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Local Woman Caught Sleeping With iPhone

A Cleveland woman was caught by her husband Tuesday morning sleeping with her iPhone. “I went to kiss her goodbye before leaving for work and noticed an object sticking out from underneath her pillow” Dr. P-Dawg stated. “It was her iPhone.”

When confronted, the woman, Rima Rama, 37, admitted she had fallen asleep waiting for new Facebook updates.

“My friends never update their status anymore. I refresh, like, every five minutes and I’m lucky to get some kind of lame YouTube link or Farmville update” a frustrated Mrs. Rama said. “But I have to keep checking, because the alternative is being alone with my thoughts.”

Dr. P-Dawg has advised his wife on numerous occasions to go offline at least an hour before bedtime to help avoid insomnia. “Here is a woman who depends on her white noise machine and Tylenol PM to fall asleep every night, yet she is up until the wee hours of the morning checking her Twitter stream with eyes bugged out in opposite directions.”

“I don’t want to miss any Shit My Dad Says,” Mrs. Rama confided. “Plus, my internet friends are like real people to me. I depend on them to tell me what I should think, feel, and buy.”

Dr. P-Dawg, who recently joined Twitter in a list ditch effort to communicate with his wife, stated that he’s had it up to here with this crap. He reportedly put the iPhone on top of the refrigerator where the diminutive Mrs. Rama could not reach it, but she quickly retrieved it by standing on a chair. “I’m addicted, not stupid,” she said.

An intervention is planned for sometime next week.

Please visit Rima Tessman’s personal site here.

Brain candy

I’ll admit it.  I pretty much only read brain candy (and by read, I mean listen to as an audio book on my commute to work). I’ve never really read deep, meaningful novels. But since I’ve become a parent, my taste in books has swung to the exclusively brainless, purely entertainment kind of books.

For reading such junk, I’m quite picky.  I like to read series, because I’m compulsive and start at the beginning and read them all in order.  I almost always read mysteries, crime novels, or something with a supernatural theme.  If it has a vampire in it, I’ll probably read it.

I want books that I have to pay just enough attention to that I’m engaged in the story, but not so much that I have to really think.  I want fluff.  Happy stories.  Happy endings.  No main characters dying.  Everyone should end up with whoever they were supposed to.  And I shouldn’t cry.  So this means that I normally haven’t touched whatever the “must read” book is, anything that is part of Oprah’s bookclub, or whatever the heart-wrenching, beautifully written book you are about to tell me is your very favorite.

Since my local library is a tiny little branch, I reserve my audio books ahead of time.  I’m usually pretty good at timing how long it will take me to listen to one vs. how long it will take the library system to ship the next one to my branch.  And lately, I’d been downloading the books directly to my iPod (look at me, so technologically savvy).

Last week, however, my careful planning hit a small snafu and I found myself without anything to listen to and a few days with lots of extra driving ahead of me.  I hurried into my tiny library branch after work and picked up the  The Lovely Bones.  I realize The Lovely Bones goes against EVERYTHING I’ve just told you about what I read.  But I kept hearing how great it was.  And it sounded so interesting.  And, blah, blah, blah.

I popped the CD in the first of my long drives and made 11 tracks in before calling it quits.  It’s beautifully written.  The main character, Susie, is very sweet.  I wanted to like it.  But…

It’s heartbreaking.  Part of the story focuses on the parent’s grief and I just…couldn’t.  I. Just. Couldn’t.  I can’t imagine, don’t want to imagine, will not imagine how horrible losing a child is.  And I certainly won’t do it as a form of entertainment.

So, for now, I’m back in my happy little cocoon.  I’m listening to a frivolous book.  And I’m deciding I really need to be OK with my choice to read crap.

I’m an educated woman.  And I choose to read brain candy.  There.

Now you know my secret.  Feel free to judge me.

Visit Caitlin’s personal site here.

May the Flash be with you

It’s more disturbing than road rage, soggier than a wet newspaper, and nastier than the moldy mystery food in the refrigerator.   It warms your body faster than a quick shot of tequila.

Hot Flash: The Perfect Personal Heating System.

Your body surface temperature always feels like 100 degrees.   People gossip about your continuous glow.

“She just had a facial,” or  “She had work done.”  The only work I had done was housework.

I have patented that glow with a daily facial.  My face is dried with my personal mini fan.  I painstakingly apply make-up, pausing to dab at the beading sweat.  After lacquering on the final coat, the mini fan dries my efforts.  On a good day, I look great for ten minutes, before it starts melting like a slushy.

The hot flash nabs you anytime, like last winter while shopping.  I had found the perfect blazer, but realized it was inappropriate to go top less underneath…unless I was auditioning for the new reality show, “I Want to be a Middle Aged Hooters Chick.”

Flagging down a salesgirl to aid me seemed the only viable solution.

“This turtleneck would be so cute underneath,” she said perkily.   I might as well have parked myself in a sauna.

“Do you have something less constricting?”

“How about this V-neck sweater?” she said.

By now the beads of sweat were doing the “Electric Slide” on my forehead.   I spied a sleeveless camisole and grabbed that baby before another pre-menopausal woman saw it.  My outfit was complete.

That night, I crawled into bed, the pre-winter gales howling outside.  The bedroom window was ajar, heat turned down to sixty degrees, and I was donning a short-sleeved tee shirt.   Hubby was huddled under the covers, in a down jacket, and a pair of earmuffs,

“Cripes, it’s five degrees outside; can you close the damn window?  You could hang meat in here for heaven’s sake,” he muttered.

