Bitch Fest
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: it's all about me

Jason has been away deer hunting since Friday.

We got 3 more inches of snow last night.  I got up at 6 am to start scooping the driveway.  With a shovel.

Actually what got me up at 6 am was Audrey asleep in my bed, wetting it.

I'm in charge of the Sunday school Christmas program.  Practice is tonight, sandwiched neatly at 5:45 between Audrey's 5:00 piano lesson and my 6:30 rehearsal.

Hunter is sick.

My computer is not working right.  Even the desk it sits on is beginning to collapse. 

Hunter, home from school, is on his second viewing of "Christmas with Alvin and the Chipmunks" on DVD.  This means I've heard the "Hula Hoop" song about 16 times.

The "Hula Hoop" song is stuck in my head.

We're out of beer.  I wonder why.

We come now to the part of the show in which I tell you my most embarassing moment.
Mood:  special
Topic: it's all about me

Tomorrow my nephew will be taking part in his own graduation commencement ceremony, and so it is in honor of him that I bring out this story.  You know, so that he knows that whatever happens tomorrow could not possibly be as bad as this.  My graduation gift to you, Dear Nephew.

It was Saturday, May 20, 1995.  In my black cap and gown I greeted my parents and oldest sister as they entered the over-full gymnasium on the campus of Central College.  I then turned and lined up with the rest of the graduating seniors, alphabetically by last name as instructed during the previous day's rehearsal.  Being two weeks shy of my wedding, my name still began with C.  So I strategically placed myself, correctly, just after Lori Barber and just before Angela Conover.  In we walked, Pomp And Circumstance a-playin' and parents a-wavin' and seniors giddy with anticipation.

The gym was packed.  My name belonged between Barber and Conover. 

Following the standard commencement address by President Wiebenga and then the guest speaker, we were invited to stand according to our alphabetically-arranged rows to approach the stage.  This was the part in which the newly-hired dean called each graduate's name off her roster, and then the named graduate was to cross the stage, shake President Wiebenga's hand, and pause for a photograph.  All the while smiling with pride and glee. 

Pride and glee.  Gym was packed.  Barber, me, Conover.

President Wiebenga knew me well by graduation.  In fact, we literally crossed the Atlantic together in the summer between my sophomore and junior years.  Playing the part of Central's ambassador during the choir's tour through nine European countries, the dean became quite familiar with my face after seeing it across the aisle of the bus for two and a half weeks.  I'd been to his house.  I'd met his wife (well, same across-the-bus-aisle familiarity there too).  I'd heard his Central College solicitations in three languages.  I even knew he sang baritone.

The new Dean Whatser-Name had been on campus barely long enough to change her pantyhose, let alone learn the faces and names of all the seniors.

But President Wiebenga was in charge of the commencement stage handshakes.  Dean Whatser-Name was in charge of the commencement stage microphone.  Pride and glee.  Packed gym.  Would the Barber/Me/Conover row please rise and approach the stage.

If you haven't figured out by now what's going to happen, you are an idiot.

Ms. Barber proudly accepted her diploma.  The camera flashed on her proud face.  Whoops and hollers erupted from her family's seats in the packed gym.

I.  Was.  Next.

Cue the Dean:  "Angela Conover."

WTF?!?  I stood there stunned and swallowed hard.  Angela Conover looked as surprised as I did.  Well, if that was possible.  I stepped aside as she passed me on the top step and strode over to President Wiebenga.  (President Wiebenga, help me!  Come to my rescue!  My eyes were pleading.)  As anyone in my dire circumstance would do, I began going over my class list and wondering WHAT JERK PROFESSOR FLUNKED ME AND DIDN'T TELL ME I WASN'T GRADUATING.  But I wasn't even close to flunking any of my courses; my grade point average was actually somewhere in the A- range.  And I had more than enough credits to graduate.  In the fleeting moments it took Angela Conover to upstage me, I'd already convinced myself that this had to be a simple error of omission.  Not an error of, say, another year's due tuition. 

