Where Exactly Does That Fit In The Food Pyramid*?

When it came to cooking for four children, I was fortunate in that we miraculously managed to produce no really picky eaters. They weren't freaked out by foods touching each other and so were unfazed by casseroles¹ and even tolerated, if not enjoyed, veggies of all kinds. They were easily bored, however, which resulted in many nights of "We're having this again?!"

There was one particularly memorable night when seven-year-old Son-One walked in on me assembling yet another shepherd's pie and groaned, "Aw, not that again."

"When you get bigger and get a job and buy your own food, you can decide what to have for dinner," I told him in my patient mommy voice.

To which my beloved son responded, "If you keep feeding me that crap, I'm never going to get bigger because I'm going to stop eating!"

My usual response when they did complain or refuse to eat "that crap" for the fifth time in a month was to allow them to make themselves a sandwich rather than to force the issue. For the most part, though, I tried to vary the menu as much as possible within our budget, which often meant subtle twists on all-too-familiar foods.

For instance, one night, right around the same time as the shepherd's pie incident, I was making dinner for some assortment of my own and Little Sister's kids. I wrapped generic hot dogs in refrigerated biscuit dough²  and baked them up. While they were baking, I got distracted and left them in maybe a little too long³--they were a few shades darker than golden brown when I pulled them out just as Son-One was walking through the kitchen. 

"What's that?" he asked.

"Pigs in a blanket," I proclaimed. It's surprising how much of parenting turns out to be about branding and spin, isn't it?

"Mom," he said, "those are not pigs in a blanket. They're hot dogs in a burned-up biscuit."

Word spread and dinner was served to a chorus of "But I don't want hot dogs in a burned-up biscuit!" and "Mom, please never make hot dogs in a burned-up biscuit again." and "Do I really have to eat all this hot dog in a burned-up biscuit?"

Now, I know what you're thinking, but hot dogs in a burned-up biscuit is a time-honored family recipe, passed down from generation to generation.

I have to be honest, though, times are tight...I'd probably be willing to part with it for the right price.


B is for Burned-Up Biscuit
*I know, I know. They've scrapped the food pyramid. But food trapezoid or whatever they've come up with now just didn't have the same ring to it.

1. As someone who now plans menus for seventeen adult men, I can attest to the fact that children not being fazed by casseroles is a bigger deal than it might seem. I routinely deal with grown men who whine at the thought of their food being mixed together in one pan.

2. Nutrition Nazis in the audience should feel free to re-imagine this as veggie dogs wrapped in homemade, gluten-free, whole-grain biscuit dough.

3. We can all agree that timers are for amateurs, right?

What A Fool* Believes

(Deep breath...)

I am an atheist.

(...exhale.)

I don't talk about it much. I never bring it up and, until quite recently, I would perform all sorts of linguistic gymnastics to avoid saying those four simple words. It's entirely possible that you have witnessed the very first time that I have made such a simple, declarative statement regarding my lack of belief in a supreme being.

Part of my aversion to directly admitting my atheism can be chalked up to cowardice, pure and simple--to the fear that people will think less of me, to the fear of damaging relationships with friends and coworkers. But a whole other part of that aversion is that to define myself as an atheist is to focus on what I don't believe in rather than what I do.

Contrary to persistent¹ belief, atheism doesn't necessarily equal belief in nothing. While I wouldn't dream of speaking for other atheists, I am at long last ready to speak for myself about what I do believe.

I grew up in a non-religious household. My father was raised by a Catholic mother and a Protestant father (my Nan and Pap.) Pap wouldn't allow Nan to attend Catholic church, much less take my father. Though Pap was nominally Protestant, he apparently rarely (if ever) attended church and appeared to harbor some anger toward preachers of all sorts until much later in life, when he was baptized in his kitchen sink, read Our Daily Bread and listened to cassette tapes of sermons provided by the minister of a church down the road. Despite his own misgivings and outward lack of belief during my father's childhood, my grandfather forced my father to attend a Protestant church from the ages of eight through eleven or so.

My mother was also only loosely affiliated with church growing up--attending Sunday school with friends, but not forced to do so by her parents. She fell away from church entirely when she was fourteen and the minister questioned the length of her skirt (a hand-me-down) in front of the entire congregation--she did not believe God cared about fashion choices and that moment became the perfect stand-in for all kinds of misrepresentation and hypocrisy that she saw when she looked at religion in general.

As kids, my closest-in-age sister and I occasionally attended Vacation Bible School or Sunday School or even regular church services with friends, but God and religion were mostly not on our radar growing up. Both of my parents were big fans of the Don Williams song "I Believe In You" with the lyrics, "I don't believe that Heaven waits for only those who congregate/I like to think of God as love/He's down below, he's up above/He's watching people everywhere/He knows who does and doesn't care." Rightly or wrongly, I've always kind of thought of those lyrics as representative of the entirety of my parents' religious philosophy.

The one time that I can remember the subject of God coming up between my parents, my sister and I, it was a fairly disastrous conversation. I was seventeen and my sister sixteen at the time. Though we had never been encouraged, let alone forced, to attend church, when it somehow came out that my sister (at that time) identified herself as an atheist, there was yelling and tears and door-slamming. To my recollection, I was mostly a stunned bystander, as was my mom--though she tried to intercede a few times in hopes of calming things down a bit.

I clearly remember my father at one point demanding, "If you don't believe in God, what do you believe in?" and my sister responding, "I believe in people." And I remember, too, my father yelling, on the verge of tears, "I am telling you I have seen God! Doesn't that mean anything to you?!"

I understand my father's anguish much better now, twenty-and-then-some years on--one of those universal parenthood moments when we feel we've failed our children in some fundamental way. 

Even in the face of that anguish, though, my sister did not back down. Not one tiny bit. Though there were tears on all sides, she refused to say she believed in something she did not believe in and she continued to argue vehemently for her right to express her own beliefs while at no point attacking or belittling my father's beliefs. Her answer to his shouted assertion about having seen God was to say that she was glad it was a comfort to him at a time when he needed it (Vietnam).

