Is this the middle?

I (Kind-of) Hate Clothes

2012-03-01T07:10:00.002-08:00

No, this is not a post where I announce I have become a nudist. Rest easy.

It's about someone who spooks me.

I’m not afraid of many things, not really. I do worry and obsess about this and that, but real fear and trembling, thankfully, no.

But I am deeply afraid of a woman of my acquaintance.

This is why: on Sunday evenings, she chooses all the clothes she will wear for the coming work week. She arranges them, cleaned and pressed, hanging in order, on the back of her closet door. She chooses shoes, jewelry, scarves, barrettes, and other accessories to complement each outfit. I haven’t asked her about her undergarments, but she probably has those picked out and color coordinated with each day’s clothing choices. All she need do each morning is pull the prepared outfit and dress.

This is terrifying to me on so many levels.

Over the last twenty years (who thought I would ever live long enough to make such a statement?), my interest in fashion has waned. I don’t hold it against anyone who follows clothing styles and dresses trendily; it just doesn’t float my boat anymore. For my work as a teacher, I need to be presentable, but as one fashion forward young student told me, “No one cares what an English teacher wears.”

She got bonus points for rhyming. And I agree with her for the most part. My memory is shaky, and I do occasionally wonder if I have repeated an outfit in the same week, but I figure my students have too many other things to worry about. Honestly, they could care less if Mrs. B. wears the same outfit on Friday that she wore on Monday, and it’s extremely unlikely they would even notice!

An annoying development lately has been that I have trouble pulling my separates together to dress for work. (For some reason I never wear dresses to work, so I always have to put a top with a bottom.) I remember back to my own college student days, and one professor who always wore khaki pants and a nicely ironed, colored, button down shirt (he had an excellent shirt-laundry). Some of the other students commented on his lack of imagination, but I admired him for making a choice and sticking with it! Would his teaching have been more effective if he threw some navy or black pants into the mix? Oh, please.

Part of my dilemma in dressing each morning is my demand for comfort. With my menopausal madness, I can’t stand anything that’s binding, itchy, or too heavy. Some days I can’t bear the thought of wearing certain dark colors, other days I dress in black from head to toe, trying to maintain a cloak of invisibility. This morning I made immediate progress choosing black pants, but tried three or four tops on. I was disgusted with myself, and having flashbacks to my teen years, when clothing mattered to me and I had similarly indecisive mornings.

With the temperature forecast to possibly reach 80 degrees today, my big concern was finding a couple of comfy layers that would not suffocate me. Should this decision really be so difficult? No. But difficulty making decisions is one more crackpot menopausal symptom. Finally I settled on a sleeveless teal shell covered with a cotton-knit cardigan—in leopard print! Woo-hoo, and I was out the door.

I will never be the lady who picks out all her clothes on Sunday night and carefully hangs them on the back of the closet door. I never want to be that organized. The thought of it chokes me. I want to run, screaming.

If you are that pulled-together fashion-wise, please never, never tell me. Or I’ll be terrified of you, too.

Making Him Proud: A Letter From a Student

2012-02-28T12:13:00.002-08:00

It's the second day of my English composition class at community college. The assignment for the first ten minutes is for students to write a letter of introduction to me.

They freak-out just a wee bit.

A letter? To you? Right now?

Some start writing almost immediately; some fret and chew their pens a bit. Almost all of them check the clock to see how long this agony? / delight? will last.

I ask standard questions to prompt them: name, major, why this school, where they grew up, what they like to do for fun (specifying I only want the PG 13 stuff), what they want to do with their lives, what they like to read, favorite song lyrics and so on.

Since we are in a military town, I ask them to let me know, if they want to, if they have a loved one in harm’s way. I also give the caveat that they don’t need to tell me what they wouldn’t tell their priest, pastor, or psychiatrist.

They chuckle and relax a bit.

Some of them write slowly, carefully, with elegant handwriting. Some scribble and their words are borderline legible, even for an old pro at decoding handwriting. Some noisily tap the letter out on a laptop, driving their eye-rolling tablemates (who are trying to concentrate) up the wall.

Some write half a page, some a page and a half. Some stop writing when I give the” times up;” some keep writing surreptitiously until I hold out my hand for the paper.

Some write lightheartedly, and I can hear their youthful, bubbly voices in my head as I read the letters later.

Some write sincerely, but awkwardly. An occasional student guiltily confesses to writing poetry, some to hatred of reading any genre (eek—but you’re a college student! I later write in the margin).

After the ten minutes are up, I ask who will be the first brave person to share what she wrote.

Today it was a smiling, brown-haired woman in the back row, in capris and a t-shirt. I’m terrible at guessing ages, but I’d say she was about 30. Her name is Calinda*.

“My wonderful husband always prodded me to go back to school,” she reads.

“Actually, he nagged.” The class giggles at this.

“But then he passed away a couple of months ago. I’m here in school to make him proud,” she continues, and she chokes a little on sudden, small sobs.

The class lets out a slow, sympathetic sigh.

We are in a military town where death is no stranger.

The young girl next to Calinda is Sharon*. Sharon, whose husband is a Marine, hugs Calinda in spontaneous support. I run to the back row and hug Calinda too. What else can I do?

Later, when I read Calinda’s full letter, she notes her favorite song lyrics.

“If heaven wasn’t so far away, I’d pick up the kids and come for a day,” by singer Justin Moore.

Now you can better understand what I mean when I say my students are uniquely motivated.

A new semester begins: second day of class.

*Names are always changed to protect student privacy.

Disappearing Acts...

2012-02-27T14:12:00.001-08:00

Did you wonder where I went for a week?

There I was, Nablopomoing along with daily posts, and then I dropped out of sight. Thanks for noticing, if you did. Although with all the fine bloggers out there Nablopoming to the max, we didn’t lack for quality blogs to read.

Please know that I have continued to read your blogs, even if I didn’t post. I was out there, lurking. I probably didn’t even comment on your awesomeness, because the best I could come up with “It was good. I liked it.” I didn’t want you wondering if I’d had a lobotomy, so I said nothing, even though it was good, and I did like it!

Where did I go? What happened? The answer is: I don’t know.

I was blue, grumpy, headachy, tired, blue, grumpy… you get the idea. No one around here offered to grade the five stacks of student papers and projects on my desk. More and more papers came in as the days passed. Who assigned all this crapola—I mean these fine instructional devices to challenge and enhance student engagement?

Overwhelmed is the term that applies to what happened to me. A blogging quagmire resulted. I began posts, and quit in mid-sentence. Blogging so much was suddenly too much, and I really try not to overly whine, sniffle, and moan in my posts (unless there’s a chance it may be mildly amusing).

Fighting guilt over all the horrible defects in my character, I rolled up in a ball under the covers with an icepack on my head for a couple of days, maybe more. Menopause can take some of the blame, a smidge of seasonal depression kicked in, and yes, I may have to share some of the responsibility for yearning so hard for things I can’t have. Not thingy-things, but things like peace, serenity, joy, fun, those things. (I forbid my students to use the word “things,” just FYI.)

Another item at the top of the “things I want” list: an out-of-town vacation, even if it is only somewhere two hours away. Anywhere would do, really. Overnight would be great, a weekend would really rock my world. Don’t know when this might happen, but I’m going to try my best to bring it about.

But until then, I’m back in the blogging fold. I never really left, y’all. Thanks for not giving up on me!

Menopause Mayhem

2012-02-18T03:13:00.004-08:00

Last night, in despair, I started a letter to Menopause. I told her exactly what I thought of her, and why. It felt great to let off some steam, but the letter was morbid and whiney. Scratch that. Time for plan B.

I’m forming a girl gang. I’m pretty sure I know a few blogging bombshells who’ll join the posse. Our cause: murder Menopause.

I’m ready to rumble instead of mumble.

You’ve been our foe, sapping our mojo, hurting us high and low and now you’re gonna get a body blow. The day of reckoning is here, Miss Thang. Better look out for our gang.

We got the eye of the tiger, my mob squad and me. Time is short, you better flee. This is how it’ll be. You, face down on the mat, splat. We ain’t taking it no more, daughter of a cur. Your life gonna pass your eyes in a blur.

Menopause, look over your shoulder. Be best for you to crawl under a boulder. One night, we’re going to catch you, you crone. Mayhem-ugly-tragic for you alone. We’re going to have the last laugh, the best laugh, the laugh that makes you frown. You hear that bell? Yeah, well, we’re taking your crown.

We’re packing heat, and Menopause, you’re going down.

There now, I feel better already. Anyone for a black cohosh tea?

Are you ready to join the Mob Against Menopause? Please sign below.

Subversive Children's Books

2012-02-17T17:16:00.000-08:00

Today's post is a reprise due to another stupid migraine. It originally appeared in my other blog written for a creative writing class.

The Today show did a segment on subversive children's books. Some that made the list:

Where the Wild Things Are
Harriet the Spy (one of my favorites)
The Story of Ferdinand
Yertle the Turtle (Dr. Seuss)
Click, Clack, Moo: Cows that Type (no, this is not my memoir) :-)

What children's book would you add to the subversive list?

Ode to My Memory

2012-02-16T17:08:00.001-08:00

Have you heard the informal test for Alzheimer’s?

Did you forget where you put your car keys? If so, not to worry.

Do you remember what the car keys are for? If not, there may be a problem.

My memory has developed a few quirks. I DO still have a memory, so that’s something. I still know what the car keys are for. I don’t always know what today's date is, but can usually figure it out if I think it over carefully. Well, within one or two digits, anyway.

And come on, who doesn’t occasionally think it’s 1987 instead of 2012? What? You weren’t even born in 1987? Oh.

On an envelope, I may write a return address from three houses and fifteen years ago. Today I filled out a form with my maiden name. It’s been a while since I was a maiden. But isn’t maiden a lovely word? Makes me think of puffy sleeves, floppy hats, and daisy fields...

Sometimes I forget what I’m talking about.

I have trouble with student names that start with the same letter: Adam’s and Andrew’s, Jessica’s and Jennifer’s, Amanda’s and Ashley’s. I look right in the face of a co-worker of five years, and cannot, for the life of me, call up her name for what seems like a century but is probably only five seconds.

I pop into the grocery for peanut butter and toilet paper. One hour later and a hundred dollars lighter, I have the peanut butter, only remembering the t.p. after I get home and find my list on the kitchen counter. If two items can be called a list. This is a serious situation. Our house runs on peanut butter and toilet paper.

My 82 year old mother, my sixty something husband, and I (yes! I am younger than two people in the universe!) have spirited discussions we call “name that actor.” Remember the guy, who acted with the blonde, and she was a waitress, who was really an heiress, no, not Cary Grant, not Van Johnson, not Errol Flynn, the heiress was Claudette Colbert, no, Joan Fontaine, no, the other blond, the one that died of kidney failure, and she dated the band leader or was it Mickey Rooney… what? You still remember the names of actors and their movies? Well then, never mind.

Items I do remember run to the peculiar. I remember all the words to the 1970s song, Ode to Billy Joe, by Bobbie Gentry. Quite a few lines from Hamlet’s soliloquy, Wordsworth’s “Daffodils,” and an obscure poem by Donald Justice are in my repertoire.

I recall how to spell “arithmetic,” but only because I was taught the mnemonic A Rat In Tom’s House May Eat Tom’s Ice Cream. I remember the word mnemonic, but will never be able to spell it without help.

Help. H-E-L-P. Help. When is the National Spelling Bee this year?

Whew, almost lost my train of thought there for a minute. As I was saying, to be or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind...

College Bored? List of 101 Books

2012-02-15T11:06:00.001-08:00

Today in shocking confessions of Melanie…

I am a college English teacher, and I haven’t read all *101of the books every high school student should read, according to the College Board, the administrators of the SAT test taken by college bound high school students.

I have read a number of tomes on the list—I refuse to tally how many—and have read several or all of the books of some authors listed, like Ernest Hemingway. You’re not impressed, are you? I didn’t think so.

I have gaps in my education. Some gaps you could drive a Chevy Suburban through. I’ve read a lot of books, but not nearly, not even close, to the number that many of you have read. Yes, you! And I’m the English teacher. Chance are, you are not. Life is strange, strange, strange.

Guess what else? I don’t confine my reading to certified “literary” books, either. When I teach literature classes, we spend a fair amount of time questioning what is “literature,” and who gets to vote in that election, anyway?

I read popular novels. There, I’ve said it. A hush falls over the blogging universe. I read detective, suspense, spy novels, some fantasy, to include… VAMPIRES and BOUNTY HUNTERS. Sookie Stackhouse of the True Blood books has a friend in me. Stephanie Plum, Evanovich’s Jersey bounty-hunter, is next to my bed in the form of Seven Up.

I do read “literature,” too, whatever that means. When I’m picking out a book to read, I don’t often consider whether the book fits someone’s criteria of literature. Go ahead, call me a slacker, although I prefer the term “dissident.” For example, George Eliot’s (born Marian Evans) rebellious life fascinates me; her novel, Middlemarch, not so much. I’ve tried in great earnestness to read this book, hailed by some as the greatest novel of all time, three times over the years. Nope, I can’t do it. Not yet.

I don’t give up easily on books—it took me about six years and three tries before I read Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. That third time, I loved it so much I followed it up with every novel my man Hem wrote.

There’s still breath in my body, a charged-up battery in my Kindle, and a library card in my wallet. Oh, and a Barnes and Noble coupon in there somewhere. I’m not dead yet, so I should be able to knock a few more books down before I head for the big Shakespeare festival in the sky. Whether the books will be on the College Board’s list, I can’t say, but a few of them probably will.

So George Eliot, be patient, and Stephanie Plum, I’ll see you tonight.

How about you? Is there a “classic” book you’ve tried to read several times you just couldn’t finish?

A Bit of Red for Valentine's Day

2012-02-14T09:27:00.000-08:00

I Shall Paint My Nails Red, by Carole Satyamurti, 1990

Because a bit of colour is a public service.
Because I am proud of my hands.
Because it will remind me I'm a woman.
Because I will look like a survivor.
Because I can admire them in traffic jams.
Because my daughter will say ugh.
Because my lover will be surprised.
Because it is quicker than dyeing my hair.
Because it is a ten-minute moratorium.
Because it is reversible.

From: An Introduction to Poetry. Kennedy and Gioia, eds. 8th edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1994.

Pause for the Cause: Blogging Gratitude

2012-02-13T13:28:00.000-08:00

A while back I confessed to my hero-worship of Anne Lamott. I’m turning to her now, to her book Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. This book I can pick up, open to any page, and find passages that were written for me. And for several million other fans, but who’s counting?

Lamott says:

“Don’t underestimate this gift of finding a place in the writing world: if you really work at describing creatively on paper the truth as you understand it, as you have experienced it, with the people or material who are in you, who are asking that you help them get written, you will come to a secret feeling of honor. Being a writer is part of a noble tradition, as is being a musician—the last egalitarian and open associations. No matter what happens in terms of fame and fortune, dedication to writing is a marching-step forward from where you were before, when you didn’t care about reaching out to the world, when you weren’t hoping to contribute, when you were just standing there doing some job into which you had fallen.”

Anne published Bird by Bird in 1994, long before even the most veteran blogger among us had uploaded her first post. When I apply her words to blogging, I am moved by deep gratitude for this medium.

Blogging has broken down so many barriers to writers who want to practice their craft, but didn’t have the means to readily share their writing with others.

Blogging has compelled me to take risks I would not have dreamed of two years ago.

My blogging friends teach me more about writing each day. They provide incredible support. I don’t feel so alone anymore in my desire to write, and to be read.

It's a good time to be a writer.

Melanie

Anne Lamott's book, Bird by Bird, is available through Anchor Books.

Why I Can't Take Teaching For Granted

2012-02-12T10:23:00.000-08:00

At a table in the library, I had been reading student journals.

We start class each day with a writing prompt, and the students write for about ten minutes. The first week of class they moan and complain about the task, by the second week they are falling into a groove, by the third week if we skip the journal entry writing due to other priorities, they say “What, no journal today?” and give me a letdown scowl. They miss not having their journal time.

I collect the journals after they have about ten entries accumulated. I read them, assigning a grade mostly based on how sincerely they have attempted to respond to the prompt using specific examples, sensory description, and details.

Students are instructed to keep the journals PG-13, and I remind them not to tell me things they wouldn’t tell their pastor, psychiatrist, or parole officer. But still, the students have a clear need to unburden themselves. They tell me a lot, even though they don’t have to.

One tall young man who sits in the front row has read a couple of his journals out loud to the class, so I already know he has a gift for writing. As I read the other entries in his journal, I sigh. No matter how many times I read the story about how an individual student has come to be in a college composition class, I am not prepared.

