Considerable Redness and Swelling...*

I have delivered flower arrangements for eight years and during that time have encountered a number of hazardous conditions--icy steps, snarling dogs, knee-deep mud pits people pretend are driveways, half-naked old ladies (no lie, once we called to let this woman know that we would be there in half an hour to deliver a plant we had repotted for her and the seventy-three year old woman came to the door in just a T-shirt and panties (bringing "granny panties" to a whole new level). Worse, the door was at the bottom of a set of stairs that led into the kitchen and as she was too frail to carry the gigantic plant, I had no choice but to follow her up the steps with her jiggly, saggy, old-lady butt right in my face.), not to mention various hazards in funeral homes including wheeled casket stands that someone has forgotten to lock so when you go to put the casket spray on the whole thing lurches back and forth and you have a moment of panic in which you're absolutely certain that you're going to spill the dead guy and how the hell are you going to explain that one to your boss, the family of the dead guy and the already grumpy funeral home director.**

Despite all these hazards (for which, incidentally, I think I should get hazard pay, but of course I do not), I have only ever seriously injured myself once while on deliveries--the day I totaled Cranky Boss Lady's car (because, of course, nothing bad would happen to the shop van, it would happen to be the day the van was at the mechanic's getting new tires and I was driving CBL's personal vehicle, a fuschia Ford Escort, which I just don't think was a coincidence) until Wednesday.

Wednesday I was delivering to another little old lady--a great customer, who has money to blow and regularly does so at our shop. She's housebound though so we take everything to her. She has a little set of six or eight stairs leading up from her garage to her kitchen. I've probably been up and down those stairs a thousand times. On this particular day alone, I'd been up and down them four times. I had brought in all the spring wreaths and wicker baskets that she'd ordered and was getting ready to leave when she asked if she could see the arrangement she was sending to someone else. No problem, right?

I went out to get it--an artificial arrangement in a little metal airplane done in patriotic colors for a guy who just had surgery to fix a deviated septum-- and brought it up to her. She was delighted with it and I turned to leave with the arrangement in my hands and promptly stumbled at the top of the stairs--or more accurately stumbled all the way down the stairs, almost but not quite regaining my balance several times before falling forward at the bottom of the last step and landing on my face on the concrete garage floor.

I never let go of the arrangement! I skidded on my face because I was so intent on not dropping the arrangement. (Save the arrangement, save the world?) It hit me that every time I've started to slip on an icy sidewalk, I have held whatever arrangement I was carrying up in the air to protect it to the best of my ability--the same way I would hold a child I was carrying. Gosh, that's just sad.

Sadder yet is my face today--two days later the bruising is still coming to the surface, the swelling is settling and shifting, the brush burns are an icky brown color that looks like it's oozing even when it's not. As an added bonus, I'm sore everywhere--Hubby and I have been debating whether it's the landing or the trying to catch yourself that does that to every muscle in your body, but whatever side of the debate you come down on, you still can't get off the couch without creaking and groaning and whining and moaning.

I need a raise.

*In case no one else is as much of a geek as me: "considerable redness and swelling" is from the Dr. Scholl's Gel Inserts commercial. One of those "I'm gellin'" asinine commercials. This one the guy's "not yellin' even though there's considerable redness and swellin'" from some dippy waitress who spilled hot coffee on his leg.

**Granted, this only happened once, but one "I almost spilled the dead guy!" is enough.

Tune In Next Time When I Make Ronald McDonald Bawl Like A Baby...

I've been at the parenting thing for almost nineteen years now--you'd think by now they couldn't surprise me anymore, but somehow at the least expected moments, in the least expected places, they can still leave me speechless (snorting with hysterical laughter, but speechless).

The Scene: KFC drive-thru

Staticky Disembodied Voice: Welcome to KFC, can I take your order?

Masked Mom: Yes, I'd like a twelve piece bucket, please.

SDV: Would like you original recipe or extra crispy?

MM: Extra crispy, please.

SDV: (silence)

Son-Two (from the backseat with deadpan sincerity): Mom, do you think the Colonel's disappointed that you're not ordering original recipe?

Nose-Worm Update!!!!

(Masked Mom's Media Monday is on hiatus--but don't cry too hard. It will return with more pithy and pointless commentary as soon as things settle down a little around here.)

When last we saw the ...and-then-it-moved! nose-worm, it was at the hospital lab in a yogurt cup. The small-town hospital had no luck identifying it except to say that it wasn't a "common maggot."*

So off the little bugger (booger? bogger bugger?) went to Penn State where university minds went at it--and determined it was a carpet beetle larva. Apparently, little larva craweld up father-in-law's nostril while father-in-law slept.

The (almost) good news? It can't have been up there long because it was too "well-fed."

Yum.

*Actually this was originally reported to me as "human" maggot. I'm taking some liberty in assuming that someone somewhere lost something in the translation and that "common" is close enough to "human" to count but makes a whole lot more sense. Nevertheless, I'm afraid visions of a "human maggot" will be wriggling in my head all night.

The Odyssey

Over the weekend, Son-Two participated in his fifth Odyssey of the Mind competition. He's been an avid OMer since seventh grade--almost always on the "structure" team, whose goal is to produce a balsa wood structure (to specific criteria--criteria different and a little more difficult each year) capable of holding more weight than the next team's. This was no problem at this year's regional competition (which blessedly has been held in our own school for the past two years), since there was no other structure team in his division. They were guaranteed a place at the State competition just by virtue of showing up.

The guaranteed spot did nothing to dissuade any of the team from staying at school until nine or ten each night last week, putting the finishing touches on the structure as well as polishing their skit (another requirement). This year's skit had to include a "special effect." Son-Two's team chose to make one of the girls on the team disappear in a box created from plans they found on the Internet. The night before the competition, Son-Two was pretty sure the box was going to collapse on stage and humiliate them all. Instead, it worked perfectly--so perfectly in fact that the small crowd gasped and Son-Two's team was approached all afternoon by perfect strangers wanting to know how they'd done it.

Despite gasp-inspiring special effects, OM isn't really audience-friendly. The individual performances/tests are held in small classrooms throughout whatever school the competition's being held in--there is little or no seating and, in fact, even standing room is at a premium. The other part of the competition is "spontaneous" in which only the members of the team can even enter the room with the judges. After a (long) break for lunch, there is usually some sort of "entertainment" while the judges tabulate their scores and then there are the awards. There are often gaps of several hours between the different "events." Gaps spent aimlessly wandering the halls, an activity which I got plenty of in my own high school years, thanks very much.

The second or third year Son-Two was in OM, Daughter-Only was begging me for weeks before the competition to go along. I kept telling her she would be bored and that I didn't think it was a good idea. She kept begging and then she put together a six page packet explaining in words and pictures why it was so important to her to go. All incredibly well thought out and convincing. My favorite part, though, was when, in her opening paragraph, she referred to OM as Oblivion Minds. She was only eight or so at the time and I suppose it's just as impressive that she knew (and could spell) the word Oblivion as it would've been had she actually gotten it right.

I let her go and I can't help thinking it's significant that she hasn't asked to go again. I haven't gone the past two years either. Son-Two seems genuinely not to care whether I'm there or not--he's so over his mother showing up places...not to mention he'd barely get to see me anyway.

I'm kind of sorry I missed it this year, though. The marching band, who was in charge of the concession stand, burned some popcorn, setting off the smoke alarms and causing the building to be temporarily evacuated. I always miss the good stuff.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Daylight Saving Time

The negatives of Daylight Saving have been enumerated elsewhere (including by Masked Mom herself), but what I've yet to see articulated in any convincing fashion were the "positives" of Daylight Saving. That's probably because there are no positives or the ones that do exist aren't concrete or provable.

