"Mockingbirds and Tortoises"

Damn Darwin. Were it not for his meddling ways, I'd still be catching a daily nap just before--okay, more honestly, during--"Oprah."

But he just had to go to the Galapagos and stare at all sorts of birds and turtles. Then he wrote that thing.

And suddenly, everyone was in a tizzy, wanting to roar at each other over what are clearly apples-and-oranges issues. Religion shines best when there are no microscopes in the pulpit; science convinces better when amazing technicolor dreamcoats aren't hung in the lab.

Despite these truths, people started fighting, and they continue to this day.

Unfortunately, I'm just not very conflict oriented. I let pushy bastard-ass drivers on the highway ram through, a strategy that keeps it their problem, not mine. I smile as bossfolk shovel verbal compost and call it "a new initiative." Sometimes, in fact, I have been known to remain in relationships for, say, six years, simply to avoid a fight.

'Cause most fights require hot air and posturing, and doesn't that sound like a lot of work? Generally speaking, I've got better things to do.

Thus, I shouldn't have been so suprised eight years ago, that night I attended a Creation versus Evolution debate at the local high school. I never would have gone, except a colleague--a pal--had agreed to sit on the side of Evolution and use his philosophical skills to debate the visiting evangelical "I'll-Give-Y'all-God-In-This-Here-Slideshow-AND-Scorn-The-Empiricists-Whilst-I'm-At-It" preacher. My colleague was nervous. He needed clapping hands in the audience.

Given the right cause, my hands can be very clappish.

One time, back in '97, I even did a "woot-woot."

Some Chinese Acrobats had just spun plates with their feet. How could I not?

At any rate, Groom and I slogged our way into the auditorium that night and settled into the hard wooden seats. At halftime, I excused myself to "go shake hands with My Savior" in the restroom.

I sat on the toilet and started to muse. Why is it evangelical preachers always wear powder blue suits? Why is it their hair--

KKKKAAAABBBLLLOOOOSH.

My musings were interrupted by an enormous eruption into the toilet. This eruption was so unusual, it was, like, NUMBER THREE, maybe even NUMBER FOUR, if NUMBER THREE was something just a little bit more impressive than poo but less impressive than what had just come out of me. Let's call NUMBER THREE cake batter.

So, yea, a volcanic thing had just exploded into the toilet water. Generally speaking, that can't be good. If it ever happens to you, make sure you mop up but good afterwards, Moby.

Especially when you're just starting Week 37 of your first pregnancy, and you're pretty sure you have, like, a month left to consider packing a bag for the hospital.

But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. The Creationists and the Evolutionists had to go all barky at each other up there on the stage that night, getting my knickers in a very particular bind, and before you know it, my anti-conflict membranes had reacted with a pre-term rupture.

I still don't know if it was an act of God or science that caused it. What I do know is that, eyeing the ensuing bloodletting, we hied it over to the hospital an hour later. To this day, I don't know who was right in that debate at the high school, but a part of me hopes God and Darwin fled the building and settled the argument afterwards by kickin' it on the curb and drinking a couple 40's of malt liquor.

Me? I pretty quickly had a monitor strapped around my belly. "Did you have any idea your contractions are three minutes apart?" the helpful nurse asked.

Contractions? Really? Three minutes apart?

This was starting to sound like the Big Show.

And no. I had no idea I was even having contractions, much less that I'd gotten them to repeat with the regularity of a Dick Wolf cop 'n lawyer show in which a corpse is discovered in the first thirty seconds by an early-morning jogger who stops to retie his trailing shoelace.

Crikey, if these were contractions, this childbearing gig was going to be a walk in the park (just not Central Park, where I'd undoubtedly be attacked by a group of wilding youth who could only be brought to justice through the power of Sam Waterston's homey-voiced closing statement).

A couple hours later, though, I had become one with the contractions. While Groom dozed, I stared at the clock during the peaks of pain and dozed through the valleys.

By morning, infuriatingly, the contractions had stopped all together. At that point, the midwife said we could either go home--and come back later when they started up again--or we could follow the momentum and make the birth happen.

Moment of character revelation: I discovered I don't go through twelve hours of contractions just to be sent home with a casual "catch ya on the rebound." So they rolled out the Pitocin and, as long as they were hooking me up, some penicillin to treat the Strep B that had built a vacation home in my downstairs lady flat.

We were in business. Over the course of the next ten hours or so, I started out determined and then got really tired and then cried and got emotional and then had my spine poked and for awhile there got really happy and chatty and then got all panicky and wild-eyed--the whole thing being kind of like a recap of the conception--and eventually I got really, really angry.

Second moment of character revelation: I hated the pushing. Holy watermelon through a bagel, but I hated the pushing. I was surrounded by medical staff, Me Man, and a crew of galpals. They were all being really good cheerleaders, assuring me, with each push, that I was almost done, that this was IT, that one more push would do it.

Sam Waterston should have prosecuted every last delusive one of them for perjury.

It was NOT the last push. It was never going to be the last push. I hated the push. The push was a pisser.

At one point, as I lay damp and panting in between pushes, the midwife announced, "I'm going to go make a pot of coffee."

She was so carefree, so breezy, I 'bout reared off the bed and severed the midwife's tail.

Turns out, the old Pot of Coffee Trick is well-known, in, um, druidic circles for jumpstarting a plateauing labor.

Midwife returned. Everyone told me--the lying sods--that it would be just one more push.

And then, twelve pushes later, it was. And it was a girl. It was the Girl.

I sobbed crazily, like a woman who had been through labor and a Creation vs. Evolution debate in the course of one 24-hour period.

Hot upon that catharsis, I realized that getting the babe out was just Step One. Step Two was expelling and massaging the mother******* placenta out. Where had that bit of information been, in all my pre-delivery reading? Huh? HUH?

But the Girl was good, and that was lucky, so I muddled through the placental hell; soldiered through the bloody, blistered and cracked nipples the next day; and eventually we all went home. For weeks, lovely friends came and went, urging me to "Enjoy every minute of it because it goes so fast!"

More with the lies. For a long time, every minute felt like three days. Nothing flew by. After a short battle with jaundice, we all were doing fine, but never, never did I end a day wondering where the time had gone. Time was sludge. The second hand had been attached to a glacier.

A few years later, we had Niblet--at which point every minute felt like five days.

Yet.
Now.
In the last couple years.
Things have sped up.

Occasionally, a minute feels like a nanosecond. Occasionally, I start to consider the possibility that all my friends and family aren't just big whoreliars. Time sometimes gets pulled over and issued a speeding ticket.

That fact gives me profound joy, yet it simultaneously rents little fissures into my heart. This moment in my kids' lives is very, very good. It will change soon enough, though.

But what can you do? Just be.

Eight years later, we have gotten pretty good at be-ing with our Girl. She's made it easy.

Before, I had expectations of parenthood--about how challenging it would be, how rewarding, how much it would revolve around caretaking. However, I had no idea

that She would become my friend ("Can I braid your hair now?")

that She would teach me responsibility ("I need to put on my coat and hat by 8:00 and be on the corner by 8:03, or I'll miss the bus, Mom. I need to get ready now.)

that She would take care of us ("Ooh, Niblet, that runny nose needs a Kleenex! Let me get you one.")

that She would earn my respect ("I have some questions I want to ask a lot of people, like a survey. Then, when we get their answers, can I make some graphs of them?")

that She would inspire in me a keen admiration ("I want to run this 5K, and I'm going to beat you, Mom.")

that She would have an uncompromising purity of character ("I can't even breathe right when I think about people having to be slaves. It makes my heart inside of me hurt.")

that She would be unflappable (Of a neighbor boy, "He calls me an idiot all the time. It doesn't bother me because he's wrong.")

that She would illuminate how shy, quiet reserve is also gentle, poised confidence

that, by her 8th birthday (today!), She would be one of my best companions, the person with whom I'd most like to take a walk around the block at the end of the day--that She would be one of my calmest and most-insightful chums

that the promise of Her arrival the night of the debate would be fulfilled a hundredfold by 2nd grade

We created her. And what a delight is has been to watch her evolve.

----------------------------
Semi-incidentally, and if you have any more reading time, my post commemorating the Girl's birthday last year is perhaps my personal favorite...

"Next Up: A Horseless Carriage"


"Giddyup!" I hollered to my team after a long day of plowing furrows in the west field. They were whupped, but I had one more section to turn over before heading back into the cool of the soddy to soak up bacon grease with a hunk of hardtack.