So I did what any respectable omitted graduate would do:  I leaned over to the Dean and subtly said, with the utmost grace and discretion required to privately handle such a misunderstanding, "I think you skipped me."  Only, Dear Readers, Dear GOD Almighty, I accidentally said this straight into the microphone.  And as the packed gym suddenly went silent, "I think you skipped me" went echoing through the thousand-year void that was that moment.

Dean Whatser-Name peered over her spectacles, sized me up and answered, "WHO are YOU?"  Accidentally into the microphone.  Silent packed gym.  Echo, echo.  What my parents had to be thinking at this point in time - you know, $60,000 into my college education - from their position in the silent gym, well.  I've never asked.  And they've never said.

So I stated my name.  Into the microphone...MY GOODNESS, you'd think I'd avoid the microphone just once, but no.  Echo galore.  Packed gym, all eyes on me, and you could cut the tension with a knife.

The Dean looked up and down her roster, flipped the page and read intently for a good solid ONE HUNDRED YEARS, before turning quizzically to President Wiebenga.  He mercifully gave her a nod.  She looked at me and spoke the name I'd just told her.

The grand ceremonious event of gliding over to greet the President's outstretched hand was more of a frantic shuffle.  As he clasped my hand, President Wiebenga leaned into my ear and gave a humble "Sorry about that, Amy."  (WHERE'S THE DAMN MICROHPONE NOW, HUH?)  When my commencement stage photo came in the mail a month later, my face was aimed downward in a nervous but humble grimace, and in a shade so deeply red that I may as well have skipped the SPF during the previous day's picnic.

Back in our seats, Angela Conover and I exchanged our diplomas.  While I'd received my baccalaureate degree along with all the other seniors, I can pretty much guarantee you that I'm the only 21-year-old that day that earned rights to a full-fledged heart attack.  But I survived, humbly proclaiming that I'd been given not only a degree but a lesson in grace under pressure.

Two weeks later, I walked down the aisle and tried in vain to fit Jason's left-hand-sized wedding ring over his RIGHT ring finger.  You know, in front of a packed church.  Pride and glee....is just plain overrated, in my opinion.  Hey, at least there could only be one bride.  (Angela Conover was definitely NOT invited.)

The chocolate that stares me in the face.
Mood:  hungry
Topic: it's all about me

Dear Readers, in the past two weeks I have managed to lose about 4 lbs.  Yay me!  Just when I was feelin' fine in my size 6 jeans, Easter happened.  And all that candy showed up in open-topped baskets, inviting the stray hand.  Relatives arrived bearing goodies, and I baked to complement their goodies with more goodies.  Today, I am facing temptation all over the place.  Fight it I MUST. 

There are flaws in my integrity, to be sure, but none is so troublesome as the head game I have with chocolate.  Rich, dark chocolate nuggets wrapped in pink foil, creamy caramel chocolates hidden inside pretty boxes with bows, peanutbutter-chocolate numbers that taunt with their creamy centers.  I'm undressing them all with my eyes but not touching.  This, undoubtedly, is hell on earth. 

Such it is, then, for a woman in her thirties who has birthed three babies and has sent her body through unkind loops.  There was a time when I could wrap my lips around every Easter sweet that crossed my path and never feel the waistband tighten.  Had I known then what I know now, I would have worn more bikinis.

But now here I am left alone in a house filled with candy and the painful knowledge that whatever goes through my lips will certainly find my hips:  Chocolate, chocolate everywhere, and too much time to think.  It is the battlecry of every woman in self-restraint.

To the mirror she spoke, "Dad? What are you doing here?"
Mood:  d'oh
Topic: it's all about me

My dad has a knack for being a bit over-the-top when it comes to broken things and their regeneration.  He also has a penache for refusing to give up on things that have well outlived their usefulness.

