Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Just shoot me

We're going to walk and talk here, people.

It's just that M is watching The Newsroom and I feel compelled to write a lot of words in a rapid fire pace and to seek out my finest ten dollar vocabulary and forge a Sorkin-esque monologue.

But, we're not going to do that because it's exhausting.

Instead, I'm going to tell you about this thing that my older kid, E did this weekend.  This isn't a fancy story to be told with big words.  This is not that kind of story at all.  This is a tale.  A tale that is told because at some level, it's too hard to believe.  And because it's the kind of tale that moves from one parent to another and becomes more of a legend than a story.  Because it has a ring of truth to it that only a parent can hear.  The kind of ending that every parent hears and thinks, of course, OF COURSE that is the only way that tale could end.

So, Saturday, M went out to Beerfest with his friends.  I told the boys I would take them out to dinner--just a special date night.  S refused to get burgers and fries.  E refused to eat at a locally owned (and very tasty, my personal fave) chicken nuggets place because he HAAAAAAATES chicken so much. 

Chicken makes him ill.
Chicken makes his mouth dry.
Chicken makes him waaaant to diiiiie.

You may notice that E has a certain taste for melodrama.

We can address that joyful part of my life at a later date.

For now, we are just going to focus on how my older son absolutely lost his shit because we threatened him with a very tasty, very authentic Southern style, locally owned company's very delicious food.

I mean LOST.  As in, he's yelling at his brother because his brother ALWAYS gets what he wants.  He's yelling at me because he NEVER gets what he wants.  He's yelling because chicken is disgusting. DISGUSTING.

That's it.  I quit.  This is the kind of appreciation I get for offering to take my boys out to dinner?  The ingratitude.  The petty fighting.  The arguing.  The bickering.  The inability to compromise.  The total refusal to contribute to the overall happiness of the family.

I fought this stalemate as long as I could because I really wanted to eat out. Going out to dinner is sanctioned diet breaking.  The dinner gods decreed that I didn't need to make dinner and, therefore, whatever alternative to a home cooked meal I am forced to eat has zero calories.

Right?  I thought so.  This is like universally known stuff.

In the end, however, they couldn't come to an agreement.

In frustration, I pulled into Wendy's.

Not locally owned deliciousness.

Not the place I wanted to go.

Not worth the calories.

Bummer.

S is disappointed, but I hear in his voice that he's starting to perk up when he orders a frosty.  A frosty makes up for a great many wrongs. 

E orders a frosty, too.

To go with his six piece chicken nugget order.








Thursday, August 22, 2013

On why I didn't sleep very well last night

An Open Letter to the Hypothetical Burglar who theoretically tried to break into my father-in-law's house last night. 

Dear Hypothetical Burglar,

What the fuck?  That is all.

No, seriously.  It seems that you have theoretically chosen a life of crime.  Bad for you.  But, I also see that you have chosen a life of non-violent crime, so way to go.  Is it Meth?  Do you need money for Meth?  That stuff will kill you, man.  Rehab will help you.  No one's life turns out well on Meth.  Please consider my concern for your well being and reassess the life choices that may have brought you to this point.

It seems as though the alarm system contacted the police three separate times last night. 

You were being very naughty.

You may not be aware that the alarm company also contacts other phone numbers besides 911 when you theoretically trigger the burglar alarm.

One of those numbers is my cell.  Another is M's cell.  A third is my house phone.  And yet a fourth is my father in law's phone.

You're right.  That IS a lot of phone numbers. 

Funny thing about the alarm company.  They call ALL those numbers until they get a response.  And once they call my father in law, HE calls until he gets a response. I am sure you can understand that both the homeowner and the company whose job it is to protect the homeowner are very invested in making sure that you (or one of your colleagues) does not successfully enter the house.  I am sure you can also understand that they see the situation with some urgency.  So, they tend to call in a pattern that represents that urgency:  often and on various lines.

So, with your *three* theoretical break in attempts.  And the four numbers that are contacted with each attempt.  And the assorted follow up calls that come with each of the four numbers, you can imagine (even if, like me, you're not very good at math) that my phones were ringing off the hook (that's an old timey term for all the fuckin' time) last night.

Also, I understand that your line of work is largely nocturnal.  Clearly, some hazards come into play if you try to work during the broad daylight.

However, could you please consider (hypothetically) that my line of work is largely done during the day.  As is the work of my children and husband.  So, when you attempt (allegedly) to break into the house at the eleven o'clock hour, the twelve o'clock hour, and the weeeeee one o'clock hour, YOU ARE WAKING US UP.

Yesterday, and I concede that you have no way of knowing this, was a pretty crappy day.  Perhaps it was the full moon that made our household members a little out of sorts.  Perhaps this same full moon prompted you to undertake your night time adventure.  It was difficult for all of us to get to sleep last night, and to facilitate it, we allowed the kids to sleep in our room.  Which means, you guessed it, that your shenanigans (theoretical, of course) were disturbing to all of us.

Just to let you know--for future reference--in case your motives were only curiosity, there are no drugs, jewels, electronics, or expensive goods in that house.  There are two big-ass TVs, but those are difficult to transport.  So, really, you might want to go (theoretically) and burgle some folks who actually have some worthwhile, pawn-able stuff.

Also, if you are very determined to break the law and enter this residence, we respectfully ask that you do it either during the daylight hours, or at least the pre-bedtime hours of elementary aged children and their parents.  We go to bed, again, for future reference, at about 9:30.  So any attempted B&Es should be before that hour.

Thank you for your consideration,
Julie
PS.  Alarm company--if the alarm goes off three times within three hours, there's probably a malfunction.  Turn everything off remotely, turn it back on, and handle this problem on your own.
Thank you for your service.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

The Other Beasts of the Southern Wild

Do you ever watch documentaries on animals in Africa?

I used to, before all the animals became endangered and every documentary had to end with the 10 minute Morgan Freeman narration, "These glorious animals you have been privileged to see for the last 50 minutes exist only in a single city block preserve in Africa and are the last 6 specimens on Earth.  They are killed at the rate of a billion per day and hunted only for their left testicle.  Moreover, their territory is shrinking at the rates of four football fields per minute, and they're all dying and IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT."

So, before that, I used to watch documentaries on animals in Africa.  There was always a segment on these gorgeous prides of lionesses.  The male lions fight over who gets to claim the pride, the victor eats all the loser's cubs, impregnates all the lionesses and then leaves until the next mating season.

(Forgive me, biologists for any generalizations and over simplifications.)

So, this pack of lionesses is left with all these crazy cubs.  First, they're all cute and nursing and falling over each other.  Then, the cubs have to be trained to hunt, fight off rivals, and survive without the pride of females to care for them.

The cubs spend the next seven minutes of the movie growling at one another, pouncing on one another, gnawing on one anothers' ears, pretending the weakest one is a gazelle.  It's chaos, and the mother lionesses just sit there, flies in their eyes, big tails lazily swatting at the bugs, while cubs fight and spar and tussle all around them. 
The lioness, equipped to provide for her offspring and for those of her peers, takes her responsibility stoically.  She's waiting until night, when after enduring a whole day of being her cubs' playground, she has to go out into the wilderness, find dinner, fend off scavengers and bring it back to those babies who then strut around like they brought down that gnu on their own.

Cubs these days.

Living in a house full of boys is a lot like an African Animal Documentary, except for a few things:

1.  Morgan Freeman is not narrating my life.  My life doesn't lend itself to linear narration, but would be more like perpetual surprise for the voice over..."and now, the Mother Human moves to...wait, what the hell is she doing?"

2.  My cubs draw blood.  Cubs learning to hunt and play spar until one dominates the other, but do not draw blood.  That would draw predators.  So, another point in favor of the wild animals being smarter than boy-cubs.

3.  I don't live in a pack of lionesses.  Though sometimes I wish I did. 

If we lioness moms lived in a pack, many things would be very different.  If we could all sit there together, swatting our tails, making sure no one came and ate our babies, and all we had to ensure was that our cubs could fend off a weaker male and catch the occasional wildebeest, our lives would be a snap.

But no.  Instead, moms of boys live in the reverse situation.  We exist in a pack ruled by testosterone.  Motherly instincts to "stop climbing on the furniture" and "stop hitting your brother" and "whoever left footprints on the wall, please stop doing so," are regular, repeated directions.  Nobody has to tell the girl-cubs that falling into a glass coffee table would be painful.

Moms of boys live in a world where a bra in the laundry pile is not just another piece of wash, but readily becomes a hat, ear warmers, or Mickey Mouse ears.

Moms of boys live in a house where each person actually has a favorite body part.  And those boys feel compelled to mention, extol the virtues of, give names to, praise, and exhibit that favorite body part on a regular schedule.  (Hint: it's not an elbow)

Moms of boys live where any words can be fightin' words.

The pride is flipped on its head.  Estrogen is rare and precious.The female is not the norm, she is the oddity, the novelty, the one who mysteriously gets giant pimples on her chin every 28 days.  The cubs, needing the dummy wildebeest, jump on, roughhouse and spar with her as though she is as spry and resilient and tough as they are (which she most definitely is not, in large part because she GAVE BIRTH to two cubs!)

Moms of boys live in a demographically gerrymandered world.  There is no sympathy in the house of boys.  There is no commiseration.  There's barely cooperation.  Boys live in a world without cootie-awareness or personal hygiene guidelines at all.  Like that lioness licking those babies' fur, a boy-mom has to double check fingernails and ears in ways girl-moms never do.  We tend to our camouflaged colors as our cubs grow patchy manes or fantastic plumage and flaunt it in pre-adolescent absurdity.  Little miniatures of noble sires, awkward, comically imitating what they hope to become.  Flexing their wee might as though they were the king of the jungle.

