Masked Mom's Media Monday: The (Over and Over) List

This one goes out to Crazy MomCat who has no doubt long since forgotten that in my first Media Monday post when I said I wouldn't listen to John Corbett's album over and over, she asked me what albums I do listen to over and over because she hasn't bought new music in ages...

Here, finally, is my over and over list, but I must warn you, MomCat (and anyone else who's interested), not only do I have weird tastes (as mentioned in a previous warning and as is evident from my previous Media Monday reviews), but some of this stuff is not as "new" as others.

P!nk: Especially M!sundaztood and I'm Not Dead. I've never heard her first album (Can't Take Me Home)--it's one of those things I always meant to get around to and the third album, Try This didn't seem to "click" with me the way the other two albums did (though I did like "Trouble" and "God Is A DJ"). I love the girl-power lyrics and her vocal range and I figure anyone who can hold her own with Aerosmith's Steven Tyler ("Misery" from M!s-undaztood) has got something your ordinary "pop princess" lacks.

Train: I got hooked on them with "Drops of Jupiter" from the album of the same name--coming a little late to the party, which sometimes seems to be the story of my life, I didn't hear "Drops of Jupiter" until well after the release of the follow-up album My Private Nation. My Private Nation is my over and over album of theirs. I love every song on it. I like Drops of Jupiter (the album) almost as much, but it's just not the one I reach for time and time again. (I also like "Meet Virginia" which is the only song I've heard from their debut album Train.)

Matchbox 20: Everything of theirs is amazing to me. I know, I know, I'm a geek. And I've read a lot of the mediocre and downright crappy reviews and I understand all about how "watered down" it all is, blah, blah, blah. I don't care. What I know is that when I'm listening to any of their albums--I love each song so much that I'm sad to see it end and I actually think about hitting repeat so I can hear the same song twice in a row but then the next song starts and it's so good and I love it so much that I don't want it to ever end. I love Rob Thomas's voice and I love the lyrics and I love the music. Special favorites: "Damn" from Yourself or Someone Like You (especially the second time he says "damn" in the third verse--turn it up and sit real close...damn.); "Rest Stop," "Black and White People," "If You're Gone," and "Last Beautiful Girl" from Mad Season; "Could I Be You," "All I Need," "Hand Me Down" and "You're So Real" from More Than You Think You Are.

Rob Thomas: It probably comes as no surprise that I pre-ordered Rob's solo album and that the day (April 19, 2005) it came out was an event in my sad little life. Again, I love every track and I think that's just rare and amazing and Rob Thomas is just so...amazing. And isn't it amazing how many times I can squeeze amazing into one post? It's been over a year since this album came out and I still listen to it at least two or three times a week--and perhaps more telling, I listen to it several times in a row each time I listen to it.

Billy Joel: So he isn't aging well and some of the stuff in the news about him in the past few years has been downright distressing and I haven't been able to listen to most of the stuff he's put out since 1986, but...Glass Houses, The Stranger, and Songs in the Attic are still in my over and over pile. (Favorites: "Vienna" from The Stranger, "You're My Home" from Songs in the Attic, and "Sleeping With the Television On" from Glass Houses.)

iTunes: I'd like to say right up front that I don't have an iPod. Can't afford one and even if I could, I'm not sure I'd get one since it's probably way too technologically advanced for me and I find something comforting about CDs you can actually hold in your hands. But the excellent thing about iTunes (and something I'm not sure everyone knows) is that you don't need an iPod to use it and the software is FREE! You can import your CDs you already own, download (for 99 cents!) practically any dang song you can think of, and you can burn your own CDs that are combinations of EXACTLY the songs you want to listen to at that moment. The software is amazing--we haven't had a single problem with it in the three years we've been running it--it's fast and accurate and just cooler than crap.

Anyway--a lot of the "albums" I listen to over and over are self-created. Here's a small sampling of stuff I've purchased from iTunes in the past few months:
Natasha Bedingfield ("Unwritten"), Kelly Clarkson ("Walk Away"), KT Tunstall ("Black Horse & Cherry Tree"), Little Big Town ("Bring It On Home"), Billy Currington ("Must Be Doing Something Right" and "Why, Why, Why"), Sugarland (the whole album Twice The Speed of Life), and on and on and on.

iTunes is the secret--you can see lists of new music, you can preview a song before you buy it, you don't have to buy the whole album (which might suck except for the one song the artist released as a single), you don't have to leave your house, hell, you don't even have to get dressed (but I don't recommend sitting bare-assed on a leather chair--don't ask me how I know). iTunes is why my brother remarked in my dining room on a recent Saturday night, "This is the only place I've ever been where I can hear Tanya Tucker and Eminem* on the same CD."

*Hey, I know Eminmen doesn't have the best reputation among white women in their thirties. He's gotten a real bad rap (rap, ha ha, get it?), some of which he deserves but some of the stuff he's put out in recent years is actually kind of genius in its lyrics and the beat is, well, catchy, as long as you've had a precautionary dose of migraine medication first.

All Hail...

...the Queen of Crap!!!!

A while* ago, Cranky Boss Lady was cleaning out a closet at the back of the shop and found a bunch of truly hideous dried and artificial, um, stuff--you couldn't call it flowers exactly, they were more like twigs and most of them were spray-painted white or black or hot pink or some other shockingly hideous color. They were jagged, pointed, angular in all sorts of threatening-looking configurations.

I joked that it was the stuff of nightmares--you could easily imagine any of it coming to get you! For my efforts and imagination, Cranky Boss Lady said, "You're full of crap! You've never even seen this stuff before [duh! that's the imagination part!!!!]! You're the Queen of Crap!"

So I did what any superheroine would do in a moment like that--I ran with it. We have rhinestone tiaras tucked away in corners around the shop--for prom or weddings or, say, when CBL calls me the Queen of Crap or the Queen of anything else for that matter. I wore that damned tiara every day for two weeks. I made myself a scepter by attaching a plaid bow to a long grabber thingy we use to get things off high shelves. I eventually hung a Squidward figurine from the tiara's rhinestone-studded curlicues like a talisman--something to ward off Everyone Else's Crap ('cuz we know I've got more than enough of my own).

After a while, the tiara had to be put aside for reasons of practicality--the danger of forgetting to take it off when a customer comes in, for example, especially if said customer is coming in to order funeral flowers--but I will occasionally bring it out on days when the Crap (my own and everyone else's) seems deeper than usual.

Prom Week is just such a time. Mix hormonal adolescents with dresses in every shade of the rainbow--and some shades that aren't in the rainbow: magenta, fuschia, puce--listen, if it's not in the Crayola 8-box, I have no idea what color it is--and high school intrigue ("they broke up three days before the prom and now he's taking her best friend and she's goin' with his cousin!") and you've got the recipe for the Perfect Storm of Crap.

Some--like Cranky Boss Lady--see my tiara as useless affectation, just a pointless addition to my wardrobe with no magical powers at all. But I'm here to say it works, it really, really works--because as crappy as Prom Week was, I'm pretty sure if I hadn't been wearing my tiara, it would've been worse.

Someone would've actually rented this tux:

A PS to Youngest Sister and Great White Hunting Brother-in-Law: when it's time to renew your vows, you know where to find me! Maybe we should reserve one now!!

*When my boys were little, they thought of "a while" as a set amount of time--like a minute or an hour. So if you said, "It's time to clean your room." They might say, "I will in a few whiles."**

**Alternate answers would include, "No!" and, "Why?" and, "Awww, Mom!" but none of those seem quite as cute.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Squidward Tentacles

For the longest time after SpongeBob SquarePants premiered on Nickelodeon, I couldn't stay in the room past the theme song. I did, however, stay in the room long enough to change the words of the theme song--for example, "absorbent and yellow and porous is he" became "especially annoying to people like me," etc.

I'm not sure exactly when my feelings about the show changed--probably around the time Doc upped my meds or switched me over to that new neon pill...um, no, it was actually the episode where SpongeBob is trying to rally everyone in Bikini Bottom around Squidward, who's locked in some battle of one-upmanship with, I think, his long-lost and very successful brother, or maybe an old friend or something...it doesn't really matter. SpongeBob was giving that speech, you know the one you've seen in a hundred corny old movies. Going around to each person in the crowd saying things like, "When you were stuck on your roof, who helped you?" and so on. Of course, in the corny old movie, the answer would've been Squidward. Squidward would've been quietly heroic and richly deserving of SpongeBob's loyalty and the help of everyone else in town. But, thankfully, Squidward is NOT that kind of squid.

