Not So Thankful and Yes, Thankful Too

(This is the obligatory Thanksgiving post I didn't mean to write and then -- whoa! -- did. I think the early holiday boozing oven fumes are getting to me. So type type type I did and you can read if you want when you can):

I am not so much thankful for the grey hair I don't really think I've earned. I think it was forced on me by things beyond my control, and I don't just mean my kids' being kids or DNA code, but maybe a mix of both and about twelve other things, or at least two*. Still, dudes, when you are 38 and find something grey in your freakin' eyebrow? Maybe if I was a professor of English -- a MALE professor of English -- or some such thing, but c'mon now! Travesty. Not MILFy.

(I am not thankful for the mental image I just created about myself. Let's just call the thing blonde and be done with it. Let's channel someone grey-hair-less and MILF-like and let's make that person me. K? Okay.)

I am not so much thankful that my friends are losing jobs, like Two Busy and Ciii and Manager Mom. It's feeling chronic. I am not thankful that the news everyday might as well be predicting an alien invasion on Tuesday, total world devastation on Wednesday, and I would like to encourage a little less hyperbole on that front. 

Also: not thankful for the yelling I do too much that gets me nowhere, not thankful for spending more money at Target on socks and shite than I do at the bookstore, not thankful for being misunderstood by college roommates who you'ld think might know me better, not thankful for wondering if they were right all along and not thankful for when I realized NO! they were wrong but I still never called, not thankful for fights with the Kid about politics when God knows there are better things to fight about. And make up over.

Not thankful for cigarettes. I swear, I'm not thankful for those. Most of the time.

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I am so very, very much more than thankful, downright grateful in fact, that my children seem to thrive despite me. Very grateful that Bridget's recent visits to the guidance counselor are more about growing up then actually doing wrong. Very grateful that Rory seems to hold true to herself even as the boys she plays with every day are starting to realize she's a girl. Very grateful that the GFYO is more funny than malicious. Very grateful to still have a buddy to do errands with, have lunch with, especially since I know this is the beginning of the "last firsts" as my friend Kimba has said.  

I am thankful that my young and beautiful cousin is still in remission and totally healthy, and that the rest of my family is too, even my dad, who's had a slew of surgeries but still rambles on. I'm thankful for my mom, who I think might in fact be immortal, and who is probably busy making a Paddle round robin schedule as I type. (I've often thought it was trite when people mentioned "health" as a thing to be thankful for... but I know so much better about that since then.) I am thankful to have two sisters who I like (most of the time) and who can stand with me as examples for my own daughters.

 

I am thankful that my best friends from college (and high school and beyond) are healthy and happy despite what I might have done or never did. I am thankful for the grace of a sweet goodbye I am only just now getting to know and accept.

I am thankful that the leaves have all fallen and I don't have to trudge through them anymore or sneeze at their molding carcasses. I am thankful that I have neighbors with doors as open as mine. I am thankful for a bunch of homies in the Small Town, whose big parties and simple gestures and long conversations make the whole thing better and funner. Yeah, funner: because I like that word more than the alternative two words. 

I am thankful for the fact that I can fill my fridge when it's empty, buy new shoes if someone needs them, go to the doctor whenever we have to, and if I wanted to, I could leave the Kid and marry the Awesome Babysitter, but since I don't want to do that so much, I am thankful that other people can -- at least here, in the great pot-smoking, gay-loving, over-taxing, about-to-be-freezing State of Massachusetts. 

I am thankful for the Book and the friend I am doing it with. 

Also, lastly, I am so, so thankful for a page amongst billions. 

One page, a bunch of words, a few rants (!), some stories, some thinky ideas, a little tuneage: and a trusted new neighborhood of disparate stranger friends who I have never met and might never meet** and who have made the blah blah blah and sometimes yada yada and sometimes OMG a two-way conversation I never imagined I might have. And without getting maudlin, which maybe I already have (dammit), you disparate stranger friends: I am thankful for you.

