carpool buzz

The most interesting characters I can think of are the ones I really know. I itch to spoof them. And it wouldn’t even be a spoof. The truth, possibly condensed but completely unvarnished, would be more entertaining, more poignant, and better than anything I could concoct.

But I fear that condensing the truth could be construed as not nice. So most people I’ll leave alone. But not my carpool.

Typical (30 minute) ride to Gabe’s school with a handful of 10 to 14 year olds:

Austin: Oh! I just saw Gore-bath City! It was the cooooooooolest movie ever! It was sooooooo inappropriate! Mrs. Clement! You’ve gotta let Gabe see Gore-bath City!

Me: I doubt it.

Gabe: (mumbling, his nose firmly planted in a fantasy novel) No thanks, I don’t like movies with slow-moving zombies.

Sandy: I hate Miss Snarfpooper!(Sandy has creatively altered the last 2 syllables of the teacher’s name.) She’s such a pooper! She gave me sooo much homework!

Riggs: (whose regulation khakis and polo shirt are completely obscured by a camouflage hat and camouflage jacket with military patches all over it)Hey Austin! Have you heard they’ve come out with G.I.Blastemup for PS2?

Austin: That came out 3 weeks ago! Everybody already knows that!

Robert: That game’s lame anyway. It doesn’t even let you snipe.

Austin: I know! Evilness of the Dead Dudes is SO MUCH better! Gabe, do you have Evilness of the Dead Dudes?

Gabe: I don’t like games with slow-moving zombies.

ghost

The post that lived here was about opening the window and screaming.
But then you shut the window, and begin to sort of hope that not too many people heard that scream. But at the time, it just needed out.

¿Sabes por qué?

I don’t think we were Pleasantville on purpose. I don’t think any of the teachers I had, as I grew up in Anne Arundel County public schools, or the administrators, planned, as part of a calculated agenda, to pretend the continent south of us didn’t exist.

I guess, at the time, it was commonly assumed that European history was more, I don’t know..., relevant for a bunch of kids who were all descended from European immigrants. (You mean we weren’t all? Well, yes, there were a few darker complexions, and some funky last names ending in vowels--but that didn’t count, did it?)

I guess we talked about England because maybe they seemed the most like us, and then there was that whole business with Johnny Tremain, minutemen, and wet tea, so it was hard to exclude England. It was ok to talk about Greece and Rome too, because they did stuff like invent the architecture we used for our big buildings, and think up the Olympics.

But I can scarcely think of a reference to Central or South America prior to A.P.U.S. History and the Panama Canal.

Obviously, now, in the 21st C., Pleasantville’s plastic picket fence has been cracked in a few places. And I’ve stopped and looked around, and found--to my pleasure--that it’s really not unpleasant at all. There are lots of people around here who speak Spanish. That’s a big reason I’m trying to learn it. And though we don’t seem to be able to give more than a cursory glance to cultural issues in my clase de Español, I enjoy the textbook--primarily because of the snippets of insight into Latin American culture which were completely invisible in my childhood education, despite the relative geographic proximity of those cultures.

Shake, Rattle, and (with luck) Roll.

Before you can teach a kid to drive a clutch you have to observe your own techniques more closely than usual--that which you do instinctively may not be something you’ve broken down into its component parts lately.

It took me a bombed session or two with the first kid before I observed myself.
Now I’ve learned to describe the technique as a subtle balance between pressing the accelerator and releasing the clutch. Have you ever noticed? It’s the clutch which controls your initial acceleration in first gear--not the gas.

Daughter #1 got the hang of it, and was turned loose once she’d passed “The Hill.” That’s a rite of passage where we start at the bottom of an abandoned marina driveway and climb up, in 20 foot increments, starting on a significant incline each time.

Daughter #2 was somewhat vexed by my dogged insistance that our “extra car” must be a stick--but given a choice between Little Blue--the manual transmission Subaru Outback, and a clunky, dinged minivan, her motivation to learn has materialized.

Our first session today was, well, not half bad. A big point I’ll need to make tomorrow is that if you’re off to a shaky start, you need to hit the clutch again before the car’s tremors hit 8 on the Richter scale. I’m hoping the Community College will be sufficiently neglected by its often obnoxious Public Safety dudes tomorrow--Easter Sunday, that we can take advantage of the emptiness to actually hit 3rd gear a few times. Our local community is, unfortunately for this pursuit, too hilly and curvy to get an inexperienced shifter out of 2nd.

