people greet that bit of information with a gasp, as though it signals a moral failing. In fact, we were at a dinner party some years back when it came out that two of the guests weren't "animal people," and the discussion that ensued over this was only resolved when one of them--the not-my-husband one of them--stated categorically, "It's actually okay for me not to like animals. It's within my rights not to want animals around me everyday. I'm still a good person." She was so clear, so strident, so much the hostess of the party that the hubbub fell silent; thusly chastened, the animal lovers returned to cutting off large bites of their pork loin.

Because Groomeo doesn't care particularly for animals, and because I have felt in the last decade that I already have enough small creatures, in the shape of Girl and Paco, to take care of, we haven't had a pet.

Girl, who would be more aptly tagged "Groomie's Girl," is just like her father. Occasionally, she has made a limp gesture at pretending to want a dog, but mostly she's too busy avoiding all animals in the vicinity to finish the thought. Paco has followed her lead, until recently, when he finally expressed a desire to get a pet. His only caveats are that he doesn't want to touch it, clean up after it, or feed it. He would very much like to name it, though.

Paco has learned much at his mama's knee.

At any rate, we tried to feed the boy's need last winter, when we got him a beta fish. You know, Anikin. That fish, with only two balled-up fins and a baleful glare, actually managed to convey anger, misanthropy, and even a feeling of malevolence. I fully anticipated he would leap the tank one night and crawl down someone's throat, just for the joy of choking off an air supply.

It wasn't our saddest day when Anikin hated his way to the Grave That Flushes.

Then we had a quiet few months of relative ease, months when we merely struggled to care for our own curfuddled selves.

On Labor Day, however, we drove up the shore of Lake Superior and hung out with some friends for the afternoon at a place called Gooseberry Falls. There, Paco and a compatriot found some warm pools in the rocks, pools full of tadpoles. Desperately wanting one, but completely unwilling to touch anything slimy (he's the anti-six-year-old boy, you see), Paco tried to cajole his parents into catching one. Better luck came when we gave him an empty tupperware for scooping; he managed to snare one and, in turn, pride himself on being a veritable lion tamer.

Get this: over the ensuing weeks, we didn't kill the thing. I don't know how it happened, but the tadpole didn't die, and when it went through its evolution, we were fascinated. Before September, I thought I'd had a good sense of the whole "and then the little tadpole becomes a mighty frog" process, having seen it in the 1970's in a filmstrip--but the truth is I had no idea. Watching the tadpole get legs and become more frogian everyday was riveting.

Suddenly, though, the transformation was complete. We had a frog, and not just any ordinary hopper but, rather, a tree frog, replete with them space-age type grippy sucker toes and a jet pack. Paco named him Grippo, and we were off, skipping down the path of pet ownership...

which entailed us running around in circles, dithering, "What do we feed a tree frog? What kind of habitat do we need? Who will clean its habitat? Do we need to clean its habitat? Do frogs even poop, or can we ignore it and thereby never have to clean its habitat?"

Fortunately, there were neighborhood experts mere yards away: the family with four boys. They gave us a lesson in catching crickets and loaned us a habitat, and we all settled in to the idea of watching our new pet climb every pencil we stuck into his tank. A tiny piece of me felt--no, not love--but contentment that my children might one day exhibit interest in going to a zoo.

Grippo suckers up the side of his house

The frog mansion...

which all too quickly was returned to the neighbors when Grippo hopped off to the Great Froggy Mansion In the Sky after about three days.

Seems a piece of his tail never fell off when he left the tadpole stage. Takes about three days for remnant tail to mold and toxify its carrier. Takes about two seconds to flush a frog corpse.

Takes about two months for a six-year-old boy to find a replacement pet. Yup, this week Paco has hit upon a solution that satisfies the whole family, from his animal-averse father to his allergic-to-cats sister to his Pilates-loving mother:


His name is Max. He doesn't eat, so there's no food to buy; he doesn't poop, so there's no cleaning up; he likes to play with kids, so we get to hear their giggles; he doesn't bite, so we don't need a muzzle; he doesn't mold, so he won't gradually become glassy-eyed and moss-covered; he is perfect.

Max sleeps at the foot of Paco's bed each night, and every morning the lad rolls his pet into our bedroom. They romp together, and sometimes Paco holds Max on his lap while he eats dinner.

One thing, though:

if he ever pops, Max is going to be a bugger to flush down the toilet.

"A Guest Post from My Pal Jim Who Grew Up in Wisconsin, Spent Many Years in Minnesota, and Now Lives in Palm Springs"

So, yes, the post below is the latest pinch hitting by my friend, Jim; in past times, he's also written about performing in GREASE and seeing Elizabeth Taylor. In this latest, he considers his move to California a couple of years back. Enjoy his musings, as I jet off to Colorado this weekend to help my sister organize her clutter! (I've been practicing a severe expression as I announce, "You don't need that. You don't need that either. Get rid of that. Take that one to the Goodwill. Burn that.")

My only addition to Jim's post are a few quotes about the phenomenon that is Governor Schwarzenegger's state:


“As one went to Europe to see the living past, so one must visit Southern California to observe the future.”--Alison Lurie

“There is science, logic, reason; there is thought verified by experience. And then there is California.”--Edward Abbey

“Southern California, where the American Dream came too true”--Lawrence Ferlinghetti
-----------------------------------------------

"A View From the Porch"

It’s been two years and three months since I arrived in the desert. High time I wrote some thoughts about living here.

I’m sitting on what I’m going to start calling my “Writing Porch.” It’s one of three patios at my apartment. And I’m sitting in the sun, laptop on the table, and the sun is so bright the apple on the other side of the screen is showing through. Do you think I’ll write more if I call it the Writing Porch? Michael Chabon has a writing studio in his back yard. Just sayin’.

I’ve been such a crank lately, bitching over cocktails about everything from problems at work to my dismal love life. (No offense to the two guys who have dated me this month; not talking about you.) I better get some thoughts in about what is good about living in this beautiful area.

For the beauty of it, I will just give you this photograph.


There is little more beautiful than the view of snow from a distance.

(Photo by Tony DiSalvo)

Okay, just took off my shirt. (Take that Michael Chabon.) Yep, it’s warm here in Palm Springs. Eighty-five degrees on November 1st is, let’s just say, insane. In a nice way--not like Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun, more like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Puerto Vallarta.

What’s really insane, in the way of ET having a frontal lobotomy against her wishes, is this place in the fracking summer. Alex: “June, July, and August.” Jim: “What are the best three reasons to be a teacher?” Not so much here. Three to four months of heat in the 120 degree range. It’s a dry heat my mother’s aunt! An oven’s an oven, sweeties.

Having lived in extreme cold, though, I can tell you this: extreme heat is more bearable. You can sit still on a hundred-degree day if you’re in the shade and drink a nice shandy. Outside. Then you can go into your air-conditioned apartment and watch Keith Olberman. Can’t do that in the tundra of Wisconsin, Minnesota, or Maine (other places I’ve live) when it’s 30 below. (Okay, you can watch Keith if you have cable, a hot toddy, and a snuggie.)

It’s no use, you northerners, saying how much you like the cold or value the Change of Seasons. You might as well say you enjoy the Change of Life. My stalwart brother even posted on Facebook the other day the opening line to “California Dreamin’”: “All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray.” I couldn’t help but reply that he knew where and how he could be safe and warm.


The view from my Writing Porch.

On the other hand is the bitching. A couple of years before I moved here, a friend talked about weekending in Palm Springs. Well, talked is a bit generous. He ranted: “There’s nothing to do there! There’s NOTHING to do there.” And he’s pretty much right. Sure, there’s hiking in the mountains, drinking in the bars. And tennis for those who play. And that Scottish game that takes up all that lovely parkland. But nightlife? Forget it. One museum: good. Movies: good. International Film Festival: two weeks in January.

There’s no one under sixty who is single (see above re: love life). Why even yesterday there was a rather fetching guy my age getting his haircut next to me. “I think he has a partner,” says my Guy with Scissors. Natch.

So we’re saved from boredom by our proximity to Los Angeles and the coast.

But Jeeves! I think my laptop’s overheating.

And did you see those mountains?
----------------------------------------------

Epilogue: just this week, Jim decided to start his own blog, Long Slow Distance. If you have a minute, please go visit him and his post at their new crib:

http://jimbergsblog.blogspot.com/

"You Want to Come to Their Potluck"

I noted in my last post that my body is descended from a long line of human couches. I like to think our cushions are covered in the softest of plush upholsteries and that those allowed to fluff our throw pillows are both deserving and grateful.

Below is a literal line-up of my genetic line: three great aunts, plus my grandma, Dorothy (she's second from the right). They all grew up on a ranch in Montana; they all married ranch hands; they all made (make!--two of them are still alive and cooking, albeit with limited sight and fluctuating memory) hella good chocolate cakes and peach pies; they all never shirked a day's work in their lives.

Interestingly, while the La-Z-Boy trait passed on nicely to me, the "work ethic" gene got lost in the bloodline somewhere along the way.

Anyhow, this is the photo that caused my dear galpal, Pammy--herself a bit of an overstuffed chair--to exclaim, "I look at that picture, and all I see are hips and breasts! Oh, honey, you didn't stand a chance, did you?"


Not when it came to breasts and hips, I didn't, no.

But in so many other ways, I did.

"Skeletal Superiority"

I married up, genetically. Whereas I had lost three grandparents by the age of eight, my husband is nearly thirty-nine and still has three. My last-surviving grandparent died when I was thirty-one; his first-to-pass grandparent died when he was thirty-seven.

What's more, I come from a long line of smooshy, well-hipped, prodigiously-hootered women. Our body type was made to nurse the clan's babies as we slogged across the Plains of Passage, searching out fire and perhaps the odd wheel rolling past. Slow, steady, full of girth and mirth, we'd have hung in there and done the job, collapsing on each other's cushiony bodies at the end of the trudge.

In contrast, not a single person in my husband's family has issues with bodily softness or heft. Their body type would have qualified them to serve as the arrows shot from the first bows, there on the Plains of Passage, when herds of mastodon were spotted. I can picture Groom's great-great-great-great-googolplexed-great grandfather, lean and sharp and stringy, hopping up with great willingness and notching his head into the leather of the bow. After being fired into the heart of a mighty beast, felling it easily with the knife that was his torso, that same great-great-googolplexer would have leapt sprightly out of the bloody corpse, holding its still-beating heart in his hands, and then braised it for the tribe, spooning a tasty Squaw Currant reduction over top just before service.

What's more, my husband has run an ultra-marathon (sometimes 26.2 miles just isn't enough) and has never had a cavity. Me? I once watched a marathon of The Real World on MTV and inserted stuffing into the cavity of a Cornish game hen before snorting the whole bird down sans utensils.

Certainly, I can make a case for myself. I mean, he may be genetically superior, but at least I was canny enough to marry up. Unlike him. Unfortunately, just when I convince myself that there's justice because he is dumm, and I is smart, he goes and figures out the overarching conceit for the New York Times Sunday crossword while I'm still penciling in the easy three-letter answers of "UMA" and "ELO."

