Monday, Monday

I really need to stop sleeping in over the weekend, because then Monday comes and I am so...effing...tired, and all the coffee Juan Valdez can pack over to me on his mule cannot keep me awake.  All day I dream of napping, and it's crazy hectic at work, and then I get home and it's make dinner get OD to her cello lesson take The Son to return the shoes he doesn't like go to the grocery store get everyone showered/homeworked/tucked and pluck George The Superpet's ear hair (yes, I do that) and then one would think I would be ready for bed and SURPRISE!  I'm wide awake.  Sure to be dead ass tired again tomorrow.

I did start this book last night, which is terrific so far:

It's a dog book, so I'm sucked in.  I read these books and I get engrossed, but there's also this voice in the back of my head that says, "You need to write your book" and I say "I don't have time right now" and the voice pesters me until I start yelling at it, "Do you have any idea how fucking hard it is to write a book!?!  And one that is actually good and has a story and proper English that people will read that doesn't have sparkly vampires in it because that is so 2010?!"

I love a good book.  I have been reading since I was four, and I love nothing better in life than losing myself in a book, where I am so obsessed with it that I can't put it down, and when I'm forced to put it down I can't stop thinking about when I can pick it back up again.  I will take a good book, and I mean a REALLY good book that is one of the obsession books, over sex, coffee, wine, pasta and tiramisu.  THAT is how much I love books. 

There are loads of books I've been this obsessive with in my life, but ones that pop into my mind immediately are - Jane Austen books (except for Northanger Abbey, which was okay but I could put it down and live), Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston, The Good People of New York and Out of the Girls Room and Into the Night by Thisbe Nissen, Cooked Little Heart and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, Devil in the White City by Eric Larson, It Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies, the entire Twilight series, the entire Harry Potter series, Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, Room by Emma Donoghue, all Jen Lancaster books, the Hunger Games series, and the Dragon Tattoo series by Stieg Larsson.  As a kid, it was Laura Ingalls Wilder, Nancy Drew, The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, The Trumpeter Swan, anything by Judy Blume and of course The Flowers in The Attic series.  Ish.

On deck right now I have A Tale of Two Cities, Portrait of a Lady, Bleachy-Haired Honky Bitch by Hollis Gillespie, It Looked Different on the Model by Laurie Notaro, and am awaiting Stacey Ballis's new book whenever it may come because I did love Good Enough to Eat.  And David Sedaris's Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk.  And With a Little Luck by Caprice Crane.

(I have to stop writing this because I have spent the last 20 minutes going back and adding another book I love to the "obsessed with" list.  Because I'm obsessed.)

But with a Pesky Full Time Job, my work severely cuts into my reading time, and then the Mothering takes over the non-paid-work time, so I find myself reading until all hours of the night and then waking up vowing never to do it again and covering the perpetually deep shadows under my eyes with foundation.  Open Memo to People at Work: I'm not being beaten, I'm reading.

What exactly is my point here?

That I write every single day, and have been writing pretty steadily for 15 years, and I can tell you firsthand that it is DAMN HARD to write a book.  Try it, I dare you.  I'm about 2/3 of the way through my first novel, which is about 60,000 words (the average blog post is about 600-900 words), and I haven't TOUCHED the novel in over a year.  I know how it's going to end.  I just haven't written it down.  And then when you start writing it, it changes.  The book actually takes your thoughts and says, "Bullshit, that would never happen.  THIS is what that character REALLY wants to do!"  I have another book rolling around in my head, and a collection of short stories too.  But guess what?  No publisher is going to pay me to tell them all about the stories and not write them down.  It's that tricky technicality of calling oneself a writer...you actually have to WRITE.

Every week, I say, "once we get through the school year I'll make time to write", then "once we get through the summer, I'll make time to write" and "Once school starts again, I'll make time to write" and now it's "once I finish this freelance project for CH..." and "once we finish the basement..."  One of these days I might actually do it, but honestly people, I'm 42 and I start worrying that I'm never going to purge these words.  It's like John Lennon said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

Every time I hear the song, "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield, which I'm pretty sure she wrote specifically for me, I think Get Your Ass In Gear, Girl!  Do you have a lifelong ambition that is unmet?  Do you have something you are just dying to do and just don't do it?  What is holding you back?  Am I alone in thinking my epitaph is going to be "Unfulfilled potential?"  Lay it on me, Wifers, if Blogger will let you comment.  What is on your mind?  If you can't comment here, go to the FB page and do it there.  I want to know!

Laundry School Dropout

This morning was a wee bit of a disaster in my empire.

The alarm went off at 6:30 a.m., and I woke Oldest Daughter to get ready for middle school.  I promptly went back to bed, because I can sometimes sleep in until 7 a.m. if I've had a late night before (working, not Out).  And so I did.  At 7:14, I rolled out of bed to strap on a bra and put on some jeans to take OD to school at 7:30.  I walk into the hallway and see OD is still in her pajamas, and we are leaving in 16 minutes.  Why has she been up for 44 minutes and is not ready?  Well DUH, because she can't find the one pair of khaki shorts that she MUST wear to school today!  No other clothing for the lower half of her body will do - IT MUST BE THE KHAKI SHORTS.  Or perhaps she won't be able to attend middle school today.  Clearly the khaki shorts are the lynchpin to her success in middle school today, and forever after.  It's *THAT* serious.  College degrees and future grandchildren hang in the balance.  Without these shorts, she will be resigned to living in the basement, knowing she coulda been a contender.