This year's Daylight Saving adjustment is all the more annoying and pointless because it's happening three weeks early, a change for which there are the same vague (and unsupported) explanations as for Daylight Saving in general. (And including the three-weeks early change in a bill called the Energy Policy Act of 2005 does nothing to convince me that it's going to have a provable positive effect...)

A friend and I were talking about the fact that having it come three weeks earlier is going to be a huge pain in the ass for computers and computer programs--not so much for us at home but for people in companies with more sophisticated programs that are auto-set to change the first weekend in April. At home, it's a matter of manually changing the computer clock twice--once this weekend and once again when it springs ahead all by itself, completely unaware of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which I still see as kind of a pain in the ass especially since (again) there is no logical proven purpose to it.

Way worse than resetting the clocks on my computer and around the house is trying to recalibrate my internal clock--not to mention recalibrating my kids' internal clocks, which are always running behind in any case. Daughter-Only "forgot" to reset her clock last night and has to go in late to school today--don't worry I didn't fall for it--especially since their father calls all of them as a back up to their alarms (which "fail" regularly)--but she's late nonetheless since the argument we had over whether that was a valid excuse for oversleeping an hour took a considerable amount of time*.

It would be fantastic if the energy savings from this change were great enough to justify the energy we're expending to adjust to it.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Pointless.

*I would like to take this time to thank Daughter-Only for trying to get away with that excuse since it reminded me of the best ever "I forgot to change my clock" excuse, which was given by an assistant manager when I worked at Burger King, who claimed he was an hour late because he forgot to reset his clock--except that it was October and anyone with even a basic understanding of "falling back" would realize that if you really forgot to reset your clock in October, you'd have been an hour early instead of an hour late. Duh. The asst. mgr.'s name was Kirk, and we all called him Capt. Kirk to his face (pseudo-affectionately) and behind his back (completely mockingly). I once made the mistake of saluting him (he was a Capt, after all, and due a certain amount of respect) and he had a little fit about how "sarcastic" I was. My argument was that I wasn't sure how an action, rather than words, could be sarcastic. Of course, I was aware then (and even more so now that I have teenagers) that it's entirely possible to be sarcastic without saying a word, but it was worth playing dumb to see the color red poor Capt. Kirk's face turned. Hmmm, I think it just hit me (not for the first time) where Daughter-Only gets her knack for winning losing arguments.

Who Knew?

You know that "new car smell" that everyone raves about--that smell that's so sought after that there are actually air fresheners called "new car scent?" Turns out the inside of a brand new water heater has practically the same smell. All my hot water for the past two days has had that smell--it's sort of distracting to walk into the bathroom after someone's had a shower and have the whole room smell of "new car." But I guess there are worse things a bathroom could smell like, right?

On the subject of bathrooms--have I mentioned that Hubby always, always puts the seat down? Something else he's really good at? Putting in a water heater so we didn't have to call (and pay) a plumber.

He's my hero. (This week, anyway.)

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Signs of Spring

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Yum.

I meant for this post to be a true ode to the fantastically amazing only-available-this-time-of-year Cadbury Mini Eggs, but this week has been a kicker--Cranky Boss Lady, crankier than usual; customers more demanding than usual; water heater on the fritz and needing replaced just as the temperatures dipped back into the single digits; a friend having to have his wife removed from the house because of increasingly erratic behavior including drinking copious amounts of alcohol among many other things. So, Yum is gonna have to cover it.

Perfect Post for February

Blogs seem to come in two main varieties--snarky and sincere. Sure, there are the snarkily sincere hybrids and the sincerely snarky versions as well. But whatever the main subject of a blog--gossip, politics, family--they seem to fall on one side or the other.

Ocasionally while reading the sincere variety of blog, you'll come across a post so real and raw and open that it reminds you why you were drawn into the world of blogs to begin with. Kim's post, Round and round (again), was just that kind of post.

In a few short paragraphs, she captures the ups and downs and backs and forths of being the adult child of an alcoholic. So perfectly does she do this that even if you've never "been there", after you read her post, you'll feel you know exactly what it is to be there.

So, for your honesty and the courage to share, here's my button:



And Kim, it's all yours.

(Other winners at Suburban Turmoil and Petroville.)

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Anna Nicole

Masked Mom usually shies away from celebrity gossip--on the grounds that there is so much gossip to be indulged in about people I actually know that I just don't have the time and energy to indulge in gossip about total strangers. However, I can no longer avoid saying this here (though I've already said it elsewhere)--with all the drama surrounding the circumstances and repurcussions of Anna Nicole's death, the biggest mystery as far as I'm concerned remains why so many men would admit to having had sex with her*--even for the money. I just don't get it.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Baffling.


*I realize that some of the ones "admitting" having had sex with her may not actually have had sex with her and I've been trying to figure out whether I consider it worse to have claimed to have had sex with her when you didn't or to have admitted to having had it when you actually did. I have to say admitting it still comes out worse because you would've had to have had actual sex with Anna Nicole, who I'm pretty sure was the offspring of an alien and a blow-up doll.**

**I have no doubt that I'm going to Hell for saying mean things about a dead lady so don't feel the need to tell me how eternally damned I am, 'kay?

Please Let This Be The "Best" Story I Hear All Year...

Cranky Boss Lady's daughter was in the shop yesterday afternoon and started talking about her father-in-law, whose health is somewhat poor--he's diabetic with heart problems and a knee replacement surgery last year went horribly wrong and he's basically been suffering one infection after another for the past year. Before telling us the story that follows, she did warn us that it was "really, really gross" and I feel it's only fair to pass that warning along--this is a Blurt Alert, Code Red for anyone with a sensitive stomach or a really vivid imagination.

Most recently, the father-in-law has been fighting off (not so well) a sinus infection. They thought they had it beaten but he was still feeling a little discomfort so the ear, nose and throat guy went in (up?) to take a look and did find a small spot way up there that looked like "some kind of fungus." (It's always intimidating when those medical types bring out all that complicated terminology, isn't it?) Because of his other medical conditions, the father-in-law couldn't take the anti-fungal medication so they were basically in the wait and see mode.

Over the weekend, the father-in-law was sitting in his recliner in the living room when he sneezed. He opened the tissue, as instructed by the ENT guy to check the color and having made a mental note of it, he folded the tissue and set it on the table beside his chair and then...it moved!

When Cranky Boss Lady's daughter got to that part of the story, I shrieked like a cheerleader on a roller coaster. I'm not sure whether it was her delivery or the fact that I was only half-listening to the story to begin with and those words "it moved!" dragged me right into it.

In any case, the tissue moved and it was discovered that there was "some kind of worm" in the tissue--a worm that had only recently been inside the father-in-law's head. Mother-in-law came in with a clean yogurt container, dropped the tissue in and immediately transported the whole mess to the doctor for identification. It's been sent to a lab.

Prayers would be appreciated--for the father-in-law, but for me as well because I'm pretty sure if I hear a story "better" than this this year, I might never recover.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Valentine's Day

Still recovering from Valentine's Day, Masked Mom offers this rerun of last year's 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 said, I'm off to go recover from arranging a million roses.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Overblown.

PS--This year, we got about eighteen inches of snow from 2pm on the 13th until 3pm or so on the 14th. The only thing more exhausting than waiting on ten million customers is worrying about what's going to happen when those ten million customers don't show up because they're snowed in. Not to mention worrying every single second because we had two delivery vehicles out in that crap.

With Friends Like These...