Since I don’t go into detail about students who are currently enrolled with me, I’ll just say that “Jim” grew up in an incredibly tough urban environment, enlisted in the Marines as a last chance way out, and was in multiple overseas deployments. He’s in college full-time now, is intensely focused and motivated. His writing is incredibly elegant; his journal grade is an A.

Walking across campus to my office, piles of papers in my arms, I mull over Jim’s journal. I look up, and there’s Jim walking toward me.

“Jim! I just read your journal! What a good writer you are!” I say, sure that anyone who can write as well as he would be well aware of the fact, and so will probably brush off my praise with a ho-hum reaction.

Jim appears stunned. He really doesn’t know he’s got a way with words. How is this possible?

“You must submit some of your work to the student anthology,” I say. “The deadline for submissions is coming up in a couple of weeks.”

We chat for a few more minutes, and as he walks away, Jim looks over his shoulder. “Someone believes in me,” he says, incredulously.

That smile on his face? That’s why I’m a teacher.

They're Playing My Song: "Wild One," Those Darlins

2012-02-11T10:59:00.000-08:00

My current favorite song-- "Wild One," by Those Darlins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0oZ38g_P7U

The chorus:
“If you don't want a wild one, quit hanging 'round with me

you knew right from the start that's my personality

if you can't handle crazy, go ahead and leave

if you don't want a wild one, quit hanging 'round with me.”

Word of the Day: Pedigree

2012-02-10T02:17:00.000-08:00

Flipping open the American Heritage College Dictionary for inspiration, the word PEDIGREE caught my eye.

PEDIGREE: a line of ancestors; a lineage. A family tree. A chart of an individual’s ancestors used in human genetics to analyze Mendelian inheritance, esp. of familial diseases. From Middle English, from Latin: pe de grue, foot of crane, the resemblance of a crane’s foot to the lines of succession on a genealogical chart.*

Genealogy is a little hobby of mine. I’ve listened to family stories, wondering….

Grandmother Anna Christiana fed hungry train-riding hobos out her back door near the railroad tracks in the 1930s. Grandfather Rudy, the baker from Alsace, made bread for the Union Army during the Civil War.

Grandmother Matilda had a child out of wedlock as a teenager in the 1840s. The father forever unknown, the child became Granddad Piper; he grew up strong enough to crush a clam in his fist. Grumpy Little Grannie, Nancy Payne, lied about her age to the census man, smoked a pipe, and lived to be 92.

The Old Gentleman, Thomas Leary, had a flowing white mustache in his last photo. He emigrated from County Wexford, Ireland, married a widowed woman with a child, and frittered her money away buying rounds for his buddies in Philadelphia saloons.

Gran Sadie, a white woman, raised an orphaned black child as her own, in the South, around 1900. Her husband Charles was famous for the quality of his cured hams; a smokehouse full of his hams was better than money in the bank. He guarded them with a shotgun and shot his own shadow on the barn one night, thinking it was a ham-thief.

Gramps Richard emigrated from England, c. 1670. He was an indentured servant who gained his freedom and died a land-owner, a tobacco planter. Aside from a house and acreage, his last will and testament distributed livestock, pewter plates, candlesticks, and feather beds among his many children.

No trace of a house remains at the site he farmed 300 years ago, on Gargatha Creek, Virginia. Nearby, in the silent winter marsh, cranes catch small menhaden fish, as they have for thousands of years.

Yes. Pedigree. A crane’s foot, a very gnarled, clawed, bumpy, crane’s foot.

*The American Heritage College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.

First Birthday

2012-02-09T02:01:00.000-08:00

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do." --Eleanor Roosevelt

My mother celebrated her birthday today. She turned 82.

This birthday was different-- her first birthday in 65 years without my dad by her side.

She met Dad when she was only 17. Bright girl that she was, she’d graduated high school early and was already in what was known as “business college”—the 1940s version of today’s community college. Dad was 22, not long out of the Marines, returned from WW II in the Pacific.

Although young himself, Dad had been around the block with girls more than a time or two. We know of at least two engagements; we believe there were still others. He loved the ladies! The young man fell in love often and hard.

Looking at a photo of Mom in 1947, I can see why Dad fell in love for the last time when he met her. A Catholic school girl with long, thick, wavy, hair, she flashes a shy smile. Tall, slim, studious, and penniless, Mom returned the affections of the equally penniless young man from Virginia.

Within months they were married, within the year they were parents of a son.

They had four more children over the next 15 years. Their marriage was sometimes stormy, and at times it looked like they might call it quits. They stuck it out, when even their own children sometimes wondered what kept them together.

By their sixties the marriage had caught a second wind. They had raised their children, and even raised a couple of their grandchildren. They still fussed at each other sometimes, but were committed to each other in a way that only couples who have been together for decades can fathom. They’d been tested, time after time.

But death parted them when Dad died in November of 2011.

Mom made it through her first birthday since 1948 without him. This will be a year of firsts for her. She walks in a new world, a new terrain rolling under her feet, like the deck of a ship. Sometimes she feels adrift, yet she moves forward.

6-word Memoirs: A Great Idea?

2012-02-08T02:14:00.000-08:00

Have you heard-- six word memoirs?

Larry Smith edited, book published 2008.

Loving brevity challenge; rigorous to fulfill.

Concision compels writers into pure focus.

Nothing superfluous stays, remove choking fluff.

Wordiness, be gone! Six words only!

No flab, beyond lean, pure bones.

Nerves raw, pronouns gone, what’s left?

Six word memoir, beginning to panic!

Six words ain’t enough, memory overflow.

Yucking It Up At Work

2012-02-07T02:21:00.000-08:00

Is being funny an asset in your workplace?

A recent article by Allison Linn on MSN.com reports the results of a survey of Chief Financial Officers:

“The survey of 1,400 CFOs, conducted on behalf of staffing firm Accountemps, found that 57 percent think an employee’s sense of humor is somewhat important when it comes to fitting in with the company’s corporate culture. Another 22 percent said it was very important.”

Humor can be an asset in the hallowed halls of my school, and I do what I can. Once a student told me that she took my class because a friend recommended me as a teacher. “But she didn’t tell me you were funny!” the new student added as she walked away.

Hmmn. I still don’t know just which meaning of the word funny she meant. Funny as in “causing amusement or laughter,” or funny as in “peculiar; odd?”* Or both?

Are you funny at work? Do you think humor is necessary at your job, or should we cut the shtick and focus on the tasks at hand?

*dictionary.com definitions

Bring Back Silly!

2012-02-06T01:32:00.000-08:00

Do you sometimes feel as though you’ve been an adult for WAY too long?

Are you tired of doing the laundry, cleaning the cat box, flossing your teeth, dragging through from day to day, always the good little worker bee, doing the nauseatingly right thing? Being responsible, paying the bills, clipping coupons, getting the tires rotated, and postponing gratification got you down? Does “fun” seem an abstract, amorphous term, a long-lost acquaintance vaguely recalled?

Perhaps you need to get silly. The silly that is definitively NOT: steady, serious, sober, staid.

Silly is sheer delight. It’s free, mood boosting, burns calories, and lowers your carbon footprint (study results pending).

Alas, silliness, almost by definition, is hard to plan. We can’t program into our schedules: “Friday, 1:30-1:45 p.m. Get silly.”

One must get silly when the occasion arises. Carpe sillidum. I can even get silly by myself, if need be. I can chase my cats around the house, throwing cat toys, as their furry feet slip sideways, skittering around corners. I can dance my 50+ version of the robot to Cee Lo Green on Pandora. I can Tweet nonsense to the universe.

However, getting silly with others is still best. When the chance to be silly comes up while teaching a class of college students, I may take it. Learning can resume in a minute or two.

During first day of semester icebreaker interviews, a student explains that the young woman she interviewed has a tattoo of buttered toast. We went for it. The tattooed girl wriggled out of her cardigan sweater down to her sleeveless shell, and there, in full glory on her bicep, was a life-sized piece of toast with two pats of butter. I asked her if she could make it wiggle, so it would look like the butter was melting. We had a very fine silly moment. Ice was indeed broken, loudly, so much so that curious passersby peeked in the classroom door to see what they were missing.

Silliness is an art form, but it can be learned. The steps to silly:

1. Be prepared; be alert. Silliness can happen at any time, anywhere. Silliness may even occur online, in blog posts and comments.

2. Once a potential silly situation arises, quickly assess the value to risk quotient. Silliness in front of supervisors, mental health professionals, law officers, or pastors must be carefully weighed for potential damage to career, loss of freedom, or possible excommunication.

3. Once cleared through the value/risk quotient, engage in silliness.

4. Stretch silliness to maximum length, but the short silly is typically preferable to the long silly. Leave the silly observers and participants wanting more, rather than feeling silly-sick-over-sated. Less is more for the silly scenario.

5. Cell phone photography is encouraged, but if any video clips go viral, sharing of any royalties earned is encouraged and expected.

6. Caution: extended sillies can cause elevated heart rate, facial flushing, or increase in eye rolling. Before silliness, check with your doctor if you have heart disease, glaucoma, or wear contact lenses.

7. Once the silliness has subsided, resume normal adult behavior while scouting for the next silly opportunity.

The world needs more genuine silliness. Should you agree, come on! We’ll chase the rainbow of silliness together, flying our silliness flag high. We’ll face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune all the better for having more silliness in our lives.

When was the last time you were silly?

Breaking Bad

2012-02-05T03:02:00.000-08:00

I’ve been entirely too good lately.

It’s partly this whole teacher gig, the good wife and good daughter roles, the Miss Nicey-Nice to the point of gagging persona I seem to have unthinkingly branded myself with. I mean, I am mostly nice, but that’s not all there is to me.

What can I do that’s somewhat bad, risky, or at least a bit out of character, but not (totally) illegal?

Buy and wear a black leather miniskirt. The legs are still pretty good, especially camouflaged in tights. Do they make leather minis in a size 12 with an elastic waist?

Try some F-me high heeled pumps? Nah, I’d fall and give myself a concussion. I did see a pair of teal suede platform ones at Belk’s Department store tonight. They were so high I’d need an oxygen mask.

See if my local bailbonds-woman needs some help with FTA’s (Failure to Appears)? Thanks to HomeReared Chef and Victoria’s View, I’m addicted to Janet Evanovich’s book series about Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter (the movie just came out with Katherine Heigel as Stephanie). Besides, I’m just dying to have pink handcuffs like BadLuck Detective.

Go to ladies’ night at Shooter’s World, our local indoor shooting range. Ba-bang, bang, bang. I’ll post the video of my superior marksmanship. Just need to get my bifocal scrip updated a bit first.

Book a trip to my local zip-line excursion park. They zip you through the trees and over a waterfall. You won’t catch me skydiving, but I’m ready for the zip line. No, really. Want to come with me?

Go skinny dipping again. It’s been way too long. Need to find a heated pool. Cold water makes my heart feel like it’s going to stop.

Order appetizer AND dessert for once.

Learn to cuss more proficiently in Spanish.

Sing karaoke of my several of my favorite torch songs, while wearing sequins. Lots of sequins, and reclining across the top of a baby grand piano. Or maybe I’ll lip-sync to Greg Allman’s I’m No Angel.

Or ZZ top, I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide?

Cause I ain’t no angel, y’all. And I could take this nationwide.

What do you do when you break bad?

Snot My Fault!: Sincerely Silly Saturdays Launch

2012-02-04T03:15:00.000-08:00

Dear Young Sir,

Yes, you. The nicely dressed young man who repeatedly blew his nose loudly enough to stun sparrows out of the sky, setting off seismographs in nearby labs—as gently as I can, my dear man, I regret to inform you--when in public we don’t trumpet our noses at ear-spitting volume.

Far from claiming supreme knowledge of the finer points of etiquette, I admit I, too, have occasionally trumpeted in public. Through the wisdom of my years, I have learned to confine those satisfying, proud, and productive displays of vigorous nasal strength to the privacy of my own home, car, or perhaps, in an emergency, a stall in a public restroom, or deserted woodland area (only if visibly free of vulnerable small wildlife).

I am certain you never meant to cause offense, or indeed, amusement, as you vainly tried to clear your congested passages. For your benefit, I have taken an informal survey of other witnesses to your regrettable, although enthusiastically hearty, faux-pas. Results conclusively show that:

1. Discreet nose-blowing IS better than constant loud, wet sniffing, as noted by 94% surveyed

2. Public nose-blows should be limited in volume to prevent hearing loss; no more than 85 dB (equivalent to a freight train @ distance of 15 meters)*

3. Favored sinus discharge receptacles were as follows: Facial tissues (80% of respondents), toilet paper (10%), cloth handkerchiefs (5%), McDonald’s napkins (4%), other (1%). Judged not acceptable: hoodie-sleeves, shirt-tails, upholstered furniture, back of hand

4. Sympathetic that you have a cold or allergy, bystanders agree they will gladly contribute to a fund to purchase you a generic-grade, over-the-counter antihistamine product. One observer offered to personally transport you to the nearest Walgreens.

5. Survey participants noted although they refrained from laughter each time you trumpeted, they were sorely tested. They make no guarantee of further resistance to guffawing at any of your future nasal shout outs.

So, dear young sir, please accept this gentle lesson in the spirit of enlightenment in which it is intended. As the Russian proverb says, "There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out."

When snot is flowing, go gently with the blowing. Your tender nose, your friends, loved ones, neighbors, and any living creatures within earshot, will thank you.

Sincerely,

The Sincerely Silly Saturday Etiquette Advisor

**With many thanks to Virginia, the Home Reared Chef, and her rousing “nose-picking post” at BlogHer.com. Her fearlessness gave me the courage to tackle this sincerely silly topic.

*from industrialnoisecontrol.com

No-hands Spirit of Abandon

2012-02-03T03:13:00.000-08:00

Here’s something great about Nablopomo: it compels me to notice. Driving home from work today, a motorcycle passed me on the four-lane. As it came by me, the rider put his right hand out, and I assumed he meant to move to the right, reentering the lane in front of me.

When he didn’t change lanes as I expected, I looked again. He had both arms extended. He was riding with his arms outstretched, letting the wind run through his fingers. I smiled and thought—Nablopomo worthy. Then my practical side added—he must have cruise control. And excellent balance.

Like a kid on a banana bike, he was in “look Ma, no hands!” mode. It was warm today—70 degrees. The sky was an excellent shade of Carolina blue, the road was straight, and he was having a blast. I was too, just watching him go.

So here’s to blue skies, hands-free abandon, straight roads, and noticing. Thanks, Nablopomo.

Hidden Relics of a Reluctant Hero's Past

2012-02-02T03:01:00.000-08:00

Some of you know that we lost my dad a few days before Thanksgiving. Mom and I have been going through some of Dad's belongings, and we discovered a letter Dad received in 1946. I had a strong feeling we would find medals or something related to his service in World War II. Mom had never seen this document in all the 64 years she and Dad were married.

Like most WW II vets, Dad spoke very little of his contributions. The letter comes from his duty in Occupied Japan, where he was part of a bomb and mine disposal unit. Prior to his time in Japan, he had been in the unspeakably bloody, 35-day Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. At the time Dad received this letter, he was 20 years old.

Job well done, Dad. We miss you.

Is there a reluctant hero in your family?

HEADQUARTERS I CORPS

Office of the Ordnance Officer

APO 301 (Kyoto, Honshu)

25 May 1946

Subject: Letter of Appreciation.

To: Charles C. Bundick, Pfc, #xxxxx,

United States Marine Corps.

I wish to express my appreciation for your splendid performance of duty while engaged in disposal of explosive ordnance in Japan. During your service with units under First Corps, you assisted in the successful disposition of numerous stores of characteristically hazardous Japanese explosives and munitions, much of which was in a deteriorated and extra-sensitive condition. Your capable assistance was in many forms. You aided in the dumping of ordnance at sea, the destruction of dud U.S. high explosive and incendiary bombs, the burning of bulk explosive powders and pyrotechnics, and the classification of explosive ordnance at widely dispersed targets. Each of these was vital to the overall success of the disposal program, and your part in that task was well done.

Your activities, marked by a ready willingness to undertake all assignments and a faithful devotion to duty, materially aided in the successful elimination of the Japanese war potential. Your excellent service has reflected the highest credit on yourself and the United States Marine Corps.

A. G. STONE

Colonel, Ord. Dept.

Ordnance Officer.

Why not?

2012-02-01T07:07:00.000-08:00

Stress bunny. That’s me.

So why sign up for Nablopomo for February? I have a lot of smart alecky responses to that, but I’ll spare you and say I figured, “Why not?”

I’m not always a “Why not?” kind of person. But this stress and the funny, fluttery, pleasantly/unpleasantly on-edge feeling in the middle of my chest told me to do it. No, I’m not hearing voices, not yet. More of an urge, a yearning, a desire for forward motion.

I’m in transition. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know how to be at peace. Did I ever know?

