There Oughta Be A Surgeon General's Warning

So there's this site that takes two of my favorite things--blogs and quotations--and smushes them together in a wildly addictive fashion. It's called Blogtations and this week, there's a quote from my blog. But that's not why I'm telling you about Blogtations--I'm not so vain and shallow and approval-seeking as to need to call attention to myself in that fashion (Ha! Like I'd even HAVE a blog if I weren't vain, shallow and approval-seeking).

No, I'm telling you about Blogtations because Blogtations is having a 500th quote party and simply by telling you about Blogtations and showing you my favorite quote from the site, I could win a $50 Amazon gift certificate.

To review: Not vain, shallow and approval-seeking. But greedy, definitely greedy. (Greedy, yes, but generous enough to point out that anyone can play the 500th quote party game. The rules are here.)

So Blogtations. Quotes from blogs. It's pages and pages (almost 500, hence upcoming 500th quote party) of delicious nuggets of brilliance and wisdom and hilarity and I compulsively clicked through the alphabetized categories when I should be doing something more constructive. Picking a favorite is like trying to pick a favorite finger--if you had almost 500 fingers and they all lived on the Internet, independent of you.

After much agonizing deliberation, I settled on this quote:

"The heart makes its own choices, we simply decide whether or not to follow through with them..." from the blog Dragonfly Dreaming (whose post today is about sex addiction so click with caution).

...because it seemed to apply to so many things--including selecting a favorite from almost 500 quotations.

Anyway, whether you play the game or not, you definitely should check out the site. It's a bunch of great stuff from blogs distilled into one compulsively clickable format.

Politics With Fifth Graders

When it comes to politics, I'm pretty much a preach to the choir kind of girl--never unleashing the full fury of my opinions on anyone I'm not reasonably sure agrees with me (or at least is bound, by law or genetics, to tolerate me). It may seem a little chicken-shit, but I've learned the hard way that it preserves important business and personal relationships. Odds are you're not going to change anyone's mind so the frustration level is just not worth it.

The other morning, though, I was lured into a discussion of politics by the unlikeliest of fellow conversationalists: two fifth graders. On Tuesdays, I help a friend cover a child care gap by sitting with two eleven-year-olds (one hers and one her sister's) and two eight-year-olds (one hers, one her sister's) for twenty minutes or so until their bus comes. Somehow during the usual morning stuff, Eleven-Year-Old Boy was talking about some celebrity he didn't like and I said, "Yeah, he's not on my list of favorite people."

Eleven-Year-Old Boy says, "Yeah, there's a lot of people not on my list of favorite people...like the president for example."

Then me: "Yeah, he's definitely not on my list of favorite people..."

We're interrupted by Eleven-Year-Old Girl who says, "You know there's going to be an election soon so we won't have to put up with President Bush much longer." Then, warming to the topic, speaking in that breathless way unique to adolescent (and slightly pre-adolescent) girls. "I guess I don't really care who gets elected except my grandma says if Barack Obama gets elected white people are doomed."

Wow. Just wow. What the hell am I supposed to say to that?

While I'm formulating my reponse--looking for something non-committal that will still somehow convey that I don't agree at all without saying something that might offend her family members should it get back to them (which means not using the words "paranoid bigot" which were actually the first thing to pop into my head)--Eleven-Year-Old Boy slings his backpack over his shoulder, looks me dead in the eye and says with a slightly raised eyebrow, "Hillary Clinton has a penis."

I sputter, "Um...uh...good to know." (I mean what the hell?!)

Eleven-Year-Old Girl, suddenly the voice of wisdom, says, "We really didn't need to hear that."

Eleven-Year-Old Boy says, "Well it's true! I heard it on Family Guy. If you pay really close attention you'll hear it on one of the episodes."

So, from the show featuring a talking baby with a subtle yet inexplicable British accent and an IQ higher than everyone in his family combined but who is still somehow not potty trained and whose companion is a talking dog who's almost as smart as the baby yet still hangs out with this whacked-out family, Eleven-Year-Old Boy has gleaned the apparently inarguable information that Hillary Clinton has a penis.

Before we could get into a discussion about whether or not Hillary actually does have a penis, and in what way that might affect her ability to serve as president (would men be doomed? women? Or, because she's a woman with a penis, neither? Or maybe both?), the bus came.

What really scares me is not eleven-year-olds thinking these things, but the adults--in their lives and elsewhere--who are thinking the same way.