 I do some panicky yelling, which pulls the double function of making the shorts magically appear in the bottom of her hamper AND waking The Son so he can get ready to leave for Safety Patrol at school at 8 a.m.  I drive OD to school, and when I return, The Son is having issues because he, too, cannot find the one item of clothing he would like to wear.  Panicky yelling ensues again, and the item appears and Youngest Daughter comes downstairs to start her morning complaining, and to tell me she can't find any clean socks.

And That. Just.  Did It.  
Time for The Laundry Lecture, which goes something like this:

"I did not go to college to be your laundry maid waitress vending machine!!!  You cannot push a button on me and snacks and clean laundry and missing homework will magically appear!  If you want clean laundry, you must take used clothing, which I like to call "DIRTY CLOTHES", and move them from the room you sleep in to the area in front of the magic white boxes in the basement I like to call the "WASHING MACHINE" and the "DRYER".  THERE IS NO TELEPORTER IN THE BOTTOM OF THE HAMPER!!!  ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?"

Feel free to steal any or all of my speech, but I will tell you that it has zero effectiveness.  The remaining children did move their clothes, which was three weeks worth of dirty laundry that had been shoved in the hamper, closets, under beds, and in cabinets, down the stairs, forming Mount Laundry, that started at the bottom of the stairs and ended up far short of the machine.  

EXHIBIT A:  The beginning of Mt. Laundry

This extends for fifteen feet into the laundry area. 

They used it to slide down the steps.

And yes, that IS a water noodle.  Probably still out from last summer.

EXHIBIT B:  What's that in the pile of clothes?

No kidding, this is exactly how I found the pile.

Let's move a few things to see what's in the box...

EXHIBIT C:  Yes, it is.

They've thrown their laundry ON TOP 

of a laundry sorter, Mint In Box.

By now perhaps you've figured out that laundry is the bane of my existence.  Even after multiple lectures, no one brings the laundry downstairs until they have nothing to wear to school except for the top half of a bikini, Christmas leggings and a cardigan they've outgrown with a large chalk stain on it.  When YD wears this type of outfit to school, which is often, other parents pull me aside at school functions and say, "It's so cute how she dresses herself - she has quite a fashion sense!" and I laugh along, but really?  It's because she has no clean clothes, and I'd rather they think she's color blind than let them know I don't keep up with keeping my whites white and my colors bright.

I'm not alone in Laundry Siberia.  Remember the Calgon commercials?

I'd like to point out a few things.
A)  Is it just me, or is this commercial just a wee bit racist?
B)  Notice the man is running the counter and doing the talking, but the kimono-wearing wife is behind the curtain, doing all of the work.  Hmm....
C)  Why does the woman give a crap HOW Mr. Lee gets the shirts so clean?  Let him KEEP his effing Ancient Chinese Secret.  Get my damn laundry done and I won't ask any questions!  What a sweet deal!

I know a family of four who hate doing laundry so much, they send it out to a local hotel to do it.  (I KNOW!  A hotel will do your laundry!?  Why didn't I get the memo?)  The clothes come back clean and folded.  Their only complaint?  "Well, they tend to smell a bit like cigarette smoke.  But hey, we can work around that."  These are organic-loving NPR listening artsy types, but they are willing to turn the other cheek as long as the laundry gets done.  I can totally respect that.

But laundry is only the beginning.  I didn't have three kids so I would be in charge of doing all of the housework forever.  It's time to buck up, kids, and find your inner Cinderella, your Little Princess, your Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Ma needs you to pull your weight around the Frontier!  Check back next time, when I post about the other household chores that are being neglected.  In the meantime, feel free to post comments about your own Laundry Woes.  And new readers?  Welcome!  And thanks for all of your comments lately.  I am quite the comment whore.  You, reading the blog right now?  You're my favorite.  Don't tell the other readers.

What Can Brown Do For You?

Laura was surprised to see the dark shape of Sukey, the brown cow, standing at the barnyard gate. Ma went up to the gate, and pushed against it to open it.
"Sukey, get over!" She reached across the gate and slapped Sukey's shoulder.
Just then one of the dancing little bits of light from the lantern jumped between the bars of the gate, and Laura saw long, shaggy black fur, and two little, glittering eyes. Sukey had thin, short, brown fur. Sukey had large, gentle eyes.
Ma said, "Laura, walk back to the house."
Ma ran with her into the house, and slammed the door.
Then Laura said, "Ma, was it a bear?"
"Yes Laura," Ma said. "It was a bear." - Little House in the Big Woods

So maybe that morning the bear got up late and didn't have a chance to wash her hair and she put on a cap, and it was cold in the Big Woods, so she had to put her brown fleece jacket on to stay cozy warm while she strolled around the barn looking for a venti skinny vanilla latte. And then Ma comes outside and starts calling her a cow, saying "Move it, Sukey!" and smacking her on her big bear butt, which she has been a little sensitive about lately after a fall of eating fat, tasty bunnies.