No, Squidward is grouchy, cantankerous and antisocial. And I love him. I love him so much I have a Squidward collection--molded plastic figurines from gumball machines; a stamper that came in an Easter egg; a TY Beanie Baby that keeps me company at my computer, when I can find him amid the clutter left behind by three teen boys and a tween girl.

Daughter-Only says, "Why do you like Squidward? He's mean!" There is some evidence for this argument: in his character description on the Nickelodeon site, "mean" is the first word they use. But I would say that "mean" is not exactly accurate. Squidward never goes looking for trouble. He doesn't seek out any of the nitwits in Bikini Bottom, they all find him. His description on the Nickelodeon site makes much of how "annoyed" he is by everyone and everything--I submit that everyone in Bikini Bottom is so annoying that being annoyed isn't a character defect, it's a perfectly logical response. So even though Squidward is a cartoon character and one who would no doubt find me as annoying as he finds everyone else in his life, I love him.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Genius.

I'm Pretty Sure This Isn't What The Folks At Hasbro Had In Mind...

Have you seen the Hasbro "Family Game Night" ad campaign? The commercials and print ads in which a cartoon family (which looks drawn by an eight-year-old but I'm sure there are child-labor laws and union rules against that) expound the virtues of setting a date and getting together once a week (or more!) to play (Hasbro) board games as a family.

My family--both the one I was born into and the one I've built--has always been big in the board game department so this campaign was mostly preaching to the choir where we're concerned. We're not excessively competitive--okay, I used to be, but I outgrew it and I hardly ever cheat at Monopoly anymore--we all just like to play.

Saturday night we were playing a new game with the kids called Balderdash. The game, alas, isn't made by Hasbro, but hopefully I still get cool mom points for Family Game Night--you know for following the spirit of the law if not the letter.

In Balderdash, for those non-geeks among us, you are given a word, phrase, etc for which you're supposed to make up a definition in hopes that someone else at the table will fall for your version, thus earning you points. In this particular round, we were supposed to be coming up with definitions for the acronym "D.E.B.E." The actual definition was "Does Everything But Eat," but I'm pretty sure everyone playing will only remember Son-Two's version: "Da Emergency Butthole Enlarger."

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Ghost Hunters

As mentioned in my frighteningly late Halloween post last November, I am a big fan of "Ghost Hunters" on Sci-Fi. I want to admit that up front so we can get rid of even the illusion of impartiality or an unbiased review right from the beginning. I love, love, love, love, love this show.

It's not just because of the possibility in every episode of freaky things caught on tape--though the freaky things they do periodically catch on tape are certainly a draw. It's more about the dynamics between the crew members. Both Jason and Grant, the co-founders of the group TAPS, whose investigations are chronicled on "Ghost Hunters," are very no-nonsense, matter-of-fact sorts and they employ a group of mostly similarly minded people. (The one exception is Brian who's so annoying and just--oh--annoying like you can't even imagine how annoying. And I always find myself wishing they'd get rid of him--which they actually have at least once before--but then I realize they're probably keeping him around for the tension he adds to each episode. Everyone else looks even better and more credible in comparison to Brian's whiny and annoying personality.)

The thing I like most about "Ghost Hunters" is that everyone on the show seems to be a rather reluctant "celebrity." It's likely that Jason and Grant approached the network with the idea or in any case, they were approached by producers to whom they said "yes." But a lot of the time, they seem rather sheepish and uncomfortable with the cameras--even now, well into the second year of filming. It's this every guy vibe that makes anything freaky they do catch on film even more credible.

As far as the freaky stuff--both Jason and Grant are enthusiastic debunkers. If they can find a remotely plausible, non-paranormal explanation for a "haunting" they are thrilled. (In one episode, the thumping a homeowner had attributed to ghostly spirits was discovered to be a drainpipe banging against a beam in the basment every time the sump pump came on--Jason and Grant, Roto-Rooter plumbers by day, were uniquely qualified to debunk that particular "haunting.") Jason, especially, will go to great lengths to avoid using the word "haunted." He even referred to it as the "h- word" in one episode. No matter how compelling the evidence seems to be, he will say all sorts of things like, "Is something going on? Definitely. Can I say that it's 'haunted'? I don't know." And don't even try to get him--or Grant, for that matter--to use the word "ghost." Which brings me to the only bone I can really pick with the show: Why do they call the show "Ghost Hunters" when the two "leading men" so rarely even use the word "ghost?" But I guess "Sump Pump Hunters" wouldn't draw quite the same audience, huh?

As I've told Cranky Boss Lady, and anyone else I can hold hostage long enough to listen, I'm well aware that everything on the show may someday be exposed as having been staged or doctored or whatever, but in the meantime, these seem like normal guys having a little fun chasing (and debunking) paranormal phenomena. And for as long as I'm invited along for the ride, I'm so going to be there.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Addictive

New episodes are currently playing on Sci-Fi Wednesdays at 9 p.m. (Eastern). They are running old episodes at 7 & 8 p.m. on Wednesdays as well.

A Mother of A Week

Mother's Day, like Valentine's Day, is a holiday I never really realized the scope of until I started working at the flower shop. At the shop, it's the mother of all holidays--our biggest week of sales all year long. It means 10 or 14 hour days for at least half the week and every one of those hours is go-go-go: arranging flowers, answering the phone, waiting on customers, organizing delivery runs. And this year, as an added bonus we had a wedding* and one of the local high schools had its prom Saturday, too. There's nothing like doing corsage work at 9 p.m. when you've been at work since 8 a.m. Which is why I haven't had time to really catch my breath this week, let alone visit anyone's blog, but it's over now and I spent Sunday resting up. (More than one customer inquired sweetly, "What are you doing for Mother's Day?" and it was all I could do not to say out loud, "Resting up from taking care of all your mothers.")

I literally slept until noon which is the greatest gift ever as far as I'm concerned. Hope all you moms out there had just as great a day as I did.

*Note to anyone out there planning a wedding or anyone who might be in a position to advise anyone planning a wedding--it's a good idea to avoid major floral holidays--especially Valentine's Day and Mother's Day. Despite our good intentions, it's likely you won't be getting our best work.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Trent Willmon In Concert

A disclaimer: I don't get out much. The last performer I saw in concert was Paul "Everytime You Go Away" Young in 1987 in Providence, Rhode Island. (On the way home from that concert, I got stopped by a New Hampshire State Police cruiser ten feet over the NH state line for "harassing" a limo that we had been following all the way across the state of Massachusetts in hopes it might be Paul Young. It was not. It was Michael Dukakis--governor of Massachusetts & future presidential candidate on his way to Manchester, NH to announce his (doomed) candidacy. The state policeman said to me, "Have you been following that limo?" And I said, "Not on purpose, sir." He didn't give me a ticket, just held us up long enough for the limo to lose us--a car load of teenage girls hyped up on that most dangerous of drugs: adolescent hormones.)

The disclaimer about my inexperience in the world of live performances is necessary because I'm about to gush about seeing Trent Willmon Friday night. Trent is a country singer and not all that well known--but if there's any justice in the world, he will soon be better known. His self-titled debut came out in October 2004 and included the singles "Beer Man" and "Dixie Rose Deluxe's Honky-Tonk, Feed Store, Gun Shop, Used Car, Beer, Bait, Barbecue, Barber Shop, Laundromat." Those songs were cute, bouncy, yee-haw, twangy country songs. I liked them well enough to download them from iTunes, but not enough to seek out the album.

What an idiot I was--or, as I prefer to think, there must've been an idiot in charge of deciding what songs were released as singles from that album. My first clue that Trent Willmon had more range than the first two singles showed was his newest single "On Again Tonight," which is from his forthcoming album (6-13-06). This song was released sometime in March (or at least I downloaded it from iTunes March 22) and I love it, love it, love it. Musically, it's the perfect showcase for Willmon's voice, which is much richer and much less twangy than his first two singles would've had you believe. And lyrically--it's about that kind of relationship that we've probably all had at least once in our lives: the person we just can't leave alone even though we know it's going absolutely nowhere.

Based on this song, when I heard Trent Willmon was coming to town (to our rinky-dink, teeny-tiny, little town), I was definitely interested and when I heard the tickets were only ten dollars and that the proceeds benefited the elementary school playground fund, I plunked down my twenty bucks so Daughter-Only and I could go.