See you Monday (or maybe sooner, if I get drunk enough and have wifi -- ooo! that'll be good right Carolyn?) but until then, best of everything and please, dear people, my lovely and loved disparate stranger friends, remember as much as you can of what you do so I can read about it next week.

*How mysterious I  seem to be. Hmmm....

** Blogher. Chicago. Just saying. Me and Carolyn: not to be missed. Beer. Wine. Big small talk. Fun. You. 

Bullhorn

Back in the way back day, when we lived in the house on the water, my dad had a bullhorn. I think he got it as a present, but then again, I wouldn't be surprised if he actually picked it up himself at the local hardware store that also sold really nice and preppy tote bags. I miss that place. 

Anyhoo, back in the way back day, our house was affectionately known in the summers as Camp MyLastName because there was always some combination of me and my sisters friends there, hanging out, uninvited but welcome. There was a little power boat and a little sail boat and coolers that never seemed to empty of cheap beers in cans. My sisters friends who were post-collegiate would read the New York Times and eat lobster rolls and nurse hangovers. My friends, teenagers then, were just grateful to be included. And drink cheap beer in cans without punishment. (I mean, we were almost 18 and the law hadn't been 21 that long.) It was the 80s and I felt pretty untouchable and lucky. Life was kind of good but with a really, really bad soundtrack.

So my dad played nothing but Willie Nelson or Johnny Cash or sometimes Bonnie Raitt. And he had his bullhorn.

While the rest of us lounged in beach chairs all over the lawn, little groups of chatters or readers or hangers on, he would sit in the shade of a weeping cherry tree, invisible to the boats passing by. And he would hit the button on the bullhorn and rate each machine passing by. 

A cigarette boat with a name like Honey Titz would get a blaring "FOOOOOUUUURRR!" but a Hinckley would hear "You My Friend Get a Ten." He would also comment on other things: "Stop Kissing!" he would bellow, "More Sunscreen" he might shout and the ever popular "SLOW DOWN!!!!" which was the only embarrassing holler we would all participate in. 

It was mortifying but also pretty freaking funny and none of us ever budged from our chairs even as we cringed in them. When my boyfriend would dock his boat to hang out, my dad would critique the entire exercise for all the harbor to hear. I'm really surprised that boyfriend ever came back. But then again, there were those coolers... 

I'm not sure what had me thinking about that today, since it's wet and cold and windy and I can't even remember summer. I think it's the nostalgia of the season: holidays past and whatnot. And my dad's in Italy, where's he'll be through Christmas, just like last year and I doubt he plays around with a bullhorn anymore. 

I think I should get one and hide out in an upstairs street-facing bedroom and heckle all the kids walking home from school. "Where's your helmet?" I might say, or "Do your homework first thing" or the ever popular "SLOW DOWN!" 

I am nothing if not a lover of tradition.

Pinball Psychology

Tonight, my head is like a pin ball machine.  (I actually just wrote "ping pong balls" which should give you a good idea of where I am: words.... nice... wait! Not those words... Wait! What?)

I wish I had the decent excuse that many people have -- being stressed and busy with food prep and travel -- and while the truth is that I do have those things, it's not just that that flips the flippers in the brain and sends the balls flying.

I just know that tonight, bells are being rung and lights are being flashed and I better hit the button like a thousand times or the balls will drop... oh shit, the kids need to get to bed ... and the tenderloin in the oven!... and the Book! and then well..... the ball shoots pass, like a speeding bullet, and sinks into the hole. One down. One lost.  

I can't catch them all, that's true: but still the ricocheting balls remain. 

And I think I am growing up enough to know that I own those balls. The day to day ones come and fly past and I get that and I'm good with letting most go by. But I own the ones that remain and clunk around in the machine, going nowhere.

It's those balls that keep ringing the bells, bumping the bumpers, breaking my heart. I could have shot them out. Or let them sink. I haven't. I didn't. After all the words I said or could have said, after realizing there was nothing I could ever say, after every misstep since then, every ugly glance, every silent hour, every place I put blame that wouldn't stick... what's left is a girl feeding one more stinkin' ball into the chute.