It could happen. I'm just saying maybe we should look at it from the bear's perspective.

This morning I had an early morning "meeting" with a friend of mine who enables my Starbucks addiction, but I am not much of a morning glory, so I pulled on my trusty brown corduroy cap, which is both stylish and fall-like. After surviving 40 winters in the Midwest, one would think I am used to the dipping temperatures at this time of year, but alas, I am a creme puff. (Did someone say Creme Puffs? Drool.) So I pulled on my equally trusty brown fleece jacket and a scarf and headed over to the opium den the world knows as Starbucks. And I did get a skinny vanilla latte. And it was delicious.

After my "very important business meeting" was over, I drove to my local car dealership for a scheduled oil change in my family minivan. Because I rock that minivan. I left the keys in the ignition and Linkin Park turned up in the CD player so that the guy who would be changing my oil would understand that I am a tough mother. Don't even try to upgrade me on unnecessary wiper blades or the most expensive synthetic oil produced. I'm onto you people. Because I listen to Linkin Park. The connection is very clear.

I walk into the service area to check in my van, and there is a lovely little old lady and her daughter in front of me, deep in discussion with the service bay manager. The check-in area is behind a cinder block half wall, so you can only see people from the waist up. I'm peering over the cinder block wall, looking at the various vehicles up in the air and thinking about how fun it would be to stay in the car while they change the oil, drinking coffee and reading my book while the lift raised and lowered, when I hear someone ask me a question.

ME: Smiling in direction of questioner, a guy who works there. "Huh?"
GUY: "Do you need me to sign something?"
ME: Still smiling. "Huh?"
GUY: Walking closer. "Do you need me to sign something?"
ME: Getting confused. "Huh?"
GUY: Walks around cinder block wall, wiping his hands. Gives me a once-over, and he turns red. "Uh, okay, they'll be with you in a minute."
ME: Smiling again. Oblivious. "Okay, thanks!"

I stand there for a minute, take a drink of my coffee, and look down at my brown arm. And then I think about my brown cap. And I realize that he just mistook me for a UPS driver.

So much for stylish and snarky. He thought I was delivering those fancy new fexor valves. (Because it's all about ball bearings these days.) I was not a Hot Momma, as I had envisioned in my cute corduroy/fleece/Linkin Park world. He was coming to see what Brown had done for him. To make myself feel better, this is how I think it was really going down:

(Porn movie base playing - Bow chicka wow wow...)
GUY (Looking like CH or Edge): "Do you need me to sign something?"
ME: "Oh yeah. I have your package. Right. Here."
GUY: "Then let me sign it for you."
ME: Slowly unzip my brown fleece jacket. Unbutton sexy UPS shirt.
(Bow chicka wow wow...)
GUY: "My lift is raising." He grabs a can of Castrol 10w30.
ME: I wink. Unclasp brown UPS bra. Breasts fall out and smack against concrete...SCREECH! Fantasy over, due to aging and gravity. But at least he didn't call me Sukey and smack my hindquarters.

And I guess that's all Brown did for me today. You can bet I will be wearing my stylish gray cap and black fleece tomorrow instead.

This is the last Laura Ingalls Wilder post - thanks for enduring LIW Month, and you can sample a little Linkin Park, "In The End" on the player.

The Big Turkey That Couldn't

Almanzo simply ate.

He ate ham and chicken and turkey, and dressing and cranberry jelly; he ate potatoes and gravy, succotash, baked beans and boiled beans and onions, and white bread and rye'n'injun bread, and sweet pickles and jam and preserves. Then he drew a long breath, and he ate pie.

When he began to eat pie, he wished he had eaten nothing else. - Farmer Boy

Damn. I'm feelin' you, Manly.

The major difference between the books about Laura's childhood and Farmer Boy, about Almanzo's childhood, is food and stable housing. Laura's story is about moving from log house to sod house to wood house, and Pa's restless nature (and his tendency to kill). Laura's story is full of corncob dolls, riding across the prairie in wagons, blizzards, men nearly dying in wells, grasshopper plagues, illness, lots of cornbread and johnnycakes and Nellie Oleson (I was spelling it wrong - cardinal Little House sin!)

In Farmer Boy, every third page is about food. Salt pork and potatoes and brown ham-gravy and biscuits and homemade ice cream and pancakes and popcorn with real dairy butter and pies...oh Lord, the pies. Almanzo even gets smacked in the eye with a burning potato that shot out of the fire - they get hurt by the food! This I can wrap my muffin top around.

In the spirit of Farmer Boy, on Friday night we had a dinner party. It's actually generous to call it a dinner party, because that would imply it was nice. We put out a bunch of bulk food items and told about 40 people to show up and fill their paper plates while our dog nosed them in the crotch.

We never do things like this because they make me extremely nervous - it's like opening all of your curtains and turning on all the lights at night and changing your clothes. Everyone can see in, you aren't sure who is looking at what, but they can see it all. I can do family on family, but the larger groups seem to require organization I don't possess. We've eaten at so many dinner parties in our community in the past couple of years and not reciprocated, it was time for us to pay our dues.

