BIRTHDAY PARTIES

BIRTHDAY PARTIES
Do you remember when birthday parties were small family events with a homemade cake? And maybe, every few years you might have a party for kids in your class and they would come over and you’d play “drop the clothespin in the milk bottle” (because all milk came in bottles then, not just the expensive organic kind) and you might play “musical chairs,” and then you’d open presents and have cake and ice cream and then your friends walked home and they wouldn’t have dreamed of expecting anything more at the end of the party. Do you remember that? You do? You must be really old.

Because now-a-days birthday parties are big big big events! First of all you must have one each and every year. No, it does not matter if you have three or six or ten kids you must plan and execute a full-on blow-out for each and every one of your offspring from the time they turn one (perhaps the silliest birthday party of all) until the last one is out of the house (which hopefully is before the current average age of 30 because you will feel pretty silly when your kid is 28 and you still have to send out dinosaur invitations.)


And the party must, never, never, never be held at your home! No, goodness no. Unless you hire a clown or a magician or a pony to ride on, then the “house- party” (yes the genre has a name) is acceptable.
You must also spend a lot of money on theme invitations and decorations and the required matching “goody-bag.” What the hell is a goody-bag, you might ask? It is the bag of goodies you give each of the guests when they come to your party because of course it is not enough for a child to go bowling or play putt-putt with his or her friends and eat pizza and later ice-cream and cake. No. Who would show up for that lame-o experience if there wasn’t a goody-bag to close the deal?
The goody-bag is a bag stuffed with crap you paid too much for such as erasers and pencils and little cheap yo-yos that last for just one yo, and plastic rings that no one would ever wear. When your children come home with the goody-bag they will paw through it for the candy, insist you keep the rest of the junk because it is “cool” and then never, ever, ever play with the stuff again. If you are like most moms I know, you will keep it around and then secretly throw it away along with 90% of their precious art projects that the teachers send home at the end of the year bound up in a fancy portfolio that a volunteer art mom got stuck making. Oops, getting off track again.
So that’s what birthday parties look like now. Over the years my kids have been to parties at bowling alleys, skating rinks, and pools. They have made hideous pottery items and gone on guided nature walks and gone to the movies. Now that they are older I expected this nonsense to trail off but it hasn’t. At 14 and 15 a lot of their friends are still hosting bowling or skating parties.
I confess that to some extent I have been a part of this ridiculous nonsense. We have indeed hosted parties that were held at bowling alleys and inflatable bouncy places. We have also bought goody-bags and stuffed them with junk. It’s not that I didn’t want to stop the madness, I did. One year I tried to give them all a book instead of a goody-bag but most of them looked at me and blinked like I was clinically insane. One child kept trying to hand the book back as if I’d made a mistake. The brat (there’s always one at a birthday party) actually asked where his goody-bag was. Another time, in a real rebellious moment, I decided there would be no goody-bags but kept that decision to myself. When my family asked where the goody-bags were at about 20 minutes before the first guest was scheduled to arrive, they all were so mortified (my husband included) that we ended up running around the house, filling brown paper-lunch bags with old pencils and erasers and any other trinket we could put our hands on. I’m sure the kid who got my tape-measure was delighted to have something so useful.
We have, I’m happy to report, had better luck with my equally crazy idea to host “house-parties”. The girls come up with their own theme and then run with it making the invitations and the decorations by hand. Then they invent theme-related activities. That’s how they ended up dressed like mice and playing “cat and mouse and cheese” one year. It was lovely and I even heard one of the little girls as she was picked up by her mother say, “Next year, I want a house-party!”
Her mother nodded and agreed, no doubt remembering the “house-parties” of her youth and wondering who the heck you hire to help you cater such an unusual event.

FACEBOOK: GO AHEAD TRY IT

Sometimes I find myself defending Facebook to those who haven't tried it. Invariably these people tell me it's a waste of time and they don't care if their friend is making baked chicken and rice pilaf for dinner. I understand their sentiments; I felt the same way a year ago. But that was before I joined the 70 billion other people on Facebook.

My Facebook habit started like most habits do. I 'only' signed up because I was trying to find a particular person, Wendy, who had been in Spain with me in the early 80's. I was hoping to organize a reunion for the seven or eight of us who shared that seminal time. The reunion never came to pass but I did find Wendy who now lives in Mexico married to the very boy she was dating all those years ago. I was delighted to reconnect with her if only in this little way.

