"Dear Jeebus and Pilgrims Who Are Dead: I Am Thankful For Teaching That Is Never Dull"


A follow-up to my previous post.

After a few days of putting out feelers, I managed to hook up Mindy with an office on campus that helps with things like food and cars and telephones. Now, dauntless, even in the face of an STD, Mindy continues to spread her witless charm throughout the Land of Freshman Composition.

Mindy Moment #2:

After class last week, she began chatting up a classmate that she knows vaguely, someone more interesting than most:

Her: Are your parents tall, like you?

Him: No, not really. I'm trying to remember--I was always small and scrawny, but then we moved somewhere, and I shot up. It was traumatic. Hmmm. Where did we move? I think we moved to Indonesia, and then I was starting a new school--

Her: Wait? What do you mean, like, Indonesia? I've heard of that continent! Why would you move there?

Him: Just my parents' work. It was just their jobs.

Her: What is their job?

Him: My dad's a diplomat, but it's not a big deal; it's just his job.

Her: WAIT. A diplomat? So you're all rich?

Him: No, not rich. My dad just works. He has a job, and part of it is that we moved around.

Her: OH. MY. GOD. He's a diplomat? That's, you mean, like, he's the duke to the king?

Him: (incredulous silence) (then a beat) (more incredulous silence) I, bwah...derflup...huh?


Me: (stepping in for the save; reaching out and patting Mindy's shoulder affectionately) Yes, Mindy. That's right. His dad is the duke to the king...of the United States of America. The duke to our king. It really is a great honor. Maybe one day, you can work for the king, too, holding his mirror or combing out his wigs. Reach for the stars, Peanut.

"Can I Talk to You After Class?"

In the middle of a rousing class session, during which I assigned the persuasive essay and outlawed the topic of abortion (never a good subject for a two-page paper written by untried students who still live at home), a 19-year-old student named Mindy came up and asked me if we could have a private moment after class. Denying my impulse to shout "NOOOO, for you see I have a date with 8 ounces of raspberry yogurt up in my office at roughly 12:04 p.m.," I assured her my every breath would be applied to realizing that future meeting.

Twenty minutes later, when the room had cleared, she came bopping up.

"What I have to tell you is...well, this is hard to say to you because you're, like, who you are, but, um...I think I have herpes."

Since I don't, and I'm only her English teacher and therefore--shout out to the Marquis de Sade, Oscar Wilde, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, and Erica Jong--am only vaguely equipped to diagnose STD's, I wasn't exactly clear as to why Mindy had stayed after class to provide me with this information. Was I to hug? Apply cream? Create an Excel spreadsheet tracking her outbreaks?

The subsequent conversation unfolded thusly:

Me, after some mulling: And, so, is that why you didn't have your rough draft today?

Her, dodging the question in a rush of "logic": I went to the doc last week to have her look at it, but when I got to the clinic, no one was there. I only have an OBGYN now that my other doctor died--did you hear about that? It was in the paper. So I can only see my OB, and if she's not there, I'm done. So anyhow, I have no phone, no computer, and the fuel pump went out in my car, so I can't drive to school right now. Sure, I can catch rides with my boyfriend, but that's actually keeping me from dumping him, and he was on a one-month plan with me, and then he was going to be out. Now he's trying to find me a new fuel pump, but last time he got me a car repair, he hired a crackhead who was so high he didn't put in any calliper screws, and the car was even worse after he fixed it, and I eventually had to push it into a different place and pay, like, three times as much, and now my boyfriend has found me a $20 fuel pump, which I bet is made out of Mt. Dew cans and Skoal. Did I tell you I'm afraid my three-year-old is going to get kicked out of daycare right now because I can't pay--is it too late to apply for a state daycare grant thing for next semester?--so my baby's daddy's grandma is watching my daughter today, but the kid is all gross and dirty when she gets picked up from Nana's house, and so do you ever offer extra credit in this class?

Me, squaring shoulders and unfloobernoodling my brain: I, so, well, um, what? Oh, yes. I can see how herpes makes it hard to get daycare. So, hey, you're very good natured in the face of all these stresses. I'm sorry I'm laughing, by the way, but you're making this all kind of funny. There's something kind of charmingly carefree about you, as you relate your woes.

Her: Ah, f***, I was raised like this. We never had any money or anything, especially after my dad left, so everything's always a fight. Hey, I want to learn Spanish. Will they teach it here next term? I have a good Cuban friend and a good Puerto Rican friend--I met them when I lived at the YWCA in the Young Mothers' Program--and I learned some good cuss words from them in Spanish, but I want to learn more. I actually know quite a bit from Dora and Diego. My daughter learned to count to twelve from those shows, and now I've taught her to count to thirty in Spanish. So can I take it here? Next term?

Me: Yes, it's offered pretty much every...

Her: I actually want to learn Spanish because I want to go to San Juan, you know, like in Puerto Rico, and get my butt done.

Me: (incredulous silence)

Her: You know, they take the fat from your stomach and inject it in your butt so that it looks all perfectly round. I looked it up on the Internet. It costs $3,000. I mean, I want to have one more baby one day, and it makes sense to wait to do the butt job until I'm done having kids, so I have time to learn Spanish while I'm waiting, right?

Me, further unflagemallatinging my brain: Well, I guess it's all about priorities. Learning Spanish is a good idea, no matter your motivation. But how about dealing with what's on your plate right now? When can you go back in to deal with the herpes? I think we have some programs on campus that offer emergency assistance to students in need; would you like me to contact some people and see if we can find you the money to get your car fixed, so you can get to the doc more easily?

Her: Huh? Yea, that'd be okay, or whatever. I just wanted to know if I can do some extra credit.

Me: Oh? Oh. I got all distracted. You know your life is quite the soap opera.

Her: I know. I only ever watched one soap opera, and they cancelled it.

Me: Well, now. It seems you just can't win this month, doesn't it? Here's the deal: I don't offer extra credit, as that smacks of high school to me. College is more about doing the work to your best ability in a consistent fashion. Plus, as I look at your grade here, I see you have--against all odds--a B. That's great, so stop worrying. Just get your paper written by Wednesday. Do you have a topic for it yet? Remember, I always urge you to find a topic that you have experience with and that relates to your own interests and life so that you can draw your examples from what you've actually lived.

Her: Yea, I've got a topic, and it's a good one: alcoholism.

"Benchmarks"

School pictures came home last week, toted in backpacks jumbled with Boxcar Children books, broken pencils, water bottles, and gym shoes. The kids are proud and excited about the photos; usually, I fake an interest on their behalf.

However, I find I'm turning a corner, when it comes to my attitude about these highly-contrived photos that jam a kid onto a stool in front of a magnification of Stephen Hawking's brain.

Thus far, I've balked at school pix--and not just because, in my high school senior photos, the shoot's stylist made me lean on a wagon wheel and clasp my hands under my chin coyly. No, my issues go beyond Conestoga trauma. Here's what rubs me:

Some company comes in, holds my kid hostage for a few minutes, using a photographer that calls every kid "Patty" in an effort to get him/her to smile naturally, and then the whole outfit tries to charge me, the parent, large American dollars to buy back my own uncomfortable-looking children in packaged form so that I then have something to share with the relatives come holiday time. Couldn't I do this type of thing every year on my own, at the J.C. Penney's, if it mattered to me? And don't I, quite willfully, resist doing that, too, because it's all just so fake and weird and hell if I don't prefer a candid shot I've taken myself for free? And couldn't I just give the relatives new socks, if they require a holiday thought? Or perhaps a free weekend--or week, or month--with the kids, if they need to see them so damn much?

Clearly, school pictures make me swearish, and I think we all know I'm generally quite refined.

