Ten Ways I Annoy My Husband (Without Really Trying)

1) I have purchased exactly one plunger, which may or may not be located near the toilet currently overflowing. (We have three toilets, one plunger, a 3:1 ratio, obviously not efficient.)

2) I leave wads of crumpled used tissues on my bedside table. What can I say? I have allergies.

3) At least once a month, eager for an evening snack, he pours cereal in a bowl, opens the fridge and finds . . . no milk. This is highly disappointing to him.

4) I leave shoes out, under the dresser, near the bed, wherever. I can’t be bothered.

5) I insist on doing things My Way (aka The Right Way), things like loading the dishwasher and packing correctly for trips.

6) I turn down corners of the magazines he leaves in the bathroom so I can pick up where I left off.

7) Clutter.

8) I mock his heritage by using an improbably bad Southern accent.

9) I talk to him during “important” portions of shows he’s trying to watch.

10) I don’t get out of bed when the alarm rings. I’m a three-hits-to-the-snooze-button kind of girl.

Lights Out

The school nurse called me this morning at 10:18 a.m., to inform me that my son was in her office with a temperature of 100.8, a cough, and a headache and would I please pick him up?

You’d think I’d sent him to school with the Bubonic Plague. It was a just headache treated by ibuprofen when I sent him at 9 a.m.–and he wanted to go to school! He just didn’t think he could handle recess, so he ended up being sent to the office where the nurse got him.

He’s still ill with what seems to be a virus, though for five minutes this afternoon I was absolutely convinced it was probably meningitis, the only question being: viral or bacterial and would he lose his limbs?

I thought tonight for a second, “I just can’t do this,” and then I had this whole conversation in my head about how you don’t really get a choice about continuing your current direction when you are in the midst of life. Not if you have kids, anyway, and common sense. And summer will eventually arrive, right? Summer means no more school lessons and the possibility that I will catch up on my laundry.

Why do all the light bulbs burn out at the same time? I have no overhead light in my family room, no light in my laundry room and no exterior lights in two of my light fixtures. And no bulbs because I am just not that good at being a homemaker.

Last week, someone from church called exactly at 6:00 p.m. and said, “Oh, wait, did I catch you at dinnertime?” and I said, without pause, “No, but you would have if I were a better mother.” She laughed, but I was not joking.

Post Academy Awards Show Blog

I know. I didn’t post for two whole days, which in dog years is uh, two weeks? That annoying thing keeps happening where a thought pops into my head and I think, A-ha! I must blog that! And then the thought dissolves like the bubbles in my kitchen sink just when I’m ready to wash a frying pan.

(Speaking of thought bubbles, twice today at church, I scolded my 12-year old son who was holding a piece of paper up above his head. You can imagine how distracting it would be to sit behind a boy with a paper sign hovering over his head. When I peered closely, I saw he’d drawn thought bubbles and a profound thought: “Mooo!”)

[I have to say: I told you so! Only, I probably forgot to actually tell you so, but I did predict that “Crash” would win for Best Picture (and it did) and that Reese Witherspoon would win for Best Actress (and she did) and that Philip Seymour Hoffman would win for Best Actor (and he did). I rock.

Oh, and how about Will Ferrell and Steve Carrell’s presentation for Best Achievement in Make-up? That presentation was rivalled only by Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin.]

Okay. Back to the post. Oh, first I have to say that the best way to watch The Academy Award show is to video tape it (unless you are lucky and have TiVo, in which case I loathe you because my jealousy has no rational outlet). If you tape it, you can fast-forward through the speeches, the montages, the tributes and just watch the presentations and the monologue. (Oh, and how funny was that opening?!)

What I wouldn’t give for a coherent, creative thought about now. Um . . . so . . . today was church but we had no lights in the sanctuary because last night, when some of the guys were at the church doing something or another, they smelled smoke. Smoke emanated from the breaker box when all the lights were on. So, no lights today. And the sanctuary smelled like smoke. My husband was a little stressed out about this, but I gave him some clever lines to use like this: (wait until the middle of the sermon and then pause and say) “Is it just me or am I ON FIRE today?” Or maybe point out Big Al, one of his close friends and say, “I don’t know about you, but Big Al is SMOKIN’!” Or even, “Repent, for even now, I smell the burning fires of hell!”

