I was at a picnic last week holding a friend’s adorable one year-old grandbaby when someone said the thing someone always says when a woman of a certain age is caught holding someone else’s baby: “whoa oh, look out, she’s going want another one.”
Really? Can I just say on behalf of all women out there, just because someone has a (presumably) functioning uterus, and is somewhere between too tragically young and embarrassingly old to procreate does not mean she’s somehow spontaneously going to decide she needs to add the complication of a(nother) wiggly, smelly bundle of anxiety to her life.
It was totally MIke’s idea to invite my Grandma to move in, and it wasn’t until she did that I realized I hadn’t ever been able to spend any time with her while I was growing up. In fact, I didn’t know her at all. As we helped her unpack her stuff, I came across one of those little ceramic spoon rests someone had placed on the stove. It said “Betty’s Kitchen,” and I thought: “the hell it is.” This could go wrong really fast.
I didn’t know what to expect from our arrangement. Would she try to assume the position of supreme matriarch of the household? Be overbearing and bossy? That’s my job.
I didn’t have to worry. Grandma could be assertive, but more often she was playful. She and the boys were co-conspirators in slipping table scraps to the dog, something they resorted to practically every evening after ruining their dinner. She always had a private stash of chocolate and popsicles she was happy to share with the boys.
Yeah, you. I know exactly where you inherited that from.
There are moments when I think Colin exhibits what I want to believe is latent cleverness beyond what he could have inherited from either of us. Other times I’m pretty sure his relentless questioning is actually a form of obsessive compulsivity that I’ve seen before (ahem, Mike). Since overt boasting about my kids isn’t really my style, I’m going to assume the later is the more likely possibility.
“False Chinch” better known as GET OUTTA MY FREAKING HOUSE, image courtesy of Colorado State University Extension
So, it’s a hundred and freakin’ who knows how many degrees outside, and inside we’re starting to make each other crazy. I think part of the problem is my kids only unplug from the matrix long enough to make demands, eat all our food, or yell at each other. The other part of the problem is bugs.
Little, smelly, flying bugs infested my house last weekend and whether they hatched in here or they’re crawling in some minuscule hole somewhere to evade the heat, I don’t know, but I think they’re going to cost me my sanity.
We came home last weekend on one of those overfull flights in a teeny airplane that underscore how someone missed the memo about the hoards more people commuting between Boise and Seattle than can be comfortably accommodated. We stopped downtown on our way home for a late lunch.
No matter how big he gets, I’ll have this proof that at one point he thought of me as the taller one. And probably the louder one too.
The place was new, and trendy, with lots of blond wood and brushed metal, cement floors, heavy, metal barstools and tall tables. We’d been unable to get a table the first few times we’d come. Now, months after it opened, at 3 pm on a Sunday, sans kids, we didn’t have to wait for lunch. I climbed onto my barstool and realized after a moment that a. my feet weren’t actually resting on anything, and b. this made me feel like a third grader.
Summer is coming and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
You knew there would come a time when those in your charge would be too old for daycare but still too young for gainful employment. You don’t live in China. Did you forget? All they can do now is sit around and bug you while you try to get something productive done for the next three months.
This isn’t like when you were a kid. It’s no longer considered “healthy” for people to sleep until noon, then plop themselves down with a bowl of cereal and reruns of Hogans Heroes and Gilligan’s Island. You were in full control when you made the decision to work from home eons ago, ostensibly to be with these little hooligans through their formative years. And, yeah, you reveled in the opportunity to turn the working mom model on its head. You may have bragged some. It’s not above you.
Some two or three decades ago my freckled skin and I became good friends with Hawaiian Tropic, SPF 4 in my pursuit of the teen ideal of beauty. Despite my determination to transform my natural skin tone from its normal translucent hue that would have been coveted in Victorian-era England, I never really tanned. In the years since I have learned to balance my grudge against the lotion industry and its failure to deliver on promises of bronze perfection, with my disdain for my inherited pallor.
Sometime several months ago, I absent-mindedly picked at patch of dry skin on the left side of my nose, creating a small sore that stayed for weeks. A scab would form, which would wash off in the shower, or slough off when I ran and rubbed the sweat off my face with my sleeve.
There are things I love about social media, not the least of which is the extent to which it feeds my need for attention. Sometimes that same narcissism is the foundation of one of the reasons I DON’T like social media: it occasionally makes me confront the fact that I need to be liked, and come to grips with how much it bugs me when I’m not.