In fact, it's best for us not to enter into direct competition, and by that, I mean best for any hope of my continued self-esteem. Case in point: a couple years ago, at Halloween time (BOOOOO!, by the way. Gotcha.), I managed to draw what I considered a pretty impressive skeleton head. Having never taken a studio art course, I gave myself an internal high five--something that is actually very painful and sometimes requires corrective surgery--for my piece.

You are very scared when you look at my art, aren't you? In a good way? Like you think it might be okay after all to give me a black crayon and set me loose to wreak havoc?

When I showed then-four-year-old Paco my work, he, too, was impressed. At long last, I'd won my son's elusive love! We hugged a bit gingerly, still feeling out the boundaries of our new affection, and commenced a search for Scotch tape, so's we could hang my gruesome picture on the front door and scare the gremlins right out of every trick-or-treater who had the gall to knock and beg for sweets. That'd teach the little ragamuffins to try to take my chocolate.

Two hours later, having given up on ever tracking down the Scotch tape, we settled for the masking variety (retrieved from the produce drawer in the fridge) and hung the thing.

Shortly thereafter, Groom came home and was dragged by an excited Paco to the front door. Properly admiring, my husband showered me with compliments and a gentle cascade of kisses that started at my forehead and ended at my well-evolved bosom. Jumping up and down, Paco demanded, "Dad, now it's your turn! You get to draw a skeleton, too, and then we'll have lots of cool decorations!"

Ever game, his Groomishness set to the task and emerged a startlingly-short time later holding his contribution.


The superior bastard.

"So Here"

I'm not much of a joiner, nor do I really like playing tag. Also, rules chafe.

Thus, I'm not a particularly good candidate for the "meme" challenges and thoughtful awards that litter the blogscape. That noted, when kind fellow bloggers throw an award or a challenge my way, I do appreciate the acknowledgment. I do.

In the last month or so, a few blog-patriots have given me the challenge to list ten things about myself that no one knows. So, okay, it's come up enough that I'll do it; but I ain't passing it on or tagging anyone else. Just write your blog posts, honies, and I'll come read them. If you want to make lists, you should do that. If you don't wanna, then don't. 'K?


Ten Things. Some of them my husband already knows, as he is my central repository for minutiae that require expression. But it's what I got.

1. I just spent eight minutes taking the price tag off a dowel that now runs across the top of a fabric banner, which we will hang in a "dead space" at the bottom of our staircase. As I cursed the price tag glue and twining ('round and 'round the stick it went), I kept thinking to myself, "Here're eight minutes of my life I'll never get back. Here are eight minutes of my life I could have used to fold that basket of laundry. Here are eight minutes of my life I could have used to sniff glue, intead of peeling it."

Constantly filling my eyes with birdies and bright orange, though, may just keep me off the glue during the imminent dark months of winter.

2. Streaming my own variety of "radio stations" over Pandora.com is a great way to find new music or just get a better sense what Those Kids Today are listening to. Although I can input any musical artist at all and then listen to "comparables" for hours, I've been using it to listen to more of The Killers, The Strokes, The Shins, The Ting Tings, and even one article-less group, Kings of Leon.

When I tire of pretending to care what Those Kids Today are listening to, I create a station for an artist I actually like, such as Lucero or Husker Du, and get all rock outy and nostalgia-afied. The other day, I played the They Might Be Giants station for Paco, and while he pipped around to the selections, it was acutally Groom who had to go over and hug the computer, commenting, "This is my favorite station ever."

3. I am outrageously shallow and enjoy diverting my brain with the lives of celebrities. That part of my brain also really likes to go out and shop for boots. Generally, as is also the case with boots, my brain tends to love or hate celebrities. Although I will never know them, nor they me, celebrities cause in me an emotional reaction. I adore Russell Brand; I despise all reality show bimbos who, should their airplane go down over the Atlantic, sport implants that would keep them bobbing in the ocean loooong past when life rightly should have been snuffed out.

Interestingly, here's what I realized last night: I flatline when it comes to Melissa Joan Hart. She engenders in me zero reaction. She is like vanilla pudding served in a clean white porcelain bowl, if you were to leave out both the bowl and the pudding.

4. My left hand smells like laundry detergent right now. Wouldn't this be one hell of a puzzling mystery, if I hadn't been doing laundry? How would the detective who finds my corpse explain the fact that one hand--only one hand--smells of Tide? Maybe I was making pipe bombs and--haHA, Karma lashed out!--one accidentally exploded and killed me.

I guess I'd rather just do laundry and get the hand smell that way. All in all, it's one of the better hand smells. That detective should thank me for not springing a vastly different hand smell on him, in fact.

5. My Girl is growing up, which is part of the reason why I cropped this photo severely. Plus, some of y'all are big preeverts and should take your wanker selves off the Internet and stop looking for pictures of kids, you internally-broken skeezoids.

Anyhow, she's growing up but is clearly in the 'tween years, when the idea of middle school still has mystique. Here's the thing no one knows about me: I just want to keep her in a bubble bath, reading books, through the middle school years. She might emerge pruney and dehydrated, but at least her self-esteem will be fluffy and clean.


6. Because Girl is growing up, and we've had to admit she will one day get moods and boobies and tampons, she's going to have her own room for the first time. We're currently working on shoveling out our guest room so that we can paint it TURQUOISE and ORANGE and YELLOW and maybe RED!!!! With polka-dots!!!!!! Groom has spent hours going through the closet, pulling out papers and running clothes and CDs of unknown origin. The other day, we put safety goggles on Paco, gave him a mallet, and let him bash up a stack of CDs. Now our back yard glitters with silvery shards, and Paco is feeling better about his beloved "Dee-Dee" moving down the hall. His one caveat is that, into perpetuity, he gets to smash things we no longer need. Tomorrow, I'm going to lay out my uterus on the unmown grass and tell him to hack away.

7. Speaking of Paco amusing himself in the back yard, we had one dry day recently, during which he built a veritable Hadrian's Wall of leaves, only declaring it done when it was as tall as he. I regretted his Northern European bloodstock, as the wall took a damn long time. On the positive side, it did keep him from setting fire to stuff for at least an hour.


8. The mornings already are so dark, a state made worse by unrelenting lines of rain in the region, that I fear I will have bedsores by March. This morning, as is his habit, Groom slipped out of bed early, and during the brief moment when I roused, I thought, "What the hell is in his body that makes him wake up and get up? I don't have that thing. If I lived any closer to the Arctic Circle, I'm pretty sure I would spend six months of the year under my duvet." Half an hour later, again as is his habit, Groom brought an armful of sleepy boy into our room and dumped the softness into the bed with me. As the limp lad and I cuddled in for ten more minutes of warmth in the darkness, I realized that I could spend eight months a year under the duvet with the right company.

9. I've never shoplifted.

10. Completely without plan, I recently managed to get all twenty of my fingernails and toenails on different cutting schedules, something I hadn't even known was possible until I did it. After a few months of, "Ooh, this one's a little long; I'll just do a quick snip" followed three days later by "Time to go after that hangnail, and as long as I'm at it, trim down the whole nail" followed four days later by "Hmm, that one's snagging a bit," I ended up with every single nail at a different stage of growth, a state that illustrates better than anything

the tiny insanities
that rule our lives
yet no one knows about


unless we announce them.

"Goodbye, Fifteen"

Thanks to Frank and Moon Unit Zappa and their “Valley Girl” hit of the ‘80s, I was equipped with adequate attitude and language, at age 15, to convey my scorn for the aged yee-haws who surrounded me: “Oh my God, I am, like, so sure I will ever be 40. Having all those wrinkles would be grody to the max. Flock of Sea Gulls, but I am totally so, like, buggin' at all those old Joan Collinses who think they can still shop at Maurices. Thank WHAM! I’ll never live the barf-o-rama of being a creaky old saggy haggy. I’m stoked to be grooving the rad fad that is Jocelyn at 15.”

Being a teenager was the only way to go, for, like, the rest of of my life. How that plan would play out in the long-term wasn’t completely clear, of course, but I was so busy drinking watery beer and adjusting my Flashdance-inspired sweatshirt rips that it didn’t occur to me I might one day—-if I refrained from driving while I drank watery beer and adjusted Flashdance rips, consequently plunging myself off the side of a darkened road and smack into a light pole—-live to become A Person In Her Twenties, A Person in Her Thirties, and, gag me with a spoon, A Person in Her Forties.

The joke, of course, is on the teens who scorn.

Because they have no idea.

That no forty-something-year-old in her right mind would ever, even if imbued with perimenopausal superpowers that allowed her to create a temporal portal (a sideline activity when she isn’t mainlining chocolate or snorting spilled merlot off an IKEA coffee table) and step back 25 years in time, return to being a teenager.

Let’s all shout now, using the vernacular: “No. fucking. way…would we ever go back to the angst-ridden years when 'good time' meant spending three weeks picking out just the right strapless gown for the Winter Formal that we will attend with our really funny and cute dates who are such awesome dancers that they can keep twirling and bopping through even the entire extended dance remix of Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love.” But, as it turns out, they are all these things because they are gay and we are their beards, but we won’t know that for at least another handful of years, so mostly we spend the wee hours of the night after the Winter Formal snuffling on our waterbeds and staring at our crumpled strapless gowns on the floor while we wonder why our dates didn’t want to kiss us goodnight.”

What's more, outside of how much teenagerdom sucks (except for having knees that don't make ratcheting noises whenever you bend down to pick up the jawbreaker that accidentally dropped out of your mouth onto the orange shag carpet when you were wailing along with Bonnie Tyler to "Total Eclipse of the Heart"; indeed, the "excellent knees" a part of being a teen was sweeeeeeeeeeeet), there are other bonuses to leaving those years behind, other unimaginable riches yet to come. I would never have known, at age 15, what a rollicking time I'd be having in my 40s. I would never have known that the syncopated rhythms of my ratchety, crochety knees would create a whole new soundtrack, this one entitled "K-Tel Hot Ones: Flashes and Lower Lumbar Pains." I would never have known that the fields of dark strings (snapped filaments, they tell me) that float across my vision from time to time would actually transport me into my own personal disco, a place where the ball is always a'spinnin', and the DJ is always playing "Riding on the Metro."

Thus, I send this message back in time, to my bravada-driven teen self who'd never left North America; never tried edamame; never seen the thick and swirling strokes of a Van Gogh up close; never mustered the guts to stand in front of a classroom of 30 bored students; never waded through sixteen weeks of advanced grammar; never passed a human medicine ball out her girl bits; never fallen asleep at night with her hand nesting in the curve of someone else's hip:

Dear Smartass 15-year-old Jocelyn:

You have no idea what you're missing, not being in your 40's. Being 42 is, like, totally gnarly. Back there in high school, you might be learning twenty-seven things a day about Eugene O'Neill and how you're attracted to gay men and how spinning donuts in the high school parking lot never stops being fun and how your unformed heart can splinter without making a sound...but you'll still have twenty-seven things a day to learn, even decades from now, like how to thank the Aztec Gods for polenta and how there's no such thing as "the smartest in the class" when "smart" is undefinable and how the only church worth attending is made up of towering pines and poplars and birches and aspens, where the trail is your pew, and how the concept of a one true love is a fiction yet, somehow, you tripped across a singular person who is amazingly true and, through that, redefined love.

One other thing I've learned, dear Jocelyn Who Starts Each Day Listening to Geddy Lee at High Volume, is that the riches will keep coming, as long as you and I keep the vault open.