As soon as I signed up I felt the heady rush of popularity as 'friend requests' poured in. All these people I know want to be my friend? Little old me? Of course now I realize that Facebook is set up so cleverly that people might be asking you to be their friend almost by accident. It combs email addresses and school affiliated lists to show you names of people you might know and might want to friend. Then, if you just twitch your finger near the enter button it shoots invitations out to them all.

But I didn't know that. I was flattered to be asked to be a friend. Yes! I will be your friend, I responded and so I jumped in. I didn't want to get "hooked" on Facebook of course, so I set up a policy for myself, 'I will only friend people on Facebook if they ask me first.' This is a little like saying, 'I will only eat the folded potato chips' to limit calories. It is a false and useless control system.

For a while I coasted by with that, only visiting Facebook if someone spoke to me directly (these messages come in to your email). Then I saw Richard B.'s name on someone else's friend list and I broke my first rule. Richard! I loved Richard! He was an old high school/band buddy who I'd completely lost touch with and I would love to know where he was and what he was up to. I friended him.

Now the floodgates were open. What happened to that woman whose wedding we went to in the eighties but had abruptly stopped getting Christmas cards from in the 90s? Want to know? Friend her! I started dreaming about people from my past. The neighbors we lived next door to for only one year in 1968. What were their names? There were seven kids and I played with Annette and my brother played with Ricky. Wonder what they're doing now? Look for them on Facebook! And Patti H. I was her BFF for one month in 1977 when we traveled to Spain with the Spanish club. She was from Pittsburgh; I from Detroit but we were pen pals for years. Whatever happened to her? Facebook her!

And so, like so many other people I am a bit of a fan of Facebook. After making fun of social media like the old cranky person I am, I am now a convert. I am not alone. According to Facebook the majority of their users are over 50 and that does not surprise me a bit. How else can you accumulate several dozen friends over the years unless you've lived several decades? And it is great for keeping in touch with all those people with whom you once had relationships in your storied past--from a co-worker at your first job to the kid you back-packed through Europe with--maybe you don't keep in touch by mail or phone but that doesn't mean they are forgotten.

That's the great thing about Facebook--just like email keeps us in touch in ways we would never have thought possible (my 10-year-old emails her 94-year-old Great Grandma) so does Facebook.

So yes, you nay-sayers, it is a bit of a time waster but I do indeed want to know that Wendy had fabulous salsa last week and Cher is thankful for the sunny day and Barb made a memorial rock garden for her sister this weekend.

In this tiny way I get to stay connected to all the people who were ever dear to me on a weekly basis not just through the dreary custom of Christmas cards (oh holiday letters, that's an entirely different blog). And in a world that moves ever faster I find that immensely comforting.

By the way, in case you were wondering, I'm making baked chicken and rice pilaf for dinner.

ELIZABETH EDWARDS: LESSONS IN RATIONALIZATION

An anonymous reader suggested I comment on Elizabeth Edwards so I've been letting her rattle around (Elizabeth, not the reader) in my head for the weekend to see what I can come up with.

The truth is, I am so dumbfounded, stupefied, horrified, saddened, and mystified by the whole book and tour that I cannot form any really insightful or quippy thing to say about her. She reminds me of that girl in college who dated an asshole but felt compelled to tell us constantly just how great he was despite all evidence to the contrary. No, really, when you guys aren't around he's soooo wonderful. Really. We didn't buy it then, Elizabeth, and we sure ain't buyin it now.

What is her point of all this? It can't be to get rich off her book because she knows she will not live long enough to spend that money. Is it to make sure her kids have enough money? I doubt that--surely between the two of them there's a considerable estate. Is it for fame? No, I don't think so really--I mean that can't be important when you are on your way out.

The only thing I can think of is that she wants to die in peace knowing that her decision to stay with "the cad" (as Dennis Miller so aptly called him) was the right thing to do. And because she surely knows that is not the case, she needs to really, really convince herself that it is by writing an entire book about it and hopefully convincing the rest of the world that it's a really, really good idea to live with a man who would betray you in your darkest hour with a horrible, horrible woman.

Make no mistake here: while I think that Reillo woman (what the hell is her name? I don't want to add one more hit on Google looking her up) is indeed the lowest of the low home-wrecking, predators but her crime is dwarfed by John's crime of infidelity. To quote Laura San Giacomo's character in Sex, Lies and Videotape when asked she can betray her sister by sleeping with her sister's husband, "Hey, I'm not the one who stood up in front of God and everyone and promised to be faithful to her." (going on memory here, I think that's how it went)

But John did. So this twist on the whole thing in which Elizabeth portrays her husband as a sort of dupe to a cunning woman's wiles is disingenuos at best and pathological denial at worst.

