You Look Like A Monkey And You Smell Like One Too

Welcome to the blog. Can I get you a piece of cake? This year, a minor miracle occurred. M-A-D-E-L-E-I-N-E was spelled correctly (2005) B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y was spelled correctly (My bad-2006) and the cake was sugarifically delicious.

Mmmmmmmm.

The girls cleaned up.

I didn't have a crying jag/nervous breakdown like I did in 2001, 5 days after 9/11/2001, when my sister needed to have the cake cut b/c she had to leave early and some in-law was running late and I wanted to wait to cut the cake until they got there and well, you know, 3000 Americans were still smoking heaps of ash.
No, the party went off with only minor glitches. The real drama occurred......drum roll..... after the party.

When the girls ran outside to play and a memory assailed me.....

It all started three weeks ago...

I brushed my hair from my face as I kneeled, sweating profusely, in the front yard weeding the garden and looked up to find a man standing over me. Our eyes locked and he said...

"Um...do you know where Green Valley Lane is?"

"There is no Green Valley Lane here," I replied. "I've lived in this neighborhood for 40 years, on and off, and I've never heard of one anywhere around here."

I looked up and saw that he had a gray van parked in the road. The van had white tags with red letters. I tried to see them but they were too far away to read. Van-the vehicle of choice for child abduction. Our street is 2 blocks from 2 major highways.

Something about him made me cringe. CHILDPREDATOR*CHILDPREDATOR*CHILDPREDATOR* alarms began going off in my head.

"May I ask who you are looking for?" I said, ever the gracious Southern lady, even to suspected predators, noblesse oblige, dahlin'!

"Um...some teacher I used to have..." he said, as he walked quickly to the van.

Last weekend the girls ran outside to play and I called for Madeleine to come back for a minute. I quickly shoved the Migo cell phone into a pouch and handed it to her, ordering her to take it outside with her AND PRESS THE RED EMERGENCY BUTTON IF ANYBODY TRIED TO KIDNAP HER.

One week later, the phone had not surfaced on Madeleine's bedstand, but I assumed it was in the garage with their toys.

"Where's your cell phone?"

"I...um.....um......."

I'm a lawyer, trained in interrogation.

The story unfolded: Madeleine gave it to Meredith to hold and Meredith put it on the basketball goal and then they decided to shoot some baskets so they put it on the trunk of my car in the garage and they've looked everywhere under every pillow, box, table, rug, crevice, purse, trunk, etc. AND THE CELL PHONE IS GONE, VANISHED INTO THE AGES, WHERE IT WILL LIVE ONLY IN THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF OUR GRIEVING FAMILY.

Oh! The grief! The hugs, the contrite looks from two little girls. The "Mike Brady" talk I got to deliver. I'm not mad, just sad. Very sad that you treated a serious responsibility so casually. Very sad that you begged for a phone and then reneged on the promise to faithfully care for it blah blah blah the truth of the matter is....

1. I was a sucker and
2. No 8 year old is mature enough to assume responsibility for a phone and
3. I was a sucker and
4. I was an idiot.
5. I was a moron.

So! Happy Ending time! I called Verizon and they reactivated one of my old phones and Madeleine and Meredith are forbidden to remove it from the house unless under careful supervision and I hoped THEY LEARNED A LESSON and anyway they are now 9 and 7 and much, much more mature yeah right and we all fade into the sunset and live happily ever after except.....

P.S. I have fibromyalgia.

Why, Lord, Why?

I wish you could have known her in the old days. My mom, that is.

She was funny. She asked about you and really listened. My sister and I have friends who considered her their second mother. She was feisty, and independent, and educated. Got a masters degree back in the 40s when it wasn't common.

She could sew anything and made most of my high school wardrobe. I gave away a lot of the clothes--now I wish I hadn't. They might just be retro chic by the time my girls are teenagers. The wide legged pants are already coming back...

I was so proud of my loving, funny, smart, pretty, kind mom.

Dementia--or Alzheimers--or something--has turned her into a raging bitch--not all of the time, but enough to wound.

Now she's a bitter, lonely, mean woman who will say just about anything and has lost a sense of personal boundaries. You know how you have people who won't take a hint and get off the phone? Day before yesterday she called to discuss her bowel problems. In excrutiating detail.

"And I think I have anal lumps, so I took some Milk (pronounced meelk) of Magnesia..."

"Mom, we're sitting down to eat. Please don't tell me more."

".....and I'm still not having any luck, feel all backed up.."

"Mom! PLEASE!"

"Well, I guess you don't love me anymore." Click.

And she's so right. I don't love this woman. But I love the woman she was before her body began to fail her.

The Tyranny Of An Ordinary Day

"I was offered a job in the WTC. I turned it down. I don't know why--the building just gives me the creeps."-friend of mine in 1987

I used to live in that apartment. That picture was shot by me in 1986. My did we hate the WTC--it blocked our TV transmission. We had to get cable TV even though the actual shows were being shot less than 10 miles from our apartment!

The worst part was that it was just another ordinary day. A beloved elderly relative kidneys are shutting down, you're pretty prepared to hear of the death.

The worst part is the monster hiding under the cover of another ordinary day, a day when you roll out of bed and grab the coffee and fire up the car and....

Five minutes before I made the turn into my job, I heard Jodie Page of B106 Columbia say, "A small plane has hit the WTC, so here's a nice soothing song in case that news gets you excited."

