Gin Straight Out of the Cat Dish!

Looks pretty normal when there aren't Sheriff's squad cars surrounding us.

“I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”  -  Anne Lamott

Oh, but I said those awful thoughts.  Just when my day off was going along so smoothly.  A little readin'.  A little writin'.  A little Breaking Bad.  Even some long overdue furniture rearranging.  And then as I am relaxing with a book, Fran comes into my room and says, "Dad wanted me to tell you....before you looked out the window.  Looks like  the house is for sale."

There it was. With no advance warning - having gotten past the worry of a few weeks ago.  So....I had those awful thoughts.  The kind of thoughts that would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.  And I verbalized them.  Then apologized to my family.  Made it explicitly clear that the realtor needs to know that the good appliances + the antique brass chandelier belong to us.  And then moved on.  Reminding my family that home is wherever the family is.  My immediate family at least.  Some family members....I'm not feeling so warm towards.  

Those words bubbled up again when I returned home from work tonight to find out that there would be a real estate agents' walk through tomorrow morning.  Well, good luck folks.  I'm am in no way interested in helping sell this 'charming' house.  I hope the real estate folks are impressed. Perhaps the Coroner's van will be parked down the street.  If only it would rain and the raw sewage would come bubbling up through the laundry sink....and maybe Crazy Ozzie from the apartments would stand outside and serenade passersby.  These are the things that make our place charming . . . my prayer is that others don't see it the same way.

My Baby Blue

No real spoilers to alert you to.  I'll just say that Vince Gilligan said that some people wouldn't like the way Breaking Bad ends.  (so true....could any author, auteur, or writer of musical comedy not say that?)  I liked the ending.  Except for the part that it was the end and endings of books, TV series, and the like always leave me with a bit of empty and lost feeling.

Our life has not been like the Whites'.  Except that I have felt a certain empathy with the family's laboring under the consequences of the father's business decisions.  Our problems are not nearly as exciting nor sinister.  And I'll admit that I there have been times I was watching the show and thought having to work with a 50 gallon barrel of cash wouldn't be the worst of burdens....I would make it work. What the heck, I could leave a quarter of the barrel at the dentist's office.  So far I have not had to deal with such temptations to corruption.

Here is where I found some catharsis.  Walter White's constant assertion that what he did was for the good of the family was something that I bought at the beginning.  Not that what he did was right but he was desperate. At the beginning he was desperate and latching on to a stupid idea.  But things spun way out of control and still he went on claiming it was for the family.  Walt sees Skyler for a last time and says, "I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really -- I was alive."   That pushed me close to tears.  Having heard for years that everything my husband did was motivated by concern for the family, that is a line I would like to hear.  For clarification, my husband is not a criminal mastermind - no sort of criminal - and all he cooks is dinner and all I launder is clothing.  But things may have been better if he had made some choices that were less creative, less self-fulfilling.

We soldier on.  Faithful.  Sometimes bitter.  Sometimes happy.  No barrels of money, but treasure in heaven.  And I face the day a little lighter having had a bit of video catharsis...feeling just a little baby blue. 

A Little Up...A Little Down
After watching the usual Thursday night comedies, I let the TV roll on.  "Pop News" shows like Rock Center can be really invigorating.....like the segment on Asperger's.  That was nice.  Especially since there are still a lot of people who haven't heard of Asperger's.  Nice.

Then... I walked back in on some interesting segment about education and character formation.  Nice, too.  Right up until they bring up that old child versus marshmallow experiment.  It's always given me the willies.  Even now, having seen the good character development of all my children. (And their delicate sense of smell shows we have no psychopaths!!!)  I just always had the feeling that some of my children would not only have taken the marshmallow but also would slit the throat of the person in charge and taken off down the highway with the whole bag of marshmallows. I've always had great expectations for my children, even if the expectations were negative. 