Above all, I object to the spectacle for two reasons: 1) she is passing the whole thing off as a lesson in "resilience" when it appears to actually be a lesson in "rationalization" or maybe "denial" and worse 2) she is doing this in public at the expense of her young children. This is as unforgivable as the affair itself.

So, I don't really have much new to say about this topic, but the fact is, neither did Elizabeth but that didn't stop her from writing an entire book about it.

The only thing I can hope for is that it brings her some peace at the end of her life though if it does it comes at an exorbitant price--the future peace of her children.

AWARD SEASON

everyone's a winner!

The month of May in Glenview (and in many school districts I suspect) means lots and lots of award ceremonies for all our brilliant and talented children. Of course, in a world where kids can't even attend a birthday party without getting a custom-made T-shirt, we would not expect them to finish up their school year without making sure each and every one of the little darlings is given an award, a plaque, a certificate and a big round of applause just for being you!

This means that as a parent you will get a letter or a phone call from the school inviting you to attend an award ceremony because your son or daughter has received an award for some great scholastic or athletic achievement at school.

At least that's what you think the first time you get one of those letters or calls. You get the video camera fired up and see if you can talk a grandparent or spouse or a younger sibling into going with you for the big event.

Imagine your disappointment (not to mention your mother's irritation) when you get there and find out the award is for "Good Effort In French" which is an award given to just about any kid who attended the class on a semi-regular basis. Heh heh you smile apologetically at your mom for keeping her from her pilates class as your brilliant progeny traipses across the multi-purpose room along with a dozen or so other slackers while Mademoiselle Jones hands him a "special certificate" she just printed out on her computer and says with a big smile, "Tres bien!"

I am only exaggerating a little here. To be fair, they also give out awards to children who really deserve the recognition for the nearly herculean efforts they put into the school year and the extra-curricular activities. The problem is that when you are invited to attend an award ceremony you have NO idea if your kid is going to get a real award or a bogus award. So you go, and since you've been duped before you don't make a big deal about it or even tell your spouse because you don't want him to take time off to watch your kid get an award for being above average in social studies. And THAT will be the time your kid actually wins the school award for all-around kid greatness that goes to only one kid and the newspaper will be there and they'll want a picture of your entire family and they'll wonder how such a great kid could come from such an apathetic family.

Well, that has never happened to me but it nearly happened to my friend Kelly who, a few years back, sent her husband off to work with reassurances that their son TJ would be getting some meaningless award only to find out that he was about to set a school record for receiving the most (real) awards. Thank goodness for cell-phones. We fondly remember that event as the "TJ Mihelic Awards Ceremony" around here.

Of course it helps if you can crack the code. Last year I was going to the meaningless award ceremony (You're only invited to this one if your kid is going to win several meaningless awards, I have at least figured that much out by now) only to see the parents of the superstars leaving the building. "Hey, where are you all going?" I asked naively. TJ's mom explained gently, "Oh,they have the school-wide awards first. They just finished up," she said, trying to hide behind her back the stash of gold medals and award statues her son had just won. She's a modest woman.

WTF? They have the real awards first then break up into classes for the meaningless awards and I didn't even KNOW that?

All of this came back to me yesterday when I got a letter inviting me to the Science Awards Ceremony at the High School. This is the first year I have someone in high school so now I have to try to decode the ceremony system there too. I was quite suspect of the invitation. For one thing Atticus is barely carrying a B+ in that class. Can they really award that? Maybe he found a cure for a disease or something. So I asked him about it when he got home.

"Oh that. It's nothing. I think the teacher has to give out a certain number of awards and our class is so lame he had to choose me. I wouldn't come unless you're incredibly bored."

"So you knew you were getting it?"

"Yeah. The teacher had me address the envelope to you."

Wow. That is an honor. Here, send this letter to your mom so she'll know we're giving you this prestigious award.

So I'm proposing an award system code that is just for the parents. The invitation to the award ceremony could have a three-tier code system like our oh-so-helpful homeland security threat system:

Code Blue: This is a perfunctory award given to your kid because he or she has not physically harmed anyone in this class and did show up, fully dressed almost every day of the school year. Come if you can squeeze it in between the grocery trip and the bill-paying.

Code Yellow: This is an actual award only the top 15% of the class will be given. Nifty certificates with their names printed on them will be given! You may want to attend this and even make an attempt to photograph the event on your cell-phone.

Code Orange (also known as the TJ Mihelic code): This is a REAL award. Your son or daughter not only got all A's but also headed up a project to implement an easy-to-use recycling system for the cafeteria that involves the help of the special needs kids AND led the basketball team to a state-wide victory (Judy, you will never see a Code Orange so just don't worry about it.)Bring your family and your camera and your video camera with tripod.