(Dis)Comfort Food

Like many bloggers, I have a meter attached to my blog that measures hits, lets me know where people are logging on from, and, most entertainingly, allows me to see what search may have led them to my blog. Unlike many bloggers, the searches around here are pretty pedestrian, with "neglected husband" and "uvula stuck to tonsil" vying for first position and "Carole Radziwill" coming in a solid third. The Top Ten is rounded out by seemingly random things like "Jill Taylor, meteorologist" and "long-lost boyfriend."

The other day, though, I noticed a hit from Burlington, Ontario, where someone had apparently searched for "hamster instant mashed potatoes."

Let me say that again: hamster instant mashed potatoes*.

WTF** doesn't even begin to cover it.

*You may wonder, as I did, what I had ever written that would lead someone looking for "hamster instant mashed potatoes" to my blog. The answer is I mentioned hamsters in one post and then instant mashed potatoes in two entirely separate posts.

**Daughter-Only's catchphrase of the week: "WTF and a half?!" comes a little closer.

Unattainable

I have a close friend who, like many of us, is juggling a demanding job, husband, children (two teenage daughters and a five-year-old son), plus all the push and pull of her extended family. Unlike me at least, she always seems fairly together:
nicely dressed, appropriately accessorized. Even though she's being yanked in a dozen different directions by the demands of her life and she's always hurrying from one thing to another, she projects an air of confidence and professionalism that I'm sure serves her well in all the different roles of her life.

This, however, is not the story of how she "does it all" in heels and the perfect shade of lipstick. This is the story of what happens when the facade cracks. She's always very together--right up until she's not. I've known her for fourteen years and can count those times on one hand. One of the times she "fell apart" involved sucking her engagement ring into one of those industrial vacuums at a car wash. There followed frantic phone calls and several hours of general hysteria before the ring was retrieved. This is the story of a different time.

As part of her job, she frequently travels within the region to give presentations to various groups. Recently, she was asked to drive to a city about an hour and a half from home to give a forty-five minute presentation on a Saturday. After the presentation, she would be done for the day so she brought along her husband and son, thinking they could have lunch together and maybe see a movie--make a day of it. And, as a bonus, she could drive the company car and not have to pay for gas.

She dropped husband and son off at a nearby mall and went to the hotel where she would be giving her presentation. She told them she would meet them back at the same entrance in an hour or so.

The presentation went smoothly and as she was gathering her things she realized she should probably make a stop in the ladies room before she left for the mall. While in the restroom, she somehow managed to drop the car key in the toilet. This is the key to the company car, mind you.

She's sitting there, contemplating her options. She realizes almost immediately that the only option is reaching in for it. After all, it's the key to the company car, she's stranded an hour and a half from home, not to mention her husband and son stuck at the mall waiting for her, and her cell phone is locked inside the company car because she never brings it in during presentations. So even though it's icky*, she takes a deep breath, stands up and...the toilet is an automatic flusher and the key is gone.

I imagine there was a moment of staring in awe and wonder at the toilet before she went to find the contact woman from the hotel who had helped her with the presentation earlier. While they were waiting for maintenance to see if there was any way to get the key back, it suddenly occurred to my friend that her husband and son were still at the mall, probably on their way to the entrance to meet her so she borrows the hotel lady's phone and calls her husband. She says, "The hotel shuttle is going to pick you guys up."

He says, "Why? What's wrong?"

She says, "Nothing. But the car is locked and the key is...um...unattainable."

"Unattainable? What do you mean unattainable?"

"Uh, it's just, um, unattainable. I'll explain later..."

Give her credit--she did explain later--not only to her husband but to everyone at work, where they all laughed hysterically. And then she told me, so I could laugh hysterically and now I've told you. Laughing hysterically is strictly optional, but she really went to a lot of trouble so it might be nice if you could at least titter politely.

*Doesn't "even though it's icky" strike you as the awesomest motto for parenthood EVER?

A PS to Brunette Best Friend from high school--I know, I know, you have a way better locking something in the car story. But it still (24 YEARS later!) makes me wince to talk about that...

Signs of the Apocalypse

Forget, for a moment, the global economic crisis.

Forget wars and famine and disease.

Forget the upcoming elections which feel like a matter of life and death.