Moments later, I slowed the mules and peered out from under my sun bonnet as I spied my two ragamuffins coming at me, hammer and tongs. What was that in their hands? They hadn't dipped into the last of the horehound candy from Christmas, now had they?

No. That wasn't it. What did they have there? Surely not one of those new-fangled, two-wheeled velocipedes?

Pshaw, but it was something much smaller. A new piece of calico? I had been reckoning I needed some new Sunday habiliments.

Gadzooks, but I'd never seen the like. They were holding something as small as the shrew that had bumfuzzled the cornpatch last summer. They'd best not have a shrew there, or I'd tan their hides and barter them for white sugar at the General Mercantile!

"What've you there, you rapscallions?" I asked, discommoded that I'd never get my churning set that night with such interruptions--and never a lick of help from their 'shine guzzling pa, neither, him always passed out in the lean-to.

"Make it quick now," I hawed. "Don't come showing me how your corn cob doll got scalped again when I've work to do. You know winter sets in fast and hard out here on the prairie, and there's no resting 'til the root cellar's full up."

"Um, Mom?" broke in my oldest, a girl.

"Jehosephat, Girl. Spit it out afore the shoats are ready for butchering. Enough of your palaver."

"Yea, so, Mom? It's, like, 2008 and all? Why are you so weird? We actually don't live on the prairie, and you just filled up the back of the mini-van yesterday with bags of groceries at the Cub Foods, so I'm not quite sure why you're out in the yard here, pretending to sow stuff. Plus, you just planted my soccer ball in the sand box."

"Don't bother your ma now, Half-Pint. I'm thinking that dark cloud above betokens a locust attack."

"Actually, Mom? We don't really call you 'Ma,' and that cloud is more like stink smoke from the refinery. Anyhow, Mom, if we can snap you back to reality for a minute here, we've got a birthday present for you."

"Shucks and bother, but birthdays are nothing but a vexation. I am graveled that you pay them any mind when you know full well tomorrow's washing day, and we're plumb out of lye." My mind, to tell you true, was cogitating on what a tight scratch it would be to hamper a new school marm into crossing the Mississippi and taking on that passle of ne'r-do-wells in the one-room schoolhouse.

"Get with it, Mom. We've all decided it's time for you to join the 21st Century. You refuse to carry a cell phone, but that doesn't mean you can't start enjoying an Ipod. So we got you one! Happy birthday! Now you don't have to go out running wearing those big old antennaed headphones like you do," Niblet and Girl went on at exceeding length.

"Eye pawed? What would I go and want something like that for?" I groused, mentally peppering some shot into the grouse that had just flushed out of the brush next to me.

"Cuz, Mom, it's okay if technology is your friend. Don't be afraid. We'll all be there with you. We'll show you how to download a Podcast, how to burn CD's, how to listen to your beloved Jayhawks as you sweat," they harrowed up.

"Hawk? Where? It'd better not be after the barn cats again!"

Sighing, the family reached out gently, unlaced my too-tight stays, and led me to the computer,

whereupon I uploaded, burned, downloaded, and playlisted.

And out in the fields the next day, as I put in an acre of peas, I rocked out, prim and proper-like, to Husker Du, Wilco, The Replacements, and the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Cats.

The day after that, I didn't put in any peas or even head to the fields. I just rocked out.

Hmmm. Maybe there's something to this 21st Century after all.



Next year, I hope they get me one of them high-fallutin' gee-gaws called a "safety pin."

I've got a rip in my drawers that needs hitchin' up.

"Unwrap This"

Roughly forty-one years ago, on March 25th, my mom didn't know what to get my dad for his birthday. Somehow "a child" seemed more creative than "a Mickey Mouse necktie."

So on my dad's 32nd birthday, my mom, spinal-blocked but fully conscious, pushed me out of her girl bits.

Half an hour later, she was snarfing down a ham sandwich.

This was an auspicious start.

Since then, it's become a point of pride that I've never been more than half an hour out from a ham sandwich.

And, except for twice in college, I've been fully-conscious each time I've eaten one.

About two years later, my poor parents had this on their hands.

Of course, Payback never misses an appointment. Right now, I have this on my hands:



And if your questions at this juncture are along the lines of "Is he really in nothing but his boy-panties, is that his sister's sweater he's wearing, and are those his mother's boots?" the answers are yes, yes and more yes, Sweet Ru Paul.

--------------------------------------------
Instead of just wishing me a happy birthday--which you should do, you gauche clod--tell me something about the day you were born, woncha?

Twenty-Seventh Sign of an Impending Apocalypse:

Spontaneously and unthinkingly, I recently did finger guns at a colleague during an English Department meeting.

Should I ever attend a Liberal Arts & Sciences Advisory Board meeting and toss up some gesticular air quotes, that will be your final warning.

Grab canned foodstuffs and run for your bomb shelters.

I kind of hope your bomb shelter is actually a wine cellar. Start with the Rieslings and work your way to the Malbecs. Don't bother with a corkscrew; just crack open the neck of the bottle and start chugging. Kind of like I do most nights.




Oh, and the first twenty-six signs of an impending apocalypse all involve George W.

"Preschooler Oysters"



You know how it's important for a parent to mess with her kid, just to make sure he's ready for the Whac-A-Mole game that is middle school?

I do; therefore, I view every day as a "mess-'em-up-early-and-hard" opportunity.

Case in point:

While the Wee Niblet still has affection for his Pokemon cards and is always game for a Yu-Gi-Oh duel, he's recently expanded his faux-manga-based-consumer-merchandising passions into Bakugan territory, as well.

Pretty much, Niblet is hot for Bakugan's balls.



Admit it. They're strangely attractive, weirdly soothing, these balls. You want to cradle them in your palm, don't you?

Don't be coy. One glimpse, and you can sense they give good hand.

If you don't believe your own impulses, you can believe Niblet. He's an expert in holding little balls, and he finds the Bakugan Battle Brawler balls very satisfying.

In fact, he is so enchanted with them that he keeps the Bakugan brawlers in his pockets, where he can massage them, roll them, and tweak them.

Even better, I like to get him talking about what he's doing: "Hey, kid, whatcha got there in your pocket?"

"My widdle balls."

"Yea? Whatcha doing with them, toots?"

"Feeling them. I like feeling my widdle balls."

Then I let about three minutes pass before asking, "So, buddy, you seem to be touching something in your pants there. What're you doing?"

"Mom, you know I wuv my widdle balls. I'm playing with my widdle balls."

Next mission: get him to explicate, with great volume ("EEEH? Cain't hear ya, kid. Speak up!"), at the mall, about what he's got in his pockets. I may enhance this activity by having him take along the Bakugan wrist-shooter, into which the brawler balls can be inserted and then ejected. There we'd be, in front of the Eddie Bauer store, me asking, "Whatcha doing now, poodle?"--and him answering, "Just making my widdle balls shoot out."

After the tortures of Mommy Boot Camp, middle school is, in comparison, going to feel like an easy stroke of the tool.

In honor of my naturally-red Irish roots; the big drunk that is St. Paddy's Day; a lack of writing time; and a firmly-entrenched believe that recycling is always good, I'm re-running one of my earliest posts (it had all of three readers!). I wrote a series of tales about Jocelyn Set Loose in Ireland, and this was in the mix. I hope it makes some sense--or at least as much as my posts usually do.



"Not So Much My Saviour After All: The Pompous Lord"

I feel it. Pulsing towards me through cyberspace, I sense your desire to read more of my rambling adventures in other countries. Or maybe what I sense is just my computer trying to stream an episode of Ugly Betty to me, but I'm choosing instead to read this communication from abc.com as a psychic connection that you and I share. And either abc.com or someone else out there is telling me that more travel stories would be okay. Yes?

I'll take your silence as a hearty and resounding "yes!!!"

Now, I know you want to read about when I was 17 and attended a weekend biker ralley in Denmark (all the hardcore bikers from around Europe converged on a farm for the weekend), but since some of my unmentionables went missing that weekend and later showed up nailed to a clubhouse wall, I shan't relate that story, lest I blush and find myself unable to make eye contact with you in the future when we bump into each other near the holiday hams at Cub Foods.

