THE SECRET TO A HAPPY MARRIAGE 4/14/09

The old married couple in the kitchen.

I was thinking that I would celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, which is today, (thank you, thank you very much), by sharing the wisdom I've accumulated over the years on what makes a happy marriage.

First, I should mention to those of you who do not know Jeff and me personally, we do indeed have a very happy marriage. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it is the happiest, strongest, healthiest marriage I know of (feel free to argue with me if you know of a better marriage--not you Michelle and Barack). So I think I am somewhat of an expert on the topic.

I was going to come up with a list of things that make a happy marriage and I've been kicking around a few ideas--most of them are the usual--such as forgiving small trespasses and never keeping score and relishing your history together and having lots of sex. Some of my ideas fly in the face of conventional wisdom because if you're going to stick to the old "Don't go to bed angry" you're going to lose a lot of sleep. (Which reminds me of my mother's reaction to the old saying "Never spank a child in anger" to which she says "That's sick, who would hit a kid when they're not even mad?") Exactly. And if you live with someone long enough you're bound to be angry at him at bedtime so unless you plan on losing a lot of sleep you should go right ahead and go to bed angry. Besides, sometimes you can go to bed angry and wake up wondering what the hell you were mad about.

Anyhoo, I digress. After coming up with this long list in my head I threw it all out. I decided none of it really matters. Because a happy marriage depends on one thing and one thing only. Here's the secret. Lean in, ready? If you want to have a happy marriage then you (wait for it) have to marry the right person.

Yes, this is the same advice I once gave a cousin at a wedding shower when they asked each of us to write down our thoughts on how to have a good marriage. Everyone laughed when they read it out loud but I'm not really sure why. By the way, that cousin was divorced within 5 years. That was over 20 years ago and I still think it is good advice and it is that simple.

How do you know if you are going to marry (or have married) the right person?

Oh, you know.

I like to ask my divorced friends if they knew on the day they got married they were marrying the right person. Every single one of them (with the exception of you TJ) said they knew (deep in their hearts) they were not marrying the right person but they hoped he would change or they thought it was just time or they didn't know how to back out of it or they thought they couldn't do better. Yikes. Marriage, even with the right person, can be very tough sometimes. With the wrong person it is hell on earth.

So that's my advice. If you want to have a great marriage you have to marry the right person. The person who makes your heart skip a beat long after the initial lust has worn off. The person who lifts you up and makes you best person you can be. The person who always takes your side in the battles against the world (unless you're dead wrong and then he points it out gently). The person you are always proud of in public and in private. The person who you look forward to seeing every morning when you wake up and every day when he comes home.

That's who I married and that's my secret to a happy marriage.

DAVID CASSIDY FANS

So I can blog about going to see Barack Obama on election night and I can write about my daughter's fight with childhood cancer and I can post essays on raising kids and the blogosphere does not notice. Not a yawn. Just my faithful handful of readers giving me kind feedback.

But then I go and write about David Cassidy and NOW the world takes notice!??!!

Who knew?

I do want to say this about that. Those David Cassidy fans are very nice people. Though I dissed their most beloved performer the meanest thing they said about me was "she must not love him as much as we do" Which is true. I am sure there are fan sites for other performers where I would have been roasted and had my life threatened but not Mr. Cassidy's fans.

So to all the fans who wrote and disagreed with me, let me say one nice thing about him: he has the kindest and most loyal fans a guy could have.

I'm just not sure he deserves you.

EVERYTHING I EVER NEEDED TO KNOW ABOUT LIFE I LEARNED FROM THE DAVY JONES DAVID CASSIDY CONCERT

As many of you know I attended a Davy Jones and David Cassidy concert last week. Yes, let me pause here while you swoon at the mere idea of seeing these two former heart-throbs in person. I know, I know, we can't all be so lucky to live close enough to the kind of venue that attracts this kind of top-notch talent so in case you don't live anywhere near an airport Holiday Inn or the State Fairgrounds, I'll sum up the concert for you and it will be as if you were there with me.

If, by the way, you are asking yourself, "Davy who and David what?" then just never mind. But if you came of age in the late sixties and early seventies then you surely had posters of one or both of these boys on your bedroom wall. Maybe you were even a member of their fan clubs? Surely you read about them in Tiger Beat so no introduction/explanation is needed.

So here's how it went. Originally I had snatched up four tickets thinking there would be a bidding war among my friends to see this concert but what really happened was, umm, not so much. I ended up dragging my daughters and my friend Beth to this concert against ( in varying degrees) their will (Grace was horrified, Lilly intrigued, Beth slightly amused).

We milled about in the lobby admiring the crowd of middle-aged women and the handful of non-middle-aged women and men and children they had forced to accompany them. We saw just four other children. Actually, we saw just four other people under the age of 45.

We had decent seats and mercifully there was no warm-up band. Just a brief introduction to give it up for the "world's greatest tambourine player" and out came Davy Jones singing "Then I Saw Her Face" At first the sight of an old man jumping around and singing that song was disconcerting but within just moments you could tell this was Davy. This was really Davy! He walked like him, gestured like him, sang like him, sounded like him, and yes, even did the "Davy dance" in which he holds his hands up like a hitch-hiker and points his thumbs over his shoulders. It was great!

He made lots of self-deprecating jokes about his height ("We just got back from performing in DisneyWorld. I couldn't go on some of the rides.") and his age,("I used to be a heart-throb, now I'm a coronary.") He talked about being a Monkee and how much fun they had going all over the world. He told us he still saw Mickey, Mike, and Peter. He sang a few songs we did not know but that was okay because they were sandwiched in between the old familiar songs we'd all come to hear like "Last Train to Clarksville" and that goofy song he sang to Marcia Brady when he took her to prom. He laughed and said everyone thinks he and Marcia got married and moved to Ohio and have six kids (he did not deny this by the way so you can continue to believe that if it makes you happy.)

Then he finished up with the big guns, "Daydream Believer" and they brought up the houselights and all five hundred of us old broads got up and danced and sang and just for a moment we were all thirteen again and our biggest TV crush of all time was with us. Did I mention it was great? It was.

Then there was an intermission and out came David Cassidy. Now, this man, unlike Davy Jones, was fit and still looked pretty good. As Lilly (10) said, "Is it just because we're sitting so far away or is that old guy still hot?" No, it wasn't just because we were sitting so far away, he was kind of hot. He played his own guitar and played quite well. His first song, "I Can Feel Your Heartbeat" was at first unfamiliar (a new arrangement) but then I could tell that's what it was and a chill went up my spine.

Now here, I have a confession. I had come to this concert for one reason and one reason only and that was to see David Cassidy. It was he who made my prepubescent heart race, not Davy Jones. I mean, I had loved the Monkees too, but I was a bit young for their heydey. No, David Cassidy, he was the one who pointed me in the direction of Albuquerque.

So it was with great disappointment that as the concert went on, I had to acknowledge that my heart-throb had turned into an ass. He made NO reference to the little TV show that launched his career, "The Partridge Family." Nor did he mention if he sees Susan Dey anymore. Come on! What did he think we came to hear? Apparently, he thought we came to hear him play new songs he's learned since the good old days--can you say "Garden Party"?(though he did play an excellent version of Clapton's "Crossroads" but hey that is NOT what we came to see!) When he did play the old songs he played them grudgingly ("I learned this for a friend. I say I learned it because it's been so long since I played it that I forgot it") and then he played "Doesn't Somebody Want to be Wanted", which was one of his biggest hits we all loved and he was dissing it!

The other weird thing was that in no way, shape, or form did this guy remind me of David Cassidy. Not the way he stood, or moved, or sang, or spoke. Nothing. It was as if he had deliberately recreated himself.

When he started telling stories about drinking too much one New Year's Eve with John Lennon I had seen enough. I mean really, you can't mention Danny Bonaduce but you want to tell us you knew one of the Beatles? At that point I'd seen enough of his D-bag behavior and we left the concert before he had a chance to defile my sacred memory of "I Think I Love You."

So there you have it. The one who still looks good and has a respectable amount of talent was totally upstaged by the dumpy guy with the tambourine. What the hell happened here? Well, let's take a look at the lessons we learned from this.

1. You can be old and dumpy but if you are still the essential "you" it will shine through. Like an old friend at a class reunion, Davy Jones is still Davy Jones. Though it was at first alarming to see how much he'd aged, within moments, you could see it was still him and he is still adorable. I'm not sure who that guy was on stage who said he was David Cassidy. There was not one familiar gesture, or movement, and his voice is even different.

2. Don't try to deny your past. Whether you were the clarinet player with braces or a teenaged heart-throb who toured the world it is never becoming to pretend it never happened. Why David Cassidy feels the need to escape his "painful" teen years when he was loved by millions and made a ton of money I do not know but it makes it that much more absurd to watch. He should be like Davy and acknowledge that it was silly, it was fun, and it is who he is.

