"Family Expansion"

When Groom and I met, started the love groove, and launched into the Plan Making phase of our relationship, we had the whole "So, uh, you want kids or what?" talk. Since I knew I wanted have kids, and since I was irretrievably snagged by this guy, I got to do a big, dramatic "WHEWWW" and wipe sweat off my brown when The Groom replied, "Yea, I do. Just not this year."

Since this talk took place on our second date, his statement was all good.

Four months later, I was pregnant (woops). Technically, however, we didn't greet our Girl during that first year together. Nay, she didn't emerge until a year plus three weeks.

During our initial kid talk, outside of setting a timeline of sorts, Groom also mentioned that he thought two kids would be a good number. On the other hand, I'd always thought three kids would be just about right (the fact that I'm a third child who sprinkled diamonds of sunlit joy onto my parents' lives had nothing to do with it, either. I just, um, like the number three). A truce was struck with the words: "How about we take it one kid at a time?" Everything was all, all, all so very good.

And then I got knocked up, popped out Girl, nursed a lot, took a bit longer to get pregnant with Niblet (had to stop the damn nursing of Girl--who knew Da Milkies would work as Contraception for This Particular Redhead?), and then...

Well, and then I was really, really tired. Two? I could dig it as the magic number.

Of course, I can't say that decision to stop expanding our family has gone unquestioned. Groom is completely set with our two. He's all logical and rational and thinks it's fine that we've essentially replaced ourselves, body count-wise. My gods, though, are Whimsy and Speculation--and they often, in the last few years, have sent me off to chase notions of babies unborn. I have often found myself caught in spirals of "what if" and "maybe we should just..."

But ultimately, over the deafening noise of my last few eggs shriveling up into sandstone fossils, I realized that I have only batted about the idea of a third child because I would want to know him/her as a 25-year-old. I'm not actually all that interested in the sleepless nights for three more years, in tripping over rattle-y keys on the floor, in putting in the sweat and tears required by everything leading up to Age 25.

Thus, we're done with the whole procreation thing, Groom and me. Realistically, two kids pretty much tap us out, in terms of time, money, and energy; plus, we got two good ones, and since every new kid is a wide open crapshoot, we're going to sit tight with these two and call it a day.

But still.

I do get the internal call sometimes. Sometimes I feel like I have space in my heart for another child...just not of my loins. And realistically, I'd need a child that could prosper from benign neglect.

Adoption seemed the answer.

So, last year--and most of you don't know this yet--Groom and I adopted a third.

We did the paperwork. We went through the homestudies.

And eventually, we adopted "The Keene Creek Section of the Superior Hiking Trail." I know it's a long moniker, but it's the only name the thing will answer to. For ease, you can just call it Baby. (that's BAY-BEE)

The good news is that our 3.2 mile long Baby only needs attention periodically, for help with cleaning up, fighting natural erosion (much as I do with my home micro-derm kit), and a little chainsaw work. And, honestly, hasn't every parent, at one point or another, wanted to take a chainsaw to his/her kid?

So a couple times a year, we shore up our little patch of trail, drop off a big blue stuffed bunny, and take the kids in for some bonding time with Baby. It's all been very low key.

Woefully, Baby had a little tantrum last week, during the big wind storm. Yup, Baby got a little messed up. So Mommy J and Daddy Groom had to march in the other day and straighten the li'l tyke out.

Groom removes a splinter from Baby's side.

Baby has brought some needed diversity to our family, as well, for she's an Urban girl, running through the heart of Duluth. Just being around her broadens our horizons beyond our usual Quiet Whitey World. Look what she's done with her blocks and fingerpaints:






Cootchie-Coo, Baby. You make Mama sooooo proud.

"Mel Torme Is Merely A Velvet Fog Compared to Me"

Move over, Bob Barker.

Step aside, Tony Bennett.

Outta my way, Bill Clinton.

Get another job, Oprah.

There’s a new Schmoozer in the business, and her name is Jaw C. Lin.

Yup, I recently discovered, a bit to my surprise, that I’m a schmoozer. Lone Grey Squirrel broke the news to me with a swift “tag, you’re clearly it,” based on a tag he had been thumped with by a blogger named Mike.

I must admit, at first I reeled back a bit, fretting, “Do I really wear that much hair gel? Did Lone Grey Squirrel notice that I like to walk around with a microphone and a martini in hand, over-emoting, assuring people I feel their pain and offering to give them a make-over or another chance to spin the wheel? Am I a slick weasel, and I just never knew it?”

As it turns out, however, I do none of those things, eschewing everything from microphone to gel. The only parts of me that satisfy the schmoozer definition are my love of a Lemondrop and the Big Wheel I keep in the bedroom (no details forthcoming, you voyeuristic preeverts).

Luckily, in his usual elegant prose, LGS elucidates the positive condition of being a schmoozer, as it exists here in the Republic of Blog (aka ROB). He explains, “Schmoozing as defined by Dictonary.com is the ability 'to converse casually, especially in order to gain an advantage or make a social connection'... If you look at the award logo, you will see that it is refered to as the 'Blogging Community Involvement Award'... I think the spirit of this award is best reflected by that thought...Through your blogging social skills, you have encouraged us, informed us, amused us and most importantly helped us to meet others and to expand our social circle in the blogging community."

And with that, I felt eversomuch better, to the point that I took Groom upstairs for a spin on the wheel (where he was subsequently heard chanting, “One dollar! One dollar! One dollar!”). Mos’ def’, the bloom is not off the rose, eight years into our gig.

Now, with renewed focus, I realize that it is my job to pass on the compliment and identify five bloggers who, in my estimation, are Big Ole Schmoozers. This, to me, means I need to find five writers whose blog cribs feel unusually hospitable, whose joints make readers feel welcome and impart a particular sense of togetherness and community, whose spaces make readers want to step up and participate and converse. Another way to cast this would be to identify five bloggers whose comment sections are comprised of more than a single response from the blogger’s mother which reads, “I guess I never really did understand you, JoJo. And if you think any part of this story you wrote about my wig falling into the basket of Body of Christ crackers during Communion is funny, then you’re grounded. I don’t care if you’re thirty-four. Get to your room, and no phone privileges for a week. And you can forget about chaperoning the Prom next year, too!”

Rather, the schmoozer blogger inspires comments with content, comments of reader interaction—you know, vigorous commenting simply because the blog’s visitors have been sufficiently moved by the writing on the site to put a piece of themselves out there.

At this juncture, you can start the drumroll and sound the fanfare. I would, *clears throat and opens envelope*, now like to award these five writers as some of the best schmoozers I read, and if any of you five are so inspired, you can grab the Schmoozer banner and pass on the tagging. Otherwise, just sit back and pat your backs in a gentle, soothing motion of schmoozage.

1. It’s gotta be Diesel. Diesel combines humor, fine writing, and shameless self-promotion into a most charming package. Where else can you read about the world’s scariest motel, buy a blog-specific t-shirt, and participate in captioning some excellent Photoshopped pictures? Nowhere, my friends. Nowhere but Dieselville. Plus, I’m pretty sure Diesel needs more stuff for his sidebars, so maybe the Schmoozer banner can help with that.

