One for the Money, Two For the Show...

Is it wrong to admit that the "Ting!" of an incoming email mostly makes me flinch? An email usually brings:

1) An obligation I had forgotten about,
2) A payment request which, when filled, will improve the quality of my life in no measurable way or
3) Pictures of animals who, if not adopted by me, will die. DIE! BECAUSE OF ME!

All unpleasant surprises.

So you can imagine my delight when someone I interviewed for the book wrote to me and said, "Hey! The book's for pre-sale, which I'm sure you know!" This was exciting to me because it wasn't an animal on death row and also because I had no idea it was for pre-sale. I clicked over and noted the publication date is August 7th, which was exciting because I hadn't know that. Then I noticed the book is hardcover, which is incredibly exciting and also something I didn't know.

All pleasant surprises. Highly pleasant, in fact. Like many highly pleasant surprises, they made me a little agitated.

I'm of two minds right now. I'm supposed to encourage readers to pre-order a book, because pre-orders mean all sorts of good things to a publisher, a publisher who has gone the extra mile in terms of their faith in my book by putting in in a hardened cover. And yet it's 2012 and I know everyone is counting their pennies and it's hard to justify why you should spend money in January for something you won't have until August. And when I start to think that I'm asking for someone to spend money on something I wrote, a horrible little voice in my head hisses "You expect people pay for your words, plus shipping? You monstrous glob of entitlement! Why not just hire someone to clean the litter-box with platinum bags!"

After much soul-searching and humming loudly to block out the horrible little voice, I had an inspiration, I think. If you pre-order the book and send me some sort of email showing that has happened, I will send you a chapter which didn't make it into the book, which is sort of like getting to read what you paid for at the time you paid for it. I was always fond of this chapter--it was edited and everything-- but it didn't fit into the structure of the book and was jettisoned. Now, it can stop being an orphan and serve as my heartfelt "THANKS!!!" to the pre-orderers. If you don't pre-order for whatever reason (Local bookstores both rock and rule! I agree! Or, you've had quite enough of my writing, thank you very much! I understand!), know that I'm very grateful you're here, reading this. The books have been the sprinkles, but the blog and blog-readers has been the cake and the icing for the past seven years.

CODA: Sara J. Henry, who knows things, reminds me that people don't have to pay for their pre-ordered book until it ships, so it's slightly less awful to ask people to buy the book ahead of time. Good to know. But it still feels vulgar to be the "HEY! Buy my BOOK in ADVANCE!" person, and pre-ordering should still be rewarded.

The Day the Music Died

In case you haven't been over to Wikipedia today, or Reddit or, well, Cute Overload, you might not know about the big fight taking place in DC over the future of the Internet. I know, I know, it seems terribly inside-baseball and more than a touch geeky, but it's potentially devastating to those of us who create, and take pleasure in other's creations, online.

I'm not saying there isn't a need to combat online piracy. I have more than a few friends who work in the entertainment industry whose livelihoods have been negatively impacted by theft of creative material and I will be the first to agree that some kind of change in policy needs to be created to address that. But I don't think this is that law. People who are smarter than I am tell me this is a badly, vaguely written law, capable of being used by any large corporation against any company they view as a threat, including potential competitors who might be bringing something truly interesting to the marketplace. The only people who will win will be the kind of people who measure their self-worth in billable hours.

Give this four minutes. You might decide it's so much balloon juice and that you think the law should pass. Having gained the information freely, that's your right as a citizen. Just remember, this law could infringe on some future you's ability to get information that easily.

I Want Your Sex

An old-fashioned mother would say something like "You don't call, you don't write."

My busy, cosmopolitan mother merely noted that I haven't blogged lately. I explained that was because it's hard to blog when you haven't actually finished a thought in your head for several weeks.

For as far back as I can remember I've longed to be described as useful. Candidly, I also hoped for leggy, tawny, and elegant, but useful was always high on the list because it was the only adjective I had any hope in hell of hitting. I'm here to tell you, prayers are answered. I'm useful, all right. I have four separate volunteer jobs. I'm so useful I've recently been described as “frazzled”. I'd argue with the describer, but it was Consort and just as I was about to quibble I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Staring back was the Roz Chast-ian ideal of frazzled. Also, at that exact moment, I remembered I had a half-hour to write another fundraising letter so I dashed off in a frazzled and determined lunge.

Yes, readers, my charitable urges led me deep into social activism’s heart of darkness: fundraising. Wait, now I have five volunteer jobs. I believe this is what 12-step communities refer to as "bottoming out." But I'm not here to talk about my mental illness, colorful and sparkly as it might be. I'm here to tell you about one of the unexpected side-effects of homeschooling: censorship. And it’s not what you might think.

About two weeks ago, while at the library with the kid, my eye caught the most wonderfully compelling title. I flipped through the book, noticing it to be that perfect combination of good history woven through with bad behavior. It's called The Sexual History of London and my friends, it's awfully good. The writer, Catharine Arnold, knows her stuff and relates it in a smart yet approachable way. I love English history and I certainly appreciate terrific writing. The frazzled noise in my head -- which sounds like a violin endlessly being tuned -- actually faded away for a few seconds as I skimmed the chapter on the brothels of Londonium.

"What's that?" asked a small curious voice at my shoulder.

"Oh, look. It's...you!" I said stupidly to Daughter, snapping the book closed. We both looked down at the title and the cover artwork.

"I'm guessing that's not for me," she said flatly.

I laughed weakly and dithered about whether or not to check it out. Consort had told me in no uncertain terms that for the sake of my mental health (and by association, his) I was supposed to do something which made me happy and did nothing for anyone else. Sage advice. Reading about the sexual history of London would make me happy the same way reading about the history of rats in Manhattan had made me happy. I'm not prurient. I’m just odd. One problem, of course, is that the kid is always around. If, while reading this book, I forgot that fact and left it someplace available, my child might flip it open and read a couple of pages, at which point I might as well have raised her in the red-light district in Amsterdam. Maybe I should just wait and read interesting things in a few years.

My phone chirped an incoming text message, and then another, and then another. All three texts were from different groups I work with; each with different problem it would be ever so useful of me to fix. It was a sign. To protect my sanity, and my family’s domestic tranquility, I would find a way to read a dirty book. I did, however, take it to the automatic check-out, so as not to require eye contact with anyone. I asked Daughter to answer my text-messages while I swung it through the scanner and buried it deeply in the library bag.

My schedule over the next few days went like this:

Early in the morning, before anyone was awake, Sex in London. In the middle of the night, if I awoke in a frazzle over something useful-related, more Sex in London. Hiding in the garage, ostensibly packing the Christmas ornaments, I'd sneak in a little Sex in London. Because this book is so very compelling, and because I was so eager to have it and its two millennia of carnality and corruption out of my house, I tried to read it in the cracks of my maternal assignments; like while waiting for the kid to finish a music class, but you know, it's not easy to read in semi-public when the title of your book will make people look at you sideways, forever. Daughter's classmates come from nice families with mothers who never seem frazzled because they are all somehow related to Grace Kelly. When these women are observed reading in public, people see the book title and think: "I've always meant to read that” not "Should I be concerned this woman is near my children?"

With this in mind, I first hunched over cross-legged on the ground, covering the book with my legs. Then, concerned someone might catch a glimpse of the phrase tertiary syphilis over my shoulder, I inched closer into the corner. Finally, for the safety of everyone's decorum, I curled into a ball, my book in the inches between my knees and my collarbone, picking out a word here and there and wishing I owned a sombrero. I looked like a doorstop; a history-of-pornography reading doorstop. Which was when one of the most serene, least-frazzled, and most gently-bred of the mothers I know wandered over to see what I was reading and why it caused me to act so strangely. At which point I shoved the book into my purse and settled in for an hour of cuticle harassment.

It took a few days of sneaking around behind everyone's back, but I finished The Sexual History of London and for those of you with a less highly-developed social anxiety (and no children at home) I recommend it unequivocally. The odd thing is, for all the excessive, inventive and often deviant behavior in the book, I didn't find it to be titillating. After reading about many people making things more and more erotically byzantine and not appearing to be the happier for it, I found myself wanting to take the odd historical Londoner by the side and say "You know, it doesn't have to be that...complicated. More isn't always better." To which the Londoner would sneeringly remind me I had a volunteering task or six to accomplish and that at least he was having something resembling fun in his excess.

I returned the book and bid it a fond farewell. Wandering past the Science section, a title caught my eye. I read the inner flap, skimmed a few pages, and was captivated.

"Sex on Six Legs?" Daughter enquired at my elbow.

"It's about bugs," I answered crisply, as I prepared for another week of reading in the garage.

Everyone's Dancing Merrily in a New Old-Fashioned Way

I had a great aunt, now gone, who wrote the best Christmas letters ever. The card would arrive and I'd grab the nearest object which would theoretically be used as a letter-opener and go at it. Sometimes I'd use my index finger and get the expected paper-cut without complaint, such was my excitement. And there would be the letter, in all its unremitting glory. This woman was lovely and cheerful; the few times I met her in person, she struck me as a generally good egg and a great dame, but she worked on the assumption that people were most interested in the awful bits. Each letter was another year of my distant relatives in rehab, having miscarriages, getting divorced, entering hospice care or just up and dying. In my admittedly fault recollection, there was not a single piece of good news for a decade. It was like a Christmas letter written by Job. 

I felt as if last year's Christmas letter to you all was homage to my Great-Aunt Edith. But, in my defense, it was a year of loss and loss must be recognized. Loss is the roux upon which the gumbo of life is based, the darkish constant presence which might not be delightful on its own but gives meaning to everything on top of it.

[Yes, it's a stretch, but I just glanced at Bryan Batt's new book on decorating in the New Orleans way and have Big Easy on the brain. Could have been worse; I restrained myself from declaring loss to be the okra of the vegetable world.]

