Straight Talk

My parents visited this weekend and I am lucky to have avoided a stroke. It's not that my parents and I don't get along usually, but I made the mistake of bringing up the presidential election. Not in front of my dad, who had already commented that the president doesn't have that much power, so Bush couldn't be responsible for this mess. I choked out something about 6-years of a Republican congress before I stifled myself.
But the afternoon my parents were leaving, as we sat at the dining room table without my dad, I approached my mom. She'd made some reasonable remarks recently about no one in Washington to look out for the people. I thought she might be rational on the topic. Instead, she was the farthest thing from it.
When I mentioned Obama's name, she said, "Well, you know he's only where he is because of the Chicago mob."
My husband choked on his chili and a vein started throbbing in his forehead. "The Chicago mob would NOT put a black man in a place of power," he roared. I motioned to him to calm down. We could return this conversation to a sensible one yet.
"Mom," I started, "you know those e-mails you get are always wrong."
"Well, his stepfather raised him as a muslim."
I had nothing on the stepfather.
"And, he said that he'd visited all 57 states and there are 57 states of Islam. I saw that in the paper!"
This was the point where I began to bang my head on the table. No, I didn't, but I wanted to.
"Mom, if you want to vote for McCain then do it for a real reason, not this made up crap."
I wanted to spend some time imagining what my mom thought would happen if Obama was elected. Would he take over the country and force us all to be muslim, was that her fear?
I got up and walked over to the sink. "I guess we can't talk about this, because you don't realize how panicked I am about the idea that we may have three years to leave the country before Spencer turns 18 and is drafted into a needless war."
"FDR started the biggest war ever and he was a democrat."
At that point, I went downstairs to do laundry. Hmmm. Let's compare World War II and the Iraq War. My mom still thought we went there to fight Al Quaeda. She thought the terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center were from Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia.
Deep breaths as I pulled warm laundry from the dryer and carefully folded the towels into squares.
What would be the reason to vote for McCain? The newspaper the next day gave me a good reason. So, Mom, if this is you, under the McCain tax plan, taxes will go down for the top 1 percent in the country by $125,000 per year. I can understand voting for McCain if you want that $125,000 back. I mean, I can understand that people don't want to pay a lot of taxes. And that money the top 1 percent gets back, that's more than we gross a year. But, if you need the money, vote for McCain. Maybe we can borrow that tax return money to buy a new house in France or New Zealand, where my boys will be safe from unnecessary wars.

Today I'm feeling...

Satisfied, like I finished a good meal, but not full and bloated and unable to move. I want to do a happy dance. Yesterday, after months of procrastination or brain freeze, I finished the revision of my novel Trail Mix.
Like a patient after bariatric surgery, the manuscript shrank from 99,000 to 87,000 words. From 360 pages to 326 pages. And, I think it improved - a lot.
I think I can blame part of the delay on my friend Marcus. He methodically began to sift through the book and we would meet each week over turkey sandwiches (sauce on the side for him, what kind of bread is that?) or espressos with flavor (only 3 squirts of raspberry in his coffee, please, and skim milk). But the loitering over lunch and coffee also led to the refinement of my manuscript. He'd come up with comments like: "This page is very -ingy." And when I read it, I realized he was right. I puzzled over sentences like: "Wearing only a blue jogging bra and her Nike running shorts, she scrubs her hands at the sink before popping some bread into the stainless steel toaster." What's with all the detail? Marcus would ask. How does the reader know which ones are important?
I got the point, and I think I reached a new writing phase where I could zip through pages and hear Marcus' nagging voice in my head. So the manuscript is better.
Now I feel anxious. I've given three copies to literate friends and asked them to read them -- fast. I want to send out query letters and manuscripts to agents who will love it! Okay, like it enough to ask to see the full. And maybe, that one agent who will say, "I can sell this."
So, what sort of incentive can I offer my friends to read my manuscript in record time? Well, I do hope they enjoy it and want to keep reading. Maybe, like the actor Bob Hoskins, who takes scripts to the toilet and knows they're good when his butt goes numb, maybe my friends will find themselves unable to put my book down.
Just in case, though, I'll offer a gift certificate to COSI or Panera or Borders to whoever finishes it first and gets it back to my greedy little hands.