Forget, even, that the Republican party has so little regard for the American public that it nominated someone wholly unqualified (and as we get to know her better, it would seem completely unsuited) as its vice presidential candidate.

John Mellencamp and Stephen King are collaborating on a musical together.

If it gets any scarier than that, I don't want to know about it.

Do You Really, Really Want To Haunt Me?

[We now return you to your regularly scheduled program of ghost stories. The last one was more story than ghost. As you will see, the jury's still out on this one:]

Unlike Daughter-Only, Son-Two has always approached conversations about potential ghostly goings-on with a sort of open-minded skepticism. He believes in "hauntings" generally while viewing reports of specific incidents through a cautious--even dubious--lens. Daughter-Only's breathless exaggerations of her experiences instigated much eye-rolling on Son-Two's part. Even Son-One's much more reserved accounting of flashing lights in the dark hallway was greeted with a shake of the head and Son-Two's standard pronouncement: "Bullshit."

Son-Two also rejects any woo-woo explanations--those involving "lost souls" stuck between the Here and the There, for example--in favor of the likelihood that "ghostly" activity is something perfectly logical and natural that just can't yet be explained by science. (In much the same way that we once experienced the effects of germs without being able to isolate and identify them, Son-Two thinks that these unexplainable activities will one day be attributed to something we can't yet measure or define.)

His scientific approach served him well on the night in question. Someone less scientific might have run screaming from the room.

A little after 11 one night toward the end of summer, Hubby and I were reading in bed when Son-Two knocked on the door. He looked around our room and shook his head.

"Okay. This is really weird. I've been hearing this weird noise and I thought maybe your fan was on and the noise was just carrying into my room in some weird way. But the fan's not on."

He went on to explain that he had been lying in bed in the dark for the last ten minutes listening to what sounded like breathing about two feet from his head. It was like breathing, but he could only hear the puff of the exhale--not panting, just a slow rhythmic "huh." For ten minutes. Next to his head.

At first he thought it was his own fan. Maybe the motor had gone and the blade wasn't turning and the noise he could hear was the straining of the blade...or something. So he checked--his fan was unplugged. Got back in bed--more breathing.

It was too steady and rhythmic to be the wind. So then he thought of the fan in the bathroom. But that wasn't on. And, finally, the fan in our room--also not on.

Hubby--possibly the only person more skeptically open-minded in our house than Son-Two--jumped up to investigate. After a few minutes of dead (ha ha) silence in Son-Two's room, Hubby shrugged and offered this (decidedly unscientific) hypothesis: "The only thing I can think of is that there was some kind of animal out on the porch roof. Maybe it smelled Son-Two and was just curious."

If curious possums panting from the porch roof outside Son-Two's window is the best debunking we can do, I'm thinking we might have to roll out the "h-word" after all.

Intermission II: More Politics, This Time Without The Threat of Poop, Pelican or Otherwise*

During a conversation last weekend with Son-Two (who called from college to discuss politics, of all things), he said he thought Palin was going to "get toasted" in Thursday night's debate.

In response, I said, "Yeah, she's Political Barbie."

Hubby sitting nearby deadpanned, "After Thursday's debate, it's going to be more like Political Barbecue."


*The promised absence of poop in no way implies the absence of crap which is an entirely different thing and seemingly unavoidable in politics.

**Before you cry sexism please note that I am not calling her "Barbie" simply because she's a woman. I am calling her a Barbie because she seems to me to have been chosen for her spunky, perky cute-tough persona rather than anything of any substance whatsoever. I don't believe for one second that women should be judged on a higher standard than men, but neither should we get a pass simply because of our gender. With something as vital as the presidency it's especially important to be sure that no one is so dazzled by the gender of a candidate that they forget to ask the questions that really matter--and actually listen to the answers not be impressed by the kind of one-liners^ Palin dished out at the Republican convention. Stumbling down off the soapbox now...

^One-liners not unlike those that a '90's edition of Barbie said when you pulled a string on her back. The most famous one was something like "Math is hard." or something like that and lots of people got mad then because that was enforcing a stereotype that girls aren't good at math. I didn't really think it was enforcing anything other than that Barbie thought math was hard which only makes sense since she's a friggin' doll, for cryin' out loud.

Intermission: Is This What They Mean By Animated Discussion?

Last night Hubby and I watched Nim's Island immediately followed by the DVR recording of Friday night's presidential debate.

