Crazy Cat Lady

I love my cats.

That scares the shit out of me. I'm not a totally stable person; I fear becoming a Crazy Cat Lady. But I imagine that by the time one is a fully fledged Crazy Cat Lady, one would not be aware of that fact. That's comforting, really. (And why, pray tell, do people not talk about Crazy Dog Ladies? Or Crazy Cat Guys? Definitely some specie-ism and sexism at play here.)

Still, there's something about craziness and cats. Maybe it's that oh-so-old connection between cats and witchcraft. Or maybe it's the weird eyes. Or the whole pouncing thing. I dunno. But I do fear for my sanity when I find myself engaging my cats in conversation and occasionally--just occasionally, mind you--listening to their replies.

Not that I believe a word they say. I'm not crazy, you know.

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.

Christmas cards

So here's my recipe for a perfect Christmas card writing evening:
Mix together til nicely blended:
1 husband out with buddy to basketball game,
1 16-year-old out doing whatever he does that I'm sure is perfectly legal and safe and will look great on his college applications,
1 bowl of lentil soup on the boil,
1 bottle of white wine nicely chilled,
1 really bad but in a good way movie on tv (in this case "What a Girl Wants" with Colin Firth).
Add
a heaping spoonful of My Grades Are In and I'm ignoring everything else that's way overdue.
Sprinkle in lots of Good Golly It's the Weekend
and
Thank You God It's Finally Gotten Cold Outside, to taste.
Pour into Really Cute but in an Ironic Way Winnie the Pooh Christmas Cards.
Garnish with one totally amazing family Christmas newsletter.
Really.

Tho' it's best not to drink the whole bottle of wine. The addresses get a tad sloppy; the messages rather more so. Just sayin'.

Insignificance

This past Friday, the 20th anniversary of the Challenger explosion, NPR's Morning Edition featured an interview with the brother of Ron McNair, the African-American astronaut killed in the tragedy. One part of it stuck with me, and keeps, well, sticking into me:

Mr. CARL MCNAIR: When he was nine years old, Ron, without my parents or myself knowing his whereabouts, decided to take a mile walk from our home [in South Carolina] down to the library, which was, of course, a public library, but not so public for blacks folks when you're talking about 1959. So as he was walking in there, all these folks were staring at him because they were white folk only. And they were looking at him, saying, you know, who is this Negro?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. MCNAIR: So he politely positioned himself in line to check out his books.
Well, this old librarian, she says, this library is not for coloreds. He said, well, I would like to check out these books. She says, young man, if you don't leave this library right now, I'm going to call the police.
So he just propped himself up on the counter and sat there and said, I'll wait.
So she called the police and subsequently called my mother. The police came down, two burly guys come and say, well, where's the disturbance? And she pointed to the little nine-year-old boy sitting up on the counter.
And he says, ma'am, what's the problem?
So my mother - she comes down there praying the whole way there: Lordy, Jesus, please don't let them put my child in jail. And my mother asks the librarian, what's the problem?
Well, he wanted to check out the books, and you know your son shouldn't be down here.
And the police officer said, why don't you just give the kid the books?
And my mother said, he'll take good care of them.
And reluctantly the librarian gave Ron the books. And my mother said, what do you say?
He said, thank you, ma'am.
(Soundbite of laughter)

What strikes me, what bowls me over, is not the librarian trying to deny young Ron the book. Nothing surprising there, not in South Carolina in 1959. The surprise is the cop, that nameless police officer, whose ordinary yet extraordinary action Carl McNair passes over without a pause. What was he doing, that cop? What was he thinking? "Why don't you just give the kid the books?" The black kid? In 1959? In South Carolina? With the civil rights movement heating up and white paranoia boiling over? Did his fellow police officer look at him in astonishment or confront him once they got back in the squad car, maybe call him an n-lover? Did he think about it, wonder about it later? Or was it, for him, just one insignificant moment in one insignificant day?

How many lives do I help make or break, during all the insignificant moments of my insignificant days?

Return to Heloiseland

I've posted before about my favorite newspaper column, "Hints from Heloise." I do love Heloiseland in all its order and enthusiasm and problem-solving spirit. This week, however, was truly a highpoint for Heloise lovers.

First came Cindy H. from Baytown, Texas. Cindy, weighed down with those "older bottles of spray perfume that [she] no longer liked or that, with age, had become too strong," has found a creative solution. "I now give a few squirts of spray to the inside of my cardboard toilet-paper rolls so that, with each use, a nice scent is released."

