Adventures in Real Parenting: Never Miss a Beat

I’m somewhere in Georgia with The Dancer, visiting a college and taking her to audition for their dance program. It’s going to be whirlwind day, I suspect. She’s going to get to experience a bit of college life while she’s here.

I’m going to try to stave off flashbacks of my own wild college days. Who wants to relive going in to work at Sears at 7:30 a.m. with a raging hangover, wearing clothes you don’t quite recognize and wishing desperately that you’d packed a toothbrush in your little pocketbook the night before……

In the meantime, let’s wish The Dancer perfect poise, grace, an ability to pick up the choreography quickly and to never miss a beat.

The Old Gray Mare, She Ain’t What She Used to Be…..

Is she better?

It occurred to me this morning that one of the reasons why I’m struggling with the whole college visit/college decision thing is because I am in denial that I am old enough to have a kid getting ready to go off to college.

Vanity! Thy name is Lisa.

This morning I went out to lunch with J because he likes to eat early since he gets into the office at 6:15 a.m. So there we were at 11:30 a.m. ordering muffaletta sandwiches at Jason’s Deli and the lovely, fresh-faced young woman behind the counter tells me my longish, straight silver hair is gorgeous. “You skin just glows with it!”

Well, thank you very much, my sweet. I guess if I have to be old enough to have a kid going off to college soon, at least I can have glowy skin to go with my silver hair.

You know what? When I started this natural hair color experiment – and I have really considered it an experiment all along, one that could be easily reversed – I didn’t know what to expect.

The reality is it’s not so bad. I think I’ll keep the silver. I mean, I could still be bald like I was when I started….

Merci, La Belette Rouge

A couple of weeks ago, La Belette Rouge bestowed upon me the honor of being a proud bookworm. Besides being far superior to being recognized as the hungry tapeworm I normally am, this honor is a kick to me because there was a time when I actually was a bookworm. Lately, though, the only time I can be seen with a book in my hand is when I least want anyone to see me. Let’s just say that even though I close the door, some cat or other will force its way through to investigate, looking at me reproachfully before swishing its tail in disgust and leaving in haste. For my part, I remind them that the door was shut for a reason.

That’s usually when I notice that my feet have gone numb from sitting on the throne too long. The lengths I will take for a moment alone in quiet.

So the point of this bookworm honor is to do the following: pass it on to five other bloggers, and tell them to open the nearest book to page 46. Write out the fifth sentence on that page, and also the next two to five sentences.

So here’s the thing. I’m going to grab the book nearest me and write the fifth sentence plus a couple more from page 46. The book is Pete Hamill’s Forever.

There were no signs of obvious grief; no tears, no sniffles, no choking sounds. He took two more rush mats from the old woman and floated them down over Rebecca Carson’s body. With spade, he began to cover her. He threw down seven loads of black earth and then handed the shovel to the boy. “Seven,” he said. “Only seven.” The soaked dirt was very heavy, and Robert didn’t want to do this, but his mother was already covered, and so he added earth to earth.

A friend had recommended a while ago that I read the Pete Hamill novels and I’m glad that I’m finally getting around to it. Somehow it seems fitting that I would begin reading Hamill with this particular novel. When you open it up to Chapter One, you find this passage:

And what a people loves it will defend. We took their temples from them and forbade them, for many years, to worship their strange idols. They gathered in secret, deep in the dripping glens, Chanting their prayers before a lichened rock.
– John Hewitt, “The Colony,” 1950

I didn’t know anything about Irish poet John Hewitt who wrote The Colony, but John Hewitt is the name of my paternal great-grandfather. I like the symmetry of that.

This honor has made the rounds. I am feeling lazy and a bit emotionally wrung out. The last couple of days, my mothering skills have been called upon in complicated ways that stretched my patience and tempted me to abdicate the role altogether, so let’s do this…if you have not received this award and you are sitting within three feet of a book, consider yourself tagged.

Thank you, Belette, for thinking of me when you were handing out this tres sexy honor. Je t’aime comme une soeur.

