Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Auld Lang Syne

I’m sitting here at the corner of Memory Lane and Humiliation Avenue, wondering: Is there no statute of limitations on dumb things you’ve done?

The Friday before Christmas I had lunch with a guy from my old high school crowd. He graduated a year ahead of me, and I hadn’t seen him since Commencement, but I had good memories of working together on plays when we were in school. So when this blog generated an invitation to get together for lunch, it seemed like a nice opportunity to reminisce about old times and catch up on where we are today.

And it started off like that. Over salad combos at a local deli, we talked about who we kept in touch with, and who we’d love to hear from but hadn’t. He told me about a theater project he’d just finished and I chatted about the Chronicles, laughing over my husband’s refusal to talk to me in bed the other night, because, he said, “Everything I say winds up on your blog.”

I expected a laugh on that, but just got an odd look, and, “You put some pretty personal stuff out there.”

As I finished off my couscous and tomatoes, though, the conversation took a strange turn.

Did I remember, he asked, the evening during my senior year when I came over to his house and we almost, ah...?

I looked at him and memory came flooding back, along with a rush of color to my face.

Yes, I said warily, I remembered. Why?

Because, he said, he’d always been curious as to what happened that evening and why we didn’t….

And I realized one of the things I really hate about hot flashes is that they feel way too much like the way you blush when you’re really embarrassed. And wondered what would happen if I just got up and ran out the door. But when you’re of an age to compare hot flashes with all-over blushes, you don’t really do that any more. So I just said, “Oh?”

And he said that he’d thought things were going okay, and then all of a sudden I sort of withdrew, and then I acted like I was mad at him, and he’d never really understood what went wrong.

Well, I said, it’s been thirty-five years….

And you’ve never thought about it since then?

Not for at least thirty or so….

Because, he said, he’d been thinking a lot lately about various relationships of his that had gone sour, and he’d wound up feeling like a jerk that night, and he needed closure.

Ouch. Who among us women can resist the siren call of closure?

So, I folded my hands in my lap, thinking, I cannot even freaking believe I’m having this conversation, gave one last wistful thought to escape, and said, Well, since this seems to be something you need, let’s see what I can recall.

Here’s the really bad thing, though. It was at this exact point that I started thinking about what a hilarious blog this would make.

His recollection, he said, was that I had engineered the whole situation in the first place….

And suddenly it was 1971, and I was seventeen again, with a major crush on an older boy. And a bookworm who’d read far too many romance novels about men who fell in love with girls who gave them the priceless gift of themselves. Not to mention endlessly curious about a topic that the preceding decade of Free Love made even more ubiquitous than it is today, if that’s even possible.

At some point during the preliminaries, though, the voice of reason (which sounded suspiciously like my mother’s) pointed out that this wasn’t going to wind up anyplace I’d like. And, it added, you’ll get pregnant.

Sitting across from him in the deli, I tried to explain some of this, but his expression mirrored nothing but confusion.

But we weren’t even dating, he pointed out. How could you think that was going to turn into a relationship?

Yes, I said, I understand that now, but I didn’t then. Thinking, fifty-four is so far from seventeen it’s hard to believe they occur in the same lifetime.

I could see him trying to fit the pieces together. Were you a virgin? he asked.

I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but my face grew even hotter. Well, yeah, I said.

Because I was just hoping to get laid, he said.

Yes, I understand that now, I said again. I had a sudden image of God guffawing as he watched me soldier my way through this discussion.

I don’t know if he got the closure he was seeking, but we parted on good terms.

So now I’m left with this question: That kid I whopped with a broomstick when I was five, because he wouldn’t let my sister have a turn on the swings, should I expect him to show up on my doorstep, asking for answers?

Monday, December 29, 2008

A Tale of Two Cities

We arrive at the zoo on Saturday for the big Festival of Lights and I call my step-daughter to arrange a rendezvous.

“As soon as we find a bathroom for Kylie,” I say, “we’ll meet you at the Elephant House.

Shay tells me where the bathroom is (to the right of the entrance and down the hill) and, using these very misleading directions, we eventually find a toilet.

Potty break dealt with, we climb back up the hill to the Asian rotunda that has always housed the elephants. No sign of Shay. I call her again.

“Where are you?” she says.

"I’m standing next to the Elephant House, across from the new Forest exhibit."

“What Forest exhibit?” she says. “We’re right outside the Asian Experience.”

It can’t just be the Elephant House anymore, no, now it has to be the Asian Experience.

“I’m standing next to the wooden polar bear cutout, with the signs pointing to Santa’s Holiday Village and the North Pole Post Office,” I say.

“Stay where you are,” she says. “I’ll send Jeff to find you.”

So I wait. And I wait. In the meantime, Bill and Kylie make a circuit around the Elephant House. (Four-year-olds are lousy at waiting and fifty-four year olds aren’t much better.)

Ten minutes later, Shay calls back.

“Where are you?” she asks again. “Can you see the North American Habitat?”

“I’m right by the entrance,” I say. “You know, big sign, PNC Bank Festival of Lights.”

“PNC Bank? American Electric is sponsoring this.”

“Not in Cincinnati.”

“Well, they are in Columbus.”

I pause a moment while that sinks in.

“We’re going to stop looking for you now,” I say. “Enjoy yourselves.”

So our little party checks out the elephants, who stand with their backsides turned toward us, giving me a nasty flashback to the last time I tried on swimsuits in front of a three-way-mirror. We visit the cathouse, the reptiles and even pause for a respectful moment at the shrine to Maggie, the last of the passenger pigeons. (You don’t have to like something to recognize its significance.) After writing a thank-you note to Santa and playing on the jungle gym, we’re ready to head home.

All night long, Bill made Kylie hold my hand “so Grandma won’t get lost.”

I still say we would have been fine if we’d just made it to the right city.

Friday, December 26, 2008

Mistake in Identity

It’s hard to recognize people out of their normal context. The grocery clerk who checks you out every week looks unfamiliar at the library. The nurse from your allergist’s office is unrecognizable at the gym.

So it’s understandable how I came to assault a former co-worker at the theater.

As most of you know, my former company has had some tough times recently. Declining sales and escalating costs have forced them to lay off a lot of good people. It’s become a ritual, as each quarter ends, to see people carrying their boxes to the door. So when a friend invited me to come see him play Alfred P. Doolittle in My Fair Lady at the Theater Guild, it sounded like a welcome break.