Hmm…hadn’t thought of that.  I was a little short on freezer space.

“I’m as warm as a hot buttered rum,” I said purring, while perched on top of the mountains of blankets he had scrounged.  Hubby was considering a space heater until I convinced him it would set the mattress on fire.  Next thing I knew I caught him rubbing two sticks together over the pages he tore out of my latest book club book.

Seeing he was on the verge of delirium, I relented and closed the window.  Today, our bedroom fan runs twenty-four/seven and I now sleep in tank top and shorts.

Hubby has learned to wrap himself in a parka as he exits the shower, knowing that I will have the bathroom window ajar.  He ducks past my personal fan before icicles start to form on his hair.  His dreams of installing a steam shower have been washed down the drain and he now keeps that darn space heater in our closet.

With summer here, Hubby catches a little break.   I keep the AC at a balmy 68 degrees.   The meat that normally hangs in our bedroom is back in the freezer.   Everyone else in the house keeps a sweater handy and the neighbors can hear my husband’s expletives every time the electric bill arrives.  I can’t save him money year round.

Hot Flash, it sounds so sexy and seductive.  It could be the name for an exotic dancer.   Somehow, perspiring, while sporting that dewy glow, doesn’t make me feel sexy.

Ladies, you are not alone in your sultry moments and may the Flash be with you.

Visit Laurie’s personal site here.

Fickle youth

I want my youth back, dammit.  I don’t know where it went.  I looked everywhere:  under the bed; in the closet; in the garage.  It’s nowhere to be found.

Somewhere between diapers, divorces, foreclosures and angry teens, it had slunk away like Bernie Madoff at an investment seminar.  Maturity was never its strong suit.  What did I expect?

The scene plays out in my head:

Youth:  “I’m leaving.  It’s not you, it’s me.”

Me:  “How can you do this to me?  I thought we had something good.”

Youth:  “You’ve changed.  I don’t know you anymore.  You started shaving.  Worrying about things.”

Me:  “I have to work!  There’s bills!  Gas!  Food, for God’s sake!”

Youth (shaking his head sadly):  “See what I mean?”

And with that, the door slams, leaving me with a pile of unpaid bills and a stack of regrets.

But no, nothing like that happened. One day I woke up to a hungry baby and a 10 day notice and realized I wasn’t a kid anymore.  Just like that.

I didn’t want to believe it.  Was I not young?  Was I not healthy?  I rode mountain bikes.  I played racquetball.  I wore baggy clothes and said “dude” a lot.  It was no use.  My youth and I grew farther and farther apart, separated by an ever increasing chasm of accountability.  Worse yet, I began to look forward to the evening news.  And slowly, inexorably, the History Channel supplanted Comedy Central.

I was resigned to my sober new life of plodding responsibility.  Laugh lines, nose hairs and receding hairlines:  the face that stared back at me from the bathroom mirror was a grim reminder of what I had lost.

But then one day, as I was again contemplating my ever widening forehead, a memory came to me.  It was a cool morning in 1975 on the banks of the Sacramento River.  My brothers and I were fishing with Grandpa.  He sat in our midst, calmly showing us how to tie knots and bait hooks.  A toothpick hung jauntily out of the corner of his mouth as he helped us rig our lines.  And then it happened:  Grandpa farted.  Out loud.  In front of us.

It seemed as if time stopped.  We three boys looked at each other, unsure of how to respond.  In the relentless pursuit of a good laugh, farting was right up there with the Three Stooges, Bugs Bunny and banana peels.  In the school yard, a fart like that would be rewarded with gales of raucous laughter, followed by high fives all around.  But this was Grandpa and it was awkward.

“I guess I ripped my pants,” Grandpa said, grinning.   Instantly at ease, we laughed with him and then went back to the business of fishing.

I don’t remember if we caught any fish that day, but as I looked back on it, I realized that Grandpa had seemed to keep pretty good tabs on his own youth.  More than that, his youthfulness seemed to manifest itself most when he was with us, his grandkids.

I guess my youth was with me all along.  Grandpa knew the secret:  laugh with your kids and you will never grow old.

Silly me.  Now excuse me while I go make faces at my children.

And that’s the way it is

Some NPR news program was interviewing a Canadian stand-up comic about his recently being offered a job at a brand-new conservative news network being created in our neighbor to the north.   Officially it will be Sun TV News, but people are informally referring to it as “Fox News North.”

I was struck not so much by the comic’s obvious sense of “us” and “them” (and his surprise at being invited to work with “them”) as I was about his apparent wonder at who in the world (or at least in Canada) will be consumers of that kind of network.  It got me thinking about the varying perspectives of different news outlets, and I imagined how those networks might report on current events in, say, Afghanistan:

“Next on CNN: two more U.S. troops were killed today in Afghanistan, bringing this month’s total to 14.  Anderson Cooper will take you live to the homes of the families, with some extreme closeups of women crying, and Anderson will debut his new theme music.”

“Later on Fox News: Bill O’Reilly interviews three different heads of state about the political situation in Afghanistan, and tells them why he is right and they are all idiots.”

“Next up on MSNBC: a small earthen dam breaks in Helmand Province, killing two farmers.  We’ll tell you why it’s all Dick Cheney’s fault.”

“Next on Al Jazeera: courageous American journalist Helen Thomas, speaking for President Obama, admits that the slaughter of innocent young Muslim men in Afghanistan is all the fault of Jewish U.S. troops.”

“Tomorrow on NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’: we learn about a young man from Kandahar and the daily challenges he faces as a gay poet in this conservative society.”