What I learned living without power for 5 days

The morning after the Ohurricane blew through dawned clear and cool. Not cold, but a humidity-free cool that made the sky an eye-blinding blue. The landscape of splintered trees and blown leaves seemed surreal as kids raced by on bicycles and the quiet of an electricity-free neighborhood rang in our ears. Anybody can last 24-hours without power but how long would it go. We lost power on Sunday, and on Thursday, with a blink of off/on power at the high school, electric service was restored at our house. I knew because Earl texted me: "Ta da."
Here are some things I learned:
10. Showering by candlelight is not romantic when it's your only alternative.
9. There's no point in getting out of bed before it's light when you have no electricity and no school.
8.Taper candles work best for homework and reading at the table. Those little pillar candles don't shed much light below.
7.I will always burn myself trying to light a candle with a lighter rather than a match.
6.The night is incredibly long when it begins at 8 p.m.
5.12-year-olds need electronics way more than teenagers
4.Necessity is the mother... well, you know. I made pork chops on the grill for dinner in time for Grace to eat before swim practice, but Spencer wasn't home from soccer. How could I keep them warm? I lit a burner on the stove and filled a skillet with water. I set the plate over the skillet and put a lid over the plate. Voila. Warm pork chops when Spencer got home.
3. Midwesterners are disgustingly optimistic. I can't count how many conversations I heard that started with "It could be so much worse..." as we listed the benefits of having running water, warm weather, a gas stove and water heater
2.Don't gloat about the fact that you have electricity when much of the city is still in the dark.
1. I am no Laura Ingalls Wilder

No Power, the True Black Hole

That first night the power went off wasn't so bad. Tucker pulled his acoustic guitar from its case and played songs while we sang along. When he grew tired, Grace practiced the piano as the light waned. I set a candle on top of the piano, but she said she was only playing from memory so she didn't need the light. We sat on the front porch, legs propped on each other's laps and laughed about childhood memories.Then we went inside and played Apples to Apples while Spencer tried to read The Hobbit and shushed us for breaking his concentration.
The whole situation was a little pioneerish. Music and stories and family games. The boys bunked down in the living room and I blew out the candles before going to bed.
The next day I only needed to light a match to the gas stove to heat water for tea. We put the two gallons of milk in a cooler with bags of ice and we salvaged the ham and turkey lunch meat, along with the block of mozzarella and goat cheese. Sandwiches for lunch. The bread was thawing anyway. Hash browns with bacon thrown in for dinner because they had also thawed. As the light began to fail on the second day, Tucker approached me.
"How much longer? I can't go without power. Can't we go to the Knotty Pine to watch football?"
One of his friends has power. "Go to Matthew's house and watch TV," I suggested.
"It's not the same, I can't flip through the channels. I need power."
He lay his head on the table.
I tried to reassure him. "We're safe. We'll be okay."
Apparently safety is not uppermost in the 12-year-old's mind. "I need power. I can't go for six more days."
Well, I don't know if I can either. But I have hot water. I can take a shower. My hair is curly rather than straight, but really, we're fine.
Spencer has almost read all of The Hobbit and Grace sat on a trampoline with friends late into the night before walking home and finding her way to bed by flashlight.
Our radio/boombox has batteries, so I let Tucker put a CD in and he set it beside his pillow, listening to We The Kings "Check Yes, Juliet" as he fell asleep. Any kind of electronic device is better than nothing when you're desperate for civilization.
School was canceled again today and people are lined up out the door at Panera where the lights and power, along with the coffee and bagels are going full strength. So, Panera doesn't exactly make it pioneerish, but a little roughing it won't kill us