If I’m not at peace and stressed out, what’s one more thing like a little old commitment to Nablopomo for February? Why in the heck not blog every day for a month?

Another thought I’ll add is that I am so thankful for second chances. Remember when I posted that I was “gone fishin’” to edit my friend R. K. Ryals book, Ransom? I flaked out on her, edited a chapter or two, got the migraine from hell that lasted two weeks, and was humiliated that I hadn’t kept my commitment to her in the way I had hoped.

But she didn’t give up on me. I got it back together and started editing again this week.

Her work is amazing, and it truly is – I’m going to get corny here—an honor to work on her book. How often in life are we able to say that? That it’s an honor to work with someone?

Although being in the presence of so much natural talent as R.K. has is daunting to me as a writer, as someone who aspires to publish my own book-length works one day, I wouldn’t miss the fantastic experience of editing Ransom, not for the world.

Thanks for giving me a second chance, for maybe the third time?, R. K. J Second chances are sometimes even better than first chances.

Here we go, month of February, month of darkness. You’re a dark month, but you’re not fooling me. There’s a minute more of daylight every day. I’ll take that.

Nablopomo: glorious madness. Let’s tear the roof off the mother sucker.

What Winter? My Fashion Fail, part deux

2012-01-29T17:06:00.000-08:00

So far, this winter has been a menopausal rip-off. At the risk of confirming my complete insanity, I will say that the weather here in North Carolina has been… too warm.

As I mentioned back in What Not to Wear: The Menopause Edition, I’ve been having my own personal global warming crisis. Having three delicate temperature settings, warm, warmer, and get the hell out of my way I need to put my head in the freezer, I looked forward to the winter of 2011-12 with deep yearning.

Alas, my hunger for cooling relief is unfulfilled. Here in coastal Carolina, we have had frost. We’ve had one night in the twenties. But daytime temps have been in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

I’ve had to scrape some frost off my car windshield 3 times. By the afternoon commute, I am BLASTING THE AIR CONDITIONER IN MY CAR. Peeps, I weep. You may cry for me, Argentina.

I wear summer t-shirts. I wear cotton pants. If I could keep my legs shaved on a more reliable basis, I would wear skirts to get a bit more air… up there.

My fashion-forward girlfriends wear slimming, dark tights, sweet cashmere sweaters, cute boots. I gaze at them in hopeless admiration. On the few cool-ish days when the non-menopausal wear fur-trimmed coats right in step with today’s styles, I wear a cotton hoodie, open to catch a breeze. Sometimes I take the hoodie off and tie it around my waist, keeping one eye open for a photographer from the Glamour magazine fashion “don’t” page.

Trying to find the silver (non-down filled) lining, I am thankful that local heating bills will be lower, the camellias are blooming with riotous abandon, the woodland creatures need not shiver. I won’t be a selfish, mean-spirited, menopausal crank.

For at least the next five minutes.

Plethora of Pajamas in Public Places

2012-01-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

A Louisiana parish, according to AP reports, is considering a ban on wearing pajamas in public. A parish commissioner, while visiting Walmart, saw young men in p.j.s, and apparently got a peek at some private parts one would associate more with Chippendales than with Walmart’s chips and salsa aisle.

Starved for news on the lighter side, this story attracted my rapt attention and at least ten minutes of deep introspection.

My stream of consciousness – you can thank me later—went something like this: Free country, can’t legislate good taste, ACLU, lazy-put-on-some-clothes-for-Pete’s sake if you’re old enough to be potty-trained, God-given rights of the individual, improbable enforcement, don’t want my mama to have to see a dude’s dingaling when she’s buying her skim milk, my body/my jammies, public indecency, freedom of the un-pressed, holy habeas corpus, will Slankets at Safeway be next?, keep bikinis on the beach / sleepwear in the sack, democracy in action, what happens when Granny goes to market in her Maidenform bra-thong set cause that’s freedom too, pajama jeans vs. sweatpants, definition of sleepwear, slippery slopes sink ships, beam-me-up-Scotty did Captain Kirk have Star Fleet footed-jammies?

Phew. I’m so exhausted I’m going to put my pajamas on and hit the hay. Or head out to Target?

Pajamas. An issue so controversial yet so central to freedom, and in an election year. Who will be the brave journalist to poll the presidential hopefuls on this question—are pajamas in public an inalienable right?

What do you think? Pajamas in public? Or jammies only in the sanctity of the domicile?

More to the story: Marines in conduct unbecoming

2012-01-17T19:56:00.000-08:00

Recently a damning video of U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters shocked the world, drawing condemnation of American military forces. The alleged actions of these men were wrong. No one, military member or not, condones this behavior. No one is above criticism in our country, and the outrage people have expressed at this travesty has its place in a free society.

I do not defend what these soldiers did. But I believe I can understand it. They are at war. We, the American people, through our government and our military, have asked our troops to kill our enemies. Whether you agree or disagree with the war in Afghanistan, the fact remains that we ARE at war, and these young men and women are killing in our names.

To kill, to be locked in bloody conflict, to know that if you don’t kill the enemy he will most assuredly kill you, is part of the hell of war. We who are not on the battlefield have the luxury of the finer scruples of civilized society. We can turn away in distaste. We can change the TV channel, shut off the computer, go to the kitchen for a snack. Our troops can’t.

These soldiers, as wrong as they were to disrespect dead enemies’ bodies, reacted similarly to my friend who said she wanted to spit on the graves of Nazi concentration camp guards.

Let’s walk a few steps in the boots of these soldiers. I teach soldiers, former soldiers, and their dependents every day.

Here’s a story about the last day of a college class in a military town bruised by years of war. Maybe it will shed some light on what we have asked of our military men and women in these interminable wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The last day of class. It’s also the last day of oral presentations of student research papers in this community college English class.

I’ve been kidding this class the entire semester about being the best-ever class. Focused, mature, motivated. This class … they take my breath.

Here’s the last student to present her paper, Barbara.

Topic: Post traumatic stress disorder.

Barbara puts up a PowerPoint slide with a large “MA,” Mature Adults, warning on it. I’m a little uneasy. We’re wondering when she will change slides on the projector, but she doesn’t. The MA stays.

She gives an overview of post-traumatic stress disorder. She talks in the third person about soldiers, and emphasizes they are mostly so young, 18-22 years old. Barbara, a non-traditional student with teenagers at home, also a former Marine, is about 40.

As I take notes and fill out my assessment sheet for Barbara’s presentation grade, I see that she is struggling a bit with her emotions.

She says the VA was not prepared for the returning vets. How they allot only three psych therapy sessions per soldier, yet give out mood-altering drugs so freely. How that is not an adequate response to returning soldiers.

Finishing up her presentation, she says she is going to show us some photos of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Her photos flash in relentless succession. Blood, mutilation, guys trying to drag buddies out of the small-arms fire in dusty streets. Guys blown-up in ditches. A man who has lost his face, who nonetheless survived and stands in dress blues with his bride on their wedding day.

“This is a picture of true love,” Barbara says. Her posture is erect, but her voice is starting to tremble.

She is in trouble. We can all see that.

Her last photo is of a chaplain handing an American flag to a little boy.

“That boy is Tyler,” she sighs. “I may get emotional.”

“Some things are worth getting emotional about. It’s okay,” I say, from my seat in the middle of the room among the students.

Barbara stops. I let ten long seconds go by, to give her a chance to continue if she wants to.

She stands in front of the class, her head bowed, tears streaming. How is she still standing?

I go up and hug her. She hugs back, hard.

“Is he someone you know?” I whisper.

“Yes.”

From somewhere, she finds the resolve to continue. She tells the class the story of Tyler, and also of herself.

“When I was in Iraq,” she says, “we processed the bodies of soldiers for transport back home. Usually the Iraqis removed any ID from the bodies. There were no dog tags, no nothing. But this one man still had a picture of a little boy, his son, Tyler, in his pocket. I never forgot that little boy’s face.

“I happened to come across this picture of Tyler on the internet when I was doing my research for this presentation.”

She starts crying again, but continues.

“This happened in 2004, and I wonder every day how this little boy is doing without his father.”

Standing beside Barbara, her immense bravery astonishes me. But then again, I see a lot of bravery on our campus.

Barbara has been my student for two semesters. I thought I knew a few details about her, but I didn’t know that she had processed bodies of American soldiers.

She sent the dead bodies home. That was her job.

Barbara is sobbing. “May I take over?” I ask.

“Yes,” she whispers. She sits down at her desk in the front row.

What am I going to say? Shit!

I look out at the splintered faces of the best-ever class. Words start coming out of my mouth.

“As an instructor, PTSD is something I see my students dealing with every day. You can’t tell by looking at someone if they are dealing with it. There aren’t any visible signs. We all know that.”

They nod.

“But then there are the wives, the husbands, the kids, the friends of those with PTSD who are also dealing with the fallout.”

Even the teachers, I think, but don’t say out loud. I can’t truly know what many of my students have been through, what they are still going through. Ten years of war show everywhere on our campus.

I look around at the class, the best-ever class. Some of the women dab their eyes with tissues; several of them have served in Iraq. One young woman, a Navy corpsman, worked in a field hospital in Fallujah. She remembers a day when her boots filled up with blood from the wounded. She was so busy tending the injured that she didn’t notice the blood soaked socks and boots until her shift ended.

The young men have red rimmed eyes; they are broken. I know they, their dads or moms, their brothers, their friends have been deployed. I know my voice is coming out choked, distorted. Too damn bad; apparently I’ve got more to say.

“What can we do?” I ask.

“We can try to treat each other gently around here, as much as we can. We can be kind to one another, even in small ways.

“We’ve all seen the consequences of war don’t end when soldiers leave the battlefield. We know what’s going on because we live here in this military town. If you travel over semester break, you can tell people in other parts of the country what’s going on. They don’t know.

“You can tell them.”

Just like I’m telling you, now.

Gone fishin'

2012-01-09T11:08:00.000-08:00

Not really. I'm excited and honored to be asked to edit book two in the Redemption series by my friend, R.K. Ryals. Book one is Redemption-- it's available for $ .99 on Kindle. Check it out!

Book two is Ransom, and continues the YA story of a foul-mouthed, convent-raised teenager, Dayton, who gets swept up in a war between Angels and Demons. I've read the first chapter, and it's going to be a wild ride.

So I go ... editing. Back in a couple of weeks. Love to all!

http://www.amazon.com/Redemption-Series-ebook/dp/B005Q22CEY

Zen and Granite Counterstops

2011-12-29T11:49:00.000-08:00

Have you noticed how people whine and complain on HGTV’s House Hunters and Property Virgins shows?

Oh, lawsy.

They criticize Formica counters, funky wall colors, small bathrooms from the 60s with pink tile, vinyl flooring. Whine, whine, whine. No house is “perfect,” they sigh. Why isn’t there a perfect house for them for a reasonable price?

I think about the nice house I was privileged to grow up in, with one pink bathroom for seven people, a tiny sliver of yard, about three linear feet of Formica kitchen counter. The mouth-watering meals my parents turned out of that bare-bones kitchen were the definition of delicious. Cherry pie from the fruit tree in the backyard? Who does that today? My family loved that house—it’s the place we think of when we remember home. My parents were so proud to make their last $200.00 monthly mortgage payment after thirty years.

The HGTV house-hunters’ expectations are high. How did these young Americans get the idea that they were supposed to be living so large? What the heck is wrong with Formica, anyway? Some of the most fabulous meals I ever cooked were in a camper trailer kitchen with an apartment sized gas stove from the 1950s—and gasp—no granite counters. Here’s a shocker: granite counters and stainless steel appliances don’t make dinner taste any better. Or create family harmony.

Oye.

Here comes the hypocritical part, and my secret shame. I live in McMansion. Before you start hating on me, let me explain.

We owned the lot for 20 years; we bought it when it was called a swamp and not a “delightful marsh-front property with bird-watching from the back yard.” My husband built the house for us in 2006. Sounds ominous, right? Yep, we built at the height of the real estate boom, planned to stay in the house about five years, sell, and have enough equity to help with our eventual retirement. That retirement has been moved back to about age 90 since the real estate bubble burst. We pray our health holds out.

We aren’t wealthy people. I teach in the South, for Pete’s sake. That alone speaks volumes; you must know I teach for love, not money. Like many others, I haven’t even had a cost of living raise in five years. They’ve cut my health benefits and are going after my retirement plan next. Although I’m not happy with this treatment, I’m incredibly thankful to have the job, for obvious reasons.

So now the lovely house we built, our “dream” house that we really built for other people, is sitting on the market. The market is in the toilet. We’re stuck in a house that has a humongous mortgage payment, is too big and fancy for us, and may not sell for years. The house has most of the hot-button features that HGTV buyers crave: oak floors, granite counters, 3 full baths, loads of windows, porches, decks, and even a boat dock.

The house is lovely, and we’re lucky to live in it, but it has never felt like home to me. I knew we’d sell it, so I haven’t let myself relax into it, to feel like I belonged here. I appreciate all the features, I do. We looked at house plans for ten years before we picked this plan as a match for the lot. It’s a special, light-filled house, built like a fortress to withstand the hurricanes we get here in the South.

But when I write that murderous mortgage check every month, I dream of a house of half the size, with a small yard, some old-timey charm, and yes, even Formica counters. A house with a tiny little mortgage to reflect its tiny little square footage. Room to breathe financially. A lift to this relentless weight on our shoulders.

Yet we are extremely lucky, and I count my blessings every day. Yes, I really do. Believe it or not, we moved directly from a comfortable double-wide (not a thing in the world wrong with double-wides) to this house. We sang the theme song to The Jeffersons, “Moving On Up” when we moved in. We have this huge mortgage, but we are not underwater. The house is still worth more than the mortgage, although if you count the cash we put into the house ourselves, we are at breakeven. For today’s economy, that’s a miracle.

We see people—we know people who have lost homes to foreclosure in the last few years. Other people are underwater but still scraping together a mortgage payment each month. Some families are homeless and may never be homeowners again. They are the ones who deserve our attention, our help, our understanding.

We have been there, too. In the early 1990s we were bankrupt and foreclosed on, wandering the country in an old van and living in a tiny 1964 Holiday Rambler camper trailer. Foreclosure is heartbreaking. No one can fully understand how it hurts unless she’s been through it. It hurts financially and it hurts because a dream dies when a family loses a home after trying everything they know to save it. The hurt lasts for years, and never really goes away entirely.

Please don’t judge someone who has lost a home to foreclosure. An outside observer never knows the whole story about how a family lost their home. The situation is always more complicated than you could possibly imagine. Saying they shouldn’t have borrowed the money in the first place is not helpful. Illness, job loss, addiction, and death can hit any family at any time. Most foreclosed families have spent their life-savings fighting to keep their house, trying to do the “right thing.”

In our case, after foreclosure, we rebuilt our credit over the course of 15 years. We worked and saved. We don’t ask for praise. We did what so many others have done; we built a pretty house.

Some of you may be thinking, tough shit. I should just shut up, put on my big girl panties, and thank God I don’t lay my head down in a cardboard box or homeless shelter every night. I get it, I do.

Maybe that’s why some of the couples on HGTV upset me. They tend to have such high expectations of what a house should be. The hardwood floors, the granite counters, the high ceilings seem to mean everything to them.

If I could, I’d try to get through to these house-hunters. Lighten up, I’d tell them. It isn’t the house, it’s the feeling of home created within the house. A nice house means nothing if we don’t have peace of mind.

All the granite countertops in the world won’t bring us that.

Girl Crush

2011-12-22T20:06:00.000-08:00

“Holiness has most often been revealed to me in the exquisite pun of the first syllable, in holes—in not enough help, in brokenness, mess… in holes and lostness I can pick up the light of small ordinary progress, newly made moments flecked like pepper into the slog and the disruptions.” –Anne Lamott

My latest girl crush is writer Anne Lamott. My feelings toward Anne are part crush, part hero worship, part “she would totally get me if we met” awe.

I’m reading Lamott’s 2005 book, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. After my dad died four weeks ago, I did what some readers/writers/overthinkers might do (perhaps especially if they have a touch of religious belief)—I went to Barnes and Noble and bought books about grieving, death, faith, and comfort.

That first week I was still numb, but I knew the numbness would wear off, and I wanted to be prepared. The way I saw it, $80.00 worth of books would be well worthwhile if I could avoid costly professional grief therapy. Yes, I’m a real DIY kind of sufferer.

So I’ve dipped into four of the books, but Annie’s is the one I’m reading the most. I was a little worried, since she started right off damning George Bush to hell for starting the war in Iraq. While I may tend to agree with her, the constant damning to hell of George Bush was not helping me move forward in my grieving process.

But I trusted, kept reading.