Oh wait. Was that sacrilegious? Okay, let’s move on.

I drove our new “old” van, the one nearly as old as my marriage yesterday. The interior is quite lovely, though the exterior shows minor lumps and bumps and flaking paint if you look closely. Kind of like me, I guess. Maybe that’s why I like it so well. (But we didn’t name it. We don’t name cars. Do you? Maybe we could name it “Daisy,” and then I could say, “Hey, I’m Driving Miss Daisy!” (Did you get that Oscar reference? Huh? Didja? See? I have a theme in this here blog.) I drove from going-out-of-business craft store to consignment store to thrift store to discount store to second craft store to Bed Bath & Beyond before finally drifting home.

The weather had been exquisite all day and I wanted to just pick up the kids and hurry them down to the beach, but first, we needed dinner. And then the sun slipped below the horizon and then my husband said, “Tomorrow,” and I agreed. But today (“tomorrow”) it rained and this afternoon, my 8-year old son cradled his head in pain and cried. Another illness?! (After his bath tonight, he declared this, “The WORST BIRTHDAY WEEK EVER!” I distracted him with a tale of a boy I once knew who was so sick on Halloween he couldn’t go trick-or-treating. Because really, what is more soothing that comparing yourself to someone worse off than you?)

My grandmother turns one hundred years old on Friday. And you know what that means, don’t you? That’s right! A mini-family reunion. She had six children and five of them are still alive. I have dozens of first cousins and we’ve all done our part to procreate. (Well, most of us have, anyway.) We’ll gather from around the country for a catered dinner in her honor and I will obsess all week about dressing to slim and about whether to call my colorist for emergency highlights and debating the merits of robbing a bank to hire a plastic surgeon to remove this double chin.

And I console myself this way: I say to myself, “Self, probably Grandma will live at least another six months and by then, you can be to your perfect size, just in time for The Relatives to see you again!” And then I remind myself that I am not fifteen and the world does not revolve around me and that people will not be noticing my appearance as much as I notice my appearance. That’s what I’ve learned in the past twenty-five years.

It would help if I weren’t related to the skinniest cousins imaginable–seriously, my cousin is tiny and wears a loose size 2 and my cousin, her brother, is Ichabod Crane-ish, and his wife, a girl who lived on my wing in college, is also slim and has never appeared in public without her perfectly applied lipstick and her oh-so-cool Southern composure.

But I can write. See how I comfort myself?

In other news . . . hello March? The daffodils around town are blooming. My crocuses are a happy little enclave of pure white, gold and purple, merrily coloring the drab flowerbed. They are tucked right behind the basketball hoop and seem hopelessly misplaced, but the basketball hoop was a recent addition, haphazardly introduced to the backyard by two men with no thoughts of Feng Shui or aesthetics of beautiful English gardens full of perennials. (As if!)

This is the time of year that I wish I’d planted more daffodils and I am full of regret. That is some kind of metaphor for life, isn’t it? You just have to plan ahead and be patient . . . and actually put the bulbs in the ground instead of just dream.

With that thought, I will wrap this up. But first, one final thought. About George Clooney.

Dear George, (May I call you “George”?)

I want to hate you. You are a cad. You are everything a thinking young woman should despise–your cocky attitude, your inability to commit, your failure to demonstrate your competence at marriage. You own a pig, for goodness’ sake, a pet pig! Your politics are liberal, you have that smirk, your belief in yourself bordering on narcissistic, and yet . . . I can’t help but think you are the Epitome of a Movie Star and tomorrow I’m going to buy a poster of you and put it on my bedroom wall. I don’t think my Republican husband will mind at all.

Oh, and congratulations on winning Best Supporting Actor.

Hugs and Kisses,
Mel

Open Letter to Swiffer

Dear Swiffer:

I want to love you, Swiffer. I do. I like your convenience. I like your fresh, fake scent. I like the disposable nature of your cleaning pads.