Moms of boys live in a world of heightened bluster and competition.  Of sparring only to see who is dominant in one particular moment, at one particular skill.  Moms of boys live in a zoo-like reproduction of the African wild animals.  The population balance is off, the pairings of moms and cubs much less like a commune, and much more like a habitat surrounded by a moat.  Moms of boys are trying to raise these unruly mini-men into the model of their virile lineage but they're doing it without the community of the lionesses.  There is no check of the rival alpha male.  These cubs aren't aware of forces selecting against them, of males stronger and more dominant. Or females who close rank to protect. These boy-cubs are being raised in the habitat where both of them could be king of the jungle, where neither of them will be the all-watching, all-nourishing lioness.  And there is only that duality.

Moms of boys live in an every-man-for-himself world.  And it's all fun and gazelle games til somebody skins a knee.







Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Son, I'm so proud?

So, we're in the car, driving to swim.  Because, if nothing else, parents are underpaid chauffeurs. 

The non-commercial self promotion on the Sirius Radio screams:

WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO TO NEW YORK CITY TO SEE ONE DIRECTION'S NEW MOVIE, FOLLOWED BY THE CONCERT AND BACKSTAGE PASSES FOR THE AFTERPARTY?!?!?!?

Then the radio fine print ninjas start saying that you can download an app, drink Pepsi, watch the new video and scan the code.  Apparently doing these activities in some consistent order will generate an opportunity for you to be entered into a contest to maybe win a chance to go to New York City to see One Direction's new movie followed by the concert, and backstage passes for the afterparty.

Doing all of those things sounds a lot like losing a contest to me, but nobody asked.

Kids, who are obviously the target demographic for this promotion, are unfailingly able to tune the fine print ninjas out.  S, like every other child of this ADD generation, listens to the radio while reading a book, looking out the window, playing a video game, and beating the crap out of his brother (despite that seatbelt?) immediately keys into the idea of a contest:

S:"Hey, Mom.  We should totally do that."

(Why do my kids always start a conversation with "Hey, Mom?"  I'm right there, why do they need the "hey?")

Me:  "You hate One Direction."

S:  "But I like New York City."

Me: "We were just there.  You were okay with it.  Not like desperate to go back or anything."

S:  "Yeah, but this would be free."

Me:  "We don't really need a free trip to New York to see a movie about a boy band.  We won't even cross town to see this movie."

S:  "A valid point.  But there's also a concert."

(Is there an elementary debate club that I don't know of?  What 8 year old concedes a 'valid point?')

Me:  "I'm glad you appreciate my logic.  But if you don't like the band and don't want to see the movie, why would you want to go to the concert?"

(Silence)

S:  "True.  BUT, there's an afterparty.  Everybody knows the afterparty's happenin'."

Me:  "What do you know about afterparties?"

S:  "The afterparty's always where the fun is."

Me:  "I got that.  Where did you hear about afterparties?"

S:  "Um.  I dunno."

My kid is in school for one day. He didn't come home with spelling words or math homework or PTA sign up forms.

He came home with the afterparty's rocking.

Kids these days.



Monday, August 19, 2013

The first day

Right now, the house is nearly silent.  There is the rhythmic turning of the dryer, the swishing of the dishwasher, but that is all.

There is no overly loud laugh track from the TV, no beeping and clicking from the computers, no squeals of delight from the pool.

There is only me, and the daily tasks of running a home.

Those tasks continue on, made easier by the emptiness.  There is no one here to dirty the dishes I've washed, to use the beach towels I've laundered.  There is no one putting feet on the table, or leaving wrappers on the floor.

There is nobody here.

Nobody is fighting.  No one is yelling.  No one is whining.   No one is asking me to referee.

Nobody is asking for a snack.  Nobody is reading Harry Potter.  Nobody wants to roller skate.

No one is here to swim.  No one is here to play chase with the dog.  Nobody to make the empty beds.

Nobody has Legos all over the floor.  No one is bored.  No one wants his brother to play. No one is playing alone in his room.

No one is complaining about the rainy day.  No one is making vulgar jokes.  No one is the Mad Pantster.

It is not a tragedy.  It's just growing up.  I keep telling myself.  It doesn't matter at all that I forgot to take a photo.  As if a digital imprint of this day will make it last, or bring it back to me when I look back to it in the future.

It is not a tragedy.  Everyone is ok.  Smart and sweet and handsome and healthy.  Everyone has goals and success and achievements yet to be had.  Everyone has a potentially beautiful life ahead of them.  Everyone will be back, of course. 

But for now, it's just me and Nobody.  Sitting in this house.  On this first/last day.  This last first day of elementary school.  This first day of reclaiming my house from the wild beasts of summer.  This first day of the real world.

Nobody and I will get along fine in a couple of weeks.  I'll grow to cherish this time to myself.  By the end of the school, I'll be apprehensive about the prospect of three whole months with Everybody back.

But I know that this is my practice.  This couple of weeks with Nobody is instructive to my future.  Every year, a little less of Everybody and a little more time with Nobody.  Until that time in the not-too distant years ahead, when it will be not just the boy who leaves the house, but his things as well.  It will be the things he cherishes then, I don't even know what those things will be.  

Then, too, Nobody and I will be here in the house.  With Legos and Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and Nobody will play or read those things.  They will be the left behind tokens of childhood.

Everyone will come back in whirling holiday trips and long weekends, bringing laundry and shopping lists and friends and girlfriends and wives and children.  Nobody and I will be ready, like the graying dog in the Iams commercial, eager to have our Everyone home. 

These first few days with Nobody remind me about that near future.  Nobody and I aren't ready,  nor is Everyone else. We're not supposed to be ready yet.  That's why we have this practice, and yet.

M gave me Harry Potter to cite here.  The last page of the last chapter of the last book.  An appropriate disconnect with this, the first day.  But, of course, this citation makes me even more keenly aware of Nobody.  Everybody read or reread this book this summer.  Everyone got to see the movies.  Everyone was sad that this would be the end of Harry Potter.  There will be no more Potter surprises.  No more suspense.  No more Hogwarts. 

Fifteen years ago, the first book was released.  I read the series then, before kids, when the pages still smelled of ink, and I've reread the series with my kids.  And, fifteen years from now, perhaps I'll reread them again.  The books' pages are all feathered and fingerprinted.  The covers are tattered and a bit greasy.  They books are well-loved.  And that makes them even better.  I reread them now, knowing my kids' favorite parts, their most beloved characters, the parts that gave them nightmares and the parts that made them cry.  The books are dearer yet for being shared.

As the famed Hogwarts Express pulled out from Charing Cross Station, Harry walked alongside it, watching his son's thin face, already ablaze with excitement.  Harry kept smiling and waving even though it was like a little bereavement, watching his son glide away from him.  The last trace of steam evaporated in the autumn air.  The train rounded a corner.  Harry's hand was still raised in farewell.










Friday, August 16, 2013

I think I can

I try to be a sympathetic person.

That's not entirely true.

I try to be a sympathetic spouse, parent and friend.

I'm not very good at it.

So, when in the course of daily events, my kids do crazy shit, I am not very tolerant.

Did they break something?  They shouldn't have been horsing around.  Did they hurt each other?  Then they shouldn't have been horsing around.  Did one hurt himself?  Then he shouldn't have been horsing around. 

You know how I know that horsing around is the culprit?   Because grown ups 1.  Hardly ever hurt themselves while doing something appropriate.  2.  Don't horse around inappropriately.  And when they do, bad things happen.  How many weekend warriors sport knee braces on a Monday?  How many dares end up in the ER? 

So, right.  When my kids misbehave and the consequences are negative, I usually have no hesitation in meting out punishment. 

Horseplay=loss of stuff you like to do.

There are exceptions, of course.  And mostly they involve misbehavior of another sort.  The mouthy, limit-pushing variety.  The type of misbehavior that is followed by the kids' wide-eyed stare.  They've thrown down the gauntlet, they're curious to see how you respond.  This is a test.  It is only a test. 

Your response must be both instant and thoughtful.  It must show strength, consistency, control, and compassion.  It must exact justice rather than revenge.

In short, the perfect response is unattainable.   It's an oasis-like shimmering of possibility that dries up the moment you need to execute.  It's theoretical, academic, Ivory Tower parenting.  It's the measured, but completely unhelpful response from a parenting magazine.  It's not the response that boils up to your lips in a singularly infuriating moment that reveals your child's deepest, darkest inner-workings.  It's a fight or flight instinct that must be reined in by willpower, civility and the horrible judgy stares of the community.

It's the moment when you see how your family functions at their most dysfunctional.

Predictably, there are two times every year where my family are at their worst (including me.)  These are the moments when I thank the dignity gods that I am not on a reality show, or under the purview of Children's Services, or in any way worse of  a human than I already am.

The last week (or two) of school in May and the last week (or two) of summer in August, are consistently disastrous around here.

The primary reason, and what I was thinking about when I started this entry, is that usually my kid makes a bad choice and receives an appropriate punishment and everything is straight-forward.  But for those two (or four) weeks a year, the "bad" initial behavior stems from my S's total inability to handle change.

S spent the last two weeks of school this year rudely criticizing my cooking, picking fights with his brother, provoking his dad.  And the last two weeks have been a re-run of that miserable show.

I know the behavior is coming, I want to be able to yield a cushion for him.  I want to be able to give him leeway that I usually wouldn't offer.  And, when necessary, I'd like to exhibit leniency I wouldn't usually extend.

But then it comes.  The mouthiness, the foul language, the total disregard for instructions and responsibility.  The hair trigger.

And in my moment?  In these moments when I can behave like a cultured human who reaches out to her child with patience instead of wrath?

Almost got it.  Sort of.  Not quite.

I've been lenient.  I have avoided restricting the last few days of summer.  But, boy, have I been tested.

