Good Riddance

I'm glad to say goodbye to 2007. It started off fine, and there were lots of good things going on, but good was far outweighed by bad things. There was a lot of suffering, sickness and death. So to temper my bad feelings about the year I asked my friends and family to chime in about good things to remember and focus on.

Favorite things about 2007

Mom—our new house and getting Winnie

Me—our new house, thrashers making the playoffs, YC tour, my school chorus

Sean--Still undecided.

Mamy—getting a doggy, feeding a giraffe and a dolphin, George getting a job he likes

George—every minute with my wife, playoffs, Amy’s promotion, playing golf, Travis being a fireman, Recchi, Slava

Aaron--That 2007 is almost over.

Laura—finding karaoke?

Zach—every second spent with you (me).

So here's to a happier, healthier, more positive year 2008.

Ketchup

Here are the numbers:
Spatters and I have lived in our house for 3 months and as of this weekend we have finally emptied out our 2 storage areas and put the things away.

Yesterday Spatters and I spent 5 hours bringing stuff home from our second storage area and putting it away, then Spatters cut down 6 shelves that used to be 8 feet tall to fit in our 7 foot tall basement. After that he and I spent 7 hours in the basement going through all the stuff and putting it away.

This was when I realized I have:
--most of the pictures, letters, cards and notes from friends, boyfriends, and family members that I've received from the time I was 12 until the present
--my diary that I started on the last day of 8th grade and kept writing in until my senior year in college
--all my class notes from undergrad & grad school and workshops, trainings, and conferences since I graduated from undergrad
--all of the scores music I've sung with the ASOC since 1992
--most of my textbooks from being a music major undergrad and grad student
--a collection of music textbooks and reference materials that I've amassed over the years
--several hundred (maybe 1000) record albums that I've collected over the years

From this, I have learned it is time to purge.

More numbers:
*For my job (teaching) I am split between 3 locations.
*For my second job (more teaching) I work with 3-4 choirs.
*Spatters and I had 21 people at our fantastic new house for Thanksgiving. Everyone fit AND everyone got along until yesterday when 2 of my 3 nephews started complaining about being allergic to our 4 cats. Um. I had 2 cats, and Sean had 2 cats, ee married, that equals 4 cats. Get over it. Take some allergy medicine and quit whining.
*I have 13 concerts to perform in or lead between now and Dec. 20th.

Homies

Oh Mother. May? It is shameful that I have not updated since May, I guess, but I have had a busy and wacky summer. Classes, travel, more classes, buying a house, catching up on doctor and dentist appointments, plus getting ready to have a room at school instead of being a floatie.


So, yeah, buying a house was in the list. Spatters and I have been looking casually and not-so-casually for more than a year for a place that fits us and fits our style, but almost as importantly, fits our stuff. I had a full and functional townhouse for me and my 2 cats before we got married, and since Spatters joined the homestead, bringing his stuff and his 2 cats, we've been bursting at the seams. And he didn't really bring that much stuff. Now, 3 years later, we have our townhouse full of stuff plus two storage areas full of more stuff. I must admit we have a stuff addiction. So buying a house was not just necessary to acquire some personal space, but also for our own good. Now we can buy more stuff that we don't have to pay storage fees for!

[It's a bit of a miracle that someone who shuns new things as much as I do found a man who not only is smart and attractive and funny but who also shares my taste for the odd, the inexpensive, and the recycled--also known as the used. One of the (many) times during our dating period that I realized I could give up the glorious time called "living alone" for Spatters was when we were riding in his battered, rusty, and as-old-as-us pickup truck heading out for a day of yard sales and thrift stores. I felt like Madonna when she chose the guy in the old pickup over the Material Boys in her video. How could I NOT fall for a man who values a $5 outfit as much as me?]

So for the last year and a half I've obsessively scoured Realtor websites and we'd take the rare weekends in which we weren't working to drive all over town looking for the home that belongs to us. Let me tell you, photos online never look like real life. Sometimes the photos played David Blaine-like tricks on the eye, making a dumpy, tiny, filthy, shack look awesome. Sometimes the frame of the photo ended right where the dilapidated single-wide trailer next door began. The photos hid the dingy smells, the holes in the floors, the crack dealers next door, the unfriendly neighbors.

But finally I found it. The house. It has orange walls in the living room and a white brick fireplace. It has vaulted ceilings. It looks like it was built in the 50's (for us a BIG bonus), but it was built in the 70's (less wear and tear on the structure and a bit more advanced building materials). And it's bigger than it looked in the pictures. But best of all it's close to where we are now, so we can still be close to our friends and family, plus we can keep our usual haunts without having to learn new ones.

So despite the seller, who was "motivated" but not amenable to much of anything we asked for, we're closing on Thursday! Hooray!

Ma

Greeting card and candy companies have really done a number on us. There are all these holidays that have been created for which we all feel guiltier, lonelier, or more of a loser because we don't do the right thing or don't think of the right thing to do for our "special someone" in our lives. Valentine's Day, Secretary's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Administrative Assistant's Day....