Yikes.  I wonder what the new Canadian news network would report:   “Next on Sun TV News:  Prime Minister Steven Harper appeared, along with two other heads of state, on the Fox News show ‘The O’Reilly Factor.’  The PM explained to his host that although the new Canadian network is informally called ‘Fox News North,’ we’ll have difficulty publicly comparing our programmes to O’Reilly’s because in Canada you still can’t say the word ‘ass’ on the air.”

And that’s the way it is  -  or at least the way it seems sometimes.  But at least the U.S. television news networks have the good sense to hire supermodels instead of comedians.

Christians

I am a Christian. A real, Christ following, Bible Reading, Praise singing Christian. I acknowledge Jesus as my Savior, and try to live by God’s power in the day to day life He has given me. I also have many moments where I am a fallen, sinful wreck of a person. I make mistakes, hurt people unintentionally, get jealous and prideful and say things that I shouldn’t. So….I understand why people can be put off by Christians sometimes. I understand that the church is not always what it should be (and by church I mean those that claim to have faith in Christ). I realize that many Christian leaders have begged you for your time, money and votes only to turn around and disappoint you with some adulterous scandal moments later. I get that Christians are not always involved in righting the injustices of the world. I realize that we sometimes have double standards, seem overly critical and judgmental and boycott too loud at some of the most inappropriate times.

I get it……

But….

I also get that Christ is the point of Christianity….not Christians. While Christians should be more like the Christ that we claim to follow, myself included, we are all fallen, sinful people…..just people! We make mistakes, hurt people, get jealous, and prideful and say and do things that we shouldn’t…..but Christ wasn’t like that. So if you are going to judge Christianity…..judge it on it’s actual claims….you know…the ones in the Bible….the ones that depict Christ’s life, and the life that we as believer’s should be pursuing.

There are real believers out there who in the midst of their sin have moments where you can truly see the heart and mind of Christ. There are believers who are capable of having moral standards outlined in the Bible, while loving those that disagree with them. There are believers who are part of righting the world’s social injustices, and showing those around them the love and grace that Christ has extended to them personally. There are believers who are in process, living life, trying to figure out what it means to walk by faith and be the hands and feet of a Savior who has impacted every generation in every part of the world. There are some out there….

I pray daily that I would be one…..and that everyone would have the opportunity to know one!

But…..if you come across someone who looks nothing like Jesus but says they believe…..I ask that you would consider this….. while some of us might not be the best representation of Christ (and trust me, I am not condoning being a poor representative!!!)….believers are in fact just that….a mere representation…we are not the Original…we are not what it is all about!!…The Original can only be found  in the person of Jesus Christ…and the greatest source of information on that subject is the Bible…where the real-deal Christianity lies…reading that will hopefully present a better picture of what this Christianity thing should be all about!

You can read more by Danielle at her personal site here.

My magical eyes

We live in a magical house, and I have magical eyes.  I believe both the house and my eyes became this way when I had kids.  This magic stuff allows me to see things in the house that no one else can see.  I’m not talking about seeing things that kids are up to, those “eyes in the back of a mom’s head” kind of eyes.  No, I’m talking about eyes that can see things that are apparently completely invisible to other members of my family.  They can’t see them, but I can.  It’s like some cool parallel universe.

I discovered this phenomenon when they were young.  I shrugged it off, thinking their eyes would soon adjust and have the same magic mine did.  Or maybe they could get glasses and the magic would come into focus.  But sadly, this was not meant to be.  No, only I, the mom, can see certain things.

Only I can see:

  • The underwear on the floor of the bathroom
  • The crumbs and sticky stuff on the kitchen counter
  • The gas gauge on empty
  • The TV on when no one is watching it
  • The empty glass of milk on the coffee table
  • The tennis shoes on the floor in the middle of the entryway
  • The almost overflowing trash can or recycling container
  • The random can or bottle on the lawn by the driveway
  • The laundry on the line when the rainstorm hits

Yep, only I can see those things in my magical house.  With my magical eyes.

Read more from Joan on her personal site here.

The list

Julie and Julia. Last Holiday. The Pursuit of Happyness. Many movies revolve around the concept of determination and the pursuit of our dreams, and as we watch the main characters fight to accomplish their innermost dreams we leave practically screaming at the screen,  saying, “Yes! Yes, you can do it! Don’t let them stop you!”. They leave us with the sense that maybe, just maybe, if we put the pedal to the metal in our own lives, we can actually get the job/lose the weight/start the business/ or conquer the fear.

I was left with just this feeling after watching “Julie and Julia” the other day. Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, a woman lost in a meaningless job, who “finds herself” through accomplishing the task of cooking all the recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook in one year while writing a blog about it. Eventually, after overcoming some obstacles, arguments, and the occasional meltdown, she completes the task, gains a massive blog following, and becomes a writer, her dream job. All the while the story of how Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep) became a groundbreaking chef parallels Powell’s story. In the end Powell becomes an author, Julia Child overcomes the odds to become the culinary icon she is today, and we are all empowered to pursue our dreams, if at least for the next week or so.

I asked myself, as I was watching all of this, if this movie was written for me. One line in particular from the movie struck me, where Powell herself admits she is afraid to start the blog, because,“let’s face it, I never really finish anything I start.” With that, I pull out The List. You know. The List. We all have one. The list we usually make every January 1st, which ends up lost in a pile of junk mail by February 1st. The one with goals to reach, dreams to make reality, the one where you said to yourself as you wrote things down, THIS is what my life is supposed to be like!

