My Towels

I apologize, oh blog people, for my absence. I have been frozen in a state of teenager-induced psychosis.

Why is it that parenting a teenager so rapidly reduces one to teenagerdom?

Hugh was heading back to school. The bus was waiting. We'd had a horrid weekend, a horrid week, a horrid month. As I handed him his various bags (it is amazing what this child needs for 5 days; every weekend it's like moving day), I realized he had packed my towels. The good ones. Not the ones I bought him for school but my towels. "Wait," I say. "What are these? Why do you have these towels?" He shrugs. "I don't have any towels. I don't know what happened to mine."

I'm immediately pitched into a state of outrage. "Well, FIND THEM! And you can't have these towels. These are my towels."

He shifts seamlessly into fighting mode. "I just told  you, I DON'T KNOW WHERE THEY ARE. Are you deaf? And these aren't your towels; they're MY towels."

We're in a parking lot. People are watching. People are waiting. People are judging.

"What do you mean, they're YOUR towels? These aren't YOUR towels!"

"Yes, they are! They were in MY linen closet."

"YOUR linen closet? Don't you mean MY linen closet, in MY house, paid for with MY salary?"

And on and one we go.

Needless to say, when the bus pulls away, Hugh is on it and so are my towels. And my self-respect. And the last few bits of my sanity.

God, he was such a cute baby.

Child-free Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving approaches and I am depressed. Also relieved. But mostly depressed.

For the first time in 21 years, I face a Thanksgiving without at least one son. Son #1 is staying in Oregon to focus on his senior thesis. (This is not my fault; I did not give him this work ethic.) Son #2 is in, of all places, Sri Lanka.  (Can I just say, this is not normal; we are not the sort of family who holiday in Sri Lanka; I, for one, have never been to Sri Lanka or anywhere in the vicinity of Sri Lanka.)

So I face this child-free Thanksgiving and I am depressed. I'm astonished how depressed I am.

And here's where the relief comes in. I've wondered-- fairly frequently in the last few years-- if I lack some essential Mom Gene, if I'm deficient in fundamental maternal, uh, stuff. Because many of my friends and acquaintances have kids about the same age as mine, which means many of my friends and acquaintances are sending off their youngest child to college or university, which means many of my friends and acquaintances have been slogging around in various stages of grief as they confront the absence of young Taylor or Tyler or Madison or Morgan. And I nod, and hold hands, and say, "Oh, I know," --but I don't. I don't. Hugh went off to boarding school last year, and with Owen off in Oregon, that left us with an empty nest, and well, frankly, in our childless house, Keith and I look at each other and go, "Cool!"

Except now it's Thanksgiving, almost, and my boys aren't here and damn. Damndamndamndamn. I am sad. I miss my guys. And suddenly I realize this is it, they won't be here much any more, hardly ever really, and the ache in my gut and heart really really hurts. Which is kind of a relief. It's good to know I'm not some sort of deficient Un-Mom.

Except it hurts. It really really hurts.

Damn. I need someone to nod and hold my hand and say, "Oh, I know."

Shit. I need my boys.

Sick Day

Stayed at home from work today with a massive headache. In between putting my head on ice and ransacking the cupboard for more drugs, I watched a bit of daytime tv. I do love What Not to Wear--it's like "Hints from Heloise" for people who leave their kitchens occasionally. So cheery and affirming. Today's subject was a young woman on the heavier side of plump--or, in Clint and Stacey's eyes, an "hourglass figure" and "great boobs" and "wonderful curves." A shorter skirt here, a splash of color there, the right little jacket. . . and golly gosh darn, she was ready to take on the world.

But the best part were the commercials. Did you know that every household needs a Martha Stewart craft scoring board? So that you can make your own envelopes and paper party centerpieces resembling gigantic disco balls? The mind boggles. I try to imagine a life in which I would make my own envelopes. I fail.

My favorite commercial today, tho', was for one of those law firms that sues drug companies:

Have you ever taken XXX?
If you have ever taken XXX and your answer is YES to any of the following, you may qualify for compensation!
Do you now or have you ever suffered from

• heart palpitations or irregularities?
• shortness of breath?
• heart attack?
• death?

I had no idea daytime tv was this much fun. I may become a professional invalid.

The Family Thing

Facebook drama: My aunt tells my brother she doesn't argue politics with people she loves. Then she posts, "Nah nah nah nah boo boo."

Such a great aunt.

Family is so weird, you know? And social technologies make the whole Family Thing even weirder. The vagaries of Facebook--who friends me, who posts, who comments--have a huge impact on which members of my family I keep in touch with and care about. One niece doesn't post at all, no problem, except I do end up feeling so much more involved with the families of the nieces who post regular updates and pictures. I comment, they reply, I answer back; heck, it's not like meeting up for dinner every Sunday, but it IS something. And so Facebook works its weird magic, skewing relationships, shaping the emotional dynamics of this totally weird, slippy, slurpy, can't-pin-it-down thing called Family. 

But it isn't just Facebook. There's also The Phone. As in the Weird Messages Family Members Will Leave on One's Cellphone When They Should Know One Rarely Checks One's Cellphone Messages. A few days ago I listened to (God knows how long it had been there, lurking)  a slurred, incoherent, drunken message from Cousin A, expressing his concern about the drinking habits of Cousin B. Ah, the ironies abound. So much so I had to go pour a second glass of wine, just to be able to cope with the whole Family Thing.

Cursing Doris

Oh lord, Doris Kearns Goodwin on The Colbert Report. I hate seeing historians on Colbert and Jon Stewart. Overcome with longing, I watch in sorrow and think, "why not me me me?!" Obviously I don't think this when the guest is a rock star or a movie actor or the president. But an historian?? Damn damn damn. I coulda been a contender! Instead, I had children. Sigh.
 
Not that I'd trade the kids for fame and fortune or a chance to chat with Jon Stewart. Except sometimes.

Such as last Sunday morning, for example, when Keith and I were driving up and down and around every single friggin' parking lot on the LSU campus. It's a big campus: 35,000 students, God knows how many administrators, a few faculty, and lots of cars. Lots and lots and lots of cars. Amidst which we were hunting ours. Just one nondescript black Honda Civic, lost by our horrifyingly non-penitent teenaged son during a drunken tailgating session the day before.

Sorry, what? You say you don't know "tailgating"? Ahh, guess you're not from the American South, eh? "Tailgating" = 24-hour party that precedes all Southern university football games. Picture massive encampments of those temporary pavilions, Weber grills and smokers, gargantuan generators fueling large-screen tvs and stereo speakers mounted on pickup truck beds, coolers the size of industrial refrigerators, people of all ages painted in purple and gold, vats of gumbo and jambalaya, platters of fried chicken, barbecued ribs and boiled crawfish, and miles and miles of red Solo cups filled with cheap beer. And now picture my extremely sociable, not-very-consequences-minded teenaged son in the midst of all that.

We trusted him. Dumb, eh? Sure seemed so as we forsook our usual leisurely peruse of the Sunday papers and instead toured acres and acres of concrete expanses strewn with grimy plastic red cups and broken beer bottles and chicken bones and crawfish shells.

Eventually we found the car. Son has lost the right to drive. Son thinks we are unfair. Mom is staring at the television and cursing Doris Kearns Goodwin. Sorry, Doris.

Windows 8

I have bought a new laptop. Windows 8. Oh god. I can't figure out how to do anything with the damned machine. I am typing this on my old, clunky, prone to overheating and liable to do reallly weird things but totally comprehensible laptop.

I know. Now you're saying, "But you should have gotten a Mac!" Shut up. No, really. Just shut the fuck up. I cannot cope with you Mac people right now. I have a book manuscript due at the end of December. Clearly the only way I'll meet this deadline is by chucking the horrible new laptop under the bed and hoping the cat pees on it. Yes, yes, I'm sure my life would have been infinitely better had I opted for the road less traveled. But two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I, I took the pc one.

Was it this way with typewriters? I don't think so. I don't think my mom's generation had to cope with constantly having to learn an entirely new way of typing/visualizing/thinking/conceptualizing/communicating every other year or so. Geez louise. I am trying to be flexible and up-to-date and open to new possibilities. Really. But you know, honestly, all I want to do is to be able to check my email and write my book and put together lectures with some groovy illustrations and keep up with my nieces on Facebook. I don't need to be able to program a nuclear holocaust or plan a financial meltdown of the western world or record a Grammy-winning music video. I don't even need to Skype my sons. The phone works. I can hear them rolling their eyes perfectly well, thank you.

I don't want to be that old lady who talks about the ice box and moans about not being able to find anyone to service her hi-fi. But somehow I do believe it's inevitable.

Trying Not to Think about Politics

I live in Baton Rouge's Garden District, which has just been designated one of the 2012 Great Places in America Neighborhoods! No foolin'. And it truly is a great-place-in-America-neighborhood, shaded by trees straight out of Tolkien, featuring wonderful vernacular architecture (that's a technical term--impressive, eh? means "local") and a truly amazing abundance of flowering shrubs and trees. And it's walkable and has sidewalks and front porches and cute kids and a real sense of itself. It's a good place. It's a Great Place in America.

Except it's in fucking Louisiana. Minor FUCKING detail.

Sorry, sorry. But it's election night and I'm in FUCKING Louisiana, which means my vote means utterly and absolutely nothing. Geez. The Democrats don't even bother with us any more. I had to vote for Crazy No-Party Guy, just to register my complete contempt for my horrifying congressman. (Do you realize how many crazy little parties are out there? and this guy couldn't even find one of them to endorse him. . . )

But I am not blogging about politics. This is not a political blog. This is the blog of a middle-aged, getting- -old lady who is trying desperately not to think about politics tonight.

So I'm thinking instead about my shat-in-the-shower kitty, who has gone psycho, even by middle-aged kitty standards. It's my fault. I bought her a touch-activated squeaking mouse toy, filled with catnip. Actually, I bought it for the young kitty, since Wimsey never, even when she was a kitten, had any interest in toys. But Marple ignored the mouse while Wimsey, well, I do believe the mousey has sparked something deep within Wimsey, has in fact triggered a mid-life crisis, a veritable existential struggle. All night long, she wanders around the house, batting this mouse and wailing loudly, articulating, as only a cat can, those basic, keep-you-awake-all-night-long questions about life and love and meaning and purpose. I'm ready to strangle, skin, and barbecue the damned animal but I do admit that when she yowls, I find myself thinking, "Oh baby, yes, I know, I know."