What I love about my Anne is that she is so messed up and sarcastic, and she knows it. So self-deprecating, yet she’s unwilling to take shit from anyone, including God. She talks about Jesus and God in the most intimate and sometimes bitchy ways.

A recovering alcoholic, now in her fifties, at the time Plan B was written she is both a mother to a teenage boy and going through menopause, an incendiary situation. Summing her life experience up, she’s a survivor.

She overthinks, as well, a trait we share. Lamott admits to wrongheadedness, uncharitable thoughts, and murderous impulses. She’s not afraid to pray the one-word prayer: HELP!

In short, she’s exactly the kind of Christian I need right now. I don’t need platitudes, and my Annie doesn’t do platitudes. She’s had to do lots of inner work to get to where she is, a place where she is mostly (or at least sometimes) content with her life.

For instance, she admits that she’d rather be celibate than get into another toxic relationship. Of course, in the funny way life goes, a while after she came to that conclusion, she found a boyfriend.

She attends a racially diverse Presbyterian church in the Bay area, has a female pastor, and sometimes refers to God as “She.” I know this kind of new-agey feminist stuff drives some Christians over the edge, but me and Annie, we say, “Chill.” We don’t think God gets all excited about gender. Or about a lot of other stuff.

She says, “…we should try to stay on God’s good side. It’s not hard. God has extremely low standards. Pray, take care of people, be actively grateful for your blessings, give away your money—you’re cool. You’re in. Nice room in heaven, flossing no longer required—which is what will make it heaven for me. Oh, I mean that, and Jesus.”

Anne struggles with mid-life, admits she has a bit of flab, is creaky when she gets up in the morning, forgetful. She’s a white girl who gave up the struggle with her exceedingly curly, unruly hair a decade ago and now sports dreadlocks, feeling that dreadlocks are the equivalent of her hair finding its way home. She’s a blue jeans kind of girl; she’d never judge me for my general dishevelment.

If I lived near her, my friend Annie and I would go for hikes in the hills. She’d show me her favorite views, the trails she hiked with her dad as a girl. We’d talk about faith, and failure, and love. I’d be sure she knew how much I valued our friendship, and she’d offer to read drafts of my historical novel. I might even admit that I’d had a girl crush on her. She’d be a little embarrassed, but mostly flattered.

She be kind, real, and she’d offer to watch my cats if I had to go out of town. We’d make each other laugh. I’d cook her some soup.

That’s my girl crush. Crazy Annie is helping me work through some of my grief, after all.

Have you ever had a girl crush on an author or famous person, living or dead? I challenge you to name your crush, and tell me about her.

Tasteless, Tacky, Tawdry: My Life as a Prude

2011-12-15T14:56:00.000-08:00

I used to be such a Prude with a capital P.

What happened?

Once the mere mention of “passing gas” offended me to the core, the word “damn” made me cringe, and if I saw the “f” word on the ladies room wall, I felt slightly dizzy and broke out in hives.

Now I find I excel at double-entendres, bad bathroom puns, and none-too-lightly-veiled sexual innuendo.

By the way, no one writes on the bathroom wall anymore. Is that because we’re too busy talking on the cell, texting, or taking notes for our next blog post? Remember when there was even rhyming poetry on the walls? “If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat and wipe the seat” springs to mind.

See what I mean? In my life as a prude, I would never, ever, have repeated that poem. As a teenager I was completely mortified by needing to ask for a bathroom when traveling with friends. I routinely “held it” long enough it’s a wonder I didn’t burst a kidney.

Now I blab for the world to hear, “Time for a pee break! Anyone else need to go?”

My grandmother would be appalled. I believe I heard her say “damn” maybe twice in her 93 years. She powdered her nose—she certainly didn’t “use the toilet.” I heard nary a curse word from my mother until I was at least 18.

Purchasing feminine hygiene products used to be torture, but now I can actually say the word tampons out loud without feeling like my tongue may burst into flames. Although not in mixed company. And of course I recently passed the point of needing tampons. I can even say menopause out loud. Well, if it’s just us girls.

I use the “f” word out loud perhaps two dozen times a year, but my long-suffering husband is usually the only one who hears it (not directed at him, but in description of politicians, incompetent drivers, and other assorted dunderheads).

Upon reflection, perhaps I do retain a few taboos and words I refuse to acknowledge: nasal dishcharge, alternative “poo” words, parts of male and female anatomy below the waist, certain gastric disturbances, and don’t even attempt to talk to me about something you read in the Kama Sutra.

A friend from the Deep South recently revealed that she calls a certain part of the female anatomy one’s “butterbean.” I adore this as a term.

If you’ve never seen a butterbean, they are really very cute. They're shaped like a... oh, dear heavens, stop it! The vegetable, people, I’m talking about the VEGETABLE. Sheesh.

So maybe I am still a bit of a prude after all.

Shall I say it out loud, I’m a prude and I’m proud?

Or shall I write it on the bathroom wall?

Melanie

Unbalanced

2011-12-11T10:27:00.000-08:00

One of the books I’m reading, Healing After Loss, by Martha Whitmore Hickman (Harper, 1994), quotes social worker Lily Pincus:

When I asked the orthopedic surgeon who treated me whether people often fracture bones after bereavement, he said, without even looking up from my injured foot, “Naturally, people lose their sense of balance.”

Oh, so that’s what’s going on.

Never the most graceful of women, lately I have been walking into a few more walls than usual. My elbows flail away from me, hitting door casings. Small bruises appear on my arms and legs, and I can’t remember how I got them. Walking along, suddenly I veer off to the side like the cliché of the drunken sailor. I haven’t fallen. Yet.

Unbalanced. That’s a good way to put it. Off-center.

Losing Dad three weeks ago, I sometimes wonder I’m dealing a little too well with grief. Does that mean there’s something wrong with me?

Then, leaving a restaurant, I encounter a little man, bent over his walker, wearing a WW II, D-Day veteran’s cap. Dad had a cap like that, but for his service in the Pacific. I bought it for him, but he was reluctant to wear it, and continued with his ratty Carolina Panthers hat. Dad didn’t like to draw attention to his veteran status.

The little man is toddling toward the restaurant door. Shockwaves hit me, but I smile, say “WW II? Thank you for your service,” as I hold the door for the little man and his companion. Then I turn away, hit with that stupid weight front and center, under the breast bone.

But it passes. A young man in a wheel chair rolls up, and I hold the door open for him, too. My day to be doorman, but that’s how we do it in the South. I pull it back together, and no one with me even notices.

Talking with my husband later, I told him that meeting the old man was an unexpected slap of grief. I should have been prepared to meet my first little man with a walker after losing Dad, but I wasn’t, hadn’t planned for it.

I’m dealing well with the grief thing, honestly. Just a little clumsy, the occasional crying jag in the shower, and the urge to hug little old men.

But that’s not such a bad impulse, is it?

Of Ponies, Life, and Laughter

2011-11-30T01:39:00.000-08:00

November was not typical for me and my family.

I’m wondering how much of what happened this month I should write down. What do I want to remember? What should I try to forget? Don’t worry, I’m not thinking about putting it all in this post. I wouldn’t do that to you.

Some of this is going to be sad, so you don’t have to keep reading if you don’t want to. But not all of it is sad.

My brother called me at work one day. He had been taking care of Dad at home, acting as Dad’s 24/7 nurse, doing everything and more for Dad. Mother, a retired nurse, was helping, too, and she described those couple of weeks as “the shift that never ends.”

When brother John called me, he said, “Mel, I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry.”

He had done so much to keep Dad from going into the hospital, but he is only one man. My heart broke at the despair in my brother’s voice. If only he would believe, as I do, that he did more than anyone else could have done for Dad, for far longer than any of us could have done it. My respect and gratitude for what John gave Dad is boundless.

So we called 911, and Dad took a ride to the hospital. Dad was having a cascade of events that individually weren’t insurmountable, but for an 86 year-old with congestive heart failure, the outcome didn't appear promising.

Still, we held on to the thought that Dad had pulled himself back from death many times before.

The attending doctor, Dr. Blue, examined Dad, told us he was in atrial fibrillation and was beginning to get pneumonia. Dr. Blue asked Dad if he wanted to be resuscitated, should his heart stop. Dad had always answered “yes” in the past.

This time he said, “No, let me go.” In some ways I was stunned to hear this, but in other ways I understood. Life had become a struggle for Dad. He was tired. He was nearly ready.

You can see where this is going, but that’s not all to the story. Dad was still Dad, and the next professional in the room was Cassie, the telemetry lady, who came to hook up Dad’s heart monitor. She hit it off with Dad right away, and they began to flirt, shamelessly. Cassie had a scarf on, and said it was getting in the way. So she took it off.

Dad said, “Is that all you’re going to take off?”

They bantered like that for a half-hour. Cassie, I’m going to write you a note. You had my dad laughing out loud in the hours before he died. Thank you, dear lady.

Later, Dad had been admitted to a room, and I was giving his health history to a wonderful nurse, Sandy. Sandy acted as if she had all the time in the world to spend with us, made Dad comfortable, and sat down at the bedside computer to ask us a long list of questions. We were going along fine, until she asked Dad, under standard procedure, if he was in an abusive relationship.

“Yes, she beats me, “ Dad said, blue eyes twinkling.

“Dad, you can’t say that about Mom! The nurse will have to report it and they’ll go arrest Mama!” Even as well as I knew my dad, I was flabbergasted.

He wouldn’t back down, and was having quite the little chuckle at how flustered he'd made me and Nurse Sandy. We finally got him to admit he was kidding, but it was like pulling teeth. So ornery! That was his last little joke with us.

A few hours later, he passed away in the Intensive Care Unit.

Mama overspent a tad on Dad’s gravesite, and I fully supported her decision. His grave is on a hill, overlooking a lake with ducks and swans. We have an old photo of Dad feeding ducks at a lake; he was completely obsessed with feeding all creatures great and small. Beautiful, ancient live oaks, evergreen, draped with silver Spanish moss, flourish near his grave. Beyond the cemetery is a tidal saltwater creek teeming with the fish, clams, and oysters he loved.

We learned that the cemetery property was formerly a pony farm. Mother and I smiled when we heard this. How fitting for the little boy who’d had a Chincoteague pony from the time he was a toddler, for the man who'd realized a life-long dream of working with horses. Dad had traveled far from the coastal family farm of his youth.

He didn't know we would bury him on a pony farm. I can picture Dad chuckling. He would approve.

photo from www.chincoteague-island.net

Who, Me? Shallow?

2011-11-29T02:00:00.000-08:00

In my infinite shallowness*, I fantasize about:

1. Laser hair removal. On my face, oh noooooo! The female heartbreak of unwanted facial hair.

2. Laser eye surgery. It would be lovely to see clearly again, but I’m way too chicken, even if I had the extra $$$. Yet, I still dream.

3. The upper arms I had in my 20s and 30s. Can you believe it? I thought I was fat back then. Bwah-

ha-ha-ha! Snort.

4. A personal trainer/nutritionist named Sergio. He is very nice to me and whips me into shape. People! Get your minds out of the gutter. J

5. A live-in personal chef, like Oprah has. Her name is Gi-Gi, I pay her very well and love every morsel she cooks for me. She cleans up the kitchen after herself, too.

6. When my buddy Oprah comes over, we laugh about back in the day.

7. Then Gi-Gi passes a tray of truffle puffs with sparkling glasses of award-winning wine. That Oprah! I have to watch her or she’ll get tipsy.

8. Nablopomo ending not with a whimper, but a bang. Do I have anything left to close out the month? Sadly, by next year I will have forgotten the agony and will say, “Oh, that was so fun last year! Sign me up again, Blogher!”
* apologies to Jane in Her Infinite Wisdom

Nablopomo: You're kicking my butt. Love, Melanie

2011-11-28T01:15:00.000-08:00

1. Check out “one-note” so I don’t keep losing my lists.

2. Figure out if I should get a smart phone. Gasp! My current phone is not smart.

3. Do I want to use Twitter in the classroom next semester? See #2.

4. Find homes for some of Mom’s rescue kitties. They have their shots & are spayed/neutered, and need forever homes. Guilt-trip good people into becoming kitty-parents, if necessary.

5. Spend more time with my husband while we are both awake.

6. Cut back on beating myself up with so many “should’s.”

7. Get a haircut.

8. Stop forcing my lists to be at least 10 items long. Sometimes 7 bits/pieces are enough for one list.

My Word Nerd Side Takes Over: Foreign Phrases

2011-11-27T04:14:00.000-08:00

Great foreign language terms or phrases, so fun for a word-nerd like me:

1. Café con leche (nothing happens in my world without this ebony/ivory nectar of the morning)

2. Faux pas (thanks for reminding me, Janey, and no, I never commit zee faux pas. Well, maybe not more than once a day)

3. Sic semper tyrannis (Latin motto of the Commonwealth of Virginia: “thus always to tyrants.” Sticking it to the man, old school! Love that!)

4. Ménage a trois (if you don’t know, ask your mother, cause I ain’t splainin’ it)

5. Un poco loco (as in slightly cuckoo, nutty, or fruitcake-ish; bonus points for the rhyme)

6. Au contraire (fancy way of saying, “You are an idiot, and oh, so wrong”)

7. Contretemps (the snooty way to say: a row, a falling-out; “Melissa blithely threatened to pinch me when we had a contretemps about the quality of my writing”)

8. Mas tequila, por favor (always drink responsibly-- me, I stick to una cerveza—don’t want Bad Luck Detective slapping the dreaded pink cuffs on me)

9. Carpe diem (seize the day, gather your rosebuds, kiss your sweetie right now; this one’s for Desi, who already is a superb seizer of the day)

10. Amigas (who doesn’t need a few more of these? I’m proud to call Home Reared Chef mi amiga)

11. ¿Dónde está el cuarto de baño?; Ou est la salle de bain? (Arguably the most important phrase in any language; Karen Lynn, will you come with me? Ladies need backup for that trip.)

12. Chaise-longue (think I’ll go take a nap in one now, hi Oh Napper Deluxe, VV, aka Belle of the Carnival)

13. Antonio-Banderas-hubba-hubba (he needs no translation. Tonio appears in my creative visualizations happy place—make that a chaise-longue for two, please).

Are there words from languages, other than your own native tongue, that you enjoy using? If English is your second language, are there English words you find interesting, confusing, or amusing?

The Student Who Taught Me

2011-11-26T04:30:00.000-08:00

I met Ted the second semester I taught at a community college—just a few short years ago.

He sat in the front row. His legs were too long to fit under the ridiculously small 1970’s desks we had then. The chair seemed tiny in comparison to his frame. He was a former Marine, 49, six-foot-five, and the oldest student in the class. Ted was even a couple of years older than the newbie instructor--me.

When he first spoke up, challenging me on an essay we’d read for the English comp class, I thought, “What am I going to do with this dude?”

His voice boomed off the concrete block walls of the classroom.

The essay we’d read for class that day, “The Androgynous Man,” was pure crap, Ted informed me. I later learned he’d been a drill instructor among his many other Marine Corps positions, so no wonder his lungs seemed to dwarf my pitiful, newly developing “teacher voice.”

You know what? That essay was pure crap.

And Ted was going to be Trouble with a capital T.

I didn’t know what to think about Ted. I thought I was prepared to work with military, former-military, and military-dependent students, but no one had mentioned Ted. I found I was dumb as a mud-stump.

Ted even had to explain to me what “Sergeant Major,” his last rank before retirement, meant. Even though my dad was a WW II Marine Corps vet, two of my brothers were Marines, and one brother served in the Navy, enlisted men all, ranks were fuzzy to me. I had no clue, until Ted, that S.M. is the highest rank an enlisted Marine can hold, and that the rank is not just another Sergeant. Sergeant Majors are few and powerful. They can and do talk back to officers.

Because of his “no bullshit” attitude, it had taken Ted a bit longer than it might have to achieve this high rank, but he was justifiably proud of the achievement. Ted seemed an anomaly to me at first, a Marine to the bone, an American patriot in the tradition of the best fighting force in the world, who was not afraid to point out flaws in the Marine Corps. In spite of my personal experience with my father and brothers, who are as different in their political views as any other randomly chosen group of four men, I had the dumbass idea that many military men and women were generally brainwashed into unquestioning support of their service branch.

In the years since he was my student, thanks to Ted and many other individual students, I’ve come to realize that there is no such thing as a “military” person. Each man or woman who is serving or has served may have shared the same training, the same job title, the same rank, the same duty station and more, but the military never truly “takes over” the person the way I suspected. Generalizing about military or former military members is not wise, is not accurate, and shortchanges them. They are individuals who may share a sense of camaraderie.

There has never been another Ted, that’s for sure.

Soon, I realized Ted was not my adversary in the classroom. It happened slowly, but I saw him nodding in agreement during class lectures. He visited my office with rough drafts of his papers. He was good at expressing himself in an essay. He was unfailingly polite, carefully considered my criticisms and suggestions, revising his papers to bring them up to A level. He worked hard.