I’ve had the same list for some time now. Lose weight, be more appreciative, take my parents on their dream vacation someday, travel the world, and, of course, become a writer/editor for a major publication. Some things, if not all, continue to make the list year after year, and as I scan this list again I think to myself, what the hell is the point of making these lists when I never check anything off of them? Is it the fear of failure? Mmm, yeah, probably. That has to be the biggest factor in why we don’t all go out and become what we imagined we’d be when we were 10 years old. The fear of going for something, failing at it, or being laughed at by others can be paralyzing. The thought of people ridiculing us and the doubt people can place in our minds just by making comments like, “Are you kidding? YOU wanna do WHAT?” can be enough to keep us from becoming what we really want to be.

Maybe that voice of ridicule or doubt is our own. We say to ourselves, Yeah right! I’m not pretty enough/smart enough/funny enough/whatever enough to be what we want. In reviewing The List, a sense of empowerment came over me. I am NOT going to review this list in 10 years, with the same wants, dreams, and desires and wish I had done/said/ did. I spend WAY too much time: 1. Not enjoying and/or appreciating what I already have in my life and 2. Daydreaming about the life I want instead of doing the damn thing and LIVING the life that I want. And that stops NOW. Because when I watch another feel-good-about-yourself movie a few years from now, I want to pull out that same list. Except then, there’ll be check marks next to the items on it.

You can read more from Julie here.

My Mother’s kitchen

It was the house near Delaware School in Evansville. I’m amazed that I remember the kitchen and more amazed that I remember my Mother in it! Having never seen a Christmas tree in the same house two years in a row until I was twenty-six years old, the memory of kitchens seems too insignificant to clutter one’s memory with. My Mother in the kitchen generates not even a blip on the computer screen. Donna Reed did not show up in apron and pearls with a pan of warm cinnamon rolls in her hand and my Mother evidently didn’t even bother to watch the damn show when it appeared on our black and white TV.

But I do remember this one particular day. I came home from school for lunch. Mother was eating a can of peas, butter bread and coffee. I hated that house and particularly the kitchen because when you turned on the light in the dark of night those giant, crusty-backed water bugs would scramble for cover—hundreds of them. To my nine year old mind, the water bugs, a mother who ate only peas for lunch and the shame of our poverty-stricken dysfunctional family were all related to each other. Surely, if my Mother could just pull off the June Cleaver act one day a week our lives would greatly improve. But, no, she sat around in her red chenille bathrobe smoking cigarettes and working crossword puzzles looking more like a hung-over Cher than June or Donna—and she didn’t even drink!

The memory of this kitchen makes me question what kind of memory my boys would have of the Tally Road kitchen or our Summershade kitchen if asked to do this assignment. They would teasingly remember store-bought cookies rather than homemade. They would remember a house too neat for their slovenly taste but they would also remember a home that was open to the “K-Mart Deli Club” (Mark’s childhood gang) and the kings of macho, Sims’ high school gang, “The Posse.” They would remember “The Bartella Motel” which our home was dubbed when Aunt BJ moved in followed by Bazz and Rachel when they lost their house in the tornado of ’86.

Perhaps they would remember that it took all five adults to get Sims through the sixth grade. He was too busy learning to be bothered with school. They undoubtedly would remember Smoke, the black lab, Sims convinced Mom to buy two weeks after Dad’s death. Smoke ate large quantities of plastic toys, my best Italian sandals, a can of Frito bean dip (metal can and all), Rachel’s favorite flip-flops and a $580 check. So as not to be conquered by this wet-nosed tyrant, I gathered the pieces of the check, put them in an envelope and delivered it to our lawyer with instructions to “deposit it in the estate account.”

They will not remember their Mother as Donna Reed, June Cleaver, Cher or Mrs. Brady. They will remember her as Brenda-girl, Bren-dog, the Brenster, the Brown-Eyed Girl, and most frequently as Mom.

Green Eggs and Ham deconstructed

Sparky’s favorite book, hands down, is Green Eggs and Ham.  This Dr. Seuss classic from 1960 is one everyone knows and loves, yet I have learned that it is possible to tire of the clever rhyme.  Especially when Sparky comes running every single night with that orange book in hand.

Lately I have been a bit uneasy about the underlying theme of Green Eggs and Ham.

Consider the first spoken words of our nameless behatted grumpy main character, whom I shall call You:

“That Sam-I-am!
That Sam-I-am!
I do not like
that Sam-I-am!”

We are supposed to pooh-pooh these words as those of a loony.  You seems a bit crabby today.  Then Sam-I-am proceeds to offer You something that You rejects out of hand.  Sam-I-am is oblivious to You’s protestations, cheerfully offering up endless options.

“Could you, would you, with a goat?”

“Would you, could you, on a boat?”

Sam-I-am is relentless.  You is a close-minded, boorish oaf who won’t even give it a try.  We cheer Sam-I-am.  We ridicule You.

It may seem obvious to others, as it does to me, that a much better tack You could have taken than simply saying “I don’ wanna” would’ve been to call the health department on Sam-I-am’s ass for pushing spoiled food, but then I like to go postal and ask questions later.

Well, you know the story.  Sam-I-am eventually wears You down.  You is out of options.  You is at the point of tears.

“Sam!
If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.”

No problem, right?  You tries them. You likes them. You is enlightened. You is happy. You is presumably introduced to a taste sensation which will become a life-long favorite.

But — thinking like the deranged parent I am — what if we were to substitute for the words GREEN EGGS AND HAM, the words SEX, DRUGS AND BOOZE?