Blogroll Amnesty Day

This coming Tuesday, February 3, is Blogroll Amnesty day. This is the day when we are encouraged to link to blogs smaller than our own. I’m planning to participate, but now that I use the rss feed feature for my blog roll, I’m wondering how in the world I’m going to create all those links……

In the meantime, here’s a fun explanation created by our fairyblogmother Bluegal …

http://www.youtube.com/v/AYh0IPCY3HE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1

If you hear someone shouting “fuck” a lot and grinding her teeth, that would be me trying to figure out the link thing. Pay no attention.

With Singular Focus or a Lack Thereof…

I do believe that the combination of amphetamine and coffee is making me more frantic and manic than usual. I wish I were kidding you. Currently, I am multitasking at unhealthy levels. Even for me.

I’m uploading pictures to flickr. Reading and commenting on blogs, reading work emails and responding to them, working on this post, listening to music, having short online chats with friends, updating contacts in my email, going through my sitemeter to see who is visiting, updating Facebook, twittering (tweeting?), fretting about the upcoming busy weekend, and trying to figure out how to edit a video using Picassa so I can upload it to youtube and bore you to death with a snippet of life from Golden Manor.

Plus my hands feel dry and I need to dig out the lotion from my purse, but if I stop typing now and do that, I’ll end up doing six other things before I get back to this post. Now I just paused to read a text message on my phone and before I got back to this post, I checked my gmail and deleted a couple of things without reading them, took a drink of water and thought for a second about opening my flickr tab because pictures have uploaded and I need to tag them and finish the process.

Please, oh please, tell me that you are just as scattered.

I remember when I was a kid and my siblings and I would be sprawled out over our M&M colored beanbags watching The Price Is Right or The Flintstones and my mother would say something to us through the passthrough to the kitchen. Not one of the three of us would respond and she would raise her voice and would finish by bellowing at us that we couldn’t do anything when the television was on. Her point was that our focused attention was a bad thing. We were not so easily distracted.

I do believe I have said the same thing to The Spawn. Now I’m thinking that the ability to do just one thing and to focus on it completely is a skill I need to relearn. Seriously.

So, on to the real purpose of this post. I have been asked to dig through my obsessively sorted and categorized photo files because susan has tagged me with the photo meme. I cannot deny susan who thinks possibly naughty things when she sees the milk mustache advertisements, so here goes. Business first, though.

The Rules:

1. Go to the 4th folder in your computer where you store your pictures.
2. Pick the 4th picture in that folder.
3. Explain the picture.
4. Tag 4 people to do the same.

So here is the picture in my 4th folder. My folders go like this: Baseball, Birds, Blogging Pix, Bloomington, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

That is MathMan in 1990 during one of our trips to Indiana. We’d already graduated from Indiana University, where we met and married. When we visited my family in southeastern Indiana, we would typically swing through Bloomington. On this particular trip, we went through the campus and took a bunch of pictures.

MathMan is standing in front of the old arcade at the corner of Kirkwood and Indiana. What was it called? Spaceport or something like that? Anyway, look at him, so young! So hairy! Dang, he was such a hottie back then. (Still is.) No wonder I propositioned him the second time I met him……..

Oh, and about that shirt – it was a gift from my parents who had just returned from a cruise. Looking back over the years of grief I have given MathMan, the message on that shirt seems a bit cruel. I think I’d better have a word with my mother about that……..of course, she’ll have to turn off the television and put down her crossword puzzle so I can speak to her.

Consider yourself tagged, my happy little amphetamines:

Kulkuri
Nan
The Earth Bound Misfit
SaoirseDaily2

A Break in the Clouds

It may be a gray day. There may be some kind of wet stuff falling from the sky. I might even be stuck at home because my car won’t start. There’s precious little food in the house (I’ve got Kraft Dinner oozing from the pores that aren’t clogged with peanut butter and jelly) and we don’t have any batteries for the remote.

But!

