Browsing Archives for October 2007

Many, many moons ago…

Before I pledged my troth to the country doctor…

Before my uterus was shattered four times in a row by the exact same model of bald, blue-eyed, baby boy…

Before I had the wisdom of motherhood and could force children to eat their sweet potatoes, and film them while doing so…

Before I understood the dementia that accompanies each birth, as the holes in your head, where the babies come out, never completely heal…

Before I fell in love with the steady, rhythmic, calming sounds of a ceiling fan on medium speed…

Before I blogged…

There was Penny Annie’s

Back then, I worked as an administrative assistant at the Lawrence Arts Center in Lawrence Kansas, which was located in the Old Carnegie Library directly behind Penny Annie’s.

I would skip the light fantastic in my cute office girl outfits of corduroy skirts and second hand plaid jackets…or fabulous thrift store cardigans with pearl buttons and sweet pleated wool skirts. I would flit over to Penny Annie’s on my lunch break, order a tuna fish sandwich or a chicken taco salad and sit down to eat by a sunny window overlooking busy Massachusetts street.

As I ate, I watched the world pass by. Executive types in dark suits and sunglasses driving by in their SUV’s. Young moms pushing strollers loaded down with babies, shopping bags and sippy cups. Under-employed secretaries with master degrees in economics or anthropology, buzzing by breathlessly on an errand for their blustery bosses. College students ambling along aimlessly, the light of youth and fun still dancing on their unworried faces. Middle aged housewives with expensive hair cuts and manicures flocking from shop to shop, the sun glinting off their streaky blond highlights. Business men and women in crisp white shirts, walking briskly down the street as if in a tunnel, focused on a distant horizon.

I watched them all and wondered…

What would become of me.

Then I shrugged, wiped my mouth on a paper napkin, bought a half pound of sour watermelon candy, and went back to work.

My house stinks….I mean stiiiinks! I mean el stencho, la crapola, stinkity stink stink stink. It has stunk for several weeks, but it seems to come and go. Just when it gets unbearable, we seem to find the problem and it disappears for a day or two. Then while we have our guards down, the stink rests up, regains it’s strength, and comes back with a vicious second wind.

We have a shower in the main floor bathroom that no one is using. Evidently the lack of use can lead to the evaporation of water in the “trap” which can cause stinkage to seep into the house. So I ran some water in the shower and the smell went away for a few days. But it is back. Back with a vengeance. Back with a fly covered fist, straight up the nose that leaves me searching desperately all over the house for the giant pile of poo that must be located right beside a roaring fan that is blowing the reeking reekage into every crack and every crevice in the house.

Then… our heater wouldn’t turn on and even if I am participating in Crunchy’s heat challenge, and keeping our heat down to 65 at night and 6…8 uh I mean 69 during the day – I am not willing to try and survive without any heat at all.

So I called our plumber who is also our heat/AC guy and they came right out. I stumbled to the door on my frost bitten toes to let him in. As soon as I opened the door, the force of the smell hit him straight between the eyes. He gasped for breath, and crumpled to one knee. I had forgotten how bad the house smelled as I was prancing around trying to keep warm.

After I revived the plumber by squirting some lysol directly up his nose, he went about searching for the source of the stink. He poked his nose STRAIGHT into the open pipe under the bathroom sink on the main floor that is yet to be “hooked up”and said, “yep, pretty ripe.”

Then he went about sniffing the rest of the house, trying to figure out where else the great waves of wafting stink might be coming from. He dumped some water down our basement drains. He told me to place a cap on the outside sewer vent, he fixed the heater, and as he left, he gestured vaguely around my gorgeous, brand spankin new, classic American, stink hole of a farm house and said, “no one should have to live like this.”

As soon as my nasal passages started to defrost, I too started to smell my house. And girlfriends (and the occasional boyfriend) there ain’t no scented candle big enough to mask the wretched puddle of sickly brown greenish yuck of which my home currently smells.

