moving

We're not moving from Trout Towers. If we moved, we'd have to take the house with us.

I've consolidated, and am now posting new random thoughts on my website which - oddly enough - is called Trout Towers.

Come on by! We didn't clean up for you.

the nature of hate

You know that Freudian slip joke? Where the man asks what a Freudian slip is and then says something like "oh, like this morning when I meant to ask my wife to pass the jam and instead I said 'you ruined my life you stupid *****'"?

I've been having that.

Except I don't have a wife.

I have someone who is persistently and mercilessly mean. Think "passive aggressive" with the passive part worn off.

I start each day thinking "this is the day I will let it all roll off!" I sometimes last an hour. But before long, she says something that makes me want to take a swing at her with my coffee mug. I don't because 1) I love my handmade coffee mugs, 2) I make good coffee and 3) It's not a nice thing to do.

In that order.

I would also be charged with assault, but trust me, no jury would convict.

It takes everything I've got to not meet meanness with meanness.*  If I did, I would feel sick about it all day and she would remember neither the offense nor the retort. What's the point of that? She doesn't remember the things she says because they're not the point. There is no target. She's angry and scared and maybe by spewing vitriol she thinks the vitriol will leave her system. (It doesn't, so don't try this at home.)

There's a great quote from (someone on the internet who is probably not actually) Buddha: “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

I've been holding onto a lot of anger. Like the man in the joke, my response to a question like "did anyone make coffee" is "I hate you." I can't remember the last time I actually said "I hate you" out loud to someone. Except maybe that time my friend fit into her regular jeans the day after she delivered a baby.

Obviously, I don't hate my friend (although I still think she's a jerk and should at least be showing some signs of age or something). And I don't hate the person who says vile things to me. I hate that she's unable to get all the crap out of her system without flinging it at me.

This morning I realized hate is like a usb charger. It doesn't do anything unless it gets connected to something. But once you plug it in - usually to something you wish would go away - it sucks the life out of you. And it makes the hated thing an even bigger deal. It takes over your day because you can't stop thinking about it and arguing with it. It can't do that on its own.

The flip side of that quote is also true. If someone drinks poison, it will not kill you - no matter how loudly they yell the specifics of that poison's properties at you.

I think I can practice this for a full ten minutes at a time. I don't know why this has to be part of my life, but if there's a lesson in it, I'd like to learn it and get it over with.

Today, I will not drink the poison.

*Shut up, I can too be mean.

(My friend Jennifer sent me this, ducking before I could swing anything at her.)

the power of the pompom

Due to the wild success of my debut reading at one fundraiser (a person liked it), I was invited to read at a second fundraiser. This one was for Housing Assistance Corporation and is pure, unadulterated mayhem. Most of it is music, plus some funny stuff thrown in.

Lest I seem too calm about appearing publicly, now that I've done it once, one of the bands asked me to be in a skit they had concocted. I don't do skits, but I'm trying hard to not be the kid sitting alone on the playground, so I said yes.

In the skit, a kid asks his drunk uncle to tell him a story. The uncle comes up with something loosely resembling the Nutcracker. We did the opening party scene (I was a guest), the mouse vs. soldier scene (I was a soldier), Dance of the Snowflakes (snowflake, obvs), Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy (more on that in a minute), and the wildly abridged Land of Sweets (I don't know what I was).

I mention all this because a Christmas miracle occurred. 

Did I mention that it's mayhem? The parking lot fills well before start time. The room is huge and completely unnavigable. It's exactly the sort of thing I'd feign jury duty to avoid. When I am faced with a mass of humanity, I give myself fits trying to figure out how to get from here to there. I usually end up simplifying matters by figuring out how to get out and home.

Somehow I was elected Leader of the Snowflakes. As such, I led the pack through the crowd. It's amazing we didn't all end up in a cowering ball 5 feet from the stage. Our job was to get to the other side of the hall to usher in the Sugarplum Fairy, so cowering was not an option.

To make us look more like Snowflakes, we were each given two large tissue paper pompoms to wave over our heads in a snowflakish figure eight pattern. It was stunning. So off the stage I went, with all the other flakes behind me, waving my pompoms. 

Did you know that if you walk through a crowd waving large tissue paper pompoms, the masses part for you? They even smile as you pass. I almost had fun. In a crowd. 