Later I woke in the middle of the night from a dream in which the CGI pelican from the movie, Galileo, had circled over the candidates, chattering and cawing at particularly ridiculous remarks.

At least he signaled his displeasure verbally...because the only thing more unpleasant than politics as usual is politics with pelican poop on it.

Do You Really Want To Haunt Me?

Considering my previously professed passion for Sci-Fi Channel's Ghosthunters, it should come as little surprise that when we were househunting last year, one of the criteria we actually discussed was the likelihood of a given house being haunted. Lacking the equipment of the TAPS team and absent a category on the real estate listings web sites*, we had only the age of the house to go on. We figured the older a place was, the more souls that were likely to have passed through it and, therefore, the more likely it was that one or two of them had hung around.

Ghosty geek that I am, the higher our chance of sharing a place with ghosties, the more ready I was to sign a lease. In fact, on Daughter-Only's first tour of this house as we came to the bottom of the stairs with Hubby right behind us and I said, "And the best part is that it was built in 1900 so it stands a pretty good chance of being haunted."

Daughter-Only had just enough time to roll her eyes at her mother's dorkiness when we heard a long and loud noise from the room above us--a room we had just left and which, as far as we could tell, was empty.

The nature of the noise was a matter of much debate among the three of us. Hubby maintained that it sounded like a pinecone rolling down the roof--theoretically dropped by one of the gazillion squirrels we'd seen outside. Daughter-Only and I argued that it sounded more like someone dragging a dresser or some other heavy piece of furniture across a bare wood floor. It was too long, too loud and too close to have been a pinecone bouncing down the roof. Hubby countered that it must've been a branch scraping the side of the house. Daughter-Only and I put this notion to rest by pointing out that though the house is surrounded by large trees, the closest branches were several feet from the house. We generously granted that a strong wind might bring the smallest branches into contact with the house but it was a calm day outside and the noise we'd heard couldn't have been made by the twig-like branches that were closest to the house.

I've learned from Ghosthunters that it's best not to jump to conclusions--and from Jason in particular--to use the "h word" sparingly (almost grudgingly) so I told the boys not that we were haunted but that we might have some "activity."

The first few weeks we lived here seemed to support my theory with reports coming from all the family members (except of course Hubby, that party pooper)--jiggling doorknobs, a computer that repeatedly connected itself to the (dial-up) Internet, weird noises and, most notably, the shower coming on in the middle of Daughter-Only's bath. Since most of these things could be explained by normal, as opposed to paranormal, explanations, the boys and I continued to withhold judgment--and the "h word."

Daughter-Only was a little less reserved in her assessment. Along with Oldest Niece, she had found a trunk full of keepsakes in the attic. They belonged to a man named Bill--our best guess is that Bill's father built this house. Bill was apparently quite a player--there were photos of several women in a wallet and dates on letters from at least two of the women overlap.

In any case, Oldest Niece and Daugther-Only became convinced (half-jokingly) that Bill was responsible for all the mischief around the house. This despite the fact that there was no evidence whatsoever that Bill was even dead. In fact, based on dates they'd found, Bill was probably around 71 and statistically just as likely to be among the living as to be taunting my family with silly pranks barely worth mentioning.

Daughter-Only rejected that possibility and began telling everyone she knew about our ghost, Bill. Once, she even called home from a friend's house and left a message on our answering machine for Bill.

When it came to preserving Bill's reputation as a bona fide spirit, Daughter-Only was not above helping Bill out a little. A common tactic was to conceal one accomplice (friend or cousin) in a closet while telling a wide-eyed story to the others about all the knocking and tapping she'd heard from Bill. Cue knocking and tapping and, more often that not, screaming and giggling.

Though no one had seemed traumatized, I warned Daughter-Only that she was going to end up really scaring someone someday. Maybe she would've actually paid attention if she'd realized the traumatized person would end up being her.

Early in the spring Daughter-Only was deathly ill and had stayed home from school. She was there alone with the dogs and ferrets. She called me at work, speaking barely above a whisper, clearly terrified. "Mom, um, I was feeling better? And, uh, I put the dogs outside so I could kick my soccer ball down the upstairs hall? And my ball bounced all the way down the stairs and into the dining room and I was going down to get it when Son-Two's bedroom door started rattling really, really hard--like someone was trying to get out of it!"

I asked her if she was okay and where she was. She was on the sofa hiding under a blanket. I asked her what she thought it was--did she think it was an actual human being? She did not. She knew it would've been virtually impossible for someone to get to the second-story bedroom without alerting the dogs.