In the last year alone, I've taken your interest in old white guy writers--first exhibited when you read all of Eugene O'Neill your sophomore year of high school and, at about the same time, realized Mark Twain made you snort Mr. Pibb through your nose, and then by junior year you were sucking up the entire Rabbit series by John Updike (not quite understanding why Rabbit didn't just go out and have some fun and maybe watch that A-Ha video on MTV)--and I've run with it. Sure, I've also learned that women and writers of all ethnicities can turn out jaw-dropping prose...but...

and don't tell Toni Morrison this because I fear the "Sister, you betray me" bitch slap she could deliver...

of late, I'm coming back to what you first taught me (see how you were the teacher?): old white guys kick ass as writers.

Don't get me wrong, Poodle. You and I will actually read stacks and stacks of romance novels and chick lit before we come back to the white guys. Even more, the truth is that, lots of times, the white guys' books will just be too white. And too guy. And we'll return them to the library unread (sorry, Cormac McCarthy; if it's any solace, you're in good company with Don DeLillo, there on the "re-shelve" cart). Plus, some white guy novelists will just hurt our pretty little head. Fortunately, Thomas Pynchon is reclusive enough that he'll never notice us not seeking him out.

But Updike's still there. He died, you know, but only after a long, prolific career. He'll keep us busy for awhile.

Here's the surprise, though, Punky: there's a guy you've never even heard of, back there in 1983. And he's amazing--kind of like Mike Reno, the lead singer for Loverboy? Remember how you squealed over him when they played in Bozeman and how you aaahhhhed at the way opening act Quarterflash prepped you perfectly for Loverboy's bitchin' show?

Yea, this author is like that, like Quarterflash followed by Loverboy. He's that good.

His name is Philip Roth, and he makes your aging, ratchety-kneed self gasp a little bit with delight when she/you read his novels. Not only is he terribly wry, to the point of being caustic (you have to pay attention to get that; fortunately, your longtime love of Jane Austen will ready you as a reader), but he writes straightforward stories whose effectiveness doesn't rely on cliffhanger-chapters, vampires, or hidden codes. Quite simply, he strings words together and allows that--words, carefully chosen, one following the other--to create his magic.

By the time you're in your 40's, Joceybaby, you're going to respect nothing more than a quiet book that uses lyrical writing to make your insides swoon. You won't need bombs or deaths or laconic cowboys to keep your attention. Hell, with what you've learned from watching Seinfeld, you'll realize you don't even need plot. Just the words.

You probably don't get what I mean, entirely. It would help if you'd stop doodling "I'm so bummed that M*A*S*H* is over forever" on your College Algebra's paper-bag book cover and pay attention.

Try out a snippet of Mr. Roth, just in case you can catch a faint whiff of what you'll love so much when you're all old and creaky. In his novel Goodbye, Columbus, which was published waaaaaaay back in 1959, a college-aged young man who lives in Newark, New Jersey, drives on a humid summer night out of the city and into the suburbs for his first date with a girl whose family has made the jump out of urban life. Here:

Once I'd driven out of Newark, past Irvington and the packed-in triangle of railroad crossings, switchmen shacks, lumberyards, Dairy Queens, and used-car lots, the night grew cooler. It was, in fact, as though the hundred and eight feet that the suburbs rose in altitude above Newark brought one closer to heaven, for the sun itself became bigger, lower, and rounder, and soon I was driving past long lawns which seemed to be twirling water on themselves, and past houses where no one sat on stoops, where lights were on but no windows open, for those inside, refusing to share the very texture of life with those outside, regulated with a dial the amounts of moisture that were allowed access to their skin. It was only eight o'clock, and I did not want to be early, so I drove up and down the streets whose names were those of eastern colleges, as though the township, years, ago, when things were named, had planned the destinies of the sons of its citizens. I thought of my Aunt Gladys and Uncle Max sharing a Mounds bar in the cindery darkness of their alley, on beach chairs, each cool breeze sweet to them as the promise of afterlife, and after a while I rolled onto the gravel roads of the small park where Brenda was playing tennis. Inside my glove compartment it was as though the map of The City Streets of Newark had metamorphosed into crickets, for those mile-long tarry streets did not exist for me any longer, and the night noises sounded loud as the blood whacking at my temples.

See how it's simple but complex, J-Girl? See how Roth takes us into the heat of the night and the nerves of the young man and his desires to reach not only for this Brenda but also beyond his humble home life? Even better, notice how Roth makes it clear that, ultimately, the suburbs are a sad, closed-off place--perhaps not the right answer for this young man after all?

You don't know it yet, Toots, so sure are you of your health and promise and spark at age 15, but what Philip Roth wrote in 1959 is your story, too. You might be very busy hiding bottles of sloe gin in the yucca plants of Montana, stashing them there for future imbibing,

and you might be calling in repeatedly to the radio station, trying to win tickets to see Billy Joel,

and you might be sniffing your armpits discreetly as you stand by your locker between classes, worried that you're "pitting out,"

but the truth is,

unique as you want to be, your story has already been written. There is a book--damn, there are 16,456 books--out there about wanting to be something more, about wanting to escape the limitations of your beginnings, about yearning for release from an as-yet circumvented sadness, about turning your face outward and taking uncomfortable steps into a humid world.

So read them.

Even when filaments in your eyes start snapping, and you're reading through black floaters,

Even when you have to use two bright lights positioned above the book to see the print clearly,

Even when your back aches a little from being propped in one position too long,

read them.

And then, when you're all read-out, turn off the lights, fluff the pillows, and roll onto your side, fitting your body into the spoon of your husband's. Nestle your hand into the crook of his hip.

So here's what I can tell you, young 'un: although you'll be a saggy haggy at 42, you'll have consumed books, traveled widely, danced madly at 4 a.m., cried through the night, cried in the classroom, cried when your babies came, cried when your mom left your dad, cried when you held your sobbing dad the last time you ever saw him, cried when he died a few months later, mopped your face repeatedly, laughed at Craig Ferguson, held hands with your best friends, learned to say what you think, learned the therapy of plunging your hands into the earth, and learned that you know nothing, which then frees you to accept everything.

In short, my dear stumbling, bubbling, happy-sad teenaged pip:


you'll have reaped what you've sown.

“The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched”

--Thoreau


For its rich colors, its slanting light, the way the axis of the world exerts its tilt, the feeling of delicious melancholy, the accordion pleating of previous warmth with impending cold, the heartening sense of continued life amongst clear decay,

October is my favorite month.

We jump in piles of leaves and watch raptors migrate South and smell the wood smoke and plan to be ninjas for trick-or-treating--and the whole damn month feels like the last time we will stretch our arms wide, looking up to the sun with awe and reverence, before folding them back across our breasts and lowering our heads, craning downwards to watch for ice.

Plus, in October, there's a final harvest.

Out of all possible metaphors, that of "harvest" snags me best. Planning and cultivating and nurturing and waiting? Listen, I might not be able to find a screwdriver in the basement or hop out of bed happily at 7 a.m., but the components of a harvest? Those, I can do. Thus, the whole cycle that leads to harvest assures me that I have actual life skills, even though I might drop my kids off late for their friends' birthday parties and not really understand where in the house we file our bank statements. Harvest reminds me that some of us are good at the nebulous things. Some of us, like October, are conceptual--yet we still produce a practical yield.

Throughout the summer, we gathered in vegetables as they ripened, but the bulk of our harvest has happened in the last weeks, before the first freeze. And what a payoff, this business of biding your time and then biding it some more, until, finally, almost as a surprise, the windfall arrives. It reminds me of how I finally met, at the age of 31, the man whom I'd marry (just I was beginning to fear my eggs would require harvesting if I ever hoped to have children).

This is the one I plucked from near the footpath in my Garden of Desolation. He stood out as the sole sunflower:

Sunflowers like to chew gum, incidentally.

On a rare, sun-dappled day, our backyard and garden almost look as though they're not strewn with plastic toys, discarded bandaids, and weeds. Good lighting is key.

A few last hallelujahs from the flowers, before they crisp and snap. In two months' time, we will shovel the snow off our deck, onto this spot, and then jump into the heap.

If it only snowed an inch, that's gonna hurt.

A perfect illustration of summer hanging on as fall matures: hollyhock vies with maple. Step back. They'll thumb wrestle next, and leaves will fly.

Before Paco attacked these brussels sprouts plants with a plastic rake, they put on quite a show.

This is my idea of pearls on a string.

Our kids eat these like candy--asking repeatedly for more of the "Bugs Bunny carrots" from our garden. I always answer in an Elmer Fudd voice and tell them what "wascals" they are.

Squash eternally surprise, volunteering both in the garden and the compost...

An emblem of October,
they prove that a slow, gentle basking in the warmth--
a slow cook--
imparts all the hardiness needed
to prosper in the face of impending cold.

"Forgive Me, Viewer: It Has Been Two Days Since My Last Shower"

...which is the norm, actually, so I don't know why I'm acting all proud here.

At any rate, occasionally I am less greasy than in this video. Let's just pretend I've smeared myself in bacon grease.

Howzabout for the 4th of July, I run around a park, and y'all try to catch me?



UPDATE: Tonight, Carnivore Husband O Mine has been singing Beyonce's "If You Like It, Then You Should've Put a Ring On It" but using the lyric "You will like it if you put a bite of ham on it."

"At Our House, You Don't Have to Hide Your Brussels Sprouts in Your Napkin. Hell--That's Funny--Like You'd Be Given a Napkin at Our House"

Here are my dominant memories of first grade:

1) I got chicken pox and stayed home from school for a week. It got a little long, that week of lolling around, scratching myself, but then my mom set a Mason jar of buttons next to me (which her mom had collected for decades), and suddenly the week had rattles and texture in addition to itching and scabs. Ha! That reminds me: when the first chicken pock erupted, my mom was certain her 6-year-old had a zit, so she popped it. To this day, I have a scar at the top of my nose, right between my eyes. Good thing I'm blind as Ray Charles in a ninja costume at midnight on the winter solstice in the Arctic Circle and, thus, have to wear glasses, the frames of which cover up the scar that my mother, in her crazy need to squeeze any blemish within arm's length, inflicted upon me;

2) My first grade teacher, Mrs. Bulger, was a fearsome thing. Then she got cancer in her arm and went away for a few weeks, and when she came back, she only had one arm. Note to Spielberg: if you ever want to produce a horror film for 6-year-olds, have it be one in which their teacher goes away and comes back less one arm plus a belly full of pain and rage.

Actually, as an adult, I feel nothing but agony for Mrs. Bulger. I cannot imagine how awful that year was for her, and she had every right to become even more cantankerous;

3) However, she had no right to call my mom and schedule a meeting about the fact that I liked to carry, um, about 62 pencils to school everyday in my lunchbox. I even had a huge, thick one with a plastic White House where the eraser belonged, and I'd used it up enough that it would actually fit diagonally into my lunch box, along with all sorts of other really cool pencils with groovy erasers. That I had such a collection with me each day seemed fitting in an "open" school--one with no walls (it was the '70s); that I had a teacher who got mad at me for bringing a far out collection of pencils to school everyday and who went so far as to call in my mom and put the kibosh on all extraneous pencil carrying...well, that was just Old School, one-armed or not.


