Facet Hound

A kiss on the hand

May be quite continental,

But…

Our latest excursion with our Austrian exchange student was the Natural History Museum. His choice. Once inside, the teenagers split from us old folks and the little one to parts unknown. The youngest child wanted to see the new Written in Bone exhibit. But we had to make a detour for Mama to see her favorite exhibit – the Hope Diamond. It’s more than just the diamonds that thrill me. There are rubies, and emeralds, and sapphires, and garnets, and opals, and, and, and.

Tiffany's!

Cartier!

Black Starr!

Frost Gorham!

Talk to me Harry Winston.

When I was dating my soon-to-be fiancé, a childhood friend admonished me “No yellow diamonds”. Blue, red, yellow, clear – the color isn’t that important. My one desire during high school wasn’t a backseat boogie with the star football player; it was that delicate necklace on display at the corner jewelry store. Every Friday evening as the high school crowd would gather for Friday-night “cruising”, my first stop was the corner window to covet what I couldn’t afford and, as a teenager, didn’t need.

But stiff back

Or stiff knees,

You stand straight at Tiffany's.

Nowadays, the resources are budgeted towards college tuition for the kids and retirement for my husband and me. Indulgences are limited to four-star restaurants, spa half-days, and Godfather trilogy Blu-Rays – things that don’t have to be financed. But every now and then, standing close and gazing at the sparkling ice is just what the doctor ordered.

But square-cut or pear-shaped,

These rocks don't loose their shape.

Diamonds are a girl's best friend.

The Teutonic Typewillow

As a good friend told me, sometimes you just have to tell people you don't have anything to write. My muse is taking her sabbatical without me. If anyone sees her, let me know. Without her, all I can do is my Lili Von Shtüpp impersonation.

"I'm tired... Zzzzzzzz...."

Going to Radio Silence

As Queen Elizabeth II said several years ago, this has been an annus horribilis. My friend's mother passed away in New York over the weekend. I'm heading up for a few days. My laptop is staying home. No new blogs will be posted for the next week.

Wines and Tigers and Pandas! Oh, my!

Do you come back from vacation needing a vacation to recover from your vacation? How about from the weekend needing another weekend to recover? Whew! What a weekend!

More accurately, whew! What a Sunday!

Our Austrian exchange student wanted to join us for church Sunday morning. He rolled up his sleeves with the EYC (Episcopal Youth in Community) to prepare a meal for the homeless shelter. Then came the service which was more formal and more musical and more populated than his small Lutheran church back home. He even managed to sing a few stanzas in the hymns but took Communion without touching the chalice. Our church is decidedly low-church on some things; we take the chalice from the server to drink.

We made plans with another exchange family in our parish to do a joint outing after lunch, something fun for everyone, kids and adults included. Some things are the same regardless of where you are. Take the zoo for instance. Wonder at the animals is universal. Off we went to the zoo all crammed in our gas-guzzler, one too many for the seatbelts. Thank goodness the father and son from the other family didn’t go with.

On the first really nice day of spring that just so happened to be a Sunday, everybody and their brother decided to go to the zoo. Parking was a bear. The premium of a $20 flat rate to park in the closest-in parking lot didn’t seem like an extravagance. If only they charged admission at the zoo! Maybe the number of bipeds and strollers and toddlers-on-leashes would have been lessened.

As it was, viewing the panda meant standing six deep and waiting for the batteries to run out on the front row’s digital cameras in order to move up to the rail. Oh the joys of living in a tourist mecca! But we made the pilgrimage. Good thing I can prop my feet up while I type this blog.

Chem Fatale

My eldest daughter has been having a difficult time deciding on her senior year classes. To receive an advanced diploma, she must take certain subjects and a certain number of AP classes. To remind those of us who haven't stepped foot in an AP class recently, they're basically college-level classes with the requisite college-level reading and writing. Last summer, for example, she had to read part of her regular textbook as well as part of a college-level book, finish a packet of questions based on the readings, and turn it in on the first day of school or receive an F for the first quarter. Brutal!

Some of her AP classes for next year were already givens. Currently she's taking German IV. German V is an AP class; no way around it. Since she has an A average in her English class as well as a 100 for the year in her creative writing class, she'll take the AP English next year. She also has an A average in her AP United States History class so AP United States Government is the next step. Now try to decide if four AP classes are too much.

She's currently taking chemistry and doing quite well. Her grade has alternated between an A and a B, depending on whether she missed a lot of school during some critical classroom time. She's been debating between AP chemistry and physics. My biggest concern was that four AP classes in one year, her senior year, might be too heavy of a load. Especially since we'll be visiting colleges and she'll be taking the SAT another time. (She took the SAT in October of her junior year and did very well. Taking it again in her senior year might increase her scores significantly.) She, her father and I discussed the pros and cons of AP chemistry versus a regular physics class.

She recently brought home a copy of her registration form. I scanned the form. AP English, AP German V, AP United States Government, Statistics, Trigonometry, Psychology, Art, and Physics. No fourth AP class. No more chemical equations. Now whenever I take the kids to the theme park and tell them about how roller coasters work, she'll be able to understand the decreasing circles in the corkscrew turns all the better.

Life Stinks

Baruch dayan emet (Blessed is the one true Judge). Into your hands, O Lord, we commend our brother (sister). Allaahumma ighfir lihaayina wa mayitina wa shaahidina wa ghaa’ibina wa sagheerina wa kabeerina wa dhakarina wa unthaana (O Allah, forgive our living and our dead, those who are present among us and those who are absent, our young and our old, our males and our females). Give rest, O Christ, to thy servant(s) with thy saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.

Those words, which should give comfort, have been spoken by me and too many of my friends recently. Within the last twelve months, we have lost a wife, a father, a mother, an actress, and are now close to losing another mother. In the last two years, I have sat Shiva with both a young mother of three six-year-old-and-under daughters and an older daughter who had an astonishing tale to tell about her extraordinary mother. I took food to homes and our fellowship hall for parishioners’ families’ meals and receptions.

Just yesterday a neighborhood friend walked up with her dog and my god-dog. I was surprised to see her with my dear friend’s dog. She informed me that the reason was that my friend and her family had gone to New York to see my friend’s mother who might not be with us as I type these words. It’s ironic how two Upper East Side transplants from across the Atlantic were/are both in hospital in New York and one is mourned by the world while the other will be mourned by only those who knew and loved her personally.

I will take food again and sit Shiva again and shed tears not only for my friend and her mother but for my neighbor and her mother and for me and my father. I will help her understand the pain and the labor that grieving requires of us. And I will be thankful that she has a strong synagogue community to support her.

My own thank you notes sit unwritten in a box from the funeral home which the funeral director topped with a picture of my father. Another friend told me that the thank you notes are the finality of death. Writing them is to acknowledge that your loved one is gone. I’m not to that point yet. I’m in limbo – that dreadfully depressing time after the casseroles stop coming, when everyone expects you to be “back to normal”.

There is no more normal for some of us. We are now widows and widowers, motherless daughters and adult orphans. We have been left alone by the world because we aren’t always up and happy. People don’t like to be reminded that there is sadness and grief and anger and any other emotion than happiness. Depending on your religious beliefs, our dearly departed are in a better place, free from pain, rejoicing in the Everlasting Light. But those of us left behind need nurturing and caring and checking in on.

Next time you ask us, “How are you,” look us in the eye and mean it. Ask it with conviction and a real desire to know how we’re doing. And don’t let time and society dictate when we’re supposed to be fine. Sit with us for a week. Pray for us for four months. And check up on us on holidays and birthdays and anniversaries. And slowly, hopefully, we’ll be able to answer you back is an honest “I’m okay.”