Meeerowwww.

Hurricane Envy

Last night Keith and I sat cuddled under a blanket (we're having our first cold spell and it turns out our furnace is kaput) and watched the news coverage as Superstorm Sandy ravaged New York City and the Atlantic states. Given our experiences in the many storms that have hit so hard down here over the last several years, we of course felt this profound sense of connection, of shared vulnerability, of our common humanity, with our East Coast brothers and sisters.

Well, not really.

I mean, we're not totally terrible people. We thought with concern about our friends in New Jersey and in D.C. and we don't wish pain on anyone. But I have to admit that as we watched the coverage, we did behave rather like high school seniors who smirk and snicker at the freshmen who can't open their lockers and get lost on their way to P.E. When the anchorman reported with horror that three feet of water had flooded the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and then added with a gasp, "And it's a wooden floor! In an historic building!", we burst out laughing. Water on wood floors in historic buildings--not quite gasp-worthy in southern Louisiana.

Yes, we're being pitifully petty. Because it's not just that we're the hurricane seniors smiling at the antics of the storm freshmen. It's that hurricanes are our thing, you know? We don't have much. We don't have Broadway or Central Park or good public transit or riotously colored autumn leaves or great Ecuadorian and Ethiopian food or mile-high buildings or a sandy shore or great museums or some of the best universities in the world. We're not a swing state. We're not an economic incubator or a transportation corridor and we don't have a high tech valley or triangle or hub. So forgive us if we feel a bit proprietorial about hurricanes. A deprived people can become a bit deranged.

Smoking

So Hugh smokes. (Cigarettes, that is--other stuff? Lord, I dunno.)

He started smoking at least a couple of years ago. We first began to suspect because he was spending a ridiculous amount of time in the alley. There's not a lot to do in our alley, unless you're really into garbage cans or stray cats. Then came the air fresheners in the car. Finally one night he came in and when he asked me a question, the stench of stale cigarettes on his breath almost knocked me down. "When did you start smoking?" I asked him. "I'M NOT!" he howled in outrage. Sigh.

As if I don't know tobacco breath.

I grew up amidst clouds of cigarette smoke. My dad smoked constantly and four of my five older brothers were smoking by the time they hit their teens. To see the tv I peered through a smoky haze;  washing the dishes at home meant scraping the cigarette butts out of the ketchup puddles in which they'd been extinguished during dinner;  crumpled-up Kool packets littered my life; I just assumed everyone stepped out of the car reeking of tobacco. And of course, almost everyone did.

Then, as I hit my late 20s, the smoke began to dissipate. This amazing cultural shift took place. Bit by bit, the ash trays, the omnipresent butts, the smoky clouds, the acrid-smelling clothes, all disappeared.

Until Hugh hit his teens.

When I mention to friends that Hugh smokes and that, apart from not allowing it in the house, we're not responding--no "consequences"--they recoil in horror, as if I'd casually mentioned my son was a serial killer or a child molester. But I pick my battles. Lord knows, Hugh and I fight on many fronts.  This one, however--geez, this one I'd lost long ago. While just a toddler, Hugh became amazingly adept at finding the one single cigarette butt on the sidewalk. Before I could pounce, he'd have it in his mouth in a spot-on imitation of a serious smoker. At age 4, he pronounced he was going to be a Bad Guy when he grew up because Bad Guys smoke. At age 6, he declared my brother JT his favorite uncle. "Why?" I asked, somewhat mystified, since Hugh hardly knew him. "'Cos he smokes," he explained.

So Hugh smokes.

And you know, he's still as beautiful as when he slept, smelling of rising bread dough, in the cradle beside my bed.

Tho' he doesn't always smell so good.

Bridget Redux

I've been driven back to Weightwatchers by an imaginary character. Is that a bad thing?

It was Friday evening; I'd had several days of Bad Headache; the polls showed Romney and Obama in a dead heat; I was in my usual "ohmygodtheweekisoverandI'veaccomplishedNOTHING' mode. So I did what I usually do: I reached for familiar fiction. OK, yes, first I filled my wine glass. And then I pulled Bridget Jones' Diary off the shelf and settled down for some comfort reading.

Except remember how she starts each entry with--wait, what do you mean you've never read Bridget Jones' Diary? OK, click here and order your copy and go read it; get along now; scoot!--so you've read it now, right? Alrighty then, you know how she starts each entry with a log of her weight, "alcohol units," cigarettes, lottery tickets, et.al., plus commentary? e.g. "9 st. 1 lb.  [in the American edition, 127 lbs], alcohol units 2, cigarettes 0, calories 998 (excellent, v.g., perfect saint-style person)."

And you know how she's supposed to be this lovely but chubby woman?

Well, I now weigh rather more than chubby Bridget. Crisis. Back to Weightwatchers! Because while lovely but chubby Bridget does end up with Colin Firth and gets to sleep with Hugh Grant along the way,  let's face it, I probably won't.

Power Points: 2 Nutrigrain whole wheat waffles: 5 pts, 1 1/2 teaspoons low-fat peanut butter: 1 pt, coffee and skim milk: 1 pt. Gah! 2 alcohol units = 8 pts. Only 11 pts left for entire rest of day's food allotment and it's 7 am. Not perfect, saint-style person.

God Bless Amazon

I have to say, I often despair about the current political affairs in the U.S. I don't think of myself as much of a patriot. I couldn't run for office; I couldn't sport an American flag lapel pin and go on and on about "America" being the best country in the world. But every once in awhile, something happens to make me love this country. Like this:
http://www.amazon.com/Avery-Durable-Binder-EZ-Turn-17032/dp/B001B0CTMU/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1350534523&sr=8-8&keywords=white+binders

You have to scroll down to the Reviews. And then enjoy.

I just think it is so amazingly creative, so utterly innovative, so golly-gosh-darned American that people chose to express themselves in this way.

God Bless America. . . or at least amazon.com.

I get that

A few days ago the kitty-cat shat in the shower.

I was, of course, appalled, but also gob-smacked, dumbstruck, shocked, bewildered. I mean, I've had confused kitties who have decided to dump on the sofa or the bathroom rug. I get that--the surface is soft, pliable, makes a nice convincing skritch-skritching sound somewhat similar to kitty litter. But the shower floor?? The hard, cold, shiny shower floor??

Until I thought further

--which is scary, really; here I sit, in the 52nd year of my life, contemplating cat poo in the shower; still, this is my life--

and it actually makes perfect sense. Kitty is no longer a kitten. She's not old, mind you, but she's not  young. She's a middle-aged kitty. And who knows how long she's been looking at that shower floor;  how many hours she's sat there, immobile, on the shower ledge, asking herself what it would be like to shit in a shower, to feel that cold hard tile against her rear, to try something entirely, utterly new. And then, one day last week, evidently, she realized the time had come, what the hell, why not, now or never, cross it off the bucket list, go girl. And she went.

I get that.

A Presidential Debate, and the Grace of God

Oh dear. Once again I've missed my self-imposed target of two blog posts per week. And this time I can't blame my vulva.

I blame Mitt Romney.

OK, I admit he probably didn't set out to sabotage my blog, but nevertheless that is what transpired. After That Debate, after Obama just stood there as Lie after Lie after Lie spewed forth from that horrid J. C. Penney-model-man's mouth. . . well, Things Got Difficult.

I am in a fragile state, dammit. Walking on the precipice of depression, just barely holding my own as I step gingerly through the minefield of professional failure, personal lacklusterdom, parental terror, and general middle-aged oh-dear-God-is-that-really me crisis. I do not need, I cannot cope with, a looming political apocalypse.

So I didn't. I withdrew into a total funk. But I am, slowly, bit by horrendous old-lady bit, emerging from my funk. And, weirdly, it is all due to Sunday's Communion (aka the Lord's Supper, Mass, Eucharist,  Love Feast, that weird semi-cannibalistic thing Christians do). I'm still amazed. I mean, who really expects Grace to come washing in via something as standard, as orthodox, as a communion service?

Maybe the key thing is that it wasn't a very standard communion service, at least not by Presbyterian standards. My church is in the midst of massive renovations and so we are now meeting not in our sanctuary but in our "fellowship hall." We sit in stackable chairs in a multi-purpose room, devoid of all aesthetic beauty, acoustic utility, or liturgical symbolism. In this room, Communion Sunday presents some logistical challenges. See, the thing is, we Presbyterians, we usually do communion in one of two ways: We sit in our pews and pass around heavy trays laden with individual teeny-tiny cups of wine and torn-up little itty-bitty pieces of bread, or we process to the front for "intinction." (Intinction means you stand in line--kind of like you're a Catholic except you don't fold your hands in front of you, unless you're an ex-Catholic; born-and-bred Presbyterians keep their hands swinging by their sides to show their Protestant liberty from papist tyranny--and when you get to the front, you tear off a piece of bread from a common loaf and dip it in a common cup. You eat the intincted bread. You sit back down.)

But in our temporary fellowship hall accommodation, neither of our usual communion procedures would serve: No little circular cup holders in which to place our empty communion glasses, no wide aisles in which to process for "intinction." The powers-that-be, then, decided on a new format; a big loaf of bread, wrapped in towel, and a large common cup of wine, to be passed down each row. As you received the bread, you were to tear off a large hunk, dip it in the wine, and ingest. Then pass the bread and wine to the person sitting next to you and say "The body of Christ, broken for you. The blood of Christ, shed for you." Okey dokey.

Except for a slight problem: If you stick a large hunk-o-wine-dipped-bread in your mouth, it is then very difficult to say, "The body of Christ" etc. So there we were, good Presbyterians all, trying desperately to mind our table manners and not talk with our mouths full, yet to be liturgically correct and not just sling along the bread and wine without the proper blessing as if it were just ordinary ol' white bread and screwtop red wine.

And as I watched this ridiculous scene repeated, pew by pew, Presbyterian by Presbyterian, all these wonderful souls endeavoring to negotiate between liturgy and etiquette, to chew and to swallow and to bless all at the same time, suddenly I saw God--God stuffed in the mouths of mannerly Presbyterians.
God of the drips and the crumbs and the choking coughs and the awkward giggles.
God of the white bread and screwtop wine.
God of the stackable chairs and multi-purpose rooms.
God of the professional failure, the lackluster personality, the terrified parent.
God of the middle-aged.
God of the politically weary.
God of the frightened and the funked.