But this year? I've been surprised; I'm appreciating adding their photos to the progression of years. I like seeing them grow up through the school's eyes. Crunk it, but I think I prefer my kids wallet-sized.

Hence, suddenly I am all about embracing the school photos, even though they give me paper cuts when I hug them too tightly.

Plus, the photos prove that my kids exist when I'm not around, and I've never been completely certain on that point before.

Lookit:


You know why I don't blog about this one as much as the other one? Because she shows up, shuts up, and does the job, all with a sprinkling of freckles. Oh, and if you ever need a kickass speller, call 1-800-GIRL.

Certainly, when she's overtired and has had a big day of Scholastic Book Fair + Parent/Teacher Conferences + Swimming Lessons, the sum of these parts is just as likely to be her lying on the floor of her bedroom, screaming in high dudgeon, a toothbrush dangling out of her mouth, kicking her heels repeatedly in an impressive fit as it is to be her spelling "temperamental" correctly.

But then she recovers and helps her little brother with the snap on his pants.


If you've ever wondered what it looks like when a Finnish/Norwegian-American gets his monkey on, this is your day.

Note the pebble-creature necklace, which I was given when I turned 12.



I think I wore it in my school picture that year...the necklace, a new bra, a cowl-neck sweater, and a smile manufactured just for the photographer when he called me "Patty."

"Twenty-Three Years and Thirteen Days"

In terms of female friendships, I have sixty-eleventeen inspirations but only three true Women of My Life. One of these three I met in 1985, in a dorm lounge, where she was being way too cute and cynical and cutting for her own good. Intimidated, I decided I didn't like her.

She kept being cute and cynical and cutting, however, and at some point, I realized I loved her. Eventually, I went with her to Ireland for a semester; I listened with her to The Pretenders; I cried with her under a sink; I stood up with her at her wedding; I learned new dimensions of pain and guilt from her during her divorce. Twenty-three years later, she can make me blow open a kidney with laughter and provide the comforting feeling that someone in the world knows everything about me and still doesn't make a citizen's arrest. She and I? Lifers.

This dearling gel, called Colleen, has spent the last few decades shedding her armour of cynicism and allowing kindness and vulnerability their rightful place.

She is so cool.

Who better, then, to relate a pivotal moment for the U.S., the moment when millions of citizens felt--hokey as it sounds--a renewed sense of possibility?

I refer, of course, to the recent presidential election. Colleen lives in Chicago with her beau, Tim, and threw her energy on election day towards hope. Of that historical day, in an historical place, she writes:

-----------------------------
I spent the afternoon of Nov. 4 curled up next to the elevator on the floor of the tiny lobby of a nondescript downtown Chicago office building, peering at a list of Pennsylvania voters, clutching my iPhone in one hand and plugging my ear with the other to block out the cheery voices of a dozen others who'd fled the steamy warren of basement offices crammed full of Obama campaign staff and eager volunteers. I left lots of cheery voice mails reminding people to vote. A few of the people who picked up the phone were curt; two hung up on me as soon as I said "I'm a volunteer with the Obama campaign" (which I found thrilling to say), but most were delighted to tell me that they'd voted for Obama.

Making calls did what I hoped it would: distracted me from my anxious, audibly-whamming heart, and made me feel like I'd done some little thing besides sending money to fight the good fight. I hopped the El to Tim's office at 5:00. We sat at his desk eating takeout sushi and obsessively refreshing news Web sites until we joined the river of people heading to Grant Park around 7:15.

It's impossible to be a misanthrope in the midst of an enormous, good-natured crowd. Nobody shoved, nobody was drunk or obnoxious, nobody bitched about the long lines for the metal detectors, everybody joshed good-naturedly with the cops, everybody was smiling and laughing. As the field slowly filled, people were glued to the Jumbotron screen showing CNN. (Seriously, Bill Bennett, shut your giant head the fuck up. Best comment of the night, from an incredulous James Carville: "After the last eight years, I hardly think y'all have any authority to tell Barack Obama how to govern.") Roars went up every time CNN projected a state for Obama. Boos for each state called for McCain. Roars whenever the screen showed the live feed from the park. That's us! Wave! Woooooooo hooooooo! We're in the middle of history! When the California polls closed and CNN declared Obama the winner, people screamed, cried, hugged strangers. I felt a funny mixture of giddiness and gravity: We did it. Take that, haters. I can finally let go of eight years' worth of anger & embarrassment over what's been done to my country. Oh, god, there is so much to heal and to fix.

The crowd was surprisingly quiet during McCain's concession speech, booing only when the camera shifted to Sarah Palin. We waited another hour for Obama to come onstage, turning to one another every few minutes and saying incredulous things: Holy shit, this is real. I can't believe I'm here for this. Oh my god. Yes, we can.

I said the Pledge of Allegiance and really meant it.

When Obama and his family appeared at 11:00, a quarter of a million people whooped and cheered and hallelujah'd. I'll never hear anything like it again as long as I live. I teared up at the sight of him and his young family, beautiful and smiling and willing to take on this tremendous task for us. When he began to speak, I started to flat-out weep, big gasping sobs of joy and pride and relief (and a little bit of fear for him, too). Yes, we can, everybody chanted along with him. Yes. We. Can.
----------------------------

Here's a picture for you. Tim is dead center in the "frame" formed by the two flags; Colleen is to his left, leaning on him.

"Neuf"

A pot of water boiled on the burner behind my husband, as he leaned against the stove, pulling my face into his sweatshirt. This story does not end with seared human flesh, so relax, gentle reader.

He hugged me to him for a long time, hard.

Finally, I managed to choke out, through thick tonsils, "I really love the hug. But I'm having trouble breathing even when my air passages aren't obstructed by a hoodie. Let me come up for a gasp."

I reared back, gulped in some oxygen, and nuzzled back in for the hug.

After a minute, he took my hands off the sweatshirt covering his back and tucked them underneath, so they touched his skin.

"That's never bad," Groom pointed out.

"Brave man. You're not very discerning about who touches your unclothed bits. You have no idea where these hands have been. But I like your skin."

We were quiet for a minute. The water burbled behind us.

"I'm really sorry you've felt so pooky for so long this week," he said into my greasy hair.

"I'm really sorry I haven't showered for two days," I responded. "And thanks. This tonsil stuff has been suck slathered onto a crud cracker."

"I'd do anything to help you feel better," he said, hugging me tighter, cutting off any hope of breaf to my body.

Breaking away for a few more gasps of air, I pointed out, "You let me watch America's Test Kitchen and brought me omelets and espresso milkshakes in bed. You made me feel twelve kinds of better."

"Well," he noted, "I like you."

"I like me, too."

Then he turned to the pot of water and poured in the macaroni that he would bring to me, minutes later, after I'd crawled back into the bed. While I ate the noodles, wincing with every swallow, he joined me under the covers and stroked my calf with his foot.
-----------------

Nine years ago today, my husband literally was The Groom. I was the other one. As we stood up in front of 120 friends and family, it was unseasonably warm. That Santana song featuring Rob Whatzhisfutz was the #1 song in the U.S.. I cried a lot during the ceremony, and not just because that Santana song featuring Rob Whatzhisfutz was the #1 song in the U.S..

I'd never actually dreamed of being a bride. However, I had dreamed of finding a One True Love.

It's simple to feel that I've found such a thing when we're both in perfect health; it's unquestionable that I've found it when one of us is suffering an illness.

I am constantly awestruck that I have something to believe in.




I was a bride married to amazement
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms

--Mary Oliver


These banners, painted by my mother-in-law, were the backdrop to our vows.

