I just drove 548 miles with an unpaid stand-up comedian, a maharajah, a mustachioed brigand and a Christian-phobe.

I just drove 548 miles with an unpaid stand-up comedian, a teenage maharajah, a mustachioed brigand and a Christian-phobic person who is trying to tour the U.S. by way of leaving his personal belongings in as many different cities as possible.

We all went out of town this Thanksgiving, to be present at the eight months belated memorial of my 101 year old grandfather and to be with my extended family for the holiday. We had to get up early and drive to Tucson on Saturday morning the 19th.

So I spent several days before, busily scurrying around and gathering items to bring with us, fussing loudly and trailing various lists in my wake: Lists of items to go in the cooler in the morning. Lists of things to do at the last minute. Lists of clothes to bring. Lists of general agenda items. Lists of which lists to refer to. That kind of thing.

My husband, Mike, sat on the couch, tired from working all day, and tried to ignore me while I thrust various bulletins at him. Then we got in a fight about how I do all the list-making work, while he just waits and throws everything in a bag and then does all the driving while I sleep fucks everything up.

And so on.

Then, on Friday night, I was so tired from making all of these lists, and choosing which scarves to pack with which socks, that we had to go out to eat. We brought my mom with us, who was going to be doing the unpaid labor of running our insane asylum for ducks house sitting for us for a couple of days, until she left for her Thanksgiving trip to Maryland.

My mom had brought prints of a photo she had taken of our kids and our canine-donkey hybrid dog that she wanted to show us, to the restaurant. Some were in color and others were in sepia tones. Obviously I have never heard anyone actually say "sepia" before, because when she said it, I told her she was saying it wrong.

Yes, that is straw. We are wanna-be farmers. That's just how we roll.

Me: "I think it's "SEH-pee-UH."

Mom: "I'm pretty sure it's "SEE-pee-UH."

Me: "That sounds like a condition. Like something potentially fatal. 'I'm afraid you have SEE-pee-UH, ma'am.' (turning) Mike..."

Mike: "What?"

Me: "Do you say "SEH-pee-UH" or "SEE-pee-UH?"

Mike: (pauses) "No."

So, we ended up sending my eldest Rowan over to my friend Jenn's table to find out how it was really pronounced, and it turned out I was wrong. Meanwhile, Mike kept telling everyone that the correct term was "chromatic".

Rowan somehow ended up with a coloring book of biblical stories to entertain him while we waited for our food. This made me nervous. I don't want to end up being known as the family of heathens whose teenager defaced sacred coloring books at the Hill Diner. Nevertheless, since I obviously am incapable of substituting good judgement for a desire to amuse myself, I found myself suggesting that he tarnish a page full of archangels.

The page had four angels on it and said "Which one of these angels is different?" One of them had no wings, so the answer was gratuitously obvious. I couldn't help thinking it would be more interesting if one of the angels had horns and fangs, for instance. Having said that, I then had to insist that no one actually disfigure any heavenly creatures.

Which is what good parenting is all about.

"Which one of these did Jesus give to people to eat, Mom?" Rowan showed me a page with a puffy loaf of bread, a weird plant that looked like it might be part sea anemone and a broadly smiling fish that looked like a cuddly stuffed animal. Meanwhile, my mother and husband lapsed into discussing theology. This is normal for them.

Mom: "I read about one guy who claimed that he believes in what he calls 'prosperity Christianity' and says the justification for this is that the wise men brought the baby Jesus gold, frankincense and myrrh and that he accepted them."

Me: (disgustedly) "He accepted them???"

Mike: (making wide, adorable eyes and holding open his arms with infant-like excitement) "Gold! Ga ga goo goo! Myrrh! Ba ba boo boo!"

The thought of a Capitalist Baby Jesus caused all of us to laugh uncontrollably and, for no apparent reason, in the middle of a crowded restaurant, for most of an hour. I can hardly wait to have another baby so I can put frankincense and myrrh on my gift registry.

Idiosyncratic behavior also characterized the next day's car trip to Tucson.

He is...the most interesting man in the world.

At the half-way point, in Socorro, Mikalh, who is six, bought a mustache he could stick on his face like a sticker and wore it all day. We forced Rowan to make a phone call about his church service project, which almost lead to a public full-bore family rift when he threatened to walk out of the restaurant before relenting. Devin, my sixth grader, turned out to have lost the biography he was supposed to be reading at the restaurant we ate at.

Rowan's tombstone will probably just say: "What?"

We kept driving.

"Let's tell jokes!", said the newly mustachioed Mikalh. "What is a vampire's favorite food?"

"What?" said everyone.

"BROCCOLI!!" he announced happily.

(silence.)

"I think it'd at least be...red meat," Rowan offered delicately.

"BROCCOLI!" Mikalh insisted, becoming increasingly angry. An argument ensued and was quelled. The jokes continued.

Mikalh: "What is the finger's greatest enemy?"

Everyone: "What?"

Mikalh: "The GALAXY!"

(silence.)