And I could regale you with a story about camping around Iceland for ten days, my body sucking up around-the-clock arctic light; upon return to the States, my body's internal clock was so confused that I ended up with a surprise pregnancy--a daughter now nearly eight!--out of the deal. A quick summary of that part of my life goes: "Whee. Whoa. Wow. Whoops." But again, if you'd read a detailed account of such a happy, but personal, mistake, how could we chat superficially at the Cub Foods after running in to each other in the cereal aisle? We'd be fake-smiling, trying to come up with things to say, mindlessly loading our carts with heaps of unneeded Quaker Oats, while your brain would be spinning: "Oh, man, I know way too much about this lady to even pretend to care about the weather. But just keep smiling, Skeeter. Just keep smiling. And nodding. And making those affirmative noises in your throat."

Or I could tell you a story about being in the airport in Chisinau, Moldova, when I tried to crack a joke about how I was visiting the country with the intent of drinking lots of their famous wine and then standing on the corners to sell Levi jeans for a huge profit (the Iron Curtain had fallen, so I thought the place might have lightened up. Who knew 70 years of Soviet influence wouldn't just melt away into good humor and that I would be pulled out of the baggage area and made to stand aside and be scowled at while my passport was "taken to another room"?). But again, if I told you this story, there you and I would be, standing stiffly in the Cub Foods cookie aisle after we reached out simultaneously for a package of Keebler Merry Mints, taking turns retreating and saying, "No, really, you go first" and then lurching out again at the same time and clunking hands, making you think to yourself, "Honestly, I swear this woman is the type of annoying person who would think making jokes to uniformed officials in crumbling countries is appropriate. And she probably plans to serve these cookies at a neighborhood party, passing them off as homemade. 'Oooh, look at me: I worked for hours, trying to get the icing just so!'"

So I guess I'm left telling you another story about Ireland, where even poor behavior seems only "naughty" at worst, and it's the uniformed officials themselves who are cracking the jokes at the airport.

When last you left me in Ireland, I was cursing at a pony and muttering "Never again...Never again..." The good news is that I hitched up my chaps, tucked my spurs into my backpack, and got over my pony trauma before deciding the next thing to do was explore, on foot and by car, Co. Donegal--a remote place with sparse bus service, which left me asking my B & B hostess, "You're really sure it's safe for single women to hitch-hike around here?" Assured that hitch-hiking was common practice in the area, I began relying upon it to get me around the county.

After warming up my thumb the first day with an intricate exercise involving balancing jelly beans on my thumbnail and then flipping them into my mouth (repeatedly), I set off for the coastal mountain/hiking area of Slieve League, scoring four rides whilst to-ing and fro-ing.

The first guy was a handyman who hollered, "Ya don't mind sitting in back with the tools, do ya?" Not at all. I made off with his monkey wrench.

The next husband and wife were very prim, venturing so far as to ask me if, indeed, everyone in the United States carries a gun. Upon exiting the car, I blasted them with my Supersoaker.

After my muddy, awe-inspiring, 3-hour hike at Slieve League, I was picked up by Liam, who asked me to sit up front and cradle his Sunday paper on my lap. Sensing a fetishist, I obliged, but I managed to steal the crossword puzzle and leave him, undoubtedly, bereft of the sense of accomplishment that comes with knowing which 1970's rock group performed "Mr. Blue Sky" and filling in the accompanying three-letter answer.

Finally, I hitched a ride with an enthusiastic 19-year-old who was incredibly happy to see me--or anyone else, for that matter. This lad never met anyone or anything he didn't like...especially MacGuyver, with whom he was obsessed. "Lawse, but that man can do anything! Give him a rubberband, a spatula, and some brown sugar, and he can make a bomb! And what about his hair? Isn't it cool? Didya notice my hair? I had it cut and bleached to look just like his--you know, that actor Richard Dean Anderson. Doncha think I look like him?" Not having the heart to tell him that highlighted mullets had gone out of style, well, before there ever was style, I remained mum. But I did show him how to make chewing gum out of tree sap, a match, and tire tread before he dropped me off.

Heady with the power of The Hitch, I set out again the next day, this time walking to the local strand (aka "beach"), where I intended to take artistic photos of fog and throw rocks at seagulls. On my way back to the B & B, as I walked the narrow road, I was almost body slammed by a careening Mercedes Benz, driven by a buck-toothed weasel named Justy, who looked and acted like Dr. Frankenstein's sidekick, Igor ("Yessssss, Master..."). Next to him, in the Seat of Command, was a 63-year-old florid man named...

"Lord Hamilton, my dear, and so nice to have you aboard. Do sit in the back, and I'll tell you about myself." This he proceeded to do for 20 minutes, detailing his family's pedigree, handing me a gold business card that had the weight and heft of a credit card, inviting me to stay at "the manor" next time I was visiting, and cautioning me off "the natives," saying, "They're animals and gypsies, every one of them." Speechless in the backseat, and not by choice but because I couldn't get a word in edgewise, I mentally reviewed the history of the Republic of Ireland: English landlords driving the native peasants to destitution and starvation...and there I was, sitting with one such modern "landlord" who'd not had the good sense to update his thinking or to really look at the substance of the native inhabitants of the town of Killybegs. Later, after he dropped me off with a shouted warning not to socialize with a soul in the town, I recounted his monologue to my B & B hostess, a native herself, who laughed herself silly and dismissed him with, "Ah, you were in a car with Himself! He's quite a toff, eh?"

I still have that gold business card, and I still think often of how Lord Hamilton prided himself on being above the reality of the people who surrounded him. His pomposity created in him a crisis of character, one of which he'd never be aware--such was the state of his arrogance.

Even now, ten years later, I feel confident that if I ever run into him in the coffee aisle at Cub Foods, I will crack open a bottle of Torani's Hazelnut syrup on his head and dump its contents into his declaiming maw, just to make him cease babbling about his importance. (You can hover down by the tea bags, gawking and assuring your fellow bystanders, "Trust me, I've read her blog, and I can tell you this is just like her.")

And I guess I won't be staying at the manor.

"Stockholm Syndrome for the Flabby"

My relationship with the airlines thrusts me into moral crisis. When I fly, they make me angry. They treat me condescendingly; they torment me with their itty seats; they feed me not; the handlers bark at me when I inconveniently have to use the bathroom during Beverage Service.

Of course, if the handlers could bother themselves to whip up a free screwdriver for me from that beverage cart, I'd be more than willing to draw upon a decade of Kegel exercises and apply it to achieving the urological wonder called "holding it." Indeed, Airlines, you should know that if I have a free drink in hand, my bladder becomes gloriously bathed in a numbing solution that allows it to exceed normal human limits. O Airlines, you parsimonious curs, if only you would ply me with vodka, I would stop trying to hurdle your beverage cart. I am eminently pliable. I'm so pliable that my gangsta tag is Triple-Ply.

Yet DeltaWestAmerinental gives me nothing, save a leg cramp, a ripped suitcase, and a false "buh-bye" at the door upon my limping exit.

Strangely, though, despite this torment, I keep going back. I hate them, but they have made me feel I need them. They have created in me an uneasy reliance. I am loathe to question the power dynamic between us; rather, I would prefer to cloud my vision by peering through my single Ziploc bag full of 3 ounce bottles and blindly do as they say. If they look askance at me, I will apologize for my cosmetics. I give them money, and I am their client, yet, queerly, they own me.

Such is the case, as well, with the fitness instructor at the local Y, a Gym Nazi with AK-47's for arms and Jaivana cannons for legs. GymNastika makes me whimper, but I love her**.

In particular, I am obsessed with--yet hide in the back during--GymNastika's weekly Pilates Fusion class, in which my well-padded abdominals search for life and sunlight while being throttled by a series of exercises involving one of those big balance balls.

Some of you crunchy types are probably sitting on one right now, in front of your computer screen, with some misguided idea that the give and malleability of it will save your spine. If you are one of those people, give me a call, as I have a really amazing complementary ergonomic elbow saver--it looks a lot like a felt-covered plank on top of some sawhorses, but trust me, it'll revolutionize your posture (and I'm the only licensed dealer in the Lower 48).

So if you're sitting on a balance ball right now, you're either My Kind of Sucker, or your contractions are about three minutes apart; either way, stop your whining, stand up, and look at that thing. It's big. It's fun. It has just the right plasticy bounce. It's the happy-clown-pinwheel of desk-sitting, baby-catching, and exercise equipment, ja?

Not in the hands of the GymNastika. For her, it is the instrument of a very specific torture. You wouldn't believe what she gets a gym full of spray-tanned-women-swathed-in-gold-jewelry, four men, and me to do with that thing.

