Month: March 2006

My Grandma is One Hundred Years Old

The strangest thing about writing daily in a blog like this is that most people I know in real life have no idea that I do this. It’s odd because blogging is such a mainstay in my life, yet I don’t talk about it to relatives or local friends.

So, to the forty relatives I saw tonight at Grandma’s birthday dinner: “I write in a blog every day.” Ha.

My husband had to stay home (secretly he was happy to miss a family event) with our two sick kids. I took my twins and they had a great time playing with their distant cousins. The dinner was at a church facility which was set up for youth in one room–so there was an arcade basketball game, a pool table, video games, etc.

My grandma looked tiny and fragile in her hot pink jacket and permed white hair. But I sat close to her and we had a little private conversation. Her mind is completely intact and I suppose she feels twenty-two inside, just like I do. I was happy to be the one to fill her coffee cup.

So many cameras were flashing that I asked my grandma if she felt like a movie star and she answered quite seriously, “Well, I wouldn’t know.” I doubt she could even name one movie star. I doubt she’s ever seen a movie. She’s from a different era, a time when good Christian women wouldn’t dream of setting foot in a movie theater. She is aghast when my mother goes shopping on Sundays.

My grandmother raised six children in the ’30s and ’40s. The Great Depression affected them very little since they had so little anyway. My grandfather was a preacher and devoted to his calling and my grandmother supported him without complaint every day of their sixty-one years of marriage. (He died on their sixty-first anniversary.) My most enduring memory of them together happened when I stayed with them one week when I was about eight. I peeked out of my bedroom just in time to see them standing in the kitchen in a long embrace. I had never seen my own parents embrace.

For a child who grew up in a divorced household, this steadfast display of affection and love offered hope for my own future. My grandparents are the finest example of Christian living that I know. My grandmother, even at one hundred years of age, continues to pray for me by name every day of my life. She cannot see. She can barely walk. She lives alone in a tidy little house with a garden planted with primroses in a neighborhood sliding into disrepair. But she prays and listens to the Bible on CDs almost continuously.

I’ve always felt like her favorite granddaughter, though she has dozens of grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren. Shhhh, don’t tell my cousins. Grandma loves me best.

True Confession

I have a Mean Streak. I do. I know I shouldn’t say that out loud, especially where people can (and probably will) use my own words as ammunition, but I say it anyway.

I.
Have.
A.
Mean.
Streak.

This explains why I laugh at “American’s Funniest Videos” when someone falls down. This explains why I smirk at the baby’s screams when I am a little slow getting the bottle to her imploring hands. This explains why I like to watch the first shows of “American Idol” more than the last shows. My Mean Streak.

I suppose a more theologically astute (and pretentious) person might point out that a Mean Streak is kind of like a Sin Nature. I have one. You have one, too, but you probably don’t want to admit it. I don’t like to admit it, either. It’s best to just keep the Mean Streak hidden, to pretend it’s not there.

My Mean Streak thinks terrible thoughts sometimes. My Mean Streak shines the spotlight of judgment on stupid people and judges them for their stupidity. My Mean Streak shrugs off the gentle hand of Benefit of the Doubt and would prefer to tell it like it is, according to me, of course.

I carry a mental gag in my pocket at all times, so I can shut up the Mean Streak’s mouth before I do any damage. My Mean Streak is muffled. Mostly. I don’t say out loud the worst of what I think.

But, oh! Some times I can hardly contain myself! I cannot understand non-thinkers. I don’t get why people are not interested in reading. Why doesn’t everyone want to figure out their own personality, their angst, their development? How is it that some people are not interested in understanding people?

Why are people so stupid? And why does it bother me so much? Why do people make such devastatingly stupid choices? And why should I care?

Some days, my Mean Streak won’t stop squawking and on those days, it’s best to just shut up. If only I had an Isolation Chamber where I could hide before my Main Streak lands a punch squarely on the face of the nearest knucklehead.