Me: "WHY?"

Mikalh: "BECAUSE he doesn't like it."

And so on.

By the time, we hit Tucson, everyone was weak with hunger and desperate to find a place to eat. The kids were enlisted to do a visual scan for suitable restaurants. The guidelines were that we needed to ID places likely to have lots of vegetables available, and options other than pasta and cheese.

Devin, nervously contemplating the Fast Food Inquisition.

At some point, we drove past a Church's Fried Chicken, and Devin declared his disapproval with a voice full of dread.

Devin: "We can't eat THERE. I went there with the Smythes and it's a CHRISTIAN restaurant."

Me: "What do you MEAN by that?"

Devin: "They close on Sundays. And they asked us if we wanted the Christian chicken."

Me: "How can you even tell if a chicken is Christian?"

Mike: "It's simple. The chicken has accepted Jesus Christ as its lord and savior."

Me: "Or is it like a choice they offer: 'Do you want the Original Recipe, Christian, or Extra Christian Chicken?'"

Devin: "I'm not kidding, Mom."

Rowan: "I see an Italian restaurant!"

Me: "Too much pasta and cheese."

Devin: "What's wrong with pasta and cheese?"

Me: "Mike and I can't eat dairy or flour, still."

Mikalh:  (confidentially) "Milk makes me FART."

We ended up at a Teppanyaki grill, which was really good, and, through pure force of will, I made Rowan order a real Japanese dish instead of the fucking chicken fingers. The chef expertly tossed cooked shrimp into my boys' open mouths, and everyone had great fun. We even had enough vegetables. (Mike and I each have to eat twelve ounces of vegetables at lunch and dinner. Don't ask.)

Devin: "Mom, why didn't the guy toss you any shrimp? He tossed some to the other grown-ups over there."

Me: (sighing) "Because I'm uptight and he can just tell. He can tell, even though I'm wearing double pony tails and a tee shirt that says "Little Miss Sunshine", that it would be a bad idea to throw shrimp at me."

And then I got depressed.

But, after the landlord was done being mad at us for arriving so late, and Mike had come back from racing off  and leaving his Teppanyaki meal getting cold to go and get the key, we were happy because our rental was beautiful. And the week had just begun.

The good news is that I can feel very special.

If I needed a reminder that I am just like everyone else, yesterday was not reassuring. However, if, as my life history indicates, I just want to be "special", then things are going exactly as planned. With only two more days left of winter break, I had a long list of errands to run. Here was my list:

1. take my teenage son, Rowan, to his get his allergy shot, 
2. then go to his prescribing doctor in Santa Fe. 
3. We needed to hit Trader Joe's and Target while down in Santa Fe, 
4. and then on the way back pick up my cat at the vet. (My cat was at the vet spending down my small savings getting all his goddamned teeth dealt with so that I don't feel like a bad person, but that is another blog post entirely.) 

But, first, I had to go to the lab and get blood drawn.

If you know me very well, the background of your consciousness is now filled with maniacal laughter. In case you don't know, I am part vampire. Blood draws for me typically take 45 minutes to an hour and end with a room full of fascinated, frustrated phlebotomists apologizing profusely while they cover me all over with cotton balls and medical tape.

This time, I made sure I drank plenty of water coffee first.

At the appointment with bad-assed rheumatologist who ordered these tests, my impression was that he was generally satisfied that I had primary Fibromyalgia and was just going to check a couple of rare conditions to make sure they were not provoking the fibro symptoms. Hence, I was a bit surprised when he emailed me lab orders that looked like this:

Me: "It would have saved time if he had just had a 'select all' option."

Mike: "I'm sure he's just being very thorough."

Me: "Anti-Smith antibodies sound like something you would need in the Matrix."

Rowan: "Yeah, antibodies to keep him from doing that thing where he takes you over and you become Agent Smith."

Me: "Exactly. I might need those."

Rowan: "They are testing you for C4. That's cool! Actually, though it would suck if you had C4 in your blood and then you were shot because boom!"

I have certainly gotten a lot of lab ordered before, so I grimly accepted this reality and went, orders in hand, to meet my fate. I had never been to this particular lab before and when I arrived there, I was pretty focused on warning the phlebotomists that I was a hard stick, so that they didn't get all freaked out when they started dealing with me. But this turned out to be a very minor problem compared to their reaction to my lab orders.

At first the lab tech, a sweet-looking pony-tailed woman in her mid-twenties, sat down with a professional demeanor at the computer to review the lab-work that had been sent for me, but very soon her competent exterior began to crumble.

Lab Tech: "He must have like 50 tests ordered here! Is he crazy?"

Me: "Well, my primary care doctor did say, when he sent me to this rheumatologist, that this would be the closest thing to seeing Dr. House."

LT: "(pensively) I think I need to call the doctor's office and just make sure there isn't some mistake. I mean, what about your insurance? Do you know how much money this would cost? Did he enter all the diagnostic codes for all these tests?"