When we got to the high school parking lot, Willmon's bus was parked unassumingly in the corner of the lot. We parked ten or fifteen spaces up from it and sat watching a small group of men practicing roping skills in the corner of the lot. I would've never been able to pick Willmon out from the group if Daughter-Only hadn't pointed him out. (He'd been at the elementary school earlier in the day and performed an impromptu concert of three or four songs for the students.)

He definitely didn't radiate that aloof I'm-a-star (or even a wannabe star) attitude. Which is weird, because onstage? He was definitely star material. Even in our itty-bitty town in front of maybe 200 people in our scaled-down high school auditorium, Willmon and his band really gave it their all. I've always had a theory that the best performers--singers, actors, writers, artists of every stripe--are those who really enjoy what they're doing, who feel compelled to perform whatever the rewards. I would definitely put Willmon in that category--both live and on the album (which Cranky Boss Lady bought and I have repeatedly appropriated and listened to over and over again), Willmon sings every song like he really means it. He's either a really good fake or a sincere man with an amazing voice. (And we all know how I feel about great voices!)

So, the new album's out next month--June 13. I'm marking my calendar.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: A keeper.*

*So, technically, that's two words, but I'm pretty sure Willmon is worth it.

PS--To MommaCW a.k.a. Blonde Best Friend From High School: remember that game we played on the beach in Maine? R-A-B? Willmon? Was definitely at least a 9. C'mon, isn't it a relief to know that some people (me) never grow all the way up? You're only young once, but you can be immature forever.

What's That Smell?

I've come here today to talk about air pollution. I'm not talking about the certifiably toxic air-polluting chemicals that would have been covered by the Clean Air Act and the Kyoto Accords if our government and the World Trade Organization hadn't worked so hard to reverse important parts of it because, after all, how crucial is breathable air when compared with net profits? I mean if the net profits are high enough, the wealthy will no doubt be able to buy clean air for themselves and their families--the rest of us be damned, but I digress. Worse, I digress in a way that might result in an FBI agent showing up at my door, which reminds me--sometime I'll have to blog about the time an FBI agent actually did show up at our door.

But for now let's talk about smells.

I live in an itty-bitty town tucked into the hills in south western New York State. We don't have smog to contend with or chemical factories belching noxious fumes or anything as drastic as that, so I suppose I should be grateful, but...

There's a restaurant in town whose hot dogs and special sauce are regionally famous. And I would never say a bad word about those hot dogs--especially not the kind of word that might constitute libel. But when they make up a batch of sauce, which I can only assume they make in 50-gallon drums, the smell hangs over town. Despite the deliciousness of the finished product, the pungent smell is not at all pleasant. I've heard it compared to sweaty gym socks, but to me it smells like school lunch leftovers. Every time they whip up a batch of sauce, I'm transported to the days of Mystery Meat with gray gravy served over a glob of instant mashed potatoes the color and consistency of half-hardened flour paste.

Back in the days when ketchup was not yet a vegetable, chicken nuggets hadn't yet been invented, and pizza was a once-a-month treat rather than a menu constant, everything the cafeteria served had that smell. And the smell lingered in the halls nearest the cafeteria in almost visible clouds and was embedded in the laminate table tops, which were almost like those scratch-n-sniff stickers except you didn't have to scratch, the smell just emanated from them in waves. (And, this is totally off subject--if there is, in fact, a discernible subject today, but those table tops were always, always, always sticky--no matter how frequently they were wiped. And they were never sticky in that, oh someone just spilled something on them way--they were sticky in that two decades of built up school lunch fumes way.)

So that smell hangs over that end of town on the days--a few times a week--when they make the sauce. I work right around the corner from the restaurant and on sauce days we shut all the windows and when we have to venture outside, we duck quickly into our vehicles to avoid inhaling any more than absolutely necessary.

At the other end of town, there is a smell from the other end of the scent spectrum--there's a candle factory which makes lovely candles in a variety of scents that individually I'm sure are heavenly. But when you combine random scents willy-nilly and vent those smells to the outside world, aromatherapy becomes aromatorture. I live downwind of the candle factory and on windy days or on humid days when the air doesn't seem to be circulating much at all, the scent reminds me almost but not quite of Avon's Skin-So-Soft original scent by the tanker truckful. Again, a cloying scent that hangs so heavy you can almost see it.

What's great is the days when the candle factory is really pumping it out and the restaurant is making their sauce and somewhere between home and work those two scents merge with the added fried doughy smell from Dunkin' Donuts and a wave of nausea hits that reminds you of the morning-sickness-all-day-long days of pregnancy and then you finally stumble in to work and there are two customers standing in the front room--one is a guy with his cow-doo covered barn boots on and the other is a woman who has apparently been bathing in cologne from the dollar store.

Who says small town life isn't entertaining?

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Mini Review

In spite of my penchant for pointless patter, I'm keeping it short today since the Perfect Post awards sorta kinda count as a review--in my humble (and, since it's my blog, all important) opinion.

I just wanted to say I'm halfway through Son of a Witch and I utterly, truly, truly, utterly heart Gregory Maguire. And I don't usually heart anything even things I really, really, really love. But Gregory Maguire and Wicked and Son of a Witch--I heart you all.

PP for April (And Don't Even Get Me Started on the Where The Hell Did April Go? Thing!)

It's that time of the month again. No, not that time of the month that makes everyone in my family hide in their closets quivering in fear just waiting for Mom's PMS to pass--no, luckily for them, it's just Perfect Post time.

This month, my Perfect Post award goes to Little Miss for her post Humpty Dumpty. Not only did she combine two topics near and dear to any mom's heart--nursery rhymes and migraines--she topped it off with the most wonderful drugged-up picture of herself and made all of us almost jealous about whatever magical drugs she was on when the picture was taken. Too bad we can't get the drugs and the rest in a quiet room without the migraines, huh?

So here's my button--



And, Little Miss, it's all yours!

Masked Mom's Media Monday: John Corbett

Masked Mom, it is probably no surprise to learn, is a fan of alliteration and, as you've also no doubt learned if you've been around much, Masked Mom loves an excuse to babble. If, therefore, Masked Mom were to come up with an idea (say, at 2:34 a.m., when sensible people are otherwise asleep but Masked Mom's brain, for some unknown* reason, has been whirring and buzzing at an alarming rate (and, unfortunately, not in any productive way) ), an idea which combined both her affection for alliteration and her passion for pointless patter, she would have practically no alternative but to inflict it upon you, her faithful reader(s)--all five of you.

And so--the debut of Masked Mom's Media Mondays in which Masked Mom brings to the table a completely unqualified voice on books, magazines, movies and music--some current, some dug out from under a pile of moldering paperbacks in her attic. As the old saying goes, I may not know art but I know what I like and I also know what I don't like and in a fit of generosity (and excitement over the chance to babble MORE) I will share it all with you, my faithful reader(s)--all five of you.

So John Corbett...in the '90s he was Chris Stevens, the smooth-voiced, ever-searching-for-enlightment, hot-as-hell-in-a-whiny-sensitive-but-not-too-whiny-or-sensitive-type-way DJ on Northern Exposure and, more recently, the groom in My Big, Fat Greek Wedding and, even more recently, some love interest of Carrie's on Sex and The City, a show which I've never seen but which has so permeated the public consciousness that I still somehow know the main characters' names...that John Corbett released a self-titled country music CD on April 4th.

I was walking by the TV one morning last month and literally did a double take because there was John Corbett, riding horses and hoisting bales of hay and singing his heart out. I liked the song--"Good to Go"--well enough, but probably wouldn't have bought the whole album without hearing a little more of it. Cranky Boss Lady shows no such restraint, though, and she preordered the album from our local music store. (The owner of the store, R, commented to CBL that he had been told more than once how much he (R) looks like John Corbett, which now that he mentions it, I can kind of see. But I think it's funny that R would mention it--I mean once (two decades ago) someone told me how I looked kinda like Sheena Easton, and I can't imagine that coming up in casual conversation, not least because it opens the opportunity for the other person to go, "Yeah, right!" More recently, I've been compared to Queen Latifah--and while I consider it a compliment (and I'm even reasonably certain it was meant as such), it's a long way from Sheena Easton to Queen Latifah. Ah, the ravages of time...)

I've heard the whole album five or six times and read the customer reviews on Amazon. More than one of the reviews says something along the lines of "If you like country music, you'll like this," which is funny to me because I don't really think this CD is all that country--not in the twangy, yee-haw tradition of country anyway. (For the record, Hubby disagrees and begged off after song 4, complaining he'd had enough "twang" for one day. Twang tolerance is a very subjective thing, I guess.) Of course, in a world where Bon Jovi is at the top of the country music charts, I guess lots of things are up for grabs.