Check it, Moondoggie:






Now do each of these things fifty-ninety times, and that'll be your warm-up. Sure, as I am stretched on the Rack of Balance Ball, I find solace and motivation in the driving beat of Bananarama singing "She's got it/Yea, baby, she's got it." What fool wouldn't?

But mostly I groan and sweat and pray to Saint Brucejenner while I rub his gold medal (and stroke his waxy facelift). Every now and then, when my oxygen stores are depleted from doing a shaky one-footed side plank...


...I fade off into my own reverie about H.R. Pufnstuf and how I wish I had a talking flute that could bolster my spirits when Witchiepoo (or GymNastika) tried to freak my shit right off the Living Island.

(extra-credit homework: compare Witchiepoo and Bruce Jenner, and write a paragraph making a case that one is distinctly more horrifying than the other)


Eventually, though, Bananarama stops singing, Bruce Jenner's face melts into magma, I tuck away my magic flute, and all that's left on the floor of the gym are my screaming abs and tattered self-esteem.

As I roll up my mat, delirious with the promise of escape-at-hand, I am, simultaneously, grateful to my captor and tormenter, the GymNastika. I have been through agonies at her hands; I will be back. I am a heteroclite.

Which does not mean I only like clitorises of the opposite sex. You. Depraved. Pree-vert.

Perhaps strangest of all is the fact that the escapees, in both a soaring Pilates class and on an overseas airline flight, burst into spontaneous applause at the moment of release.

The bastards had us in their grip. We hated the experience; we loved it. But as we dash off into the fresh air, we are happy. And we know it. So we clap our hands.

--------------------
**If you want to see the GymNastika in person, you can watch a video of her from the local news . Just keep in mind she's playing nice in this clip; try imagining her wielding barbells and yelling at you that every bite of pizza contains 500 calories.

"Another Wasted TV Hour"





There I was, a plate of hash brownies on the tv tray, a bouquet of tulips nestled to my not-inconsiderable bosom, clogs shodding my feet, and damned if I wasn't disappointed.

Turns out that show New Amsterdam isn't about dykes at all.

"Pecking at the Picketing PETA Pipers"


Keith Richards was named this week as the new face of Louis Vuitton (headed by Marc Jacobs).

Shortly after the contracts were signed, Jacobs seized Keith's face in a firm embrace, skinned it, and used the leather to make a suitcase.

Keith staggered home, enjoying the aftereffects of the anesthesia, eager to answer his family's questions about his wildass experience at the Designer Shoppe. Sadly, since his look had only veered from "pretty damn skeletal" to "truly skeletal," nobody noticed the change. Later, processing his day solitarily, Keith felt it ironically appropriate to visit Facebook, where he friended master prop comic Gallagher before logging off to snort his father's remaining ashes.

Next week, to "support" Louis Vuitton's new line of hobo purses and matching wallets, Marc Jacobs hopes to sign Nick Nolte and Mickey Rourke.

"Ouchie-ooh-la-loobie-ding-dat"



After a particularly hardcore session of Webkinz, during which he mined for precious gems, tackled fairies in the Charm Forest, and added a new trellis to his platypus' yard, Wee Niblet stood up and staggered away from the computer.

Leaning uncomfortably against the bed, he groused, "My legs fell asleep."

"Eep opp ork ahah, scoobie-shoo-doo, boopity ba-ba-ba," I hummed in response as I folded the laundry, unable to find a caring bone in me. Rather, deeply immersed in my non-mommy headspace, I considered the possibility that my life, even though I'm 40, might not yet be completely set. If I could toss out scat like that with no rehearsal to speak of, the distinct possibility existed that I might be featured as JocelyNummy on Fergilicious' next album.

"No, rewwy, Mommy. My feet have all prickles in them. It's like I'm getting my shots for my five-year-old check-up again, all at once, 'cept only in my feet, a million times over. I need for it to stop now."

"Well, keep on keepin' on, kid--try kickin' it Pre School, for reals--and it'll go away," I counseled, folding another towel.

"It's so bad, though, I won't ever be able to sleep because it won't ever go away," Niblet moaned, launching the Increased Desperation Triggers Sympathy strategy.

"Dude, you have a computer to play games on and a bunch of Webkinz and a new trellis, and your platypus ate a big plate of noodles tonight and stuff. I don't really feel for you here. Take your pain and your pout and stomp them around the room a little bit; that'll get the blood flowing again," I recommended, wondering if Craig Ferguson would wear a blue or a yellow tie during his monologue that night and if he might ever need me to come on to work the audience into a frenzy with my scatting virtuosity.

"But Mommy, it's so bad. You need to feel my feet. They are so prickly you will shriek when you touch them because it will hurt you too. You should feel them to see how much they hurt."


So I did. I bent down and touched his paws. And those prickles of his felt like rays of burning sunlight had been taken and jammed into shards of ice which were then packaged inside diamonds and scratched along a blackboard covered with jalapeno juice that squirted into an eyeball that was being held open with toothpicks coated in barbed wire that had been heated in molten lava for six minutes. Jehosephat, but Whinebot was right. How he managed to contemplate which jammies to wear at the same time that kind of torment was roiling around inside his body--well, I'd never admired him more. Letting go of his feet, I fell to the ground, paralyzed.

"Um, Mommy?"

Croaking from the floor, weakly, whimpering, I whispered a, "Booooy? Get your father. That's right. Get Daddy. Mommy's dying from touching your prickles. She may need a lemontini to restore a regular heartbeat."

"Hey, Mommy. Get up now. I have to use the potty and am going to need a wiper-suhviper. You can do your scat thing while I do mine."

-----------------------------------------
Despite my willingness to mess with his head and play along, I'm pretty sure Niblet will soon outgrow his certainty that interior pain can be felt by those outside of his body.

Until his first acid trip in college, of course. Then I'll have to be all "Wow, babes, but the walls ARE melting. Yea, your hand is totally bigger than that chair. Ooh, yea, that scab on your leg is on fire."

What?

Like I'm not going to be there?

What else I got to do? Wait for Fergie and Craig Ferguson to call?

“Hep Me. Hep. Me.”



You know how, every night when you’re asleep, there’s the possibility that a mouse will crawl down your throat and suck the very breaf out of your body?

Now imagine a critter that’s 23 times as big as a mouse, one that doesn’t restrict itself to the obvious throatal orifice.

Picture Big Evil with Fangs and a Plan and a Collar, roaming loose in your house, eyeing every one of your inviting orifii and salivating.

For me, there’s no imagination required. I lived with it for five months when I was 24.

No, Chachi. It was not Anne Rice.

It was a ferret. And it was skank on wee paws; it was malignant fur that slunk through the shadows like Jack the Ripper playing Ghost in the Graveyard.

When I agreed to live with two gals in a cabin outside of Boulder, Colorado, part of the deal was that the ferret would have a cage. In my mind, that cage would be a welded thing, soldered of krypton and tooth enamel and diamonds. It would be built without an exit. It would be indestructible, and my personal safety and happiness would remain intact, unmolested.

Naturally, though, the ferret’s owner proved to be unreliable, lacking follow-through. Or, as some of her closest friends described her with a loving chuckle, she was a raving bitch-whore of a psychotic git.

Plus, sometimes, even in icy conditions, she exceeded the speed limit.

So there was no cage. The other roomie and I tried to build one when I first moved in; with great vigor, we stacked some boards, found hammers, and stretched out chicken wire. But then the ferret sat down near the nails, giving us no choice but to go out for enchiladas.

As a result, my months in that house were spent in constant mid-alert terror. I took to new heights the cliché about women going to the bathroom together, as I clung to the side of Nice Roomie, mirroring her every move. Damn, but we were jiggy when she did her step aerobics videotape. Bathtime wasn’t bad, either.

Nice Roomie served as the physical barrier between me and the Slinking Evil. If It crept near, she’d pick It up and hurl It towards the loft or lock It in the bathroom (where, surely, it sucked on our toothbrushes). As well, she’d warn me when I was about to step, unwittingly, into one of its pretzel-shaped fecal deposits—calling cards left randomly ‘round the house.

But then one day.

I came home from one of my jobs (nanny of two; taker of phone orders for personalized mail labels; administrative assistant at the National Center for Atmospheric Research), and no one else was home.

I didn’t realize this at first, but then the theme from Jaws spontaneously started playing on the stereo. Treading cautiously, afraid of trodding on an ire-filled shark in the living room, I looked around for Roy Scheider.