Ohio Hurricane

How was I to know that the "high wind advisory" was actually a hurricane blowing through? Seriously. Who thinks hurricane in Ohio? I went for a run in the morning and spent the day baking banana bread, cleaning, helping with homework. I noticed that the trees were bending in the breeze and my husband came in from reading on the front porch predicting that the wind might knock down limbs. I disregarded him as I handed the car keys to my 16-year-old. She was headed downtown for her dance/vocal group. I left a few minutes later.
"I'll ride my bike," I called to my husband.
"No, take the car. The wind's too strong."
I pshawed, but took the car anyway. As I drove along the main road, half a mile from our house, I swerved to avoid major branches in the road. This mile drive was fraught with wind gusts, malfunctioning traffic lights, and blowing debris. What had I sent my 16-year-old into? During the meeting, I tried to reach my daughter by text. "Let me know when you're safe."
Finally she called. "Mom, I'm having really bad stomach cramps."
She was safe. My husband and I drove down so we could both drive cars back. She seemed chipper. "I'll get my stuff."
The dance instructor confided, "She was cramping up."
"I think it might be anxiety," I replied.
When we ran to the car, the wind ferociously howling, she burst into tears.
"Is it that black hole thing?" she asked. We'd recently read about the semiconductor in Switzerland that could, possibly create a black hole that might or might not engulf the earth.
"No, honey, it's not the black hole. It's the hurricane."
So Hurricane Ike, which took hours to move across Houston, reached Ohio within a day and swept away our electricity, along with lots of tree branches. On the bright side, it wasn't a black hole.

A dream dies

My husband wanted to talk about John Edwards. He'd call me from work and say, "It doesn't look good for Edwards." I'd tell him to shut up. I didn't want to hear it. I didn't want to believe it. Now that it is true and has sunk in, I still don't want to discuss it with my husband or any other man. Because this is not about John Edwards. This is about every man who I thought was decent and upstanding, and the truth is -- They are not.
Any man who is offered the world, will trade it for a piece of ass. End of story.
Do you want to be the leader of the remaining superpower or do you want to have sex with the frizzy blonde? Sex, obviously.
Do you want to make certain poor people have housing and food and health care or do you want to have sex with a middle-aged blonde? Sex, again.
Do you want to be there to comfort your wife, the mother of your four children, who is dying of cancer, or do you want to have sex with the blonde? You guessed it. Sex again.
Men should be finished ruling. Just hand in your keys and go have sex. Let us women take charge. We enjoy sex, sure, but we wouldn't let the children starve while we have sex. Sex is a great rush, but we wouldn't risk our marriages, much less the entire country.
I, obviously, do not have what it takes (a penis) to understand the ridiculous choices that men make again and again. Edwards' mistake proves to me that although I can think Obama is an awesome leader, I should fully expect him to make the same stumble. I'm ready for it this time; I won't be surprised.
The only bright spot in an otherwise sex-hazed world, is the thought that if George Bush had an affair, he might not have started a war. And, I guess, sex with irrelevant blondes is better than body bags full of American soldiers.

High-Class Strippers

I was reading the sports page the other day, getting a fix of all the latest Olympic news, when I saw a small ad at the bottom of the page -- a closeup of a blond woman's face. Her lips looked sensual, her eyes half closed. An ad for a strip joint. That's not what they call them, of course. They advertise "private modeling" or "adult entertainment." Under the woman's picture was her name -- Claudia Monet.
I cracked up and nudged my husband. "Look."
That's for the upper crust guys who want culture and hot babes stripping, he figured.
Because, really, what art afficiando is going to be lured in by a blonde named Claudia Monet?