From The Infirmary

Her: That’s too bright for my eyes. My head hurts. I’m so sick!
Me: I know. Do you want some medicine?
Her, wailing: Noooooo!
Me: You’ll feel better. Just a tiny bit? Please?
Her: No! I want to be sick! I want my head to hurt!

And that sums up the day. She woke at 12:30 a.m. and at 5:00 a.m. (Oh wait. I think I already said this.) After accepting a dose of ibuprofen at 7:00 a.m., she has refused all medication, so once the pain relief wore off around noon, she’s been miserable. All she wanted was for me to hold her in the “big green chair,” and if it weren’t for the 9-month old who is determined to stick her fingers in the electrical sockets and her hand into the DVD player and the 15-month old who slept only one hour instead of two and the 3 and a half year old who needed snacks and the 12-year olds who needed my assistance with math, history, and science and, of course, the still-sick 8-year old, I could have held her all day.

My own head began to ache late this afternoon, but that could just be sleep deprivation talking. Even if I don’t come down with this illness, I’m not sure I can leave my baby girl while she is so ill. And yet, my grandmother is turning 100! And my relatives will all be assembled from across the country. Sigh.

Now, for a completely unrelated matter. I have just started reading Jane Smiley’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel. I have long admired Jane Smiley’s skill and talent as a novelist. I adored A Thousand Acres, her Pulitzer Prize winning novel, though the story was devastating. I’ve read nearly all her novels (but not The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton–I own it, but haven’t read it yet).

The only complaint I have so far (three or four chapters in) is that the hardback book is so huge that my hands literally fall asleep while I hold it and read. The perils of reading!

I just finished Francine Rivers’ Redeeming Love, another Christian “romance” novel. In this novel, as in the last Christian inspirational novel I read (A Family Forever, by Brenda Coulter), the male protagonist wooed the obstinate and clueless (stupid?) female protagonist. Perhaps the plot similarities were not all that similar, but in both books, I found myself exceedingly annoyed by the women’s behavior. Are all Christian romance novels populated by women who are too dim to notice the stellar male character who offers them True Love? Or is it just that I happened to read two in a row? (I rarely read so-called Christian fiction.)

I think this is why I shy away from romance novels. I spend the whole book being frustrated and annoyed by the characters–which I know, I know–the story must have conflict and obstacles and all that, but I have little patience for all that nonsense.

I just sneezed. I hope that’s not a bad sign.

What Were You Doing 35 Years Ago?

Thirty-five years ago, I was in kindergarten. I remember almost nothing of that school year. I went half the year to one school, then we moved and I went half a year to another. I don’t even remember my teachers’ names.

Little did I know that on this very day, thirty-five years later, Gina would be born. What a great addition she is to the planet earth. Will you go and tell her happy birthday? She writes a witty and often hilarious blog.

* * *

Plague Update:

Son slept all night.

Daughter woke at 12:30 a.m. Fever subsided, but she needed to pee. I rocked her a few minutes and put her back to bed. She slept until 5:00 a.m. and insisted on getting up to watch a video. Fine. I let her and went back to bed, where she soon joined me. She never slept again and I may have lost consciousness or maybe not. It’s hard to say. She began to cry about her legs hurting and her head hurting at about the time I had to get up at 6:30 a.m., so I convinced her to drink a little medicine. Boy, she hates that!

Here’s what I learned from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website:

Incubation period for the flu, 1-4 days.
Spread by droplets in coughs and sneezes and also by transference (touching something with droplets on it).
Fever can last 3-4 days.
Fatigue/exhaustion can last 2-3 weeks.
Ill person is contagious a day before symptoms show and a full five days after the first symptoms.

She’s licking a sucker now, sneezing and chatting with her buddy who just arrived, which is confusing to me after last night’s delirious fever. I’m still diagnosing this as “flu” rather than “cold,” however, because of the sudden onset and severe headache.