When neither he nor the ferret appeared, I relaxed and greeted Lakota, the wolf that also shared the cabin with us (species factoids: while wolves are terrific at killing household mice and leaving their body parts strewn around the kitchen, they are even more adept at biting in half 12 hummingbirds in one hour, should your avian-loving self hang up bird feeders on the side of the house; even better, if you let a semi-domesticated wolf out to roam the mountainside for a few hours, he just might come back from his hunt with a greasy skillet clamped in his jaws).

Ferret free and feeling modern and English, I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, humming the chorus from “I’ll Stop the World and Melt with You.” Of course, I knew the ferret was out there somewhere, and although denial can create a force field around one’s mind, it can’t actually create one around a bedroom.

Don’t I know it.

In addition to the mental force field, I also created a physical defense that night, since my bedroom had no door, by stacking a heap of furniture in the doorway. There, hunkered down in my bunker, I was secure in the knowledge that no members of the polecat family, such as a fer—

HEY. WHAT THE FREAK? WHOSE LITTLE BEADY EYES, TEEMING WITH BLOODLUST, WERE PEEKING AT ME OVER TOP OF THE FUTON CHAIR THAT CAPPED THE SUMMIT OF THE PROTECTIVE FURNITURE?

I made that half-strangled noise that women make when all air exits the bosom, kind of like Pamela Anderson did when she got her implants removed. Before she had them put back in.

A beat later, full-monty-shrieks erupted, as I scanned the room for an exit. Ferret had Door. I had, ummmmm, I had…

No. Option. There I was, trapped on my bed, in full banshee mode. I threw a hairbrush at It. I hucked a pillow at It. Desperate, I whaled the clock radio at It.

What a suck of a time to throw like a girl.

Foul Fur just stood on top of the furniture, unruffled, staring at me. Slowly, though—

Slowly—

It focused on my rapidly-beating heart…and It began the descent, moving on tiny claws towards me, traversing the 9 feet between us…

Frantically, looking around for one last missile to lob, I tried unscrewing my head from my body. Although it remained attached, I gave myself one hell of a free spinal adjustment (bonus!).

Ever closer, the demon edged closer…

Until it stopped, squatted, and made a perfectly-symmetrical pretzel on the carpet, right next to my copy of Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses.

I may be phobic, but I’m not entirely without wits. Two seconds of pretzel-making were long enough for me to hurdle the Evacuating Beast, dash down the stairs, and jettison out of the cabin, where I secreted my well-aligned body in the backseat of my Honda Accord and locked the doors against further assault. (As part of the ruse they perpetuate on humanity, ferrets like to pretend they can’t handle keys with their little feet)

In the car, crumpled and wan, I slept until 3 a.m., at which time I was jarred to wakefulness by the bewildered faces of my drunken roommates staring at me through the hatchback.

Woefully, that’s my last memory of those two ladies. After assuring me the coast was clear, they went in the house, cranked some aspirin and Vitamin B, tussled into some jammies, and hit their beds.



Whereupon the ferret crawled down their throats and stole the very breaf from their bodies.

Me? I went and got an oil change at the all-night Lift ‘N Lube.

"Thursday Night Live"

Had it not been for the two drinks in July
rum/ginger ale/lime concoctions (aka the "Dark 'N Stormy")

Downed before my pal Jim
over for dinner that night--crispy pork bits on rice

Said, "So some of us were talking"
a gaggle of clackers at the college

"And we think you'd be a good co-chair for the division"
Liberal Arts & Sciences

I would not have had to use the bathroom
a damned place, for the toilet could hardly be bothered to flush

Where I had a few quiet moments to think
holding the handle down and down some more on the toilet, despairing of ever saying adieu to that paper

"I can't believe it, but I think I've reached a pivotal moment in my career"
after seventeen years of teaching writing to people who don't read

"Because I'm actually considering crap meetings as an alternative to working with quite so many students"
'tho some appreciative "A"-earners bring me truffles

"So this would seem to be a moment of tipping the balance"
for I would consider being admin's bitch preferable to grading my 11,307th comparison/contrast essay

The paper finally swirled away, and I'd made a choice
the least of which was to get a new toilet

Sure. I'd swap out 4 credits of teaching load each semester to feign interest in the running of the college
a choice that put me down to a mere 165 students in the Fall

And due to those rum drinks and the paper that wouldn't flush
we got a new toilet by the way, and I have named it Serge and gifted it with a sceptor

I was in a meeting last Thursday with my dean and co-chair
she of the natural sciences, the yang to my humanities-ish yin

It was a meeting that went on for an hour and a half
thanks to a gossipy aside about a vice president

Which meant that I didn't get back up to my office until after 4
still hadn't logged in to my online classes to read 142 messages about Tim O'Brien's TOMCAT IN LOVE and to grade 12 new Brief Summary Reports

Which meant that I didn't get out of my office until after 5
with a caffeine headache cracking my head open

In turn, I was then not on the treadmill at the Y
what? it was -12 outside

Until 5:30, and by the time I'd run and lifted weights and worked the abs
fat lot of good it does me

I really needed a shower
as a service to my public (yea, that's right "public," with an "l")

And once I'd showered
alongside a doctor who used to be in my yoga class and who used to be an anorectic but has tamed it to compulsive exercising

And dried my hair
what? it was -12 outside

It was nearly 7:30
Webkinz time at home for the kiddles; Groom logging in DinkoJunior, as Niblet gets hung up after typing the J-U

Sadly, I'd forgotten that the Holiday Inn parking ramp outside the Y locks the convenient door by that time of night
it's a questionable ramp at any hour

Which made me huff and stomp and head for the far-away entrance
which doesn't have stairs, so I had to take the elevator up one floor

But at least I got to review the Inn's lunch menu for the week, conveniently posted inside the elevator
potato soup on Wednesdays

And when I stepped outside the elevator, pushed through the door, and stepped into the poorly-lit concrete ramp
what was that, squishing under my feet?

I looked up in time to see a college-aged lad heading my way
not one of my students, Praise Plato, but he looked glassy-eyed and on his way to the next happy hour

Leading a man in a navy blazer
Dad buys the next round?

With a good haircut
recent

Distinctive frames
seen them before

"Hiiiii," my voice greeted him, familiarly, as I gave him a warm grin
I do that best with strangers

"Hello," he responded, seeming to think about relaxing his shivering posture and removing his hands from his pockets
what? it was -12 outside

As though he wanted to shake my hand, as though he was alert for further engagement
I do that best with strangers

But I kept walking
burning off 2 more calories

Until a beat later I realized my missed chance
if it's not a poo in the woods, it's a handshake in a parking ramp

To claim a minute with the man in the navy blazer
it was Al Franken

Full of shucks, all I could do was go home and mix up a Dark 'N Stormy
fitting tribute to the man who delivered "A Lime-O for the Lame-O"

And think about the impending pleasure of casting my airy American vote for Stuart Smalley
i'm good enough, i'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!

"Shameless Plug"

No, not like the ones on Elton John's head. This is a different kind of plug.

There's a new online humor magazine that just launched its first issue this week. It's called the Clay Pigeon, and its puppetmaster is Diesel over at the Mattress Police, head puppet designer is Joel Bezaire from Crummy Church Signs, designer of puppet costumes (most noteworthy was his Heidi outfit for a particularly skanky-looking old sock puppet; as it turns out, a dirndl is the ultimate anti-skanker) is Frogster from The Frog Bog blog...

and polisher of the puppets' shoes is me. Mmmm. Shoes.

We've got a couple other puppeteers hitting the work room in future weeks, too. Get your clapping hands ready.

This magazine is an amalgamation of new material and already-published posts from a variety of contributors. If you ever encounter a particularly funny post in the blogosphere, by the way, please let me know! The Clay Pigeon is all about promoting good satire, Potsy.

Unlike most of my sprawling hoo-haws here at O Mighty Crisis, this post is brief. Use the twelve extra minutes you'd allotted--for reading about the toe-nail polish choices of my adolescence--to head over to Clay Pigeon and give it a looksie, woncha?

Hopefully, you'll find the site worth bookmarking or blogrolling or tattooing onto your left bicep. With so much good stuff all pulled into one weekly edition, it'll save you enough blog trolling time that you'll soon be able to, um,

wade through that Kierkegaard on the nightstand.

Or read more blogs.