3. Stop trying so hard. Here was Davy, just shaking his maracas, doing the Davy dance and letting his much younger, extremely talented band shine and shine and shine. There was David, telling us he used to play this song with John Lennon, showing off his Eric Clapton slow hand, and berating his tired old-man rock-and-roll band for not getting the sound right. You tell me who is more fun to watch?

4. Give the people what they want. When people pay upwards of $50 bucks to see an old crush play the old music from their old past then you better play the old music for them. It matters not that you have "evolved" into a much better musician, nor do we care that it was "beneath you" to play the music we fell in love with and fell in love to. We just want to hear the soundtrack of our youth one more time.

And so folks, that is what the concert was like. I was pleasantly surprised to rediscover my past by watching the delightful Davy Jones, painfully disappointed to learn that David Cassidy is still trying to distance himself from his own youth, and glad as always that I got up off the couch on a Saturday night for a change.

I CYBER DO

As I am on spring break please enjoy this re-run which I may or may not have ever posted. J.

Last Saturday I was driving in the car with my son, when he looked at the dashboard clock and said casually, "Oh, I need to be home by 6:00, I'm performing a marriage today."

As my son is only 13 and not an ordained clergyman, this news was intriguing, to say the least.

"Excuse me?" I said.

"In my online game--World of Warquest. I'm a priest and I said I'd marry these two people."

"Oh, I see," I said. "No, not really, I really don't see at all. What does that mean? What denomination are you? Did you choose to be a priest or is it randomly assigned? Do they know you’re only 13?”



“You choose your characters and I picked priest. Then someone asked if any priests were available and I said I was. They know I’m 13. The bride’s fine but the groom keeps asking me if I know what I’m doing.”



“So they’re not really getting married, it’s just online characters getting married?”



“No,” he said, growing impatient with my ignorance, “They’re real people and in real life, they're getting married next weekend and since they're big gamers they wanted to get married online first."

My reaction to all of this was a mixture of relief and awe: relief that he can still distinguish between real life and online life; and awe that he has the confidence to "marry" two people--albeit virtually.



“So do you know what you want to say? Did they give you vows?” I asked, pulling into the driveway at 5:55.



“No, I thought I’d wing it,” he said breezily, getting out of the car.



“You’ll be drawing on your extensive theological training?”



“Well, I’ve been to a few weddings.”


My husband was in the kitchen quartering limes. I informed him that his eldest would be administering online sacraments momentarily. He shrugged and reminded me that it was cocktail hour. Meanwhile, our son the priest, sat down at the computer and calmly signed in to his fantasy world. (Since we are good parents we insist the computer remain in the kitchen to better monitor his online activity, but as he has managed to join the priesthood without our knowledge, this approach may be flawed). “Okay,” he said over his shoulder to the room at large "Should I start with 'Do you take this woman?' or say something else first?"

"Umm, err, honey, didn't you do any research for this? You know--Google 'online vows for cyber geeks' or anything like that?" Realizing that what I had mistakenly identified as admirable confidence was in reality teenaged indifference and recognizing that he was now way out over his skis, I started to panic on his behalf. I started racking my brains, trying to remember –how does a wedding start? Should he ask if anyone objects (well who wouldn’t?) or was he supposed to welcome the guests (virtual and real). “I could run upstairs and find vows on Wikipedia,” I offered, growing ever frantic as I imagined the bride waiting anxiously, her hands poised over the keyboard, her father ready to give her away with the click of a mouse, “Or I could look for our Bible and you could do a nice reading from Paul--”



Fortunately, my meddling frenzy was cut short by a little voice of reason which said, "Stop. This is not your problem. Let him take care of it." I'd like to say the little voice of reason came from inside my head but it didn't--it came from my husband who was standing at my side. I took his advice-- and the gin and tonic he had just mixed me--and we left our son to perform his first wedding.

We sat on the patio and toasted the bride and groom. We talked about the virtual world we know so little about even though our children have moved there part-time. And as with all big parenting epiphanies we were forced (once again) to acknowledge that we don’t really know what’s going on.



As the sun turned from amber to rose we grew quiet and our son called out through the kitchen window, “I’m pronouncing them husband and wife.” I shivered as the night grew just a bit cooler and remembered a line from Kahlil Gibran’s poem on children:



Their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.



And my son the priest said, “Amen.”

CHARGING STATION

See, it's cleverly hidden and attractive!

If your house is anything like mine, you have a plethora (that means "a lot", not "fake leather" as my friend Barb thought) of electronic cord chargers all over the place. Every cell-phone, ipod, and digital camera has at least one charging cord and in a family with two adults and two teenagers that adds up quickly unless you are "urban Amish" like my friend Lisa who still listens to music on something called a "radio" and takes pictures with a film camera from last century.

Keeping these cords organized and out of sight is apparently impossible. They appear everywhere, multiplying mysteriously, and often after everyone has left for the morning I find them plugged into different outlets around the kitchen, still smoking from the charging they did all night long.

I tried to wrangle them a little. I designated an entire drawer in my kitchen to these gadgets but before long the drawer became an unusable tangled mass of cords, and no one was bothering to put them back there anyway. This was making me a little crazy but I accepted the challenge. My goal is to organize things in a manner that is so logical even my slob children can get with the program (which is why I had a laundry basket in the play room for years to catch the socks they liked to whip off, though come to think of it, it was usually empty with socks laying all around it).

So for a few months I've been trying to come up with a plan to organize the chargers that would be so easy and convenient that even my kids could use it and not leave cords around constantly. (At this point several of you will say, My God she needs to get a life, to which I'll say, I have one thank you and it, by design, allows me to ponder such trivia, oh please as if you use your free time so constructively with your Facebook!) I don't mean I spent hours on it, I just mean I kept my eyes out for a clever system that surely someone else has invented to organize these cords. It could be called the "Cord Wrangler" or the "Cord-anizer" or something.

Anyhoo, one day while I was at Staples, realizing again that no one has invented such a thing, I decided to design my own system. So I bought a power strip that had enough outlets on it to accommodate all our chargers. I took it home and picked a seldom-used corner of my family room and plugged the power strip into the wall. I then hid it behind a piece of furniture and slipped the charge couplings out in a cleverly semi-hidden fashion so that all my family had to do was walk over to this thing and plug their phone or i-pod or whatever into it. It was hidden enough that you did not even have to put anything away, I could leave it out all the time.

Unveiling it to them, the natural marketer in me took over. "Hey look. I've simplified your life by installing this new thing. I call it the 'Charging Station'!" I stood in the corner, doing my best Carol Merril impersonation, showing the features of the Charging Station and explaining how it was going to vastly improve the quality of their lives. "It's nice over here. I think I'll start serving snacks and it could be a hangout!"

My spouse and offspring dutifully plugged their devices in at the Charging Station, smiled, and congratulated me for my cleverness. For the first few days all went well. No one misplaced a vital electronic device and I did not have to coil up any cords laying about. The Charging Station was revolutionizing our lives and it was good.

The bliss did not last long. By the third day I had a defector.

"Hey," I said lifting up the phone charger that had found its way back on to the kitchen counter, "Who's not using the Charging Station!"

Everyone looked shocked and innocent but it was easy enough to figure out which phone fit into the cord like Cinderella's slipper. Knowing the jig was up, Grace confessed. She didn't like it because, get this, she had to be away from her phone for too long if it was WAY over in the corner.

For a while I tried to entice her back to the Charging Station. "You know, we're serving espresso and biscotti over here in the Charging Station." I'd say from the corner.

"No thanks," she answered, maniacally texting while her phone was plugged into the kitchen outlet.

The next day I tried again. "Hey Atticus," I said as I found him fetching his phone ever so conveniently from the designated area, "What's going on at the Charging Station today?"

"We're having live jazz and smoothies over here," he answered. Grace smiled but she was not coming back to the Charging Station.

After that it was only a matter of time before my brilliant idea was completely discarded. I found Atticus's phone plugged in to the kitchen outlet too the next day. "HEY! What about our special place?" I tried one last time.

"Umm, it wasn't working, I needed to text some friends while it was charging."

Lilly, the baby and appeaser tried to make me feel better. "Hey, Mommy, I still use it! Look, I'm going over there right now to try the sundae bar!" But she's just throwing me a bone. She doesn't even have anything to charge yet and really it just looks silly to find a plastic horse with a USB up its butt.

So now it's just me using the Charging Station (and Lilly's horse) which really doesn't make it a station at all. More like a Charging Portal or, if you want to put a fine point on it, a cord plugged into the wall. The magic of the Charging Station is gone because it's boring to be standing at the station by yourself even if you are virtually serving themed martinis next to a make-believe piano-bar.