One of my favorite parts of parenting adolescent males is the glimpse it gives me inside the world of high school guys. I had only one brother and by the time he was in high school, I had a couple of kids and wasn't around much to see it. Now I get a much closer view--and I find their world sometimes baffling but always, always entertaining. Some of the things they say to each other are absolutely priceless.

An example: One of Son-Three's volleyball* teammates (the previously mentioned Player Five--the one who got his braces stuck in Daughter-Only's zipper on the trampoline) was complaining that he didn't get as much play time as he would like. Son-Three, a sophomore, said, "Well, you are only a freshman."

Player Five sarcastically replied, "Congratulations! Your parents boinked** before mine."

*The volleyball season is over and the boys' team took first place for our conference.
**There's a very real possibility that the actual word Player Five used wasn't quite as family friendly (or sort of family friendly) as "boinked." It may, in fact, have had an "F" somewhere near the beginning of the word...

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Philosophy Made Simple

A widower and his three adult daughters (all of whom are leading increasingly complicated lives), an avacado grove, a Hindu wedding, an artistic elephant, a Mexican brothel and, just maybe, the meaning of life. Considering all that author Robert Hellenga has packed into its pages, Philosophy Made Simple is a surprisingly slender and quiet book.

It sneaks up on you--this story of widower Rudy Harrington trying to understand the world and his place in it--and by the time you realize how invested you are in the fates of all the people (and one fascinating elephant), there's the last page. But, as with any book of value, it never really ends. You carry its essence with you in your own search for understanding.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Enlightening.

It's Going Around

Justin Timberlake's newest "What Goes Around...Comes Around" is in heavy rotation on the new radio station. (Have I mentioned there's a new radio station in town? I was positively giddy when I heard about it--it plays Top 40 "the best of the '80s, '90s, and now" instead of country or "oldies" like the other two stations. Now I don't have to listen to the staticky Buffalo stations!!!) I hope I'm not the only one to ever be spun into a whirlwind of philosophical thought by the lyrics of a pop song, but if I am, so be it.

I've been thinking all week about that saying, "What goes around, comes around." meaning "he'll get his" or "she'll get hers." It's commonly accepted as fact--and karma, boiled down to its essence and stripped of all subtlety, is just another version of "what goes around, comes around" on a grander, more cosmic scale.

When someone has been cheated on or stolen from or otherwise done wrong, it's practically a reflex to say "what goes around, comes around," as though there is some comfort in the thought that the one who hurt you will someday be hurt, and maybe, deliciously, in exactly the same way he or she hurt you. In the human nature laboratory of the flower shop, where who's done wrong and been done to around town and around the world is the most frequent topic of conversation, I wouldn't doubt I've heard that phrase at least once a day for the past eight years.

I've never been much of a believer in it myself. It seems to me there are lots of people who are perfectly miserable human beings--who treat others with disrespect or outright disdain, who cause others pain as a matter of course--who are walking around, fine and dandy, in some cases (corporate honchos, for instance) they've actually profited from their evil ways and their lives seem measurably better.

There is one particular person I know who seems to have gotten away with being vile on a fairly regular basis. She is routinely nasty to everyone around her--even when she seems to be trying to be nice or generous, there is a pushy element about her generosity (and her expectation of your gratitude). She is two-faced and completely unable to keep a secret. She's bossy and certain her opinion matters significantly more than anyone else's. She delights in other's troubles. (I once saw her call her neighbor's teenage son first thing in the morning--knowing she would wake him up--just to let him know he had a parking ticket on his windshield. She was that eager to be the one to break the "bad news.") All this and yet, nothing disproportionately bad has happened to her. I keep waiting for something heavy to fall on her from way up high, but nothing...

Then it hit me--thanks in part to the prompting of Justin's new song--her punishment for being the way she is is being the way she is. I can't think of anything worse than going through life with a shriveled up and nasty little soul. She's missing so much by being the way she is that there really doesn't need to be any further punishment.

So sing on, Justin, because not only does it come around, sometimes it's already here.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Too Cold

After lulling us into complacency with temps that barely dipped into the teens at night and highs in the 30s and 40s during the day for much of January, we've been hit by temps below zero with windchills in the HOLY CRAP area. (Seriously, our town had the coldest windchills in the viewing area of the Buffalo TV station--we were at negative 31 degrees this morning. I've resolved not to look tomorrow morning.)

I was at the grocery store this evening, hastily throwing my groceries in the car and I went, "Errggghhhh!" because I was cold and just as I did a girl walking up the sidewalk toward the store made exactly the same noise. And we both looked at each other in sympathy and I said, "It's the only logical response."

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Errgghhhh!

PS--It's supposed to break tomorrow. Let's hope so...

Perfect Post For January: "...an oncoming train of painful insight"

January is typically the month of the year when resolutions are made and, all too often, broken. The month when, if we're not careful, we will descend into a pit of introspection from which we might never escape. Self-awareness is generally a good thing, but there's a point at which your brain begins to chase its own tail. I remember, during a particularly fruitless and melodramatic time, thinking of all that soul-searching as being lost in a wilderness of mirrors where you can't find the path home because all you can see are facets of yourself reflected back at you.

Lucky for me that at the beginning of this month, I came across "choo" at tuckova. There is a lesson to be learned (admittedly at tuckova's expense) there. I will, of course, not learn it, but it sure was nice to see the raging battle between self-assurance and self-doubt spelled out in a post so short and sweet and sneakily brilliant.

So here's my button:



And, tuckova, it's all yours!

Other winners at Petroville and Suburban Turmoil.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: One Punk Under God

I'm not sure how I'm going to talk about a mini-series called One Punk Under God about Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (Messner)'s son Jay, without getting into a discussion of religion in general, but that's my goal. Religion, like anything we are passionate about, can rarely be discussed calmly and rationally--perhaps because so much of faith and belief comes from some place not entirely rational--and while it's possible for people who care about one another to agree to disagree, the Internet is full of people who don't really care about each other and many who are just looking for a fight and the opportunity to flaunt their own faith or belief (usually in the form of harshly judging those who dare to be different from themselves).*

As so often happens, I found the mini-series One Punk Under God purely by accident. Our cable package includes a Sundance Channel "sampler" where you can watch selected shows "on demand" for free and I was flipping idly through one afternoon and thought the title was intriguing.

Five minutes in, I was completely charmed by Jay Bakker, who may look a little "punk"--tattooed and pierced, but who is soft-spoken and utterly sincere in his religious searching and in the comfort he tries to provide for the members of his own church Revolution. (During one sermon, he says, "We're not here to judge you, we're just here to love on you.") The piercings and the tattoos as well as his prematurely balding head are a contrast to his little boy lost manner. He is human and vulnerable and uncertain and completely unafraid to show it. Like his father, he is a minister. Unlike his father, he was not called to the sterile world of TV studios but to the streets.

We also get to see glimpses of his relationship with his father, who has a new show of his own, and his mother, who suffers from Stage 4 cancer. He is extremely close to his mom, visiting her often and speaking to her regularly. His relationship with his father is more strained and restrained.

The six episodes of the series show Jay and his wife Amanda preparing to move from Atlanta to New York where she will continue her education as well as Tammy Faye's worsening health and Jay's attempts to reconnect with his father.

Considering it was something I never meant to watch, I found the show fascinating and, dorky as it sounds, touching.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Surprising.

PS--If you're interested, clips from the episodes are available at Sundance.com and can be purchased and downloaded from iTunes.

*The harsh judgment isn't in any way one-sided. I've seen atheists who are just as judgmental in their own way as the rabid fundamentalists. It goes back to wanting everyone else to believe what you believe, I guess.