I like the album, but I don't like it like it. I will not be listening to it compulsively the way I have some of the other albums I've bought even recently--I always thought I'd grow out of that playing an album over-and-over thing, but it hasn't happened yet. This album is not that kind of album--it's the perfect background music, not too distracting--but nothing in it really jumps up and grabs your attention, makes you say, "Hey! Let me hear that again." The way I figure it, though, the fact that it's not actively annoying (as some actors' forays into music have been) is a pleasant surprise and worth the ten bucks (especially since those bucks weren't mine).

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Harmless.



*The reasons (at least some of them) are actually known, but in an effort to avoid foisting my stress, despair, and random freakouts upon my unsuspecting public (all five of you), I've decided (in a rare fit of discretion) to keep the reasons (known & unknown) to myself.

Easter Eggspectations & A Pointless (Musical) Aside About the IRS

As the parents of four (beloved but increasingly loud, large, and hungry) children, Hubby and I can probably be forgiven for casting a wary eye upon a holiday whose symbolism--eggs, bunnies, chickies, lambs--was derived from ancient fertility rites*. Sure, those symbols in our modern world are increasingly commercial and it's unlikely that plastic eggs and synthetic furry bunnies are somehow going to tap into a supernatural stream of fertile energy, but you can't really blame us for not wanting to take any chances.

Luckily for us then, the boys are all well past the age where they care one way or the other about mythical bunnies and baskets of chocolate. We still go through the motions with them--a "basket" (we've never actually done real baskets, preferring instead to give them crates or tubs or something else that will have a use for the whole rest of the year--something for organizing the gababigzillion little metal cars and plastic blocks of practically microscopic size they once amassed, but anyway a "basket") with a gifty or two and a handful of processed sugar products. So cynical and jaded are they that Son-One and Son-Three asked that their gift be subscriptions to an online video game and Son-One actually printed the receipts himself for their baskets. Son-Two asked for the cash.

Daughter-Only, at almost twelve, also doesn't believe in giant, hopping, gift-and-candy-giving bunnies, but nevertheless is reluctant to let go of "Easter traditions"--like coloring and finding eggs and finding their hidden (by Mom) baskets. She gave me a big speech on the subject on Friday, titled "Why Easter is Ruined." She informed me that since she doesn't really like candy very much and since the boys won't color eggs or hunt for them with her and since I won't hide the baskets (on the grounds that there's so much clutter around here we might never find them), Easter is completely pointless** and ruined for her. When I tried to explain that the boys thought they were too "grown up" for that kind of thing and that it was only natural and not something she should take personally, she said, huffily, "Well, if I was the oldest, I would still do all the traditions for the sake of the younger kids."

I have no doubt that she would do those things for a younger sibling if there were one (and please, powers that be, don't misinterpret that as a wish for a younger sibling) because the truth is it's not just about age or maturity but about something in her very nature. She loves holidays and all the traditions associated with them in a way that her brothers (not to mention her parents, poor kid) never really did at any age.

We're talking about a kid who, on the night before Ground Hog Day, when she was six, set her alarm an hour early and then couldn't sleep for fear the alarm would malfunction or she wouldn't hear it and would then (gasp!) miss the live coverage of Punxsutawney Phil deciding whether or not to stay out of his electrically heated burrow. (And, by the way, how can we be sure it's his shadow that scared him and not the glare of the lights and cameras from all the morning news shows covering the "event?")

This enthusiasm is mostly endearing but I do worry about her. Her expectations for these "special" days are just so high and, unfortunately and guilt-inducingly, out of proportion with the reality she's actually living. So often does her non-celebratory family let her down that she has started a holiday tradition of her own: as Son-One pointed out two Christmases ago, "She cries on every holiday!" And not generally tears of joy, either--tears of disappointment and frustration.

Okay maybe she doesn't cry on every holiday, but it's closer to every one than I even want to think about. And guilt aside (where it never stays for long, as any mom can tell you), I think the problem is as much with her as it is with us, her Scroogey family. It's not merely that we're not excited or enthusiastic enough it's that we're not the perfect family--not even for these special days that dot our calendar each year.

I'm a big crusader against unrealistic expectations--I think all sorts of things can be blamed on them from credit card debt (we expect to be able to live like the people on TV even though our budget is decided by real-life economics and not a team of writers and studio execs and we expect the things we buy to provide comfort) to marriages failing (we expect our relationships to be all hearts and flowers and mush and gush or just expect it to be so much less work than it ends up being).

I'll tell you one thing, though, it's a lot harder to crusade against them when they appear in the form of your eleven-year-old daughter's chronically broken heart. So, this year, we struck a compromise--since she said she would keep the traditions alive for younger kids, we invited her youngest cousins over (whose mother, my sister-in-law, says, "I'm not good at any of that.") to color eggs and hide them in the backyard. And, at least for Easter Eve, Daughter-Only was tear free. My second youngest niece, however, bawled her eyes out because her younger sister found more eggs than she did. Isn't it nice when a tradition can be handed down like that?

The Long-Awaited Pointless (Musical) Aside About The IRS (In Honor of Tax Day):

One day last week, I was on hold with the IRS--which isn't on anyone's Top 10 List of Favorite Places To Be. I mean the IRS is no fun and being on hold sucks in any case--so being on hold with the IRS can't help but be a spectacularly ungood time, right?

You'll be happy, but perhaps unsurprised to know that the IRS, in what was clearly an attempt to make an unpleasant situation more so, has provided music to entertain waiting taxpayers. The musical accompaniment during my call was "The Flight of the Bumblebee". I know almost nothing about classical music--it's got no words so as a word geek, it's not of much use to me. I do know "The Flight," though and it's always inspired a clawing anxiety in me.

Have you ever seen someone who is so freaked out by the possibility of being stung that the very sight of a bee sends them screaming in a tizzy just as likely to cause the bee to sting them as to prevent the bee from doing so? That's exactly how I feel about the music in "The Flight of the Bumblebee." I realize that's probably an extreme reaction, but it isn't what most people would consider a soothing piece of music. All I could imagine was the effect it might have on someone who was waiting to hear bad news; someone who was already freaking out just a little might be pushed completely over the edge by the strains of that damned bumblebee.

When I told Cranky Boss Lady that the hold music was "The Flight of the Bumblebee," she said, "Is that because they're gonna sting you?"

So maybe it's not malicious--maybe it's just a friendly warning. Bzzzz.

*Not only are we not interested in any more children of our own, the children we do have are rapidly approaching (or at) the stage where they are physically capable of reproducing themselves and, therefore, fertility is a frightening concept on a whole other level.
**Yes, Daughter-Only and I both know that there is a "point" to Easter (The Resurrection) that doesn't involve food-grade dyes and shredded plastic "grass." For the purposes of our particular conversation, however, that point had little power.

A Letter From the Divine (Little) Miss M--

Dear Masked Mom,
I am supporting the March of Dimes by participating in WalkAmerica. Volunteers like you and me help raise funds that support lifesaving research to prevent premature births and infant mortality. Now in its 34th year, WalkAmerica gives moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, family members and friends the opportunity to help the March of Dimes fight prematurity.

Premature birth is the leading cause of newborn death in the first month of life. It’s on the rise - up 27% since 1981. And it can happen to any pregnant woman. In nearly half the cases, the causes are unknown. The March of Dimes is leading the way to find answers by supporting research into the causes of premature birth.

We need your help - and so do America’s babies. Won’t you join me in this fight? Please visit my personal Web site to make a donation and learn more about the March of Dimes.

My personal web page address for donations is ...
http://www.walkamerica.org/littlemissfamily
Our mission is to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth, and infant mortality.
Click Now to sponsor me for WalkAmerica!

Thanks for your support! And please visit my website listed below.

Sincerely,Mandi (Little Miss) www.thelifeoflittlemiss.blogspot.com

p.s. please feel free to forward this message to anyone and everyone! Every little bit helps. ; )

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All I have to add is great cause, great blog so go often, give what you can and pass it on!

