Life is Art

This morning I visited a woman's home who had offered household furnishings on our local freecycle. Although her posting was about a half-dozen specific items, on my arrival at her little bungalow she told me she was having trouble making decisions on what to keep and what to dispose of, and how to dispose of it, for an impending move - and was thus almost desperate to siphon off anything in her home that someone would genuinely want. She was a bit of a Hoarder - one piece of furniture she was now offering had been found on the side of the road, and now she had to find a place for it to go. "It's a real good lesson," she tells me soberly, "about what you take into your life." I relieved her of a pretty but modest floor lamp, and on the way out the door a Madeline doll for my son. I wished her well with her move and gave her my phone number should she want help when the time came.

I thought to myself how few people "get it" at all. They hunger for more, and better, and what everyone else seems to have ("My daughter needs new shoes", "I need some 'decent clothes'", etc). My recently-acquired personal knowledge is that I have never truly regretted any move (however drastic) I have made toward downsizing my possessions. Two weeks ago we got rid of more than 2/3 our kitchen items, carefully keeping one frying pan, one stockpot, and so on. A friend called into question my decision and asked what I'm going to do for large gatherings. But I'm thinking to myself about women who cook for larger families than mine using a clay stove and a hubcap. I can do it. I'm also thinking those women would have clawed through our cast-away kitchen utensils like ravenous wolves.

And that's an important point. A woman or family in a position of true poverty really does benefit from material possessions. But I am not that woman. And my posessions, if I'm honest, can often serve to deteriorate my quality of life and my spiritual nature. At this point in my life I need to look for less "stuff" and use my relative privilege to think of what I'm providing and who I'm providing it for. And, when I do consume something or indulge myself, to have more of a spirit of reverence and calm for the bounty we've been provided.

As anyone who knows me will agree, I still have a long way to go on the way to being the Reigning Zen-Mama of Simple Living. I have some really embarrassing habits - such as buying an expensive coffee every day and yes, using a new disposable paper cup nearly every time. I have a home full of crap. Yeah, I have less than my contemporaries due to a constant paring down my husband and I have adopted - but it won't fit into a couple truckloads, like our possessions did when we first moved in (kidless, of course).

But I'm trying to let it go. To winnow it down. One item at a time. Until, perhaps one day not so far away, my home is full of peace.

Today as I walked my daughter to preschool she ran ahead of me and streamed past the elementary school, tapping every one of the six green poles in front of the building, then hopping up on the flagpole stand and swinging around the flagpole waiting for me. What a little darling she is in my life. I mean, despite my cynical jokes about parenthood, the fact is I am into my kids. Disgustingly so. I can look at them and I can smell their skin, I know exactly where each item of clothes they have on is from, what they have in their pockets (a pair of batteries in Nels' back right-hand overall pocket, even as he naps), when they last washed their hands, and what they last ate.

Sophie's inventory today:
Bathed this morning at 8:15 (Ivory soap), hair combed but not washed

Wearing:
Little pink panties and undershirt bought by my mom
Old Navy red-and-blue ringer tee I bought online (yes, I am ashamed for buying ON)
Green corduroy overalls, hand-me-downs from Kimberly
White socks, green-and-pink Converse Allstars I bought from zappos
Navy blue puffy coat I found on the playground one day
Baby alpaca pink-and-black hat I knit last Christmas
School backpack I sewed her this summer

Eating:
Piece of homemade banana bread in her left hand (which she shared with her grouchy brother)

On the flip side of the coin, my son is being really unappealing this morning. He is currently napping and I'm considering whether I want to get him up for our African dance class (yeah, you heard me) or let him sleep a little further. Hell, what I want is to have a little laudanum to slip in his warm milk.

One of the habits I am not so good at is getting up in the morning. I get up when the kids do, or rather when my husband is almost out the door to work. For those of you who don't have wee tykes yet, I can offer a bit of advice. It really is best to have your act together before they awake - at least get a shower in, get dressed, and have that first slurp of coffee to steel yourself. Kind of get a head start on the tousle-haired, ravenously-hungry little things. For my friends whose children wake early (we're talking 5:30 AM here) this habit is real hard to adopt. But even for those of us whose children "sleep in" (7:00 AM in our case) it hurts to think of giving up an extra half-hour of shuteye, especially if you are either A. hungover; B. trying to escape the reality of family life; or C. both.

