Who’s behind the false face

Via Retro Weirdo

Special concern:  If you were in the path of the Hurricane Sandy, I hope you’re okay.  Has anyone heard from MSB after the storm? I emailed her, but haven’t heard back.

1. I’m participating in NaNoWriMo starting on November 1st. The family has been warned there will be increased neglect and I’ll be acting like someone with PMS for the entire month, consuming sickening quantities of leftover Halloween candy (right down to the already-opened Smarties) and overreacting to all interruptions. Plus I’ll be squeezing all this fun into the hours when I’m not at work or driving to and from. Predictions:  A 50/50 chance of success with a high probability of martyr-like behavior and an outbreak of adult acne.

2.  I want to write an essay titled “Why the Constitution is an Asshole.”

3.  If Mitt Romney becomes our president, I’m cancelling my plans to get my diminished hearing checked. Listening to him lie is bad enough, but if I have to go through four years of listening to him do that ghastly tongue click before he speaks, well, that will be too much to bear. It’s even worse than the classical radio announcer out of Cincinnati who always sounded like he was chewing a fistful of nuts when he spoke. I could picture him spraying spittle and flecks of pistachios all over the microphone.

Via Retro Weirdo

4. I spent nearly an hour yesterday evening looking at photos of vintage Halloween costumes. The entire Eastern seaboard is in a shambles and I’m trolling for vintage Halloween photos because the bad news all around is breaking my delicate nature.

5. I’m reading a book with the most atrocious dialogue, but I want to know how it ends. I’m halfway through and want to skip ahead, scanning through the dialogue because otherwise I’m afraid I’m going to lose my damn mind. But some writer – all right, Selden Edwards – worked really hard to write this story. Does skipping and scanning make me an asshole like the Constitution?

6. MathMan and I voted on Saturday. Spiderman was standing the prescribed number of feet or yard away from the polling place holding a sign for some fellow who’s running for the local school board. After watching this, I’m thinking that having Spiderman on the school board would be an improvement. Goodness knows he wouldn’t be our first mutant.

What are you hoping for in your treat bag?

Somewhere in a cotton field in Georgia

A sign is jammed into the ground, polluting the landscape, polluting thought.

I ask you – is this kind of thing really necessary?

The floor is yours.

Adventures in Real Parenting: What comes around

When I was a teenager, I was full of ideas about what my life would be like. My mother would glance up from her novel and listen as I laid out my plans for a beautiful life unmarred by children or husbands or society’s silly, oppressive rules.

A perfect apartment in a city wonderland. All white furniture, white carpet. No clutter. No avocado appliances. And for the love of god, no Early American decor.

As I got a older my plans shifted to include a husband with a great job. Travel. Fabulous careers. Eventually plans for children – two, perfect in every way – sneaked in. By the time my first college boyfriend and I had secretly moved in together, we’d already picked out names for our future children – a boy and a girl.

Naturally, I became a pre-child, child-rearing expert and I took a sick pleasure in listing how I would be a different kind of parent. I’d never spank, yell at or nag my children. Furthermore, my life would be so much better, so much more organized and enviable.  My house would always be clean, my emotions in check and my attention unwavering.

Most of the time, my mother’s response to my prattling on remained unchanged. She gave a little smirk, a chuckle perhaps, a slight shake of her head. She wasn’t taking the bait.

But every once in while, she couldn’t help herself. Uh huh, she’d say. We’ll see how that turns out. Later, I imagine, when she was alone with my father, she said something like “That Lisa is a piece of of work…..”

Now the smirk is on the other face.

Sophie has suddenly started talking about her fabulous future. Her family is going to have traditional holidays. They’re going to dress in matching outfits and take photos for holiday cards. Big dinners. Vacations. Game night. Okay, I made that last one up, but it’s only a matter of time before she says that.

Like I was a mildly OCD sufferer bucking against my mother’s laissez-faire attitude toward housekeeping, Sophie plans to rebel against the way we’ve moved away from family and let go of so many of our traditions. You practically have to hold a gun to one of the cats heads to get me to decorate for Hannukah/Christmas. The decorating and the extra activities – they become just another thing I have to do. Funnily enough, my invitation to the other family members to go crazy with the tinsel never spurs them to elvish activities.

So I don’t blame Sophie for feeling the way she does.I understand it. So as she lays out her Five Point Plan for a beautiful life, I make an effort to be attentive and supportive. If I feel my eyes about to roll, I look away. A sigh about to escape my lips is swallowed.

I look around my rented, uncluttered split-level with the falling apart dark, faux leather sofa, the stained carpet and the colorful, framed travel posters (I haven’t been to any of those places) on the edge of a tiny, rural Georgia village, that I share with my husband of twenty-four years, three kids and four cats and try not to laugh.

Ectoplasm

Not dead. Just busy _______________.

Go ahead, fill in the blank, tell us about yourself, vent, offer a recipe, tell us what you’re going to be for Halloween, what’s your twitter handle? Am I following you on Pinterest? Are we Facebook friends? Details people. I want details.