So there you have it. You can invent a special charging place and even offer faux food and entertainment but unless they can text from it, no one will come.

OBAMA OUT-GIFTED

Wine not a good gift. Gloves good gift.


Last month when Prime Minister Brown of England came to visit our new president, he presented Barack with an amazing gift: a "pen holder crafted from the timbers of the 19th century British warship HMS President (whose sister ship, HMS Resolute, provided the wood for the Oval Office's desk)" and his wife brought the two First-daughters "dresses from the UK's trendy Top Shop (with matching necklaces) and a selection of books by British authors."

In return the Obamas presented PM Brown with a collection of greatest American movie DVDs (which won't work in a British DVD player) and the Brown boys were given replicas of the AirForce One helicopters that looked suspiciously like they came from the White House Gift Shop.

Barack got out-gifted.

I truly feel his pain. You see, I live in Glenview where I have been for the past 13 years constantly out-gifted by the women here.

This is NOT, I assure you a matter of money. It is a matter of good manners, good taste, and a little thought all of which I apparently possess very little of.

It has taken me some time to get used to this. There is a complicated and intricate set of gift-giving customs here that could take an anthropologist years to decode but I think that I have finally cracked it so I will share with you what I have learned. If you ever move here (or if you live somewhere simlilar) you will then avoid the embarassment of being "out-gifted" which is the term (I think) I made up for this.

Here are the rules:

1. Hostess Gift: This should be a tasteful, never too-expensive, very thoughtful gift for the lady of the home. Under no circumstances is it to be a bottle of wine you grabbed from the fridge. Wine is only acceptable if it is a very, very good (again, not necessarily expensive) bottle of wine in an incredibly creative bag (like one made of red and white santa velvet for Christmas). Over the years I have been the recipient of some amazingly creative hostess gifts such as a pair of rubber gloves fashioned after some worn by Bree VanDeKamp on "Desperate Housewives", a wine stopper with our initials engraved on it, and a bejewelled pair of ice-tongs. I believe that the smart cookie buys these things as she discovers them and keeps them on hand for special events so she is never caught grabbing a bottle of Chuck Shaw Chardonnay on her way out the door. I am not a smart cookie.

2. Holiday gift for neighbor: Here I have been so out-gifted by my neighbor Sue Ruch year after year that my children have coined a phrase "you got Ruched" meaning "you're a thoughtless clod whose idiocy was made clear when you both opened your gifts". Now in my defense, I do have to buy Christmas presents for my husband, my children, my husband from my children, my children from my husband, my sister, my brothers, their children, my parents, my grandmother, the teachers, the bus-driver, my two former co-workers, and don't forget the mailman and the newspaper carrier. So by the time I get to the last half of the list sometimes I do not give it the thought it deserves. This is not really much of a defense as Sue has to buy for a lot of people too and manages to find something amazing for me each year. One year (and I am not making this up) I was horrified as she showed up with a hand-made bag (yes, the gift came in an adorable bag she made that I could use as a purse) with cocktail napkins with funny sayings on them (I collect those), and coffee mugs that matched my newly decorated kitchen. As I was opening and exclaiming over these delights she was gamely making a fuss over the home decorating book I had grabbed in the sale bin at Walgreens which was not so cleverly wrapped in Christmas paper and no bow.

Awkward.

I vowed never to be Ruched again and now I go online and find great stuff for her sometimes weeks in advance. My goal is to actually out-gift her some year. If that's not the spirit of giving I don't know what is.

3. Teacher Gifts: These can be classic gifts but never useless tchockes (how the hell do you spell that word?) No paper weights or "World's Greatest Teacher" mugs, puh-leaze! Engraved stationary or a donation to their favorite charity are okay. In addition (yes, that's not enough) you should contribute to the class gift which is usually a generous gift card or even (again not kidding) jewelry from Tiffany's.

4. Others: Do not forget the bus-driver, the crossing-guard (you will have both if your kids are spread out in age), the mailman, the soccer coach, gymnastics teacher, piano teacher, and your hairdresser. A small gift-card is perfectly fine as long as it is tucked inside a thoughtful note written on your personal stationary. Oh, you don't have personal stationary? Well, you'd better get some.

Okay, well, I guess that's enough of a lesson for today. I'll forward this on to Barack and maybe with all his spare time after he fixes the economy, cures health care, and brokers peace in the middle east he can focus on what really counts: not getting out-gifted by the British.

THE BACHELOR

He proposed to Molly but ditched her for Melissa.
No wait, he proposed to Melissa but ditched her for Molly.
Ooops, no one can tell the difference.


Leave it to Lilly (10) to sum up just how badly that guy on The Bachelor behaved. "Hey, they teach you that in kindergarten: once you pick a cookie you don't put it back and pick a different one!"

Indeed.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, please tell me where you live because I would like to live somewhere where I can avoid hearing gossip about a reality show I don't even watch being pawned off on the news shows as "news".

Don't pretend you don't know ANYTHING about what I'm talking about. Okay, fine, I'll explain. There's this reality show called The Bachelor. On it, beautiful 20-something girls with seriously low self-esteem and major daddy issues subject themselves to the humiliation of allowing a man to choose among them. When he has chosen, the "winner" gets to marry him.

Really? Is this what Susan B. Anthony, Betty Friedan, and Gloria Steinam fought for?

So anyhoo, apparently on this show, this paragon of manhood chose one bubble-headed overly-made up girl to marry. Then on the next show, he changed his mind and chose another girl. All on national TV.

Now the fans of this show are --wait for it-- actually outraged on behalf of the spurned girl. The airwaves are a Twitter with it all. The humiliation! OMG! That is SO not cool! How COULD he do such a thing and of course the inevitable, how could SHE (the second girl) accept? There is speculation that maybe the producers set them all up (do you think?). Imagine that: a man who would choose his mate (and the mother of his young son) on a reality show might behave in a less than gentlemanly manner.

It's this debate that is baffling to me. I mean really, when you come to a Jerry Springer show you don't complain when the transvestite hits the Nazi with a chair. It's a little nit-picky don't you think? Debating whether or not this man's behavior is socially acceptable on a show that is so socially unacceptable is a little like debating the moral implications of taming wild animals while watching a Christian being thrown to a lion. It might be missing the point just a little.

I'd like to wrap this rant up with a pithy lesson to be learned but I don't know what it is except maybe, we should all stop watching reality TV.

Okay, gotta run, "Dancing with the Stars" is on.

HUMAN GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

If it's fifth grade and spring time around here it means it is time for the Human Growth and Development Unit in science. In case you didn't follow that, I'm talking about Sex Ed. As a parent, I am going through this for the third time so here is a primer for the newbies. This is how it'll go down:

The Letter: You will get a letter from school warning you that the topic is about to be raised. It strongly suggests you have a talk with your child before this happens. I strongly second that. If you do not, you will have a child looking puzzled for the next few weeks as there is much talk about eggs meeting sperm and fertilization but not a whole lot of talk about how that sperm met up with the egg in the first place.

-Desensitization: The teachers, wisely knowing that some words have the ability to make a fifth-grader burst out laughing, will work on some desensitization training before they get started. This is why, if you walk past Ms. Pierce's room this week you will hear twenty fifth-graders shouting out "penis!" "vagina!" then laughing uproariously. If this makes you uncomfortable, I suggest you avoid fifth grade. If it makes you want to laugh and repeat the words under your breath then come on over for happy hour on Friday and we'll say dirty words and giggle together because yes, I am that immature. This explains why my fifteen year old son and I are equally likely to laugh out loud if, say, while playing a word game he draws the card and reads aloud the clue that says "I am a tool" No really, that happened over Christmas. I snorted a martini through my nose.

-The presentation: At the end of the unit, the parents are invited to take their kids to see an enlightening and educational presentation put on by a local health museum. This is pretty straight-forward though again, not much is made of how A goes into slot B. Still, there will be graphic questions in a co-ed setting about "nocturnal emissions" and "menstrual cramps" that would have made our parents extremely uncomfortable. This is however, much preferred to the sex-ed "filmstrip" I was shown in fifth grade, you know the one they showed the girls while the boys saw something else. It was produced by Kotex and was so vague and unhelpful that I left being concerned that I would have to put a belted contraption on a butterfly after it emerged from a cocoon.

-The Talk: Whether you do it before, during, or after the Sex Ed unit, you will most likely have to have the talk. Most families agree that dad will have the talk with the boys and mom will have the talk with the girls. For most families this is just a formality because when it comes down to it mom will end up having the talk. Here is how it often goes:

Dad takes son out for dinner/movie/snack and to have the talk. Afterward, mom checks on dad.

MOM: So, did you tell him you know, the penis goes into the vagina?