"Mama's Best Advice: 'Do It Naked'"

My mom gifted me with lots of things in my youth: flute lessons, bassoon lessons, piano lessons, ballet lessons, the old Nissan Stanza, her recipe for beef stroganoff, a deep loathing of my body, a fondness for the ocean. Human nature being what it is, however, I've also decided that my parenting should compensate for certain things my childhood lacked--I should, in this round of fetching 'em up, make recompense for the Things Mom Never Told Me.

Thus, while still dropping my kid off at ballet lessons (he does love a pink leotard), I will take the parenting a step further and be sure to pass on to my progeny the advice that I wish Me Dear Old Ma had imparted. Specifically, I will be sure to tell them:

1) The ultimate in outdoor entertainment is not acting out the Donnie and Marie show on ice skates. It's also possible to be a little bit outdoorsy, a little bit country, and quite a bit rock 'n roll while doing things like grilling pork or rolling old tires through the garden.


2) When you see the letters "MVSEVM" chiseled into an old building, it's not actually pronounced "MUV-ZEE-VUM." Instead, them is old-fashioned letterings for "MEW-ZEE-UM," which is where The Smartie Richies keep the dinosaur bones and gold. Now git in there and fill up this bag. Mama's collection needs an Allosaurus furcula!

3) In sixth grade, when the father of one of your classmates comes to the school claiming to be a "scientist" and gives the assembled eleven-year-olds a presentation about the mystical powers of pyramids--having you hold your arm up and out to the side while he pushes on it...and then having you hold it up and out to the side while holding a little pyramid in your hand only to discover he has a distinctly-more-difficult time pushing on it--feel free to mess with him and start hollering, "My arm! My arm! That big man hurt me when he pushed so hard! The tip of the pyramid pierced my ligament, and now I think I need to skip the Presidential Physical Fitness Test today, except maybe the Standing Broad Jump, which doesn't so much involve arm ligaments!" If you need to bump up the drama from there by taking your little show to the nurse's office and having her call me, I promise I'll come pick you up in my two-toned station wagon. Meet me out front by the big grey boulder. I'll slow it down to 10 mph; you and your pierced ligament can hop through the open window.

4) If, in your mid-twenties, Your Long-Time Man announces, "You always say you love me, but I'm not sure I love you," the correct response is not, "Yea, that sounds about right." The correct response is, "Well, then, buy me more stuff. I am easily distracted by baubles and Picassos."

5) When an ad tells you a new deodorant is "revolutionary," that doesn't mean it comes packaged with a musket.

6) Chlamydia is not a rare orchid.


Despite wishing I'd been armed with these nuggets of knowledge earlier in life , I do have to give my mom a hugenormous shout-out for handing me one of the best pieces of advice ever: Always bleach naked.

The other night, as always, I forgot to heed her wisdom, and I unscrewed the cap of the Tide Bleach Pen fully clothed.

Fracknation.

My intent was to turn the Girl's pink and white winter coat back to, er, something like pink and white. A winter full of slamming that coat against a dirty jungle gym (dirty jungle gym antics are also a moonlighting gig of mine, incidentally) has rendered the thing dingy, crusted, and leathery. What better, Rapt Readers, than a careful whisk with a Tide Bleach Pen, a thorough soaking in Oxyclean, a deep rinse in Borax Mule-Team Brightener, plus another soaking in Oxyclean to transform it into--crap on a cracker--a garment that is only minimally less dingy, crusted, and leathery?

At any rate, I was optimistic, but not nekkid. Poorly played on my part.

Instead, during the multi-step achromatizing operation, I sported a sassy chocolate brown zip-up-the-front hooded cardigan, one that now sits, riddled with white bleach spots, in a plastic bag labeled "Goodwill Donations."

More frankly, it sits in a plastic bag. Wouldn't it be something if I were the type to make a label?

Should Goodwill refuse my donation, screeching "We actually need things in wearable condition" as it hurls the unlabeled bag back towards my speeding car (30 mph in the parking lot; windows up), I daresay I'll have to find other uses for my now-ruined brown cardigan:

1) Draping it over my poo mounds in the woods, thereby making my natural heaps look twenty-seven times larger and infinitely more intimidating (or enticing) to passing snowmobilers and bike commuters.

2) Using it to strain vermicelli as the noodles hover on the precipice of al dente. Of late, our colander has been taking up too much room in the cabinet, elbowing the pots and pans quite aggressively. But a speckled hoodie is passive--infinitely adaptable to space. I could crumple the thing and store it inside the food processor, alongside my stash of Robitussin.

3) Stuffing it down the throat of the kid who called my Niblet "fat" and "ugly" last summer. Brown is the new gag.

4) Gently wrapping my new boxed set of My So-Called Life in it and burying the whole thing in the backyard, under a full moon, sacrificing a squirrel and incanting the 14-year-old Claire Danes to star in at least eight more episodes before growing up and dating that wanker Billy Crudup who, for Claire, abandoned the knocked-up Mary Louise Parker (little-known fact: the sound of her water breaking masked the little snapping sound a heart makes as it breaks). That's all my cardigan and I want: just eight more episodes with teen-phenom Danes and a chance for Brian Krakow to go to prom with Angela Chase.

5) Cloaking Barack Obama in it to make him more appealing to African-American voters. Between Ofrey's endorsement and my sweater's browning abilities, he might just convince them he's black. Plus, his wearing a woman's sweater would clearly signal that Obama is unafraid to bring change to the White House.


Should none of these alternate uses take hold, I can, of course, always take my mother's other piece of clothing-related advice: when in doubt, give it to your daughter and make her wear it.

"Golden Plates: Tarnished"

Yesterday, I watched voyeuristically as my country acted the john to another media-Hallmark-florist-driven whore of a holiday. Having steered clear of the entire transaction myself, I had plenty of time to muse on the fact that it was a mutual-antipathy of VD that first watered the love blooming between Groom and me.

Oh, plus he owned a silver Honda hatchback, and I sported some fierce Dee Snyder spiral-perm curls. Those were also part of the initial shizzbang.

And we both liked toast.

Now, nine years later, the Honda has hit the road; the curls have curled up and died; the toast is toast; but, proudly, the antipathy pathies on.

Indeed, the grumpy question around our house is why do we need a day about celebrating love, when love is all around, no need to waste it? Mos' def, we've always had a feeling we just might make it after all.

And yet. A recent interaction between Groomeo and me indicated that it might be time to starch my crinolines and rub a burnt match along my eyebrows, lest he stray West:

It was night, dark, but not stormy. For the second time in two years, we were watching public television's documentary about the Mormons. This documentary is so hot, so smart, so sizzlin' that it completely puts PBS's special on home funerals in the corner. This documentary has some seriously smart talking heads in it, to the point that David Byrne should just crawl over into the corner, too, and commiserate with the home funeral program about what it feels like to be such losers. By the time the Mormon talking heads are done with you, you'll be swearing the state of Utah needs to get some testicles, revert to open polygamy, and go back to living The Principle.

As the show lead into a not-a-commercial commercial, it snagged viewers with a teaser of what was to come in the next segment, which would explore the role Mormon women play in the church and in family life. The voiceover tantalized:

"The Mormon woman has long conveyed an image of perfection: she makes cookies, she always looks beautiful and impeccably groomed, she greets the world with an enormous beaming smile--"

Ever quippy, I interrupted, "Ohmigod, I'm totally a Mormon woman."

Quite agreeably, Groom patted my arm with his Mitt and noted, "Yea, you do make cookies."


Slap that on a card and lick it shut, Hallmark.
------------------------------

And if Groom ever leaves me for a lovely Mormon homemaker named Bev, I'm going to leave him right back for my Fine Gay Boyfriend, Bob Mould:

"Uno, Deux, Trois, Cinq, Sept"

Over the course of my adolescence, our family hosted seven French students for "a delightful summer abroad." They would get on a plane in Paris and fly to Montana where they would disembark, their necks wrapped in scarves, their mouths smoking Gaulloises. Then, with a slow exhale, they would stare, in shock, at the hicks milling around the Billings airport (who were, after all, wearing scarves--bandanas--around their necks and smoking--Marlboro Reds). C'était un nouveau monde entier for the poor Froggies. Standing there on top of the Rimrocks, they were clearly, assuredly, crushingly, not within a beret's toss of a good baguette.

The first French student we hosted was Frederico, who, strangely, was Mexican. There must have been a mix-up in the paperwork. Or maybe he was undocumented entirely. All I know is he had cute curls, wore a striped shirt sometimes and--oh, yes he did--brought us a sombrero. Had he tucked a bottle of Kaluha into that sombrero, I would have dubbed him perfecto.