We grew to like each other, and although our classroom banter was a little edgy, we gained each other’s respect. Ted will never understand how much his respect means to me.

There came a day, though, when Ted sat sullenly in the classroom. He wasn’t looking at me, wasn’t paying attention, wasn’t answering any of the questions I posed to the class.

I thought he had a hangover. I was a bit angry because I expected more of Ted.

Frustrated, I finally called on him by name. “What’s the matter with you today, Thaddeus? Celebrate a little too much with the boys at the club?”

“My nephew was killed in Fallujah last night,” he said, flatly.

Of course, the rest of the class members fell silent. Of course, the wall clocked ticked, ticked, ticked.

“Oh, Ted. I am so sorry,” I finally mumbled.

I will never forget those words, “My nephew was killed in Fallujah last night.” Never. The clock, and Ted’s face, and his long legs crunched up under the stupid too-small desk. The nephew was married, and had an infant son at home.

Ted was gracious, then. How could he be gracious? I don’t know, but he was.

“It’s okay. You didn’t know.”

I didn’t know anything.

Now, seven years later, he sits across from my desk. He is a friend. We chat for a while, mostly about his rose garden and his grandkids. When he leaves, I tell my office mate, newly hired to teach, about Ted.

“God, I was green,” I tell her.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“Ted taught me more than I ever taught him. I hope you have a Ted in one of your classes.”

I say it, I mean it, and it is inadequate.

But I do. I do wish her a Ted. Teds make teaching an honor, a joy, and incredibly worthwhile.

Thank you, Sergeant Major.

Taboo Topic: Would You Write Your Own Obit?

2011-11-25T05:46:00.000-08:00

Writing my father’s obituary was not as daunting as one might think. He died on Saturday at 86, after an eventful life. The challenge was figuring out what to include in the limited space.

Dad had so many colorful experiences, traveled the world, fought in WW II, raised two daughters and three sons, and had a 63 year marriage. He worked for 30 years at a chemical company, trained horses, raised vegetables and flowers, played semi-pro baseball.

With so many events to choose from, I tried to write an obit that reflected what Dad found most important in his life: his family, his paid and unpaid work, his country. While it was difficult in some ways, the experience of writing it made me proud and humble. Dad saw to it that I never wanted for any necessities of life, made sure I had a good education, and fussed over all his children like a mother hen.

I hope someone will have as many positive words to say about me one day.

Have you ever written an obituary? What was the experience like for you? Have you considered writing your own obituary?

Gonna Take a Sentimental Journey... What're your favs?

2011-11-24T05:28:00.000-08:00

In reckless disorder, here are a few sentimental pop songs I love. Shall I sing you a few bars? No, let's stay friends instead.

What are some of your favorite pop songs, especially those songs the world may have forgotten?

1. Autumn Leaves, Nat King Cole

2. Lights, Journey

3. Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye), Gladys Knight and the Pips

4. Tunnel of Love, Bruce Sprinsteen

5. Wonderful Tonight, Eric Clapton

6. I’ve Been Waiting for a Girl Like You, Foreigner

7. Dreams, Fleetwood Mac

8. Ma Cherie Amour, Stevie Wonder

9. Blue on Black, Kenny Wayne Shepherd

10. Summer Breeze, Hall and Oates

11. The Thrill is Gone, B.B. King

12. Poor Side of Town, Johnny Rivers

13. Hello, It’s Me, Todd Rundgren

14. Angie, Rolling Stones

15. Melissa, Allman Brothers Band

16. For the Good Times, Al Green

17. Desperado, Eagles

18. If You Don’t Know Me By Now, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes

19. Midnight Confessions, Grass Roots

20. Me and Bobby McGee, Janis Joplin

21. Oh, Girl, Chi-lites

22. Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time), Delphonics

23. Try a Little Tenderness, Otis Redding

24. Rainy Night in Georgia, Brooke Benton

25. The Shadow of Your Smile, Tony Bennett

26. We’ve Only Just Begun, Karen Carpenter

27. Walking on Broken Glass, Eurythmics

28. Fire and Rain, James Taylor

29. I Will Always Love You, Dolly Parton

30. These Dreams, Heart

Memories of My Father

2011-11-23T01:00:00.000-08:00

Dad passed away on Saturday. Here are some of my favorite quirky memories about him:

1. he got mad when Vanna White wore long dresses instead of the shorter ones that showed off her gams.

2. his obsession with shellfish, especially clams and oysters.

3. that grimy old Carolina Panthers ball cap. Tomorrow we will bury him with that cap in his casket.

5. the way he would go out to the car five minutes before the rest of the family was ready, and honk the horn for us to hurry up.

6. he loved to garden and thought Miracle-gro plant food was one of mankind’s greatest inventions.

7. his sweet-tooth that he passed down to me. Some of his favorites: chocolate milkshakes, strawberry ice cream, chocolate Little Debbie’s

8. his world centered around his wife and family, making sure they were well fed.

9. the way he floated on his back in the ocean and spouted water through his fist like a whale.

10. he showed me how to fold and hang pants properly and I think of him every time I fold pants.

11. he’d get so attached to “his” chair and would sit nowhere else until the chair fell apart and was replaced once every twenty years.

12. he loved pretty ladies of all ages, races, nationalities and religions; all ladies were pretty ladies to him. He flirted until the day he died at 86 years old.

Playing Mom & Dad's Song

2011-11-22T06:06:00.000-08:00

Do you remember the song that was playing during an important event in your life? What was the event and the song? Do you and your significant other have a song that you call "yours"?

Nat King Cole was singing on the jukebox when my dad asked Mom to marry him.

The song was "Nature Boy." They were married for 63 years until Dad passed away on Saturday.

I looked up the lyrics and found that many other singers covered the song: Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughn, Celine Dion, and others.

Here are the lyrics to "Nature Boy," by the eccentric composer eden ahbez.

There was a boy

A very strange enchanted boy.

They say he wondered very far, very far

Over land and sea

A little shy and sad of eye

But very wise was he.

And then one day,

One magic day he passed my way.

And while we spoke of many things,

Fools and kings,

This he said to me,

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn

Is just to love and be loved in return.”

Big Girl Panties

2011-11-21T05:46:00.000-08:00

Big Girl Panties

Oh, I wash ‘em, I dry ‘em
fold ‘em in the drawer
Stormy day comin’
An’ I gonna need ‘em sure.

Big girl panties
Keep me strong
Keep me sane
Keep me goin’
Up life’s lane.

Without my big girl panties
want to cry and moan.
I whine, I fuss,
groan and cuss.
Wanna run away from home.

But blessed big girl panties
sho’ nuf revive my pride
My spirit rises,
Backbone grows
I’m gonna make it
This I knows.

Small stuff
Ain’t worth sweatin’
Big girl panties
Ain’t just fluff!

Thank you, big girl panties.
Almost lost my way.
But with yo’ soft
silky support
Tomorrow is
Another day!

Until we meet again, Pop

2011-11-20T03:58:00.000-08:00

My dad, 86, passed away from us yesterday. He leaves his wife Nancy of 63 years, 5 children, their spouses, seven grandkids, two great-grands.

He was a loving husband, a good father, a diligent worker, a sometimes difficult man, extremely modest about his achievements, a great cook, WW II combat vet (Iwo Jima/occupied Japan), quick with the one-liners and loved to laugh.

He fought hard to live through various illnesses and disabilities, including blindness, in recent years. He fought until he was too tired to fight any more. He said, “Let me go.”

We did, Daddy, we let you go.

You would hate me to say this, but that’s too bad. You were a great man where it counts most: a great husband and father. You were a true representative of the Greatest Generation.

I'm Still Here

2011-11-19T05:41:00.000-08:00

When someone you love is gravely ill, it’s tempting not to blog, to throw in the towel for Nablopomo.

My dad, as some of you know, is not doing well. This may be the time he doesn’t come home from the hospital.

I’m going to keep blogging, if I possibly can. There's a gospel song on my MP3 player called "I'm Still Here," and that's my anthem today.

Many of you Nablopomo-ers have written about what blogging means to you, and the rest of us have been nodding our heads, saying yes, me too. I don’t intend for this to be a long post about blogging—I don’t have that in me right now.

But, I will say this.

Blogging has given me a support group at a time when I wasn’t sure anyone else on the planet felt the way I did. I was lonely and desperate, even with loving, well-meaning people around me. Depressed, menopausal, overwhelmed.

Blogging, and in particular, the women I’ve met through Blogher, did nothing less than save me.

In varying stages of life, with different backgrounds and perspectives, we don’t all share the same experiences—we’re a "proud to be quirky" lot. Yet sometimes the similarities are startling between us, in ways small and large.

We are all willing to take chances. We write. We read. We listen. We laugh. We respect. We encourage. We dream. We love.

I can feel the power of this, and it helps sustain me. I can’t give it, or you, up.

Thank you: readers, writers, friends.

My Picks: Seven Natural Wonders

2011-11-18T02:45:00.000-08:00

*Prompt thanks to MamaKat via Katie @Sluiter Nation

The Seven Great Natural Wonders of My Life

I went with landscape wonders. Bringing in people or animals would be a whole ‘nother ballgame.

7. Deception Pass Bridge, Whidby Island, Washington state, USA

6. Yellowstone National Park. If you haven't been there, GO!

5. the view of Lake Sunapee from my grandmother’s house in New Hampshire

4. the approach to Cobh, Ireland, & Cork Harbor from where my g. grandfather likely sailed to America

3. anywhere along the coast of Cornwall, England

2. the ocean-side beach at Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, with a pod of dolphins cresting

1. on top of the Wasatch Mountains in Alta, Utah with the snowy 360 view of Salt Lake City, Heber Valley, and the arch of cloudless blue sky. I hung my head over and heard the wind blow*. :-)

What's on your list?

* apologies to the old song, "Down in the Valley" reprinted below. You may know the song as "Birmingham Jail." Burl Ives sang a version of it when dinosaurs walked the earth and I was a young girl. I actually love the song despite my sarcasm. We sang it in elementary school, back when they had music teachers! "Put your arms round me, give my heart ease." Love that!

Down in the valley the valley so low
Hang your head over, hear the wind blow
Hear the wind blow love, hear the wind blow
Hang your head over, hear the wind blow

Roses love sunshine, violets love dew
Angels in heaven, know i love you

If you don't love me, love whom you please
Put your arms round me, give my heart ease
Give my heart ease love, give my heart ease
Put your arms round me, give my heart ease

Write me a letter, send it by mail
Send it in care of, the Birmingham Jail
Birmingham Jail love, Birmingham Jail
Send it in care of, the Birmingham Jail

Build me a castle, forty feet high
So I can see her, as she rides by
As she rides by love, as she rides by
So I can see her, as she rides by

Down in the valley, the valley so low
Hang your head over, hear the wind blow

Huh? What?

2011-11-17T06:35:00.000-08:00

Being in midlife and caring for aging parents can be a circus. Or maybe a merry-go-round that's not always merry?

Mom is 81, and Dad is 86. They live about 10 minutes away, in their own home. Steadfast Hubbie, my stalwart brother John, and I try to make life a little easier for them, but sometimes that works out better than others.

Mom does much of the caregiving for Dad, who's visually impaired and uses a walker. She chases him around to get him shampooed at the kitchen sink. She shaves him with an electric razor every couple of days, with him puffing and blowing like a steam engine.

Dad's visual problems lead to some interesting situations. He complained that he didn't like his rice the other night at a restaurant. The rest of us looked at each other. His “rice” was coleslaw, we told him. He's a good sport, and a generous man. He laughed along with us.

Currently we are wracking our brains to find something he'll like to eat. Yet we have to keep watch on him—he's been known to eat the scraps my mother saves for her cats.

“Mmm, that sausage was good,” he'll say.

“But Charles,” Mom shrieks, “that was for the cats-- it was cooked two weeks ago!”

Both Mom and Dad are hearing impaired; Hubby is slightly deaf. Me too. When did everyone start mumbling and garbling? Trying to hear in a noisy room is getting difficult for all of us.

A conversation: “Well, it’s snowing in Boston,” I say.

“Oh, you’re reading Jane Austen?” Mom asks.

“You’re throwing the moss? What moss?” Hubby inquires.

“You’re going for Frosties?” Dad wonders.

Oh, never mind.

I pray for patience, with menopausal wickedness making me feel like a certified witch on a broom. Outwardly, I do my best to smile. Mostly.

The “Sandwich Generation” term has already become cliché. We don't have the bottom piece of bread in our family sandwich, since Hubby and I don't have children. So I guess we're the peanut butter, stuck to the plate, topped by a piece of bread?

Hope it's not moldy. I'll have to put my glasses on to see.

Top 5 Lessons Learned, Day 15, NaBloPoMo

2011-11-16T02:56:00.000-08:00

1. Many truly wonderful writers out there. I mean everywhere! The suburbs of Canada, the backwoods of Kentucky, the Bay area. This is not shameless sucking-up to readers. It’s bald truth.

2. My writing is okay, but I should never get a big head because there will ALWAYS be better writers than I. Or is that “me”? Where did my grammar skills go?

3. I should never stop making an effort to improve my writing.

4. The internets are good. How else would I have met these fabulously creative people?

5. Blogging keeps me sane, helps me feel young again, and has made my hair curly and full of body. Well, the first two for sure.

The Prodigal Student

2011-11-15T05:58:00.000-08:00

Once she

danced fervently with sweaty

men, pounded hard liquor

in loud places

slept late in ashy,

unwashed sheets

blew smoke halos from stained fingers.

Drove fast, left the scarred red

Camino in a muddy ditch,

Mardi Gras beads dangling

from the rear-view mirror.

Anointed that wormy chick's

head with a beer bottle

flew from the roadhouse.

Now she limps, slightly,

paints her nails bruised purple

scowls down at her desk

through long, black bangs,

scribbles furiously.

She’s in the front row.

When she leans forward

in the college English class,

angels exhale.

Mad Methods: First, Get Their Attention

2011-11-14T03:32:00.000-08:00

When you come visit my house, you may be shocked to see People magazine on the coffee table.

You may think “But Melanie is a certified egghead-intellectual. I expected to see first editions of Proust, Tolstoy and Hemingway. How can it be that a woman of such high intelligence reads low-brow People magazine?” I know, right?

It’s self-defense, with a little teaching method on the side.

You have heard that I teach at a community college. One of my important goals in working there, aside from saving the world for democracy, molding clean and healthy young minds, and making my mortgage payment, is to NOT look like a TOTAL, CLUELESS DORK when it comes to popular culture.

Yes, I am that shallow.

I don’t want to be the laughingstock teacher who doesn’t know the remake of Footloose stars newcomers to the big screen Kenny Wormald and Julianne Hough. Twenty-three and dating Ryan Seacrest, Julianne is one of the many gorgeous blonds from Dancing With The Stars.

Although it’s a bit of a losing battle for middle-aged me, I do try to keep up with more than the latest methods to teach an expository essay.

Does Kate Gosselin have a new hairdo? Queen Latifa a new clothing line? Suri Cruz a new designer bag? Lady Gaga a hat with fruit-colored dollar signs? Just ask me. I feel like the kid who wildly waves her hand in class hollering “I know, I know!”

Through People I grub a smidge of pop culture street-cred by brazenly dropping factoids about Ashton Kuctcher or Laurence Fishburne after class.

Even at my most “hip” (in relative terms), about three decades ago, I preferred watching old black and white movies from the 1930s, was more than slightly fashion-challenged, and didn’t follow the love lives of celebrities.

Yet nowadays I try to stay informed on the cast of True Blood. When the English lesson has gone sour, the students are yawning, and we’re all looking at the clock, I can throw out an "Anna Paquin" and re-charge the atmosphere. Don’t worry, the off-the-wall comment will get tied back into "how to add detail to a college level essay." But first, I had to get their attention by name dropping.

Does most of this People magazine information matter a whit in the big scheme of life? Heck, no.

Does People help me teach better by keeping my students guessing what nugget of cultural nonsense they may hear next? Yes.

To get and hold their attention, I’m willing to play the fool, the prankster, the geek. Some might see this behavior as beneath a college teacher, but it works for me. I’ll sometimes sell my dignity to roust the dears out of a stupor. They have to break out of the fog before I can reach them.

And you know what? In the end, I have fun, and my students learn. All from an unexpected source: People magazine.

I have copy of Proust if you’d like to borrow it.

Blogging Milestone: "First Contact" With a Reader

2011-11-13T04:31:00.000-08:00

Thanks to reading advice from my favorite “big-girl bloggers,” the wise ones who have way more blogging experience than I do, I knew it was coming.

First contact. A reader. And me.