But Swiffer, we do not see eye to eye. Why, you ask? Well, because, Swiffer, you are too short.

I’m taller than the average American woman, true. I stand five feet, seven inches tall, while the average American woman is only five feet, four inches tall. When I use you, Swiffer, I must bend at an awkward angle, an angle that screams, “CALL THE CHIROPRACTOR!” I don’t have the heart to tell my lower back that I don’t have a chiropractor.

What I need is a longer Swiffer, a sturdier Swiffer, a Swiffer who can rise to the occasion. Please. I want to love you! I want to devote myself to you! But you make it difficult.

So, please, grow up a little. Grow a spine. Grow taller. Get some hair on your chest. (Oh, wait, I’m drifting off topic now.) I’m just saying that if you want me to cherish you, you have to do your part.

(I won’t even mention how sexist it is that Swiffer is completely aimed at a woman consumer. An average American man at five feet, nine inches tall would cry out from back pain like a baby girl if he attempted to vigorously scrub the kitchen floor with your woefully inadequate too-short handle.)

Please, please answer my pleas. My back begs you. Don’t make me go back to an old-fashioned mop.

Love and kissesSincerely,
Mel

Integrating the Sacred and the Secular

When I was a child, my mother ordered us to turn the channel when Donnie Osmond sang “And I’m a little bit rock’n’roll!” For rock and roll music was sin. So was dancing, even square-dancing, drinking alcohol, swearing, smoking, mini-skirts, hip-huggers and shopping on Sundays.

As I grew up and attended Bible College, life seemed to be neatly divided into two categories: Sacred and Secular. Christian music? Good. Secular music? Bad. Christian books? Good. Secular books? Bad. Dancing in the Spirit? Good. Dancing at a bar? Bad.

My four years at Bible College (where women were required to wear dresses to class, even on snowy days) brought out the cynic in me. I heard enough rambling sermons to last me a lifetime and I saw enough hypocrisy to turn my heart to stone. I’m lucky I escaped with my faith intact, because I definitely needed it later when I traveled the rocky paths of infertility, cancer, death, loss, heartbreak–in other words, Real Life.

The idea that life should be lined up in separate categories crumbled, bit by bit, until finally, I came to understand that I would live my life without a division between the sacred and the secular. Good music is good music, whether or not it includes the lyrics “Jesus died on the cross,” or not. Fantastic art is simply fantastic art. A walk through a still forest, glimpsing trilliums in bloom is as sacred as a moment in a stained-glass church.

Just tonight, I came across a book by Steve Turner called Imagine: A Vision For Christians in the Arts, which discusses this very idea. I can’t wait to read it, if the sample first page on Amazon and the comments are good indications of the quality of the rest of the book.

So, when I see a particular well-known blogger announcing that she is partitioning her blog into two separate blogs, one for Christians and one for non-Christians, I just shake my head. Maybe that’s because I don’t write for Christians. I don’t even write for non-Christians. I just write for people. I’m not a Christian blogger and this isn’t a Christian blog. I’m a blogger who is a Christian. I don’t divide my life–or my blog–into partitions. (I even avoided associating myself with Christian bloggers when I began this blog for fear that I would be boxed in by other people’s expectations. I just wanted to write. I didn’t want to write a Pastor’s Wife’s Blog.)

Hey, I’m no apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor or teacher, but I do know this: Taking care of my kids is my spiritual worship. Writing well is my spiritual worship. Singing “Great is Thy Faithfulness” in church is my spiritual worship. So is washing the laundry and walking on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. Whatever I do, if I do it well and with acknowledgement of the Creator, that is worship.

My integration of the sacred and secular is incomplete, because I am in progress, learning as I go. Each believer certainly has to find his or her own way, embracing some things and rejecting others. But building walls around our lives, pulling up the drawbridges and digging moats can’t be what Jesus intended for us to do. He came to bring us life, not fear and judgment. (And furthermore, when anyone assumes I’m not bright enough to be able to distinguish the differences between sects, cults and even different denominations, that annoys me. I wonder if it annoys Jesus, too?)

