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.