I throw up my hands thinking, those boys haven't lifted a finger all summer.  They haven't helped, they've complained about every bit of work we've asked them to do.  They've put up their feet and been waited upon like kings.  And NOW they're yelling at me over the smallest of domestic chores.

Three more days.  Three more days.  Three more days.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Brace for it

E got braces this week.

You know what this means, right?

It means

I'm old.

I know this because it is a proven fact that young people do not pay for orthodontics.  Why do young people not pay for orthodontics? 

Why would young people pay for something like orthodontics?  Why would anyone?

Young people are not planners, naturally.  Investing in something as intangible as "a smile" is not high on a young person's list.  Two, no young people have enough money to even come close to paying for braces.  I mean it's like a life-long cellphone plan.  Three, it's way too sensible.  Young people are busy paying for life-long cellphone contracts.

Moreover, I know I am old because I sat in an orthodontist's lounge for two hours, and was caught off guard when I was called back to watch the hygiene video and I'm bumbling and fumbling a giant coffee, a wet umbrella and an overly sensible purse that I travel with but haven't unpacked since New York, and I thought,

Holy shit.

I'm the embarrassing mom.

Sensible purse, non-Starbucks coffee cup, completely disheveled.

Who watches videos on oral hygiene.

Lame-o.

While I'm rehashing all the things about E's braces that make me feel old (because it's all about me) I should mention that I am the biological mother of a child with all adult teeth. Young people are not usually parents of tweens.

How can it be that I have a child old enough to have braces?

I STILL REMEMBER HAVING BRACES!

It doesn't seem that long ago.  I can remember going to the orthodontist's office in my hometown.  They always played KOST easy rock through the office speakers.  For some reason, it was always Patti Labelle "On My Own."  I remember one of the tech's names, for pity's sake, how can it be that long ago?

And already now, it's me sitting in the lobby rockin' the easy listening tunes.  It's me pulling out my (ancient) paper calendar and making a date for 5 weeks from now. It's me signing that big fat check that for a benefit that seems a bit intangible, even for an old person. It's me railing against the damage caused by soda and don't even get me started on the Armageddon that is taffy.

So, what I'm saying is, while I am proactively fostering good oral health and an attractive smile in my son, I'm not doing it without mental anguish.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Shawshank Museum

S is funny.  Not funny for a kid.  Genuinely funny.  As in, he's some one who is fun to spend time with.

He's funny unintentionally--he has a crush on Giada de Laurentiis.  He has only one giant, cartoonish tooth right now.  He has freckles and mischievous twinkles in his eye.  He looks a little like a modern day Howdy Doody.

Despite his humor, he has some strange obsessions--currently, he's into the sinking of the Titanic and the Holocaust.  Thank God Anne Frank's diary was out from the library.  Maybe truly funny people are also capable of horrible sadness.  I don't know what goes on it that crazy, curly head, but I love it.

Michael continued what awesome Traveling Mom calls the Museum Death March in New York. Not satisfied with seeing every art museum in every city we visited overseas, M found some more in NYC.  And not just kid-friendly museums like the Natural History, but brain-numbing boring to any child under 70 museums like the Met and the Guggenheim.

(Another thing--S constantly refers to the Guggenheim as the Googleheim.  He then absolutely broke down when we found this insanely Googly-eyed guard in the museum.)

The Googleheim is a relatively small museum, exhibit-wise, and S really likes Van Gogh so that was a relatively painless trip.  When S wants you to know he's had enough, there's no ambiguity.  You, and 30 of the closest passers-by will be well aware that he is finished.

Immediately after Googleheim, M decided to push his luck.  I mean REALLY push it, when he led us across 5th Avenue to the Met.  The Met offered us some negotiating (bribery) room.  If the kids gave us one hour in the museum, I would sit with them for 30 minutes in the cafe and then we would go to Armor and Weapons and the Egypt section.  Hold out the stuff they're interested in until the end.  Cross your fingers.

S, who never stopped mocking me for my cane, soon became a big fan.  He sat on my lap (really taking us dangerously close to the cane-seat's 200 pound limit) all through Medieval art (who doesn't need to sit through Medieval art?)  We looked at a jillion gilded triptychs and macabre recreations of the Bible's goriest scenes.  He was quite the trouper.

If you're wondering, E never complains about museums.  Whether he is genuinely interested (I doubt) or just likes to stuff with his dad (which I think is more likely) he just walks on and on.  He loves New York and walks along with us.

Medieval art gave way to 17th and 18th century portraiture.  Yawnsville.  Portraits?

S and I shared commentary on various dead rich white guys.  He pointed out that angels have small penises.  I suggested that maybe Rembrandt was a Hobbit.  We made fun of poofy pants and Elizabethan collars.  Even still, time oozed through molasses.

An hour and a half in, I swooped in and rescued the little men (Ethan, admittedly, did not complain about my liberation) and we went off in search of overpriced refreshments at the museum cafe.  Restored after a three and a half dollar root beer and some smuggled-in protein bars, the boys were soon making jokes about escaping the second half of the museum trip.

S, straight faced as he can be says, "I have a plan.  We tell Dad we need to go to the bathroom."  With perfect timing he holds up a plastic cafe spoon, "and then, we dig."


Friday, August 9, 2013

An unintentional love letter to California

This will surprise you not at all:  I am not a southerner.

Here, in the self-proclaimed heart of Dixie, I am easily identifiable as "not from around here."  How many times have I heard that?  The total confusion on anyone's face when they encounter my last name (not that they would have an easier time with my maiden name), the reluctance to change and modernize, the continued identity as the self-proclaimed heart of Dixie--all of this I struggle with.

I have a hard time with ravenous mosquitoes and humidity that makes the air physically heavy.  Southerners' love of gardening and traditional home style are alien to me.  The old-timey elitism and entitlement.  The homogeneity of it all grates.

On the other hand, I can fully get behind the ancient spanish-moss draped oaks and the gracious hospitality.  I can readily "set" myself in a rocker on a porch with a "patch." (Bourbon and Coke, y'all).  I enjoy the smile and conversation I get from nearly everyone in the service industry.  I savor the warm nights filled with crickets and frogs and other things that chirp and hum.  I love fried shrimp, gumbo and white sausage gravy.  I may not be a southerner, but I have adapted to southern life.

The thing that I haven't adapted to is being considered a Yankee.  I am not a Yankee.  I am not about big cities and expensive clothes and cars.  I am not about high-falutin' art and opera.  I don't live for the electricity of the urban life.  Bright lights and skyscrapers?  The Yanks can keep 'em.

I, as I tried to explain to my boys, am from another country altogether: Southern California.

I have in my heart the ethos of nouveau culture.  I hug my trees, munch my granola, wear my Birkenstocks, and sport a toe ring.  There is no "culture" out there, as Woody Allen observed in Annie Hall--the only cultural advantage is being able to turn right on a red light.

California invented the word lifestyle--for better or worse.  Don Delillo argued that this fact alone warrants their doom.  On the other hand, can you imagine a place so abundant, so accessible that life is not a struggle or competition for survival, but rather a process to be done with elan?  While Yankees are eking out an existence attached to their ipods, ferried to their tiny offices on underground trains from their closet sized homes, face down to the ground, isolated from one another and yet physically crammed together like a hive of ants, Californians are driving on expansive, clean roadways into freestanding homes, stopping to surf, exercise, and coif their designer dogs.

The Yanks are hard working, there is no question.  Everyone you see in New York is industrious.  From the lowliest garbage collector to the uber rich pillars of Wall Street, New Yorkers are working hard.  The city grinds like a grain mill constantly--generating wealth, setting the global economy, running subway trains, painting, delivering, working in a way unlike any place else in the country, perhaps the world.  The men and women of New York have a toughness and resilience like the calloused hands of men and women who work.  They put their pretty shoes in their big totes, put on their sensible shoes and walk to jobs that keep the world as we know it spinning.  They make money.

Unfortunately, money in New York is money for money's sake.  It's impossible to have enough money in Manhattan.  When 400 square feet of living space rents for five grand a month, money must be carefully counted and only thriftiness stands between a man and homelessness.

Money where I'm from?  Money is a means.  Money buys lifestyle.  There's land, there's room.  Five grand a month could put you ocean-front with an endless view of the Pacific that represents the limitlessness of your existence.  California doesn't enslave its workers to the chains of money making--it says take your money and change everything.  The sun will still shine on you, the beach will still welcome you--dare and you will be rewarded.  You are not a slave to your money--your money buys you a limo so that you can step out in your sky-high heels without sensible flats in your totebag.

Saul Bellow, as Yankee as anyone, once said that in Los Angeles, all the loose objects in the country had been collected as if America had been tilted and everything that wasn't tightly screwed down had slid into Southern California. That's the way we like it out there.  There's room for everyone.

Anything goes out there.  The Midwest shakes its head in disapproval of the lack of moral center and the opulence of it all.  The Midwest was built on the hard shoulders of farmers and businessmen.  Chicago, central, distributing all the goods and food and necessities of life to all points east and west.  The south falls to its knees and prays for the lost souls of California.  The heathens, the hippies, the unchristian souls leading wayward lives.  The south barricades itself against the openness to change that California epitomizes.  New Yorkers chuckle to themselves as though they were the wise parents to California's vexing teen.  The indulgence, the casual work ethic, the plasticine waiters and waitresses waiting for their big break in Hollywood.

But Cali, precariously and boldly sitting on the San Andreas continues its adolescent zest for life, its sense of invulnerability, its unwillingness to be reined in.  California, to whom all chemicals are known to cause cancer (and thereby warning everyone else on labels everywhere), California where pot is a cash crop, California where French wines are looked down upon, California where the bottle blonds wear sunglasses as large as dinner plates and drive cars the price of houses.  Where surfers can ply the waves, skaters navigate the boardwalks and snowboarders carve the mountains with the same easy gait.  It truly is the land of fruit and nuts and granola.  Where we can see what we all will be doing in 10 years--recycling EVERYTHING, driving plug-in cars, and eating organic whole wheat, gluten-free, hormone-free, sustainable foods.

