Category Archive

While I was in California my stepmother told me that I should start telling her and my dad now which of their many possessions I’d like to have “after they’re gone.”  This is weird to me because I remember when my mother was dying, she started asking each of us what things of hers we wanted to have, and that was very painful because she only had two weeks to live and I didn’t want any of her things, I just wanted her to keep living.  My mother was not a woman of many possessions, anyway.  Or rather, she was a woman of many temporary possessions, not the sort of things one usually bequeaths to anyone else.  My parents’ life together was one of looking forward to the day when they would have more money (or fewer liabilities) and more time (or fewer responsibilities), and finally be able to get something nice and go someplace exciting.  My father actually went to a lot of exciting places on business—Europe, Russia, Japan, Hawaii, who knows where else—but it was not usually practical for my mother to go with him.  She did accompany him to a conference in Boston once.  That might have been the only trip they took together (alone) since their honeymoon.  It’s ironic, in the Alannis Morrisette sense, that just as they were on the cusp of empty-nestdom, she should leave the nest herself.  Wherever she is now, I reckon it’s at least as nice as Hawaii, but I think my dad still wishes in retrospect that he had taken her to Hawaii when he had the chance. 

 

My dad is well aware of the opportunities he missed with his first wife, so he hasn’t made the same mistakes with the second one.  Of course it helps that he has more money and all that et cetera, but still, he’s learned his lesson.  Also, my step-mother isn’t shy about telling him what she wants.  Or what she doesn’t want—but she only tells him about that after he’s already given it to her.  And then she tells anyone else who will listen about how much she doesn’t like it and why on earth would he buy such a thing for her.  It’s a bit hard to take because a) despite his documented shortcomings, my father is very thoughtful about gifts—even if it isn’t what you wanted, he sure has a lot of reasons why he thought you’d like it, and b) my mother never got anything as nice as the stuff Dad buys for Step-mother.

 

Step-mother is a wonderful woman in many regards, but she could use some work in the graciousness department.  I don’t claim to be a paragon of this virtue myself, but I do know that if my husband bought me a piece of jewelry that he thought I’d like, I’d suck it up and wear it.  At the very least I would refrain from calling it “tacky.”  While we were there last week, I got to see my father at his wit’s end, trying to explain to his wife that the earrings made from diamond chips he gave her for their tenth anniversary really were diamonds.

 

“I don’t see how they’re any different from cubic zirconium,” she said.

 

“Because they’re diamonds!  They’re 100 percent diamonds, made from carbon!  Cubic zirconium has zirconium in it!”

 

“So I have genuine fake diamonds?”

 

“You have genuine REAL DIAMONDS!  And they weren’t cheap, either!”

 

That’s when I told her that if she didn’t want her genuine fake diamonds, I would gladly take them.  Only I’d pass them off as real.  Then everybody laughed.  Which was good, because I was about to punch her.  Also, I don’t have pierced ears, so a fat lot of good genuine diamond earrings would have done me.  Maybe I could have bequeathed them to somebody.

 

Which brings me back to my original subject.  My mother had no jewelry to speak of, aside from her wedding ring, which she was buried with.  It was a simple white-gold band, just like my father’s.  My dad remembers that they bought the set at Monkey Wards for $65.  It’s a sweet story, I think, but that’s neither here nor there.  She also had no china, fine or otherwise.  I think she used the same white Corelle dishes for the first twenty years she was married.  Then she bought some dinnerware with a country goose theme.  This was after she decided that she was going to be into geese.  She bought some goose glasses to go with them, but quite a few of them broke.  She couldn’t find the same pattern anymore, so she bought some slightly different goose glasses to replace the broken ones.  A lot of those broke, too.  I inherited the lone surviving goose glass a couple years ago.  It has since broken.  I wasn’t too torn up about it, though, because I’d also inherited the goose dishes and the goose salt-and-pepper shakers, which are packed away like they were fine china, and not just some country kitchenware that isn’t my particularly my style.  I have naught against geese, country or otherwise.  I just have my own dishes that I registered for at Target ten years ago, and I hardly ever use those, either.  We prefer Spiderman and Barbie plates at our house.

 

I also have my mother’s old melamine serving platter.  It’s yellow-green and too thin and thus has a crack in it.  I don’t use it anymore.  It’s entirely useless, and not valuable.  It’s not even attractive.  I keep it because it was my mother’s, just like I keep her old reading glasses, which she may very well have bought at the Pic’n’Save, for all I know.  They are in the same cheesy glasses case I made her for Mother’s Day in my eighth-grade home ec class.  It’s one of those plastic-grid needlework crafts, a yellow flower with a white background.  It is, of course, filthy.  It’s been filthy since a week after Mother’s Day twenty-three years ago.  Good Lord, twenty-three years.  The glasses and the case are in the bottom of my temple bag because the last time I went to the temple with my mother, she had me carry some of her stuff in there.  Sometime after she died I cleaned out my temple bag and found them, and I just left them there.  Where else would I keep them?

 

What’s left at my parents’ house is a whole lot of pretty nice stuff I don’t want.  What I want is the crap stuff I grew up with.  I want the Keane paintings my mother bought in a garage when she was still young and single.  They aren’t worth anything and I reckon my husband would sooner die than have them on his walls—but they are integral images of my childhood, and therefore they appeal to me.  They are both night scenes.  One is of a lone little blond girl sitting on a step of a long staircase in the moonlight.  The other is of a young woman on a busy street.  In each picture the subject is staring straight at you with their giant eyes.  Yes, it is creepy and weird.  (This was before Margaret Keane became a Jehovah’s Witness and started painting happy pictures.)  My mother bought the woman-on-the-street picture because it reminded her of herself—a young single woman on her own.  She even looks like my mother did in those days (at least as much as anything Keane painted could look like a human).  In the background there’s a sketchy image of a man who looks like the young version of my Dad.  To us that gave the painting a sort of mystical quality, since my mother was years away from meeting Dad when she bought it.  Dude, her destiny was right there in the freaking painting, and she had no idea!  My brother has that painting.  I suppose it’s appropriate, since he’s the only single one left among us.  Maybe he’ll meet a blond woman with giant eyes someday, and their kids will be similarly impressed by the magic painting that can tell the future.

 

After my mother died, everything she owned became a holy relic to me.  There was so little, materially speaking, to remember her by.  She hated having her picture taken because she hated how fat she looked, so we have very few pictures of her.  Most of the things she had were not meant to last.  They were meant to be used until they could be replaced with something better.  This is why I still have Post-It notes that my mother wrote on.  Stuff that should have been thrown away a long time ago has taken on ridiculous significance simply because I know there will be no more of it.  It will never be replaced with something better. 

I suppose this is the legacy my mother left me, that I can live with not having the best of everything—but also that I won’t have forever to do what I mean to do.  As much as possible, the doing should be done now.  It shouldn’t be saved for later.

I am a recovering pack rat.  The cynical among us might say that I’m a recovering pack rat in the same sense that Mel Gibson is a recovering alcoholic.  Fortunately, when I fall off the wagon, I don’t blame some innocent minority group.  I blame my parents.

Actually, I blame myself.  I blame myself first, anyway.  Then after I’ve heaped the damnation upon my own soul, I blame the modern consumer culture I live in.  Then I blame my parents.  Then I go back to blaming myself.  It’s a vicious cycle. 

You see, I’m just a tender-hearted soul.  I attach far too much emotional significance to material objects.  I’ve learned this about myself, okay?  I admit I have a problem.  I’m well aware of my internal struggle.  It’s huge.  That’s why I get extra-mad at people who tempt me with more material objects to horde.  They should have more compassion for my disease.

Sugar Daddy and I have moved seven times in our marriage, so with each move I had the opportunity to do a major purge of my ample stuff.  I was extremely proud of myself for giving away my collection of gift bags to a needy gift-giver.  She asked me if I was sure I wanted to part with them, as they come in so handy when it’s time to give someone a present.  “I’m absolutely sure I don’t want to cart them out of state,” I replied.  “Anyway, I can always get more.”  Actually, for the first year and a half after the great gift-bag giveaway, I was reduced to wrapping my gifts in manila envelopes, but everyone else thought that was so creative and hip that I didn’t mind.  Anyway, it was better than storing those infernal gift bags.  Whew.  That’s my success story.

Now for the sad stories.  I’ve gotten rid of tons of other stuff over the years, and I don’t miss or remember any of it.  Unfortunately, I can’t feel good about those purges because they’ve made only the tiniest dent in my Huge Pile of Crap that I seem to add to daily.  I pack stuff up for the Goodwill, but then I don’t take it to the Goodwill.  It somehow becomes unpacked and strewn about the garage.  Some of it ends up creeping back into my house, and I say, “AUUUUUGHHHHH!  WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?  GET OUT OF HERE!” and I pack it up for the Goodwill again, but I don’t take it to the Goodwill, and, yeah, that’s pretty much how that goes.