I'd like to get away from the tyranny of the real holidays too, or at least what they make us do. What if you don't have presents that are meaningful or thoughtful for someone at Christmas because it's the most ridiculously busy time of the year? You just have to buy them something anyway. What if you don't feel like partying (another word I hate--it used to be a noun, but it's been made into a verb) on New Year's Eve, which happens to be Spatters' birthday. Do you know how hard it is to find something fun to do on New Year's Eve that doesn't involve masses of drunkards?

I prefer to buy my friends and family thoughtful gifts when I see something they'd like, and not have to wait until Christmas to give it to them. As if I ever wait. I (hope I) treat my husband like he's precious to me every day and not just in February. I hope, even though I always have a full schedule, that I plan or buy things for my friends seesters, and Mom and John that let them know they're important.

I've written about my enormous and weird family many times, talked about our backyard, our hockey addiction, family lore. But because of the "holiday' this weekend I've decided to write about my Mom. Maybe I'm giving in to the Hallmark dominion, but she deserves some admiration.

When I see young families who struggle to get places on time with their 1-2 kids in their minivan, carrying diaper bags and crap announcing, "we're parents and everyone should admire us and put up with our children" I think of my Mom. She had FIVE girls. Within six years.

Let me put this into perspective:

The summer before my oldest sister started first grade, I was born. And there were three more sisters in between, ages 5, 4, not quite 1, then me, the newborn.

We went everywhere. To hockey games and practices, camping, to the store, to the mall, to Stone Mountain, to Maine, to Six Flags. I wonder at those people who "can't because of the kids." My Dad worked full time, often in other states. My Mom was home with five girls, until I started Kindergarten, living in the South away from her support network of family and friends who could give her some peace or some time for herself.

Instead she kept us in line, raised us with a healthy understanding of sarcasm, a strong work ethic, taught us manners, embroidered our jeans, made kick-ass Halloween costumes from scratch every year, AND had a real dinner on the table every night at 6pm when Daddy got home, which we ate together, with the TV off, and we didn't leave the table until we asked to be excused. That's just what folks did. They didn't need child psychologists or nannies to figure out how to raise humans instead of brats or little animals.

Mom has embraced the Mom role. For Daddy's hockey team, which was made up of mostly young homesick guys from the North, Mom took on the role of "Team Mutha" (which was sewn on the back of her jersey). She gave the boys advice, and gave the referees hell. And anyone else who needed it.

When our friends were over Mom would play games with all of us and treat the kids like people, not like children. In middle school and high school and college it was the same. My friends would come in packs to the house, and sit up all night around the kitchen table talking to Mom about everything under the sun. I was told by my friends many times, "I wish I could talk to MY Mom like that." Everybody called her Mom. Even people who were just a few years younger than her. My 18 year old nephew used to tell everyone Gram was his best friend. That's just who she is. Mom. I used to call her almost every day while I was in college, just to see what was up. Then I lived with her after I graduated from college when I began teaching, and I lived there until she found her current partner in crime, John, who is her fellow garden weasel and they really, truly love each other.

She has never been afraid to say what she thinks. Sometimes that gets pretty unpleasant. She doesn't understand the Southern custom of being nice to your face, but tearing you apart when you're gone. Might as well say what you think. But if any of us ever fell on hard times the house was open. Almost all of us have gone home to stay for a bit for one reason or another.

It would be enough to cement her status as a remarkable Mom to say she raised five women who take no crap. We are all strong, opinionated, smart contributors to society. We would not have turned out that way if we had not been taught by example by our parents.

Remarkable, strong, opinionated, funny, complicated, maddening...these words are not enough to describe my Mom. Mindblowing is more like it.

When I was in my teens my parents divorced. It was horrible. It was messy. Mom did everything she could to hold the family together, but when that didn't happen she girded up her loins and was a single Mom. When Daddy wanted to continue to have family holidays she held her notoriously prickly tongue, because she wanted to allow "the dotters" to have him in our lives. Despite everything he'd done. Strength? That hardly describes it.

And finally, when Daddy was dying of cancer 10 years after they had divorced, Mom said, "come live here at the lake." and we cared for him as a family until he died.

Words are not enough to describe that.

Should-a, Would-a, Could-a

The problem, as I see it, is that I'm a grammar snob even though my grammar is not perfect, and sometimes it's not even good. But I've decided to take a stand anyway about a few words and phrases that I think deserve some attention or should be banned from usage.

momentarily--this word, for centuries, meant FOR a moment, not IN a moment. Flight attendants are the worst offenders in the world. "We will be landing momentarily." What?! After we touch down are we going somewhere else? Yikes! It's even worse when they say, "We'll be taking off momentarily." Doomed!

After I did some research online I found, much to my dismay, that the "IN a moment" usage has become so rampant in North America that it has become correct. I am sad. That's like "bootylicious" being put into the Oxford dictionary.

a lot--this is TWO words. It indicates that there is a non-specified number or amount. Why not be more specific and say, "a large number", "a bunch", or just "tons"?