And then--The Hill. After which, the spouse gets his dinged minivan back.

raining, pouring

Our house in Baltimore had some leaky roof problems. In fact, in our entire history of renovating properties, leaking roofs have been the bane of our existence. All of this reached a horrifying climax in our nine months of rooflessness here on Avondale Circle. Nine months. 25 plastic garbage cans. 5 rooms with caved ceilings. And a few more giant steps toward either total insanity or the placidity of a cow eating clover. (not sure which, but then, neither is the cow.)
Now we have a roof which is so uber-engineered that it not only won’t leak, it would most likely survive a nuclear detonation. So, no more leaks, right? Wrong. Water doesn’t have to be rain. It can come from your very own kids’ shower head. And your very own tile, that you installed (inexpertly) your very own self is even more vulnerable to failure than any old roof shingles. Tupperware, and and a fortuitously unfinished kitchen ceiling are handling the problem for now. I hope some generously applied marine caulk will handle it for later. But someday, I hope to know--what is the cosmic significance of water, falling where one doesn’t want it? There’s got to be a metaphor in there somewhere.

frankly...

I envy people who are in a position to say whatever's on their minds...well, at least a little. I guess the Pope can't, and most politicians shouldn't, even though they might. Young people, maybe, can blog with more abandon, because the children they'll later embarrass or screw up aren't around yet, so you don't notice them.

La casa loca

Fredfred the dog is very happy to be downstairs, finally. It’s been her unfortunate lot to be confined in Olivia’s room from 7:30 to 3:30 daily this week.
The good news is that this means we have a construction crew at work on the family room, and we presume that they do not fancy nips in the fanny.

Sadly, the cats find that the positioning of their cage in the kitchen is as unsatisfying to their sense of feng shui as it is to mine, but it will be returned to its place by the sunny family room window sooner or later, and anyway, if you’re the sort of creature who pees indiscriminantly you’ve pretty much signed away your two-cents in the interior design scheme.

The fact that we have construction hirees at all is the result of an intervention of sorts--in this case it was 3 of Jeff’s siblings who felt compelled to confront him. “Face it bro’,” they said, “you’re a bite-off-more-than-you-can chew-aholic, and you’re asphyxiating yourself. Furthermore, we’re afraid your saintly, albeit somewhat cranky, wife will give you the heave-ho sooner or later and we don’t want to take you in. Heaven knows, we’ve got enough personality quirks of our own without having you honking on your saxophone in our basements.

(a quick aside about Jeff: he did not think it would be that much trouble to live in a house with no roof for 9 months, catching the rain in 30 garbage cans. He does not think it would be that much trouble to dredge down to the Severn River to create our own Fallingwater, or import our own herd of buffalo so we can pretend we live on the great Plains. (One of these statements is true--you guess.) I have learned. Slowly, but I've learned. Now, this is as far as I'll compromise: We can hire a grizzled old cook whom we'll call "Hank," who will rustle him up some grub when he gets tired of Flatbread pizzas from the freezer.

So, Jeff has been strong-armed into a sensible, workable, kind of game plan. This does not, however, change the fact that I, as a matter of course, must still hide my hairbrush, my toothbrush, the kitchen broom, and my personal tools if I ever want to see them again. Additionally, I just ran a bright orange extension cord to the pc so Becca could do homework, since when Jeff unsuccessfully diddled with the light fixtures in the computer room today, he forgot to undiddle before he went to work.

not funny

I hate painting ceilings. Oh, I’ve got a pole all right, to stick my roller on, and it’s really not a tricky job in the technical sense, but all that looking up leaves me feeling in need of chiropractic help. I don’t blame Michelangelo at all for being agonized--I just wonder where the ecstasy came in.

I can’t update my blog because I don’t feel funny. At all. It’s not that I’m not as surrounded by the absurd as usual--I most certainly am. Why just this morning the circuit that the coffee maker’s plugged into decided, completely arbitrarily, to take a coffee break. I tracked it down pronto--it was the switch between the one that handles all our auxiliary oil radiators and the one that sends every clock-radio in the house into flashing seizures. But I could discern no reason for its lapse of work ethic. It’s possible that the ghost who hangs out by the basement stair when Jeff toots his saxophone got tired of waiting for him to get home from exercise class and threw the switch in protest.