In contrast, my part of that conversation was to sit with some relief as my sister took the heat, content to get away with the wimpy and evasive: "I'm not sure really what I believe." even though at the time, my beliefs were pretty well lined up with my sister's.

Wimpy and evasive succinctly sums up my approach to religious conversation ever since. I have become adept at non-committal answers and well-timed changes of subject. A time-worn favorite of mine is to say "I'm a lot more sure of what I don't believe than what I do." and then not elaborate on any of my beliefs or non-beliefs.

There comes a point, though, where it is far scarier to continue hedging and dancing around the things that are important to you than it is to just come out with it. And here we are.

I do not believe in the Christian God or any other supreme being, but I do believe in the power of thoughts and in a kind of prayer. I believe that love is a verb, not just a noun--that, ideally, it is not merely something we feel, but something we do. I believe, too, in compassion and empathy and tolerance and forgiveness--and I have tried mightily to practice these things, not merely preach them. (I fail miserably on a regular basis--but I try to spare myself a little compassion and forgiveness, too.) I believe in learning a little more each day to live my beliefs.

Though I do not believe they are bestowed from some force outside ourselves, I do believe in blessings, miracles and sacred wonder. I believe in something like a soul in each of us--if it is merely the product of firing electrons and stewing chemicals in our brains, it is no less precious and may even be more so.

I believe that religious faith is an inclination we are born with or not. Environment and training can contribute to what you come to believe in, but I don't think they have much influence over whether or not you believe in (or seek) a higher power. A substitute teacher I had in humanities during the Bible unit my senior year in high school said it best when he said, "I believe you either feel that spark or you don't." Perhaps it's not quite that simple, but I believe it's close.

Finally, I believe that sharing what we believe is our only hope of seeing each other as more than just the labels we attach to ourselves and to one another.

I am an atheist. And I believe.

A is for Atheism
~~With thanks to Little Sister and my father for allowing me to pick their brains about a difficult moment in our shared history. Thanks, too, goes to Tara at Faith in Ambiguity for leading by example and nudging me in the direction of living (and blogging) more openly.

*Just to be absolutely clear, the fool here is me.

1. Though stubbornly persistent, this belief is not as popular as it once was.

 

Possession Is Nine-Tenths Of The Law

When Youngest Sister was three or four, she learned the ABC song, the one that ends with "Now I know my ABCs, next time won't you sing with me?"

At some point, she asked someone, "Do you know your ABCs?" and when they began reciting, "A, B, C..." Youngest Sister piped up, "No! Those are my  ABCs!"

Here's hoping (the now 40-year-old) Youngest Sister will forgive me for trotting out that story yet again and for making use of her ABCs throughout the month of April with the Blogging From A-Z Challenge. For those unfamiliar with the challenge, participating bloggers post every day in April (except Sundays) with the topic of each day's post corresponding to consecutive letters of the alphabets. So, the first post, which will appear later on today, will feature a topic beginning with the letter "A." And, April 30th's post will feature a topic beginning with the letter "Z." And all the letters in between will be allotted their due and their days.

I'm looking forward to the challenge and to the opportunity to make some new bloggy friends.

Of Cupcakes & Cookies and Babies & Bathwater

I don't mean to brag, but I make a mean cupcake. And my cookies aren't half-bad either. I actually enjoy baking so I am sometimes pressed into service by family members in need of bake sale items for various organizations and causes.

Last fall, Baby Brother's Ex-Wife asked for donations for The Salvation Army bake sale. I've baked for them before, at BBEW's request, despite my uneasiness with some of the church's teachings and my deep reservations about the local organization's fiscal management. Because of these concerns, I had long since stopped dropping spare change in the Salvation Army's holiday red kettles.

Being the diligent overthinker that I am, I had sometimes wondered if donating my time and homemade buttercream frosting to an organization at odds with many of my own beliefs constituted a kind of hypocrisy--delicious hypocrisy, but hypocrisy, nonetheless.

I reasoned that I wasn't really supporting the church, I was supporting some of my nieces and a nephew, who have all been involved in and enjoyed church activities over the years. Besides, the voice in my head went on as I piped frosting swirls atop dozens of cupcakes, the Salvation Army is more than a church, it is a charitable organization--the local corps runs a food pantry and has an extensive program to provide food and gifts to needy families at the holidays, among many other things.

Surely those positives outweighed any perceived negatives. And, after all, it was just a couple of trays of cupcakes and a plate of cookies--my participation (or lack thereof) would not make a crucial financial difference.

A few weeks after my goodies had been delivered and sold, I was with a resident of the halfway house where I work when we walked past a Salvation Army red kettle bell ringer. The resident mentioned something he had recently read about the Salvation Army's vehement stance against same-sex marriage and about its discrimination against homosexuals who either sought aid or employment from the organization.

That a Christian faith-based organization would be against gay marriage came as no surprise--even the fact that they would prefer not to hire or promote gay men and women seemed to me obvious, if not necessarily acceptable. Believing as strongly as I do in the separation of church and state, I tend to embrace a broad definition of the words "religious freedom." Though it's a bit of a tangled mess in my mind, I could see how the church, being a religious entity, might be permitted an exemption from the fair hiring practices that apply to secular employers.

When it comes to denying aid or (as I discovered in my later reading) making that aid conditional upon a gay couple separating, we're in a whole other area--not only is that morally reprehensible, in my opinion, it's also downright un-Christian. Worse still, was the fact that The Salvation Army had not merely issued a statement against legalizing gay marriage, but was actively campaigning against legalization of gay marriage in the United States and around the world. Have I mentioned my passionate interest in the separation of church and state?