2. I have to shout out to That Chick Over There. Here in the Midwest, folks like the word “hoot,” and she is one. A hoot, I mean. Not a folks. Well, she is a folk, but that’s not what I’m driving at. Since Chick is a Southerner, though, I’m not sure “hoot” is the best description for her and her writing…I feel that more colorful phrasing is required, to acknowledge her life below the Mason-Dixon Line; so let’s just say she’s funnier than a two-headed dog do-si-doing at a clowns’ barn dance. However we put it, all I know is that her open letters (“Dear woman in the burgundy mini-van in the furthest left lane on Interstate 40,…”), her posts about her piss-ant neighbors, and her recent good-old-fashioned serial of posts about her meeting and marrying her husband…well, they’ve got a slew of us readers hooked.

3. The comment section of Hearts in San Francisco’s blog is a regular tupperware party. Hosts of folks check in to read Hearts' latest rousing messages about ethics and the right way to be in the world, or to roll their eyes at the latest sub-letters next door, or to admire her turns of phrase (a recent post ended with “Why does every errant hedgeborn canker blossom end up living right next door to me?", which pleased me no end). Pretty much, I think Hearts should go into politics. She gets me standing up in front of my monitor, pounding my fist in the air. One time I broke a picture on the wall doing that, but it wasn’t her fault. Now my computer and I go into an open, empty room before I jump over to her blog. It’s safer that way.

4. Because it would make any good Minnesotan blush to be publicly honored with anything, I have to say Dorky Dad. He tells stories of mishap while camping that make all of us readers certain he should never even utter the word “tent” again, much less get into one. Fortunately, he has a worthy partner in mosquito-bitten-tentpole-in-the-skullishness in his lovely wife, who occasionally has her input into this funny blog on Wife Wednesdays.

5, And finally, I must acknowledge that I get a special feeling—not just from the Lemondrop I’m drinking, either—when I visit Jen’s blog. The whole business of getting shivers while reading something? Jen’s writing does that for me. She mixes it up with posts about her work with the homeless, her hopes for an expat life with her family, and everyday slices of life, like getting a manicure. Everyone who reads Jen’s blog regularly ends up feeling inspired by her sense of social justice, but not because she’s preachy or self-righteous. She is one woman, following her choices in life, and her readers can’t wait to find out what comes next.

So thank you, Dear Schmoozers, for helping to create that really weird thing that is community with the land of the blogs. You not only make it a great place to visit; you also make Blogland a place many people want to live.


…which, now that I think about that, is kind of sad and scary. I mean, get a life already.

(warning: I’ll be cleaning out my Meme Closet in the next few weeks here; I recently noticed that I have about five of ‘em sitting in mothballs, awaiting a good dusting off)

"If a Tree Falls in the Backyard, Does It Make a Sound If Only the Mail Carrier Is There to Hear It?"

Now, first off, I'm not complainin'.

But the skies around here have been pretty unstable lately, with words like "low pressure system" and "cold front" being bandied about by the weatherheads. Translation: it's blessedly cool and lovely...but it's also raining in eight-minute-spates about five times each day. That, too, is good and fine. We likes the water here in garden country.

However, the other day, the Weather God got into a bit of a snit and stirred up a day of seriously-strong wind gusts. Exhibit A: I was attemtping to exit my favorite coffee shop, iced hazelnut latte in paw, when I was suddenly, completely, literally unable to push the door open. I turned my back to the door, even, and put my legs behind it. No luck. I couldn't budge the door even a fraction, as it was held shut by the wind.

Fortuitously, a nice woman, her skirt tossed up over her ears (thank heavens she opted to wear her knickers that windy morning, even if they were of the dingey grey granny variety), blew up to the building and worked the door from the other side. Our combined female might finally did the job.

Still skeptical about the force of the gusts? I give you, then, Exhibit B (formerly known as Our Park-Like Backyard):

Yea, so we gusted home that day from the coffee shop and various errand runnings, only to discover that one of our lovely trees had dramatically toppled onto our neighbors' fence. According to all laws of Nature, of course, it was predestined that the fence be spankin' new, the screws barely dry, the paint barely drilled in. The only witness to the blowdown was the mail carrier, who was still breathless and awed as he recounted the moment of "tiiiimmmmbbber" to us; later that evening, he began a continued stalking of the downed tree when he drove by it several times, his wife in tow, before ultimately converting his mail truck into a tour bus that he now uses to shuttle passengers down the alley on a daily schedule of 1 p.m, 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. (his microphoned commentary of "The Mighty Arbor met its fate under dour skies on July 10th, in the year of Our Lord two-thousand-ought-ought-seven" is already wearing on us).

So now we have a little disaster in the backyard, and I don't mean The Wee Niblet pouting on the swing mid-afternoon, when his needs for a nap and a snack combine to make him a fearsome beast. No, I mean we have this big, dead, formerly luscious tree laying like a passed-out sorority girl, unconscious atop our recently-transplanted raspberry canes.

And I find that

I mourn the loss of the tire swing that hung from its branches.

I mourn the loss of the knotted climbing rope that led neighborhood children up the bark.

I mourn the loss--deep in my gut--of the tree itself, for the whole thing, even that which still stands upright, has to come down, and its corpse must undergo a complete hack-job. Quite out of proportion to the event itself, I mourn the death of this glorious old behemoth. I am profoundly, even mawkishly, sad.

But even more deeply and profoundly, I mourn the clean-up estimate dropped with a loud clang onto our checkbook today by the local tree service. That's got my heart hurting more than anything, for our bank account had already been severely depleted by the recent big road trip and rental of the U-Haul. And now this new bill looms larger than any sale of Hummels and vintage Rosenthal china (my mom bought it in France in 1960, and we have 88 pieces of it, and it's not at all foofy, and you know you want it!) can recoup.

*big sigh of financial woe*

The Children would so have enjoyed college, too.

Without a college education, they'll be virtually useless, right? Sans degree, I'm pretty sure they'll never be able to support us handsomely in our dotage, and isn't that the point of progeny?

Thus, the sign on my front lawn needs to change from "Hummels for Sale" to "Children for Sale." One of them can just about push the vacuum, and the other is able to laze in the bathtub for an hour and a half without supplemental oxygen. Clearly, they are valuable additions to any household that almost needs vacuuming and is short on air. I'll even toss in a discount if you buy both kids AND the Rosenthal china, 'k? Like five dollars off.

So here's the deal: you buy 'em; you send 'em to college; and then you send 'em back here to Ma and Pa. By then, we may have just about paid off the damn tree debt.

But you can keep the china.

Photo: Groom strums a plaintive ballad on a balalaika my mom purchased in Russia in 1961; the ditty is entitled "I've Been Hauling Other People's Boxes in 103 Degree Heat for Days, and It Sucks"

"Hummels for Sale"

Holy crap.

And I when I type crap, I mean stuff and stuff and puffin'-more-stuff--a veritable excess of possessions. Buying, arranging, and eventually shedding stuff, it would seem, is my genetic legacy; indeed, I have the innate tendency to hoard and collect roaring through my veins.

Actually, I've realized in the last two weeks that my hoarding inclinations are pale and watered-down compared to those of my sister and mother--both of whom we helped move/unpack during our big road trip around The West.

There are upsides to helping someone else deal with crap; I mean, there is no emotional attachment to the items, so it's easy to declare, "You really don't need those fake silk flowers. Like, REALLY don't. Ain't no one who do. Let me just trot them to the Goodwill bin for you, all righty? And that copy of Macbeth you had to read your freshman year of college, in 1953? Yea, we can get that damn spot out, too. To the bin with it all!"

The downsides, of course, are readily apparent: you're spending your hours going through someone else's accumulations, through dozens and dozens of boxes that represent the physical manifestation of someone else's needs and desires. Invariably, these hours also tick away during a heat wave and/or when your young children just want to be at the pool instead of being good sports about understanding that their auntie or grandma has a hoarding pathology that requires she be talked gently and at length out of owning 15 wooden spoons, when, in fact, she doesn't cook at all and has absolutely no stew to stir.