The Yankees will keep the world spinning, for sure.  Californians keep it tilted on its axis.

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

When Martha Stewart's brain became a website

First, there was Etsy.  Etsy, for those of you who don't spend hours idly shopping on the Internet is like an on-line swap meet.  Do you like fancy jewelry?  Some one on Etsy makes a decent copy for $12.  Want a personalized map of the US to show where you met your spouse?  Etsy.  Personalized crib art for the nursery?  Personalized gold-tone necklace?  Found object art?  Etsy is your place.  Thousands of purveyors of tchatchkes hawk their wares on Etsy.  Knit beanies that look like a Yoda head for your cat to wear?  You can find it at Etsy.

It seems impossible, but there's something worse than Etsy.  It's like a DIY Etsy.  You don't purchase the finished projects that you see in the pictures on Pinterest.  No, no.  You get a photo-link to a site that gives you directions to make your own tchatchkes.  The pattern to knit your own Boba Fett dog costume.

Pinterest is killing me.

Pinterest is EVIL.

Ostensibly, the site is an endless (literally?) resource of ideas for everything from improving your vacation photos (Sort! Label! Print! Organize!  Display!) to renovating your bathroom.  There are ideas for refinishing furniture and polishing silver.  You can reclaim junk as art and repurpose it all in your house.

If you don't know about Pinterest, consider yourself lucky.  It's a visual site that absolutely sucks time from your life. It's like you and Alice fell through the rabbit hole together.  She followed the rabbit, to go see Wonderland and you got roped into looking at the computer screen version of Wonderland.

The screen shows you everything that is possible in our world--marble showers, cascading carpets of green lawn, bountiful home gardens in perfect, tidy, weedless rows.   Impossibly adorable photographs of children, bright eyed and happy, rather than teary and red-nosed.  There are bathrooms with open air showers, bedrooms with expansive views of turquoise seas.  Children's rooms that look like toy shops. 

Are you not looking to live in a fairy-tale castle?  Then you can find more mundane organization for the shit you already have.  Do you need rolling shelves under your stairway?  Perhaps your junk drawer needs to be reclaimed from the twine that has unraveled in there and snagged everything in it.  Do you need a super creative way to store Legos on your child's wall?  Do you have a spare bookshelf that you can convert into a mega-storage for whatever piles of crap you've accumulated?

Perhaps your house is already fairy-tale ready and you are OCD organized to the ears.  Then you can use Pinterest to find workouts to make your upper arms smaller.  Or your waist flatter.  Or your saddlebags slimmer.  Do you need a smoothie after your workout?  Soothing cucumber? Healthy ginger?  Pinterest has a recipe to juice every vegetable known to man.  Maybe you want some liquid kale?

Fairy tale house?  Check.  OCD?  Check.  Resemble an anorexic mannequin?  Check.  Then YOU need to look through Pinterest's collection of home remedies and tinctures.  Red cheeks?  Make this paste featuring coconut oil.  Or this salve with crushed bananas.  Some rural Amazonian tribe looks forever 25 using just just one ingredient in all their foods--find it.  Use items in your pantry to make foot scrubs, hand scrubs, and magically dissolve scars. 

There is literally something for every single body on Pinterest.  Classroom ideas (a reading nook is no longer good enough.  A palm-tree tropical oasis with books is possible).  Gift wrapping ideas (You didn't even know that a gift in paper with a tag wasn't cute).  Garden ideas.  How to keep a proper family calendar (writing things on the back of an envelope is so 1997).   How to dry herbs from your immaculate herb garden (You just do not have enough heirloom basil).  How to turn a pail into a chandelier (in case you live in a barn).  Make an end table from a bench.   Or, a bench from a table.

Have an extra ladder laying around?  Turn it into art and hang it in your family room. Decoupage family photos onto a dresser.  Spray paint virtually anything into a brighter version of whatever it was.  Make slip covers to conceal your shitty furniture, turn dishes you don't use into art.  Learn how to adopt and care for a micro-pig.  Spray paint a found cow skull.

Want a new tattoo or haircut?  Pages upon pages of ideas for colors, shapes, images.  Tattoos that are gallery-quality, if only you can find an artist to reproduce the Pinterest (possibly photoshopped) image.  Hair cuts in every shape and color, ombre dyes and neons. 

Transform a nutritional nightmare food from your fave restaurant chain into a low-cal, home made crock pot version.  Low cal ranch dressing from yogurt (blech) or a fat free no-pan egg frittata. 

It seems to never end.  The options are limitless, the ideas unfettered by any sort of reality about your own talents.  Do you have hours and hours and free laborers?  Do you have seemingly bottomless closets to store all this crap?  Do you live in a museum? Does your child hate cupcakes made from the Betty Crocker mix? 

Pinterest, despite your convictions to the contrary, cannot improve your life.  All Pinterest can do is make you feel inadequate about your non-subway-tiled master bathroom, your grandma's recipe for  full-fat non-eggplant lasagna, your scrappy garden with the bald spot in your lawn.  Your roses are not hand washed with dish soap to get rid of mites.  Your hand cream is not lavender scented with the lavender you grew in your own hanging herb garden.  You do not have time to make your own lip gloss. 

What is happening?  Is there a certain demographic in this country who is walking around saying, "Alas, I have so much free time, and I disdain brand name products, so I will prepare my own line of bath toiletries?"

Who are these people?  Are we devolving?  Like suddenly we're back in 1840 and we need to churn our own butter?  The reason we have butter for sale in the grocery store is that people figured out they could exchange a product/monetary value for another product/service.  This is how we developed, you know, an economy.  We don't need to be self sufficient in addition to working, raising children, trying to be good spouses, partners and people.  We don't need to adopt pet projects to be useful.  There is no need to repurpose a 1950s melamine tray into a magnetized "To-Do Board" because, and I cannot stress this enough--if you have time to do that, you OBVIOUSLY do not need a To-Do Board.  Because you clearly DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH TO DO.

Pinterest doesn't make our lives better.  It highlights the things we don't have.  It shows us the perfect yards (groomed to within an inch of their lives) or the ideal way to store your spices, or the perfect way to make your kids get along (the getalong shirt.  Are you kidding?)  Pinterest breeds dissatisfaction and longing.  It gives us unreasonable expectations of our own abilities.  Is that kitchen in the photo gorgeous?  Of course it is.  Is it feasible for your modest budget on your kitchen redo?  Of course not.  Pinterest highlights a thousand insignificant things that you are doing incorrectly.  If you need to feel inadequate, Pinterest is the place to go to dissolve your self esteem in a easy-to-whip-up mixture of vinegar and baking soda.

The American desire to acquire.  Even if you refurbish, repaint, reclaim--it may not be new, but you still have more.  You can go to Target and buy a new, one-of-a-million mirror for $20 or you can go into your yard and spray paint twigs and moss to make your own "rustic" one-of-a-kind mirror. 

It's still a shitty mirror.



Friday, July 26, 2013

When (theoretically) good states go bad

I catch a lot of shit for living in Mobile, Alabama.  Everyone out in SoCal thinks I have intentionally crawled under some rock of poverty and ignorance and choose to live there like Gollum.  People up North think we've descended into a cultural and educational void.

To a point, this is true.  Of course, right?  Alabama is a poor state.  It is a red state.  (Is there something redder than red--say crimson?)  Alabamians have a strange priority when it comes to football and church (as in these are more important than food or water).  Alabamians have crappy access to quality health care (and by all accounts, dental care as well.)  There doesn't seem to be, shall we say, a plague of diet and exercise.  We're not necessarily the most industrious place, either, but that's not all bad.

Mostly, it's just a place of the "have-nots."  And when I get down on living here, I think about it like that.  When we got off the plane from Copenhagen, and looked around us, M and I were like, so this is like the OPPOSITE of Scandinavia.  But that's okay, because home is where you make it and we have friends and a good life.

You know where I totally don't want to live?  Florida.  As I mentioned on Facebook today, Florida is literally and metaphorically the armpit of our nation.  It's peninsula dangles into the Caribbean like it's trying to break off.  Florida is what happens when everything goes wrong. Florida is broken, beyond repair, and it's time to admit it.  Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana should no longer be the butts of American jokes.  It should be Florida.

Obviously, and first off, it's apparently okay to shoot black kids in hoodies.  I feel for the jurors in that horrible Zimmerman debacle:  how can they deliver justice when the law in question is unjust?  They weren't a bunch of racists who thought Zimmerman did the right thing.  They thought he did an awful thing, but the law protected him.  So, there's that about Florida.  Shooting people happens a lot. I don't like shooting.

Also, the driving in Florida is awful.  Time and again, national surveys tell us that driving in Florida is taking your life in your hands (because certainly those hands aren't on the wheel.)  I attribute this to several factors:  the elderly, those not trained to drive in the US, those not used to driving with the elderly, crappy cars that randomly break down, and an overconfidence among drivers who think that driving straight is all they have to do in Florida.  It turns out, Florida's roads are only a small notch up from third world countries where like a thousand Vespas hover around the intersection and take off like angry bees when the light turns green.  So you find yourself stuck on a highway behind an old person driving 35 miles under the speed limit, but you're unable to change lanes because of a paralyzing fear of being divebombed by some dude driving 90 on the same road.  It's insanity.