DAD:(looks horrified) No, I was supposed to say THAT?

MOM: Well what did you think you were supposed to say?

DAD: I said, 'you know where babies come from, right?' and he said 'yes'.

MOM: Great. Now I have to do this for the girls and the boys.

Later there will be an enormously uncomfortable moment when mom traps her son in a room alone and says, "Okay, I'm just going to say this out loud to make sure you know," and she says it. Son will look mortified and they will move on.

So, if this is your first time with a kid in sex ed I wish you well. If you go over the homework carefully you might even learn something new and hopefully when it's all said and done you will know just what to do when a butterfly comes out of its cocoon.

IT COULD BE WORSE

I was lamenting the falling stock market the other day when my son pointed out that it could be worse...the Dow Jones could be at zero. Technically he's right but I found that to be cold comfort. There is a lot of this talk going on as we try to make the best of our unpleasant economic situation: could be worse I could be homeless, jobless, penniless. To be sure it can almost always be worse but does that mean we don't get to point out that things are pretty bad?

I'm sort of talking to myself here because I'm quite guilty of employing the "it could be worse" technique to deflect negativism. I do frequently with my Dutch friend Laurent. He is a bit of a pessimist. No, he’s more than a bit of a pessimist he’s a glass-half-empty-Eeyore who is given to sending me emails that say, “Today I calculated the odds that I could ever be happy and it appears they are extremely low." He cracks me up. Anyway, I often answer these emails with the classic, “It could be worse," and I point out that at least his life is better than some unfortunate person I've just heard about on NPR. To which he counters, “How on earth does knowing that a twelve-year-old boy in Africa was conscripted into a civil war make me feel better? Only a sick mind would feel better knowing that.”

Well, he does have a point. We can carry this “It could be worse” argument a bit too far. But I use it regularly as it is a Zimmerman-family defense mechanism. My father is the king of it. He likes to “put things in perspective.” When I spoke to him on 9/11 he said, “It could be worse. It could have been an hour later and the towers would have been full. And to put it in perspective, more people die in traffic accidents each year than died today.”

Yes, but. You know the saying, “If you can keep your head about you when all others are losing theirs, you may not be fully grasping the gravity of the situation.”

No, you should be able to say things are going badly for you without someone pointing out it could be worse. Of course it could be worse but if you carried this to the extreme, there would be only one person in the whole world at any given moment to whom you could NOT say "it could be worse" and really, I don't even want to think about the circumstances that person could be in.

So I’m going to try to stop saying, “It could be worse.” Go ahead, tell me your troubles in these times of trouble. I’m not going to tell you that at least it isn't like the depression when people had to eat dust or at least you aren't a child working in the African diamond mines because while that is true it is not very helpful. And if things are going really,really badly for you I will have you email Laurent. It might just cheer him up.

HOW DID YOU END UP WITH ALL THOSE ANIMALS?

Some people who know me well have wondered how on earth I, a person who is not so crazy about dogs and fur and mess have ended up with a dog and two rabbits. Well, of course everyone knows how kids can talk you into these things but I want you to see, first hand, the kind of pressure I am subjected to from my kids (mostly Lilly who is 10) about animals. Below is the latest in her attempts to get me to acquire yet another pet. She presented this paper to me last night (strategically timed as I was having my nightly glass of wine). I have edited it just a bit for length but kept her misspellings because I like them. Here it is. I hope she considers a career in law:

Dear Mom,
Remember when we had the guinea pigs? Remember how sweet they were, and how cute? Well I don’t know about you but ever since the day Snuggles past on, I have been missing that. Molly is cute, but she isn’t chubby and she is too big to pick up. And the rabbits are sweethearts but with guinea pigs they are chubby and lie around. Please at least consider the following: I feel I am very responsible. I brush the rabbits daily, I give them fresh veggies, I try my best to clean there cage every four days and if not every week, and I play with them. Well I would do the same for a guinea pig. Also remember when Layne asked if I could baby-sit Stevie for a week? All ‘dog people’ agree that two dogs are far more to handle then one. Its not doubling the work, its tripling it! And even though Stevie is an old dog she was still work. I didn’t bother her when she wanted to be alone like a little kid would. I brushed her, I fed her, I walked her a few times but not that often because she is old, and I stayed up the night she got sick.

Also whenever I get home from school I get straight to my homework. And when I realized that I was dropping in math I told you that I will get better and FIX IT! Like the dude in the SNL skit. Also even though I’m not ‘gifted’ IM STILL A BETTER READER THEN ALL THE NOSE PICKING BABIES!!!!! Sorry… but I am. Off the topic of nose picking babies in my reading class (uh, have you seen whose in it? Just kidding don’t you think Wonderbunny needs a friend? I know Suzy didn’t really work out, but a guinea pig would be great for both rabbits! Now that Wonderbunny has arthritis he is stuck in his cage more often. But if we got a guinea pig that got along with Wonderbunny he would have a friend. Also I’m guessing he will like a guinea pig considering how he liked Oreo and Snuggles. And if we got a guinea pig that liked rabbits I bet they would be great friends. Also his friend would remind him of Snuggles (in a good way) and he wouldn’t miss me as much when I’m gone. You know how I feel about shelter animals and animals without homes. Remember all those sad commercials they show for shelters? Well guinea pigs, birds, rabbits, and reptiles aren’t as popular as dogs and cats are, so they aren’t shown in the sad shelter commercials. But hundreds of small animals are neglected and abused every day. Hudson: A small guinea pig crammed in a hamster cage with five other baby guinea pigs. When animal control came, he was the only survivor. 23 other guinea pigs were taken from the home. The person was breeding guinea pigs for money. Hudson barely survived, and it took three and a half years to get used to humans again. Gracie: A large white rabbit that was abandon on a lawn. Grace had bight marks on her face and back, and could hardly walk. When animal services found her a new home, it took nearly four years until she trusted humans again. Suzy Q: I don’t know her exact story but I know she gets distressed when forced to go in a cage and she hates being in the dark and loves light Denver: you get it…. He was an abused guinea pig. Wouldn’t it be great to rescue a guinea pig from a shelter? It could be like any of the animals above and it would go to a great home. style

For a while I have thought about what I want to do with all my money. And I have made my decision. I was thinking about getting an outside hutch for the rabbits. But what would that do? I would get something to spoil animals when I could use the money to give an animal the gift of a lifetime. A home. I will pay for the guinea pig. I will also pay for a cage for it too. If I don’t have enough money for all that I will pay you back. I promise.

I will do a lot for another guinea pig. And if you don’t believe me I will show you. I sweep my room once a day, and with a guinea pig I will do it twice a day. I will brush my guinea pig once a day because I do the same with the guinea pigs. I will chop of fresh veggies for my guinea pig every day like I do for the rabbits. Please believe me. I wont grab and chase the guinea pig like I did when I was little. Because I trained the rabbits to be so friendly with humans, I can do the same with a guinea pig. There is a shelter in Chicago that we could go to and they have lots of guinea pigs. I can show you the website if you like. I think adding a guinea pig to our family is a good idea, and I hope you do too.

PUT DOWN THE SPATULA

Grace made this ginger bread house. From scratch.
The gingerbread too.

Fred Astaire was a good dancer. Michael Phelps is a good swimmer. And Grace, (13) is a good baker. She likes to bake when she's stressed or when she's bored. When you are 13 you are almost always stressed or bored. There is not much in between. That is why you will find homemade (I'm talking from scratch) cakes, cookies, or cupcakes in our house at all times.

She is very good at this. Apparently the baking gene skips two generations because although my Grandma Zimmerman and Jeff's Grandma Gebert were expert bakers, our own mothers are just adequate (sorry moms, no offense intended). I am not even adequate. I am an inadequate baker, in fact. But Grace seems to have gotten the family gift that lay buried for so many years.

Once she starts there is no stopping her. She decides to bake; she goes to the internet and finds a recipe (with a picture, it has to have a picture); she begins to bake; and a few hours later, (in addition to a pile of incredibly dirty dishes in the sink), we have yet another delectable masterpiece. She is never deterred by little things like lack of ingredients. If she finds we are out of vanilla extract (a frequent occurrence) she will get on her bike and go to the corner store and get vanilla extract (or powdered sugar or whatever it is we are missing).

This is a delightful and charming hobby of course. But it is not delightful and charming to watch us all balloon up like a backwards version of "Biggest Loser".

So we had to put our foot down. No baking for a few months, Grace!

This is driving her crazy. She has tried to take her mind off her hobby. She even went so far as to sew a purse but that did not satisfy her need to bake.

Grace: Please let me bake.

Me: NO! You have a problem. You need to find something unconstructive to do like normal teenagers. Go spend time with your virtual friends on Facebook or something.

Grace: Just one little lemon meringue pie?