"Decapitating the Child"

For almost nine years, Groom has been our stay-at-home parent (I married him because he was the closest thing to a woman I could find in a man's body). He is an example of walking Zen, so his temperament has been perfectly suited to taking the kids to storytime at the library, playing soccer in the yard, building a pirate ship out of cardboard boxes, making Mommy a latte, and cooking up spicy pork bits for dinner. It's been a good ride.

But now Girl is in third grade, and Niblet is in half-day kindergarten, and Groom is thinking about what he wants to be when he grows up. Certainly, he's held some part-time jobs (newspaper boy, coffee shop barista, cross-country running coach, adjunct anthropology and world geography instructor) during our marriage. And before I yanked him away from it, he was working as a naturalist at an environmental learning center. In sum, he can throw paper, grind beans, run 50K, lecture on the Yanomamo, and teach Voyageur canoeing to a group of 4th graders.

Looking at his resume, then, it would seem he can do anything but may be qualified for nothing.

To get past that little issue, Groomeo is, this semester, taking advantage of one of my job perks: free credits at the college where I teach. While he's already got a degree from one of them spendy private liberal arts institutions, he's now experiencing the rich and diverse pageant of humanity known as the community college classroom as he takes ceramics, drawing, and 2-D digital design courses this semester, with an aim, ultimately, to earning a second degree in graphic design or art education. While he's heard my stories for years about how agonizing it can be to teach students how to be college students while they're in college, the reality of being in courses where he's the only person to turn in an assignment when it's due has been occasionally startling. Equally startling for me has been the inside glimpse I'm getting into my colleagues as they instruct my husband. Since Groom and I have different last names (he's "Smothers" and I'm "Brothers"), the instructors of his classes don't know that they're teaching my husband.

Even better is the fact that one of his courses is taught online (the 2-D digital design), so I can read the teaching and look right at the class.

It's kind of, um,

embarrassing.

While I think most of my colleagues are crazy-ass talented rock stars, not everyone is turning in a performance worthy of Ozzy biting the head off a bat. In fact, I'm discovering that sometimes students do terrible work or no work at all, and still they get big points. And sometimes instructors send out messages to their classes that are so undecipherable and riddled with errors that I have to read it out loud seven times before throwing up my hands and saying, "I have no idea what she's trying to tell you. I don't think she's ever written a sentence before."

Aiyaiyai.

But since I'm merely a fascinated onlooker, I can only read and blush and apologize and try to urge Groom to set the standard, and maybe everyone in the class, from the other students--to the teacher herself--will realize that the work can be better.

In the 2-D design class, the students are asked to post their assignments to a class blog, so everyone can view the image that's been created, along with an explanation of what the student is trying to achieve and how he/she went about making the final image. Here are a few copy and pastes from Groom's classmates, as they elucidate the subtleties of their pieces, on that blog:

"For my abstraction, i chose pieces of fruit. I tried to get a real close up image so you weren’t exactly able to see what it was. I wish it flowed more than it does because I don’t think the art work is very balanced."

"I think the pictures here speak for themselves. I did not use any computer programs to maniulate the images because the images are cool on their own."

"I used mostly images and shapes that appeal to me and tell who I am. Sorry It’s so small but I had to resize it that small to get it to fit."

Clearly, these students have taken chisels and pounded little holes into their hearts which allow love and passion and emotion to flow out of their chests and into their art. On top of all that, their critical thinking is staggering.

When I see the larger context of the entire class's explanations, I find myself appreciating, on behalf of the, em, challenged instructor, that she gets to have Groom in her class. He's generally a person of few words, but at least he's willing to take the time to explicate his process. So, here, for your reading enjoyment, is one of the Groom's posts for class**:

I am glad that we have about a week to complete these assignments. My brain doesn’t create the best designs on a short time frame. I need to get into the class, read the assignment, and then just let it sit and ferment in my brain for a few days. If anyone has ever made beer, this will make more sense. After an initial fermentation, you rack the liquid (transfer it to another container to remove sediments and jump start the fermentation process) and let it sit some more. After my initial processing of ideas, I sit down and “rack” my ideas into a design. It usually isn’t that exciting–just like your imaginary beer or wine at the racking stage of the process. I let the ideas ferment (usually on bike rides, runs, or when I wake up in the morning) some more and come back to them at the bottling stage. Some more tweaking and changes occur, just like the process of moving my brew from carboy to bottle. Then I need to go away and come back later. My imaginary brew needs me to do the same. It sits and mellows. So does my design. The results end much better at the end of this long process than when they were a jumble of ingredients. Enjoy my latest homebrew. It is posted above.

Part of my problem in the early fermentation stage is the Internet. In this assignment, we had to find six items with a radial balance. Sounds easy. But when I do a search in Google, like for “bicycle wheel image”, and then 100s of search pages appear, I start to hyperventilate. I just don’t have the patience to sift throught them all and find what I truly want. I find it much easier to make my own images, from my own life, and work from there. So I photographed six different fruits and vegetables with radial balance on a white background (making it easier to cut them out in Photoshop later). I loaded these into Photoshop and began altering them. First I changed them to black and white by switching from RGB color mode to Grayscale. Then I messed with the contrast and brightness. Once I had an image I liked I cut the fruit or veg from the background and pasted it into a new document. Here I switched back to RGB color mode and created a new layer in which I selected the image, airbrushed a green color over the image, and then selected overlay so the color and black and white image below merged. I did the same thing with my son’s head.

Then I created the master document and began to copy and paste the images. First, I created a layout by creating a gradient layer with the red color. I put the darkest color in the lower left corner, creating the radial focus point of the design. The color fades out from here, empahsizing the design’s radial direction. My son’s head went over the focal point, and I began to arrange the food in a spiral pattern from his mouth, resizing the images to get larger the farther they got from his mouth.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this brew. It has left me mellow and hungry for some squash.
---------------------------------------
**I'm the kind of sick this week where I have to wince, cringe, groan, and clench my fists every time I swallow. My tonsils have a lifelong history of kicking all other tonsils' asses when it comes to swelling and pain. When I'm sick like this, and the docs tell me to open my mouth and say "ahhhh," they generally jump back and hold themselves for a minute before gasping out, "Well. Now. That's impressive." At any rate, that's why I didn't have a whole lot of sass to pour into this post. Since I literally can't talk right now, Groom's words have pitched in.

"In a Fog"

It was full-frontal foggy the other day. This wasn't just film noir, dry ice kind of stuff. Nay.

This was, "Holy Haunted House, but I'm holding my hand up in front of my face, and I can't see it!"

Okay, it wasn't my actually my hand, but I was waving something vaguely hand-like up in front of my face--a glazed bear claw from the donut shop, in truth--and I couldn't see it a bit. Which makes it all the more fortuitious that pastries can be eaten by touch and require no sight.

Indeed, it was so foggy last Monday that a person might have been forced, there, outside the bakery

--as if she were slow dancing with a man named State of Desperation--

to use only mouth feel and feather-light fingertippling to feel her way around yeast and glaze and buoyant dough, until the claw disappeared and only chin crumbs remained. Yup, it was Sticky Face Foggy the other day, friend, the kind of day where pride is unnecessary, as you can't even see yourself falling upon 500 calories of wickedness in a frenzy. You might as well eat three, for only the shadows know.

Some hours after that person Helen Kellered her way around a baked good, she awkwardly high-fived her healthy self and went for a run on the Superior Hiking Trail. Getting to the trailhead was an adventure in itself, as visibility was down to approximately 15 feet, which meant, once she knew roughly what part of town she was in, she had to flip on her blinker and then drive another 400 yards in the turn lane, muttering, "They ate Hutchinson Street. There is no Hutchinson Street. Yoo-hooooooooo...Where are you, Hutchinson Street? Maybe Hutchinson Street looked like a bear claw to someone this morning, so they mauled it with their teeth. Whoa, jinkies! There it went. That little curb thingy back there was Hutchinson Street. Looks like nobody's behind me--but who would know, on a day like today?--so let's throw it into reverse and hit it on the rebound."

