Victory Speech

30 days and 9,500 words later, I have fulfilled my NaBloPoMo obligations.

I'd like to thank God that it's over.

I'd also like to thank my husband for not complaining too loudly when he was forced to wear non-matching socks in the absence of any freshly laundered matches.

I can't forget my dog, who ate poop just so I'd have something to write about.

Thanks also go out to Blogger for unveiling a beta version that ate up at least one of my posts and ensured that anyone trying to stay abreast of my site via Bloglines got the shaft. I eat your hate like love*.

And the one to whom I owe it all: The Boss. You're the reason I started blogging. More than ever, I am truly me because of you. Thank you for being there. Thank you for not being there. Thank you for thanking me.




*Current Google research indicates this quote is attributable to the band Bikini Kill, but it came to me on the penultimate page of an issue of Sassy Magazine circa 1990.

The Boss At Sixteen

The Boss's baby book has not been updated since she was two weeks old. It would've been so simple for me to crack the pastel binding on a more consistent basis, inserting one-liners, dates and strands of my baby's fine hair. It would've been easy, in dribs and drabs.

But I've never been one to just fill in the blanks. Empty lines between pre-packaged words are too shallow for my pen. I have to start something, to finish it.

Because I have this blog, I'm not sweating the baby book. The milestones are here. It is the way I feel about life, as it happens. But in between the recollections, however complete I believe them to be, is a lack of some simple detail. The plain facts. Truth that has shed its clothes for some good, old fashioned fun.

So here are the things I've thought about putting in the baby book lately, but have neglected.

- At 16 months of age, The Boss begins to show an interest in books.

- They are balloons, but she calls them "balls."

- She wears her fork as a "hat" at dinner.

- Her vocabulary consists of the aforementioned "ball" and "hat," as well as "thank you,"
"hi," "dog," "that," "look," "eye," "head," "dad," and, finally, "mama."

- After 6 p.m. she tends to walk like a drunk.

- She gives and receives kisses indiscriminately.

- She shows culinary appreciation with a hearty "mmmmm!" after each bite.

- She terrorizes the dog.

- The dog terrorizes her.

- Her favorite food is broccoli.

- She sleeps till ten most mornings.

And thus, my posterity-driven conscience can breathe easier until next month.

Thank You

Today I brought The Boss with me into the basement. We stepped over puddles that would send any other homeowner running to the nearest sump pump dealer, only to find out there ain't nothing that will keep a 200+ year old house dry. The Boss wobbled her way along the edges of the trench that ran the entire perimeter of the foundation. There was the thin sound of water in a skinny stream. We stopped at the washing machine.

I was pleased to find that The Boss is shaping up to be the housekeeper I never was. "Here," I said, handing her a sock. "Will you please help mama do the laundry?"

She took the sock. "Thank you," she said. Then she threw it through the front loading portal.

I handed her a tee shirt.

"Thank you." In it went.

Another sock. "Thank you."

A pair of boxers. "Thank you."

Another "thank you" and she was tangled up in one of her father's shirts. While she tried to extricate herself from the armpit stains, I snuck the rest of the load into the basin. I marveled at this girl of mine, who has been saying "thank you" in all the right places since before she was a year old. Amidst unexceptional motor skills and an average vocabulary, it is her manners that stand out.

I can't claim any responsibility for this whatsoever. Not because I am an innate ingrate, but because I know my mother was the one who taught this to her. I dropped her off one weekend at nana and poppy's house when she was about ten months old to find a changed girl upon my return. Though she couldn't walk or indulge in a conversation that didn't involve "da," "dog," or "gak," she would accept the cup from your hand with a "thank you." Then she would sip from it, exhaling with that audible sigh of quenched thirst when she was through. If you gave her food, she'd say "mmmmm."

All these were things nana taught her. From me, she got nothing. No tricks to whip out at a party. No sweet gestures that make others giggle at her gratitude.

It's a sad realization that I must not play with her enough. I don't test her imagination and her intellect with every interaction. Of course, I don't do a lot of things that grandparents know how to do, being that they're generations deep into parenthood and I'm just starting out. Being that they have time and memory. Being that they can send the kid home when they're done.

I know I have to cut myself some slack. But I also have to remember something:

It's not just The Boss who has a lot of learning to do.

A Winter Warning

The news on the cover of today's local paper was bleak. Below the fold but still very much on my radar, I learned that we can expect a "colder-than-average winter this year, with an increased chance of snow." Being that cold and snow are the very things I hate most about this tiny section of the USA, I sense that I am on the cusp of four long, dark months in New England.