Yes. I met in person someone I knew who’d read my blog. Dun, dun, duuunnnn (scary organ music).

Of all places, I was at the pharmacy counter picking up perhaps two of the most potentially embarrassing prescriptions known to womankind. A former student now works there as a pharmacy tech. She’s a charming young woman, was an excellent student, and is a talented writer. (If you’re reading this, hello dear one!)

A slightly terrifying fact is that she changed her major to English, partly at my encouragement. Although pleased when a student chooses English, I also panic, thinking that if they face a lifetime of starvation and deprivation due to the liberal arts degree, the guilt will be on my shoulders.

When I saw Alice (not her name) was going to wait on me, my mind started spinning. I wanted to ask how her studies at a major university were going, and was trying to remember other points of conversation. Slightly embarrassed at picking up major drugs, I knew I could unreservedly trust Alice with the personal nature of my “lady scrips.”

Sweet Alice rescued me from the somewhat awkward moment, asked me how I was, and said with a smile, “I read your blog!”

That was when I thought I’d faint.

Whoa, boy. The look on my face must have been priceless.

Alice said “I hope that was okay?”

“Oh, of course, that’s great!” I said, leaning on the counter nonchalantly to keep from falling down.

“I really liked it! It was the one about you dressing up?”

My brain was blanker than blank. I couldn’t think, in this month of NaBloPoMo, what post she may have meant. I mumbled something about writing posts every day for a month, the posts being a blur.

“Oh, you must be doing NaBloPoMo!” brainy Alice said. She knew about NaBloPoMo! I love that girl!

We chatted a moment more; she rang up my purchases. We wished each other well and I went on my way.

High-pitched voice inside my head: Someone I know in person read my blog! A former student read my blog! What does it MEAN?

Sweet Alice, thank you. Of all the people who could have been the first one to tell me they’ve read my blog, it was supportive, generous you.

I’m overwhelmed, scared, proud, humbled, and happy. Where blogging is leading me, I have no clue. But I’m one step further along the journey.

Has it happened to you? Tell the story, please. If it hasn’t happened yet, how do you imagine, or fear, it will go when it does happen? And the big-girl-bloggers were right—it will happen.

Ode to Bacon

2011-11-12T04:43:00.000-08:00

Bacon in the morning,

Bacon at noon.

Bacon is so good

He sends me to the moon.

*With sincere apologies to my many friends and family members who do not eat pork on moral or religious grounds. Truly.

I don’t eat bacon every day, nor every week.

Most months I do eat some bacon either on its own or as seasoning, especially in soup.

I’m not addicted to bacon; I can give him up, er, it up, any time I want!

Yeah, right.

I never eat bacon on a burger, never eat ersatz/turkey/soy bacon, never eat “bacon bits.” If these are some of your favorites, this blog is a safe place—I do not judge you.

I can’t eat more than three strips of bacon per day, or it triggers a migraine. No, really. Helps give bacon that dangerous edge, no?

Yet bacon is one of those foods I don’t want to live without.

Bacon and I go back as far as I can remember… it was a sunny spring morning, and Bacon and I were racing to each other across a meadow of daisies…

Or was it a glittering nightclub in Harlem, in 1924, when I saw him dancing in another woman’s arms, and yet I knew…

Or was it that day in the market in Barcelona, when he looked up from under the brim of his Cordobés, with a dimpled smile of destiny?

Whenever it was, Bacon and I became lovers.

Much later, after Bacon and I smoked a cigarette, I made soup.

Almost every soup in my repertory (yes, I am a soup maven) includes at the onset two strips of bacon and a diced onion, browning in the bottom of a stock pot. By the time the soup is complete, you barely know the bacon is in there.

The bacon flavor is elusive, adding a depth of flavor to the star of the soup: the mushrooms in Cream of Mushroom, the potatoes in Potato/Cheddar cheese soup, or the clams in Manhattan Clam Chowder.

The aroma of bacon cooking is why, although a confirmed animal lover and kitty foster mother, I may never be a vegetarian.

If you fry bacon in my house and I don’t come to investigate, you know I am extremely ill. Quite likely, dead.

Bacon will mourn. Comfort him any way you can.

Take My Menopause, Please

2011-11-11T03:21:00.000-08:00

Henny Youngman and Herman Melville are my muses today.

Henny Youngman, comedian, was famous for his line, “Take my wife… please.” I feel the same way about my menopause.

Without sharing too much, technically, I’m not even in menopause. Not totally. But if this is perimenopause, I’ve been in in for seven years. Seven years.

What else could I have done with the last seven years of my life besides languish in anguish in perimenopause?

If I had gone back to school, I could be a surgeon by now. I could have built my own log cabin, gnawing the logs for it with my teeth.

I could have walked the Appalachian trail at least 3 times, round-trip.

I could have learned to water-ski, trained and run in several marathons, grown hair down to my knees, built a raft and sailed to Tahiti, gotten an engineering degree and gone to work for Microsoft, climbed every mountain in the Alps, driven a Subaru to the southernmost tip of South America, founded a new religion, watched Casablanca 2,433 times, learned to play the piano.

Equipped with only a nail-file, I might have sculpted a block of marble into larger-than-life dolphins leaping from waves.

But nooooo, I’ve been too busy having perimenopausal symptoms: crying, breaking out in acne, having migraines, sleeping, not sleeping, crying, fighting fatigue to the point of nausea, sweating, aching, moisturizing my dry skin, having night sweats, crying, having heart palpitations, fog brain, gaining weight, waving buh-bye to my libido, dragging myself out of bed every morning with my mind screaming NO!, buying Kleenex in bulk at Sam’s Club, crying, and having nightmares. Oh, and being depressed to the point of crying quite a lot.

So this whole perimenopause-menopause never-ending-bundle-of-fun thing? I’ve decided it’s not for me.

No thanks. Take it, please, like Henny used to say about his wife.

Come to think of it, I’ll add that famous line from Herman Melville’s classic character, “Bartleby the Scrivener,” and say, “I prefer not to.” I have not fully appreciated Bartleby until this moment of clarity. Bartleby was right. (Whenever someone asked Bartleby to do something, his reply was "I prefer not to.")

Are there stages or phases in your life that you’ve wanted to reject? Times you felt like, no, none of that for me, no thanks?

Not-yo-mama's Mixed Greens

2011-11-10T04:50:00.000-08:00

What could be better than a vegetable garden? A friend with a garden!

My dear friend Pat brought me a grocery bag full of greens today: beet greens, turnip greens, radish greens. They were the prettiest mess of greens I’ve ever seen (in the South, they’re a “mess” if there’s enough for the whole family). Pat’s greens were young, tender, not a blighted spot anywhere. Just perfectamous. We had a horribly hot and dry summer that was hard on Pat’s garden, but the fall has brought rewards to her patient sowing and hoeing.

I washed the greens carefully in a sink full of cold water, even though they looked spotless, just in case a little grit had clung to them.

The volume of greens called for my big 6 qt. Dutch oven. In they went with about a cup of water, seasonings, and in about a half hour, ooh-la-la! They had cooked down from filling the pot to about 2 inches of green goodness in the bottom of the kettle.

Warning for the greens newbie: greens give off an aroma that can smell just… awful! These really smelled horrific to me, even though my husband thought they smelled good. But when I tasted them, wow, I've never had any better, thanks to the picked-the-same-day freshness.

Each batch of greens you cook will be different. The type of greens, the size, age, and even whether the greens have been through a frost affects their flavor. (Greens such as collards that have been through frost are considered to be sweeter.) Experiment with the seasonings below as a guide, and add more or less to your taste.

If you’ve never had greens, give them a try!

Greens, the Not-Yo-Mama’s Way
(Southern mamas sometimes overcook greens by about 6 hours!)

Fresh greens: collards, kale, spinach, beet, turnip, radish, whatever is in the farmer’s market, enough to fill a 6 qt. pot. Wash the greens thoroughly in plenty of cold water and cut off any tough stems. I leave greens whole, un-chopped. Some people prefer to coarsely chop greens. No need to dry the greens after their bath.

1 cup water

2 cloves chopped fresh garlic or 1 teaspoon jarred roasted garlic

2 slices lean bacon

1 teaspoon Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning, or to taste (it has salt in it, so take that into account if you are watching your salt intake) (if you don't have Tony use herbes de provence with a dash of salt, black and red pepper)

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1/3 cup cider vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons butter

Combine all the ingredients except the butter. Bring the greens to a boil; lower the heat to a simmer. Add the butter. Let the greens cook about half an hour, stirring occasionally, making sure the greens don’t simmer dry (add a little more water if needed).

Serve with cornbread, pinto beans, and sliced raw onion for a real Southern meal. My hubbie has taught me to spoon some of the pot liquor from the greens onto my cornbread. Ummy.

Y’all enjoy!

I'll Never Understand, the random list

2011-11-09T04:29:00.000-08:00

Some things I'll never understand:

Why the couple ends up in separate bathtubs in the Viagra commercial (thanks, Karen!)
Why at a certain point in the wash cycle, my dishwasher flashes the words “Ho Ho;”
is it judging me or is it happy about Christmas coming?
Why almost soft-porn sex is used to sell hamburgers (Hardees), & pomegranate juice (POM)
Why I keep getting stuck with neighbors who burn trash daily and have incessantly barking dogs-- in a subdivision, not the backwoods of Alaska (apologies to Alaskans)
Why my cat apparently sheds more hair weekly than covers her entire body
Why people keep telling me they have a friend who looks exactly like me (my chance to use the word doppleganger!)
Why an unnamed family member puts clothes on the floor next to the empty clothes hamper
Why I never find priceless valuables in the attic like the folks on Antiques Road Show
Why I am an animal lover and yet such a hopeless carnivore
Why whatever line I get in at the supermarket will be the line that moves excruciatingly slow
Why when I was twenty people who were forty seemed incredibly, sadly, pitiably old (now they're hotties)
Why I thought it was a great idea to commit to writing a blog post every day for a month: NaBloPoMo remorse (not really, but yeah, kinda, but no, it's good for me). Have mercy!

What miscellaneous, nonsensical, whimsical things don't make sense to you?

Surprise Blues Buster: Cooking Shows

2011-11-08T04:52:00.000-08:00

Why do I love watching cooking shows so much?

At the moment, P. Allen Smith (Garden to Table) is mixing a Blackberry Jam Cake with walnuts. He’s cute! He can come make cake in my kitchen any time. Love that touch of Southern accent.

Cooking shows relax me. I inherited this trait from my father: I love to watch other people work, especially when they are cooking with skill and efficiency. Makes me feel good, seeing people getting ‘er done, even while I’m in the recliner.

Some of my favorite cooking shows are: Primal Grill, America’s Test Kitchen, Cooks Country, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Sandra Lee Semi-Home Made (I’m not a total cooking snob),Down Home With the Neelys, Mexico: One Plate at a Time with Rick Bayless, Lidia’s Italy in America, Throwdown with Bobby Flay… and on and on. Undoubtedly, I left out some of my favorites and yours.

It’s hard for me to feel blue when I’m watching a cooking show. Always on the lookout for depression-busters, watching a few cooking shows on the weekends has become a ritual for me. And as Martha Stewart says, “It’s a good thing.”

How about you? What are your favorite cooking programs? Does any other genre of shows work as a blues-buster for you?

OMG, P. Allen Smith is putting Caramel Icing on his cake! Gotta Go!

Their Turn

2011-11-07T09:40:00.000-08:00

Presidential election cycle in the U.S. I’m so weary of it and we have a year to go. It’s making me very tired and short-tempered when it comes to political rhetoric.

Many candidates don’t have anything helpful to say. They talk and talk and talk, and all I hear are empty promises and sometimes outright nonsense.

The students at my community college look at me funny when I refuse to talk politics with them.

Instead, I say, YOU are the ones that need to consider running for office.

Their eyes bug out of their heads. What was in Mrs. B.'s coffee this morning?

Start small, I tell them. Run for county commissioner, city council, work up to sheriff or mayor. Keep going from there: state legislature, working for a congresswoman, running for a national office or accepting a federal appointment.

YOU have more to offer than most political figures we see.

YOU came home from three combat tours and enrolled in college. YOU were the spouse who kept it together while your hubby/wife was in harm’s way. YOU know what it’s like to live on a budget, to work your job all day, study all night, take care of your kids, and get up the next day to do it all again.

YOU are the solution to this mostly shoddy field of poor excuses for leaders.

I tell them often. It’s your turn. IT’S YOUR TURN.

I’m a registered independent, I say, so I don’t even care what party you want to throw in with.

Who would do a better job than you? WHO?

They laugh at first or smile indulgently like I’m nutzo. I say: I’m not kidding!

Sometimes I see a glimmer in their eyes. Maybe Mrs. B. has something. Could I do it? Am I good enough, smart enough? they wonder. I'm the first in my family to go to college. How could I become a person of influence, a person whose opinions matter, and who could make things happen?

You are good enough, smart enough, moral enough to run for office, I repeat.

They think over this preposterous idea. Maybe I should consider helping to run this county, this city, this state, this country of mine. Maybe I could do better than those in office now. Should I listen to this crazy lady, talking her crazy talk?

I will keep talking, wearing them down to the possibility. They need to get used to the idea, to the glorious notion. I will keep talking.

God, I hope they are listening.

My Last Meal

2011-11-06T05:12:00.000-08:00

Oh, no!

It’s my last meal?

That sucks.

Fire up the grill, then, mes amis. But first….

Launder, dry, and iron my white linen blindfold, light on the starch. Load the rifles of the firing squad, and bring me hot water for my final ablutions.

Is Chaz Dean available to do my hair? Will he weave some baby’s breath around my head? Bobbie Brown for my makeup, please.

My sunset ombre ruched gown by Monique Lhuillier just arrived from Neiman-Marcus, for a mere $5,290.00 + tax and shipping. Sunset colored, get it? Isn’t it the bomb? Strapless, backless, full flowing skirt.

No thanks on the Spanx.

Oprah—so good of her to attend every day of my trial—has loaned me her favorite diamond drop earrings. I won’t need them for long. Kim Kardashian sent me her 20.5 ct. engagement ring, since she can’t bear to look at it with the unfortunate pending divorce. That will round out my understated jewelry.

For my perfume… hmmn. C’est tres difficil. I’ll have a light spritz of Insolence (Guerlain)? My Sin (Lanvin)? Poison (Dior)? Yes, Poison, please.

No shoes. I’ll have a nice pedicure and expire, au naturelle, barefoot, just the way I was born.

The hour is upon me.

Bring out the antique bone china, the cut crystal, the sterling flatware. Something nice and ornate.Being held prisoner in this royal castle does have its advantages. The dining room is well appointed; a ballroom is nearby.

Some red rosebuds in a crystal bowl are the centerpiece. Twelve ivory beeswax candles glow. The air-conditioner is cranked, so the room is just slightly cool. Even preparing for death, my menopausal needs must be met.

Billy Joel, wearing a tux, is singing “Only the Good Die Young.” Gregg Allman and the boys rock out on “I’m No Angel.” Sting makes a special appearance, and patiently waits for his turn to sing “Every Breath You Take.” “Hungry Heart” is Bruce Springsteen’s contribution.

Now, for the repast. The appetizer: a half dozen Chesapeake Bay oysters, with lemon, chilled on ice.

What’s this? Jon Bon Jovi offers to be my server for the evening. He looks smashing and asks me to dance while my main course is prepared. I’m a wonderful dancer after the tutoring by Maksim Chmerkovskiy. Jon sweeps me across the floor in a blur, whispering the lyrics to "Living On A Prayer" in my ear.

Next arrives a 1 ½ inch thick Angus beef, New York strip steak, marinated eight hours in a mix of fragrant, freshly chopped garlic, olive oil, red wine vinegar, fresh thyme, salt, and black pepper. Grill it medium rare, over a hickory-wood fire, and make sure it is still pink in the middle, please.

I am a woman of simple tastes.

On the side, freshly made mashed Idaho russet potatoes with butter and cream, salt and pepper. Butter melting into the lovely mound of fluffy goodness.

Asparagus spears, lightly steamed, with homemade hollandaise sauce.

Hot, crusty French bread, and keep it coming, with the finest Italian olive oil and herbes de Provence in a small bowl for dipping.

Scotch, please, in a Waterford crystal glass. An 18 year-old-Macallan single malt should do. A goblet and a pitcher of spring water with ice, as well.

For desert… an assortment of miniature French pastries, Devonshire scones, clotted cream, and a warm dark chocolate sauce on the side. Some strawberries, too.

Ah, I am replete. I will say my prayers, now, and bid you, adieu.

I push away from the table.

But what is that ringing? The telephone? The governor, a reprieve?

I’m not giving back the gown.

Steampunking

2011-11-05T05:16:00.000-07:00

The automobile, the aeroplane,

Are useful gadgets, but profane:

The enginry of which I dream

Is moved by water or by steam.