So, loss is roux and it's important and all, but it doesn't mean I didn't go into this year without a certain trepidation. Was 2011 going to be another year of goodbyes?

Turns out, it wasn't. Around this house, 2011 was not a year of loss, but a year of gains. Extra work-stuff for Consort, the book for me, challenging new online classes for Daughter, three new volunteer jobs for me and, of course, a rabbit. There have been many times in my life before this year where I've been beetling along, getting small things done, when I've been struck with the profound guilt that There's so much more I could be doing! I have much more energy I could be expending on getting things accomplished! Entropy is speeding up because I'm not helping someone somewhere! Well, while the Congressional Library couldn't hold all the other things I believe I should be doing, I can say honestly I'm probably at the upper limit of what I could be doing.

When I stop to consider that I forgot Daughter and I were due at church Sunday morning for altar-attending, I grant everyone permission to suggest I'm actually slightly beyond what I'm capable of doing.

In February-when I was signing the book contract- I scheduled my year and told Consort I wouldn't have an actual unaccounted-for day through June, 2012. Then we laughed, because that was absurd. It is absurd. It also happens to be true.

It's a funny year for my family; I'd say we're all a little burnt-out and yet somehow we're not unhappy. We're running everywhere, doing everything, noticing how more time and more money would make the whole process so much more effortless, but we're smiling. I think if you have a year of loss before a year of gain, there's always a small still voice in your head in the middle of the chaos reminding you you're alive, and that's a good thing to be. Maybe I take on everything because I know those people who've left would love to be back here, feeling useful, being alive.

Everything in my life needs me right now, which sometimes annoys me; I might periodically grumble about my volunteering, but I also know that because I show up, things get done. Maybe not perfectly-definitely not perfectly-but they get done, and I walk away feeling as if I've added something good. Seems like a small price to pay for all that I've been given. When I look at Daughter, her education, my relationship with Consort, my work, my life, my small, still inner voice sings softly And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

Have a joyous holiday season and I wish everyone a 2012 of productivity and peace.

Sugar, Oh Honey, Honey

Every winter, Consort and Daughter make cookies together. And then Consort and I eat them. So in solemn commemoration of when I could fit into my skinny pants, I offer you all the best recipe for Hermits I've ever found. Say after me; It has nuts and raisins in it, so that's healthy, right?


Ingredients

2 cups flour (plus a little extra, if necessary)

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 1/4 cups packed light brown sugar

1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk, at room temperature

3 tablespoons molasses

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3/4 cup finely chopped walnuts

1/2 cup dark raisins or currants

2 to 3 tablespoons finely chopped

Crystallized ginger (optional)

For the egg glaze: 1 egg, beaten with 1 teaspoon water




Instructions

1.Get out one or two large, heavy cookie sheets -- preferably shiny ones. (Just one sheet will be in the oven at a time, but having two sheets will streamline the baking.) Cut a piece of parchment paper to fit each sheet, then cut those pieces in half, length-wise. You should end up with four rectangular pieces of parchment. Heat the oven to 375°.

2.Sift 2 cups of flour, all of the spices, the baking powder, the baking soda, and the salt into a medium-size mixing bowl. Set it aside.

3.In a separate large bowl, use an electric mixer for a few seconds to soften the butter. Add the brown sugar to the butter roughly in thirds, beating at medium-high speed for 1 minute after each addition. Add the egg and yolk, and beat for another minute. Add the molasses and the vanilla, and beat for 1 more minute, until the batter is smooth.

4.Using a wooden spoon, stir 1 cup of the dry mixture into the creamed ingredients. Stir in the walnuts, the raisins (or currants), and the crystallized ginger, if you're using it. Add the remaining cup of the dry mixture a half cup at a time and stir after each addition. The dough should end up fairly dense and hard to stir. If it seems a little soft, mix in another 1 to 2 tablespoons of flour. Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and divide it into 4 equal pieces.

5. Working with well-floured hands, roll the first ball into a log about 12 inches long. Roll the log onto one of the pieces of parchment.

6.Place the log (with the paper) lengthwise onto the cookie sheet, leaving room for a second one beside it. Slightly flatten the log into a rough rectangle so the dough is about 3/4 inches thick and 1 1/4 inches wide.

7. Repeat the rolling steps for a second piece of dough, then use a piece of parchment to place the log on the other half of the cookie sheet (a) before flattening it (b). Using a pastry brush, paint both bars with the egg glaze. This will give the cookies a nice, shiny finish.

8. Bake the bars on the center oven rack for 11 to 12 minutes. While they are baking, prepare the rest of the dough and place it on the second sheet, if you're using one. (If you're using just one cookie sheet, be sure to let it cool thoroughly before you place any dough on it. Put it outside in cold weather or in the refrigerator to speed up the process.) When the bars are done, they will have flattened out somewhat. They might seem a little squishy and underdone, but that's okay: they'll continue to cook a little longer and will get firmer as they cool.

9.Place the baking sheet on a cooling rack. Let it cool for 10 minutes, then lift the parchment pieces with the bars and place them onto a large cutting board.

10. While the bars are still warm, cut them into 1 1/2-inch-wide sections with a pizza cutter or a sharp serrated knife. Cool the hermits thoroughly, then store them in an airtight container. Makes about 32 hermits.

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

First and foremost, I have FINISHED MY REWRITES ON THE BOOK! Not only that, but I DID NOT BREAK MY STREAK AND MADE MY DEADLINE! Yes, it’s a geeky thing to be proud of, but when your entire childhood was a never-ending version of the same academic song, “Quinn has no self-discipline and doesn’t budget her time well,” it’s nice to be able to define myself as The One Who Makes Deadlines, Often With Hours to Spare. I have one more pass at the book, after the copy-editor cleans it up, but I can say that while it might be a better book, it’s very nearly the best book I could write.

Enough of that, back to my being an idiot. When last we left me, I was the supervisor of a nest of altar-attendants at church, the competent parent/supervisor I was supposed to be learning from not able to make it that Sunday. The Sunday in question was All Souls Day, the only day of the year our church uses incense, a troubling thought for an asthmatic like me.

I arrived at church and headed towards the attendant holding-pen, which has a better name but I don’t know it. As a matter of fact, there are special names for lots of things in church and I usually don’t know them. This rarely affects me. The attendants milled around the pen, getting into their robes and eating donuts. I stood there and tried to look quietly authoritative. Bryan, the usual primary supervisor, arrived to drop off his daughter before his meeting. He caught my eye and smilingly said, “It’ll be fine,” which leads me to think my “calmly authoritative” look was neither. Josh the Youth Minister arrived and rubbed his hands together. “Welcome and thanks for attending the hardest service of the year,” he announced. The what now? I flashed a look at Bryan, who mouthed the word “Sorry” and vanished.

All Souls Day, I came to learn, occupies its own place in the church. There are different walking patterns, different music and different accessories (I think I just blasphemed). Josh slowly walked the Senior Attendant Rebecca and me through what to expect. Here’s an embarrassing secret about me which hasn’t come up before on the blog; I can’t take directions. Rather, I can’t take long directions. If I am lost and I pull over and ask someone how to get to where I need to go, I pray the instructions will be “Get on this freeway, the one right here. Go two exits. Get off. You will see the building from the offramp.” Anything more complicated and I start to drift. I don’t mean to, I’m focusing with all of my being, but by Step #5, I’m wondering if the new Vanity Fair will be there when I get home. I nod vigorously, I thank my benefactor, and then I drive the three steps I remember, stop and ask someone again. So you know how excited I was to find out All Souls Day has no fewer than twenty prompts, many of which involve words I had never heard before in my life.

“At the end of the Flarg, you’ll take the first attendants to the Gleef, have them stand before the Harb and wait for the choir to finish the second Deus Yart and then have them sit down again. But don’t let them sit before the Draknog.”

I nodded and hoped I could pull over halfway down the aisle and ask another person. I looked to Rebecca, who has been an attendant for two years; she had the bored, slightly removed expression of a frequent-flyer listening to the flight-attendant explaining how to fasten a seat-belt. This bode well; all I had to do was follow Rebecca and I wouldn’t be smote. Josh said, “And, of course, the thurifer. Oh, here she is.”

I sensed the smoke before I saw it. A sweet-faced teenage girl, a girl I’ve seen sitting braiding the hair of some younger girls, walked in carrying a teardrop-shaped smoldering thing. The smell wasn’t actually unpleasant to me, but my bronchi begged to differ. I lunged from the room and took a puff of my inhaler. Josh brought all the kids together for a quick prayer before the service. I prayed to not screw anything up noticeably, thanked God for the product Albuterol, and rounded up my charges, keeping a wide berth from the thurifer. The last thing Josh did was press a printed list of the prompts into my hand and remind me to “...make sure to get them out in front of the choir during the processional. Throw them if you have to.” His tone led me to understand I had been told this at least twice already but that it had come in during the Drifting and Thinking about Magazines at Home time. I nodded. All attendants must be before the choir. Got it.

The procession was somber and silent; no music this week. I watched as Rebecca grouped her attendants in subsets of twos and threes in ways which seemed obvious but only after she did it. My throat seized up a second before I smelled smoke. I looked behind me to see the thurifer-girl was trying to get where she was supposed to be, which was exactly where I was. I moved as far I could from her, which wasn’t very far, what with about forty people waiting in a room meant to hold fifteen. Rebecca looked at the thurifer-girl and whispered, “No, you go after the altos, stand over there,” pointing to next to me. I inched away again and tried to remember how often I could use my inhaler. Slowly, the group processed. Thurifer-girl distractedly, as another person might jiggle her leg, waved her thurifer. My brain informed me I was about to break the respectful silence with a loud hacking cough, possibly involving phlegm. Quickly, I raced outside, gulped some non-sanctified air and raced for the door leading to the apse.