Be The Cone

Last night, I stood in a parking lot while a car drove toward me and maneuvered within inches. After a brief stop, the car reversed and tried to retrace its tracks, missing me and crushing a traffic cone behind it. This was one of my less demanding, yet grueling jobs as a mother. My daughter was practicing for the maneuverability test so she could pass her driving test and I was one of the five cones.
Some parents are so nervous about their kids driving. Maybe because my daughter is not a risk-taker, I feel a little more secure, but I know that when she gets behind the wheel and pulls onto the road, I can't protect her anymore. Even riding with her while she practiced driving, I knew if things went really wrong, there was nothing I could do.
Her appointment was at 4 p.m. and we showed up early. A glitch. Her temporary permit was issued exactly one year and a day before. It had expired. The examiner sent us next door to get a new temporary permit and I heard her tell someone on the phone that they were scheduling appointments in two weeks. We waited in line for about 40 minutes and paid $22 for a new temporary permit that she had for less than 24 hours.
The examination office was closing when we left with her temps. Maxwell, one of the officers, told us we were too late to take the written test. My daughter had to retake the written test because of her expired temps.
"Come early. Saturday is a zoo," Maxwell warned.
So, at 8 a.m., we were in line for the written test. After she passed, we lay in wait for Maxwell as he returned from a driving test.
"Do you remember us from yesterday? Can you fit us in?"
He was a nice guy and he surreptitiously worked her into his driving schedule. She came back from the car smiling. And we stood in another line until she emerged with another license, this one letting her take to the roads alone.
So this afternoon, at 12:30, she got into her dad's red convertible and she drove away. Only three miles to work and three miles back. But she was alone in the car. Without the radio on if she was following my rules.

Brain vs. Braun

I read in the paper today about a crazy biathalon that involves playing chess and boxing.
Sorry to break it to these organizers, but my son and a friend invented this sport years ago when my then 8-year-old had his first, and so far as I know, only fist fight over a chess set. He was a slender boy with long eyelashes and gold hair down to his shoulders and he played chess every Wednesday at the library. He and an older friend wandered out the back door of the library to watch for me when one of two curly haired twins snatched away the queeen of his chess set.
When threats didn't work, either my son or his friend threw a punch and the chess set was complete again. We always joked about what a dangerous sport chess was after that. Now, I can see that someone is cashing in on it.

Raspberries - My One Wish

That's when I'll know I've made it, when I can eat as many raspberries as I want. Right now, when I go to the grocery, I buy the square flat box of raspberries. What is it a pint, a half-pint? Then I bring it home and gently wash them, hoping I won't find any mold. I separate the raspberries into four tiny glass bowls (my husband doesn't like them luckily) and we sprinkle them with sugar. My 14-year-old inhales his and begs for mine. This is one thing I won't give in on. I eat my own raspberries, savoring each fresh bite.
Someday, maybe I'll get a whole bowl brimming with berries. But I have no hope of ever affording enough raspberries, or any other food, that will fill up my 14-year-old.

If I had one wish....

A guy I teach with is getting ready to move to Kansas or Nebraska, some more Midwestern place, to get his PhD. Because he's leaving, he won't be able to teach this summer.
"Guess I'm looking at manual labor," he said. He went on to express his wish that the more letters behind his name, eventually he will be able to leave manual labor behind. He'll know he has really made it when he can order in pizza and drink good beer with it.
Funny, how such a simple thing could be the sign of success.
Mine used to be books. I thought if I had enough money to go into a bookstore and buy whatever book I wanted then I would know I'd made it. Then I realized, the library fulfills that need for me. I can bike down to the library and fill my basket with more books than I could ever read.
Sometimes I wish I had enough money to buy whatever the kids need for their many sports. Spencer's basketball shoes are too tight. We go buy a new pair without calulating when the season starts, how long they'll have to last, how much his feet will grow.
Tucker's goggles leak and we traipse down to the aquatics store. Maybe we choose a few pair so that he has a backup. Grace's racing swimsuit gets too loose so we send away for the $200 Speedo, the one that can take precious 100ths of seconds off her race time.
Maybe buying the kids all of their high-tech gear for sports would spoil them. Maybe it's for the best that I say, let's wait until... payday, we sell the other house, that big government rebate check we're still waiting for.
When I think about what would satisfy me, lately, I've mostly wished to be comfortable enough to eat out or order in most nights, so I won't have to fire up the grill or my imagination to come up with another dinner!
How about you? What's the one thing that you need to be comfortable?