This is when I wish I could use the sarcasm font I've been dreaming about creating. We've all had times when we've written to a friend or family member and our tone has been mistaken. We were joking, but the recipient didn't get that we were joking. Unpleasantness ensued.... A sarcasm font would be REALLY helpful in those instances.

plethora--often used when people need a $10 word for "a lot". The problem is the word means "an excess" not just "a great number." My English 102 professor just forbade the word altogether.

alright--not a word. Just use "OK."

could of, would of, should of--"of" should be replaced by "have."

suppose to--should be "supposed to"

alumni--which means "a group of men" or "a group of men and women" who have graduated from an institution. When I see a car with a tag or bumper sticker with "_______ University Alumni" it just makes me wonder about driver's gender and state of mental health. Or do they drive their former classmates around all the time? And does, for example, Smith College sell Alumnae or Alumna tags?

playoff birth--the word is berth. After the Thrashers won the SE Division they did not go into labor.

baited breath--have you been eating minnows? The term is "bated," meaning in great suspense (or breathless suspense).

These are not misused words. They're words I hate, yet I've been forced to use them in my profession:
empowered--ugh!
guesstimate--double ugh!
learner--aka student.
methodology--used interchangeably with the term "method."
competencies--aka abilities. Or maybe they mean the learner is competent but not really able?
facilitate--help or lead?
utilize--aka use.
"popcorn out"--meaning to call out answers when you think of them.
rubric--aka grading scale.

This sounds like a really snotty blog entry. I know I have MANY grammatical imperfections, and if I use bad grammar, feel free to let me know about it, but nicely, please. I know I'm imperfect but I'll never stop saying, "behind the AT" when Spatters asks me where I'm at. I'm sure we all have word usage mistakes or just words that bother us. These are some of mine. Feel free to add your own!

Bruiser

Spatters: Oh my God, honey! What did you do to your back?
Brielvis: [bending over a laundry basket, apparently with lower back exposed] Um, I have no idea.
Spatters: You have a HUGE bruise along your spine. You'd better go look at it in the mirror. [touching it gingerly] Does it hurt?
Brielvis: Um. No.

We headed to the bathroom mirror and I checked out my back. I have a huge purpley bruised area right alongside my spine. It's about an inch wide on each side of the spine and about 5 inches long. I panic. My back hurts when I don't drink enough, and the bruise is right by my kidney area. Are my kidneys failing? Did I hit myself and not feel it? Do I need to go to the emergency room?

Then it hits me.

It's spring break, and I did something two days ago that I never do. I took a bath. It's rare because I never have time to take baths the way I like them. I like to take super-hot baths that make my skin tingle. I like to get waterlogged and wrinkly. I like to fully submerge and put my feet up on the wall while my ears fill with water and I can hear the swoosh of my heartbeat. That was the kind of bath I had the other day, but with a twist that has never happened before.
I finished my bath, all wrinkly from the water and red from the heat, but when I tried to get up to towel off I found I couldn't move. My back had acted like a suction cup on the floor of the tub, and I was suctioned tightly to the porcelain. I wiggled around a bit and let the water out to drain and somehow I broke the seal. With a pop I came loose.

I thought nothing else of it until Spatters and I were examining my mysterious back bruise. I explained to him, with much embarrassed laughter, that it wasn't a bruise--it was a huge tub hickey! All the girls will be jealous! Luckily Spatters is the kind of husband who laughs with me, not at me, but boy do I give him opportunities!

Obsession

I've never really felt Southern. I was born and raised in the south, but I don't like grits or sweet tea. I don't enjoy super-hot weather. I was really into SEC football until I went to an SEC school and had a few too many frat boys peeing under my front porch on game days. It was then that I decided I didn't want to be like them--dressed in garish, mascot covered attire. Living and dying on Saturday afternoons. It seemed silly, having your mood and your life affected by a game.

Hockey is different.

My parents are both from Maine. They grew up living and breathing a different obsession. Daddy didn't just watch hockey, he played it (and football, baseball, and even basketball, I think).
Even farther back than that my Grampy played in a time when they'd use Life magazines tucked into their socks if they didn't have shin guards.

My parents moved to the south in the early 60's, and our family's been here ever since. Not only did Mom and Daddy come with their growing family, but so did uncles and aunts and cousins who all stayed too. That's the true definition of "damn yankees."

But once we were here it wasn't the warm-weather sports that kept our attention. Sure, we went to see the Braves and the Falcons here and there, but the REAL game was going to the Omni to watch the Flames. So much of my childhood was spent around hockey, between going to Daddy's games, Uncle P's games, and Flames games. We'd go camping with the hockey team, go on road trips with the Alouettes, and then we'd hit any Flames events they had, like the Carnival for a Cure, a benefit put on by the Flames' wives. I have pictures of me and my sisters with the stars--Willi Plett, Guy Chouinard, Eric Vail, Curt Bennett...but we never cornered my favorite (and the reason my lucky number is 12), Tom Lysiak.

The Atlanta Flames went to the first round of the playoffs SIX times even though they were only in Atlanta for eight seasons. My family had season tickets. Then the Flames were sold to Calgary in 1980, and hockey was hard to come by.

We had an IHL team, the Knights for a few years in the 90's, and I went to a few of their games, but it just wasn't the same intensity as NHL hockey.