This morning was one where I didn't even get my shower in before Ralph left. And I am someone who takes a shower every day - no skipping out. So after I got them fed and (reasonably) occupied I did what I do about half the days of the week - put up a baby gate to block the kitchen and downstairs, made sure all other doors were latched, and ducked into the bathroom and closed the door (else Nels, like a dog, would assuredly play in / drink out of the toilet) leaving my children out and about in the house, free to roam.

The toddler sabotaged my 6.5 minutes of alone-time (never truly peaceful as it is often accompanied by sounds of screaming from the other room) by having to pee. A legitimate request. After her little pee visit I got to listen it on (which she sat and babbled on the toilet nonsensically culminating in the, "Mommy? I really like you!" announcement that she has made a lot lately - perhaps in hopes I will continue to feed and house her) she popped off the toilet, wiped, pulled up her panties, put her overalls back on, and washed her hands (holy shit! parents of recently potty-trained toddlers will know how great that succession is). I shut off the water, wrapped the towel around me, and herded her out to the hall where her brother was waiting, his little claws scrabbling at the door. As gently as I could I slapped their hands away and closed the door on them so I could at least dry my hair by myself (estimated time I had been out of their sight, four minutes) and I swear to God as they vanished from my sight the sounds they were making, the glassy-eyed eager stares, and the clawing hands looked exactly like the zombies trying to storm the boarded-up house in Night Of The Living Dead.

... but so are my kids.



You know what I think is funny? When women (or men, I suppose) talk about their good such-and-such food dish. Like "Oh, come on over tomorrow. I'm making my good Greek lasange." I mean, what is the implication? "I won't make my lukewarm, stray cat-hair-in-the-pan, BiMart-ingredients Greek lasagne. No, I'll make you my good one." It's also funny that women (or men, I suppose) who say this are likely to call the dish by some silly name striking illusions of culinary grandeur: "Impossible Cheeseburger Pie" or "Knock-You-Naked Brownies" (I didn't make that up!) or such nonsense.

The dish in question which I of course made a good version of tonight and named it according to abovementioned custom (and with the help of my family) is "my good Sunrise Chicken" (Sophie calls it "Dinosaur Chicken", but I find that frankly unappetizing). If you're noticing we're having chicken thighs a lot, yeah, you're right. That, and ground beef, and if I find a stray possum on Highway 20 now and then, it goes in the stew pot too.

My "children" over the past few days.

Today was great, until about 1:30 PM when our downstairs flooded with shit-water. Yay! Turns out we have tree roots enroaching on the outlet from our house which backed up everything. Thank God it wasn't me, but was my husband, who got to discover this exciting development while he was dealing with a diaper in the privy. The 24-hour plumber was called (it is the weekend after all) and once again things are safe and tidy. I did the antiseptic cleanup on the bathroom just to prove to my husband I love him.


It's film festival time in PT. We tried to get our kids to wear the seizure-inducing 3D glasses for tonight's feature film. The movie (It Came From Outer Space) was pretty damn awful, but there's nothing like an outdoor 3D movie viewing - free at that - to have a lot of fun, sitting on hay bales and screaming at the suspenseful parts. I also noticed my husband's heckling got way more laughs than mine. Excuse me while I feel a little put-out.

I am in a meeting tonight for my second-born's second year of Playschool. As necessary as these sorts of meetings are - and as much as I appreciate the efforts of the lovely ladies who do all the work behind them - they are a pain in my balls. Mostly because I can't stand to sit still, I guess, unless I am either A. drinking alcohol and conversing, or B. watching something on the television (or C., both together - which is best of all). Even then, I am usually itching to have something in my hands - to rip seams, hand-sew, bead, or knit.

So that's what I was doing at this meeting - knitting. I knit on the bus ride to the meeting and knit while the multitude of forms were passed out and explained and protocol for handwashing and nosewiping were discussed. I knew I was bordering on being assholian to knit while a meeting was being conducted. But you know, at least I was there (many parents skipped) - and I was listening and occasionally putting aside my work to make eye contact with the speaker(s). And because of that not-wasted hour or so, I'm going to be done with Nels' hat tonight. So there.

Despite what you might read in shite like Men Are From Mars, ... etc., women aren't all the same. Women vary so much they are like an exotic subspecies of the human race. Women have different temperaments, different drives and desires; taste, look, smell, walk, and rage differently. However one thing that happens almost without fail, to almost every woman who willingly enters motherhood - they become immortalized in love. When my husband came to pick me up at the meeting I glimpsed him with my children in the hall, blinking at all these people they didn't know, at an hour usually associated with bath and bedtime. A moment later My Boy saw me from across the crowded room, wiggled out of his father's arms, barreled toward me like a little tank, then grasped me in his strong little (yet pleasingly fat) arms and sighed. His sister joined him clinging to my leg and smiling up at me, "Mommy!" as if they'd both not seen me for days, not two hours.