After we bought the house, my step-mother brought up about, I don’t know, twenty boxes with my name on them, stuff that had been sitting in her and my dad’s garage until I had room enough to store it myself.  I told her many, many times over the years that I didn’t know what was in those boxes, but I did know that I didn’t want whatever it was.  I had too much already.  Whatever was in those boxes could not possibly improve my quality of life, and if I didn’t know what it was, I’d never miss it.  I told her to throw it away, throw it all away, don’t even so much as peek inside, just throw it all away.  She couldn’t do that, of course, so she held on to it for seven years and then packed it in the back of her Prius and hauled it a thousand miles so I could throw it away myself.  I made the mistake of looking inside.  I saw stuff I wanted to keep.  I wouldn’t have missed it if I’d never seen it, but having seen it, I had to keep it.  I only wanted to keep a small minority of the stuff, though.  Most of the other stuff fell into one of three categories: 

Category 1:  Stuff I Don’t Want and Which No Person in Her Right Mind Would Want

This would include stuff like the envelope that my SAT scores came in (not the scores themselves, mind you, just the envelope), my fifth grade spelling book, and a fifteen-year-old tube of holiday M&M’s.  Why?  you might wonder.  Why indeed.  I have no idea.  But at least I didn’t pack it in a Prius and drive it a thousand miles.

Category 2:  Stuff I Don’t Want, Which Means Nothing to Me, But Which I Feel Ought To Have Sentimental Value Even Though It Doesn’t to Me Personally

This would include stuff like souvenirs I can’t remember the origins of and random gifts of which I forget the giver.

Category 3:  Stuff I Don’t Want But Which I Feel Guilty Throwing Away Because It’s Still Useful, Only Technically It’s Not Useful Because I Don’t Want To Use It and I Don’t Know Anybody Else Who Wants It Either

This would include stuff like stationery and, I dunno, paper clips.  I mean, all these things are useful, but one only uses so much of them. 

You don’t have to tell me what needs to be done with all of this stuff.  I know what needs to be done.  Half of it is already gone.  The other half is boxed up for Goodwill, only I haven’t taken it to Goodwill yet, and, oh, never mind.

Then there’s my record collection.  But that’s another blog.

Anyway, my point is that I know I have a problem.  I am working on my problem.  Getting rid of the stuff I have is hard enough.  At the same time I am also working on not acquiring additional stuff.  I can’t tell which I’m worse at, but I can tell you that my loved ones are not helping by giving me stuff that I’m not even under the illusion of thinking I need.  My mother-in-law–whom I love, dear as my own fine mother–collects things.  I mean that she collects certain kinds of things, and also that she collects things in general.  She also collects things that she sends to me.  As in, “I thought this was a neat container, you could put craft things in it or something.”  God bless her, I could indeed put craft things in it, but unfortunately the thing that’s keeping me from doing crafts is not the absence of a random plastic container with many compartments that once held cheesecake or hors d’oeurves or whatever.  I enjoy having my mother-in-law visit, but I cannot throw anything away in her presence.  I have to wait until she’s sleeping.  On the plus side, my husband will suppress whatever pack-rat tendencies he’s inherited from her while she’s here, I think because he enjoys making her crazy. 

But then there’s my father’s wife.  I thought the Great Prius Dump of 2004 would end my obligation to my folks’ Midlife Simplification Project, but as it turned out, there was still a whole lot of other crap in there that she thinks we kids should divvy up among us.  A few weeks ago she sent each of us an e-mail with twenty-nine attachments, which were photos of the stuffed animal colony that has lived in their garage for the last decade or so.  This doesn’t mean there were 29 stuffed animals.  There were 29 group photos of stuffed animals.  When I talked to her on the phone a couple days later, I said that I hadn’t looked at any of the pictures yet but I knew that I didn’t want any more stuffed animals, because if I wanted them I would have wondered where they were by now.  She said she wouldn’t get rid of them until I looked at the pictures because I might want them.  Okay, I said, I will look at them before I tell you again that I don’t want them.

Well, I looked at the pictures, and I didn’t want any of those animals, not even the two that were technically mine.  But I failed to respond immediately, so yesterday I received a package in the mail, which I didn’t open right away because I was cleaning my house, and the last thing I wanted to know was what was in that package.  But then I checked my e-mail and I scared the baby because I screamed out loud when I read this:

“Too late!  You never told me which ones you wanted, so I picked for you.”

Now, I’m sorry that I never got back to her about the animals I swore up and down that I never wanted and never would want even if I did look at them, but did she have to go and do that?  Really.  To add insult to injury, none of what she picked out for me included anything that once actually belonged to me.  I was so angry that I felt like sending it right back to her.  SD said he would enjoy setting the stuffed animals on fire and taking pictures of the burning animals to send to her in 29 separate attachments, but that isn’t really my style.  I’m more the passive-aggressive type.  I’m just never speaking to her again.

Just kidding.  But I’m still mad.

A recent post at Feminist Mormon Housewives brought up the topic of appropriately accommodating diversity of beliefs in a family setting.  The author’s sister-in-law had a Muslim husband who of course didn’t celebrate Christmas and didn’t want his children celebrating Christmas, but the sister-in-law still wanted to celebrate Christmas with her extended clan, and so what ended up happening was that the sister-in-law brought her little family to the big family Christmas gathering and celebrated Christmas herself while her grumpy husband and disappointed children stood around and watched everyone else open presents and have fun.  Seemed odd to me.  I think if you’re a Christian married to a Muslim and you agree to have your children raised Muslim, maybe you shouldn’t celebrate Christmas so conspicuously yourself.  Do we get to hear our children cry so infrequently that we must make gratuitous efforts to have them do so?  I don’t know. 

Anyway, in the comments the author said that historically her family has bent over backwards to celebrate Christmas in as Muslim-friendly a way as possible, e.g. not singing Christmas carols, so as not to offend the Muslim husband.  (I think they even fasted when Christmas fell during Ramadan, or something like that.)  Someone else commented that their atheist relative had similarly ruined Christmas for them by being snide and grumpy and impatient with any expression of religious faith.  That seemed excessive to me.  If I were visiting people of a different religious tradition during a major holiday, I would not expect them to modify–or abandon–their rituals to suit me.  Actually, I don’t think that behavior seems excessive.  It’s patently offensive and unreasonable any way you slice it.  Some people should just stay home on Christmas.  The world would be a better place.

But all of this discussion reminded me of a recent series of letters in the Ask Amy column about a couple who were non-religious and took umbrage at their religious relatives praying out loud before a meal in their (the non-religious couple’s) home.  The couple had no problem sitting respectfully through a prayer at their relatives’ home(s) but thought that their own home should be their secular castle, as it were.  People responding to the original letter had vastly different opinions, and I wasn’t sure how I would rule on this if someone wrote to Ask the Giraffe with a similar issue.  Our family prays before eating in our home, but we don’t take the reins of mealtime ritual in other people’s homes. 

As a teenager, when I ate at my Catholic friends’ homes, everyone did the sign of the cross before saying grace.  Well, everyone but me, because a) I could never remember what you did in what order (this was before I learned the spectacles-testicles-etc. mnemonic) and b) it seemed, I dunno, silly for a Mormon girl to fake Catholicness.  But I certainly bowed my head respectfully and remained blissfully unoffended by a ritual gesture I didn’t happen to be practiced in.  When I eat with friends who don’t, for whatever reason, say any prayer before eating, I don’t feel a need to do so myself.  But perhaps I’m overly laid-back in this regard.  It wouldn’t be the first time.

My husband says that when he was a missionary, this business of praying in public before eating was an issue because Mormon missionaries are so conspicuous to begin with.  If you pray aloud over your Big Mac, people think you’re some kind of exhibitionist.  If you don’t pray at all, people think you’re a hypocrite (or whatever).  So for them the happy medium was to make this ambiguous gesture which involved putting your hand to your forehead and closing your eyes for about 1.5 seconds.  They called it the Missionary Headache.  It could mean whatever you wanted it to mean.  Silly Mormons.  It seemed to work for them, though.

I’m sure other people of various religious bents feel obligated to pray before mealtime and would be upset if asked specifically not to pray.  I can’t really imagine having someone over to my house and then, when they start to pray, saying, “Hold it right there, bucko!  Not under my roof!”  Unless they had to be naked or pick their noses or something while they were praying–that I might have to factor in, I don’t know.  Anyway, I don’t like confrontation, so if a guest got out her crystals and lit incense before eating, I wouldn’t think to object.  (If she had to sacrifice an animal, I’d probably ask her to do it on the patio.)  But still…it seems somewhat impolite to insist on your particular prayer ritual at the table of someone who has made it clear that they don’t share your beliefs and aren’t comfortable with the attendant practices. 

What do you all think?

The following is dedicated to Scott, King of the Epic Blog Entries

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Sugar Daddy said I would probably provide a travelogue of our vacation, which is interesting because I hate doing travelogues.  I actually dislike being on the receiving end of a travelogue, which is why I don’t like doing travelogues.  I bore myself, and I sense that I am boring others.  Who wants to see a slide-show of my vacation?  No one.  (Good thing, too, because we took hardly any pictures.  So many kids, not enough duct tape.) 

Yet I feel obligated to give my report.  Get it down for posterity.  Sigh.  So bear with me.

The trip started inauspiciously when we flew into St. Louis to discover that the airline had checked our bags to Chicago.  It wasn’t the fault of the woman who checked our bags.  She thought we were Mark Williams.  He was going to Chicago.  Where his bags ended up, I don’t know.  But it was midnight in St. Louis and our luggage was MIA, including the stroller, which had been gate-checked, for the love of Mike.  They gave us a loaner stroller, but for the next 22 hours we had to live with the clothes on our backs.  (Except Mister Bubby, who had wisely insisted on packing all his worldly belongings into his carry-on Scooby Doo suitcase.  Note to self:  Next vacation, we all pack Scoobies.) 