In sum, while it's always a pleasure to spend time with loved ones, Groom and I are plain tapped out right now when it comes to handling other people's crap. Seeing what my sister and mother, individually, were going through, in terms of panic attacks and tears and sheer overwhelmage, well, it was an object lesson for me, and I have now returned to Minnesota with a new resolved to de-stuff-ify, inasmuch as I can while basking in the full sunshine of the Little Kid Years, a time of Transformers and baby dolls and puzzles and Candyland under every footstep.

Here, now, on my honor, I resolve to engage actively in a war against my innate genetic programming. I promise to be a tiny bit less of a hoarder. No, reawwy. I pwomise.

And I've already taken steps in that direction. Two days ago, Groom and I returned from our Western trip followed by a U-Haul of family heirloom furniture and even a few knicknacks, which I am generally against on principle (*sigh*...but it was Baccarat crystal purchased almost fifty years ago in France, and it gives good hand when I pick it up and let it nestle in my palm, so what could I do? Say no?). We're trying to consider the new influx of crap into our house as more of an upgrade than an invasion. And to our credit, we no sooner had carried the new things into the house than we excreted an admirable amount of old junk out the back door--good-bye, old box springs in the basement; arrivederci, stack of rusty trunks; au revoir, old, stained garage sale chairs; sayonara, college textbooks.



Yup, the household has undergone a physical and karmic balancing in the last 36 hours, since we got home. I have the smelly armpits to prove it. Balancing is not delicate work.

And at this moment of half-past-midnight, when I'm not caught up in carrying boxes or muttering about materialism and the sheer mental toll exacted by *things*, I can afford a little sentimentality. I think about the furniture that we just drove across North Dakota from Montana, and I realize it's come home, in its way. My mother, her father, her grandparents, all of them spent major chunks of their lives in southern Minnesota, and after the older generations passed away, my mom inherited some fine pieces of furniture, moving them then to Montana, where she lived after marrying.

As the seasons continue to turn, my mom now finds herself living in a small seniors apartment in California, no longer craving the comfort of things. And so it has fallen to us, her children, to inherit the table our great-grandfather read at, the china cabinet dusted by our grandmother, the claw-foot table that held a Christmas cactus in the 1880's, a splitting from which I still water every week. In coming back to Minnesota, the furniture has completed a loop of generations and locales and eras. Even though it's just stuff, I feel something for it and for the sense of continuity and connectedness it gives me to people I never knew.

Ultimately, I have the opportunity to know them through their possessions and through the awareness that I am touching what they touched, that my children are running their hands along the surfaces that Minerva and Orange Scott touched 120 years ago, that Julian and Mildred touched 70 years ago, that Maxine and Donald touched 35 years ago.

So we hauled

the pastor's chair, and


the library table, and

the music bureau, and

the claw-foot table, and

the humpback chest, cursing the effort all the way. But now that they're settled in and have had their midnight snack, I find myself looking upon them with fondness and appreciation.

Should these things ever leave my life, that's okay. On a certain level, it would be a relief. They're just things, and, moreover, I can't be too burdened by the weight of responsibility for other people's memories.

On the other hand, they come from My People, my posse, my ancestral homies, and this physical reminder of who they were is powerful and affirming.

But if I ever try to convince you that fake silk flowers are a necessary part of my decorating, you are hereby invited to grab me by the shouders and administer a firm shake. Better yet, grab one of my 15 wooden spoons and whack me silly.

"Bizarro Profession"

I am a bibliophile who wants to throttle most librarians.

This, of course, keeps me in a constant and heightened state of conflict, as I rely heavily on libraries and read several books a week. I want my books. I need my books. But I don't like most of the people in charge of my books; they are crabby and often snappish and need a good bitch slap.

Here's the rub: librarians love information and books and periodicals and cataloguing, but they really don't like people. Yet their job is one, essentially, of customer service...you know, helping people all day.

So pretty much, the librarian behind the counter is an intellectual, an introvert who just wants to absorb factoids and be left alone to stroke, repetitively, the long braid thrown over her shoulder while memorizing the order of the English monarchs. And then she wants to spend the second half of her shift reading her manga before biking home to eat a solitary meal of lentil soup with grated cheese on top.

Invariably, as the librarian strokes her braid and bones up on her anime, I walk in. You know, wanting books and stuff. And my need pisses her off. And then she heaves her bulk out of the rolling chair to show me where I can find the Civil War Magic Tree House book, stomping, sighing loudly, never making eye contact.

The librarians and me? We've missed a lot of potential precious moments together, due to the whole attitude issue. No matter what kind of bookish small-talk I throw out there ("Aren't we all excited for the new Harry Potter?"), I know Librarian and I will never be running towards each other in slow motion across a flower-strewn meadow, arms extended.

In the town where I live, it got to the point where I actually filled out a comment card about the librarians in the children's area, noting briefly, "Maybe the library could staff the children's area with workers who actually like children." Shortly after dropping this card into the comment box, I took my stack of about 40 books--for both the kids and me, enough to last three weeks--up to the Circulation Desk, whereupon the checker-outer dude rolled his eyes at the size of the stack, snickered with a co-worker at how ludicrous our reading intentions were, and then, handing me the foot-long receipt at the end, snarked, "Make sure they're all back on time."

My reaction to this is to think, "What? You're pissy because my kids will grow up saying 'Our house was always full of stacks of books that we were expected to read'? Or is it because I've disrupted the quiet order of your day by coming to this public place and drawn you out of your reveries about The Renaissance Festival?"

And right about here? Yea, the bitch slap.

My ongoing librarian issues were highlighted yesterday here in Billings, my childhood town in Montana. Needing to check email while we're on this road trip, I went to the public library. And I had the audacity to ask the man at the Computer Service Desk if I could, devil that I am, use a computer to get onto the modern thing called "Internet."

Such a query opened the floodgates of resentment and discontent that plague this profession full of Garbo-like professionals, who just "vant to be alone." The little man, who looked amazingly like Larry "Bud" Melman of the David Letterman show, reared up out of his desk, reaching his full height of Jocelyn's Clavicle, and exclaimed, "Well, as you can see, all the computers are being used. I just signed up someone else before you, too, so I can't even begin to tell you when you can get onto one."

"Really?" said I. "You have no general sense of when any of these ten people have to be off their computers? Are there any time restrictions?"

"Well, everyone gets an hour, and we do have that registration system over there, where you can make a reservation for the next open computer, but other than that, no, I really can't tell you."

Realizing that bitch slapping a 60-year-old white-haired man who was a foot shorter than I would yield little in gratification and a great deal in court fees, I tried the talking thing some more.

"Just to be clear: I can go to this station right here and sign up for the next open terminal? And it will give me a time that I can get onto that terminal?"

"Yes, yes, yes. That's what I said. Here, I can walk you through it, as it seems awfully hard for you. Now, do you have a library card?"

In an attempt to move towards Dr. Phil's principles of honest and open communication, I responded with, "Actually, I don't. See I'm from out of town. But is there some way.."

"WHAT? NO CARD EITHER? WHAT IS IT WITH ALL YOU PEOPLE THESE DAYS? EVERYONE JUST NEEDS TO BE ON THE COMPUTER ALL THE TIME. IT'S ALWAYS, 'GET ME ON THE COMPUTER; GET ME ON THE COMPUTER.' DON'T ANY OF YOU PEOPLE READ BOOKS THESE DAYS? WOULD IT KILL YOU TO READ BOOKS?"