Me: "I don't think it's a mistake. He sent me a pdf with the written orders and they're all checked off. I brought it with me in case they didn't come up on your computer."

LT: "(excitedly) Can I see that?"

Me: "Sure."

I retrieved the lab order, and the phlebotomist studied it in disbelief.

LT; "He's more or less checked the whole thing."

Me: "I made a similar observation."

LT: "I have worked here four years, and I have never seen anything like this. Can I ask...what is wrong with you? I mean, what symptoms do you have?"

Me: "Well, I have fibromyalgia, but I had an unexplained hepatitis and pleurisy and I have some joint damage. I think they are trying to rule out conditions like Lupus or other mixed connective tissue disorders."

LT: "Oh...I guess that makes sense."

She made two calls, wherein she made several snarky remarks about the number of tests ordered being astronomical, and it was ultimately concluded that yes, my doctor did want for me to have all these tests, and that they would require about thirty tubes of blood. The lab could only take fifteen at a time, so I would have to come in twice.

LT: "If I take more than that from you, I'm afraid you won't be able to drive."

So, forty-five minutes after I arrived, they actually inserted a needle in my vein and, miracle of miracles, blood came out, and filled all fifteen tubes. (I tried my anti-Smith joke on two lab techs, but my level of geek was apparently slightly elevated above what could be appreciated in this situation.)

Image credit

LT: "You should definitely eat something when you leave here. Do you feel faint?"

Me: "Yes, but I always feel faint. That's why they are running all these labs on me."

LT: "Oh. I see.  Well, your doctor is being very thorough. The good news is you can feel very...umm....special."

Me: "That is a great relief to me."

LT: "Before you go let me get your urine test collection container."

Me: "My what?"

LT: "Oh, for one of these tests, you will need to collect all your urine for twenty-four hours in this container and bring it back to us when you come back for the other blood tests. You might want to plan on staying home that day."

Me: "I guess so."

Although, I could totally get another blog post out of what would happen if I took it to work with me all day, and that is unbelievably tempting. It's a full-time job being special.

If I come up with Anti-Smith antibodies, I'm totally going to assume I'm "The One".

A Ninja Christmas Brunch

My family is impossibly geeky. It should not be this much fun to use the note-assigned whistles from our traditional British holiday crackers to play "Jingle Bells". 

Victorian Trading Company

Next year, in addition to the holiday crackers we decided that we will also get a peppermint pig. It turns out the only reason anything has been going wrong for any of us is that you are supposed to get one of these and beat it to smithereens with a tiny elegant hammer then share the peppermint shards, and we haven't been doing this. Someone should have said something. I probably wouldn't even have developed fibromyalgia had I known to do this every year. 

I worked all the last two days cleaning and organizing and prepping food, then woke up early this morning. (Actually this was just because I can't sleep anymore). I prepared a brunch which consisted of miniature frittatas made with local fresh eggs, portabellas and baby spinach, home-fried potatoes with Vidalia onions, gingerbread pancakes with powdered sugar, chicken apple sausages and fresh pineapple with pink lady apples. I made a large buffet  thermos of hot chocolate from scratch with cocoa powder, sugar and fresh milk.  There were also dates and nuts in the shell. I whipped cream from scratch, and shaved bittersweet chocolate myself with a vegetable peeler into delicate curls. 

In other words, this was some bad-assed shit. NINJA brunch.

We ran out of food before everyone could get seconds, which was either really cool or embarrassing.

Of course, my husband was called to do work on-call right when we were exchanging gifts, and then one child had a personal emotional crisis and required counseling while standing barefoot in the snow, threatening to run away from home. Another child forgot to take his ADD meds and narrowly missed breaking every picture in the house while he ran around armed with multiple Nerf guns. Somebody's new Narnia shield got broken and they forgot to practice their non-violent communication when explaining their upset to the unwitting perpetrator.

It turned out I am catching a cold, so I progressively lost my voice during the gathering and by the end, when I said goodbye to my guests, I called out, "Have fun storming the castle!" in a voice like gargled cat hairs. 

Christmas is finally over. And I think we snuck up on that shit and smashed it like Silent Death smashes a peppermint pig. Even if we are all bat-shit crazy.

I am like the virgin at the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

It remains very mystifying to figure out how to promote my writing, but all the methods suggested seems to have something to do with putting a badge or ad on my site. So soon, my blog is going to look like a Cub Scout. And still somehow, hardly anyone will be reading it. Which means the badges aren't doing what they are supposed to do; attracting readers like web-based pheromone patches.

There is a major flaw in the idea of writing as a career: Writers are good at writing, not sales. If they were good at sales, they wouldn't be writers, they would be assholes.

At least if I was an erotic massage therapist, I'd know my work was appreciated.  I probably should have done that as a sideline instead. I need to be appreciated. Writers are terribly insecure. We pretty much need people to follow us around the house congratulating us for getting dressed and breathing in and out consistently. It is a pain in the ass for my husband, so I have trained the dog to pursue me gushingly everywhere I go. (Actually, this required no training.)