Perspective, Courtesy of Goose Poop (or the Lack Thereof)

I was waiting at the bus stop Friday after my nieces and Daughter-Only had been picked up--waiting for Cranky Boss Lady who picks me up every morning even though I would just as soon walk and could invariably get to work earlier (on time!) if I did walk, but that's another whiny story for another whiny day, but while I was waiting a pair of geese flew just fifteen feet over my head. They were bickering in their honking way--probably because she wanted to stop and ask for directions and he kept insisting he wasn't lost so why should he stop?! Anyway, for the few seconds they were directly over my head, I was absolutely certain one of them was going to let loose on my head and I knew exactly the extent to which that would ruin my day. For those seconds, I harbored images of dumping boiling water on my head to rid myself of the ick factor as much as to remove any lingering bacteria. Not only is goose poop poop, it's big gigantic poop, slimy and green with chunks in it. Oh, goose poop is just soooo wrong.

But the important point turns out to be not goose poop but the extent to which I borrow trouble on a regular basis, the habit I have of worrying about things that never happen. Granted, I didn't expend more than a few seconds worth of energy on the goose poop possibilities, but it was a reminder to me of how often I do waste minutes, hours, days worrying about things that never really happen. I think some worry is good and necessary--it helps us prepare and avoid disaster and all that, but there's got to be some way to strike a healthy balance. I, of course, have no idea how to strike that balance, and if anyone does, please feel free to let me know. You can usually find me under my blankets in a quivering mass freaking out over eventualities that will never come to pass.

On a lighter note, when Son-Two was six or seven, a bird actually did poop on him, not on his head, but on his leg. He came running in the house and said, in front of company, "Mom, a bird shat on my leg!"

Now, it's fairly easy for me to figure out where he might've picked up a word like "shit" because well, you know, the occasional four-letter word has slipped out of my mouth over the years. But, to this day, I have no idea where he picked up the little-used past tense of a swear word. I do know it was adorable and hysterically funny to everyone assembled.

And, though I might have worried that such arcane knowledge (and the willingness to use it in public) would doom Son-Two to being a friendless loner--just for a few minutes, mind you--that has so far not come to pass.

That's All, Nothing Else

Falling back may be pointless and annoying, but springing forward is simply inhumane.

It is cruel and unusual punishment.

I heard someone say, "Try explaining to your dog that he's supposed to wait an hour to go." It's been my experience that dogs--and kids--don't really understand this arbitrary tinkering with time and it's not because they're simple-minded or not (yet) mentally astute enough to understand the intricacies of Daylight Saving--it's because it doesn't make a damn bit of sense!

That's all, nothing else.

PP for March

First, let me just say I have no idea how it is that March is gone already. You know what else I don't understand? How can an individual day seem so freaking long (especially at work!) and a week or a month or a year (yes, the years especially) go by so dang quick?

But pointless whining is not what we're here for--at least not this time anyway. It's the end of March and time again for the Perfect Post Awards hosted by those generous chickies at Suburban Turmoil and Petroville.

With no further ado (or whining--but okay, maybe a little whining--do you have any idea how many great blogs there are out there? And how hard it is to pick just one Perfect Post for a month?), my Perfect Post award for this month goes to Tawny over at Blogger's Nightmare for her post The Meltdown.

Tawny and her family are in the middle of moving into a brand new house and they're all understandably excited about the new place and all the possibilities but this post was more about the things they'll be leaving behind. I've mentioned (okay, whined about) growing up an Army brat so it's no surprise that I have a special place for all those bittersweet feelings we experience in those moments before a Big Change. I think Tawny did a great (Perfect!) job expressing those feelings.

So here's my button:

And, Tawny, it's all yours!

The Phone Crush

At the Day Job, a lot of our business is done on the phone. It's not unusual to talk to a customer every other month or so for years on end without ever meeting them in person. There comes a point with every customer when you instantly recognize their voice and can recite pertinent information before they do: the address and person their order will go to, the amount they usually spend, their payment method, etc.

With one customer in particular, that point came much sooner than it has with any of the others I've dealt with in my seven years at the shop. This customer was blessed with an amazing voice--rich, warm, flowing, enveloping. It gets me every time, inspires involuntary cooing and giggling. I once saw actress Dana Delaney on a late night talk show describing her trip to South America. She said she'd stepped off the plane in Brazil and the heat, the humidity, the teeming crowds and strains of music from the street musicians, "went straight to my crotch." The Voice is kinda like that. I have to steel myself against it. And it's a major effort.

My only defense is to remember the week a few summers ago when I got to meet The Voice in person. The Voice calls to mind tall, dark, handsome, charming but not "slick," sexy but not smarmy and a whole host of other appealing characteristics. The reality of The Man Behind The Voice is stocky, average height, minimal neck, and very, very hairy--troll hairy, the kind of hairy you can only suspect when you see a fully dressed man, that hints of the horrors that lie beneath.

The day after I first met him, I made a delivery to his parents house and was greeted by TMBTV wearing shorts and a tank top, which left his pelt alarmingly visible. This is a profoundly hairy man--so hairy, in fact, that the tattoo on his right shoulder reminded me of moss-encrusted statuary you see in cemeteries and at battlefield memorials--you almost want to scrape away the moss, but can't bring yourself to touch it. He was sweating a little because it was so humid and he had been moving tables and chairs all morning, so each strand and clump of hair glistened in the morning sun, winking in an ominous and repulsive way.

I'm not in general a squeamish person--I mean seriously, would I have made it this far with four kids without requiring electroshock therapy if I were squeamish?--but thatch-like body hair not only repulses me, it actively alarms me.

In this case, that alarm is a good thing because it's the only thing that keeps me from making a total idiot of myself every time he calls. I counsel the primal response to his voice with reminders of the visual reality: "He's hairy, he's hairy, he's hairy, he's hairy."

And, most of the time, it works.

Wrong!

In 17 years of parenting, my most constant companion has been doubt--guilt often runs a close second, but doubt is the undisputed winner. The is-this-the-right-thing-to-do's and the will-this-or-that-decision-be-the-one-that-scars-them-for-life's have buzzed in my brain from morning until night for years on end and sometimes caused nightmares that woke me from what little sleep I managed to get.

I'm happy to report that when it comes to mothering an almost-twelve-year-old daughter, all doubt has been removed. There is no doubt whatsoever that absolutely everything I do, say, and am is completely, unequivocally, totally, one-hundred-percent wrong.

The certainty has its comforting moments--of course, I'd rather be right than wrong, but I have to admit there's a certain sense of freedom in knowing I can't win--it's a lot easier to throw up my hands, flip a coin, just wing it when I know I can't possibly be right. Just by being, I am already wrong. I've got nothing to lose.

I'm exaggerating, but only a little and if you have an adolescent daughter or, for that matter, can remember being an adolescent daughter, you know exactly how little I am exaggerating.

A short list of recent infractions: I woke her at 7:45 (as she'd asked) and was informed that's too early. Next day, I woke her at 7:45 (as she'd asked) and was informed that it was too late. I bought her an alarm clock to eliminate this issue. The alarm is too loud and it's not loud enough and it's too hard to set and I didn't remind her to set it and WHY do I keep reminding her to set it? She's not a baby! She says we don't spend enough time together, but when we do, she can't stand the sight of me, the sound of my voice, the activities I pick for us to do together...

OK. I'm exaggerating again. But, again, just a little.

I may be in danger of being disloyal to my gender but I have to say, in my experience, the drama of living with a girl on the cusp of adolescence is wholly different and much more, uh, dramatic than seeing a boy through the same passage. All three of my boys have had their surly, door-slamming, I-wish-I'd-never-been-born moments, but they seemed to come less often--and less loudly--than Daughter-Only's you-can't-do-anything-right-moments. Not only that, but the boys seem--have always seemed--less inclined to take my failures as a mom and human being personally and, conversely, less likely to make personal attacks when they're in a bad mood.

Do the early stirrings of womanly hormones account for some of the mood swings? Most likely, but that's of little comfort, considering the fact that we have to spend (at minimum) another six-plus years under the same roof. And, honestly, Daughter-Only has always been more drama-prone than her brothers. She has been so high maintenance at times that I have joked that if she had been my first child, she would be an only child.

Every time that joke comes out of my mouth, I feel the sharp pinch of guilt. I hate catching myself comparing my children to one another. I know from personal experience the way accidental, offhand comparisons can breed years of resentment between siblings and cause all sorts of self-image issues. But, really, I don't mean it in a bad way.

My relationship with Daughter-Only just seems so much more tangled and complex than mine with her brothers. Sometimes the boys hate me and sometimes they love me and mostly they just ignore me until they need something from me, but I'm always reasonably sure that we'll all get over it. With Daughter-Only, it seems like every single thing (especially lately but, really, since she could talk) is a matter of life or death. Is it that she's a girl or is it just that she's who she is and the girl thing is incidental?