Motherhood makes you a demigoddess to a very select few. You are their one Goddess and on some innate level they will always think you perfectly unattainable and infinitely desirable.

On to the mundane aspects of keeping wee chilluns alive and kicking, I made this for dinner. Which means I fed my family on $3 worth of meat. Two of them (my family members) are small but can eat their own weight in animal flesh. I am slightly repulsed and scared by this, but even more intimidated at the idea of switching everyone to a vegetarian lifestyle.

I probably only have about three innate good habits. By that I mean, something that comes naturally to me that is, in fact, good for me. I mean, I have a lot of enforced good habits - keeping a relatively tidy house, responding to my email promptly, and being impeccably polite to service people. But those are all issues I have to work at.

So anyway, the habit I'm thinking of now is that I love vegetables. And no, not in whatever weird way you're thinking, pervert (that would be you, Abbi-Felching-Queen)! I mean I love buying, preparing, and eating them. I think I inherited this from my mother who, like me, can get emotional over a good cole slaw or perfectly steamed broccoli. God knows my dad and brother only eat vegetables the way seagulls eat vomit: "Hey, it was there!" P.S. Onions are not a vegetable, they are foul. My whole life has been about people trying to force or sneak onions on me (thanks for that too, Mom!).

This afternoon I'm sitting on the bus with my kids who are squirming and wiggling and (occasionally) yelling and punching me in the face. But I'm feeling mellow because I have a soundtrack - in this case, Brian Eno, the Raveonettes, Beulah, etc. I'm making a mix tape for my sister, who's going abroad in a few days. I have the headphones in, testing the mix tape's flow. It's like having a little dose of downers. I smile indulgently at my horrid, unruly children as I hum along to Ivy's "Undertow".

Like my post titles lately, bitch? I thought so.

Right now I am listening to a selection from my vast iPod music library via Logitech Bluetooth *wireless* headphones [gloat]. They belong to the CEO at my husband's work. I told Ralph, "Why don't you just tell him they broke?" in hopes we could scam them. Because you know, I don't have an extry 150 clams (see post immediately previous). Yet, although I don't have the money to buy them, I know on some level I need a pair of wireless headphones to tune out both A. The Kids, and B. Reality In General.


Me holding yet another God Damn Baby. Just kidding. This was the youngest attending child last waffle Sunday and it was a real pleasure to snuggle her. Her name is Emily and her father (not shown in picture) dotes on her in a very sweet way. He used his phone camera to take pictures of the baby, anyone who held the baby, anything the baby touched, and things that the baby may be interested in when she wakes up. Even though her focal point is probably about 18" from her little nose.

Today's been one of those, "Hey, random weird shit is happening" days. First, my friend Renee shows up on our Tuesday hike with my much-beloved, and long-missing, hat. I mean, I hadn't seen that thing since early summer. She works at the local movie theatre (note cool "Euro" spelling) and while going through the Lost and Found recognized the hat as mine. This is an example of how it can be a really cool thing about living in a small town.

Second, as I was making dinner - chicken, rice, peas, and baked acorn squash - the fucking Pyrex baking dish shattered in the oven! Luckily no pieces of splintered glass seemed to get in the food. Or at least, not that I could tell anyway. I will be checking my children's stool over the next few days (yeah right - like they ate my lovingly hand-prepared squash! All white rice and meat for those little bastards).

Current project I am ignoring my children to complete: mix CD for my ladyfriends.

I was out with two dear friends on Wednesday night and we got to talking about our reputations (this is back when we had reputations, I suppose. Now, who gives a damn?) and the subject of early sexual identity came up in about five seconds flat. Amidst our stories of humiliation at the hands of our peers my girlfriend Steph leans forward to tell Sara and I that a boy - she still remembers his name - said to her once, "You're the type of girl a guy marries. Not the type he dates."