Twist & Shout. Or Croak.

Two microphone Karaoke Revolution is the biggest pile of fun I’ve had with my kids all month. It’s true that not a one of us would make it through the first turnstile at American Idol. It’s also true that my pathetically obstructed larynx is hardly a pleasure to listen to. But I can consistently hit and sustain pitches, and frankly, that’s all the game really cares about.

True enough though, that the girls squeak by me in the “Oops I did it again” sing off, but don’t even try to outdo me when I’m being a Mama in “California Dreaming,” or blowing Sonny out of the water in “I Got You Babe.”

But they’re not impressed. They know they need only fire up the B-52’s “Love Shack,” and those notes will be like wet soap in my grip.

Efficiency?

I’m working on Gabe’s room.

I don’t know whether he’s accrued the average amount of clutter for a boy of almost thirteen, but a quick survey of his belongings suggests his thoughts are rarely organized.

I’m determined that the next time it falls to me to distill 2 gallons of Bionicles, a quart of army men, and a pint of marbles from 3 gallons of magic tricks and random flotsam...my default action will be to sweep them all into a bag bound for the curb.

The people I live with aren’t the tidiest, and sometimes I tell myself that the right application of efficient planning will encourage even these trogs, who seem to believe that all floors should be evenly fertilized with dirty socks, to put their stuff away.

So I have, all ready to assemble, a mondo-sized IKEA wardrobe, with doors--(doors that close)--behind which can be stashed baskets which’ll work like this:
One basket will hold underwear, another socks, another school uniform shirts...etc...and these items can all be thrown, into the baskets, with relatively careless abandon.

He has a dresser, but the drawers are small and hard to close. He has a closet, but there are multiple psycho-motor steps involved in using hangers. The purpose of the wardrobe will be to both organize and hide items of clothing which belong to someone with minimal neatness skills.

The minute I moved out of my mother’s house, I adopted a similar approach to most housekeeping chores. It is true that I knew how to make beds with hospital corners, but it was equally true that it seemed a pointless exercise in tedium. So I thought ahead, and the minute I had only myself to please, I bought a poofy comforter which, when spread out, handily camouflaged the hastily yanked up sheets below it. That’s still what I do.

Several years ago, I turned the kids loose with their own laundry. While the girls’ rooms may look disastrous, they appear to know which garments lie in balls beneath which dust bunnies. It seems they do laundry more out of desperation than a sense of order...but the girls keep smelling ok, so I don’t worry about it.

I confess that I help Gabe with laundry. Partly because his early efforts involved generous experimentation with liquid bleach, and partly because by the time I pin him to his homework chores, he’s used up the quotient of energy I have available for him. Oh, and partly because he wouldn’t care if he did stink. But the rest of us would.

Why I Have the Audacity.

I refer to myself as a writer. It may seem a highfalutin conceit to do so, in light of the fact that I have (thus far) one "published," as in print-on-demand book (which has raked in a grand total of $42,) a second completed manuscript which is floating around the house hoping to garner enough positive feedback that I'll have the heart to send it forth into the unkind abyss of editorial slush piles, and a hard drive full of silly columns, written for a variety of silly purposes.
So, I'm not Michael Crichton. Or Lemony Snicket. Or even Barbara Cartland(...pant pant...oh. Maybe you've never read her.)
But here's what it boils down to.
If I'm not working on a writing project I am miserable and anxious.
If I am working on a writing project, I feel grounded and sane.
Those are the facts, and, believe me, I've tested them.
If my compulsion was to apply acrylic paint to canvas, and I persisted in doing so without hope of compensation, could I call myself an artist?
If I tootled my whistle every Tuesday night with my friends in a rousing and jovial session, could I call myself a musician?
If my metabolic system didn't function without the regular addition of synthetic insulin, could I call myself a type 1 diabetic?
So, if I must write to keep my mood and sensibility stable, can I call myself a writer?
I think so anyway.