And just like that, we enter the threshold of an alternative universe: Heloiseland, where so little goes awry that its inhabitants have time and energy to fret over excess perfume spray bottles and where now, thanks to Cindy H. of Baytown, Heloiselanders can enjoy the fragrance of old perfume with every wipe.

But it got better.

Betty Hill, of Grove City, Iowa, wrote in to tell us, "After washing and drying sweaters, blue jeans, hooded sweats, etc., remove lint from the inside of all pockets by turning wrong-side out and rubbing briskly with an emery board. This works like a charm."

Gosh. I didn't even know about the problem of pocket lint! I will confess, that in a shocking reversion to traditional gender roles, I am the household laundress--ok, actually, I only do Keith's and my laundry; as soon as the boys entered middle school, I introduced them to the wonders of the washer & dryer, and insisted they take charge of their dirty clothes--which means that to get into bed every night, Hugh has to wade through a knee-high "clothesdrift" (it truly does resemble a snowdrift, except it's a lot more colorful and it smells much, much worse, but hey, that's his problem)--and I admit I'm a laundry "lay-about," as the British would say: the journey from dirty clothes hamper through washer/dryer onto the folding table (aka the dining room table) and into drawers and closets can take weeks, yea, even months. Occasionally, Keith will casually inquire, in his best "I'm a feminist and I am in no way implying you should be delivering clean clothes to my wardrobe" tone, "Umm, have you by any chance seen my khakis?" I ponder and then reply, "Oh right. They're in the dryer"--where they've been for six days.

All of which may help explain my reaction to Betty Hill of Grove City, Iowa.

Betty Hill, I am in awe. I mean, I'm scrambling through the dirty clothes hamper to find my no-line panty that I wore three days ago but haven't washed yet and now need because I'm going to wear my tight skirt, and you, you, oh amazing Betty Hill, you are filing--or perhaps buffing is the correct word-- the inside-out pockets of blue jeans and hooded sweats with your emery board.

Betty Hill of Grove City, Iowa: Can I come live with you? Will you buff away my pocket lint? And maybe squirt aged perfume on my toilet rolls so that when I poop, all I smell is ancient Charlie or Estee Lauder White Linen? And I know you keep Heloise's Always-Ready Basic Muffin Mix on hand, so that when unexpected guests drop in, you can quickly blend in an egg and a half-cup of milk, and voila! produce home-baked muffins in ten minutes. Betty, I could use a muffin. Please, can I come stay with you in Heloiseland?

Junior League

Perusing the Sunday paper, cruising through the People section, skimming along past "Out and About" --and there they were, a set of photographs of Junior League's "Ho Ho Hollydays." I try to just flip on by but no, no, I can't. The pull is too powerful, the addiction--once again-confirmed. I turn back and stare at the photographs for a long, long time.

I'm not addicted to Hollydays. I'm not even sure what it is, actually, just that it happens every year in Baton Rouge. I think it has something to do with shopping and fundraising--and lots of thin white women with expensive haircuts in tasteful sheath dresses. They are my addiction--the women in the photos, the Junior Leaguers. They're so completely outside my experience, so utterly foreign, that I find them fascinating. See, I've never met a Junior Leaguer.

Oh dear. I sound like my mother, saying she's never known anyone who is gay.

I suppose, like my mom and gay folks, that over the years I've been introduced to many a Junior Leaguer, and just not realized the JL thing going on. I mean, there must be closeted Junior Leaguers, women who don't usually dress like Jackie Kennedy, women whose hair is a mass of frizz, women who fantasize about chucking their hummus-dipped pita triangles at the tv screenwhenever Glenn Beck comes on. (but don't actually do it because they know they're the ones who will be stuck scraping the hummus off the screen). And then trip on over to Ho-Ho-Hollydays and smile for the camera.

I guess. But I don't know. And that's the source of my fascination--that I don't know. I stare at the photos and I wonder, "Who are you?" They all look like they've just left the set of Mad Men--but it's 2010. I suppose it's the same reason I stare at the Amish. (I know, I know; it's really ignorant and rude and I do try to be discreet. . . but come on, 'fess up, don't you find yourself peering over as well?) Here are these people, from another time, except no, they're here, in our time--and historian that I am, I'm mesmerized.

Besides, I keep wondering, what happens when these women age? Why is there no Senior League?

Bizarro

Today's newspaper contained a great Bizarro comic: A couple walk on a deserted beach. She says to him, "I'm having such a great time that I must be in a pharmaceuticals commercial."