From “Doggerel By A Senior Citizen” by W. H. Auden

In The Norton Book of Light Verse, 1986

As usual, I’m a little late to the party. This time it’s the Steampunk phenomenon.

I was around for the TV show Wild, Wild, West when it originally ran in the 1960s (OMG, how is this possibly almost 50 years ago?), and I recently read The Complete Sherlock Holmes. I noticed that Goth had maybe morphed into another sub-culture with some polished brass accents, corsets, dirigibles, and funky mechanical oddities, but I hadn’t given it much thought.

There was buzz about Steampunk lit on Twitter, and CBS Sunday Morning, prior to Halloween, ran a piece about a Steampunk convention. So I did a little Steampunk research, in my typical, “let’s over-think this!” style.

In case, like me, you hadn’t given the movement much thought, or even known that it qualified as a “movement,” here’s a definition courtesy Amazon.com, in their page for Jeff VanderMeer’s popular book, The Steampunk Bible.

Amazon calls Steampunk, “A grafting of Victorian aesthetic and punk rock attitude onto various forms of science-fiction culture” and adds that it “has come to influence film, literature, art, music, fashion, and more.”

To get an eyeful of Steampunk, Google the word and hit images at the upper left. Pretty amazing, imaginative, and literally brassy. Steampunk computer keyboards, Steampunk spiders, Nerf guns, motorcycles, cameras, and of course, even cell phones. Most objects of daily life now have a Steampunk interpretation.

Attire favored by Steampunkers includes for milady: remnants of a Victorian hat or helmet, the aforementioned corsets, pantalettes, black lace-up boots with helical brass gear dangles, torn fishnet hose along with random ruffles, leather, and lace. Weaponry optional, but encouraged, as long as it has antiqued brass, gears, and whimsicality.

For the gentlemen: leather goggles, brass appurtenances (some look sharp enough to cut glass!), white silk shirt, flowing scarf, brass/leather/tweed vest, black steel/brass weapons, and casual worm/spur/ herringbone gears, gears, and more gears and pinions.

Also, as Amazon notes, “A burgeoning DIY community has brought a distinctive Victorian-fantasy style to their crafts and art. Steampunk evokes a sense of adventure and discovery.”

You can find Steampunk articles by crafters on Etsy—a search yielded 140,000 items. From a brass octopus hairclip, to a made-to-order leather under-bust harness, to a pattern for sew-your-own military spats, we can all make our Steampunk dreams come true.

Okay, this Steampunk research has been quite the voyage of discovery for me. My grandparents were all Victorians, born in the years 1869-1899 (I know; I’m an antique, right?). I'm thrilled to teach Victorian literature, and have always loved reading about Victorian life.

Now I have a new interest. Color me Steampunk!

Excuse me—must run. Brass needs polishing and my lighter-than-airship awaits. Ta-ta!

Are you interested in the Steampunk phenomenon? Have you already jumped on the steam-powered train?

Crock Pot Saves the Day with Barbecue Pulled Pork

2011-11-04T08:00:00.000-07:00

I pride myself on keeping a fairly well stocked pantry of basics. Imagine my surprise today when I didn’t have enough barbeque sauce or ketchup to follow the recipe for pulled pork barbeque in my trusty The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (2006).

Hmmn. I was already browning the pork. Instead of boneless Boston butt (how’s that for alliteration—poetry is everywhere) I had picked up a 3 lb. package of boneless country style ribs on sale at the local Harris-Teeter. These ribs were lovely and quite lean. I sprinkled them liberally with Tony Chachere’s Cajun spice mixture. Chachere’s mix has salt, pepper along with spicy hotness. Go easy on it if you don’t enjoy a bit of zing.

The boneless ribs browned in canola oil in my square iron skillet (I’m no pioneer woman so, no, there aren’t photos, but honestly, I trust you to have enough imagination to picture pork browning in a skillet. While you’re at it, imagine a lovely fresh pork aroma).

I scanned the fridge and cupboard shelves. The recipe called for either a bottled barbeque sauce or asked me to make my own sauce with a ketchup base.

Instead, here’s what I substituted, mixing the ingredients together in the crock pot:

1 cup jarred salsa, mild

1 cup dark ale

½ cup catsup

½ cup commercial barbeque sauce (I used Sweet Baby Ray’s with Vidalia onion)

1/3 cup cider vinegar or more to taste

¼ cup sorghum (or molasses or honey would work)

2 tablespoons of coarse deli mustard

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

2 bay leaves

Next, I sautéed the following ingredients in a skillet with 1 tablespoon of canola oil for about 10 minutes, then transferred them to mixture already in the crock pot.

1 chopped green bell pepper

2 chopped hot banana peppers

2 stalks celery

1 chopped sweet onion

Once the ribs were browned, I transferred them into the mixture of ingredients in the crock pot. If I’m going to be around the house, I put the crock pot on high until the meal is bubbling, then I turn it down to low. If I’ll be out of the house, I use the low setting. The ribs cooked on low for about 4-5 hours and that was plenty of time.

Pull the pork out and shred it with your hands or using two forks. We like ours on a sandwich or just plain on a plate. You can drizzle some of the thin sauce from the crock pot on the pulled pork. The sauce still has chunks of onion and peppers in it for a nice flavor. The hot peppers really brought the pork up a notch. By the second or third bite, I was loving the flavor of this pork. I put a little extra cider vinegar on my mine at the table.

Coleslaw is really a necessity with this dish, but cabbage was not in the fridge so we made do with garlicky dill pickles. That doesn’t qualify as hardship in our house! Cornbread or biscuits go well, as do some nice barbeque baked beans, if you have them. A green salad can stand in for the coleslaw if you aren’t having any hardcore Southerners over. They may look askance at a salad, but they’ll be too polite to say anything.

Happy eating!

Nutty in the Family Tree

2011-11-03T06:52:00.000-07:00

In doing a little genealogical research, I discovered that a possible relative from the 1500s got into trouble with an ax. According to the records, he killed two people with the ax, and his brother helped him bury the bodies.

He was hanged. His brother was found not guilty.

I am not a violent person and don’t believe in solving problems with violence.

However, I am in menopause. I have had more violent thoughts in the last year than in all the 53 prior years combined.

I get mad. I get red-faced. I haven’t had a screaming fit so far, but who knows how long I can hold out? I have fantasized, lightly, about offing a couple of difficult people, but haven’t laid a hand on anyone in violence. Yet.

I had a student a few years back who told me in confidence that if he ever got a fatal diagnosis, he was prepared with a list of people he would send to the next world before he died. Laughing it off at the time, now I have toyed with a short list of people who would improve the world greatly by leaving it. Just in case.

Does it make me a bad person if I want to make the world a better place?

No, don’t dial 911. This is a post filed under “humor,” okay? There wasn’t a category for “humor in poor taste.”

I’m not going to take action on my little fancies. And come on, if you’ve ever read a novel where someone was killed who needed killing, and said to yourself, “Yeah! Woot!” are you really so very different from menopausal me?

If you’ve read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series, you know what I mean about being happy that Lisbeth had a golf club handy at just the right moment. With my little personalized fantasies of minor blood and guts, I’ve just strayed momentarily over to non-fiction for my subject matter.

I have moments where my cloud of generalized rage makes me think about Mr. T, from the old TV show, The A Team. Remember his line, “I pity the fool!”?

Sometimes when I hear a noise in the night, instead of getting scared, I think, “Go ahead and break-in to my house, knucklehead. I’ve got a hickory walking cane with your name on it.” Then the noisy squirrel or possum on the porch, sniffing my bad karmic energy, wisely runs away.

I do pity the fool who may give me a reason to go berserk in a just cause, like defending myself or others.

I’m not proud of my possible ancestor, don’t get me wrong. But in a tiny, trifling way, through menopause I may understand the homicidal urge just a weensy bit better.

I stay away from axes, but I do keep a hammer in my desk drawer in case I have a sudden impulse to “hang a picture.”

How about you? Any occasional homicidal fantasies? Random thoughts of violence? Please don’t forget, this is humor, people, humor. Have an ax-free day!

Virginity Lost

2011-11-02T08:00:00.000-07:00

“I miss my virginity.”

That was Dylan, a 25 year old student in our American Lit II class at a community college in North Carolina, where I’ve been an instructor for a number of years.

No, Dylan wasn’t speaking of the kind of virginity you may first imagine.

Near a military base, we have many vets of both genders in our classes, most of them logging in multiple combat tours. Dylan has been on three combat tours in Iraq, and is a single dad now working on his associate degree.

What prompted Dylan’s statement was the class discussion of a line from Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse Five. In the story, Mary O’Hare, the wife of one of Vonnegut’s World War II army buddies, has just blasted Vonnegut for planning to write a book about the war. The source of her anger is asleep upstairs in footie pajamas—her young children.

You were babies, she growls at Vonnegut, and yet I know you’ll write the book as if you were men. You weren’t men; you weren’t John Wayne or Frank Sinatra, she hisses. You were children like our kids asleep upstairs. You’ll glorify war in your book, glamorize it, pretend you were big brawny men when you fought it, and people will keep fighting wars forever.

She hates Vonnegut for the book she believes he’ll write.

Sitting at Mary’s kitchen table, Vonnegut surprises Mary. He swiftly agrees with her that he and his pal, O’Hare, were children, in fact were “virgins,” when they fought in Germany.

Our American Lit class discusses the meaning of the word “virgin” in this context—that it doesn’t refer to sexual virginity but to the innocence of teenagers who have yet to fight their first battle.

Dylan pondered this discussion for a few seconds. Then he stated the line above that deserves repeating-- “I miss my virginity.”

The hair on my neck stood up. His terse comment chilled the stuffy classroom. Some of the other combat veterans nodded.

Dylan has been my student in other classes. He’s smart, no doubt about that. But he’s more than smart. He’s perceptive, analytical, and insightful. He’s wise.

He has been a warrior for us, the best kind of warrior. Sometimes I wonder how many U. S. citizens know, care, or approach understanding what our warriors have done for us.

Dylan probably won’t even mind me adding that I know he can be gentle, although I wouldn’t announce that to a crowd if I ran into him at a local pub on a Saturday night. He is confident, not arrogant, not the macho stereotype of the warrior. I’ll go further. I admire him, and the other men and women like him in my classes.

What they have seen and experienced in Iraq or Afghanistan I can’t come close to imagining, even though I watch the nightly news five nights out of seven. The conflicts that I see in sound bites, they lived in 3-D, 24/7.

Now they’re looking at me, for Pete’s sake, standing here hoping I have something to teach them. They are so eager to learn that they lean forward in their uncomfortable plastic chairs. They are my students, but I look up to them. They humble me.

Dylan is unique, but he is also just one of many warriors among us. He is the warrior who comes home from battle, makes a good life for himself, his family, his community.

He lost his virginity for us.

He misses it, and that is part of what makes him the man he is.

Me Drive Pretty One Day

2011-11-01T06:21:00.000-07:00

Confession: I sometimes make mistakes while driving.

How many driving mistakes am I allowed per year? I’m not talking about the kind that result in accidents. It’s the near misses. The getting honked at moments.

I commute a total of two hours daily on a five-lane highway. Making a concerted effort to drive well, I drive conservatively. Like an old lady, some might say. My goal is to get to work and home in one piece.

I stay with 5-7 miles over the “speed limit,” since it goes without saying that to drive the speed limit would actually cause wrecks as NASCAR wannabes jockeyed to get past me.

When changing lanes or turning, I engage that underused device, the turn signal. I allow several car lengths of space between my car and the car in front of me. Before changing lanes, I check the rear and side view mirrors, then glance, sometimes twice, over my shoulder.

I plan miles ahead, especially for left turns. I don’t talk on the cell phone. Well, really, really rarely and not for long when I do. I never answer the phone or make a call in traffic. I don’t text while driving.

Further, I don’t apply makeup, change clothes, scold children, braid my hair, tidy up the car, balance my checkbook, or watch DVDs while driving. Yes, I have noted other drivers doing all of the above while in motion at highway speeds. A friend even reported she’d seen a man watching porn on his DVD player as she passed his car one night. IIICCCKK!

In parking lots, I stay in the marked lanes rather than roaring across parking spaces without looking left or right. My preferred parking spot is one I can drive through to the outside, so I can pull out rather than back up when leaving.

In spite of my generally careful ways, occasionally I make a driving gaffe. Last time it was moving from the fast lane back into the slow lane. Even after I looked in both mirrors and over my shoulder, I didn’t see the car in my blind spot and got a brisk honking from the irritated driver.

Truly, it was my bad, I was sorry and embarrassed, and I actually appreciated the honk. When I make a blunder like that, I need to know about it! The honk scares me into even more vigilance on the road. Can I really be too vigilant?

Probably not. At least I try to be a decent driver. Does that count for extra points?

How about you? Will you admit to making the occasional driving boo-boo or no-no?

Smarty-pants, the quiz/ and now, the answers

2011-10-26T18:02:00.000-07:00

By popular demand (okay, three people jokingly asked for it), here is the Smarty-pants quiz. Yes, you may use your books, internet searches, and your notes. But only after you think really hard about the possible answers. Since Halloween is just a few days away, we have a spooky theme.
Answers below.

1. What was the name of the man that spawned the legend of Dracula?

2. Where was Jim Morrison of The Doors buried?

3. Name one of Henry VIII’s wives executed at the Tower of London.

4. Name one edible vegetable related to deadly nightshade.

5. In what U.S. state was the film version of Stephen King’s Firestarter filmed?

6. What two articles were left on Edgar Allen Poe’s grave each year (until recently) on the anniversary of his birth?

7. “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” was the first line of the what spooky novel?

8. Victorian mourning jewelry was sometimes made of what from the deceased?

9. What legendary liqueur with an eerie green color has wormwood as an ingredient?

10. What poisonous mushroom is named for an unearthly creature?

Answers

1. Vlad the Impaler (Prince Charles claims him as a cousin) or Bram Stoker. My question wasn’t clear, so either answer is correct!

2. Paris, France

3. Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. His six wives were remembered in this ditty: Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived.

4. Any of these: eggplant, tomato, potato, tomatillo, chile pepper, bell pepper, cayenne pepper

5. North Carolina

6. Bottle of cognac, roses

7. Rebecca, by Daphne DuMaurier

8. Human hair

9. Absinthe

10. Destroying angel

Pioneer Family: Childhood in the Land That Time Forgot

2011-10-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

I never understood how strange, by many standards, my up-bringing was until a few years ago. In trying to give a brief description of my youth to a new friend, I began to see the stark oddness of my experiences.

My family had a nice, modest home in a suburban neighborhood in a university town. Nothing out-of-the ordinary. My parents were both children of the Great Depression, so they were proud to be able to purchase a single-family home after being married for 15 years.

The unusual part started when my parents purchased an old, run down farmhouse on 10 acres when I was about ten. That purchase sent our family on a unique journey. The farm became our home on weekends and over summer vacations.

The farm was on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, otherwise known as the “land that time forgot.” The structure had been built in the 1890s of heart pine, and was two rooms over two rooms with a rickety kitchen addition.

Originally the kitchen must have been in an outbuilding, but in the 1920s the back porch was enclosed to make a modest cooking area and dining room. The wide planked pine floors sloped and the peeling flowered wallpaper was at least fifty years old. My parents paid $2,500 for the house and ten acres. The farm was a three hour drive from our suburban home.

There was no indoor bathroom of any kind. Cold running water flowed to the kitchen sink from a well on the property. We sponge bathed with old porcelain wash basins, sometimes in a bigger galvanized washtub, or at the kitchen sink.

In one of my brighter moments, (I think I had been reading an old stack of Mother Earth News magazines), I hit upon a plan for a hot shower. I stretched the long garden across the yard, past the former pig wallow, to the outhouse / latrine.

In no time, the sun heated the water in the hose. With a bar of soap and the hose inside the outhouse, I managed to have a hot shower! The only drawback was when I burned my arm on the bare light-bulb hanging low on the john's ceiling. While rinsing my hair with the hose nozzle stretched up over my head, my arm made contact with the bulb for quite a few seconds before I realized I was being scorched. Of course, the thought of electrocution hadn't entered my enterprising little head.

The farm had electricity in only a couple of rooms (and the outhouse!), no phone, no television, and --the horror of it-- there were no home computers in the 1970s, no smart phones, no video games. We played checkers or cards and read at night. We spent half an hour killing mosquitoes before putting the lights out (if you've ever been to the Eastern Shore, you know it's the mosquito capital of the world). The family slept on beds and cots, dorm style, in the same downstairs room off the kitchen.