So there you have it: my best recollections of being six. Naturally, I have no idea what memories my kids will retain of their early years (probably Mommy being really tired, and then Mommy sleeping a lot), but if I had my way, I'd always like for Paco to remember the Day He Assaulted Vegetables.


Warning: this video is thin on plot but rich in character development and cultural insight. Plus, anytime your narrator sounds like she's on the verge of expiring of TB, you have to wonder about her reliability as a conveyor of point of view--and that right there is damn intriguing, inn't, Gentle Watcher?


Oh yea, and then there's the sunflower at the end, used both as aggressor and instrument of denouement. I know.

You. can. HARDLY. wait.

"Sometimes I Get So Distracted, I Forget to Wipe"

Groom just disappeared for three minutes.

When I came upstairs to, er, use the amenities, I saw what he'd been up to.

It's gotten so fun around here that I find myself drinking 467 ounces of water a day, just to earn repeat trips to the bathroom.

Question: if a Pyramid Man breaks his leg whilst skiing, does a St. Bernard with a flask of brandy around his neck show up to provide succor?

Or maybe a mummy comes and applies the bandages to Pyramid Man's wound?

Or maybe kind Inuits feed him seal blubber and make him a crutch out of whale bone?

And if a Pyramid Man falls on the ice, does he make a sound?

A few thoughts to occupy you for the weekend!

"(Mis)Adventures for Pyramid Man and For You, Too, Gentle Reader"

Many commenters on my previous Pyramid Man post were correct that "Pyramid Man" was inspired by the They Might Be Giants song "Particle Man." When Groom started playing around with the idea of the Adventures of Triangle Man, however, he quickly realized that a triangle is hard to confound, as it can just turn sideways and slide through most any situation. Once a triangle becomes multi-dimensional, that's when things get sticky.

And more interesting. Misadaventurous, if you will. Thus, Pyramid Man was born.

In recent days, Paco has decided that Pyramid Man must always have a door on his belly, through which a bandage-hurling mummy can exit the building and wreak havoc. (As I type those last words, I realize how much I want to use them in the past tense, for I have a random but compelling desire to type "wrought havoc." HEY, now I've just typed it, and as I continue this aside here, I realize the longer this tangent goes on, the more havoc I'm wreaking with this bit of writing overall, to the point where you might finish reading and be left thinking, "Wow, that post really wrought havoc with my will to live.").

So, as I was noting before my wilting synapses wrought havoc with the direction of my thoughts, Pyramid Man sometimes may have a door in his tummy (which I believe is the correct Egyptian word for that part of a pyramid), and there might be a mummy, and any long strings you see in Pyramid Man 'toons are the mummy's bandages. Except, sometimes, long strings might also be x-ray vision at work. Paco has lots of ideas, and he really likes adding strings into his dad's panels.

Adding strings into his dad's panels? That sounds like a euphemism for something and as though it might express being really torked, like, "Remember when Margot was reaching onto the floor of the car, trying to find her sunglasses, and she crashed my canary-colored Corvette into the back wall of the zoo? That really put strings into my panels."

Er, anyhoodle: Paco also thinks Pyramid Man is a bad guy who always should be carrying a bag on his back--you know, to hold the loot he's just heisted.

Loot he's just heisted? I'll be tarred and feathered, but that sounds like another euphemism, kind of like "chaps my hide." Imagine if Margot not only crashed through the back wall of the zoo in your Corvette but also killed a gorilla in the process. As you looked at the carnage with disgust, you'd be all, "That really heists my loot."

Seriously, I'll stop with the tangents now. Pyramid Man must make me giddy or something, kind of like when a Bob Mould song comes on the Itunes, and I have to crank it to seventy, and then I have to dance and sing a little and think back to how seeing him play at First Avenue back in the '90s was the best show I ever went to, and not just because he was a punk god who was wearing a cardigan but also because I was with my best girlfriend and her date who was actually the live-in boyfriend of her boss--talk about grounds. for. dismissal. Yet somehow it was all good fun, and our eyes got shiny as we listened to Bob sing, and to this day I just want to build him a little house out back and make Bob some snickerdoodles.

Like, um, yea, so Paco says Pyramid Man always has to have a loot bag on his back (remember how Julia Child had that hump on her back, and it managed to be charming?).

I present to you, now, the latest Groom/Paco collaborations on the easel in our bathroom, which is actually a pretty nice room in our house, as it's bigger than you'd expect and has both hard wood and tile on the floor, which gives users tactile options for their feet and, I suppose, for their hands, too, if they were to bend down and touch it with their fingers. But older people might find the bending down hard and should probably stick to feeling the flooring with their feet alone, lest they have to call for an assist.

What I mean to say is, here's Pyramid Man:

First, Paco drew the red plant in the middle of the frame and announced it was a Venus Flytrap. Groom built from there, depositing the flytrap into Pyramid Man's hand and entitling this episode "Venus Flytrap Rox." In this panel, Pyramid Man announces, "My theft of the flytrap is a success" (although Groom wrote it as "sucess," which made me think, as I added another 'c" to that word, "Honey, you may be cute, but leave the Englishing up to me and concentrate on drawing your little pictures and looking pretty").

In response to Pyramid Man's pronouncement of his theft, a new character, clearly a law enforcer (see the flashing light on his head?), shows up on the lefthand side and says, "Not so fast, Pyramid Man! Geometry Man has got an angle on you."

And, punkies? Look: Geometry Man is holding a protractor as a weapon, and if that's not the humor of a private liberal arts college graduate, I don't know what is. Your parents' hard-earned money was well spent on that killer tuition, Groom!

Of course, Paco insists there's no such thing as a protractor, and it's just a gun there in Geometry Man's hand.

I fully expect to see Paco at the community college in 12 years' time.

A few days later, Pyramid Man's adventure continued. You can see, in these panels in green ink, Paco's additions. Geometry Man yells, "Bring back those jewels, Pyramid Man" and then shoots at the culprit with x-ray heat vision. Pyramid Man then thinks, "He'll never find me in the sewer."

In the last panel, you can see what happens when a pyramid tries to jump through a manhole. Essentially, he becomes Plug Man.

Finishing out this story is the appearance of a new character, which Paco added. Check this out, though: my six-year-old named his new character Period Man because he's a piece of punctuation, and when he told me that, I hugged him so hard and with such jubilation that his eyes popped out. We picked them up off the bathroom floor, though (one eye was on the hard wood part, and the other eye was on the tile), and stuck them back into his sockets, which was fortunate, as he then could read the caption of "Period Man thinks you're in a pickle."

At the very bottom, there's a line about a sneak peak at the next adventure. All I know so far is that it involves the x-ray heat vision melting a lot of things into puddles of goo. Beyond that, I just step aside and hand over the marker.

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

Whew. Despite the fact that I merely posted a couple Pyramid Man adventures, that sure wore me out. And now I'm dwelling on the word "manhole" and am really afraid of the tangent that I'm about to go off on,

so I'll stop now,

before I type the word

urethra.

"Parliamentary Procedure of Plastic"


I never like my kids better--and trust me, sometimes I don't like them at all--than in the hour before bedtime.

For 9-year-old Girl, who is exploring the vagaries of attitudinal preadolescence, it's a time when she often announces, "For my book time tonight, I want to talk." Since she reads consistenly on her own, and we therefore have no worries about spooning words into her, "book time" can be anything she chooses; that she opts to conversate ("about my friends" or "about orchestra") is a boon. As one of my many wise mama friends once noted, "When your kid is ready to talk, no matter the hour of the day, you sit down, shut up, and listen for as long as the window stays open."

Equally gratifying at the close of the day is Paco. A night owl like his mother, Paco has a Circadian switch that flips on at about 8 p.m. every night, causing him to ask, "For my book time tonight, can you read to me while I dance?" Hell, yea, I can read to a dancing kid. The only tricky part for me is managing to hold the book steady enough to make out the words as I read...because, Britney? Like Paco, I never met a song I didn't need to bounce around to, so the boy and I roll and jive and spar to the beat, and while we're at it, I work in a book as the bassline. The whole hullaballoo takes me back to another sage woman friend's words to me when I was pregnant with Paco; I, unaware of his gender, worried aloud, "Lawsy, I hope it's another girl. I'm scared of boys. If they're not hitting something with a stick, they're jumping off of it." At that point, my friend said, "Oh, pulease. Boys are heaven. Just think of any 18-year-old boy you've ever known and how he is with his mother. You can't tell me you don't want that."

True dat. We're only a third of the way to 18, and already Paco and I are there. Last night, as we wound down for bedtime, he decided he wanted to be a waiter and write down requests on Post-it notes, which he then would deliver to his dad in the kitchen.

And with that, a long-harbored dream (squeezing out progeny just so they could bring me booze) was fulfilled.

Anyhow, a few nights before he discovered I'd give him a quarter for serving me hard cider, when he was too sweaty from jigging to continue hoofing around, Paco found a new pre-bedtime amusement.

This is the imp with a plan.


At what point does a soft little belly stop being cute and become distressing?

I only ask because, *cough cough*, I've heard that some adults suffer from Big Ole Soft Belly Syndrome, and maybe I could pass on a few words of advice, you know, if I ever ran into any of them. If that advice entails cutting out chocolate or wine, though, maybe your counsel to those anonymous adults should tell me, er, them, to make peace with my, er "their," jiggly bits.

Here's the sister of the Imp with a Plan. When the Imp's best friend comes over to play, he has to make pronouncements like, "I sure do like your sister's cute little sprinkle of freckles, Paco."

Here's the vanity in the Imp and Girl's room. Inside the drawers was Paco-Imp's inspiration for his new pre-bedtime activity.

Oh, and if you're gasping at the obviousness of the vanity's toupee, it's actually a Hannah Montana wig dangling there on the top, but we don't tell Vanity that, as he thinks he's passing for a non-antiquarian when he wears it.

This is the Hannah Montana wig dangling on my top. It makes me feel like I'm passing for non-antiquarian, too.


At any rate, here was the plan: Paco-Imp went through the vanity drawers, collecting dribs and drabs and gewgaws and hizzabits, and decreed, as he dragged everything into the master bedroom: "These are my clubs. They are having meetings tonight."

Then he busied himself for 45 minutes with setting up, naming, organizing, and fluffing each meeting.

I present to you The Frog Club.

The Barbie Club

The Gem Club (of this one, I'd like not only to be the president, but also a satisfied client)

The Shiny Club

Incidentally, we have pinstripe bedding because it makes us appear professional.

The Guatemala Club

The Scary Monster Finger Puppet Club

The Scary Monster Finger Puppet Club in the mosh pit. It's only fun 'til someone loses an eye.

Then it gets REALLY fun. And tasty.

The Random Club (hand to heaven, Paco assigned the names), milling about, er, randomly

The Random Club, somehow made more cohesive when contextualized and staged on a first grader wearing an awesome shirt.

Finally, breathlessly, at the end of the day, after enduring vapid Power Point presentations, drinking tepid coffee, and finding that no one wanted to take the minutes,

all the clubs rallied, overthrew their CEOs, and converged

into a new world order:

The Cooperative of Crap.
--------------------------------

You'd better believe Paco got more than the requisite 27 kisses goodnight when I tucked him in.