School Success

My 12-year-old had been in school exactly three months when he dressed that day in a Polo rugby shirt and gray cords. He tried to smooth down his dark hair that sticks up on top and I saw him swallow hard a few times before he headed out the door.
It was supposed to be an honor, this student of the month award. To him, it seemed more like a punishment. Oh, the award was nice. Good behavior, good grades, respect, helpfulness. All of those things were taken into consideration before they chose my youngest to be the sixth grade boy student of the month. And, he admitted, that he likes to get to school early so he can hold the door open for the teachers and students. Little brown noser. So that may be why he was chosen.
The prize for being student of the month is a lunch at a local restaurant. That sounds good. We'd been there a dozen times in the fall to watch OSU football and eat wings. The catch was, the lunch was for the students of the month from each grade,
5th through 12th. One boy and one girl from each grade, plus the principals from the middle school and high school.
He was nervous. Who would he talk to? He didn't know that many students in the 6th grade, much less students from the high school.
That night he came home with his certificate.
"The burger was so big I couldn't get my mouth around it," he said.
"I was the only one who ordered Coke. Everyone else had Sprite."
We have a no caffeine rule in our house, but I told him for this special occasion he could go with the Coke.
He sat at a table with the two fifth graders and an 8th grade boy who is an acquaintance of his brother.
"It was okay," he said.
The principals sat away from the students, on the other side of a partition, peeking their heads over to see if they were behaving.
The impression that remains, Student of the Month is really just Student of the Lunch. Not a big deal, unless you're the youngest kid in a family whose older siblings haven't been chosen as student of the month-- yet.

Pulling on the reins

I did something yesterday that I never imagined myself doing. I walked into a cinemaplex, entered the darkened theater where the movie flashed, and found my 14-year-old son.
"We're going home," I said. And he got up and followed me.
I don't know if I'm really mad at him, but I do know I was manipulated and I'm pretty pissed at the dad who took him.
Saturday was a busy day. I was at a writer's conference all day and my husband was working. The kids were left unsupervised. Well, the youngest spent the day at a friend's house after soccer. So my 14-year-old left a sleepover to walk over to another friend's house. He called -- three times in a row until I answered -- to tell me the change of location. I called him back at lunch time.
"Could I please go see Escape from Guantanamo Bay?" he asked. I'm picturing terrorists and guns and chase scenes.
"It's a comedy."
I asked a passing friend. "You know anything about it?"
Not suitable for a 14-year-old, the friend suggested.
"Make another choice," I told him before I went to eat a grown-up lunch.
Later in the day, my phone rang, vibrating in my pocket. A session was wrapping up and the phone vibrated again before I could escape to the hall to answer it.
"Please, Dylan's dad is going to come with us so we can get in to the r-movie."
The agent I was hoping to catch was coming out the door. I wanted to talk to her.
"Okay." I agreed to the r-rated movie so I could catch the agent.
When I got home, he stopped by for money and my phone rang again, this time it was the mother of one of his friends. "Are you really letting him go, because I'm not letting Dakota."
She read the review from Common Sense.org. Incest? Sexual positions? Excessive drug use?
The father, divorced, was waiting in the car with his son and another boy who was allowed to go. I walked out to the car, barefoot.
"Look, I'm not going to let him go," I said. "I just don't want to deal with all of those issues. Sorry you waited for him."
They started to drive away when the son yelled, "We could see something else."
The boys agreed and my son hopped in the car. In the house again, I looked at the newspaper to see what their other options were. Under PG-13 I saw Prom Night? A slasher film.
I texted the boys. I'll take you to the video store to rent something.
No. We're going to see 88 Minutes, they texted back.
I'd seen previews. Al Pacino. Probably a lot of tense moments, I thought. Wait. That was rated R too.
I looked it up. Violent torture of women. Victims are hung upside down in their underwear.
That was when I decided. Carrie was with me, so I wouldn't humiliate my son alone. We walked in the theater and said, "Our sons are in an R-rated movie without our permission."
They let us sail by like we were Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip.
As we walked out of the theater with our sons, the father came running out after us.
"I'm sorry. I didn't think."
I didn't turn around, I kept walking with my boy towering over me, my hand on his thin back.
When the dad stopped by later, to apologize again, I made amends. "He should have known he wasn't allowed to see that movie and he should have told you." I said to the dad.
"I shouldn't have put a 14-year-old in that position," he said.
Yeah, I wanted to agree with him. You shouldn't have. But you're the divorcee. The fun-time dad.
"Look, any movie that is degrading to women, I'm going to object to."
I wanted to say, you have a daughter too. Don't you get it?
But I didn't.
I'm reconsidering the freedom my 14-year-old has. You can bring your friends here, I told him. For awhile. Let's stick around home. Where I know there are adults who are keeping an eye on things.