Eventually, our nameless bear claw ravener, also named me, forwarded and backed herself to the trailhead. I parked, pretended I was Catholic so I could cross myself dramatically, and headed into the woods.



Blundering through the fog, I listened to the Halloween podcast of "This American Life," which featured the anxiety-inducing tale of a woman outside her country home who was attacked by a rabid raccoon on the driveway. Only after she managed to pin the 'coon by its neck and feel around in her pockets for something--anything--did she find her cell phone, with her that day by a fluke. She called her son, and within minutes she had the aid of her family. But, get this: after her husband bashed at the rabid beast with a stick for several minutes, trying to kill it, the thing only got angrier and more aggressive. So they got a tire iron, the ultimate meat tenderizer, whereupon it only took another twenty whacks to put the poor, diseased creature out of its misery.

As I listened, I was reminded that going for a trail run is really relaxing, especially when you're making your way through the forest juggling an enormous branch, a shard of broken glass, a granite rock, and potentially-rabid-animal-blinding confetti made of leaves.

What? I heard a puma.

And a badger. Discussing, in an exchange of hisses and gnarf-gnarfs, which parts of me looked most tender.

I had the children to think about, as I armed myself, intent on self-preservation. Wouldn't want Niblet and Girl to grow up without a mother and all. Who else would dissect for them the talents of American Television Icon Chuck Woolery? (one day, when they're ready)

Equally as heebiejeebie-ing as the thought of being stalked by rabid monsters was this worry: in that soupy fog, was my face going to melt?

Or in a slightly-brighter scenario, I posited that I might get back to my car and look in the rear view mirror, only to see this:


I'd have to gasp and be all, "Where'd my hair go?"

Fortunately, nothing used its cougar fangs or bear claws to tear at my flesh that day. And my face didn't decompose into a smoky masque.

In fact, the whole thing turned out unexpectedly well. The scary podcast ended with David Sedaris visiting the morgue for kicks and giggles. The carbo-loading I'd done earlier in the day kept my tiny cat feet happily gliding over the trail. And the best bonus of all--that which keeps Bono looking 48 instead of his true 87 years old--is that mist and fog are hella good on the pores.

When I finished my run, flushed and trail tangled, I dropped my arsenal of weapons and hopped into the car, doing a quick check of my look in the rear view--for stray branches that might be dotting my hair.

HAWP. Looking back at me was this:



Oh, joyful, face-tightening fog, you made me ten again! I am glorious! I am magical!


Then the curious goiter on my shoulder bit me.

"Casting Your Vote in 2048"

In about forty years, if you start seeing lawn signs in your neighborhood touting "Wee Niblet for President," I urge you to slow down your hover vehicle and take note.

In Wee Niblet, you'd have a president who could work both sides of the Target Halloween clearance aisle, who could stabilize the economy ("One dollar, per piggy bank, per week, but only if you empty the bathroom garbage can on Tuesday mornings"), and who could revitalize America's health care system by insisting everyone have tubes put in their ears, as he has, making "pool adventures in ear plugs and a cap" a national mandate.

Punky has a platform, all right.

Even more convincing for you Undecideds out there (waiting for Rosie, your robot maid, to bring you a Mercurytini, as you recline in your easy chair made of moon dust and monkey chromosomes) is the fact that Niblet, even in his early years, proved himself an accomplished stretcher of the truth.

For example, at age five, he swore up and down a bunkbed ladder that he did not like Kit Kittredge, An American Girl: The Movie one, single

--even-if-he-were-under-the-influence-of-a-Kit-Kat-Snickers-Reeses-sugar-rush--

iota.

Crackerjack photographers on site during the movie viewing, however, proved the politician-in-training to be

a liar of "we have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" proportions.

When asked about the photos, Niblet replied, "It's amazing what Photoshop can do. I wasn't even there that night; I was home, with Hilary, making cookies in an effort to prove that she's a woman."

Unfortunately, Future President Niblet's disclaimers felt hollow in the face of further photographic evidence, which clearly indicted the "Commander in Cheat" as


a swinger without remorse.

"Deep Tissue, Deeply Discounted"


I could have taken my experiences at cosmetology school and washed that cheapitude right out of my hair.

Hell no. One of my greatest hallmarks is the refusal to take a lesson, even when it's slapped onto my head and speared with swords. In the case of my follicular thriftiness, I could have learned that I get what I pay for, and if I pay nine bucks for a haircut, I generally get three bucks worth of smarts wielding the scissors and six bucks of spray spray clouding my brain.

Luckily for my battered wallet and the well-worn dollar bills that have constructed a permanent home within, I don't learn nuthin' nohow, Gomer.

That's why I also patronize a training program for massage, which is sort of like letting a four-year-old hang my wallpaper--if by "four-year-old" I mean a nineteen-year-old named Brittany and by "hanging wallpaper" I mean stroking my body with oils.

That's the euphemism you use for it, right? Remember when you were twelve, up in your room for three years, "hanging wallpaper"? Goodness, but your mom thought you were an industrious soul! She never could understand why the wallpaper you later hung in your first home as an adult was so crooked and droopy. With all that practice you'd had, she'd been certain you were a professional! And you were!! Just not at that!!! Tap me, wanker!!!!! But wash your hands first!!!!!!

Jinkies. I was channeling Brittany there for a minute. And let me tell you, having never seen her written work, but simply felt her hands on my back, I had to intuit her predilection for exclamation marks. My first hint was when she wrote one on my clavicle in ylang-ylang oil. It was all well and good when she drew the straight line of the exclamation point, but then she started searching for a place to put the dot at the bottom of it, and suddenly I found myself yelling out, "No nip! No. Nippledom. Step away from the nip, Brit-Brit!"

Oh, all right. So I'm just making up shizz. Like that's news, Cronkite.

Refocusing now:

Fact one: I love the feeling of getting a deal. Fact two: the college where I teach has a massage therapy program. Fact three: the massage therapy program offers "clinics" each semester, during which students gain valuable on-the-job experience. Fact four: the clinics cost $15 for an hour massage. Fact five: Fact Four makes me throw out some serious jazz hands.

At such a minimal cost, these clinics book up fast. Every semester, I call on the first day the schedule comes out, attempting to get appointments for both Groom and me, yet often we are too late. But last month, when the schedule was released, the Gods of Muscle Relief beamed my direction: I flexed my dialing finger and went buzzsaw on the phone, managing to book a total of three massages for the household.

Yea, two were for me, and one was for Groom. Who wants to know?

A couple of weeks ago, I went for my first appointment, the Relaxation Massage. After forking over my 1,500 pennies, I was greeted by, yes, Brittany. This Brittany was so imbued with the essence of her Brittanyishness that she made Ms. Spears look like a Velma in comparison. This Brittany, from her bleached hair to her glossy lips to her tight shorts to her faux-tanned legs, set a new standard for manufactured beauty put on public display.

However, she was there, studentizing with some seriousness; clearly, the homeopathic art of massage therapy spoke to something deeper within this girl, something existing in her naturally-beautiful heart (beating an inch beneath her pink push-up bra). Indeed, despite her off-putting facade, Brittany proved to be a total BFF honeypie!!!!!!!!!!