Not the least of my problems with the extreme season is the idea that any barrier between myself and hypothermia cannot be taken for granted. It is not a baseless fear, this image I have in my mind of getting stranded in my temperamental car in -10 degree Fahrenheit weather on the side of a rural road with no cell reception for miles. Winter is a certain kind of helplessness. I've only experienced it a few times, but there is pain that would have you believe cold can crush bone into fragments.

It is no coincidence that my husband's grandmother, though she took 97 years to die, did it during the record breaking cold snap of 2004. It shouldn't have mattered, being that she was untouched by the elements in the toasty in-law apartment of her son's home, but she hated winter, too. On the other side of an ice webbed window, winter sucked the marrow from her bones.

NaBloPoMonopoly

26 days of blogging and a holiday weekend behind me, I am feeling the NaBloPoMo drain. Today I take Mr. Moneybags from the clink to the bank with this Get Out of Jail Free card.

See you on the other side of GO, where I can assure you I will not be collecting $200.

The Fortune Cookie

I bought a package of fortune cookies from the local supermarket to accompany a stir fry dinner I made a few weeks back. We read our three fortunes that night and I didn't think about the rest of the box until The Boss pulled it out of the cabinet earlier this evening and handed me a little plastic pouch with a thin, hard cookie enclosed. I bit it open with my teeth and handed it her. She wandered away. Not long after, I heard my husband speak out.

As I turned the corner, he was reading the fortune strip from the Boss's cookie. "Your ideals are well within your reach," he told her, sagely. Then he thought about it, and he raised an eyebrow.

He looked at The Boss, who was stretching a tiny hand, her fingers disproportionately long and slender, high above her head as she extended it over the tabletop in an attempt to grasp the cordless telephone laying in wait. One finger after another crept forward on the laminate until she was able to knock the phone off its perch. She was halfway to dialing China when The Partner scooped her into his arms and severed the connection. Then he looked at me.

"You heard the fortune," I shrugged. "It's all within her reach. I think it's about time we started child-proofing this place. "

Thanksgiving Detox

Thanks to paper plates and giblets wrapped in paper, Thanksgiving at my house went off with relative smoothness.

Late the night before, while I prepared the turkey to soak overnight in salt water brine, I did not have high hopes for such a pleasant result. As I stuffed my hand in the main turkey cavity in much the same way I search, blindly, for my glasses if they accidentally fall off the nightstand, I came upon what I presumed to be the neck. It was frozen to the rest of the turkey, which was strange when you consider that the turkey I so carefully selected and paid for was labeled "fresh." Why the inside of my fresh turkey was a flaking ice cube is beyond me.

At any rate, I pulled on the neck. It wouldn't budge. Then I pulled some more. It still wouldn't move. Knowing nothing about turkeys, I wondered if was still attached to the spine, or something. Then suddenly it gave. I started, and then I screamed. I screamed so loud that one would have thought the gates of Hell opened and unleashed upon me the Ghosts-Of-Junior-High-School-Gym-Classes-Past. The Boss, who was situated behind me in a saucer, did not know what to make of it. So she started screaming, too. She was inconsolable for the better part of ten minutes. Her father patted her back and she bawled over his shoulder while I stood over the sink, my gloved hands clutching a long, frozen neck.

I thought about the way parents are not supposed to show fear. They are supposed to be a safe haven for their children. I wondered how that worked, exactly. It wasn't all that long ago that I was a child myself. When was I supposed to become fearless? When was I supposed to get myself together, reining in all the ragged ends of my dramatic and spastic (one of my friend's coined it "dramastic") personality? My daughter is 16 months old now and I show no signs of changing. Have I doomed her to a life of uncertainty and trepidation?

At any rate, she got over it. I bagged the neck and stuffed it into the freezer for my mom to take home, then I dumped my 20-pounder into the brine and called it a night. I wondered if I wasn't possibly forgetting something, but I didn't care enough to ponder the question too deeply.

At Thanksgiving dinner the next day, as my mother helped my husband carve a turkey I am proud to say was as moist and flavorful as I could've hoped, she peered curiously into the bird. "What's this?" She poked around with the electric knife, then she tried to stifle her grin. "I think you missed something."

"Oh, no," I said, the reality of my ignorance becoming clear. "It's the giblets, isn't it? I didn't take out the giblets."

She held out a paper-wrapped package of innards. "Yes,these are the giblets."

What I've been saying all along--which is that I know nothing about cooking a turkey--is no exaggeration. It's not that I forgot to remove the giblets. It's that I didn't know where the giblets were. When the neck popped out in a frozen mass the night before, I just assumed the giblets were included. It was easier to make that assumption than it would've been to violate another of that poor bird's orifices.

