Day 8 - Goodbye, Four Leaf Clover.

Day 8, People.  The Month of Blogging streak is unbroken.  It will be hard next week, as I am traveling to Ohio for a hooker convention and will be...ahem...BUSY.  But I ain't quittin you, Wifers!

So tomorrow I have a pap smear, which by it's very name sounds gross, and it's one of those days where you want to look decent because COME ON.  Someone has to stare into your very soul via your hoo-ha, and you sort of hope there isn't any unsightly hair or bruises and your stomach isn't flopped out on the table on your side.

One of my best friends since fifth grade (yes, someone has known me THAT long and still speaks to me!) is an OB-GYN and actually delivered my niece and nephew, and she's the one whom I alway refer to when I say I badger a doctor friend from high school for advice.  Although I think I was put on the ban list on her paging service last year when I called her service at night a little drunk and told them to tell her that "Me and Meem want to know why she isn't at the party!?!"  (But you were *supposed* to be there, Paige.  Don't make me go to extremes to get you out.  You did that to yourself.)

Anyway, OB-GYN friend says that they see EVERYTHING as far as personal hygeine and body decor, so don't worry about it because they don't see it or talk about it in the break room, which is nice to hear but I think is total BS.  If YOU saw someone's dealio shaved into a four-leaf clover or pierced with a safety pin, wouldn't YOU need to tell someone?  At least your therapist!  And let them talk about OTHER people (and please, God, let me hear it) but I don't want to be in the water cooler talk.  Therefore, I am shaving off my four leaf clover and taking the safety pin out. 

Today, I am walking past a big plate glass window at work that has a mirror effect, and I caught a glimpse of myself and thought, "Whose stomach am I carrying around?  Because THAT?  Is unattractive."  I blame Current Husband and that twenty pound bag of Peanut M&M's he brought home this weekend and forced me to eat at gunpoint.  And the beer and wine he made me buy.  And the ice cream and the shish kebob.  Do you hear me?  CALL THE POLICE, he is fattening me up for something.  Now I have to go disrobe for someone and explain myself.  Well, I probably don't HAVE to explain myself, but I'm sure I will.  It's what I do.

By the way - Happy Birthday Paige!  I'm having a pap smear on your birthday in your honor!  I hope there's theme cake afterward!

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 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!