Oh, and it snowed last night, just a dusting.

This Calls for the Pirate Yell: ARRRRGH!

My 8-year old son hasn’t been to school since the nurse sent him home on Monday morning. He’s hardly eaten a thing and looks noticeably thinner, but today, he perked up a bit. He laughed at cartoons and played his Nintendo DS and ate a little. I thought tomorrow he’d go back to school.

My 3-year old suddenly grew whiny this evening. She was playing Candyland with her daddy when she complained that her legs hurt. She quit the game and had her evening bath. When she came out of the bath, she was shivering and crying. My husband kept saying, “I think she’s sick,” and I didn’t want to believe it, but by 7:00 p.m., she wanted to go to bed. She cried and said she was cold. She felt warm. I covered her up and turned off her light.

At 8:00 p.m., my son finished his bath and from our room, we heard him crying. I rushed to him and found him shivering. “I’m so cold!” he cried. I dried him off and dressed him in pajamas while he asked to go to the hospital. He described feeling weird and cold and pain in his muscles. I brought him medicine and covered him in four blankets. He looked up at me, his green eyes shining with tears and said, “Mom, if it gets any worse than this, I want an ambulance.”

At 9:00 p.m., screams startled me. I hurried upstairs to find my daughter shrieking and burning hot. She’d had a bad dream (the t.v. was going up and down in her dream, how horrific!). I attempted to coerce her into swallowing one teaspoon of ibuprofen, which she promptly dribbled out of her wide-open-screaming mouth. At which point, I, Miss Florence Nightingale, hollered and scolded while she shook and cried.

Then I washed us off and carried her downstairs, where we tried again. This time, she cooperated, even though her hand trembled and tears ran down her face. We rocked for a while and then she told me she was tired and so I took her back to her room, where we rocked again. Then, to bed.

I have now been sitting anxiously, wondering if I hear a child crying somewhere. I telephoned the mother of the baby I watch to let her know we seem to have the flu. They’ve already been exposed, all three of the kids I watch, so I’m not sure what to do now but carry on.

Arrrrrgh! That’s my hearty pirate yell, which I reserve for situations such as this which leave me with nothing to do but yell. My grandmother’s 100th birthday is Friday. We’re supposed to attend a huge family dinner (a reunion, really)in her honor that night. Clearly, we can’t go if we are contagious with the flu, because it simply wouldn’t do to have anyone ask: “And what did you give your grandmother upon the occasion of her one hundredth birthday?” because then, I’d have to say, “The flu,” and how rude would that be?

Ten Ways I Annoy My Husband (Without Really Trying)

1) I have purchased exactly one plunger, which may or may not be located near the toilet currently overflowing. (We have three toilets, one plunger, a 3:1 ratio, obviously not efficient.)

2) I leave wads of crumpled used tissues on my bedside table. What can I say? I have allergies.

3) At least once a month, eager for an evening snack, he pours cereal in a bowl, opens the fridge and finds . . . no milk. This is highly disappointing to him.

4) I leave shoes out, under the dresser, near the bed, wherever. I can’t be bothered.

5) I insist on doing things My Way (aka The Right Way), things like loading the dishwasher and packing correctly for trips.

6) I turn down corners of the magazines he leaves in the bathroom so I can pick up where I left off.

7) Clutter.

8) I mock his heritage by using an improbably bad Southern accent.

9) I talk to him during “important” portions of shows he’s trying to watch.

10) I don’t get out of bed when the alarm rings. I’m a three-hits-to-the-snooze-button kind of girl.

Lights Out

The school nurse called me this morning at 10:18 a.m., to inform me that my son was in her office with a temperature of 100.8, a cough, and a headache and would I please pick him up?

You’d think I’d sent him to school with the Bubonic Plague. It was a just headache treated by ibuprofen when I sent him at 9 a.m.–and he wanted to go to school! He just didn’t think he could handle recess, so he ended up being sent to the office where the nurse got him.