This is just another example of my experience of having missed out on the Instruction Manual for How to Survive Life. I now fear that getting it right will have something to do with understanding hash-tags, which I believe are either special gift labels used for breakfast potatoes or something to do with cannabis resin.

I am like the virgin at the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Photo by Alex Erde

Do these neck ridges make me look fat?

This week when the Bloggess posted something referencing Kardashians, I accidentally thought their name was pronounced "Cardassians".

Let me explain: I live in a paper bag. I have actually spent more time in the last several years discussing the nature of reality than observing popular culture. As a result, I have only a vague sense of who "the Kardashians" are. Like it fucking matters.

But I have seen Star Trek. So, of course, my husband and I got in a fight about whether or not the aggressive, reptilian-looking species that conquered the Bajorans were, in fact, called the Cardassians. And, of course, he was right.

But it's easy to see my confusion, right?

I'm having an early midlife crisis with technicolor, knee socks and pony tails.

Today's #ReverbBroads11 prompt:Did you taste any new flavors this year? Did you love them or hate them or in between? Will you incorporate these new flavors into your life? via Bethany at  http://bethanyactually.com/

Color.

All my adult life I have tended to choose black clothes most of the time to avoid having to coordinate colors. And this year I actually embraced color. Kinda like when Dorothy first stepped into Oz.

Also I started wearing ponytails and knee socks. Because I've had undiagnosed fibromyalgia and so I have spent the last several months wondering if I am going to be sick all my life and whether I will be able to work and who I'm gonna be. I think this is my version of a midlife crisis. So, the result is copious writing, color and questionable hairstyles.

I'm just gonna go with it.

I am a Cylon Hybrid. And two more things I can do better than you.

Today's #ReverbBroads11 prompt: What are three things you are better at than most people? via Catie at catiecake.wordpress.com

This would be easy, except that, in order to maintain your interest and avoid repeating myself, I should probably stay away from the topics of collecting animals, making lists, abusing caffeine and making wisecracks. Which doesn't actually leave a whole lot else to write about. 

And I'm not sure that exuberant fertility can be considered an actual skill set.

There remain a few stray items remain to consider.

Item #1:

I am the human central computer which powers my family. And I do this way better than my husband and kids, who all have ADHD and can't find their own socks. Perhaps you'll be more impressed if I say that I even do this better than most mere mortal mothers that I know. (The ones who do yoga, meditate and sit peacefully, watching their kids playing.)

Let me elaborate.

Have you ever seen Battlestar Galactica? I am talking here about the 2004 version, not the old, irrelevant one that I have not seen. On the series, the Cylon base ships are powered by special Cylons known as Hybrids which are "specially constructed as living computers that manage the autonomous functions of the basestar, including navigation, propulsion (especially faster-than-light) and climate control." 

I am like that, except without as many tubes.

At any given time, with or without a migraine or sudden attack of fibromyalgia symptoms, I am collecting data and monitoring the status of my family's needs and conditions as to school lunches, long-term projects, extracurricular activities and need for transport thereto, immediate need for clean socks and underwear, dinner menus, shopping lists, prescription refills, and emotional health, as well as a host of other functions. And like Hybrids, I can also do this even from a bath. 

At our house, my husband is the computer genius, but I'm the computer.

Item #2:

I can find deeper meaning in anything. And I can do it without even subscribing to conventional religious beliefs-another one of my superpowers! 

Other people just want to figure out how to make class lists for religious education at our church. I want to figure out what is standing in our way of fulfilling every child's deepest need for authentic religious education. Other people want to buy groceries. I want to discuss what would have to happen to feed everyone in the world while preserving the environment. 

Other people just want to be happy. But I just want to be authentic. (Me and Jean-Paul.)

Item #3:

I can find what's wrong in any given situation. It's a talent, really. 

I'm not an Eeyore. I'm don't typically engage in that kind of maudlin repining one associates with depressives and angsty teenagers. I mean I find what is actually wrong. If you want a critical but empathetic analysis of your relationship skills, I'm your girl. Want to know what is wrong with communication in your organization? Just ask. Why can't you lose weight? You get the idea.

In other words, I'm your worst nightmare. A rabidly organized idealist with an annotated list of your shortcomings. Merry Christmas. 

Oh crap. This is another one of those "I think this is piss" moments.

Image credits:

I stole all of these images from Facebook memes that came through my stream and internet searches for Battlestar Galactica. So sue me.

Another life saved by a sick sense of humor.

#ReverbBroads11 prompt: Name and explain the one guilty pleasure you can't live without. Then explore the idea of how you would feel if you gave that thing up for a year. via Neha at whereyouarehere.blogspot.com

Let me explain. A terrible accident has happened. I have allowed myself to be swept up in the enthusiasm of writing and pretending to be a grown-up writer, and ended up here: Writing on an assigned prompt with a group of women. 

I hate both assignments and being part of a large group of women. In both cases, it's because of the rules that I just can't seem to follow. This post being a good example of that. 