For his winning pre-bedtime ways, he also got one bumfuddler of a zlllllllllllllllllllllluuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrbbbber on his soft white underbelly.

"Yea, We Should Just Build That Fence Already"

Okay, so Pyramid Man has been having a few more (mis)adventures, which will be forthcoming. However, since my Groomeo has been spending much of his time this week working on assignments for the three art classes he's taking--and also hours and hours painting our upstairs hallway (that area is the final domino that toppled during the kitchen remodel and is in the process of being stood up again...once we finish the painting, including the stairs that lead to our second floor, we'll have a new runner installed, and then, Poodles? We's DONE!)--well, he hasn't had much leisure cartooning time. The sub-story here has to do, clearly, with the fact that he's not spending enough time in the bathroom to doodle on the easel as he's doodling in the toilet. I'll feed my man Fiber One for dinner tonight, and Pyramid Man will be back to befuddlement in no time.

Moreover, because I am all about following every biblical edict (I don't eat pork, nor do I trim the corners of my beard, nor do I braid my hair [rot in hell, Bo Derek]), I try to be a help meet to my husband. This week, that means I volunteer to help paint the trim and the five doors that ring our hallways, and then I kind of get that white paint in all sorts of places it wasn't supposed to go, and after a bunch of unsightly drips start taking over the banister and I cry a little bit, I offer to go empty the dishwasher.

The upshot is that I'm paint-covered and tear-stained (although my glassware is spotless), which means I haven't been the blogger I (and God; remember the edict in Revelations that dictates, "Thou shalt publish to your blog at least twice weekly and visit the blogs of thy neighbors, lest ye be hobbled by an angry computer virus"?) would like me to be.

Fortunately, I have this lesbian friend named Kirsten. The fact that she's a lesbian is only pertinent here because I met her when she married one of The Galpals of My Life, a woman named Virginia. Without the lovely lesbians, I would have no Kirsten, so praise Jesus that the bible fully supports their love!

Anyhoodle, Kirsten's life labels are not only restricted to "lesbian"--she's also funny and compassionate and Canadian. That she's Canadian is the basis of the article below, which she wrote for the Austin (MN) Human Rights Commission a few weeks ago. Although Kirsten and Virginia live in Minnesota, theirs is clearly not a Green Card/citizenship marriage (Duh. The U.S. not only sucks with its health care and immigration procedures, it also smacks down gay and lesbian marriage, and I think we can all see that I'm about to launch into a really unpleasant middle class white liberal rant, so I'll stop now. But just one more thing before I cuddle up with the ghosts of Martin Luther King, Paul Wellstone, and Seymour Hersh: don't you think everyone should have at least one home before anybody has two? Yes. Yes. My work here is done):
-------------------------------
Here, then, is Kirsten's story:


I'm just a girl wanting to live in the United States...

I have been thinking a lot in the past weeks about my journey...my immigration journey. In 1990, I left Canada and joined a theatre company located in the Unites States. I worked with them for 5 years. Maintaining status while working for this entity was always a challenge, but the company did the work, tracked my status, giving me the luxury of not really having to worry much about coming and going to and from Canada. After my 5 years on tour, I decided to pursue my degree and did so here in the US. As a student, once again, maintaining status was relatively easy. While in grad school (7 years later) the true work began. I had an agency wanting to hire me and they were willing to file for an H1B temporary work visa for me. I received my visa and began work in spring of 2001. Getting a Green Card was the goal. The agency hired an immigration lawyer and the work began.

My H1B turned into a second and then a third...the costs mounting with lawyer fees and filing fees and more filing fees. My favorite of these fees (NOT) were those asked for from the Department of Homeland Security to expedite requests. Twice, the visas were not processed on time (the date in which the US is required to respond by). Upon inquiring, TWICE, we were told that they would expedite the request (do what was already theirs to do) for an additional fee of $1000....INFURIATING. We paid! And waited...waited...waited.

In 2006, my lawyer told me that it could be another 3 years...that I was in a backlog of 750,000 people. But that one day, he would call saying that the window had opened and that I would be allowed to make my final application for permanent residency. I did not have to wait 3 more years. In March 2007, the window opened. It was open for a VERY short time and during that time I needed to complete a mountain of paper work and get a physical done. This was not as easy as one would expect. I made 26 phone calls to Civil Surgeons throughout the state of Minnesota before finding one that would see me in time to beat the deadline. I was tested for every communicable disease known to man. I found myself joking with the Doctor while these tests were being completed. By this time I had been in the US for 12 years and any disease found through these tests would have been things I contracted here in the US. I also needed to be fingerprinted and have my "mugshot" taken. I say mugshot because the process, location and staff for this part of the process was very sterile...in fact the woman taking my prints did not smile...did not speak...except to give instructions and corrections. this place and the people working there were civil but not friendly...as I watched others I decided it was even unkind...and certainly un-welcoming!

Anyway...I made the deadline and once again found myself waiting....waiting...waiting. On March 25, 2008 (March 25th is my birthday by the way) I received word that my Green Card had been issued and that it was coming. In the meantime I was travelling to Canada and had to make a trip to immigration services in the Cities on my way out to receive a stamp in my passport allowing me to travel. This stamp was in essence a temporary green card. When I arrived, I was welcomed...I was congratulated...I was smiled at...

I am a white girl from Canada (who speaks English) who wanted to live in the US...I am still 3-4 years from being able to apply for citizenship. To date, between fees paid by me, by my sponsoring agency and those fees waived by an incredible law firm, the cost has exceeded $30,000.00. It has been 9 years...I am through the hardest part, of course, but continue to wait...continue to wait. I think about my counterparts...the others trying to make their way through this system...I speak the language, am educated and had the financial support of an employer and a kind hearted lawyer who waived thousands in fees and in this process, this journey, I am challenged...I am frustrated...I have felt cheated...I felt un-welcomed and un-wanted. Oh what the others must feel...

-----------------------------------
Kirsten also provided this link, which is to a really wonderful chart that lays out the process:

http://www.advancingequality.org/attachments/files/201/Immigration_Chart.pdf

"If you'd like to have a logical explanation/How I happened on this elegant syncopation/I will say without a moment of hesitation/There is just one place/That can light my face...And It's Called In Front of the Easel in Our Bathroom"


If you were able to find a scale the size of Gary, Indiana, you could hoist upon it all of the toys, puzzles, and games in our house and weigh 'em--at which point, even though you weren't actually weighing the toys ON the town of Gary, Indiana, I'm pretty sure, in a moment of transcendent empathy, the the nice little town of Gary, Indiana, would explode with a loud pop, just from sensing that a scale its size somewhere else on the planet was holding all that kid crap and measuring its heft.

In so many ways, not the least of which is that such an explosion would signal the end of Mayor Rudy Clay (who, based on what I see on his Website, is teeming with pos-i-tiv-ity), this would be a tragedy. Maybe, at least for the mayor's sake, it would be prudent for me to consider cutting back on the piles and piles of child amusements that fill our house so that no scale anywhere ever has to blow up--and so that all mayors, no matter the burg, can continue planning back-to-school picnics for their cities.

If I had to whittle it back to a mere 5 pounds of toy-ish stuff, I know one thing I'd keep: the easel.

Our Girl has used it for years when she is acting as teacher to a class of 26 babydolls; we have used it to pose a "Question of the Day"; both kids have created paintings of robots and sunflowers on it; and, in a pinch, it's a helluva coathook. I also sometimes prop myself against it when I get tipsy.

Transformers, stuffed animals, and board games alike know the Sheriff Is In Town when Easel stops by. Easel kicks toy ass (including that donkey from SHREK).

A few weeks ago, Easel stopped by the bathroom--on a campaign to intimidate the bathtub toys, metehinks, which live in a bucket under the towels--and has been hanging out there since.

Can I just say there are few things more fun than an easel in the bathroom? For one thing, it negates the need for magazines and the crossword puzzle. Because? Punky? You can spend a lot of toilet time creating art when Easel is hovering nearby.

It's a venue for a whole new kind of toilet humor.

Even better, since Paco is waaaaaaaaaaay into reading comic books and graphic novels, we can pretend we're upping his literacy by drawing cartoons on Easel that the lad then has to decipher while he, as we say, "makes a pooper."

In recent days, we've had a variety of panels appear and be wiped away (simultaneous wiping: the hidden bonus of a whiteboard in the bathroom!), including my personal favorite, an alien guy named Brainiac who can't figure out how to eat chicken nuggets, what with him being only a brain on a body and having no mouth.

However, I'm also really enjoying Groom's latest creation, "The (mis)Adventures of Pyramid Man." First, Pyramid Man showed up like this:

His triangular shape makes him wonder, "How am I going to get in?"

See. Rectangular doors are discriminatory.

Today, I switched up Pyramid Man's house and thoughts, though, which delighted Paco during his early-morning toilet ministrations.

Here, Pyramid Man looks befuddled because he didn't actually order that new rug.

As Paco noted while his undies and shorts fell to a puddle around his ankles, "Pyramid Man can't even get inside to call someone and tell them they brought the carpet to the wrong house!"

Poor, poor Pyramid Man.


Clearly, Easel will continue to amuse us as we brush, floss, and wipe. I invite you now into our bathroom, so long as you're willing to ignore the grey ring running around the inside of the tub: if the marker were in your hand, what scenario would vex Pyramid Man next?

“I’m Kind of An Old Woman, and While I Don’t Live in a Shoe, I Believe I Could Cobble Together a Modest Colonial Out of Boots and Flip-Flops, Featuring a Sunroom Constructed of Cleats”


Personally, my waters are a bit muddy. I don’t perceive things as black or white, and my moral compass has never tweaked to true north.

Hmmmm. There have got to be a few more metaphor/analogy/simile/personifications I can toss into that confusing mix. Try these: "my integrity shifts with even the smallest seismic activity" and, um, "my moods waft in and out with the tide."

There. That linguistic mess should have Strunk and White reaching for each other in a darkened library somewhere, seeking comfort, fumbling around for each others’ “ink pens” with their lily-white, uncalloused editors’ hands.

The point is that, due to all the mud and shades of grey and spinning compass needles, I am eminently casuistic and corruptible. If it’s shiny and hanging in front of my face, I will reach up, drooling, and snatch at it.

This tendency proved particularly unfortunate when someone hung a set of Ginsu knives from a maple tree down the street.

It’s not so hard to get by with seven fingers, I’m here to tell you.

Plus, thumbs are overrated.

Anyhow, due to all my suspect internal bidness, I’m a swirling mess of happy-crazy laxity.

And you know how traditional wisdom dictates that, in good relationships, partners complement each other? Like if one partner in a lesbian union owns Carhartts, the other partner in that relationship should have a great toolbelt and a black lab?

Holy Indigo Girls, but I scored just that complementarianship in Groom. Remarkably, despite being an American adult, he has remained, well, pure. Don’t get me wrong: he’s fun in all the important ways. He’ll drink beer with me and cackle when I call our attitudinal daughter a “roiling bag of butthead.” But, overall, he meets the world with a level, steady gaze. In the time that it takes me each morning to hum a few songs from the SHOWBOAT soundtrack and dither about what earrings to wear, his Groomishness has shown up, put in some good thinking, and done the job beautifully--whatever that job may be, from making baguettes to staining windows to biking to the grocery store for a 20-lb bag of rice. In fact, the only negative thing I can say about his performance in a multitude of daily activities is that his ears don't glitter very much, nor can he warble a single show tune.