Mental Gymnastics

[Editor's note: Be sure to vote in the poll to the right of this blog.]

Facebook Former and I have been IM'ing each other on an almost nightly basis. He's been filling me in on the happenings in the political world of my birth state. For me, being involved in politics was a birthright.

My father was on the county party executive committee from before I was born, and the state party executive committee beginning in my teenage years. My mother was a voting inspector who worked the polls every election. My first memory of politics was when during the 1972 presidential election. She was working the polls as usual and I was with her. She told me to go outside and remove the bumper sticker from the back of our car since it was parked so close to the building and some people might consider that politicking.

Since I graduated from university a year early, my "gap year" was spent volunteering for a United States senatorial candidate. When he was elected, volunteering led to a paid position in his main district office which just so happened to be in the city where the university is located. It was the perfect opportunity because I had been accepted to the law school. My full-time position became part-time as torts and civil procedure and others filled my mornings; my afternoons were spent at the office, evenings studying. The senator wanted me in his Washington office, so off to DC I went.

After leaving the paid workforce to stay home with the kids, my ties to politics were reduced to nuggets gleaned from talks with my father. Without him, news from the state has dried up totally. Until the Facebook Former showed up and started peppering me with more information about the goings-on in state politics than I'd heard for years.

One thing I've noticed about IM'ing him is that he keeps me on my toes. He's very quick-witted and expects me to use parts of my brain that have lain dormant for a long time. Chatting online with him is both exhilarating and exhausting. Chatting with FF, I'm expected to know not only big words but nuances in labels and descriptions. After too many years of Big Bird, Anime, and Miley Cyrus, it's good to knock out the cobwebs and exercise the brain. Just slow down a little. After the other night I think I sprained my cerebellum.

Stolen from a Friend on Facebook

Kid questionnaire.

Ask your child(ren) to answer the questions and type their answers in.Tag other folks with older kids who might have fun with this. :)

( just type what the kids said...)

1. What is something Mommy always says to you?
* Clean your room.
2. What makes Mommy happy?
* When we help around the house.
3. What makes Mommy sad?
* When a pet dies.
4. How does your Mommy make you laugh?
* Tickle me.
5. What was your Mommy like as a child?
* How am I supposed to know?
6. How old is your Mommy?
* 43.
7. How tall is your Mommy?
* 6 feet, 3 inches.
8. What is her favorite thing to do?
* Relax.
9. What does your Mommy do when you're not around?
* Run errands and clean the house and cook.
10. If your Mommy becomes famous, what will it be for?
* Cooking.
11. What is your Mommy really good at?
* Being a mom.
12. What is your Mommy not very good at?
* Juggling.
13. What does your Mommy do for her job?
* Be a mom and sometimes teach ballet.
14. What is your Mommy's favorite food?
* Spaghetti.
15. What makes you proud of your Mommy?
* She keeps the whole entire house in check.
16. If your Mommy were a cartoon character, who would she be?
* Kyo’s mother from Alice 19.
17. What do you and your Mommy do together?
* Watch movies.
18. How are you and your Mommy the same?
* We both love to cook.
19. How are you and your Mommy different?
* Her eyes and partly her hair.
20. How do you know your Mommy loves you?
* She says it.
21. Where is your Mom's favorite place to go?
* The spa.

I asked my youngest. She got a lot of them right and some of them wrong. Hmm, which ones are wrong?

[Editor's note: The poll is still open. One person suggested New York City and even offered the use of her mother's Upper East Side apartment while the mother is out of pocket.]

Frau Robinson

[Editor's note: Don't forget to vote in the poll to the right of this blog.]

When you were in high school, didn't you look at other kids and think, Oh, s/he's cute? Even though you may be married, don't you see a stranger at the mall and think the same thing? As we age, do we stop appreciating good looks? Are we supposed to not acknowledge the fact that we think someone is cute/good looking/hot/beautiful/gorgeous? Perhaps if we're married and the person we think is cute is the same age as our eldest daughter?

She takes German in school and is participating in an exchange program with a group of kids from Austria. Even though the ratio of girls to boys in the German classes at her high school is fairly equal, for some reason there are more American girls than boys participating in the exchange this year. The Austrian class is split closer to 50/50. Which means that some of the girls need to host a boy. Even though we have only daughters, we moved the youngest in with another and offered to host a boy.

The Austrian students arrived yesterday and when we got a look at the young man who'll be staying with us both the teenagers' as well as mom's eyes widened. A quick glance at my two girls and I could see in their face what they were thinking.

When I privately told my husband about their reaction, I also mentioned that I thought he was cute. At which point my husband immediately starts in with "coo-coo-ca-choo".

Where in the World Should The Gaelic Wife Go?

One week. That's all the time you've got to vote in the poll on the top right side of my page. My husband and I decided that I needed some Me Time. Alone. Preferably in a different city. So, here are the pros and cons of each. Don't forget to vote!

London - Cons: It'll still be dark and cold and dreary. The dollar isn't doing too well against the pound. The last time I was in London was with my father who recently passed away. Pros: They speak English. There are great theatres and museums to keep me busy so I don't think too much about my troubles. The last time I was in London was with my father.

Paris - Cons: They speak French. The dollar isn't doing too well against the euro. The first time I was in Paris was with my father. Pros: I speak French. Lots of museums and restaurants. The first time I was in Paris was with my father.

San Juan - Cons: Not much to do except the beach and I'm fair skinned (Gaelic, remember). Getting to the resort you pass such abject poverty that you feel guilty indulging in such luxury. They speak Spanish. Pros: It's still in the US, so no passport or changing money. It'll be warm and sunny. El Yunque.

Remember, vote early, vote often! Polls close on Monday, March 23rd at noon Eastern Time.

Do You Want Cheese With That Whine?

The back pain began with a vengeance two years ago. Was it residual sciatica from my third pregnancy? Was my four-time-a-week running schedule creating a tight piriformis muscle or SI joint? Time to find out.

After numerous MRIs, x-rays, nerve tests, muscle tests, six months of physical therapy, deep-tissue massage, and two rounds of epidural steroids, the pain still radiated down my leg and tingled my toes. If my toes are going to be tingling, I’d prefer a different method. The doctor put me on a nerve medicine and two pain medicines which are enough to stop a horse. No wonder I feel like I’m walking in a fog all day that never lifts.

Today’s office visit was to discuss other options than living on meds the rest of my life. However, five minutes into the conversation and it was becoming clear to me that he wanted to do another round of epidural steroid shots. Thank goodness my husband was with me to drive me home.

So instead of heading off to the gym for some cardio and strength training, I ended up walking gingerly back to the car for a not-too-pleasant ride home. Um, did I say home? I made the unfortunate mistake of checking my email on the way home. My Girl Scout troop’s cookie manager needed me to pick up cookies for today’s cookie booth. (Yesterday was a wild goose chase for cookies in which I ended up driving two hours roundtrip and still didn’t come back with the two biggest selling cookies without which a cookie booth is basically useless – Thin Mints and Samoas (coconut and caramel with chocolate drizzle).)

Today calls for a medicinal latte. If it’s medicinal, then partaking won’t be breaking Lent. Ten o’clock was too early for anything harder. Although it’s four o’clock somewhere. Europe, perhaps? Stilton, anyone?

Previously on The Gaelic Wife

Yesterday’s blog about my Facebook Former led to some questions about my life before becoming The Gaelic Wife. So to get everyone on the same page, let’s begin, shall we?