While I'm on the subject of driving, there is also the issue of the roads themselves.  While America's infrastructure is largely on the endangered species list, Florida's pot-holed roads go on for eternity. Have you ever driven the length of Florida?  You've been driving for hours and hours and hours, and you're not even half way down there.  It's agony. If you're lucky.  Otherwise a giant sinkhole can open up and eat your car while you're stuck at a red light.
Right?  The ground actually opens up and swallows people in Florida.  How hostile is that?  Hurricanes, torrential rains, gator infested swamps AND man-eating earth?  What the hell?  It's as though the devil himself is trying to open up a portal and reclaim Florida for himself.

So, yes, the natural disaster facet of Florida is something. But the human element really kicks the natural disaster part up a notch. The hurricanes...remember Andrew and the decade of the bajillion dollar storms?  How many crappy cookie cutter subdivisions have to be wiped out to ring up a tab like that? And, of course, since it's Florida, there's always some moron doing something stupid, like surfing in the hurricane.  Which wouldn't be so galactically stupid, except that he couldn't swim.

The politics of Florida are a cruel joke.  All of these electoral college votes in the hands of people who couldn't use a hole punch in 2000.  Where the state actually legislates every man woman and child for him/herself.  Remember that dangling chad asshole?

Seriously?  In the 21st century our elections were counted by Mr. Magoo? 
Nothing makes you stop and shake your head, though, like the "celebrities" from Florida.  Those giants of literature art and film that have shaped and defined our nation:
 Megan Fox, Wesley Snipes, Leighton Meester, Mandy Moore, Pat Boone, Half the Backstreet Boys, Vanilla Ice and a whole bunch of rap artists whose names are in quotation marks. Florida is not the home of ground breaking cinema or even, really any cinema at all.  I suspect the only reason there are any "stars" out of Florida at all is that the most hideous of all creatures--the stage mom--spawned there.  So, basically, we (meaning movie goers) pay these actors to just actually BE who they are--crappy Floridians.  Yeah, somebody's going to come back to me with Johnny Depp and Daniel Tosh who are both Floridians with long standing careers and real talent.  Yeah, there are 20 million people in Florida, they have to produce some quality occasionally--it's just not as often as the statistics suggest it should be.

Criminals in Florida are also a special breed--nefarious, but somehow just a little screwed up as well.  Like maybe they get caught in some stupid way, or their trial was spectacularly botched, or somehow the whole thing just got to be too much for the system to bear.  The Polk County cheerleaders who beat the absolute living snot out of a girl.  Cheerleaders? Debra Lafave--one of those classy teachers who had sex with a 14 year old student.  Casey Anthony, and of course Ted Bundy all hail from Florida, or at least did their dirty work there.  Florida is where band hazing turns lethal, and college football rosters are regularly compared to prison rolls.  Criminals in Florida are driven to do strange, bizarre and grotesque things.  Is it living in Florida that drives them to this craziness or is it the other way--Florida attracts weirdos.  And old people.  Lots and lots of old people.

Florida is a hot mess.  The panhandle, most generally compared to Georgia and Alabama, is a bastion of rednecks and loners who live away from civilization to work on their apocalypse bunkers or whatever.  Southern Florida is a mash up of hard core Puerto Ricans and blue haired old ladies.  A disconnect of screened-in patio homes and crack houses.  It's like God threw up his hands and was like "I dunno where to put these people!  I'll just drop them in Florida til I figure it out" but then he totally forgot to go back there.  Because, let's be honest here, it sometimes seems like God forgets Florida.

Finally, there is the non-taxing philosophy that is working so well to fund all of Florida's schools and other quasi-necessities.  Sure, it draws really rich former NBA stars and the uber-famous, but for what?  They build their mega-mansions there to avoid paying state income tax and then they live elsewhere, because (and you may have guessed what I'm going to say here) WHO WANTS TO LIVE IN FLORIDA?

Even the manatee, Florida's state mammal, is kind of a joke in the animal kingdom.  What animal lives in water so shallow you can stand in it but has no protection mechanism at all?  The manatee.  The sea cow.  Not the sea-chimp (that'd be waay to clever) but the sea cow and its prehistoric brain and fragile skin are the inhabitants of Florida. Manatees--driven to extinction because they are simply too dumb to move outta the way.

Disney.  I'm not even going to write about Disney because my vitriol for that place exceeds the limits of my ability to express them.  Disney is truly proof that Florida is the bottom of the United States' bucket.  As low as it goes.  The gator-filled, boa constrictor infested, murky swampy bottom of the US's bucket. 


 


Thursday, July 25, 2013

Why am I watching this?

I sometimes find myself doing the same thing repetitively, hoping, praying for a different outcome every time.  Like "please don't hit your brother."  (Not gonna happen.)  Or, "yah, coconut seems like it should taste good"  (Still, no.)  Or, maybe the news will not be a laundry list of crime and thunderstorms (hasn't happened yet.)  Or, maybe the Hits1 Sirius station won't be playing Macklemore and Ryan (maybe next month.)  Or, most recently, perhaps this Aaron Sorkin thing won't suck. (It does.) M keeps going back for more.  Despite my eye-rolling (I make a good sound effect to go with the eye roll just to pester him while he watches,) he feels that there is something redeemable in all of this.  That Sorkin's pat answers are going to change politics?  The world?  Does he like the verbal masturbation of an alleged Republican bitching about every elected Republican in government?  What, exactly, is M expecting to happen?  One episode won't involve a grown woman acting like a hormone-riddled teen?  That one episode won't show some failed government practice DEEPLY AFFECTING one of our characters?  That Sorkin isn't a one trick pony? 

More importantly, how do I keep getting sucked into this?  I HATE summer TV.  It's a vast wasteland of repeats and sports-less tundras.  Baseball, America's pastime is really just a white-noise generator to facilitate my nap.  There are no movies made for grown women on cable.  EVER.  And now, on Sunday nights, there is this Newsroom show. This frantic, frenetic, didactic tirade that I am subject to once a week.  WHY DON'T I GET UP and do something else?  It's like a tractor beam.  I'm sucked in, if only to ridicule.  It's like picking at a skin blemish.  Picking will not make it go away, but it's something to do while the blemish is there.  The satisfaction comes from the pain it causes.

Usually, I reserve my critical interpretations of TV shows for artistic heavies like Jack's Big Music Show or Yo!  Gabba Gabba!  But, today (well, actually last night, but I couldn't get my google password to work and I have the tech savvy of a Triceratops) I think The Newsroom has earned some of my insightful analysis.

First of all, I have to say that I'm moderately surprised that HBO even gave me a second chance at The Newsroom.  I thought for sure that it was going to be a one season blunder.  But no...it's back!  And quippier and fast-talky as ever.

Some obvious complaints about Sorkin:  who keeps talking, louder and louder, OVER the boss's monologue?  No one.  Ever.  And yet, here we are watching Dumb and Dumber yell over poor Law and Order Prosecutor.  Louder and LOUDER.  And British Girl screaming over Dumb and Dumber guy? Second, what kind of savants have, at their fingertips, arcane statistics about the mortgage collapse in this country? Or violence in Rwanda? Or the DNP of Sweden?  Third, who runs everywhere at work?  Fourth, why, oh why are these people PISSED OFF ALL THE TIME?  AND YELLING ABOUT IT? 

Another issue, what is with the casting?  Why do the Don character and the Other Guy (Jim?) look so much alike?
Seriously, generically attractive guys who mumble?  When they are on their cell phones, lit by random downlighting in a bar, mumbling at The Forehead (whom they are both? dating?), it is impossible to tell them apart from one another.  Last week, they introduced some other guy, Washington, to further confuse me:
This guy came up from Washington, D.C. on the last episode to help produce the news while one of the other Hardy Boys ran away from his true love, The Forehead.
The Forehead, who I do not object to as an actress (she may be very good at reading non-self pitying, trying to be an Important Woman script) but in this, she reminds me of a Cabbage Patch Kid who is (essentially) whining about boys despite trying to be taken seriously as a journalist (how 1990s):

See?  There she is all yarn-haired and Cabbage Patchy.  Her internship has become fraught with sexual tension, much like this scraggly-haired blonde:
Sadly, though, for all his modern take on the world, Sorkin's women tend to be of this type. These women who constantly interrupt Very Important Business with their trivial love problems.  "Should I tell him I love him?  Will the workplace be weird if I don't?  Do I deserve happiness?  Does he think of me as anything but his secretary? I guess I'm stereotyping: sometimes, they aren't blonde:
But they definitely have a look, right?  These women who aren't in charge, but through their personal assistant/intern position steer their morally-driven men into the right decisions and spectacular soap boxing.  They venture into Sorkin's verbal fray only to wind up in their bosses'/mentors arms by the end of the series.

There are women in charge (ish) though, in Sorkin Situations:
 But while these are competent women, they are sexual failures, governed by break-ups and broken hearts.  They have no time for relationships, for they are married to their careers and what must be GIANT closets filled with silk blouses.
They talk fast, eat up men and spit them out even faster.They bust balls and pump iron.  They carry big stacks of paper and walk around their offices (Importantly) in stilettos. They say things like, "Yes, I am here and I am working hard and I have filed this news report on the 4.9 starving children in the Sudan and the economic and social repercussions, of term limits to Republican senators but, dammit, Will, I still love you.  I have always loved you."
That's not an actual quote, it's like the Cliff Note version, because that actual monologue takes seven minutes when written in Sorkin-ese.
So, these horny women who drink men's scotch, propel slightly damaged men (Will McAvoy, I'm looking at you) into the stratosphere of success.  Talking, the whole time.  Non stop.
This photo (above) also brings me to another casting gripe.  Why Sam Waterston?  I love the guy and his work for TD Waterhouse (or whatever retirement fund he's encouraging me to use) and of course, Law and Order.  But I'm pretty sure the guy has limited lung capacity.  He is frequently winded from running up and down Sorkin's workplace halls (keeping up with those pissed off women) and then can't spit out a Sorkin-logue in one breath.  He fades out there, in the middle, and I am often rewinding to pick up the last half of whatever it was that he was saying.  (Which is, I should know by now:  I care/do not care about the ratings of our show today, dammit, Will McAvoy.  Get your shit together and do/do not do the news tonight.  We can/cannot make it as a network with/without you.  That wig-wearing bitch, Jane Fonda, is all over my ass about you.  She's in charge, but kinda scary in her silk blouse, so I mostly do either what she tells me to, or the direct opposite.  My role is confusing.)