The service passed in a haze for me. First of all, there was the constant moving of attendants, pushing this child and that towards what I could only hope was Gleef or the Harb. Second, I was mildly hypoxic from the smoke and so ramped up on Albuterol that all I wanted to do was unzip my skin and run around the room, which means I wasn’t exactly focused on details. And then there was thurifer-girl. If for some reason this child ever chooses to go hiking in the Angeles National Forest and gets lost, if she happens to be carrying her thurifer, I will find her in a matter of minutes. I couldn't stop finding her. To get some fresh air, I’d dart out the side-door, or down a back hallway, or into the closet where they keep the crosses and there she’d be, freshening her smoke. I’d look panicked, grab my inhaler and lunge away from her, heading exactly in the opposite direction, only to find thurifer-girl standing there as well, looking apologetic. It seemed I was privileged to witness a genuine miracle, the multiplying of the thurifer-girls.

Standing outside, huddled against the wall, I glanced at my prompt-sheet and saw that the procession was to come next. The list indicated there would be attendants, then the choir, then some attendants. I raced back in just in time to see Rebecca take her half of the attendants from the Communion table to walk in front of the choir, who were marching off to form the processional through the entire church. Thurifer-girl passed by me and headed to the front. I waited alertly to put my half of the attendants, who had been sitting in the apse, in. Rebecca caught my eye and subtly mouthed “What are you doing?”

What am I doing? I’m possibly contracting emphysema and waiting to be useful. She tipped her head discreetly towards her group and I understood the prompt-paper was wrong. This was the part Josh had been talking about, about getting your attendants in front of the choir, by catapult if necessary. I grabbed the first of my attendants and tried to weave her through the choir towards the rest of the attendants, but it would have been as likely to pass these kids through a wall. The choir would not be separated, they moved as a single entity. I shrugged in panic at Rebecca, who managed the tiniest, most Christian sigh and eye-roll I’ve ever seen. She discreetly put her hand toward me; stay where you are. I sensed her feeling was I’d do less harm there.

Imagine you’re in a church. Imagine the minister and everyone is walking around the aisles, leaving you with an empty church to contemplate, a metaphor for the sense of finality and loss which death brings. So empty up there. Not a single person.

No, wait. There’s Quinn and four pre-teenage girls, staring in horror at the congregants.

The four girls were Daughter, Daughter’s best friend (whose mother is the Rector’s secretary), the daughter of Bryan, who usually does this job and Bryan’s niece. The service lasts only an hour, but I’m pretty sure we were up there alone for at least six weeks. Sometimes, I’d stare at the ground in a penitent way. Sometimes, I’d catch someone’s eye and sort of wiggle the prompt-paper in my hand, hoping it would indicate that the fault lay not with me but with the paper. Sometimes I’d just grip my Albuterol and take a small pleasure in these moments when the thurifer-girl wasn’t an inch away from me.

Eventually, everyone came back. We were no longer alone; Rebecca sat next to me, although I’m pretty certain she had inched to the far side of my seat. Thurifer-girl walked past us, swinging the smoke. She looked at me sympathetically. I waved my inhaler at her in a communal way. We all had our tools.

All Souls Day is meant to be a reminder of frailty, of limits. There are certain inevitabilities we might as well recognize: we’re mortal; some of have rotten lungs; getting distracted during the hearing of instructions means you miss things. But then we are encouraged to leave our sorrow in church and go forth with the dualism that while some day we will all die, today, right now we are alive and that should make life all the sweeter. Likewise, some day-probably very soon-I’ll be an idiot again. The odds are good this will be in front of a large group of people and maybe also God, but that just makes any moment I’m not humiliating myself in public so much more exquisite. Some days we can do no more than hope tomorrow will be better and take about three showers to remove the thurifer-smell from our hair.

Now, go in peace. And mind the Harb.

Soul Survivor

A few months ago, when it was warm outside, I had taken the kid and a friend to the beach for frolicking. They were frolicking and I was doing my version of frolicking at the beach, which is sitting in the shade and answering email. The youth-director at our church, Josh, had put out a request that any parent with some time and, dare I say, a calling do a little volunteer work this liturgical season.

I read this, and gnawed at a cuticle. My obligations if listed on fingers now stretched well into the second hand. But there had been a fair amount of turnover at church in the previous weeks-- people leaving for new positions and people going to seminary, that sort of turnover—and they did need help. I had a little time each week. The insidious guilt-Macarena started playing in head. I wrote back, offering help, but I did it in what I freely admit was the most mealy-mouthed, passive-passive-aggressive way ever. I listed every single one of my obligations, including the home-schooling and the book which I was still finishing; the only thing which prevented me from noting how much time hand-washing undergarments takes was my fear it would make Josh feel funny. Many obligations later, I sent it off, pleased that I had technically offered and confident that he’d write back saying, “Oh, Quinn, I couldn’t possibly ask you to do more. In fact, let me swing by this afternoon and find out why the dryer keeps making that noise.”

About five minutes later, the phone beeped, indicating an email. Josh was thrilled to hear from me and would gladly take my offer of help. But, considering my life, he thought I’d be best-used by being one of the altar-attendant parents. Each group of eight altar-attendants has one parent who corrals them before the service, monitors them into church, glares at them if the word of God grows less interesting than poking another attendant with a hymnal. It sounded reasonable; it sounded more reasonable when I read that Josh would have me be the back-up parent, learning the job for a year with a seasoned veteran before I had eight of my very own to corral, monitor and glare at. It wasn’t like sleeping in on a Sunday morning, but I could be of service while also carrying a low risk of disaster. I wrote back and accepted.

It’s a great job, being second-parent to this group of altar-attendants. The father who was the primary parent, Bryan, has done this for two years and knew everything and what he didn’t know the senior altar-attendant, Rebecca, did. I would follow Rebecca into battle, which is odd to say considering how she’s in tenth-grade, but every time she’d organize her attendants and snap on her gloves, I’d practically tear up in relief. The grown-ups were in charge, and the idiot here could do no harm. For three Sundays, it was all just a beautiful dream.

Thursday, October 27th, I received an email from Bryan. Our group was attending the service the upcoming Sunday, but he had an obligation; could I handle it by myself? I stared at the screen, my breath catching in my throat, because I was in no way, shape or form ready for my first solo-performance as an altar-parent. My breath also caught in my throat because I was in the fourth day of a small but pernicious asthma attack and the Sunday service was All Soul’s Day, the only service of the year which used incense. I might as well just start using my trachea as a meat-smoker. But I had Rebecca who knew all and I had my inhaler and how bad could it be? I gulped, and then coughed a little, and wrote back saying "Sure, no problem."

Next time: How bad could it be?

Right Here, Right Now

At this exact moment, I should be doing the final rewrites of the book, using the smart and considered notes I've gotten from people far more intelligent and literate than I am.

So, I'm here.

I'm here because, frankly, here is better than there. There, with the manuscript, is staring at things I've written, and rewritten, and mulled over, and polished, and rewritten, and gotten notes on, and rewritten and am now confronted with a terrible question:

WHY AREN'T YOU BETTER?

There isn't a sightly place to be right now. And no amount of purloining Daughter's Halloween candy is going to make there any better-looking; it's certainly not doing my upper-thighs any favors. Final rewrites are like doing your own obituary while also performing your own autopsy.

But, here! Here is good! I'll just stay here and write blogs forever! Who cares that I do it for free? Writing books isn't much better!

Perhaps I should get to the point.

This week, I was shuffling through a fashion magazine, because it's my drug of choice,
and I came across a diet. We know it's a good diet, a successful diet, because Gwyneth Paltrow is on it. It clears up inflammation, something you've probably never considered in a dietary way but let me assure you, INFLAMMATION IS WHY YOU AREN'T BETTER. Inflammation gives you a belly. Inflammation makes your skin dull. Inflammation is why you can't remember the name of your cousin's new daughter:

Acacia?

Amaryllis?

Ambergris?

Inflammation is at the root of all that ails you and with this magic diet, you will be BETTER. Your skin will be clear and bright, your mind will remember the girl's name is Hawthorne and most important of all, you will be thinner. Magically thinnner.

Ready to be thinner and smarter?

Here goes.

For one month, you will take scads of expensive probiotics. Your diet will consist of fresh, organic greens, brightly-colored fruit and non-commerically farmed meat. Financially, it's best if you are the wife of someone in the band Coldplay. You will not ingest dairy, sugar, caffeine, starches and alcohol. You will do this for a month. After a month, thanks to this newfound lack of inflammation, you will magically find you've lost weight!

Or-and it might just be the candy-corn and green-tea I'm living on right now talking here- if you cut out all starches and sugars, you lose weight. You may call it the anti-inflammation diet, or the Zone diet, or the diabetes-control diet, but if you eat no starch and sugar your inflammation (read; your belly rounded by starches and sugars) will go down. In the article, a doctor is quoted as saying he's seen patients lose up to ten pounds in a month, which is about two and a half pounds a week, which is about what you'd lose if you cut out starches and sugars. It's a good diet, it just doesn't need the accessories. Then again, without the accessories, it doesn't get into the Beyonce issue, does it?

Here's what I say. Cut out sugar, cut out starch. Everything will fit better. If you feel fancy, stop drinking; it's easier to remember unusual baby-names without a Syrah-haze. Save the four hundred dollars or so you're supposed to spend on probiotics and buy yourself something.

(Might I suggest putting a few dollars aside to pick up my book next year?)

I'm might never do this diet, but I can say honestly it's already made my life better. The next time I'm assaulted by my inner editor screaming WHY AREN'T YOU BETTER, I'll blithely say, "Can't help it, I'm inflamed."

And then I'll put on some Coldplay. And go back over here.

Talking to Myself

Thank you to every single person who wrote a comment on the previous blog. Your words were bracing, heartening, and just the right amount of profane. I could rent you out, en masse, to bloggers who feel unappreciated.