Chapter One: I was born. No, no. That’s too far back. But it’s a good back story for character development. You see, I haven’t always been The Wife, but I’ve always been Gaelic.

Imagine growing up in the town of Maycomb, Alabama, that Scout (Miss Jean Louise Finch) describes in the opening of “To Kill a Mockingbird”. That was pretty much my childhood, transposed to the 1970s. It was a town bypassed by good intentions. The race track that would have brought in a steady revenue stream was located elsewhere because the thought of having racing nearby bothered the town elders. The four-lane road from the interstate directly connecting through the town toward an outlet mall was nixed because they feared people would speed through the town. Now they speed by it on the interstate never knowing that it lies a mile to the west of the right-of-way.

Factory work kept the next generation close to home, except for a few who were shooed away by well-meaning parents in hopes of a better life for their offspring. In its heyday, there had been a cotton mill, a tire and rubber plant, a steel plant, a pipe shop, and a foundry. As my Baby Bust generation came along, the cotton mill sat empty with broken window panes; the pipe shop was out of business; the foundry was long gone, overtaken by Mother Nature’s weeds and vines. The steel plant was operational as much as it sat idle. The tire and rubber plant seemed the only way to go. It ran shifts round the clock, six days a week.

Blue laws kept the plant shuttered on Sundays, as well as the department and shoe stores, the libraries and the grocery stores. Mine was a dry county which didn’t allow the sale of alcohol. The county line, and the first liquor stand, was a thirty-five minute drive following the serpentine of the river around the bends and fingers of the mountains which dipped toward the water.

My section of the Deep South was at the very end of the Appalachian Mountains. There’s a certain twang in our voices that carries along the crests of the mountains. Nuances are honed in the hollers and ridges down the eastern backbone of the country. My family instilled a pride of our Scots-Irish heritage. Bluegrass and traditional Celtic music carry the same lilt and resonances much as our souls carry the same religions and prejudices and suspicions.

Once upon a time there was a trolley line that ran from my little town to the county seat. The trolley fell out of favor, replaced by busses. With the increasing encroachment of civil rights into small towns, bus lines were shut down rather than having mixing. The last solitary public pool was left to turn putrid green with algae rather than clean it for the black kids since only the Blanche Dubois’s of the world would darken the doorway of the shower house. Some years later it was backfilled to make room for a mobile home retailer.

In winter, my father would throw us in the car and race to the nearest fire in the N-town on one side of the tracks to watch the firemen futilely battle a fire started from a coal fireplace, a gas heater, or just plain old negligence as it raced through timber-frame structures sitting squat to the ground. In summer, he would pile us in the car and meander to the sirens of gospel music wafting from the N-town on the other side of the tracks. Our neighborhood was a thin slice of 1950s prosperity sandwiched between two sets of railroad tracks against which shanty-like houses shouldered sheltering the poorer blacks in town and giving those sections of town their pejorative names of N-town.

Hierarchy was learned at an early age. Families that once had been well-to-do saw their fortunes evaporate during the war as their farmlands were confiscated. Families whose reputations survived were knocked off their pedestals in response to a d-i-v-o-r-c-e. Conditions such as divorce, and cancer, and affairs were only spoken of in whispers. Some things, like mental illness, were never discussed because it just didn’t happen to anyone you knew. Pity and shame kept people quiet about unmentionable subjects and kept them in their places if they dared to even dream of straying from the straight and narrow.

[Editor’s note: The author has been convinced that this should be serialized since it’s already much longer than most of her blogs. More of the “Previously on” blogs will be forthcoming soon.]

Tide Your Love Away

Facebook is still relatively new to me. My account is active. There are friends on my list. People invite me to join their causes. But I find that most of the folks asking me for friend requests are all high school acquaintances. Not even friends. Sure, I was friendly with them in high school, but they didn’t share my favorite things nor my innermost yearnings.

Finally a blast from the past shows up on Facebook who makes me really excited about going online. He’s an old boyfriend. Not just any former boyfriend, but the only other guy I dated than my husband who was of the same political bent as me and, more importantly, my father.

When my now-husband-then-boyfriend asked for my hand in marriage, all he had to tell my father was that he was of the same political party for my father to agree. After that, they stood in the backyard and dissed all my other boyfriends whom my father called Nazis, including one CIA operative, because they were all of the “other side”.

So the “Facebook Former” as we’ll call him friends me out of the blue. His profile pic looks just like he did over 20 years ago. Back then he was a respected lawyer in a small town about 45 miles from my hometown as well as a seminar professor at one of the upper tier law schools in my home state. He wanted me to become a law partner with him and settle down and have his kids. His mistake back then was not formalizing things by actually asking me to marry him; he just assumed.

Guess he found out the hard way that I am just like time and tide; I wait for no man. I wonder if he still assumes too much.

Cure for the Common Scold

[Editor's note: The author cleared this blog with her friend before posting it. Her friend said the woman was a "narrow-minded old bat". The author now proudly claims the pejorative of shikse.]

I could never be Jewish. Or Pentecostal. Or Orthodox anything, for that matter. The second son of a very good friend had his Bar Mitzvah on Saturday. Having run late trying to get out of the house, the note for the gift sat in my purse during the service, unwritten. Following the service, I asked my friend for a quiet place where I could write the note. She said that some people would be offended by writing anything in the chapel and then suggested a small couch in the ladies’ room for nursing mothers.

I retrieved the note and a pen from my purse and had just begun making the D in Dear when an older woman exiting one of the bathroom stalls harrumphed at me.

“I know I’m not supposed to be writ….”

“I hate it when people do that on the Sabbath and here in the synagogue. You should have more respect. You could at least go out to your car and do that.”

I felt like I had committed some unforgivable deadly sin. Embarrassed, I made my excuses to my host, grabbed a cup of coffee and hightailed it out of there. Once in my car, I began to reflect on the differences between my church life and what I had just experienced.

There aren’t many rules in my current parish. Unlike other denominations and other religions, I eat meat on Fridays; play cards; drink alcohol; wear makeup and jewelry; go bare-headed to church; wear shorts and sleeveless tops outside my house; drive on Saturdays; drive period; take Communion from women; eat pork; enter my pew without kneeling; take notes on the sermon; cross the center aisle without bowing; and still believe that all that really matters is my relationship with my Creator.

Of course it doesn’t help matters that, when told about my scolding at schul, my husband remarked that for the boy he is mentoring for Confirmation he might give the boy a copy of Jefferson’s Bible. Because Jefferson exhorted his nephew to “Question with boldness even the existence of God.” A great way to teach kids to question authority. And one that my rebellious, anarchist side thinks the cure for a lot of what ails us is a small serving of that.

Ja Nyet Spioni

Let’s face it. I’m weird. Like we didn’t know that already! Those of you whose first thought that was, I know who you are.

I like Russian literature. Old Russian literature. Like nineteenth-century old. To my delight, I stumbled across a website where I can read full texts online of Russian literati short stories. Oh joy! Oh, man, she IS weird!

If you’re looking for a quick fix for your expansive, angst-ridden, achingly beautiful tragedies, check out http://russiatoday.com/Russia_Now/Russian_literature.html.

Glut Your Mug

5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE
4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
A small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug

Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed! Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.

EAT! (This can serve 2 if you want to feel slightly more virtuous.)

So why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world?

Because now we are all only five minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night!

Talk Shirty to Me

How hard is it to schedule a little nookie? Get out your PDA. Let's compare schedules.

"Thursday night?"

"Nope, got belay training. What about Saturday morning?"

"Isn't that the Bar Mitzvah? What about Sunday?"