Well, while I’m at it, writing this atypical post which has nothing to do with grocery shopping (I purchased twenty bags full of groceries at 10:45 p.m. tonight!) or laundry (currently backed up), I will also comment on this post at Internet Monk. He talks about another blogger, this guy who announced he would no longer call himself a “Christian, an idea he bandied about here.

I just have one word for that guy: SEMANTICS! Quit fussing about how the label “Christian” might taint your testimony or make you look and go feed the hungry, visit a prisoner, share with the poor, listen to a lonely widow, serve someone who doesn’t deserve it and then get back to me. I’m guessing that by then you might be too tired and too peaceful to worry about what someone might think if you accept the descriptive label “Christian.”

(If I continue to roll my eyes that far back in my head, they might stay that way, so if you see a 41-year old woman at Albertsons with only the bloodshot whites of her eyes showing, say hello. That would be me.)

It Was Tuesday Just a Second Ago

Pretend it’s not actually 12:05 a.m. That way I can talk about what happened five years ago today and we can all agree that I mean Tuesday, February 28.

Do you know what happened five years ago today? Anyone? Anyone?

That’s right! The Nisqually Earthquake, magnitude 6.8 on the Richter scale shook our house and caused me to run upstairs to my son, instead of crawling under a sturdy piece of furniture as I suppose I should have. My son, then barely three years old, had been playing “Yoshi” on Nintendo 64 and frankly, couldn’t have cared less about the shaking of our house. I felt like I was in a snowglobe and not in a good way.

But nothing broke and that crack in the ceiling? We ignore it. Perhaps it was there before, right? Normal house settling and all.

Also, today is Fat Tuesday (as well call it in Seattle) or Mardi Gras. Last hurrah before Lent and everything. I did not grow up around the Lenten traditions and the first time I saw ash smudged on foreheads when I was a new bride living in New Haven, Connecticut, I eyed people curiously. Growing up in a Pentecostal tradition means you lack liturgical observances. Sure, people would hoop and holler in church and once, I saw a group of people trying to cast a demon out of a girl who was simply having an epileptic seizure, but no one ever mentioned Lent. Or Ash Wednedsay. (Or Fat Tuesday, of course, because everyone knows that drinking alcohol is a sin if you are a Pentecostal Christian, at least it was in the old days.)

So I enter the season of Lent without any preparation or plans. I regret that, too. I wish my life were more measured and solemn and observant. And I wish I got out of the house alone more often and I wish I had more Diet Coke with Lime and I wish it were not so late. I wish I were not so distracted and I wish I hadn’t waited until the last minute to do my little writing assignment because I missed watching the last half of “American Idol.” I wish I knew what to make for dinner tomorrow and I wish the taxes were already done.

And just because I want to make a note of it, I have to tell you that my husband and I were laughing over the fact that four cars sit in our driveway tonight. The one that drives the best doesn’t even belong to us and it has over 250,000 miles on it. That says something, doesn’t it?

Yes, it does. It says “L-O-S-E-R-S.”

[But at least we don’t have a baby rat in our house. Read this and laugh!]

Public Service Announcement and More!

You should be thankful that I just deleted my original paragraph. I’ll just leave you with this link which details everything you might want to know about noroviruses. Did you know you are considered contagious from the moment you show signs of illness to at least three days later? And some people are still contagious two weeks later. (But my twins show no signs of illness. Yet.)

How did I get to be forty-one without knowing all that? Study carefully, Young Grasshopper. You may need this information sooner than you think.

So, my deadline still looms. I have three great ideas, but no actual words strung together like pearls or even like popcorn strands, the kind you hang on your tree at Christmas. I did send back a cheery email: “I’ll have everything to you by midnight!”

I’ve just made my daughter cry because she won’t stop asking me to blow up spit-slimed balloons. Pardon me while I go tend to the angst of a 3-year old.

Okay. I’m back. I am never going to earn my Mother of the Year tiara at this rate.