"Well, at least they were wrapped in paper," my mom said.

"That's for sure!" chortled my mother-in-law. "If they were wrapped in plastic, that turkey would've been toxic!"

I had to laugh, too. I mean, how could I not? As we all filled our plates and clinked wine glasses in thanks, I was already fat and happy with perspective. I was grateful for our large and ever-growing family, all present and accounted for; for our table full of food; and, of course, for giblets wrapped the old fashioned way.

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a time for stories. It starts in the morning as radio stations play special programming aimed at listeners in the kitchen and on the road. Demographic studies and Arbitron ratings must have proven that today, more than any other day, we focus more on the words than the music: Alice's Restaurant on the local independent rock station; short stories read by their authors on NPR; tales of the olden days on the A.M. local.

Then family and friends roll in, and the stories get personal. Words like wine flow around a table or a fire-lit living room; they skim the heads of scampering kids. Now the words on the radio--snow songs crooned in the background--are secondary. The Thanksgiving picture is one of sound, smell, taste and warmth. It's more complete than yesterday; so much more substantial than tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. Enjoy the tales and the telling.

Ask Patty--Go Ahead, Ask Her

Roxie the family pet is making the rounds. Just today she was featured on a Web site catering to the automotive needs of women. If you're wondering what my dog has to do with female drivers, I'll tell you that the connection will become clearer once you stop over to say hi. And after you do that, you should cruise around the rest of the site for a look at the automotive world from a woman's perspective. The site has been featured in papers like the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and was recently a presence at BlogHer '06.

As someone who has been reduced to a snot-faced, blathering mess at more than one car repair facility by technicians who were out to take me for a ride, I am all about a Web site devoted to helping women assume the driver's position when it comes to navigating the slaloms of car buying and car maintenance. If only Patty could also teach me how to merge correctly and not to hit curbs.

Anyway, check it out. And tell them Roxie sent ya.

The Tail End of Autumn in New England

The fall of the frostbitten scarecrow.

May your November nights be warm and comfortable, and your December days not too much of a pain in the. . .well, you know.

To The Family Pet on Thanksgiving

Dear Roxie,

Upon my homecoming from the Supermarket today, as I walked through the door with a 20 pound turkey hanging from one hand and a 20 pound girl tucked under the opposite arm, I saw laid out before me the evidence of gratitude. I saw that pit bulls, too, can give thanks. It is in the wag of their hind quarters that shimmies out through their tails; it is in the incessant licking; and it is in the fabric of three sofas ripped open with love.

This year, I know who it is that has taken over receipt of your doting energies. I see the bond form a tighter strangle-hold every day. You and The Boss. The Boss and you. She feeds you. You sniff her butt. She drops heavy objects on your back. You eat her socks. The two of you cannot get enough of each other.

I'm sorry I did not take you along for the ride to Price Chopper today, as I know how you feel about the separation. I just thought it was a little too cold out to leave you in the car, and supermarkets do not generally smile upon dogs in the turkey section. Perhaps I should enlist the practiced hand of a mental health professional to write the kind of doctor's note that would allow me to bring you with me, everywhere, in your capacity as my state-sanctioned "emotional service pet"--kind of like a seeing-eye dog, only for crazies. Because that is where I'm headed, buddy. Your love is slowly driving me insane.

Here's what I saw on the floor of the kitchen when I walked in the door just an hour or so ago: an empty ice cream container, a plastic dessert tray, the crystallized remnants of a doubly soiled diaper, and a host of brown baby wipes.

I remember that diaper when it was still intact. It was particularly foul. I threw it in the un-lidded garbage receptacle next to the front door with the intent of bagging it up and dumping it into the can outside on my way to the grocery store. Well, like everything else, I forgot. It's my own fault. It usually is.

I know you love The Boss and can't get enough of her toddling goodness. I know she feeds you every day from her own plate--a ravioli flung here, a waffle square tossed there. Just the other day we had to let your collar out a rung to accomodate your ever expanding neckline. But I have to tell you, Rox-o, it doesn't taste nearly as good second hand. Mealtime with The Boss is NOT a gift that keeps on giving. Just because we let you get away with sneaking morsels of your own solidified waste in the backyard does not mean eating our daughter's poop is okay. Because it is not okay. It is not okay.

You're thorough, though, I'll give you that. All that was left for me to clean up was a few shreds of papery plastic, some crystals and the wipes. I'm sure the bacteria that remain, so gloriously invisible to the naked eye, are nothing a can of Lysol (or two) won't eradicate. All's well that ends well, right?