I love the friendships I’ve rekindled on Facebook. I had no idea I’d ever reconnect with so many ex-boyfriends outside of a drunk dialing marathon. There are several acquaintances I’m happy to get to know better, and friends from the past I’ve missed dearly.
I’ll not pretend to be one of those people who doesn’t check her Facebook account several times a day. I don’t have a water cooler at which to hang out and find out what’s going on.
To all of you who like to rave: “ooh, Facebook, who has time for all that nonsense? Who cares what you had for dinner or what your cat threw up?” Whatever. I love it. The pictures of the toll-painted holiday crafts, the announcements of who read what fan-mag article, the restaurant where you enjoyed lunch. the pithy quote from Yogi Berra, the not so pithy quote from your kid. Bring it on. I’ll read it. Maybe twice.
I’ll sometimes block content that I feel is too political (rare) or offensive (even more rare), but for the most part, friends contributing to my news feed provide a refreshingly broad array of perspectives and insights – sometimes droll, sometimes funny, sometimes just a blur of color as I scroll quickly by.
Whitesnake’s David Coverdale
Then there’s Casey. In the 9th grade, Casey and I were briefly an item, but only in the academic sense, meaning there was no kissing, a little hand-holding, and daily notes passed when we walked to fifth period. Casey was tall, with a gigantic Adam’s apple. He played the trumpet, or trombone, or some wind instrument that has a spit valve. He shared my affinity for unicorns and called every evening at exactly 7:00 pm for a 20 minute chat. That is all I remember about our relationship – that and the fact that I broke up with him in one of my pre-5th period notes.
When we reconnected on Facebook some 25 years later, I was happy to learn that he had a successful career as a music professor at a local private college, and had a wife and three children.
Funny Girl Barbara Streisand
He also was a strident evangelical libertarian, and was the most vociferous of all my Facebook friends in his posts. Aside from quoting some of the most gloomy scripture I’d ever read, he didn’t say anything patently offensive. He also appreciated the humor in my status updates – especially those about my habit of sending the kids off to school while covering Barbara Streisand classics in my fuzzy white robe and slippers from our porch. Casey liked Babs, apparently.
Then one day the stream of hell-fire stopped abruptly. Casey had “unfriended” me.
Me: funny, irreverent, careful to screen out anything remotely depressing, negative or political. Me.
Casey: angry, Ron Paul supporting, pro-gun, pro-hell-and-damnation with a gigantic Adam’s apple. Casey.
Casey. Unfriended. Me.
My discovery of this kicked off an afternoon of forensic Facebooking the likes of which I had no time for. What in my funny, trite posts had offended Casey? Was he trying to get back at me for 9th grade? Didn’t I even warrant the courtesy of a note?
The offending photo (apparently): Jeff Crosby and the Refugees at last year's Boise Rec Fest
Since, as I’ve said, Casey had been kind enough to comment on many of my posts, I could go back through my news feed and more or less find where his feedback had ended abruptly.
Early this summer I posted a picture of a young musician playing on a park stage during an outdoor music festival. He had the kind of long blonde “do” that my friends and I used to swoon over while watching videos of White Snake on MTV. The photo I posted of him I had captioned “yum.”
Classy, huh? But not as much as the photo I was going for, which would have framed him beyond the large micro brew in my hand, with my painted toes on bare feet stretched out in the grass. My little phone wasn’t able to capture that particular scene.
Commenting on this cute musician was something that I thought would illicit comments from friends my age who had either swooned over long-haired hooligans or been swooned over because of the length of their locks. After a couple of beers, this seemed like a fun conversation starter.
A note on drinking and posting: Ever since I’d had the opportunity to rethink one of my more ill-timed and snarky comments about children in the Gifted and Talented Program (which mine aren’t), the morning after I’d made it on Facebook, I resolved to avoid publicly airing grievances after imbibing. My judgement is terrible after a couple of beers, and I hate making public apologies. I’d sworn off drinking and posting, until this incident.
So, here I am. Minus one less Facebook friend. I don’t know if I’m more intrigued by the irony of being shunned by the purveyor of the Prince of Peace, or irked because his threshold for taking offense is so low.
I’m also kind of sad because there is now one less person out there waiting to hear about my latest Funny Girl impression.