Hello, ladies, it is good to meet you. I will introduce myself and my blog today by announcing that I indiscriminately hate both members of my own gender and the activity in which we are all engaged here. I will now show myself to the door...

Shakespeare speaking at a Writer's Convention

The guilty pleasure I cannot live without, not even for the length of time it takes to make a good impression?   Snark. 

Snapshot #1:

I am standing at my locker, first year of middle school, in direct violation of the official stay-the-Hell-away-from-your-locker-between-classes policy, attempting to extract some item which, naturally, I have forgotten. The principal, a twig-like ghost of a man to whom I have never before directly spoken, comes upon me and regrettably asks the following question: 

"Are you at your locker between classes?' to which I reply..."No."

Twenty-five years later, I would still 100 times rather serve detention than have answered that question any other way.

Snapshot #2:

I am twenty-five, lying on my own bed, in a country cottage in the primordial redwood forest of Camp Meeker, California, engaged in the act of giving birth to my second son, Devin. I have reached that critical, consuming part of childbirth just past transition labor where I will soon begin to push. My midwife, an officiously capable ex-hippie in her fifties, is urging me to get on my hands and knees, which I do not want to do, in order to ease my labor. In order not to appear rude and to accommodate her obvious concern for my well-being, I assure her, 

"I will. I promise. Just as soon as I am done having this baby."

Snapshot #3:

I now work as an instructional assistant and teach reading to kids. One particular lesson component for second graders a few months ago centers around using descriptive words in writing. It includes a minimally passable example of descriptive language titled Student Model, depicting a red bicycle, which I read to my group of three boys and one girl. In order to then solicit a response of some kind from them, I add,

"But this is not what you guys write. You write", I say dully," 'I like my bike...because it is cool.'" 

 "You want to bring the reader in and make them see what you see! Like this: 'I love my bedroom. It has pink walls and a canopy bed. I have a tiara tattoo on my wall and a bedspread that says Princess. It is my favorite place in the house.' by...MICHAEL."

Michael, and everyone else, erupt in uproarious laughter, having already become long used to Ms. Adams' Reading Class and Comedy Half Hour.

My dog got into the garbage. And lived. Because I wanted to take a photo and post it on my blog. Otherwise, I'd have just asphyxiated the sucker. There. Another life saved by a sick sense of humor. 

I'm going to have to cheat on this assignment. I cannot actually imagine what would happen to me if I gave up Snark for a whole year. All I can reasonably say is that I would stop being me. Which, I guess, is why I find it so difficult to give up for family reunions, staff meetings and parent-teacher conferences. 

If I stopped being snarky, I guess I would just have to rely more on my other defining traits. 

Like compassion. 

And I'd probably end up working in a leper colony. No, a sanctuary for hedgehogs with leprosy. And no one wants that. Least of all the hedgehogs.  So, just live with it, people. OK?

I went shopping on Fourth Avenue in Tucson and decided my son can go to college there because they have newspaper stands that look like robots.

This is my son Rowan. 

Rowan is smart. We are pinning a lot of our hopes for the future on him because he can do math, as well as vacuum and unload the dishwasher. 

We figure this more or less qualifies him for just about anything he wants to do. The sky's the limit. 

And once he makes it good in the world, he can take care of us.

Right now, he is fourteen and in eighth grade. So, he is pretty much only interested finding places in conversation to say "That's what she said." and setting things on fire. 

But you can see that potential just simmering underneath everything he does. (Like telling "That's what she said" jokes but with impeccable grammar and reading comics, but comics based on Greek myths, that kind of thing.)

I think a lot about his future, mainly since mine is already pretty much botched, and I would like to be able to send him to a good college. 

In order to fulfill on this, the method I am currently employing is to check his grades online repeatedly and question him about every mistake he has made so that the prospect of failure becomes a sort of unlivable disaster in his mind. This is what is called positive reinforcement. 

It is a very powerful parenting technique. You should try it. As a result of my approach, my son has very high grades and will probably kill me in my sleep before he ever graduates high school.

Anyway, as I've said, I was recently in Tucson, Arizona, visiting my extended family. On the last day before we had to depart, my two oldest kids had already flown home to spend Thanksgiving with their dad, and my husband, my youngest son and I had dropped my father and his girlfriend off at the airport and were looking for some place to act like tourists. Primarily, I wanted to buy a spoon that said "Tucson" so that when I am an old lady, I can have a wall covered with an array of tacky spoons to prove that I once left my house.

We ended up visiting Fourth Avenue, which is the hip college area of Tucson. I was just looking to kill a few hours and find a spoon, but based on my findings, I have decided that Rowan can go to college there. 

I haven't actually seen the actual University of Arizona, nor do I know if they have any programs that will be of interest to my son, when, four and a half years from now, he graduates high school. I can't afford the out-of-state tuition, either, but a little debt never hurt anyone anyway. Stay with me, though, because THIS is what the newspaper machines look like:

We looked around for several hours and entered various stores. I shopped for a long time because choosing a college for your fourteen year-old is an important decision which requires a lot of browsing. Some of my additional findings were:

Awesome garbage cans!