God of me.

Secret Worlds

'Tis the roach season.

Well, ok, yes, it's south Louisiana. Every season is roach season.

But this time of year, the nights get a bit cooler, and the roaches, accustomed to our usual subtropical temperatures, get nervous and scuttle indoors. Every morning, every room bears witness to their occupation: the night's leftovers, the aged or too enthusiastic bugs who flip over and are left flailing on their back sides, waiting for the kitties to bat them around until I come and squash them. The thrill of squashing the big bad bugs is poor compensation for the knowledge that for each roach squashed, dozens, oh lordy, hundreds, lurk. A secret world, alien creatures, right here among us.

Then the roofing guys come and solve the problem of our rather large living room leak: The wooden planks beneath the shingles feature several rather large holes--and a large, exuberantly healthy, and well-entrenched colony of termites. Apparently we've  been sharing the house with the termites for quite some time. . . . another hidden and horrifying universe, existing parallel to my everyday reality.

I retreat to the comfort of my laptop. I miss my boys. So like any good mother, I log onto Facebook and go stalking.

But but but--who are these people? where are these places? when did that happen? what the fuck are they talking about?

Secret worlds, hidden universes. Except you can't squash these alien creatures.

A Moment in a Marriage

The pinched nerve still has Keith in its grip. Pale and pained, he steps gingerly, as if he expects the floor suddenly to crack open and tumble him into the abyss.

Meanwhile, my decision to resume my morning walks against the podiatrist's advice means I'm now limping; my too-enthusiastic return to yoga has triggered a massive three-day-and-counting headache, and the vulvodynia continues to lurk. Crippled on the bottom, burning in the middle, aching on the top. Pathetic.

The living room looks like a cross between a sex toy shop and a physical therapy treatment room, littered as it is with weights of varying sizes, heating pads, lavender-scented microwavable neck buddies, freezable gel packs, and the vibrator-wanna-be massage tool.

We update each other on our symptoms, exchange prescription ibuprofin and muscle relaxants, and watch massive amounts of tv. We kiss chastely, celibate siblings-in-pain. "We are not this old!" I tell him. He smiles. We take more drugs.

Not Doris

When I resumed this blog a bit ago, I promised myself I'd post twice a week. I broke that promise last week, I admit, but it wasn't my fault, it was my vulva's.

I hate my vulva. I know that's not very nice. One should cosset one's vulva, call it pet names like Rosebud or Doris, affirm it regularly, enjoy its company, give it special treats. And I would do all of that, I really would, because I am a nice person.  But my vulva is not nice. My vulva does not deserve to be called Rosebud and definitely does not rate Doris. My vulva, in fact, is downright mean.

In hindsight, I now realize that even when I was in my 20s, my vulva was beginning to be a problem. I figured it was just moody, or tired, or you know, having a bad day. But then I hit my 30s and gave birth, and somehow that act sent the vulva over the edge. I don't know why; I ended up having a C-section so never in fact actually involved the vulva. Maybe that's why; maybe it's sulking, feels left out, deprived. I dunno. What I do know is that the process of giving birth set my vulva aflame-constant burning, with intermittent spikes of severe, sharp pain, as if someone was stabbing me up the yahoo, just for the hell of it. For the next ten years, my life--and to a large degree, Keith's-- was vulvar-centric. Could we have sex? "Absolutely not," was the usual answer. Could I wear jeans or leggings? No, not really. On bad days and for a very long time, most days were bad days, a long skirt and no undies was the only option. Could I sit down? Not very comfortably. Was I a bitch? Oh, totally.

Doctors at first called the problem "vestibular adenitis." That was a comfort; it was good to have a diagnosis, even if there was no effective treatment. And "vestibular adenitis" is such a satifyingly scientific and diseasey name. It sounds like something that hurts. Somewhere along the line, tho, the name shifted. Now I have "vulvodynia." I do not approve of this name change. "Vulvodynia" sounds like a dance--can't you just hear the wedding d.j.: "OK, everybody, on your feet for the Vulvodynia!"

After ten years of burning and spiking pain, the vulvodynia got tired. Little by little the time between episodes grew longer and longer; bit by bit the epidodes grew less and less extreme; gradually I claimed a largely vulvodynia-free existence. Still had to be careful--couldn't have sex too many days in a row, couldn't spend much time in chlorinated pools, couldn't go on long bike rides--but I could have sex, I could wear jeans and leggings, I could bicycle. A Good Life.

Til last week. When the vulvodynia came raging back in all its burning, spiking fury.

You know, when someone asks, "How ya doin'?" I know that one is not permitted to reply,  "Oh geez, my vulva really hurts." But one is tempted. 

Neighborly

Keith has a pinched nerve in his back and so one of the neighbors has just sent over a "back massager." Hmm. It's long and slightly curved, can be extended, heats up and vibrates, and is best when used with lubricant.

I know that Southerners take the whole neighborly thing really seriously but still. . . .

Feminine items

Today I had my favorite monthly committee meeting --honestly, it's a great group of fun folks, tho' our task (to review the paperwork for new courses) is mind-numbingly boring and often completely inane. . . 

Actually, you know, these days, inane often seems just fine to me. Sheesh, I find in these my waning years that I aspire toward inanity.

But anyway, my monthly committee meeting means I get to use my favorite LSU restroom. I love this restroom. For one thing, it's clean and it always has paper towels--a fine and wonderful thing in this era of maintenance budget cuts. But even better are the signs in each stall: "Ladies, Please do not throw feminine items in the toilet." (It really says "toliet" but let's cut the underpaid and overworked janitor a bit of slack.)

It's the feminine items that gets me every time. I fight to restrain myself from chucking aftershave and jock straps, fishing poles and football jerseys, Weber grills and Playstations, down the commode.

Feminine items. Yup. Nothing speaks femininity quite like a used tampon.

Upgrade

Hell hath no fury like a 17-year-old deprived of his cell phone upgrade by his older brother.

No doubt about it, it was Hugh's upgrade. And he'd been counting, actually counting, the days til the release of the iPhone 5. And no doubt about it, Owen should not have grabbed the upgrade without checking with us. Us, as in We the Parents Who Pay.

And now we're paying big-time as we deal with Hugh, who is incandescent with fury, almost in tears with utter, absolute rage, shaking with thwarted iPhone desire. I get it. Phones don't matter to me, but I know what it is to enjoy something and to want something and to expect something--and to have those expectations suddenly shattered, and to stand there, impotent and angry, knowing that I did not make this happen and that this was not fair.

Safely out of reach in Oregon, Owen is apologetic but cool, "Hey, man, sorry." He went swimming and forgot the phone in his back pocket. His phone was soaked and ruined; he needed a new phone; his cheapest option was to take the family's available upgrade. It must have all seemed so clear under the Hugh-free skies of Portland. And yet, since this is only Owen's second phone in eight years and since Hugh has grabbed approximately 75 percent of the collective upgrades due to the four of us, I can see my older son's point.

"Fuck him!"

They launch their weapons at each other but somehow always hit me instead.

Cowering in a foxhole

Sitting here watching the Democratic National Convention. Rahm Emanuel is on. He has amazing skin. So smooth and soft-looking.

Am incapable of thinking about national debt or health care or welfare-to-work or jobs programs or taxation rates. Can only focus on skin. And ties. And hair styles. Am not sure I'll ever be capable of substantive thought again. Saw the sign for "Virgina" and thought it said "Viagra," and that seemed fine.

I could just be tired. Or maybe I'm getting sick. But I think it's that I'm sick and tired of fighting these fights. I so admire those awesome folks who spend their entire lives fighting the good fight. Me, I just want to crawl into a foxhole and let the battle pass me by. While I comment on the soldiers' fashion choices and skin care regimens.

The voice of the turtledove

We have a new assistant pastor. He's lovely--looks about 16 and like he should be riding a skateboard. He preached for the first time this morning and in an incredibly gutsy move, did so on the Song of Songs:
Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away,
for lo, the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtle dove
is heard in our land.

You don't get a lot of Presbyterian sermons on the Song, for fairly obvious reasons-- "his fruit was sweet to my taste"-- "your breasts are like twin fawns"-- "I had put off my garment, how could I put it on?"-- you can just hear the feet shuffling and bulletins rustling.

Skateboarder Pastor Guy talked about intimacy, about our having been created for intimacy with God and with each other. He referred to the Creation story, to Adam saying to Eve, "You are flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone," and he recalled a service in which the minister had had each member of the congregation turn to the other and say those words. Imagine, he said, if we did that, if we thought that, if we realized that on a daily basis: "You are flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone."

So I come home and 17-year-old Hugh is sitting at the kitchen counter. I walk over, give him a big hug, and say, "You are flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone."

Hugh springs up and shouts, "Geez, Mom what the FUCK does that mean?!"

Still waiting to hear that turtledove.

Hurricane

Hunkered down, waiting for the hurricane. Got our coolers of ice, flashlights and batteries, candles and cans of tuna. Got Hugh home from his school since it sits right on the Gulf. Got the radio on with all the usual reports of storm surges and downed power lines and flash flood alerts.

I probably shouldn't admit this, but I love hurricanes. Not the actual hurricane, not the danger and the destruction, but this part, the waiting part. Each hurricane is different, but The Wait is always the same. Preparation rituals replace the ordinary rules. The suspension of normal work and school routines infuses The Wait with holiday flavors. A beer at 10 am? Why not? Better use up the meat in the freezer and the leftovers in the fridge—so everyone gathers for an impromptu party. Even the last-minute scramble for batteries and ice becomes something of a game as we pass on tips, exchange horror stories, and share our loot —“The Home Depot on Airline still has D-batteries!” “Four hours in line for ice!” “We picked up flashlights for you guys.” The sky is clear; it’s still hot; the whole idea of a storm seems unreal. I hit the sale at Talbot’s, buy Hugh a sweatshirt at the Gap, weed the back flower bed. But then the wind begins to pick up and the temperatures to inch down. We secure our lawn furniture, take in the potted plants, make sure we’ve ground the coffee beans, debate which car gets to take shelter under the carport. We wake in the middle of the night to the whoosh of wind and snuggle under the sheets. In the morning we sit at the window and watch the trees sway and bow and bend, crazed dancers at a rave, flinging their limbs about with abandon.