HOLY SHIT!  She is scary.  Do you think she can blink anymore?  That skin looks tight.  Although if Felicity Huffman's character from Sports Night were to get a LOT of work done, she might look a little like this, so maybe in one of Sorkin's benders, he thought he was hiring Huffman.

Look, Sorkin is a talented man.  The Social Network was really good.  A Few Good Men was pretty good.  The West Wing redefined network drama.  But what I'm saying, I think, is that the whole Sorkin experience is exhausting.  I just can't immerse myself in a world where every one knows everything about the world, but nothing about human nature.  The same characters resurface from old shows, and while their wardrobe is updated, their situations aren't.  This is a show about cable news.  The stakes are made to feel urgent, meaningful, NECESSARY.  But the thing is--news is none of these things.  Are they going to not get the essential statistics on the royal baby dubbed in on time?  No.  And if they don't Wolf Blizter is just going to eat some gravel and usher us into a commercial break.  I just don't care about any of it.  I don't care about self righteous liberals trying to point out the error of their conservative coworker's ways.  I don't care about these slightly relevant, but fictionalized news events.  I can barely find it in me to care about these things in the real world news, but I am definitely not buying into the high stakes of these events on a fake news show.  I don't need to hear Sorkin's thinly veiled diatribe spat at me by some one who talks as though he's taken speed.

So, this Sunday night, who's up for either A) Sorkin-themed drinking games (everyone drinks while characters are running) or B) turning off the TV and going out?

Because something's gotta give.  Seriously.




Tuesday, July 23, 2013

An Open Letter to George Clooney

I like cyclical events.  Routine is good.  Cycles help me to look forward, keep focused.  I like the Olympics, and now they come every two years, which is even better.  Cicadas, Nordstrom sales, and best of all, George Clooney break-ups.

George Clooney and his girlfriend,
No, wait, his girlfriend is THIS Keibler:

...have broken up.

George Clooney (sigh, doesn't he look fantastic in this photo?!?) and this gorgeous, tall drink of water are no longer an item.  I am taking this opportunity to let George know that I am (mostly) available.  

Missed Connection:  You:  were hosting a fundraising party for POTUS.  I:  failed to win the drawing for free invitation to the fundraising party you hosted for POTUS.  We were so close, and yet, too far.

So sorry to hear about your recent break up.  I am sure it is difficult to let some one special walk out of your life. 

I realize I have no information other than scuttlebutt and rumor, but I heard that you and Stacy had divergent viewpoints on having children.  I understand that you are not interested in having any.  I have two kids, but let me tell you, I absolutely promise you that I will not pester you for children.  (Peri-menopause makes that difficult anyway)  If you were interested in hanging out with me, I can assure you completely, that children would never be a part of our future.

As part of your emotional healing process, I'd like to point out to you the many advantages of seeing me.  First of all, let's be honest.  You're not getting any younger.  And while you are still looking all kinds of hot, that handsomeness is ephemeral.  Soon, you'll be looking like your friend, Brad, in that Benjamin Button fiasco.  And then what 24 year old super model is going to want to date you?  That's right.  Deep pockets only outweigh deep crow's feet to a certain point.  And then, what?  I will be there.  My appreciation for you is beyond skin deep, it's forever deep.  (Actually, not true.  My adoration of you is exactly as deep as your epidermis.)  But then again, I have far fewer prospects than your ex.
Another point in my favor is the wisdom of my years.  I'm not a young tart boasting perky breasts and peppy attitude.  I'm a seasoned woman.  I'm the real deal.  I can be your muse as you study for some unnamed role for the as yet unmade Roman Holiday remake.  Only you'd be the prince and I'd be the random tourist who finds your stunning self and woos you. 
Also, I probably clean up okay and would look good in a very sensible Judi Dench-sleeved ensemble on the red carpet.  People would admire you for dating some one who is "unconventionally beautiful"  (read:  not supermodel young, beautiful, or thin.)  Think of the positive publicity for you.  People would call you deep, and applaud your effort to find a "real" relationship with "meaning."  Only you and I would need to know that it was all about the hot sex.
Conveniently, my dog is already named after you.  He and I would seamlessly transition into your life.  Italy is lovely this time of year and I pack very light.  I would be happy to help you air out the villa and welcome in the gorgeous summer breeze in Lake Como.  I have no desire to live in the hubbub in LA, either.  We could retreat to the beauty of the Italian countryside and read literature (I know this guy with a great new novel.  He's a TOTAL stranger, by the way.)
I will be happy to buy a Rosetta Stone Italian Edition so I can help you buy wine and prosciutto and crusty bread for our romantic picnics on the lake.  See?  I want to be your help mate. No pressure, though.
I hear from reliable sources that you are a merry prankster.  I LOVE merry prankstering.  We could have Angie and Brad over and then hire 25 child actors to mix up with their kids.  We could make the loving parents find their own kids in the sea of children a la Pin the Tail on the Donkey.  We could write on Brad's forehead in glow in the dark pen.  Or put his hair in a ponytail when Angie isn't looking.  I'm game for all kinds of fun!
Anyway, George, just think of the possibilities.  There are a couple of glitches standing between you and me (namely my husband and children) but those obstacles, and the distance between my humble life in Alabama (yes, that part is true, but I promise it's not what you think: I'm not from here--ask anyone) and your Hollywood life is smaller than you think.
So, consider it.  I can be the shoulder you cry on.  I'm even willing to be your transition woman.  Just remember, I will not be the woman who wants to trap you, marry you, beg for kids.  I will be the fun-loving partner you desire.  Really.
By the way, I asked my husband if you were too old for me and he assured me that you aren't.  He suggested that I may be too old for YOU, but I assured him I'm not.
Well, I hope you are doing well.  Looking forward to that Astronaut movie with Sandra Bullock (I hope it's better than that fiasco with the overrated Melissa McCarthy.) 
Thanks for your time,
Sincerely
JP


Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Weather or Not

I'm a weather nerd.  I get it.  I like researching the difference between frontal rain and heat effect rain.  I check accuweather daily during hurricane season.  For those of you who aren't weather nerds, hurricane season runs from the end of May til November.  I have sites that I favor for different weather-researching needs.  Weather.com is the default on my phone.  (I don't know what this means.  But what I intend it to mean is that when I press the little square on my phone that has a sun on it and says weather, I get linked to Weather.com)  I use it occasionally.  Accuweather has a good section on the tropics that is well-updated both with maps and a written forecast.  I like that.  Wunderground has the best regional forecast and local forecasts, such that I can find out if it's raining at the baseball stadium even if it's not raining at my house.
Also, at Wunderground, there is an infographic enumerating the world's weather-related news for the day.  Marathon Key, Florida had an all time low temp for June 16 of 75 degrees.  This summer has been full of "world's hottest" and "world's coldest" records, which might lead some to consider climate change as a viable scientific reality, or not.  But, nonetheless, there I am, checking my weather facts.  Accuweather has assured me that dry Saharan dust (is there any other kind?  Not Saharan but dry.)  is being drawn into the tropics and hindering the development of tropical waves.  This pattern is usual for this time of year.
During the school year, it is my duty and pleasure to be the first one downstairs.  I turn on the computer and the coffee maker at the same time, and it's a race to see which will be able to produce happiness first.  (That first cup of coffee is pretty essential in the morning.)  I then shout the weather forecast up to the kids and M from the bottom of the steps. 
Not, by the way, that there is EVER real, significant change in the Mobile weather.  The main difference is whether there will be a sweatshirt in the kids' uniforms.  And, for what it's worth,on the 3 days per semester when I get the kids from school, it is guaranteed to rain.
Our weather options for the school year are pretty much:  hot, warm and rainy, warm and humid, cool, cool and rainy. 
My sister is also a weather nerd.  In her defense, she is a geographer (?), so it's kind of ok to be a nerd.  She teaches her students about volcanoes and plate tectonics, and climate change, and earthquakes, and while these aren't actual weather events, they sort of fall in to the category of it, and I'm ok with that.  She and I will often talk about the totally bizarre weather extremes in our sections of the country.  Here, in Mobile, AL where more rain falls than in any other city in the US (DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED, SEATTLE) humidity is a way of life.  Overnight rainfall totals are measured in multiple inches.  The Fourth of July weekend total was over a foot.  She lives in Phoenix, AZ.  A foot of rain is like a century's worth.  We compare relative humidity and dew point temperatures.  The dew point around here is often 72 or 73 degrees.  Where she lives, it is often in the single digits, or even in the negatives.  People in Phoenix look like raisins.  People in the South look like reconstituted jerky.  Phoenix temps can soar into the one-teens.  Here, we seldom see the dark side of 100, but enjoy it vicariously through "feels like" temperatures.
My Dad, also is a weather nut.  I talk to him about once a week.  In that conversation, I get a weather recap.  Like an inept weather man, he doesn't forecast what's going to happen, he just accurately details what is currently happening or what already happened.  Ironically, he lives in Southern California, a region defined by its fundamental lack of weather.  It's perpetually 72 degrees there (when it's not on fire, sliding down a muddy mountain, or being rocked by earthquakes.)  Stranger still, he lives in this a strange cove of land where it seems to be its own micro climate.  While he's shrouded in fog so thick it's soupy, folks three miles inland are perfectly fine.
Nonetheless, I get this weekly weather update.  "It was too cold to nap outside" (Below 72 degrees)  "It was too windy for cocktails on the beach" (Below 75 degrees, 20 mph wind)  " It was gorgeous outside, we had lunch on the patio" (75 degrees, limited wind, bright sunshine)  "It was miserable and damp outside.  We had to turn on the heat."  (Fog, temperatures below 72).   I also get the accompanying astronomical data:  "too cloudy for a good sunset."  "Great Santa Ana winds, gorgeous sunset."  "Fire in Riverside, surreal sunset."  "Perfectly clear afternoon.  Looking forward to the sunset.  Should get a green flash."Don't know what a green flash is? Click here
The Green Flash.  The holy grail of astronomical phenomenon.  Dad sits out there, martini in hand, waiting, waiting for the green flash at sunset.  Any guests or relatives will be summoned out of their small talk, away from their dinners to pause, wait and then debate whether or not there was a green flash, whether or not they actually saw it, and whether or not it's actually a thing.  I bought my dad pint glasses from The Green Flash Brewery in San Diego so he could have a green flash every night.  The Green Flash is so rare, such a literally infinitesimal moment that it seems like only a micro percentage of the world will ever see it.  I, for one, can't even see the sun actually set, because it sets behind trees and forest and my neighbor's house.  There's no green flash for me.  There's no "moment" when I can see the sun set.
So, when I think about these conversations between me and my dad and occasionally, my sister, I think it's so weird that we're comparing notes on this.  Me, looking up weather for kids' uniforms, her tracking weather news for current event exercises in the classroom, my dad using weather and astronomy to order his post-retirement day.  For most people, the weather is incidental, an afterthought to their plans.  An inconvenience, or an unexpected respite.  For us, the weather moves to center stage.  It dictates the quality of my dad's day.  While I get that, I find myself annoyed that the events he postpones because of weather aren't really 'events' at all.  He took his nap inside instead of on his fancy wicker outside sofa.  He drank cocktails on the leeward patio rather than the beach. As it turns out, I'm not jealous of the weather, just the lifestyle. Bummer.