A communist coffee shop. Every good college town needs one.

Excellent pop culture stores with cool signs. 

A hydroponic store for growing "vegetables".

A nearby hookah lounge for smoking "vegetables".

(I am not trying to promote drug abuse. I have not smoked "vegetables" for the last nineteen plus years. I am just documenting the fact that there was a hookah store. I associate hookahs with Alice in Wonderland. That's because I'm so geeky highly literate. I figure if there are hookah stores, there may also be walking chess sets and talking eggs. It just seems logical.)

A mural depicting dead hippies on the wall at a major intersection.

This is some seriously bad-assed shit. AND, as if that's not enough,  you can buy your own mason jar wine glass in a store there!

So, the upshot is that what I really want is for my son is to go to a school where he can grow marijuana, become a sort of New Edition Beatnik and then drop out to join the Communist Party. All so I can go visit a place that makes me feel like I am still sixteen and shopping on the Haight, except without as many people trying to sell me acid (probably just because I'm with the six year old).

I can hardly wait to come visit him there. It solves all of our college problems! It's close enough to drive. We can make sure our relatives keep on eye on him and I can save up until I have enough money to buy a complete set of mason jar wineglasses (you know, for when we have company). We don't drink wine, but we can use them for grape juice, or perhaps, cooled mint tea sweetened with a hint of organic agave nectar (since we can't even drink juice these days, either). 

I've looked into it online and I think, if Rowan continues to get good grades, they may accept him at an in-state rate.  But if you say anything to him, please don't mention the hookahs. 

I'm trying not to be a bad influence.

This one is for the other closet trailer trash among us.

FOREWARNING: Please don't read this if you're just going to become annoyed. Life is much too short. If you are annoyed by any of the following:

1. The Coen Brothers
2. Samuel L. Jackson
3. Renowned American authors whose greatest works include hand-drawn sketches of assholes...

...you will not like this post. Go read the Bible and knit sweaters for your kittens. We should all do what we enjoy. Just sayin'.

I don't know if you've noticed, but I swear a lot.

I didn't always. And I don't do it while teaching elementary school students how to read, or while sitting in as youth advisor on Sunday to a group of mid-schoolers. (Because I don't have Tourette's Syndrome.) That said, I refuse to feel bad about it.

I'm just sort of in hiding.

-Kurt Vonnegut, from Breakfast for Champions

I secretly happen to think I can lay claim to a certain amount of crassness as the cultural contribution of my generation, and the one before, and I mean that in all sincerity, and in a way that suggests that it is every bit as valid as jazz, or women's liberation, in terms of the advancement of the human species.

Let's just put "motherfucker" right up there with penicillin in terms of human achievement.
Thank you, Samuel L. Jackson.

This proviso: Kurt Vonnegut, from whose singular style I've poached my favorite line, was the author of the great work Slaughterhouse-Five, which was peppered periodically with the aforementioned word. Vonnegut remarked, some years after its publication and after years of uproar and of attempts to ban Slaughterhouse Five from schools and libraries that "Ever since that word was published, way back in 1969, children have been attempting to have intercourse with their mothers. When it will stop no one knows."

And so on.

If you want to consider the necessity of crassness, please take a moment (while your kids are in another room) to watch this great moment from the cultural memory of Gen X:

O.K., if you're not finding this funny, I'm thinking you should stop now, and wait til I post about something else, because I'm probably going to start really irritating you now. I also think this is really funny. (You really should listen to it. At least if you were a teenager in the late eighties or very early nineties before rap and metal ever crossed genre. But not a teenager who liked the New Kids on the Block.)

So, despite all the evidence you've just seen, and although both my parents swore freely, but not prolifically, in front of me, on the assumption that I should be able to determine when it was appropriate to swear and when not, I was not a foul-mouthed kid. They were right. I did not seem to feel compelled to swear. If anything, I felt superior to my mom, who called bad drivers "turkeys" and worse. So, I didn't swear a lot, and never got in trouble for swearing that I can recall.

Until I became a teenager. 

And I just fell in love with crassness. Because I was angry and the "in the face"ness of crass humor just appealed to me. And it still does.

If you take all the "fuck" peppered generously through Eddie Izzard's epic comedic performance of Dress to Kill, which is otherwise largely inoffensive, it isn't as funny. Being "awful" just isn't as funny as being "fucking awful", even if it is said with an English accent. 

In fact, the Brits do the word "fuck" better than anyone else. They make it sound sort of...sophisticatedly frank.

Americans do a better job with "motherfucker", really.

Periodically, my secret life as a foul-mouthed white trash peon has come into conflict with my public life as a Slightly Hipper and More Educated version of June Cleaver, which is what I am attempting to project at work. (That or the Enlightened Secular Spiritual Powerhouse that I am pretending to be at church.)