Right, Roxie. Right. But I'm sure you'll understand why we won't be letting you into our bed tonight. Or maybe you won't quite make the connection, and will patter off huffily, in the dead of night, in search of something else to be thankful for. And if my negligence in appropriately dog-proofing the house is any indication, you'll probably find it.

I have nobody but myself to blame. You, I can't help but love every bit as much as before. Maybe more, because that's the kind of sucker I am.

May your Thanksgiving be filled with scraps never before digested,
ECR

Ten Things He Loves About Me, Plus One

Earlier this month I posted a list of 10 Things I Hate About Me. Were this any other month, I would've probably left it at that. But this is NaBloPoMo and, as it's the Monday before Thanksgiving, my time and inspiration are in short supply. To that end, I enlisted my husband's help in following up on the first 10 Things post via this latest bastardization of the game I like to call She Said/He Said.

SHE SAID: Please list 10 Things You Love About Me.

HE SAID: Would five be enough?

SHE DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING, BUT RAISED HER EYEBROWS IN A POINTED MANNER

HE SAID: Fine. In no particular order, here goes:


1. talented writer

2. does cute things to surprise me

3. popped out a really cute baby (that looks like me)

4. tries a new recipe for dinner several times a week

5. is a freak in bed

6. pushes me to succeed

7. always wears thongs

8. has good taste in home decorating

9. laughs at my jokes no matter how dumb they are

10. likes to go places and see/do new things

11. drives a car that has allowed me to hone my mechanic skills


SHE SAID: Awwwww. But I'm not sure about #6. You make it sound like I nag you. I don't nag. You're the nag, remember?

HE DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING, BUT RAISED HIS FINGER IN A POINTED MANNER

Sunday Dinner

Things I should be doing tonight instead of blogging:

- The dishes.

- Something that pays money so that I can afford to remodel our kitchen into something that actually includes counters. Because we currently have none. Seriously. None. Okay, maybe one, but it can barely fit a spice rack and a block of Henckel's. In case you were wondering, that's why we keep dirty dishes on the stove.

- Figuring out how the heck I am going to cook my first full Thanksgiving meal in the culinary cubicle that is our kitchen.

Completely Useless Information That I Would Never Share If I Had Anything Better To Write About, Brought to You By NaBloPoMo

The states in red? I've visited 'em. The rest is a gray void that I won't be happy 'til I've filled.

I want to travel cross-country on a southern bent in a rented Winnebago for the better part of the month of May.


Create your own personalized map of the USA

A Novel Concept

My mother consented to putting a boring, traditional name on my birth certificate because she knew full well it was just a piece of paper. As soon as the ink dried, she set out to tell everyone my nickname.

I was Binky from the beginning.

When I first expressed an interest in being a writer at the age of 5, she told me I had the perfect name for it. "People won't forget Binky," she said. Even at 5, I must have rolled my eyes.

Who knows if I'd ever actually use that name on a published work. It's all moot at this point, as I have yet to commit any fiction of length to my computer screen. The idea of a royalty check signed over to any of my identities is still a dreamy, out-of-focus concept.

However, I have recently finished a 25,000 word manuscript for a non-fiction project I was commissioned to write by a trio in the process of building their own publishing company. The agreement I signed precludes me from going into detail until the project is unveiled sometime around the New Year. It's nothing earth shattering, but I'm proud of each and every one of those 25,000 words and I hold them up as proof that I actually CAN write a book.

If confidence is the foundation on which one builds a novel, then I guess I've got the basement. I even have some tools. What I lack is the most rudimentary blueprint. I just don't know what to write. I've got some characters, sure. I have a few settings. I just don't know how to nail them together, and am not entirely sure they'll fit.

I've joined a blogosphere-inspired writing group that I hope will be just the thing I need to get productive. A few days into it, I can already tell that the experience, discipline, and enthusiasm brought to the cyber-table by the other participants can only enhance my craft.

Now, if I could just find a cleaning group to inspire me to get the laundry done. . .

Diagnosis

Because the lack of communication in my family extends not only to the way we convey information but also to how we receive it, I had to deduce the name of my father’s cancer from a few clues dangled in front of me via a telephone call from my mother.

“Your father can’t remember the name of his cancer,” she said.

“What?”

“He said the doctor told him but that it's long and he can't remember it. There are three words and it begins with an ‘sz’ or something.”

“You have got to be kidding me.” I sat there a moment in disbelief before practicality overcame me. I held the phone to my ear as I leaned into my computer and fired up Google.