Central Ohio Meets Hot Miami

A group of 8th graders travelled by bus from the flatness of central Ohio to the former swampland that is our nation's capital. The boys were herded into the back of the bus and the girls coralled into the front with the chaperones sitting between. They hit all the major monuments, and were stunned into silence at the Holocaust Museum. The week culminated with a dance and dinner cruise along the Potomac. The boys, growing tall and gawky, put on polo shirts and dress pants. The girls donned dresses and skirts, some of them daringly wearing spaghetti straps under a pearl-buttoned sweater. The shoes were a disappointment, but the teacher insisted on flats only, no heels. The girls' hair was slicked straight and many opted for a ponytail. Giggling, they boarded the boat and were surprised to see another group of students -- 8th graders from Miami, Florida.
These students looked different. The girls' dresses were cut low across the chest and high on the leg. They glittered with jewelry and hair ornaments in their wild curls, frizzing in the swampy heat.
When the dancing began, the groups were mingled. These central Ohio kids knew how to dance. They'd been going to dance club for six weeks, stepping and shaking in rhythm to the music and the directions of the dj. But they weren't quite ready for the Miami kids' dancing.
One boy, about 5'4" and with a smooth, innocent face, stood doing his goofy dance, his arms in the air bending back and forth like windshield wipers. His friends love to watch him make up dances. Suddenly, a girl from Miami joined him. Her dance moves were centered a little lower.
"She was just humping him," said one 14-year-old observer.
"What'd he do?" I asked.
"He ran."
And when he told his girlfriend, she laughed.
Another boy, a little taller, his muscles beginning to fill out, his face tan and his smile dazzling, shrugged his shoulders when two girls asked if he wanted to dance.
He knows now that he should have said no. Shouldn't have been so accommodating, but when they began to grind on him, he wasn't the one who went running from the dance floor, it was his girlfriend. She still isn't speaking to him, in spite of pleas and tears.
"Those girls from Miami, they were different from the ones here," my wise 14-year-old observed.
"Compared to them, our girls are prudes," said the boy who sat on the sidelines watching and refusing to dance.
"Well," I said, "let's just call them more modest."
And, as I pulled the car into the garage, I felt pretty good about our move to this small town in central Ohio.

Social Savoir Faire

My kids have done pretty well adjusting to school after all those years I tortured them with homeschooling. The thing we homeschool moms laugh about is when people ask the "socialization" question. We spent our days driving to sports and crafts and trying to get our friends to take their kids back home rather than leaving them at our house for another day. Socialization is not a problem for homeschoolers. They play with kids of all ages.
And, I'm lucky that, although one of my kids is struggling with test taking, he has mastered the school social stratum. He has had a couple of girlfriends, but he's really more interested in hanging out with his buds, coming home covered in mud from football in the field or basketball on the court. His hands grow weary from Guitar Hero and Play Station.
He came home one day and said some girls made a list of the hottest guys at school and he was number one. He was obviously feeling pretty good about that.
"Who are the girls?" I asked.
"Oh, just some girls. I would never go out with them or anything," he said.
They are on a different rung of the ladder from him. A little lower, just dreaming of the guy on the rung above them.
I'm not sure if I should be bothered by his feeling that some people are beneath him, but am I kind of disturbed to realize that I was one of those girls. I might have made a list. I might have given a secret nickname to the hot guy, but he was never going to look at me.