I’ve come to expect certain things from community theater. I expect some mishap on stage – a missed cue, a forgotten line, a misplaced prop. I expect cookies and punch at intermission. And I expect to run into Mr. Scott.

Chuck Scott taught in the Dayton school system his entire career, and he gave many Wilbur Wright students, including me, their first chance to see live theater. Almost every time I go to the Theater Guild or the Dayton Playhouse, I run into him.

So it was no surprise to glimpse him across the “U” that forms the Guild’s stage. He looked different somehow. Thinner, maybe, or a different haircut. At the intermission, he was still sitting there, which was odd, because he’s usually in the lobby, hobnobbing with former students.

I decided to ignore these important clues. “I’m going to go say ‘hi’ to Mr. Scott,” I told my husband. “Be right back.”

I scampered across the empty stage. When he saw me coming he got to his feet, smiling a little. I threw my arms around him and gave him a big hug. He didn’t hug back. Then I looked at the woman beside him. She wasn’t Mrs. Scott.

And she wasn’t happy.

John, my former co-worker, introduced me, looking bemused.

Now the smart thing to do at this point would have been to admit my mistake and march my flaming face back to my seat, but that’s not what I did. Instead, I stood there, babbling. And babbling. And babbling. Finally, John cleared his throat, and I realized that the lights had flashed three times, signaling the audience to return to their seats. And everyone had, except me.

I scuttled across the stage, with the whole place glaring at me, and plopped myself down beside my husband. I whispered what I’d done.

Fortunately, the play was a comedy.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Pre-Christmas Rant

Just a brief, pre-Christmas tirade.
My carpet is not toilet paper!

As the holiday approaches, things are getting hectic here (as with the rest of you), and I’ve been trying to keep the house reasonably clean so that I don’t have a major sanitizing effort on Christmas Eve, along with cooking/wrapping/etc.

But Emmeline and Abigail are not helping.

Every time I push the vacuum back into the closet, satisfied that we’re reasonably presentable, one of them decides it’s time to drag her butt across the living room.

They’ve always been indoor dogs, but if it weren’t -22 here (counting windchill) I would shove their furry behinds outside and leave them there, whining pitifully at the back door, until the holidays are over!

As you view the pictures, perhaps you are thinking, "What kind of woman owns a black dog and a white dog? Does she view dog hair as an accessory, to be sported on her clothing every season of the year? Or, does she think a light coating of fur makes an otherwise drab room?"
No, she's just a sucker for a cute puppy.

Aarrrghh!

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Toy Stories - First Installment

I have a friend who, with her 27-year-old daughter, started a business a few years back selling sex toys.

Marketing via the party plan, kind of like Tupperware or Pampered Chef, the company has grown to the point where they now employ five other young women. They do a brisk business in bachelorette parties, but their market differentiator is that they are the sole company in our area that handles co-ed parties. They have a standing rule in place that, if any of the girls get to a booking and feel the least bit uncomfortable with the neighborhood, the client, or just the general vibe, they are to drive on past and cancel the gig. There have never been any problems.

Last summer I flirted with the idea of working for them part-time to gather material for a non-fiction book about a middle-aged woman getting into this field. I even attended a hen party with Ashley, only to realize:
a) It would take a lot of bookings to garner enough anecdotes to fill a book
b) I already had a 45+ hours a week job
c) I’m not a salesman and
d) I can’t even talk about underwear, for heaven’s sake. I could literally die of embarrassment trying to sell this stuff.

So, instead, I’ll pass on some of the stories they’ve shared with me.

Story #1
The daughter rang the bell at a large brick home in one of the nicer areas of town and a gentleman came to the door. In the foyer he proceeded to explain that this party was being held by a club he belonged to. Was that a problem?

She assured him that she often handled parties for clubs.

Well, he said, their club operated according to certain by-laws and they’d like to proceed under their normal rules of operation. Was that okay?

Sure.

Their policy, he said, was to meet in the nude.

Shrugging, she said, "I’m not taking my clothes off, but whatever floats your boat."

And then she followed him into the living room, where 20 people sat, naked as the day they were born.

And not one of them weighed less than 400 pounds.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Underwary - Part 3

(Being the third and final installment in the misadventures of a Baby Boomer in a world without BVD boundaries.)

Recently, I’ve been staggered to discover how many otherwise respectable people will chat about their scanties at the drop of a knicker. There are entire stores dedicated to selling lingerie -- and not just naughty places, either. To make matters worse, these emporiums are co-ed. In them, men and women openly discuss lingerie.

A few years back I visited such an establishment on my annual replenishment mission. Arriving early to avoid the crowds, I found a dozen varieties on display, including something called a thong. Underwear has two functions: to keep things out, and to keep things in. I can’t imagine how that bit of floss serves either purpose.

“They’re more comfortable than you think.” The salesgirl snatched up a lace jockstrap, waving it like a midshipman signaling the Third Fleet. With an effort, I refrained from grabbing her wrist. “When you wear them, you don’t have a panty line. So no one can tell you’re wearing panties.”

Although I prefer not to talk about underwear, it has never been one of my goals to make people think I don’t wear any.

“They’re on sale – six pairs for the price of five.”

I shook my head.

“Maybe something more conservative?” she said. “What do you normally wear? Bikinis? Hipsters? Sportsters? Hi-leg?”

A tide of color surged up my neck. How could such an attractive young woman have such a foul mouth?

Her voice took on a soothing note. “This happens a lot. Do you want me to check your tag?”

Before I could reply, she grabbed my hips, twirled me around, reached inside my drawers and twitched my tag out into the open. My face grew redder than the Valentine’s Day negligee special.

“The print on this tag is faded,” she said, tugging on my waistband.

In the next aisle over, a husband-in-training looked our way, grinned and nudged his girlfriend, and I understood for the first time how a nerdy high school freshman feels when an upper-classman administers a wedgie.

Life has a way of coming full circle, though.

When I was in my forties, I met and married Mr. Right. With his love and support I’ve managed to get baptized, stay away from slumber parties and maintain a reasonable inventory of undergarments. I truly realized he was Mr. Right the day he set off to buy some Fruit of the Looms and came back empty-handed.

“Don’t tell me Sam Walton ran out of undershorts,” I said. (It’s all right to discuss this topic within the sanctity of the marriage vow.)

“Nope,” he said. “I did what I always do. I found what I needed and then I checked to see who was running the cash register. It was a woman, so I put them back for another day.”
Finally, someone else who gets it.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Old Joke #2

A man who lived a very bad life dies and goes to Hell. A demon greets him at the Admissions desk and scans his paperwork.