The concept of religious beliefs--Christian or otherwise--as legislation is terrifying to me and I feel it should be terrifying to people of faith as well. If your beliefs can be codified into laws so, too, can any other belief system. It continues to baffle me that most Christians who persist in pursuing religious-based legislation are the same ones who are so deeply appalled at the affects of religious-based governments in the Middle East, for example. The problem is not which religion controls the law, it's that any religion controls the law. Your right to practice your own religion comes from exactly the same place as my right not to practice any religion--to weaken one right is to weaken them both. The concept of separation of church and state, rather than being a threat to our nation is one of the key elements of its success, in my opinion.

I believe that legislation should exist to protect people and property from quantifiable harm--not to forward any particular group's moral teachings. In the case of gay marriage, perhaps you find homosexuality immoral or same-sex relationships icky or "unnatural," but being offended is not the same thing as being harmed. In the case of marriage inequality, it is clear that the measurable, quantifiable harm is being done to couples and individuals who are being denied financial and legal protections that other Americans enjoy.

So, back to those cupcakes...in the immediate aftermath of leapfrogging around the internet reading article after article on the subject, I determined that I would not bake another morsel for the Salvation Army church. But, as my initial ire cooled a little, I kept thinking about the fact that, despite an abysmal record in the area of gay rights¹, the Salvation Army does make a positive difference in the lives of many, many people. Does the good still outweigh the bad now that I know more about the organization's stance on homosexuality and human rights?

Obviously, no organization is perfect and whenever we give of ourselves or from our pocketbooks to a charity, we may be unknowingly supporting things we would never choose to support. I am curious, my bloggy friends, what sorts of research you do before donating to a given cause? What formula do you use to determine the worthiness of an organization that will benefit (however minimally) from your money or efforts? 

For my part, I've decided the moral cost of donating to an organization which actively works to prevent equality for a segment of society is too high for me. I will respectfully decline the next time BBEW asks for donations for The Salvation Army bake sale and I will explain why. 

I will not, as First Niece² suggested while she and Hubby and I were mulling all this over, make trays full of cupcakes with gay pride symbols such as rainbow flags for The Salvation Army to sell at their next bake sale. But I can't say I won't be tempted.
 



1. A.K.A. civil rights for people who happen to be gay.

2. Not one of the nieces involved in The Salvation Army church or activities.

[I welcome dissenting viewpoints regarding issues raised in this post, but please express those viewpoints respectfully so that I may respond respectfully as well. Hate and nastiness will not be tolerated. If you are interested in more information about The Salvation Army's record on this issue, this article is a good place to start.]

Masked Mom's Media Monday: The Art of Fielding

The first review I read of Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding was in one of the men's magazines--Esquire or GQ--that I read every month. So positive was this review that it bordered on gushing. Despite this endorsement, I didn't scribble the title down in my To-Read notebook because The Art of Fielding is a book "about" baseball. And I? I am not a baseball fan. I am not a sports fan in general and I am not a baseball fan in particular. I am also not a fan of the genre of fiction (be it books, movies or short stories) that revolves around sports. Too many of these tend to devolve into the minutiae of the sports world itself rather than to be character-driven and too many others of these have plots that hinge on a single all-important game which our protagonist and his team can be counted upon to either win or lose, both outcomes resulting in a generally predictable set of consequences. Granted, the sports arena provides a convenient metaphor for all sorts of things--but because of its convenience, that metaphor has permeated not just fiction but our entire culture to some extent. Forgive the expression, but sports as a metaphor is played out.

So, I was a bit of a tough sell for a "baseball book." It did not go on my list with the first glowing review. Or the second. Or the fifth. But the book kept popping up again and again--it was on several "Best of the Year" lists for 2012 and, finally, it was a "Staff Pick" at the library. I could resist no longer.

The most important thing to know about this "baseball book" is that baseball functions primarily as a framework to bring this group of characters into one another's lives.  The characters are so well drawn and the plot and subplots so engrossing and the pacing so perfect that it would've been a shame to miss the book because of a little baseball.

Henry Skrimshander is a shortstop of almost supernatural abilities who has just finished high school with no plans to attend college when he is recruited to a small Wisconsin college team--the Westish Harpooners--by Westish sophomore and self-appointed baseball scout, Mike Schwartz. Henry's decision to join the Harpooners changes his life and the lives of those around him in unpredictable ways.

The Art of Fielding is a book about ambition and single-sightedness, about competition and sportsmanship, about loyalty and betrayal, about actions and their unintended consequences, about the price of perfection and the ultimate folly of pursuing it. And, yes, it is a book about baseball. Baseball is more than a game in this book--as, to many fans and players, I would imagine, it's more than a game in real life.

Masked Mom's Two-Word Review: Home run.

Trifecta of Bloggy Generosity

It's bloggy awards time again, faithful readers. Two weeks ago, I was honored to receive three bloggy awards from two bloggy friends. Sleepy Joe bestowed upon me both the Authentic Voice award and the Versatile Blogger award and Kathy Collier, a newcomer to these parts, granted me a Liebster Award. My thanks to Kathy and Sleepy Joe.

As anyone who's been around the blogiverse for any amount of time knows, these awards always come with certain rules and conditions. And as anyone who's been around this specific blog for any amount of time knows, I always end up bending some of those rules to the breaking point.

This time, I'm smooshing the awards together a bit. I'm answering Kathy's Liebster questions and plagiarizing an old list of my own questions to pass on to anyone who wants to play along. I'm providing my 7 random facts and 11 random facts concurrently for a total of 11 random facts, for those keeping track in the stands. And, as always, I'm not passing along to individual bloggers, since most of the bloggers in my immediate circle have likely already received these awards in recent weeks, but I would like to invite anyone interested in playing along--especially you lurkers out there--to hop over to Kathy's or Sleepy Joe's and grab the official rules. If you decide to play along, let us know in the comments so we can check out what you come up with.

First, Kathy's questions. I've only recently "met" Kathy. As you'll probably be able to tell from her line of questioning, Kathy's a writer. Follow the link on her blog to check out her YA paranormal romance, The Veil.

1. What would your perfect world look like? Everyone would have enough of the things they truly need and the wisdom to realize enough is enough.