I thought, "How bad could it be?" which is funny, because it's the same thing I thought before birthing our three children or buying four different special needs houses or opening a retail store or walking in the front door at 3 a.m. when I was a teenager locked out of the house after sneaking out or having just...one...more...drink. How bad can it be? Bad. Real bad.

We told people it was a White Trash party, but mostly just because it was at our house, hosted by us, and we didn't feel like cleaning. We emphasized our stuffed and mounted squirrel (yes, we have one) and put sheets on the furniture and bought disposable dinnerware. Theme fulfilled.

Menu-wise, I thought I couldn't go wrong with a turkey on the grill. A nice 20-pound bird ought to keep people fed, and what goes better with turkey than mashed potatoes? And a creamed corn/cornbread casserole? Oooh, and some cranberry conserve? And asparagus? And then dinner rolls? Super! Except that I got about 2 hours into the preparation of this meal and had a little Come To Jesus moment:

A) I've never grilled a turkey.

B) I've invited nearly 40 people, and have 6 chairs indoors. And it's 40 degrees and rainy outside.

C) My menu was going to ruin everyone's Thanksgiving.

So it seemed like an appropriate time to open the first bottle of wine.

Since I live in 2009, I consulted the Internet. Everything is on the Internet, right? Three different websites told me to grill the turkey at 300-350 degrees for 15 minutes for every pound. I'm no math genius, but I deduced I should grill my 20-pound turkey for 5 hours. At 11 a.m., I put the bird to flame. The guests were coming at 5 p.m. My turkey was done at 1:30. By 2:30, the popper that tells you the turkey is done had actually propelled out of the turkey and through the foil into the pan. By 2:45, the turkey carcass had literally split in half, with the breast bone cracked in half and meat falling off of it into what turned out to be about 6 cups of butter. My turkey was saying Uncle.

"At least I have potatoes," I thought as I walked to the basement fridge. I took the stockpot holding 15 pounds of potatoes I cleaned, peeled and diced the night before. But when I pulled the potatoes out of the fridge, I realized my error. Cut potatoes oxidize, and my diced white potatoes were all a nice charcoal color. With nowhere else to go, I boiled these gray potatoes, and skimmed the black foam off the top of the pan as they cooked. My youngest daughter squealed, "Oooh! Halloween potatoes!!"

When it was time to mash them, I found white things to put in the pot to lighten them, as one would with paint. Sour cream, salt, milk, half and half, all were added to the pot, but to no avail. The gray roadkill potatoes would be seated next to the broken down turkey on cinder blocks. With the corn playing banjo music next to it. Again, theme fulfilled.

I could go into the other food debacles of the night, like the dry creamed corn, or the shallow church social steamer I used that only kept about 5 servings of food warm at a time, but in times like these, I know people will forgive all of your food faux pas if you have dessert and liquor, and I had those in spades. My pastry chef/gourmand friend made the most amazing pies and homemade cinnamon ice cream, two other friends brought lots of wine to add to our stock, and one guest owns a brewery and brought a keg, so instead of asking "Can I get you more food?" our mantra became "Let me fill your glass".

All of the guests got lightly toasted (and a couple got quite fried), people sat on each other's laps or on their spouses shoulders (and pulled out lighters and yelled "Freebird!") minors were banished to the basement, and the last people left at almost 2 a.m. so it seemed to be a success.

Mother Wilder would have been proud. Or plowed. Because I'm hoping if I filled her glass often enough, she would forget about that busted up turkey and gray potatoes and only dream of pie and wine.

Dancing on Laura Ingalls Wilder's Grave

Mary yawned, and Laura said: "Ma, can't we get out and run behind the wagon? My legs are so tired."
"No, Laura," Ma said.
"Aren't we going to camp pretty soon?" Laura asked. It seemed such a long time since noon, when they has eaten their lunch sitting on the clean grass in the shade of the wagon.
Pa answered: "Not yet. It's too early to camp now."
"I want to camp, now! I'm so tired," Laura said.
Then Ma said, "Laura." That was all, but it meant that Laura must not complain. So she did not complain any more out loud, but she was still naughty, inside. She sat and thought complaints to herself.

Since we are on the downside of October, it's time to get all sentimental about Laura Ingalls Wilder month. Sniff. Even if Pa was crazy as a coon in heat, and Ma probably spit in his porridge in acts of passive aggressiveness, if Mary was so perfect that she kind of pissed you off and then you felt guilty when she went blind, and Carrie seemed kind of dull and Grace was spoiled, as a girl in the '70s you just had to love the Little House on the Prairie books.

I lived in Nebraska in a small town that made up the ribbon of civilization between the Omaha metro area and the grasslands that everyone hates on their drive to Colorado. The Little House books were my first love affair with history, and I could picture what Nebraska might have looked like 100 years before, and what girls my age were doing (which, by the way, was not playing Atari, eating Lucky Charms and watching Gilligan's Island.)

When I was 10 and my sister was 6, my mom took us on a summer trip to see Laura's home in Mansfield, Missouri. By then, I had probably read all of the Little House books three times, and was completely entranced with everything in them. I had to see it. My dad managed to bail out on that trip, since 8 hours in the car with three women to see Laura Ingalls Wilder's house held as much appeal as learning to make ganache or scrapbooking or talking about his feelings.