Finally, after 19 seasons without an NHL team, the Thrashers began playing at Philips Arena, the new venue which was built upon the rubble of the Omni. The opening game on October 2, 1999 was sold out. I had a gig that night with a singing group so I didn't try to get tickets, but as the day got closer I realized I had to go anyway.

We sang our gig--a benefit for a homeless people with mental illness, and I booked it out of there after we finished to get to the game. I parked for free (something my Dad ALWAYS did--better to park illegally than to pay!), and in my semi-formal attire I went to each door of the arena asking the ushers to let me in. It was the second period of the game, and I guess the "fans" who had come to just say they had been there had left already, so when someone finally let me in I walked with a purpose to club level and had a seat about 10 rows from the ice.

I was surrounded by people I thought should never go to a hockey game. They were talking on cell phones! They were sipping martinis! They were eating SUSHI!! At a hockey game!! Where was the beer and pizza? Where were the working class folks shouting at the refs? What had Atlanta done to my game?

In the intervening years I have attended many, many Thrashers games. I've taken friends and colleagues, encouraged others to come. I proselytize in the name of hockey. I believe people will love hockey if they will just go to a game! I also think of my family and the Flames every game. I see my Uncle P. and my cousins at most games, and I met Spatters because of hockey. We've had season tickets next to Sissy and G. for two years, and yes, I talk on my cell phone now too, and I've eaten sushi at a game (it was awful).

Some of my friends just don't get it. This is the thing I do. It's what my family has done all my life, and it's what Spatters and I will do with our family for the rest of our lives. It's important.

So now the Thrashers have won the Southeastern Division title for the first time, and we're going to the playoffs. It's been a long time coming, but we're ready!

Lucky

I complain sometimes. Sometimes I complain a lot--it breaks the monotony and it's fun.

But I know with certainty that I have a fantastic life filled with incredible people. My huge, hilarious, obnoxious family is very close and we all know we can call on each other for anything (except regular visits, apparently, considering my insane schedule). My friends are smart and funny and reliable true friends, not just folks who wander in and out of my life--even when I don't seem them regularly. I have really great jobs and groups I sing with that are annoying sometimes and they take up my time, but I get to sing and dance and make music daily.

But the best thing about my life is my husband, Spatters. He smokes, even though he was supposed to quit before October 4, 2004. He refuses to pick up his socks. He once told me I couldn't buy a bucket that cost $2. He has smelly feet. But I know I'm fantastically blessed to have him in my life and in my home. He makes my already full and happy life even fuller and happier, somehow. How on earth did I get so lucky?

Car Washtopus--a brush with fear

I'm not one to spend a lot of time babying my car. I use it pretty much for utilitarian purposes--come, go. That's pretty much it. But the car had gotten rather grungy, so tonight Spatters decided to get a car wash with our fill up.

As far as I know, drive thru car washes have two styles: the touchless technology, in which there are jets that pressure wash the car, or the whirling brushes that smack smack smack the dirt right off.

This car wash was different.

We pulled into the car wash bay until the red "stop" light came on, then the whirling brushes started and gently rocked the car to and fro. No problem. Spatters and I shared a quick smooch as the suds covered the car, then...THUMP...THUMP...THUMP... a loud thwacking noise started at the rear of the car and moved forward. HUGE swaths of rubber were smacking the car and jarring us forward and back. We looked at each other, thinking the machinery was malfunctioning, but it was just part of the washing mechanism.

I don't think I can accurately describe the sensations. The spinning brushes were on each side of the car, easing us from side to side, then these two swinging beams with long rubber attachments moved forward and backward as if a huge biped octopus was walking back and forth over us and whapping the car with its tentacles.

Have I mentioned I'm phobic of octopi? A phobia is an irrational fear.

It's a good thing Spatters was driving because I would have ripped out the bottom of my car trying to haul ass out of that car wash mid-cycle. Instead my knees started shaking and I started trembling. By the end of the car wash I was clutching Spatters' hand and had tears running down my cheeks. Spatters, who should be commended, did not mock me for my idiocy, even when I started making fun of myself. He just held my hand and waited for me to calm down. Then he promised never to take me to the Car Washtopus again.

What time is it?

I hate, hate, HATE daylight savings time! I am awake at 11:41pm on a school night. That is all.

Afrodite

Me in 3rd Grade.

My Senior Portrait. The hair I have feared my entire adult life.

As I said in my "Just a Girl?" post, I am glamour challenged. Much of that dysfunction has to do with my hair.

When I was born I had a black curly bush on my head.

As a child I had wavy and usually unmanageable hair.

My third grade yearbook photo looked like the kid who threw the boomerang at the end of the Road Warrior: Mad Max 2 movie. (pictured above) Actually, his hair was more kempt (as opposed to unkempt) than mine was. Picture Michael Landon's hairstyle gone badly awry.

Then, lucky me, when I hit puberty my hair got curly. I mean kinky curly at a time when the style was to have wings and a purple comb in the back pocket of your Jordache jeans to keep them wing-y. Over the years I had many hair disasters. I had a bi-level cut, nowadays known as a mullet. I spent most of my high school years wearing a banana clips or barrettes to try to tame the beast. Once, out of desperation, I gave myself a semi-mohawk (shaving the sides up even with my eyebrows) and dyed it burgundy. I had the mousse rake. I've had a lifetime of bad hair.