2. How many hours a day do you spend writing? Right now, I spend less than an hour a day. How much time do I spend thinking about writing? Berating myself for not writing more? Wondering whether I'm not writing because life is so complicated or if life feels  so complicated because I'm not writing more? Right around 24 hours a day, I'd imagine.

3. What inspired you to write? I've been writing for almost as long as I can remember--since second or third grade at the latest--so it was less an inspiration from outside myself than a compulsion from within myself, I think.

4. Who do you have to critique or edit your work? Mostly myself, with back up from Google and internet sources for grammar, factual research, etc. Occasionally, when I am undecided between two turns of phrase or struggling with a structural issue, I'll ask advice from Hubby or Daughter-Only. I do often wish I belonged to a regular writer's group--not just for the advice, but for the accountability. Having a First Reader (or Readers) waiting every other Thursday for new pages might be just the nudge I need.

5. Do you have a Muse? Not a Muse in the traditional sense, but a few mascots and props--a favorite pen, a Squidward doll, and, of course, my beloved Thinging Cap.

6. What time do you write, day or night? I think I write better during the day, but between children and full-time employment, it has been a very long time since I've had any kind of writing routine at all. I have been incrementally trying to improve that situation over the last year or so, with some small success.

7. Describe your work area. It's a pretty standard issue small home office area--a cheap desktop computer on a cheap computer desk, the shelves and drawers of which are crammed full with writing guides, files with old work, etc. I do have the luxury of a ledge-style bookshelf that runs around two walls of the room. I need a ladder to fetch books down, but they make great company right where they are.

That's the official work area, but I have to admit that a lot of the real "work" of writing gets done the old-fashioned way with pen and paper on a lap desk in the living room or at a table in a quiet corner of the library or spread out on a blanket at the town park.

8. Who is/are your favorite author(s)? Way too many to name, which seems like a cop-out, I know, but to begin listing individual names would be to reveal far more about the depth of my reading addiction than I am prepared to share here.

9. What have you written so far (published or unpublished, poetry, etc)? Except for some appropriately adolescent poetry and a few angsty teenage short stories I wrote in high school and a few greeting card ideas I sold in my twenties, I have written only non-fiction--primarily essays and opinion pieces. I have about 20 publication credits, mostly in small magazines and newsletters. My "biggest" credits were in Woman's Day, The Writer and The Buffalo News. And, of course, I have been blogging for almost eight years--many of those posts don't count as "real" writing in my eyes, but a couple of them do.

10. What's your favorite color? My stock answer is purple, or shades thereof. But it really depends on the context, I think. I feel very strongly that certain colors are more appropriate for certain things than others. And I also feel very strongly that teal should simply not exist at all.

11. What's your favorite kind of pizza? With the exception of anchovies (the edibility of which is completely open to debate), the more toppings the better--mushrooms, peppers, onions are necessities--everything else is a bonus.

And, now, eleven random facts that I'm reasonably certain I have not revealed on the blog before...

1. For a period of time in the fourth grade, I chewed the ends of my hair. I don't remember now why I started or how I ever stopped.

2. "I can do better" is the thought that keeps me awake at night and the thing that gets me out of bed in the morning.

3. I rarely leave the house without a book or magazine and every time I do, I regret it.

4. I am currently involved in a passionate love affair with spinach. We've been meeting a couple of times a week and I still can't get enough. There's seemingly no end to the things that spinach can make better.

5. After months of Ancestry.com abstinence, I've recently had a relapse. Not only have I spent an absurd amount of time on the site these past few weeks, I've graduated to contacting county court clerks to request copies of records that aren't available online. I may be too far gone this time to ever come back.

6. The other night at work, I was rushing around like a multi-tasking madwoman panicking a little as my to-do list continued to grow despite my checking items off at a furious pace when I noticed that my thumb felt a little weird--warm and tingly. I didn't remember doing anything to it, but over the course of the next few hours, a deep wrap-around bruise appeared just above my top thumb knuckle, even turning my nail bed a disturbing purply blue. Somehow, without my even noticing, I managed to slam my thumb in something.* I was too busy to take care of myself, too busy to notice or recall a moment in which I did myself bodily harm. There's a metaphor in there somewhere. But I can't spare the time to figure it out.

7. Speaking of metaphors. Best passage I read all week: "After the accident I wasn't swimming, but I wasn't drowning either. Treading water, maybe? Holding my breath and going under, coming back up when I had to. Metaphors fall apart. They always do." ~~Joel Peckham, "Swimming" in The Sun, February 2013.

8. I was five when Baby Brother (who turns 39 today, by the way) was born. For about a week or so after he came home from the hospital, I was utterly convinced he was an elaborate inflatable doll. The scab on his umbilical stump covered the air valve; I was terrified someone would bump it and air would hiss out of him until he was completely deflated.

9. Sometimes I think I should get out more; sometimes I think it's better for everyone that I don't.

10. While trying to log into Facebook on my cell phone, I entered my password incorrectly and received the message: "Facebook is unable to authenticate you." I'm thinking of getting that printed on T-shirts and handing them out to everyone I know.

11. My need to park perfectly has gotten completely out of control--as has my outrage at people whose substandard parking skills make parking perfectly more difficult for me. C'mon, people! Those tidy white and yellow lines are not meant to be merely decorative!

And now, my questions for anyone reading who wishes to play along. If you post your answers, please be sure to let us know in the comments.

1. If time travel were possible, where would you go first? The past? The future? A specific time?

2. If you could claim any existing literary work as your own, what would it be?

3. You come upon a group of extraterrestrials disembarking from their ship in a deserted field. What is your first thought? First action?

4. I once read that smell is the sense most closely linked to memory. Which scent most strongly brings back childhood for you?