Keeping my bitchslappers glued to my sides, I warmed up a little with, "You'll have to pardon me, as we don't know each other in the slightest. But you don't want to get me started in a 'who reads the most books' contest here, because I'll win and would have won by age eleven. Also, I came here today, to the public library, where you offer free Internet access, to get on the Internet. All I need is five minutes to check my email. See, I've driven here from Minnesota to help my 72-year-old mother empty 115 boxes and a household of furniture out of a 120 degree storage locker, sort through it, arrange a garage sale, and distribute heirloom items to my siblings. And, see, my brother lives in Portugal and has sent me an email, telling me if he wants my dead father's music bureau or not. Exactly where am I in error here in wanting to access that message from him before we load up the trailer tomorrow?"

Keep in mind, this was just a shot over the bow. Given any more provocation, I'd have had him in a half-nelson and talked low and mean in his pasty ear until his spit dried up and he begged for mercy.

Luckily for his neck and his saliva, he backed down and offered to help me sign up for a terminal, so long as, he noted threatingly, I kept in mind that each terminal was individually named (The Sweetwater; The Poplar; The Rosebud) and made sure only to log-on to my assigned terminal. As I sat for the next twenty minutes, reading a book, waiting for my turn on my assigned terminal, The Maple, I watched him berate and harangue the next three people who also were interested in gaining free Internet access.

And eventually,

I got my turn,

read the email,

shared my terminal with a woman who had logged on earlier in the day to print an article and then, getting home, realized the article had only half printed, so she came back to try it again, only to be scolded by Larry "Bud" Librarian for trying to sneak in a second session in the same day, when the rules clearly state that every patron is only allowed one session per day,

and, after logging off, I stuffed that little, bespectacled troll of a librarian into The DC Comics Encyclopaedia. There the pint-sized Mister Mxyzptlk, Superman's nemesis, ushered Librarian into a whole new world of control games when he pounced on Larry "Bud" to give him the noogie of a lifetime, promising only to let up if and when Librarian could pronounce "Myxzptlk" backwards while simultaneously checking in overdue items and forgiving the fines.

“Honey, I Can Tell Something’s Bugging You”

In college, I had a friend who was gifted nostrilly. I mean, he had some seriously large nostrils. Some nights, to wow The Crowd at dinner, he would take a quarter and stick it up one of his nostrils.

At this juncture, some of you are probably thinking, “Yea, big deal. I stick quarters up my nose everyday, in a very particular and private kind of consumeristic self gratification.” But read on, Mugsy; I mean he’d stick a quarter up his nose, not sideways, but straight on—with good old George Washington and his fake teeth facing directly down to the floor. Then he could just leave the quarter hanging in there, a little booger shelf. In short, his nostril was pretty much the same circumference as a quarter…hence my assertion that he was uniquely gifted in the nostril department. Personally, I’d be hard pressed to get an almond up my nose, much less make it serviceable.

Don’t start assuming this type of stuff is on my mind all the time. I do sometimes have thoughts about books (don’t get me started on Horton and how he heard a Who that one time!), and occasionally I take a look at a newspaper and think, “Anne Coulter. Wow, you crazy beyotch. Keep saying mean things about that John Edwards; donations to his campaign skyrocket every time you call him a faggot.” So, see, I’m a deep thinker about many, many subjects.

But today I will admit I am musing, in focused fashion, on the awesome capabilities of orifices. Go ahead: insert your bawdy joke here. I’ve made about ten and deleted them all while typing this for I am, you see, very, very couth, in addition to being a deep thinker.

Now let’s move on. I’m thinking about orifices because our latest travel adventure required that my Groomeo have a gaping hole in his head, and not just his yammering maw. Rather, this adventure required that he have a really accessible and welcoming ear canal—that he be aurally gifted. I’d never noticed it before The Ear Event, but he really does have a good-sized cave up there, above his ear lobe.

To backpedal a bit: after a luscious week in Colorado, where we saw lots of folks, biked, avoided the Spirulina WheatGrass Soy Protein Shakes, had terrific trail runs (heat and prickly pear notwithstanding)…


...and got the kids out in a canoe…


…we quit the state and headed for Wyoming, where we garumphed around for the last couple of days. The change in terrain brought the camera out, even at 75 mphs…


…and after camping under a very fertile cottonwood tree one night outside of Casper (where the most curious little monkey roamed our campground)...


...we struck camp the next morning, during which The Event took place. Get this: a bug flew into Groom’s ear--and tunneled in for the duration.

Throughout the day, his hearing was plagued by loud fluttering sounds and burblings (which I posited was the noise a bug makes as it lays eggs, which, after gestation, would turn into a winged migration that would exit through his nose and mouth). First, he tried flushing it out with copious amounts of water poured into his ear canal. No luck. So then I broke out the tweezers, testing our love as I maneuvered past clumps of ear wax to extract any living thing. Sadly, our efforts were a bust. So we carried on with the day…


...toodling, amidst our mountain of car-crap, over to Thermopolis, where we visited the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. Our 4-year-old Niblet melted in the heat during the tour, to the point that he proclaimed “That was vewy boring for me” minutes after having seen Stegosaurus vertebrae (uh, the plastic model isn't to scale, btw)…

…but Girl was able to appreciate an Allosaurus footprint when she saw one.


During all this, with scary-alien-brainsucker-bug still alive in his skull, Groom went for a sweaty run, ate a hamburger, and hung in there gamely for 8.5 hours before announcing, “I think we need to go find a doctor.”

Turns out, the Thermopolis hospital, in a town of about 3,000 souls, has bug-in-ear experienced docs who greeted my beau with a reassuring, “Oh, we see this all the time.” (I suppose if you’re a rancher who lassos little dogies while riding horseback in the chapparal for sixty years, the bugs do have ample opportunity to score the hole in one of your ear canal.)

So the White Coats stuck a water pick in Groom’s ear and started flushing. Hmmm, said they. More flushing. Bigger HMMMMs. Then a very long, narrow tweezers came into play, and, as the gathered staff looked on, gasping and murmuring, THIS bit of horror…


…was eventually extracted from my true love’s ear, very much alive and aflutter. The docs gave him his trophy in a container, where it continues to flap its wings, even now, two days later.

To get rid of remnant moth dust in his ear, the professionals flushed the canal a few more times and left him with this homespun prescription: “Tonight or tomorrow morning, put a few drops of cooking oil into your ear, and that’ll clean you out real good, son.”

Since it’s been very hot (still 95 degrees at 8 p.m.), and since we were heading into Yellowstone Park the next day, where restaurants were scarce, I saw a way to make my groom’s huge and inviting ear hole into something functional at last. We needed to carbo-load before taking on Old Faithful, so I let the vegetable oil heat up in his ear…

…and then fried up some mini-donuts in the oil and ear wax.

Tasty.

Boy howdy, but Krispy Kreme ain’t got nothin’ on us.

"If You Pay More For Everything, Then Life Is Better, Right?"

Every town has its unique features--those little lifestyle elements that contribute to the feeling of the place. Such features are often taken for granted by longtime residents, but, man-o-man, are they noticed by the newbies and visitors.