Me: Okay, but you'll have to take it to the neighbor's house again.

Last Saturday, Jeff and I went out to dinner. When we got home the kitchen was suspiciously clean. Usually, when we come home after a night out the counters are littered with dishes and pizza boxes. But not last Saturday. I snooped around and my worst fears were confirmed. She had tried to hide the evidence by cleaning up for a change but she had overlooked an egg beater I found in the sink.

"WHO HAS BEEN BAKING?!" I roared, holding the evidence high.

Grace looked sheepish, "Me. Just a little."

I opened the refrigerator and there it was! It was worse than I expected. Chocolate mousse pie.

"Hey, there was no pie crust in the freezer," I said accusingly.

She had to admit extent of her crime. "Yes, I know. I made a homemade pie crust too."

My God what am I going to do with this delinquent?

She promised she'd try harder and she has done pretty well. She went four whole days but last night as she paced the kitchen, eyeing the pantry shelf where we keep her baking ingredients I finally gave in.

"Okay, fine. Make something for Valentine's Day but you'd better take most of it to the neighbors."

Which is why I just had two chocolate cupcakes (made from scratch including the frosting) for my lunch.

I suppose an intervention is in order. I'm just not sure if it should be for me or for Grace.

MUST I BLOG TO GET YOUR ATTENTION?

So last week after I posted my incredibly witty account of my latest Comcastic battle, loyal reader KC suggested I send it on to the president of Comcast. Which I did. And lo and behold two hours later I got a call from Mark Casem of Comcast.

Turns out it is Mark's job to try to appease blabber-mouth bloggers like myself who are complaining about the company online. In fact, he had already come across the blog (thanks to a Google notification system) and was reading it when his boss IM'd the link to him.

I asked him if this was his job, to make bloggers happy, and he assured me that along with his other duties that was indeed his job. (Turns out most of the major companies now have this position...wonder what it's called? Blogger Damage Mitigation Officer?)

Now I don't know about you, but I think Mark's job might be about the worst job you could have (except, maybe, for Barack Obama's) and I say, bravo sir for keeping your chin up while you carry on. I asked him if he thought my blog was maybe, just a tiny bit funny. He chuckled and then quickly said very seriously, "But it wasn't funny that you were so inconvenienced."

He apologized profusely for the problem I had, asked a few brief questions about the error code I received and told me he'd have M. Gardner from our local office take it from there. I had a call from Miss Gardener (a serious-as-a-heartattack lady from the "Executive Services" department) who did indeed take care of my problem. The error code apparently meant I had no credit on my account which makes no sense as they have my credit card on file which my bill is automatically charged to. Miss Gardener really didn't know why that error code was coming up but she took care of it. She also issued me a credit in my next bill.

Which means, the very first profit of any kind that I'm showing for this blog is a credit from Comcast which is surely some sort of O'Henry-esque irony.

I asked Mark if he could tell me what my non-blogging friends (that's YOU) should do if they have a Comcastic issue. He said they should feel free to email his department at

we_can_help@cable.comcast.com

So next time you're stuck in Comcast purgatory, remember that email address and let me know how that goes for you.

If they can't help you could always get a blog of your own.

YOU DID NOT JUST WISH ME A COMCASTIC DAY

I wonder if this movie is any good. I'll never know.

This past weekend seemed to be fraught with technical difficulties. It took me hours to upload my YouTube video, then the washing machine broke (which I fixed by googling "Whirlpool frontloader won't drain" God I love the internet), then the microwave (which I fixed by Googling "microwave moaning like an unpaid whore" (punchline to a bad joke)), then my Comcast On Demand wouldn't work.

There we were, popcorn on our laps on a frigid Saturday night scrolling through our movie choices all ready for a fun, fun night! I was extolling the virtues of On Demand (we've only had it about six months so it's still a novelty) and how much better it was to order a movie from the couch than going to the video store, trying to please everyone (Mom won't watch violent movies, Dad won't watch subtitled movies, child one won't watch kid movies, child two won't watch anything, and child three won't watch anything that isn't about a dog). So I was scrolling along and finally found the perfect movie. I pressed "BUY"

And got an error code. It said, "You can't get this, nyah nyah nyah. Call Comcast and tell them you have this error code".

I know, I know, you're thinking "What the hell, she went back to Comcast?" Yes, I'm afraid I did. Though this is as pathetic as an ex-wife of Drew Peterson remarrying him, I did. It's just that AT&T was no better. They refused to bury a cable for six months and then Comcast was all like, "No, really, I've changed and I have a great rate" and the next thing I knew I was giving them another chance.

Foolishly, I thought the phone number on the screen was some sort of direct line to the On Demand Error Code Override Department so you can imagine my disappointment when I called and got the standard "Oprima dos por espanol. Are you calling about your cable, internet, PC, I-pod, cell phone, digital phone, car engine or furnace?" menu. I pressed a few buttons, still hopeful, but alas I was not to see Swing Vote. Maybe that error code meant "No, really, you do NOT want to rent a Kevin Costner movie." But I'll never know.

On Sunday I logged into my online account to make sure I had paid the last cable bill. I had. So I logged into their live online help service. After a ridiculous amount of time someone named "Mary" came on line to help me. I suspect "Mary" is a pseudonym because her taxonomy and lexicography (I don't even know if those are words) were suspiciously similar to Apu in "The Simpsons" " Many times you have been having this problem?" for example.

After several questions she told me she would transfer me to sales. "NOOOO" I screamed in caps, "I don't need to buy the service, I HAVE the service but it stopped working." She assured me that sales would also take care of technical problems. She transferred me to "Cindy" her cousin in the next cubicle.

I knew I was doomed when Cindy wished upon me a "Comcastic morning" WTF? Who would ever wish that on anyone except maybe as a curse just before throwing a shoe at your head? Despite the fact that I had signed into this whole mess through my Comcast account and answered Mary's numerous security questions ("How many stitches were in your first episiotomy") I had to repeat the process with Cindy. But between questions she would just go away for minutes at a time. At one point I asked "Did you go for coffee" and got a curt "I am accessing your account." My ass, my account had been accessed for about 25 minutes by now. I suppose they have those poor people trying to help several customers at a time. Wow. That's efficient to have to re-learn the problem every time the screen pops back up.

After some time she typed "So, if I am understanding, you wish to purchase the On Demand service."

AAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHH

I know, you knew it was coming and so should I have.

I logged off in defeat.

Which is why you will see me at Family Video this Saturday trying to find a movie in English with an adult theme, no violence, and a dog.

MONEY SAVING TIPS

DID YOU JUST CALL ME WITH YOUR BUTT?

Calling someone with your butt is not the same as drunk dialing but they both can have dire consequences and should be avoided.

One of the funny little things about having a cell phone with a redial button is how often you can accidentally hit that button and call whoever you called last. It happens at our house with frequency. The phone rings, we see it's my husband Jeff's cell number, we answer and all we hear is a muffled crowd sound or street sounds.

It happens enough that we have a routine and it goes like this:

Kid answers phone: Hello? Hello? HELLOOOOO??? DAAAAD ARE YOU THERE?

Kid hangs up: It was Dad, he just called us with his butt.

Lilly once added an "Anchorman" reference to the scene by shouting into the phone "Dad, if you're in Milwaukee, bark twice!"

Once or twice Jeff has called me with his butt when he's at the bar. Fortunately, he has been covered under the full-disclosure law and I didn't hear anything going on I wasn't aware of.

That was not the case for a friend of mine. Her husband is in sales. He spends a lot of nights out entertaining clients. One night, while she was home doing kid duty with three kids under eight he phoned and told her he'd be later than expected. The darn client wanted to stay out later and what could he do? She wasn't happy, it was about the 27th night in a row she'd put the kids to bed by herself and it was already midnight but she said fine and hung up. About ten minutes later the phone rang. No one was on the other line but she could hear the distinct sounds of a bar in full party mode. Then she heard her husband say, "Hey guys! Who wants one more, I'm buying. Come on, you can have one more!" The conversation went on. It was clear that the client was not insisting on staying out later but her husband sure was. Unfortunately for him, he had just called her back by accidentally hitting the redial button as he set his phone on the bar.

Wasn't he surprised when he showed up at the door at 3:00 am to be met by his wife as she left the house to check herself into a fancy downtown hotel for the day. "The kids need to be driven to school in about, oh, four hours, and the rest of the schedule is on the counter. I'll be home in time for dinner unless a 'client' wants me to stay out late."

I'm pretty sure he makes sure his phone is off when he's at the bar since that time.

It's a good policy for us all.

1.20.09

Did these signs really ever exist or was it a bad dream?

Much has been written about the coming inauguration on Tuesday and I can hardly let this momentous occasion come and go without weighing in on it myself. I'm not sure what's left to be said, but I'm going to give it a try.