If I Were You: Some Free Advice About Free Advice

I have mentioned before that the flower shop where I work is a magnet for folks with nothing better to do--I call them the shop groupies. They're people who stop by and linger for a few minutes or an hour or, in the case of K, the unemployed Drama Queen, all day several days a week. Some days, I want to crawl under the futon we keep in the office and hide from them all. But most days, they're a big part of what makes my job tolerable at all.

In our office, my chair is tucked into a corner behind my desk, which has shelves that provide something of a hiding place for me. And I will often hide there, tucked away, not commenting on the subject of choice--politics, religion, celebrity gossip, exes, in-laws, ex-in-laws--but definitely taking notes. I don't comment mostly because the issues are often the sort that boil down to a matter of opinion and I don't believe it's my job to change someone else's opinion--plus, even after eight years on the job (and therefore in most of these people's lives), I'm a little shy.

One afternoon, we had several people gathered in the tiny office and one of them was ranting on and on about her sister-in-law, a woman who by all accounts is extremely annoying--self-centered, rude, argumentative, whiny. Another person spoke up and said, "I would tell my brother that bitch isn't welcome in my house."*

Now, there's little doubt in my mind that this particular person would tell her brother that--and she would be proud of it and she would probably enjoy it thoroughly--effects on the rest of the family be damned. But, I also look at this person's life--and the fact that she has three brothers who are in no way part of her daily (or even weekly) life--and I think to myself, "Okay, here are the results of being the sort of person who tells her brother that his bitchy wife isn't welcome in her house."

Maybe Advice Giver in this situation is content with being contacted by one of her three brothers once a year and by the other two even less often--maybe a close relationship with her siblings isn't a priority to her--and that's certainly her perogative. But let's leave room for the Ranter in the above situation to want a different outcome--let's let Ranter rant safely in the relative privacy of the office of the flower shop so that she has some hope of continuing to fake it with her Psycho Sister-in-Law and thereby maintain her relationship with her brother which may be more important to her than the momentary satisfaction of telling the brother what she really thinks of his wife.

Have you ever noticed that the most avid advice givers--the ones who give it whether it's asked for or not--are often the most outwardly miserable people among us? Advice Giver above may never admit that she regrets driving so many people from her life (it's certainly not limited to her siblings), but from the outside, it's not hard to see the result of offering unsolicited and often unconsidered--she's a good one for popping off in the heat of the moment, but too stubborn to go back later and admit she was wrong--opinions to everyone around you.

My advice on advice? Consider the source--look at your advisor's life. When they say, "If I were you--" their own lives are, at least theoretically, where they put their "wisdom" to work. If they don't live by their own wisdom, that says something quite clearly about the value of that wisdom or at least about the advisor's tendency toward hypocrisy.

Unsolicited advice is especially suspect. In general, people content with their own lives don't feel compelled to meddle in other's lives.** In other words, the people with some real wisdom are more likely to mind their own business while those a little too confident in their own common sense are all too often happy to share the wealth.

So look at the person whose advice you're considering--is her life something worth emulating? Or is she alone more often than not? Unhappy as a matter of habit? Is she the sort of person you duck down the dairy aisle to avoid in the grocery store? Is she someone worthy of your respect and admiration? If not, then she probably doesn't know any better than you do. All this advisory meddling is probably just a ploy to distract herself from her own bitter and hollow life.

*There are doubtless circumstances in which a bitch, be she my brother's wife or not, would not be welcome in my house as well and I would definitely say so, if for instance, she were a threat to my children or my sanity, etc. But the bitchy, psycho sister-in-law in question is bitchy more in petty and silly ways--ways that I would just try to see as the price we pay for having people other than ourselves in our lives.

**The exception is professional advice givers like Dr. Phil, who's a favorite of mine--if by favorite you mean someone whom I would duck down the dairy aisle to avoid in the grocery store. Dr. Phil is clearly not an unhappy man and yet he continues to spew advice on a regular basis--and why shouldn't he? He's become fabulously wealthy by pointing out the obvious to people too dense to figure it out for themselves.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Cell Phone Manners

I'm not going to talk about cell phone etiquette and I'm not going to rant about cell phone junkies in general. First because "etiquette" is one of those things people often convince themselves (probably wrongly) only applies in formal or business situations--not, say, in the line at the grocery store or in the back row of the movie theater and so on. And second because, living in the teeny town I live in, I've been relatively sheltered from the really rude cell phone junkies that seem to plague major metropolitan areas.

But I am going to talk about a cell phone crime so heinous that I may need therapy to recover from it.

I was browsing at the library this afternoon--a thing we know I dearly love to do. I only had ten minutes I could steal away from work and so I was sort of speed-browsing. In that ten minutes, three patrons received cell phone calls. All three of them answered their phones and carried on conversations right there in the library!

Now, our library strives to be a casual and comfortable sort of place, I think. None of the librarians are of the "shushing" persuasion. There are often quiet (and even not so quiet) conversations taking place in every corner. But c'mon! Taking a phone call?! In the library!? Nearly shouting to be heard over static, telling your husband or your sister or your mom--along with every other patron in the library--what's for dinner or where you are or what movie you're trying to check out?!

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Uncivilized.

Driving Lessons

In October, Son-Two got his learner's permit and promptly (well, within the week) drove the car over a curb and came to rest along a line of trees. All sorts of things contributed to this minor accident--I didn't give him enough warning to make the turn, he made the turn anyway (even though he was obviously going too fast), the grassy area on the other side of the curb was soft and wet from a week of rain causing us to slide much further than we would've otherwise and to be more thoroughly stuck once we stopped, we went over the curb at the top of a steep hill so even gravity played a part. There was no damage to our vehicle--nor to the trees--and while waiting for the tow truck to pull us out, two friendly town cops regaled us with stories of other drivers (many with much more experience) who had "failed to negotiate" (as the radio newscasters are fond of saying) this particular turn.

So we were none the worse for wear, except for $50 for the tow truck and a hit to Son-Two's driving confidence which was already sort of unstable. Sitting beside him when he's behind the wheel, it's obvious he's not convinced he's in control of the vehicle--even when all outward signs are good--speed reasonable, fully in his own lane, no weaving or wheel yanking, no gear grinding--Son-Two still radiates a discomfort bordering on outright fear that does nothing to calm his mother's frazzled nerves.

Daily practice for a few weeks made both of us feel a little better. Then he backed out of the driveway into a minister's car. (The GEICO is my hero accident.)

About a week after the accident--more of an incident really (other than the way in which it illustrated to me (not for the first time) that being a "man of the cloth" is no guarantee of a person's character)--we stopped at the landfill transfer station on the way to the boys volleyball practice. There are two bays there, where you back in so you can just toss your garbage out the back of your vehicle. One of the bays is deeper than the other and that's the one I usually use. On this particular day, though, it was occupied so I backed into the other one and promptly forgot (dragged into a debate on the relative merits of Scrubs vs. The Office or something equally earth-shattering) which bay I was in.

The bumper of the van connected--loudly--with the metal barrier designed to stop people (idiots like me) from driving their vehicles directly into the gigantic trash compactors. And Son-Two says, "Wow! Wonder where I get it from?"

Ha. Ha. But it made me think--and not for the first time--about whether I have any business trying to teach anyone how to drive. I've mentioned my stellar driving record--and it is, of course, family lore--so there have been occasional teasing questions, "You're teaching him to drive?!"

Well, yes I am. For a variety of reasons--including but not limited to temperament--Hubby is not an option in the driving teacher department. The school driver's education program is underfunded and understaffed and the waiting list is long and in any case, some parent-guided driving time would be necessary to supplement whatever time he could squeeze out with three other students in the car every time they went out.