For example, as has been intimated in previous posts, when I first moved to Austin, MN, more than a decade ago, I noticed (a tame term for something that was more of a physical recoil coupled with violent gagging) the smell of the SPAM cooking at the Hormel plant. I also filed away the sound of the pigs heading into the kill line, literally Auschwitz-style on a train chugging into the compound of the plant, in my Permanent Sense Memory files. Even though I've now been seven years away from that town, I still remember the frantic squeals.

Earlier than Austin were my years in the panhandle of Idaho, where lifestyle consisted of an unthinking respect of guns, even when shot at children during the Ruby Ridge incident, Another facet of lifestyle up there was a belief in White Power. Goooo, um, white folks with guns. If you own't fight for your liberty, how will you ever enjoy equality?

Long before that, even, I lived in my hometown in Montana (Idaho's kissing cousin), a place typified by gun racks hanging in the cabs of pick-up trucks--and these in the parking lot of my high school. There was nothing like hearing the bell ring at the end of the school day, slamming my physics book into my locker, fluffing my bi-level hair and enormous shoulder pads, and heading out to the parking lot to admire who had the most firepower on wheels. Then I'd head home to eat a pound of beef straight from a cast-iron skillet.

Suffice it to say, I'm a lifestyle connisseur by this point, always inventorying what makes a place tick. In my current hometown, one I chose on purpose, there is a clear sensibility, one that is built around kayaks, canoes, Subaru Outbacks, black labs running wildly off-leash, and ore ships. As I harken back to my upbringing surrounded by the arid Rimrocks in Montana, I can hardly reconcile the sound of a foghorn that permeates so many of my adult days. Startlingly, I now live in the midst of a water-obsessed cabin culture.

Thus, when I'm on vacation, as now, you can slap your chaps with complete confidence that I'm taking stock of the vibe of each place. And here in Boulder, in Colorado, my work is easy.

Because, you see, Boulder is a loud and proud lifestyle city.

For a million bucks, you can buy a shack. For five dollars, you can buy a candy bar. It's all rather New York, eh? What's so fun and trippy about Boulder is that the dominant feeling is "we're hippy-dippy and have tattoos on the napes of our necks hovering just above our yoga-toned arms which are highlighted by our $60 tank tops while we're out running the trails in between trips to the oxygen bar." The place, purely and simply, is about living deliberately and embracing health and sun and skiing and two hundred dollar dinners, all of which are, in turn, punctuated by buskers on the walking mall singing "Peace Train" off key.

Even though it's all so very high maintenance, I dig it. And it will be okay to leave it in a few days, too.

Let me present you with this case study as evidence of Boulder life: we are staying in the home of dear, dear friends of mine this week; they currently happen to be on vacation with their two daughters, but they are generously letting us stay in their empty home. I yuv them.

At the same time, I can tell tales from their cupboards--stories about the Spirulina Powder, the Vegan Vanilla Rice Protein Capsules, the Whole Psyllium Husks, and the Bio-Cleanse Capsules. If these were the only things in the kitchen cupboard, I would be scared of my own friends.

Reassuringly, though, they also have delicious and toxic Cheez-Its in the cabinets, and the house is littered with stores of Happy Meal toys (our kids stumble across them and shout out in recognition). Really, if we took away the Spirulina Powder, the Vegan Vanilla Rice Protein, the Whole Psyllium Husks, and the Bio-Cleanse Capsules, it would be just like home.

Except a hell of a lot cleaner. They have a cleaning woman, you see. In Duluth, we just call that a "Jocelyn."

Cheaper, at any rate. And we do find we get what we pay for.

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

So do tell, readers: what are the lifestyle trademarks of your town? Gertrude Stein famously said of Los Angeles, "There's no there there." What puts the there into your place?

"Dharma Bums"


GAAACK.

I'm a human shoe tongue. Leathery. Dessicated. In need of a good tug to straighten out my wrinkles.

For the love of high heat indexes and mind-altering altitude, could someone just pass me some moisturizer? And then, so long as you're in motion, dump a 64-ounce Slurpee on me?

See, as of today, we're outside of Boulder, Colorado, and I--get this wisdom in action--decided that temperatures over 100 degrees and complete exposure to blistering sun would make a fine backdrop to my daily run. So I headed for The Mesa.

Sure, I got to listen to some Joe Jackson ("Is she really going out with him?/Is she really going to take him home tonight?") on random local radio, but the fact that all dewiness was gradually being leeched out of me overcame the tunes. I slogged along, admiring the Flatirons to the West, keeping a wary eye out for rattlesnakes, coyotes, and yucca.

And eventually, my dehydrated shell staggered back to the house here, where only half a pizza and two mixed drinks could revive me (jot that down as a homespun cure for dehydration; never mind what the "specialists" say).

Outside of this run...oh, okay, and yesterday's run, too, in the mid-day inferno that folks in Lincoln, Nebraska, call "noon in June," the trip has been an easy toodle across the Great Plains. Do you suppose this heat, coupled with the thigh-high prairie grasses, could explain why early homesteaders didn't run marathons? Before the last two days, I just thought they were pussies.

So we left Duluth four days ago and spent the first night with one of the Friends of My Life, a woman who lives in Austin, Minnesota. We exited the car there, and Girl wrinkled her nose, sniffed a bit, and asked with great disgust, "What's that smell?" Well, dear Girl, it's the smell of all that's evil in the world being violently reduced into an aspic, canned quickly, labeled brightly, and then shipped out to places of war and/or Hawaii. There, poor unfortunates crack the tins and choke down the food called SPAM, giving themselves a thimble full of nutritionally-questionable energy.

Look at how I bring the world to my children, would you?

Since my Austin friend happens to be 70, and our young Niblet happens to be 4, these two, with liquid ease, found they held in common an avocation: dressing themselves, and others, in costume. Thus, in my friend's basement, Hijinks--and their lesser-known cousin Chuckles-- took roost:






The next morning, our true identities restored, we tore out of Austin, made quick work of Iowa, and crossed into Nebraska. And there, due to the hallucinations induced by two nights of restless sleep in KOA Campgrounds (conveniently stocked with barking dogs, ant hills under sleeping spots, and late-night drag racers) I made a break-through:

**Although I don't think seditiously at all, really, President Bush and Your Blog-Watching Minions (I mean, er, "Freedom of Information Fighters"), it was revealed to me that Nebraska is the actual seat of power in this country, and, were it crippled in any way, the U.S. would grind to a halt.

First: the East/West highway running through that state is actually an Unbroken Corridor of Semi Trucks, where all food and goods for our millions of citizens are transported at high speeds on eighteen wheels; why, even when I attended the How Many Semi's Can We Fit Into a Church Parking Lot Rally in Rugby, North Dakota, some years back, I never saw the like of that Nebraska highway. Bumper-to-bumper Wal-Mart and Home Depot trucks rule the asphalt, playing chicken with their loads of toasters and drills.

Second: Paypal is housed in the Council Bluffs/Omaha area; without Paypal, would any of us have a collection of Star Wars figures (still in box) in the upstairs closet, just awaiting eventual resale when our children's college educations need financing? Paypal is the true president, if we're talking about a daily, effective presence in citizens' lives.

Similarly and thirdly: Google is on the verge of opening a Server Farm in Omaha, an automated location that will handle all Google queries; and if the town that can answer "What Website contains the most information about lobster panties?" isn't the seat of modern democracy, I don't know where the power rests.

Fourthly: language in Nebraska captures the human condition like no other American locale; today, a tour guide actually exclaimed to me, "...and then, in the face of all those trials, they had to think, 'Isn't that just the berries?'"

Oh, yea, and finally, Nebraska is the repository of our finest history and arts, from sod houses...