I think, “I should get some work done.” But I know I won’t. It’s a hurricane. Ordinary life on hold. I just love this bit.

#2

I pooped in my pants today. Not a lot, but still. . . .

I'm checking my email and I'm aware suddenly that my tummy has gone all rumbly-tumbly topsy-turvy. "Whoa," I realize, "I need to go to the bathroom." And I head on down the hall and then I get distracted. I stop to pick up those shoes that I meant to put in the bedroom and there's Hugh's shirt on the floor and dang, thought I had stowed away that cat toy. . . and before I know it, well, fuck.

Is it blasphemous to think God might speak through bathroom accidents? Because as I sat there, humiliated, I could hear Her voice: "Stay focused on what matters, ya moron." She said it with a lot of love.

But She was laughing at me, no doubt about it.

The New Rules

So at what point does one get to check out from, well, new stuff? When does one get to say, no more, sorry, enough already, brain's tired, spirit's sapped, just can't any longer?

I had a disastrous class on Friday with a lecture I'd given with great success a couple times before--but that's never a guarantee. The students change, the class time changes, I change. And technologies change. Part of this lecture involves a film clip (from Mary Poppins--never let it be said that I do not challenge my students) and my copy is on VHS. Yes, a videocassette. But we no longer have a VCR at home so I could not cue up the scene in advance and my effort to do so in class set into motion an entire series of technological mishaps, all with the students glaring at me in obvious contempt. Because of course the scene is on Youtube and of course one can embed the scene in one's Powerpoint--if one is not me, that is. Tired old me with Mary Poppins in its gargantuan plastic rectangle, a relic of my children's childhoods.

But you know, if the problem were confined to technology, I could cope. You 're mystified, you fail, you whine and moan, and then you go find someone young who shows you how. I get that. Plus it's every generation's right to immiserate the last with new technology. I get that too.

It's the new rules that are driving me nuts.

Take the Matchy-Matchy Rule. I went home in July for a wedding and accompanied my 14-year-old niece as she hunted for shoes to wear with her silver-and-black dress. I suggested a silver-and-black pair of heels and she shot me a look somewhere between sorrow and pity: "I don't want to be Matchy-Matchy," she explained. Oh. Right. I nod like I have a clue but inside I'm asking, "Wait, when did matching become a problem? Who changed the rules? Why wasn't I notified?" And now it's a Sunday morning in August and I am wearing a new black-and-white polka-dotted sundress and I have a pair of adorable black-and-white polka-dotted earrings. . .  but Hugh says no, too Matchy-Matchy. Well, dang.

Or then there's the Trim-Your-Bush Rule. Keith and I went to see Your Sister's Sister (a terrific film, by the way) and in one hilarious scene, Rosemarie DeWitt's character reveals that her half-sister (played by Emily Blunt) once came home from a date all embarrassed because the guy had laughed at the bulge in her underwear created by her pubic hair: "She didn't know she was supposed to trim her bush!" And the Emily Blunt character is cringing and everyone in the theater is roaring and I'm laughing too but I'm also thinking, "Well, damn, so you are supposed to do that." Was this always a rule that somehow Mom forgot to inculcate? Or is it a new rule and once again, I missed the memo?

Where does one pick up these memos? When are they delivered? And really, when is it ok just to chuck them in the trash and trip along unawares, earrings matchy-matching one's sundress, bush pooching out from one's underwear, videocassette of Mary Poppins firmly in hand?

A Very Weird Mother

I wonder sometimes what it would be like to be normal, you know, as in "mainstream," part of the general current, floating in the middle with everyone else. I don't think of myself as a contrarian and I'm certainly not much of an original thinker and I really rather like feeling like I belong.  And yet it so rarely works out that way. Maybe it's the consequence of being the first daughter after five sons; maybe that experience of being the outlier just got woven into the fabric of my being. More likely it's just happenstance, the random throw of the dice. But somehow I ended up a political and theological liberal and an impractical humanities grad in a family of fundamentalist Republican moneymakers, a Midwesterner in the Deep South, a city lover submerged in strip malls and subdivisions, a sports agnostic in a universe of football fanatics, a European with an American accent.

And, evidently, a Very Weird Mother.

I have just begun a new position as the sort of academic head honcho of a residential college at my university ("head honcho," that is, in the sense of "the person in charge of making lots of phone calls and begging people to do stuff," not, mind you, "the person with power or prestige"). Now, if you're my age, and you attended an American college or university, you probably lived in a dorm. You are old. Dorms are no more. Now we have residential communities, or if you're really cutting-edge in the student services industry (and yes, oh yes, what an industry it is), residential colleges. Which is all well and good, and if you're really interested, go Google it, but the point is, I now have more exposure to the parents of university freshmen than I've ever had before. And I've come to realize that I am not a normal mother.

Normal Mothers--or perhaps, given the range of my data, I should say "Normal Mothers of Freshmen Attending Public Universities in the Deep South" but then again it's an Election Year when we're all used to general conclusions based on the flimsiest bits of anecdotal evidence so hell, let's just go with "Normal Mothers"--Normal Mothers accompany their children on Move-In Day.  They come in with enormous refrigerators and microwaves and flatscreen tvs and they demand to know when Brittni's WiFi will be available. They storm down from the room with long lists of Things That Must Be Repaired Immediately. They stand in the various dining hall/mailbox/rec center lines in loco offspring-is so that their children can be free to do whatever it is such children do. Normal Mothers know their children's course schedules by heart--they know course titles, times, classroom assignments, professors, the required book lists, the tentative dates of the midterm and final, and the various ways these courses fulfill the General Education requirements. They say things like "We're thinking about Engineering. Or maybe Interior Design. We're not sure yet."

Weird moms like me? We stick the kid on the plane with a suitcase, $50, and a big hug. And then we wait for him to call. And when he doesn't, we figure he's doing ok or he'd call. And we avoid looking at his baby picture or that beautiful painting he did when he was ten and we let him be.

I guess I'd thought that was the whole point. Raising him, releasing him, letting him be. Except it's so damned hard. And now I find out it's just weird.

Well, shit. Can we rewind?

Geology at Work

I was prepared for the wrinkles.

Well, ok, not actually. But I at least knew in my head they were coming, even if my heart assured me that as long as I drank lots of water and found just the right moisturizer, all would be well. (My heart lives in La La Land.)

The bumps, however. I had no idea about the bumps. And so, oh youthful reader, let me warn you: Age Bringeth Bumps.

I'm not talking about rolls here--yes, age brings rolls that spill over one's waistband and slurp over one's bra straps. But there again--one was warned.

I am talking bumps. Like the tiny bumps on the inside of my knees that are now spreading down my calves and migrating to my upper arms.  "The technical term for that is 'chicken skin,'" my doctor said. "So what do I do about it?" I asked. "Oh, put on moisturizer. It won't actually help, but that's what you do." She smiled brightly. She's young. But soon she will be old and bumpy. May she be afflicted with chicken skin.

The worst, though, are my bumpy feet. There is, for example, the bump on the joint of my second toe--remember back when we wrote with pencils in school? And your middle finger on your writing hand would get that lump on the top from holding your pencil? Just like that. And then there's the perfectly circular bump on my right foot, just at the base of the little toe--looks like someone inserted a little ball bearing in there. All of this culminates in the really big bumps bursting from the bones under the big toes, the harbingers of arthritis and old-lady afflictions like corns.

So here's my theory. It's about geology as much as biology. As crevasses and caverns cut their way through a plateau, they push out and upward elsewhere, producing cliffs and mountains.  With valleys come hills. With wrinkles come bumps. My body is a geological demonstration.

You Can't Go Home Again

Of course you can go home again. It's just that it will make you feel like shit.

Just back from Chicago and a family wedding. Took Owen on the Chicago Architectural Society Boat Tour--as fabulous, with views as breath-taking and guide as witty and knowledgeable as I remembered--except that most of the buildings that dominate the river tour rose up long after I left the city. Damn. Nothing like a couple of spectacular skyscrapers to make you feel your age.

Then we were on the El. And as soon as we boarded, a young woman popped up and gestured to her seat. Poor child. Raised well, she was just doing as she'd been taught, offering up her seat to elderly passengers. Except that said elderly--Keith and I-- were horrified.

The trauma of Lutz's brought the message home. I was first introduced to Lutz's by my beloved Gram V. It was quite a trek from the suburbs, driving in on the tollway and down crowded Montrose Avenue, but well worth it: this little slice of Vienna, transported to the Midwest. A plush dining area that evoked the parlor of the early 20th-century bourgoisie, cakes so rich and ornate that you felt they'd have satisfied even Mozart, coffee served in fancy little pots with real whipped cream on the side, buxom waitresses with their hair in buns and pronounced German accents, and--an essential part of every visit--the most elaborate women's restroom I have ever encountered. When I grew up enough to live in Chicago, my roommate and I would regularly set aside several hours for a trip to Lutz's: a walk to the bus stop, a long bus ride, a walk to another bus stop, another long bus ride. . . but all worth it. One memorable day, we stayed in the Lutz's patio garden for several hours, consuming several slices of cake and plates of cookies and quaffing countless pots of whipped-cream-laced coffee in the process. Amazing we didn't launch ourselves into a diabetic coma then and there.

So when Keith and I married in my mother's backyard in the western suburbs of Chicago, of course Lutz's cakes bedecked the festivities. And of course I dragged Keith and Owen to Lutz's this trip. Except all was changed. Shrunken. Literally shrunken--the dining area halved, stripped of its plushness, just a set of utilitarian diner chairs and tables on linoleum; the wait staff now a couple of adolescent girls; and, horrors, no women's restrooms, just a single unisex toilet. And the cakes? Fine, but not fabulous. "It's ok," shrugged Owen. OK. A part of me died inside. Lutz's was never "ok."

So, yes, you can go home again. But maybe you shouldn't.

Deodorant

It's the deodorant that really gets to me.

As I've mentioned, both boys are home for the summer. I come home and every kitchen cabinet door is open, dirty dishes clutter the counter, greasy pots and pans crowd the stovetop, the toilet stands unflushed, impossibly gargantuan shoes litter all the rooms, wet towels wind their way through the hallway, and seed pods cover the sofa (Hugh is addicted to sunflower seeds; it's like living with a Really Big Squirrel).