5. If you could rewrite the ending of a favorite book or movie, which one would it be and why?

6. Speaking of childhood, what food or foods make you wrinkle up your nose even now that you're a grown-up?

7. Who is the friend who's been in your life the longest? How did he or she come into your life?

8. Who has been your greatest teacher (inside the classroom or out)?

9. Do you have or have you ever had a nickname? Love it? Hate it?

10. What would the teaser on the back of your autobiography be?

11. Though you've no doubt been warned, do you nevertheless judge books by their covers?


*Injuring myself without noticing is anything but a rare occurrence. I am frequently covered in angry-looking bruises of all shapes and sizes that I have no memory of getting. At dinner one night at the halfway house, one of the clients looked at the four or five visible bruises on my arms and asked if I was being abused at home. I thanked him for his concern and assured him that the only one abusing me is me.

Ways I Am Not A Grown-Up, The Seventeenth In A Potentially Infinite Series

Peeps!

Need I say more?

On the off chance that I do need to say more, let me allow the ever-eloquent Elayne Boosler to speak on my behalf in this video recorded back in the olden days when Peeps were only available at Easter time and only in pink & yellow. Though Ms. Boosler and I part ways on the "properly aged" vs. fresh-from-the-package Peeps question, we share the same conflicted passion for Peeps.

Regarding the year-round availability of Peeps: though I do dearly love Peeps and have been known to eat myself into a Peeps-induced coma from time to time, I mostly do not consume the off-season versions (except for a slip now and then, which I generally regret--see: Christmas tree peeps incident). Apparently, Peeps Fever and Spring Fever coincide for reasons no doubt related to interplanetary alignments and hormonal fluctuations.

One last Peeps-related note: while positioning the Peeps for today's photo shoot, I noticed something I'd never noticed before--the "best by" date on the end of the Peeps boxes. I'm not sure whether I was more heartened or disturbed to discover that every box of Peeps I purchased had a "best by" date at least a year away and one of them was "best by" December 2014! 

Finally, I came to the conclusion* that it didn't really matter what I thought about the ridiculously long shelf life of Peeps, since none of them will be on my shelf 'til the end of this week, let alone the end of next year. 

*Said conclusion may or may not have been reached under the influence of 3/4 of a package of blue Peeps bunnies. Heh.

In The Name of Love: A Twisted (& Belated) Valentine To Unrequited Love

I have a scar on the inside of my left wrist, just to the right of center, a tiny oval divot of missing flesh. It's been there since the day in fifth grade when Ricky Doud challenged me to a race--first one to the top of the monkey bars wins!

It turned out Ricky had ulterior motives. Once we were both at the top of the monkey bars perched on opposite rungs with the top bar between us, we spent a few minutes bickering about who had reached the top first (hint: it was me), but then he grabbed my wrist and pinned my hand down to the top bar.

"I love you," he said. "Do you love me?"

Now, Ricky was cute enough--dark, bowl-cut hair framing deep dimples and soulful brown puppy-dog eyes--but he was no Tony Cimino. And though I expended considerable effort covering my true emotions with nonchalance and fake hatred, Tony Cimino owned my ten-year-old heart--as he had owned my nine-year-old heart. In top secret declaration of my nearly two years' worth of undying love, I had even carved Tony's initials high on the trunk of the maple tree beside the chicken coop at our house. My heart was a loyal and stubborn thing, even then.

As far as I was concerned, Tony was the love of my life. I did not want to hurt Ricky's feelings nor did I want to profess a love I didn't feel--not even to get out of the hostage situation I suddenly found myself in. So, I said, "I don't know."

My attempt to dodge Ricky's question unleashed a dark side of Ricky I'd never seen before. He squeezed my wrist tighter and said, "Do you love me or not?"

I squirmed, as much from emotional discomfort as from any physical pain, and tried again, "I don't know. I'll tell you tomorrow."

Ricky pressed the nail of his index finger into the skin of my wrist, the glint of a threat in his eyes. Those eyes had gone from puppy-dog to Cujo in an instant. "Say you love me."

"I won't say it," I said. I looked him straight in the eye, daring him to carry through with his implied threat. Though he claimed to love me, he clearly did not know me at all. I was not the sort of girl to cower and squeal at bugs or snakes or mud puddles or fingernails pressed into my flesh. Not only was I not that kind of girl, I was ever-ready for the opportunity to prove how much not that kind of girl I was.

"Last chance," he said. "Say you love me."

I vigorously shook my head, my lips pressed tightly together to dramatically illustrate my resolve.

My skin gave way beneath Ricky's nail with a barely perceptible pop. When this failed to elicit either a whimper or a proclamation of love, Ricky's eyes met mine as his nail dug deeper and twisted, carving away a little piece of me. I pushed Ricky hard then, pulled my arm free and climbed down from the monkey bars without a word or glance in his direction.

That lifelong indentation on the inside of my wrist was the first scar I got in the name of love. It would not, of course, be the last.

Ode To A Complicated Man

"The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves in them." 

~~Thomas Merton¹

My Pap, my paternal grandfather, was a complicated man. The wickedness of his sense of humor was matched only by the wickedness of his temper. By the time of my childhood, he was mostly a quiet man, given to solitary pursuits: reading, fishing, tying flies, staring blankly at the television while rolling itty-bitty balls of Scotch tape between his index finger and thumb. When a ball got good and gummy, he would stick it under the end table next to his chair. After he died, Nan and I found thirty or forty of these little balls wadded up under there like chewing gum on the underside of a diner table.

Whole afternoons could pass in the three-room house he shared with my grandmother without us hearing the sound of his voice. He tended to be most animated around company, though whatever mysterious spirits moved him sometimes did so at unpredictable times and it would be like the sun poking out on an overcast day--if the sun were not only shiny, but quick with a raunchy² joke and possessed of a full-throttle wheezing laugh that was equal parts disturbing and infectious. For some reason, boredom maybe, these moods would often overtake him while he was driving longish distances. He would crank Juice Newton's "The Queen of Hearts" (he had the 8-track tape of that album in the player in his car) and sing along while make goofy faces or press the accelerator in time to the music. When these moods came over him, he would ask for a smooch on his stubbly cheek, he would dole out affectionate pats and squeezes, and he could be ridiculously generous with gifts and money.