“One thing your father did get out of the him is that this cancer has an 80% cure rate.” A lifetime of hope and fear was in the heft of those words. “I couldn’t believe the doctor actually said it. Cancer. The whole time my mother was dying, her doctors never once uttered that word.”

“Um-hum. Um-hum.” The computer keys tap-danced staccato under my practiced fingers. “Squamous cell carcinoma of the larynx,” I said, suddenly.

“Yes, that must be it! Where did you find it?”

“Google.”

“S-Q-what?”

“Squamous cell carcinoma.”

“How do you spell that?”

“S-Q-U-A-M-O-U-S.”

“Definitely. That's it. Wait till I tell your father. He’ll be so happy.” She chuckled at the absurdity of it. “Would you believe he was actually shocked when he found out it was cancer? You should’ve seen his face. All those years of drinking and smoking and now using that chewing tobacco, and still his eyes were as wide as saucers. He just thought it couldn’t happen to him.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I remember when he was a police officer and how he’d always say he was okay with the idea of being killed by a bullet, but he’d never want to die of cancer.”

“So he smoked two packs a day.”

I could see her on the other line, shrugging off my sarcasm. “He just didn’t want a drawn out death, by any disease. But he always said cancer.”

“Then why…” I trailed off into the realm of speechlessness I’d be better off to visit more frequently. Brief silence ensued.

“Well, anyway, how do you spell that again?” My mother was bright with the solid prospects of my investigative discovery.

“S-Q-U-A-M-O-U-S.”



____

What Do You Do When Your Dishwasher Stops Working?

The warranty on the dishwasher my husband acquired through marriage has long since expired. Daily, and with a sigh, he resigns himself all over again to glasses that are not quite clean and teflon pans that are indelibly traced with soap scum. This dishwasher--never a finely tuned machine to begin with--gets more unreliable by the day.

Still, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't trade me in even if he could.

I'm a bad housekeeper. My mop is the dog's tongue and my vacuum is the handheld Black & Decker I nose into corners to remove blatant webs of dust. Only when there is not a single family member left with a clean pair of underwear to his or her name will I do the laundry. Upstairs, where no house guests may roam, it is hard to see the floor for all the clutter.

I'd like to clean it all up. I really would. But my messes are slow-growing and layered like certain fungi. To wipe out the scourge would take at least 4 days devoid of any other commitment, including motherhood, writing and sleep. And I'll tell you this: If I had that kind of vacation time coming to me, I'd spend it on the terrace of a spotless, beach-front hotel room with maid service before I'd waste a minute of it cleaning my own house.

I know some of the beliefs I hold, like this anti-cleaning one, are not easily supportable, so I have taken to collecting witty aphorisms that bolster my cause. I will end today's post with one of them, which I discovered on my mother's refrigerator when I was about ten years old. It's been there ever since.

"Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing." ~ Phyllis Diller

Hell Hath No Fury Like a Blogger Scorned

I am going to wait and see if the post I just spent over an hour crafting decides to show up below. As it stands, there is an emtpy space that was NOT there when I hit "publish post" just a few moments ago, so naively satisfied with my words.

You can imagine my surprise when I went to view the fruits of my labor and saw that no content conveyed with the title. I was so flustered, in fact, that I proceeded to engage in a series of missteps that made it so the "recover post" feature in Blogger was no longer an option. Though I have some of my post saved, the final third of it is missing, and therein lies my anger.

See, I have this problem where I cannot make myself re-write something that has disappeared. I just get too angry. I feel like the Internet has robbed me of words that I will never again be able to come up with, and I get so caught up in the rightous indignation of being the victim that I cannot possibly find any energy left over with which to write something in replacement.

I realize this borders on insanity and that it's wholly unproductive, but that's an issue for the psychiatrist's couch that I see no point in burdening you with here today.

So, unless someone has some great advice about how to retrieve lost words from the Blogger Dashboard, or unless they magically reappear of their own volition, you will never know what happened in the Dunkin Donuts Drive Thru More Than a Month Ago.

Somehow I think you'll survive.

To The Person In Front of Me at the Dunkin Donuts Drive-Thru More Than a Month Ago

The Bad Aunt

I am off to deliver belated birthday gifts to my niece and nephew, whose birthdays were in September and October, respectively. I am a bad, bad aunt. The sheer amount of groveling I feel compelled to do at their feet this afternoon precludes me from writing anything of length here today.

Instead, I leave you with this photo of The Boss and my shining star of a brother, who could never be construed as bad.

Flashback

The Good Uncle, December '05