The second summer's hosting brought us sixteen-year-old Jean-Pierre, he of the pencil-thin mustache and after-dinner cigarettes out by the roses. Standing there, puffing, he undoubtedly stared at the big sky and mused, "Zose potato streeps zey served pour le diner are faux. Zey are not one beet French. But I weel have more tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, for the grease is très comme une drogue, and I find I must have it." The highlight of his stay was perhaps the night my brother broke J-P's nose during a tutorial in The Hottest Moves of World Wide Wrestling. Later, after a trip to the emergency room, J-P and his love of ska introduced us Ozzy lovers to the madness of "One Step Beyond" and a new way of waggling our legs on the dance floor (by the tv in our den). Little known fact: such cultural exchange also played a major role in negotiating the Louisiana Purchase.

Shortly after shaking hands, James Monroe and Barbe Marbois were hoisted into the air by Toots & the Maytals, whereupon the entire crowd broke into a tri-corned remix of "Pressure Drop"

Our third Frenchie was Marjorie, who sported a Flock of Seagulls haircut and labeled me très sympathique. I will always remember how my dad and I took her on a road trip to Chicago (long story: we were actually picking up my sister and brother at the airport there, after they came home from living in France with host families...and, of course, the closest airport to central Montana is O'Hare); the road trip coincided with Prince Charles and Lady Diana's wedding, which meant Marjorie and I, sharing a bed at a Budget Host Motel in Des Plaines, clutched sweaty palms at 6 a.m. as we watched the exchange of vows. And how could we not weep a bit in the presence of such genuine and lasting love? Also memorably, Marjorie's father was a chef in Reims, and she brought aprons and some nice scarves as gifts. Had she rolled a bottle of red Coteaux Champenois into one of those scarves, I would have labeled her parfait.

Our fourth student was, um, Piquequinque, thusly named because I have no recollection of a fourth student, and I'm starting to think we didn't actually host seven students but maybe more like five, but I've always told people "My family hosted seven French students when I was growing up," and if the fact that one of those seven was Mexican has never slowed me down, then I don't know why I would let the fact that there were maybe only five stop me either. So I maintain Piquequinque came, and s/he was terribly homesick and droopy until my sister taught him/her how to play Clue. Once there was candlestick in the conservatory and a wrench in the billiard room, the summer days shone un nouveau genre de soleil dans le coeur de poor Piquequinque.

Fifth came Hervé, a techno-musicophile who gifted us with Jean Michel Jarre albums, albums that tested our good will mightily, forcing us to paste a smile on our collective face and gasp phrases like, "Well, I'll be. Is there anything a synthesizer can't do?" Hervé's precision cut, incidentally, was this

squared.

A summer later, we flung open our doors to fourteen-year-old Sophie, who was, memorably, from a region of France. And she had braids.

The only possible encore to a wild show like Sophie was, um, Pippi. Much like her cousine Piquequinque, Pippi didn't really exist; however, to prop up my memory of seven students, not a mere five, she is here today. Boy, I'll never forget her red Converse high-tops. Even better, side-stepping quarantine laws, she brought a monkey with her (one Mr. Nilsson) and did this amazing party trick where she had a horse stand on a wooden door and then would lift it above her head. Once, she asked to borrow my bike. Hoping that she would, in return, let me accompany her to the South Seas to find her long-lost father, I let her.
----------------------------------

With all of these students, from Frederico to Pippi, our family did its best to show them the major sights and sites of the Wild West. They toured Boot Hill cemetery, the old pioneer cabin by the airport (what a convenient first stop, once they had alighted from the plane and put out their cigarettes!), and the Little Bighorn Battlefield, at that time named after the pudding-head of a general who had been routed there in 1876, a flan-follicled man called Custard.

But in between? Lots of down time. Lots of "What the hell do we bored kids do with the Frenchie while Mom and Dad are at work? Sure, there's always 'Beverly Hillbillies' re-runs, but the constant translation of phrases like 'Yee-haw' and 'cement pond' gets old."

What to do? What to do?

Fortunately, local radio stations often teamed up with car lots for mutual promotion. The radio jocks from KBear, 97.1 on the FM dial, would back the station's van up to an open spot on the car lot and do a live broadcast from the van, alternately playing "Don't Fall in Love with a Dreamer" by Kim Carnes and Kenny Rogers and shouting out plugs to "Come on over to Rimrock Pontiac-Cadillac before 3 p.m. today and grab a free hot dog and Pepsi!"

So we did. One hot July afternoon, with no other way to amuse Jean-Hervé-erico, my brother, sister, and I extended the ultimate in American hospitality. We got him the hot dog. We showed him the cars. He had a Pepsi. We bobbed our heads to Kim and Kenny.

Now, twenty-five years later, all I have to say is,

Suck on that, Sarkozy, you pretentious pâté mucher. Stuff that in your goose and smoke it.

We took your people. We made them sleep in a waterbed. Moreover, in perhaps the most inequitable cultural exchange since the Americas exported the potato to Ireland and Ireland countered with Michael Flatley, our French students gave us Hermès scarves, and we fed them Oscar Mayer.

C'est la vie, muchacho.

"My Funny Valentine"





Dear Bicycle Commuter Rocketing Off the Trail by Crosley Street at Dusk:

You will never know how close you came to a kismetical meeting with the Love of Your Life tonight.

That unmet L.o.Y.L.? Me.

So focused were you on getting home after a long day at the--what?--H & R Block that you didn't even see me coming, didn't even notice The Future in a Pair of Running Tights barreling towards you, didn't even register that my strides were occasionally punctuated by a sexy gut clutch. No, you were all about the blinking red light on the back of your bike; the rubber bands saving your pants from their fate as derailleur fodder; the bungee cord strapping your briefcase onto the rack in the back.

Yoo-hoo! Honey? I have a rack in the front. And you missed out on it entirely. So absorbed were you, I can only imagine you must have been mentally pre-heating your microwave for the Hot Pocket earmarked as "Wednesday's Dinner." But Lance? Sweet Lance? If you'd only slowed down, you could have become my personal Hot Pocket and I your buffet for life.

When you zipped out of the wooded trail like that--dreaming of a stuffed sandwich cooked in a "crisping sleeve"--you cut off our potential intersection, our chance to fulfill a destiny. I was heading straight for that trail and those woods, Lance, as I clutched my intestines.

If you'd come along ten seconds later, our future "Love at First Sight" story, one that would have been recounted ad infinitum during Scrabble tournaments with the neighbors, would have involved me, in the woods, crouching beneath a tree, pants down, charmingly making an orificial offering. The envoy to the telling of Our Story, of course, would have been: Some things can't be stopped--can they, darling?--and when it's time, it's time.

Unfortunately, tonight was not our time. Woefully, if you'd simply stopped for a quick drink of water on the way home, or checked your Civil War Re-Enacters' list-serve emails one more time at the office...if you'd just delayed your journey by a mere ten seconds, Lance, you would have, Hosannah on the Highest, encountered my pasty white buttocks reflecting off the moonlit crust of snow--and this, in turn, would have sent you toppling madly over the romantic precipice d'Amour as, with crashing insight, you apprehended what a rare broad you'd lit upon.

So much could have been gleaned about your future wife from that brief encounter, if only you'd lifted your head from the handlebars, Lance. Specifically:

1) She eats her recommended daily servings of fruit.

2) She runs. And sometimes she has them. But not tonight, praise granola, not tonight. Tonight was more of a well-controlled, artfully-constructed valentine in the snow. Had she known your name, Lance, she would have added it in as a final touch--in cursive. She can do that. How flat your future will be for having missed this Hot Pocket-Free Mess.

3) She is a creative problem solver. From your perch on the bike seat, you easily would have born witness as she troubleshot the "what to use as Nature's toilet paper when all leaves are covered by a foot of snow?" dilemma. How you would have smiled, chortled, clapped even, to see her pack icy snowball after icy snowball and vigorously apply them to her nethers. That's the kind of thinking that keeps a relationship spicy, decade after decade.

4) She is environmentally conscious. In fact, when she's not blazing every light in the house and driving the mini-van to Target to buy Little Debbies, she is--clearly--a devoted composter. Moreover, come Spring, a single brave tendril shall unfurl from a certain spot just off the trail in the woods by Crosley Street. Your near-wife renews the earth. That could have been our spot, our tendril.