(It seems so petty to sum up a feeling like this in pinball metaphor.)

(She stands back; she takes a breath.)

***

The game has never been about the balls. 

It's only and always been about the paddle.

 

Wardrobe, Food, Family=Fun?

I had to buy yet another new wardrobe for Rory who is seven and as Giant as the Giant Four Year Old. Eleven inches in two years! Twenty one pounds! She has surpassed her nine year old sister and will probably soon be taller than me.

Bridget on the other hand needs to be weight-checked in two months.

I alternate between obsessing about the one who eats too little and the one who is constantly coming downstairs in some hackneyed punk rock I got dressed in the dark with my eyes closed outfit because -- whine with me please -- "nothing fits mooommmmmmm!". And nothing does fit. And so I hand the outgrowns to the older sister who needs to cinch 'em up.

And then I head to about sixty five different places because R will not wear just any clothes. They can not have a butterfly or a fairy or gasp! be pink. They can not be shiny or sparkly or (her words) "glowy." I aim for solids, because in her world, stripes go with plaids go with tie dye, and since I don't hassle anyone about clothing choices, it just makes the morning less stressful -- in a visual sense -- on us all. Whatever she wears will come home filthy and probably ripped, so cheap is at the top of the criteria list, too.

I can have do drive myself crazy about the other one who seems to be giving a new name to "picky eater." I know I shouldn't. Laying off is what all the books say to do, and frankly, after trying the bribing and the begging and the threats, not doing anything seems to make the dinner hour fifteen minutes happiest. Happier. (You can really get a hang up about your culinary skills when cooking for children.) 

Since I have been size M most of my life and never much cared about that, and since I seem to be just about the only person I know who can't find the way to the gym or the boot camp (6am? Um, nothanks), and since I personally enjoy everything from truffle oil to Taco Bell, I cannot for the life of me figure out where this tooth-pick food-hater gets it. 

I mention this all because the Big Feast approacheth. And inevitably someone will point out how little the older one eats and how messy the younger one is. The GFYO will probably wipe out down the stairs or break something or generally distract our attention for a few short minutes, but the comments will come. And I won't have the answers or any answer so I will smile and say something about Obama or Palin because nothing says tension-free family gathering more than a little political gamesmanship between the token "socialist" (ie: me) and most everyone else in the Kid's family. 

But at least we won't be talking about my kids. And you gotta be thankful for something.

Swimming or Drowning

The GFYO missed his last two swimming lessons because, despite his tough ninja style, he would not go past the locker room. Would not budge. Cried. Would not.take.one.more.step.

He finally confessed that he doesn't want to "race" so I said OMG you little nutcase gently, there's no racing little man -- it's just pretty much putting your face in the water and learning how to swim. The dude sinks like a smiling, blissful stone and yet in his infinite wisdom, figured I'd enrolled him in swim team and was expecting kick turns on the 200meter butterfly.

Today, he went. Today, in his swim cap squeezed to the top of his head like a yarmulke, he actually swam -- unattended by human or flotation device. Then he did a perfect kick turn and broke the individual medley record. Actually, he didn't do that, but as I kinda knew all along, that little bugger has been fooling me from the get go: he just likes it when I haul his life jacket everywhere we go. So now I think he can probably read too and also do laundry, but why bother since he has me to do his bidding.

I told Rory the good news and she high-fived him from across the seats in the car. And then the following commenced:

R: Now you can swim in the pool in South Carolina. But I will watch you anyway because you will probably get tired and drown. Then I will scoop you up and pat your back. You might drown again so mom might have to come but the thing is YOU WILL SURVIVE because you can swim now. I have drowned like eighty times. Maybe a hundred. The thing is: don't go in the deep end.

GFYO: OK.

R: And maybe wear your life jacket for, like, the first few days because I'll probably be busy and stuff and won't see you if you drown.

GFYO: OK.

R: But anyway, good job.

And you know what? She's right. Because it's a good day if you can swim and don't drown, kind of like it's a good day if you have your driver's license and don't kill some innocent bystander. Everything's relative: swimming or drowning included.