"We've got the Girl Scout cookie booth after which I'll just want to sleep. What about Monday or Tuesday morning?"

"I've got meetings those mornings."

"What about phone sex while I'm running errand? I've got to pick up the laundry on Monday after ballet."

"Okay, then, between dancing and dry cleaning you can whisper sweet nothings through the phone line."

"Deal. Now could I go to sleep, please? My meds are making me woozy."

Oh, Belay Can You See

[Editor's note: Today is Day Eight of Lent and Day Eight for the author without her triple decaf grande latté. If you happen to live within a 100-mile radius and want or need anything from her, wear a helmet when asking lest she knock you up side the head.]

My Girl Scout troop and another Girl Scout troop are planning a trip to Savannah in June. Savannah is the Birthplace of Girl Scouts, home to Juliette Gordon Low. To help the girls get to know girls in the other troop, we've been doing several activities together this year such as a camping trip back in September and a pre-New Years slumber party on December 30th. Our next joint event will be rock climbing at a local rock climbing gym.

To keep the cost down, we decided to use our own belayers rather than the gym's. The other troop leader is already belay certified. She suggested having my two teenage daughters trained so they can take the test to be certified. So last night she lugged over several ropes and harnesses and biners to my house to teach them the basic knots.

The elder daughter had no problem with the knots or the harness and picked up everything very quickly. The younger one was not focused at all. She couldn't get the knots down between text messaging her friends. The other troop leader finally took her phone away from her. Good move. All this was going on around me while I sat in my comfy chair with my laptop delicately answering emails from parents in my troop about the troop finances and fundraising for the Savannah trip.

After the other troop leader left, the younger daughter told me she was very cold. Hand to forehead, Oh My God, she was burning up. That explains why her face was flushed. She complained of a headache and sore throat and woke up this morning with a nasty cough. Sounds like the flu. Although strep throat is going around.

Good thing I osmosed all the information about belaying. I'll take the certification test since I doubt my daughter would be able to look up at the climber without keeling over on the mat. Instead of her yelling back "Climb on", someone on the ground would be yelling "Timber!"

Puss and Ludes

There is a small tear in one of the discs in my lower back. The spinal fluid chemically irritates the nerve which causes awful lower back pain that radiates down my leg to my toes, to the point of making my toes feel like there are pins and needles in my shoes, my socks, or even on the bare floor. My doctor finally found a combination of meds that dull the pain enough for me to make it through the day without too much agony. But those same pills are enough to also knock me out if I end up doing something non-active like, say, eating lunch.

To help with the joints, the doctor also recommends taking fish oil every day. After adding in the calcium tablets and the other vitamins, to keep track of all the pills I had to buy a multiple-slot pill caddy. My kids joke that it looks like a senior citizen's pill caddy.

Last night at supper, I discovered that one of the cats had knocked off the pill caddy during the day. After putting everything back in, three pills were missing. Two fish oil capsules and one Schedule C pain pill. The cat was probably going for the fish oil. But that explains why he slept all day yesterday and all night without getting up once.

Keepin' Granny Off the Street

Are you "quirky but stylish, awful but nice, alcoholic, enraged, creative, insecure, skillful, tall, small, perhaps you’re cross-eyed with a huge nose, you’re beautiful but you’ve got hairy feet, you do know bats and maybe you talk to clothes pegs"? Then I have the place for you... to design your own beanie.

First, check out their video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwd-ogAgKm8. After you've got the basic idea for the concept, check out their website at http://goldenhook.fr/en/home. The fun part isn't designing your granny-knitted hat. It's choosing which granny you want to knit it for you. You can even send your granny-of-choice a message.

Of course, the scary part is reading the granny bios and realizing that one of the grannies is just 48 and that another has been married since kindergarten. Ack! Imagine going through puberty with your husband.

Gilt by Association

There's been much in the news lately about skittish investors buying gold. And not just futures either, but insisting on taking deliverance of the actual bullion. All that demand is driving up the price of gold to over $900 an ounce.

Ever noticed how humans are pack animals? We hear the warnings of Wall Street analysts and rush to buy or sell whatever they may be hawking or shunning that particular day. It some cases it creates forced losses for some investors. But let's not get into the legality of some practices.

We wonder whether we should have jumped ship on certain stock months before and then beat ourselves up for holding stock that takes a nosedive into oblivion. Yep, I infamously held my Enron stock to the bloody end. There's so much emotion wrapped up in our investments, just as our hopes and dreams and children's college and our retirement are wrapped up in those investments. Who among you hasn't been filled with angst upon opening your quarterly statement?

The best advice I have heard recently about investing in the stock market is to take emotion off the table. Sort of like the best poker players. The best of the best let no facial muscles betray their hands. When we take emotion out of our investments, we can invest the same monthly amount in stocks regardless of the market. Over time, the gains will offset the losses and provide us with a nice nest egg. And while everyone else is madly selling off their stocks in favor of precious metals, we'll be racking up more shares at discounted prices.

The Bucket List

The Bucket List. Place an X by all the things you've done and remove the X from the ones you have not, then send it to your friends (including me).

Things you have done during your lifetime:
(X) Gone on a blind date
(X) Skipped school
(X) Watched someone die
(X) Been to Canada
(X) Been to Mexico
(X) Been to Florida
( ) Been to Hawaii
(X) Been on a plane
( ) Been on a helicopter
(X) Been lost
(X) Gone to Washington, DC
(X) Swam in the ocean
(X) Cried yourself to sleep
(X) Played cops and robbers
(X) Recently colored with crayons
(X) Sang Karaoke
(X) Paid for a meal with coins only
(X) Been to the top of the St. Louis Arch
(X) Done something you told yourself you wouldn't
(X) Made prank phone calls
(X) Laughed until some kind of beverage came out of your nose & elsewhere
(X) Caught a snowflake on your tongue
(X) Danced in the rain
(X) Written a letter to Santa Claus
(X) Been kissed under the mistletoe
(X) Watched the sunrise with someone
(X) Blown bubbles
(X) Gone ice-skating
(X) Gone to the movies
( ) Been deep sea fishing
(X) Driven across the United States
( ) Been in a hot air balloon
( ) Been sky diving
( ) Gone snowmobiling
( ) Lived in more than one country
(X) Lay down outside at night and admired the stars while listening to the crickets
(X) Seen a falling star
(X) Enjoyed the beauty of Old Faithful Geyser
(X) Seen the Statue of Liberty
( ) Gone to the top of Seattle Space Needle
(X) Been on a cruise
(X) Traveled by train
(X) Traveled by motorcycle
(X) Been horse back riding
( ) Ridden on a San Francisco CABLE CAR
(X) Been to Disneyworld
( ) Been in a rain forest
( ) Seen whales in the ocean
( ) Been to Niagara Falls
(X) Ridden on an elephant
( ) Swam with dolphins
( ) Been to the Olympics
( ) Walked on the Great Wall of China
( ) Saw and heard a glacier calf
( ) Been spinnaker flying
(X) Been water-skiing
(X) Been snow-skiing
(X) Been to Westminster Abbey
(X) Been to the Vatican
(X) Been to the Louvre
( ) Swam in the Mediterranean
(X) Been to a Major League Baseball game
(X) Been to a National Football League game

If you want to, do it. I’m not much for tagging people anymore.

What Are You Giving Up for Lent?

[Editor’s note: It was brought to our attention that in yesterday’s blog the author neglected to include a picture of a computer to reference posting a blog and checking email. Here’s the picture that should have been included.

Now, onto today’s blog.]

Day One of Lent.

Day One without my Triple Decaf Grande Latte.

So far so good. Of course, it's still early in the morning.