He’s still ill with what seems to be a virus, though for five minutes this afternoon I was absolutely convinced it was probably meningitis, the only question being: viral or bacterial and would he lose his limbs?

I thought tonight for a second, “I just can’t do this,” and then I had this whole conversation in my head about how you don’t really get a choice about continuing your current direction when you are in the midst of life. Not if you have kids, anyway, and common sense. And summer will eventually arrive, right? Summer means no more school lessons and the possibility that I will catch up on my laundry.

Why do all the light bulbs burn out at the same time? I have no overhead light in my family room, no light in my laundry room and no exterior lights in two of my light fixtures. And no bulbs because I am just not that good at being a homemaker.

Last week, someone from church called exactly at 6:00 p.m. and said, “Oh, wait, did I catch you at dinnertime?” and I said, without pause, “No, but you would have if I were a better mother.” She laughed, but I was not joking.

Post Academy Awards Show Blog

I know. I didn’t post for two whole days, which in dog years is uh, two weeks? That annoying thing keeps happening where a thought pops into my head and I think, A-ha! I must blog that! And then the thought dissolves like the bubbles in my kitchen sink just when I’m ready to wash a frying pan.

(Speaking of thought bubbles, twice today at church, I scolded my 12-year old son who was holding a piece of paper up above his head. You can imagine how distracting it would be to sit behind a boy with a paper sign hovering over his head. When I peered closely, I saw he’d drawn thought bubbles and a profound thought: “Mooo!”)

[I have to say: I told you so! Only, I probably forgot to actually tell you so, but I did predict that “Crash” would win for Best Picture (and it did) and that Reese Witherspoon would win for Best Actress (and she did) and that Philip Seymour Hoffman would win for Best Actor (and he did). I rock.

Oh, and how about Will Ferrell and Steve Carrell’s presentation for Best Achievement in Make-up? That presentation was rivalled only by Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin.]

Okay. Back to the post. Oh, first I have to say that the best way to watch The Academy Award show is to video tape it (unless you are lucky and have TiVo, in which case I loathe you because my jealousy has no rational outlet). If you tape it, you can fast-forward through the speeches, the montages, the tributes and just watch the presentations and the monologue. (Oh, and how funny was that opening?!)

What I wouldn’t give for a coherent, creative thought about now. Um . . . so . . . today was church but we had no lights in the sanctuary because last night, when some of the guys were at the church doing something or another, they smelled smoke. Smoke emanated from the breaker box when all the lights were on. So, no lights today. And the sanctuary smelled like smoke. My husband was a little stressed out about this, but I gave him some clever lines to use like this: (wait until the middle of the sermon and then pause and say) “Is it just me or am I ON FIRE today?” Or maybe point out Big Al, one of his close friends and say, “I don’t know about you, but Big Al is SMOKIN’!” Or even, “Repent, for even now, I smell the burning fires of hell!”

Oh wait. Was that sacrilegious? Okay, let’s move on.

I drove our new “old” van, the one nearly as old as my marriage yesterday. The interior is quite lovely, though the exterior shows minor lumps and bumps and flaking paint if you look closely. Kind of like me, I guess. Maybe that’s why I like it so well. (But we didn’t name it. We don’t name cars. Do you? Maybe we could name it “Daisy,” and then I could say, “Hey, I’m Driving Miss Daisy!” (Did you get that Oscar reference? Huh? Didja? See? I have a theme in this here blog.) I drove from going-out-of-business craft store to consignment store to thrift store to discount store to second craft store to Bed Bath & Beyond before finally drifting home.

The weather had been exquisite all day and I wanted to just pick up the kids and hurry them down to the beach, but first, we needed dinner. And then the sun slipped below the horizon and then my husband said, “Tomorrow,” and I agreed. But today (“tomorrow”) it rained and this afternoon, my 8-year old son cradled his head in pain and cried. Another illness?! (After his bath tonight, he declared this, “The WORST BIRTHDAY WEEK EVER!” I distracted him with a tale of a boy I once knew who was so sick on Halloween he couldn’t go trick-or-treating. Because really, what is more soothing that comparing yourself to someone worse off than you?)