I cope. Barely.

And then, there sits the deodorant stick. Atop the coffee table. Perched on my laptop. Nestled amidst the kitty bowls.

And I totally lose it.

I mean, who are these creatures? Why can't they perform their ablutions in the bathroom, like normal people? Why must they wander around the house with deodorant? Geez louise. Didn't their mother teach them anything?

Dang.

Laundry; or, Things Happen

I'm not proud of much in my parenting career, but I do feel quite chuffed about one achievement: I taught both boys, once they reached middle school, to do their own laundry. Lights versus darks, hot versus cold, gentle versus permanent press versus heavy duty. . . we covered the lot. There were a few blips along the way, like the time Owen ran out to stop me before I backed out of the driveway to ask if it was ok to put a shirt with buttons in the wash. (God, he was so adorable.) But, blips and all, I released them, to discover the woes of shrinkage and the mysteries of lost socks and the horror of dye seepage all on their own.

So now they're both home for the summer. And they continue to do their own laundry. And, to my horror, they do not Separate. Completely ignoring all  my carefully inculcated lessons, they just throw all their whites and darks, towels and cotton shirts, jeans and undies, all together in one big undifferentiated mass. "What's the point?" they ask. "It all goes on cold--regular," they point out. "It's fine," they insist.

And it is fine. They're not walking around in pink undershirts or weirdly bleached jeans or horribly shrunk tee-shirts.

Except it's not fine. One cannot not Separate laundry. There are Rules. Whites do not float promiscuously with Darks; undies do not spin with dress shirts; sheets must not fraternize with khaki shorts. Consequences will ensue. Catastrophe looms. You start mixing socks with delicates and, well, Things Will Happen.

The thing is, my boys aren't afraid of Things Happening.

So much to learn. And, with my 52nd birthday lurking just ahead, so little time. I'm going to start tomorrow morning by throwing in my white blouse with my blue jeans. And so it begins. Laundry and a life where Things Happen.

Jubilee

My apologies, blogovians. I have been bad. Blame my kids. (There's no actual reason to blame them, no empirical data, so to speak, but blaming the kids is my default mode. It works.)

Anyway, I'm back. A bit worn out, however, from celebrating the Queen's Jubilee yesterday. What Queen, you ask? As did the lovely little girl behind the counter at Baum's Bakery. "THE Queen," I replied. "You know, Queen Elizabeth. She's been on the throne for 60 years!" The little girl was so impressed. "That is so cool! So, how do you celebrate a Queen's Jubilee?"

Silly girl. You eat cake. A $40 Baum's Half Lemon/ Half Chocolate Dobasch Cake (http://www.baumspastries.com/index.php/cakes/specialty-cakes/dobasch-half-and-half.html) which, I'll admit, looks a bit wonky on the website photo but is ecstasy encapsulated in six layers of delicate, moist cake, enfolded by delectable lashings of buttercream and fondant. And then you get the star-struck, lovely, silly girl to write "God Save the Queen" on it. And you combine it with a sandwich and salad buffet and a very last-minute gathering of somewhat mystified Baton Rougeans, and you watch BBC-America with the sound turned off so that you can all shout out questions like, "Good lord, who is that woman?" and "Wait, who sucked who's toes?", and you mix in lots of champagne, and there you have it. A respectable Queen's Jubilee celebration.

But not the best we've done, actually. Ten years ago we were living in Manchester and 7-year-old Hugh's primary school marked the occasion of Elizabeth's 50-year anniversary on the throne with a "garden party." Completely bowled over by the event, Hugh came home from school that Friday afternoon and--unbeknownst to us--invited all our neighbors on the street to a Garden Party that evening. Somehow, we got wind of the plans and were able to convince him to walk round and change the invitations to Saturday afternoon. Keith and I figured most of the neighbors would not come; the few who did, we were sure, would show up, smile fondly at Hugh, eat a small piece of cake, wink at us, and head home five minutes later. So the next morning I toddled down to the local bake shop and picked up a couple of small "Jubilee" cakes--simple single layer sponge cakes with fondant icing and a picture of the queen. We chilled a bottle of wine and made a pot of tea, and set aside 30 minutes.

That afternoon the neighbors poured in, all of them thrilled to be invited and massively ashamed that it took "the Americans" to whip Grange Avenue into shape and make sure that we observed the Jubilee properly. Gobsmacked, Keith and I ransacked the cupboards and fridge for snacks, party food, anything edible, really, and after our embarrassingly substantial wine and beer collection was completely drained dry, the neighbors began making periodic forays to their own kitchens to restock the liquor supply. By the end of that long, glorious, sunny, booze-soaked, cake-filled, amazing afternoon, we felt like we were honorable members of the British tribe. We moved to the U.S. just a month later--and coming back to Louisiana, in many ways we felt like ex-pats, far from home.

So, Happy Jubilee, Liz, old gel.  God save you, luv. You've been good to us.

Ebbs and Flows

The ebbs and flows of marriage fascinate me. You'd think, after almost 22 years of married life, that we'd settle into some sort of stasis, no more ebbing and flowing, just you know, a pond that sort of sits there, quiet, with barely a ripple on the surface--except without the algae and moldy odor that that implies. Or maybe that we would sort of drift along gently like the inner tubes in those quiet water park rides, the ones that carry you softly along a well-defined path, far from the screaming of the water slides and wave pool. But no, life keeps doing its thing and so we change and the marriage changes too. To demonstrate:

As a result of my botched foot operation two Christmases ago, I can now no longer walk very far without a certain amount of pain. Sometimes walking even just a wee bit, like the distance from the bedroom to the kitchen, poses great difficulties. Foot pain, I have discovered, makes a daily aerobics workout rather tough. Running, jogging, walking, and even doing the elliptical at the Y have all become distinctly problematic. And, because the pain slices through the ball of my foot, the exact region that presses down on the pedal of a bike, bicycling does not offer much of an option. I could swim, I suppose, that is, if I could swim as opposed to doggy paddling rather ineffectually.

Anyway, the point is, while I sit with dicey foot (and sit and sit and sit and. . . .), Keith continues to pursue his somewhat fanatical "dammit I may be about to turn 60 but that doesn't mean I have to be fat" program: vigorous basketball and tennis several times a week, supplemented by running, walking, and weight-lifting. He's never been in better shape. It's great--he's thin and hard and energetic. But it's the matter of timing. We both get home around 6 or so. He then goes off to do his sporty exercisey fitnessy stuff. I, tired and starving, pour a glass of wine and pull out a box of Triscuits. A couple hours later, he returns, all sweaty and virtuous and healthy, whereas I, by that point, well, I'm slightly (or, depending on the day, totally) looped, as well as saturated with salt.

It's not a winning combination. In the ebbs and flows of married life, it's definitely on the ebb side. One does not like feeling sloshed and salty and soft. One then tends to take one's feelings of inadequacy out on one's sweaty and virtuous husband. And then one has another glass of wine, followed by something involving saturated fat and sugar in vast quantities. And thus, in the ebb and flow of marriage, one ends up not only ebbing but in fact stuck in the noisome mud of a trash-strewn bank while scaly creatures bite and tear at one's limbs and large flying insects lay their eggs in one's eyeballs.

Maybe a return to yoga is in order.

Off the Recommended Path

Grades posted. Another semester finished. Done and dusted.

Another graduating senior failed. Sigh. She's no longer graduating, I'm afraid.

Before I became a professor, I thought that teachers/instructors/professors probably got a kick out of failing students. All that power, you know. The flick of the whip. The assertion of authority. But it's not like that. Listen, you slackers, we agonize; we really do. Why, I'm not sure. You don't show up for class for weeks on end, you blow off most of the reading response assignments, you don't hand in the major paper, you never come to my office hours,  you score a 43/100 on your final exam. Did you really think you were going to pass this course? Why? GoodGodinHeaven, WHY? Because you're a graduating senior? Because you figured. . . what?  See, here I am asking these questions, whereas you, well, you're not, are you? Although honestly, why should you? Success or failure in "20th-Century European History" won't determine your life's course, tho' it probably does mean that your mom will insist you send back those graduation checks. (Even if she doesn't, you should. Really.)

It amazes me that students can and do fail with monotonous regularity, given the incredible resources that the university pours into making sure that doesn't happen--counselors and special coaching sessions and free tutoring and vigilant R.A.s and streams of emails and legions of support services and a downright fascist approach to course scheduling that involves "Recommended Paths" ("Recommended" is a euphemism for "Absolutely Mandatory") and "critical courses" (woe betide the student who fails to take the "critical courses" demanded by the Recommended Path at the "recommended" times: such a failure results in [quoting from the catalog here] "mandatory removal from the program"). Nope, no chance for the aimless or curious or misguided or just plain independent student to fuck up without the university knowing about it and marshalling its resources to rope said student back on the Recommended Path. And yet, even with all these guideposts and Big Brother accommodations, students somehow fail.

A remarkable triumph of the will, when you think about it.

OK, hats off to you, you slackers. Go for it. Diverge from the Recommended Path; choose (dare one say it) the Road Less Traveled. Maybe by failing you're succeeding.

Just don't you dare complain to me about your grade.

Ick

Marple the Kitty has tapeworms, Cleaning Sarah informed me when I got home today.
"They were all over the chair, you know, the rocking chair that he sits in."
I'm confused. "But, how in the world, I mean, I thought tapeworms showed up in poop."
Cleaning Sarah is embarrassed. She doesn't like discussing bodily functions. Too much cleaning of other folks' toilets, I imagine. "Well, yeah, but you know, they crawl out of, well, you know, down there. . ."

Oh good lord.

Ick.

So in less than one week we've got Kitty Wimsey crapping in our bed, Ol' Dog Rowan vomiting twelve times one morning before I left for work and another five times after, and now feline tapeworms.

I'm thinking maybe a goldfish.

Maybe not. I remember goldfishes. We had a series of them, plus beta fish, when the boys were little. You start with all that enthusiasm, a fresh bowl, a little filter, a couple of plastic plants and a castle, plus the fish. You end up with lots of slime, a horrible odor, and a dead fish. Which was the whole point of it all, from Hugh's perspective. He loved our fish funerals. He never actually actively killed a fish, but he certainly thought they were far more interesting dead than alive. Of course, he had a point.