Agenda for Today

Hurry, hurry, hurry…

Before the next job…
Then there’s supper…

Why pancakes for supper? Because it’s…

Then home to…

Weather Report

Epiphany is winding down. I go to a Carnivale party over the weekend where the hostess insists that I can't drink or eat until I have beads on. Break open another box of beads straight from New Orleans, put two around my neck, and head straight for the bar on her back porch where the drinks are chilled not with ice but by the outdoor air.

At church, we are reminded that Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. The priest confesses to having an addiction. To baseball. He's looking forward to Ash Wednesday. Not because he plans to give up his addiction during Lent, but because Wednesday is the first day of Spring Training games, which to him means the first day of Spring.

Sunday afternoon on our way to a Girl Scout delegate training session, my second daughter asks when I'll take them out of school. I have a tradition of checking the kids out of school on one of the first really nice spring days to go to the cathedral and play in the garden. She says that playing in the garden as a child made her feel like princess. I remind her that it's still winter.

"I hate winter," she says.

"Then kill the groundhog," I answer.

But the radio this morning reminds me that the groundhog saw his shadow after all. I miss the traffic and weather on the 8's and ask my husband what today's forecast is. His reply? He gives me the rundown of the highs and lows for the week. But today?

"Blustery with a chance of winter."

Do You Want Fries With That?

When the Wall Street Journal published an article about Wal-Mart’s decision to stop selling fabric in some of their stores, the first thing that crossed my mind was “I haven’t bought fabric at Wal-Mart ever!” Someone told me that sewing is a dying art. I’m not really sure about that. For most home seamstresses and tailors, if we’re going to put that much time and effort into something, we’re going to use the highest quality fabric we can afford and it’s not found at Wal-Mart.

But that got me thinking about the differences between home-tailored clothing and ready-to-wear store-bought clothing. Sewing hasn’t changed much through the years. Neither have the patterns that I use. Sure the styles change. But on the back of every pattern is a size chart that is the same today as it was in the 1950s.

Amazingly, for clothes that I buy at the store, I wear the exact same size today that I did when I graduated from high school! When I graduated, I was 5’10” and 110 pounds soaking wet. (I wouldn’t have been able to step on the catwalk in Madrid because my BMI was 15.8.) I have since had three children and put on a few years. (My BMI is now in the healthy range.) According to the back of my patterns, I should be wearing clothing that is at least three sizes larger than what I was wearing in high school. Surely I’m the same size I used to be! Dressmakers don’t lie! Do they?

Hogwash! Somewhere in Milan or Paris or New York there’s a Jack Nicholson-like fashionista yelling at women “You can’t handle the truth!” Do they think that we’re so much more emotionally fragile than men that we can’t deal with our ever expanding waistlines? Men go into stores and buy their clothes by their waist size and inseam lengths. Why do women have to assuage our vanity by buying sizes we haven’t worn in decades? Seventh Avenue isn’t going to let their sizes slide back toward normalcy any more than we Americans will give up our love for hamburgers, French fries and Phish Food ice cream.

Maybe it’s all tied together. There’s some great big giant conspiracy between fashion designers and the food industry. They’ll just keep feeding us oversized portions at a never-ending trough of all-you-can-eat food-bar gluttony. Then they’ll convince us that we’re just as svelte as we were before marriage and kids and two cars and a mortgage by selling us clothing in sizes that have been dumbed down for our acceptance.

I guess I’ll go pick up a new pair of jeans at Wal-Mart. After all, they have a wide selection in my size. Just a few aisles down from the in-store McDonald’s.

Sport of Call

Have you heard the news that the Washington Nationals phenom Dominican teenage shortstop isn’t who or as young as he says he is? Seems like Esmailyn “Smiley” González, aged nineteen, isn’t who the Nationals thought they were signing. He’s really Carlos Alvarez Daniel Lugo, aged 23. Apart from the fact that this sheds a bad light on my team, it’s also a good reason for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to make an official visit to Cuba to open trade.

If you’re not a baseball fan, you are probably scratching your head saying, “What does some scandal in baseball have to do with opening trade with Cuba?” Easy.

The Dominican Republic is a country of 9.2 million people, 159 of whom play professional baseball in the United States. Cuba is a country of 11.4 million people, 15 of whom play professional baseball in the United States. The Dominican Republic, like much of Latin America, has an unregulated network of middlemen, street agents, who produce fake IDs and participate in money-skimming and kickbacks. Cuba still has relics of the communist regime (other than Castro), namely programs aimed at producing world-class athletes formerly funded by the Soviet Union.

Many in the baseball world have been hoping for Fidel Castro’s quick departure from this world. They believe that his brother Raul will be more open to talk with the United States.

If the world-wide economic downturn continues to upset oil production and prices, Venezuela and Russia might no longer have such a strong grip on the affections of their compatriots. Even though China is eyeing the waters off Cuba as ideal sites for drilling, the paradigm of the global economy might prompt President Raul Castro to meetings with his neighbor to the north.

If that happens, MLB will have a new crop of athletes 90 miles away. Having Cuba as a player in the world of American baseball will force a change in the dynamics that drive the Dominican baseball problem-children whose actions create many high-profile scandals in the United States.

And then we can get back to that all-American game of baseball. Now where’re my peanuts and Cracker Jacks?

[Editor's note: The author still holds Becca as a friend and appreciates her candor.]

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

You know that guy from CNBC who yells all the time? Why is he yelling? Does the title of his show, Mad Money, have anything to do with why he yells? But it brings up an interesting observation.

Have you ever noticed that we’re getting more and more entrenched in our beliefs? You can’t turn on the radio anymore without being bombarded by people yelling about their perceived injustices. Every time you turn on the TV or radio the talking heads are spouting off about something new that we should all be up in arms about. They rally their audience to call in with just as much ire as they have.

What does it do to everyone? It separates us. It keeps us from our full potential. As long as it’s always Us versus Them, it’ll never be We.

The other day on television, I saw that someone I used to work for was claiming something as fact about the new stimulus package. But the actual history that he was “quoting” was exactly the opposite of what he was claiming to be true. He was claiming something as true that was completely false. I should know. It was one of the areas that I covered when I worked for him.

And he was mad about it. He was trying to get his constituents riled up. Knowing his constituents, they’re as mad as he is now. They’ll be calling into the talk radio shows with their hatred for all things out of their comfort zone. And we’ll still be divided.

It’s time to do the hard thing. Tell all the fear-mongers to sit down and shut up. It’s time to do the even harder thing. Realize that it’ll take all of us. Because we’re all in this together. If the ship goes down, it’s taking all of us with it.

I'm Amazed

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Put your iPod or other music player on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the NEXT button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
4. Tag friends who might enjoy doing this as well as the person you got this from.