Regardless of how bad a driver I am, he's stuck with me. Wondering how qualified I really am to teach Son-Two how to drive led me to wondering how qualified I am to teach any of them anything.

Little Sister and I used to joke that we were going to write a self-help book covering all the major life topics--parenting, marriage, career, family relationships--and call it What Not To Do because even though we had no idea how to do any of it right, through years and years of personal experience, we knew all about how not to do it.

I started getting depressed--thinking all I could pass along to my kids was a long list of things to avoid--when I remembered that my own mother had tried to pass along much the same list to me. Did I listen? No. Would I have listened even if she had nailed down the secrets of the universe? No. Would my kids listen to me? Probably not.

And thank goodness. Wisdom is non-transferable--there's no way to get it except by getting out there and figuring out all the ways there are to be unwise. And maybe knowing what not to do isn't such a small thing...we've definitely earned it...and my kids will have to earn it too.

Here's hoping Son-Two is soon done learning how not to drive.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: What It Used To Be Like

Raymond Carver is one of those authors who's been on my List for years--that List I keep of books and authors I plan on getting around to sooner or later. I've never actually read any of his short stories or poetry, but I've read quite a bit about the man himself.

Recently, I came across a piece in The Sun by his second wife, Tess Gallagher, about his hard-won sobriety. The piece included some of his poems and my interest in him became even greater. Before I had a chance to dig around in the stacks for a short story collection, I stumbled on a book by his first wife, Maryann Burk Carver.

What It Used To Be Like is the story of their marriage--beginning in their teens and lasting twenty-five years. When I first started reading the book, it was out of curiosity about Ray Carver, but a few chapters in, I realized I was just as fascinated by this woman who, while she was still a girl, made a commitment to a man, who was still in many ways a boy and how the two of them fought so hard for so long to make their marriage work--against incredible odds.

It helps that the book reads as though Maryann is sitting across the table from you with a cup of coffee reminiscing about her life with one of America's greatest writers. Writing was central to Ray's life and, therefore, to Maryann's and while it's never far from the surface, I don't think you have to be a full-out bibliophile to really appreciate this book.

It's about much more than writing--it's about all the intricacies and complexities of trying to build a life together under extraordinary circumstances and I would recommend it to anyone who's interested in the thousand and one ways husbands and wives prop each other up and let each other down.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Valuable.

Signs From The Powers That Be

I'm always on the lookout for signs from the universe, messages from beyond, you know any hint I can gather to make life a little easier or safer or just more understandable. Once you start looking, you find they're everywhere--songs on the radio, fortune cookies, conversational coincidences--of course figuring out what they mean is a whole other thing.

For example, yesterday morning, I nudged hubby awake because his dogs were whining. He immediately mumbled what sounded like: "It's not going to be a tuba."

"It's not going to be a tuba."

Or maybe he said tuna. "It's not going to be a tuna."

Later, while I was trying to decipher the meaning of this profound statement, Son-One suggested that maybe Hubby had said, "It's not going to be a tumor."

So, now I'm sitting here wondering how tunas, tubas, or (non)tumors may fit into our immediate future. Maybe it's better just not knowing...

A Post About A Comment--Now I Know I've Gone Too Far...

Fellow bloggers out there, have you ever read a post on someone else's blog and then, say, at some time nearing one a.m., left a comment and then stared at the ceiling half the night thinking about that comment and even though you stand by everything you said in the original comment, you also feel like you didn't say quite enough or quite what you meant to say and there's really, surprisingly, a lot more to say on the topic?

No?

Well, I guess I'm just more of a freak than even I thought, huh?

Last night (this morning?), I read Lindsay's post over at Suburban Turmoil titled "To Snip or Not to Snip. That Is The Question." Lindsay is pregnant with a baby boy and is mulling over the circumcision issue--and finding the conflicting "advice," so much of it militant, a little overwhelming. By the time I read the post, Lindsay had 111 comments on the subject, only some of which I read and which seemed to run about half for, half against circumcision. For every commenter who had a scary story about an unsnipped guy there was a commenter who had scary stories about snipped ones. For every commenter who said not being snipped was no big deal--not a health or social impediment as some of the pro-snippers implied, there was someone who countered that being snipped is also no big deal--the baby doesn't remember the pain or doesn't feel it the same way or whatever.

In short, if Lindsay was looking for a definitive answer or even some sort of general consensus, she wasn't going to get it. So instead of commenting specifically to the issue of circumcision, here's what I said:

~My husband and all three of my sons are uncircumcised. It has not yet been an issue for any of them.(Medically at least. I have my doubts about whether my teenage sons would share any emotional or psychological discomfort, but I'm hopeful that because it hasn't come up, it hasn't been too much of an issue.)

~I think we all get a little wrapped up in seeing someone else's choice as a judgement of our own choice: If you decide not to do it, it's a comment on my decision to do it. Despite all the bluster and insistence that our way is the only way, I think what lies at the core of these raging battles between parents (work/SAHM, breast/bottle, snip/not), is a deep insecurity and uncertainty on each side.

~Ultimately, like so much of parenting, I think it comes down to making a choice in good faith and hoping that whichever way you go you don't scar your kid (emotionally or otherwise) for life. As the comments here from/about both circumcised and uncircumcised men clearly show, there's no way of predicting every possible outcome or side effect from either decision so, once you've done all the research, you just kinda have to cross your fingers and pick one. (Oh, and blog about it--don't forget to blog about it.)

As soon as my head hit the pillow, I started thinking about what a wimp I am and how I should've defended the unsnipped position, because it is something I obviously felt strongly enough about to go against the prevailing tide. The doctor who delivered Son-One eighteen years ago made no comment on our decision not to snip, but some of the nurses did and my mother did. My mother had a lot of comments to make on the subject--she was convinced I was making a terrible mistake that would doom my son to a life of both social and physical discomfort. Son-Two's doctor--a different doctor in a much smaller town--was also very accepting of our choice. My mother still had lots of comments to make. Son-Three's doctor was a little less accepting and asked me five or six times at the hospital if I was sure I didn't want it done. I had a three-year-old and an eighteen-month-old "undone" at home and had never regretted the choice, so, yeah, I was pretty sure. My mother? Still not sure and still there with the comments.

My distress at my failure to defend my position led me right back to the "meat" of my comment which is that we all are entirely too defensive on these sorts of subjects. To me, the issue of circumcision is fairly cut (or not cut) and dried--much of what I've read indicates that there are no compelling reasons to do it. But there is an equal number of (theoretically) equally convincing arguments to do it. What I'm interested in is why these either/or decisions have to be so divisive.

In my comment, I wrote that I think the vehemence often comes from our insecurities about our own choices. I say that not in some abstract way but as a wife and mother who scrolled through a hundred-some comments, cringing at the ones made by women who called intact penises "icky" and other really mature stuff, and not thinking to myself, "Wow, those are some really immature and shallow women," but "Wow, I made a huge mistake and have doomed my sons to a lifetime of having their man-parts mocked by shallow women."

I felt a sudden urge to climb up on a soapbox and start spouting statistics and spewing anecdotes and hurling words like "barbaric" and "unnecessary" and "antiquated." I fought the urge because I'm pretty sure it was coming as much from a desire to convince myself I'd done the right thing than from any desire to convince Lindsay (or anyone) what to do about her son's foreskin.