“Based on your resume,” the demon says, “I can offer you two choices of how you’ll spend eternity.”

Before the man can ask any questions, the demon sets off down a hallway. The man follows. Soon they come to a door with a small glass window.

“Here’s option one,” the demon says and gestures for the man to look in the window.

Inside he sees a freezer full of naked people. Their skin is blue, their teeth are chattering and icicles hang from every part of their bodies.

The man shudders. “Oh, please,” he says. “Not that. I hate being cold.”

The demon nods and proceeds down the hall to a second door.

Inside this window the man sees a roomful of people standing around in brown slime up to their ankles, drinking cups of coffee.

“Ugh,” the man says. “Is that…?”

“Yes,” says the demon, “it’s shit.”

The man thinks about it for a second and then sighs.

“That’s pretty disgusting,” he says, “but I really hate being cold. I think I’ll go with this one.”

The demon nods and, pulling a key from his pocket, unlocks the door.

Just as he opens it, a bell rings and a voice inside the room yells, “Coffee break’s over, back on your heads!”

* * *

So, the purpose of this joke (there’s always a purpose here at the Chronicles, however tangential) is to let you know that I’ve found gainful employment.

On January 5, I will start work as the Office Manager at a clinic. It’s different from the jobs I’ve held for the last 30+ years, being both less technical and much more people-oriented, and I’m looking forward to the change.

The work day doesn't start until 9 a.m., and since I get up at 5, that still gives me time to hit the gym and write in the mornings. (Novel is coming along very nicely, thanks for asking.)

So, I guess my coffee break’s over.

Time to get back on my head!

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Feather Phobia

I was just over visiting Dee from Downunder (http://myaussieantics.blogspot.com/). Today’s post is a list of 10 honest things about herself – and very brave and honest they are, too – and one caught my eye.

She doesn’t care for birds.

I immediately felt a sense of rapport with this lady on the other side of the globe, because she’s figured out what so few people have: that birds are really just rats with wings.

Okay, I know all the bird lovers out there will set up a squawk, but I have valid reasons for my antipathy.

When I was six or seven, my Great-Aunt Nini (actually Geneva – they didn’t name her till she was five and allowed her to pick her own name) owned a little green parakeet named Tommy. Tommy was getting on in years, and he had a big pink tumor on his belly, which was disgusting just for starters.

Anyway, every week after church my sister, Rita, and I would stop by to visit Aunt Nini and she would give us cheese on crackers and these little glasses of Coca-Cola. We rarely had soda pop at our house, so this was a huge treat.

But every week when we were there, Aunt Nini would say, “Pet Tommy.”

“I don’t want to pet Tommy,” I’d whine. “He pecks me.”

She’d look shocked. “Tommy would never do that.”

So I’d stick my skinny little finger through the cage wire and Tommy would peck the fire out of it. Every week this would happen, with it coming as news to Aunt Nini every single time.

Fast forward to fifth grade, when Linda Bell brought her parakeet for show and tell. She was walking up and down the rows of desks, allowing the bird to hop from her finger to each classmate’s as I watched in horror, knowing my turn was coming. I couldn’t quite come up with the courage to say, “Keep that vile thing away from me,” but when it was my turn, as soon he got one of his bony little feet on my finger, my terror won out and I jerked my hand away, nearly turning Linda Bell’s beloved pet into a miniature version of the Thanksgiving wishbone.

And there have been other incidents over the years. Like the time when I was cleaning my downstairs neighbor’s apartment (I was a single mom at the time and needed the cash) while he was out of town and his parrot flew out of his cage and landed on my shoulder, causing said neighbor’s apartment to nearly also need a good carpet cleaning. I had to call one of his friends to come get the bird off my shoulder, while I waited, rigid, for him to arrive.

Or the time I was at a picnic and a bird flew by overhead and pooped in my plate and down my leg, earning me the nickname “Bird Woman” among my friends to this day.

There is one thing I like to do with birds, though: dinner.

Every time I stop by the Colonel’s, I figure I’ve evened the score just a little bit.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Guest Post -- Peanut Butter Fudge Recipe

Note: I received the following from Hoodchick, who makes the world's best peanut butter fudge, and since it seemed like a Chronicles kind of recipe, I decided to do a special Tuesday post.

Here's her email:

First, I have to rant about this. I use the recipe on the back of the Fluff jar, with slight modifications. The first thing about that, the recipe calls for 12oz of marshmallow cream. But Fluff comes in a 16oz container. It’s their own stinking recipe and they do that to you? Anyway, just guess - error on the side of too much.

Then, at some point in the last year, Kroger stopped selling Fluff. So I had to deal with the Walmart crowd to get a jar. All the makings sat on my counter for a month and I finally got around to making it Saturday then I realized by the second ingredient – they changed the recipe! Maybe that is why Kroger quit selling it, some buyer was loyal to the recipe for decades and the bastards go and change it. But, being the anal retentive person that I am – I had the original written down.

Lastly, 5 minutes of boiling means 5 minutes of BOILING. Not thinking about boiling, not just about boiling, but boiling. Too little, you will be eating it with a spoon. Too much and it will be dry and crumbly. Now my disclaimer – boiling sugar, evaporated milk, margarine, marshmallow cream and salt is worse than napalm. Wear an oven mitt on your stirring hand, seriously consider wearing long sleeves and for god’s sake don’t get your face near the pot!

Ingredients:

5 C Sugar
1 12oz can Evaporated Milk
¼ lb margarine
12 oz Marshmallow cream
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
2 pkg Peanut Butter chips (I use Reeses)
Peanut Butter*
1) Combine first 5 ingredients in 4 qt (at least) sauce pan. Stir over low heat until blended.
2) Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly at a boil for 5 minutes.
3) Remove from heat, stir in chips, vanilla and peanut butter until chips melt**. Pour into 2 buttered 8 ½ x 11 pans

* Adding peanut butter is my modification. I usually take a tablespoon (not the measuring kind) and throw in 3 or 4 huge dollops. I don’t think you can get too much. **PB chips don’t melt as well as chocolate so they aren’t likely to completely melt by the time your arm feels like it’s going to fall off. I totally give in and pour it anyway. Once it sets you can’t tell.

Enjoy!

Sunday, December 14, 2008

The Chronicles of Cooking

My friend Teri, who’s been a blogophile for a couple of years, recommended (okay, nagged unceasingly until I caved) that I start this blog.

You’re funny, she said.