Despite that lack, I still gotta love one man ‘til I die.

For, you see, I can’t help lovin’ that man of mine.

Yea, so, as I was noting: Groom is very adept and able and solid and clear and junk. Thus, when he speaks, I pause my yammering and listen up.

One of his greatest pieces of wisdom is something I can agree with, intellectually, yet I just can’t get my heart to follow.

See, he maintains that shoes are one of the evils of the world. We have too many; we don’t need so many; they clunk up our lives; they defy corralling; they are symbolic of all hollow excess. Moreover, they are often expensive and uncomfortable and stinky. In Groom’s ideal world, everyone would whittle his/her shoe stash down to only a pair or two.

The world not being ideal, Groom himself wrangles a handful of pairs of Vasque trail running shoes (justifying at least one with “that pair is old, but I wear them when I mow”), a couple pairs of Crocs (which he has to wear around the house, lest he break a toe, as is his wont), a few pairs of flip-flops, and maybe even something he could wear to a funeral or a job interview. Or to a job interview at a funeral home.

This shoe issue has been highlighted once again these last few months when we’ve dragged and toted around our heaps of crap during the remodel and floor refinishing. Twenty-seven trips later, and the shoes have been moved from the front coat closet out to the porch and then again from the back porch to the front porch and then upstairs and, on Sundays, into the basement.

Feh and patooey.

Imagine, then, how giddy I was that last weekend’s garage sale would help reduce this problem. If we were shedding crap and more crap, a few shoes would have to scootch out of our lives, right?

And they did! Approximately five pairs took a walk. Good riddance, cheap leather; hello, $2.25.

Even better, to help organize the remaining household shoes, I had ordered a cabinet devoted to that one task. After the cabinet arrived on our porch with a thump the other day, Groom sighed a bit, crossed himself, and set to putting the thing together. I was upstairs admiring the way a pair of silver hoops jangled as I enunciated "Fish gotta swim, and birds gotta fly."

He only grumbled “shita$$” once during the process.

But lookie! Lookie! We have a home for shoes!

What's more, if we ever get truly resolute and actually pare down our pairs, we can open our own post office and give everyone a mail slot! For now, though, we’re a family of four whose shoes are all nicely stored, which means that I must be a good person and maybe even grown up!

Sure, it’s true that not all the shoes fit in that one cabinet. We also have a little shoe annex in the coat closet. That’s still reasonable.

And, uh, naturally, because we live in a climate of four profound seasons, we also have snow and ski boots stored in the basement.

This is not a problem. It just means we’re warm and active, as all the most clever shoe owners are.

Just ask Imelda.

The other thing we are is environmentally conscious; when people give us hand-me-downs of things like soccer cleats and puddle boots, we’re much too deliberate about our footprint on this earth to say no. It’s all part of reducing and reusing, ja?

That's why we also have this shelf next to the washing machine. I’m only wheezing neurotically the very smallest amount as I type this.

Strangely, the wheeze is intensifying as I recall--GACK--that we also have another bin of hand-me-down shoes in a basement closet, awaiting our kids’ future growth.

As the presence of enormous plastic bins always indicates, we engage in some serious tree huggery.


Since the air in the basement is so thick, I need to head up to the light, maybe to the haven of the bedroom...

...where, Sweet Snoopy On a Cracker, I’ve just remembered I have a closet full of very special shoes that make my feet feel like life is a party


--even when my eyes are crying at the fact that my perspicacious Groom is right:

Evil abounds, lurking everywhere, just underfoot.

The way I feel right now, I can’t imagine what will ever relieve this doleful, sucking feeling.


But I'm guessing a new pair of Teva flip-flops could be balm to my sole.

"All I Know Is I Sure Ate A Lot of Jelly Bellies As These Photos Uploaded"

Alternate titles in the running for this post were "Doing Our Part to Revive the Economy"; "At Least It Got Us to Dust"; and "So, I Suppose If We Have a New Kitchen, That Means We Should Wash the Dishes?"

Naturally, because my brain is cacaphonous and full of conflicting shouts and yips, I have yet another option: "Some Weeks, I Find Myself All Balled Up Inside Because I Have No Time to Write." The subtitle for this option would read: "Groom Is Doing His Stint Today as a Newspaper Reader on the Radio for the Sight Impaired, and Paco's Testing for His Orange Belt Tonight, Followed by a Soccer Game, Followed by a Parent Meeting for Girl's Class Regarding an Upcoming Trip to an Environmental Education Center, and, Oh Yea, I'm Also Having a Garage Sale This Weekend, and Because My Neighbors Rock, They're Letting Me Use Their Garage, and That's So Cool Because Our Patch of Asphalt Could Not Be More Low Rent, but That Also Means I've Spent the Last Two Days Not Only Dredging and Pricing but Then Carrying Every Last Damn Piece of Crap the House Is Pooping Out Across Two Lawns--Oh, One More Thing, I'm Also Trying to Find Time to Grade a Passle of Run-Ons Activities, Get to the Grocery Store, and Go for a Sanity-Maintaining Run on a Beautiful Trail Where I Can Smell Some Pine Trees and Remember All That Is Good."

That last title's kind of catchy, inn't?

Adding to the kerfuffle has been the in-and-outing of construction guys and carpet layers (new rug on the back porch, as the old one got trashed during the kitchen work) and the fact that each of them is very chatty and has to ask me if I have a wrench and, inexplicably, an iron. Then I make them mochas and find out they hate their jobs and bemoan the lack of healthcare in this country, and before you know it, there's another hour I'll never get back.

Yet, somehow, it's all a bit of giddy fun at the same time. I kind of like making mochas for people, a skill that could come in very handy, should this teaching gig ever get tired. Mocha-making, coupled with a penchant for random chat, could turn me into Starbucks with personality, friends.

Anyhoodle, as of yesterday, the interior of the kitchen is done (a bit of exterior work remains). And, yes, I know I've rather gone on this summer about the remodel and have posted pictures time and again, but since we aren't so much Christians at our house but more Foodstians, I guess I can't help myself. It's like some disciples came and built us a new worship space.

So here goes again: the most recent views of the narthex, the pews, and the altar.

Tony, the tiler, came last week and put in the backsplash. White subway tile is almost as nummy as homemade croutons (which is what Groom's got drying on the counter there).

Backsplash from a distance. You can also see a silver-bullet looking flask on the island; I got that for Paco, in an attempt to get him to take a stainless steel water bottle to school. It has a skull on the front, and that has made all the difference. That skull is at first grade today. I think Paco is, too.

Technically, this would be the altar, methinks. Miss Silva, vixen of the village of Rancilo, has had me on my knees, kowtowing in gratitude, more than once.

The hood here--with the push of a button--rises majestically out of the countertop. In the presence of such technology, every testosterone-driven being who has come into the kitchen in the last two days finds himself struggling to catch a full breath. Gasping, the individual in question eventually asks, "Can I push the button again and watch it retract? And then push the button again and watch it come up?"

The vanity in the new half-bath has been installed. Get this: when you add another sink and toilet to the house, that means there's ANOTHER SINK AND TOILET THAT NEED CLEANING.

My antidote for this? Don't clean.

Groom painted the back porch, and then a really sketchy guy who seemed suspiciously tight with his bottle of glue came, cursed a lot, and installed the free carpet (kitchen remodelers paid for it).

What were you doing at 9:34 last night? I was shrieking at the appearance of yet another disembodied head in my day. The first one had been that of a Barbie (I put a price tag of $.10 on it). This second one looks like Librarian Ken's, eh?

Part of the domino effect of switching up the kitchen was the floor refinishing and--aw, what the hell--a rearrangement of furniture. Most important is the presence of the Playmobil castle on the radiator, of course.


See the heap of junk on the sideboard there? This morning, I carried it across two lawns and tossed it into a garage. With any luck, some poor sod who needs a fleece ballerina blanket will drive through my neighborhood this weekend.

You know, overall, as the various projects start to move towards a close, it's not so much about "stuff" and "having" and "shedding" as it is the creation of a space--and a house can be synergistic, more than the sum of its parts--that feels right,

a space that feels like a haven from the meetings and kid activities and grading,

a space that makes me want to take Communion.

In my case, of course, Communion consists of Triscuits and a hell of a lot of wine, often sucked straight from the bottle.

I would use a glass.

But with all the household transitions, I can't find one.

"As Henry VIII Would Tell You, Heavy Is the Head That Bears the Seed"

My lad Paco is generally regarded as quite tall for his age. On more than one occasion, the drunken college students who rent the house behind us have tossed him their car keys and asked him to be their designated driver. As well, he could trounce all his fellow first-graders in a tetherball tournament, simply because he has the ability to keep the ball a'spinning far above each opponent's reach. Even better, he's tall enough to open the medicine cabinet and retrieve his own Valium when the world is too much with him (spelling lists have sent stronger kids straight to Oxycontin).

However, compared to what's growing out back in the garden, Paco is Lilliputian.

We have cultivated a sunflower so prodigious, it can't handle its own enormity.

My cousin had a breast reduction for the same reason.

For the last few weeks, I've been watching Sunny peak and then begin his gentle decline; briefly, he reached towards the sky, but all too quickly, his frame slanted into a gentle bend of abatement. He is a metaphor for so much, from midlife to sex to friendship to appetite to the new cast members of Dancing with the Stars.

Mostly, for me, Sunny is what he is, though: taking a bow at the end of another season.

"I Am So Over All That Midnight Dreary, Pondering Weak and Weary"


For me, the last couple of decades have been a glorious gambol. Sure, a couple of guys broke my heart, and a slew of annoying fine lines started creeping in around my eyes, but, on the flip side, I began investing in more expensive shoes, spooning every night with a man superior to those who previously dented me, and discovering that a full-time salary can purchase heckalotta dark chocolate.

Oh, and I also realized poetry doesn't always have to make me lie down in a darkened room and long for a pretty boy to place a moist cloth upon my brow.

When I was studying English in college, poetry felt like the suck. I was always, "Huh?" and "What the fetzpah?" and "Who said hummanuh?" in class, cowering in the back row, trying to avoid participation--yet ready to blurt out, if called upon, "It's a Christ figure and/or beauty is a means of conveying the truth! And if neither of those, then dusk is imminent death, and every rose has its thorn!!"

My head came to hate poesy.

Being so negative, I was, thus, primed for a dramatic turnabout. Because--who knew?--there is actually a fair amount of kickass poetry in the world. Too bad Them Alls in Charge don't teach it in the stuffy classrooms.

Hey. Wait. I think I may just be one of Them Alls in Charge these days. On occasion, when I've not been able to sidestep it (such as when one-third of the curriculum in my British Lit class focused on The Romantics, and damn my hide but those poncy absinthe-drinking boys only cranked out rhymers), I've had to bring poetry into my own classrooms, which, yes, are literally quite the hell stuffy because my college is ventilation-impaired and likes to take one big classroom, chop it into three smaller ones, and then not actually consider airflow in the new layout, which means that the new classrooms are generally, kid you not, 86 degrees and that--HELLO, PLATO--is not exactly the best path to good education. Seriously, is there any other more stultifying English equation than poetry + 86 degrees + class held after lunch = kill me now?