That was really okay, because it was hot and humid in St. Louis, and clean clothes would have been wasted anyway.  So we went to the City Museum, as SD mentioned in his blog, with my sister, brother-in-law, and their daughter, who is Princess Zurg’s age.  I will refer to her as Cousin Yinda because that is what PZ called her when she was two years old and couldn’t pronounce her L’s.  My sister and Cousin Yinda came to visit me and PZ when I was pregnant with Mister Bubby and SD had gone trotting off to England on “business.”  I was glad of the company, but PZ was less grateful.  She did not cotton so much to Cousin Yinda, who was a few months younger and really, really wanted to be PZ’s friend, much to the annoyance of the anti-social PZ, who, lacking appropriate verbal skills at that age, responded to most of CY’s overtures with screaming, pushing or a frustrated scowl that seemed to say, “Don’t you get it?  We’re enemies.“  They got along much better the next year, when they were both a little older, but since my sister’s family moved to St. Louis, we haven’t seen much of Cousin Yinda until now.  I only tell you the earlier story as a dramatic contrast to this trip, in which PZ and CY became BFF’s, walking along holding hands, having slumber parties until all hours and whatnot.  Ah, family.

So yeah, the City Museum–really cool, blah blah, definitely go there if you’re going to St. Louis, yadda yadda.

Moving right along, on Wednesday we all drove up to Nauvoo, stopping first at Carthage Jail, where Joseph Smith was killed.  That was interesting, in the sense that I can now say, “I’ve been to Carthage Jail.  It was interesting.”  Some of it is original, including the door with the hole made by the bullet that killed Joseph’s brother Hyrum.  But it might have been more enriching if we hadn’t had Elvis in tow.  Anyway, we went to Nauvoo, which my brother-in-law aptly described as the Mormon Disneyland.  The kids played at Pioneer Pastimes, where they got to play some old-fashioned games and run around like ninnies.  The boys went and visited the old gun shop and the girls visited the Family Living Center or somesuch place–you know, where they bake bread and make rope and beeswax candles.  In hindsight I wish I’d gone for the guns.  I visited the Printing Press.  Then we all trucked down to the cemetery, where some of my BIL’s ancestors are buried.  (You don’t see that at Disneyland, do ya?)  Then we said goodbye to sister, BIL and CY and went in search for food. 

Let me save you some trouble, if you’re planning a visit to Nauvoo.  Bring your own dinner.

We ended the day with Sunset on the Mississippi, which is a cheesy, mildly amusing road show put on by elderly couple missionaries and BYU theater students on summer break (I’m guessing).  It was entertaining, but true to Mormon form ran about 45 minutes longer than it should have.  We had to leave early because Elvis kept trying to wander into the river.  Which, if you haven’t seen it yourself, is big.

The next day we finished our tour by visiting some of the historical sites maintained by the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, now known as Community of Christ–or as I think of it, Mormonism Lite.  The cool thing about the Reorganites is that they sell more souvenirs.  I didn’t get the Joseph Smith root beer, but I did buy a magnet for my magnet collection.  It was a nice tile one, with the Nauvoo Temple on it–an artist’s rendering but interesting in that it’s a rendering not of the historical building but of the one rebuilt by the mainline church.  Princess Zurg and the baby got sun bonnets.  MB and Elvis got a covered wagon and handcart, respectively.  Ah, Reorganized Mormon capitalism.

We did not get a chance to visit the Nauvoo Christian Visitors Center before we left.

The best thing about Nauvoo for me was a) seeing the temple, which is beautiful, and b) seeing the landscape, which is even more beautiful.  Both SD and I felt far more connection with the past by looking off of Temple Bluff than any of the other attractions.

Then we drove up to Chicago to see SD’s brother and his wife (the brother’s wife, not SD’s other wife).  I shall refer to SD’s brother by the nickname the children gave him last week, which for some reason was “Uncle Buncle.”  His wife is a medical student, so I will refer to her as…Medical Student Sister-in-Law.  While in Chicago, we visited Millennium Park, got spit on by the giant fountains, gazed at ourselves in the giant reflective bean sculpture and had Chicago Style stuffed pizza for lunch.  Stuffed pizza is good, but it’s got at least two pounds of cheese on it, which wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t gotten the sampler platter of deep-fried appetizers to start.  Later that evening we would get frozen custard.  If there were any dietary justice in the world, we would be dead by now.  But we lived on to visit Navy Pier, view the city from atop the giant ferris wheel and basically walk all over downtown until we were just effing sick of it.  We didn’t visit the Sears Tower because we’re too cheap.  Also, there was a bomb threat or something.  But mostly we’re just cheap.  Anyway, the ferris wheel was high enough, and not a little scary.

The next day we stuck closer to suburban Chicago and visited a small petting-zoo type zoo I can’t remember the name of.  Our friends from Wisconsin and friends from Michigan drove down to join us.  What I found most interesting about this zoo was that each animal exhibit was accompanied by a sign explaining what the animal was good for.  For example, there was “Chickens:  Source of Nutritious Food,” with some pictures of eggs and whole chickens roasting on a rotisserie.  That was surreal.  Pigs are extremely useful, for stuff like glue and rubber and paint thinner or whatever, in addition to tasty ham and bacon.  Each sign showed pictures of the cuts of meat we get from the animal.  Except for the goat because in our country we really only consume goat dairy products, but the sign did point out that goat meat is eaten frequently in other parts of the world.  Then there was the picture of the bunny being mauled by a wolf.  You think I’m making that part up, don’t you?  You’re naive, as I once was.

Then we went to a swim park, where SD was unsuccessful in shaming me onto the 200-ft. slide.  For once.

We had Greek food at a diner, where we were waited on by a server of much spunk and personality.

The next day was Sunday, so we went to church, which was the same in Chicago as it is elsewhere.  Then my sister-in-law’s parents and brother came over for dinner, and SD cooked Mexican food for them.  SIL is half-Mexican and half-Puerto Rican, so once again my husband was cooking ethnic food for people of that ethnicity, but they very much enjoyed it, so that was cool.  Later that evening we went on a riverwalk in Naperville, where we fed the ducks and rolled down a giant hill until we almost puked and died laughing.

Our last full day in Chicago was spent at the Museum of Science and Industry.  That is a very cool museum.  It kicks the crap out of OMSI.  (Probably kicks the crap out of anything in Seattle, too, though, so nyeah.)  I also picked up another souvenir magnet–this one with Chicago spelled out in periodic table symbols.  Ah, capitalist science.

The next day was a traveling day, as we went back to St. Louis.  BIL (the non-Buncle uncle) cooked us our first vegetables in eight days.

The day after that we went to the Butterfly House in Chesterfield.  That was quite awesome.  Kicks the crap out of the butterfly exhibit at the Oregon Zoo.  I spotted all the Mormon butterflies–the Great Mormon, the Scarlet Mormon, and the Common Mormon.  I felt a keen sense of accomplishment afterward, like I didn’t have to feel obligated to do my genealogy anymore.

We had more frozen custard at Ted Drewe’s on Route 66.  I got the Cardinal Sin Concrete.  It was beyond tasty.  Totally worth the year it took off my life.

The next day I stressed out over packing to get home, and then we went to the airport and got stressed out over flying.  SD yelled at some United employees.  I got embarrassed.  Then he told off an unhelpful fellow traveler who was yammering on her cell phone about Elvis’s testosterone-laden personality and the parents who spawned him.  I got embarrassed again.  Then there was another fiasco with the Missing Gate-Checked Stroller and SD got into it with another United employee, who was so snippy, rude and argumentative that I started yelling at her, at which point she turned her postal wrath on me, and I cried halfway to Portland.  Elvis threw up on SD.  The people on the plane were very nice about that.  (Cell-phone Lady wasn’t on that leg of the flight.)

They lost our stroller again, but we made it home with the rest of our luggage.

To sum up our Midwest experience:

Humidity–bad!

Steak ‘n Shake–good!

United Airlines–flawed but sadly typical of modern air travel companies

Souvenir magnets–make me happy.

Madhousewife (to sister):  I like this one because it spells Chicago using the periodic table, and that’s cool.

Sister:  That is cool.

SD:  You can’t spell Portland with the periodic table.

Sister:  That’s right, there’s no R, is there?

SD:  No, there is an R–but there’s no Or or Rt or Tl, so it all falls apart.

Sister:  Too bad.

Mad:  Can you spell my name with the periodic table?

SD:  Sure–[Rattles off several elements that spell my actual name, which I won't reveal here]

Mad (to sis):  Isn’t that romantic?  He can automatically recite my name in periodic table format.

Sister:  Most impressive.

SD:  Hey, remember I diagrammed the molecular structure of your name when we were engaged.

Mad:  That’s right–I’d forgotten.  Whatever happened to those little gestures?

Sister:  They just don’t court you anymore once you’re married.