I remember the time my camera broke; it was a Pentax purchased in the late 60's by Dad while he served in Viet Nam.  So it was, you know, old for a camera.  He gave it to me because he'd purchased a new one for himself, but he couldn't bear to throw it away.  I became its recipient, and at a time in my life when I was overjoyed to accept handouts, it became the camera on which I learned to create photographs - real photographs, with focus and framing and depth of field and tricks of apperture.  But, being old, it did break.  One day while rewinding the film (by hand, because this thing predated automaticity), the lever broke off in my hand.  Unfortunately, it broke in front of Dad.  Within one hour's time, my dad had purchased a large wooden dowel, carved prongs on one end, and added a keychain loop on the other end.  He was giddy with excitement, prefacing his invention with "This will work great!"  Then he explained that I could stick the prong-end of the dowel into the rewind crank as the replacement lever.  And look, it will be easier to hold on to!  Thus, the enormity.  The keychain loop around the end was to fasten the device to the camera strap, so it could easily be taken everywhere the camera was.  Somewhere on there, I know there was Scotch tape.  I think the Scotch tape was an addition to the keychain concept, when it became apparent that the thing, which swung awkwardly from its position on the camera strap, was going to club me with every step I took.  The Scotch tape, thus, would secure it to the camera.  Voila!  A veritable masterpiece that looked ridiculous and made me feel silly to use.

Then there was the time that my father gave us one of his old motorcycle helmets.  The thing was dull white and the exact shape of a globe.  It was the same helmet my mother wore on my parents' motorcycle tour.  That they took on their HONEYMOON.  That's 1970, Dear Readers.  And it ended up in our closet, because at the time we were borrowing Dad's motorcycle.  Jason had just bought his very own Sportster when Dad came up for a visit.  Dad was invited for a test drive, and so to our closet he went in search of the White Spherical 1970 Helmet.  He put it on.  He drove the motorcycle to the place where Jason bought his bike.  Where Dad walked up to the counter and promptly bought a new helmet because The White Globe fit so poorly, he didn't think he could stand to wear it the 3 miles back to our house.  He left ol' Roundy at the store, bidding them to do with it what they would.

Well.  What they would.  Do.  Was put it on their Wall of Shame.  It just so happens that the manager at said store is a friend of ours.  We got to hear all about the staff's reaction to Dad's trade-in.  The crack on the crown that had been smoothed over with putty.  The Scotch tape holding the face shield together.  The sheer ugliness of it.  And the irony that it lives on, not because it is still deemed useful but because NO ONE CAN BELIEVE IT'S STILL AROUND.

Imagine the ridicule I took from the same manager friend and his wife when Jason went to throw out his old helmet, since said friendhad delivered the newly-ordered one.  "What?  THROW IT OUT?  But it's still perfectly good!" I said.  I lived to regret those words throughout the evening.

But it all came to a head last night.  After rehearsal, the choir was hanging out in the living room of one of our tenors.  Mid-conversation, my glasses lens suddenly fell from its frame:  The screw had been lost.  We looked in the carpet and over the couch but came up dry.  So I asked the host for a paper clip.  I took my lens, placed it in the frame, then quickly slipped the paper clip into the screw's place, and bent it three times around to secure it there.  "Would you like me to find you a screw out of an old pair of glasses?" said the hostess.  To which I replied: "No!  This will work great!" and put on my glasses, goofy safety pin and all.

And then I startled a bit, because I knew full well where I'd heard those words before.  Which is why I asked the hosts to hide all the Scotch tape.

My name is Amy. I am a Jedi.
Mood:  d'oh
Now Playing: Theme from "Star Wars"
Topic: it's all about me

Dear Readers, I have a problem.  I need a support group.  I am addicted.

Nine-year-old boys everywhere:  FEAR THIS.  For not only can I name just about every character, creature, and planet in all the Star Wars episodes, but I'm also able to kick serious square-block butt in "Lego Star Wars: The Original Trilogy" on PlayStation2. 

It started as innocent fun with Hunter.  Mom can play too!  Good Mom!  Aren't we having fun together?

But then...as 3:45 rolled around I began waiting impatiently for the sight of the school bus, my fingers twitching, readying for the feel of the controller.  Hi Hunter!  Meet you downstairs!  What?  BATHROOM?  SNACK?  HOMEWORK?  Aw, man, we've almost gotten to True Jedi level on Chapter 6!  Come on!