His fits of temper, like his fits of good humor, seemed to sweep out of nowhere, triggered by the teeniest things. In those moments, if his bacon was a little too crispy, he would slam his hand or, worse, fist, down hard on the nearest flat surface and the resulting smack-thud would echo through every cell in my body. He would let loose a string of profanity which rarely made much sense and in which "goddamn" and "son-of-a-bitch" figured prominently. He sometimes called my grandmother stupid or lazy. Once, I saw him drive a steak knife into a wooden table top because she had forgotten to put the butter out for his noonday meal. It was not the forgetting so much as it was her frightened attempts to apologize and explain that seemed to set him off. I never saw him lay an angry hand on my grandmother, or anyone else for that matter, but he sometimes threatened to and in those moments when he was swept away by rage, it was difficult not to be utterly convinced that he might.

For all his oversized personality, my grandfather was not a big man. Even in his youth, before drinking and smoking and steelworking and finally emphysema ground him down, he was perhaps 5'7" or 5'8" and maybe 145 pounds. By the time he died at the age of 67, the steroids which had helped him breathe had so weakened his bones that he was not quite 5'5". He weighed 87 pounds when he entered the hospital for the last time.

Despite his ever-diminishing physical stature and declining health, there was a whole stretch of time during my childhood when I thought my grandfather might be the strongest man in the world or at least in the top ten. I was convinced there was nothing he couldn't do. No doubt his ferocious temper contributed to this illusion, but that wasn't the whole of it. He had freakishly strong hands--he kept a hand exerciser within reach of his rocking chair on the end table next to his breathing machine; until I was in my early teens, there was not a jar that man could not open. He could put together any toy we pulled out of a cereal box without even looking at the directions. With his bare hands, he could pick up a hot coal that rolled out of the wood stove. (I later learned this was less of a feat of fortitude and more a function of poor circulation in his hands.) He could spell Punxsutawney.


My grandfather was an abstinent alcoholic. Though he stopped drinking when my father was very young, I do not say "recovered" or "recovering" both because he never, to my knowledge, participated in any formal recovery-type program (including AA) and because he was, in many ways, exactly the kind of man that people in the recovery community would call a "dry drunk." A dry drunk is an individual who has quit drinking or using, but has failed to adequately address underlying emotional and psychological issues that contributed to addiction in the first place, issues that are often exacerbated by years of active drinking or use.

Pap was a classic dry drunk: moody and often miserable and wholly unwilling--or, given his time and place³, likely unable--to address the source of all his bitterness. He was more than that, though. Of course he was.

Oh, how I loved that man, with his messy, outsized personality. I loved him not in spite of his faults and certainly not because of them. My love for him simply existed alongside my knowledge of his faults. It was not "I love him, but..." and not, "I love him for..." but "I love him and I'm fully aware that he's a crazy sumbitch."

The knowledge that my heart was big enough to hold pure, undiluted love and not just the awareness of, but the acceptance of a whole, real person, warts and all was an invaluable gift my grandfather gave me. That, and the love of a naughty joke--oh! and the ability to spell Punxsutawney.

Pap & Me, 1968

1. As I was struggling with the finishing touches on this post, I clicked over to Facebook to rest my brain for a second and stumbled on this quotation, posted by one of my cousins. Timing is everything.

2. To this day, I cannot hear the Eagles' "Heartache Tonight" without hearing my grandfather's phlegmy remake of the lyrics, which, naturally, included the word "hard-on." And don't even get me started on the flag raising story, which, naturally, made great use of the phrase "blow the bugle."

3. Born February 6, 1919 just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Random Quote Tuesday

"Logic was, I first thought, like a train. Get on it and the rails would carry everyone to the same destination, and when they got there, they'd see it was the only place to be. But I soon understood that, outside of arithmetic class, logic was more like a taxi. You told it where to take you, and it took you there. If you were in favor of the death penalty, it found a street that led to the electric chair and nailed the accelerator to the floorboard. If you hated the death penalty, it took the same street just as fast, but in the opposite direction."

~~Andrew Hudgins, "Helen Keller Answers The Iron" from The Kenyon Review in The Pushcart Prize XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses



Masked Mom's Media Monday: Blogging

I've missed it.

I have a folder full of half- and three-quarters-written posts that should've been posted months ago. So, for the next few weeks, you may stumble upon some posts that would've been timely in mid-November. In other words (as always), read at your risk.


Masked Mom's One-Two-Word Review: I'm back-ish.

Tried and True

Cranky (Ex-)Boss Lady was involved in a freak accident about a month ago. She was talking with a friend while the friend's three large dogs were tearing around the yard when one of them barrelled into CBL from behind, knocking her over and somehow breaking her right ankle. So broken was the ankle, that she had to have a screw surgically inserted to hold everything together.

She has an adult daughter, a live-in boyfriend, and a renter who has lived in the attached apartment for so long (at such low rent) that he has become a member of their highly dysfunctional family--all of them can help her out in the late afternoons and evenings. Which leaves mornings and early afternoons during the week to me because there isn't anyone else, because I don't mind helping out--actually like to be able to help out when I can. When she called about the ankle, she said, in typical tell-don't-ask Cranky Boss Lady fashion, "I'm going to need your help with appointments and stuff." The answer would've been "yes," but I couldn't help noticing that there was no real question there.

Cranky Boss Lady is, to understate it in the extreme, a high maintenance individual under the best of circumstances and clearly a severely broken ankle does not qualify as the best of circumstances. She is unable to support herself on crutches and so is wheelchair bound and home all day with three springer spaniels.

The two male spaniels do not get along owing to having been neutered only after having gotten into numerous scraps with one another and so there is an elaborate routine that CBL has devised involving segregation and rotation of the dogs. Since she is no longer working outside the home, she has plenty of time and energy to fixate, er, focus on the "needs" of these three dogs. In addition to being rotated (one male is in the living room with CBL and the other in the sun room with the female dog and then they switch), they go outside for potty breaks every hour and a half to two hours. They have stuffed toys that are dog-specific and it's extremely important to CBL (significantly less so to the dogs) that none of the dogs plays with someone else's toy. Therefore, the hairy-stained-up-spit-encrusted toys must also be transferred from room to room at each rotation. And one of these toys, a mangled Pumba from Lion King, which makes farting and burping noises, must be dropped over the gate to land on its head so it will make noise, whether the dog is standing there to hear it or not.