Really changes the way you read the whole goat thing, especially, doesn’t it?

NOW who’s a crabby social reject?  Not You — we’re pulling for You.  Resist!  Resist!  Just say no, You!  That Sam-I-am, that Sam-I-am — I wish they’d lock up Sam-I-am!

“I do so like
sex, drugs and booze!
Thank you!
Thank you,
Sam-I-am!”

Next week I plan to take on The Pokey Little Puppy.  Stay tuned.

To read more from Foolery, visit her personal site here.

Photo via Wikipedia

Emotional fall down plan

While waiting to start my physical therapy appointment the other day, I found myself perusing the rack of brochures and pamphlets. Among all the scary spine disorders and joint issues was a familiar advertisement for a red button you could push if perhaps you had fallen and couldn’t get up.

While I am still feeling spry and able to retrieve myself from the bathroom floor I began to wonder what it would be like to have such a button available during an Emotional Fall Down. Imagine you have been dumped, fired, laughed at, talked down to, insert your own crisis here and you feel all alone. You would call a friend but, sometimes that even feels like work when emotion has the best of you.  You glance at the jaunty button on your wrist and think, “Yes I have emotionally crashed and I do in fact need help getting back up.”

So you push it and wait for your Emotional Fall Down Plan to engage.

My plan would look something like this: in a matter of minutes my emotional concierge (Bill) would arrive on site to direct my breakdown, similar to a cruise director only not as yappy and no tips necessary, yet able to weather the rough seas.  A glass of liquid warmth would be poured, my hand would be held all while Bill is busy getting the train back on the tracks. A team of people would quietly go about running my life and for a short time I could just process, deal, dwell.

I realize that this job is usually fulfilled by family, friends, and community, but what if you are inept at asking for help and the very idea of asking someone to be there has you breaking out in stress hives? An Emergency Fall Down button sounds like an ideal solution to me, in fact I would be first in line.

Visit Jennifer’s personal site here.

A Show of Hands

What is the first thing you notice about a person when you meet them for the very first time? Their eyes? Their teeth? Their hair? For me, it is all about the hands. Hands are so expressive and can communicate so much with so little effort.

A strong handshake communicates confidence.

A sweaty palm reveals hidden nervousness.

A hand with calluses tells the world that the person does physical labor for a living.

A hand with smooth skin coveys a life of ease.

Praying hands suggest a person of faith.

Sign language communicates words to those unable to hear.

Nails that are bitten off tell the tale of a person with a nervous habit.

A ring on the left hand claims that person as married, and clearly off-limits.

Unfortunately, my hands are the pits. I have bitten my nails ever since I can remember. Bitten them really far down, like so far down that sometimes I lay awake at night from the pain of my throbbing cuticles.

Yes, THAT bad. I guess that gives a nod to my life as the mother of 5 kids.  I also have a brown birthmark on my left middle finger knuckle. And, by the way, it’s in the shape of the United States! I’ve suffered from coarse skin on my hands ever since I was 14, when I got scabies from a dorm bed at band camp. Both my mom and I couldn’t figure out what was making my hands itch like they did. We went to our family doc & an allergist before we finally got sent to the dermatologist. He took one look at my hands and took a step back –WAAAYYYY back – and put some rubber gloves on before giving my hands their full examination. So, I’ve got that whole experience, which is fun to remember.

I also have fairly large hands. My wedding ring is only slightly smaller than my husband’s ring. When I buy gloves, I always have to buy mens’ sizes because the ladies never fit. As a matter of fact, I have (another) funny story (okay that last one wasn’t really so much funny as it was kinda gross) about someone Texan Papa and I used to work with. We both worked for a catering company and a new server started one evening at an event at the St. Louis Art Museum. Upon meeting me, he shook my hand and said, “Wow, has anyone ever told you that you have HUGE hands?” Hmmm…. I think it would have been less offensive had he asked me if I’d just farted or something. But, whatever, his observation was spot-on.

Now I’ve got a Seinfeld-esque nickname from my husband, just for me: Man-Hands. Good times.

Gretchen, a.k.a. Texan Mama, spends her days finding rogue singleton socks and tending to the dozen feet that wear those socks. She resides in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex with her husband, 5 children, and one dog (who doesn’t wear socks). In her spare time, she blogs at Who Put Me In Charge Of These People???

Mom no matter what

My mother has been dead for almost 10 years now.  I never thought I would miss her this much.

I know that sounds strange.  She was my mother, after all.  But while she was alive and going through her chemo and operations, I never really thought about the imminence of her death.  I never expected to miss her.  You could call it hope, I guess.  I wouldn’t.  I had an expectation that she would get through it.  I saw no need for hope.

For her part, Mom approached each day of her battle with dignity and resolve, and not a little humor.

“I thought people who had cancer were supposed to get skinny,” my Mom said to me one day.  “Why am I still fat?”

I looked at her, nonplussed, but only for a second.  She was laughing, and I joined her.  What else could I do?  If she wasn’t crying about it, I sure as hell wasn’t either–at least not in front of her.

Mom made her share of mistakes.  She grew up in a nest of pedophiles and alcoholics.  Her mother was a domineering bitch who made it her life’s work to belittle her at every turn.  So it was no wonder that when my father died, she lost her mind.  We kids grew up with a succession of alcoholics.  It’s happened before to a million other kids, and it will surely happen again.  That doesn’t mean we gave her a free pass.  Not by a long shot.  I don’t know that the word forgiveness was ever uttered, but there came a time when Mom began to be the mother we always wanted and needed.  It’s hard to distinguish at what point acknowledgment and absolution coalesced to bandage the wounds of our collective childhoods.  Was it the arrival of her grandchildren?  Was it her final marriage to a good man who didn’t need to be saved?  The how or the why didn’t matter.  We finally had our Mom.