And speaking of doing more swimming, go here and let ciii of Goat and Tater know you got his floaties. 

Weather Report

There are icicles on the weather dude's weekly chart. The entire word "Wednesday" is frozen over. This means only one thing: we are about to enter the Missing Mitten Zone.

Akin to the Bermuda Triangle and the place where socks go, the Missing Mitten Zone shows up at about 7:45am on the first freezing morning and lasts until about five minutes after the last school bell has rung on the first day of Spring. Buckets, baskets, those see-through shoe holders that I've tried hanging on the back of doors, clips, safety pins -- nothing works. The Missing Mitten Zone trumps Missing Ballet Slipper Zone, Missing Shin Guard Zone, Missing Shoe Zone, Missing TV Clicker Zone, and Missing Permission Slip Zone. 

And four year old boys who insist on wearing gloves but are totally incapable of putting all the right fingers into all the right slots and can't open car doors on sub-zero mornings because three fingers are jammed into the pinky slot of said gloves thus rendering the hand entirely useless and who will then rip off the annoying glove and throw it the driveway where it will inevitably get buried under leaves or blow away -- breathe -- will cause parents to enter another zone: the You Know What Just Put Your Hands In Your Pockets You'll Be Alright Zone. 

All The People at This Party

Since I am not sure there is a cure for the song stuck in my head (the song offered on video below, that I hope you will play before you read the following), like Helter Skelter, I am taking Joni's back. 

Cue: music (yes, YOU: click it):

All the people at this party

I think Bedhead has a lot of style

Freeman has stamps of many countries

I had a passport; Waltz smiles...

Laggin's friendly, some are cutting

Sometimes I'm watching Kristin from the wings:

Maybe FADKOG, Infant, and Uncool are giving to get something?

When Whiskey gets attention

Bossy and Jonniker running down,

Cusp's got things no one knows --

I take the lampshade as my crown.

One minute I am happy

Then Heather's crying on someone's knee

I say laughing and crying  -- Aimee

WAIT? it's not about me?

I told you when I met you Meg and Minivan

I was thinky

Cry for us all Rho

Cry for Myself in the corner

Thinking she's nobody

And Jesus behind his Joker

and stone-cold X behind her fans

and me in frightened silence

waiting for Carolynnnnnnn.

I felt like I was pretending Nash's Mom

then JenW... woke me

Sass seems to have a broader sensibility

I'm living on nerves and feelings Two Busy

Like Merecat, Patty and Cii -- word

showing up at Deeples parties

waiting to flip the bird.

It's not a lack of humor, UncoolKevin,

that keeps the sadness at bay, 20Something:

it's throwing the lightness on these things, Floyd,

laughing it all away, Lori

laughing it all away,

Manager Mom is laughing it all away.

I'm laughing it all away.

Getting All Politically

I feel like it's been a while since I've really railed and raged. Stand back, peeps, because I am pissed...

I think in our collective election hangover you on the right can still keep reading ( yes, I'm talking to you Kid), we cried and cheered and celebrated but as it turns out, the world around us did not fall off its axis. I think in our yada yada woohoo big whoop good times wow kind of thinking, we missed the big picture. Ours is in fact not a New America.

Take California. Take Florida. For god sakes, will somebody take Arkansas and give it to another country? In the midst of our self-congratulatory moment in the burning sun (or in my case, rain), do we not see how in fact backasswards our nation is? 

Women, black people: if you do not know that you have arrived, and yes, I am thoroughly and willingly throwing myself under the large ass tractor trailer headed my way, but OH MY GOD: it is your own damn fault. Title 9? The Civil Rights Act? Nothing has been made perfect for damn sure, but things could be a helluva lot worse. 

While laws do not make perfect the acts of man (or The Man), they give credibility to our complaints. They give us leeway and access and cause. But there are those who walk amongst us, most of the time right damn beside us, who do not have any legal foot or even toe to stand on.