You love to write, she said.

You even know a couple of things about computers. It’s a perfect fit, she said.

Due to her *persistence* I finally gave this a shot and she was right – the last time I had this much fun I wound up with a beautiful daughter nine months later. (Okay, that wasn’t the last time, but the results made it the most memorable.)

Consequently, when Teri has suggestions for improving the blog, I feel I should listen to her. Her ideas were:

1) Add a counter
Done
2) Add some pictures.
Which I’ve done, and will continue to do, but I am NOT a photographer and my total lack of composition sense is not counterbalanced by Blogger’s tendency to chop off the right-hand side of photos.
3) Add some pictures of delicious food and include recipes.

Um, I’m kind of not a cook, either.

I was once a competent cook. I used to be able to put edible, reasonably varied meals on the table day after day. When my daughter turned fifteen and became vegetarian, I even learned to cook a few really good vegetarian dishes – pastas and homemade soups and casseroles made with things like lentils.

Eleven years ago, though, I married a man whose eating habits are, to say the least, erratic. On more than one occasion I have cooked a three course meal, only to have him walk in the door and announce, “I stopped for a burger on the way home – I’m not hungry.”

So, over time, I kind of got into the habit of buying things you can nuke and eat from the package.

Now that I’m a full-time homemaker and it seems appropriate to put more effort and less money into dinner, I’ve discovered that I’ve lost the hang of it.

* Nothing gets done on time
* Nothing gets done at the same time
* If variety is the spice of life, we’re doomed to bland.

Onward and upward, though, so, the other night I served this delicious appetizer while we waited for the turkey stew to finish simmering.

Recipe:

1 bag potato chips
1 tub chip dip

Directions: Open containers and place in front of TV.




Presentation really makes the meal.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