On Tuesday, we will, as my minister said today, "Swear an African-American man into the highest office in the land." Given our history with race relations, this is no small feat.

When I was born, and a year later when Barack was born, we lived in a country that still had signs that said "whites only" above drinking fountains. Racism was alive and well back then. Not the covert stuff that still goes on in some places still but overt ugly stuff.

I thought about that and started thinking about all the changes large and small that had to take place between 1960 and 2009 to go from a place of segregation and racism to a place with a black president. A lot had to happen. We all had to do a lot to get here and not just the victims of racism but those of us who watched from the safety of our white skins. We had to do a lot too.

As a country we had to have Martin Luther King Jr. lead us, marches on Selma, voter registration drives, lunch counter sit-ins, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and Rosa Parks. Those are just a few of the big events and big names we needed to help us get from there to here.

But we also had to have a thousand or maybe a million little things happen too. And that's where my story comes in. This is a story of one of those million little things that had to happen and it happened to me.

In the summer of 1972 I was 12 and about the coolest thing a junior high girl could do was go to the beach for the day and fry her young skin in the sun with nothing but baby-oil between her and melanoma. Fortunately for me, I grew up in the Detroit area with an abundance of lakes nearby to choose from. Of all the fun lakes to go to, the best was purported to be Camp Dearborn, a swimming recreation area in Milford, purchased and run by the city of Dearborn, a suburb that bumped up against Detroit proper.

At that time Dearborn was run by a mayor who was such an awful human I will not say his name here. I'll call him Mayor H. Here, from Wikipedia "For many years, H. was unabashed in his comments about segregation. He once told an Alabama newspaper: "They can't get in here. Every time we hear of a negro moving in ... we respond quicker than you do to a fire."He also boasted that one of his tactics to discourage blacks who had just moved into Dearborn was by providing police and fire protection that was "a little too good" -- wake-up visits every hour or so through the night in response to trouble calls."

He was a real sweetheart and the racist residents of Dearborn elected him year after year after year.

Not surprisingly Mayor H. had decided that he did not want negro children swimming in his recreation facility but in 1972, even he could not get away with saying black children couldn't come in so he devised a plan to keep them out. He declared that anyone who wanted to come into Camp Dearborn had to show ID that proved they were from Dearborn which certainly did the trick as no blacks lived in Dearborn. Funny thing though, they never did ask for ID if you happened to be a white person so people from all over the white suburbs of Detroit were able to avail themselves of the facility.

I was blissfully unaware of these racist shenanigans when I was invited by a friend to go to Camp Dearborn one day that summer. My parents quickly educated me on the topic and I was forbidden from going and though I quickly elevated the place in my mind to a kind of perfect, forbidden, tanning utopia, even I, a vain 12 year old could see their point and I never did see the ValHalla of the Detroit suburbs.

I wonder how many other parents forbade their children from going to Camp Dearborn back then. Certainly not a majority-- but some. In fact it became a common bonding experience for me and my still-best friend whose parents also banned her from going. Her parents and my parents took a stand on Camp Dearborn and they were making a difference. In a small way, but a difference.

Tuesday we will swear in a fine, decent, highly qualified man for the job of President of the United States of America. It will be a great day to stop worrying about the economy and just revel in being an American. To be proud of what we can do. Be proud that we can change something so fundamentally wrong as racism.

I dedicate this column today to my parents, Frank and Faye Zimmerman, who did their small part in this way (and other ways too numerous to mention here) and to the other people whose names do not appear in the history books but who take a stand, speak up when they see a wrong, and yes, forbid their daughters from going to Camp Dearborn.

Yes you can. Yes we did.

MY FIRST YOUTUBE VIDEO

Hey, with help from my manager and my light and sound guy (my kids) I've produced my first YouTube video. Feel free to send it around in cyberspace along with piano-playing cats and surfing squirrels so I can have my fifteen minutes of fame.

Thanks for watching!

Judy

THE TROPHY WIFE CAR

They look nice but you probably don't want to wear them to shovel snow.

Jeff has a new (used) "high performance" car and man does that car look good. Actually, I picked her out and talked him into getting her. "You deserve it" I said, allowing the car's movie-star good looks and prestigious hood ornament to temporarily blind me as I brushed away that silly little angel on my shoulder saying, "Shouldn't you at least check Consumers' Report first?"

No, we threw caution to the wind and it was lust at first sight for Jeff. He bought her on a sunny fall day and drove her up the driveway proudly. We took a test drive and were in awe at the heated seat controls even in the back! Lots of leg room, the kids marveled. Heated steering wheel--t's a dream come true. We zoomed through the neighborhood going too fast and laughing as Jeff executed James Bondesque turns. Men looked up from raking their lawns with envy in their eyes. We loved it. We, who have driven Novas and Toyotas our whole lives, finally had a hot car. The fall was a magical season with the new big-boy toy in the driveway.

But alas, like all sizzling romances, it cooled when the leaves fell and the snow flew. After a month of snow, you can say the honeymoon is over. It turns out that Jeff's car is like a trophy wife. She sure looks good but she's pretty useless when the going gets tough. Watching her try to gain enough traction on an icy road to show off her high-performance skills is like watching a trophy wife try to shovel the driveway in her Manolo Blahniks. It's clear she hates the cold and ice. She's accustomed to heated garages and valet parking.



Which is unfortunate for her because we do not put our cars in the garage and we seldom valet park.


So Miss Trophy Wife car is forced to sit outside with snow and ice on her. She complains bitterly about this. When you put her in reverse, her rear-bumper sensors go off constantly as if to say, "Oooh, I'm so cold," until you get out and clean the bumper off. My mini-van rolls its headlights at her and says, "Really, bitch, you should try carting three kids around for ten years and then whine to me about a little ice on your high-performance ass."

Coffee Friend 2 suggested we put her in storage and buy a nice little four-wheel drive for the winter. I think she may have been making fun of us.

At any rate, as you speed past us as we struggle up a slight icy incline in your sensible vehicle, feel free to chuckle at us, but come this spring, if the trophy wife car survives the winter, we'll look fabulous.

THAT ONE THERE

I don't know which was funnier, the stuff he said or the wandering around.




Much has been made of the moment in the second presidential debate when John McCain nodded his head toward Barack Obama and said, "That one there." It was an odd thing to say in a very odd debate, I think we would all agree. What did he mean by that? Was it a way of saying "That punk over there" or a way of pointing out that he was the senior member on stage? Was it simply a disrespectful thing to do by not using his name or title? I wasn't really sure but it was noteworthy and gave Saturday Night Live even more material.

I was reminded of the strange expression this past week at church. Our minister was wrapping up the Christmas pageant by thanking all the adults involved...she thanked them all by name and by title, "Thanks to Pam for leading the choir, to Jan for playing the piano, and of course, big thanks to our writer...." and here she hesitated, struggling to remember Becky's name. We all held our breath. It was clear she could not remember her name. Finally, she just said, "That one there," which got a laugh since it came close enough on the heels of the debate for all of us to get it.

I totally sympathize with my minister (who by the way is about my age). She managed to forget the name of a very prominent church member, the woman who has written the play for about 10 years, who is also a friend, and member of a book club we all belong to. I feel her pain.

Yes, most of us are really, really bad at remembering names. I don't know why that is. I am not talking about forgetting the name of someone you have only met once or twice casually. I am not talking about forgetting the name of someone you knew a long time ago and just ran into. I am talking about forgetting the names of people very close to you.

Don't worry, I already checked and this is, unfortunately, fairly normal memory loss. It's like when a word is on the tip of your tongue and you can't retrieve it. You will eventually, it just takes longer.

This happened to me the other day over coffee with my Coffee Friends. I literally forgot Coffee Friend 2's name. I said, "Hey, I came by the other day and...." I looked at my friend helplessly. "Val," she supplied, "Yeah, Val was out front shoveling," I went on as if I hadn't just done that.

But alas, she would have none of it. "You just forgot my name you crazy old hag!"-- she called me out on it. Errr, yes, ummm, maybe I did.

Another time I called my good friend Martha. I have known her 12 years. I was expecting to hear her voice but her husband, Dan, answered. I was so flummoxed by having him answer that I forgot his name. I've known him 12 years too. They are among our closest friends. We all have dinner out at least once a month. But I could not think of his name. I panicked and said the first thing I could think of, "Umm, is your mother home?"

He chuckled, "No, I'm 55, I don't live with my mommy anymore."

Shit.

So it was with great empathy that I watched my minister make this mistake on Sunday. And since misery loves company, it made me fell a little better because at least I have not done this in front of a large crowd. Yet. And when she said, "That one there," a light when on in my head.