So, anyhow, for a variety of reasons, I am profoundly appreciative whenever I find a poet who actually keeps readers awake and writes clear sense in real words and doesn't stress out my fluffy brain or cause my armpits to sweat even a tidge more because then those big perspiration circles would reach down to my waist.

The latest find in my continual search for Poetry That Keeps My Humours in Balance came, as so many good things do, over the airwaves of public radio. Some weeks back, I heard an interview with Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, herself an English teacher, but, in the case of her latest volume of poems, more importantly a mother...whose daughter was murdered--strangled by an ex-boyfriend. In Bonanno's recounting, the poems come together to form a narrative of that event and its aftermath.

Clearly, Slamming Open the Door is not low-density reading.

However.

Bonanno's style is accessible, frank, heartwrending. Most refreshing of all, she's one poet whom I'm pretty sure I'd like, were I to meet her. I would like to invite her to come sweat and do a reading in my non-ventilated classroom.

I would bring her a Frappucino. At the end, the students would clap with more than vegetative politeness, for she would leave them sitting up straight, amazed at the power of a words strung together with great deliberation.

Here, then, is an introduction to Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, a woman who will make a true English major of me yet (in this, my 19th year of teaching English). In this poem, she draws upon the experience of her daughter's memorial service and dispenses advice to all mourners, everywhere:


"What Not to Say"

Don’t say that you choked

on a chicken bone once,

and then make the sound,

kuh, kuh, and say

you bet that’s how she felt


Don’t ask in horror

why we cremated her


And when I stand

in the receiving line

like Jackie Kennedy

without the pillbox hat,

if Jackie were fat

and had taken

enough Klonopin

to still an ox,


and you whisper,

I think of you

every day,

Don’t finish with

because I’ve been going

to Weight Watchers

on Tuesdays and wonder

if you want to go too.

"Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Parents"

Do you ever get in your jammies and contemplate bedtime and then decide that you need to make a movie, real-quick-like, before you sack out all Tired Tiger on your sheets?

And if you do, do you then ask your parents to do "something"--so long as it contains all the best of cinema, from conflict to action to tension...with a few lulls in the middle for character development? (like showing how your sister has a penchant for "grooming" your hair, in ape-ish fashion?)

If you've answered these questions in the affirmative, then you just might be my son. (reminder: when the lad is "Paco," he's being a 14 month old and therefore talks in his special baby voice, calling his sissy "Dee-Dee"--or, better yet, "The Deetinator")

Sidenote: not too far into the video, I mock-elbow Groom and actually whack him quite nicely in his cracked rib (he was mountain biking the other week and went over his handlebars; current practice for a cracked rib is to just leave it alone for a long time--too bad, current practice doesn't also dictate that Your Wife Should Not Mock Elbow You In the Ribs During Healing).




What do y'all do before bedtime for fun?

And, yes, I am a leeeetle bit afraid of the answers that question will prompt. Especially if your activities, like mine, involve going bra-less.

"I Need Pa"


I grab comfort wherever I can find it--

especially at the gym. To ease me through time on the treadmill, I rely heavily on my Ipod (having to hang onto the treadmill's bar when I am thrust into a "Laugh at The Zany Mess That Is My Personal Taste" moment as my playlist cycles from the thrash of Norwegian punk to the surprising infectiousness of Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA.")

Shut UP.

It's a good song.

In addition to the music and the handbar, I also rely heavily on celebrity gossip magazines. One one hand, I love encountering stories about beauuuuuuuutiful people who share my birth year (I believe we're referring to it as being "of a certain age," ja?) because, by extension, that means I'm not a total loss; indeed, I am heartened by the loveliness and continuing appeal of stars who are my peers--thriving talents such as Julia Roberts, Salma Hayek, and Anna Nicole Smith (hey. wait. a. minute.).

Even more, it's amazing how the miles fly by as I read about Britney's dress at the Teen Choice Awards, how that Bradley Cooper manages to break Jennifer Aniston's heart without ever seeing or speaking to her, and how running burns off belly fat (them is BIG BELLY FAT LIARS, says A Flopping Bit of Firsthand Knowledge named Jocelyn).

The other day, as I inched up towards Mile 4 and kept my feet turning over in rhythm to "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction, I came to the end of my magazine (squawk not on my behalf, intrepid readers: I had an US Weekly back-up awaitin' in the wings).

The last page of the magazine had a profile of legendary sculpted rapper L.L. Cool J.

Although, in my life, he's never been a Particular Person of Note, I have always had the impression that he's less of an idiot than most of 'em alls in Celebrityville, so I read on. "Well, whaddya know," methought, panting, "L.L. is only 9 months younger than I! He's part of my validation-that-I'm-still-viable-because-he's-hot strategy!"

Three sentences later, he became even more def to me.

You see, the interviewer asked him, "When was the last time you cried?"

And his answer was off the hizzy--it showed undeniably that L.L. and I share points of identification in the world; even though he grew up creating tunes on a mixing table purchased by his grandfather at Sears while I grew up creating Tic Tac Toe games with a Mason jar of buttons saved by my grandmother during the Depression, we shared the same cultural touchstones.

Here's the thing: his answer to the interviewer's question was, "I cried when Michael Landon died. I was all broken up; you just don't get an icon like that everyday."

That's ma boy, L.L.! That is what this pasty Rush-loving girl from Montana is talkin' about to you, darkerish Hip-hop-loving boy from Queens: Mike-ay-el LanDONE!

As I trotted along spiritedly, it slayed me that L.L. clearly had loved those moments when Pa Ingalls would sit with Half-Pint next to the creek and, against the burbling auditory backdrop, give bucktoothed Laura a gentle lesson in pioneer values.



In fact, since L.L. and I grew up during the same decades, he probably even shared my earlier recollections of Michael Landon on Bonanza in his role as that rapscallion charmer Little Joe!! What's more, L.L., seeming to be a man of sense, doubtlessly knew, with well-developed street instinct, that we don't say aloud the words Highway to Heaven.

Dudes, nothing had ever made my treadmill time more fun than knowing Michael Landon's death had caused L.L. Cool J to cry! That was an even chicer clash of tastes than my schizophrenic Norwegian punk vs. Cyrus Ipod battle!!!!!

I was so excited, to tell you true, that I neglected to wipe the sweat out of my eyes for a few minutes there, and I was bouncing around even more than usual due to the running coupled with chortling and savoring the rare awesomeness that was L.L. Cool J mourning Michael Landon.

Clearing my eyes and slowing the bounce, I finally glanced back down at the magazine profile of my newest hero, one Monsieur Le Cool J.

Huh? What the...?

Turns out the words "Michael Jackson" read as "Michael Landon" when a half-focused person is also kicking along to "Party in the USA" and--hahahahahaha--burning off belly fat.

What. a. downer.

At least, however, I have my answer ready for the celebrity gossip magazine interviewer when he comes a'knockin':

the last time I cried, you ask?

On the treadmill at the YMCA.

Oh, L.L., you may have been born in 1968, but I hardly know ye. You're all Billie Jean and PYT and moonwalking, and I'm all cornbread in a skillet and currying the horses and Sister Mary going blind.

Feh.

Except. Wait.

THANKS TO YOU, ELL-ELL-IO, NOW I'M HUMMING "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough,"

and,

even if--actually, because--it's not sung by that upstart pole-dancing Cyrus girl,

I suddenly feel twelve again (rendering you a mere eleven, young lad in Queens)...which means

I just might have the pep


to get to Mile 5.

"Herein My Former Dean and Always Friend, Jim, Gives Me A Guest Blogger Assist During a Week Where I Might Lose My Mind Otherwise"


Sometimes helping a friend and engaging in public navel gazing are the same thing. In this case, I offered to write a guest blog for Jocelyn because I know she’s just started school, has all her junk all over the house, and can’t find her Triscuits.

Recently I was remembering an annoying woman I met in college, and how one particular branch of her annoying tree reminded me of the film Slumdog Millionaire.

Her name was Rachel Katz, and I use her real name, because I believe everyone googles themselves occasionally (or, in my case, daily) and should find their name somewhere unexpected. So, yes, Rachel, you were bright and funny and a good dancer, but you were also amazingly annoying. To me, anyway. I’m sure the rest of the cast of Grease that summer at the University of Wisconsin-Superior all loved you. (See, now Joce will get Google hits with many other types of searches.)

Rachel was dance captain of said musical, and I played one of the lesser greasers, Doody. I know; I have been typecast from the beginning as good boys, priests and whatnot. One reviewer, bless him, mentioned my “baby-faced Doody,” which is better than being a doody-faced baby anyday. I was twenty; I looked fifteen; I am now forty-five and look forty-five. (This is what forty-five looks like, as Gloria Steinem would say.)

I’m wearing my own clothes (second from left)! That may be Rachel Katz immediately behind me. Jocelyn's editorial: the gal in the middle looks like Susan Lucci to me; did Erica Caine get her start in Wisconsin musical theater?

One day in the green room a bunch of us were playing Trivial Pursuit. I don’t remember who else was there but probably Doug Ronning, our Danny, who I was crushing on since high school. We were all good in the entertainment category, natch, and it was a close game.

Rachel was in the habit of explaining why or how she knew every answer she got correct. “I only know that because when I was in the fifth grade my mother gave me a scarf that was this amazing color of orange and she told me that it was actually saffron, and it comes from the spice saffron, which is really expensive and you only need a little bit of it in the rice to make it saffron rice, and so now whenever I see that color I know that it’s actually saffron. Plus I really like Indian food, so…” (I’m sure she said “actually” a lot, and her explanations were invariably in the form of the run-on sentence.)

This went on for the entire game. “The only reason I know that is because I was in New York last year and toured the U.N. and so I met the ambassador from Swaziland who told me about the net worth of their exports. So…” I ground my teeth and tried to catch someone else’s eye to share my pain. I don’t think anyone else was irritated, which shows that I was a crank when I was twenty and that my irritability did not come on to me in middle age.

Even then I recognized Rachel’s mannerism as more of a nervous tick than anything else. It was probably a result of being a smart girl in school and trying to minimize that intelligence, making herself more ordinary as if to say, “I’m not smarter than you are really, I just know this because…” Sort of the way smart girls in the Midwest often end every sentence as if it is a question? With a little raise of the voice at the end? (“I know my paper is late? But my boyfriend is in jail? And my mom threw my dad out of the house? And my dad was my daycare provider? So…”)

Rachel had the opposite effect on me, however. Not only did the needless repetition ruin the fun of the game, the subtext of her remarks (the “I’m not smarter than you” part) came off to me as a slight dig at the rest of us, sounding more to me like “I am smarter than you and this is why.”

What does this have to do with Slumdog Millionaire? I’m just getting to that. You’ll recall that our slumdog, Jamal, is a contestant on the Indian version of the gameshow, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? He’s condescended to (and worse) by the show’s host, who continues to refer to him as a Tea-Wallah. (You’ll have to google that one yourself, it’s fun.) The entire plot of the film is structured around Jamal’s memories: whenever he gets a question right, the film flashes back to his memories of (yep) why or how he knows that particular bit of information.