The electricity is still on. I don’t have to shovel rain. We are NOT out of vodka. I’m capable of walking to the television to change the channels. My feet aren’t cold. The Dancer drove the other spawn to school so I’m alone. Our plumbing still works. I have a tube of Chapstick next to me. I am not required to attend any extracurricular activities tonight. I’m still losing weight. The coffee was excellent today. I was able to pull out some dvds that I hadn’t watched since last spring and watching them didn’t stir up things like anger flashbacks or a desire to fire off a hate email to my Dementor. I’ve only had to clean up one pile of cat yak today. Every time someone on MSNBC says “Stimulus Package,” I take a shot of vodka and the punditocracy is all about stimulating packages today. And then there’s this – more fun things from blogpals!

I’m telling you, if I can get our printer to work (it is apparently in cahoots with the idiot car today), those nifty things from Summer will keep me busy for hours. Now I need a Miss Lemon so I can pretend they are having paperdoll, um, …… tea.

Photo above swiped from the Belgian Waffle.

The Trick Will Be to Keep It Out of the Dancer’s Clutches

I am one lucky blogger, I tell you what. And I have the most talented and generous friends.

Yesterday afternoon, I got something absolutely beautiful in the mail. Feast your eyes on the fabulous clutch sent to me by the blogger known as The Ardent Thread.

Carol, the brilliant artist who creates these magical pieces has her first trunk show on February 9th in Concorde, California. I’m sad to say I won’t be there, but you can find more information at Kimonomomo.com.

Thank you, Carol, for thinking of me. This clutch is beautiful! And I’m honored to be a recipient of your beautiful artistry.

(The photos here don’t do the clutch justice. Look here for more pix and order info.)

Isn’t it gorgeous?

Oh, Poop on it!

Something funny to start your day……

http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x115u4
Triumph The Insult Comic Dog – Star Wars
by ZaraV

HT my pal in Amsterdam.

Could Be Professionally Upbeat

Okay, y’all. I have a question for you – Do you see me as perky? Ever? Because I know that I’m not always perky, but do you see me as incapable of doing perky?

I ask because my boss J told me this morning that he doesn’t think I can do perky. What!?!? After I helped him up from the floor and wiped his blood off my desk, I asked him if he’d never heard me on the phone with our members? Wasn’t I perky then?

“Not perky, exactly,” he said, edging away from me, keeping a close eye on the sharp letter opener in my right hand. I didn’t realize that I was squeezing it as tightly as I was. My hand had gone nearly white with a lack of circulation.

“Well then, what would you call that?” I tried to keep my tone non-murderous. It was taking a lot of effort to keep the fury from playing across my face.

Taking his eyes off me for just a second to make sure his path to the door was clear, he smiled slowly, nervously. “Well, not annoying perky. Professional and upbeat would be the best way to describe it,” his eyes flicked furtively to the letter opener.

I considered this for a moment. Okay. I guess upbeat is good. But still – never perky? Never? I looked again at my hand gripping the letter opener and sighed. “Okay. Hmmm. Maybe I don’t do perky. But do I seem like a bitch?” I could hear the tinny sound of resignation in my own voice.

J saw his chance. “No, not a bitch!” he blurted out and raced to the door.

So I ask you? Really? Me? Never perky? Incapable of perky? Because if that’s true, perhaps I will forgo the venting of my spleen that I feel coming on. I will hold in all the nasty thoughts I’d like to blurt out right here because I don’t want anyone to think I’m a bitch or anything…..

Quick Hits

The Actor walks into the kitchen, takes one look at the television and says “I should never have to see Tucker Carlson this early in the day.”

I hope Citi flies their new plane over what will soon be the former Golden Manor so they can see how the weeds are growing up so nicely in the once glorious garden (bitter? you bet.)

I like silly.

Don’t call him a pansy.

All work and no play does make Jack a dull boy.

Sometimes, things just can’t be explained.

http://www.youtube.com/v/nZ7ZvxXvn90&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&border=1
Jimmy Eat World. The Middle.