The plumber promised he would be back. He promised to bring reinforcements, which I hope to God includes a specially trained dog to sniff out the exact location of the reeking problem, but for now, he is gone and I am still here… half frozen…in a brand new house…that smells like an open sewer. There is only one appropriate expression to end this blog with and I am trying with all my might to hold it back. Trying…try…ing…but c’mon…. Shit…shit shit shit….SHIT!!!!! Sorry about that – but that is what it is.

A few nights ago, while I was at a very important, high ranking, celebrity studded, executive, highly classified, uh…er…um…bunko meeting…

The country doctor was forced to help Jack, our kindergartner with his homework.

They were looking for pictures that started with the letter “G”.

He did a pretty good job until I saw this one…

Which I am not sure embodies the wholesome spirit of kindergarten “G” sounds.

I pointed to the picture of Giuliani and asked Jack what it was…

He said, “it’s a guy… a guh… guh… guy.”

And I said, “That’s right!…very guh….guh…good!”

It’s October. The air is crisp, bright, chilled with a slight acidic after taste. I am pulling on sweaters and jeans. The afternoons are quickly deepening into night and the big ole yellow moon has started showing off. It’s time for some caramel apples.

We made these every Halloween of my childhood.

A huge batch of caramel apples and we also made home made popcorn balls for all the neighborhood trick-or-treaters…

Except that we lived out in the country…

Our neighbors were far flung…

And darn few trick-or-treaters ever stopped by.

No matter..

We did what we had to do.

We ate those caramel apples and popcorn balls all by ourselves.

Watching a “scary movie” on network television with my mom and sister.

The caramel yanking at the fillings in our teeth.

Popcorn sticking in our gums.

Our bellies filling up with sugar, and corn, and apples.

Faces and hands, sticky and sweet.

Falling asleep under a harvest moon…
Dreams of witches and goblins and ghosts.

Delicious! Shiver! Scary! Yum.

I just finished the second book in the His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman. “The Subtle Knife” a highly entertaining and interesting story. I am insisting the my two oldest boys read the first book before we see the movie this Fall.

After reading the first two books, I came to realize that my “daemon” is this blog. I can tell…because of the searing knife-like pain I feel whenever I get too far away from my blog. If I go too long without seeing my blog, or messing with my blog, or adjusting my blog, I feel like I am going to die. It is also clear that I am not a grown up as my blog keeps changing forms, shapes and colors. I don’t know when it is ever going to decide what kind of creature it is.

When I must be away from my blog, to do ridiculous chores like care for my children, go to the bathroom, or water the new grass, I nurse the ragged wound – by thinking about my blog. And whenever I have to do a task that involves other people, like attending a committee meeting or getting coffee with girlfriends or helping out in my son’s classroom, I just talk about my blog…non-stop to whomever I am with. Blah blah blah my blog. My blog blah blah blah. Blah blah blah my blog my blog my blog blah blah. I can see their eyes glaze over as I talk about my blog. I can tell they slowly lapsing into a catatonic state as I go on and on and on about my blog. But I don’t care. My blog is all that matters.

I went to see April on Sunday. We left the kids with Clay, and headed to downtown Lawrence. As we ordered some appetizers from a new restaraunt that I think was called the Trying Too Hard Trattoria, all I wanted to do was talk about my blog. April could also talk about her blog if she wanted, but mostly I wanted to talk about my blog. But April didn’t want to talk about her blog…or my blog…or anyone else’s blog. She was clearly irritated with me. She was clearly sick and tired of the whole blogging thing. She was clearly thinking that I have lost my mind and need to start doing something sane like homeschooling my kids or raising a flock of chickens.

So it was with great relief and rejoicing when I finally got home that evening and could rush downstairs to my dismal office and sit for a few hours cuddling my daemon blog. We were together again. Reunited and very happy to be with each other again.

Did anyone else see that article on Yahoo today? Something to the effect of “Driven People Are Less Likely To Suffer From Alzheimers“. Oh Crap! I am SOOOOO going to get Alzheimers. I probably already have it. Let’s see – mood swings, irrational behavior, forgetful, lives in the past. Oh yeah – I’ve got Alzheimers.