I was teaching that day. I ran into the classroom and tried to access cnn.com, abc.com, foxnews.com, cbs.com and got nothing.

I whipped out my cell phone and called the boys in the computer lab. "Sorry, there's nothing wrong with the internet, Lorrie," said Jimmy cheerfully.

As the day progressed wild rumours began to fly around the campus. I didn't see the towers fall because I was still in class. Emails began to circulate. Somebody sent an email saying that two planes had taken off without clearance from the Charleston airport (120 miles away). Nobody knew what to believe that day, because the unbelievable was happening in living color...

I cancelled classes later on that day and as I was taping the notice to the door a student walked up. He looked puzzled. He had not heard. "Paul, they brought down the towers. This is your generation's Pearl Harbor!" I exclaimed. "This is the day you will tell your grandchildren about!" He looked at me as if I had lost my mind and slowly walked away.

And my daughter turned three on September 14, 2001. Today she is almost 9. Does she know about the monster hiding in the closet? Does her subconcious remember a day when she was unceremoniously deserted on a sidewalk somewhere in China, never to see blood kin again? Is she prepared for the next time she wakes up to a ordinary day and receives devastating news?

I am not. I dread the ordinary day. I lock my car door and fasten my seatbelt and beseech the heavens for a break each and every day. The phone sits by my bedside waiting patiently to deliver the next bit of horror. Another attack, another illness, another accident, another catastrophe which will change the fabric of life as I know it.

I dread the ordinary day.

Maximum Ride

This is a blog review for Mother Talk. I asked to review a copy of James Patterson's new book Maximum Ride 3: Saving The World And Other Extreme Sports.

I'm prejudiced 'cause I'm a big James Patterson fan. I love, love, love his Alex Cross and Woman's Murder Club series. For the past few years he's put out a number of books about bird children--genetic experiments by mad scientists. The bird children are mostly normal but can fly and have a lot of bird DNA in their bones/wings.

This is the 3rd book in a series, and I have read the other books also.

The book is narrated by the Head Bird Chick, Max. Max is delightfully sarcastic and teenagers ought to be able to relate to that.

Good points: Well, it certainly is filled with action. Not a dull moment. Max and her cohorts are constantly escaping the evil scientists out to destroy them, devising many ingenious ways to fly the coop, so to speak. I liked the way that Patterson put a blogspot.com in the book. One of the birds starts his own blog to alert the kids of the world of this evil.

Bad points: It lacks the subtle plotlines and gradual character development I'd like to see. It's just chase scene, escape, chase scene, escape, etc. etc. etc.

I think that teens would enjoy it, for what that's worth. One could compare Harry Potter to a long, engrossing train ride and this book to a quick whirl on a roller coaster. Both enjoyable, depending on what mood you are in.

Why Yes, It IS All About Me

Hi, I'm sorry that this is such a spectacularly bad picture, but I don't have any decent shots of me with my new short haircut. Y'see, the only picture I have was shot after I asked Roger to do so (WHY do I ALWAYS have to ASK him to take a picture? We could speculate about that ad infinitim, I suppose. Is it because I seize the camera and groan audibly after each shot that I look "just horrible?" Or is he just a bad person? I vote for the latter).

He did shoot a picture of me last week but it was before my dental visit. See, I have to take iron pills, and they are hard on my stomach, so I got the bright idea of taking them sublingually (under the tongue) and then one day I noticed that my teeth were a most unattractive shade of black which required an hour's worth of cleaning from the dental hygienist and now I take my iron pills by swallowing them. Anyway, attractive short hair pictures to follow soon.

Now back to me, me, me. It's my blog, after all, dammit.

I've always been perfectly up front with my girls. I've clearly informed them that they are supposed to do all the things I never got to do. Dance en pointe. Date a cute boy (or girl, if Meredith turns out to be gay--whatever) for the prom. Get into medical school. I mean, I would have written it into the adoption contract and pressed their little thumbs in ink if the authorities would have let me.

So they are studying ballet as I made it clear that was mandatory. So two things are now coming up.

Madeleine and Meredith are starting to develop preferences of their own.

Madeleine has decided that she wants to play the violin. Now from my point of view this is a ridiculous waste of time and a cliche. An Asian girl on the violin? I mean, who ever heard of that, right? If she's going to do something, I want it to be, well, different. Like basketball. But she truly wants to take it. She got a chance to test drive a violin at school and came home, clasped her hands in reverential awe, and said in a hushed voice,

"It's like I had played one before."

"Perhaps you did in a past life," I suggested. Roger shot me a Don't Confuse Them With Your Whacked Out Hippie Stuff Look but I make no bones about it--I believe in reincarnation and don't mind talking about it. So what if the Catholic Church disagrees? That's my opinion and they can decide for themselves when they get older.

So--violin lessons it is! Two days a week.

Then Roger decides that if Madeleine gets to do three things (violin & ballet, plus she's auditioning for the district wide chorus)--well, then Meredith ought to do at least two things.

But she doesn't want to.

"Look," I argued. " I had braces, was a Brownie/Junior/Cadette Girl Scout, took ballet, took piano, played the flute in the band. My sister did nothing except horse stuff. Because she didn't want to. Every child is different."

"What do you want to do, Meredith?" he inquired. "Golf, flag football, tennis, piano, violin, cello, macrame, guitar, flamenco dancing?"

"Nothing!" she replied cheerfully. And I reminded him that it isn't all about us, it's about the children, and that each child is different.

I'm both totally wise and totally schizophrenic.