Shelved

You wrote.

To vent. To make sense. To find a way to explain how you could be so ridiculous? You wrote to process, to tell a story. Did that really happen?.

All those words written. Done and done. Purge, the purpose. A retching of poison, a letting of blood. Get back in that bed you made. Lie, lie, lie.

Shame and guilt, a foundation of sand. Drape them in indigo and call them humor. Self-defecating. No, that’s not right.

Wasn’t that story milked dry, emptied of energy anyway?

The words, left in the sun, faded on the printed pages.The files deleted – some on purpose. Others? It’s not called a crash for nothing.

Tucked away now where it can’t hurt you or anyone else.

Time passes. Words fade. Memories muddy. Sharp edges soften.

Then something happens. Something strange. Strange because you don’t believe in signs unless they’re convenient and fit your current internal narrative. Which compounds your cynicism and confirms your inability to believe. Faith is always just out of your reach. The mystical residing well beyond your pedestrian imagination.

It’s just another day at the office. You’re in the break room looking at the books on the swap shelves. Hoping to find something to hold your son’s interest among the Harlan Cobens, Stephen Kings, Lisa Scottolinis, James Pattersons and Agathas.

You reach for a book. The Raft of the Medusa. It’s a familiar title, but you don’t know a thing about the story so you sit on the floor and read the dust jacket. Oh, right. It was a painting you studied in art history. By Gericault, the painter upon whose life the novel is based. You start to put the book back on the shelf. Not at all your son’s type of story.

And that’s when a book falls off the shelf and lands on the carpet next to you.

You look around. This is a joke, right? How is it possible that this book, this very book would be stuck among the thrillers and mysteries? But then, no one here knows that long-buried story. No one here would play that joke.

You think anew about the faded words on those dusty, ignored pages. Raw material for a story that time has made more relevant, not less. A new vein opens, begging to be mined. You pick the book up from the floor and stand. Hesitate next to the trash can wondering.

Have you learned from your mistakes? An Oscar Wilde quote tries to come back to you, but gets batted away as a colleague rounds the corner and enters the kitchen.

Ectoplasm

Not dead. Just busy _______________.

Go ahead, fill in the blank, tell us about yourself, vent, offer a recipe, tell us what you’re going to be for Halloween, what’s your twitter handle? Am I following you on Pinterest? Are we Facebook friends? Details people. I want details.

George Washington took the shortest cat nap ever here

You know that hole they tell you to stop digging? Well, we think we’ve put down our shovels only to find ourselves back at it. Dig, dig, dig. We sorta kinda gain on the backlog of bills from my two plus years of unemployment and then I go and do something stupid like crack a tooth. A crack, I ask. Can the repair wait?

No, intones The Dentist. You either get a crown immediately or you might DIE!

Laughing in the face of death (again), I put it off and off and off, rescheduling from one month to the next until even the sweetest scheduler ever got a little huffy with me. I also had to take Nate and Sophie in for long-deferred cleanings. My ability to wiggle out evaporated.

Me in the Kurt Vonnegut Barcalounger, a blue paper towel necklace, the right side of my face melting onto my shoulder. Dear, dear, Novocaine. The smell of ground tooth thick in the air as the dentist preps the tooth right next to my incisor.

Oh no.

The dental assistant gasps. Oh no and gasping are are not something one wants to hear while a perfectly fine, but slightly cracked tooth is being ground to a nub.

Yes? The dentist stops drilling.

We don’t have any of the right color for the temporary.

Thus began a flurry of activity involving color samples and a mirror. This one? Maybe this one? Too dark. Too Chiclet. How are your teeth so white anyway? Dammit, woman, stop brushing with baking soda!

We finally agree on a temporary crown color, I settle back into the Barcalounger and close my eyes.

I have never felt so sexy.

Uh oh.

My eyes fly open. The dentist doesn’t even stop grinding before the assistant elaborates.

We forgot to include lab charges on the treatment plan. I’ll go get a revised plan for her to sign.

The dentist drills. I wonder how much more this will cost. The assistant returns, the drilling stops and a clipboard is thrust before me. I lift the cataract surgery glasses from my eyes so I can see the growing numbers.

Sign here.

I glance over the form and my tongue edges toward my shaved tooth. Time stopped so I could consider consider my options. Halloween is coming up. I could sit on the front porch with a  lit votive in my mouth. Look mommy! A living Jack-o-Lantern! 

I could invent a story about a disturbed dental student bursting into a cinema where I was viewing (what movies are out right now?) and started drilling teeth. Too unbelievable. How about a disturbed dental student drilling strangers’ teeth in the toothpaste aisle at CVS. Coupons and tooth shards were flying!

The dentist revs the drill over my head.

I don’t have much a choice here, do I? I’m slurring like a stroke victim.

No answer. I grab the pen and sign.

Payment is expected at the time services are rendered.

I wrote a check and paid the bill for a temporary crown that looks like someone yanked out my tooth and replaced it with a kernel of corn. And I don’t mean a creamy piece of Silver Queen. No. This is definitely GMO corn only marginally safe for human consumption.