I told her I'd be right there and that she could bring the dogs in for company and protection if it would help. I even said,

"Remember, whatever it is, it can't hurt you."

She said, "I know, but it's still scary."

I hung up and explained to Cranky Boss Lady that I needed to go home--to my haunted home--because Daughter-Only was (apparently justifiably) completely freaked out.

Just then, it hit me that Son-Two had told me that morning that he had slept with his window open the night before. It was incredibly windy that day so obviously--mystery solved.

Needless to say, Daughter-Only was nowhere near as amused by the episode as I was. It probably didn't help things that the main reason she was so terrified was that she had swallowed her own paranormal propaganda whole.

In the case of Son-Two, who had his own experience a few months after this one, there was no propaganda swallowing, whole or otherwise. Stay tuned next time for that story.

*For example: Bedrooms: 5, Baths: 1 1/2, Lot Size: 1.08 acres, Spooks: 2, but they mostly keep to themselves.

Housepainting With Daughter-Only

D-O: Mom, I was gonna say, "I think you have paint in your hair." but then I realized it was just white hairs.

If there were any justice in the world, she'd have fallen off her step-stool laughing that hard.

What My Daughter Learned From The Olympics*

Was it good sportsmanship?

Geography?

Atheleticism?

The importance of working single-mindedly toward a goal?

No...

"Hey, Mom! If it wasn't for the Olympics, I never would've learned that Asian men don't have eyelashes."

*Masked Mom does not make any representation regarding the accuracy of anything Daughter-Only learned from watching the Olympics or elsewhere for that matter.

Three Wishes, or A Frightening Glimpse At My Current State of Mind

Coming home from work with Son-Three just now. As we pull in the driveway, he says, completely out of the blue, "If you had three wishes, don't you think you'd use one of them to know the words to every song ever written?"

This was seriously out of the blue--the conversation just before that had to do with a chick fight between two girls who just graduated with Son-Two. Nothing to do with songs or lyrics or even wishes. Were this coming out of a normal child's mouth, I might be at least a little concerned with the child's mental health, but this was Son-Three, who has a long history of saying random and completely odd things. (See: "What's the opposite of a moron?...A more off!" "What's the opposite of this nose [while pushing his nose up]?...THIS nose [while pushing his nose down]!") So far, for the most part, the weird and completely random things seem to be merely an indication of his ability and need to say weird and completely random things. So instead of worrying about his mental health at the moment, I'm concerned about mine.

What would my three wishes be? The lyrics of all the songs ever isn't a bad wish. But one of my wishes would, I hate to say it, be an endless supply of just enough money. I don't want to be filthy rich, just to have enough to not worry every single second. And as mentioned previously, I know that money doesn't solve every problem, but it would free up some of my mental resources to solve the other problems (for example, the problem of my third son randomly* saying things like, "Cereal is cereal and cereal is quiet. Cereal is cereal and cereal can't talk.")

I was thinking how great that would be, just to be able to relax a little, to breathe easier. And then it hit me that immediately after I made that wish along with my other two, I'm absolutely certain that the global economy would collapse and money would become an antiquated and worthless concept.

Yeah, things are pretty cheery here in Masked Mom's brain.

*Because random is pretty much the only way you can say something like that.

Twenty-One

Our marriage turned the legal drinking age today.

It intends to celebrate accordingly.

Don't Do The Dew

So Mountain Dew is having this big "Dewmocracy" promotion. They've introduced three new flavors, Dew drinkers are supposed to vote on which one they like best and at the end of the promotion only the most popular will remain.

I made the horrible mistake of taking a sip of the pinkish purple one ("SuperNova").

I was in the car with Son-Three, Son-Two and Daughter-Only. I said, "That tastes like feet!"

Son-Three took a sip (because the smart ones always want a sip of something someone else thinks tastes like feet) and declared it the best of the three. He said,"And it doesn't taste like feet..."

"Yeah," I said just as the medicinal aftertaste hit me. "You're right, it tastes like a cough drop rubbed on feet."

Needless to say, I won't be tasting Voltage or Revolution. And the only way I'm voting is if there's a line for "none of the above."