See you when I finish my assignment. Or when I get back from Tahiti, whichever comes first.

Photo courtesy webcam.

In Commemoration of Our Long Marriage

Utterly ridiculous, that’s what this is. It’s 11:22 p.m. and I’m wrapped in a somewhat hideous purple bathrobe that my in-laws sent one Christmas (what? now we send sleepwear to people we never even visit?) and the old navy blue velour Lands End pajamas I bought the year my son was born (1998) and I have work to do, actual important work with deadlines and everything and what am I doing? What? I’ll tell you!

I’m procrastinating and reading your blogs and listening to the local late-night news and occasionally hollering to my almost-teen boys, “BE QUIET! GO TO SLEEP!” My husband woke up early with the stomach virus I suffered through on Friday and now he’s exhausted from the rigors of trudging to the bathroom ten thousand times today. I said with barely restrained glee, “And now, do you feel sorry for me?!” because last Friday when I had the same virus, my daughter never left my side and for half the day, I was babysitting the 15-month old. Never mind the fact that my boys were entirely on their own and that my now-8-year old invited two friends over to play in the backyard without even telling me or the fact that I was up and at a birthday party the next morning by 10 a.m. Never mind that because having the stomach virus is not a time for healthy competition. Sick competition, perhaps.

For the record, he does feel sorry for me. And then he said, “Yes, I was neglecting you while visiting the dying in the hospital.” Which is entirely true and spotlights the life we lead. The dying in the hospital trump a stomach virus at home, unless of course, the roiling stomach belongs to the pastor, in which case, the youth pastor will have to do (as he did today when a church woman called for a pastor today–she was having an MRI on her head to see if she had a stroke). (And, wouldn’t you know it, a different woman, the one my husband has been visiting frequently the past weeks–she died last night at 1 a.m. And he couldn’t go and do his pastor-thing and sit with the family today. It’s such a tough time and he normally makes a point of being with the grieving family.)

Before my 8-year old left for school, I looked into his green-gray eyes and said, “Now, listen. If you get a stomach ache and if you have diarrhea, tell your teacher and I’ll come get you.” I wrote his teacher a note to inform her that we have a stomach virus here which is highly contagious and that if he showed signs, I’d come pick him up.

At 9:30 a.m., the call from his teacher came. My husband threw off the covers of his sick bed and came downstairs to sit with my daughter and the toddler while I drove three minutes away to the school. My son looked fine and I confess I didn’t believe he was sick. I confined him to his room, relegated him to playing the old Nintendo 64 system and for a long time, every time I checked, he seemed bored, but healthy. He insisted he’d had diarrhea and I gave him a little speech about being truthful, yada, yada, yada.

At 3:00 p.m., he threw up all over his bedroom carpet.
At 3:01 p.m., the doorbell rang.
At 3:02 p.m., the telephone rang.
At 3:03 p.m., the nice church couple who rang the doorbell sat at my kitchen table while I pretended not to be mortified by 1) my messy kitchen counter; 2) the toys scattered all over the family room; 3) the stacks of laundry, folded, but still; 4) my unmade-up face and humidity-induced crazy hair; and 5) my daughter’s nutty outfit (sundress and too-short wildly unmatched purple stretch pants).

And with great hilarity, I must tell you that we are replacing our van (aka, “The Deathtrap,” the 1991 Chevy Astro van which was given to us a couple of years back) with another van, a pretty, powder-blue Chevy Astro van which was manufactured the very same year we were married. That’s right! Bonus points for those of you who shouted out the correct answer. Nineteen eighty-seven!! Yes, people, that means our “new” van is four years older than our “old” van and; not only that, but it’s guaranteed not to break down within a twenty-mile radius.

No, really. We are so grateful for this donation to our sad, pitiful cause. Our old van quit running and the brakes were deemed unsafe by our mechanic friend. Our regular car, the 1993 Mercury Sable randomly stops running, despite the assurances by the mechanic (twice, now) that they’ve fixed it. (The last time, it cost $300.) So, driving that car very far feels unsafe.