One thing you can be sure of--whatever I think the answer might be, I'm soooooo wrong.

Bowled Over

A group of us went bowling a week or so ago. Every time we do it, we talk about how fun it is, and cheap and how we don't do it nearly enough--and still somehow we only do it once or twice a year. Anyway, Son-Two and I were sitting together at the little scorekeeping table where he was mostly making fun of my inability to understand more than the barest minimum of how to keep score and my brother--Baby Brother even though, you know, he's going to be thirty-two in two days!!!!-- was helping his daughter bowl her first ball in the tenth frame.

In much the same voice he was using to lecture me on scoring, I say to Son-Two: "Now, we're going into the tenth frame where, if you do well, you get three balls. Of course, in nature, three balls is considered an anomaly."

Without missing even a nano-beat, Son-Two says, "Well, I don't know about that, but some people have three nipples and that's pretty hot and happenin'."

I snort out loud before recovering enough to say something about how it kind of makes you wonder, doesn't it? Are those people with three nipples lagging behind a little evolution-wise? Did everyone once have three (or more) nipples? Or are those triple nippled types the next step in our evolution and a couple of hundred years from now, everyone will have three nipples?

Unfortunately and not for lack of trying, I haven't discovered any scientific evidence to support either theory. I do, however, think I've figured out why we don't go bowling more often. It's really loud at the bowling alley and having these sorts of intellectual debates is so very difficult with the clatter of falling pins and slamming, um, balls.

Escort Service

That title oughta really bring out the Google freaks, huh? Ever notice that the more sedate, academic web searchers use MSN while the freaks prefer Yahoo and Google? Countless people researching the Radziwills found my site through MSN's search engine, but the ones searching for "masked women" or "tight Lycra" or, best of all, "mom made son wear high heels," they all use Google, or once in a while, Yahoo. My point? Well, actually, I don't have one, and if you were expecting one, I sure am sorry to disappoint.

Now on to the subject at hand. I learned to drive the summer I turned fifteen, under the watchful and not-so-patient eye of my grandfather. Pap had a beat-up Subaru sedan that he put into my inexperienced hands for an hour or so each evening. I would make the rounds of the narrow, rutted dirt roads that extended for miles in any direction from his house and Pap would minutely critique my every move.

Some of the things he told me really stuck with me. To this day, when I catch myself following the next car too closely, I hear his gravelly voice: "Look out the windshield--you see the hood? You know the engine's under there, right? If you hit the guy in front of you, where the hell's all that going to end up? In your lap--that's where!" When I pull a "rolling stop" at one of the many quiet intersections in town, I remember Pap pointing out the subtle shift your upper body makes when you come to a complete stop--nothing else counts as stopping.* When I brake in the middle of a curve, I remember, "Never brake on a bend. Once you're in it, it's too late to slow down. You'll steer better if you gently accelerate." (None of these things should be construed as advice since I am not a professional driver--as will become crystal clear later in this story.)

Like most people, Pap practiced much less than he preached. Every one of my siblings and I have memories of him doing 65 on a dirt road, 80 on an open stretch of two-lane highway, driving with his leg propped on the bit of dashboard to the left of the steering wheel. A few of us even have memories of "The Queen of Hearts" period: Juice Newton blaring on the 8-track player, Pap tapping the accelerator in time to the music--making the whole car and everyone in it dance in time to the music. ("Dance" in the sense of neck-jarring, involuntary jerking back-and-forth, a little too similar to an epileptic fit to be altogether enjoyable.)

It would be easy to blame my subsequent driving record on my poor grandfather--on his "do as I say, not as I do" teaching method--but the truth is much more nefarious and complex. So, whose fault is it that I've totaled not one, not even two, but three vehicles since I got my license twenty-some years ago?

I'll let you be the judge: All three of those vehicles? They were Ford Escorts. I've never even been in a fender-bender with any other vehicle, but I've totaled every Escort I've ever driven.

*Rolling stops are so common at some of the intersections in town, I call them "stoptional signs." These are signs at which it is no less illegal or inadvisable to roll through, but the odds of a collision or a ticket are so low you could get away with it 99 out of 100 times.

The Comeback, In Which I Pull A Muscle Patting Myself On The Back

It's been said that nobody likes a smartass. To this I say: "It's way better than being a dumb ass." But, even more importantly, I think the proliferation of shoot-stuff-out-your-nose-hysterically funny blogs has disproven that old wives tale. Clearly, there are people out there (myself very much included) who not only like smartasses, but love them.

As someone who has cultivated my smartassitude for more than three decades, this is great news. That cultivation has led me to moments like the following, which I share with you now trusting that you are all of the likes a smartass persuasion:

The Scene: The shop the other morning. One of the shop groupies, a wannabe lecherous older guy who's been loyally and happily married for a bazillion years but nonetheless likes making dirty jokes and randy comments, many of which are hysterically funny, was talking about a conversation between him and an equally unlecherous lecher friend of his.

Wannabe Lecher: R and I were talking about what heaven was going to be like and we decided it would just be acres and acres of boobs.

Me: Yeah, and then when you and R get there, there will be two more!

What's not to love, right?

A Post About PP

As you begin to read a Mommy blog post with PP in the title, you can be forgiven any trepidation you might feel, since you know we've all heard more than enough about bodily functions.

In this case, the PP is for Perfect Post Awards--an idea dreamed up by Lucinda and MommaK. And, not entirely coincidentally, the PP is also for Penny Pressed over at Fashionable Chaos who is the recipient of my Perfect Post Award for February for her post "Unrequited and it feels so good." This post captured the rich complexities of real romance and it even did it on Valentine's Day, that day dedicated to reflexive expressions of expensive, and not necessarily real, emotions.

So here's my button--



And, Penny, it's all yours!

When I Grow Up...

My youngest niece--of money-growing purse fame--turned six earlier this month, as I've heard her announce loudly to anyone unfortunate enough to mistakenly refer to her as five. Her heartfelt pronouncement, "I'm six!" reminds me of an animated bit that used to run on Sesame Street years ago (and may still for all I know), in which a little boy sits up in bed first thing in the morning and says, "I'm six years old today! I'm six years old today!" and then he leaps out of bed and begins bouncing around his room, singing, "I'm six! I'm six! I'm six years old today!"

Strange--when it's 36 (and then some), the impulse to dance around is considerably diminished.

Don't think, though, that I'm complaining about getting old (or older). I'm not of that mindset--at least not yet. Whenever I feel the urge to be overly sensitive of my age, I remind myself to consider the alternatives. It's get older or die, you know? I'm not sure how much longer that pragmatic approach will work in the face of wrinkles, creases and sags (Wrinkles, creases and sags! Oh my!), but for now, it's holding up.

In other age-related news, my next-to-the-youngest niece, older sister to Little Miss "I'm Six," saw me scribbling away in my trusty spiral notebook the other day. She said, "Do you want to be an author when you grow up?"

Now, if she were a few years older, that remark may've been laced with mockery and sarcasm (as are most comments out of the mouths of those in the early double-digit years of adolescence). After all, duh, I am a grown-up, right? And if I were gonna be anything when I grew up, one would think I might have wanted to get started on it sometime before now. But since my niece is only eight and said it with such sweet sincerity, it got me thinking about how even when we're stuck in the rut of our real lives and we think to ourselves, duh, it's too late for me to be anything different "when I grow up," maybe all those possibilities are still out there and maybe I'm not quite as grown up as I thought.

It's All In My Head, Or Why Not to Post Under the Influence of Cold Medicine

On the one hand, I'd like to whine about my head cold, and regale you all with descriptions of the Day-Glo green stuff clogging my sinuses, but on the other hand, I think it's rather ungrateful of me to complain considering this is the first cold I've had all winter and shoot, we're within spittin' distance of spring now. (Of course, my gratitude is tempered by the knowledge that viruses really know no season and the two times I've had pneumonia in my life were both in August.)

This hasn't been much of a winter in our parts in any case. This past weekend was our first real dip into the single digits, with windchills in the negative double digits. So not only has my nose been running, my boogers have been freezing when I'm outside, which is a universally recognized signal of extreme bodily distress brought on by inhumane temperatures. But again, I'm not complaining because as I said, this winter has been mild.