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
The One On The Right Is On The Left – Johnny Cash
WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow – O Brother, Where Art Thou Soundtrack
WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Women’s Prison – Loretta Lynn
WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
I Walk The Line – Johnny Cash
WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Pas De Cheval – Master Ballet Class
WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Lullaby – Dixie Chicks
WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT OFTEN?
Faster Polka – Laura Hausmann (Fun Favorites Pre-Ballet)
WHAT IS 2+2?
Cochabamba - Sarazino
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Stretch/Adagio – Lynn Stanford (Ballet Class At 6:15)
WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Steve McQueen – Sheryl Crow
WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Refugee – Tom Petty
WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Travelin’ Light – Widespread Panic
WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Despertar – Aisha Duo
WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
China Girl – David Bowie
WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Gypsy Biker – Bruce Springsteen
WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Daring Night – Van Morrison
WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Seasons Of Love – Rent: Original Broadway Soundtrack
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Half The Fun – Snow Patrol
WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Sentimental Journey – Les Brown and His Orchestra
HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Hark the Herald Angels Sing – Royal College of Music
WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
I Dug Up a Diamond – Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris
WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Busted In Baylor County – Shooter Jennings
WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Now I’m a Fool – Eagles of Death Metal
WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
If I Wanted To – Melissa Etheridge
WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Tendu in 5th – Densil Adams (Ballet Dance Notes)
DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
I Am Weary (Let Me Rest) – O Brother, Where Art Thou Soundtrack
IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Right To Be Wrong – Joss Stone
WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Help! – The Beatles
WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
I’m Amazed – My Morning Jacket

Calling All Men

When Live Spaces made their latest changes to the format, my husband claimed that they were just trying to make their site more like Facebook in order to compete. He has had a Facebook page for quite a while; so coming from him, the comparison made sense. He said he likes Facebook because all these people from high school have been coming out of the woodwork to be his friends.

I finally bit the bullet and created a Facebook page. And he's right. If only my old high school yearbook had survived all these many years! Being able to jog my memory with the way some of these people who've been friending me looked back in the day would help me better decide whether to confirm or ignore their friend request. The past few days anyone with any reference that even remotely rings a bell gets the confirm button. It's amazing who turns up as a friend.

In checking out the friends on my husband's page, he has a mix of men and women. The men on my page number in the round number. Four to be exact. It turns out he has one, possibly two, maybe three, women on there with whom he did some mattress dancing. That in addition to his already full bevvy of gal pals.

Whether we ever dated or not, if you're male, send me a friend invitation.

The One Zagat Forgot

What’d you do for Valentine’s Day? Imagine this, a four-star one-table restaurant. Our table for two was by a steady fire, two candles on the linen-covered table. Delicate bone china, softly patina’d silver and sparkling leaded crystal rounded out the setting.

The first course was artichoke-parmesan crostini. Our fingers lifted the four crisp pieces from the small plates. The first round from a bottle of an Argentine Malbec filled our glasses. The entrée was a medium-rare for me, rare for the husband pepper-crusted filet mignon with a red wine reduction sauce served alongside creamy spinach and slow-roasted tomatoes. More Malbec. Finally, the pièce de résistance. Two individual light-as-air Grand Marnier soufflés with crème anglaise. Decaf coffee, if you please, came with a pitcher of real cream.

Total bill for the evening? $35.00. Where’d we find such a well-kept secret? Chez nous.

Yep. I cooked; the children set the table and built the fire; the two youngest acted as our servers. (The kids had pizza for supper and their own individual soufflés for dessert.)

No cards, no gifts, no flowers. Just a simple home-cooked meal for two.

Valentine's Swap

Fresh off the press! Pictures of the swap spread. My swap buddy was S.L. Here is the whole kit and caboodle that she sent.

A close up of the adorable card.

Here are the dish towels and the pretty plates.

The card-making or scrapbooking supplies, plus the candies, the heart-shaped bathtub grippies, and the little mailbox.

Here's a close up of the little mailbox, soon to be filled.

Thanks to S.L. for the best Valentine's Swap!!!

Creativity Under Construction

This is the first time I've participated in the gift swap. My giftee might have opened the package and gone, "What the?" I feel like I could have done better. Because after I opened the package from my gifter, my eyes started to well up.

What adorable heart-patterned plates! And the red-heart-on-red towels! And valentines making supplies complete with the cutest little mailbox I've seen. My swap buddy really outdid herself. Thank you, S.L.

So to N.W., my swapee (is that really a word?), the thought process was that everything relates to bubbles. Enjoy the bubbly in a bubble bath while blowing bubbles. And if you just need to let out some steam with the way the economy is treating you, stomp on those bubble wrappers.

Bring on the next swap, Becca. Wifey is going to roll up her sleeves, put on her thinking cap, and scour the pages of Etsy. Watch out world!

Antici (Say It) Pation

[Editor's note: Read only within twenty feet of a cold shower. And for Heaven's sake, hide it from the kids.]

I've only had one one-night stand. Except that in all honesty, it really couldn't be called a one-night stand because it lasted five years. It just started as a one-night stand. I knew all the guys, including him, at his former fraternity. He was a grad student and five years my senior.

Back at his apartment we worked up a sweat on that late August night two weeks before classes began. Then dropped down exhausted with only a sheet on top of us as we drifted off to sleep. A few hours later the full moon shining through his open window woke me. It cast enough light to see the field that stretched out beyond his window. Marvelling at the simple beauty of a grey landscape I rolled over to look at him and was surprised to find him propped up on one arm looking at me. His reaching over to stroke my hair led to another hour of sweaty intensity which was followed by more sleep. We awoke at almost the same time the next morning. His first offer wasn't coffee or breakfast or a ride back to my sorority house but another go at it.

Ah, morning sex. It's the best kind there is. You wake from a refreshing sleep raring to go. Damn the alarm clock. Full speed a head. Whether you're gentle and slow and tender or down and dirty, the mental picture stays with you all day. You can reminisce during your wait on line at the bank or during your tedious meeting. You can remember the touch, the feel of hands on skin.

Lots of people seem to picture a tub for two filled to the brim with bubbles and surrounded by scores of tea lights as the epitome of foreplay. But the most seductive of all suggestions is to tell the person what you want to do and then follow up with "What about tomorrow morning? Will it make you late for work?"

Eight hours of waiting for it. Eight hours to have it invade your dreams. Ah, the thrill of it when you finally get that release you've been wanting, been needing. Tell me goodnight but twitter me in the morning.

The Herringbone Collector

Police officer. Nurse. Chef. Lobbyist. What do all of those have in common?

We had a substitute mail carrier yesterday. At least, I think so. I saw some strange man walking down the street carrying a mail bag and stopping at each house to put some things in the mailboxes. He was wearing blue jeans, an untucked white shirt, a baseball cap and white tennis shoes. His boxers’ waistband was visible over his jeans’ waistband.

It’s much easier to identify people by what they wear. For years now, however, business dress has been trending toward the casual side until it’s hard to tell by looking at them who work in the buildings and who are just trying to get to the museum. For a while, the easiest way to tell the tourists from the natives was by their ubiquitous tennis shoes. Tourists wear tennis shoes everywhere. Most natives wear some other sort of office shoes.

Causal Friday evolved into Casual Summer wear. Casual Summer somehow got strung out into Casual Autumn and even Casual Winter and Casual Spring. My husband’s suits would see the light of day only on Sundays. Until our church went to Casual Summer.

But he’s taken a new tack at work. Suits are back at the front of his closet. Even when he rides his motorcycle to work, he’ll wear a suit or slacks and a sports coat. He’ll lay the jacket in the top rack. He looks more professional. This in today’s economy can help him keep a leg up.

Just like the police officer and the nurse and the chef, wearing a uniform to work can help identify who you are and what you do. Whether it’s the black suit or the camelhair jacket, he looks like a lobbyist in his lobbyist uniform. And I just love a man in uniform.

Ms. Green Genes

My parents grew up on farms and moved to town after they got married. They kept a garden on my grandfather's farm every year when I was young. My mother would weed the rows while I would pick up stones. We'd bring home all sorts of fresh vegetables. Very few dishes on our table came from the grocery store.

In past years I've planted tomatoes and peppers. One year I tried okra and eggplant. But for a backyard gardener with younger children, giving up too much of their playing area of the lawn wasn't a real option. But this year?