I foraged around a bit on Blogger to see if I could close comments on only a single post and not the others; let "Marion" rest in peace and keep my comments for every other post. It would appear I can't. I can either have them everywhere or nowhere. So, I'm leaving the comments open and here's why:

You.

Not the bracing, heartening, soupcon of profane part (although it was gorgeous), but the comments on quotidian blogs. I might be a little biased, but I happen to think that many of my commenters are among the better commenters out there and I can't imagine this dialogue we have becoming a monologue. It wouldn't be nearly as fun for you. It certainly wouldn't be as fun for me.

When I do something idiotic in public, I slink home and write about it, and then I wait. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, one of you writes in and says "Yes, that has happened to me as well. In front my mother-in-law. Thanks for making me laugh" and my general feeling of mortified self-consciousness shifts from "Please allow me to be absorbed into the earth" to "I wasn't the only one! I can remain unabsorbed for another day!"

Every time I write, I run the risk of hurting someone's feelings. I won't say that hasn't been on my mind for the past few weeks, and it's hard to write while stepping around possibly-imaginary land mines. But every time I write, I also have the opportunity to find one of those common threads, which I imagine stretching across any potential land mines.

So, I think I should get back to work, don't you?

Even Downtown, Voices Carry

Readers, I need you to help me decide something.

About a month ago, a blog of mine ran in a magazine. It wasn't the entire blog, just part of one. And it wasn't a great blog to begin with. Of the 550 blogs I've written, it was my 550th favorite. But the magazine chose it and they bought it. I offered to write them another one, such was my innate suspicion that this wasn't going to end well for me, but they wanted that one and, overriding my fears, I let them have it. For what it's worth, they paid me $500.

As a pessimist, it's always comforting when things work out even worse than my worst fears. Scores of emails later, I now understand that I am a mean, elitist, stupid bitch. Also, I hate librarians. And I'm an idiot. And I'm mean. And I'm also a bitch. Yes, a few people have written in to say it was possible I was just having a bad day. I was having a bad day so I'm very grateful to them. And let me assure the people who now complain that I'm the MEANEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD, and a BITCH, that I'm certainly having no fun now.

My regular readers know my blog was never meant to be a hagiography. If anything, it's quite the opposite because I am usually a knucklehead and report my knuckleheadedness with frequency and precision. Also, I don't edit out readers' comments even if I come off badly because, hey, what the heck. But after the first fusillade of complaints on the Good Housekeeping article, I posted my own reply in the comments section explaining that I had never been a fan of the original essay, that I hadn't chosen it for publication and that it had been edited for space. I can't say cutting two-thirds of the piece rendered my behavior any less defensible, but it didn't help.

For weeks now, I've let people comment here. I happen to be a big fan of the First Amendment and if readers worked hard enough to articulate an opinion about what a collossal ass I am, they deserved the chance to be heard. But it's been weeks and I'm flinching whenever I hear the sound of an incoming email. Today's hate-letter was from yet another librarian, saying she was cancelling the magazine to all twelve of her libraries and--need it be said--would never buy another book of mine, which I guess is her prerogative as a librarian.

I know it hardly seems to matter at this point, but the pointless little power struggle I originally experienced wasn't actually with a librarian. It was with a clerk. And it may sound a bit "some of my best friends are librarians" to mention this, but I've been an avid library patron since I was old enough to not gnaw on books. I can clearly remember Rita, my first librarian in the San Vicente branch in West Hollywood, helping me pick out books. My daughter received her first library card (a featured player in this particular controversy) when she was two years old. We visit a library at least once every week. Over the years, I have done a lot of volunteer work for libraries. I love libraries. They made me the person I am, which should cause added consternation in those people who hate me.

Such is my desire to make it right with libraries (and such is my overwhelming desire to go back in time and have written a blog about kittens that week) that I am donating the my magazine fee to the Los Angeles Public Library. I'm not doing this so these people who now hate me will like me. That boat, she sailed. I'm sure many of them had never heard of me before and will never see this blog and would sneer at the gesture anyway. But this entire experience has been so unpleasant that the only way that I can possibly start to feel better is to give the money to people I may have unfairly offended.

So here's my question to you:  Is there a point where I can close the comments? I'm sure it's "elitist", "bitchy" and "mean" to even consider this but, quite frankly, I'm very tired of being kicked. Part of me thinks closing the comments will just rile certain people up. They will accuse me of being as dismissive of them as I was of the library clerk with whom they obviously identify. I'm even willing to consider that most people commenting are going to be friends or regular readers, who might say some version of "You served your time. You can close the comments." I'm willing to take my lumps without another peep if even one person makes a good argument for keeping the comments open.

In sum:  I posted a mediocre blog and I'm sorry the magazine bought it. Repeat that a thousand times. I wish I had written it differently, more in keeping with what I actually felt, which was a meditation on bilateral pettiness. But I'm not sorry that two years ago, I was frustrated by a trivial encounter with a bureaucrat and I abided by my original promise to my readers when I started this blog: whatever I wrote about, I would tell the truth.

One woman wrote in that she was appalled at what I had written. That word struck a chord with me. "Appalled" is powerful word, especially when it's levelled at you. Personally, I'm appalled by the fact that 16 million children in the US go hungry each day. If one particular blog continues to appall people, maybe I should continue to give them an outlet.

What should I do? You tell me.

And Makes the World Taste Good

I don’t know how you all spent your weekend, but Daughter and I spent four days in Utah. It was one of those uniquely last-decade-or-so adventures. For the last year, she’s been taking classes online with the same group of kids, and she’s gotten really close to one girl in particular. This girl invited Daughter to stay for the weekend with them in Provo and I was invited as well. Then it got even better; the mother of “Melanie,” the other girl, said they could have a pre-Halloween costume party. We’d arrive on Friday, help set up the party on Saturday, host the party on Saturday night, and possibly die of party prostration on Sunday.


I’ve come to discover that Utah is an incredibly appealing state. Everyone we met commended us on my exquisite timing; it seemed we timed our visit during the best-looking weekend in recent memory. The mountains and multiple parks were swathed in changing leaves of yellows and reds. The sky was an unsullied bright blue. The sun had yellow rays beaming down. It was cool in the sweater-way, not the muffler-way. This was autumn as designed by a Dick and Jane book.

The girls had a glorious Friday night—which to uneducated parental ears sounded like an extended squeal—and then Saturday came and preparations for the party began. The girls weren’t unhelpful, but it’s nearly impossible to remember to carry chips and salsa to the rec room when there is more squealing to be done. In the interest of finishing the prep-work before Tuesday, Melanie’s mother and I set up most of the food. And then there were the desserts. Before I arrived, I had a dim memory of reading someplace that Mormons were crazy for desserts. I don’t want to make sweeping generalizations about any group. I will say that on the day of the party, while driving through Provo on a grocery-store run, I noted a doughnut store, a cupcake store, a pastry store and something called a “Chocolatery”.

That was on one block.

Finally, the party started. There was talking. There was a screening of “Despicable Me”. Melanie’s kareoke machine was brought out. To uneducated parental ears, it sounded like an extended squeal. When parents returned to pick up their costumed offspring, most of the guests were pleading to be allowed to stay a little longer, so I’m thinking it was a hit. The hostesses settled in for an late-night session of squealing, and the parents crawled into their beds, vowing to wash the frosting out of their hair the following day.

After a sluggish Sunday morning -- the girls baked and ate cinnamon rolls, the adults drank hot things and squinted blearily at a sink crammed with dishes -- we thanked Melanie and her family for their kindness and headed off to Park City which was, if possible, even prettier than what we’d already seen of Utah. Polychrome trees, sparkling lakes, breathtaking vistas. This was the natural equivalent of four dessert stores in one block. Daughter amended her life-plan to include at least one year of being a ski-bum. Then she noted we were in front of an ice-cream store. I scraped cinnamon-roll icing off her ear and countered in a firm voice, “Salad”.

Our next morning was a spent in Salt Lake City, and then to the airport for the flight home. We were happy but exhausted, feeling the effects of three nights of interrupted sleep, hours of squealing and the introduction of the “dessert for breakfast” concept. Because we were in Salt Lake, we visited Temple Square. Because we aren’t LDS, we were done in about ten minutes. I Googled What to do in Salt Lake City. Google suggested we see Temple Square. There were plenty of parks and hikes we could take but the kid didn’t have shoes up to walking long distances. (She packed assuming all of Utah was breathless to see the last word in cute shoes for girls from Los Angeles). We had three hours gaping ahead of us. I had no interest in entertaining Daughter in the airport for three hours and I couldn’t find a single thing to—

Oooh.

I silently handed the phone to Daughter and pointed at something. Her eyes widened.

“THERE’S A CANDY FACTORY IN SALT LAKE CITY? AND THEY GIVE TOURS? GET IN THE CAR!!!”

Daughter flung herself towards the car. I raced after her, shouting “WAIT! THE TOURS ARE BY APPOINTMENT!”

Daughter shouted back over her shoulder, “THEY’LL GIVE OUT FREE CANDY!”

I yelled back “IT’S NOT RUN BY WILLY WONKA, YOU KNOW!”

It was then I noticed we were running and shouting through the gardens of the most revered and iconic real estate in the Mormon world. If either Romney or Huntsman wins the election, I’d just bought myself a lifetime slot on the FBI watch list.

I caught up with her and we agreed to go visit the factory, if for no other reason than it was about ten minutes from the airport. We wouldn’t get a tour, but we’d go to the factory store and buy something delicious if slightly irregular to bring home to Consort. The factory was large, grey, about the size of a city block, very much a normal factory. Not a single Oompa Loompa was seen bustling about. We parked and I said to Daughter, “See? It’s just a place where stuff is made.” She waved a dismissive hand at me and barrelled inside. There was a smiling receptionist and three baskets with free taffy samples. Daughter flicked an eyebrow at me and politely pounced. I asked the receptionist, “I know this isn’t likely, but might my daughter and I get a tour? Maybe just slipstream onto some other group?”