John McCain did not call Barack Obama "That one there" as some sort of old man disrespecting a young man or as an insult or as a way to demean him.

He simply forgot his name.

As I am more than 20 years junior John McCain I can hardly hold that against the guy.

Still, I didn't vote for ole' what's his name. I preferred that one there.

MOMS IN PAJAMAS

No, I never look this good in my pajamas.


On Wednesday I drove Grace to school because the bus never showed up after a night of snow. As I came back down our street I saw Coffee Friend 1 out shoveling her driveway. I stopped the van and rolled the window down.

"Can you believe the wife?" I said referring to the drama that has been unfolding all week about our incredibly inept/corrupt governor Rod Blagojevich.

"I haven't heard the details about her, what?"

"I skimmed the complaint. I'll forward it to you. They have her on tape yelling over her husband's shoulder 'You tell that F***er he can forget his deal on the F***ing Cubs if he won't fire that editorial staff!'"

"Holy shit, I knew she was a bitch," Coffee Friend said as she leaned on the handle of her shovel.

"Yeah, but really, who does that? Who stands over their husband's shoulder while he's on a business call telling him what to say?"

We both shook our heads, trying to imagine the scenario. It was really one of the most shocking revelations in a shocking week of revelations. We talked a few minutes more about the scandal, the possiblity that Rahm Emmanuel dropped the dime and the prospect of hearing him on a tape cursing like Ari from "Entourage" the character based on his real-life brother, and then I drove on.

As I pulled into the driveway it occurred to me that the entire conversation had taken place while we were both in our pajamas. Both of us had been wearing winter coats and boots over our pajamas, bed-head hair, and not a stitch of makeup (by the way, that expression makes no sense, makeup does not come in stitches).

This is not that shocking for me. I can often be found in my pajamas until 10:00 or so (I am right now actually, polar bear flannel, thank you) and even on my wedding day I don't think I wore anything more than mascara. But for Coffee Friend...well she was a model in her youth. I'm sure there was a time in her life she wouldn't have been caught dead outside un-showered and in p.j.'s.

I thought about this the next day when I drove another child to school for band and I saw a mom in the pajamas/boots/winter ensemble as she helped her special needs child on to the bus and I realized, consciously for the first time, that I LOVE seeing my peers like this.

To be sure, I usually see them fully dressed, coiffed, and made-up, and many of them could audition for a part in "Desperate Housewives" but I like them best this way--when they've just rolled out of bed. They look more vulnerable, more approachable, more human, and much younger. Like a sleeping child, an un-groomed mom is the sweetest mom of all.

This made me feel better about the time I went out to get the paper wearing the shorts of one summer pajama set and the top to another, my sad post-breast-feeding boobs hanging low in their natural braless state only to look up after scooping up the paper to see my children's principal as he jogged by our house. I played it cool, "Good morning, Mark," I said. "Good morning, Judy," he said as he continued on. He never spoke of it. What happens in the driveway stays in the driveway.

I wonder if Patti Blagojevich is ever caught in her jammies. Probably not. She is the daughter of a prominent Illinois politician who bought the governor job for her husband when she was only 35 so she's probably been the picture of an entitled brat her whole life. She probably hasn't taken out the trash or shoveled a driveway in her entire life or, God forbid, been caught in her jammies. And therein lies much of the problem I suspect.

So here's to all my mom friends today. If I see you in the 'hood with your hair rumpled and your snowflake patterned jammies peaking out from under your coat as you run kids to school or fetch the paper, rest assured you've never been more beautiful to me.

ADVENT CALENDAR

Last year instead of getting the cheap, $2.99 advent calendar from Trader Joe's I got a substantial advent calendar from Crate and Barrel that is a sturdy cardboard concoction in the shape of a Christmas tree. The tree is formed of a stack of tiny drawers and each drawer represents a day. When you open the drawer you find your treat. It's so cute I saved it and this year I stuffed each drawer with a piece of Halloween candy or a note with something on it like "You get to ride in the front seat for two days" or "You get to choose dinner" which I hoped were things of value to my children and of course congratulated myself on the incredibly clever, cheap, green use of things we already had in the house.

Yesterday, Lilly (10) pointed out that there was nothing in the drawer for day 7. Hmm, that's funny, I was pretty sure I had systematically filled each drawer but sure enough it was empty. I threw a quarter in there and forgot about it.

This morning however, the mystery was solved. Several of the drawers were open and there were candy wrappers all around the advent tree.

"Atticus! Did you eat all the candy from the advent calendar?" Lilly roared.

He shrugged as only a 15-year-old boy can and said shamelessly, "Yeah."

"Dude," Jeff said, "You got a problem. That's like something you do just before they send you to rehab."

Atticus tried a diversionary offensive tactic, "Hey, those things are like $4.00, you couldn't have bought a new one this year?"

"What the hell does that have to do with it?" I asked. "I'm reusing it because I can not because I'm cheap. And, hey, eating the candy from the advent calendar sounds familiar. Oh yeah, that's what Billy Bob Thorton did in 'Bad Santa'. Nice, you're Bad Santa."

"Whatever, I just didn't want to eat frozen candy. I meant to replace it with the other candy from the freezer. "

"But you didn't," Jeff pointed out.

By now Lilly had gone to the freezer and found the frozen Halloween candy and refilled the tiny drawers. As she did this she spoke in her parent-voice to her brother, "Now Atticus, you are forbidden from taking anything from the Advent calendar. You have to learn there are consequences for your bad behavior."

"Yes I see the consequences--my little sister will lecture me and my parents will make fun of me. I can live with that."

And that, my friends, is the problem.

Clearly Atticus needs better parents. Just the other day I asked Lilly to help me put away a complicated building toy he'd left out for weeks. "Didn't you ask Atticus to do that?" she asked skeptically as she started to help me dis-assemble the tiny pieces.

"Yes, but he'll take forever to get to it," I said realizing how lame that sounded as soon as I said it.

"You would not train a dog that way," she said calmly.

"You're right," I admitted and we left the project there and he did indeed eventually put it away.

There's a lesson in all of this. Something about parenting and dog-training but I'm not really sure what it is.

I'm hoping that Lilly will explain it to me later when she tells me how to punish a puppy who eats all the candy in the advent calendar.

I SPEAK MIDDLE SCHOOL

Today I will helpfully translate the names of the classes our children in junior high are enrolled in.

Let's start at the very beginning a very good place to be:

Middle School means Junior High. At orientation night they will tell you that middle school is a more nurturing and transitional educational experience than junior high. Instead of moving every hour on the hour to a new class as they do in high school, the kids move from "block" to "block" every hour or hour and a half or two hours depending on the complex scheduling grid that only a Homeland Security spy or a junior high kid can even keep track of. Whatever. If it's a school full of 11 to 14 year olds with poor personal hygiene habits and an obsession with the word "popular" it's still Junior High to me.

English class is now called Language Arts: I have no idea when or why this changed but I strongly suspect it is due to the propensity of all vocations to invent jargon to make them sound more knowledgeable/inscrutable. Because it is "arty" it means a heavy emphasis on the creative-writing and not so much on the grammar and punctuation but that switch occurred way back when. Diagramming sentences and using good grammar is so 1950's.

The Library is now the Learning Center: Now this one I can embrace a little--I mean the need to rename a library. As books are replaced with computers it does seem a little silly to keep calling it a library. Still, "learning center" is a little vague --isn't the whole school a learning center?

Foreign Language is now Global Language: Who knows why? Maybe foreign sounded derogatory? But isn't any language that isn't your own foreign? Whose feelings were being hurt here?

Art is Visual Art: So as not to be confused with the other arts such as music and dance, I suppose. But isn't this derogatory to the sightless? I think it should be "visual if able art".

Good news--Math, Science, and Social Studies are still Math, Science, and Social Studies. For now.

And now, for my personal favorite. The other day my son said he'd have time to finish his homework in PCT. Please elaborate, I said. Productive Choice Time, he said, snickering. Do you mean homeroom? I asked incredulously. Yes indeed.

Now I don't know about you but I'd have to say that in Junior High, a time in which I made more unproductive choices than any other time in my life (with the possible exception of the last term of my senior year in college), I made the MOST unproductive choices of all in homeroom. Passing notes in the form of quizzes (How bored are you? Check one: bored enough to 1. Yawn noisily 2. gouge my eyes out 3. actually do my homework), discussing who likes who and who said that to whom and endlessly ranking my crushes though the list was almost always topped by bad-boy Joe Doga and boy-next-door Kenny Gratton. Sigh. Now that was productive choice time.

So, if you have kids heading into Junior High, consider yourself a little more prepared now that you've read my handy guide but remember that Junior High, like politics and sausage, is best if you don't look at how it is made.

FROM THE BACK SEAT

The tooth fairy.
She's very forgetful now that she's in perimenopause.