5) She is a developer. Look at how she laid track there over top the bare trail. Now that's progress.

6) She's already married. Even a bulky helmet couldn't block the glint of her wedding ring as she scratched away at the birch tree next to her, considering the bark's advantages over the snowball's as a posterior cleanser. Yes, Lance, as the ring on her finger indicates, this woman knows how to commit, and she's not afraid to open her heart to the emotional potential of Hot Pockets a Deux. She'd have ridden tandem with you, Lance, off into what remained of the sunset. Her first husband would have understood; he would have filled the marital void by going to see Juno and chow on a bag of popcorn, size large (free refills).


However, as with so many great love stories, and so many drunken wedding nights, you were about ten seconds too early, Lance. The universe threw us towards each other tonight, but we fumbled the opportunity--and the universe, disgusted with our abuse of its plan, retreated, pouted, and moped on a futon for three hours. Then it logged on to E-bay and bid on a vintage Fisher Price airport.

The universe, in its infinite wisdom, knows shopping is always the best therapy.

Thus, tonight: the universe made a bid; you made "Deal or No Deal"; I made a poo.

Had we connected there in the woods (next to the steaming chocolate heart) and fallen in love (over a set of symmetrical white buttocks) and dated briefly (three pints at The Brewhouse, tops) before marrying barefoot at Machu Picchu with my current husband officiating (he has a license from the back of Rolling Stone), just know this, Lance:

I would always, always have referred to you, with a small quiver of love in my voice,

as

Husband Number Two.

"Three a.m.: The Onamotapeiac Hour"

A thump.

A creak.

A scratch.


A splat.

Then the whisk of our duvet being flung open as Groom garbled, "Whaat und whooo huh? Fonzi hug me? Is someone there? Someone? Did someone just vomit in the hall?"

By the end of that string of kerflabble, I had been yanked from blissful black to adrenalized alertness. If it's mid-winter, and a splat has been heard on floorboards in the middle of the night, then vomit is (literally) afoot. Groom was already heading towards the source as I shook my brain into a semblance of sense and leapt out into the 54 degrees of House at Night. Three seconds later, I was up to speed and ready to wrangle.

I may have trouble feeding the children with regularity, but I am ever Barf's handmaiden.

As Team Groggy Parent careened into the hallway, we encountered a shivering Girl, riveted there in the hall, staring in awe at the offering pooled around her feet. Respectfully, we all took a quiet moment to admire her artistry--a vivid palette of red and maroon and burnt sienna, all heaved so effortlessly onto the oak. Had we the fortitude, we would have let the pile dry onto the boards for a few days, carefully excised them from the surrounding floor, hung a hook on the back, and driven the whole thing down to a gallery in the tourist center of the city; properly lit, this piece could have garnered us a cool three hundred. Out-of-towners, up The Shore for the weekend, eager to purchase an example of local talent, would surely have appreciated the cachet of displaying Girl's Pukescape in the foyer. They would have paid. Oh, yes, they would have paid.


(http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattwright/492183361/)

However, Groom and I always get reactive around heaps of hurl; the art world will survive the loss. Groom threw on a shirt (hazmat suit) and began the mop-up. Even as I shouldered the strenuous shift of Girl Cuddling and Temp Taking, I managed to point out, helpfully, "You know, we have five nice things in this house. Three of them are the washcloths you're using."

His voice irrationally pinched for someone doing nothing more than squatting on the floor at 3 a.m., wiping up someone else's spew, Groom replied, "They're doing the job, and we can wash them when I'm done."

True 'nuf, Galahad. I suppose we could, even though those three washcloths, along with the Kitchenaid mixer and the vintage Schwinn in the garage, constituted our children's inheritance. But wouldn't it have been easier if we had had urp-rags at the handy upstairs, so that we never again would have to misuse the very goods that might help finance the kids' college tuition?

Hold your answer. It may come in handy in about six paragraphs. As you strive to keep your thoughts in check, picture us wiping, rinsing, medicating, patting, tossing, and then, back in bed at last, turning for another hour and half before we could get the stench out of our nostrils long enough to cop a dozzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzze once again.
------------------------------------

Later the next day, and I'm going to call it Thursday, Groom came home from the gym. Normally, Groomeo is not a gym fan (he'd have to be big and industrial, if he were, with a head that didn't tire of rotating gently throughout the humid summer months), as he believes bodies in motion should traverse natural spaces and actually cover Point A, the inbetween, and eventually Point B--not so much the same six-foot treadmill belt ninety kwathajillion times. However, he's had to concede that the pool at the gym works better for swimming than the running trails around the city do, especially after he almost lost a hand in '03 doing the breast-stroke up a particularly rocky and steep path. Since then, all his swims are carried out in open water, which, when it's 40 degrees below zero and all the world is ice, means the gym.

Plopping down his bag on the kitchen floor, he announced, "So, I went ahead and signed up for that 'Couch Potato Triathlon' they're doing this month at the Y."

Clearly, there was only one possible reaction: "Evil Pod Martian, I am going to tell you this once and only once: I'm going to need my real husband returned to me before dinnertime tonight--because he cooks the dinner, and I'm already feeling a might peckish. So give him back NOW, or I will squash you like a walnut between the nutcrackers that are my thighs. And don't try to pass off yet another of your clearly-flawed clones of him. Return the one who told me the other day, when I asked if he'd ever spend an evening with fellow voters, 'I'd go for a two hour run, but I'd never spend two hours caucusing, stuck there in a place with strangers, having to pretend I could stand them.' That's the man I want back, not this defective 'I'm-a-joiner' copy you're trying to pawn off on me now."

"No, really, Joce, it's really the real me, and I did sign up. I decided it would give me some motivation to swim more, and I've been wanting to bike more, and all I'll have to do as part of the 'triathlon' is log my miles each time I go in."

I perked up. "Plus, I'll bet there's a fine reward at the end, inn't there? Not a trophy, not a medal, not a plaque. You're going to get saddled with your 223rd race t-shirt, aren't you, for doing this Sofa Tater doohickie? And really, hasn't your closet been needing yet another too-long cotton shirt with a poorly-designed graphic on the front? Weren't you just saying the other day you've been needing a man blouse that prominently features a spud reclining in a La-Z-Boy?"

"Well," he responded, "it's not like I have to wear the dumb t-shirt. I mean, we always need rags..."

...and with those words, a blinding flash of illumination knocked us both to the linoleum, where we lay stunned, flattened, wondering why we don't sweep more often.

Yes, we always need rags.

Especially in the mid-winter months.

When dinners involving kidney beans and tomatoes go splat in the night.


At the moment of this illumination, things suddenly got all sciencey. See, the universe is a place of exquisite elegance: in an ecological system, a need is sensed, and, providentially, something arises to meet that need. In the biological world, this mutually-benefical reciprocity is called "co-evolution." (And, yes, that is the one thing I know about the biological sciences since the sole time I ever took biology was in the 7th grade; sure, we pinned down some worms and dissected the fetal pig and all that year, but mostly I remember the teacher, Mr. Leland, ran into some trouble for liking to cozy up to the nubile lads in the class. Me, he never gave a second glance. That's why I hadn't even heard the term co-evolution until last week, when Groom told me about it. That one? He glances twice, even thrice, at me, so I remain his diligent student.)

In case you need something more technical than what I gleaned from Mr. Leland and his substitute teacher, Naturalist Groom, The Wikipiddle blathers this: "In biology, co-evolution is the mutual evolutionary influence between two species. Each party in a co-evolutionary relationship exerts selective pressures on the other, thereby affecting each others' evolution. Examples of co-evolution include pollination of Angraecoid orchids by African moths. These species co-evolve because the moths are dependent on the flowers for nectar and the flowers are dependent on the moths to spread their pollen so they can reproduce. The evolutionary process has led to deep flowers and moths with long probosci."

Mmmmm. Long probosci. Rock it, Mr. Leland.

Oh, but, er, to refocus. Furniturial Triathlete Groom and I had been licking the tiles in the kitchen, illuminated. Even after we closed the refrigerator door, bidding adieu to the 40-watts of helpful light, the idea remained. We found ourselves crawling across an historical moment of adaptive co-evolution.

This is why we have hired a contractor to build a small glass case into the wall upstairs, just outside the kids' room. In that case, behind the glass pane (to be broken only in the case of emergency), there will be a hook. And on the hook will dangle the Couch Potato Triathlon t-shirt, waiting to fulfill its destiny, poised to leap into the next

splat.