My mother-in-law will be visiting us over the next fortnight, so I will either be really scarce or I'll be on here every day, taking the free babysitting way too much for granted.  I love my mother-in-law and I love having her visit, but one of the reasons I'd love it if she moved up to
Portland is that I'm growing weary of her refusal to fly.  (Ride on an airplane, I mean.  I wouldn't want you to think I was making an unreasonable demand.)  The charitable part of me–the part I try to nurture whenever possible–understands that she has an irrational fear, and we all have irrational fears, and it isn't her fault that her irrational fear is really inconvenient, blah blah…that part of me is very sympathetic.  The impatient, self-centered part of me thinks she should try harder to get over it because not flying usually means (for her) taking the train, which means that the trip from Los Angeles to Portland takes about ten times longer and her arrival is always delayed by several hours.  And today it freaking snowed.  In
Portland!  I know!  And because it never snows here, people don't know how to drive in the snow, and also it can't stay dry long enough so it soon turns into a big sheet of ice, so venturing out in this weather in one's vehicle to pick up somebody at the train station downtown in the middle of the night is not the most comforting holiday activity.  Fortunately, we have life insurance.

 

What's wrong with Amtrak?  Seriously.  It's not a weather thing.  They were four hours late coming into
Los Angeles from freaking
San Diego.  There's no snow there.  There's no snow when it's ten hours late in the middle of freaking April.  A couple years ago she had to get off the train mid-trip because of some derailment or other train-related fiasco, and they put her on a bus.  The train had been running several hours behind schedule, but the bus got her here several hours earlier than we'd been expecting her.  Freaking Greyhound.  Leave the driving to them.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm sure train rides are nice–I'd like to take one sometime.  Just not if I'm in a hurry to get somewhere.  But I probably need to slow down myself, don't I?  Hmmph.  I have to go fold my twelve loads of laundry.  Maybe I'll just make like a train and do it tomorrow.

When Sugar Daddy was a college sophomore, he roomed with a guy who couldn't go home for the Thanksgiving holiday, so SD invited him to come to his family's celebration.  This roommate was kind of a strange cat; they were at a science and engineering school, but he was more interested in labor movement politics than in physics.  That and video games.  He wasn't much of a talker, as I recall, and most of what SD said just made him shake his head. 

 

Anyway, on the drive out to SD's home town, SD told his roommate that he was going to love Thanksgiving at his family's house because "my Grandma is a great cook, and we all dress up like Pilgrims and Indians."  Rather than shake his head, the roommate got kind of a scared look on his face, and SD laughed and said, "No, man, I'm just kidding."  The roommate gave a small sigh of relief and probably shook his head a little bit, too.

 

So they arrived at SD's grandmother's house, where the roommate met Grandma and was in the process of making himself at home when in walked SD's mother, aunt and cousin, all dressed in long skirts and bonnets.  Yes, this year, totally unbeknownst to SD, his family had indeed decided to dress up like freaking Pilgrims.  Needless to say, the roommate was a little freaked out and never came back to Thanksgiving at SD's house again.  (But I think that was mostly because he flunked out of college and SD was married to me by then.  But I digress.)

 

I believe SD and I celebrated our first Thanksgiving as a married couple at my sister's house, but the following year we were scheduled to spend it with his family, who apparently had started a tradition of dressing up as Pilgrims for the holiday feast.  This year SD's cousin, the seamstress, decided to make everyone proper Pilgrim outfits, and so SD's mother called to inform me that mine would be ready in plenty of time and she could bring it up when she visited us the week before.

 

"Ohhh, that really…isn't…necessary…" I said, not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings but not crazy about putting on a costume for Thanksgiving either, since I wouldn't even do it for Halloween.

 

"Oh, it's no problem, we bought all this black fabric, it was on sale, and we might even have some left over to make a little dress for Princess Zurg."

 

Well, I was fine with them making a Pilgrim out of my daughter, but I really felt like I was a little too dignified to be participating in this particular family custom, so I tried to mutter only non-committal phrases while we discussed the particulars of my new wardrobe. 

 

I really did not want to be a Pilgrim for Thanksgiving, for the same reason I haven't wanted to be anything for Halloween in about 20 years:  because I'm a spoilsport suckhead who wouldn't know fun if it bit me in the butt.  But as I was admiring my cousin-in-law's fine sewing skills a few days later, it occurred to me that the only thing less dignified than dressing up like a freaking Pilgrim was refusing to dress up like a Pilgrim because I was just too freaking cool.  Because I wasn't cool.  I was just being a spoilsport suckhead.  I mean, this wasn't my own family's style–in fact, they would have laughed their heads off in shock and horror if I'd shown up at my sister's in a Pilgrim costume–but I figured, eh, when in
Rome, do as the freaking Romans do.

 

So there we were having Thanksgiving dinner at SD's grandma's house, with all the females dressed up as Pilgrims (except for my mother-in-law, who decided to go as a Native American that year).  We were really a very impressive sight.  I'm the sure the neighbors wondered why so many nuns were visiting Mrs. Grandma's house on Thanksgiving, but that was part of the glamor, I assure you.  And PZ did indeed have her own Pilgrim outfit, though she didn't like wearing it much.  (Six-month-olds can be so fashion-conscious.)

 

Unfortunately, in the years intervening, I have somehow lost my Pilgrim costume.  This has been a great disappointment and frustration for me, because if I ever did get a wild hair and decide to dress up for Halloween, I'm usually pregnant or carrying a small child, and if I slapped a letter A on that black dress, I'd make the perfect Hester Prynne.  No one would get it, but none of Grandma's neighbors got the nun thing, either.  It's all about amusing myself. 

 

I'm disappointed for another reason, too.  This is our first Thanksgiving we're doing by ourselves, me being too pregnant to travel to relatives' houses.  SD is looking forward to making his first turkey, but we thought it would be a little lonely with just the five and 8/9 of us, so he invited a colleague from work to dine with us.  The colleague and his wife are from
India, so Thanksgiving doesn't really mean anything to them, but we're all about multiculturalism here, and we figure it will be an educational experience for them.  Plus, SD is excited to have real Indians over for Thanksgiving.  If only I had my Pilgrim costume, this would be a fantastic photo op.

 

Enjoy your holiday, kids. 

 

I know this because every time I visit Epicurious.com, I get one of those Yoplait ads that splatter my window with what at first look like little pink condoms but are actually yogurt lids.  You know, the kind you lick clean and send into Yoplait so they'll make a donation to breast cancer research.  I like yogurt and I like breast cancer research, but I don't like to lick yogurt lids and put them in the mail, so I'm going to do something different to observe the season.   

I've heard it said that if breast cancer were a man's disease, they would have found a cure for it by now.  I've always found this theory slightly ridiculous, for two reasons.  First, does it make any sense that there's a vast male conspiracy to rid the world of women's breasts?  Second, and more importantly, there's the fact that IT'S CANCER!  They haven't found a cure for testicular cancer either, as far as I know, and men have testicles, don't they?  Except for the ones who've had testicular cancer, of course.  Cervical cancer has a fairly high survival rate, and more men have breasts than have cervixes, so how do we explain that one? 

 

The most important factor in breast cancer survival is early detection.  Apparently this Friday is National Mammography Day.  It's probably short notice to make an appointment with your radiologist, and they're probably swamped because of the holiday anyway, but fortunately it's never too late to observe this one–until, of course, it's too late.  I'm about a year away from my first mammogram, but there's still something very important that I–and other women outside the mammography demographic–can do for the sake of my own breast health, and that's to perform a monthly breast self-exam.

 

My mother dutifully got her annual mammograms, and they always turned out fine.  She did not, however, do monthly self-exams.  Like many women, she was very uncomfortable with her body and didn't like examining it, which was why she didn't notice, until the day she accidentally glimpsed herself in the mirror while stepping out of the shower, that the lower half of her right breast had turned bright red.  This was unusual enough to merit a trip to the doctor, who concluded that it was some kind of infection, so he put her on antibiotics.  When the first course of antibiotics didn't resolve the problem, he prescribed a second course.  Then a super-duper course.  Then my mother got a new doctor, who didn't know what was going on either, so he decided to check her into the hospital for more extensive testing.

 

About three months or so after my mother's post-shower discovery, she had a diagnosis:  breast cancer.  It hadn't shown up on her last mammogram because it hadn't come in lumps.  It came in tiny beads spread throughout her milk ducts.  Eleven months later, after a mastectomy and several courses of chemotherapy, she died.  She was 53.

 

There's no way to know, of course, if my mother could have discovered her cancer early enough to save her life.  The odds certainly would have been better, though, if she'd been as diligent about her self-exams as she was about her mammograms.

 

You should know that I'm telling this story as much for my own benefit as anyone else's.  Do I religiously perform my monthly self-exams, given that my family history puts me at greater risk for this type of cancer?  Uh, sure.  Sometimes.  Unlike my mother, I don't have body-image issues, but I find I just don't have the time.  Ten minutes out of the month to make sure my breasts haven't undergone any screwy changes I should know about?  I mean, really, am I Superwoman?  Plus, I just forget.  Forget that a simple, non-invasive, completely-in-the-privacy-of-my-own-home test can prevent my children from having to endure the loss of their mother?  Sure.  All the time.

 

Guilt.  It's my anti-(chemotherapy) drug.

 

In conclusion, ladies (and technically, gentlemen), do yourselves and your families a favor and do your monthly breast self-examination.  It's more fun than licking yogurt off of pink tin foil.