Friends

The worst thing about sending my kids to school, aside from all of the school things, is that in one fell swoop I lost contact with all of my friends.
When we were homeschooling, hardly a day passed that we didn't get together with friends to play or meet at the rec center or have classes at the library or go on a nature hike/kickball game. The days were filled with laughter and yelling and conversation.
These days, after 8 a.m., my house is mostly quiet. When I'm home, I work in the solitude, shooing the cat off the mantle, turning on another load of a laundry. I don't mind the quiet and sometimes will stretch out on the couch for an afternoon nap. But I do miss my friends, those homeschool moms who helped me brainstorm so many childrearing problems.
And so, I'll think to myself, we should go out for coffee or lunch. But then I remember the problem. That mom still has all those kids at home. She can't just dump them and meet me. I can't invite her and the clutch of kids to my house because my kids aren't here to entertain them. And, I'll have to assume, my homeschooling friends figure I wouldn't want to visit their houses with the passel of kids there. Who would want to leave a quiet house for a house full of kids (to steal a turn of phrase from Seinfeld)?
So, I'll sit here in my quiet house, reminding myself to get my work done while the kids are gone, and hope for more days like the snow day, when I invited some moms of schoolgoers over to play cards and we had pina coladas in the middle of the afternoon.

Blizzard

Somewhere back in my childhood is the memory of being snowed in. I think I can remember my father not going to work because of the snow, but it somehow gets mixed together with my best friend from college being stranded at our house too, so I know that different blizzards have mingled. But I felt that same excitement yesterday when the winter storm warning was changed to a blizzard warning.
As a child, I can remember the weather man's face on the news when he warned that the barometric pressure was dropping. That was a sudden and scary blizzard. The one this weekend was just heavy snow that refused to quit.
I was prepared to hunker down in the house, a nice fire drying off the wet gloves and boots as the kids came in from their sledding forays. I got up at 5 and turned on the TV so I could see the cancellations, confident that the championship swim meet over an hour away would be put off for another day. But when the call didn't come, we piled into the car, leaving at 6:45. The kids busily texted their friends.
"Where r u?" they asked.
Not going, came one response.
Then, "Turning around," from the friends about 20 miles ahead of us. The roads are too bad. And the highway was covered with packed down snow. When we got to a smaller route that didn't have buildings on either side, the blowing snow was piled up, scraping the bottom of our Honda Pilot. We began the route home, calling the swim coach with the bad news.
So today, as the kids arrange sledding dates, there is a vague feeling of missing something. Being stranded in the house with peanut butter cookies and cocoa, card games and a curious kitty isn't as satisfying because we have that left out, nagging feeling, knowing that in an overheated natatorium, the kids' friends are swimming, possibly making their zones' times.
And our kids ask for rides, to a friend's house three blocks away or to the sledding hill. Another is picked up to go to a farther sledding hill. And so the bunker mentality of the blizzard is broken as the kids disperse and my husband stops to get a movie for those of us who won't brave the snow. Okay that's just me. But now I'll always remember the blizzard of 2008 as the year that I watched Italian for Beginners.

Makeover

I love good escapism like anyone else, but as I'm devouring a mommy lit or chick lit book, I find myself dreading the scene when the heroine has a makeover. Suddenly her gray hair is tinted with fabulous highlights. All of her old clothes are replaced with new designer brands that show off the tiny waist she was hiding under her shapeless clothes. And who knew that with a little make up she could accentuate those sparkling green eyes.
Perhaps we're conditioned from our childhood days of Cinderella to believe that the makeover must occur or we're just not worthy of all the good things coming our way. The Prince, after all, is deserving of much more than a date dressed in a Kohls' juniors evening gown, arriving in a rusting Dodge Colt. Even a magic pumpkin will suffice.
But, when I look beneath the superficiality of the makeover scene, I wonder whether this character, usually a mother who has spent her recent years taking care of everyone else, can change inside without the outer metamorphosis. Can she become introspective, realize she has become a person she doesn't know, a person without passion, and then change only within? Suppose she starts taking time for herself rather than devoting all her minutes to the kids. Can't she just curl up in a corner and read novels rather than buying a new wardrobe and going to fabulous parties? Maybe the makeover isn't just a symbol for shaking off the old life. Maybe it's necessary for this character, this woman, to realize her value again.
But the part that really hurts is when they throw out clothes that I know are in my closet. Why can't the heroine ever hold onto those boiled wool clogs and the overalls? Won't she ever have those bloated days again?