JOY, LOVE, BELIEVE
It's not all tutus, stray toes and bubonic plague at my house.  Really.  I've been giving some serious thought to the cognitive dissonance that I feel this time of year. But...there is that real love - believable love - that frees us so that we can find joy in a variety of moments, whether solemn or absurd.

To keep and ponder in my heart...
I am thankful that there are twelve days of Christmas...So much happens; so many happy moments.  There is more than I could possible process in just one day.  Early Advent may have found me in the doldrums but things were picking up by Christmas.  Some of my job responsibilities of have changed, so that I was still busy at work but not quite as manic.  I wasn't as prepared as I hoped to be, but December 25 arrived ready or not.  And now there are the memories to savor. 

Lily was good as gold at church - but she needed to cut loose while waiting for dinner.

Keep the curtains closed so we don't see the snowless Christmas morn!

That rug really tied the room together.  The severed toe was a big hit, too.

Someone gave Bridget a hand.  No - really.

Bubonic Plague Stress Ball - the hit gift of the year.  (unless you are three years old; then it is pure terror)

Occupy Smith Avenue
or
Does my eye twitch bother you?

Hey, it's not easy to type while using one hand to press on my twitching eye lid.  These are times that try our souls.  And set some small facial muscles to twitchin'.  I can beg for the grace of grace under pressure, hoping to take each day as it comes.

I remind myself that what I call pressure is not what much of the world would consider pressure.  I don't risk my life going to work or the store.  There are no lands mines or snipers; no dangerous criminal types (not lately).  Here I am, mewling about what basically feels like death by a thousand pinches. Oh, those pinches.

Envy creeps in here.  I think all the little conflicts at home would be minimized if we lived in one of those MacMansions with a room for everybody and a few rooms to spare.  We do what we have to do.  A close family is a blessing - but at times the apples of my eye start to seem a bit rotten.  Oh, when these apples are packed so closely in the barrel.


I actually started writing this a few weeks ago and my eye was twitching and my head was pulsating too much to continue.  The change of having Martha move home in the wake of her sudden job shake up is pretty much resolved.  Most of my twitching has come from the logistics involved....Martha moved out, Fran moved into Martha's bedroom, Fran's bedroom was made into a library/lounge.  This could not in any reasonable way be undone.  But the negotiations over what to do led to a lot of bickering.  (one desperate conversation ended with me offering Martha my bedroom and I would live....in the garage? the laundry room?  the library?  I just wanted it all to stop.)  And my husband quotes Robert Frost and reminds me that home is where they have to take you in - and as someone who had once been taken in I appreciate the sentiment.  Rick and Frost both offered no insights on the logistics.  I don't think Nate Berkus has done any shows about this dilemma.  We're playing this by ear.

But home is where our hearts are.  And the turkey is already thawing in the fridge.  The eye twitch is in remission and Thanksgiving will find us thankful.

And...
while I was not dodging a turkey trying to throw itself under the wheels of my car. Or avoiding making eye contact with Ducky the husky. And looking for that misplaced $1000 face cream for the actinic keratosis on my forehead. (Yes, 0ne thousand dollars. That's half of what we paid for the Jeep! If only the box that the cream comes in would be half the size of the Jeep. [OK, $957, but let's just round it up for shock value.] The insurance company would pay once but I don't think they'll spring for it again if the dog eats it. Of course that might cure the dog problem. Just another Shouts & Murmurs essay, folks.) I did manage to write another post for Fr. Barron. A subject of great familiarity - the teenage feminine soul curvatus in se, the industry which perpetuates it and the true remedy.

Time for some serious blogging.
I know some serious blogging is on the horizon because I abruptly gave up the idea of long, glamorous fingernails*. Fingernails that can slow a girl down. And cause some unfortunate typos; at home and work. On any and all keyboards.


I've taken inspiration from my sister and decided to document an inspiring view through the seasons. She stops her car at an exquisite spot along the way to her children's school and takes beautiful pictures. The view of the cottonwood from my bed is good enough for me. Those canine nose prints give it a nice soft focus effect. My original idea was to take a picture every morning. That didn't work out. Day two found me lacking enthusiasm. As did days three, four and five. Weekly sounds good. Or biweekly.