My grandmother turns one hundred years old on Friday. And you know what that means, don’t you? That’s right! A mini-family reunion. She had six children and five of them are still alive. I have dozens of first cousins and we’ve all done our part to procreate. (Well, most of us have, anyway.) We’ll gather from around the country for a catered dinner in her honor and I will obsess all week about dressing to slim and about whether to call my colorist for emergency highlights and debating the merits of robbing a bank to hire a plastic surgeon to remove this double chin.

And I console myself this way: I say to myself, “Self, probably Grandma will live at least another six months and by then, you can be to your perfect size, just in time for The Relatives to see you again!” And then I remind myself that I am not fifteen and the world does not revolve around me and that people will not be noticing my appearance as much as I notice my appearance. That’s what I’ve learned in the past twenty-five years.

It would help if I weren’t related to the skinniest cousins imaginable–seriously, my cousin is tiny and wears a loose size 2 and my cousin, her brother, is Ichabod Crane-ish, and his wife, a girl who lived on my wing in college, is also slim and has never appeared in public without her perfectly applied lipstick and her oh-so-cool Southern composure.

But I can write. See how I comfort myself?

In other news . . . hello March? The daffodils around town are blooming. My crocuses are a happy little enclave of pure white, gold and purple, merrily coloring the drab flowerbed. They are tucked right behind the basketball hoop and seem hopelessly misplaced, but the basketball hoop was a recent addition, haphazardly introduced to the backyard by two men with no thoughts of Feng Shui or aesthetics of beautiful English gardens full of perennials. (As if!)

This is the time of year that I wish I’d planted more daffodils and I am full of regret. That is some kind of metaphor for life, isn’t it? You just have to plan ahead and be patient . . . and actually put the bulbs in the ground instead of just dream.

With that thought, I will wrap this up. But first, one final thought. About George Clooney.

Dear George, (May I call you “George”?)

I want to hate you. You are a cad. You are everything a thinking young woman should despise–your cocky attitude, your inability to commit, your failure to demonstrate your competence at marriage. You own a pig, for goodness’ sake, a pet pig! Your politics are liberal, you have that smirk, your belief in yourself bordering on narcissistic, and yet . . . I can’t help but think you are the Epitome of a Movie Star and tomorrow I’m going to buy a poster of you and put it on my bedroom wall. I don’t think my Republican husband will mind at all.

Oh, and congratulations on winning Best Supporting Actor.

Hugs and Kisses,
Mel

Open Letter to Swiffer

Dear Swiffer:

I want to love you, Swiffer. I do. I like your convenience. I like your fresh, fake scent. I like the disposable nature of your cleaning pads.

But Swiffer, we do not see eye to eye. Why, you ask? Well, because, Swiffer, you are too short.

I’m taller than the average American woman, true. I stand five feet, seven inches tall, while the average American woman is only five feet, four inches tall. When I use you, Swiffer, I must bend at an awkward angle, an angle that screams, “CALL THE CHIROPRACTOR!” I don’t have the heart to tell my lower back that I don’t have a chiropractor.

What I need is a longer Swiffer, a sturdier Swiffer, a Swiffer who can rise to the occasion. Please. I want to love you! I want to devote myself to you! But you make it difficult.

So, please, grow up a little. Grow a spine. Grow taller. Get some hair on your chest. (Oh, wait, I’m drifting off topic now.) I’m just saying that if you want me to cherish you, you have to do your part.

(I won’t even mention how sexist it is that Swiffer is completely aimed at a woman consumer. An average American man at five feet, nine inches tall would cry out from back pain like a baby girl if he attempted to vigorously scrub the kitchen floor with your woefully inadequate too-short handle.)