Having hooked up, Brittany and I headed to the room of massageual arts. But here's the rub (you know you totally read this blog for the puns):

The massage is cheap because it's part of a clinic--meaning there were nine other patrons getting their massages at the same time as I, and in the same room. About the size of my bedroom at home, the massage room has ten curtained-off cubicles, one for each patron/masseuse pairing. After ushering me to our little Island of Connection within the larger room, Brittany instructed me to disrobe and hop onto the heated massage table. Backing out, she took three clothespins and snapped me into some questionable privacy.

At this moment in the clinic, things got a little surreal. There we were, the ten of us, all getting nudie together in a darkened room, a scenario that felt, somehow, as though it should cost much, much more.

Personally, I'm not overly discomfited about dropping my bundies in a relatively public place; I've given birth, after all, which constitutes the ultimate modesty decimation. But it was strange to be stripping down in my place of work, one floor below my office, down the hall from my classroom. At this most-recent massage, I was three feet away from a colleague who teaches psychology ("Yo, Betsy! How's your sabbatical going?"), two feet away from a mustachioed lawyer, and generally able to hear the intimate shuffles, scratches, and coughs of my cheek-exposed peers.

Once everyone was naked and warmly tucked in, the masseuses returned and unclipped the curtains, pulling them back so that the cubicles disappeared, leaving the twenty of us sharing a unified space. At that point, the clinic got even more surreal, for the students practiced the "massage script"--all ten, simultaneously, dipping their heads down to their respective clients, loudly whispering in unison: "I'm going to start the massage now, (insert name of client), and if at any point you'd like me to use more or less pressure, please let me know. I'm going to begin by working on your scalp."

Because some spoke more quickly than others, those sentences tapered off awkwardly at the end, with the last student masseuse left self-conscious as his uttering of "scalp" rang out, a cappella, throughout the room.

For the next hour, the scripted lines were presented periodically--always simultaneously, as the various parts of the body received attention. Every now and then, I fought off the urge to counsel Brittany, "You can speak for yourself, Brittany! I will understand your own particular way of relaying the information; I can perceive that you are an individual, despite the script and the fake tan that are currently defining you!! Brittany!!!!! Hear me, Brittany!!!!!!!!!!!!! Brittany?? Brit-Brit?"

Ouch. Perhaps perceiving my internal monologue, Brittany dug one of her French tips just a tidge too hard into my calf. Of course, my heavily-muscled calf is made of steel, and her tip snapped off, where it remains embedded in my leg to this day.

Eventually, at the same pre-scripted minute, the massage was over, the curtains were redrawn and clipped, and the students retreated. We citizens re-dressed and made our way, cheeks flushed, out into the daylight, trying to preserve the sense of relaxation as we began recalling the grocery list, the kids to pick up, the meeting at 3 o'clock.

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

Overall, the upshot of my reliance on student trainees is this: I am willing to pay people to put their hands on me, but I'm not willing to pay them much,

and this is--in no way

whatsoever--

at all indicative of any

deep and longstanding

self-esteem issues

I might have.

It's not at all kind of sad.




So stop thinking that.

You're just a big, dumb boozer anyhow, so what do I--WHAT?

Am not, either,

you kettle of blackness daring to call me Potsy.

You're the dumb drinker who passes unfounded judgments.



No, you're the dumb drinker.





No, you are.


A judgey drunk.




Maybe you need to go get your hair cut and your body massaged, and then you'd feel nicer.

I can hook you up. Bring five dollars.

"Deep Conditioning, Deeply Discounted"

Early on in my career as a person with hair, I stumbled across the option of the beauty college. Generally titled something like Darlene's School of Cosmetology, such places are, theoretically, win-win for both the cosmetological students and the shallow-pocketed patrons. For nine bucks, customers can get a hair cut from a country girl named Tawny, she who is honing not only her scissor, but also her interpersonal, skills:

Her: "So, snip, do you, like, do stuff?"

Chairbound Client: "Yes, I'm a lawyer. I specialize in family mediation and have recently started to do some pro bono work..."

Her: "My mom totally loves Bono, too! He's kind of a geezer and all, but so's she, so there's a match made in heaven. I totally have to say I only know how to count to seven in French cuz of him. Gawd, my mom played that 'uno, dos, tres, catorce' song, like, twelve times a day when I was in middle school."

At this point, Tawny turns to her fellow fledgling professional cosmetologist, Heidi, who is repeatedly testing the heat of a curling iron by pressing it against her index finger--and, yes, it does seem to be hot, each and every time she recoils--and asks,

"Remember that old 'uno tres' song from, like, five years ago? My mom would crank it, and I'd be out back of the trailer practicing round-off flip-flops, and I'd be all, 'Welcome to the 19th Century, Mom. Ever heard of My Chemical Romance? Like, get with the times, lady!'"

In response, Heidi puts down the curling iron and starts back-combing her own hair, eyeing her image in the mirror as she replies, "My mom's even dorkier than that. She likes this singer guy called Eric Clapton, and I'm so, 'Uh, yea, Mom, you go ahead and clap on and clap off your little Clapton there.'" With that zinger, Heidi picks up a bottle and begins spraying her volumized and baloonified follicles into an unmoving shell.

During this exchange, Chairbound Client has watched, first, with fascination, tutting inwardly, "My, my doesn't life present a rich pageant?" After a moment, however, CC's gaze shifts downward to the REDBOOK magazine that was plopped into her lap upon arrival, during the intial "So, what did you want today?" consultation. Finding an article about how to make a five-bean salad that can win over even the toughest mother-in-law, CC realizes that feigning interest in the recipe is easier than pretending to be part of Tawny's conversation posse.

Just as CC gets to the part of the article where the forbidding mother-in-law compliments the long-suffering daughter-in-law for her beany efforts, Tawny refocuses and pipes up again, her professionalism re-emerging,

"So that's cool you like Bono. Is there other stuff you, eh, you know, do in a, like, day?"

For the Chairbound Client, the best strategy at this point is not to engage, not to reveal. Rather, keeping the flow of words focused on Tawny will lubricate the proceedings.

"Oh, sure. But mostly I wonder about how you decided on this career for yourself. Tell me about it."

A snip and a snap and a brush and a "I just always liked to play with hair" later, the thing is done. CC is released from cape and chair, able at last to pay the nine dollars and head home to wash out the masses of "product" applied to her head, stuff that, instead of adding control and shine, have just made the whole business seem lank and greasy.

But, hell, it was only nine dollars.

-------------------
For me, this was the typical I'm Caught in a Hell of My Own Cheapness beauty college experience. But then, when I lived in Minneapolis for a bit, I discovered the Aveda Instititute. Yes, it was still a beauty college; however, it aspired to a kind of grandeur, to turning out more than hair cutters, to graduating salon therapists, to teaching the art of image crafting.

So what if it cost fourteen dollars? My image could get crafted, Dieter!

And this kind of implied I might have an image. Or that there was the possibility of one.

So I went there sometimes, and they gave good hair, and it was all tea and rosemary mint scents each time...until the day I went in, hoping for something special. Some friends and I had a big party weekend ahead of us, and we wanted fun hair...retro hair...beehive-ish hair.

Upon our request, the Institute fell silent. Had bobby pins still been in fashion, we could have heard one drop. Instead, we just heard multiple arm bangles clanking against each other.

"Like, a beehive? You mean, in your hair? Just a minute..." fretted Salon Therapist Carina.

Frantically, she called over her Therapeutic Colleagues, Hansi and Iris. I heard whispers of "They want 'up-dos,' and not Prom-type ones. How do we do an 'up-do' without baby's breath?"

Moments later, these words emerged out of their hushed exchange: "We need Lorraine. Run--get Lorraine."