So maybe hamsters. We had a successful run of hamsters when we lived in England. Cute, containable, fairly cheap. You put the little guy in a ball and watch him run around--a couple of glasses of wine and hey, it's like you're at the Olympics. But you have to remember to put him back in his cage, or you'll find one really traumatized hamster and a plastic ball filled with hamster pee and little hamster feces, stuck behind the sofa late one Saturday afternoon.

So maybe not hamsters. Can't remember basic things these days, let alone hamster balls.

Maybe menopausal women and pets are a bad combo. Like menopausal women and teenaged sons. And menopausal women and husbands. And menopausal women and work colleagues. And menopausal women and neighbors. And menopausal women and telephone survey takers. And menopausal women and pizza delivery guys. And menopausal women and supermarket checkout clerks. . . .

Maybe the isolation ward. I hear the drugs are really good.

Revenge

In the chaos following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, looters specifically targeted Royal Street in the French Quarter. Although just a quick walk from the drunken frat boys, sad strip shows, and tacky bars of Bourbon Street, Royal's high-end antique shops epitomize a world of luxury and elegance and privilege that most of us can only gawp at. After Lake Pontchartrain overtopped the levees, then, and before the National Guard descended to restore a highly racialized version of "law and order," looters descended on Royal Street. They broke the plate-glass windows, smashed all those Regency chairs and Louis Quinze tables and Delft china sets, spray-painted the walls, and then, in shop after shop after shop, defecated in the cash registers.

I had thought that out of all the animal species, only human beings were capable of actions of such symbolic and substantive fury.

I underestimated my cats.

We've had friends from Britain come to stay, and because one of the group has severe cat allergies, we boarded out the kitties. When I picked up our two cats from Petz Plaza yesterday morning, I knew they were miffed, but by the evening, they seemed happy; I assumed all was forgiven. Until the wee hours of this morning, when one of the cats (aided and abetted, I am sure, by the other), jumped on the bed--our bed, the bed containing both of us, the bed in which we were sleeping--and left us a steaming pile of shit.

Message received.

"Pause"

Three of my friends have become grandparents. Good lord. I'm rather miffed, to be honest. I mean, no one consulted me; no one thought about my feelings or needs. These couples just go off and procreate without considering the ramifications of their actions for the wider community. For the friends of their parents, for example, who just might not be ready to move in grandparent-y circles. I"m not asking for much. I'm not asking that these young people eschew offspring, for pete's sake. I just want the power to hit "Pause." I promise to press "Play" eventually, you know, when I'm ready. Tho' that "Fast Forward" function has simply got to go.

I've been Bruced. Bossified. Springsteenized.

Bruce Springsteen has provided the soundtrack of my adult life, thanks to the Guy That Got Away, a sweet New Jersey boy I dated back in my Calvin College days. It was 1980--five years after Born to Run, the iconic, amazing single and album that vaulted Springsteen into rock history and put him on the cover of Time and Newsweek in the same week. But in 1975 I was only 15.  "Born to Run" actually didn't make it at first onto regular radio; Springsteen didn't leap the boundaries between "rock-that-critics-adore" and "rock- that-young- unaware- Midwestern-teens-listen-to" until 1980, with The River. 1980--still four years before Born in the USA. So, until The Guy That Got Away, I didn't know Springsteen, hadn't a clue. But The Guy, well, he was from New Jersey, and he was clued-in. He volunteered as a dj on our college radio station--broadcasting to the dorms and dining halls of Calvin College, not a huge gig, mind you, but still--and I would sit there through his sessions with him. The radio station protocols were strict: every hour had to include a certain number of minutes of "Christian rock." The Guy, bless him, hated Christian rock, so he would carefully search out Christian rock songs whose duration matched those of Springsteen singles. He'd play the Springsteen, and then enter the Christian song in the log. I have to tell you, in the context of Calvin College, this was downright subversive. Of course, no one ever noticed, since no one ever actually listened to the college station. But in the grand scheme of things, it didn't matter. The Guy gave me Bruce. And I've had him ever since. Bruce, that is. Not The Guy. Which also, in the grand scheme, turned out not to matter. My mom used to say there was a lid for every pot. Actually, I think there are several. Plus pots change shape over time, and so do lids. And sometimes, you know, you just cram that sucker on there and command it to fit.

Back to our main story.

In all these years, I've never seen Springsteen in concert. There was this and there was that, never in the right place with enough money and enough time. But last night, he was in New Orleans and I was there, in the right place, at the right time, with a paid-up ticket.

It was good. It was very very good. Sometimes life is very simple and very sweet. Not often. But sometimes.

And I believe in a promised land. . .

I am not an Anglophile

Watching "Antiques Roadshow," waiting for "Doc Martin."

A friend in England once introduced me to her neighbor as a "complete Anglophile." I was stunned, and rather horrified.. An Anglophile? Me? No way. Anglophiles are like antiquarians. . . you know, crazy people, those folks who bore everybody at parties.

I am not a boring party person. I"m a British historian.

Oh dear. Not a very convincing argument.

Strange, isn't it, how one ends up doing what one does? I ended up in British history because I had to pick a senior honors thesis advisor, and  I was having a really rough time, and the British historian at Calvin was a kind, gentle man who looked like he carried peppermints in his pockets. So, I chose him instead of the famous French history guy or the cool U.S. social history guy or the serious ancient history guy. It had nothing to do with the subject; it was all about the guy. At that point in my life I desperately needed a grandpa, and Henry Ippel was it. I wrote my honors thesis, and that became what I submitted with grad school applications, so of course I ended up in British history. Happenstance, really. Just a lonely fatherless girl looking for someone to care about her. And here was this aging British history professor, such a decent man, who was willing to play the part. In such arbitrary ways, one's life gets decided.

And so, arbitrarily, as a result of a kindly college professor who never actually offered me a peppermint, I've spent much of my life studying, reading about, thinking about, living in the British Isles. I know more about British politics, social life, intellectual developments, popular and high culture, than I do the Southern American counterparts, even tho' I live in southern Louisiana. Ostensibly. But can one really live in a place when one spends most of one's time thinking about somewhere else?

After more than 20 years, I still find the South an alien place. I can't figure it out; I'm constantly stumbling, careening into no-go areas and horrified by what I uncover. Would I have embrace my area of study with such passion if I'd been able to live my life in, say, Chicago? Dunno. Life didn't happen that way. All I know is that when Keith is out of town, I switch on the Baton Rouge public radio station in the evenings: At 9 pm, the BBC World Service comes on and stays on all night long. I go to sleep, and I wake up through the night and finally in the morning, to these beautiful, comforting British accents. Strangely, the sound of home.

Millicent's Cat

A couple of colleagues won some Big Awards this past week. I'm just so pleased; we all started in our academic careers at about the same time and it's just so thrilling to watch folks I knew at the very start, way back when, now reach the heights of professional success. Of course back then I aspired to those same heights and now I realize I'll never reach them, but that's fine. I'm content to sit on the sidelines, to know what it takes, to cheer on the winners.

Right.

I do wish I were such a person, that kind of good and generous person who can rejoice heartily and wholly in another's success, even while contronting one's own failure. I aspire to be such a person. I pretend to be that person. I say the words, go through the motions, follow the script.

You know, actually, I think I put on an incredible performance most of the time. Damn. I should have gone into acting.

I'll keep saying the words, honing the performance, trying desperately to own the character, to become the role. Maybe, in time, the magic will happen. Transmutation, transmogrification, the spell that will change me, completely and utterly, to that better soul.

Right now, tho',  I'm like Hermione crouching, horrified in the bathroom stall, faced with the fact that her plans have gone awry, that her preparations were insufficient, that she is not Millicent Bulstrode, but, sadly, grotesquely, Millicent's cat.

This, I didn't expect

Hugh said he needed a new shirt for prom. "What about that black shirt you wore to the dance last year?" I asked. He rolled his eyes, disappeared, and returned a few minutes later, with his neck bulging out of a much too-tight collar and six inches of his forearms extending out from the cuffs. "Right," I sighed.

"Hey," he said. "At least I'm not a girl and you don't have to buy an expensive new dress for every dance."

"Well, who says I would?" I asked.

Hugh stared at me, stunned. "What!? Are you serious? You really wouldn't do that, would you? Don't you know how important the dress is for a girl?" I laughed at him. He accused me of child abuse. I got indignant.

And there we were, arguing, fighting, practically pummeling each other over my failure to buy my mythical teenaged daughter a mythical new dress for her mythical prom.

Remember What to Expect When You're Expecting? And What to Expect in the First Year? Someone need to write What to Expect When You're Too Friggin' Tired and He's a Teenager.

Prom Night

So Hugh went to prom last night.

What a disappointment.

You know, I try very hard not to live through my children (it helps immensely that they're both boys--most of the time, quite frankly, there's a certain "ick" factor, which I'm sure is sexist but hey, teenaged boys are icky much of the time). The point is, I do try to establish boundaries, to make clear to them and me and everyone else that I have my life and they have theirs. . . .

Still. Prom.

I didn't go to prom. We didn't have prom. In my Dutch immigrant Calvinist corner of the world, drinking in moderation was fine and smoking was practically required for adult males, but dancing, card-playing, and movie-going belonged to the traditional trifecta of forbidden, sinful activities. (Actually, there was a fourth Sin: Freemasonry, but since no one in the Midwest knew what that was, it didn't impinge on our lives.) Now, by the 1970s, when I was in high school, both the movie-going and card-playing prohibitions had largely lapsed; my grandmother, in her 60s, discovered Shirley Temple movies on the local tv station's Saturday morning programming and again and again, she said plaintively, "I just don't understand; why were we told these were so Bad?" I imagine it was television that made the ban on movie-going utterly nonsensical. I don't know what happened to the card-playing; I just know by the time I came around, my parents played pinochle every week with several couples from church. Not poker, mind you, but cards nonetheless.

That left Dancing on the Forbidden list. We were allowed the occasional square-dance, but that was it. Certainly no Prom. Insread,we had the Junior-Senior Banquet and the Awards Banquet and Senior Night. "What did you do at all these banquets?" asked a puzzled Hugh. "Umm. We ate. They gave out awards. Like I got the Freshman Latin Award and the Sophomore American Lit. Award. And people sang. Sometimes there was a play." He stares at me. "Mom. That's pathetic."