This statement was so foreign to me I had to really sit back a moment mentally and consider the implications. See, I was the (proverbial, not actual) girl this boy was "dating" even as he set sights on eventually marrying Steph. I wouldn't even say "date" is the right verbiage - more like, "feels up", "gets head from", or "fucks", depending on the age, crassness level, and intentions of the boy in question. I am slightly ashamed to admit that for a number of years in high school I was the "girl on the side" to a socially popular boyfriend of mine who officially dated girls more likely to be Homecoming Queens (literally) or at least safely in the "Good Girl" category. I can't excuse myself for participating in this vile behavior except to wave a vague hand at the usual lack of self-respect an adolescent female shows herself - but I also remember by the time I was fourteen my sexual identity had been forced on me somehow. The real Me might have been funny, plain-talking, smart, wanton, brash, voluptuous and (socially and sexually) available - in short, a real (developing) person. But somehow inherent in those character traits - or perhaps formative to some of them - was the identity of Slut.

At fourteen, before sexual intercourse, and before I had even a clue as to what it was all about, I still knew I wasn't Good. I could choose to fight the battle against the Slut label stamped on my forehead, or I could give up, become the Slut, and have a good time. I mean, come on - it wasn't much of a choice!

As much as I know you, dear readers, would love to hear more of the dirty details, that's not what I have been thinking about since Steph's comment. I also won't even stop for a moment to ponder what makes boys and girls agree on and establish the Virgin-Whore continuum - neither Virgin nor Whore are entirely desirable for men, and women struggle their whole lives to integrate these qualities - because this is a mystery that remains entirely unsolved for me. No, I've spent the last couple days thinking about my friend and wondering if I myself can stop pedestaling the Good Girls. Not so much Steph in particular (who I adore anyway), but all the Good Girls I've run across in my life and (mentally) rolled my eyes at how easy they had it.

And now that I've been thinking about it, I'm starting to see how being the Slut worked out well for me in some ways. I have found that being on the Easy end of the spectrum (which often has nothing to do with how Easy in fact you are, but is in fact a complicated algorithm involving how socially aggressive and assertive a woman is, along with special considerations such as, in my case, breast size and fabulousness) lends a lot of comfort with the male of the species. I have never been the prettiest, best-dressed, or most well-connected female in the group, but men always felt available to me, if occasionally on limited terms (say, Friday nights only, after climbing up into my bedroom window). Being on the Slutty end of things gave me power and a certain laissez-faire attitude toward feminine etiquette. I managed to get through the first few years of femalehood without worrying much about the size of my ass, my fashion mishaps or successes, or "what people would think" (most of them liked me - another bonus to being a Slut). The Slut identity gave me a jump-start on being my own woman, although I won't say this came without a cost (that "cost" is what I've been irritated at the Good Girls for not having to pay).

I got to have my cake and eat it to, though, because as it ended up I did get married (securing the position by getting knocked up out of wedlock, a classic Whore stratagem!). It turns out all my time with men helps me like them, for the most part. Or at least, the one I ended up with. Being married a handful of years and friends to those married only a handful of years, there is a temporary embargo on the Are You A Slut? subtle (and not so subtle) queries that men (and women!) throw my way. But I wonder if, when marriages start to fall apart, as kids grow, as we make friends with more divorcees and singletons, my long-lost Slut persona will be sniffed out like that of a fine truffle by a discerning swine. At the PTA potluck one look at the barrette tangled in my hair, the flushed cheeks, the hot pink bra strap slightly twisted underneath a shirt missing a button, and the perceptive man will know it:

Slut.

My daughter loves my knitting and in fact will bring me my latest project if she sees me on the phone for any length of time. Today after an afternoon family swim (in our local freezing cold public pool!) the boys adjourned to the grocery store. Meanwhile I tucked Sophie into bed and prepared to go out to the living room to sit and the couch and work on my sister's hat. My daughter is tired yet clingy: "Mommy, I don't want you to go. Don't leave me here by myself!" So I got the hat and sat next to her on the bed, clicking away. She watched for a while, her eyes getting heavier, and finally said, "Mommy, I like you when you knit". Five minutes later she was fast asleep, leaning against me with her hand clamped to my arm. After I finished the second earflap I carefully disentangled myself.

Ralph took the kids to Sequim to get some DVDs (he is in love with iDVD on my Mac) and ended up at the park.


"I invented the swing, bi-atch!", Nels thinks to himself, triumphantly.

I hope the guy playing air guitar (very seriously) was listening to what I was today as I drove by him on Sims Way. Next time I will make sure to get a picture of his awesomeness.

To absolutely nobody's surprise, Little Monster #1 had a great time on the Baby Farm this morning.


The children painted on Sophie's preschool scare me. Like the silent, oppressive stares of those kids from Village of the Damned. It's a great school though. Today I learned the very first thing each kid does when they get there is to wash their hands. Ye-es! I have been saying this all along. Children's hands scare me more than anything else.