Dumber than average

I’m taking Spanish classes. Three cheers for geekdom. Have completed Le Fantome de l’Opera, and am reading Harry Potter a l’Ecole des Sorciers. (Four cheers for geekdom.) Might even take German in the Fall (will hold off on that fifth cheer until then.) Turns out I don’t have a sincere need for meaning in my life, merely a sincere need to be busy. Guess I’m shallow that way.
True to form, I managed to put my foot in my mouth at, literally, the first opportunity, in Spanish class. The weather had turned wintry foul, people were drifting in, chatting a bit. La profesor walks in 30 seconds late, and I say, (in a manner intended to be light and bantery,) “We thought we were going to have to elect a teacher!” It’s possible that I imagined she spent the next hour and a quarter glaring at me...I don’t know. Perhaps I can redeem myself through abject obsequiousness--I understand college teachers tend to appreciate we aged students. But sometimes I can’t tell whether they see me as an aged student, or as an ugly kid who hasn’t slept in 5 years.
‘Twas interesting that, at Gabe’s last two Kung Fu classes, I sat near another kid’s French au pair who was reading a novel in English while referring frequently to her Dictionnaire Francaise/Anglaise, as I read Harry Potter while referring with even greater frequency to my French/English Dictionary. Perhaps what I’m really doing is preparing for my next incarnation in which I will actually be fairly bright.

You do What?

So...what do you do?
The correct answer could be something like: “I run a muffler franchise,” or “I’m the scary desk person at a behemoth law firm,” or--my personal favorite, for its vagueness if for no other reason--”I’m a consultant.” (You have to say that with a confidant nod.)
I’m toying with a variety of other ways to fill the loaded silence that follows the well-meaning stranger’s query. It could be entertaining to lie.
“That depends on my next placement in the witness protection program--I can’t tell you yet.”
“I’m an assassin. Let me give you my card and some references.”
“I paint the boomerangs on laminate countertops. Business has been slow lately.”
Call me a goody two-shoes if that’s your inclination, or just leave my shoes out of it and scoff...but I’m a bad lier.
What I usually say is: “aaahhm...I kind of...do some...what did you say you do?” (This works best if you can suddenly drop your napkin on the floor, laugh lightly at your silliness, and duck under the table.)
The problem arises when there are no napkins. A truthful answer is the only way out.
“I’m a jill-of-all-trades, but strictly on a volunteer basis.”
“I put the home fires out.”
“I’m working my way out of a stressful but ultimately rewarding career in the multi-faceted field of child maintenance.”
“I’m a writer in the sense that I intrinsically believe myself to be a writer, much in the same way that someone with an painting habit might intrinsically believe herself to be an artist, due to the fact that she, does, in fact, creates works of art. Oh, whoopsie, did you drop your napkin?”
Perhaps the floor would stay cleaner if I just called myself a consultant.

How to Not Know

The offsprings’ lives get bigger every day. More draws them into the world. Less compels them to say home. If they are with me, it’s for lack of a better offer, but the rolling snowball of independence is picking up speed and diameter. The writing is on the wall--or at least on the bumper of the car--and it gets straight to the point: I will, within a handful of years, have worked myself out of a job.
Initially, I was tickled and excited by the possibilities. But my wonderment at the opening doors has been muted a bit by the coincidental shrinking of my partner’s ability to wonder with me. (edit: this is improving...I think it is.)
I feel a lot of ways--ways that roll around and trip each other so that no single way of feeling can rise to an important enough position to demand attention.
I have no creditable career or function. Is it ok to become nothing more than a student of my own interests, or should I feel obligated to ferret out a useful position in society, even if such a forced search might lead to absolutely nothing?
Is it fair and honorable to live off the resources we have acquired over a couple decades, retire in effect, when the actual paid portion of the joint effort was carried out by the other? To be sure, I reared children through some mighty unpleasant conditions--conditions which might have been intolerable to many women--in order to facilitate both the earning of wages and the morphing of some abysmal real estate into lovely, inhabitable houses (while my own remained abysmal until recently.) It’s easy to forget, as the physical environment improves, that I did work long, hard, and patiently. (And there’s always the uncertainty of whether one’s “resources” are even stable, or whether they’ll be washed away like major portions of the southeast Asian coastline--and if that happened--oh well, at least necessity would dispatch confusion.)
One should feel useful. A sense of purpose is an essential amino acid, except, perhaps, to Nirvana-bent demigods, and I’m not one of those. But a sense of purpose cannot be plucked from the cosmic void--it has to come, I suppose, with experiential living and time. And maybe that is the answer. The living and time outlay which must be experienced before I’ve earned my next sense of purpose have not yet happened. I’m not done with offspring. Not quite yet. If one of those Nirvana-bent demigods would just stop by from time to time and remind me of that, then, maybe, I could relax.