My long weekend in
Marysville, Washington, is finally over.  At times I thought it would never end.  We arrived Thursday afternoon and by Saturday morning I was wishing we had left Friday night.  I could feel tension in the air–that we-don't-want-you-here-anymore-but-we-can't-ask-you-to-leave tension.  Or maybe it was we-don't-want-to-be-here-anymore-but-we-don't-have-a-good-excuse-to-go-home-early tension.  Possibly it was both because, man, it was tense around there.  Elvis and Princess Zurg were sick, Mister Bubby was miserable because the boy cousins were too old to play with him, and by Saturday afternoon, the sister I was staying with had had enough of PZ's ranting and raving, and I was upstairs crying and packing and wondering how I could tactfully tell everyone that I was leaving and never coming back again until my children were all in college.

 

Actually, I ended up riding it out and leaving Sunday morning, as originally planned.  The kids were all so glad to be going home that they were very well behaved during the four-hour car ride.  After I'd threatened them with vague promises of bodily harm and starvation, but still–I was proud of them.

 

I like all of my sisters, but I find I can't be around them for more than a few hours at a time.  I definitely can't live with them.  It's not that there's anything wrong with them, but our lifestyles are incompatible.  I like to put my kids to bed early (or make that "early"–you know, like eight) and have a couple hours of quiet, off-duty time before falling into bed myself.  It gives me the illusion that I am still a separate being from them, not just the human tether that prevents them from spreading terror and mayhem across the entire globe.  As time-consuming as it is to put children to bed when there's still lots of live action going on in the grown-up world, I feel that it's worth it.  My sister–I have three, so let's call her Sister Two–prefers not to bother with her children's bedtime until she's ready to go down for the night herself.  It's easier for her, which is fine, or it's fine when I'm not staying with her. 

 

When I'm staying with her and there are 20 people having fun and occupying every available room, engaged in activities which are decidedly of the non-sleeping variety, it is not fine for me.  It means that no matter how many hints are dropped–such as me saying it's time for my kids to go to sleep, my kids saying they're ready to go to sleep, my kids taking baths and getting in their pajamas and begging to go to sleep–no one will be going to sleep until everyone in the house is ready to stop partying and call it a night.  It means that Elvis, who no longer naps on a regular basis and certainly doesn't nap when there's fun and games going on all around him, is whining and rubbing his eyes and being miserable until about 10:30 or 11 p.m., at which time he is so over-stimulated that he can't go to sleep.  PZ and MB are irritable because they can't go to sleep because Elvis can't go to sleep.  I'm irritable because I can't go to sleep–not with a clear conscience, anyway, as my children and whining and carrying on when it's 11 p.m. and our relatives are finally wanting to sleep themselves.  We did this for three nights.

 

I don't feel I can blame anyone but myself for this.  I never came out and said, "Look here, everybody–my kids need to go to sleep, so could you please clear out and give them some space and possibly some illusion of quiet?"  I never asked if there were some unoccupied corner of the house where I could at least put Elvis down so people would no longer be bothered by his bad mood.  (Everyone commented on his bad mood and tried to cheer him up.  I said he was tired and needed to go to sleep, and everyone just went back to what they were doing.)  I am not assertive enough to say, "People, please stop playing in the only room I am allowed to put my child down to sleep in."  I am the kind that feels a sense of entitlement, like people should just know that if I say my baby desperately needs to sleep, they ought to fall all over themselves to accommodate me.  Because that is what I would do.  But the world is a diverse place.  That's the beauty and the agony of it.

 

In my family, I am known as the anal parent.  The only reason I am an anal parent is that it took having kids to make me anal.  I used to be proudly disorganized and unscheduled, totally going with the flow.  I can't do that anymore.  It took me a few years to realize it that the schedules and routines I impose on my family are not primarily for their benefit, but for mine.  When I'm off my schedule, my ability to go with the proverbial flow is severely hampered.  I get very tense and feel like I'm going to cry but of course I can't cry because crying over a missed bedtime is so two years old.  My sisters have all found their own ways of being parental and sane simultaneously without becoming anal about schedules and routines.  They think I need to lighten up.  Which is fair enough.  I think they need to lighten up when it comes to other things–things that don't actually affect me at all, but still, that's my opinion.

 

It doesn't help that I'm just not all that close to any of my siblings.  We've never had much in common.  They care about stuff I don't care about.  They don't care about stuff I care about.  To sit around and talk with them is just not natural, and not something they would think to do anyway.  It isn't that they aren't interested in my life, but they'd just as soon get the Reader's Digest version from my dad, who talks to each of us twenty times more frequently than any of us talks to each other.  I feel obligated to be close to my family, for some reason.  I have no reason to be estranged from them.  I just don't enjoy being with them as much as I feel I ought to.  I'd much rather be with my friends.  I feel like if I never saw any of my family again, I would probably be okay.  That makes me feel guilty.  But I think if they never saw me again, they would also probably be okay.  Which makes me very unmotivated to see or be seen by them again.  But I know I will see them again.  There's no good reason not to, even if it does feel more like an obligation than anything else.

I know you're all waiting with bated breath to hear–or read, rather–about my exciting trip to Virginia and Maryland, but unfortunately there just isn't that much to tell.  I had a good time, if only because I was not changing diapers or smelling diapers for six glorious days.  Let me tell you how easy it is to get used to that.  Very easy.  As easy as breathing.  Deeply, for the first time in years.  But I digress.  My plane ride over there was uneventful, noteworthy only because the pilot was a woman.  Yes, I know that sounds lame, but to my knowledge I had never been on a plane piloted by a woman before.  Sure, I figured women pilots had to exist theoretically, but now I have proof positive.  And as I said, the flight was uneventful, so I guess that just goes to show We Girls Can Do Anything, Right, Barbie?  (The pilot could have been inspired by Barbie as a young girl, for all we know.  Don't be dissing Barbie to me anymore, kids.)

 

So while I was in the Commonwealth, the Old Dominion, the First Colony, I didn't do much except hang out with my friends in a manner totally unremarkable to the casual observer.  Even the careful observer would have had trouble being impressed, I think.  I hadn't seen any of these people for eleven years, and I just wasn't interested in doing anything but talk and eat and laugh together.  My friend in Front Royal had four young children when I last saw her, and now she has five children, the youngest of whom is eight.  I suppose it should have made me feel old, but what it actually did was give me hope for the future.  Someday the youngest of my (four, not five) children will be eight.  No one will be in diapers (theoretically).  Everyone will be able to feed themselves.  I can leave them at home alone sometimes and not be breaking the law.  The world, in short, will be my oyster.  Sort of.

 

My visit with my friend in
Richmond, who is still single and doesn't have any diaper-clad people in her life either, was similarly low-key.  She caught me up on all the latest gossip about our alma mater, which just lost its affiliation with the Virginia Baptist General Board due to being too darn radical, which is amusing to me.  Apparently the catalyst was the Gay Pride Week organized by some students in concert with the school's Baptist Student Union.  Let me tell you, kids, the alma mater and its BSU have certainly changed in the last eleven years.  Such a turn of events would have been impossible to foresee back in my day.  So anyway, in addition to finding out who got married and who was fired, I also found out that my former advisor was a lesbian.  Not that it makes any difference in my life.  Just another bit of useless trivia taking up valuable real estate in my brain.  Anyway, I don't know what the college is going to do without all that Baptist money.  Probably go out of business, but oh well, I wasn't using my degree to impress anyone anyway.

 

I'm glad I didn't waste any of my time sight-seeing or going on outings because my visits were too short as it was, what with the amount of driving I was forced to do.  A friend of mine says that a visit has to be at least twice as long as the time it takes to get there in order to make the trip worth it, so I think I succeeded on that criterion, though just barely, if you count all that time in the stupid planes.  I had never actually driven, as in my own car, in this area of the country before, and I'll tell you, I was not missing much all those years.  I don't know why people complain about driving in
Los Angeles.  I've said it before and I'll say it again,
Los Angeles is like a paradise compared to most of the other densely populated areas I've had the misfortune to drive in.  There's one thing to recommend
Southern California sprawl:  plenty of space to put freeway off-ramps–and on-ramps.  Not to mention an abundance of two-way streets.  You get off a freeway in
Southern California, you can get back on again, usually without looking too hard.  (You can make U-turns, too.  I know, they're just a bunch of hedonists out there.)  Get off a freeway in
San Francisco, D.C. or
Boston, and you'd just better be on good speaking terms with God, because He's the only one who can help you now. 

 

So anyway, something I've noticed while driving and riding about in
Virginia and
Maryland that I've never encountered in the West is this practice of naming one road Route Numeral and a completely different road Business Route Same Numeral.  What is up with that?  What's the difference, or rather, I don't know, what's the similarity between Route 29 and Business Route 29?  Why can't you just give them their own numbers, since they go completely different places?  You've already got roads numbered in the quadruple digits, so what the heck?  I know I'm making myself sound like a hopeless
Oregon hick, but what I don't understand annoys me.  I need education.  Well, it probably wouldn't help.  I realize that many of these cities were built before there was such a thing as cars or people wanting to go places anyway, so it makes sense that the infrastructure looks like it was designed in a patchwork fashion on a whim with some spit, or whatever, but I'm just getting old and cranky now, don't listen to me.