During our wait for the legendary Lorraine, Salon Therapists and Chairbound Clients all chuckled nervously and stared at each other in the mirror, unsure of how to acknowledge that we'd come to The Best Thrifty Place of Hair, but no one in the joint could create a well-known, decades-old hairstyle. The whole thing was akin to when I read a document written by a fellow teacher and discover he/she has no idea how to use an apostrophe. In such moments, I find myself, quite snappishly, declaiming things like "Stop embarrassing the profession. You either need to know the fundamentals of the most fundamental things, or else you should get yourself to a Target and cozy up to one of their 'We're Hiring' kiosks, where you can fill out your application and pursue a line of work that suits you better, Nutwad. Just don't answer any questions that might require an apostrophe."

(for more rants along this line, you can visit my other blog: O Mighty Irrational Stickler)

Fortunately, Lorraine wasn't long in coming. At the very sight of her, the 1970's Virginia Slims slogan "You've Come A Long Way, Baby" ran through my mind. Lorraine was Old School. Not only was she preceeded by a whiff of polyester, she also had a rat-tailed comb tucked into her nest of hair. A complete anomoly in the Aveda world, Lorraine was the only woman for this job.

"Up-dos, huh?" she asked. "Okay, so the hair of the 1960's needed a good foundation, girls. Gather 'round. For this lady here, we'll do some finger rolls, and for this one, let's do a bubble 'do, and for the other one there, let's give her some shape on the forehead as well."

A crowd of Salon Therapists followed Lorraine's every move. She threw up some scaffolding on each of our heads and then, gradually, got the trainees involved. Every time one of them would draw back and give Lorraine a questioning glance of "Is this right? Am I done?" she'd reply with "More spray. With a good old-fashioned updo, you always need more spray."

After much rolling and sculpting and tutting and repeated sprayings, we were done, ready to emerge into the daylight. We paid our fourteen dollars, plus tip (instead of leaving money, I wrote a little note that said, "You'd do well to follow Lorraine through life; if, for some reason, you can't, I understand Target is hiring") and giggled our way out onto the street, discovering that our 'dos had turned us into showstoppers. The feeling continued for three more days, as we rode out the Power of the Spray and slept with our heads propped up on wooden blocks, geisha style.

An added bonus was that even cheap people like me always have a stash of little plastic cocktail accessories in a drawer somewhere.




The moral of all this hoo-ha, clearly, is this: if you're drunk enough, it is possible to sleep with swords stuck into your head.

"The Wreck of the Edmund FitzJocelyn"

I live next to the largest body of fresh water in the world in terms of surface area. Because I have a long bendy straw, and I am very good at leaning out my window, I am never thirsty.

And because I am always careful to suck up my requisite sixty-four ounces per day, the water levels would take quite a hit, were it not for the forty-two creeks in town that continuously feed the lake.

Not incidentally, forty-two creeks and a big lake perk up some sweaty arse in the heat of August. For those few days when the temperature hovers near 90 degrees, we just pack up our beds and pillows and drop them into the frigid waters of the lake, where we recline in perfect comfort.

Yea, Lakey is frigid. Interestingly, when something is so enormous, it is slow to warm and slow to cool, rather like 1970's tv detective Frank Cannon closing in on his suspect during the episode "Girl in the Electric Coffin."


He didn't rile easily, that Cannon, but once he had a scent, there was no stopping his drive for justice. Cannon and the Big Lake both exist in a state of intriguing contradiction: cold when it's warm and warm when it's cold.

Of course, Cannon actor William Conrad died in 1994 of congestive heart failure and has been persistently cold since.

Lake Superior, however, swishes on and, as it does, warmed a bit this past August--two months ago now. For several glorious weeks, we were actually able to inch our toes into the relatively-balmy 53 degree water, eventually shoving in the whole foot, and when that went numb, wading to the ankle. At some point, the impulse to plunge would overtake the screaming messages from our nerves, and we'd shimmy in up to the groin or go Full-On Fool and submerge every last follicle.

For eleven beautiful minutes, the heat of the day would drop away, and we'd swim and pull up hunks of eroded concrete from the lake bottom,


and then, suddenly sideswiped, we'd be struck with the paralysis of shit-damn-holy-hell-that's-cold-water-and-I-don't-care-if-it's-88-degrees-outside-because-my-innards-are-now-a-box-of-Bird's-Eye-frozen-peas. And really, if I have only one rule of parenting, it's this: when the five-year-old utters anything starting with "shit-damn-holy-hell," it's time to towel off and go get cocoa and a scone.

On one particularly-spirited day this past August, with out-of-town visitors in tow, we launched ourselves on a progressive tour of the city's swimming holes, creeks, and polar plunges. In one afternoon, we hit four different spots, and at the end of it all, fell into an exhaustion entitled The Day of All Summer Days.

That day in August seems far removed now; but it resonates with what I feel this mid-October. When I hop into the lake in August, it's a way of embracing the peak of a particular season--it's me in my twenties, quitting my job as a nanny to drive to Graceland in Tennessee and Hot Springs, Arkansas, and White Sands, New Mexico, and Austin, Texas, and Boulder, Colorado, in a big swoop of "cuz I can" roadtripping abandon. The crest of summer, like that period of my youth, is golden and evanescent and fugitive.

And now. I'm forty-one, and I'm the embodiment of October 20th; I'm a breathing mid-autumn day. After we eased through June, July, August, fall set in with jarring swiftness. The overhead light of summer angled sideways and became slanting, mellow, softer. Everything in the world blazed briefly--orange and red and saffron--and then, in the midst of my gasp about its beauty, began the decline into rust, amber, chestnut. Fall and I are fading into an abatement of our peaks, and starkness looms.

Curiously, being just past the pinnacle, a tidge beyond the brightest blaze, a week past the sell-by date, well, it leads me into a feeling of harmony with bigger, deeper life junk. Although leaves have fallen from the trees and crunch underfoot (on my body, the leaves are called "breasts"; unbound, they too crunch underfoot), and although the lake is too cold to touch (on me, no such thing exists), and although ripening has morphed into waning,

I like it.

Fall, and my forties, are a season of ebbing. We are less fertile; we are less flexible; we are less free.

Yet we are full of texture; we perceive the rhythm of the full cycle; we appreciate that lessening can result in abundance.



We suspect, in our declination, that winter may be the richest of all seasons.

After all, there will be cocoa.

"There's a Kind of Hush All Over the World Tonight"


They're out.
Gone.
Vamoosed.

Praise the long-armed reach of absentee landlords (take that, Ireland!): the bohunk renters across the alley have been evicted.

After my earlier post about these five college lads' disruptive partying tendencies, things got worse.

They hit a new high the night that Phat Boy Renter and his Li'l Blondie girl sat outside the house in her car, blaring country music at 17 on the volume dial, drinking beers (the trunk of empties clanked resoundingly each time they finished swigging, got out of the car, tossed the bottle into the bottomless well of its peers, and grabbed another. During this process, a song entitled "Marianne" thumped again and again, hammering out a psychosis-inducing tattoo. On its third go-round, I was certain that, no matter what Marianne had done to earn the gullible singer's admiration, Bitch Stole My Chips).