Nonsense, of different sorts.

What next when you’ve just finished what is most likely the dumbest story you could ever write? Tossing it seems unfitting. I plan to revise, revise, and maybe revise a bit more...but since I really tend to edit myself all along, revision generally amounts to little more than some changes in phraseology. It may crisp up a bit, but a turn of phrase won’t change the underlying premise, which is an absurd trifle. But at least if I march forward laughing, eventually pitching my little manuscript through the doorways of the club with the big bouncers who remind me of that nasty game called “Red Rover” I had to play in first grade...well, maybe I’ll still be laughing when they snarl and toss it back out.

I've just polished off a little bag of cookies from the Korean grocery. I have no idea what they're called, but they look and taste like miniature vanilla wafers. The bag is decorated with what appears to be wiggling, winking, pigeon-toed gumdrops wearing eggshell helmets and licking their lips. There's something disorienting about a bag of cookies with writing, and subwriting, which might as well--from my pov--be written in Martian. I don't remember being as disturbed by meaningless characters when I was pre-literate, but now--to be faced with packaging that mocks me with its utter indecipherability--I lament my limited mind, which hasn't assimilated all existing forms of human script. I take small ...very small...comfort in the single comprehensible item on the bag--a trio of arrows in the recycling triangle, surrounding the word "other." At least I know these gumdrop babies go in the trashcan, not the yellow bin.

Haunted

I’ve offered to take a daughter to see Phantom of the Opera--the movie. You’d think I’d have had enough. Saw the stage version in October at the Hippodrome, and have now seen the movie twice. Once, because I personally had to, and Jeff, who went only because he didn’t want me to go alone, conceded to liking it. Twice, because...well...I personally had to, and dragging daughters #1 and #2 with me under the guise of cultural significance served as suitable cover. Daughter #3 is now feeling left out since she’d gone skiing with friends, and missed the outing. But I find myself quite willing to do it again.
I can only speculate that the fact that my first Phantom experience occurred at a time when I desperately needed the catharsis of a vicarious tragic romance is what has fused my psyche into some kind of perma-bond with the story and its accompanying Webber score. Sooner or later I expect the addiction to wear off. The “highlights” cd was laughably inadequate, so I’ve listened to the full soundtrack cd so many times it’s not worth counting. My family does think I’m a little wack, and I can conveniently dismiss my infatuation with Gerard Butler by noting that I’m too old for him. Gabe read the book in school last year, and has filled in details of the back story which both the play and screen version leapt over--but I can’t convince him, yet, that he needs to see the show.
I bet he’ll watch the dvd with me...that’ll be out before you know it!

Two Tabs

This might become the primary site of my web-nonsense. It might. If it can accept the fact that it must always be one of two open tabs. Case in point: I am five words into this entry. Olivia needs to know the names of all our congressfolk, senatefolk, district #'s, etc. I google up the Maryland General Assembly web page. Ok. I am 10 words into this entry. She needs the House majority/minority leaders and majority/minority whips. I google. I am 15 words into this entry. Jeff needs a local supplier for the obscure Scandinavian Grundfos pump which has died in the basement, leaving us without 2nd floor heat. Googled. 20 words. Becca wants to sign up for March SATs. Taking them in January only is assuredly not enough. Googlegoogle, CollegeBoard...blablabla. 30 words. Gabe demonstrates some Kung Fu form, reminding me that I need to email the primary JingYing studio guru and encourage him to keep being encouraging despite the fact that Master Po might have had minimal patience for boys who become distracted and pick paint off the gym wall between tasks. 35 words. The bobbin on the Bernina has become uppity, foiling Rachel's efforts to complete an Xmas present for her bf. Ok, ok...a browser tab won't fix that one, but I can. Now it doesn't matter how many words I'm up to. If my brain had a power light it would be snoring like my iBook in sleep mode. Goodnight.