These are some instances of that, all with relation to my offspring:

• Fourth grade (circa 2007), my son Rowan, gets hurts on the playground swings at his school, apparently due to an other child's stupidity, and remarks (and again, he does not swear any more often than I did as a child): "So-and-So, that fuckin' HURT!" This gets worse. The teacher on duty, who happens to be pretty strict, marches up to Rowan with the child he has sworn at, who has now told on him, and says, "WHAT did you say, Rowan?", to which my highly literal child faithfully repeats EXACTLY what he said and ends up being written up for disrespect to an adult for having repeated it to her. And I am forced to apologize for her over email for his offense. Whoops.

• Mikalh, in kindergarten, while going to school two doors down from me,as I am working in kindergartner as an aide at this time, loses at a game he is playing with other kids, under the supervision of a parent during a class party, and yells "GOD DAMN IT!" loud and clear into a classroom of parents and kids. All of which I find out about while still at work. Joy.

• Backing up a bit...My son, Mikalh, who is four at the time, says to me after overhearing me remark that something (most likely something he overheard his dad and me saying about politics) is "stupid", "Mom, you should not say STUPID. And also....(he looks at me, doe-eyed, with the indulgence of a patient and loving teacher)...you shouldn't say FUCK."

I am happy that now two of my children are old enough to swear or not at their own discretion and have learned most of the popular swear words without any of my help (thanks to Lonely Island, their friends with more permissive parents and the internet), so I don't have to be so cautious. I still try to avoid repeating anything I think Mikalh is likely to enjoy echoing while attending first grade, lest I have to explain myself, especially anything that could be construed as hurtful.

But there are slips, by adults and older children. 

The other day, Rowan, while trying on his brand new, awesome shiny black dress shirt, tie and slacks (in which he looks like a very blond junior Mafioso), joked "I'm sexy." Naturally, Mikalh then demanded to know what sexy meant, and Rowan, having been caught, said "Ummmmm, it means you look nice." 

"You look sexy, Rowan.," Mikalh announced then admiringly. GREAT. I can hardly wait for him to tell his teacher she looks "sexy".

Hopefully, he won't, and also no one will overhear me, alone in my classroom, saying,

"Where the mother-fuck did I put the Dr. Suess stickers?"

The butthole image is from http://ijustreadaboutthat.wordpress.com. All the videos are from YouTube. 

Somehow I out-geeked myself in Geekland, U.S.A.

I actually am not really a geek. Or, at least, I have never thought of myself as one until pretty recently.

I wasn't a geek in high school.

WELL, freshman year, I was a theater person and something of what is now called a goth, but I gave that up to become a ''rocker" sophomore year. Rockers are not generally accepted as geeks, I think. Or at least, I don't think we were then. At any rate, I definitely wasn't watching Star Wars over and over again and collecting medieval weaponry. I was traipsing through the drainage system of Marin County with bottles of stolen liquor and hanging out at Day on the Green.

Geeks, I would argue, were smart and got good grades. Rockers wore ripped Megadeth t-shirts and smoked Camel straights in the girls' bathroom instead of going to Biology. Rockers ended up at the continuation high school writing poetry about self-hate and making demon-shaped ashtrays in art class.

O.K. I confess. I'm not really sure how this works. "Geek" was not part of the Redwood High School vernacular. You were a Prep, a Rocker, a Rapper, a Mod, a Hippie, a Poser, a Skater, a Jock or a Loser. Or maybe I just don't know. I spent most of my high school career at Redwood hiding out at a couch in the woods by Heatherwood Park. It is possible I may have missed some important information.

Anyway, the upshot is that somehow I have nevertheless managed to distinguish myself during my thirties as being incredibly geeky, in a community where this should not be remotely possible.

For my readers who don't live in Los Alamos, I will simply provide a simple bulleted list of proofs of the implausible level of gaugeable geekiness my current municipality.

• There are more PhDs per capita here than in any other city in the U.S.

• A couple of months ago, my eldest son and I were driving to Smith's when we passed a wizard and two knights having a battle by Ashley Pond. Rowan made me turn back and circle round so he could see it himself, and it wasn't a hallucination. They were really there.

• There is a pond in Los Alamos named after a man called Ashley Pond. So the full name is Ashley Pond Pond. Really.

• March 14 is practically a national holiday here. (Pi Day.) All the local schools make a big deal out of it, and everyone posts "Happy Pi Day!' as their Facebook status. (I keep my head down and try to pretend this isn't happening, since I can't figure out how to relate to it meaningfully, which is the same strategy I use for Ash Wednesday and Superbowl Sunday.)

• There is more than one adult in this town who regularly rides a unicycle to work. One of them also juggles.

• There is a popular brass band composed of adults who walk in parades with hats shaped like birds and other animals.

• There is more than one adult man in this town who, at all times, wears a gas mask. One of them also wears underwear while watering his front lawn.

Photo by Bill Bradford

Anyhow, I have been threatening to show up as truly geeky for a while now, somehow, despite all this. I credit this mainly to the fact that I work at a school, which, believe it or not, is not exactly a haven for Geekhood. Teachers, I have concluded, were not the school geeks growing up. Those were the people who went on to become scientists and computer technicians  Teachers were the officious, motherly girls in your class that kept telling you what to do, who got A's and B's and weren't so good at Math. 