Every fifteen minutes or so, to spice up the potential monotony of "drink a beer/toss the empty/ grab a new one," Phat Boy Renter would lurch out of the car, half-filled bottle in hand, and stagger off to pee in the yard. At one point, another of the renters, this one named Dimwit, pulled up with his girl, and they, too, remained parked outside the house. Dimwit and His Girl were in the middle of a fight, apparently. At one point, Dimwit slammed out of the car and ran down the alley, causing Phat Boy and Blondie to jump out of their car, with Phat Boy chasing Dimwit and Blondie hopping into the second car next to Dimwit's Girl. Much drama played out before Dimwit eventually meandered back home, twenty minutes later, and retrieved a sleeping bag out of the trunk of his car. His Girl had already taken her sleeping bag from the trunk and gone into the house, but Dimwit took his bag and went and slept on the lawn. (pssst, fellas...a little tip here: you're paying money to have access to that house; you should take your drinks and sleeps inside the damn place)

All the while, Phat Boy Renter and Blondie counseled and consoled and hit the trunk for fresh beers and kept the tunes a'throbbin', teaching the entire coulda-been-sleeping neighborhood comprised of young children, pregnant women, and solidly-employed types that--get this!--life is a highway, and those crazy college kids were going to ride it all. night. long.

I witnessed every subtlety of the drama, watching it from my back porch that night, where I lay on the couch, wrapped in a fleece blanket, shivering, yawning, muttering my own private commentary about their ongoing monkeyshine.

From my seat in the loge, all the world was The Renters' stage from roughly 1:30 a.m. until 3 a.m., when I finally passed out into sleep. The cops, whom I'd called at 1:30 a.m., had still not arrived, denying me the much-hoped-for pleasure of seeing each blockhead receive a "drinking as a minor" citation. As I waited and waited, I wanted to huff around about how the police certainly weren't doing their jobs that night, but the fact that my city swells by approximately 25,000 college students each August kept me sympathetic. It just might have been, at bar-closing time on a Saturday night in September, that the cops had bigger Alpha Tau Omegas to fry. Eventually, perhaps as the sun rose, Phat Boy and Li'l Blondie and Marianne, hissing, shielded themselves from the light and relinquished themselves to hangover-inducing sleep.

As they do, even when one is fatigued or hungover, the days and weeks passed. The renters, already in possession of one dog, brought back on board the ceaseless barker (of my previous post on this issue). The freshmen dunderknots drank nightly, smoked and called each other "faggot" twenty feet from my children at play during the daylight, and generally brought the vibe of Age 18 Hollister to our gentle neighborhood of Middle-Aged Coldwater Creek. Their antics made it increasingly hard to remain stuffily removed.

But then.
The landlord called.
From Arizona.
Just to check in with us.
To see if everything was going okay.
Ever since he'd given the striplings a cell phone lashing after their inaugural party some weeks before.

Sometimes I have a lot of words. So I used them.

He did okay with the part about "Marianne" and my calling the cops. Clearly, he had never heard "Marianne," or his outrage would have been more immediate and palpable.

However, when I mentioned the dogs, old Tuscon Tom snapped. DOGS? DOOOOOOGS? DAAAAAAAAWWWGGGGSSSSS?

Seems there was a little clause in the lease that mentioned the words "castration," "hobbling" and ultimately "eviction," should any animal ever enter the premises.

Clutching protectively at their 'nads and ankles, the lads got their notice. They had two weeks to get out.

Two weeks and three days later, they started packing. The whole moving process was like a Three Stooges movie starring Robert Downey, Jr., Kiefer Sutherland, and Judd Apatow, featuring a guest appearance by Mickey Rourke (Fifth Renter was noticably absent from the proceedings, no doubt drowned in a fifth of a different sort near a bus stop somewhere)...

what with Phat Boy's only contribution being, inexplicably, to deposit a pair of shoes onto the side lawn--perhaps to mark the spots where he'd drunkenly peed;

Dimwit dragging out various pieces of his possessions to the car--all of them jammed inside a sleeping bag;

Kyle clambering into the trash can in an attempt to stuff in just seven more pizza boxes;

and Joshua fumbling through the long-empty packs of smokes that littered the driveway, seeking out one last puff as he sat on the cooler and considered the asphalt, for quite a very long while, before slowly standing up.

Eventually, after they'd all worked really, really hard, in the fashion of Paris Hilton making her own way in the world, they hopped into their cars and drove away, crashing into whatever unsuspecting neighborhood will be saddled with them next. Call Mommy! Call Daddy! America's Best had not only lived on their own for the first time; they had also moved out of a place, all on their own, for the first time!

But what they had failed to do, for the first (and certainly not the last) time, was reclaim their security deposit. For three days after their departure, a cleaning lady scoured the place, a handy man came in to repair the holes punched into the walls, and a carpet dude came to pull out the rugs and put in new ones. And that was just the inside work. Here's a little math problem for you, College Boys:



+



=



That crying Native American there? It's probably for the best that, at the close of this commercial, he stepped out into speeding traffic and was taken down by a mail truck. Had he survived, he'd have needed a full-on box of Kleenex Aloe Vera and a whole new treaty struck with the White Man's King after looking down into the ravine next door to the now-empty rental--

a ravine, curiously, where the creek was newly dammed

with a couch

and a bookshelf...

furniture that had spent the previous three days perched outside, on the porch of the rental, mysteriously "disappearing" (with great ruckus at midnight) just as the knucklebutts left for good.

Suffice it to say, there were more phone calls: to the landlord, to the delinquents (who swore they dinn't know nuffin' 'bout birthin' no babies, Mizz Scarlett!), nearly to the cops. They were given two days to get the furniture out of the ravine. It was out the next day.

And left there, next to the ravine, on the sidewalk.

At this point, while I was still gunning for police work and enormous fines, the beleaguered landlord discovered his inner Native American and decided that instead of continuing to fight past exhaustion and nearly to extinction, he would, in the interests of self-preservation,

step back, let the feckless bastards move on, give them ample time, and feel secure in the knowledge that

the idiots will eventually hang themselves in a web of their own weaving.

"If These Photos Represent a Mere Ten Seconds of My Day, How Could I Possibly Find More Hours For Blogging?




I don't mean to post all the time about mein Wee Niblet, but, hand to heaven, he continually provides a mind-boggling amount of fodder.

For example, we have a deal in the household, when the kids are due for haircuts, that they can go sit in a stylist's chair somewhere and be enveloped by a plastic cape and false gushing about how cute they are--both of which are matter-of-factly laid on by a hair artiste who wishes she hadn't gotten pregnant at 19--or they can stay home and let me pay them a dollar to cut their hair. The kids spend about thirty seconds teetering on the steely edge of that decision, weighing the bright lights and free lollipop of Cost Cutters against their desire to save up one more dollar towards The American Girl "Feel-Better" Kit, ultimately tumbling towards personal greed over glamorous gratification every time...and saving us about $28 bucks in the process.

Indeed, I'm happy to shell out $2 for my kids to have the nicely-trimmed hair that tells the world somebody loves them.

Of course,

I'm not exactly a professional. I, em, wield good intentions more adeptly than I do a scissors.

In my defense, it's not exactly a disaster. I mean, who cares if an 8-year-old girl's hair slants dramatically downward and to the right, when she is viewed from behind? She hardly ever holds still or has all her hair in one place, anyhow. No matter the slant, it still looks all wild and happy when she's dangling upside down from the monkey bars. Plus, we always have the slick back-up option termed, in spy circles at least, braids.

And who cares if a 5-year-old boy's eleventy-nineteen cowlicks all conspire to make him appear a Young Einstein, even after the snipping?

Hmmm. Wait a minute. I guess I do. Niblet's Chia Pet hair is as unruly as the crew of kids on the morning bus ride to school, hair that often leaves him looking tragically untended (incidentally, damn you, third grader Caitlin, for forcing your way into his backpack each day during the drive and pretending to steal his applesauce cup, a little scenario that stresses out my kindergartener to the point that SuperMommy may be riding the bus one day soon wearing the coolest part of her hero's get-up: the patent-pending Stealth Pincher Hands).