Sophie doesn't mind the freakish children painted on the building. Casually walking to school. Cup of peanuts in hand. 'Sup?


Sophie says, "Bye!" as Ralph snaps a picture. Do you see the timidity, the fear of what's in store, that look of, "I'm going to miss you so much!"?

Me either.

Tomorrow is Sophie's first day at preschool. I just hit the store with a friend to buy Q-tips because, dammit, she is not going to be sporting dirty ears for some teacher to peer into and think, "Tsk, tsk" about the Familia del Hogaboom. I mean, we are white trash in ways too varied to ennummerate here, but I really do keep my kids' hands, faces, teeth, ears, and genitals clean.

Geez, just typing that out exhausted me. It is such an effort keeping up with them. Today at Steph's my son somehow got rice plastered all over his shirt and undershirt (eating my sushi roll and accidentally, and sadly, getting a "Wasabi Surprise"). He also got very grumpy and suddenly sported facial scars and a (dry) yet amazingly stanky diaper. In short, looking at him, he was only one small step away from being the Boy in Sweatpants and Cowboy Boots that we all hate. It was hard to claim him as mine and load him in the car but I didn't really have a choice.

Later after a nap and a face wash he was smiling and beautiful again. It's a good thing I didn't throw him in the garbage earlier, when he was so annoying. I'll have to make sure to remember that.

My daughter had a super short nap so by 8:00 PM she was ON THE FRITZ. Her head spun around and she told me to fuck myself in Latin. I was resigned to a gladiator-like struggle to get her to bed but she grew oddly calm in the bath (even while I was washing her hair). I transferred her to Daddy and when I got home after my very-brief trip to the store I peeked in on her to find her lying on her back, breathing deep, with her little arms crossed over her chest as if in a coffin. Yes, that's it... REST. SLEEEEEP.

Mother of God.

What is it about my second-born that feels so alien? It's almost like I'm going to get to raise a mini-Ralph. He feels foreign to me after my first child who I seem to have known innately my whole life.

He is big, for one thing. Big-boned, big-arsed, burly. He has a slight olive-golden skin tone and Ralph's beautiful reddish brown lashes that are blonde at the base. As far as I can tell, the only things he gets from me are his pretty hands, his curly hair, and a green tinge to his brown eyes.


Note: Rougeish nature, just like his father.

On Friday we had the first experience as parents of going for medical help for an injury. Nels burned his hand on the heater in his room. It isn't easy to burn your hand on that heater - you have to stick your finger in, in just the right place. Well, I guess he figured that all out. He's such a tough li'l fucker I didn't even know he'd hurt himself at first. I was nursing him and he was fussy and I saw he had a big blister on the index finger of his right hand. Perhaps because that same hand has both a black-and-blue thumbnail from two weeks ago and a broken-glass-cut from the day previous I felt suddenly overwhelmed with guilt. We took him to Urgent Care where we learned how to care for the burn (two days later so minor-looking I feel silly) and watched him try to dismantle the examining table in the patient room.


Note: Injury to right hand, which hasn't notably dissuaded him from going for the heaters.

This morning my father called and asked how Nels' healing was going. "The first of many" injuries, my dad predicted. Sadly, I think he's going to be right. Months ago my father had looked at my then-crawling boy cruising around the living room and said, "He's going to be hell on wheels." He was right then, and the games are just beginning. I don't want to be the mom that has to deal with a child who bonks his head, gets stitches and minor breaks, and tears the crotch out of his pants on a regular basis. But that looks like what may be in store. After all - again - my husband has similar traits (How do you tear the crotch out of jeans?! You're a full grown man!!!).

Five minutes ago as I was bathing The Girl I heard an interruption on the music on the laptop in the living room. "Ralph, I think Nels is playing with your computer!" I call out, and Ralph jogs down the hall to check it out. Moments later he's back. "Yeah, he'd climbed up on the table, activated a song, and started dancing," my husband reports, "while grabbing his dong."

That's my boy.


Note: Ass.

Last night we went to my girlfriend's birthday party and my husband held the wee baby there - little 5 month old Rosemary - almost incessantly. She was in a hot pink bunting and glued to his chest all night like a little starfish. It was very sweet to see Ralph with a young baby again.

It seems like I am honing the balancing act of being married better and better these days. The biggest difference I can feel is that I have held my Man far less responsible to soothe my anxieties than I used to. And I've refrained from taking his up automatically, as well. Ralph and I are so much alike that we share the same desires, the same sense of humor, the same standards, and the same worries. This is a great thing when it comes to working in synchronicity (yesterday he instinctively chose to do a dreaded chore because he knew I was feeling down about the house, and his efforts really "hit the spot" to easing my bad mood), but is a real strain when pressures come up if they are the same thing that trigger us both.