Then (HELP ME) I began to play while Hunter was at school.  Just five minutes!  One chapter!  I promise I'll save it separately, and it won't affect our "real" game!

And then the housework sort of started to slide.  Drawers empty of their neatly-folded laundry.  PB&J for supper again.  We're out of bread?  Fine, use crackers. 

Tobey started showing signs of neglect, such as standing in front of the TV to get my attention.  Wielding a fake light saber.  Talking in beeps and crackles like R2.

I am exaggerating of course.  Sort of.

But last night when Hunter was settling into the movie "Empire Strikes Back"?  I started making excuses for Yoda.  He's just goofier in this movie because, well, he's retired now.  He's more relaxed.  Besides, Yoda is mysterious; you can't predict everything about him.  But he's still the wisest Jedi Master.

Oh.  My.  Goodness.  I was one moment away from trying to commune with The Force.

Hello, my name is Amy.  I'm addicted to Star Wars. 

That the support group would be made up entirely of school-aged boys and the tech support team from Best Buy, only makes it that much more painful.

Note to Self
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: it's all about me

Three things I need to do today: 

1. Laundry
2. Get kids to karate
3. Buy my husband a birthday present

Three things I've already done today:

1. Put kids on the school bus
2. Made pumpkin bars
3. Cleaned the dog kennel

Three (of the 124) books I want to read:

1. Falling Through The Earth: A Memoir by Danielle Trussoni
2. The Places In Between by Rory Stewart
3. Seriously by Lucia Nevai

Three books I've read and would recommend to others:

1. The Liberated Bride by A.B. Yehoshua
2. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
3. Don't Lets Go To The Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller

Three things I need to take out of the family room closet:

1. An empty, ruined cardboard box that used to contain Legos (now scattered)
2. The Lucky Ducks game that keeps quacking on its own
3. All the puzzles we won't do again

Three foremost things on my mind:

1. The upcoming choir Christmas program
2. How Jason is doing on his hunting trip
3. Identifying the smell coming from the storage closet (primary suspect: dead mouse)

And, Dear Readers, my three wishes for all of you:

1. A peaceful day
2. A warm mug of your favorite beverage
3. Something better to read than this

 

Things that freak me out
Mood:  spacey
Now Playing: Stevie Wonder's "Superstition"
Topic: it's all about me

1.  Black lights.  So the kids got these pens as prizes from the PTO fundraiser.  They're gel pens with a black light at the end.  (Granted, Hunter's already broke, leaving him seething with jealousy over Audrey's functional pen.)  Anyway...the pens.  You write "secret" messages with the ink end, and then reveal them with the black light end.  While the luminescence is perfectly explainable, and in fact quite common and even sometimes naturally occurring, it's still a pretty awesome effect.  Never have white socks been cooler than under the glow of a black light.

2.  Mice.  Ok, you all know me.  Mice seriously freak me out.  But what's even freakier is how I ever came to be so intimidated by them.  Bette Davis once said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your permission."  Hmm, I don't remember granting my permission to cheese-eating rodents.  My reaction to mice seems to be primal, a deep knee-jerk to grayish-brown fur and whiskers.  Spiders?  I'll gladly face them.  Snakes?  I can at least fake it.  Killer bees?  Fire ants?  Bring it on.  And yet, the sound of scrabbling mousy feet in the middle of a still night can send whole shock waves of shivers up my spine. 

3.  Toast.  Shut up.  It's an endothermic reaction, which means the toast will NEVER GO BACK TO BEING BREAD.  Freaky.

4.  Monkeys.  I hate monkeys.  It's true.  They remind me of...ugly people.  Ugly people who don't bathe, who pick bugs off one another, and exhibit unpredictable behavior.  OH MY GOD, monkeys remind me of relatives.

That really freaks me out.

For your amusement
Mood:  cheeky
Now Playing: Theme from "Harry Potter"
Topic: it's all about me

I'm uncertain of the year, but I'm guessing my age here was 3 or 4.