So when I recently cut Niblet's hair, I decided to use the electric buzzer clipper doohicky wahoonie thingie all over his whole head and not just on the back section. Trying to get his hair to behave, I buzzed the kid's entire noggin.

Leaving him looking like a sociopath out on a day pass.

Oh, and let's check the clock at this juncture, shall we? We were a week out from School Picture Day (and 47 subsequent years of mockery, based on that picture).

The hair clearly waddn't going to grow back in before Picture Guy squeezed the birdie for 500 elementary school kids. (poor Picture Guy: imagine the chafeage after all that "birdie squeezing," not to mention the prison time)

All of this brings me back to my original point--and I did have one: Niblet offers up endless fodder. Case in point...while I didn't directly mention to him that he looked kind of scary after Mommy buzzed his skull, I did suggest that Picture Day is traditionally a great time to express personal creativity, and wouldn't a hat or a wig be a nice touch?

His unique solution, of course, was to choose to wear a hoodie that has monkey ears on it. Naturally, he NEEDED to wear the hood up, ears a perkin', along with a special necklace made out of three rocks glued together.

So the other day, in front of the camera and for all posterity, Punky proudly sported the monkey ears and covered up his Death Row 'do.

Other times? He puts on his bathing mask and takes a plunge.

My point, thus, is that when it comes to the Resident Bathtub Diver, I don't make the news. I just report it.

"Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want: This Key"

I wasn't kidding. This story is a continuation of the previous one. I know you're all, "Well, even though I didn't read her last post, I'm not about to go back now and waste my precious time on it. No, I'm NOT. I'm just going to read this one here and piece it all together. I'm smart. I can do that."

Yes, honey. Yes. You're smart. And you're pretty and sweet, and the other kids just don't understand you.

But go back and read the previous post anyhow.







I'm waiting. (*taps foot and begins humming "Ina-Gadda-Davita"*)









What, you again?


You haven't even scrolled down to it yet, ya Big Faker. It was called "Like Searching for a Grain of Broken Rice in a Bowl of Particularly-Soggy Shredded Wheat," and it involved my talented girl parts and a 95 minute run, so you really don't want to miss it.


Schlep off now.





I'll wait. (*starts filing nails and practicing some "Mr. Bojangles" soft shoe, further proving her ability to multi-task when fingernails and vaudeville converge*)

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

Oh, HI. I'm glad you're back, you upstanding and honest reader who'd never skip a preliminary post in an effort to cadge four extra life minutes during which you dreamily picture what Sarah Palin looks like with her glasses off, hair down, her "energy plan" a'roarin'. Now that you're up to speed:


So yup. There we were the next day, the Assembled Family Jocelyn, ready to fan out the family's collective vision and scan every stick, leaf, and dead raccoon on a very particular stretch of the Superior Hiking Trail, in search of my shiny silver Camry car key.

(if you have no idea what I'm referring to and are just kind of nodding and smiling blankly after that last paragraph, that's because you are one seriously lazy cuss and didn't EVEN go back and read that previous post, Mrs. Pants On Fire...like it's so onerous to take a few measly minutes out of your life to catch up with the rest of us. You're just a living, breathing, personified "War of the Worlds" broadcast, fooling the entire audience into thinking one thing's happening when, in truth, you're just sitting in your lazy chair drinking Diet Mt. Dew and pretending to be "an avid blog reader and defender against alien attack")

Before the family gathered around, I had done some kitchen-table triangulation and narrowed down the most likely area for the key loss--to a spot called "Pee Alley." Knowing this, we could park on a nearby road and hike in a few hundred yards, looking all the while for browning ferns and a mish-mash of footprints that indicated a Woman/Ipod scuffle.

But first, we had to get the kids out and on the trail, the motivational script of which read,

Me: "Okay, now that you're both home from school, we're going to drive up to the spot where Mommy was running yesterday when she lost her key."

Kids: "Mommy, why do you talk about yourself in the third person? It creeps us out."

(okay, they didn't say that, as they're still learning--and will be for at least another decade--that anything beyond first person exists in the world)

Me: "So, listen, we're going for a lovely hike on this sunny fall day. Our mission: to find a silver key."

Kids: "Don't wanna and are not."

Me: "This actually wasn't a request. We. are. going. out. to. the. woods. And. we. will. make. this. an. adventure. And. FUN. You. poopshoots."

Kids: "Not going. Don't like hiking."

Me: "In what universe do children of mine not like hiking? This is unimaginable--preposterous--like women over thirty wearing leggings under a tunic blouse! Clearly, you are not the true people I grunted out from my body; anyone fostered under my care is destined to have a life-long fixation with sumacs and granite and singing The Smiths amongst them. Pod-people, you are clearly not my children. Either you hike with Pappy and me, or I love you not."

Kids: "Hey, Mom? You're kind of a dinkus."

Me: "I know what you are, but what am I? Now get in the car."

Kids: "Not going. No hikey. Can't make us."

Me: "The key is very shiny, you know, which means it's glamorous. Only the cleverest of people could ever find the treasure that is a lost key in the woods. Let me tell you a tale about the kind of person who only wishes he could find a key in the woods: there was a guy once who seemed, on the surface, to be clever, a guy named Johnny Keyfinder. One day, he plunged into the woods, in search of a key. After many hours, he emerged, keyless, having fooled himself that he'd found something better: a hand full of appleseeds. Listen to this: old Johnny 'Keylacker' Appleseed then wandered the country for years after, holding his seeds in one hand and shaking hands with the other. Now how clever does he sound to you? Not very, eh? Not bloody clever at all. Kind of dumb hickish, if you want to use real words about it. Seriously--how did he think he'd wipe himself or cut a steak, what with both hands already so busy? This man was NO keyfinder. He was just a busy-pawed gladhander. Eventually he keeled over, appleseeds in hand, with his last words being, 'I never did find me a key, so what's it all been about?' His legend pales in comparison to the one you two are going to create today, when you hit those woods and find Mommy's key!!!!"

Kids: "Gracious! He was hebetudinous. We must differentiate ourselves from that dolt. Hie now--to the horseless carriage. Oh, and thanks for the thesaurus last Christmas, O Maternal Matriarch."

Me: "Huzzah! The afternoon is ours to seize."

So then we, like, drove there and stuff.

The second we stopped the car, as predicted in a secret wink-wink-eye-rolling exchange between Groom and me, the kids did shape up and forget their hatred of Woods. They ran to the trail and began bushwacking, peering, and


herky-jerking on the balance beam known as "uprooted and suspended birch."

Two minutes in, the true beauty of the afternoon became apparent, particularly to the Star Warsian Wee Niblet:

We were in Ewok country.

Vexingly, Ewok Country is rife with stands of browning ferns, each looking more like a possible pit stop for a full-bladdered runner than the last.

But the Jedi Youngling was not daunted.

Picking up speed,


Niblet gathered light saber sticks, thrashed the bushes in search of battle droids, and continued his Jedi training, which has advanced considerably in the last few months. Specifically, his ability to harness The Force has gained finesse.


Concentrating, the lad raised his hand and channeled all his fledgling powers into using The Force to find that key.

Fortunately, Jedi Master Groom was in the lead. Stopping suddenly and staring intently at the ground, Groom called to his Padawan, "This looks like a spot in need of your attention, Boy. Focus your powers here, and let The Force do its work."

Skipping along, humming a new song learned in kindergarten ("Hell-ooow/How are you?/I'm so glad/To see you"), holding his Force-channeling hand in the air, Niblet abruptly pulled up short.

He stared hard for a minute, soaking in the quiet of the immense trees surrounding him, and then carefully bent down.

When he straightened to his full height--equal to that of the brown ferns cloaking him--he peeled open his hand, on which balanced--

by the Original Light!--

a silver key.