And then, because life is far from fair, Mom developed breast cancer.  She never asked, “Why me?”  She never wished her disease on anybody else.  She fought it, tooth and nail, for as long she could.  Through it all, she continued to make cookies and birthday cakes; she never stopped bouncing the grandkids on her knee; and she always had a smile and a hug ready when we walked through her door.  My Mom was no June Cleaver, but in the end she taught me two of life’s most important lessons:  how to live, and how to die.

Eventually, Mom decided she’d had enough.  No more chemo.  No more operations.   She was tired of being a zombie all the time.  She was tired of the pain.  She was tired of what she was doing to us, her children and her husband.  All of that for maybe another 6 months—it wasn’t worth it to her.  Of course, it was worth it to us.  We wanted her with us, any way we could have her.  But it wasn’t our decision.  And so, she passed.

It’s been said that the measure of your life is not about what you did yesterday, but rather what you are doing today.  My mother’s life was resounding proof of that old adage.  She rose above the sins of the past to finally become our Mom—in spite of it all.

And I miss her still.  Much more than I ever thought I would.

Your house, my house, lakeside version

I don’t  know if you happily married folks and singletons have been paying attention, but the way divorced and separated families look has been changing.   A few decades ago, it would have been rare to see a split couple sitting together at a baseball game — let alone a graduation. And when such an event happened, it would have occasioned drama (will he bring the live-in girlfriend?) or speculation (could this be the start of a reconciliation)?

Nowadays many couples who have separated their homes and finances sit together at parent-teacher conferences. They invite their former husband or wife to  parties. And sometimes they even vacation together — separate bedrooms, of course.

It would probably horrify my ex to realize that he’s part of a trend.  Yes, he keeps up to date on the latest movies and books — but being fashionable has never been one of his top-tens.

However, in many ways, he and I do model the amicable split.  We switch homes for holiday meals, dragging presents and food up or down Route 100, depending on the year.   We share calendars, doctors appointments, counseling appointments.  And we also take our son to summer camp together.

This past weekend, we nabbed our daughter and went to pick up our son, leaving early in the morning so we could arrive close to 9:00 for the closing skit. Afterwards, we drove down to  see some  of my ex’s old friends — a retired pastor, he had baptized one grandchild, and presided at the wedding of a daughter.  They welcomed us as though…well, as though we were still together. Out came the pretzels, the soda, pictures of the wedding, lines and hooks so that our children could play at fishing.  I could feel the wind and the water leaching away my anxieties, the kindness of my hosts clearing the decks for the kind of relaxation I can rarely discover at home.

Helping set the table, chop the salad vegetables,  I felt very domestic, like a well-liked guest.

Inescapably, I was only there through the good graces of both my hosts and my ex-husband.  Yet, somehow, throughout that quiet afternoon of conversation and eating, we reaped the benefits of years of counseling, disappointment,  regret, hard work and yes, the affection of worthy opponents.

And on that afternoon by the lake, as I watched my daughter fish off the dock, teenage angst forgotten,  I took a minute to be grateful for the new divorce.

And then I tucked into a large portion of blueberry pie. Homemade — and well worth waiting for.

You can read more from Elizabeth on her personal site here.

Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the photo of Acadia National Park.

Judge me not

The other day, I overheard a conversation about how some mortgage companies may be forgiving past due debt for folks who have found themselves struggling to pay for their homes.

Those involved in this conversation were alternately angry, and then giggling. Angry about their taxes being used to bail out losers who had made poor choices. And then laughing as they joked, “Hey, let’s quit paying our mortgages! We can take trips instead!”. Then they patted themselves on the back for being such good, responsible people. Righteous people.

Their words stung. You see, I lost my house this year. It’s the house that my ex-husband and I bought from my dad fifteen years ago, the house my dad and mom bought when they first moved to Minnesota in the late 60′s. It’s the only my home my children knew.

How did I go from being a content, stay at home suburban mom to being a desperate, single mom of four facing foreclosure? I had a little help.

When my husband left me for a sweet young thing at his office, he was pulling down a pretty decent salary. The divorce was devastating, but thanks to a generous alimony and child-support arrangement it looked like I’d be able to pick myself up, dust myself off and make a decent new life for myself and my kids.

I got the house in our divorce. The house and the three loans on it (original mortgage, HELOC and a refinance, all incurred during the marriage). The house was worth almost $150,000 less than what was owed, but I had a 5 year plan. I was going to pay the loans down and be debt free. I had started looking at the future with optimism instead of worry.

And then the poo hit the fan.

My ex quit his job. The sweet young thing was now his wife, and while he was occupied with the dismemberment and disposal of our marriage, she was busy finishing college and snagging a well-paying job. A job that apparently paid well enough to keep things afloat on their end. So he announced, out of the blue, that his payments might be smaller, and later. Smaller and later evolved into non-existent, and never. Boom. Just like that.

My plans to go back to school were shelved while I scrambled to make ends meet. I watched my near-perfect credit rating plummet as I had to pick and choose which bills to pay. It was the proverbial rock/hard place situation: do I feed my kids, or pay the mortgage? With my “upside down” situation (house worth less than the debt), there was no equity, no wiggle room for modification or refinancing. It was basically hopeless.

After almost a year of negotiating, floundering, pleading…I admitted defeat. Waved the white flag.