Let Me Get This Straight

In the mid 1980s when big hair was on the loose, I finally let my hair down. I was living in Washington D.C. and then Pinellas County, Florida. What chance did I have against the humidity but to let my curly hair do its own thing. So I lived with the curls and became used to getting out of the shower, putting in some hair gel and not thinking about it again.
One of my friends deemed it "romance heroine hair." So I could shake back my curls and pretend to be sexy.
And that worked for me through all of my childbirthing and childrearing years. You know the ones I mean, when instead of putting in contacts, I'd wear glasses so I could nap whenever the kids were napping or watching a movie. When the only make up that got near my face were a few smears of strawberry jam on my cheeks.
This fall, when I had my hair cut, the kind hairdresser offered to blow it dry straight. I'd spent my middle school years trying to straighten it into a page boy, so I knew it would never work, but I let her try it. Something in the world of haircare has definitely changed since my middle school years. My hair was straight and flat. My husband loved it. He bought me a ceramic flat iron for Christmas. I used it once before deciding it was way too much trouble to try again.
Until last week.
That's when I got my hair cut again and the hairdresser straightened it. My husband loved it again, but the comments from friends were the worst.
"Wow, you look 10 years younger," said one.
"You look like one of the kids," another mom said.
"You look really thin," said a third. "I'm not standing by you."
Now, it is not really possible that straightening my hair has taken off years and pounds, is it? The problem is that I'm highly succeptible to other people's opinions.
So, on Saturday morning, before driving to a swim meet, I got up early, showered and blew my hair dry. When is the last time I aimed a hairdryer at my head? Maybe if the temperature was below zero and I had to go out. When my hair was dry, I plugged in the flat iron and painstakingly separated it into small chunks, pulling the scorching ceramic iron along the waves until they fell stick straight. My husband came in and added the finishing curl under at the back.
Three times now I have stood in front of the bathroom mirror, running the flat iron over and over my curls until they're straight.
People keep asking me, "How long does it take?"
I have no idea how long it takes. I don't have time to time how long it takes; I'm busy straightening my hair!
This I do know, it takes 100%, maybe 1000% more time than it used to, because I never did anything to it.
And another thing I'm sure of, now that I'm straightening my hair, curls should be back in style any minute.

"My Head is Like a Magnet"

After 9 years of homeschooling, my daughter started school this year. She's a little more naive than most 16-year-olds and that's why I didn't really believe her when she came home and said people keep throwing things at her head. I mean, she's pretty innocent, but those high school boys are way finished with throwing things at girls to get their attention.
At first it was the hacky-sack boys. During lunch, they play hacky sack in the halls. They did that when I was in college and inevitably, someone walking down the middle of the hall would get hit. She claimed it happened every time. Finally, I gave her some advice that I learned from watching her "Aunt Pat."
When we were reporters in Clearwater, Florida, Pat was terrified of spiders. One practical joker in our office took delight in hiding a rubber spider in places that would startle Pat. She would scream and rave before handing the spider back to Mike, who would hide it again in another place. One day, after finding the spider in her coffee cup, she'd had enough. She took the spider out the front door and stood along the curb, waiting for a break in traffic. Then she threw the spider into the middle of the four-lane street. (Of course, Mike later ran into the street and retrieved the spider, but that's not the lesson I wanted my daughter to learn.)
I told her that the next time they hit her in the head with the hacky sack, she should grab it, run out the front door of the school and throw the hacky sack. (They're allowed to leave school at lunch time.) But before she had a chance to retaliate against the hacky sack boys, other boys began throwing things at her head.
Carrots at a swim meet. Coins and a ping pong ball at lunch. A pencil, part of a pen and a bottle cap during class. "Then he giggled," she told me the other day. "A high school boys giggling is not something you want to hear."
Her friends at school were unbelieving too.
"You're exxagerating," one friend said.
"Watch," my daughter retorted. She stepped into the hall, her friend Lisa right behind her. A hacky sack flew straight for her head.
She glared at the boy.
I think she's becoming famous for her glares, but they don't really serve as a force field to protect her head.