As a matter of fact, we could. As a matter of fact, a tour had just started two minutes ago and were at their first stop. We scrawled signatures on release forms, donned hairnets, handed our bags and phone/cameras to the receptionist and were escorted to the group. Before you could say Halloween Jelly Pumpkins, we were staring at Jacuzzi-sized bags of sugar. I’ve never been on a tour of a candy factory before, so perhaps I’m not jaded enough yet, but this was awesome. I mean this in the most traditional sense of the word, this candy factory filled me with awe.

They had a three-story high silo filled with sugar. They had a large room full of rotating barrels for covering jelly beans with coloring. They had a conveyor belt only four feet shorter than the length of a football field for the boxing of various candies. I defy you to look at it and not see Lucy and Ethel frantically trying to keep up. Consort would have spent the entire tour in ecstasy looking at these immense machines which were both intimidatingly modern and clunkily old-fashioned. I’m no gearhead and I was delighted. Daughter was pleased enough, but her high points were the stops where we were offered a freshly-made sample of whatever each area made. Can’t say as I disagree with her. I’m no foodie, but I’m here to tell you that an hours-old jelly bean or chocolate-covered orange stick is an order of magnitude better than what you usually get.

We gazed in delight at the final bags of Christmas candy getting ready for shipping and the rooms full of jelly-rabbits awaiting April 8th, 2012. Outside, the weather was cooling down, but inside it was warm and sugary and always happily anticipating the next candy-related holiday. And, down deep, aren’t they all candy-related holidays? I just knew that somewhere in this massive structure was a flag-shaped taffy for Veteran’s Day, a blue one for Water Quality Month. Utah had won me over; desserts are for breakfast, candy should be measured by the ton and chocolatery is a word. I chewed my sample happily.

The tour ended and we de-hairnetted. The part of me which notices these things is happy to say that the employees seemed happy and that on the wall they had a commendation for exceptional safety from OSHA. The part of me which stays up late at night surfing the Internet for new reasons to fret was heartened to hear that the candy is run through a metal-detector before being bagged; I’d never specifically worried about metal in my candy before, but it was nice to preemptively check it off the list. The buttered-popcorn taffy tasted pretty much like sweetened buttered popcorn, thereby creating a new Platonic ideal of sugar and salt. We bought bags of mixed taffy to bring home and waved goodbye to the receptionist. Outside, the mountains were tinting a deeper red as the sun set and a breeze rustled my hair in the most adorable way. I felt wonderful and it wasn’t just the sugar. Daughter hugged me and said “This was an excellent weekend.”

Yes, it was.

Can't Escape Slave to Love

About three months ago, Daughter and I arrived someplace early for a class. This isn’t surprising, because I’m pathologically punctual and ever since we’ve started home-schooling, I’m so eager to hand Daughter off to more competent hands that I arrive anywhere academic early. Usually we spend the extra half-hour or so getting Daughter a snack because she hasn’t eaten since we left the house ten minutes before and she’s starving to death. This day, we grabbed her usual hedge again low-blood sugar and walked down the street, past a pet-store. The dog needed food; feeling virtuous at the thought of accomplishing something in what a minute before had been time-killing mode, we turned in.


Within seconds, I knew I wouldn’t be getting food there. It was the kind of store where they sell purebred puppies. I’m not going to stand outside the store and picket, nor am I going to shout at the owner, but neither I’m not going to support a store which supports puppy mills. It didn’t help their case that a Siberian Husky puppy was in the same-sized cage as a Pomeranian puppy and not one dog had a toy or a chewy in with them. It was dirty in there and a little sad and I feel enough animal-related despair without adding starter fuel. I spun around to leave when Daughter pointed to the back of the store, shouted “Cats!” and dashed off to see them. Grudgingly, I walked over.

The cage was in the back of the store, in what appeared to be a converted closet. To this day, I have no idea how she saw it, because it was underlit and out of eye-range. Perhaps it was the smell which drew her; even my marginally senescent nose picked up litter-box. In a small cage were two full-grown, nearly identical cats. The sign on the outside said they were available for adoption, name your price. They had neither food nor water. One cat was curled up, sleeping; the other was sitting up. She looked straight out at me, pleading. In a second, I saw their lives, stuck here, possibly not exactly being abused, but certainly being neglected. I’ve seen worse situations and not meddled, even though I wanted to. I couldn’t fix every animal in the world, but a small voice in my head said “You’re supposed to fix these two.” Daughter said, “I think they need help.”

I did what I do when I’m having a perfectly nice day and then someone needs help. I swore, softly but vigorously. Then I stomped around a little bit. And then I went outside and called Kate, the woman who runs the rescue group where I volunteer and, for the first time in the five years I’ve worked there, asked if we had room for two full-grown cats. Because hey, what rescue group doesn’t clap their collective hands in delight at the thought of two cats who are no longer in the cute kitten stage coming in, possibly for months? Kate heard the story. The only thing she asked was, “Do they need us?”

I squinted back into the darkness of the store and said, “Damn it, I think they do.”

“Then bring them in.”

I looked up at the sky and said “Nice one, St. Francis” and went to drop Daughter off at class and come back and ransom out some cats.

The store-owner looked puzzled for a second when I asked about them, perhaps forgetting they were back there. They were mother and son, both under two years old. The woman who had owned them moved in a rush and had given them to the store, paying their way until they were placed. Since I was paying to spring them, these cats had probably been the best financial decision he ever made. In reward of this, he gave me a cardboard box big enough to hold both of them. They demolished it before we reached the freeway and spent the entire trip to our shelter alternately rappelling up and down the back seats and screaming. We set them up in a nice big cage, got them some food and water; Daughter decreed their names to be Lavinia and Arthur and then she and I went home so I could vacuum cat-saliva soaked cardboard out of the back of my car.

Everyone who worked with them agreed; Lavinia and Arthur were lovely cats. Attractive, social, interested in humans. Of course, that didn’t mean there weren’t some quirks. It took two days to determine Lavinia hated her son. They might look like an exercise in cloning, but you could always tell which one was the mom; she was the one slapping the other one. His very existence drove her insane. Her attitude seemed to be “You’re grown and yet you’re still around, keeping me from making your room into a crafting room!”

They were separated and peace prevailed. Within a month, Lavinia was adopted by a family and was whisked off to a life of affection and post-spaying actualization and A Room of One’s Own. One Saturday morning, I came by to work and I passed by Arthur’s cage and stopped to give him a scritch on the head.

“Someday soon, Artie,” I said, “Someone will take you home and love you.”

Another volunteer snorted, “You mean Arthur the feline pedophile?”

The what now?

Silently, the volunteer opened a cage and let two half-grown kittens frolic around the store while she cleaned their cage and indicated I should let Arthur out. He leapt down, raced toward the marmalade kitten and commenced to...

Oh, it was unsettling.

And there was a great deal of noise.

I really don’t think the marmalade was consenting.

A spray bottle was utilized to help Arthur rediscover his composure, but as soon as the kitten started to walk away, off he went, a feline Humbert Humbert trapped in the longing for his own Dolores Haze. The volunteer continued blandly, “He has a type. It’s always male marmalades, about five months old.”

“But,” I offered feebly, “he’s spayed.”

“You know that and I know that, but ol' Arthur over there, he...oh, God. Get the spray bottle again.”

Perhaps this was why Lavinia didn't want to share a cage with him. Maybe the look she first gave me at the pet store was "Please save me from the slow death by indifference," but I'm starting to think it was “Please call my son’s parole officer.”

I Know What I Know, If You Know What I Mean

I'm guessing that in your life, there's a person you call if you want a recommendation for the most romantic restaurant in your nearest city.

Perhaps there's another person you call if you need to find a kidney doctor for your aunt.

Possibly, if you have a wide-enough range of friends, you have someone you can call to make that certain troublesome person in your life disappear, if you know what I'm saying.

I think you know what I'm saying.

Today, I clarified who I am. My friend Lynn called this morning. She needed me to walk her through how to bathe a cat.

This isn't completely dispiriting. She was very grateful to have someone in her life who knew this. Also, if you did have someone troublesome in your life, I could make the disappear by having you say to them, "Hey, I need you to come over and help me bathe my cat."

They'd be gone forever and it wouldn't require a shovel and a bag of quicklime.

You're welcome.

Every Girl Crazy 'Bout a Sharp-Dressed Man

Imagine this. It's midday. The child is learning. The Consort is off discussing arcane things. The dog has a little gas. I am doing what I do to stave off domestic entropy: Swiffering. Out of nowhere, possibly while cornering a gopher-sized  lump of spent fur, a thought explodes in my head: "Where's Squee?"

[Squea used to be Anne of "AnneandDiana," but she is chatty and eventually became known as Squeakers, which shortened to Squee because, really, in this modern, go-go world, who has time for two syllables?]

I look on the giant amoeba couch. Much fur, one Diana in a sun-Jacuzzi (slightly larger than a sunbath), but no Squee. There is no Squee patrolling the back room, praying for spontaneous kitty-star combustion. There is no Squee behind the curtain in the living room, under the dresser or in the kitchen sink. I bite my lower lip. There is one last potential nest...

Those are Consort's polo-shirts. That is Squee. There is a shelf just above with Polarfleece sweatshirts and jackets, which my ignorant mind would assume to be far more comfortable than polo-shirts and which would have the added benefit of not showing claw marks. The shelf just below holds jeans, which I would find perfectly comfortable were I of the feline persuasion; and which also would not show claw marks. In sum, I see no earthly reason why, three times a week, Squeakers somehow opens the closet and embeds herself in Consort's shirts the way you tuck sage leaves under a turkey's skin.