Evolution

Tonight's junior-senior prom at the boys' high school. Son-Three was unable to attend due to his girlfriend having a dance recital, which he must attend instead. After the recital they will be going to the official post-prom party sponsored by SADD, of which the girlfriend is a member. They've been together since November of last year--in high school years they're not only married but well past the honeymoon stage. The way Son-Three was grumbling about it you just knew the words "ball-and-chain" were right on the tip of his tongue (or they would've been if anyone who isn't hopelessly outdated actually used that phrase anymore).

Son-Two is attending with E.G., who happens to be the girl Son-Three "went out" with in eighth grade. First Son-One goes camping with Son-Two's ex-girlfriend and now this...clearly, high schoolers have really evolved since I was in school. I can't imagine smilingly accepting the fact that my sister was going to the prom (or on a camping trip) with my ex-boyfriend. I've tried to brush it off as a gender difference--girls are notoriously catty about this kind of thing. But it's just as hard for me to imagine Hubby finding out his brother was taking Hubby's ex-girlfriend to the prom.*

Our boys are unfazed by this sort of development and seem baffled by my bafflement. The other day, Son-One**, Son-Three, Daughter-Only and I were in the car after a tennis match, waiting rather impatiently while Son-Two and E.G. stood by the bleachers ironing out pressing prom details. I looked over at Son-Three and said, "Isn't this weird to you at all?"

And he said, "What?"

I said, "Oh, I don't know...first Son-Two goes out with A.C. sophomore year and then Son-One goes camping with her senior year. Then you go out with E.G., albeit in eighth grade, and now Son-Two is taking her to senior prom. But I guess that's just the kind of thing that happens in a small town."

Son-Three said, "Yeah, it's probably way worse in The Next Town Over, which is way smaller."

I smirked, "Yeah, over there, the same thing happens but the girl is their cousin!"

And then, building steam: "And over in The Even Smaller Town Two Towns Over, the same thing happens but the girl is a goat!"

They're apparently not too evolved to snort out loud at a very immature joke.


*I would've asked Hubby his opinion on the subject, but I've been married to him for almost 21 years and I already know that his response would have involved a discourse on how the question is impossible to answer because there is no way that any girl he was willing to go out with would EVER have been willing to go out with his dorky little brother.

**Home from college and pining for his current girlfriend--who, blessedly, is from Westchester County (all the way across the state) and has not yet dated either of his brothers.

Fly Away Home

So when we were first looking at this house last fall, I noticed a few ladybugs in between the glass and the screen in the dining room window. I pointed them out to Hubby and told him that I vaguely remembered that some culture or other (maybe someone in Asia?) considered ladybugs good luck. We took it as a sign--even though I didn't trust my memory 100% (and now that I have dial-up, Googling it is out of the question without tying up the phone for several days...).

Ladybugs may or may not be considered lucky in some Asian (or not) culture but when they're crawling in your ears or up your nose in the middle of the night, you can only wish you were lucky enough to have a gigantic can of Raid next to the bed. When their carcasses litter your bedroom floor after every semi-warm winter afternoon, even after attempts to vacuum out every nest from every nook and cranny, they no longer seem dainty or adorable. When you begin to feel a sense of unbridled glee at sucking up yet another colony of the little buggers, you know things have gone entirely too far. Despite the cutesy ambivalence of their name, when more than, say, ten or so ladybugs gather in the same place they begin to seem a lot less ladylike.

It has gotten better the past week or so--for reasons I don't completely understand--but for a while they were EVERYWHERE. I even found one--a flat one--in a library book I was reading in the bathtub.

But in this, as in all things, perspective is important. I was busy bemoaning our infestation when Cranky Boss Lady called me about an infestation of another sort at Other Kid's house. Other Kid's Mom (who is CBL's daughter) had just called her to say there was a bear in the back of her pickup truck. Apparently OKM had loaded her truck with stuff to take to the dump the next day--she has done this a million times and never had any problems. This time a big black bear crawled right over the side of her brand new pickup truck (scratches down to bare metal), dragged the cans out and up the side of the hill to the edge of the yard, where he proceeded to pick through the contents of each can before going back for the next one.

I imagine that the vacuum, my weapon of choice in the Ladybug War, would have been pretty useless against this particular pest--at the very least, I would've needed a much bigger attachment.

Is Blogging Just Like Riding A Bike? For That Matter, Is Riding A Bike Like Riding A Bike?

It's been a while but I'm just gonna get on, start pedaling and see where I go.