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

The White Flag

The outdoors is officially intolerable.  No longer am I continuing relations with that enemy state.  Done.  Finished.  I'm tearing up treaties faster than North Korea.  I'm taking my ball and I'm going inside.

From July 2 through the long weekend and beyond, it rained here.  Big rain.  None of this Seattle "it's like living in a fog bank of moist droplets."  None of these Midwestern squalls that howl through in late spring.  No, no.  It rained here.  Like you say "rrrrrrrr-aaayned" in the thick, guttural voice of a blues singer.  It Sweet Baby Rains.  It pours.

If you're out driving in this weather, the droplets hit the windshield like pancakes, both in their size and the satisfying f-wap sound they make when they smack the car, the pavement.  Windshield wipers simply cannot keep up.  You peer through the window, as though somehow being closer to the glass will make it easier to see.  And, since all of this rain is falling on a town with infrastructure that dates back to when Napoleon owned the city, you of course will not see the puddle that is probably knee deep and growing on the side of the road.  You will hit it with that sickening slowing of one side of the car and the (hopefully only) momentary feel of the tire leaving the road.  So, yeah, driving hasn't been on my to do list in last week's weather.

Moreover, the outdoors are threatening right now simply because of their gargantuan size.  Temperatures and humidity have been hovering around 90 (degrees and percent) so, plants are taking over.  Like in Indiana Jones movies where the jungle has reclaimed the ancient ruins, so to is my yard, my house, my town being assaulted by the encroaching wilds.  Indeed, my neighbor's wisteria has grown from a mere strand of vines to a botanical boa constrictor.  The grass, like Homer Simpson's beard, looks instantly after a clipping as though it needs it again.  You can watch the weeds grow.  Literally. 
The gorgeous oaks are filled with ferns that have taken hold in the bark.  I love that--plants growing ON plants.  And ferns growing in between bricks, on balconies and in between roof tiles.  All of these plants whittling in from the outside, threatening.  The Green Giant on steroids. And you are bringing everything short of Napalm to the party.  There isn't enough Round Up in the world to fight these weeds.  These plants are laughing at your Round Up.  They have roots fed on gallons of water.  Tons of water.  These weeds are going nowhere, Bud.

While the flora conspire for the ground assault, corrosion is working to destroy the support network.  We are far enough from the bay and the ocean not to feel the water's refreshing breeze, but to have the disadvantage of the briny dew the salt water leaves behind.  The humidity and the fog are eating my barbecue as though it were a smorgasbord.  Every last screw driver, can of paint, shovel and clippers that I store outside are rusted to such extent that I got a booster on my tetanus shot.  The wrought iron on the porch (I'm pretty sure) is held together by the paint alone.  There are only two allies in this battle--Rustoleum and WD40.

And finally, these rains.  These torrential monsoons.  They bring the worst enemy of all.  The enemy that's brought civilizations and nations to their knees.  An evil that has halted canals, obliterated colonies.  Malaria, sickness, fever, all spread through the world by (DUM Dum dum) MOSQUITOES.  That's right.  Those evil effers are out in force since the rain.  I mean, these mosquitoes were throwing mosquito orgies under azalea bushes. These male mosquitoes didn't even have to TRY to think of cheezy come-ons to get a female mosquito.  He just had to buzz vaguely in her direction.  The UGLY male mosquitoes were getting laid after the rains.  And now in some revolting post-rain baby boom, they're feasting on us.  They're sucking our blood just as surely as the boomers will suck our Social Security. 
The scabby baby population among us is growing.  I see all these kids and their poor legs are just covered in bites, scratch marks and scabs.  It's like a horrible war of attrition--we send our kids out to play because it's fun and it's good for them.  And we're sending them out as meals for these mosquitoes.  Just giant cocktails waiting to be drunk by disgusting bugs.  Insects so unconquerable that I think they inject themselves with Raid in small doses until they are immune.  Mosquitoes so virile they wear DEET as cologne.  Deep Woods Off! is their aphrodisiac.

And so, since these forces of nature have aligned themselves in an Axis of Evil that would scare even ol' Ronnie Reagan himself.  These are deep, dark, primeval forces.  This powerful nature controlled by vast mythical forces.  I can't fight it.  Not even with legions of painters, gardeners and handymen.  I am France in this war.  These are the creepers and crawlers who will occupy my territory, my borders.  I surrender. 

Monday, July 15, 2013

Technically, today isn't over yet

See how easy it is to fall off the blogging wagon?  Today, I had to work out and grocery shop (two big blehs on the schedule) so I lost some mojo early.
So, Mobile is in a bit of a renaissance, apparently.  Things haven't been the same around this city since 1860 or so.  A bit of a downhill, really.  It reminds me a lot of Buffalo, NY some times.  It's a former shipping hub that clearly boasted wealth and culture that has slowly crumbled and renewed in a mini-cycle since its heyday.
There was an Air Force base, but it closed.  There was a cruise terminal, but it closed.  There was a big deal with AirBus that Obama nixed.  There were almost many moments for this small city.  Unfortunately, for me, I wasn't around to experience them.
Recently, though, there's been an uptick.
It started, probably, with the Shit Ship Carnival Triumph.  Its inglorious 4 day tow from the Gulf of Mexico back to a port (any port) with toilets brought national media focus to our bayside hamlet.  Even Erin Burnett of CNN had to concede that perhaps our town defied stereotypes of hillbilly one post towns in Alabama.  She described it as charming with mossy covered oaks arching over the streets.  It was possible, at last, for a northerner to leave our humble home with something positive to say.
Then Airbus decided to open a plant here.  Woot!  Money!  Jobs!  Families! Infrastructure!  Hooray!

It might be coincidental to this AirBus plant, or it may just be synergistic good luck, but things are looking up around here, lately.  Some eyesores have been released, refurbished and are being reopened.  And we have 2--count the--2 new Publix stores.  No longer are we relegated to WalMart and local IGA chains.  We've been freed from crappy store brands and bad customer service.
Hallelujah!

Plus, and I don't want to overstate the importance of this, but today something downright magical happened in Mobile.

M came home from the gym with an unmarked white box.  A foldable box for pastries.  Lo, and behold, he opened it to (choir of angels)

Donuts.

Not crappy Krispy Kreme, but real donuts.  Made by real people.  Not grocery store donuts, not Sara Lee prewrapped donuts.  But real donuts.  Cakey donuts with real icing.  They're not those sugar-saturated monstrosities from Krispy Kreme.  That place is nauseating, cloyingly sweet from blocks away.  These are fantastic pink and Devil's Food and filled donuts that don't instantly put you in a diabetic coma. 
\
I've been saving mine all day.  Now, after dinner after everything is cleaned up, I have a Bavarian Creme filled waiting for me.

Bavarian.  Creme, Filled.  Things really are looking up for Mobile.


Friday, July 12, 2013

Day 3: Space Invaders

My sister and her husband visited us for 3 weeks until the end of June this summer.  My parents arrived the same day my sister and J left.  We had fun.  A lot of fun.  And E and J spent a lot of their time in hotels, which was really generous of them.  Mercifully, they have personal space issues that make me seem cuddly.  We were able to have fun without feeling trampled upon.
My parents stayed at our house to watch the boys, but M and I left for our trip the day after that. Their presence didn't really affect our space.  We did come home to all-family, all the time with the boys, though.

I've been craving solitary time. 
I don't want to get hate mail from my hubby, so I'm going to include this disclaimer:
While it is true that M has taken the kids on numerous walks, breakfast outings, coffee breaks, and games in the pool, it's not quite the same as being alone.  I miss being in control of a set amount of time in which I could do anything.  Nothing.  

I am not complaining about M's sincere effort.  He really is helpful.  It's just not the same.

I'm BIG BIG BIG on personal space, and summer really challenges those boundaries.