How can I as a woman, as a feminist (there: I said it), raise daughters and a son in a supposedly equal opportunity world when others (and maybe even them) (who knows?) are denied the rights we take so perfectly for granted? Explain to me how I can explain the "civil" in civil rights or the "equal" in equality when that is not in fact true for everyone? 

This is not about religion or a bible or any of  that. This is not about your private feelings about homosexuality. This is about equal rights under the law. Marriage is not about God or romance at the end of the day (unless you choose it to be so, and dude, I hope most of you do), but about protection. Marriage is about protecting property and children. It is a legal construct. Nothing more, nothing less. Our constitution insists on equal protection under the law. In banning the rights of marriage to some citizens, we are denying the rights granted to all of us to some of us.

And that, fundamentally, is wrong.

The New America we supposedly woke up in is the Old America to gay and lesbian people across this nation. I can not pat myself on the back for anything (even though I live in Massachusetts) (where by the way decriminalizing small amounts of pot won overwhelmingly) (and will save a lot of lives, in my humble non-smoking pot opinion) because our country, our freedom loving, New American country has serious work to do.

And that concludes Ms. Picket's rant. Pick it up if you can. 

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PSSST: You may have seen this from Keith O, who I generally consider to be over dramatic for my liking, but still: have at it.

All Lost in the Supermarket

I mentioned earlier today that I had forgotten the joys of grocery shopping with three small children. What with school for the older two full time, and play dates I am not obligated to attend pre-school for the GFYO a few mornings a week, I can pretty much manage the buying of food (no one will eat) all by my lonesome.

Today, since we honor Veterans Day here in Massachusetts by taking the day off from organized education, and since the cupboards were really pathetically bare (stale Triscuit anyone? limp carrot?), off I went with the Short Drunk People for an hour or so of public drunkenness at the local food store. Thankfully, we saw no one we knew. 

It is not that my children are any worse or more spazzy than other kids in grocery stores. It's just that they are mine and so I get to highlight their shenanigans because I consider it my RIGHT and my DUTY.

For instance, those coupons dispensed in those little machines are not coupons but tickets and for some reason, the more tickets you get the better. Tickets to what? to where? Who the fuck knows, but they want them and must have them.

Also, produce baggies are not so much for say, um, brussel sprouts or broccoli, but better used as blow-up whacking instruments. I know this because for a good twenty minutes Rory* and the GFYO blew-up and whacked. Creative play? Perhaps. Utterly annoying? For sure.

Three children under the age of ten can discuss the merits of different types of "fruit" flavored gummy snacks for longer than your average senator can filibuster. The fish department on the other hand elicits gasps and speed walking, and also from Bridget*, a kind of stunned silence that a mother would even consider "making" her children eat something so "gross."

The word "gorp" (you know, the trail mix your mom probably made with peanuts and raisins and M&Ms) resulted in what will forevermore be known as the Gorp Song. It included many made-up (or misused) words, some lame beat boxing, some attempts at break dancing (in aisle 6), and the scorn of other shoppers.  

The good news? The cupboards are less empty and we made it out of there, all four of us, with a dollar to spare for the (I mean, really: it's NOVEMBER) bell-ringing Salvation Army guy. We loaded the goods in and then they loaded them all out. We put the food away, divided up crackers into ready-for-school-lunch individual portions, discussed how we would not eat all the "fruit" flavored gummy snacks in one gluttonous feast when in fact, we have REAL fruit to gluttonously eat, and we marveled at our accomplishment. Well, actually, I marveled; every one else went outside to play.

The bad news? No booze section in that grocery store which puts a little damper on the one-stop-shopping, you know what I'm saying?

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* Oh yes. I am leaving the initials behind (except for the GFYO because I just dig that little moniker of his) because "B" and "R" never sounded like them to me anyway, so there you have it.

   

How Romantic is That

The weekend saw me crying one day at a funeral and the next day at an engagement party. I said to the Kid that I felt like I was an interloper at both.  He said no one invites a voyeur. 

I'm trying to make that a compliment, and I think it was, and anyway: this is an awesome song. 

THIS is not about THAT

This is NOT about politics.