 

I saw my brother, the youngest in our family, graduate from the

University of
Maryland.  My brother and I are not especially close, but I love him, so even though graduation ceremonies are just slightly less entertaining and edifying than C-Span on a slow day, I'm glad I could be there, since none of the other sibs were.  Since my dad was taking pictures, I had to do all the clapping when they called my brother's name.  I don't think I was quite up for the job.  And no, I don't do that wolf-whistle thing.  It's just not me. 

 

Conversations with my father and brother are usually kind of awkward because it's such hard work coming up with stuff to talk about.  Given that we're the three most laconic members of the family anyway, I'm sure you can imagine the effort it took to maintain conversation for the several hours we were together this weekend.  My brother really would have benefited from having a greater number of males in the household.  I would have benefited from having my garrulous husband around to relieve the longer stretches of silence.  I probably need to learn a lot more about video games and computers.  Or cars.  Or something.

 

The least enjoyable part of my vacation was the trip back, and no, it wasn't just the sense of impending doom that bothered me.  I had a layover in
Denver, which was having thunderstorms or something, so our plane just sort of took an extra hour and a half moseying around the skies of
Colorado, waiting for permission to land.  Of course that delayed the flight going out of
Denver as well.  I was feeling sick and very tired, and I really just wanted to lie down and pass out and wake up in my own bed and go back to sleep for several more hours, but 'twas not in the cards.  I had finally acclimated myself to Eastern Standard Time, just when it would do me no good.  I didn't get in until close to midnight PST, so I'd been awake about eighteen hours straight, which is about 67 in pregnancy hours.  At least I think so.  Let's see, function of x, blah blah, pi R squared, carry the one–yeah, that's about right.  Needless to say, I am still recuperating. 

 

This concludes the dullest travelogue in history.  I hope you all enjoy your Memorial Day weekend.  It will be raining here.  Home again, home again, jiggidy jig.

When my children have diarrhea, all they want to eat is fruit.  When they're constipated, all they want to eat is cheese.  I have the most spiteful offspring in the history of the human family.

 

There's something I've often wondered about, and maybe you can help me with it.  Why are women so embarrassed to say how much they weigh?  It's not that I'm really interested in what other people weigh–in fact, I'm totally uninterested, which I guess is why I don't get what all the secrecy is about.  Unless you're trying to meet hot guys on the internet–in which case I can see not wanting to disclose that you're 5'2" and weigh 216 pounds, no matter how good it may look on you in person–I don't see what difference a number makes.  I mean, if a person's looking right at you, they can see what size and shape you are.  Is it really going to change people's opinions of how you look if you tell them that you're actually 167 pounds and not the 120 you're hoping they think you are?  Personally, I'm content with the weight I am now–especially since, you know, I'm pregnant and my backside is supposed to be getting wider anyway.  But if I were unhappy with my weight, I don't think I'd be embarrassed about the number.  I'd be more embarrassed about my backside (especially if I weren't pregnant).  But being unhappy with the size of my butt has never stopped me from going out in public, so why should the number on the scale be so shameful?

 

No, I'm not angling to get you all to tell me how much you weigh.  It wouldn't mean anything to me anyway, unless you were 300 pounds.  I have a pretty good idea of what 300 pounds looks like, regardless of height.  (If you told me you were 9 feet tall, though, I'd really be impressed!)  But short of that, I have difficulty envisioning it.  My husband, on the other hand, has this uncanny ability to guess women's weights.  No, he doesn't do it to their faces.  It's not a parlor trick.  ("You look like you're about 155–am I right?"  "Go to hell!"  "See, Mad, I told you."  No, it doesn't happen like that.)  So how do I know he can do this?  Don't ask, but I know.  It's one of his many strange talents.  He can also multiply three-digit numbers in his head.  He's lots of fun at parties.

 

Speaking of strange things, I have in recent weeks, for some dumb reason, become addicted to doing the daily Jumble in the newspaper.  Yes, I know it's lame, but I'm not smart enough to do the crossword.  Anyway, it's very upsetting because some days I just cannot unscramble a word, and I think, "This is shameful.  My parents didn't shell out thousands of dollars for my education so I could sit around for hours on end wondering what RAWFE is."  Do you know what RAWFE is?  Well, it's WAFER, of course.  Do you want to know when I figured that out?  About two seconds ago, when I typed it.  Do you know when I started that puzzle?  Saturday.  Okay, so I haven't been working continuously on it or anything, but still–what does it say about me that I look at RAWFE and can't see anything but WRAFE, FEWAR, and WEFAR, and it's actually still bothering me on Monday afternoon?  What I hate, of course, is when Sugar Daddy–who couldn't freaking care less about the Jumble because he has a Ph.D. and isn't so starved for intellectual stimulation that he does word puzzles designed for people approaching senility–does the Jumble over my shoulder just so he can feel superior to me.  Of course, what does that say about him?  We were made for each other.

 

Speaking of being made for each other, today is my parents' wedding anniversary.  They don't really celebrate it anymore, being how my mother is dead and my father's married to another woman now, but it's information just as useful as the rest of what's in this post, so I don't have to explain why I mention it.  I've always liked the story of my parents' courtship, even though there are few things ickier in life than thinking about your parents being in love, and even though it isn't that remarkable.  But I think it's kind of cute.  My mother was a divorced mother of a young daughter (my older sister), working at the

Oregon
Graduate
Center (now Oregon Graduate Institute) as a secretary, and my father was a mild-mannered young graduate student working on his master's degree in chemistry.  Everyone in the department told my mother to stop flirting with that nice young man because he had a girlfriend back in
Idaho that he was practically engaged to.  My mother didn't really have any intention of ensnaring some unsuspecting farm boy-turned-scientist because she'd more or less given up on dating Mormon men.  It was the '60's, and most eligible men in the church were not too keen on marrying a woman with life experience.  (That's a euphimism, by the way.)

 

As it happened, my father didn't really have any intention of marrying this girl back in
Idaho, either, so he asked my mother if she wanted to go with him to a party.  Thinking it was just a friendly/platonic thing, she said okay.  When he came to her apartment to pick her up, he spent some time playing with my sister.  My mother said that was when she began to see him in a different light.  Two weeks later they were engaged.  Five weeks after that they were married, and 366 days later I was born.  (Please, hold your applause until the end.)  They were married 26 years and had five children (including my big sister, whom my father adopted).  To my knowledge, Dad never guessed Mom's weight or did crossword puzzles over her shoulder.  And Mom never started a weblog in which she wrote all the annoying crap Dad did.  But they were happy, all the same.

 

POST SCRIPT:  I'm going shopping for a book or two tomorrow that I can read on my 5-hour plane ride.  Any suggestions?  No Anna Karenina.  I want a sexy page-turner.  Okay, it doesn't have to be sexy.  Just something that will take my mind off my nausea and that really uncomfortable seat.

No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. Sometimes I just want it to stay saved, you know? For a little bit. I feel like the maid. ''I just cleaned up this mess. Can we keep it clean for ten minutes?''–Mister Incredible

 

The amount of squalor my family will tolerate never ceases to amaze me.  How is this Zen-like attitude achieved?  I guess it's easy when you know that eventually someone-not-you is going to take care of it.  It really doesn't matter how bad it gets if you never have to deal with it.

 

I did the same thing to my poor mother growing up.  I–and to be fair, the rest of the family–had so many other more important things to worry about than whether or not the socks got picked up and put in the laundry or in a drawer or wherever they were supposed to be.  It's no wonder my mother needed psychotropic drugs for most of her life.  Which reminds me, I need to call my psychiatrist today.

 

I began to panic when my mother-in-law was packing to go home on Saturday.  She's not the best housekeeper in the world, but she did do the laundry and the dishes, and most importantly, she served as a supervising adult when I crashed headfirst into my bed every day around 2:30 p.m. and stayed there until the following morning (more or less).  After 24 hours of her absence, I got desperate and thought that it might be a good idea to swallow my pride, not to mention my self-respect and whatever shred of dignity I have left in this world, and ask my step-mother to come up for a visit.  That would mean I'd have to tell her I was pregnant again, but I was going to have to tell her eventually anyway, so was that really so bad?

 

Answer:  Yes.  Yes, it was that bad.

 

She and my dad were both on the phone Sunday night when I broke the news.  First, my father's response:

 

[Unambiguous Groaning Sound]

 

And now my step-mother's response:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, I'm still waiting, too.

 

Needless to say, I never got to the part where I tried to make her feel sorry for me and convince her to come up and be my personal servant for the next six weeks.  Which just goes to show you how durable self-respect can be.  Well.  At least that's over.  Now I have to go clean my kitchen before the ants take it over entirely. 

Another one of those pregnancy truths:  By the time number 4 starts cooking, the muscle tone is shot.  Case in point–baby is no bigger than a grain of rice, but I already need maternity clothes.  That's messed up.