Here is what I remember from the trip to Mansfield:
* My mom drove her kick-ass white Thunderbird. In the pre-sunroof days it was complete with the T-roof feature where you had to stop the car, take out the heavy and highly breakable glass panels, and put them in the trunk. If it started to rain or birds kept crapping in your car, you'd have to pull over, open the trunk, and replace the heavy, highly breakable glass panels.

* My sister and I wanted McDonalds, and we got it for every meal because my Dad, Thrifty McThriftmiester, Mr. Bring Bananas In The Car, Mr. I'm Not Paying For That Crap, wasn't with us to say no.

* Mom found a hill in northern Missouri that would make you lose your stomach when you drove over the crest, so we made her stop, turn the car around, and go back and forth over it about 10 times, and she did it, earning her a place in the Mom Hall of Fame.

* My sister and I got bored, and found a really annoying way to amuse ourselves.

ME: "Can we stop and get out of the car?"
MOM: "No, Julie."
ME: "Aren't we going to be there pretty soon?" It seemed like forever since our most recent slop of the trough at the Golden Arches.
SISTER: "Yeah!" (She was six, her role was to play backup to whatever position I was taking.)
MOM: "No, we aren't close yet. Let's play a game - when you see a truck, you can honk my nose!" (This is one of those moments a parent looks back and says "What in the hell was I thinking!?!?")
ME: "TRUCK!" And I pushed my hand on Mom's nose.
MOM: "HONK!"
SISTER: "TRUCK!"
MOM: "HONK!"
ME: "TWO TRUCKS!" And I smack my hand on Mom's nose twice.
SISTER: "Me too!" And she semi-punches Mom in the nose twice.
MOM: (Dodging our blows and trying to stay out of the ditch) "Honk...honk...ouch..hey..Knock it off Dammit! No more honking!"
ME: "But Mom, it is a fun game!"

Then Mom said, "Julie." That was all, but it meant that I must not complain. But instead of being a good girl like Laura, I rode shotgun and complained the rest of the way to Mansfield, because I was that kind of child.

We did go to Rocky Ridge Farm, Laura and Almanzo's house in Mansfield, and to me it was the most amazing thing on the planet. The house, which Laura and Manly built themselves, was lovely, and it held all of the holy relics of the Little House series: Pa's actual fiddle, Mary's organ, the 'Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread' plate that survived the fire, the rocking chair Almanzo built for Laura, and of course tons of photos, brooches, letters, and other ephemera. I was in heaven.

From Rocky Ridge, we proceeded to the graveyard, where we visited Laura's grave. There she was, next to Manly. And then something a little undignified happened. My sister, who had gamely followed me through the house and into the gift shop and now to the graveyard, was having a revelation.

"WAIT A MINUTE!!!" she screamed. "Do you mean to tell me that we drove ALL THIS WAY to see some DEAD LADY'S HOUSE!?!?!"

She agreed to this trip on the terms that Melissa Gilbert would come bounding out of the house, braids flying behind her, to bring us in to camp out in the attic, go for wagon rides and play by the creek and mess with Nellie Olson. But she had NOT signed up to poke around some dead person's stuff. It was too much. My little sister proceeded to have a full-blown meltdown, dancing on the grave of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Because that dead bitch had done her wrong.

We don't speak of the "Dead Lady Vacation" in my family, but let's just say that my sister never became a fan of the books, my mom never again proposed games that involved smacking her about the face while driving, and I still send messages of apology to LIW every once in a while.

Pioneer Runway

I come from a long line of Mennonites. My father's family are very kind, practical, thrifty people, so it's no wonder I lean toward the practical joking/social drinking Irish of my mother's kin. Dad is a total by-the-book Mennonite, except for the drinking, smoking, swearing, vanity, breaking the Sabbath, not going to church and some light coveting. However, he is thriftier than God.

The first time my parents met Current Husband, we ate turkey, and when CH took dark meat, my mom looked at me and said, "Oh no. Not this one." My dad was the only dark-meat-eating member of the family, and my mother equated a thigh preference with someone who wouldn't turn on the AC until it is 110 degrees outside, or the heat unless toes start turning white and numb (this is actually true). My mother was right - CH is a big miser. You'll find Mom working in Omaha at "Get Your Meat Read at Jan's House of Turkey Futures."

CH is always trying to find creative ways to save money. His current experiment involves cancelling cable and putting a wireless modem in the basement so we can watch TV from the Internet. At dinner, my youngest daughter's favorite part of the day was finding out that Spongebob might be marrying Sandy on Nick next week. When I told her we wouldn't have cable TV, she was devastated. It was like I told her Santa wasn't real, AND he kicked the tooth fairy in the bicuspids. I patted her hand and said, "It's your Daddy's fault."

There are only three shows I watch, and they are ALL on cable: The Daily Show/Colbert (I consider these one show), Mad Men, and Project Runway. Missing Project Runway makes me think about the Ingalls women, and how they could sew. On Project Runway, contestants frequently have to make outfits out of strange raw materials, like newspaper or candy wrappers, and I realize that is ALL those pioneer women had to make their clothes.