I finally stopped fighting it and let it curl. It was fine, I guess, until the day before I was scheduled to have my senior portrait taken for the yearbook. Mom unwittingly took me to a hairdresser who had apparently never seen curly hair before. What this hairdresser didn't understand was that curly hair curls up. It's shorter when it's dry than when it's wet. She hacked mercilessly. By the time my hair dried I knew it would be a LONG time before I got my hair cut again. I looked like a dirty Q-tip. I had a genuine 15-years-too-late afro. I have photographic evidence of this fact. It was eight years before I set foot in another salon.

I quit getting my hair cut. I would get it trimmed every year or so, whether it needed it or not, but aside from a few inches of chopping here and there I just let it grow. And grow. After a while I learned how to deal with it, and it started being rather nice to have--long curls I could tie up if they were in my way. I could put it in a ponytail. I could do that little bump in the front like Elaine from Seinfeld had, until my friends kindly told me I was out of style (a couple years too late). My routine was to shower, put my hair up, and go to sleep and viola! my hair would be done when I got up in the morning. It got ratty sometimes, but it was perfect hair for a lazy sleep-loving girl like me.

Not many people have extremely long curly hair. I began to think of it as part of my identity. A bit unusual. Not entirely out of style, but not entirely in style either. Who needs style? I looked unique. And maybe a little strange. I had a friend who used to call me "Opera Hair" and a couple years ago a woman stopped me at the bank to tell me me I had "mermaid hair." That wasn't really the look I was going for, but it never occurred to me to try to do anything else. Hairdressers were the enemy. My hair was my glory.

Last year on New Year's Day I convinced Sissy that she and I should donate our long hair to Locks of Love, an organization which makes wigs for children who have lost their hair due to illness or treatment for their illnesses. We got to the cut-rate (no pun intended) salon and the dingbat girl didn't know how to measure the 10 inches necessary for donation. When Sissy saw how short my hair would have ended up (more like 12 inches gone, hello,afro!) she talked me out of cutting it. But she went ahead and cut hers anyway and ended up with a much-shorter-than-necessary-but-very-cute hairdo. So I had my butt-length ringlets of guilt for another year of growing.

After the recent up-do experiment (see "Just a Girl?") I finally admitted to myself that it was time. I wanted to donate my hair to Locks of Love in honor of my Dad, who died of cancer on Feb. 25th, 1995, 12 years ago, and one of my students from school has a dad who owns a really fancy salon in Atlanta. If anyone could cut my hair and not make me look like my high school portrait, they could. The stars were finally aligned for my change.

I went by the salon Wednesday (Bossy's birthday, BTW) with the intention of just talking to a stylist about my desire to donate my hair and about my neuroses about hair cuttery in general.

I ended up cutting 11 inches off my hair.

My stylist, Adriene, was a very calming and reasonable woman. She is a second-generation stylist and has been cutting hair since she was a child in her mom's salon. While she talked to me I realized I could do it. I could even try to get a stylish haircut instead of just chopping the donation hair and ending up looking like Gilda Radner's character Rosanne-Roseannadanna from Saturday Night Live in the 70's.

I now have shoulder-length and layered hair which doesn't require me to do anything more than what I was already doing--wash hair, go to bed, wake up with whatever hair style it wants to be. I am pleased. My hair has straightened out a lot over the years too. It has softer waves instead of ringlets. I look and feel different--a look closer to Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam than to Ariel from the Little Mermaid, and Spatters likes it. He even got inspired to get a hairstyle himself AND he bought hair "product." HA! He now uses more stuff on his hair than I do!

Just a Girl?

I'll be attending a black-tie fundraiser in a couple weeks, so I need to look glamorous and lovely. The red dress that I wore for my wedding in Vegas still fits (remarkably), so my next mission is to get my head together--hairdo, makeup, reopen my earring holes since I'm too lazy to wear earrings except on special occasions, and find some comfy yet sassy shoes to wear.

I'm very excited about the event, but I have been experiencing a lot of stress about preparing for it. The truth is I am glamour challenged. I have worn my makeup essentially the same way since I started wearing makeup which, since I live in the South, was age 13. I don't go many places without makeup, especially one of the essentials of life, lipstick, but I'm no good at doing artful application, nor do I want to work that hard. Plus, since I'm blind in one eye, I can do a wonderful job applying makeup on one eye, then for the other eye I just have to close my eyes and hope for the best. I usually can't be bothered to wear foundation, and all the girl crud comes off my face at the end of the day with Ivory soap.

I have super-curly hair, so the only thing I know how to do with it is let it dry and sometimes it looks okay when I pull it back. Other times it looks like I'm trying to tame a squirrel's nest. I don't use "product", I'm pitiful at heated curling or straightening things, and once my hair is dry I can't brush it lest I look like I have a straw hut hanging off my head.

When I got married (the same day as Sissy) I decided to hand the head-work off to a professional,--Sissy and I found a woman whose billboard on the side of a hotel on the Strip was compelling enough for us. It read "HAIR" in 8 foot tall letters followed by her phone number, and I do have to say she was a hair and makeup artist. My Sissy and I looked rather lovely as we wed our wonderful boys.