Probably the best thing I can do for him is to slow down, make eye contact, and accept the hugs and kisses that he wants to give and receive. This is hard for me, mostly because the last four years have been been spent learning and performing the varied acts of "Mother-love" - so different than wifely love. In other words, the love I show for my children only in part consists of openness and intimacy. The rest of it is demonstrated by acts of maintenance - my ability to keep a clean house, cook good meals, wipe their noses regularly, keep them in clean clothes, keep a line of instructional chatter, and occasionally nip at their heels. A husband needs far less servitude and much more attention and respectful intimacy (as opposed to my children, who during the course of the day I am kissing, stroking, and softly yet constantly pinching their fabulous bottoms and you can't stop me, it's my right as a Mom and a Freak). Anyway, I think in the last four years I have spent a lot of this maintenance love on my husband and these days I am moving toward what he needs more (read = bj's). OK, my idea of a joke, people! (No, seriously. He wants bj's. A lot of them).

Just as an addendum - five minutes after I was thinking all these profound thoughts my husband came out on the porch where I was having a little "me-time" (September's a smoking month, FYI) and called me a "smelly pirate hooker". So, you know, we're obviously on the same page.

Our little Honda moved on to another family this afternoon, now to serve as my friend Steph's "run-around" vehicle. This was the car I bought for my husband in June 2001, pregnant with our first child and gifting him with the best vehicle I could manage under the circumstances. It was our first "family car", pathetically because it actually had a backseat to accommodate an infant carseat (which our Mazda truck has only in the legal sense, really). Bright red, which I always loathed, but the price was right and I bought it from a coworker and had it paid off in no time. We brought Sophie home from the hospital in it and I first car-nursed her in the front seat a month later on the trip down to my parents' as a young family for the first time. I also pulled my oldest in and out of the carseat while grossly pregnant with Nels and even had both kids in the car for a month or so before we got Astrid, our can-do-green family van.

One of our fondest memories (which happens to be car-related, so I will share here) was Mother's Day 2004, when we went on a hike with Olympic Wild up in the God-knows-where mountains and there, in the middle of pristine wilderness with our two young children in tow (Nels barely a month old) our muffler clean fell off in the middle of some road marked FS 4317 or something like it. The muffler had been making funny noises on the rather lengthy ascent and finally just gave in and dropped trou. The man orchestrating the hike saw our dilemma, pulled his van over, and kindly lept to our rescue with a sturdy and serious job rewiring the muffler to the car, perhaps partly in stewardship to the Mother Nature we had all come together to experience and worship. The baling wire held for over a year and is still what's keeping the muffler on (truth be told, it is rather scraps of muffler at this point). I am assuming the new owners will want to shell out the $125 to make a real repair but, until they do, I can always count on knowing when our former transportation is in the area by the lovely distinctive song it sings.

About five minutes ago as I typed this I heard a knock at the door and ran to answer it. Who could be calling at this hour? I ask myself - squinting at two form outside. I open the door to find two well-dressed young men in ties and tucked-in shirts and exclaim, "Ralph, I think we have some Mormons on our porch!" adoringly, like someone seeing a Mommy duck with her babies waddling by the side of the road. The Mormons in question take this in stride, the one in front nervously chuckling and the one behind looking a bit surly. I am fascinated by Mormons and far from being irritated when they (or Jehovah's Witnesses, or any of those so-called "cults" as we so insultingly call them) knock on my door, I am amazed and perplexed at what could keep them calling on so many irritated, unwelcoming, and sometimes hostile homes.

Sadly, we don't have much to offer these two young hopefuls. We gave the Mormons a shot last summer. We've been through enough Mormon boys to feel we could start a dating service... Elders Simpson (now based in our hometown, last we heard) and Venstra (who could rodeo-rope like no one's business) were our favorites ... we also met an Elder Hindman who was very polite indeed and another one (can't remember his name) who looked like a caveman and actually threw a rock and killed a bird (accidentally) while on Fort Worden with Elder S. We made friends with, actually had to dinner and went on hikes with, some of these young men. Heck, I even read the Book of Mormon because who am I to be a religion snob if I don't know much about the religion? Anyway at the sight of these young men I felt a sense of familiarity and comfort, even as I heard my husband (politely) ask to be left off their next circuit of visits. One reason I love my husband is he is not afraid to talk religion and he's not rude to those whose beliefs he doesn't prescribe to.