So nobody laughs at my Mental Floss t-shirts, and people wonder why I wear knee socks and double pony tails. But whatever. I'm used to being the subject of quiet scorn.

Why? Well, before I became the teenager who your mother wanted you to stay away from, I was that weird girl who sat in the corner of the elementary school class reading and creating elaborate fantasy worlds while I was supposed to be doing a math sheet. So, yeah, I guess I was once a geek. I have a geekish background. 

I submit:

• I played Dungeons and Dragons with my rocker friends, and I still have an emotional attachment to the elvish character I created during those years.

• At one point, I had memorized all those things the audience is supposed to shout at live re-enactments of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's still hard to hear "The Time Warp" without breaking into song.

• As a child, I read the Greek Myths the way other children read comics.

• These were some of my Halloween costumes: Medusa, a stalk of asparagus, two-headed monster (with friend)...Anyway, I tended to win Most Original.

• I really like Lewis Carroll.

O.K. This is the problem:

You're saying "WHO?" 

Lewis. Fucking. Carroll.  He wrote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865.  But you never read it. You saw the Disney movie. And last year you saw the Tim Burton version, and you compared that with the Disney version, favorably or unfavorably. You are as interested in this particular item of classic English literature as you are in reading Beowulf, which is not at all. (Confession: I don't want to read Beowulf either. Please don't make me. In college, someone made me read Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock and it almost ruined my life. I'm afraid Beowulf might be really bad, too.)

Anyway, I didn't know all that 'til this Halloween. I read my littlest child, Mikalh, both Alice's Adventures and its sequel Through the Looking Glass this past summer, and, with enormous enthusiasm, he informed me that this Halloween, he would be the Cheshire Cat and I would be Alice. Which sounded really fun to me. Lo and behold, my mother, who loves classic literature, said she would be the Dutchess, and my husband would be the King of Hearts. Then Mike's family, who are the craftiest people alive, got involved, and the project spawned a Mad Hatter, White Rabbit and Queen of Hearts. It was like kismet.

But when, in my increasing glee, I began to tell people about our plans, I got the same kind of reaction you get when you aprise people that you are sending your teenager to Star Fleet Academy for the summer, or maybe, that your family spends Sunday evenings gathered round the television watching the Beverly Hillbillies and eating paste. 

"Ohhhh, I tried to read that once, but it was so WEIRD."

Weird? Right. Monty Python is fine with you. Celebrating Pi Day is fine with you. But Lewis Carroll somehow crosses a line.

HUMPH.

I have nothing further to say to you but this:

He thought he saw an Elephant,

That practised on a fife:

He looked again, and found it was

A letter from his wife.

'At length I realise,' he said,

'The bitterness of Life!'

He thought he saw a Buffalo

Upon the chimney-piece:

He looked again, and found it was

His Sister's Husband's Niece.

'Unless you leave this house,' he said,

'I'll send for the Police!'

He thought he saw a Rattlesnake

That questioned him in Greek:

He looked again, and found it was

The Middle of Next Week.

'The one thing I regret,' he said,

'Is that it cannot speak!'

He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk

Descending from the bus:

He looked again, and found it was

A Hippopotamus.

'If this should stay to dine,' he said,

'There won't be much for us!'

He thought he saw a Kangaroo

That worked a coffee-mill:

He looked again, and found it was

A Vegetable-Pill.

'Were I to swallow this,' he said,

'I should be very ill!'

He thought he saw a Coach-and-Four

That stood beside his bed:

He looked again, and found it was

A Bear without a Head.

'Poor thing,' he said, 'poor silly thing!

It's waiting to be fed!'

He thought he saw an Albatross

That fluttered round the lamp:

He looked again, and found it was

A Penny-Postage Stamp.

'You'd best be getting home,' he said:

'The nights are very damp!'

He thought he saw a Garden-Door

That opened with a key:

He looked again, and found it was

A Double Rule of Three:

'And all its mystery,' he said,

'Is clear as day to me!'

He thought he saw a Argument

That proved he was the Pope:

He looked again, and found it was

A Bar of Mottled Soap.

'A fact so dread,' he faintly said,

'Extinguishes all hope!'

-The Mad Gardener's Song by Lewis Carroll

If you don't think THAT'S funny,  I guess you'll just have to stick with the SCA. Look, don't be insulted. It's just that I figure if you're reading me, you're :

1. a family member (I apologize)
2. a personal friend with possibly normal interests (I really do apologize)
3. a secret member of the SCA, or at least someone who could compete well in a cut-throat bout of Lord of the Rings trivia
4. a Star Wars fan
5. a Trekkie
6. someone who likes Ninjas and watches Myth Busters

In short, you are my people. I am merely asking you to take a broader view of the Lewis Carroll thing. It's hard to feel so alone.

Jeez.