Happy awards season. I hope your children get many awards, real and otherwise!

THE AUCTION

If you were in downtown Grand Rapids Michigan on Friday night at midnight you would have seen my family, all dressed up, parading down the street carrying a large potted plant, a piece of artwork, and pushing Lilly in an ergonomically correct office "chair of the decade" as we left the Western Michigan Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund 2009 PROMISE CELEBRATION "Honoring Our Roots", a benefit to raise funds and honor my parents for all their work they've done over the years for JDRF.

We hadn't meant to get all that stuff but we had been swept away in the moment.

By now you have all been to a fund-raising auction so you have probably seen this moment in the evening when, like a perfect storm, the crowd, pumped up by a few drinks, moved to tears by the stories of the afflicted/needy, and spurred on by a little testosterone, begins to bid on stuff they don't really need or want as if it were the last face-mask in a swine-flu pandemic. And there was Jeff bidding like a madman on the "chair of the decade" even though on the ride over we had all made fun of the chair when we read about it in the auction booklet. (Which is funny but not nearly as funny as what happened to my new friend who told us the next morning at the hotel breakfast that she got the Yanni tickets--another much-ridiculed auction item--because her husband (who could not attend) had circled them in the booklet and when she'd called to tell him of their good fortune he said, "Yanni? Who is that anyway?" --and just to clarify, Yanni is not the guy who plays the alto sax, that is Kenny G., Yanni is the other one.)

Anyhoo, at the peak of this bidding frenzy, Jeff, who had already procured the once derided but suddenly priceless chair of the decade and was (as my sister said later) being played like a fiddle by the auctioneer, tried to buy nothing for $5,000.

Yes, nothing. At this point in the auction they had sold all the items and vacations and they began to sell off "a piece of the cure" (or some such term, I don't really remember) and the starting bid was $5,000. It sounds crazy but it works. In fact it works really well--it was madness--here we were in Michigan, a state hit hard by the recession and people were fighting for the chance to buy $5,000 of nothing.

My brother, no stranger to the world of charity auctions (his ex runs these kinds of events) leaned over and said, "Here's where the open bar pays for itself."

Indeed.

Fortunately, I could see Jeff out of the corner of my eye when he raised his bid card and I smacked his hand down before he bought $5,000 of nothing.

This was all for a very good cause. Juvenile Diabetes, a disease that affects my own brother, is a nasty thing that chips away at a human and forces children to prick their own skin several times a day to check their blood sugar and then inject insulin. This is not the kind of diabetes your overweight, eighty year-old aunt has (though she shouldn't have to endure that either) it's the kind babies and toddlers and teens get. It takes eyesight and fingers and ultimately internal organs. It shortens life-spans. In short, it sucks.

So I wasn't too upset when a few minutes later Jeff went ahead and bought $500 of nothing because of course it wasn't nothing at all--it was the chance to help find a cure for this monster and in the end that is a lot more satisfying than an ergonomically correct chair of the decade.

If you would like to buy some nothing, please go to http://www.jdrf.org/ and click on the donate button. I'll let you sit in my chair next time you come over. Did I mention it's the chair of the decade?

PS A special shout out to my new friends and fellow David Sedaris fans from TC and GR. Best wishes for keeping your babies healthy and enjoy that Yanni concert.

PPSS Another shout out to Dick, Dora, Helen, and Marilyn who have also been deeply affected by this rotten disease.

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THINGS THAT PASS FOR CONVERSATION AROUND HERE

Driving in the car on Sunday during the dedication of the new Holocaust Museum:

Grace: What are all these signs for?
Me: This is where the Nazis are demonstrating against the Holocaust Museum.
Grace: What are they demonstrating against?
Me: I have no idea. Sometimes they try to deny it happened. They are hateful.
Lilly: If they're Nazis shouldn't they be proud it happened? You'd think they'd be bragging about it.
Me: There's a special place in hell for them. (pause) Except I don't believe in hell.
Grace: (giggling) Maybe there's a really unpleasant place in heaven for them.
Me: Yeah, with bad lighting and poor service.

Waiting in the car for Grace after her voice lesson.