Waxing nostalgic tonight, indeed.

Today is Ralph and my anniversary. It also happens to be my longest-running best friend's birthday. She was my Maid of Honor and let me just tell you - at my wedding? She had the most amazing rack. I still think about it. That thing was good. Now that I'm thinking of her, she also did my makeup for the event and I was the height of bridal-glow with a slightly-harlotty touch (I was five months pregnant at my own wedding, natch). I was lucky to have her that day.

Three cheers for Amore!

And now, off my tangential feel-good post about my sexyful gal pal, and on to my maudlin "Oh I'm so happy to be married" pap...

I am so happy to be married. We had some setbacks but nothing we aren't coming back from. Coincidentally - since I hadn't told anyone it was my anniversary today - a woman at the park (perusing the Breeder) asked me how many years I'd been married. When I told her it was my anniversary she simply said, "Four years, two kids." and left it at that. She also has two young children so had some perspective. She gave a nod at me, I nodded back. Acknowledgment. I am proud of my marriage, as flawed as it might be, and as scary as some moments have been. Monogamy and commitment to my husband are commitments to myself. No matter who else I become, or who else I've been, I now know I want to be the kind of woman who stays with one man, bears and raises his children, and never leaves his side.

If someone were to ask me the secrets to having a loving marriage I would say... "Don't ask me yet, we've only made it this far. Ask me when we're hitting 40 years together and still makin' whoopee like a couple bunnies on Valentine's Day."

Ha, ha.

Of course, I really do have ideas about how to forge and keep a soulmate relationship, and after seven years and two kids with Ralph I think I have a decent track record to back it up [brag]. But I'll only share them in exchange for cold, hard cash. Ahhh... again, I'm just fuckin' with ya. Mostly I'm just sleepy, and wanting to curl up on the couch with my beaux.

Happy Anniversary, Husband. Now take me to Pleasure Town!

[wink]

Fifteen minutes ago:
[phone rings]
My husband answers: "Hello?"
[pause.]
Ralph: "... Uh, no, this is her husband. Would you like to talk to her?"

I mean - WTF? This is a first. I have a kinda scratchy, brassy voice. But I don't sound like a man, for the love of God. What ... ?!

Five minutes ago:
Me: "Sophie, if you want to go outside, you put your shoes on."
My daughter: "No. I don't want to. It makes me want to puke."

It is really hard to ask your child to follow your instructions when you burst into laughter at this sort of retort.

So, my husband does all these silly reports with MS Money. I have mocked the data-porn in this silly software in the past, but last week he revealed that since the day I bought our August bus pass (mid-month, pro-rated), our gas prices went down 13%. In two weeks, the price of the monthly bus pass was paid for several times over.

I am now obsessing over ways to ride transit instead of driving. This morning as we were en route to the park I was looking around at my fellow passengers thinking, "Weird, I'm starting to know all these 'bus people'." Then I realized, "Wait, I am becoming 'bus people'!" On our way home I talked with a young father and his children - he a minister in a local church - as our four kids gambolled about and squirmed in their seats. He and I continued our conversation while we transferred, helped by a young man with low-budget tattoos covering his limbs, including the elbow-spiderweb (I've always secretly thought those looked cool). We boarded and sat next to a middle-aged man morbidly obese and of course, the small handful of senior citizens that can always be counted on in public transportation. A woman with lines etched in her cheeks looked at my son with tears in her eyes and said, "Beautiful!"

I am digging the bus action.

Meow! For the love of God, my kid is great. So is my knitting.

I can't help but be proud of some rather trivial (read, "Boring To Anyone But Me", but fuck off, you're the one reading my blog) things:

1. My home is very cozy. This is due to rather rigorous housekeeping efforts on the parts of my husband and me. It's worth it, though - to cuddle in bed with your child in clean sheets and candlelight. To walk through the rooms of your home in the evening quiet (a house with sleeping children is peaceful yet very full in a way like no other) feeling relaxed. No scary dishes in the sink, no laundry pile to the ceiling. This evening by 8:30 both kids were tucked away in bed and I sat down to knit while my husband was out running errands. With another woman, I might add (a cute one, too!). But hell, that didn't detract from my nest and the peacefulness within ("... we wouldn't be laughing later when he brought back some whore from town!").