The Year of Our Charlie Brown Christmas

It was our worst Christmas tree ever. Not that we Morgans were strangers to bad Christmas trees. Dad grew up during the Great Depression, and years of doing without had left him tighter than Brigitte Bardot’s sweaters. The only real surprise was that, with the holiday still more than two weeks away, he had already brought home a tree. Most years he refused to buy until the lots started slashing their prices. One year he delayed right up until Christmas Eve, announcing that we were resurrecting the old German tradition of decorating our Tannenbaum on the night before Christmas. But even that tree was prettier than this one. I pushed my glasses up on my nose and looked at it in disbelief. Beside me, my older sister, Cathy, snorted. The top branch barely reached the sash of the bay window. Dad had leveled the trunk before nailing on a pair of notched-out one-by-twos, but it still listed like a schooner taking on water, and each time Dad brushed against it, needles fell. Mom hovered nearby, broom and dustpan in hand. Across the room, our little brother, Ben, sat cross-legged in front of the TV, watching the Peanuts gang lampoon Charlie Brown for buying a Christmas tree that was Rockefeller Square material compared to this one. “Hey, Ben, get the lights,” Dad said, rubbing his hands together. “Hang a few ornaments, throw on some tinsel and she’ll be beautiful.” Ben, an easy mark because, at seven, he still believed in Santa Claus and didn’t want to wreck his chances just as he was coming into the home stretch, ran to fetch the lights. “What do you think, Brain?” said Dad. “Is that a tree?” He’d gotten the tree from Mr. Pinkus, an old army buddy who had a Christmas tree farm in Southern Ohio. Mr. Pinkus smoked smelly cigars, and talked in a booming voice that made our house seem too small, but he kept butterscotch disks in his pockets, which he produced with the air of a magician conjuring gold doubloons. When I was a little kid, I just loved that. I resettled my glasses. “Pinus sylvestris,” I said. “Commonly known as the Scotch Pine.” Right after entomology, and prior to my current fascination with microbiology, I’d gone through a horticulture phase. He sent Mom a look that said, ‘she gets that from your side of the family.’ Cathy, who had just celebrated her fourteenth birthday, directed the lip curl she’d perfected over the past six months at the misshapen little evergreen. “My friend Debby’s family has an aluminum tree.” “You know how your father and I feel about artificial trees,” Mom said. “It has a wheel that makes it change colors.” Mom’s left eyelid twitched, and I could see that the battle they’d been engaged in for the past year was about to escalate. I grabbed Cathy’s arm and dragged her toward the hallway. “We’ll get the ornaments,” I called over my shoulder. Mom smiled warmly after us. “Why, thank you, Lori.” "Let go of me, Brain,” said Cathy, trying to jerk her arm free. “That tree….” “Sshh!” I opened the door to the cellar and she continued to grumble as we clattered down the steps. “What are you trying to do?” I said when we reached the bottom. “Destroy Christmas?” “Me?” she said. “Did you see that pathetic excuse for a tree? Do you know what that means?” Over the years, we had observed a correlation: our Christmas tree was a barometer of how bountiful Dad was feeling. The year he brought home a six foot spruce, our Christmas morning brought the mid-twentieth century equivalent of the gifts of the Magi. The year of Tannenbaum, we’d received matching sets of pajamas and robes, and stockings stuffed with tangerines and peppermint sticks. Although Mom had assaulted the after-Christmas sales with the intensity of a Mongol raiding party, bringing home china tea sets, hula hoops and rag dolls big enough to dance with, the searing disappointment of a Christmas morning without toys was something Cathy had never forgotten or forgiven. This year she had been lobbying for a hi-fi, refolding the daily newspapers so that a parade of stereo ads stared up from the coffee table. So far, there’d been no sign that Dad or Mom had picked up on these hints. For myself, I had my eye on the Tasco 300x Microscope Kit, complete with prep-ready slides. I had already started collecting hair, plant clippings and various foods and storing them under my mattress, planning to razor them down to see-through thinness, load them onto the slides and peer at them until 300x magnification unlocked the secrets of the universe. Unfortunately, the Hobby Hound had only one microscope left, and it would be long gone by the time the after-holiday sales rolled around. “The tree is a problem,” I said, “but yelling at Dad won’t help. He’ll just get mad, and say how ungrateful we are, and how we don’t do enough to help Mom and maybe they should just take all our presents back.” “If there are any,” said Cathy. I nodded glumly. Our last survey of Mom’s favorite hiding spots had yielded nothing, and she was not a good hider. “It’s Mom we need to work on. She does all the shopping, and she’s the one who can soften him up.” “And just how do we do that?” Why did I have to come up with all the ideas? Cathy was three-and-a-half years older, but as far back as I could remember it had been my job to figure things out. I pulled a box of ornaments off a metal shelf and handed it to her, then lifted down a second box. The cartons had been in the basement for the past year, but they showed no trace of dust because Mom wiped down every surface in the house at least once a month. I thought about her, standing by the tree, broom at the ready and smiled. “Just follow my lead.” * The next day, while Mom was upstairs putting away laundry, Cathy stood sentry while I grasped El Pathetico’s spindly trunk and shook it. I was a little concerned that I’d dislodge one of Mom’s prized ornaments, but at the merest shiver, needles cascaded to the floor. I returned to my homework at the dining room table. I hadn’t even finished my spelling assignment when I heard Mom say, “Well, for Heaven’s sake!” She trotted to the kitchen, retrieved the broom, and then hurried back to the living room. When she didn’t return right away, I got up to see what was going on. Beneath the tree, on her hands and knees, Mom was prying needles out of the crevices between the floor boards. A few minutes later she marched through the dining room, carrying the dustpan like it held dog doo. * When Cathy and I got home from school the next afternoon, we found Mom pulling individual packages wrapped in newspaper from a large cardboard box with Grandma Morgan’s return address. Mom placed our annual gifts from Grandma beneath the tree, using them to camouflage the latest windfall. “Are you just going to leave that mess on the floor?” said Cathy. “Yes, I am,” Mom said, but, as she got to her feet, she grazed a branch, triggering another needle-fall. Her eyelid twitched, and a second later she was back on her knees. * The next afternoon I stopped by the Hobby Hound on the way home from school to find a lady in blue wool coat with a fake mink collar looking at my microscope kit. Pretending to check out some slides of Yellowstone Park at the View-Master display, I hung around to listen. “We could put it in lay-by for you,” Mr. Orton was saying, tilting the box so that the chrome gleamed under the fluorescent lights. She took it from him. “How much is it?” “Nineteen ninety-nine.” I held my breath, my fingertips leaving sweaty whorls on the red plastic binoculars. “That’s very expensive,” the lady said, inspecting it through the cellophane. “It’s a very nice set.” She handed it back to him. “Let me check with his father.” I walked the rest of the way home, praying Mom’s cleanliness had overwhelmed her godliness, but when I got in sight of our house, I was crushed to see Quasimodo through the bay window. It was time for desperate measures. * My next operation was one of such delicacy that I couldn’t let even Ben and Cathy know about it. Too dangerous to involve my siblings and too complex, at any rate, to leave in the hands of amateurs, it would require split-second timing and nerves of steel. If things went awry, whoever was implicated could very well wind up with no Christmas presents at all, not to mention being grounded till she left for college. As the tree had grown drier, Mom had become more and more paranoid. It was still over a week till Christmas, and she wouldn’t let us turn on the lights anymore. Dad, who spent every January poring over the December electric bill and trying to assess just how much lighting the Christmas tree had cost him, was not heartbroken. What I had planned was a controlled burn. After reading up on pyrotechnics at the library, I was certain I could char just enough of Mr. Pygmy to make Mom and Dad afraid to leave it in the house for one more minute. All I needed was sunlight, a magnifying glass and a carefully stripped branch. Upstairs, Mom was lying down with a romance novel. Cathy and Ben were ice-skating with the church choir, but I had told Dad I needed to finish a report for school. I took the precaution of soaking a heavy wool blanket stowing it on the porch, behind the glider, along with a bucket of water. To ensure the fire didn’t have much fuel, I chose a branch near the top, with nothing but air above it so that the fire wouldn’t ignite any other branches. I removed most of the needles and trimmed the remainder to a quarter-inch. After relocating all the nearby ornaments to other parts of the tree, I positioned my magnifying glass inside the window, focusing the pale December sunlight on the cluster of pine needles. In a surprisingly short time, a wisp of smoke appeared, followed, a few moments later, by a tiny flame. Then something I hadn’t expected occurred. No sooner had the flame appeared than it licked its way up the bare branch and burrowed into the heart of the tree. As I watched in horror, a demon with flames for hair possessed our Christmas tree. In an instant, the top half was ablaze. “Lori Alexandra Morgan!” Mom’s voice broke my paralysis. Racing out to the porch, I pulled the wool blanket from behind the glider and threw it over the tree. Half a dozen ornaments crashed to the floor. There was a sizzling sound and smoke rolled from beneath the blanket. Running back to the porch, I hauled in the bucket of water, slopping a little onto the floor as I came, and tossed it over the blanket. Clouds of vapor rose up, filling the room with an odor like dog shampooed in Pine-Sol. Mom’s eyes traveled from the steaming blanket to the bucket to the soaked floor littered with shards of ornaments, finally falling on the magnifying glass I’d dropped when I ran outside. In a quiet voice that was scarier than shouting, she said, “What were you doing?” “I was…it was an experiment. For my report,” I said. She shook her head. “The truth.” I hung my head. “You know,” she said, “you’ve always been an odd child, but I never thought of you as dangerous. Not even that time when you stuck that magnet in the lamp socket.” She took a deep breath and her voice rose. “But now…. Were you trying to set the house on fire?” Shock made me blurt out the truth. “Not the house. Just the tree.” “The tree.” I saw her mentally review the past week and make the connection. “You’ve been trying to get rid of this tree ever since Dad brought it home.” Her gaze sharpened. “Are your brother and sister involved?” I shook my head. There was no point in dragging them down with me. “Not in this.” “Why? What in the world made you hate a tree so much you were willing to risk killing us all to get rid of it?” The enormity of what I’d nearly done finally sank in and my eyes welled with tears. “It was because of the presents,” I whispered. She shook her head. “What are you talking about?” “When Dad buys a crummy tree, we get crummy presents,” I said. She closed her eyes, took another deep breath, and then opened them again. She looked at the wool-draped tree, which had stopped smoking. As we watched, the wool blanket slid to the floor, revealing the blackened tree. If it had been bad before, it was nothing to how hideous it looked now. Mom’s ornaments, which she’d been collecting since the first Christmas she and Dad were married, were black with soot. Many lay smashed on the floor. Grandma Morgan’s presents were sodden balls of newsprint. Without being asked, I got some rags and began to sop up the water, tears joining the water in the puddle. When the floor was once again dry I went to my room and lay down on the bed, trying not to think about what would happen when Dad got home. Finally, around seven o’clock, there was a knock on my door. “Come in,” I said, my voice rusty with tears and mucous. The door opened and for a moment Mom’s outline was silhouetted in the doorway. Then she flipped the switch and I squinted against the light. She was carrying a tray with a bowl of chicken noodle soup, a glass of milk and some crackers. She placed it on my desk. I saw her nose twitch and she looked around the room. “What is that smell?” Too broken to even make up a lie, I peeled back the corner of the mattress, revealing my samples. Mom wrinkled her nose and blinked a couple of times. “In case I got my microscope.” She collected them and tossed them in the trashcan. “Eat your dinner,” she said. Her voice was gentler than I expected, and my spirits lifted a little. I ate some soup and part of a cracker before pushing the tray away. I thought she’d leave then, but she sat down on the bed. “Is Dad home yet?” I said. “Not yet.” “What are you going to tell him?” “I haven’t decided.” I took heart from that. I might yet get out of this without a spanking. “Do you realize,” she said, “how close you came to burning our house down?” “But I didn’t,” I said eagerly. “I was careful. I did my research, and….” Then Mom slapped me, so hard my head whipped to the side with the force of it. I stared at her, open-mouthed, my cheek burning. She’d never done that before. “Lori,” she said, “you are more intelligent than 95% of the people in the world. You’ve been given a gift most people don’t have. But there’s a responsibility that goes along with that gift.” She waited for me to answer, but, outraged and furious – Mom, not Dad, but Mom, had slapped me -- I refused to meet her eyes. She sighed. “From now until you return to school after New Year’s, I want you to spend your time thinking about what you did. You may not leave the house except for church. You may not watch television, you may not listen to the radio, and you may not read.” Not read? My long-anticipated Christmas break was instantly transformed into a prison sentence. * When I came downstairs the next day, the tree had disappeared. All that was left were two boxes of ornaments, now half empty, and the scorched remnants of Grandma Morgan’s gifts. Ben and Cathy kept their distance, staring at me like I might torch the furniture at any moment. I wished I had finked on them. Dad glared at me, his lips pressed so tight they all but disappeared, but all he said was, “Consider yourself lucky I wasn’t home when you pulled this stunt.” Mom’s eyes, when they rested on me, were troubled. And nobody called me “Brain” anymore. I was pretty sure that was Mom’s doing. Through it all, I wrapped myself in the knowledge of the injustice that had been done to me, and treated everyone with frosty courtesy. I said “please,” “thank you,” and “may I” at every opportunity. If my mother wanted a polite drone who never thought for herself, then that’s who I’d be. * It was our tradition, on returning from candlelight service on Christmas Eve, to gather around the Christmas tree and open our gifts from Grandma Morgan, saving our presents from Santa (i.e. Mom and Dad) for Christmas morning. This year there was no tree, so Dad tuned the TV to Perry Como’s Christmas special and Ben passed out the packages, bits of charred newspaper falling to the floor as he handed them around. As the youngest, Ben opened his first – a metal fire truck. He immediately dropped to his knees and began to run it across the carpet, pressing buttons to make the horn and siren sound. Cathy and I went next – matching scarves and gloves, Cathy’s in day-glow orange, mine in a bilious shade of green. “Don’t those look warm?” Dad said. Mom peeled L’il Abner and Dick Tracy from her gift, a mustard-colored sweater. She held it against her chest and her face took on a yellow hue, as it always did when exposed to anything yellow. Dad didn’t seem to notice. He opened his present, a leather wallet. “My mother certainly knows how to shop. Remember the year Ben was born and she did all your Christmas shopping for you?” Cathy was staring sullenly at her new scarf and gloves, which she knew Dad would insist she wear to school. For once, I had to agree. I wasn’t exactly a fashion maven, but puke green was not my color. It reminded me of the year we got robes and pj’s. Suddenly I made the connection. My eyes flew to Mom’s. She looked steadily back at me, neither confirming nor denying. Dad had just put his arm around her, looking around with satisfaction, when a thunderous knocking sounded on the front door. Outside stood Mr. Pinkus. Instead of letting him in, though, Dad stepped onto the porch. In the halo of the porch lamp, I saw Mr. Pinkus hold out some bills, but Dad pushed the money back toward him. “Go on, take it,” Mr. Pinkus said in that voice that could be heard for half a block. “I got my check from the government – they declared Lorraine County a disaster area because of the pine blight.” “Are you sure you’re all right?” Dad said, so softly we could barely hear him. “I can replant, and, thanks to you, Lily and the kids will have a good Christmas.” The last piece of the puzzle fell into place. Dad hadn’t bought the tree because he was cheap. He’d bought it to help out a friend. And he hadn’t bought us the robes and pj’s; Grandma had. My entire plan had been based on flawed logic. Dad and Mr. Pinkus came into the house and Mr. Pinkus produced a silver and white striped shopping bag from behind his back. He pulled out a Man from U.N.C.L.E. pistol for Ben and the Beach Boys Christmas album for Cathy. She stared at it for a moment, then squealed and threw her arms around Dad and kissed him. Mr. Pinkus pulled the last item from his bag. It was a set of pre-prepped microscope slides. My face lit up with a blazing grin, then just as quickly dimmed. I turned to Mom, waiting for judgment. Her eyes searched my face and then she smiled. “Tell the man thank-you, Brain,” she said.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Underwary - Part 2