I think the whole thing is completely insane, but if that's how she wants to do things, so be it. I will say, however, that even if I were the type of person to be concerned that Benny is playing with Misty's toy or to engage in a "battle of wills*" with Buddy because he's not really interested in going out at the moment since he was out an hour ago, I would make an effort to simplify the doggy routine if I was relying on another person to help me with it. I would, not, in other words, visit my insanity upon someone who is taking an hour or more out of her own day to help me.

Along with going over every weekday at 10:30 and noon to deal with the dogs, I have also taken CBL to three doctor's visits (one of these of the "emergency" last-minute variety and thirty minutes away from home); winced inwardly (and sometimes outwardly) as CBL was whining and demanding and borderline verbally abusive to office staff at these appointments; paid her cable, gas, and electric bills (in person at three different locations); picked up prescriptions for her and her son; listened to the graphic details about the bursting of her boyfriend's sebaceous cyst; purchased bandages for her boyfriend's sebaceous cyst; stopped and gotten her lunch every day--usually a ridiculously complex order from the supermarket deli, which she has never yet failed to complain about; and more, oh-so-much more.

We also went through the McDonald's drive-thru at one point and she demanded that I order her fries "straight out of the fryer," which is how she always wants her fries. When I worked with her on a daily basis at the flower shop, I told her more than once that asking for that sort of special consideration at a fast-food restaurant is just begging them to spit in your food. Still, she persisted, though to be honest, when I was tasked with picking up her lunch and bringing it back to the shop I never, not one single time, requested fries "straight from the fryer" and she was none the wiser.

This time, of course, she was in the passenger seat next to me so there was no wiggling out of it and I asked for the fries "straight from the fryer." When the bag with the chicken tenders and fries was handed out to the window to me, CBL warned, "Don't drive away yet!" Then she snatched the bag out of my hand, stuck her hand in to test the fries, declared them "warm, not hot" and ordered me to send them back. I started to pull away from the window and she yelled, "What are you doing!?"

I calmly said, "I'm going to go inside to return your fries."

She said, "I would've just banged on the window!"

I said, "I'm not going to hold up the fourteen cars behind us. I'll just go inside."

Then she proceeded to complain about the fact that I drove around the building rather than parking at the end of the drive-thru lane where I would've been partially blocking traffic. I got out of the van to go inside while she was still talking.

The punchline, of course, is that she did not actually eat the fries until we'd gotten her home and in the door and settled on the couch--so the fries were no longer straight from the fryer. Therefore, her tantrum had been completely in vain.

On that straight-out-of-the-fryer day, which was fairly early on in this whole process, Hubby had come along at CBL's insistence because she was pretty sure we would need his help getting her in and out of the vehicle (we hadn't) so he was waiting in the van while I got her settled in at home. As I was trying to get out the door, she made a heartfelt speech, getting a little teary-eyed as she told me how much she appreciated everything I was doing for her. She told me, "You are a true friend."

When I made it out the door, I recounted her speech to Hubby and said, "When she called me a true friend, I thought to myself, 'If I were really a true friend, I wouldn't be about to get into the van and start complaining about every aspect of your personality before the door was even all the way closed.'"

So, what say you, my bloggy friends? What is the measure of true friendship? In which direction does peevishness tip the scales? Precisely how much annoyance (and often (OFTEN!) bitter resentment) is required to turn generosity from something sweet to something bitter? Is it better or worse if this annoyance is expressed behind the back of rather than to the face of the annoyer? What if this behind-the-back expression feels like the only way to be kind face-to-face?

Please, my bloggy friends, share with me your insight, your wisdom, perhaps your own stories of that special someone whom you care deeply about despite actively dreading the time you spend with him or her.

Please, because it's another few days til the cast comes off and weeks (maybe months) of physical therapy after that and I need all the help I can get.



*I am standing in the sun room, holding the storm door wide and negotiating with this dog who is looking at me like I'm a complete idiot (about this he is so clearly right that it barely bears mentioning) when CBL calls from the next room, "Sometimes you've got to kind of lead him out the door. It's really a battle of wills between him and me most days." Dude, I'm no vet or doggy psychologist*, but if the dog has to be cajoled or worse dragged out the door, and he's just been out an hour ago, odds are he's not really urgently needing to go out the door.

*Though CBL did, in fact, hire a doggy psychologist to come in and evaluate the situation between the two male dogs. Naturally CBL and her boyfriend dismissed every one of the psychologist's suggestions (most of which had to do with the interhuman dynamics rather than the dog-to-dog dynamics). They were then shocked and dismayed that their $500 had gone to waste.

(Update: I'm going to "cheat" a little and use this as my TidBit Thursday post at Larissa's. Hoping to use my computer time and energy to catch up a bit more on visiting everyone else.)

Random Quote Saturday

"How can we not still be rooting for the younger versions of ourselves as if they actually exist, playing catch-up in time? Who wouldn't like to implant their current brains into a scenario from the past? SATs be damned, how about the insertion of a few eloquent turns of phrase when, for no discernible reason, Michael Gruzman called me 'baloney boobs' on the bus home for a whole year?"

~~Sloane Crosley, "If You Sprinkle" in How Did You Get This Number?

Ways I Am Not A Grownup, The Sixteenth In A Potentially Infinite Series

It's snowing! It's snowing!! It's snowing!!!

Big, fat snowglobey flakes!!!!

And I love it!!!!!

Every first time is like the first first time.

It was too dark to catch them mid-flight, so I had to settle for catching them at rest on the side of my van.

Tidbits

[This post was my original Thanksgiving post--seven years ago. Even reheated and seven years old, it's better than anything I've got going on in my brain at the moment...]