2. I know it shouldn't matter, and I would love her no matter what else, but I am really thrilled that my daughter's tastes run to dinosaurs, ninjas, and catching grasshoppers. Not a Barbie, princess, ballerina, or item of cookingware in sight. Of course it's only a matter of time before she makes friends with a Queen Bee who will teach her all about Cabbage Patch dolls and the female traits of settling for second-class and instigating petty in-fighting with your peers. But for now, Hooray for Sophie.

3. I finished my obsessive weekend knitting project started on Friday - the Kittyville hat from Stitch 'n Bitch.

( <-- bottom-right) I was trying to make it for myself. Without going into a lot of blah-blah about yarn gauge, knitting needle size, and blocking (something probably exactly one reader here understands and / or cares about) - it turned out a wee bit too small (I like a loose fit) but *perfect* for my daughter. Who by the way, started harping on me the second I started knitting it, demanding I make her one. Now the rotten little bastard is going to think that's how she gets her way. Figures.

Where have I been? Doing this:

Oh yeah. 5th Edition is out. Fucken A'.

Download the pdf by clicking here. Don't worry if it takes a long time - it's about 7 MB, so it's pretty big. If you have dialup, don't even bother trying. Just email Amber or me to find out where you can pick one up (when they're back from the printers') or send us your address to mail it to you.

kelly AT hogaboom DOT org
amberlparker AT yahoo DOT com

My Inner Bitch is coming out in this entry. I hope you are all OK with that. It's a cute li'l Inner Bitch though and underneath her gin-swilling, foulmouthed exterior cowers a small, kitten-like soul of docility who just wants to be loved.

So anyway, today I got royally ass-fucked and I owe it all to The Rules particular to the all-female social arenas of groups, group organization, martyrdom, and responsibility. My error is due in part to the last couple years' experimentation with being straightforward in drawing boundaries. You know, simply saying, "No" without a long explanation as to why. After all, one of my least-favorite female litanies is the, "Oh-I'm-so-busy-I-couldn't-possibly" blahdy-blah-blah speech many women launch into if you ask them to do something like, oh I don't know, pick up a pencil off the floor. And by the way, these aren't women living in the Sudan who have to walk 2 miles to get water a day and have six children. These are SUV moms, middle- to upper-middle class, and they are talking about stuff like baking pies for the Unitarian potluck or planning toddler birthday parties. If you are in the room with me and you hear someone start in on the, "Oh my God I'm so busy..." you will hear clicking sounds as my eyeballs roll back in my head.

Enough of that for now. (This whole pet peeve of mine needs to be filed under my massive category of "Weird Hangups I Attribute To My Mother" [Mom, you know it's all in fun - I WUV WOO!"]). On to what I am now calling The Ass-Fucking Incident. A few days ago a leader of a group was announcing her intention to pass the torch and, because I'd offered to help on two specific administrative duties for said group, asked if I "wouldn't mind taking over". I said, "Yes, I would mind. No, I don't want to." She had that moment of vertigo when my answer didn't match what it should have been, and then we got past it and moved on. I gave no reason for not wanting to do it. I also - and this might make me different than other women I know - don't give a good goddamn if the effort all goes into the toilet for lack of a leader. I'm not going to be that leader just because, gosh-dang-it, someone should be. I felt peace about my decision and a vague curiosity about who might be the next to take over.

Well, you can guess what happened. Much like my, "I knocked over an entire Mexican family on the bus today, with my ass by the way" story I've been telling recently - I don't really need to say more than a couple sentences for you to get the drift. But yes, today amongst mixed company this ex-leader outed me as being "next in charge" and detailed group members to refer to me. Wowza. I am very confused as to how exactly my, "No, I am not willing to do that" became a "Yeah, sure, sign me up! My God, I have been DYING to do that! The only reason I didn't do it, Mabel, is because you were doing it and I didn't want to steal your thunder!" or something to that effect.

BOHICA.

Let me just say for the record before I offend exactly 62 readers who think this story is about them asking me to do things for them - a list from today alone would include babysitting a boy this morning (bad Jen!), a girl this the evening (saucy, impertinent Abbi!), helping friends sew (Elin! Stephanie! Naughty monkeys!), and finishing our latest zine (Amber, you troll!) - don't even waste brain cells wondering if I'm pissed or resentful. I'm not. And I plan to move into the leadership role of this group and do a bang-up job. I guess when I started this story I planned to make some big point about women and their weird setups and betrayals, but you know, I'm getting a little sleepy and will probably sign off instead.

I also, today, heard the funniest story ever involving one of those car breathalyzer units. To say any more would be rampant gossip about a pillar in our community. But GodDAMN sometimes I wish I had anony-blog.