Obviously, not everyone with a strong opinion is using it to hide their own deep-rooted insecurities. But, I think some of us are and I think we'd all be a lot better off if we could remember that--whichever side of the debate (whatever debate it happens to be) we're on.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: GEICO

Hands down, GEICO has the best commercials in the insurance industry--even though the celebrity ones have started to grate on my nerves a little and I'm not sure how much further they can go with the cave man ones and I'm a little afraid to see how long they'll continue them after they stop being funny. But that's not why I became a GEICO customer--I became a GEICO customer in August of last year, when I realized that I could pay half what the next lowest competitor was charging for the exact same coverage.

I did the whole thing on-line, printed out proof of insurance that came with scannable bar codes for the DMV and it all took less than half an hour. I'll admit I was a little concerned about customer service--despite Charo's* assurances--but I went ahead and signed up anyway figuring that when and if I did have to file a claim, if things didn't go well, I could always switch.

When and if came a lot sooner than I would've hoped. In December (a scant five months after my coverage began), Son-Two backed out of our driveway and into the side of a car belonging to a visitor across the street. Our car was undamaged but the other car was hit just in front of the front driver door and there was a dent in the front fender. To me, it looked like the kind of thing that could be popped out by a clever guy with a deft hand and a plunger. But the estimate was in the neighborhood of $1400.

I filed my claim on-line at 8:12 a.m. I immediately receive an automated e-mail confirming my claim and providing a claim number. The e-mail said I would be contacted within 48 hours. I was contacted well within 48 hours--in fact, I got a call from GEICO at around 8:23 the same morning. More importantly, I was off the phone by 8:35--the whole thing taken care of.

The best part? Friday I received the bill for my next six months of coverage. I was afraid to open the e-mail, because I hadn't even made it through my first six months with the company without having to file a claim. I fully expected my premium to go up. It went down. Down! Down! Can you believe it?

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: I-just-saved-a-buncha-money-on-my-car-insurance.

*The funniest thing about those commercials is trying to explain to your kids who the hell Charo is. Even if you remember her from the Seventies (which I do because my grandfather had a thing for her, among other reasons), you can't really say who she is. She sings, she dances, she tries to act (Love Boat, anyone?) but she's not really what you'd call a singer or a dancer or--even less--an actor. She's an entertainer, sort of, but really just a personality. One of the boys saw the commercial, with her broken English and weird-ass noises and jiggling, and said, "Mom, who is she?" I tried to explain and he cut in, "Yeah, but what did she do?" I said, "You're pretty much lookin' at it." She wiggled, she made weird noises and she talked nonsense and gibberish--in two languages.

Another (Missed) Shot At Fame And Fortune

So Daughter-Only and I are in the bleachers at the boys' volleyball game when the opposing team hits the ball straight into the floor where it bounces up and hits one of our players, Player 8, in a sensitive spot.

Daughter-Only and I were chuckling sympathetically (we were sympathetic, but, regardless of how sympathetic you are, there's still something funny about it--witness America's Funniest Videos) when all of a sudden, Daughter-Only says, "That reminds me of the time Player 8's little brother [who is also on the team], Player 5 and I were on the trampoline together..."

And she proceeds to tell me a story about two summers ago, when Player 5 & 8 lived two houses over, and Player 5 had come over to play on the trampoline. Despite safety warnings to never allow more than one person on the trampoline, there were frequently five or six people on the trampoline. On this particular day, there were only two--or at least only two who mattered.

As Daughter-Only was bouncing up, Player 5 was coming down and somehow (and here is where video would come in handy & not just because I think we'd be finalists on AFV but because I'm all about the how and the why of things), somehow Player 5's braces became entangled in Daughter-Only's zipper--her pants zipper.

She immediately began laughing hysterically, though Player 5 was considerably less amused. He tried to yell at her, saying, "It's not funny." but with his braces stuck in her zipper, of course he couldn't talk right so he said, "isssht nossht fusshny" or something similar which only made Daughter-Only laugh even harder, which made Player 5 even angrier.

He was trying to work his way loose but not having any luck and he somehow communicated to Daughter-Only they were going to have to go over to his house so his mom could help get them untangled. As Daughter-Only tells it, "I was this-close to having to walk across the yards with Player 5 hooked to my zipper, when he popped off his rubber bands and that got him loose."

Yeah, and I was this-close to winning $10,000 but no one had a video camera.

Perfect Post for December: My Job

Daughter-Only is in sixth grade this year and recently finished up her marking period of "Family and Consumer Sciences" which is just the fancy, modern name for Home Ec. Each day she had FCS, she would come home stunned. "Mom! There are kids in my class who don't know how to use a washer and aren't even allowed to use it!" "Mom! There are kids in my class who have never even made themselves toast!"

I shared with her the story of when her aunt, my Youngest Sister, went off to college at a small, private university and many of her classmates--18, 19 year olds from fabulously wealthy families--still couldn't use a washer or dryer or cook for themselves. YS was also suitably stunned. I also lost no time in pointing out to Daughter-Only that despite all the complaining that gets done around here regarding chores, perhaps she was beginning to understand the purpose of all of them.

I am too disorganized and wishy-washy to have an actual chore chart, but my kids are expected to contribute to the household. When I get tired of all the whining and groaning and the "it's not fair" and all that, I sometimes snap at them, "It's not my job to provide a wonderful childhood* for you, it's my job to create functioning adults."

I'm only too aware that I may very well be failing at even that job--that there are things as important and more so than being able to wash laundry or scrub a pot or make simple meals--but it's the point I try to keep in mind as I make my way through the labyrinth that is parenting teenagers. It's my parenting philosophy, however I may fail to live up to it.

Of course, there are as many parenting philosophies as there are parents--more even, since any honest parent who's child is no longer in utero will tell you that their philosophy often changes from moment to moment and more so from year to year. That evolution is part of what December's Perfect Post is about.

Julie over at Ravin' Picture Maven discusses parenting philosophy along with the differences between Mom parenting and Dad parenting among many other things in her post Parenting As If I Might Get Hit By A Bus Tomorrow. My favorite part of course was when she talks about not wanting her kids to grow up, move out on their own and realize that they completely lack basic skills--judging from my daughter's and my sister's experience, this is a very real concern and it's so nice to have my position validated so that I can feel like a little less of the raging lunatic bitch my kids often clearly see me as.

So, for making me feel like less of a b-word, here's my button:



And, Julie, it's all yours!

See other winners over at Lindsay's and MommaK's.

*I would like the record to show that when they were younger children--still in the childhood part of their childhoods rather than in the adolescent part of their childhoods--I made real efforts to give them arts and crafts and days at the park and cookie-making and all those other fun childhood things. I just didn't want anyone thinkin' I've treated them like free labor their whole lives--it's just been the past coupla years.

PS--Happy B-day to Blonde Best Friend From High School! May this coming year be your best ever.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Oops

Due to a whirlwind of festivities and extended exposure to family (both extended and immediate), Masked Mom's Media Monday took the day off.

We will return next Monday with insightful reviews on a variety of "media" subjects. (Okay, maybe not "insightful" but we will return.)

A Belated Christmas Present--Sort Of

When the incident I am about to share first happened, I was going to post about it--I could hardly wait to get home and post about it, in fact. But then, I talked myself out of it--because I wasn't sure what I would say about it and how it would come off. Then last night, I'm catching up on blog-browsing and come across a post about a similar incident at Jenandtonic and I figure if it's good enough for Jen, it's good enough for me.

All this is a long-winded way of introducing a story about how the day after Christmas, I was out to lunch (literally, which is rarer than the metaphorical way I am so often "out to lunch") with my three youngest (Son-One is antisocial and recovering from a nasty sinus infection) children. The place was packed--it's one of those regional greasy spoons that people go back to more for the nostalgia than for the food and during the holidays, everyone who's home from somewhere else crams themselves in there--my kids and I have no such excuse.