Adolescence is a difficult time, and even tougher for those of us beleaguered with lingerie issues, a fact rammed home to me at my first slumber party.

My Cousin Gayle lived in a podunk town 40 miles south of the metropolis where I grew up. It should have been a clear-cut case of the city mouse and the country mouse, with me lording my superior cultural advantages over her, but somehow the roles got reversed. Maybe because she was two years older, or because she grew up in a family not hampered by bizarre interdictions around lingerie, Gayle always seemed more sophisticated than I.

Being two years older gave certain other advantages, too. While my own chest was as level as the roof of my Aunt Louise’s Rambler, Gayle’s already displayed interesting geography. When another girl at the party teased her about her expanding bosom, she thrust out her chest and proclaimed, “Them’s my mountains,” leaving me with foothill envy and panicked that she might veer off into a discussion of brassieres.

To cope with my unease, I wedged myself into a corner, where I could watch without getting pulled into conversation. Occasionally Gayle’s eyes would flick my way, and she’d demand to know what I was looking at, was I queer or something, but aside from these little forays into hostessing, she left me pretty much alone, and slowly I relaxed enough to grow drowsy.

Until, eying me, she warned, “We’re staying up all night. The first girl who falls asleep – we stick her underwear in the freezer.”

That snapped me awake. I’d never been up past midnight in my life.