* - umm, that would be fingernails that are maybe about an eighth of in inch past the end of my finger. A quarter inch and I feel like some sort of Dragon Lady. Half an inch and it feels like Guinness World Record time.

"Can You Pick Up a Bag of Ice?"
Those forlorn words...muttered by my husband about once every thirty-six hours...so iconic of the zeitgeist of household disrepair that someone once made it Dad's cellphone ringtone...

Now the ice issue has become part of the 'continental undrift' of my work and home lives. The identical French working glasses that I and a few other people in both locations think are absolutely swell, the identical dirty/clean sign on the dishwashers [yes - I made both of them], my boss and my husband having the same birth date... the list goes on. And now the icemaker. At work it's not for want of contacting a repair man. He's been here enough that we're becoming old friends; though not so friendly that I could ask him to hook me up with free repair service at home.

There are no dogs at work so there is some semblance of sanity. And a nice lady vacuums my office and dusts all the surfaces in the rectory on a regular basis. Except for my desk...I told her not to worry about my desk. My desk is a little too cluttered to ask anyone else to dust it. And there's that three-year old petrified potato on the shelf. Perhaps some people are put off by that. Honestly, though, the thorough ministrations of the cleaning lady leave me a little blue. I want to be the 'nice lady.' But when I get home and it is my turn, I'm not particularly nice.

I'm praying for patience. And offering up the glasses of tepid water...here and there. Accepting the way it all weaves together. [Well, just as long as I don't get a call from Fr. asking, "Can you pick up a bag of ice?" ]

UPDATE: Eureka - we have ice at work today. But that machine has lulled me into a false sense of security before, so I'm not counting on finding ice tomorrow.

You've Been Warned...
I found the batteries for the camera.
It's not that the unphotographed life is not worth living, but the life examined through the lens is a bit more...attractive. My father, an avid photographer who had documented the minutiae of my existence in the way befitting a child with a darkroom in the basement, warned me not to look back on my life and realize that I had lived through the view finder.
That hasn't really been a problem. I quickly forgot darkroom techniques - including winding my own bulk black and white film - and over the years deteriorated to the extent that most photo-documentation of my family was done with disposable 35mm cameras. Film that only had about a 49% chance of being developed.

I inherited Dad's video camera and did have fun with that. I'm not especially proud to admit that there was a time when the kids would wear me out with their rambunctious behavior and I would only really 'enjoy' watching them at play...on tape...at 2:00am. While in the fray, I was distracted by the details of health, safety and organization. But on tape in the middle of the night I could savor the aesthetic appeal of the brood.

The miracle of digital photography presents further opportunity for the documentation of the mundane. All sorts of pictures that I wouldn't deem worthy of taking to the drugstore for processing; in the digital world they become significant. And if my surroundings are looking a little drab I find that they look better through the lens. Better and much less in need of dusting.

Budget Carnival.
Seriously budget minded.
As in "75% off beaded garland in purple, green and gold." So what if there are snowflakes on the gold strand - this is Chicago!

What Kind of Mother...
before leaving for work, grabs an industrial size Sharpie marker and writes "You are a bunch of PIGS" on the window above the kitchen sink?
And then, before going out the front door, turns back and adds "Nasty, nasty pigs."*

Clearly not a mother of young children with delicate psyches. (Nor a mother who did a very good job when her progeny were young.) Maybe a mother who has returned from work at 8:00pm and found, for the second night in a row, that her family appears to have gone feral. A mother who can't wait to get to work. Because no matter how tedious or pointless her job may be, at least she can walk through the rectory without stepping in mystery substances. And the garbage there is taken out before it becomes a hazmat crisis.

*Don't worry - Sharpie is easily removed from glass. And it beats my first inclination, which was to grab some paint and write "HELTER SKELTER" on the living room wall.