Anyway, as we were getting up to leave, an older woman* at the next booth patted me on the arm and said, "Are you their mother?" Apparently her companion, who looked to be about my age was convinced I was their sister. I mean, maybe she meant their MUCH older sister, who knows?

The older lady said, "I told her it would make your day to hear that."

I thanked her profusely but as I told Hubby, when I got home, "Why would it make my day that a total stranger was so badly in need of an eye exam?"

*This woman had already drawn the attention of our table when Son-Three noticed her putting salt and pepper in her glass of milk. Maybe we all need to get out more but this was a new one on me.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: A Holiday Tune

(Sung to the tune of "O, Christmas Tree")

Ne-glected blogs, ne-glected blogs,
We're sorry we've ignored you,
No time to post, no time to browse,
No time for clever commenting.
With gifts to wrap and trees to trim,
Our blogging time has been slim.
But January's almost here
With its holiday-free days
And we'll all be back to babbling.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Exhausting.

Ho Ho How The Hell Did It Get To Be December 21?

Last year for Christmas, one of my gifts was a Trivial Pursuit page-a-day calendar. Once in a while during the year, I couldn't help thinking that Trivial Pursuit was not merely the trademarked game the calendar was based upon but also some sort of philosophical commentary on the state of my life.

As I ripped off pages, I began thinking that a page-a-day calendar is a concrete reminder of how fast the days really pass. Somewhere around November 10, I began focusing on how few days remained to be torn off. It seemed like we were zipping through the year at an unprecendented pace.

And now here we are four days before Christmas. My gift-buying not quite complete, a few straggling cards left behind still awaiting their personal notes, some baking left to do, extra hours at the shop to fill up what little time there's left between now and the Big Day...

Ah, crap, just call me Ebenita Scrooge.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Inflatables

They are a fungus upon the land.

The end.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Fungal.

(Exceptions can be made for people with children under, say, seven in their lives. Everyone else--cut it out!!!! I mean seriously--I've seen yards with 18 or 20 of the damn things. Wouldn't it be way more time, energy and cost efficient to just put a big billboard up that says, "I have way too much money and way too few brains." Shoot, we can do it in neon if it'll make 'em feel better.)

The Hard Sell (& I Ain't Buyin')

So, remember how I said Wal-Mart's the Debil? Well, at the moment, that other big (well, used to be big and now has been in and back out of bankruptcy) mart is on my list. I went in last week and as I stepped through the second set of sliding doors, I spotted the dreaded Olan Mills hard sell table set up right in the middle of the path to the rest of the store.

They do this every once in a while--set up a table with all these sample portraits of other people's children and man it with some barely out of adolescence girl who can rattle off whatever special they're pushing all in one breath. I do whatever I can to avoid it--because it's a waste of my time and theirs and I also bitterly resent the feeling that listening to the spiel is a requirement for the privilege of buying socks at buy one, get one 50% off.

This time was no different, with Son-Three in tow, I executed my patented duck left and across the line of registers and up past the one-hour photo counter and on into the safety of the store (where, for goodness sake, I just wanted to buy a printer cartridge, some cheapo Christmas cards and a little bunny food). So Son-Three and I are perusing the Christmas card selections on the $2.99 a box rack when we're joined by Daughter-Only (who'd been at the store next-door) and, right behind her is the Olan Mills Chick, who immediately begins giving me the breathless spiel.

At the end of each of her sentences (which I could spot only by context, because as I said, she never paused for breath), I said, "Okay." In what I hoped was a civilized but clear-cut signal that I wasn't interested. She persisted through a paragraph of information as though I had never spoken and then walked off.

Daughter-Only actually stood there with her mouth hanging open. "Mom, you kept saying 'okay' like you were wanting her to stop talking and she totally ignored you, like completely, just ignored you. Wow." (Why the person who ignores me like no one has ever ignored me before would be so amazed that someone else would ignore me is completely beyond me.)

I have never seen anything like it in my life. I would've thought she was wandering around giving her spiel to everyone, but, no, she didn't stop anyone else. That little twit had seen me execute my patented move and come after me.

Listen, I work retail. I know it's tough out there. Okay? I get that she's trying to earn commissions and how much it must annoy her that people don't even give her the time of day. But guess what? It's not my job to humor her. It's my job to go to the discount store and buy socks, and printer cartridges and electronics made in China with a lead content long ago deemed unsafe in the US*. So here's what I'm gonna do instead of taking her up on her breathless offer of overpriced portraits...I'm gonna write on my blog what an idiot she was and how I will never, ever, no matter what use Olan Mills in this town again.


*It's not only electronics of course. Have you checked out your Christmas lights--do they have that fancy sticker that warns you to wash your hands after touching them? Isn't that nice of them? You know, if we're going to allow unsafe lead into our country and into our homes, at least we're gonna put a teeny, tiny sticker on it with a barely legible warning. That oughta keep people safe, huh?

Benefits Package, Or One Reason I Haven't Quit My Job Even Though I'm Often Sorely Tempted To Do So

Customer calls today, says she wants to send flowers to her "natural mother," who lives in a town several hours from here.

I start to take the information but when we get to the natural mother's phone number, the customer says, "Well, I don't actually have it. See, I met her in person when I was in my mid-twenties and now every year I send her flowers at Christmas, but the only time we ever talk on the phone is after she gets the flowers and she calls me to thank me when she's five sheets to the wind*."

Now, where else are you going to get to hear stories like that without a degree in psychology or having to stand all night behind a bar?

*There ensued, as there so often will at my place of employment, a mini-debate over whether the actual expression is "three sheets to the wind" as I thought, in which case five sheets to the wind is an extra two sheets drunk, or "six sheets to the wind" as Cranky Boss Lady thought, in which case (as CBL said) the natural mother's "missing a sheet." This evening, Hubby came down on the "six sheets" side and, as he's no stranger to either drunkenness or sailing, I was willing to concede defeat--but a quick Google check reveals that although both "three" and "six" are used, "three" is far more common. I say we quit all the bickering and just start using "sheets" as a unit of measurement for drunkeness. So you can be one sheet to the wind or six sheets to the wind. It's not as scientific as a blood alcohol level but it's way more poetic and colorful.

Masked Mom's Media Monday: Celebrity Gossip

Cranky Boss Lady: Did I tell you Kimberly Williams-Paisley is pregnant?

Masked Mom: Yes, you did (...what you neglected to tell me is why I should give one teeny, tiny crap about someone I've never met).

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Overrated. (Celebrity gossip, that is, not Kimberly Williams-Paisley, who seems very likable except for the fact that if the song Brad Paisley wrote about her is anywhere near accurate, she's setting the bar a little high for all the rest of us. And, truthfully, I'm not entirely against celebrity gossip, and may even occasionally indulge in it myself. It's just that early on a Monday morning is probably not the right time to be asking me (for the third time) if you've told me Kimberly Williams is pregnant because A) It's Monday morning. B) I find your "pronouncement from the mount" voice especially annoying and intolerable on Mondays. C) I can barely care about people I know well and in some cases am related to by blood early on Monday. Hell, maybe it's not even Celebrity Gossip that's overrated so much as Cranky Boss Lady, (unpaid, unacknowledged, unauthorized, unwelcome and unnecessary) publicist to the stars.)

Weather Report

Cranky Boss Lady (looking out the back door): Hey, we have a little flake activity out here.

Masked Mom (looking around the shop at assorted shop groupies): Yeah, we've got some flake activity in here too but you don't hear us bragging about it.