Please, please answer my pleas. My back begs you. Don’t make me go back to an old-fashioned mop.

Love and kissesSincerely,
Mel

Integrating the Sacred and the Secular

When I was a child, my mother ordered us to turn the channel when Donnie Osmond sang “And I’m a little bit rock’n’roll!” For rock and roll music was sin. So was dancing, even square-dancing, drinking alcohol, swearing, smoking, mini-skirts, hip-huggers and shopping on Sundays.

As I grew up and attended Bible College, life seemed to be neatly divided into two categories: Sacred and Secular. Christian music? Good. Secular music? Bad. Christian books? Good. Secular books? Bad. Dancing in the Spirit? Good. Dancing at a bar? Bad.

My four years at Bible College (where women were required to wear dresses to class, even on snowy days) brought out the cynic in me. I heard enough rambling sermons to last me a lifetime and I saw enough hypocrisy to turn my heart to stone. I’m lucky I escaped with my faith intact, because I definitely needed it later when I traveled the rocky paths of infertility, cancer, death, loss, heartbreak–in other words, Real Life.

The idea that life should be lined up in separate categories crumbled, bit by bit, until finally, I came to understand that I would live my life without a division between the sacred and the secular. Good music is good music, whether or not it includes the lyrics “Jesus died on the cross,” or not. Fantastic art is simply fantastic art. A walk through a still forest, glimpsing trilliums in bloom is as sacred as a moment in a stained-glass church.

Just tonight, I came across a book by Steve Turner called Imagine: A Vision For Christians in the Arts, which discusses this very idea. I can’t wait to read it, if the sample first page on Amazon and the comments are good indications of the quality of the rest of the book.

So, when I see a particular well-known blogger announcing that she is partitioning her blog into two separate blogs, one for Christians and one for non-Christians, I just shake my head. Maybe that’s because I don’t write for Christians. I don’t even write for non-Christians. I just write for people. I’m not a Christian blogger and this isn’t a Christian blog. I’m a blogger who is a Christian. I don’t divide my life–or my blog–into partitions. (I even avoided associating myself with Christian bloggers when I began this blog for fear that I would be boxed in by other people’s expectations. I just wanted to write. I didn’t want to write a Pastor’s Wife’s Blog.)

Hey, I’m no apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher, but I do know this: Taking care of my kids is my spiritual worship. Writing well is my spiritual worship. Singing “Great is Thy Faithfulness” in church is my spiritual worship. So is washing the laundry and walking on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. Whatever I do, if I do it well and with acknowledgement of the Creator, that is worship.

My integration of the sacred and secular is incomplete, because I am in progress, learning as I go. Each believer certainly has to find his or her own way, embracing some things and rejecting others. But building walls around our lives, pulling up the drawbridges and digging moats can’t be what Jesus intended for us to do. He came to bring us life, not fear and judgment. (And furthermore, when anyone assumes I’m not bright enough to be able to distinguish the differences between sects, cults and even different denominations, that annoys me. I wonder if it annoys Jesus, too?)

Well, while I’m at it, writing this atypical post which has nothing to do with grocery shopping (I purchased twenty bags full of groceries at 10:45 p.m. tonight!) or laundry (currently backed up), I will also comment on this post at Internet Monk. He talks about another blogger, this guy who announced he would no longer call himself a “Christian, an idea he bandied about here.

I just have one word for that guy: SEMANTICS! Quit fussing about how the label “Christian” might taint your testimony or make you look and go feed the hungry, visit a prisoner, share with the poor, listen to a lonely widow, serve someone who doesn’t deserve it and then get back to me. I’m guessing that by then you might be too tired and too peaceful to worry about what someone might think if you accept the descriptive label “Christian.”

(If I continue to roll my eyes that far back in my head, they might stay that way, so if you see a 41-year old woman at Albertsons with only the bloodshot whites of her eyes showing, say hello. That would be me.)