Well, I don't quite need maternity clothes.  What I need is fat clothes, but I don't actually have fat clothes.  My body may not be a wonderland, but it's very stable.  It tends to retain its shape, except when I get pregnant.  Then I think, "I could really use some fat clothes about now."  Historically I have not had the budget to buy new clothes when I get fat (i.e. pregnant), so I just go straight to my maternity clothes.  Which, since I stopped Working Outside The Home, are really just maternity pants and large t-shirts, which I wear even when I'm not fat, i.e. pregnant.  Of course, after three pregnancies, said maternity pants are really in no shape to be worn again.  Truth be told, they were in no shape to be worn the last time, but I had no choice because there was no money for new maternity clothes. 

Now there is money for new maternity clothes, which I fully intend to buy, but the problem is that it's the wrong time of year to need maternity clothes.  At least in
Oregon, where April (and May and usually half of June) is still quite cold.  (And wet.)  The only clothes I'm likely to find, maternity, fat or otherwise, are for weather that doesn't show up in these parts until the middle of July.  (And even then, it's only Monday through Friday–what am I supposed to wear on weekends and holidays?  But I digress.)  I could get some maternity capris and wear really thick knee-high socks with them, but even I have too much pride for that.  Okay, so it isn't pride.  I just don't want the whole world looking at me and thinking, "What's with that get-up?  Gasp!  She must be pregnant!"  I kind of want to tell people in my own way, in my own time.

Speaking of which, I still haven't mentioned my pregnancy to any member of my family yet.  Well, my in-laws have been informed, but no one on my side of the family is to be trusted with this bit of scandal just yet.  I can already hear my step-mother tsk-tsking behind my back about how I've already bitten off more than I can chew and now I seem to just be stuffing my face, figuratively speaking.  That part doesn't bother me.  Behind my back doesn't bother me.  It's the to-my -face that annoys me.  The awkward silences and cryptic remarks she thinks are polite and/or subtle but really aren't.  "I'm pregnant."  Silence.  "Hello?"  "I'm still here."  "Did you hear what I said?"  "Yes."  Silence.  Not polite.  Not subtle.

The Sunday Report:  A Dramatization

Curtain opens on interior of a church sanctuary.  Most of congregation in quiet meditation, as the sacrament is being administered.  Our heroine, Madhousewife, aka Giraffemom, is only mildly distracted by the voice of Princess Zurg in the adjoining foyer, loudly complaining that her mother has failed to bring Cheese Nips to the meeting.  Young Elvis is munching on a cereal bar.  Sugar Daddy is at the organ.  Mister Bubby gently nudges his mother.

Mister Bubby (whispering):  Mama, my nose hurts.

Giraffemom (whispering back):  I'm sorry.  Maybe you should stop picking it.

MB:  I think it's because there's a raisin there.

GM:  There's a raisin in your nose?

MB:  Yes.

GM:  Why is there a raisin in your nose?

MB (a little louder):  Because I put it there.

GM tries to discreetly instruct MB on how to blow his nose.  MB can only inhale.  He alternately sniffs and whimpers about the unnecessary pain he is enduring because his mother is incompetent.  GM catches SD's eye and gestures meaningfully.  SD nods his head and his body starts to shudder with silent laughter.  MB continues to complain about his injury.

GM:  Sweetie, there's nothing I can do about it until the sacrament is over.  Can you wait just a few minutes?

MB:  I think we can use a pen.

GM:  I think that would just shove it further in.  Let's wait until Daddy comes down.  I bet he has experience in this arena.

MB:  Mama, did Daddy put a raisin in his nose when he was little?

GM:  I'm sure he did.

MB:  Mama, did you put a raisin in your nose when you were little?

GM:  No.

Short pause.

MB:  Mama, why do only boys do that?

GM:  I have no idea.

Curtain falls. 

*********************************************

So SD and I went out again on Saturday–two weekends in a row, and we've got plans for Friday, too–it's like +a Valentine's/President's Day miracle.  Anyway, I was getting ready and experimenting with the part in my hair, because Lord knows I have nothing better to do, when I realized that Elvis, who had thoughtfully smeared Vaseline in his hair on Wednesday in a valiant effort to give himself "handsome hair," had used this same comb to effect said 'do.  I'll wait for your laughter to subside before I finish my story.  Are you finished?  Okay.  So apparently one thing that makes me look older than I already do is giving my hair that limp and lifeless look you can only get from Vaseline.  Yes, it's still there.  I read on the internet that you can use baby powder and liquid detergent to get it out, but I haven't had time yet to assemble both those items in the same room at the same time along with my hair.  It's complicated.  Maybe today I'll get to it.

********************************************

Last night we opened my mother-in-law's Valentine's Day package.  Despite the fact that these packages are filled with stuff that mostly just clutters up my house, I can't fail to find them entertaining.  PZ and MB both got laminated maps of Narnia.  (When your mother-in-law works for the school district, lots of stuff gets laminated.)  PZ got a pink unicorn Beanie Baby and some conversation hearts in a Cinderella tin.  MB got Spiderman fruit snacks in a Spiderman tin, and a stuffed lion.  ("It's Aslan!" he cried.)  Elvis got some cool stuff, too, but once he saw the whole box of fruit snacks intended just for him, he wasn't interested in any other booty. 

My MIL has a great sense of humor about her son's obvious insanity, so among the trinkets she sent him was this little green NSync teddy bear, complete with stud earrings and a Justin Timberlake sweatshirt.  "This is going in my cube at work," SD said.  Then, when I started to remove the shrink wrap from its plastic display case, he protested, "Hey, that's limited edition, man."

"Excuuuuuse me."

"I'm just kidding."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm going to go on the internet and find out how much it's worth."

"Uh huh."

Among the thoughtful gifts I received was a lime green handbag with Mrs. Timberlake embroidered on it.  When I showed it to SD, he laughed and pronounced it "awesome."

"You just wish it was yours," I said.

"This bear is so going in my cube."

 *********************************************

Happy V.D. to all. 

Whoever thought up putting DVD players in cars should get the Nobel Peace Prize.  Too bad those silly Swedes never ask for my opinion.  For a split second I felt guilty for pacifying the monster with television rather than family sing-a-longs and lame find-the-license-plate games, but then I asked myself, "Do I feel guilty for not washing my clothes by going out to the river and beating them against a rock?"  And then I was okay.

Interstate 5 is a really boring road.  A reeeeeeeaallly booooooorrrrrrinnnnnnnng road.  And a long one, too.  Reeeeeeeeaaaaallllly looooooooonnnnnnnnng.  And boring.

If you're ever in
Ashland, Oregon…  You should know that Big Al's Drive-In is not really a drive-in.  Which is kind of a rip-off, in my opinion.  But the food's not bad.

What's the connection?  Part one

1.  LAPD officers

2.  Ronald Reagan

3.  Sugar Daddy's hometown

Wisdom from my mother-in-law, aka Nature vs. nurture

She says our children are going to grow up to be axe-murderers because we let them watch The Rescuers.    This is of course the same woman who gave us such gems as "They named their child Kipland Kinkel.  What did they think was going to happen?"

She also says that if she ever gets old and crazy like her mother, we're supposed to slap her.  (We won't, of course.  Our names are perfectly normal.  The real ones, anyway.)

Every day my husband gets closer to his premature heart attack

"Good news,
Mad.  Tommy's will now freeze a gallon of their chili and ship it to you overnight."

A few minutes later…

"Of course, we're going to have to buy a deep-freeze first, because I'm going to want to get more than one gallon…"

What's the connection?  Part two

1.  Keanu Reeves

2.  Water slides

3.  My dad's condo

Grandchildren-spoiling

My stepmother took each of my three children into the Build-A-Bear factory.  Princess Zurg built a fairy unicorn named Magic.  Elvis built a football player puppy named Don.  (Shrug.)  And Mister Bubby built a pink tie-dyed bear with a purple evening gown and matching handbag and named her Ursula.  She is now happily married to his teddy.

Food I can't get in the Northwest that I stocked up on whilst in
California

1.  Cactus Cooler

2.  Knorr Arroz con tomate soup mix–yes, more than one serving has enough sodium to poison you, but it's just so freaking good.  Why?  I don't know.

Food I didn't stock up on because it seemed impractical but I'm going to be sorry later

1.  Padrino's No-Salt Restaurant Style Tortilla Chips

Technically, one shouldn't number a list of one, and technically one does not a list make, but I don't have any other regrets.

Two things you don't want to happen while you're on that section of I-5 known as The Grapevine, and definitely not at the same time

1.  Vomiting

2.  Potty emergency

Try to avoid that, okay?  Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Apricot Tree restaurant in
Firebaugh, California has an extensive collection of vintage lunch boxes (and thermoses!)  From Hopalong Cassidy to Rambo, it's all here.  No, I don't know what kid takes a Rambo lunch box to school.  But I don't know what kid was taking a Waltons lunch box to school, either, and there it was.  I can't recommend the food at this place, though SD said the apricots were delicious.  But my favorite thermos was the Bionic Woman one, because it also featured her Bionic Dog.

It's possible that I may have lost my mind entirely because I have allowed Sugar Daddy to convince me that it is a good idea to take our three children–ages 6 1/2, 4 and 1 1/2–on a sixteen-hour car trip to California.  We visit
California every year, but up to now we have always flown.  It's more expensive, yes–significantly so since it became necessary to purchase four tickets at once–and flying with young children is a pain, but it's a pain that lasts for significantly fewer than sixteen hours.  And when you do the math for a round trip, that's a significant pain savings indeed.  I have always been reluctant to pooh-pooh the importance of avoiding pain.  There's already so much suffering in the world, after all.  Lately, however, we've been feeling the pain of our Visa bill with enough intensity that we've started to wax philosophical about the nature and purpose of our suffering.  In other words, we can't help but wonder if the devil we don't know may be better than the devil we do know.  Or in other words, debt has made us loopy.