It is from the back seat of the car that all momentous pronouncements come. So it was inevitable that the curtain came down on the Santa myth from the back seat of the car on Sunday as Lilly and Grace and I drove to pick up our fast-food Sunday dinner at Steak N Shake.

"Umm, Mom?" Lilly says "I know about Santa."

Oh thank god. I had not been looking forward to that conversation but I had also not been looking forward to another year of playing Santa. Frankly, I'm not cut out for that role.
Too much sneaking. I'm not sneaky. Too much planning. I'm not a planner. Way too much to remember. I have no memory. Thus I would all too often say, "The doll I got you, no I mean the doll Santa brought, hee hee, I'm so confused, who gave you that?"

It is perfectly appropriate that Lilly would tell me. With three kids proper protocol diminishes with each child. When I told Atticus he was crushed like kids are supposed to be; Grace asked me outright and just shrugged when I broke it to her; and Lilly told me.

"I've known for two years," she adds.

"Why did you tell me today then?"

"I told Grace and she told me I had to tell you."

"Thank you Grace." Grace is well aware I do not relish my Santa job. I've been pawning more and more of it off on her in recent years--first under the guise of "softening the blow" of the truth but more recently out of sheer laziness. Here, help me pick something out. Hey, would you wrap that. Oh, here's a twenty, ride your bike to Toys R Us and find something. Go ahead and get yourself a little something too.

"So that means I can stop all the nonsense? Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy?" I confirm.

"Yeah. And that tooth fairy trick you do...it's lame. We know about it."

I know exactly which trick she means. In fact, it's the only way the Tooth Fairy has delivered money in the past four years. Here's how it goes. She tells me she lost a tooth. She puts it under her pillow. I forget and go to bed without taking care of it. In the morning at the breakfast table Lilly says, "The Tooth Fairy forgot to come. Again." and I say, "Oh, I have to get something in my room," and slip away with a dollar hidden in my hand. From her bedroom I call, "Hey, look the dollar must have fallen down behind the bed!" and she comes in and acts surprised.

Over time I got sloppier and sloppier on this until the last time when I think I walked to my purse took out a dollar and said, "Oh look, the Tooth Fairy left the dollar in my wallet."

And so it was that when Lilly made the pronouncement from the back seat I surprised even myself by not being remotely sentimental about it all. No tears, no regrets, no sadness at the obvious marker of a childhood slipping away.

All I felt was great relief at finally being able to drop the facade I had erected so long ago and maintained so poorly over time.

Ho, ho, whew.

OBAMALAND

A view from the Chicago River








We live in Chicago, often called the "Second City"--second to NYC, LA, and DC really. Unlike those cities, we don't host a lot of celebs. To be sure we have Oprah, and Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston show up now and then. You can't swing a cat in Wrigley Field without hitting a Cusack or a Piven or a Murray. But that's really it. And none of those celebs attract world-wide media attention. Well, Oprah does but not on a regular basis.

As for global recognition, Chicago is of course known by other countries--but not well-known. Tell a European you're from Chicago and he'll hold his hands like a tommy-gun and say "Ah, Al Capone." Not exactly the image we'd like projected around the world, but there it is.

So it's kind of weird to have spent a week in the eye of the global media storm after the Presidential Election. Of course, we expected it to happen on Tuesday but when we woke up Wednesday and the traffic reporter mentioned he wasn't sure what was happening in Hyde Park because of the new "no-fly zone" over Obama's house it was noteworthy.

We're not used to presidential motorcades. Cokey Roberts on NPR said we'd better get used to it after we heard some unaware fool tried to pass the motorcade down in the Loop and got pulled over by the FBI, guns drawn. Oops. My bad officer, I was just trying to get to my lunch at Gene and Georgettis.

Barack's first press conference was at the Chicago Hilton, the same hotel we stayed in last week and the same hotel I've attended numerous events at. He and Michelle went to dinner at Spiaggia on Saturday a restaurant I've been to also for date night. It was odd to see all of this on World News Tonight.

At a church fundraiser on Friday the talk was all about our new family-elect. An architect friend of ours, Bill, was saying that his client's children attend school with Sasha and Malia (we're already on first name basis with these girls) and that they had shown up to school on Wednesday morning, on time, despite the fact that they'd been on stage the night before in front of the entire world until nearly midnight. Many of their classmates did not show up, using the excuse that they'd stayed up late to watch the elections. You gotta love that. And where else are you going to hear a story like that but here in Obamaland?

"Are they nice girls?" I asked Bill.

He smiled broadly, "They're very nice girls," he confirmed. We all sighed and sipped our drinks.

The President's daughters are nice girls and they're our girls from our town.

Chicago and for now the "Second-to-none City".

YES WE CAN

Michigan Ave after the rally in front of our hotel.


I should have written yesterday to tell you about our election night in Chicago but I'm still trying to digest it all and process it. I can't. It's just too much. So I'll give you some highlights/observations and we'll go from there.

For now, I'm walking on sunshine, bouncing off the walls. Life is good. Change happens.

-The best moment was when we were standing on Michigan Avenue waiting to get into the park. We went late deliberately, not wanting to stand in the crowd for hours, and mistakenly thinking there would be no line at that point. Instead, at 9:30 when we left our hotel we found a line, five people wide and about three blocks down. We got in line and everyone was pumped. Cell phones were on and friends were texting to keep us up to date. We knew victory was close. All we needed was for the California polls to close. There was a roar coming from the park and everyone wanted to know what happened. A man leaned out of a hotel window across the street and shouted "He took California!" and everyone started going crazy. Hugging. Crying. Laughing. Another few minutes passed and the woman in front of us looked up from her cell phone and shouted, "They're calling it, they're calling it! We did it" and then we really heard the roar from the park and even though the street was closed a few cars snuck through with people hanging out the windows, waving signs, screaming "We did it, We did it!" and we hugged and cried again. Horns honked and everyone screamed. It was unreal.

-We stayed at the Chicago Hilton and Towers a storied old-school hotel and as I hoped it was full of reporters and movers and shakers. When we got out of the car in the parking garage three vans full of TSA agents were unloading. They smiled and joked with each other. One of them said hello to me and I asked "Hey, you going to keep us safe tonight?" "You know we are!" The party was on.

-Grace and I stopped in the hotel gift shop to get a snack. We paid $3.99 for a bag of cheezits. Next to the cash register was a basket of McCain buttons. The sign on them said 99cents.

-The Defender, a black Chicago newspaper, was hosting a big party upstairs and we saw Jesse Jackson and several other black politicians I recognized. Everyone looked like a journalist with their perfect faces and being followed by cameramen. I can't remember ever being somewhere where it was so obvious that you were in the middle of something big. The kids and I waited over an hour to be seated for dinner. Jesse and his posse came out of the restaurant and we just hung around watching people come and go in the hotel lobby. More than half the crowd was black. At one point a white man in a suit walked by and I was struck by how out of place he looked. It's a new world.

-We finally got seated for dinner. Kenny Mayne a reporter for ESPN was sitting next to us. I only recognized him because he has been on Dancing with the Stars. A few people approached him for a picture. He was gracious. Every few minutes the crowd in the lobby bar would erupt into cheers and Atticus would run out and then run back to tell us the news, "He took Pennsylvania!" The food was tasteless and I was too excited to eat. It was one of the best dinners I ever had.

-When we got to the park we stood on the edge of the sea of people with a clear shot of the Jumbotron. A man gave an invocation. We said the pledge of allegiance. I haven't said it in years-- it's my silent protest of the man in the White House but I said it Tuesday. When it was over a girl on her boyfriend's shoulders shouted to the world, "I've never said that and meant it before tonight!" A woman came out to sing the national anthem. I don't know who it was but she didn't know the words and we had to laugh at her mangling of them. And then, a voice came over the loudspeaker and said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the first-family elect of the United States of America" and the crowd went wild and the crying really started in earnest.

-Barack spoke. You saw it. It was solemn. It was great. The crowd was jubilant, triumphant, but subdued, weighed down I think with equal parts disbelief and the heft of the moment.

-When it was over we all turned and went as quietly as 150,000 people can go into the night. Later at the hotel bar we sat and watched more returns, dazed at what we'd seen. Two British journalists started talking to us. They wanted to know why the crowd was so civilized and where had everyone gone? It was nearly 1:00 and the street was almost empty. Jeff and I thought about it long and hard. Finally, I summed it up, "This is the city that works. We had our party but we're all getting up and going to work tomorrow. Jeff will go to work, I'll take the kids to school. That's what we do in Chicago-- we work."

And as it turns out, that's what our president-elect did too.

Godspeed to Barack Obama.

More of my pics at http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?id=552537016#/album.php?aid=49115&id=552537016