This is not about anything historic or ideological.

This is not about the news. 

Or soccer. Or the PTO. 

This is not about what I did today, or yesterday, or about what I will do tomorrow.

THIS is about this tiny minute and nothing else. 

This is about the rain slamming against the skylight and the leaves like kamikaze birds making a final flight. This about the three kids who think I can't hear them upstairs (in bed?) but I do. This is about me doing nothing about it and hoping someday, my gamble pays off and they end up loving each other as grown-ups. 

This is about the hum of the click clack on the keyboard and how that sounds like the post office workers in Africa that I heard on a cassette tape once in a music class in college. 

(This is NOT about worrying that I left a canvas bag full of soccer balls and other crap outside in what is now a full on downpour.)

THIS is about this tiny minute. It is about me turning off the radio and the television and the everything else and sitting here, in THIS minute, all by myself (at least in this room) (where I am, for now, all alone). This is about me listening to something other than than every one else and every thing else and just for right now, listening to nothing. But the click clack. And the rain.  

This is about being quiet in a fury of sound, in a fury of hoopla and chit chat and emails and phone calls, and all of the other things that make noise.

THIS is about this tiny quiet minute, this one little bit of time, this thing I can have and make silent and untouchable. I wonder if anyone can relate to that, and I hope that they do. I wonder if life is about more than this -- tiny minutes -- and I think that mostly, it isn't.

Because right now, in this minute, this tiny minute, when my children are at last, finally asleep, and when I can hear in the quiet how truly lucky I am to be living here, in this house, right now, at this time, at this very stinking minute -- everything else can find the back door: I am just happy and grateful.

That's what this is about.

What To Do While Waiting

1) Do not check polls on any number of web sites. This is much akin to diagnosing a cold with a google search. You will log out with the plague or colitis.

2) Consider reorganizing a coat closet. An attic. The pantry.

3) Call old friends, yawn, sigh and say "So.... what's going on? Anything new with you?"

4) Pick through left-over Halloween candy. Arrange Skittles in a colorful row. Add M&Ms. Then Dots. Invent new art form.

5) Windex the inside of your car's windows. Because you can. Because, why not?

6) Let your children vote on what to have for dinner, exercise your veto powers, and finish with a hearty "and that my little friends is a beautiful thing called Checks and Balances!"

7) Catalog your catalogs. Fill up the recycling bin. Feel good about doing your part. 

8) One word: solitaire.

9) Ponder the number nine. If you say nine nine times, it sounds weird. Try it.

10) Type type type. 

Repeat 1 through 9 (minus #6, because that would be, um, dumb and involve lots of cooking), throw in a 11) cocktail and breathe. It's a pretty awesome day to be American, yo.

Life Sneaks Into Boring

I wrote five sentences and deleted them. I do that almost... never.

Typically, I sit down to the screen and wonder what I could possibly say and so, just start typing. I hit delete when I spell words incredibly wrong but mostly just, yeah....go.

Today, on the final edge of a weekend in which there was so much to do that I never enjoyed any of it as much as I should have or could have, and which might have been blog fodder, other shit happened. 

Parents died (not mine). 

Babies died (not mine). 

Emails came that made me cry about things that had nothing to do with the dying. 

Life sneaks into my boring. It sneaks in and finds its insidious home. 

The minute I say the news is dull: a bomb goes off. The minute I say we are so lucky: someone gets sick. The minute I decide that I will never have anything to write about ever again: parents die, full-term babies die and I wonder how I could have ever dismissed the dullness of the life I live.

Mine is the dullness of the every day that lots of other people want to have. Mine is easy, relatively, and despite the closet full of bones, it is good.  

Mine is the life most people have: mostly boring, decent, and safe, but all of us -- all of us know, it's fleeting: round the bend, turn the corner, who knows what might happen? 

No one goes through life untouched. No one.

I want to start believing in a God, because I need someone to protect those people, that poor mother, their other kid, the adult children of Alzheimer's and yeah... hmm... -- dude -- I want someone to blame.