Though my relief at how mild the winter's been is tempered by my concern that this is just another sign of global warming and we're all really, really, really screwed, which reminds me of an old Far Side cartoon in which two goldfish are standing on their tails on the table beside their fish bowl inside of which the little ceramic castle is aflame. The one goldfish says to the other something like, "Whew! We made it...of course now we're equally screwed."

So now I've solved the problem of not posting, but, um I'm thinking we might all be equally screwed.

Valentine's Day Rant*

Is Valentine's Day the most romantic day of the year or a purely commercial holiday, which only suckers fall for?

Being on the one hand a cynic by nature and on the other hand employed in one of the so-called industries that benefit directly from the commercial aspect of the holiday puts me in an odd position in that argument. (Rock(ME)Hard place? Not that bad, but close.) The couple-of-day rush at Valentine's Day pays my salary not just for a couple of days, but for a couple of weeks or more so I don't know where I, or the shop, would be without it, but of course I think it's asinine that so many people (almost all men) spend so much out of what amounts to a Pavlovian response to societal and (in the case of demanding, high maintenance women) interpersonal conditioning. Not only do I think it's asinine, I bitterly resent having to jump through hoops for these suckers who not only fall for the hype, but wait for the day of the hoax-holiday and expect my help in working some miracle in their romantic relationships.

That was my mental landscape last year as I put in 36 hours over the course of three days. I was arranging a dozen roses, which with balloons and delivery charges came to right around $100, when I wondered, really, what emotion would motivate someone to spend $100 frigging dollars on one day. I don't buy it as an expression of love--I think it's fear of the highest magnitude. There are two kinds of guys spending $100 on Valentine's flowers--one is living in fear of his woman (a condition commonly referred to as pussy-whipped, or just plain whipped for the faint-hearted among us) and one is guilt-ridden for his own failures the rest of the year. As with all sweeping generalizations, there are exceptions...I just haven't met any lately.

I don't have much faith in the grand gestures--they are hollow and pointless in unhealthy relationships and wholly unnecessary lily-gilding in good relationships.

I hate, too, the dismal lack of creativity and individuality we see on this holiday. A dozen roses is the grand gesture of grand gestures, widely understood to speak of commitment and depth of emotion. It's so arbitrary and, ultimately, meaningless because it pushes the same buttons, at least theoretically, for every couple everywhere. It's not personal in any way--I just don't get it at all. Clearly, there are a lot of men and women who do get it (women who have tantrums when they don't get it, in fact), but I just don't understand why. How can a cliche move anyone?

That having been said, I'm off to arrange about a million roses.

*With thanks (or blame) to Just Me, whose post in part inspired this rant.

Adventures In Parenting: Communicating (Or Not) With a Teenager

From inside Masked Mom Headquarters, 7:23 a.m., one morning last week:

Son-Two: I didn’t sleep very much last night and I’ve been up since 5:30.

Masked Mom: And what were you ruminating upon all night?*
(Pause during which I’m partially dreading his answer and partially trying not to fall back asleep.)

Son-Two: You don’t really expect me to answer that do you?

Well, um, no, I didn’t actually expect a straight answer, but to not ask seemed rude and even a little neglectful. For Son-Two, this conversation is over, but for Mom the conversation is just the beginning…the beginning of ruminating all afternoon about rules and boundaries and being involved enough to show you care without being so involved that you permanently stunt their emotional growth, thereby guaranteeing your children a lonely, hopeless existence.

With teenagers, communication, if it exists at all, is a tricky and terrifying thing. Respecting their privacy, protecting their safety and encouraging their independence all seem essential and often at odds with one another. Finding the right balance is made all the more challenging by the certainty that the right balance is probably different in each new circumstance, with each individual child.

During my own adolescence, when my mom and I were wrangling, long and loud, over her place in my life, I scribbled something in my journal that has come back to haunt me a thousand times since. I wrote that she was so busy trying to be the kind of mother she’d needed or wished she’d had that she had no idea what kind of mother I needed or wished I had.

I know, I know: I sounded just like the spoiled, adolescent brat I was, but I still think I was on to something—not necessarily about my mother in particular, but about parenting in general. Unless we were blessed with perfect parents or perfect perspective on our parents’ imperfections, we carry disappointments about our own parents’ failings with us into parenthood. We’re determined not to make the same mistakes our parents did.

And, we’re right, we don’t make the same mistakes because we’re too busy making our own gloriously messy mistakes for which our kids will no doubt require significant amounts of expensive therapy later on. Mistakes, maybe, like not running after Son-Two that morning—not chasing him down and quizzing him on what might be bothering him. The teenager I was would’ve responded to that kind of interrogation by closing down—answering in shrugs and grunts if at all—and instinct tells me that would’ve been Son-Two’s reaction as well. But instinct is all tangled up with wondering if I’m just being the kind of mother I wished I’d had at sixteen and not the kind of Mom he needs in this moment.

There is so much uncharted territory—streams and bogs and open fields and wooded hills—between us and our kids and as they grow they make more and more of it all their own. Sometimes we must trespass for their own safety—the rest of the time the rules aren’t so clear. Some days, I think the best we can hope for is not to do any lasting damage and to steer them into careers with excellent mental health coverage, just in case.


*Yes, we really do talk to our kids like that around here--occasionally in a mock British accent or snooty professor voice (think John Houseman in The Paper Chase, if anyone out there besides geeky me remembers John Houseman or The Paper Chase). It's had the unintended but totally cool effect of painlessly building their vocabularies--not that the size of their vocabularies is often obvious since they still rely heavily on slang and four-letter words and four-letter slang words especially when talking with friends.

Whose Story Is It Anyway?

We had something dramatic happen in town a few weeks ago--something that directly affected only a few people, but took many more by surprise. The week that followed the news was full of "Well, I heard..." and while I occasionally participated, it made me feel like I needed a shower. Gossip: is it evil, pointless chattering or is it a sincere attempt to make sense of the world and our place in it? Or both, alternately or simultaneously, and depending on the spirit of the participants? In this case, most of the people I spoke with or overheard seemed to really be trying to piece together a puzzle, to make sense of a seemingly senseless event.

This leads to another question that's always been of great interest to me, as a person and especially as a writer: to whom does this story--or any story--belong? I've read a million examples of family members feeling betrayed by a writer's work. Do we have a "right" to tell the stories even if the privacy of those closest to us is invaded? I've read in both Anne Lamott and Natalie Goldberg's work, among others, about giving ourselves permission to tell the truth as we see it in whatever form it flows out of us--poetry, fiction, memoir--and consequences be damned. Tell the truest, realest story you can and take your comfort in that. Your first loyalty is to the story. Okay, yeah, but you don't have to share an apartment or a Thanksgiving dinner with the story except in the most figurative sense.

Even before the local drama, this subject had been on my mind as I read What Remains by Carole Radziwill. She was married to John Kennedy, Jr.'s cousin, Anthony Radziwill and she had a very close friendship with Carolyn, John's wife. Carole's husband died of cancer three weeks after John and Carolyn were killed in a plane crash.

In September of last year, when the book was released, I caught maybe thirty seconds of an interview on one of the morning news programs. I'm a chronic channel hopper when it comes to those shows--thirty seconds here, a minute there--so I'm not at all sure who was interviewing her, though I'm reasonably sure it was someone male. One of the questions she was asked had to do with how John and Carolyn would've felt about intimate details of their lives being made public. I don't even remember Radziwill's response because I was so busy making a snap judgment--she was taking advantage of her close relationship to John and Carolyn, she was capitalizing on her intimate knowledge to sell books.

Having since read the book--which I never expected to do, but was persuaded by an excerpt of it I stumbled across in a magazine--I can say I was wrong. The interviewer was wrong--unless the rest of the interview somehow redeemed the snippet I caught, somehow revealed the interviewer's depth of understanding of and respect for Carole's book. I doubt it, but hey, I've got to at least put the possibility out there.

The truth about this book, at least, is that the story within it is Carole's: unmistakably, intimately, Carole's personal story. The details she reveals of John and Carolyn's personal lives--and even Anthony's--are just enough to make the reader understand their places in Carole's life--to understand the depth and breadth of her loss, the holes left behind by the disappearance of these three people from her life.

Since it's a question Radziwill has no doubt faced (there's interview transcripts all over the Internet--I was too lazy to read, let alone link to, them all) I have to say that it's likely that if she'd been married to a Schmoe cousin and was close friends with Joe Schmoe and his wife Jane Doe she would never have gotten the book deal she got--especially with a major publisher willing to spring for so much promotional support. But that would've been our loss, you know? And, also, that truth is much more revealing about the nature of publishing and the "book business" than it is of Carole Radziwill's character or talent.