Seriously though – I thought laid back types were less likely to suffer from brain illnesses. I just figured all that spazzy trying to amount to something is what landed most people in the psych ward. Guess I was wrong. And to think I have spent years trying to tame my inner CEO. Oh well, there is still time.

I always wanted to be impressive. I just kept hoping it would happen naturally. Like if I prayed hard enough God would make me a movie star. If I wished and dreamed and bought a cute enough pair of pants, I would be discovered and asked to co-host the Today Show. If I gesticulated wildly enough and blamed others for my problems – Bingo! – I would be giving my acceptance speech at the Grammys.

I have a list around here somewhere – and at the very top of it it says…BE VERY VERY DRIVEN! It was part of the plan. But it just kept getting pushed further down the list by other things like – stare into space…walk around aimlessly…forget what you were looking for…read same page of book over and over. ..have wild daydreams involving stardom and making millions….doze off.

Isn’t there something good for people who take it easy? Something for those of us – who are really really good at smelling the roses. Other than the roses? Like maybe we get less diseases of the brain??? Guess not.

So my plan is that from now on I will be driven. I will be the most driven… I mean like sooooo driven that my brain will not even be able breathe, much less develop an Alzheimer type lesion. I will be successful, and important, and so impressive that the world will invent a new word just to describe me. Rechellified. As in – she is so awesome, she is so amazing – she used to be such a pile of clear jell-o and then she Rechellified and became the CEO of the Intergalactic Bank, Hospital, and Legal Operating Systems.

I plan to begin to implement the new driven me….tomorrow…or maybe the day after….Right now I need to check on the ceiling fans…while lying supine under them…on my bed…reading the same page in a book over and over… for the next eight solid hours.

Yes, that’s right. This is the puppet team from my misspent youth. Misspent in that instead of drinking massive amounts of alcohol and getting in cars with boys and driving around town all night long. Instead of going out to the middle of some corn field with a bunch of kids my age and drinking misbegotten beer bought by some lonely desperate Vo-Tech guy.

Instead of doing anything NORMAL, I spent my formative years behind a puppet stage “doing puppets” with my mom and my sister and the other unfortunate people in this picture.

I found this picture on a recent trip to my parent’s house. I brought it home for the express purpose of setting it afire and destroying all evidence that I was ever involved in puppetry. But then I started looking at this picture…

This is my mom. Look how pretty she is. Even with that weird hat on, she is still very pretty. In fact, she is radiant! She is glowing! You know why? Because my mom loves puppets! They make her happy. They make her glow! They make her radiant.

Here we have April, my sister. The one with all the blue eye shadow. Note her facial expression. She does not seem unhappy. In fact, she seems pretty content. She has the grandma puppet. April was very funny with the grandma puppet. She was very good at creating all sorts of voices and characters. Go ahead – next time you see her – shove a puppet on her hand – and watch what happens.

Here’s April and I. Do you see a difference in the two of us? Can you see how one of us seems very satisfied, at ease, comfortable with her surroundings… and the other one of us seems…

Like she wants to CURL UP AND DIE RIGHT NOW PLEASE!!!! Do you see how I also seem to be THE ONLY ONE IN THIS PICTURE ABLE TO DETECT THE IRONY!!! The rest of the people in this picture are just ACCEPTING THIS CRAZY SITUATION. Like it is perfectly OKAY to have a professional studio portrait taken of yourself with a PUPPET ON YOUR ARM!!! I am the ONLY SANE PERSON in this picture! THE ONLY ONE! I just felt that should be stated. Even when I was fourteen, fifteen??? I knew that some things were just weird. I had an advanced understanding of what is truly bizarre. I could see beyond the “harmless puppet team publicity pic” into the realm of “Holy Crap! people are going to SEE this picture!”

I have been trying to recover from this particular picture and many moments just like it for the past 25 years.

Clearly, I still have a lot of work to do.