So rested she by the Tumtum tree

Growing up in a conservative Christian family, attending a private religious school, enmeshed within an immigrant community with a strong religious identity, I memorized countless pages of incomparable prose--Psalms and Gospel narratives, Proverbs and vast portions of the Heidelberg Catechism, various creeds and oh-so-many hymns and carols.

So, why is it, then, that the one thing, the one single thing, that I can still recite effortlessly, perfectly, fully, without having to stop, without thinking, is "The Jabberwocky"?

I dunno, but I suspect I'd be a better person if, in moments of crisis or stress, I could recall the Beatitudes or the 23rd Psalm or a Wesley hymn. But no, I conjure up, "Beware the Jabberwock, my son, the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!"

Which might not seem so odd, really. Fitting for periods of danger. But, the sad fact is, "The Jabberwocky" comes up at the most awkward times. Sex, for example. It's painful to admit, but in moments of extreme intimacy, here's what sometimes comes into my head: "One, two! One, two! And through and through/The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!" Yes, it's very strange. I do worry.

At other times, the poem's echoes have seemed rather more appropriate. During the Margaret Thatcher/Nancy Reagan era, for example, "Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch" came to mind as a literal warning. And when the boys were little and had done something amazing, I would cheer, "Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" These days, I'll look at a dazed undergrad and, I just can't help it, I think of: "And as in uffish thought he stood."

Twas brillig today. The slithy toves gyred and gimbled in the wabe. The borogroves were all mimsy. And the momes raths, the momes rath did totally outgrabe.

Graceland

Driving from Baton Rouge to Chicago, listening to Paul Simon's Graceland album.

The album is, of course, a masterpiece, but the song "Graceland" is perfection. If Simon had done nothing at all in his life except write that song, he could have died knowing he had done great good in the world.

That evocative opening lyric:
The Mississippi Delta was shining
Like a National guitar

That brutal rendition of a love gone bad:
She comes back to tell me she's gone
As if I didn't know that
As if I didn't know my own bed
As if I'd never noticed
The way she brushed her hair from her forehead.

That wonderful description of life's craziness:
There's a girl in New York City
Who calls herself the human trampoline
And sometimes when I'm falling, flying
Or tumbling in turmoil I say
Oh, so this is what she means.

That account of heartbreak and loss:
Losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow.

And, most of all, that breathtaking affirmation of redemption:
I've a reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland.

And all that's left to say is, amen.

Not in a state to perform the function

Trying to log on to my computer just now, I was informed: "Log-in has failed. The group or agency is not in a state to perform the function." Huh? There's a group or agency inside my computer? And what are those group or agency members doing in there that has rendered them incapable of performing their usual functions? What kind of state are they in, anyway? Should I take their car keys away? Get them ibuprofin? Call their mothers? Report them to, I dunno, Bill Gates?

The Slough of Corruption

It's official. I am Morally Corrupt.

I used to be pure. Unsullied. I didn't own a tv. Then my mom gave me an old black-and-white portable that used to be in my parents' bedroom. That was fine. Most of the time the "picture" was just a bunch of wavy lines, so I could watch I, Claudius and yet still feel untainted because I was really just listening. That tv melted in an apartment fire and shortly thereafter, I took my first step down the slippery slope. I accepted a small color tv (bizarrely, the giver was once again my mom, not usually one to play the Temptress in my life's story).

So, ok, tv. But free tv. I drew the line at paid tv, and when we married, Keith gave up his cable subscription. Time drifted on, however, as did technology, and eventually we found the only way to ensure that the free network channels would actually appear on the screen was to purchase a cable tv subscription. Basic cable, just the networks and a bunch of local and religious stations, but still, we were now paying--paying--for tv. Down the slope we slid.

I suppose I should note we had paid for tv before--when we lived in England. But that's different. That's paying for the BBC. The BBC is worth it. It's moral. Totally different.

Anyway, there we were back in the U.S., with Basic Cable, clinging to our moral sense, as the boys moaned and whined and sulked and pestered us. Evidently we were the only family left in America with Basic Cable. Evidently we were guilty of child abuse by depriving them of Nick-at-Nite and MTV. But we stood firm.

Until Keith read one of those mail advertisement things and discovered that for less than what we had been paying, we could get our wireless internet bundled in with our phone and satellite tv--with the regular package of tv channels. Well. A Really Good Deal trumped morality. We went from about 5 watchable channels to umm, 95? Not that all 95 are watchable, not at all, but the thing is, the regular package included BBCAmerica, which meant there was no going back. Not ever. Life without BBCAmerica is totally unthinkable. I am not sure how I survived so much of my adult life without it. I know for a fact that if I were deprived of the new Doctor Who, my adult life would not be worth living.