 

I'm so vain (I'll bet you think this blog is about me, don't you? don't you?)
Mood:  special
Topic: it's all about me

As a kid, I would have been classified as a runt: short, skinny, all bones and no meat.  At the time of my wedding, I weighed 98 lbs. at 5' 3".  After I had Hunter, the pregnancy pounds melted off and I again sported a tiny figure.  When Audrey was 6 months old, I was wearing size 2 pants.

Then I had Tobey, and whatever metabolically-gifted genetics I had before seemed to wash away at the time of his birth.  He is now 21 months old, I 33 years old.  Something about that formula equals EXTRA POUNDS ON MY ASS.  I have had to resort to (gasp!) exercise.  In times past, jogging was a mental release, a way of getting out of the house and into fresh air, and feeling the breeze on my face and the endorphins pumping through my veins.

Now, I feverishly run thrice weekly on a treadmill in my basement, like a lab rat in a wheel.  No breeze on my face, just sweat on my brow and the promise of finally, FINALLY, being able to zip my shorts WITHOUT first lying on the bed and sucking it in. 

It's vain of me to complain, I admit; I'm only off about 8 lbs. from my intended goal.  No, not from my original 98 lbs of 1995; that's just insane.  I can be reasonable.  And weighing in at 123 lbs is no crime, either, unless you're willing to be, you know, vain about it.  But (butt?), it freaks me out to look in the mirror and think....Mom?  Is that you?  Because she is budding underneath my increased girth, and I refuse to let her reside in my bulging waist and fat ass.  And so, thrice weekly I run like a lab rat to song tunes that now remind me of sweat and the view of a dull green wall in my basement. 

I'm sure it doesn't help that my method of dieting is to eat EVERYTHING IN SIGHT.  Seriously, if you bring food into my presence (excluding mayonnaise, of course), don't leave it unattended.  Today I ate a French toast bagel, four breadsticks, four pieces of pizza, and seven chocolates, plus two cups of coffee with cream and a Rice Krispy bar.  This IS me on a diet.  I'll likely drink my supper.

But today, for the first time since breaking out the maternity clothes in 2004, I looked in the mirror and thought....Amy?  Could it be?  There was a trace of a face I recognized, less full and less fleshy, and - whaddaya know! - my pants that zipped easily.  And you know what?  With the extra padding reduced, I see now that I HAVE WRINKLES.

But, hey, I don't notice them so bad when I stuff my cheeks with chocolate.

Trilo Bytes
Mood:  cool
Topic: it's all about me
Let's save the state fossil of Wisconsin for another blog. This is a list of lists, each containing three useless facts about yours truly.

Three words to describe myself
cogent, ironic, equanimous

Three places I'd like to visit
Germany, Venezuela, New Hampshire

Three things that make me go UGH
mayonnaise, NASCAR, monkeys

Three colors I wear the most
black, white, khaki

Three favorite sayings
"I'd be nicer if you'd be smarter."
"You can lead a whore to culture but you cannot make her think." (from Dorothy Parker, who was asked to use horticulture in a sentence)
"Lack of planning on your part does not mean an emergency on my part."

Three favorite cartoon characters
Gromit, Dory, Charlie Brown

Three favorite novels
The Liberated Bride (A. B. Yehoshua)
Death in the Family (James Agee)
The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Three things I'd like to do before I die
water ski, play "Rondo a la Turca" without mistakes, finish a thought

Three predictions for the future
People won't be driving cars in the next century, not because we've invented something greater but because we've used up all our fuel resources.
Democracy will fail.
My own life will end with Alzheimer's.

Three things that sound terrific right now
a 16-oz. cinnamon mocha, quiet children, a 20-oz. Leinenkugel's

Three favorite blog entries
Kiddieshack, the William Carlos Williams one, Plans of Man

Three things I'd rather be doing
ignoring my kids, playing with my kids, making a cinnamon mocha

Three things I'm too lazy to do
play with my kids, make a cinnamon mocha, edit this blzogf

Three favorite movies
About Paris, Harry Potter (all of them), Lord of the Rings (all of them)

Three things about me I'd like to change
my weight, graying hair, level of tolerance for stupid people

Three things for which I'm grateful
faith, where I live, and those almighty Blond Kids