Really? Maybe. I dunno. Hugh tells me that after the dances at his school, used condoms litter the floor; I think of those poor girls pressured into having sex in public and I am grateful that all I ever had to do was sit at a table and clap for the Senior Quartet.  Still. Prom. I alwas felt like I'd missed something, some quintessential American teenager experience. I mean, we banquet-going Calvinists hoped for dates, and we got nice dresses, and the guys brought corsages. But it wasn't Prom and we knew it. Not like in the movies and on tv. Not Like In Normal America.

So, yeah, pitiful as it is, as the boys got older,  I did think, "Prom! Cool!" Owen, however, refused to stay on script. I hinted, wheedled, and cajoled. I offered bribes. I tried guilting him into it. But no. Owen and his buddy Angela went to the Salvation Army surplus store together and bought Anti-Prom clothes for the dance and then decided WTF? and went to the movies instead.

But now it's Hugh's year. While Owen has always swum in the undercurrent, Hugh floats in the mainstream. He's definitely a Prom rather than an Anti-Prom kind of guy. And off he went, boutanniere in his lapel and corsage in hand. To my confusion and consternation, however, somewhere along the last three decades Prom has ceased to mean, well, PROM. Prom, for example, no longer requires that the the guys rent tuxes. No pink ruffled shirts. Not even a bow tie, let alone one of those adorable little vests. Proms no longer have Themes. No Underwater Enchantments. No Oriental Evenings. No Rockin' Back to the Fifties. Not even a Rod Stewart's Tonight's the Night. Parents do not gather to take pictures of the glamorous duo. Bashful couples do not sit together at a fancy restaurant before the dance, nor is there a post-prom lakeside party. Nope, once the dance was over, Hugh and his buddies drove to the 24-hour Coffee Call, while the girls wandered off to Waffle House.

Beware living on or through one's children. That road leads, inexorably, to the Waffle House. . . tho' I have to admit, I'm rather partial to their Pigs-In-A -Blanket breakfast plate. And those chocolate chip waffles with the whipped cream. They do a pretty good cinnamon roll too. . . . Come to think of it, maybe those girls were on to something, a crucial life lesson, the Moral to the Story, even: Dance with the guys and then dump them for grits and bacon and pancakes. One must make one's own Romance. And it's best when covered in whipped cream.

Sunburn

The last evening at the beach. No sunburn. Of course not. We have a beach umbrella. We retreat to the condo for lunch and reading and naps during peak sun hours. We use #50 sunscreen on our faces and #30 on the rest. Sunburn?? That is soooo Not Done. My one undisputed success as a parent is that blonde, blue-eyed, pale-skinned Owen did not experience sunburn until he was 17 and went to the beach with friends. Of course, he also assumed it was totally normal to swim clad in swimming trunks that went down to his mid-calves and a long-sleeved shirt and a pith-helmet-like cap that covered not only his head but his neck. Still, the point, the victory, is that he was 17-friggin' years old when he came home, pointed in horror to his deep red, just-about-to-blister shoulders, and said, "Mom, this really hurts. What is this?"

Such a contrast with my own upbringing, when it was simply expected that every summer I went to the beach, I got horribly burned, my temperature spiked, I was miserable, my skin erupted in blisters, I "peeled"--meaning I shedded vast swathes of skin that I could hold and drape along the furniture and wad into a ball--and then I emerged with "a tan," which we all assumed was a Good Thing.

My mom tells this heartbreaking story of my dad, taking his four older sons, all between age 2 and 7, to Florida for a week in the spring, to give my mom, home with baby #5 (not me--I was #6), a bit of a break. And after the first day at the beach, Dad shepherded his four little guys through the parking lot--and they were all sobbing. A gentle man, my dad, but come on, he'd driven the little rugrats all the way down from Chicago, all on  his own in the station wagon, and given him this splendid day on this magnificent beach and now they were all whimpering and moaning. . . WTF, man!. . . so he basically beat them into the car, oblivious to the fact that his sons, in fact, needed hospitalization, that the hot Florida sun had fried and crisped the white-as-white-can-be skins of his phalanx of little blonde Dutch boys.

God, I hate that story.

But Dad had no idea. No one had any idea. When the first #6 sunscreen lotion came onto the market in my early college years, I used it --much to the amusement and incomprehension of family and friends, who just couldn't understand why any rational person would employ such a radical sunblock and so ensure that she would remain such an incredibly unattractive shade of pale. I didn't want to be unattractive. I just hated the pain of sunburn enough to choose "ugly" over "in-need-of-medical-care."

And now I await my first skin cancer diagnosis. The fact that I've spent all of my adult life looking wan and washed out, eschewing the sun, this will count for nothing. I know this. I resent this. But I know this. I know skin cancer waits, lurking, bound to happen, the assured results of all those annual bad burns. The intervening years of copious suntan lotion and rigorous hat-wearing and assiduous shade-seeking will count for nothing. The fact that I've spent my adult years not at the seashore or beach but rather in libraries and offices and archives; the fact that I wear the same swimsuit for years, years and years, on end, til the elastic wears out, for pete's sake, because why spend money on something that one only uses for a few days each decade; the fact that I've never been Brown and Beautiful, the tanned Beloved One of high school dreams. . . none of this will count. I am doomed by biology, by genes and generation, by my blonde hair and blue eyes and alabaster skin (ok, sounds egocentric but one boyfriend long long ago called my skin "alabaster"; he turned out to be narcissistic and gay [not that I have a problem with gay, except when it's a guy who's promising to marry me. . .] but still, I stick by and totally claim the "alabaster"). My comfort: Owen does not, cannot face the same future.

Of course there's a certain irony at work here. Enormous colorful tattoos now cover most of Owen's beautiful skin, which I oh-so-carefully and consciously protected againt the sun's damaging rays. "I only go to reputable places," he tells  me. "Mom, it's organic ink. Totally safe. No problem." Really? No problem? Vast quantities of ink injected into his skin and "no problem"?

Dunno. What if I'd plucked off that long-sleeved tee-shirt, eschewed the #50 sunscreen, let him get totally burned as a boy? Would he regard his skin differently? Would he see it as more vulnerable? Limited? In need of care and protection?

I imagine not. Hell. I did my job. I protected what I was supposed to protect when I was supposed to protect it. The rest is up to him. Me? I gotta go check for moles.

Gather round, little children

My niece sent me a link to a hilarious post about the failure of "bikini condoms." Evidently women just did not flock to use a latex G-string panty with a "condom pouch," which I gather is something like an empty hotdog skin, hanging down between your legs, awaiting the male member. (Such a strange term. Is there a female member? Does the clitoris count as a member or is there some kind of size requirement?)

I'm disturbed that I had no idea there was such a thing as a bikini condom. In my defence: As soon as Hugh's adoption was finalized, Keith ran off and got fixed, so scared was he that we would become one of those legendary legions of couples who adopt and then immediately get pregnant.** And since I'm not inclined toward adultery, that means it's been 17 years since I've had to think about birth control in any personal way. But still, I keep track of all kinds of things that have little direct impact on me personally--dissent in Syria, the strength of Springsteen's marriage, what's hot in the West End and on Broadway, the gender disparity in literary awards--I mean, you know, I 'm alive, alert, aware. . . but evidently not so much on the contraception front. I just hate that.

But I'm even more disturbed by "In Bed with Married Women" blogger's description of the bikini condom as "a pouch-like tube (oh yeah), a belt reminiscent of grandma's old-timey maxi pads, and cream-colored latex, which we all know is the very sexiest latex color." It's the "belt reminiscent of grandma's old-timey maxi pads" that arouses such discomfort. Because I wore that belt. And I do not feel like "grandma" or in the least bit "old-timey", tho' maybe the fact that I did not know about the bikini condom completely undercuts my argument here.

Ahh, the sanitary napkin and the belt. Gather round, little children, and let me tell you about long long ago, in the days before maxi and mini pad technology. (OK, yes, tampons did exist. . . but I was 10. I was just a little kid and my body suddenly transmogrified into this horrifying, alien thing sprouting hair in weird places and growing breasts and then gushing blood. Not until I was 17 and much more comfortable in my own skin did I relax enough to insert a tampon.) Fifth grade, then. A belt with little clips and a rectangle of cotton fiber with these tails on either end to stick in the clips. One size fits all, supposedly. . . which of course meant that rectangle jutted far in front and behind of my bottom. It moved. Not my bottom. The napkin. It moved. Ah, little children, remember that adhesive technology had not yet been invented, at least not in the realm of Ladies' Monthlies. The belt went around your waist, the pad was clipped on, and then, well, a 10-year-old kid did what 10-year-old kids do--swinging on swings, climbing the monkey bars, playing tether ball, rolling on the grass--and the pad traveled. I'd find it on my left hip, or all the way up my backside, poking out of the waistband of my skirt as I sat at my desk completing my spelling words.

So yes, little children, we have made progress. Despite the bikini condom.


**Factual note: couples who adopt are no more likely to have unplanned pregnancies than couples who don't. Really. There are stats and everything, except I can't find them. But you can trust me. I am a Reliable Source. Even if I am on the Internet.

Of Palms, and Processions, and Crown Roasts

Palm Sunday. Green branches waving. "All Glory, Laud, and Honor." Lots of Hosanna-ing.

But no children's procession. Sometimes my church does a children's procession. Sometimes it doesn't. We're the flexible, changeable sorts of Presbyterians. You know, mix it up. Keep things fresh. Surprise the punters in the pews. I imagine God approves, since He/She/They seems to enjoy surprises (earth-encompassing floods, the writing on the wall, Daniel and that lion, burning bushes, virgin births, the whole resurrection thing--this is clearly a God longing for a surprise party).

I might need a more predictable God. The thing is, I really really like the children's procession. I miss the children's procession. Palm Sunday just isn't Palm Sunday without it. I'd like to think it's for deep, spiritual reasons, not just the "awwwww" factor. See, those kids stumble down the center aisle, and they embody us, we questers of the Divine, in all our various stages and manifestations. You know, you've got the kid who races down the aisle, and there's always the kid the teacher has to carry, the little ham that charms the congregation, the totally serious one who is intent on waving that palm branch is just the proper, prescribed, Presbyterian way and who is visibly annoyed by all the non-conforming palm waving all around her (yes, yes, I do identify with that kid). . .