Still, I retained some shreds of moral decency--after all, we purchased only the regular package, not the fullbore, deluxe, HBO-Showtime extravaganza. "Oh, we don't have HBO," I could say gently, but loftily, when someone started raving on about The Wire or Mad Men or whatever. We are Good People. We wait for the series to come out on Netflix. We do not demand Immediate Gratification. We do not Spend Our Money on TV. Umm, not as much as we could, anyway.

Then I read about this new HBO series: Treme'. Set in post-Katrina New Orleans. it begins tonight. We live in south Louisiana. We lived thru Katrina. Keith works with the homeless--Katrina continues to shape his daily work life. And it continues to shape the world in which we live. We can't wait for Netflix. So, weve upgraded to HBO. We'll be watching the series premiere in just 15 minutes.

It's official. I'm morally corrupt. I gotta say, tho', this moral corruption stuff, it's really kinda fun. We just watched True Blood--without waiting for Netflix. And there are these cool movies. And that Tudor series is coming on. And Hugh is so very happy . . .

Outside the Land of Mordor

This is the time of year when south Louisiana sucks me in. The long, pleasantly warm days, the cool nights, the azaleas exploding with color in silent fireworks displays all across town, the leafy trees playing tag with the sun. Snowy egrets line up along the shores of the lakes; a brown heron struts her stuff; ducklings bob about the shallows. The restaurants trumpet, "Boiled Crawfish Now Available," and at every table diners descend into the primordial pleasure of twisting off heads, peeling tails, and sucking meat. I find myself thinking, "what an amazing, what a glorious, what an exotic place to live."

I've been had. Again.

I know, I do know, that within a matter of weeks, the heat will rise from the pavement in waves, will wrap its sticky cloak around me so that I'm like Frodo caught in Shelob's sticky web: pale, poisoned, unable to move a limb, not caring if I live or die.

But for now, I'm living in the Shire in 1420, "the marvellous year." Mordor has fallen, the good and the golden have triumphed, and "not only [i]s there wonderful sunshine and delicious rain, in due times and perfect measure, but there seem[s] something more: an air of richness and growth, and a gleam of a beauty beyond that of mortal summers that flicker and pass upon this Middle-earth. . . . And no one [i]s ill, and everyone [i]s pleased, except those who ha[ve] to mow the grass."*

But here in Shire-on-the-Bayou, in the glorious springtime, even mowing the grass is a fine and wonderful thing. Not that I actually mow (what else is the point of male offspring?), but I watch from the porch and really, Hugh looks happy, even bucolic. Ish.

Soon, tho', he'll be stumbling behind the mower, gasping for water, falling to his knees and muttering about "My Preciousssss."

Mordor will rise once more.

Every damn summer in south Louisiana.

*J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. Vol. 3. The Return of the King, p. 1000 (1991 ed.).

A bit confused

There's a shop in Gulf Shores (Alabama) with the name "JUST BOOKS." And underneath the shop sign is a second sign: "Rent your movies here."

I just love that.

Name it

Quite awhile back I watched a movie, the name of which I can no longer recall, that featured several women having a drink in a pub, and one of them was telling the others that for the longest time she thought clitoris was pronounced cli-TOR-is, "like a woman's name." And I was tickled because for the longest time I thought vagina was pronounced veh-JEEN-ah, and that it really did sound like a lovely name for a girl. As does vulva, actually. "Have you met my daughters? This is my eldest, CliTORis, and this is VaGINa, and our the baby of the family, Vulva?" But it's not just specifically female body parts. Divorce rectum from its meaning and just focus on the sounds. Now, isn't that a rugged guy's name? Or urethra. It's quite pretty. I can imagine meeting girls named Tibia and Fibula, or a man named Clavicle.

I mean, it's no more odd than the fact that my classes are now populated by individuals named after cities in Texas--Houston, Austin, Dallas, Tyler. I'm just glad Lubbock never caught on. And then there are all those girls named Reagan.

Keith says we should have named Owen and Hugh "Carter" and "Clinton," just to balance things a bit.

Flying

Did you know that Nashville is the Athens of the South? So the jaunty voice on the Nashville airport loudspeaker just announced. I wonder if there's an acropolis? And where is the Athens of the North?

Flying always makes me question if we really won the Cold War. I look around the waiting area: Long lines of grumpy but subjugated people carrying heavy loads. All nodding abjectly when told patent lies. Standing shoeless before stone-faced, power-hungry uniformed thugs. And then crammed with strangers into a small airless container and denied food for hours at a time. Somewhere Khrushchev is smiling.