The ironic thing is that two of my dearest female humans are Bossy and Sissy. If there were a contest for the "Girliest of Girly-Girls" Sis and Boss would have to share the title. Sissy once cleaned out her purse (we joke that she has to send the miners to the bottom of the cavernous thing to send things up for her) to reveal 22 different lip-care products. Just in her purse. She has many more at home. And that count didn't include the eyeliners, mascaras, powders, or lotions she also carries around. And Bossy is a Mary Kay lady. Enough said. If it weren't for those two I would probably be wearing overalls and clogs every day.

So I tried to practice doing my hair tonight--straightening, hot rolling, and doing a something-up but not a bun. Um, it was not successful. It just looked like a curled up straw hut.

Cooties

I teach children. Children are gross. They pick their noses. They scrape at their scabs. They eat dirt. Some of them use saliva instead of lotion to rid themselves of dry skin. Kids are snotty. Literally. They get ringworm and they don't yet know how to suppress farts.

I can handle most things kids do, and I even (usually) have a way of telling them what they're doing is gross in an effective but not humiliating manner. But lately we've had an epidemic that is affecting me psychologically.

The second grade has lice.

It started with one kid. She apparently learned sharing very well in Kindergarten, because most of her class got lice also. Ours are friendly students and loving kids who hug a lot and share coats and sit close to each other during story time.

The vermin spread to another class. And another.

It's up to six classes now.

The usual protocol is the infested children are supposed to stay home until their heads have been sufficiently treated. Treatment includes putting stinky chemicals on the child's head and combing, combing, combing daily, then re-treating the child with the chemical louse killer in 10 days. Family members should also do the combing process to check for dead lice. The child's house should be treated too, including washing or dry cleaning everything, vacuuming a lot, and putting non-washables in a garbage bag for 2 weeks.

Our school is packed with intelligent parents and highly educated families, but it seems that somehow we're not mastering the anti-cooties regimen.

It's icking me out. I'm not a gooshy sit-on-my-lap kind of teacher, but I've been doing the "this is my space, that is your space. Over there. No, WAY over there..." lesson an awful lot lately. Forget about hugging the kids or patting them on the head when they've done a good job, which I miss. I've mastered the straight-armed hug. I can't even think about second graders (my favorite grade to teach, BTW) without feeling itchy.


And the circle-dot-cootie-shot doesn't seem to be working.

The Sat/Sun Morning Ritual

I have a crazy schedule. I mean, most days, I leave my house around 6:40am and I return home anywhere from 12-16 hours later, depending on the day. So I claim Saturday and Sunday mornings as mine (when I don't have something on my schedule, which is pretty rare).

I usually stumble out of bed long after the sun is up, stagger downstairs to plop into the green chair, drink copious amounts of coffee, read the paper and any other local free magazines around, and I don't move from that location until I have to.

Saturday's the better day for the paper reading because my background music from 8-10am is my favorite radio show "Music for the Prepubescent" on Album 88, so despite the spare Saturday paper content I can hear songs from my childhood while I pretend to be an adult. I get to hear the songs from the Muppets, Sesame Street, Schoolhouse Rock, and Mr. T. Aural Saturday morning cartoons! Whee!

The cats love the Sat/Sun Morning Ritual and they love draping themselves on me while I'm in the green chair--right now I have a 3 cat heating system surrounding me while I type, and Betty just did that awesome cat-chattering thing because she saw a birdie out the window. Anyway, the Sat/Sun Morning Ritual takes a while, and often I finish the paper and move on to checking my email accounts and lately, reading blogs.

Spatters resisted my immersion in The Ritual for a while--he's an early riser, which I don't understand at all. Why be awake when you could be asleep? My roommates in college learned that waking me up in the morning could result in them having to dodge projectiles I hurled their way for interrupting my bliss. Mom tells me when I was an infant she didn't recognize me with my eyes open because I slept so much. She also tells me I was so ugly as a newborn I made her eyes water. That's another story for another time....

Anyway, by the time I finally drag myself out of bed Spatters has usually been up for hours drinking coffee, searching for online deals, reading the evil Neil, and farting around until I'm up and reading. He used to interrupt the paper reading process with sighs and "what do you want to do today?" or "I'm hungry." But now after 2 1/2 years of marriage he has finally learned that rushing me in my "MY time" makes for an irritable wife. Irritable wife+spending time together=no fun. Best to be patient and let me read.

I'm pretending Bossy tagged me:

A-Available or single? Neither--happily married

B-Best Friend? Spatters & My Sissy

C- Cake or Pie? Yes, particularly if made by the dessert guy who used to work at Bossy's husband's bar.

D-Drink of choice? Diet Dr. Pepper, Guinness, Cran-Grape, red wine

E-Essential item I use every day: I won't even go to the mailbox without lipstick. And coffee. Duh.

F-Favorite color? Chartreuse

G-Gummy Bears or Gummy worms? Yes again.

H-Hometown? Atlanta--I grew up on the south side, went to school in Athens, lived in the country for a while, and now I'm on the east side.