At least with blogging, I don't have to worry about skinned knees...

He's No Simon Cowell...And Maybe He Should Have His Hearing Checked

Whatever the future may hold for Other Kid, he definitely doesn't have what it takes to be a hard-assed judge on a TV talent show.

We were riding in the car together last weekend when Martina McBride's "This One's For The Girls" came on the radio. I was singing along--something I have a pathological compulsion to do when Other Kid piped up from the backseat: "Are you singing?"

Immediately self-conscious, I said, "Um, yes..."

"Well, did you make this song?"

Not sure now where he's going*, I say, hesitantly, "Um, no..."

"Well you sound EXACTLY like the lady on the radio."

(This post is dedicated to Pasta--an old friend from high school, not only because she recently nagged me about posting more often, but because she was there at the start of my belting it out in the car disorder--singing along to Huey Lewis, The Thompson Twins, Duran Duran and a host of other '80s pop stars while driving aimlessly around in the Wilds of New Hampshire.)

*One place he might have been going: the very same week the above exchange took place, Youngest Niece was sitting beside me while I was singing along to a Christina Aguilera song and she said, "Who sings this song?" And I said, "Christina Aguilera..." And she said, "Then let her do it." (This she learned from one of Second Niece's friends, apparently. Other Kid, obviously is less discriminating and doesn't run with quite such a cynical crowd.)

Perfect Post For February: Call Me Frances

Just after the birth of a baby, there's that moment in the hospital where the pen hovers over the birth certificate form and you want to be sure, really sure that the name you've chosen is the "right" one before setting it down in ink for the government wonks and all the world to see. In the case of Hubby and I, as I'm sure in the case of most parents, the names set down on those official pieces of paper were the result of endless hours of debate and not a little bickering--debate and bickering that often begin well before the birth and sometimes even before the pregnancy. Daughter-Only's name, for example, evolved throughout my earlier pregnancies--when we chose a girl's name only to have a boy and another boy and another boy. The name evolved slightly each time until we arrived at the name we gave Daughter-Only.

Years of work for a name that she had rejected twice by her eighth birthday. For a while, around the time she was four, she insisted upon being called Lisa. A perfectly nice name but not the name we had given her after literally years of effort. And we had no idea (nor do we still) where she came up with the name Lisa (the only possible connection I've been able to think of was The Simpsons, but we weren't fans at that point and I'm not at all sure how she could have heard it). All we do know is that for several weeks, she literally wouldn't answer to anything else.

The second name change made even less sense. One morning when she was six or seven, as she was gathering her backpack for school, she said, "I'm Dr. Ashklomash Coco Peppermint." That one lasted only a couple of days--probably because only she could pronounce it...

During both episodes, I couldn't help remembering when I was in fourth grade and decided my name should be "Frances." I didn't go so far as to insist on my family refering to me solely as Frances, but I did orchestrate a playground game in which we pretended to be from the planet Frantasty and everyone had to be named something that started with "Fran." We were a planet full of Franks and Francines and Franceses. I did it and have no logical explanation why my nine-year-old self wanted to be called what I considered an old lady's name even then. All I can say is that's the same year I went through a persistent, annoying and entirely gross phase of chewing on the ends of my hair.

In any case, Nita, over at Advanced Maternal Age is having name issues with Rio at the moment--issues that any parent (or anyone who wanted to be called "Frances" for no known reason) can probably identify with. She generously shares them in her post "My Name Is..." and in a second post "My Gears Are Grinding." So for a giggle and a trip down memory lane, here's my button:



And, Nita, it's all yours!

Browse other winners at Suburban Turmoil and Petroville.

Top Ten Symptoms Of Severe Sleep Deprivation

10. You are disproportionately amused by this 6:40 a.m. announcement on the radio: "Our random drawing name this morning is Harry Beaver of blah blah. Harry Beaver, if you call by 7, you'll receive blah blah blah. Once again, Harry Beaver, we must hear from you by 7 a.m."

9. This line from Steve Martin's Born Standing Up seems not only disproportionately brilliant but an alarmingly apt description of much of your life: "Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration."

8. You find Chuck Palahniuk's latest book Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey disproportionately moving and heartwarming despite the fact that practically every character and situation in the book is bizarre and disturbing to a point just this side of repugnant.

7. You find yourself disproportionately fascinated with the word "disproportionately."

6. Your "Top Ten" list is only five items long.