And I wasn’t wearing any underwear.

A quick glance showed me that, beneath their pj’s, all the other girls wore panties. I had a vision of myself nodding off, only to wake up sans pajama bottoms, with half a dozen teenaged girls staring at my bare behind. If my heterosexuality was in question before, that would surely seal the deal.

I had to remedy this deficiency, pronto.

While the other girls jiggled to a 45 of “Love, Love Me, Do,” I slid from my niche and wafted toward the row of travel cases, nodding and putting a little jump in my step that could be mistaken for dancing. Snatching up my case, I headed for the stairs like a Johnny Unitas breaking for a touchdown. I was at the thirty, the twenty, the ten-yard line….

“Where are you going?” Gayle said, staring at my suitcase.

I swallowed. “To the bathroom. I have to, uh, change my, uh….”

Before I could finish she cut me off. “Don’t wake up Mom and Dad.”

I realized later that she thought I had my period. Apparently, even in her anything goes world there were some things you didn’t say aloud.

In the bathroom, I hunted for the next day’s undergarments in my suitcase, but all I could find was the pair I’d worn that day. Grimacing, I turned them inside out and pulled them on.

On my way back upstairs I met the pack, minus one, coming down. Gayle led the triumphal parade, bearing a pair of pink panties on the end of a stick.

“And that’s what will happen to every girl who finks out on us,” she said, shoving them into the freezer among food her family would now surely have to discard. I felt the reassuring pinch of elastic around my thighs and breathed a sigh of relief.

When we got back upstairs, we roused our victim, who laughed sleepily, rolled over and fell back asleep. She was still wearing her pajamas and the line of her underpants was clearly visible, which left me with a mystery: how could her panties be at once in the freezer, and on her bottom?

Gayle put “Johnny Angel” on the record player, and a couple of girls started dancing together and singing along in a moony sort of way. Beyond them, against the wall, one suitcase was open, its contents rumpled.

They hadn’t scored the pair that girl was wearing, I realized. They had taken the clean pair from her luggage.

This is how I learned that not wearing panties beneath your pj’s is only the social frying pan.

The inferno is reserved for those who don’t change their underwear.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Sounds of the Season

With the holidays almost upon us, I'd like to share some questions I've had for many years about some Christmas carols:

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's the most wonderful time of the year.
With the kids jingle belling,
And everyone telling you,
"Be of good cheer,"
It's the most wonderful time of the year.

There'll be parties for hosting,
Marshmallows for toasting and
Caroling out in the snow.
There'll be scary ghost stories and
Tales of the glories of Christmases
Long, long ago.

This is what I want to know: who the heck tells ghost stories at Christmas? As you tuck your wound-up, sugared-out darlings into bed, why would you scare the bejeebers out of them? They’re already hyper-vigilant, waiting for the sound of reindeer paws (don’t even get me started on that one) on the roof and the entry of Santa via the chimney. So now we’re sending them off to the Land of Nod with the idea that maybe he’s not Santa – maybe he’s a merry old ax murderer!

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

Oh bring us some figgy pudding
Oh bring us some figgy pudding
Oh bring us some figgy pudding
And bring it right here.

We won’t go until we get some
We won’t go until we get some
We won’t go until we get some
So bring it right here.


Does no one else feel threatened by these hoodlums? Terrorized by their incessant demands for pudding and their stated intention to camp on your doorstep until their ultimatum is met? For gosh sakes, who even keep the makings of figgy pudding around the house? The next thing you know, they’ll be lying down across the driveway, so that you can’t even head to Kroger's for ingredients.

Jolly Old Saint Nicholas

Johnny wants a pair of skates;
Susy wants a dolly;
Nellie wants a story book;
She thinks dolls are folly

Nellie’s kind of a little snot, isn’t she?

The Little Drummer Boy

Come they told me
Pa rum pum pum pum
A new born King to see
Pa rum pum pum pum
Our finest gifts we bring
Pa rum pum pum pum
To lay before the king
Pa rum pum pum pum,
Rum pum pum pum,
Rum pum pum pum
So to honor Him
Pa rum pum pum pum
When we come

Need I say more?

On the other hand, here’s a link to my own favorite Christmas song from my childhood, probably because I was such a rotten kid myself:
http://susie1114.com/Christmas/NuttinforChristmas.html

And while I was looking for that link, I found this:
http://www.links2love.com/christmas_songs_womens_underwear.htm

It’s a sick, sick world we live in….

Sunday, December 7, 2008

The Happiest People in the World

According to a segment I saw on “60 Minutes” a few months ago, Danes are the happiest people in the world. I’m not sure how they measured this, or what criteria was used, but apparently the reason Danes are so content is because they have low expectations.

Conversely, Americans are among the least happy people in the world – because we have such unrealistic requirements for happiness. We live in a world where we‘re barraged with movies, TV shows, newspaper ads, and, above all, commercials telling us about all this cool stuff we should have – we deserve to have. So when we don’t get it, we’re miserable.

Last week I visited one of my two remaining aunts , my Aunt Dortha. I’ve lost two aunts this year, Miss V and my Aunt Louise, who died on Easter, forcing me to bring a laundry basket filled with plastic grass and good chocolate (none of that cheap stuff – Aunt Ease used the holidays to teach her barbaric nieces and nephews an appreciation of the finer things – like good chocolate) to her memorial service.

And, yes, "Dortha" is the correct spelling – my grandparents were Appalachian, and those folks have their own notions about names. Seriously. I have relatives named America, Pocahontas and Palestine and my first husband (also Appalachian heritage) had cousins named Ottie, Oretha, Opal and Okra.

Anyway, Aunt Dortha is my mother’s younger sister. Mom’s been gone for nearly 35 years, so I never got to know her as an adult (me, not her) and I love hearing Aunt Dortha’s tales about the two of them growing up in Kentucky. They’d sit around on the front porch and Aunt Dortha would play the guitar and they’d sing (and not, apparently, help grandma with the chores). And about the two of them coming to Dayton during World War II and working as waitresses at the Green Mill Restaurant, where she met my Uncle Ed, her husband for 55 years. (It was out of this experience that Mom taught us never to stiff the waitress. She said if you don’t have enough money to leave a good tip, you don’t have enough to be going out to eat.)