In "By The Shores of Silver Lake" the whole family makes a coat for Grace. Pa shoots a swan (Aaah! Who kills a swan!? Stop the madness, Pa!), Ma stretches and prepares the skin, and the girls sew together blue silk and make the lining out of swan's down. Michael Kors would have LOVED them, and mark my words, that swan coat would've made it to Bryant Park.

On the Little House version, Pioneer Runway, the contestants make clothes out of synthetic fabric, since the stuff they are wearing is already made out of flour sacks and gun casings and swans. For tonight's challenge, they work in teams, and they must: "Create A Pioneer Woman's Everyday Work Outfit With Mostly Polyester."

There are only eight designers left, and the teams are Laura and Mary (naturally), Ma and Carrie, that bitch Nellie Olson and her mother, and the requisite gay team of Albert Ingalls and Willie Olson. (Oh come on, you KNOW Willie was gay!) They have 10 minutes in the Mood General Store, and they panic because no one is there to cut and they only have a budget of fifty cents. They make it under budget and leave. "Thank you, Mood!"

They are working as quickly as they can, because it is only light out for another hour, the kerosene lamps are dim, there is only one pedal sewing machine and Mrs. Olson keeps "accidentally" breaking the needles. Laura is feeling the time crunch and having second thoughts about their design.

LAURA: "Mary, this is a fashion disaster. We're being too safe."
MARY: "What are you saying? It's beautiful!"
LAURA: "It's too Goddess. Goddess is SO last year. We might as well throw a pashmina and a sailor hat on it."
MARY: "No, it has great construction, and I think we're going to win this challenge."
LAURA: "Jesus, Mary, what are you, blind?"
MARY: "Um...."
LAURA: "Oh, sorry, I forgot."
(Mary continues to hand-sew a pocket inside-out on the right calf of the dress.)

Tim Gunn walks in to check everyone's work. He's in a coonskin cap and carries an actual gun, turning his name into a charming, fable-like moniker. As he is reviewing Ma and Carrie's wrap dress, ("This concerns me"), it gets too close to the kerosene lamp and bursts into flame. They are out. Auf Wiedersehen.

Suddenly, the Olson's swing dress gets too close to the cookstove, and it too flames out. Albert and Willie are fighting about who is actually the team leader, because Albert IS the team leader, but Willie keeps alpha-bitching him, and Albert is angry. Theirs is a winter outfit, meant to be worn on the way home from visiting a neighbor, but when they put the hot potatoes in the pocket (to keep the wearer's hands warm, remember?) the heat melts the poly into a literal hot mess. Tim tells them they have to "Make it work."

They get on the Runway, and the Pioneer creations get scathing remarks from Michael, Heidi, Nina Garcia, and from their guest judge, Willa Cather.
"It's like a Buffalo's ass."
"She's a hoochie momma after a terrible barn fire."
"You have no sense of style. You are boring us, and that's hard in a time of no entertainment or technology."
"You design for your client, not the volunteer bucket brigade."
"Love the pocket on the lower calf - so innovative and original!"

Laura and Mary win, of course, because no Little House story ends with an Olson beating an Ingalls. And I will be watching my three shows on our TV by Christmas, because I know how to break CH. But this time, I have three little Disney/Nick addicts to back me up, and nobody puts (our) Baby in the corner.

Time For a Beatin'

"...Then Pa growled so terribly, his hair was so wild and his eyes so fierce that it all seemed real. Mary was so frightened that she could not move. But as Pa came nearer Laura screamed, and with a wild leap and a scramble she went over the wood box, dragging Mary with her.
'You shouldn't frighten the children so, Charles...
Look how big their eyes are!'" - Ma, Little House in the Big Woods

It's one thing to read the Little House books as a kid in the 70's, but it's quite another to read them with your young children today. They dislike Little House in the Big Woods for reasons other than pig killing. It's because throughout the book, when Pa isn't murdering the forest creatures, he is either spanking, telling stories about spanking, or acting like he's on peyote. These all qualify with my kids as "Reasons to Dislike Charles Ingalls."

Pop.

That's the sound of my "Oh the kids will come to love the Little House books as I have" bubble bursting.

Their cultural references today do not cover discipline, because no one on Disney or Nick ever gets disciplined. The mom on The Suite Life of Zack and Cody isn't cutting a switch from a tree in the lobby of the Tipton and beating the tar out of those kids (oh, but they so richly deserve it). Spencer, Carly's brother on iCarly, doesn't go all Mike Tyson on her when her friend Samantha eats all of their food or floods their house. And Spongebob doesn't run around acting like he's on peyote. (Oh wait. He does. How else do you explain a sponge in tighty whiteys who lives in a pineapple under the sea and is friends with a starfish in OP shorts and a squirrel in a dive suit. But it's really funny, so that's okay.)

My sister and I grew up in the 70's, when it was becoming uncouthe to beat your children. Semantics dictated that it was no longer discipline and was now to be called abuse, soon to be followed in the '80s with the banning of leaving kids in the car while grocery shopping and making them fetch your rum and Cokes at parties.