...to buffalo statues made out of 4.5 miles of barbed wire fencing...


Wisely, Niblet shied away from this here bison, preferring instead to head back to the mini-van, where he tried on clown wigs, admiring himself in the rear-view mirror.


Such are the freedoms afforded to Americans, wherever they may roam.

"Time After Time"

I'm currently the bologna in a Colorado sandwich.

I'm aware makes no sense, so don't scrutinize it too closely. Cutting through my nonsense, what I'm saying is that I'm currently in Minnesota, having recently come back from a kamikaze weekend in Colorado. And tomorrow, the family and I are taking off for, you guessed it, Colorado.

Compared to my opening statement, that makes lots of sense, right?

Here's the deal:

Last weekend, a good friend of mine from college who lives outside of Boulder, CO (she's in the sassy orange halter top in the photo here) was the recipient of a suprise 40th birthday party. Her husband, knowing how wiley she is, threw the party six weeks before her actual birthday; in addition to that, he went through all sorts of machinations, created tangles of lies, and even went so far as to fake a phone call or two in her presence...and if that isn't the definition of a loving relationship, I don't know what is.

Because my college years were a floodlit time in my life--when everything seemed heightened and special and life changing and full of promise--making the trip to Colorado for a patio-top restaurant party to honor this friend seemed well worth the effort. Of course, since I was so busy being all floodlit and stuff, I ended up majoring in English in college and then becoming a teacher, which means I now don't make enough money to pay for such a boondoggle weekend myself. Enter My Benefactress (the brunette in the photo--and if you want to say anything about her like "nice rack," go ahead. She can take it), the pal who funded the trip. In my defense, I would like to stress that, although she paid for plane fare, car rental, and hotel room, I did shell out on a $6.00 toll road, thus carrying my weight.

The party was gratifyingly fun, the after party back at their house even more so. Stir in some good meals, a lovely run up Boulder Creek canyon one morning, and my introduction to a new drink called a Dark and Stormy (check it, cocktail fiends: put some ice in a glass, squeeze some lime over it, toss in a shot or two of rum, top it with ginger brew [non-alcoholic...kind of a ginger soda pop, available at co-ops or organic food type shops], and, if you've got it, mash up some fresh ginger and stir it in, too), and the weekend was outrageously happy making.

I also considered it a scouting mission for the upcoming family road trip. Yup, we're leaving on Monday, the 18th, and will be driving a huge loop around the West for almost three weeks. First, we'll head down to Austin, MN, where I used to live, for a visit with a sainted friend; then we'll head through Iowa into Nebraska, where we'll stop over in Lincoln for many hours of play in the tremendous children's museum there (seriously, this is the third time we've worked that museum into our trip plans), eventually meandering into Colorado, where we'll see all sorts of friends in Denver and Boulder (including my sister, freshly back in Denver after her two years in Guatemala); after that, it's up through Wyoming, stopping to see my great-aunt in Cody, and then heaving over, bravely, for a glimpse of boiling mud pots in Yellowstone Park; after all this, we'll drive to Billings to help my mom clean out her storage locker there (she's now a Californian) before we hire a trailer to help us haul our storage locker spoils across North Dakota and back to Minnesota. At that point, we'll collapse in a heap and stare at the new furniture in despair, as it's not like we actually have room for it. But how very fun to go get it!

Indeedy, I've just been to Colorado, and now I'm heading there again. I do so love the shortness of breath and leathery skin I get while there, you see.

So I'll be trying to post from the road and check in occasionally. But my trolling through your blogs, which has already taken a hit this summer since I'm never in my office, which is where all the best computer loafing takes place, may suffer even more.

However, I have little copies of each of your avatars framed and hanging in a shrine in the corner of my dining room, and I'm hiring a neighbor kid to come light the candles and incense in your honor twice a week, so I'm certain you'll still feel the lurve, even in my absence.

Gotta go get the motor runnin' now.

And, even though I do intend to keep posting with my usual regular irregularity, if you start to miss the feeling of Jocelyn Holding Forth, just come here and gaze upon this photo

The sight of me, mid-monologue, is certain to quash any wistful pangs you might be feeling. I'm here for ya like that.

"If You Get My Drift"

As a teacher of writing, my life is full of unexpected chortles; sometimes, I get to chortle when students with visible thongs and bra straps complain about not being taken seriously. Other times, I get to chortle because students write crap without thinking about what they're putting on the paper.

I've documented this phenomenon in a previous post, but them students, they just keep coughing up new gems for me. And now that I've been on summer break for a few weeks, I've gotten all melancholy and find myself pining for some crap writing (y'all bloggers aren't doing the job for me, so tone down the polished rhetoric, would you?). At such junctures, I breathe deeply, do a couple yoga poses, and then take a look at the cover of my gradebook, which is littered with phrases from student papers, jotted down as I wipe tears of chortle from my eyes.

For your edification, then, I offer up three student dookies:

On a final exam, one fine young 17-year-old wrote: "My grandpa is Norwegian, married to a woman who is half-Norwegian, so every Christmas we have lutefisk and Swedish meatballs..."

Shall we presume she thinks Norwegians are Swedish? Even further, I'll bet she thinks Canadians are Americans who live in a region with better beer and more talented improv comedians.

Final exams also yielded this unproofread delight:

"I spent a lot of time in my swimming suite..."

...leaving me certain that I have been rooked my whole life; I mean, every time I've gone swimming, there has been only one measly pool--okay, maybe with a hot tub on the side (aka Bacteria Stew)--but a whole suite of pools? With valet and room service and a minibar? And really fluffy towels? And thick Turkish robes? And 148 channels? And a blow dryer? And how dangerous and futile is that: blow drying one's hair whilst in the pool? Can I just swim all night, from pool to pool, marveling at how the children are asleep in one pool, but I'm still awake and watching Weeds over in mine?

Lastly, I was sorry to read that the family of one of my students is imbued with a thread of obsequiousness:

"My uncle Roger is syncophantic."

Interestingly, this student's paper, up until this point, had been about her uncle's struggle with hearing voices, suffering from depression, and waging a war with mental illness. But suddenly, with spell-checker plugging in its guess at how to spell something like "schizophrenic," her uncle's problem became more benign; at worst, he was crippled by the illness of being an overly-attentive "yes" man.

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

Ah, I'm feeling much better now, having reviewed those. It's possible I might now find the heart to go outside and drink a mojito in the sunshine. And if I ever write about that experience in a composition class, I'll be sure to tickle the instructor by typing about "how affective a German drink can be for relinquishing in a lounge chere."

"The New Meth...Wait, No, Even More Addictive Than That: The New Chocolate"

About fifteen years ago, I took up cross-stitching for all of two months. Single and childless, I was looking for a hobby, and the idea of handiwork tapped in to my desire to share pursuits, outside of grinding corn and sitting in straight-backed chairs in my whale-bone corset, with my colonial ancesors. So I got a hoop and some floss and started making all those little X-s into pictures.

After two months, I had a moment of awakening: I didn't actually have a need in my life for little stitched pictures to--what?--frame. Plus, sitting inside under artificial light with my head bent in the height of summer struck me as one of my dumber notions, as well.

I decided it was time to lift my head and venture out into the sunshine. Whilst under the rays, shading my eyes, I peered around for a new hobby.

For awhile, I occupied myself with lacing a pair of snowshoes. Again, though, my head was bent, my neck was sore, and who can watch the Oscars in their full glory that way? So then I made a lot of mixed tapes. Inside. In the middle of the night.

