What Winter? My Fashion Fail, part deux

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

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

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'

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

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

“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

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 discharge, 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