Leftovers: You know how this time of year all the magazines and cooking shows try to come up with creative things to do with all that leftover turkey? I've seen turkey tarts, potpie, burrito, salads, and on and on. Well, I have the perfect solution to get rid of all those turkey leftovers--three teenage boys. They don't need it prettied up--they'll wolf it down straight out of the fridge with a little mayo and a slice or two of bread. Before you can even say leftovers, they're gone.

Gratitude: At last year's Thanksgiving celebration, my dad suggested we all say one thing we're thankful for. Daughter-Only piped up: "Can we all also say one thing we're not thankful for?" That suggestion was loudly vetoed (by me and a few others at the table--I mean, first, do we really want the entire extended family hearing what Daughter-Only is not grateful for and second, depending on her mood of the moment, it might take her an hour or two to narrow it down to one thing she's not grateful for and by then dinner would be stone-cold and we'd all have a whole new thing to be not thankful for). The big surprise, though, was when it was finally Daughter-Only's turn to speak her gratitude aloud, she said, "I'm thankful for the variety of people we have in our family--that we're all so different and we all still get along."

Caught On Tape: There is one of those old-fashioned home movies somewhere of my first Christmas--me in a red velvet dress, age 5 months--propped up in a high chair at the dinner table. I'm holding a turkey drumstick the size of my head. My mother always said I was insistently reaching for it and my grandparents, ever-ready to give me every little thing I wanted--including a turkey drumstick that may have weighed nearly as much as I did--gave it to me. There is no evidence that I actually ate any of it, but I am seen intently rubbing turkey grease all over my face and my little red velvet dress. Perhaps my distaste for dressy clothes and my not entirely healthy relationship with food can both be traced to that moment, but probably not.

Ghost of Turkeys Past: Last year, as I was hacking apart the turkey, a sizeable piece of white meat liberated itself from the platter and flew across the room. My (then fourteen-year-old) nephew observed, "Ooooh, looks like we've got a poultrygeist!"

Hope you and yours had a wonderful holiday.

It's The Little Things...

Rushed out of the house first thing this morning due to a make-up removal emergency Daughter-Only was having. She was running late for work so I ran out the door, cranky and with my unbrushed hair yanked up into a messy bun. And did I mention...cranky?! Very cranky.

Walked into Walgreens and was greeted by this song:



I wasn't even a fan of it the first time around, but for some reason, this had me grinning like a fool. At least on the inside.

Ways I Am Not A Grown-Up, The Fifteenth In A Potentially Infinite Series

"Eventually? Doesn't that usually fall somewhere between the months of Maybe and Never?"

~~My (now ex-)coworker, Mark Z.

I'm still pretty sure that procrastination is a viable life strategy. All evidence to the contrary is dismissed as the horrible side effect of me having not yet perfected my procrastination techniques, therefore requiring additional procrastination practice.

Practice makes perfect.

Eventually.

Right?

Masked Mom's Media Monday: PostSecret

[A repost (original post Nov 2006) courtesy of the kind of day that is making me question every major life decision I've ever made. Please note that I no longer obsessively refresh the page on Saturday nights. Instead, I check it as part of my routine at work on Sunday mornings. And there are five books now.]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume most of you have seen PostSecret--the site where people send in their secrets on 4" x 6" cards, which may or may not get posted to the site and/or included in a book (there have been two books so far and a third is on its way). For those who haven't, check it out. It's disturbing and fascinating and awe-inspiring and sometimes you can't look away from it even if you want nothing more than to not look at it at all.

The secrets are updated on Sundays--at least in theory, though it's quite often updated by Saturday evening, when I log on to begin obsessively checking to see the new secrets. Every week, I scroll down the entire page and by the time I get to the bottom, I think, "What the hell do I do this for?" and I make a half-hearted pledge to not be sitting there the following Saturday evening, obsessively refreshing. I never promise not to check back, but you know, there's no reason it can't wait 'til Monday or whatever--the secrets are up all week.

What's even more fascinating to me than the individual secrets (which themselves range from the disturbing to the mundane), is the impulse so many people have to make a card and send it in. Is it that confession is good for the soul? Is it that there are that many people hoping for their fifteen minutes (or week) of anonymous fame?

Are there people who send in secrets not sincerely, but ironically, as a prank? There's no doubt in my mind, but the interesting thing is that these people are revealing something just as intimate about themselves as the people who send in sincere secrets--they're revealing their cynicism, their mean-spiritedness, their (perhaps misguided) faith in their own superiority, their willingness to put in a relatively large effort for what I can only imagine is minimal reward. In their insincerity, they are just as revealing as others are in their sincerity.

The fact that there's absolutely no way to tell if a person is sincerely revealing a deep (often, though not always, dark) secret about himself or just goofing on us all is part of the bargain you make in scrolling through all those secrets. I like to think most of the postcards we see--and the e-mails in response to them--are sincerely meant and that there is some comfort to be found in finding you're less alone in your little secrets than you might've imagined. And until the site collapses under the weight of its own fame, or I just get bored of it, you know where to find me Saturday evenings between 9 and midnight. (Jeez, I need to get a life.)

Masked Mom's One-Word Review: Fascinating.

Spiral Notebook Sunday: Tuesday, November 19, 1985

One of the enlightening things about keeping a journal for nearly thirty years is finding out how what passes for wisdom changes over the years. For example, tonight's Spiral Notebook selection is from an entry I wrote when I was seventeen lecturing myself for overthinking* a thirty second moment of eye contact between Mr. High School and I and my ongoing inability to behave in any "normal" fashion.  The word "revelation" may have been used to describe this passage:

Tuesday, November 19, 1985

 

Why couldn't I have been born an airhead? Bubbleheads dive straight in because they always bounce off the bottom and float to the top. 

*A phase from which I've never really recovered.

Random Quote Saturday

"The luckiest of us learn to use our histories as a ladder to climb to the future."

~~M.J. Rose, In Fidelity