Lilly: So if they didn't teach sex ed at your school how did you learn about it?
Me: Linda Boshoven told me walking home from Girl Scouts.
Lilly: What? She just said, "Here's how babies are made"?
Me: No, she told a bad joke with a naughty word that means sex then she asked if I knew what that meant and when I said "no" she told me.
Lilly: What was the bad word?"
Me: You know, the "F" word.
Lilly: (incredulous) The "F" word means SEX!
Me: Yes, what did you think it meant?
Lilly: I didn't think it meant anything. I just thought it was a really bad word.
(Pause to think about it) That makes no sense at all! I mean "sex you", "sex off" "what the sex" none of that makes any sense at all.

door opens and Grace gets in

Lilly: Hey Grace, did you know the "F" word means sex?
Grace: No.
Me: Well what did you think it meant?
Grace: I didn't think it meant anything. I thought it was just a bad word.

While eating lunch on Saturday

Me: I heard on the radio that those Navy Seals were such good sharp-shooters that they dropped all three pirates without harming the parrots on their shoulders.
Lilly: Did they really have parrots?
Atticus: No, it's a joke.
Lilly: Oh. Ha ha.
Me: If I were a modern-day parrot I would totally wear a fake pirate on my shoulder.
Atticus: I think you said that backwards.
Lilly: No, I like it the way mom said it. If I were a parrot I would wear a fake pirate under me.
Me: That is really hard to say--pirate parrot pirate parrot
All three kids: Parrot pirate parrot pirate parrot pirate......

SEX ED PART II

As I was saying, Lilly just finished up Sex Ed in her fifth grade science class. I was pleased to see that some things have changed since Atticus took it four years ago. The biggest change is that now, they do indeed explain that part A goes into part B. Actually, I'm not sure if this is a true change in the curriculum or an executive decision made on the part of Ms. S (Lilly has the same teacher that Atticus had) who was tired of year after year teaching a topic when half the class was completely confused. The confused half tended to be the boys since (as I also mentioned earlier) it is the dad's job to tell the boys about sex and a lot of them simply don't do it.

Bravo for Ms. S who decided to take the bull by the horns and tell them exactly how babies are made. And kudos to her too for the creative explanation of erections (as passed on to me by Lilly). "She said it's like a long balloon that you have to blow up or it won't go in the hole." Good point. That shriveled up balloon is not going anywhere if you get my drift. It's a not-so-subtle point I would have forgotten to cover myself.

I realized just how comfortable the fifth-graders were getting with the whole subject when Lilly turned from the computer the other day and asked me, "Mom, is menstruation when the penis gets blown up so it can go in the vagina?" "No," I answered, peeling potatoes and trying to picture my grandmother answering that question a few decades ago, "Menstruation is your period. You're thinking of an erection."

She smacked her forehead and said,"Oh yeah! Of course," then turned to the computer and typed furiously.

"What are you doing anyway?"

"I'm instant-messaging Alex and we're studying for the science test together."

Is that what they call it now? In my day that kind of talk would have gotten your knuckles smacked with a ruler (not really, it was the 70's no one was hitting anyone in the public schools but I wanted to say that). Certainly I would have been much too mortified to say any of the words in her question in front of a boy or type them if such space-aged technology existed back then. Secretly I was thrilled that my kids are so much more comfortable with the whole human body sex thing than kids were in days of yore.

So I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. All three kids have gone through sex ed so all three are well-versed in the topic. I've also had the "always wear a condom--every time" conversation with all three of them repeatedly. (By the way, did you know that experts say when it comes to uncomfortable subjects like sex and drugs and why all Illinois governors go to jail that you should talk about these things so frequently that kids have no memory of a single conversation--it's just something they grow up hearing about. Good to know especially for those of us who remember with excruciating detail the talk our mother gave us --or in my case the talk my mother never gave me.

Anyhoo, like I said I was feeling pretty cocky and forward-thinking and progressive on the whole thing until Saturday night when the family watched a PG-13 movie in which one of the mean high-school girls says to the nice high-school girl "I've heard you've never had an orgasm." (On what planet do high-school girls talk this way, I wonder?) and Lilly had to ask, "What's an orgasm?"

Uh-oh. Ms. S didn't you cover that?

"Oh," I said breezily, "That's the part that feels good so you want to have sex. Otherwise who would do that?"

"Oooohhhhh!" Lilly said, as another piece of the mysterious puzzle fell into place, "It actually feels good?"

"Yes," Jeff offered, "It's the part that makes you want to say yippee." Grace looked mortified and Atticus heh-heh-ed exactly like my brother Paul did at that age.

Later in the movie when said nice girl had her orgasm (thankfully off-screen)Lilly asked, "If it feels good why does she sound like she's in pain?"

I ignored the question.

Some things a girl has to figure out on her own.

Unless Ms. S wants to cover that for me too.

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.