Thus we get thrilling, beautiful, horrific scenes of Jamal’s life, from swimming through a fecal swamp to get a glimpse of a matinee idol to scamming tourists (and stealing shoes) as a fake tour guide at the Taj Mahal. And he does all this in order to find Latika, whom he refers to as his destiny. “I went on the show because I thought she would be watching,” he says.

It’s a brilliant narrative move by screen writer Simon Beaufoy. One of those I-wish-I-had-thought-of-that moments. So I couldn’t help but wonder, what if I hadn’t just been annoyed by Rachel Katz’s stories but instead had seen them as a creative way to tell a story? Would I have developed my own version of Slumdog Millionaire? Okay, so mine wouldn’t have the lovely Dev Patel and Frieda Pinto, in her long saffron scarf, doing their Bollywood dance in a train station.

And I only know that because…

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi3946185497/

"Hypertension in the Key of D"


Sometimes, if your house is already in chaos due to a kitchen remodel, and then a new crew comes in to start refinishing your floors (one half of the house at a time, which means all possessions in two rooms get shoved into the other two rooms, and then the next week, everything from that side gets shoved back over to the side of the newly-refinished floors), you hit Maximum Chaos and Crap Overload. It ain't pretty. In fact, I feel like I'm actively restricting my drinking this week (what with classes starting back up, too) so that I don't just sip from a flask--delicately and discreetly, mind you--from the moment my eyes open in the morning 'til the moment they slam shut at night. Under my current plan, I'm not allowed to have twenty beers until after 8 p.m.

We have so much stuff. Usually, we can pretend there's a place for it. Not this week. We have not place.


...except out on the curb. The case with this spinet is that it's untuneable unless we shell out about $600.

Not gonna.

So we listed it on Freecycle and Craig's List and got no bites. We put it out with "Free" signs all over it and got some. Our neighbor said she'd take it. Woot-woot! We turned away all lookers after that.

She called this morning and said she can't take it. (good thing she's a lovely woman otherwise; I've never seen Groom, who makes Gandhi look like an a-hole, contemplate violence before)

It's supposed to rain tonight.

We can't find enough tarps to cover it adequately. The other tarps are already covering a kitchen table that's living outside.

We can't pay to buy anymore tarps because--WERE YOU LISTENING?--we're already paying mounds of dollars for a kitchen remodel and floor refinishing.

So there sits the piano. Forelorn.

Come and take it.

Should you arrive, I'll make you pie. It's raspberry season, you know, and I have cream cheese.

All right, so bummers aside, the kitchen is getting prettier. Getting the cooktop in has been transformative. We eat pasta and beets now.

The oven's been in for a couple of weeks. Look what it did for us last Sunday morning! Oven must've known we had a big week coming up, one with new students and no access to the kitchen during the floor business.

Oven likes skillet pancakes (aka "Dutch babies").

Jocelyn likes Nutella.

Jocelyn also wonders when someone stuck her mother's hands onto the ends of her arms.

For the first time since we moved into this house, our recipe books are in the actual kitchen and not out on the back porch.

Of course, I still go out on the back porch to look for them every time I need a recipe. Why can't I just holler, "Dutch baby recipe: come to Mama!" and have it gallop right to me, to save some of this annoying rustling around, looking confounded? That's exhausting work, the Rustle and Confound.


Miss Silvia and some still lifes (yea, I know it's "lives," but humor the English teacher who knows all the rules so well she has license to violate them) have come aboard, too. See how much our floors needed refinishing?

It's proven confusing, as well, to have the food IN the kitchen. I still am wandering around the living room, calling out to my Triscuits. Now I hear their muffled cries coming from inside this pantry.

I've made two good choices in my life: 1) the man I live with; 2) the transom window above the door there. Both are transparent.

A shot of the dining room, after we cleared it out on Sunday. Note the refrigerator on the left. I like a fridge that serves as maitre d' to everyone entering the house.

Because this is a high-class joint, we also have a hostess, Sideboard, to greet you on the porch.

The living room, all this past week, has been JUNK, JUNK, JUNK. Just typing about it makes my blood pressure skyrocket.

Dining room table in the living room.

Have to stop typing about this now. Need my meds. Pressure is spiking...


Every now and then, though, the crap and junk come together in a queer synergy.

And it delights me.

If I stare at Maestro Monkey Love long enough, some nights I can wait until 8:18 p.m. before cracking the first two beers.

And then I stare at the dramatic dark vs. light of our half-re-finished floors (plus Paco doing the hula), and I can wait until 8:49.

“No Matter How High Their Heels, My Boots Never Rate a ‘Strongly Agree’”

As the new semester revs up this week, my thoughts drift back to an adjunct instructor whom I mentored last year.

A cool, lithe blonde, she shared with me how difficult it had always been for her to get valid, helpful student feedback in end-of-semester evaluations.

“Sing Hosannah to the choir, Sister!” my enthusiastic phantom mental churchgoer person chimed in. As I nodded vigorously and started leafing through my hymnal, I also thought, “Don't I know what you’re talking about, Blondie Adjunct! When I read the comments from students at the end of the term, they usually veer from ‘We should have used the textbook more’ directly to ‘I wish we hadn’t used the book so much’ to ‘This class, which I dreaded, has made me love writing’ to ‘I want my money back; all this class taught me was to write a thesis-driven academic essay’ to—an all-time favorite—‘Jocelyn certainly seems to think she’s funny.’”

Oh, yes, I am well familiar with the cacophony and discord that constitute a class’ final assessment of my performance. As I started to raise my hand to give Blondie Adjunct a high five of solidarity, she continued her original train of thought:

“I mean, year after year I’ve had to caution students, when evaluation time comes around, that they should not be complimenting me on my ‘lovely dress with the dragonflies’ or on my ‘delightful dangly earrings’ or asking me where I get my hair cut.” Almost moaning at this point, she went on: “I actually have to tell them to keep their comments focused on my teaching and their learning and not my appearance.”

Nonplussed, I felt my high fiving hand drop down to my side, where it hung limply, kind of reddish and frecklish and wrinkledy, not at all blondish or coolish or lissome.

Strange, thought my hand and the person attached to it,

I’ve never run into that problem.

These reminiscences now have me reconsidering my first-day-of-class outfit for tomorrow:


Clearly, I’m going for something memorable enough to merit admiring words 16 weeks from now. All I want is for the comments on their evaluations to sidestep mention of textbooks, learning to write, and my attempts at humor.

Indeed, if their comments revolve around my appearance, won’t that make me an Honorary Blonde?

I've always wanted to have more fun.

This photo--of someone elses's trashy mini-van--is one of the few things that makes me feel better about my own.

“Crumbs Under the Mini-Van Seat”

Our mini-van is a pit, littered with popcorn, Goldfish crackers, granola bar wrappers, toys, and books. It’s a random place that, I fear, may never feel organized or tidy. The second that it does, we’ll know it’s time to move on, time to shed the catch-all vehicle and ease into a more adult vehicle (Toyota’s new XXX, perhaps?), something littered only with lip tints, incense, and throw pillows.

At any rate, my thoughts today are random, like the crap under the seat of the mini-van. My brain is a jumbled mash of odds and ends:

1) At National Night Out a few weeks ago, we had a big block party. Customarily, police officers and firefighters stop by—part of the whole community-building vibe and all. During the visits, I totally appreciated that my kids actively avoided all officers of the law, refusing to come over for high fives or badge stickers. Such avoidance tactics will serve them well in 8 years, when the keggers they’re at are being busted.

2) I’m sitting and watching Paco’s karate class as I type this. Straight ahead of me is the father of a kid in the class. Every time I look up, I think, “I’ll bet you were pretty attractive in your younger years, Pappy, but right now, you just look bloated and like you drink too much.”

3) Oh, hell. Turns out I was looking at myself in the mirrors that line the wall of the karate studio.

4) Joking. There really is a bloated dad here. If it sounds kinder, I can qualify: he’s only bloated in the face, which looks like it’s still detoxifying last night’s 12-pack.

5) Funny how all the beer went to his face.

6) But he is wearing nice flip-flops, and that’s something.

7) Plus, he is here, watching his kid’s karate class, so that’s something else.

8) I just hope he doesn’t yack. He seems to be fighting the urge.

9) Seriously, he’s gone into the please-don’t-let-me-hurl-in-public zone…you know, the one where you sit up a little bit too straight and pull your chin in towards your neck? My kids will know it well in 8 years, the day after they’ve run away from the cops at a kegger. And I’ll recognize it then, too, and make a pungent scallop stew for breakfast that I ladle out with a dried ox tongue and serve over a bed of ear wax. That should really get them pulling their chins in towards their necks.

10) As long as I’m rambling about kids’ activities, let me trip across the subject of Girl’s soccer coaches this year. I totally think the two doctors-by-day/coaches-by-night guys are to be admired for offering up their time and buying a clipboard and all; however, they both seem very nervous around a herd of 16 nine-year-old girls, to the point that they avoid interacting with the girls the same way my kids avoid interacting with officers of the law. For example, these coaches, several weeks into the season, still don’t know any of the girls’ names except their own daughters’. This REALLY bothers me. Also, they ask the girls to arrive to games half an hour early, yet they themselves arrive a fair bit after that and, without ever acknowledging the crowd of girls standing there in full gear, they have a huddle with each other that lasts until the start of the game.

I’m giving them a couple more nights before I go all Enthusiastic Parent Volunteer on their asses and jump right in, as they huddle importantly in doctors-with-clipboards fashion; while they murmur to each other, “I dunno what our goalie’s name is. You ask her. No, YOU ask her. You ask her. Oh, all right: Let’s just refer to her as Curly Hair Girl when we confab like this and, er, during a game, to pull her off the field, we’ll gesture wildly and yell, ‘Red Team Goalie: Come IN!’; in the meantime, my enthusiastic volunteer parent self will get the girls warming up together—maybe making a circle and kicking the ball around while playing The Name Game, so they at least know the names of their teammates. Of course, once I do that, it'll be a short step from pairing them to do dribbling and stopping drills, having them practice passes, working with them on scoring goals, to becoming a doctor with a clipboard one day myself.

11) Classes start next week at the college. My lack of enthusiasm for this indicates, if any doubt remained, that I was actually born to be a Manhattan trophy wife who fills her days with Botox injections, hiring and firing the help, and “charity work.” It astounds me how easily I can fill a day with non-workish activities, and the hours fly. But in the face of teaching 175 students (my all-time high, speaking of how lower student/teacher ratios improve the quality of education), I am limp and full of dread, as though I’m about to head into the theatre to watch a buddy comedy called BRAIN TRUST starring Jennifer Lopez and Mariah Carey as former cabinet members (clearly from the Bush administration) who, at professional loose ends, decide to open a detective agency aimed at solving pet-related crimes; this film also features a cameo by Jessica Simpson emerging from the waves in both slow motion and a bikini. Indeed, even before the opening titles of the semester, I’m sitting all slumpy and waiting for the final credits to roll.

12) Okay, the hungover dad just left the studio and is now pacing in circles out in the parking lot, a little too near to my mini-van, if you ask me. On the flip side, the van is so filthy, I wouldn’t actually notice the addition of a puddle of spew.

"Translating Candyland to Concrete? You Know It's August, and You Still Have Almost a MONTH Until the Kids Go Back to School"



How would you use up four buckets of sidewalk chalk?