My worst physical punishment on record, and believe me when I tell you that I wholeheartedly deserved every punishment I got, was when I sassed my mom in the car. As you can imagine, I was very...um...verbose as a child, and knew which pointy sharp words to use on appropriate occasions. We pulled into the mall parking lot and I was in the back seat when my mom made some stern comment, probably about my attitude. I retorted with a statement designed to escalate the situation, knowing I was safe in the back seat. My mom got very quiet, put her cigarette carefully in the ashtray, and tried to lunge over the backseat to slap me. She made contact only once, since I was not wearing a seatbelt and was still in my Sears Toughskins slim jeans, and then she realized people in the parking lot were watching her. She told me to sit in the car and think about what I had done while she went into the mall, presumably to find a bar and an adoption agency.

Did I sit in that backseat and think about what I had done? Au contraire, my friends. Pa would have spanked me, then regaled me with a story about how his father had been caught breaking the Sabbath by sledding and then hit a pig (loose pigs were apparently very prevalent back then) and his father had to wait until the Sabbath was over to get his beating, and I would have felt ashamed and contrite.

No, I sat in the backseat of the car repeatedly slapping myself in the same spot my mom had hit me so I could get a bruise, or at least an angry welt, and then when people would say, "What happened to you?" as they surely would because my life was so important to them, I could say, "My mom hit me". Believe me when I tell you that my mom gets very nice Mother's Day cards today.

I think my sister's worst punishment came when we didn't pick up our toys like we were supposed to, and after telling us to pick up forty times my dad finally came unhinged and started throwing our toys up the stairs to our rooms. One of the items Dad launched up the stairs was my sister's beloved doll, Goo-Goo. Goo-Goo was one of those 70's dolls (whose brand name escapes me) that not only drank a bottle and peed, she ate food and pooped. Goo-Goo came sailing up the stairs in slow motion, her bright yellow and olive green frock floating gracefully around her as she hit the wall, at which time her head popped off and she shat herself.

Whoops.

The next person to come unhinged in my family was my sister, looking at her beheaded doll laying in a puddle of her own poo. But I can't blame Goo-Goo, because anyone who has witnessed my dad coming unhinged knows this is a common response. Goo-Goo took one for the team that day. Dad sort of shuffled off in horror and I tried unsuccessfully to hook Goo-Goo's head back on her body, but alas, that doll had taken her last crap.

Pa's disciplinary measures may not have survived into the 21st century, but his storytelling with a message lives on. Today, my sister and I like to tell our kids about how Grumpy broke our favorite toys while high on peyote, just before the liquor and the beatings, and that if they don't shape up we'll invite Grumpy over to the house. It's far more effective than cutting a switch.

Laura is to braids as I am to Aniston

Last Friday I got a haircut.

When I say "haircut," I mean the chemical painting of my hair to cover up the 'Old Hag Salt and Pepper' color I naturally sport, cutting of the hair, and then waxing of my Freda Kahlo moustachio. After I paid my (gasp!!!) $130 bill for said haircut and procedures (please God do not let CH read this post), I started thinking that might be more than Laura paid for hair maintenance in HER ENTIRE LIFE. I will be embracing my future styling, heretofore called "The Half Pint."

Anyone who watched "Little House on the Prairie" and saw Melissa Gilbert bounding down the grassy hill knows Laura was a braid girl. Except for Little House in the Big Woods, Laura is always illustrated with her hair in braids, either down her back or done up in a bun-type do. I have serious doubts as to whether Laura ever had her hair colored. It was probably highlighted from the sun, as she sometimes disobeyed Ma and ran on the prairie without her bonnet, but never in an orangey Sun-In sort of way (see Julie in Junior High).

I feel confident it's equally likely Laura Ingalls Wilder never had wax applied to her body, be it the upper lip, brow or netherparts, unless it was after the hogs were butchered and some tallow for candles spilled. (And I dearly hope that was not on her netherparts.)

Basically I'm thinking Laura would strongly disapprove of my entire haircare regimen.

Since my appointments are so expensive (somehow I am shocked at the total every single time, and check the receipt for mistakes), I only get my hair done every 12 weeks or so. It's important to me to let my roots grow out 3 inches and to get a nice downy black fluff above my lip so that when I come home from the appointment I look so stunningly improved that if CH should happen to see the amount it took to get me that way he might ignore it.

As the appointments are three months apart, I forget them. Organized mothers have their appointments written down in a handy calendar they keep in their purse. I'm not one of those mothers; I write things down on scraps of paper I keep in my purse, later used to catch gum from my children. The salon calls me the night before my appointment to remind me, and again, I am always surprised. This is the life of the disorganized wife and mother - always full of surprises!

My stylist is a lovely unmarried young person who is blonde, thin, childless and owns her own home. Because of this, she has no traces of bitterness or stress about her, and always seems cheerfully optimistic that she can help when I ask to look like Natalie Portman or Jennifer Garner. I whip out a book to read and she goes to work.

Last week, something went very wrong.

Instead of my usual lighter color, trim, and lip wax, I ended up with darker hair, a Jennifer Aniston cut circa Rachel, and a very abnormally swollen, pink upper lip. I looked like I was unshowered, ready to break up with Ross (again), and resembling Hitler in pink. I was a real-life dirty Rachel Green FemiNazi.