SKITS ARE AWESOME.

We made it safely to the door, where we awaited the 6-foot-something man in a purple tutu to arrive. Believe me, once he showed up the masses parted even further. It was magnificent.

Yes, my friends, this is my life. 

So my holiday tips for you are A) don't answer emails from musicians, and B) don't leave home without pompoms. You won't believe the results.

I was going to get everyone week-long spa visit gift certificates for Christmas, but obviously tissue pompoms are the way to go. 

If you'll excuse me, I have some folding and fluffing to do.

My very first public reading!

Just when 2012 was on the verge of ending without anything truly thrilling happening, I was invited to read at a fundraiser. It was a benefit for Lower Cape Outreach Council's Fuel Assistance Program, which helps our friends and neighbors stay warm in the winter (by burning my stories).

This was the first time I read something of my own in public* and I have to say, audience response is wildly addictive. Pausing for people to stop laughing is my new favorite thing.

I was also terrified, but that goes without saying. I am Perpetually Terrified.

I'm sorry if I ruin the Nutcracker, Christmas and strippers for you.  These things happen.


*I've read at lots of weddings, but they never seem to want me to use my own material. Can you imagine?

Thanksgiving - the real version

I have deliberated for days whether to share this or not. On the one hand, it's totally airing my family's undergarments. On the other hand, I know we're not alone in this and maybe, just maybe, it will help someone.

No one actually wants to hear about your Thanksgiving when they ask how it was, so I've been going around saying it was great. Which is completely not true.

In the pro column, we had a small gathering of family and adopted family. My mom lives 2 hours from here, so I picked her up the day before and made her stay a couple days before driving her back.

From here out, I'm going to thinly veil this by calling our mothers Grandmother A and Grandmother B. That way one of them doesn't get profiled as an unspeakable jerk. Which one of them was.

In Grandmother A's defense, she hurt her back recently and is on painkillers. She struggles with memory anyway, and the painkillers made her even more confused. The confusion came out as antagonism.

(I am sugar-coating this. She is really good at being antagonistic, even on a good day.)

Nothing was right for her. She hated the cheese on the relish tray. We'd hand her something to try and she'd yell at us. And then she'd complain that no one was giving her anything to eat.

Grandmother B did like the relish tray, and was eating off the cheese knife. Fortunately for all of us, dinner was ready.

Because of the painkillers, I offered Grandmother A ginger ale. She made a face at me, so I listed the other options.

"I don't give a damn what you give me," she said.

That pretty much sums up dinner.

Grandmother B and our guest were horrified. Unable to deal with the sniping (though not directed at her), Grandmother B prayed loudly throughout dinner.

It was... great.

I couldn't resist sneaking off and sending World's Worst Thanksgiving texts to my sister, who found them hilarious. (Don't worry - her shift is coming up soon.)

In actuality, it wasn't the World's Worst Thanksgiving - by a long shot. We had plenty of food, a roof over our heads and - for the most part - each other. I worry about the kids, but the kids were only worried about getting the right kind of pie.

Intellectually, I know that Grandmother A left the building a long time ago. She's in a sort of survival mode, in which nothing is filtered. We're told she doesn't mean half of what she says (although she may truly hate Stilton with cranberries). Knowing that she won't remember what she said 5 minutes from now doesn't help as much as it should. I catch myself wincing when I hear her voice.

I cannot, however, say that she ruined Thanksgiving. You can't ruin Thanksgiving for anyone but yourself.

And that's what I came away with. Grandmother A sent the appearance of a nice Thanksgiving up in flames, but she couldn't touch the real thing.

Despite aggressively grumpy appearances, we have much to be grateful for.

The Apocalypse (or, if you prefer, Thursday)

8am

Chris says the ground opened, which is what it feels like. Most of the lights don't work and the house smells like melted appliances. The ground opened, and in we fell. I didn't think this was supposed to happen until December.

Electricity is coming into the house at 220 because the ground wire went down in the latest storm onslaught. That's not a good thing.

We're not sure what survived, appliance-wise. When we open the refrigerator it looks like an alien spaceship is coming at us. (I mean the light, not the leftovers.) The kids are psyched because first everything was dark and then, just as they were done getting ready for school by flashlight, the house went into Demonic Possession mode. They'd flip a switch in one room, and a light would come on in another. It was awesome. I could barely get them out the door.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my mother-in-law has short term memory loss so we've been over what's going on a million times in the last 15 minutes.