Summer Thoughts

• The purpose of Scott's Colorful Songbird Food is not to promote healthier, glossier 12 pound chipmunks.

• If I were wealthy and eccentric I would devote my life to the eradication of the cottonwood tree. (Of course, if I were wealthy I could just stay inside, crank up the AC and hire someone to rake and sweep my yard twice daily until the cottonwood onslaught passes.) I saw what appeared to be a large fluffy white rat on the windshield of Rick's van this morning. To convey a better sense of disgust, allow me to paraphrase..."it look's like an explosion in a feminine hygiene products factory."

• I think I'm getting the hives. I look at the cottonwood and start to itch. Other things that cause intense itching:

1. The upstairs/downstairs Martha/Bridget room swap. Mellofahess. I'll say no more.
2. Our altar wine shipment. Which is coming from California...headed west. I'm thinking Somali pirates intercepting sail boats. That can be the only reason for the delay.
3. That obese chipmunk. I haven't seen one colorful songbird. No finches at the finch feeder, either. I'm wondering if I should sit near the window and play selections from the bird song book.
4. Thinking about cleaning my room, setting up a new bookcase and moving out the one-of-a-kind petite white hutch to give to Lilyanne. I haven't even found a new bookcase yet. Where are they on the curb when you need one? [I'm checking Craigslist, but rather than the fabulous antiquities that my sister finds for her Northwoods dream/nightmare house, the best I have found is a pair of taxidermied chickens for $450. They are for sale right in my town, but that doesn't make the price any more attractive. The chickens? They are attractive. But I don't need chickens. I need a bookshelf. For under $25.]
5. The laundry...
6. The phone calls...
7. The mess....

TGI...
I wouldn't say I was counting the moments til I could head off to work. But I could...
Just another weekend...

• Daughter #4 left for a Las Vegas vacation with a bunch of girlfriends. Say no more. (I'm checking up on her via Facebook...She's lost IQ points already. Misspelled Las Vegas.) There's a major prayer focus for the week.

• Fran had a birthday bonfire/cookout for William. I saw the bonfire on Facebook. The lighting of the bonfire was an incendiary event that I am glad I missed. I'm sure the video will be on YouTube shortly. You'll know it when by the screams of "The chairs are going to melt." Say no more. Except the idiot who chose the acellerant for the damp wood was not homeschooled. Not by me.

• Spent a substantial amount of time with another daughter who was worried/enraged over her boyfriend* who disappeared on Tuesday night. Disappeared as in he lives down the block from us and his car was never home and by Friday his mother was calling the sheriff etc. He rambled on home on Saturday morning. I offered to run down to his house and straighten him out. At eight in the morning, while clad only in nightshirt and Crocs. That was more for comic effect...but really, I was tempted. Where do these wastrels come from and how do my daughters keep finding them? (*A Model Idiot)

• Grey Gardens and Wise Blood are "very long wait" on NetFlix. So I watched Frida, which I enjoyed much more than I thought I would. Of course, I had to watch it in interrupted segments, the final coming after the power came back on Sunday morning. An exploding transformer is a nice wake-up for the party guests camping in the backyard. The WoW addicts were bereft, but I was able to crawl into the nearest book the way some might "crawl into a bottle."

• The explosion didn't bother me much, having already come close to losing my mind at the 7:30am Mass. I thought about grabbing the red liturgical binders on Thursday...and then it totally drifted out of my mind. Until the beginning of Mass, when the realization of what had slipped my mind hit me in such a visceral way that I felt light-headed and nauseous. (A sure sign that I have started to take my ancillary job way too seriously!) But there was no way I would sit down until the feeling passed, since I know what the ushers are instructed to do with the faint and/or ill who are not accompanied by an adult able to drive them home or to appropriate medical care. There was no way I was going to exit church on my back while muttering "red binders, red binders, I forgot the red binders."