Anyway, Aunt Dortha now lives in a nursing home, which you’d think would suck. She has Parkinson’s disease and the meds they give her to control the tremors have pretty much erased her short-term memory, which should also suck, but, for some reason, it doesn’t. She’s been in about 4 different rooms since she arrived there, and every time I go to see her, no matter what room she’s in, she’ll say, “I think this is the nicest room in the place. Don’t you?” I’ll nod, and, lowering her voice, she’ll go on, “You know, your Uncle Curt (actually my great-uncle Curt, my grandmother’s brother, who made a packet in real estate) used to own this place.” I’ll agree and then she’ll whisper, “I think that’s why I got such a good room” and nod significantly.

And it doesn’t matter if the room’s pretty nice (like the one she has now) or is an 8’x10’ box because, in her eyes, it’s a nice room.

So now that I’m out of work, I figure I have the option of seeing it as a tragedy (no money to buy best-grandma-in-the-world toys for the grandkids this Christmas, a black mark on my formerly pristine work record) or a joy (because I LOVE having time to write, keep my house clean, take the dogs to the park and make actual from-scratch meals).

So when the pastry tray of life comes around, make mine Danish.

Friday, December 5, 2008

Underwary - Part 1

My family never talked about underwear.

We purchased it. We wore it. We laundered it. We even mended it. When it wore out, we disposed of it. But, for us, our unmentionables truly were unmentionable.

This taboo has had an enormous impact on my life, starting at age ten, when my inability to broach this topic caused my baptism to be delayed.

By thirty-five years.

As children, my sisters and I attended Linden Avenue Baptist church. Every Sunday, while the choir sang "The Old Rugged Cross" or "Onward, Christian Soldiers," the minister made an altar call. Upon reaching her tenth birthday, each of my older sisters answered that call, sailing down the aisle to be blessed and prayed over and scheduled for her turn in the washtub of salvation.

After I grew up, I went back to visit. The church not particularly large, but when I was a child it seemed huge. The sanctuary looked big enough to hold an Olympic-sized swimming pool, an impression reinforced by the stinging odor of chlorine that filled the air on quarterly baptism days. Beyond a window arch at the back of the altar was a wall of celestial blue. Inside the window lay the baptism pool. On the big day, illuminated by a few well-placed lights, freshly laundered Christians emerged from the pool, sopping wet, but safe from Satan.

One after another, each of my sisters appeared in that archway, dressed in a gauzy robe and cradled in Dr. Parr's ample arms. He asked each of them three questions: Do you believe in Jesus Christ as the son of God and your personal savior? Yes! Do you renounce Satan and all of his ways? Oh, yes! Do you accept the gift of the Holy Spirit? A final affirmative and the Reverend placed one plump hand behind the supplicant’s shoulders, the other on her forehead and he plunged her backwards into the water. A moment later he dragged her back out, shining with sanctity and reeking of bleach. The flame of sinfulness might not be permanently dowsed, but the Devil would have a tough time getting a bonfire going under all that water.

I couldn’t wait for my turn to run up to the front of the church and be welcomed into the fold. I pictured myself robed in white, the center of attention. Afterwards, people would stop me in the social hall to say, “Child, you looked like an angel up there! An absolute angel.” But as the long-awaited day grew nearer, I encountered a hitch.

I didn’t know what to do with my underpants.

If I left them on, I’d have to walk home six blocks with my panties squelching every step of the way. If I took them off, I would wind up participating in the ecumenical equivalent of a wet t-shirt contest. What if the minister saw through my robe? What if the whole congregation gazed into that brightly lit archway and realized I was stark naked beneath that robe? If you committed a sin of that magnitude right while you were being baptized, would it negate your salvation? A third option, wearing a pair under my robe and bringing an extra pair to change into afterwards, had its own challenges. Where would I put the extra pair while all this was going on? What if someone saw them? And what would I do with the wet ones on the walk home?

In a normal family, I could have raised this issue and been given a little overnight case in which to store my things while I was being baptized, but for me that was not an option. I sat through altar call after altar call while my sisters hissed that an eternity in hellfire lay in store for me. Finally, I took to playing hooky from Sunday school, watching cartoons instead.

If I was destined for an appointment with Satan, at least I could catch up on Johnny Quest in the waiting room.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Bedtime Story

After 11 blissful years of marriage, my husband and I are having troubles in bed. I refer, of course, to the two issues that confront every couple – snoring and blanket allocation.

The first time I ever saw Bill doze, I noticed that he had the most adorable little – it wasn’t even a snore, really, more like a tiny, soft catch in the back of his throat followed by an even softer expulsion of air. His face, relaxed from the cares of the day, looked so peaceful, his dark eyelashes lying in crescents on his cheeks, his chiseled lips appearing to smile, even in slumber.

Apparently, even sleep has a courtship phase, because the guy I lie beside now sucks in great a swallow of air, gargles it somewhere between his nose and his throat and then expels it with an eruption guaranteed to jar the soundest sleeper from her beauty rest.

Even more annoying is the conversation this spawns.

“Bill,” I say, “You’re snoring.”

“What?” He draws another raucous breath.

“Snoring,” I repeat. “You’re snoring. Turn over.”

“What?”

“Turn over.” I give his shoulder a shove.

“What?”

I think briefly about holding a pillow over his face – not long enough to do any real harm, just enough to break the cycle, but decide that’s a slippery slope best not trodden upon. (Lest you think I’m unique, you should know that, in an unscientific survey, 75% of married women polled confessed to thinking about holding a pillow over their beloved’s snoring visage on one or more occasions.)

Instead, I shout, “YOU’RE SNORING! ROLL OVER!”

With a miffed sound, he turns onto his side and sinks effortlessly back into slumber while I lie awake, fuming.

What makes this conversation particularly annoying is the way he always says, “What?” as though there’s endless variety of topics I ‘m prone to introducing as soon as he drifts off. I swear to you, this is the ONLY thing I’ve ever said in these circumstances.

The second issue is blanket sharing.

Like most women, I am married to a creature whose body mass exceeds my own substantially. Theoretically, this should give him a real advantage in acquiring a solid share of the blankets at night. However, due to the fact that I was raised in a family of seven children and shared a bed from the time I left my crib until I left for college, while he had only a single sister, I am much more skilled at “tuck and roll” than he.

At least, this used to be true. For the first ten winters of our marriage, he complained that he nearly froze to death while I transformed myself into a human jelly roll with all the covers.

Lately, though, I notice he’s figured out the trick, and our nightly struggles for the blankets would make a WWF match look like kindergarteners jostling at nap time.

I still adore him, though, and out of this, have only one question:

If you were going to learn a new trick, old dog, why couldn’t it be “roll over”?

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