My friends and family rallied around me as I mourned the loss of the house and the life that was lived in it. They helped me find a house to rent, one that’s big and comfy and mere blocks away from the “old” one.  It’s been the perfect place for us to start rebuilding our lives.

The past year has been brutal, but it’s also been humbling and filled with hidden blessings. I am not ashamed about what has happened. It doesn’t define me. I went down swinging, and for that I am proud.

So when I happened to overhear that conversation, it hurt. There are thousands of people with stories similar to mine. None of us woke up one day and said, “By golly, I think I’d like to be financially ruined!”. Life can turn on you in a heartbeat.

Don’t judge.

Feel the burn.

Burnout. You hear that term all the time. Thrown around with the casualty of an old sweater, perhaps used to explain a co-workers sudden resignation or a favorite website shutting down. It needs little  explanation. Gossip seekers ask ‘what happened?’ to which you  reply that single word, that conveys the entire back story. A story we all understand and can fully appreciate. You say “Burnout”. Heads nod and you hear ‘oh yeah of course’ from the peanut gallery. No more details requested.

I am personally fascinated by those who burnout. I work hard at what I do, and while I have most certainly have felt the BURN I have never, not once wanted totally OUT. I wonder then if those among us who quit their jobs at the law firm, shut down their websites or even take off for the Bahama’s without telling a soul are really just walking away from something their heart wasn’t into in the first place. Perhaps they got into it, thinking they could handle what was required to make it a success only to decide that they were not passionate enough to make it happen. When you have no passion for what you are doing, then each effort, chore and element becomes another trying expense of energy. Like climbing a never-ending staircase; it is hard and it will wear you out unless you simple love the climb itself.

Secretly, when I hear of others who ‘burnout’, I smile. I do not waste one moment of sympathy on their mental explosion and exhaustion. I am happy they can now go find the thing that they love enough to never even consider giving up. They are free now to find the job or hobby that they can fully connect to on a level that transcends the concept of ‘burning out’. They will find their passion and love that will burn so bright, that it can not be extinguished. Not by endless hours of effort or discouraging results. They will press on just for the love of PRESSING ON. Sometimes buring out is less about giving up, than it is about GIVING IN. Just finally coming to terms with the fact that you are not enjoying the climb.  Of course competitively I also smile when I hear of a case of burnout, because it helps to reinforce my own personal resolve to continue on. To continue taking step after step up that never-ending staircase. Never once thinking I will reach the top ….but still knowing that with every step I have continued my path and have continued to push forward. For me it is not about reaching the summit, but it is about knowing I am one step higher each and everyday I move forward. Forward towards goals that are fantastical and ridiculous to some, and equally impossible and improbable to others.

But I am okay with those odds. Because I am just as happy climbing those exhaustive stairs as I am reaching the top.

Maybe even more.

Yet another relationship killed by television

I once dated a guy whom I adored, but who was more a buddy than a boyfriend. We had so much fun together. Parties at his house were kind of like the movie “Diner”: lots of guys, lots of beer, lots of sports. He was very tight with his family, this guy I dated — not only his siblings but his mom, too. They came to a lot of his parties and were as much or more fun than most of the inner circle of friends.

His last name was Hill. Ordinarily I would be cagier than that with my information, but it’s kind of important to the story.

At one football party (or a get-together for some other sporting world behemoth) we were all nursing our current beers and watching the clock run out. As often happens after big testosterone festivals of this kind, the television stayed on, volume pegged, while we all talked over it the best we could. It was a wall of sound, until the network sucked all the money it could out of the post-game interviews, and the screen went dark for a moment. The mood in the room became instantly expectant, quiet. And then the new ABC show debuted, and the titles came up on screen.

laurie hill

There he sat, that guy I was dating, named _____ Hill. There sat his mother, also named Hill. And there I sat, named Laurie. Not Hill, just Laurie. I wanted to run out of the room screaming. The tension was palpable, or was it only my tension? Was I the only one who noticed? No one else even flinched, but inside I was squirming like a weasel.

The show lasted six weeks. Our relationship outlived it by three months.

Damned network.

photo via takkk

Cheering and Clapping, Redux

It’s weird how life turns back on itself sometimes….

I was recently watching my next-door neighbor as she cheered and clapped while her two-year old daughter did something out in the yard.  I caught myself thinking, “Man, I’m glad I don’t have to do that anymore.”

Truth be told, I’ve never been much of a clapping and cheering type.  But I did my stint when the kids were young in the backyard and at soccer games and gymnastics meets and t-ball and lacrosse games and dance competitions and….well, you get the picture.  There’s a lot of clapping and cheering when you’ve got three busy kids.

As I watched my neighbor, I breathed a sigh of relief.  It’s a different time in my life, and I’m loving watching my crazy young adults who I used to cheer and clap for as they do other things, like going to college and working and figuring out what they’re going to be when they grow up.  These good choices they are making require cheering and clapping alright, but the kind you don’t see. (I love that this internal cheering and clapping can be done sitting on the couch with a cocktail instead of a sports field in a snowstorm.)

Later in the day, after that bit of introspection, my mom called.  She and my dad live in a wonderful retirement community close to our house.  She wanted to let me know that her African drumming class was doing a little performance at a local street fair, and to drop by if I had the time.  Now I don’t know what kind of relationship you have with your mom, but I know for sure mine would be disappointed if I didn’t show up.

So along with friends and other family members we headed down to the street fair.  And as my mom’s senior citizen African drumming class ended their performance there I was, cheering and clapping like crazy.  Just like she had for me and for my kids.