My all-time favorite Palm Sunday was years and years ago, a lifetime ago, back before marriage, before the Ph.D., before the move Down South--another time, another place, another life. A graduate student at Northwestern, I had joined the Presbyterian church in downtown Evanston. It was my first Presbyterian church, and my first (and only) experience of a distinctly swanky congregation. The kids in the Children's Choir, for example, were decked out in red choir robes, complete with the circular white frilled collars that always reminded me of those paper frills you put on a crown roast. (To contrast: in my current church, the kids in Children's Choir definitely gravitate to the Casual section of the Children's Department: shorts, tee-shirts, sweat pants, the occasional soccer uniform. . . ) As one would expect, the church had a fabulous adult choir, filled with paid professionals (which always struck me as cheating, somehow). So the choruses of "All Glory, Laud, and Honor" resonated throughout the faux-Gothic sanctuary with carefully articulated and beautifully modulated precision, as the robed and frilled children processed up the aisle waving their palm branches. They all then gracefully folded to the floor, to sit out the welcome and opening hymn, before singing their anthem. The minister, a young, good-looking charmer with a gorgeous wife and three lovely kids, stood up and began the Welcome portion of the liturgy, which centered on the theme of embracing the Prince of Peace. And at that point, the pastor's son--a sturdy, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, four-year old--flipped his palm branch around so he was holding the stick-like end, and proceeded to transform it into a machine gun and massacre the congregation: BUHBUHBUHBUHBUH. So much for the Prince of Peace.

I was the only one laughing.  Which is probably why I don't belong in a swanky congregation with children dressed up to look like Christmas dinner lamb chops.

All glory, laud, and honor
To thee Redeemer King;
To whom the lips of children
Made sweet hosannas ring.

Pausing in Time

So, I'm watching Doc Martin and want another glass of wine. Cool beans! I click "Pause" and off I go for a refill. Pause. PAUSE! I've paused Live TV!

God. I love living in the 21st century.

I had no idea one could pause "Live TV," as in "TV being broadcast right now." But the weekend before last, Hugh had some friends staying over. While he was passed out upstairs (ok, yes, another story), his buddies were watching tv and I came in and we started chatting and something came up so that they pulled out the remote and said, "Look, Miss Facing-50, see, just press this button with the two lines and  you can pause your show." I was stunned. "Wait. Are you serious? TV? It's not a dvd? You're pausing a TELEVISION PROGRAM?" "Yeah, sure," they said, all nonchalant, but also rather gentle, like they were talking to an inquisitive toddler or maybe an Indigenous Person in a loincloth who somehow got catapulted from the jungle into our living room. "And see, just press this button with the arrow and you can fast-forward."

And suddenly, there was This Moment. Just a second or two, I guess. But in that one or two seconds, I had this vision, this totally Doctor Who moment, the possibility of time collapsing, of fast forwarding into the future, wrinkles in time, wormholes in space. No Tardis and no David Tennant, sadly, not even Matt Smith, but still, TIME, right at my fingers via my remote control.

Until Hugh's buddies stammered, "Oh no, umm, no, Miss Facing-50, we didn't mean you could, like, you know, fast-forward in real time. Just if you pause a program, later you can, you know, fast-forward it. But you know, like, you can't like really mess with time. Not really."

They had That Look on their faces--that "Oh my God, we're dealing with an insane old person" look. And, even though Hugh was unconscious upstairs and Owen was doing whatever he does in Oregon, I could hear both of them howling, "MOM! Oh God, Mom! Really?! Are you kidding me???"

Time and space collapsing.

Right. Of course. I know you can't use your tv remote to fast-forward through time. Kind of. Except, you know, like, I've seen a hell of a lot of technological change in my time. Geez louise. We had a black and white tv, you know? A transistor radio. A friggin' hi-fi. And now, I click on my remote and I pause my tv program. I speak into my phone and it tells me where to go, then I plug it into a little box and somewhere somehow someone plays hours of music that I like, songs I've never even heard before, but yes, I like them, and somehow someone somewhere knew I would like them because I like Bruce Springsteen and the Beatles and the Clash. So, fast-forwarding through time. . . .for a second there, it seemed, well, utterly real, totally sensible, completely possible.

Just for a moment. A second. An eternity.

Bad Neighbor

Well, dang. A "For Sale" sign, right there in Carole's front yard. Life will be so much less interesting without her.

Carole hates me. I have no idea why, but I've enjoyed it immensely for years.

It all started when Owen was a pre-schooler, and desperate for friends in the neighborhood. We were in our house on Cherokee, and Carole and her husband and two little boys lived just around the corner. We had met at a couple of neighborhood functions. I'll admit there was no immediate attraction. Carole is the kind of person for whom the word "coiffed" was coined. And her house sported "window treatments" rather than shades and drapes. Still, several of my best friends have window treatments and a number of them could even be described as coiffed. I'm a tolerant soul. Plus, my kid needed some nearby playmates. And there they were, Carole's Edward and Charles. They suited our needs:
1) They were kids.
2) They lived close by.
3) They seemed normal despite their Little Lord Fauntleroy playsuits and their royal names. (And I can say with a certain degree of pride in my self-control that I never ever gave in to the very strong temptation to call these kids Teddy and Charlie, and certainly not Ed and Chuck. But, can I just note that eventually Edward and Charles had two sisters named Isabella and Eugenia? 'Nuff said.)

To continue: Determined to get Owen some neighborhood buddies, I pursued Carole whenever I saw her on the sidewalk, trying to engage her in conversation, asking about the boys, talking about this and that. And she'd smile her perfectly modulated smile and nod in a kind of "oh, mmm, yes" way. I then pinned her down by issuing an outright invitation, complete with date and times, for her boys to come over and play. She agreed, but insisted that Owen come to their house instead. "Great!" said I. "And then I'll have your guys over next week." Wow. Her facial expression taught me what "brittle smile" really meant. The Play Date arrived, I dropped Owen off (God, he was so excited) and an hour later--an hour earlier than agreed--Carole brought Owen back. "We all had such a good time," she said politely, "Bye bye."

Now look. Owen was (and is--you've just got to embrace the tattoos) a perfectly normal, friendly, fun boy. He behaved himself at other people's houses. He wasn't mean or squirrelly or inappropriate or obnoxious. Even at age 4, he went out of his way to please the other kids, to do what they wanted to do, to play their way. In other words, no way in God's green earth this child caused any trouble in an hour. Yet Carole communicated, clearly and absolutely, that the first playdate was the last.

I understood. I got it. I immediately abandoned all hopes of Edward and Charles as preschool pals. (I am not as clueless as I appear.) But, you know, I'm a mom. And there was no excuse to do that to my boy. So, well, umm, ok, fact is, I decided to drive Carole nuts by pretending to be that clueless, by continuing to call and drop by and accost her on the sidewalk, by greeting her enthusiastically whenever our paths crossed at neighborhood parties, by acting as if I didn't notice that my very presence caused her pain. Her face, ah, her face, our first Halloween back after four years out of the neighborhood, when she and her kids (all four of them by this time) showed up at our door--different house, she had no idea--and I greeted her like an old and dearly beloved friend.

I shouldn't have done it, I'm sure. My mother raised me better. And yet, really, did I do any harm? And more to the point, boy howdy, it was fun.

Bye, bye Carole. I'm gonna miss you, darlin'.

Streaming

Long time no blog, I do realize and I do apologize. I could blame the hot flashes--the decision to go off the Prempro was definitely not a good one (and must be remedied very very soon). Or I could chalk it up to the stress of parenting an incredibly smart, incredibly smart-ass 17-year-old--honestly, that should give me a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for eternity. Or I could point the finger at the Republican presidential primaries, because, well, why not?  I suppose I can no longer blame anything on Katrina or the Gulf oil spill, tho' those definitely provided rather handy excuses for quite awhile.

But the fact is, I've been streaming.

Ah me. I used to live a productive life, filled with a variety of cultural and intellectual activities. I mean. you know, sort of, kind of, occasionally. But now, I appear to be fated to be a 21st-century version of Miss Haversham. Years from now a modern Pip will find me, clothed not in the tatters of a wedding gown but in what remains of my comfy jeans and oh-thank-God-the-bra-is-off tank top, sitting on a dust-covered sofa in a darkened room while the rats and roaches nibble their way through the remnants of pita and hummus on the coffee table.

If you haven't read Great Expectations, the precediing paragraph will have made no sense. Go read it. Quick! Before you start streaming, because once you do you'll never read again.  At least if you're a weak-willed soul like me.

It all started when we bought  a flat-screen high-def Google TV. It comes with this groovy remote that looks like you can program nuclear war. But instead of sending the planet to Armageddon, what you actually do is: Stream. You click a button, and you are watching whatever you want to watch, right there and then. No trip to the video store. No dvd. No envelope to return. Handy for movies, yes, but far far more handy for watching entire television series. You don't have to wait an entire week for the next episode, you don't have to order the next series online. It's just there, saying "Watch meeeeeee. Waaaaaatch me NOW." And so we do. To the exclusion of everything else. We (can't believe I'm admitting this. . . oh, the shame) actually walked out during the intermission of a Swine Palace production of "Pride and Prejudice" to hurry home and get back on the couch. Swine Palace, mind you, is THE premier professional theater company of Louisiana, which probably doesn't sound like much, but actually really and truly frequently matches what I've seen on stage in Chicago, New York, and London--and yet, even so, we left halfway through the play to resume streaming.

Now mind you, I am talking about streaming high -quality tv. We have not sacrificed our social lives and our intellectual development to "The Jersey Shore." [Honesty check: I have never actually watched "The Jersey Shore." Maybe it's a really great stuff. So if it is, just fill in whatever tv dreck you want.] We watch amazing programs that prove that the "idiot box" needn't be so idiotic, that actually this medium is capable of mind-bending, artistically innovative, spiritually challenging, extraordinarily well-written, stunningly acted original drama. (No really. Check out "The States of Tara." Watch "Friday Night Lights." Be in awe.)

Still. No matter how good the programs. Still. I have come to this. Me.  A sofa. A remote. A flat screen. A bottle of wine. Pita and hummus.

And Keith. That's the redeeming factor. Somehow as long as I'm not sitting and decaying on the sofa on my own, as long as there's this sentient being next to me who is also slowly descending into total tv-passivity, it's ok. We can just call it "together time." Amazing what you can get away, with as long as you're in a couple.