This year I'm going to try something more ambitious. There are eight packets of seeds waiting to be put in either a starter system for planting after the last frost or the ground when the soil is warm enough. My goal is three-fold.

First, growing some of our own vegetables will cut down on our grocery bill. Second, we'll be eating healthier by eating fresher. Third, it'll be good for the environment by not depending on foods that are shipped miles and miles to our table.

I'm not quite ready for turning over my entire yard to a modern-day Victory Garden. But in the meantime, I'll be stretching my atrophied gardening muscles, especially the one between my ears.

Sir Nix-A-Lot

I'm about to utter something that every person utters at some point of their lives. "What's wrong with kids these days?"

Children, mostly teenagers, will forever push the envelope on their parents' authority. When those same children sulk and punish their parents by shutting them out of their lives, you have to wonder "Didn't they know to expect to be reined in?"

Parents who abdicate their role as parent and let their children decide the rules give the rest of us a bad rep. Our children don't understand when we say No because some of their friends can have anything they want.

Recently my husband went to drive carpool home after a church event. One of our daughters told him that she and a friend wanted to walk to the coffee shop and wait for the other girl's mother to pick her up there. When he said no, guess what her response was. Yep. Sulking. It's the same response every time her father, or me, tells her no. Which seems to be happening more and more frequently.

I know I shouldn't take it personally. But having your daughter give you a continual cold shoulder gets a tad old. Being the parent of teenagers, especially teenage girls, is one of the most emotionally demeaning occupations on the face of this earth.

It's Not Easy Being Green

The other day I was reading an article about ways to save money. The author was noting that today most families have multiple TVs with one being at least 35 inches and more cable channels than you can keep track of. She wrote that in 1970 her family had a black-and-white 27 inch TV. "A" TV. One. With three channels and a public television channel picked up via a rooftop antenna. Remember those days? We got ABC, NBS, PBS, sometimes CBS, and when the weather was just right sometimes TBS. (We lived about a three hour drive away from the TBS studios.)

When my father bought our first color television set, he brought it in after work to set it up. I was on the floor, cross legged, watching The Brady Bunch.

“Can you wait until it’s over?”

“The picture will be in color.”

“You mean like our home movies?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can you do it during the commercial?”

But switching out the sets took more time than the commercial did. And when the picture was back on, I’d missed prime viewing of Peter Brady. Bobby was the closest to my age but much too much like the other boys my age. Greg was much too old and much too BMOC. Peter was just right, just geeky enough to be human and just average enough to be your regular Joe.

Even worse than missing seeing Peter onscreen was seeing Peter as a Martian. He was green! Everything was green.

My father adjusted some knob and voila! He wasn’t green anymore. He was red. More adjusting. No longer red, now wavy.

“Daaaaa-dee!”

The actual episode is lost in the dark recesses of my mind. The memory of missing out on Peter is still there. Even though my infatuation with Peter is gone, I’m not too enthused with going back to just three (and on a good day five) channels. Saving money is good. But sometimes you just need a good Brady Bunch fix from TV Land.

I Want My REM TV

There's a recession going on. There's also a stimulus package being debated in the Senate. A lot of the stimulus package has implications for my husband's clients. He's been working eleven and twelve hour days for the past two weeks while the Congress works on the package.

He's had to attend hearings on both sides of the Capitol, some lasting all day and past the usual quitting time. This week he's been coming home only thirty minutes to an hour late but eating supper in front of the TV. ESPN? Nope. C-SPAN 2. My kids have started recognizing senators by face, even those in the background shots.

His boss sends bed-check emails at 9:30 p.m. asking if he's working his contacts. It's great for his job. He's very busy and has been billing beaucoup hours. His utilization is double the normal rate.

But, watching the Senate votes on the stimulus package amendments on a Friday night? Come on! What about the latest blu-ray we just got from Netflix? Cuddling on the couch with his laptop and his Jameson's while listening to the umpteenth roll call isn't my idea of romance.

Of course, there's always tomorrow. Unfortunately the voting may continue tomorrow as well. Maybe it's time for a solo date with a nice warm bubble bath, my latest magazine, and a glass of red wine. The current broadcast or the bubble bath, either way, will both lead to a drowsy feeling. I just hope he doesn't wake me up when he comes to bed.

Yen and Yank

Suffering through withdrawal is a real bear. That relentless headache and those sore muscles can stop even the most active person in her tracks. Which they did to me this week.

My withdrawal is from caffeine. Yep, the earlier blog on switching back to decaf was written before the abrupt halt and the symptoms began. When you go cold turkey, those symptoms can knock you on your arse. Even talking to friends couldn't lure me away from my fetal position.

To recap, caffeine is a diuretic. Check. Had the water retention so bad it hurt to bend my fingers. Caffeine opens up the blood vessels. Check. Those suckers clamped down tighter 'an a drum. No blood flow to the brain? Well that was the massive headache. No blood flow to the extremities? That was the shivering.

There may be residual amounts of caffeine still floating around on some mitochondrial level somewhere in there; but, I think my body has flushed most of it away. After the past few days of feeling like I've been through the wringer, I'll be sure to satisfy my yearning for the flavor of coffee with a decaf from now on.

Body, Mind, and Spurious

By now, we’ve all seen it – the photo of Michael Phelps smoking a bong at a college party. During the Olympics, Phelps was chemically clean. When Olympic gold medals and multimillion-dollar sports contracts are at stake, we hear all about chemical enhancers. But aren’t we all guilty of using drugs to enhance our performances?

Yes, you. Think about it. We wake up groggy and head straight to the kitchen for our morning cup of coffee in preparation of that nine o’clock meeting at work. To combat the mid-afternoon food coma, we walk down to the corner Starbucks for a get-me-through-the-next-three-hours cup of Joe. And that’s just caffeine. Add in the sleeping pills (OTCs as well as Lunesta, Ambien, and Rozerem) to enhance our sleep, tobacco to enhance our steadiness, and alcohol to enhance our calmness and you’ve got a vicious circle of chemical enhancers.

We heard a lot about Floyd Landis’s use of steroids in the Tour de France. We heard a little about the North Korean shooter who was stripped of his Olympic Silver after testing positive for a beta-blocker taken to steady the hands. But have you heard about poker player Paul Phillips who admitted that Adderall and Provigil helped him rack up $2.3 million in his tournament career? What about the two Air Force pilots who were on speed (Dexedrine) when they dropped a friendly-fire bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers and wounded eight more in Afghanistan?

Wow! Using cognitive enhancers is more widespread and more desired than physical performance enhancers. (Okay, let’s just leave Viagra out of this, shall we?) Cognitive enhancers can help you stay completely clear until the task at hand is accomplished, but doesn’t leave you jittery like caffeine. Most of us know that we’ll never be on the level with world-class athletes who compete for a living. Our livings are made, more and more it seems, in white-collar fields where cognitive enhancers could help us deal better with overbearing bosses and the not-enough-hours-in-the-day syndrome. So we rationalize our use of cognitive enhancers by tsk-tsking the doping athletes while downing the Working Mother’s Little Helper.

So, before the estimated 600 new cognitive enhancers hit the market by the end of the century, maybe we just need to take a look at our out-of-whack ways of living, step away from the medicine cabinet, and just take a nap for a change.

Bus a Move

Every parent feels like an unpaid taxi driver. As those cute little bundles of joy get bigger and their extracurricular schedules get more hectic than their former feeding-and-napping schedules, parents are wont to find carpools to help move Child 1 from Place A to Place B so we can swing by the grocery store for milk before picking up Child 2 and the rest of the carpool gang from Place C and be home in time to take Child 3 to Place D and get supper ready before the piano teacher arrives. And that's just Wednesday's schedule.