He Just Doesn't Get It*

[Blurt Alert: It's pretty much all TMI here today.]
After twenty years of marriage, you would think Hubby and I would know one another pretty well. And it's true that he can tell you lots of things about me--that I hate canned peas (they are vile and I hope they die**), love Diet Dr. Pepper, read an insane number of books, magazines, etc on a wide variety of subjects, have a fantasy of opening a writer's retreat out in the back woods somewhere and raking in big bucks to hang out with people I'd gladly hang out with for free (and that my alternative fantasty is to drive an ice cream truck--not to make my living that way, but to be independently wealthy and drive an ice cream truck for a hobby).

He can accurately predict that four out of ten times when he tells me, "I'm going to go jump in the shower," I will say, "Be careful not to slip and fall." Neither of us can tell you why this remains funny to me, but it's probably related more to his consistently giving me that opening than to the fact that I am in dire need of psychiatric attention. (Have no doubt, I am in dire need, just not about this particular thing.)

So, yes, he knows some stuff about me.

How, then, can he fail to notice that by the end of many days, I feel rubbed raw--emotionally, physically--so that any touch, any contact feels like bare hands on scraped skin? Ever stick your finger in the middle of a fresh brush burn when you were a kid, just to see how it felt? Yeah, it's like that.

And why, oh why, does he insist on taking it personally when my response isn't entirely positive?

In addition to all the stesses of the day that make hiding under the bed sound way more appealing than rolling around on top of it, Hubby and I have always been on different schedules. He's naturally programmed to stay up late--really late, like 2 a.m. is average bedtime for him--in fact when Daughter-Only was in first grade and they were learning about nighttime animals versus daytime animals, she came home and said, "Mommy, Daddy is nocturnal, isn't he?"

Though I have struggled with bouts of insomnia, my ideal bedtime is in the 11 o'clock range. So by the time Hubby comes to bed, I'm usually (ideally) not at all conscious so these moves he's hoping to impress me with are way less impressive. The rare nights I happen to be conscious when he comes in, I am usually bitterly resentful about being awake in the middle of the night and, therefore, not interested in anything that might keep me awake in the middle of the night even longer. None of this seems reasonable to him.

Not only does the "I'm asleep" argument not move him (or stop him moving?), but my being in the throes of a life-threatening (or so it seemed) cold also didn't sway him. One night a few weeks ago, he came to bed and there I was hacking away, obviously tubercular and typhoidal or at the very least cranky and uncomfortable and it didn't even slow him down. I think I croaked, "Are you kidding me?" before he rolled over in a huff that night.

I guess I should take it as a compliment***, and I try, I really do, but I also feel misunderstood at a fundamental level. Like somehow, even twenty years in, he really doesn't know me or see me at all.

*Pun acknowledged though not entirely intended.
**YS--I'd spare the asparagus if someone could just take out the peas.
***That's a lot easier on the nights like the one last week when we'd been bickering most of the day and he came to bed at 1:30 or so and began his "vigorous cuddling" routine and I said, "What the hell planet do you live on?" And he said, "I live on the Damn You Smell Good Planet." It was kinda cute. Woulda been way cuter at a decent hour, but hey you take what you can get, right?

Masked Mom's Media Monday: This I Believe

The library is automated now--all fancy, shmancy and I can search from my bedroom while still in my pajamas for books and authors I'm trying to track down. Then I can go to the library, directly to the shelf they are on and pick them up and be in and out in a few minutes. (Or if the book is interloan, from another library, I can just walk to the desk and have it handed to me practically on a silver platter.) It's all very modern and convenient, but sometimes I miss the Library Accidents that used to happen while doing a card catalog search. I'd flip through the little cards looking for a specific book or author and stumble across an intriguing title. (I'm pretty sure this is how I ended up reading Saddles For Breakfast in fourth or fifth grade. I mean who could resist that title? And who knows how many other books I would never have had the pleasure of without the act of flipping through title after title in the catalog?)

I do keep lists of books I want to read--lists I compile by reading book reviews and taking recommendations, but I don't kid myself that every good book somehow magically makes it to my list. So, every once in a while, I set aside time for Library Accidents to happen and wander around the shelves and stop to look at the books on the new non-fiction tables just inside the library door and just wait for something to catch my eye. Suffering, as I do, from some sort of compulsive reading disorder, it never takes long.

This I Believe was one of those Accidental Books. It is full of essays from the NPR project of the same name, which was originally begun in the 1950s and was restarted in April 2005. Being from my media-deprived little corner of the world, I didn't know anything about the radio show (of course we don't have a local NPR station!) so the book was an eye-opener for me and led me down the rabbit hole of the website, where I've spent some time happily clicking from one essay to another.

The project asks participants to write short essays stating their core beliefs--the essays are a few hundred words in most cases and both the book and the site showcase a wide variety of people from well-known to unknown. What's amazing to me is how much true wisdom is out there in the minds of otherwise very ordinary people. I can't help but think that having a forum where people can discuss their personal philosophies can only be beneficial. It's also comforting to see essays from the 1950s reflecting some of the same issues we are facing now--it helps soothe that panicked feeling I sometimes get in thinking that things are dramatically worse at the moment than they've been in a while.

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Extraordinary.

Perfect Post for November

Son-Two had to go to the doctor last week--he had some virulent varient of whatever had Daughter-Only's uvula stuck to her tonsil a few weeks before that and after three weeks of suffering and hacking and looking all the wrong colors--gray and green and yellowish--I finally convinced him that going to the doctor didn't make him a wuss in any way. At the doctor's office, she pronounced his lungs a little "tight" and asked if he'd ever had an inhaler and if he was allergic to any antibiotics.

She was stunned that he'd never had either an inhaler or any antibiotics. I said, "We've been very lucky in the antibiotic department especially--I have four kids and we've had three prescriptions for antibiotics in 18 years."

"Wow, that's really impressive but it's probably not just luck. I'm sure hygeine played a role as well."

Well.

Anyone who's ever been inside my house knows that anti-hygeine is way more at work around here than hygeine. Chaos reigns--mess and untidiness and clutter and, even sometimes things that would be called "filfth" by other, more fastidious, moms than me reign. We don't roll with the antibacterial stuff around here. Look under my kitchen sink (if you dare), there's not a single product that promises to kill 99.9% of anything.

I have a theory (don't I always) that by attempting to provide a nearly bacteria-free environment for our children, we're actually doing them a disservice. There's some support for this theory--science says that the more antibacterial products (including antibiotics) that we use, the more quickly bacteria are going to adapt and become resistant to the products and to our natural defenses. So what we're doing by being too fastitidious is helping to create a super race of mega-bacteria that will probably start carting us all off in our sleep.

I believe that by exposing children to small amounts of a variety of pathogens at an early age, we can build their immune systems to be better, stronger, faster...I also believe that I would way rather curl up with a good book or go to the park with the kids or, or, or, or than make sure every nook and cranny in my house is germ-free.

Sometimes I hate myself for not trying harder, for not being a "better" example for the kids, for failing to provide a floor clean enough to eat off of (though why eating off the floor is some kind of gold standard in cleanliness, I'm not sure--I mean we have a table, after all. I'm perfectly content--ecstatic some days--to just provide a floor clean enough to walk over.). But still, I think my way is really the only way for me.

While browsing blogs this month, I found my sloppy soul sister over at 24/7. In her post, "What Do You Do When Your Dishwasher Stops Working," ECR speaks to the pressure of outside expectations and the desire to live by her own priorities and she wraps it all up with a Phyllis Diller quote--as someone who collects notebooks full of quotes to support my "unsupportable" positions that spoke directly to my heart.

So, here's my button:



And, ECR, it's all yours!

(Browse other winners at Suburban Turmoil and Petroville.)