From reading to handiwork, my natural hobbirific inclinations have always taken me back to the world of dim lights and head-bent posture, which leaves me feeling I could have been one hell of a hooker.

The good news is that I have recently decided to ride an entirely new hobbyhorse, and this time, I can keep my head held high and throw my shoulders back--drawing in the daylight--as I slap the reins and dig in my heels.

Friends, I've decided to use my spare time to become litigious.

Yes, I know there are plenty of lawsuits out there already. But they are often frivolous, ultimately effecting no great societal change. I aim to come up with real challenges to the law, the results of which will overthrow our current ways of thinking. I am a revolutionary.

Instead of buying hoops and embroidery floss, my new hobby requires only imagination, the faintest acquaintance with the law, and a burning desire for undeserved money. I have all three.

Having sent in my dues and registration to the national organization, The LSS (Litigious System Suckers), I am ready to roll.

Specifically, for my first project, I will be suing Universal Studios, the parent company (read: having the deepest pockets) overseeing the production of the current television show Battlestar Galactica. My beef is this: one episode at a time, the writers and actors of this program are giving me an ulcer. As the groom and I lurch through the first season on DVD, I find my stomach in knots, clenching, releasing, flopping over. Universal should be held financially accountable--do we not all agree?--for not only the ulcer developing in my stomach but also, perhaps more importantly, for my lost sleep (which then affects job performance) and shredded cuticles (a lifetime's supply of free manicures at the spa of my choice seems a fair settlement).

Universal, your show is killing me. Even worse, you've made it so addictive that I am beyond helping myself. My ailments have become your responsibility, so pay up. And if you won't, I'll turn my attentions to the Sci-Fi channel, which airs the show. Short and simple: someone is going down.

This lawsuit will not be completely straightforward, of course, as there are many subtleties beyond getting Universal to pay for my cocktail of ulcer medications (brain flash: maybe a cocktail would be just the medicine!). For example, my husband, normally a steady, calm fellow, actually imagined himself, as he ran a weekly trail race the other day, being chased by Galactica's villains: the Cylons. As Groom dodged amongst the birches and pines, slogging away in the mud, he envisioned himself in peril from those vengeaful robots, to the point that he finished the race wet and exhausted. We are, therefore, going to need for Universal to pay for the drycleaning of his running clothes, a new bar of green-tea-infused soap (okay, for me) to rinse the mud away, and, um, a new pair of running shoes while they're at it.

Oh, and, I, uhhhhhhh, have had to shriek sometimes during stressful scenes in the show, and so my, em, ears hurt. But if Universal were to give me a dazzling pair of diamond earrings, my ears would feel eversomuch better.

Plus, the show has engendered in me a strong desire to pilot a Viper or a Cylon raider, so flying lessons would seem in order. And maybe a trip to another planet (tourist class is fine). And, er, in a few episodes they drink some gnarly-looking green liqueur, so I'll need a bottle of that...and some expensive cigars labeled "Last in this Planetary System"...and maybe a few of those cute tank tops the CAG pilots wear. Oops, and Edward James Olmos has some seriously awe-inspiring skin going on; to allay my fears of experiencing similar acne scars, only a lifetime supply of Proactiv Solution will do.

But really, being a reasonable woman and realizing this lawsuit is only a hobby, that should do it. Oh, wait, I guess I could also use a telephone with a cord. I don't have one of those, but apparently they do once the universe has been colonized in the future. How modernistic it would be of me to have the only house on the block that contains a phone with a cord that hooks into the wall!

And if Universal agrees to settle out of court and save us all on legal fees, I'll be more than glad to return to my cross-stitching just long enough to produce a little something to hang on the office wall of the CEO of Universal Studios:

Clearly, cross-stitching this would be a complicated project, hard to fit in between all my new hobbies of getting manicures, taking flying lessons, and holding cocktail parties,

but no thanks are necessary, Universal;

it's the least I can do.

"A Basic Civil Right: Being Scatalogical"

What is it about little boys?

Why are the colon and its emissions so profoundly, continually hilarious to wee males?

These days, my four-year-old (who, in his defense, is heavily under the influence of a cadre of neighborhood seven-year-old fellas) toodles around the house, absentmindedly singing a little ditty of his own composition:

"I'm a poopy head/I'm a poop-poopy-pooper/I'm a poopy head
Hey, Mom? / You're a poopy-pooper, too/We're all poop"

Sure, it's charming enough, and I'd wipe a quiet tear from my eye if Jordin from American Idol belted it out on her first album,

but, really? Enough with the fecal talk, okay?

There's just something about testosterone + humor that unerringly = da butt.

Case in point:

Last night, I was reading a book to the kids called Hello USA! It's a dumb Hello Kitty book, but we're stretching here in the house to meet our seven-year-old daughter's fascination with maps, continents, oceans--all things social studyish, in fact--and Hello Kitty has been workin' the geography for us this week.

The book goes through each of the 50 states (get this: PLUS D.C.! Bonus!), giving little factoids about each one. I now know that

the Mid-America Windmill Museum is in Kendallville, Indiana

the Brown Thrasher is the state bird of Georgia

the pop-up toaster was invented in 1919 in Stillwater, Minnesota

the world's largest buffalo sculpture is in Jamestown, North Dakota

the world's first alpine chairlift was built in 1936 in the world's first ski resort in Sun Valley, Idaho

and the octopi found in Puget Sound are the world's largest


The whimsical overview of Americana crashed and burned, though, when we got to Alabama. On that page, I no sooner read the words "Birmingham Civil Rights Institute" than I was interrupted with

"You said toot!"

Giggles ensued. And again, "Mom said toot!"

And again with the toot. And again.



Plus one more.

A few minutes after the intial joy and amusement, "institoot" permanently entered the family vernacular; see, each night, after I get the kids into bed, they holler out for their pappy (who is generally downstairs wilting some bok choy and broiling some marinated flank steak on skewers) that it is time for him to come upstairs for squeezes and smooches. Of late, the kiddles have decided to beckon him not with a resounding "DAAAAAADDDDY," but rather by calling out for him with some cool-sounding word. To wit, they have been heard bellering "Onomatopoeia" to get him to come upstairs these last weeks. However, as of last night, thanks to The Kitty of Helloishness, the Girl has started hollering--yes, quite fun--"Okefenokee." But the Wee Niblet?

Yea, he now just wails "Institoooooooot."

Go, Birmingham. Go, civil rights. Go, Da Butt.


Makin' Martin Luther King, Jr. proud,
I remain,

The Wincing Mother of a Boy
----------------------------------------

Oh, and hey, Jazz, this is reason 478 why you can be glad you didn't have kids.

And male readers? 'Fess up: you never have stopped finding this stuff to be the pinnacle of humor, have you? I mean, I shouldn't wait, with breath bated, for this "phase" to fade away, right? Realistically, the lad will be pretty much tuned into the poop channel 'round the clock for the next three decades, ja?

If that's the case, I have one word: crap.

"Squeak"





(the only good mouse has a single testicle)


When I was in college, I sometimes had to miss class, and not always because I was hung over or because Hart to Hart was on tv (I loved the way Max the butler said, “When dey met, it was moida” in the opening credits).

Sometimes, I had to miss class because, while tripping along to the English building, musing about how Milton was a genius of a poet (or, more accurately, about how Chuck Woolery was a genius of a gameshow host), I would encounter a squirrel along the pathway.

And if there was a squirrel on the path, Milton and Chuck be damned. I was going no further. In fact, my body would switch directions fairly dramatically, as I hastened back to the dorm, away from Nut-Cheeked, Fluffy-Tailed Evil.