And yet, she does. When I remove her, carefully extracting her nails from the shirts, she cries and carries on, her paws stretching back towards her homeland, the Auld Sod, the Land of the Free, the Home of the Placket. I put her outside. I remind her how fun it is to stand in the kitchen sink. Finally, I do a load of wash, heavy on the polo-shirts. Diana, the fluffier one, walks past me. I look down at her and think, "You and your sister are both delightful but you, in all candor, are my easier, dumber child. Thank you for being my easier, dumber child." I then watch Diana stroll across the laundry room, leap deftly into the basket of clean clothes and proceed to give herself a variation of a sitz bath.

I know when I'm beat. I hereby declare the fashion colors for 2011/12 to be orange and tortoiseshell, and the hottest look on the runway this season to be mohair polo-shirts.

She Blinded Me With Science

A friend is doing at study of identical twins and Alzheimer's disease. If you have a family member affected, reach out to her at JSteuer on Twitter. If you know a family, could you pass this along? Let's make the Internet useful.

The Lady of the Flake

When one donates blood at the Red Cross, they have the most wonderfully subtle and, I suspect, effective system for allowing people to recognize their own limitations. When you arrive, you fill out this paperwork and you say no, you haven't done anything which would compromise the integrity of your blood in the past ten years. No IV drugs, no unprotected sex with strangers, no buying packets of plasma from the guy in the alley behind the bodega and making them into smoothies. You're good.

Then, the nurse interviews you. You're sure you haven't had unprotected sex with prisoners or used IV drugs with a needle you found under a bus-stop bench or borrowed a kidney from an indigent sex-worker? It's okay, they won't judge you; they just want to know. And you insist to all and sundry that you're good. And then, finally, just as they are inserting the line to grab your fluids, you're given a small slip of paper to sign, wherein if there is any reason whatsoever this blood might be dodgy--some reason you are holding deep in your possibly-tainted heart-- you can just put a little check there. No one will ever ask you any questions, you'll never have to say anything out loud, they'll even take your blood so you don't feel shunned. They just won't use it. Of course, the entire blood-supply is tested anyway, but I just love that idea that the Red Cross has found a way for people to participate without doing harm.

Could we please create this system for people who are going through a flaky time in their lives? Note how I didn't say flaky people; I think while some people will be flaky from the first thermos they lose in pre-school to forgetting to attend their own funeral, the vast majority of flakes are going through a phase. It's a month, or a year, or the better part of the 20th century, but it's a time in their lives when they honestly will miss more than they hit. I've had these times, I suspect you've had these times. These people might be having fun doing whatever is distracting them, but they also spend a lot of time getting yelled at, or iced out, or losing out on future opportunities because they've irritated the people around them. Or, in the case of this morning, they promise to volunteer at a local shelter I work with, they confirm with me last night, and then they miss their shift this morning, leaving two people with a three-person job. One of those people was me, the one with the allergies and the asthma; it took two showers before my trachea was speaking to me again. And, of course, the terrible irony is that the very nature of flakiness renders the person in its thrall incapable of being able to predict that they're completely no good to anyone right now. You can be as flaky as a well-made pie crust and all ignorant outsiders see is a reasonably articulate person vowing to take you to the airport.

And then you miss your plane.

So, here's my suggestion. If you have missed more than 33% of your promised appointments in the previous two weeks, and the reason is not "My chemotherapy is really cutting into my day" but "Man, I just couldn't get going this morning," you are now in a flaky phase. We who monitor such things will put a ring on your finger, something impossible to take off so you won't be tempted to forget it someplace or wash it in hair-dye or throw it at a pigeon or something else kind of flaky. And then, whenever you promise someone you will be somewhere/do something/marry someone, people can look down at your hand, see the subtle yet unequivocal marker which says "That thing I just said will never happen." And the person can smile and thank you for your kindness-- for the part of your brain which is good and decent and longs to be sprung from the incoherent fog which is flakiness, without having any expectation of your assistance. When your attendance rate in life finally rises above 80%, we'll come by and pick up the ring again.

(We'd just ask you to mail the ring back to us, but you could relapse, and we want the ring.)

As with the Red Cross, this series of checks and balances won't completely eradicate the problem; flakes will slip through. Special dinners will sit uneaten. Laundry will remain in the washer until it's as green as Ireland. Younger brothers will still arrive to celebrate Christmas on the 28th. But I believe we need to begin letting the world know who cannot be expected to bring the yams to Thanksgiving. Or the turkey.

Thoughts?

You're An Education in Yourself

Cross-posting from the new education blog. I'm referencing myself! This either makes me modern or lazy.

http://learningdangerously.blogspot.com/2011/09/youre-education-in-yourself.html

No Pills Gonna Cure My Ill

So, dog goes in for his cortisone shot, because he's itchy. But we can't just have cortisone, because he hasn't had a check-up for over a year, he must also have a check-up. While there, the vet notes his teeth are disgusting, which isn't good for his health so we book in a teeth-cleaning, but because he's an older man, he has to have a blood-panel first. All on the blood panel looks well, except for some number which has to do with his gallbladder. He might have gallstones, which would explain the occasional vomiting. Or he might not, and he just vomits because he's a dog and if a dog isn't a little disgusting, they lose their union card. But the only way we can confirm this is...


that's right, more tests.
Thank St. Francis for pet insurance.

Dry Town

Quite a few birthdays ago, Consort asked me what I wanted. I trilled, “I know it’s expensive, but I’d really love a drying rack!”

And then Consort ran away and fell in love with someone who wasn’t the dullest person on the planet.

The end.

Please understand, I didn’t just want a drying rack, I longed for a drying rack. Clothes which don’t suffer the indignities of the dryer last longer and look better. I live in a region that has a rainy season which lasts less time than a pint of ice-cream in my freezer, so you can dry your clothing outside all year. The gas bill would be less. There was no downside to a drying rack except that every time I decided to splurge and buy myself one, I’d get into a self-doubting spiral where I started to question whether I was worthy of a drying rack. Shouldn’t I just drape clothing over lawn chairs like the pilgrims did? Was I just yet another mindless consumer of goods, rampantly buying things like new socks, dental floss, and drying racks?

And then Consort ran away and fell in love with someone who wasn’t the dullest ruminator on the planet.

The end.

No, instead, he bought me exactly the drying rack I wanted. He even got two-day shipping so it could be here in time for my birthday, despite my insistance that cheap shipping was good enough for me, that two-day shipping was more of a Jennifer Lopez thing. The box arrived, I opened it, saw the tops of birch dowels, squealed in delight, and pulled it out.

Tug.

Tug.

Yank.

The drying rack was stuck. I yanked again, harder.

(Because in my world, the first rule of physics is “Any object responds well to mindless force.")

The drying rack sprung halfway from the box; from within the box was a horrible sound, a breaking sound. I tugged more gently. Now, how to explain this. The drying rack is created so that when you’re not drying, it folds flat, which means it’s basically a series of hinged wooden X's. When they had put my precious in the box, one of the hinges on one of the X's got stuck on something inside. What it got stuck on I’ll never know, because my brutal yanking could bring down bridges, but somewhere between my upper-body strength and the stuck thing inside, I created something akin to a spiral fracture in one of the structural elements. I stared in dismay. I had dreamt of a drying rack for nearly a decade and broke it before I owned it for ninety seconds. This is why I can’t have nice things.

Consort, as he frequently does, fixed the problem I created, forming a sort of steel plate around the spiral fracture. Now the drying rack didn’t open without incident, but it worked well enough, drying my family’s clothing in pervasive California sun. It took some extra wiggling to get it into position, but I took that as the cost of being me, with the jerking and the hubris of thinking I was worthy of a drying rack. Besides, I consoled myself, someday it would fall apart because of this initial indignity, and then maybe I’d get myself a new drying rack. This time, I’d let Consort open the box.

More than a decade has passed. I think I’m strongly recommending this product, because it’s still with us. It’s working, but I can’t say it’s exactly attractive while doing so. I refer to it as Our Invalid. Every week, I tiptoe it out and gently unfold it. The assorted dowels hit the ground like ripe fruit in a windstorm. I reassemble it, gritting my teeth as Side-A, freed of the dowels, gracefully wilts against me as I’m trying to stabilize Side-B.  Dr. Bunstein views this as the high point of his week, because dowels sometimes roll under the hedge and they are very delicious. If I don’t weigh the clothing equally around the rack, it collapses on my foot, leaving wet clothing on the grass. Each week for the drying rack is a race against gravity and chaos. I’d complain more, but the gravity and chaos is of my making and, frankly, every week is a race against gravity and chaos for me as well. So we age together, not always attractively, but I appreciate its endurance and its quiet acceptance of my flaws. When it falls on me, it seems like the mildest sort of payback.

Sometimes, though, late at night, I click open the new drying rack page on my browser and I gently touch the screen, noticing how stable their drying rack appears, how whole. I whisper, “Someday,” and then I go to make sure the cats aren’t batting a rogue dowel around the laundry room.

Marion the Librarian

If you're coming over from Good Housekeeping, filled with outrage about how mean I was to America's librarians, please hear me out.

The original story was over 1500 words.

Good Housekeeping edited it down to 500 words.

I did not edit it.

Good Housekeeping edited it.

What was originally a story about how I got into a silly power struggle with someone over something which didn't actually matter has become QUINN CUMMINGS IS MEAN TO LIBRARIANS.

If you care, here is the original story. I never said it was my favorite. I never said it was my best. But I also never said I wake each morning to torture librarians.

Actually, I think several librarians would speak of me rather fondly. So long, you know, as they don't read Good Housekeeping.
________________________________________________________

Yeah, I'm back! Look at my tan! I'm very rested, thanks for asking. I hope you like the fall motif around here. You didn't notice? Look again, it's very subtle. Hint: I used a mallard and elk fabric print to cover the cushions on the couch. I like to keep it seasonal around the ole QC Report. Wait until you see the singing Santa I'm going to plug in at Christmas.