• Sunday lunch at my in-laws dragged. No one noticed my catatonia. Perhaps I am simply suffering from a malady which my sister has termed "jangle." (Or maybe it's "djangle.") She should know what she's talking about, what with her J.D., her career in medical transcription, a bathroom-less house that must be entered through a window and a wiener dog who locks himself in the family mini-van. She knows jangle. I tried to de-jangle with a nap, but then Em and the baby wanted me to go to the craft store with them. I had no money to spend. The craft store catharsis just doesn't click when you have less than $5 in liquid assets.

• It was not wise to conclude such an arduous week-end with the MTV Movie Awards. It's not that I didn't find some small bits of amusement, but they didn't make up for my irritation at the skanky material versus the intended audience. They were giving awards to High School Musical 3 and Twilight, so I presume they knew that 12 year olds would be interested. And yet...and yet, for example, what about the "Balls Out" and "16 and Pregnant?" Not High School Musical crowd appropriate... The blurring of the line between juvenile and puerile-adult entertainment was too depressing. So I called it a night, crawling into bed with a heart full of thanksgiving that everyone was well and the week-end was over. Make that a heart full of thanks and with a wee bit of envy of Susan Boyle for her ability to sing check into a medically supervised rest facility.

Jangle update: There is a man outside my office window with some sort of chainsaw/drill/grinding device making a noise that makes any higher brain processes almost impossible. But I'm still more relaxed than I was over the week-end. As long as the lawn guys aren't working outside of the school table when I get home, the day should be pretty much of a success!

Comediennes left unattended...

prepare for St. Patrick's Day.

A Postcard from My One Day Vacation.

What kind of people have splatters on their ceilings?

Taking a vacation day to clean was a practical and spiritual mistake. Better that I had stayed with my initial plans to prepare for my sister's visit by putting 40 watt bulbs in all the sockets - aka the "Blanche DuBois" maneuver.

Book, blogs, magazines, school stuff, blogs, noticed ceiling, book, moved around remaining Christmas decorations, contemplated decaplets as next big "thing." Wish you were here.

20 + C +M+B + 09
Has anyone seen the blessed chalk?
Please don't tell me it's gone walk about. Just like the baby Jesus from the Playmobil Nativity.
I mean, can't a person set something down and expect to find it when she comes looking for it a year later?

Our Totemic Christmas Customs - Christmas Yet to Come

Behold! A most cherished gift and addition to our Christmas decor. But perhaps a bit lacking in the gris gris - juju - tschotschke department. So on this last day of Christmas, I ask for any and all suggestions on how this all too subdued and tasteful wreath can be brought in line with our family aesthetic. No Precious Moments, Praying Santas, fallout from other holidays, double-entendres or any incendiary materials (literally or figuratively), please!

Our Totemic Christmas Customs - #12

A little irony.
My tribute to the ornaments that my father would hang from the bayonet of the rifle above the family room fireplace.

Our Totemic Christmas Customs - #11

The Gilbert Shoe Company of Thiensville, Wisconsin, makers of fine children's shoes, went out of business in 1978. My Aunt Tommy was the office manager; working at the shoe factory had been her only job for over fifty years, starting right out of high school at the age of seventeen.

When all available personnel had claimed ornaments that they had added to the office Christmas tree over the years there leftovers. Aunt Tommy decided I would be the perfect recipient for the unclaimed ornaments. Rick and I had been married that June. Money was, in newly-wed fashion, tight. Free ornaments were very much appreciated.

To be honest, I took in those ornaments thinking that as years went by they could be replaced by 'better' ornaments of my choosing. But they have been integrated into our traditions, as a sweet reminder of the humble beginnings of our particular nuclear family. Additions of been made. My parents died and my sister and I brought the ornaments of our childhood back into our respective homes. And things have come back around. Now it is time to start spinning ornaments off to the children for their own respective trees. (Emily, your pig is ready when you are. I now this Christmas has been a bit chaotic!)