I-Indulgence: Most things I like. Life's too short to deny yourself everything good, yummy, or fun!

J-January or February? January, just because the hell of December is finally over.

K-Kids and names: (Cats) Suffragette Kitty aka Gette, Betty, Simon, and Moggie

L-Life is incomplete without? friends, singing, and hockey

M-Marriage date:10-4 Good Buddy! 2004

N-Number of siblings: 4, not including Mena, my Mom's pug.

O-Oranges or apples? Oranges, except the peeling part.

P-Phobias or fears? Octopi, and feeling inadequate.

Q-Favorite quote? "I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone else."

R-Reasons to smile: I lucked out and found Spatters.

S-Season: Fall--football weather, even though I don't care a thing about football anymore.

T-Tag 3 or 4 people: Spatters, you're tagged.

U-Unknown fact about me: I think I'm pretty much an open book.

V-Vegetable you don't like: corn, but only when it's off the cob. It's especially wrong to put corn in soup.

W-Worst habit: Interrupting people and procrastinating.

Y-Your favorite food? Mashed potatoes

Z-Zodiac? Gemini

Weirdo

I'm grateful to Bossy for tagging me. I've been having blogger's-block. The deal here, as I understand it, is that I'm supposed to tell 6 weird things about myself. Six is hardly enough items to really get the scope of my oddity, but here goes:

1. I take pictures of signs. I love how sign-makers have to come up with a non-text-based way of getting their point across. I particularly love the ones I can't figure out and the ones that are dire-looking or silly.

2. I hate, hate, HATE being touched on the top of my head and/or being tickled. Either of those activities incites me to rage.

3. I'm left-handed, but I do everything right handed except write and eat. Oh, I shoot a gun left-handed because I'm legally blind in my right eye.

4. I think puppy breath and an infant's head (from 1-3 months old) are the two best smells in the world. And skunk is sometimes nice to smell in passing. I also love the smell of my Grampy's attic and the trees in his yard.

5. I am much more comfortable around old things than new things. Going to a mall or a huge store like Sam's is creepy to me--all that new stuff in one place...yuck! It could have to do with the fact that I've been an avid thrift shopper since I was 13 (which gives many people the willies), or that I am horrified by the amount of post-consumer waste generated in America, or maybe I'm just cheap, I don't know, but I would estimate that 98% of the things in my house were pre-owned. My car is a Honda I've driven since 1995. It has almost 300,000 miles on it.

6. The only things in the world I'm phobic about are octopi. I am terrified of them. When I see an octopus in print media or on video I literally almost vomit. Once, while reading my 2nd favorite magazine Smithsonian (very favorite is Dwell which should be one of my weird items I guess), I turned the page to find an icky, scrotum-like, tentacled octopus peering at me. I jumped and trembled and threw the magazine far away from me. From across the room Spatters knew I had seen an octopus just from my reaction. I couldn't even enjoy the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie, even with yummy Johnny Depp, because of the horrible Davy Jones character. HOWEVER, I call calimari "fried butt-holes" (I should feel shame), yet I will eat them unless there are tentacles present.

7. BONUS! I really, REALLY hate talking on the phone. If given the opportunity I will ALWAYS text message or email instead.

Interloper

Along the lines of Bossy's exclusion from the Circle of Love I have been the Interloper a lot lately. What happens is this--two people who know each other are approaching one another from a distance. I am in the middle. One person (that I may or may not know) waves or says hi to the other person, and I (making the mistake of thinking I'm popular) return the wave or greeting just to find that the person was NOT, in fact, waving to or greeting me. So then I do what anyone would do in that situation. I pretend I was fixing my hair or talking on my (non-existent) bluetooth.

The problem is compounded by the fact that I'm legally blind in my right eye (not deaf in my right ear as Bossy seems to think) and sometimes I'm cross-eyed or wall-eyed; therefore, I will often think I'm making eye contact with someone in passing when in actuality I'm only making one-eye contact, whilst the right eye is checking out the wallpaper, or whatever. This usually means the person I thought was saying hi looks around to see who it is I'm talking to, leaving both of us looking about wondering if someone's talking to us, and doubling the awkwardness factor.

So I've decided to revert to my usual assumption that no one is talking or waving to me unless they say my name, except maybe Spatters. But sometimes he talks to the cats....

So, here goes...

So I started my very first real attempt at a blog this morning. I actually came up with a topic that I thought would be compelling, and then I wrote for quite some time (about an hour), did a spell check, all excited that I was finally happy with something I'd written for once, and then...what??? You've got to be kidding me! Gone. It was just gone into the mysterious and evil abyss that is the internet's archive of lost writings. I pondered for a bit--is this a sign that I just don't need to be a blogger? Blogger sounds too much like Frogger, incidentally, so I briefly pictured myself as the flattened splat of a writer who had lost the first round, run over in my haste to get to the next page of navigation. But no. I want to give it another try without any idiotic screw ups. I am strong. I'm trying again.

The lesson is this (as we all know from sad experience): save the damned thing. Save it. I spent an hour writing, then more than an hour trying to retrieve the lost blog. I will forever remember it as the best thing I've ever written--the perfect balance of humor and poignancy, plus, I managed not to overuse commas (and parenthesis, as I am wont to do).

