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.

Monday, November 19, 2012

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.

Friday, November 16, 2012

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.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

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.



Thursday, November 8, 2012

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.

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

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.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

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.