Last week, my eldest needed to get from the high school to our church for her organ lesson. Usually it wouldn't be a problem. Except that I'm assisting with the after-school ballet classes, so I can't drive her. After checking the bus schedule and giving her a copy of it, I didn't give it a second thought, just assuming that she'd get there just fine. Until I got a phone call between classes.

Uh-oh.

"Where are you, Baby?"

"At the X X."

"Why'd you get off there? The bus lets you off two block from the church."

"I thought I was supposed to change buses."

I didn't have the schedules in front of me so I advised her to call her just-younger sister who knows where to catch the free shuttle in town. After we both got home that evening, I asked her if she found the shuttle. She did. But two blocks from where we was supposed to get off.

This child has got to get her driver's license soon. It would solve so many logistical headaches.

Snackin' Heat

Jennifer Hudson? Beautiful. The Boss? Rockin'. The ads? Creative. The game? Incredible. The food? Depends.

According to some news sources, the average person's choice of finger foods racked up as many calories as some people should consume in an entire day. Stop the grumbling. I can hear you, "Why didn't you write about this last week?" Would knowing that eight buffalo wings and four tablespoons of blue cheese dip pack 920 calories have stopped you from having another one?

It now seems that everywhere you turn you're bombarded with ways to exercise more, cut calories, and decrease your waist size. "Yeah, Wifey, even here." So, whatcha gonna do? Other than the hour and a quarter of vigorous push-ups to offset those eight wings and blue cheese, what are YOU doing to watch your bottom line? I need all the suggestions I can get, 'cause all those beers last night really add up.

And one last thing. Go Steelers!!!

Can You Hear Me Now?

The youth minister at our parish honored my eldest daughter by submitting her name as the youth delegate to the 214th Annual Diocesan Council. She had a full voice and vote at Council which met last weekend. There was much controversy at Council this year. The controversy that has been raging in the Episcopal church since 2003 revolves around openly gay ordained ministers.

To recap: The Diocese of New Hampshire elected Gene Robinson as bishop in 2003. Robinson is a divorced man currently living with his life partner. The shock waves are causing court cases around the country as parishes align themselves with the Diocese of Nigeria rather than their geographical diocese if their bishop is sympathetic to Bishop Robinson. Some are aligning with the Diocese of Uganda. Now remember, the Dioceses of Nigeria and Uganda support the criminalization of homosexuality and the imprisonment of gays.

The first vote my daughter cast as a delegate was on the issue of whether to remain in the Worldwide Anglican Communion. Her reasoning on voting in favor of it? We're a big family; we may not like how the other members of the family conduct themselves; but sitting around the dining room table, we can at least have the appearance of tolerating each other. Pretty level-headed thoughts for a high school student.

From there the votes ventured into the realm of accepting open gays and lesbians into the church, allowing open gays and lesbians to serve as clergy, allowing priests to bless unions, allowing priests to bless same-sex marriages, and allowing priest to perform same-sex marriages. With the more conservative parishes not participating in the Diocese currently, the votes tended toward the more progressive side. Not every resolution carried. In fact, only the first two carried.

My teenage daughter, who has several gay and lesbian friends, voted her conscience. She wasn't a rubber stamp for my views, or her father's, or our rector's, or even the youth minister who nominated her. She knows that youth can have a say in the way things are and the way things will become. And, to her, the way things ought to be.

And You Think You're Cold?

Show of hands. How many of y'all suffered through the latest snow and ice storm? Okay, hands down. How many of you know about the possible major storm due next week? My local weatherman claims it all depends on where the eastern edge of the front comes through as to whether it's all lake effect snow in the Midwest or a blanketing of the eastern seaboard.

As much as we like to bitch and moan about the weather, it's nothing compared to what many of our ancestors lived through before emigrating to America.

Two lines of my family tree saw much hardship in Europe. First, they had to leave their French homeland because of religious persecution. They were Huguenots. During the Wars of Religion, one branch escaped to Holland, the other to Switzerland. After a few generations in their adopted countries, the Swiss family moved on to northern Germany. The year before my seventh great-grandfather married my seventh great-grandmother Europe experienced the worst winter in recorded history.

The winter of 1708-1709 saw temperatures in Europe drop by an unprecedented four degrees Celsius. Today’s average January temperature in Munich is -2 degrees Celsius (28 F). A four degree Celsius drop would be -6 Celsius (20 F). In the winter of 1708-1709, Europe was in the middle of a very cold spell. According to many scientists, the temperatures likely averaged about -12 Celsius (10 F) and perhaps lower. The daily highs would be well below freezing for many, many days.

So, the next time you start grumbling about having to shovel the snow, salt the sidewalks, or score the ice just remember your forefathers and mothers and what they had to endure.

Hustle and Snow

Did you hear President Obama yesterday complaining that his daughters’ school was closed because of the snow and ice in DC? And that in Chicago the schools hardly ever closed for snow? And that the kids would still go outside for recess in the snow?

I grew up in the Deep South where a single snowflake would cause a run on milk, bread, and toilet paper. But I have to agree with the President about this school closure thing. My kids’ schools were closed yesterday. My husband decided to leave the 4X4 SUV with me. Being a thoughtful wife who really didn’t want to be home alone with kids on an ice day, I drove him to his office.

The roads were wet for the most part. Some of the side roads were still icy or slushy depending on how much traffic they’d already seen. The real obstacle was the pedestrians (again with a blog about pedestrians?) walking in the streets. Why were they walking in the streets? Because hardly anyone had shoveled or scraped their sidewalks.

If people would take the time to clear their sidewalks, pedestrians could walk safely on the sidewalks and cars could drive more safely on the streets. Then, perhaps, schools would have been able to have only a two-hour delay rather than a snow (and ice) day.

Oh, by the way, the President’s girls go to a private school in Washington. DC public schools opened two-hours late yesterday.

Back to Black

Who’s at fault if a vehicle hits a pedestrian if it’s dark-thirty and the pedestrian is wearing black? While taking a friend home last night, I stopped at an intersection. The powers-that-be of my town have made it downright impossible to see oncoming cross traffic unless you pull across the pedestrian crosswalk and nose your way out past the line of parked cars at the curb. As I started forward across the crosswalk, my friend yelled at me to stop. I looked around and didn’t see anything. But then I saw this man, standing in the crosswalk near the driver's side front bumper, giving me a what-the-f*ck look. He was wearing a black topcoat, black pants, and carrying a black briefcase. As he walked away shaking his head and looking back disapprovingly over his shoulder, I muttered under my breath, “Well, if you weren’t wearing black, people could see you better.”

Heed my warning! Don’t wear black if you know you’re going to be out after dark. If you are wearing black after dark, don’t assume that people can see you even if you’re just a few feet away.

St. Vincent Midaze

My eldest child seems to think that she can stay up until midnight doing homework, get up the next day at 6:30 to get ready for school and still be able to function during the day without her work suffering or herself crashing. At breakfast this morning, we were having oatmeal since the forecast called for snow and the children needed something that would stick to their ribs. Our family doctors up the oatmeal with a pat of butter, a short handful of raisins, and a sprinkling of brown sugar.

Being the last one to table this morning, she tried to open the plastic liner bag of brown sugar. She was complaining that the bag hadn’t been opened and was about to rip the end seam out of the bag when my husband took the bag from her, flipped it around, and showed her the opened end that everyone had used.

“I think you’re sleep deprived,” he said as my brunette child had a quizzical blonde-headed look on her face.

Her current creed is:

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light.
-Edna St. Vincent Millay