I don't know what happened on that fateful day. Was Blonde Girl distracted? Angry? High? Taking out her secret sado-masochistic streak on me? I'll never know. When she twirled me around to look at my hair, I stifled a gasp and said, "It looks great, thanks!" because I am that much of a gutless wonder. And then I gave her a 20% tip (included in the $130 total for those keeping track) and made my appointment for January, which I promptly forgot.

Next time, I'm going for braids. Welcome to The Half Pint.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President

Yesterday was Current Husband's 40th birthday. Shhh. He doesn't want anyone to know.

It's not so much that CH is uptight about his age, but he really doesn't want people to "know things" about him. This is why I have a blog. So I don't talk about him to people we know.

A few weeks ago, I asked him what he wanted for his birthday. He said, "Nothing." And he meant it. He wanted nothing. No cards, no party, no gifts. When he asks me what I want for my birthday, I usually say nothing. What I mean is that I would like a nice card with thought that he didn't buy at a gas station, dinner, a gift card to somewhere I love, and a big deal made out of the three meals during the day with in-between surprise massages and coffee delivery. Gifts are optional, but appreciated.

I have a hard time with getting him nothing for his birthday. He puts up with my erratic mood swings and questionable sense of humor all year long, so it's nice for me to feel like I can do something selfless for him one day a year that I can throw in his face when we have a fight. I thought about having a roller skating party, or a ping pong tournament party, or even a small but tasteless dinner party. But each time I thought of these things, all I could think about was his face when he walked into the room - disbelief, followed by masked annoyance, followed by a quick guesstimate as to how much it all cost - and then his feigned enjoyment of the night while everyone paid attention to him. So not fun in his world.

Yesterday was his birthday, and guess what I did? Nothing. And I felt horrible. And he loved it. He laid in bed, watched college football, and made the kids give him back rubs and bring him stuff (so different from other weekends? Hmmm.). I finally made him get up and get dressed so I could take him out for dinner at the Faithful Pilot in LeClaire, Iowa (if you have never been, you really should) but that was more about my guilt than his day.

How does this relate to Laura Ingalls Wilder? Well, it really doesn't, except that I am sure she didn't get Manly much on his birthdays, and she didn't throw him a roller skating party either. Happy Birthday, Current Husband. Enjoy your day of nothing. But don't think this is the gift that keeps on giving when my birthday comes around, because I'm a little more Nellie Olson than that.

Laura Ingalls Wilder is my Homegirl

Once upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little gray house made of logs...

I've loved Laura Ingalls Wilder since I could pick up a book, and since I am feeling themey lately, I am going to move from Neil Diamond Month in September straight into Laura Ingalls Wilder Month in October.

I so wanted my kids to love the Little House books, and when my oldest daughter was about 7 and my son around 5, I started to read Little House in the Big Woods to them. I should have remembered that they thought the Easter Bunny was creepy and Santa was a stranger who wanted them to sit on his lap and tell him all their secrets.

By page 5, the killing started.

Instead of inspiring them to think of historic, frontier America, the book made them despise pioneers. Pa was offing deer, bears, squirrels, and rabbit. To my kids, this was Bambi, Teddy, Chip and Dale and Thumper. Then Ma is taking them apart like a serial killer and stuffing the bits in the attic.

By page 13, they were dismantling a hog.

ME: "...and then when they butchered the hog, Ma saved the bladder and blew it up for the girls to play with it..."
THEM: "What do you mean, 'the bladder?'"
ME: "The bladder is an organ inside of the pig. Ma blew it up so they could play with it, like a balloon."
THEM: "What do you mean, 'organ inside the pig?'"
ME: "It's something inside your body, like your heart or your lungs. But it was a toy!"
THEM: "And what does the bladder do?"
ME: "Um...it is the thing that holds the urine, so when it gets full you have to go to the bathroom. But then they could bat it back and forth...so fun!"
THEM: "...............urine. Like pee?"
ME: "Yes, but it was like a balloon, or a kickball when Ma blew it up. Whee!"
THEM: "THEY PLAYED WITH THE PIG'S PEE BAG!?!?! That is so gross! Why would they do that!?! What was wrong with those little girls!"
ME: "But they didn't have toys, really! This was normal! It was like a pretty balloon! They could play with it!"
THEM: "We don't care how poor we ever get, we will never play with things from inside of animals, and especially not things their pee or poop goes through!"
ME: "And then Ma started making the head cheese..."
THEM: "No way. We are done with this Laura chick and her crazy mother."

And really, how could I argue with that logic?

Perhaps Little House in the Big Woods with the opening butchering scene wasn't the right choice, but I'm a purist. Laura wrote it first, therefore it should be first. You don't start with These Happy Golden Years, damn it, you start with the Big Woods, because all the books stem from Pa's restless nature. Once six neighbors were within 50 miles of him, Pa was feeling crowded, and really, you don't come on Pa's land or he'll sic Jack the Bulldog on you, grab his shotgun above the door and pop a cap in your ass.

Laura was Pa's half pint, she is the Original Frontier Girl, and she is my homegirl in October! Now go eat some corn pone and grease the bear traps!