So here is my attempt to recreate what I wrote this morning. I'm sure it will only hint at the original blog's exceptionally clever narrative. Please know it's very long, which will be rare in my blogging life. I just had a lot on my mind.

This weekend Spatters and I decided to go visit my Mom and Step Dad to avoid the "bad daughter" title, for now. Visiting them is quite an undertaking, not because of the actual visit, but because they live more than an hour away. I used to do the exact same drive several times a week when I lived down there, going to and from Mom's house to rehearsals and such, but now it seems like a monumental trek.

The house I grew up in is located about halfway between our house and Mom's, so on a whim I told Spatters I wanted to go see it. When I was a kid the place we lived was a working class town with decent schools, low crime, and it was pretty convenient to the big city. Now the whole county is known as a gang and drug-riddled scum hole with a corrupt school system, government, and police force. The high school I graduated from has two full-time cops on duty every day and metal detectors at all the entrances. From my perspective, according to any news reports, the county's decline was swift and complete.

My four sisters and I (and my aunt and uncle for a bit) lived with our parents in a three bedroom house with an ENORMOUS back yard. Three bedrooms. Yes, it was crowded. No we never had any privacy. But it never occurred to us that we had up to 9 people and many pets--usually at least 3 dogs and 4 cats--in a wee little house. Our parents both had big families, and that's just the way things were. No big deal.

The house was small but adequate (besides the yearly flooding of the basement since the house was built in a flood plain), but the yard was our glory. My dad was in construction, so he built (with 5 daughters' slave labor) THE MOST AMAZING TREE HOUSE EVER. It was no lame-o perch of 2 x 4s nailed to a tree. It had steel siding, a roof with shingles, a front AND back porch. It also had a trap door in the plywood flooring through which you could go down to visit the collies in the dog pen, which was built under the tree house so the dogs would have shelter in bad weather. It was big enough to house a sofa bed, tons of books, toys, and stuffed animals, and we even rigged a zip line from the front porch of the tree house to the back door of the house so we could send supplies back and forth. At least I think we did--that could just be a plan we had that somehow turned into a memory. But the tree house was real. And it was awesome, not just in the "totally awesome" way the phrase was used in the 80's but in the awe-inspiring meaning that someone would actually build something like it.

Daddy also "borrowed" a backhoe or bulldozer or some large piece of equipment to dig a pond in the back yard where My Sissy (my "Irish twin" who is 11 months older than me) and I would have "pick-a-nicks" using our super cool Tupperware lunch boxes. The pond even froze hard enough for us to walk and skate on it a couple times when we were little. We also had a zip line from a tree on the hill in the front yard to the back yard and we'd charge neighborhood kids to ride it. We had a motocross/bike track in the woods between the little creek and the big creek. We'd wade in the big creek and catch crawdads, and when the water was high we'd rope-swing or mudslide into the (adult voice: "nasty, probably human-waste-tainted") cool, muddy water.

The other kids in the neighborhood practically lived in our back yard when we weren't all making up skateboard and bicycle shows for the neighbors. We'd charge $2 for people to sit in their OWN front yards to watch us ride up and down the street. And they'd pay it! It was a non-stop crowded, kid-filled madhouse. But we had a good time. A REALLY good time.

So Spatters and I took the back way to the old house, and within one mile of entering --- County we saw a drug bust complete with SWAT team and ski masks. Things have changed a bit. We continued down the highway and I began my litany of familiar places, of which there were plenty, surprisingly, interspersed with the run-down and graffiti-covered shacks: "that's the bakery where Mom used to buy our birthday cakes, that's where Daddy would take us to eat the Chubby Decker burgers, that trailer park has been there since the 70's, that awful redneck club used to be a McDonald's..." until we go to the subdivision where I lived..."this is where the bus used to drop us off after school, and I'd have to carry my saxophone down the hill to the house, that's where the Chinese people who ate the turtles out of the creek used to live, that's where the girl who told me and My Sissy where babies came from lived...."

Then we turned on to my old street. Were these houses always so close together? Weren't there more trees? Who shortened the street? Somebody cut down the woods between our house and the Wilson's and built another house there! We stopped in front of 5643. It's smaller than I remember, like everything else. And it's for sale and vacant, so Spatters and I walked around it and into the back yard. Gone. Tree house, pond, zip line, and trails--the landmarks of my childhood, all gone. Instead there was, oddly, a lone basketball goal, firmly planted in the middle of a dirt clearing behind where the dog pen had been. The pond is full of garbage like the rest of the back yard, and the trails have grown over with trees and bushes.

When we were heading back to the car the neighbor who lives in the new house (where the woods used to be) called out to ask if we were interested in buying the house. I explained that I had grown up there, and we began talking about the neighborhood. All the families we knew are gone. Our house has been vacant for more than a year. But then the friendly neighbor talked about how much he likes it there--it's quiet and safe, the neighbors are friendly, there are convenient hospitals, schools, grocery stores, and the street has a cul de sac so his three boys can be safe when they're playing.

Plus, they have this enormous back yard....