I wish I could say "And so much has happened since I last wrote, I don't even know where to begin." Many things happen each day, the car never fully cools down, and yet there isn't a fun anecdote or six to point at to prove I'm busy. Daughter is, at this exact moment, not entirely hungry, and I can say that with pride because it's nearly a job unto itself. The pets are well. The house is quietly decaying. Yesterday, Consort spent seven hours fixing something blindingly complicated on his work computer. Eventually, it was fixed but nothing appears to be different or improved. I'm glad this pleases him; if I spent seven hours working hard I'd want something in return besides "I've staved off entropy."

Wait, there is one thing. I currently hold feelings of wild distaste for someone who barely matters to me at all.

It all began a few months ago when I noticed my wallet weighed slightly less than a frozen Cornish game hen. Ruthlessly pruning out expired museum membership cards and "Buy 9, get the 10th free" yogurt coupons was satisfying but my wallet still remained in cold poultry territory. Harder choices had to be made, the first being "no redundancies", which resulted in removing my library card and keeping only Daughter's card -- an arbitrary call. Eventually, I got my wallet down to a small bag of coffee, weight-wise, and we all moved on. I moved on slightly faster, what with having a lighter purse.

Months passed. I'd pick up books from the library and because this is the library we have used since Daughter was born, the desk clerks would scan the card and hand me my books. Then one day, a new clerk scanned my card, paused a moment, examined the card closely, peered coldly at my face and clucked.

"This isn't your name," she said gravely.

"No," I said smiling. "It's my daughter's name. And these are her books."

"Those are books for adults. I think these are your books" she clucked again.

And yes, some of them were from the adult section, but it wasn't as if they were titled things like "Rafe the Virile IT Guy Visits Helen in HR." As it so happens, both Daughter and I enjoy Roz Chast cartoons and books about rare fatal diseases. We would both read these books and so what if we didn't? I didn't like her tone. I quickly established she had no authority beyond clucking, twittering and peering. I grabbed my books and my -- I mean Daughter's -- card and sailed off with a "You have a nice day, now!" whispered over my shoulder to her.

For the new few weeks, no matter what time I went there or what day, there was the Clucker, glaring at me over her glasses. She'd check out my books and hiss something about how I was breaking the rules. I'd grab my books and prance out, occasionally chuckling about how people with no authority who get all rule-tweaked are a little sad. As it turns out, I was right; she had no authority. But she did have a boss. Three weeks ago, I came in to pick up some books and there was the Clucker who, upon spying me, ran into the back room and got her boss, the actual librarian.

I then endured a five-minute speech while Clucker stood right behind her, carefully dusting an empty desk and scrutinizing everything in the immediate vicinity but me. To her credit, the librarian looked embarrassed to be even mentioning this. I explained wallet was a frozen Cornish game hen. She nodded in sympathy. I noted that anything on my daughter's card, since she is a minor, is my responsibility anyway. She nodded in agreement. Eventually, we settled with "Quinn, it would be great if you could bring your own card. You know, just to make everything easy on...everyone."

And you know? Until that moment, I might have even done it, found the card in my desk drawer and changed over. I feel great affection for librarians, because they do important work and make our lives better in so many ways. But I just couldn't give the Clucker what she wanted because...it didn't matter! The very meaningless of this power battle meant I COULD NOT BACK DOWN. Because this person thought she could harangue me into doing something which didn't matter to me at all, I could no more give in to her wishes than I could fly. The Clucker was a wee little bully-queen, ruling over seven or eight electrons of the universe, the electrons which decreed whether I could use Daughter's library card and I couldn't give her the satisfaction. So I smiled at the librarian, thanked her for the hard work she does and watched her check out my books.

[Yes, they were mine. Daughter's not reading about the mosaics of Pompeii any time soon.]

I then grabbed my books, sneered at the Clucker and vowed to find a library with an automatic check-out. But I'd like the record to show I did show some restraint, some recognition that this situation wasn't so much inconsequential as infinitesimal.

At no point did I say "Cluck you."

A New Day

Lately, I've developed a bit of a case of bifurcation. One side of me is the Standard Quinn, the one who discovered this morning Diana the long-haired cat is getting kind of lax in grooming the old southerly regions and promptly rescheduled her day to include cat-bathing. And possibly cotillion for cats because, honestly, I shouldn't have to remind her of these things.

But the other side of me is Education-Wonk Quinn. Thanks to doing research for the book, I'm fairly bristling with facts about learning these days, and what comes after facts? Opinions.

Actually, I frequently have opinions before facts, but I'm working on that.

In any case, I'm eager to blog about education and related business, but I know that not everyone around here finds that topic as compelling as I do. So, I've...

ADDED A BLOG!

Darn it, there was supposed to be confetti there.

Yes, I've added a blog about education. I wrote the very first blog this morning, before noticing the cat-southerly-region issues. I'll write about education there, I'll write about cat-washing here, and if I ever bake anything, I'll add a blog about cooking. Although anyone who knows me is resting pretty comfortably in the knowledge that will never happen.

'Tis Something By Your Side to Stand

I'm re-running this one, because maybe I just attended this wedding again.

The names and some details have been changed to keep people from having to have uncomfortable moments.


The kid was at sports and my friend, Laurie, was shopping near the athletic field so a spontaneous tea-date happened. I arrived a few minutes late and found Laurie sitting next to a very large package with a fetching and expensive bow on top. She wore a decidedly glum expression. I pointed to the box and asked “Is it ‘Buy a friend farm equipment day’ again? Already?”

She patted it unaffectionately. “I can’t read German," she muttered. "It’s either an espresso maker or a trash can. This was the cheapest thing they registered for. I’d have paid another fifty dollars to feign my own death and avoid the whole thing.”

“Not too excited about the wedding, are we?” I asked. We were not. Here, in sum, are the details:
The groom, “Chad”, is her nephew, a man in his early twenties who has ADD or depression or Seasonal Affective Disorder or Creeping Malaise. His symptoms have included dropping out of high school, a disinclination to work and a deft hand with making a bong out of nearly anything. He lives with his parents who are now paying for classes for their son to become a sound engineer, the tenth or maybe eleventh career he has considered. Classes would be going better if he were to attend.

He has been dating the bride-to-be, “Brittany”, since high school. Laurie reports she is a sweet girl if you like talking about Taylor Lautner. The family owns restaurants. Brittany works up to eleven hours a week at one restaurant or another, usually until she breaks something. She also lives at home. Her purses and shoes are adorable. A year ago, the bride’s older sister got married with much spectacle and many parties. Within a month, Brittany was agitating Chad to make it official. No one expected anything to come of this, because the only long-term goal Chad had ever stated was moving to Amsterdam and becoming a pot reviewer, but for Brittany’s birthday, Chad got down on one knee and proposed, using a ring Brittany had bought for him. There are nine bridesmaids, eight groomsmen (two of whom work at Chad’s favorite pot dispensary) a meal of either salmon or steak and a long registry of things which are either espresso makers or trash cans. Chad’s mother estimates the wedding is costing Brittany’s parents somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty thousand dollars, even with restaurants at their disposal. Neither bride nor groom has five hundred dollars to their name.

After the honeymoon, they will move into Brittany’s room. We assume the espresso maker/trashcan will look nice in her parents' kitchen.

“Maybe I’m old-fashioned,” Laurie concluded, sipping her tea, “but isn’t the point of being married that you’re an adult? And doesn’t being an adult have something to do with going to work or to school or not paying your rent in hugs?” She glared at her croissant and finally said, “I blame reality television.”

Usually, she and I are on the same page about reality television being the source of our nation’s downfall, but this time I shook my head. “Sorry, not this time. Groom is a cute do-nothing pothead, bride is a pampered princess who wants to be the focus of attention for a year? I went to this wedding at least twice in my twenties, long before reality TV really hit. The marriage lasts until his hair falls out, which it always does. Two years later, she marries an orthodontist in Woodland Hills.”

Laurie looked thoughtful and said, “Yes, of course, that wedding. She’s bossy, he’s passive and they make each other nuts before the year is out.”

I continued, “The only people who benefit from those marriages are lawyers, Williams-Sonoma, cover bands and those people who make Jordan almonds. You know,” I said, warming to my subject and pointing with my scone, “we as a culture need to create a new ritual; a wedding to allow certain young women to be princesses for a day without creating a bond which will take many billable hours to undo. Think marriage-lite. Wait, I’ve got it!”

I gasped in delight, coughed out a bit of scone, then framed my fingers around my idea.
“Not a marriage, but a mirage. We, as a community, will spend many hours listening to the bride dither over flower colors and Empire waist versus dropped waist and we’ll care to the same degree we would have cared before, but now we won’t have a single moment of sorrow about how this marriage is probably a very bad idea. Because it won’t be a marriage, it’ll be a mirage! And if after the event, the groom suddenly grows up and stops thinking he’ll make his first million in hand-painted skateboards and, I don’t know, gets a job and the bride stops referring to her Kate Spade purses as “My retirement fund,” then after a few years, we’ll call it a marriage. If, as history has shown, no one changes and eventually they get tired of each other, there are no hurt feelings because it was a mirage!”

I leaned back and smiled. Laurie nodded slowly and said, “I like it. But what about wedding presents?”


I thought.


“I’m guessing for these women, the thrill is in creating the registry and opening the presents, not the owning of the stuff. How often do you use a bread-maker? If you participate in a mirage, you’d get to open the presents and then the Le Creuset pots and the flatware goes back to the mirage store. Cheaper for everyone. Very 2011.”

“What about babies? Once the novelty of the wedding wears off, you know these couples have kids.”


I stopped, stumped. I stared at the three women across the room, at their Bugaboos and Orbit strollers slung with Burberry diaper bags, at their small well-dressed accessories -- I mean, children -- cooing attractively. As if from the marketing God, it flashed to me.