When the boys were babies,  new babies, even, I boycotted the omnipresent baby monitor.  I couldn't stand it.  In fact, I closed the nursery door AND my bedroom door, figuring that if the kid really needed me, he'd let me know.  They both had healthy vocal cords, and I don't think I ever missed a cry for a clean diaper or a bottle.  (I might have ignored a couple until M responded, though).

I had those developing fetuses inside my body for nine months.  I was in no rush to glom back on to them, extra-uterinely.  The umbilical tether had been severed. In my mind, they were on their own.  Every man, mom and baby for her/himself.

From the moment I could set them down, I could.  Of course, Sam was a touchy baby and wanted to be HELD all the time.  I endured extra screaming just so I could earn some moments away to put him down and let his head flatten in the back.
 
Now, that they're older, everyone in our house has his own room (theoretically).  Obviously, this is a luxury, but also a big priority.  I try not to go into the kids' rooms--not even for laundry--as they are the boys' private spaces.  They are entitled to a place not subject (or as subject) to my definition of clean, to my idea of organized, to my prying eyes. 

Our bedroom doesn't seem to merit the same respect.  Night after night, I find contraband in MY bed--Legos, post-lights-out books, drawing pads, crossword puzzles.  Sometimes, the kid himself has fallen asleep on my side of the bed.  There's toothpaste spit in my sink and I KNOW that is not mine.  Why does a closed door not mean KEEP OUT?  How do I punish continual assaults on my domain?

This summer, our bedroom is even more under attack.  In something out of an Arrested Development episode, the kids have been sleeping camp-style on the floor of our room.  Camp Iwannalovememommy, said Buster's campshirt, I think. 

This, in my mind, takes on an horror-film-esque quality where the stumps of the boys' umbilical cords start to grow outwards towards me. 

When the boys started school, I remember a PTA note about a cry room.  I thought it was for baby siblings to sit in while school-aged kids were walked into class.  Someone actually had to explain to me that it was a room for moms to go commiserate about the trauma of leaving their children at school.  What the WHAT?

Now, back at camp I wannalovememommy, I'm hopeful that the novelty/necessity of sleeping on the hardwood floor of my room wear off soon.  I'm totally over tripping on feet on the way to my middle of the night bathroom/water stop.  I'm over being awoken by S's sleeptalking and E's hellacious toothgrinding (we really need to see a dentist about that.)  I'm annoyed that what's mine is now everyone's. I go to bed cranky, and I wake up cranky.  I never get that liberating night-time door close that separated me from the rest of the world.  I miss that satisfying click that shuts out the mess of my house, the laundry, the parental responsibilities, and shuts in the adult world of me, M and Clooney.

Last night, I was the first person asleep in this house.  At 11 PM.  That is unacceptable.  I've clearly become the camp counselor at Camp Iwannalovememommy who has lost control of the campers.  They'll take over the camp in some sort of Whedon-esque remake of 1970s camp horror flick.  I'll be tied to a pole to be eaten by fire ants.

I'm making a decree now:  At the end of summer, everyone's going  BACK to their own rooms.  Even if they have to go there to cry.




Thursday, July 11, 2013

Day 2

Tourists are funny.  No matter where you are, no matter if YOU ARE the tourist, you can always recognize another.  In fact, let me give you some mental images and caricatures.  You can see if your instant picture matches mine, and also Google Image Search's.

Germans in National Parks

Is this what you see in your mind's eye?


How about
Asian Tourists?
Chinese Tourists in Japan


American Tourists?
Not my profile picture

Canadian Tourists?
My visual image
The Rest of the World's Visual Image
Canadians' Mental Image

So, of course it makes me laugh when I am a tourist...on a cruise ship surrounded by what are purported to be the world's WORST tourists.

It seems like there are 4 categories of tourist.  We are all some combination of all four of these, with some obvious qualities of some more than others.

The Chillaxer
  • Found on beaches, rivers, lakes, houseboats
  • Favors warmer climates
  • Has minimal vacation goals
  • Uses phrases like "get away," "veg out," "escape from it all"
The Planner
  • Do you know what ride's line is the longest at Disneyland?  If yes, you're a planner
  • Found in ADHD clinics, taking OCD meds
  • Found in any climate, any setting, any culture
  • Uses phrases like "hurry up," "itinerary," and "have to"
  • Often coincides with insistence on shopping
The Cultural Maven
  • Feels the compulsion to enter any building with "MVSEVM" on it.
  • Eschews shops with patriotic shot glasses for art galleries
  • Would be proud to be mistaken for a "foreigner" at home or abroad
  • Uses phrases like "13th Century," "fascinating," and "it's very European"
The Consumer
  • Has a map with brand logos indicating shops instead of points of interest 
  • Knows the word "SALE" in 15 different languages
  • Carries empty luggage to anticipate purchases
  • Uses phrases like "just to look," "I want a gift for [Random Family Member]" "that's a really good price"

I am, I think, in order:  Chillaxer, Planner, Consumer, Cultural Maven,
M is, I think, in order: Planner, Cultural Maven, Consumer, Chillaxer
Yes, you read that correctly.  M would actual prefer to shop than to sit on a beach.

It's been years since we've taken a trip by ourselves.  Y-E-A-R-S.  When traveling with the boys, our differing tourist categories complement each other nicely.  I try to smooth out the *personality* issues in Chillaxer mode, while he makes sure we don't have an extra 6 hours of watching the kids jump on the bed in a hotel room in Planner mode.  It makes for really good family vacations.

I noticed the discrepancies in our styles much more when it was just the two of us.  In new cities and countries.  With limited time in each port.

First off, I must be completely forthright here.  I have missed flights, packed for flights days early, arrived at hotels on non-reserved days.  I am ABSOLUTELY unreliable when it comes to itineraries of any sort.  Truly.  Ask anyone.  Read back entries of this blog.  Truly awful.

M is the opposite.  He knows down to the minute how long our layovers are.  How long the plane flight is--after factoring in seventeen time zone changes.  How many flights will be departing after our flight when/if we miss it.

That's a great overlap, if you ask me.  I can sit at the gate, lost in a book while he frets about how many minutes we can make up in the jet stream to make the connection in Atlanta.  We actually get to places AND I don't have to stress.  It's like being a kid.  I just ask what time we'll get wherever we're going 143 times.

On the other hand, M dragged me by a store in Stockholm that seemed to be selling only 3 items.  Not 3 actual items, but three types of items.  I was intrigued.  A little repelled.  Curious.  Unfortunately, that store was not on the map.  72 cathedrals were on the map, however.  Not that I wanted to buy anything in the store--just to look.

By the way, the three items are: gnomes, trolls and reindeer pelts.  So, they sell both Santa's helpers and Santa's pets' skin?  WTF?
I did take a picture of it, though. That's a lot of gnomes.

I also get a lot of pictures like this:
The back of M's head in Copenhagen.

He walks a lot faster than I do.  Especially since I carry one of these now:
It's true.  I belong on a cruise.  I just can't slowly browse museums anymore.  Standing still or walking slowly really hurts.  Now, I can sit! (Emphasis from the ad)

So, in this mode comparison, it's win/lose for me.  I get to see WAAAAAAAAAAAAY more of a city than I ever would if left to my own devices.  I lose because I'm always catching up, saying 'hold on' and staring at 700 year old altars ("it's 13th century!")  I learn more/relax less.  Think more/veg out less.  Explore more, taste less.

Ultimately, I guess the biggest difference between us wasn't our style, though.  It turns out to be more of a durability issue.  M seems to be part camel/pack mule.  He eats breakfast, loads up the backpack and starts walking.  FOR MILES.  With his nose in a map, an eye on the Fodor's, and his brain engaged.
I need water.  Lots of it.  Especially if it is at all hot.  I could stop in every other cafe on the block to sip an overpriced lukewarm Coca Lite and give a constant commentary on all the pedestrians going by. I could sit on a sidewalk in awe of Europeans' gorgeous footwear.  (How do they walk on cobblestone in those heels?) I could be satisfied with spending only an hour, 8 minutes in the world's largest (non-airconditioned) mvsevm.

Ultimately, thankfully, it didn't take long for us to compromise on this issue.  Just one episode, actually:

First day, Copenhagen, sight-seeing after 17 hours of flight time

Me--I'm really thirsty.  Can we stop for a drink?
M--Next convenience store we see, we'll get some water.
Me--(casting a longing glance in the direction of some umbrella-shaded cafe tables).  Dry gulp.  Ok.
Me--(2 miles later) (Hoarse) There!  Lotto & Cigarettes! Surely there will be water there!

M goes in to shop.  I unfold the aforementioned seat cane and rest my tootsies.  No sooner am I seated, M comes out, emptyhanded.

Me--WTF?
M--I haven't gone to an ATM since we're only going to be here for a day, so I have no Kroner.  Denmark doesn't want Euros.  His credit card machine can't process our card.  So, he doesn't really want my money, right?  I don't need his water THAT badly.
Me--(Dry lip-smacking)

M--(Begins walking) We'll stop at the next store...
Me--(starting exaggerated limp, favoring cane heavily, sweating profusely, looking desperate --not hard since I haven't washed my face in over a day--soliciting pitiful looks from passers-by.  Once the passers-by catch up to M, they give him scornful looks for leaving his disabled wife in the dust.  He realizes this by the third person.)  Oh, honey, I say in overly-loud tones.  Thank you for waiting for just a moment.  It's just that I could so use just a little bit of water.   Aqua?  Eau? Vasser?( I am hoping passers-by recognize a word and take pity.) Public shaming.

M--walks into convenience store.  Buys 2 GIANT bottles of ice-cold water.  Puts one in his burro-pack, gives me the other.
Me--(I smile broadly, triumphant.  But only for a second.)
M--"There's a MVSEVUM of the Danish Parliament on the next block!"