I brought a suburban girlfriend down to the farm with me one weekend, and we slept upstairs on a mattress on the floor. One of our cats curled up with us. In the middle of the night, we awoke to a crunching sound. Startled, we turned on the flashlight to see Little Boots eating a mouse. My friend was a good sport about it, but her parents were appalled when they heard the tale.

On the farm, we grew vegetables: corn, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, cantaloupes, cucumbers, yellow squash, zucchini, pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, onions, beets, turnips, and cabbage. A sweet cherry and a fig tree came with the house. My parents planted apple, pear, and peach trees. Mom planted annual and perennial flowers everywhere. From alyssum to zinnias, she had flowers in bloom nearly year-round. The soil must have been superior; nearly everything they planted, thrived.

I'm amazed as I look at that list of vegetables, fruits, and flowers. These days I'm lucky to keep a few herbs and cactus alive. Did my parents drink a lot of coffee? How did they grow all that on the weekends, work jobs, and keep five children alive, too?

The farm was about two miles from the Chesapeake Bay. We fished and caught croakers, spot, flounder, and bluefish. We fried them and had veggies from the garden. We dug clams, eating them raw, steamed, in chowder and in fritters. Using a chicken neck for bait, we caught blue crabs for steaming. Dang, we ate well!

We swam in the bay. Crabs nibbled our toes, and sometimes jellyfish stung us. We sunburned and Mom rubbed us down in Noxema from a cobalt blue glass jar. We slept with two portable fans trained on us and the windows wide open-- air-conditioning was not part of the farm's accoutrements. We heard the owls and whip-or-wills at night.

After the sun went down, it was rare for a car to pass on the narrow, blacktopped road in front of the farm. The silence was intoxicating. The stars were incredibly bright. Dad pointed out the constellations.

It's funny that it took me many decades to realize how different my upbringing was. Honestly, at the time I was a little embarrassed about how un-cool and primitive our farm was. I avoided mentioning the farm to all but a few close friends. I groaned about it, saying “We're going to the farm again?”

It didn't seem unique or special. It was just there; it was what we did on weekends and over summer vacation. When we talk about it now, we laugh and shake our heads. Living there was glorified camping, with the benefit of a roof that didn't leak.

I'm not ashamed anymore of growing up, at least part-time, on a farm. I can see what a blessing it was, and it's almost like being in a secret club when I occasionally meet someone else who was raised on a farm. Among many lessons, it taught me that most of the luxuries I enjoy these days are just that, luxuries and not necessities.

My heart is full of memories of the farm. That run-down place is part of who I am.

Do you have special memories of a place from your childhood? Please share!

Smarty-pants

2011-10-19T19:17:00.000-07:00

Please read this post carefully; there will be a quiz next week.

“Seven billion.”

A student in the back row asked a friend how many people were in the world, and I blurted out the answer as I was writing the day’s schedule on the whiteboard. I couldn’t control myself!

“Three-hundred million,” I added when he inquired (still talking to his friend) how many people were in the U.S.

Keep in mind I’m an English teacher, not a statistics maven, social scientist, or delegate to the U.N. I’m not even very good with numbers. I routinely freeze, momentarily clueless, when asked for my zip code.

Regardless, I’m cruising into dangerous smarty-pants waters.

I so do not want to be that teacher-person who knows everything. No, no, no. Please, angels above, don’t let that happen! Don’t let me become an obnoxious jerk!

You know her: the legend-in-her-own-mind teacher. The one who throws around snippy, offhand remarks like “of course that quote’s from Macbeth” or an “obviously the bird symbol reflects the character’s need for freedom.”

Some teachers set themselves up as the expert, the authority, the last word on subjects that aren’t even in the realm they teach. They own the subject: Medieval daily life, wines of the ancient Egyptians, sexual habits of the opossum. The ozone layer, weaving llama wool, gems of South America. Television shows of the 1950s, ecological impacts of microwave ovens, what provisions to take on a sailboat trip to the Caribbean.

There is no end to the obscure corners of knowledge some teachers will stake claim as their own. No one is permitted to know more on the topic; a sneer, snide remark, or a hostile dressing-down are dealt anyone--student, fellow teacher, or innocent bystander--who shows a little knowledge in “their” specialty.

I understand only too well how this ugly character flaw develops. We teachers have power over students—I remember being surprised when rooms full of students actually did what I asked them to do! I knew stuff students didn’t, and I was the boss?! Yee-hah!

Standing in front of 20-30 college students at a time, their eyes (hopefully) trained on us, we get used to being the authority. They raise their hands; we want to give them the pithy, maybe even witty answer. First we may confine ourselves to our area of specialty. As a fledgling teacher, I felt fairly confident addressing questions about the writing process, most grammar, the symbolism in Coleridge’s “The Tiger.”

But then… the power, the knowledge… started to go to my head just a bit.

If I’m smart in English… why can’t I be smart in… how many threads per square inch make a good sheet? The top ten NBA players since 1980? The date Halley’s comet will next return?

If I’m not vigilant, I may start sliding down that slippery slope of know-it-all-ness until I’m completely insufferable.

By the way, Halley’s comet is expected to return in 2061.

Do you know anyone who’s a “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong?” Do you have strategies for gently putting her in her place? Have you ever been tempted into know-it-all-ness? How do you keep yourself under control?

Melanie

The Long, Long War

2011-10-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

Will* sits across from my desk, trembling from head to toe. He looks very young, but I figure he’s at least 23 since he says he’s been out of high school for five years. Will has an intelligent, devoted wife who’s applying to grad school and a 3-year old son. Tall and thin, he has thick, light brown hair and piercing blue eyes.

Will’s wife, Sandra, my former student, came by earlier in the week to tell me her husband is upset about his paper. He hasn’t slept in days.

He’s done two combat tours and survived, yet he’s worried about his response paper for British Lit.

Sandra says, “Mrs. Bruce, can you do something? I keep telling him he’s smart, he’s a good writer. He just needs to get a rough draft down on paper.”

Sandra and I discuss strategies to help her husband’s writer’s block. She says she’ll try to get him to come see me.

Will is in my office two days later. I’m glad he came; he’s motivated, sincere. But he is in constant motion. I’m trying to ignore it.

I can’t say I’ve ever seen a man so restless. I’m vaguely aware that I’m in denial about what is going on with Will.

I try to reassure him. His paper looks great; he’s done a fine job with Blake and Coleridge. I think: Why is he trembling? Is it espresso? Red Bull? Was he like this before the war? He is apologetic, saying that in high school he didn’t take so long, worry so much over his papers.

While I’m talking with Will, my officemate Amber* is finishing up her conversation with a muscular young student in a black t-shirt. A loud talker, Jake’s articulate, with an impressive vocabulary. They’re discussing the draft of his argument paper. Our office is small, and I can’t help listening a little, distracting me for a moment from Will’s jitters.

Jake must’ve written about his battles with the VA; Amber is telling him it’s good to be passionate in his paper, but maybe some of the language, the tone, is a bit too strong for a college argument. He shouldn’t use words like “idiotic,” or “foolish.”

Jake has hearing loss from the war, and the VA says the damage is not from his time in the military, despite all evidence to the contrary.

“I went into the military with perfect hearing, and I came out with hearing loss. They say it has nothing to do with the guns and the IED’s. I’m 24—where else did I get hearing loss?”

Jake is mad about the runaround he’s getting, but with effort, he’s contained. Amber is mad, but self-possessed, professional, making the best of a teachable moment. I’m getting mad, too, and not at the students in my office. There’s another emotion trying to escape from my chest. I’m not sure what the other emotion is. I clench my jaw.

Will glances at Jake, but without expression. Will talks a little louder, so I can hear him over the unintentionally loud guy with the hearing loss.

We continue our conversation about the poetry analysis paper. I may be repeating myself when I tell Will he’s a good writer, not to over-think the assignment. He rises to go. His hand is dry, warm as he shakes my hand, his grip strong but not overbearing. He’s still shaky.

He leaves, but my brain is roiling. Once again I have seen what few Americans ever see and rarely concern themselves with, even if they watch Brian Williams on NBC every night.

I’ve got to do something. So I plan a blog entry, trying to avoid a harsh feeling of futility. Of sinking, sucking, slippery despair.

Trying to find some way to be a witness, to give a tribute, to define and contain something that is amorphous, monstrous. Something that Will is working to conquer, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

I’ve proudly taught vets since 2003. I love what I do, and I’m doing what I can to help. I’m not being facetious, hard-hearted, or disrespectful. But by the time both Will and Jake leave my office, I need a therapy session.

Is it selfish to ask who’s going to help me?

Yes. It does seem incredibly selfish.

What can I know about what my students have gone through, are going through? The ones who have been to war, the ones who waited for them to come home, and the ones whose loved ones didn’t come home, or didn’t come home whole?

It has been a long war for all of us.

So I get up and go teach another English class.

*Not their real names. I do not write about students who are currently in my classes. Will and Jake’s stories are used with permission.

Melanie

What Not to Wear: The Menopause Edition

2011-10-09T19:46:00.000-07:00

No matter the weather, this woman is warm. Flushed. Burning up.

I don’t really get hot flashes, the way other women describe them. That counts for “lucky” in menopause. I do have three temperature stages: a warm, a warmer, and a heck no, you may not turn up the heat stage.

It’s in the 50s at night here; the windows are open, the curtains are fluttering. I’m in shorts and a tank top. I’m feeling fine!

I told a friend I fantasized about icebergs. I do! If I had an iceberg in my back yard, I would so throw down a faux fur blanket--don’t want my skin to stick to the ice--and lie down on that icy little bit of heaven. My heart races to think of it. Or is that just a menopausal palpitation?

Since there is no iceberg in my backyard, I do have my alternative. An industrial size ice gel pack. Yes, instead of the hot-water bottle or electric blanket of the non-menopausal, I cuddle up to my ice pack each night. Ahh, bliss.

Getting dressed for work has gotten complicated. I’m no exhibitionist, but how can I keep cool while maintaining my middle-aged school teacher façade?

The best I can do in fall and winter is a sleeveless shell with a ¾ sleeve open cardigan, paired with loose cottony slacks. While I’m not thrilled with showing my upper arms (there is muscle in there, it just has a little padding on top), I don’t hesitate to whip off the cardigan and show my wings. If someone doesn’t like it, aye carumba, they can look the other way.

Clothing items and accessories that are on my “menopausal what-not-to-wear” list: turtlenecks of any neck style/sleeve length, blazers, boots, scarves, heavy winter coats, fluffy-heavy bath robes, flannel nighties, slankets, snuggies, anything wool.

I’m most sad about the boots and scarves. I love the look of boots on other people, but they are impossibly hot and confining for me. Scarves, so fashionable right now, would do wonders for disguising my middle-aged neck, but I would positively suffocate. As Nora Ephron said in the title of her funny treatise on women at mid-life, “I feel bad about my neck.” But not bad enough to choke myself in a scarf of any kind.

So I soldier on, as do millions of other menopausals, sleeveless through the fall and winter, hatless, coatless, with two spare sticks of Secret antiperspirant in the desk drawer. My portable fan lifting my locks, I soldier on.

That woman you see, running barefoot in the snow, skiing in her skivvies, snowshoeing wearing only a smile? That might be me. Please don’t call 911.

I’m just having a menopause what-not-to-wear moment.

Do you have any tips for staying cool? Do you fight the battle of the thermostat? Suggestions gratefully accepted!

East for a Cause: American Hitchhiker, American Heart, part 2

2011-10-06T18:56:00.000-07:00

He held a sign that read, “East for a cause. Semper fi.”*

Patrick made it to from Iowa to Boston. He hitchhiked 1,300 miles last week, ate a lot of protein bars, lost 7 pounds.

Patrick Bohnenkamp, in case you missed my earlier post, is in his twenties, an Iraq war combat vet, single dad of two boys, and a former U. S. Marine. He works at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison as a guard. He was an extraordinary writer in my college English class a few semesters back.

Graciously, Patrick answered a few questions about his journey and gave permission to use his real name (he was the “Sean” of the earlier post).

Patrick got 14 rides. The people who picked him up were “eccentric and often flamboyant.” One couple’s car was pimped-out with harps and crystals. Another man, after seeing a police car nearby, revealed there was a warrant for his arrest, and the vehicle didn’t belong to him. They weren’t stopped, fortunately, since the man explained that he would not pull over for the police.

Eight police officers picked Patrick up along his route, mostly in Ohio. Once they checked that no outstanding warrants were pending, and saw his corrections officer’s i.d., they all released him without a ticket.

He spent a fair amount of time at intersections with his “East for a Cause” sign, “smiling and making eye contact.” That part was draining, he said.

The seminal moment of his journey came in a park on the Canadian border, near Niagara Falls. Daily life, full of lists, bills, chores, phone calls, and monotony, was far away. Blue sky overhead, sun so bright it hurt his eyes, he lay in the grass and just was.

Not entirely sure why he embarked on the trip, Patrick reminded me that he’d long had a fascination with hitchhiking. He believes the fear of hitchhikers has reached an irrational level, wanted to see if some people agreed with him, if they would pick up a tall guy with a backpack and a cardboard sign.

He lost a good friend in the war in Afghanistan a few months ago. Patrick had several sets of dog tags made up with his buddy’s name, birth and death dates. Each person who gave him a lift along the way received a dog tag. His friend’s death was at least part of the “cause” that sent him out on the road East.

“I dedicated the trip to him. I guess it helped with the grieving process,” Patrick said.

The prisoners in the Penitentiary where Patrick works kept track of his cross-country progress on a map. Being around guys who are locked up for a long, long time seems to have made Patrick even more aware of freedom, more curious about what freedom means.

With a copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five under his arm, Patrick took a risk, opted out the mundane, “the striving for a steady level of positivity and good fortune” at least for a few days.

You’ve got to hear it in Patrick’s own words:

“…but when you get a ride and a hot meal from a husband and wife, or when someone opens their vehicle and subjects themselves to a complete stranger simply for the sake of being kind and benevolent, it hits your heart in way that can't be described. It moves you so deeply that it can change your core, fundamental outlook on humans. In a world that paints a picture of evil and cynicism and hate, it’s nice to see, firsthand, that we are wrong about ourselves. There is still plenty of kindness in the world.”

Patrick cancels out the babble of voices that say there’s no hope for our future. He, and other young men and women who are thought-filled, intentional, and action-oriented allay my worst fears about upcoming generations and the world they will make.

I’m so proud to know him.

*Semper fi (fidelis) is Latin for “always faithful”; the motto of the United States Marine Corps.

Melanie

Tattoo Tragedy

2011-10-06T18:48:00.000-07:00

CNN Anderson Cooper’s RidicuList recently tackled tattoos.

Apparently, some people are sporting misspelled slogans.

Examples abound. Cooper explained Hockey star Brad Marchand has” Starley” Cup “ChampiAns” in ink on his arm. A young woman wears “Sweet PEE” tatted across her lower back.

Um, “Sweat Pea,” the term of endearment/garden flower might have been what she was after. Unless she was having a “Say it out loud, I pee and I’m proud moment.”

A skinny young man has “EXREME” in lovely, elaborate gothic script on his chest. No “T.” Maybe he is a former “Reme?”

The tat needle does not have a spellchecker.

Now, please don’t jump on my head. I don’t mind if you tattoo whatever artwork, slogan, or Chinese character you’d like, anywhere on your body you’d like. You have that right; tattoo artists have a right to make a living. None of my business.

I will defend to death your right to tattoo. May the road rise up to meet you and may the wind be always at your back*, tickling the scales of the dragon tattoo you got in Cancun. Truly.

Further, just because I’m an English teacher doesn’t mean I’m on the Spelling Police squad. I misspell, too. Sometimes in letters 3 inches high on the (erasable) white board, in front of 25 students. Hey, it ain’t easy thinking, talking, writing, and wondering why that student in the front row is texting an order for a pizza on his cell phone. Yes, I just wrote ain’t. Spellcheck underlined it in red.

When that one sweet little student raises her hand to suggest I may have spelled in error, my pat response is “So glad you caught that! I was just checking to see if anyone was paying attention!” Administered with a smile, this tactic has gotten me out of several spelling mishaps.

But if a person goes through the pain, expense, pain, commitment, and pain of getting a tattoo, wouldn’t it be a good idea to take the time, pause a moment, and spell it correctly? Shouldn’t the tattoo artist care enough to check the spelling?

Because after all, in today’s competitive job market, an employer may not care about visible tats, but she may care deeply about the veracity of one’s claim to have “attention to detail.”

Especially when “I’M AWSOME” is blazoned across one’s forearm.

What do you think? Does spelling matter more in some situations than others? In the age of autocorrect and spell check, is spelling dead?

*From the Irish blessing:

May the road rise up to greet you, may the wind be always at your back, may the sun shine warm upon your face, may the rain fall soft upon your fields, and until we meet again may God hold you in the palm of his hand.

Tattoo Tradgey (sic)