I have this little borderline phobia, you see. It involves all rodents and even a few members of the polecat family (watch this space for an upcoming post about my life with a ferret).

For me, this phobia works not only as a personal shriek-inducer but also as a general character-tester. Some people learn that I have this deep-seated and profound fear, and they think it’s funny—a chance to put me in situations where I come face-to-face with the thing that petrifies me most: “Hey, look, Joce, here in this shoebox full of fossils; it’s a mouse skeleton. Come hold the skull!”

Such people have no place in my life, and, due to their willful cruelty, I make certain my dense and chewy molasses cookies never cross their lips.

Then there are those who understand that fear is not a thing to be mocked, that fear does not have to be rational to be real, and that they don’t need to be the instrument of my gradual desensitization: “Hey, look, Joce, here in the kitchen. I’ve just let loose a mole for our mutual fun. Now, you try to catch it with this colander, and if you do, you’ll have faced your fear, thereby diffusing it, which means you'll never again have to avoid the hamster section of the pet store!”

Rather, the Wise Samaritans accept that a very specific fear is a part of who I am; they become my benign enablers, and they are amply rewarded with molasses cookies AND butter-rich chocolate-chip scones for their tolerance. In my worldview, fear, whether legitimate or irrational, deserves respect. Those compassionate enough to get that a magazine photo of a gerbil elicits in me weak knees, shortened breath, and choked screams, well, they get their laundry folded for life.

Don’t get me wrong—I hate to feel crippled by anything, fear especially. My intellectual mind is well aware that a mouse or bat won't really crawl down my throat while I sleep, and a rat won't actually swim up through the toilet hole while I'm, em, evacuating, but, as it turns out, my intellectual mind is very rarely at the helm.

In my better moments, those rare seconds when intellect has grabbed hold of the wheel, I have tried to get to the roots of this thing, to see if I can figure out why I’m petrified by small, timid furballs.

Well...

I remember when I was five, while my mom watched General Hospital in the background, seeing a fuzzy blur (“It’s a bumble bee,” I yelled) whip into a mousetrap that we had set in our house. The trap caught Stuart Little but didn’t kill him immediately, as it only snapped onto his leg, and for some moments afterward, I stood, rapt, as that mouse dragged the trap around behind him until finally petering out, tortured beyond any interpretation of the Geneva Convention, even an interpretation with the breadth and convenience of George W. Bush's. Moreover, to this day, I can never hear the surname "Quartermaine" without needing to whimper a bit with rodential anxiety (and I don't mean just because the actor who plays Alan Quartermaine is a total weasel).



As well...

I remember when I first started reading the Little House on the Prairie books, and I encountered the scene where Pa woke up in the middle of the night with a mouse gnawing at his hair, ostensibly gathering material for a nest (in actuality, this minion was planting an early pioneer version of a mouse GPS device into Pa’s scalp, so the Mouse King could track Pa’s every movement as he plowed; with such technology, the mouse kingdom would know the second the corn harvest was in, by Jehosephat). In the book, Pa roused from sleep and grabbed the busy mouse from his head and tossed it into the wall, where they found it, dead, the next morning. As Pa casually tossed the corpse out into a field, the Mouse King despaired of ever again finding such an easy target for his machinations. But then that simple Grace Ingalls came of age, and she was all new fodder for the Mouse King's evil plots (well chronicled in the tome These Happy Mousey Years).

Even further...

I remember being around age ten and wearing a pair of sassy bamboo flip-flops when I stepped out the back door of my friend Carol Darnielle’s house, right onto flattened mouse remnants that the cat had been playing with.

Oh, and to answer your question: YES, mouse husk does stick, quite determinedly, to the bottom of a flip-flop, even when you hop around on that flip-flop, screaming, for a few minutes before trying to rub the mouse off the bottom by scraping the flip-flop against the edge of a concrete step. When, at frigging last, the mouse jelly releases its grip, it is not, even in a famine, something you want to spread on your sandwich for lunch.

But wait...

I remember our neighbor Randy Rupert bringing his two guinea pigs outside one day in their cage and leaving them on the sidelines in the blistering August sun as we all played cops ‘n robbers. Some hours later, we discovered they’d gotten horribly sunburned—not pink, but red, piggies going “ouch, ouch, ouch” all the way home. And they did go Home, to the big guinea pig cage in the sky, later that night, when they died from their neglectful roasting.

You need more?

I remember taking on the flattering burden of hamster-sitting my next-door neighbor and great pal Lisa Mackin’s two fluffballs, while her family took off for a long weekend in Vegas. I did not love the hamsters, but I was still at a point where I could be in a room with them, if they were caged. And I was willing, for the friendship, to go to her house every day in her absence and throw food into their habitat. Much more than friendship was required, however, when I went over the third day, only to discover Big Hamster sitting and smirking inside the carcass of Smaller Hamster, wiping its bloody chops.

Seriously.

I'd never been gladder to have a big brother than that day, when mine did the clean-up for me, as I dry-heaved in our bathroom back home.

When Lisa came back from Vegas and tried to gift me with a stuffed animal from Circus, Circus (mercifully, not a hamster), I had to refuse, on the grounds that I was a Pet Killer and deserved no swag.

Honestly, this litany could go on and on. I could take you on a trip down my memory's Rodent Avenue and tell you tales of two white mice living in the wall by my waterbed when I was a teen...of me hovering under a dining room table, screaming with my cousins while my uncles shoeboxed a bat against the wall...of my dorm room freshman year (imagine me there, having skipped class, tuning in to Chuck Woolery on Love Connection in an effort to decrease my elevated "squirrel on path" heart rate), where my reverie was disrupted by a mouse in the garbage can...and I could take you back through this already-recounted story of calling the police when a bat flew into my house and started trying on outfits for the prom...I could take you to my aunt's house in South Dakota where mice run in the walls and perch on the edge of the bathtub...and I will take you, in a future post, into our kitchen, where a rat set up shop for some weeks, leaving feces in the drawer under the stove and developing an affection for bananas...

Summarized, though, my point is this: people have called this fear "irrational" or have acted dismissively towards it, and I get that, logically, a rodent ain't gonna kill me. But I would argue, dear Judge and Jury, that there is clear, comprehensive evidence that I am entitled to yelp, even cringe, when I see the cover of a Littles children book.


I have earned my fear.

And before I leave you to fret about every little rustling in your cupboards, let me tack on this post-script: I started writing this post more than a month ago, but never got back to finishing it or posting it. There was a reason--a new agitation yet to come.

Four days ago, it actually stopped raining, Praise Noah, for a brief period. So I jumped out onto the deck, eager to set up shop at the lovely glass table there. I would blog; I would sip a frosty beverage; I would lounge, at least for seven minutes until the next downpour. In full tra-la-la mode, I noted that the sun was actually shining and so ducked my head and torso up inside the closed patio umbrella, which is what it takes to open the huge thing. Wreathed inside it, in the darkness, I pushed on the innards, and the umbrella popped open.

It also took all of two seconds for my ennervated heart to pop open. There, on the table, having narrowly missed landing in my hair (becoming entwined there for all of eternity, gradually gnawing away at my scalp), was a bat. At first it crawled along the tabletop dopily, drowsy and bewildered, muttering, "Duh? Where umbrella haven go?"

Then Satan appeared in its eyes, and it gained focus and purpose

as it climbed into my open, screaming maw

and slowly crawled down my esophagus.