As our children grow up and need us less and less, my parents and in-laws are needing us more and more.  This happens all the time, I know.  But it’s never happened to us until now.  We’ve got our own little circle of life going on.

Hey – There’s a Person in There…

Too often as a society we are enamored of the outer shell.  If you have a pretty face, well then, you must be a great person.  The less fortunate among us don’t get the same free pass.  If you have a big nose, crooked teeth, maybe a wart…you must be evil or at least lacking on some moral level.

Popular culture is no help.  All the good guys and gals are beautiful people.  If you are not Ken or Barbie, you are bad, unless your name is Shrek.

I remember as a young boy I used to laugh at “ugly” people in the mall.  My brother and I would spy who we considered the ugliest person, or the fattest, or whatever…and make fun of them.  We thought we were funny.  It’s horrifying, looking back on it now, that we could be so callous.  You would think that two young boys such as us, living with an alcoholic, abusive step-father, would have more empathy.

There’s that word, empathy.  I like it a lot.  It is the most important word in the English language.  More than love, it is the single driving force behind all positive human interaction.  Love encompasses a whole range of emotions, but before you can fall into it, you have to begin to feel what another person feels.

What is ugly?  What is beautiful?  I used to think all you had to do was look at somebody—they were one or the other.  Worse than that, after fitting that person into my narrow definition of what constitutes good looks, I would then decide what kind of person they were, purely on the basis of how they looked. But then a funny thing happened to me on the way to maturity.  I got a job washing dishes in a rest home.

It was overwhelming.  All kinds of people lived there.  Old people.  Young people.  Disabled people.  Mentally challenged people.  They came in all shapes and sizes.  They were in wheel chairs and walkers.

I was afraid to talk to them.  I didn’t see them as people.  I saw their infirmities.

One day an aide was feeding a young man by the name of Ronnie.  Ronnie was confined to a wheelchair.  His only means of communication were grunts and facial expressions.   I was making a quick pass just to grab some dishes from the table, when the aide left abruptly.

“Talk to Ronnie,” said Nancy, the aide.  “I’ll be right back.”

“Uh, wait…”  I stammered.  But she was already gone.

This guy was in a wheelchair.  His hands were claws.  He couldn’t speak.  Remnants of his strained peas dribbled out of the corner of his mouth.  How do I talk to him?

I decided to talk to him like a guy.

“Hey Ronnie,” I said, “What’s a good looking dude like you hanging out in a dump like this for?”

“Hey!” Nancy said from behind me.  “Watch your mouth!”

Ronnie threw his head back and laughed.  Tears rolled down his face.

“He’s a funny guy, right, Ronnie?” said Nancy, wiping his face.  Turning to me, she said, “He likes you.  Not many people make him laugh.”

I looked at Ronnie.  He looked back at me, a big sloppy grin on his face, and I couldn’t help but laugh.   At that instant, I felt what he felt—the simple joy of being in the moment, and sharing it with a new friend.

30 years ago I was a brash kid who thought character was skin deep…but a guy in a wheelchair showed me that the true beauty of the human soul emanates from the inside out.

Of mice and mothering

Growing up, I was the classic tomboy. While other girls were brushing Barbie’s hair and wearing plastic tiaras, I was racing my Matchbox cars and riding a skateboard around town. In high school, I briefly considered hiding the rambunctious side of me until I realized the boys kinda liked a girl who wasn’t afraid to play tackle football. Besides, my love of makeup, nail polish, and dresses negated any question that I was really sugar and lace at heart.

As I got older, the wisdom that comes with maturity overtook my desire to conform to the role of “typical female.” I won’t be caught dead without at least a touch of eyeliner but I’ll splash in mud puddles without a second thought. I treasure my long red nails, but I’ll happily break one crashing down a water slide at breakneck speed. Disturbing me during Sunday football is a punishable offense.

My tomboyishness extends to the animal kingdom, much to the dismay of some of my friends. I adore snakes and reptiles, rodents don’t bother me, and most bugs leave me unmoved. Spiders aren’t my favorite thing in the world, but unless they’re hairy, huge, or carrying a litter of babies on their backs, I won’t try to squash them under my heel. I’ve long been aware that the odd juxtaposition of a pretty girl with the soul of a tomboy charms the guys, but I had no idea how useful it would be when I became a mother.

I’m a single mom to three amazing boys. Over the years, one thing that continually unites us is our mutual love of creepy-crawly things. I’m the first one to point out a weird bug clinging to a tree branch and they know it’s fine with me to bring multi-legged creatures into the house to feed and shelter in a shoebox. In fact, I sometimes have to fake being creeped out when one of them decides to toss an insect in my hair.

We routinely try to catch black racer snakes in the yard and I’m happy to indulge the boys as they examine moths, dragonflies, and crickets that stumble across our path. My single weakness is the palmetto bug — a huge, insidious version of a Florida cockroach. The kids know by my shrieking when there’s one nearby and they spring into action to kill it and remove the resulting corpse. Saving me from  death by palmetto bug gives them a chance to be my hero, while protecting me from the heart attack I’d have if I had to do the bug-removal myself. I love watching my kids form an extermination army to save me while I cower in the corner.

If you’d told me decades ago that I’d bond with my children over bugs and reptiles, I would have laughed. Now, I’m grateful that I indulged my tomboy tendencies and didn’t bury them out of a need to be girlie. My boys and I love football and racing mattresses down the stairs, but it’s creepy critters that really bring us together.

Image: Nina Matthews Photography

Visit Lisa’s personal site here.