Note: There is something uniquely horrible about not knowing what's going on and having to tell someone the specifics of what you don't know and have no power over, repeatedly.

We started with the long story, and then moved to the abbreviated version:

“There's no power.”

“Is someone going to make me some toast?”

(Rinse. Repeat.)

I think if we stabbed a piece of bread with a fork and then stuck the end of the fork in an outlet, it just might work.

NSTAR deemed it dangerous and advised us to throw the main breaker until they could send a crew.

(Long pause in which we wait and then give up, going to bed at 9 because what else are we supposed to do? There's no internet and I am all caught up on my counted cross stitch by candlelight.)

10pm

I wake up to an authoritative knock on the door. A tall, handsome NSTAR man is in my garden. Behind him, my lawn is crawling with utility workers in foul weather gear.

You don't realize how many windows you have until you are sitting in total darkness, with searchlights bouncing off every wall in your house from outside. It's like a movie. Let me just say that I really hope the people who are inches from my windows, scaling my walls and shining searchlights all over my lawn in the dark of night are always using their power for good, not evil.

If the neighbors ask what all the search lights were for, I'm going to tell them Sugarplum lost her gerbil.

Appliance death-toll to come. Stay tuned.

P.S. Thank you, NSTAR

updated:
Death Toll: furnace, oven, toaster, coffee maker, mother-in-law's radio, assorted lights.... (still taking inventory)

mini van not included

We have no hot water and no one has showered. It must be very unpleasant to be a furnace guy. I bet he has a clothespin in his toolbox for the extra-stinky families. (I'll let you know if he uses it.)

In other world news, Sugarplum is signing up for soccer camp.

I have wanted her to play soccer since she was a tiny thing. I love watching soccer - and kids in cleats are freaking adorable. So we signed her up when she was 3, and stood on the sidelines with her when she turned into a paralytic lawn ornament, refusing to budge.

When she got to elementary school, she learned to play soccer at recess. They had no playground, so the kids had to entertain themselves. It was either soccer or chasing each other with sticks.

Then one day, out of the blue, I got a call from the new soccer coach telling me when Sugarplum should show up for practice. I explained about our little soccer-playing garden gnome and how she didn't want to compete, and he told me to chill the flip out and bring her to practice.

I don't know what's in those water bottles, but I want some. By the end of that practice, I had a soccer player on my hands.

She is so into it that she asked to be on the travel team, tryouts for which were last night.

We showed up and it was like a cocktail party - one group of mingling kids who knew each other and one group of mingling adults who knew each other. And then there was us. Once we found Sugarplum a ball, she was fine chasing it around the field - a small oasis of quiet among the bustle. I stood in what would have been the corner had we not been outside.

Note: I hate cocktail parties.

Every fiber of my being was yelling "may we please go home now?" And it dawned on me that the paralytic lawn ornament did not fall far from the paralytic lawn ornament tree. Except now she's got a soccer ball and is completely at ease. Soccer balls are like cigarettes for people who like to run around.

I couldn't go home because I owed it to my kid to sign her up for this thing she really wants to do - no matter how much I don't want to do it. But I also couldn't sign her up because no one seemed to know what was happening.

A very helpful volunteer-type person appeared just as I was considering a drive to the library where I could sign up in the privacy of the internet, and handed me a clipboard. Clipboards are like soccer balls for people who don't like to run around and don't smoke.

Tryouts started and, seeing Sugarplum was happy as a pig in poop, I resigned myself to a life of sideline garden gnomedom, admitting that even I might make friends with those gregarious, flamingo parents.

This morning, back in the comfort of the internet, I researched the club we signed up with and found the "10 Commandments for Parents." This is my favorite:

Thou shalt place your child first. Ask yourself if you are trying to live your life through the successes of your child. If her success means more to you than it does to the athlete, you are in serious risk of pushing your child too hard. If you want to be that driven, go out and play a sport yourself (you are never too old!).

I have to admit, I signed her up for soccer that first time because I never played a team sport. But at this point, we've moved beyond me living my life through her. We've moved into this weird new territory, where I have to push myself in order to support her properly.

And as it turns out, it was all fine once I showed up for practice.