The story in What Remains included John, Carolyn and Anthony, but it was Carole's story and, to a lesser extent, the story of all of us who have faced a loss. There is an elemental way in which the story of one of us is the story of all of us: "No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main..."* It is our stories that help us map the landscape of our lives and the world.

*Ms. Tolman, if you're out there, aren't you proud of the way I worked that John Donne quote in there? And aren't you at least a little comforted by my (admittedly half-assed) attribution**? It's almost a footnote. (**Thanks, Nita!)

When In Doubt, Throw It Out And Other Highlights of My Month So Far

~~~Someone, whose privacy I have vowed to protect so I can't mention her by name, but if you're really curious, e-mail me or give me a call and we can make fun of her behind her back, called me over the weekend for some advice regarding a jar of homemade sloppy joe sauce, which was maybe a little old. Thinking it might be as much as three years old, in which case I wouldn't eat it, I said, "When's it from?"

She said, "It's from 1993."

Okay. Even if the sauce were not awash in harmful microorganisms, even it were perfectly safe to eat, I would think there would be some serious deterioration in quality. I mean, if after twelve-plus years in a dust-covered jar in a musty corner of the pantry (or basement or wherever one keeps a jar of sloppy joe sauce for 12 years!) without benefit of the industrial strength preservatives found in store-bought canned goods, it still tasted exactly the same as it did when it was brand new, how good could it possibly have been to begin with?

~~~A friend who owns several rental properties around town was running an ad that specifically said, "No pets." Imagine his delight in receiving three seperate calls in an 18-hour period in which the caller casually mentioned, "I have a cat." We're all aware that many pet owners, myself included, consider their pets members of the family and it couldn't be clearer that most cats do not consider themselves pets, but let's remember that by the strict definition, cats are, in fact, technically pets.

~~~While working on a display window for Valentine's Day, I put a strand of heart lights inside a reproduction Victorian bird cage. K, a guy who sometimes helps out at the shop, but who is mostly a Shop Groupie (one of a group of colorful people who would make great Blog Material if I ever get around to it), was watching me with a raised eyebrow. "And just what is the significance of hearts in a cage? Is your heart a captive of love?"

Gosh, I almost wish I'd been clever enough to think of that, but no, as I told K: "The significance is I am lazy, the bird cage takes up a lot of space and cramming the hearts in it tied it in with the holiday theme with almost no effort on my part."

The window, despite my admitted laziness, has gotten some compliments, but with its white lace, gauzy red tulle, and gold accessories, it turned out a little too Best Little Whorehouse In Texas for my taste.

A Change Would Do You Good...

...so says Sheryl Crow and, as it happens, Mr. High School. He's become something of a personal life coach--like Dr. Phil, but nowhere near as smug and annoying with the added bonus that I respect his opinions way more than I do Dr. Phil's.

In the time we've been back in touch, Mr. High School has made some changes of his own. He quit his job at a place he'd been working--underpaid and underappreciated--for almost 13 years. He's now in a new job, which he loves and where they truly respect and appreciate him. He has been challenged in this new position in ways he hadn't been for years. He's become an enthusiastic proponent of change--swears by it as a positive thing.

We have a lot in common, Mr. High School and I, but this isn't one of the things. Change--even when it's my idea and even when it's a change for the better--is Big Scary. It can be overwhelming and I tend to resist change with all my resources, even when embracing it might be for the best, or at the very least, more energy efficient than digging my heels in against the inevitable.

Hubby can vouch for this trait of mine. Some of our most heated trivial arguments* are about rearranging the furniture. If it were entirely up to me, every single thing would be exactly where we put it the day we moved in here (eight and a half years ago). If it were entirely up to Hubby, the tinkering (he prefers "improving") would never end. As a result of our ongoing tug-of-war, our house has a look and feel that's a hybrid of "lived in" and "just moved in." While we've clearly been here a while--as evidenced by the clutter--nothing seems quite finished or settled.

As is my geeky habit, I've given a lot of thought to where Hubby and I picked up our respective attitudes toward change--he craves it; I shun it. Not surprisingly, our childhoods were very different in regards to change. After the age of 5, Hubby lived in the same house in the same tiny town in New Hampshire while I bounced from place to place.

Maybe we're all hard-wired to certain traits and attitudes and we'd have both ended up at opposite ends of this spectrum regardless of our circumstances growing up, but I sometimes think of our adult lives as prolonged rebellions against our childhoods. He was stuck in one place, with no choice in the matter. I was yanked from place to place, with no choice in the matter. Now we have a choice and we're making it, stubbornly, logic or what might actually be best for us be damned.

So, I'm thinking I should start trying to see change in a new--more reasonable--light. Maybe Mr. High School was right: change can be a good thing. I'm just glad he doesn't have Internet access--I wouldn't want him to see this post and get all smug and Dr. Phil on me.


*If you are now (or have ever been) in a long-term relationship, you know exactly how heated a "trivial" argument can be. If, however, you've never been in a long-term relationship, you probably think "heated trivial argument" is an oxymoron and any explanation would serve only to confuse you further and perhaps make you take a vow of chastity and then I would feel guilty that you ended up a hermit all because of an offhand comment in a blog, so let's just skip it.

An Answer To Your Financial Prayers

So my five-year-old niece was here the other morning, toting an adorable baby blue corduroy purse. She says, "Guess what? I have real money in my purse! Because, you know, money grows in purses."

No, I didn't know that--maybe that's been my problem all along. I've always been more of the wallet-you-can-stuff-a-few-essentials-into-and-tuck-under-your-arm type. Considering the lack of fiscal growth in the wallet I do lug around, I've got to assume that it's time to switch accessories. Or maybe the wallet would work, too, if only I had the right fertilizer?

That would be a truly miraculous feat even for Miracle-Gro, wouldn't it?

Perspective, Courtesy of the Spiral Notebook

I had a crappy day yesterday--not for any reason, really, except for maybe the realization that I was at work on a Monday, when the two previous Mondays had been spent relaxing (ha--have I mentioned I have three teenage sons and an eleven-year-old daughter?) at home. It was drizzly and rainy and while nothing went spectacularly wrong, nothing was quite right either.

Sometimes when I've got the crankies for no reason, I like to dip into the old Spiral Notebook journal that I've kept since I was fifteen. Here's the entry I stumbled upon last night--at the time, Son-One was four, Son-Two was two-and-a-half, and Son-Three had just turned one. I was a few months away from returning to the workforce, but employed full-time tending three boys, whose sole job was attempting to drive their mother insane. Oh, we also had an 8-week old border collie puppy...

Wednesday, August 19, 1992

11:08 AM--There was no toilet paper this morning when I got out of bed. I thought maybe it was the TP Fairy, but I looked everywhere and I guess she forgot to leave the money. Son-Three's diaper was full (of record-breaking, rancid, green shit). My bra situation has gone from desperate to hopeless. I could find two this morning, one had dog shit on it and the other had a gaping hole in the left cup. I washed out the second one and offered the first as a sacrifice to the gods in charge of this day. I hope they appreciate it--it was a hell of a good bra, it served me long and well and I loved it dearly.

I make this pit stop entry in an effort to dispel whatever evil spirits may be hanging over my day. When the first hour I'm out of bed goes like this, I've got to do something. I'd cross my fingers for the rest of the day, but I'd probably break a nail or put an eye out.

Yeah, yesterday was pretty bad, but if I made it through August 19, 1992, I'm pretty sure I can survive anything this week has in store for me.

A Resolution I Can Keep

New Year's Resolutions are proof that hope springs eternal--foolish, blind hope that is disappointed time and again and yet comes back to the table for more.

Late on New Year's Day, my sister-in-law said to a group of us assembled around the table: "Okay, what are your resolutions everyone?"

I answered, "My resolution is to not make any resolutions this year."

It's the best resolution I've ever made. Think about the very nature of New Year's Resolutions--we spend the first few hours or days of the New Year thinking about all the ways we aren't good enough, all the changes we need to make to be worthy of this New Year. Here's a little secret, though--yeah, it's a New Year, a new day, another chance, blah, blah, blah, but I'm the same old me and odds are my energy will be better spent being the best me I can be and accepting all the ways I fall short of the goal of perfection rather than struggling to become more, better, faster, stronger.

So here I am on the 5th of January and I haven't even wavered in my resolution one teeny bit. I think I may have set some kind of record.