The kids tried to act like my tooth looked fine until we all busted out laughing. Well, they busted out laughing, I slurred out some laugh-like sounds.

Next up: MathMan, for a reason only he knows, threw his glasses under the wheels of a moving car. I’m sure it had something to do with percentages.

P.S. Unintentional irony on my other blog.

George Washington took the shortest cat nap ever here

You know that hole they tell you to stop digging? Well, we think we’ve put down our shovels only to find ourselves back at it. Dig, dig, dig. We sorta kinda gain on the backlog of bills from my two plus years of unemployment and then I go and do something stupid like crack a tooth. A crack, I ask. Can the repair wait?

No, intones The Dentist. You either get a crown immediately or you might DIE!

Laughing in the face of death (again), I put it off and off and off, rescheduling from one month to the next until even the sweetest scheduler ever got a little huffy with me. I also had to take Nate and Sophie in for long-deferred cleanings. My ability to wiggle out evaporated.

Me in the Kurt Vonnegut Barcalounger, a blue paper towel necklace, the right side of my face melting onto my shoulder. Dear, dear, Novocaine. The smell of ground tooth thick in the air as the dentist preps the tooth right next to my incisor.

Oh no.

The dental assistant gasps. Oh no and gasping are are not something one wants to hear while a perfectly fine, but slightly cracked tooth is being ground to a nub.

Yes? The dentist stops drilling.

We don’t have any of the right color for the temporary.

Thus began a flurry of activity involving color samples and a mirror. This one? Maybe this one? Too dark. Too Chiclet. How are your teeth so white anyway? Dammit, woman, stop brushing with baking soda! 

We finally agree on a temporary crown color, I settle back into the Barcalounger and close my eyes.

I have never felt so sexy.

Uh oh.

My eyes fly open. The dentist doesn’t even stop grinding before the assistant elaborates.

We forgot to include lab charges on the treatment plan. I’ll go get a revised plan for her to sign.

The dentist drills. I wonder how much more this will cost. The assistant returns, the drilling stops and a clipboard is thrust before me. I lift the cataract surgery glasses from my eyes so I can see the growing numbers.

Sign here.

I glance over the form and my tongue edges toward my shaved tooth. Time stopped so I could consider consider my options. Halloween is coming up. I could sit on the front porch with a  lit votive in my mouth. Look mommy! A living Jack-o-Lantern! 

I could invent a story about a disturbed dental student bursting into a cinema where I was viewing (what movies are out right now?) and started drilling teeth. Too unbelievable. How about a disturbed dental student drilling strangers’ teeth in the toothpaste aisle at CVS. Coupons and tooth shards were flying!

The dentist revs the drill over my head.

I don’t have much a choice here, do I? I’m slurring like a stroke victim.

No answer. I grab the pen and sign.

Payment is expected at the time services are rendered.

I wrote a check and paid the bill for a temporary crown that looks like someone yanked out my tooth and replaced it with a kernel of corn. And I don’t mean a creamy piece of Silver Queen. No. This is definitely GMO corn only marginally safe for human consumption.

The kids tried to act like my tooth looked fine until we all busted out laughing. Well, they busted out laughing, I slurred out some laugh-like sounds.

Next up: MathMan, for a reason only he knows, threw his glasses under the wheels of a moving car. I’m sure it had something to do with percentages.

P.S. Unintentional irony on my other blog.

Caught in a landslide

Not a chicken, but I love his style.

Are these the chickens?

The little signs. The billboards. The shoe on the other foot? One shoe on the floor, the other about to —-

Withholding or absence?

Sandpaper on silk, tongue stuck on a popsicle.

A tango without steps. Without a lead. Fearless or otherwise.

Leaves falling in July. Green grass in December.

Is this the real life or is this just Fantasia?

Where did I put it? Where did you put it?  It’s always something. First one thing than another. There you go. And there you are. There’s that.

The John Deere in the haystack. The needle in your eye.

Nothing is easy.

Quick! Make haste! Vite! Vite!

Remove all flat surfaces. Depressions and resting places. Fill them with knick knacks and bric-a-brac.

Not here. No no no no. Not here. This is not your soft landing.

Caught in a landslide

Not a chicken, but I love his style.

Are these the chickens?

The little signs. The billboards. The shoe on the other foot? One shoe on the floor, the other about to —-

Withholding or absence?

Sandpaper on silk, tongue stuck on a popsicle.
A tango without steps. Without a lead. Fearless or otherwise.

Leaves falling in July. Green grass in December.

Is this the real life or is this just Fantasia?

Where did I put it? Where did you put it?  It’s always something. First one thing than another. There you go. And there you are. There’s that.

The John Deere in the haystack. The needle in your eye.

Nothing is easy.

Quick! Make haste! Vite! Vite!

Remove all flat surfaces. Depressions and resting places. Fill them with knick knacks and bric-a-brac.

Not here. No no no no. Not here. This is not your soft landing.