Hopefully, next year, we’ll buy an actual vehicle manufactured in this century. Or decade, even.

So, they signed over the van. I cleaned up the vomit as best as I could. The telephone call was for my husband–his aunt died. As I knelt over the vomitous carpet, the toddler woke from his nap, screaming his little blond head off.

I did scurry around this afternoon, then, fueled by my mortification. Of course, now that it’s tidy, no one will stop by. That’s always how it works around here.

I expect my twins to be clutching their bellies and pushing their way to the toilet tomorrow. In a way, that would be great because then I could work on my work, the work with deadlines. Because, otherwise, it will interfere with “American Idol” and honestly, a girl has to have her priorities.

I said to my husband tonight, “Don’t you just love our life?” as I thought about the vomit and the old vans and the singing preschooler in the tub who wouldn’t stop calling out, “MOMMY! MOMMY!”

He said in a very serious voice, “Yes. I do, actually.”

The next time I came into the room (putting away laundry), he said, “Seriously, think of all the things we’ve been through. We’ve been poor. We were infertile. The unemployment. Your dad’s death. Our families’ divorces.”

Getting into the spirit of things, I said, “Don’t forget your cancer!”

His point, though, was not to dwell on the difficult stretches of our life together, but to remember that our pain helps us help others. Our pain has made us stronger. Our marriage has endured–and now we have a concrete reminder of just how long we’ve been together. What cracks me up is that the reminder isn’t a giant sparkly anniversary diamond ring, but has flaky powder-blue paint and is parked in the driveway.

A Note Before Sleep

I knew she was feeling better when she appeared in the kitchen wearing her powder-blue pajama shirt with the pink flowers, the navy blue striped with red swimsuit bottom from The Gap, and a red homemade knit cap with matching scarf wrapped around her neck and tossed jauntily over her shoulders.

She woke up last night, though, at 11:45 p.m., needing to use the bathroom. Then she woke up at 6:00 a.m., again needing to use the bathroom. I put her back to bed again, and she slept another hour, then had a bath and watched a video for awhile before crawling into bed with me and her daddy. We were all sleeping at 8:30 a.m., when my son, The Birthday Boy, quietly opened the door and asked if he should get dressed.

Since my daughter seemed better, my husband thought I should go to the birthday party and so I hurried to get the boys and myself ready to leave by 9:40 a.m. We had to stop to buy film and a gift bag, but managed to arrive on time. The party was “the best party I ever had!” according to The Birthday Boy.

I napped with my daughter this afternoon while the boys played and my husband ran errands. Though the symptoms of the virus subsided, both of us were so tired that we slept an hour and a half. (She’s napped already earlier.) So far, no one else shows signs of the stomach virus. Time will tell. (One commenter suggested it sounds like the “Norwalk Virus.” It sure does!)

Tomorrow is my son’s actual birthday which means that eight years ago tonight, I was awake, timing contractions, having no idea that the smart thing would be to sleep because I still had twenty-four hours to go before delivery!

What were you doing eight years ago?

Get Out the Disinfectant!

Warning: Don’t read this if you have a queasy stomach or a big bowl of split-pea soup by your keyboard.

I cancelled school today. I met baby boy’s mom at the door at lunch and asked her to please not bring him back after lunch. I did two emergency loads of laundry. I lolled around in my pajamas, startling my daughter by jumping up and darting to the bathroom every ten minutes for, oh, about six hours.

And that’s really all you need to know about that. Except that, just as I was putting dishes in the dishwasher, thinking I felt a bit better (at 4:30 p.m.), my poor curly-headed daughter did three things:

1) Whined that her stomach hurt;
2) Coughed;
3) Vomited all over the couch cushion, leaving herself in a puddle of puke.

Tomorrow morning is my son’s 8th birthday party at an arcade/laser tag place. He’s having a 2-in-1 party with his best friend who has the exact same birthday. My husband will have to go while I stay home with the ill child. I figure soon my husband will be clutching his stomach, felled by the same virus.

You might want to disinfect your keyboard now, lest you get what I had.