When Princess Zurg was three and a half months old, my dad and step-mother talked me into taking a trip with them to my grandparents' farm in
Idaho, where we would rendezvous with my three sisters, who hadn't yet met my baby.  Since SD was going to school full-time and working two jobs so we could afford the luxury of me staying home (oh, how I hate that phrase), I thought, eh, what do I have to lose.  And off we went.

The first day of our journey took us from
L.A. to
Salt Lake City.  Princess Zurg was remarkably good-natured during this "leg" of the trip.  Until we got to
Provo.  From
Provo to

Salt
Lake she screamed her head off, and who can blame her?  The sigh of
Provo's enough to make anyone scream.  Fortunately
Provo is not very far from

Salt
Lake, where we were able to disembark the minivan and take a much-needed, lengthy rest.  Man, that was a relief.  I was so glad that the drive from

Salt
Lake to my grandparents' house would not be anything close to fifteen hours.  As it turned out, the exact mileage was neither here nor there because as soon as we put PZ back in her carseat the following morning, she began screaming her head off again.  And didn't quit until we got to the farm.  Lucky for me my father bought us a plane ticket home, but as soon as SD strapped PZ in the car in the LAX parking lot, she began screaming again.  As she would continue to do each time we put her in the car for the next two weeks. 

Since then I have not been terribly keen on long car trips.  I have, however, occasionally worried that my wussiness in the travel department is depriving my children of some life-enriching or at least character-building experiences. 

My parents never flew us anywhere.  They would have soiled themselves laughing at the suggestion.  We took long car trips every year.  Every single freaking year.  All seven of us, crammed into a station wagon, no air conditioning–yeah, no air conditioning.  I know it wasn't standard in those days, but I was convinced we were the only people on earth idiotic enough to drive in
Las Vegas traffic at noon in the middle of July without it.  (That was the summer we visited every friggin' contiguous state in the Pacific and Mountain time zones.  I was 15.  Can you tell?)  Anyway, yes, we suffered through many a long car ride together, and did it make us a closer family?  Who cares?  Wait, that's my inner 15-year-old talking.  But seriously, who hasn't taken a long car trip when they were growing up?  Who hasn't endured extended periods of forced family togetherness which causes them deep-seated problems with intimacy for years to come?  Everyone has to do this kind of stuff.  Don't they?  Isn't it a law, just like the law that says you have to go camping, too?  I hate camping.  My mother also hated camping, but she went anyway, for the sake of the family.  At her funeral my father admitted that it took him several years to figure out that it wasn't her love of the outdoors that made her sleep on the hard ground and go without running water every summer.  But am I the martyr my mother was?  No.  Not yet, anyway.

So we are about to embark on our first 16-hour car drive with three young children, and thus I must bid you gentle readers adieu for the next couple weeks.  

So I was transferring our sizable CD collection from individual jewel cases to one of those huge CD wallets, and my visiting relative told me she prefers keeping CD's in their original cases, for a variety of sensible reasons.  I told her I might, too, except that I was sick and tired of Elvis pulling every one of them off the shelf, opening them up, and throwing the CD's on the floor and stepping on them.  "You know, there's a word for that sort of thing," she said.

"What's that?" I, idiot that I am, asked. 

"It's no."

Well, shut my mouth.  All of this time I thought I had a childproofing problem, but the actual problem was that I have never told my children "no."  Of course!  It's so simple–why didn't I think of it myself?  I don't know, but I'm going to start applying this ingenious philosophy immediately.

Princess Zurg wants to take a road trip without my permission?  No!

Mister Bubby wants to sit on his brother's head and bounce?  No!

Elvis wants to climb up on the stove and make his own souffle?  No!

Sugar Daddy wants to leave his dirty socks on the kitchen table?  No!  No!  No!

I was blind, but now I see. 

Speaking of the visiting relative, she has done me the favor of introducing my children to quality children's broadcasting.  Insert sarcastic emoticon here.  I know a little Sesame Street here and there never hurt anyone, but up until now my kids thought television was something you could watch only if the channel was set to 3 and Mommy handled the less intuitive aspects of the VCR or DVD player.  They had no idea you could just turn the thing on and get instant entertainment.  If that sounds weird or like I'm some kind of anti-television nutjob, well, fine.  I'm comfortable with that.  I was also comfortable with my children never developing the TV habit it took me so long to kick.  (Especially since I'm constantly in danger of falling off the wagon again.)  I hate having the TV on all the time.  And I hate not being able to preview what they watch in advance.  Because, you know, that PBS crap will rot their brains.  Turn them into freaking socialists and whatnot.  There was a study or something.

Anyway, now that I have that off my chest, I can give you the boring disclaimer about how I dearly love my visiting relative, and she's been tremendously supportive during this time of personal crisis (mine, not hers).  Now if she'd only keep her politics to herself…oh, sorry, did I type that out loud?  Never mind.  I have to go discipline two or more of my spoiled, TV-addicted brats.  X's and O's, kids.

Today is my mother's birthday.  She would have been 61 today if she hadn't succumbed to breast cancer seven and a half years ago.  It's funny to think of my mother being that old because she never seemed as old as she was.  I can just imagine her, if she were alive today, saying, "I'm going to be sixty-one this year.  Sixty-one.  I am old.  I am an old lady.  I never thought I'd be this old."  Because as far as I can remember, that's what she said every year after she turned 43.  (For some reason she thought 43 was a really ugly number.  I think I inherited some of that random numerology aesthetic.  I've never been fond of numbers ending in three either.)

I don't always remember my mother's birthday.  I always note that it's coming up, but usually the day passes without me giving it much thought.  For better or worse, the days that my brain never fails to acknowledge are December 20 and January 5.  On December 20, 1996 my mother told us her doctors had given her two weeks, maybe.  About two weeks later, on January 5, she passed away.  I hate December 20 and January 5.

Before her, no one close to me had ever died.  Frankly, I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing, but from others' reactions, I gathered I was doing everything wrong.  My mother died on a Sunday morning, around 4 a.m.  I went to church that afternoon.  It really didn't occur to me not to.  I had responsibilities there.  I had to deliver some paperwork, or something.  I didn't go to work on Monday because I was too depressed, but I went in Tuesday morning.  My editor walked over to my desk and said, "It's very nice of you to come in and help us get the paper out, but you should know that no one expects you to be here this week."  I can assure you that I felt quite silly at this point.  But I worked half-days Tuesday and Wednesday and only took Thursday off because it was Mom's funeral, and Friday off because my editor insisted.

A few months later, my roommate pulled me aside and told me she was concerned because it had been this long since my mother died and it struck her that I had never really grieved for her.  I didn't know how to respond to that.  Obviously, I didn't even know how to grieve.  What was I supposed to do?  I'd been taught all my life that I'd see my mother again someday, in heaven, and we'd be together forever.  That she was in a much better place, and that death was just another beginning.  Et cetera, et cetera.  How sad was I allowed to be?

I eventually caught on to the fact that people expected me to retreat, have some private cathartic experience, and emerge triumphant to announce that I was officially "over" my mother's death.  Suddenly I understood that I wasn't the ridiculous one in this scenario; it was the whole rest of the world that was off its nut.

I've found since then that my grieving goes in cycles, and I imagine it will continue the rest of my life.  December 20 through January 5 is always a difficult time for me.  It's not unlike having two-week-long PMS, actually.  And I never fail to mourn her absence when I have a new baby.  Something is missing, I always think.  I'm really annoyed that I can't show my children off to her.  "Look at this," I want to tell her.  "I was the one who wasn't going to have any children, and now I've got three of them.  Look how beautiful they are.  Can you believe what great kids I made?  And I had every single one of them without an epidural!  Would you have guessed that I was made of such stuff?  Did you have any idea I was going to be this strong?"

Every so often, though, I have other kinds of thoughts about what would be different if my mother were still alive.  She would probably annoy me with her parenting advice.  How would I have avoided the temptation to talk to her about my various marital woes over the last seven years, even though I would have known it was wrong?  I'd always talked to her about my problems.  She was the one person on earth who I knew would always understand me, would always sympathize.  How would I have managed to cut those strings if they hadn't been cut for me?  Not that I'm grateful, mind you, but I do wonder. 

It seems that other strings have been cut as well.  I always thought my family was close, but I seem to drift farther from them as the years go by.  Part of it is a natural consequence of people leaving home, getting married, and leading their own adult lives, but since my mother's death, it seems like there's no center to the family anymore.  I think I expected that our mother's death would have brought me and my siblings closer together, but it hasn't been the case.  My father does his best–calls each and every one of us every Sunday to see how we're doing, how the kids are doing, what we've been up to, etc.–but he's a man, and he just isn't as emotionally invested in the family gossip as he needs to be.  He receives information, but he doesn't pass it along.  He says we kids should talk to each other more, but he doesn't nag.  And he doesn't talk about others behind their backs so that they still seem real and we're reminded to call them ourselves to get the real dirt.