About Me

Woman, reader, writer, wife, mother of two sons, sister, daughter, aunt, friend, state university professor, historian, Midwesterner by birth but marooned in the South, Chicago Cubs fan, Anglophile, devotee of Bruce Springsteen and the 10th Doctor Who, lover of chocolate and marzipan, registered Democrat, practicing Christian (must practice--can't quite get the hang of it)--and menopausal.
Names have been changed to protect the teenagers. As if.

Thursday, March 29, 2012

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.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

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'.

Monday, March 26, 2012

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.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

S.M.A.

Hi, my name is Facing-50 and I'm a shitty mother. I am thinking of starting Shitty Mothers Anonymous. Want to join?

This weekend I was tired and feeling crummy and crabby and Hugh backed me into a corner (which, in my defense, is something that he does ruthlessly) and I just exploded. In public. Left him to deal with a disabled shopping cart full of groceries on the pavement and ran for the car. It was dumb, the sort of behavior that you see in a 17-year-old single mom of a cranky toddler and you think, "Tsk, tsk." But I'm so not 17. And not single. I know better. I've got a wealth, criminal really in its extent, of social and intellectual and financial and emotional resources at my fingertips. Sigh. So Hugh finally gets to the car and goes nuts. Screaming and swearing and even crying, "You left me! You left me!"

Oh God. My adopted son. My adopted baby screaming that I left him. Oh geez.

I'm still reeling, still trying to come to grips with it all, to sort my way through the questions of guilt and responsibility and sheer fucking personal stupidity.

Time for an S.M.A. meeting.

Monday, March 12, 2012

Oh what can it mean?

Is it possible to be driven stark raving mad by music? To be launched into lunacy by a lyric?

I think the Monkees are driving me insane. Or, more precisely, Davy Jones. Or, to be anally accurate, just this chorus: "Cheer up, sleepy Jean! Oh, what can it mean? To a daydream believer and a Homecoming Queen." That's all I know. Just those 17 words, sung in an English accent to a jaunty melody, repeated non-stop in my head, all my waking hours, since Davy died on February 29. It's 12 days later. I am experiencing a pop music version of Chinese water torture. No, no, that's where they drip water on you slowly, right? This isn't a slow drip. This is nonstop sleepy Jean and the Homecoming Queen. I don't even know what the damn song is about, for pete's sake.

Davy Jones was my first media-induced love. I was 6, and like all my classmates, I watched The Monkees on Channel 5 after school. I can still sing the entire Monkees theme song. But then, I can still sing all the lyrics to The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family theme songs. I'd feel ashamed, except I know from careful objective surveys of my demographic (i.e. late-night song fests with friends when we're slightly drunk), that every white middle-class American woman my age can do the same.

But before Greg, Peter, Bobby, Marcia, Jan, and Cindy, before Keith, Laurie, Danny, the little kid who no one ever remembers (they did change the actor after the first year), and Tracy, there were the Monkees. Like every girl in the first grade of Western Suburbs Christian School, I picked a favorite Monkee, the man I would marry if I could. That was the question: Which Monkee would you marry? Mind you, we were 6. We were too young to know there are other things one can do with men besides marry them. And although it was 1966, we lived in the white bread western suburbs of Chicago: "The '60s" were still emphatically confined to the city.

And yet. . . I do remember the utter anarchic joy of that goofy theme song--"'cos we're the young generation, and we've got something to say--hey hey we're the Monkees!"--with the four of them on the tv screen jumping and laughing. Did I know the word "liberation" at age 6? I'm not sure, but even if I didn't know the label for what I was feeling, there is no doubt that I felt it, watching the antics (not a word I often have use for, but The Monkees' episodes really rather defined the term) of four silly guys, the sense of possibility, of boundaries crashing, of something going on. And the complete, total, absolute confidence that this something had nothing whatsoever to do with my parents.

Of course, it's more than slightly embarrassing to have one's experience of the '60s summed up by the Monkees rather than the Beatles or the Stones. But such was the sad fate of those of us born in the very twilight of the baby boom. The 60s weren't really ours. They belonged to older siblings, or to our young aunts and uncles. We got the trickle-down 60s: the Monkees, the fringed suede jacket I wore in fifth grade, the Cowsills, the black-light poster I won as a prize for selling magazines to raise money for the school development fund in the 7th grade: "I do my thing and you do your thing and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful."

So back in first grade, my best friend Wendy chose Mickey, and I selected Davy, but since I was only 6, I never actually owned a Monkees record. My mother would never have spent money on such a thing and I didn't have any independent income. Or a record player. So my Monkees occurred entirely on tv, which explains why I know only one chorus of a Davy Jones song. And if that damn song doesn't get out of my head soon, I am going to go utterly, absolutely, friggin' insane.

Rest in peace, Davy Jones. And hey, Sleepy Jean, Homecoming Queen, y'all hush up, now.

Oh what can it mean. . . for a daydream believah and a AUGHHHHH.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Check List

So, I thought I was completely au courant on the whole aging thing. I thought I had the comprehensive "To Do As One Grows Old" list:
  • prod boobs for lumps and bumps
  • make sure one's moles remain nicely small and circular
  • endure a colonoscopy now and then
  • watch one's gums for signs of recession
  • beware of new scaly spots on one's skin
  • radically reduce one's consumption of fat, sugar, alcohol, caffeine, and every other fun thing
  • get regular Paps
  • monitor one's weight, heart rate, blood pressure, cholesterol, and whatever else one can assign a number to
  • interlace one's fingers with one's toes for a few minutes every day to avoid toe overlap
  • walk
  • stretch
  • exercise
  • breathe
Pretty comprehensive list, right? No, wrong. Turns out one must add a new bulletpoint:
  • watch out for one's eyelashes
I had no idea. Then my mother-in-law called. She's been struggling for a couple of months with what she thought was dry eyes. Just constant irritation and itching--incredibly annoying and distracting. But the problem lay not in her eye's liquidity, but rather, in her treasonous eyelashes. They're turning inward and scratching her eye. So, she explained as I listened in growing nausea, the eye doctor gave her a shot in her eye--yes, he stuck a needle in her eye while she sat there in the office, fully conscious, without pain killers or laughing gas or weed or geez, even Tylenol--and then put several stitches in her eyelid to keep it from curling under.

Good lord. I had no idea such a future lurked. I've always been rather fond of my eyelashes. They're long and thick and curly. And--now I know--they're just waiting to turn on me.