“Not babies..." I announced. "...Maybies!" Temporary toddlers for holidays and mall trips. Pre-verbal, not teething, preselected for attractiveness and passivity.”
You heard it here first.

Tone-Loc(o)

Question for the ages:

How can you love someone so much you cannot imagine your life--the good bits, the bad bits, the trips to the hardware store bits-- without them, and you know in all ways they are the better person but every once in a while during a discussion they can have a tone of voice which makes you want to score their larynx with a fish-fork?

Please understand me; Consort is magnificent. Better than I deserve. And considering I’m moody,asocial and uninterested in food, I’m acutely aware that “Trading up” from me can be translated as “A waitress who smiles at him while bringing his breakfast.” He wins, I lose. I get that. And considering that we spend more time together than some conjoined twins, I’m humbled by how little we squabble. This is, let the record show, entirely due to his good humor, because I’ve been known to work a sulk against the garlic press.

But oh, that tone. It’s a bit of “I know better about this subject,” a soupçon of “Let me enlighten you,” and a smattering of “Neener, neener.” And what’s most maddening of all?

He swears he’s not doing it.

He assures me he can’t hear it.

Had he not spent an hour today repairing a door handle (One of my more epic grudges is against the original builders of this house; what, was making something to code too Old Country for you, too Socialist?), I’d be going on about this longer. But he did fix the door, and he does edit my writing, and he’s a generally great egg.
However, for the sake of solidarity, please tell me your loved one has a tone which makes you want to throw yourself through a plate-glass window.

Guess Who's Back, Back Again

THE BOOK IS DONE!!! THE BOOK IS DONE!!!! THE BOOK, PRAISE BE, THE BOOK IS DONE!!!

Okay, not exactly. I have a few more obsessive little polishes to do before I hand it in to my editor and then she’ll give me notes and I’ll get emotional and defensive about her notes and then I’ll whine around the house for a bit and actually do what she suggested, but THE BIGGEST PART OF ACTUALLY WRITING THE BOOK IS OVER!!!

Your first clue is that I’m here again. It’s pretty tragic when one of the ways I coaxed myself to finish the book was to promise myself I could write blogs once it was over. Perhaps some time this fall or winter someone will take me aside and quietly explain the concept of relaxation.

Because I’ll have the time to hear about it! BECAUSE THE BOOK IS DONE!!!

Except for the parts I have to do.

The summer passed in a haze, most of my time spent staring at this very screen. I understand the weather was wonderfully mild; when I came up for air this weekend, it was a bracing 612 degrees outside. I know I can’t complain about weather, what with Irene having been inappropriate with much of the East Coast (Consort looked up his childhood home and discovered it’s now lakeview property, the lake in question being Saw Mill River Road). But, honestly, it’s completely undelightful outside, the weather having that sullen, slightly dangerous vibe one associates with the teenagers who hang around gas stations, pointedly staring at you while you code in your ATM while they suck back on generic versions of Gatorade. I walked the dog this morning and by the time I got back everything was coated with a film of dust and gasoline, including my teeth.

BUT THE BOOK IS DONE!!!

Except for the parts I have to do.

If you kindly and generously offered to help and I didn't end up getting in touch with you, please accept my apologies. I could have done another entire book about the voices of homeschooling. It is as I suspected; the reasons people homeschool are interesting and varied. I hope I give this group the kindness and attention it deserves.

Every other living thing in the house had a nice summer. Well, Consort spent a lot of time on conference calls and I think several things in the house got upgraded in technical ways, but he did those things in shorts and he hummed a lot, so I have reason to believe he was content. The dog found a new place to sleep and seems nothing short of ecstatic about that. He also made a new dog friend in the neighborhood who is perfectly happy with being barked at, ignored, or mounted. I’d get involved, but they both seem consenting. Daughter had several kinds of camp, none of which were sleepover and none of which were proximal, so we spent a fair amount of time in shipping mode. The cars did not have good summers, but I stopped asking after their emotional state years ago, because they’re whiners. Daughter also, thanks to an inspired idea by my mother, was introduced to several classic musicals on DVD. She enjoyed most of them but fell exuberantly in love with “Oliver!” choosing to watch it multiple times. I’m pleased she’s pleased without ever needing to hear “Where is Love?” ever again.

Ever.

She also started making friendship bracelets. You can’t see them, but it’s safe to assume my wrists are very colorful right now. I’d feel very friended, very popular, but it’s more accurate to say that she’s making them at such a clip right now that I’m just the easiest place to offload them. Once you’ve given one to every single friend in your life and you’ve made three more in one evening, you look at your mother and think, “Eh, why not.”

The cats ate at least one beetle each this summer so they’re totally content with how the season worked out. They also kept up a rigorous schedule of staring at a blank wall, then tearing around the house and screaming and then sleeping or, as the professionals call it, cross-training.

Speaking of cross-training, Consort and I finally watched all five seasons of “Friday Night Lights.” Trust me to be the last person to get to anything, but one episode a night was absolutely glorious, a total respite from thinking about homeschooling or book-writing about homeschooling. It was a soap in the best possible way and I was sorry to see them leave—I mean, I was sorry to see the show end. I still think Matt Saracen is real, though. And I’m worried about Luke.

The rabbit hates heat and indicates that by sitting places shady and glaring at the sky. The death-nap, however, is sacrosanct, and there is no mid-day so hot Dr. Bunstein won’t flop on his back, roll one eye back in his head and give me the creeps.

The book is due to the editor on September 1st; Daughter’s online classes began August 22nd. This means that we never had time off this summer, someone was always working. And while I can’t say it was the most exciting summer of our lives, and will never be in the top-five relaxing summers of Daughter’s childhood, we came through it all right. I have a smiling, singing child and a ton of bracelets to show for it.

AND MY BOOK IS DONE!!!

Except, of course, for the parts I have to do.

Everything About It Is Appealing

Something Stupid

You know how you download something and the first 97% downloads in four seconds and the last 3% takes so long you bequeath the download in your will? That’s what writing this book is like. In the book’s defense, it might be going faster if I didn’t keep doing this:

“I need to confirm that statistic. Let me just grab it online at this beneficial but dreary website. Let me just take a little break after doing such creditable and mature work. Where to go, what to do...oh, look! Internet cats!”

So many cats. The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee alone can hang its head in shame for the all-nighters I’m going to have to pull to catch up.

But this is not why I’m writing this blog. I’m writing to avoid writing. Some day, a sympathetic mental-health professional and I will look at this together, but right now I’ll tell you about my friend Veronica and how she and I discovered what I suspect might be a Great Truth:

All men have one awful t-shirt.

Veronica’s husband Jack works on sitcoms as an Assistant Director. Ergo, he has a wardrobe which would be the envy of any eighth-grade boy, consisting mostly of cargo shorts, t-shirts and cheap tennis shoes. Recently, one of his friends on the set grew extremely tired of Jack’s look and insisted she was taking Jack for a makeover. Within four hours, she made him buy flat-front khakis, lose the old-man jeans and purchase shoes from someplace besides Costco. I commended Veronica on having the kind of self-esteem where she’d let her husband shop with another woman and she snorted, “Are you kidding? I gave her a gift card to PF Chang’s for getting him out of those clothes. He certainly wasn’t going to do it on his own. She was firm with him.”

I sighed, “Could you send her over?”

For the most part, I wouldn’t feel the need to send Consort off with a female friend to get upgraded. There is one item, however. It’s a green t-shirt with an image of a smiling man holding up a mug of steaming something. The logo reads...

"How about a nice cup of shut the f*ck up?"

Isn’t that lovely? Aren’t you jealous that isn’t in your closet? Consort is so close to perfect in so many ways, and the frat-tendencies in him are barely perceptible but he owns that t-shirt and he thinks that t-shirt is funny. After years of wincing every time I stumbled across it in the dryer, after countless tiny-dramas when the t-shirt “accidentally” ended up in the trash can, only to be saved at the last minute by Consort who’d surmise my sudden good mood had something to do with waste disposal, we’ve come to an agreement. He may wear the t-shirt around the house when doing something smelly, something likely to leave a stain of some kind on the t-shirt which would thereafter render it unwearable. He may not leave the house in that t-shirt, not even to go to Home Deport where, yes, he’d be likely to find other men who thought that t-shirt was a hoot, but where there might be families with corruptible small children.

Speaking of small children, this t-shirt led to my having to explain to Daughter that the First Amendment meant her father could wear that saying in the house but it didn’t mean she had the right to use it in the house.

I loathe that t-shirt.

I’d pay good money for some young woman to look deeply into his eyes and say, “Oh, no” as she doused it with lighter fluid and briefly warmed the backyard. All of this, I told Veronica, who sighed sympathetically.

“When we got married,” she said, “Jack had a Chachi—you know, “Happy Days” Chachi?—t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He loved that thing. It took me eight years to get rid of it. He also had a Gumby t-shirt I had to hide because he kept trying to wear it with cut-off jean shorts. I tell you, I had my work cut out for me.”

Readers, this is where you come in. Jack and Consort are different men, raised in different states, great guys each in their own way but very dissimilar people. And yet each has, at one point, owned and irrationally loved a stupid t-shirt.

The question is, if you are a man, do you have a stupid t-shirt?

Do you know it’s a stupid t-shirt?

Do you care that the significant other in your life flinches when you pull it out, or is that part of the pleasure?

Do gay men have stupid t-shirts? I know there are gay men who aren't fixated on fashion but isn't one of the basic requirements of male homosexuality that you don't wear stupid t-shirts?

Do women have stupid t-shirts? Are the loved ones in their lives arranging to spill bleach on them?

Women, have you ever loved someone a little less because of a stupid t-shirt?

To what lengths have you gone to get a stupid t-shirt out of your life?

And to everyone: What’s the worst stupid t-shirt you’ve ever seen?

(Please don’t let it be “How about a nice cup of shut the f*ck up?”)