May 29, 2007

Packing Heat

Last week while browsing the library in a rather foul mood, I swore that I will never, ever read any book that utilizes a pun in the title, just on the principle that it's stupid and cliched. And yet, that doesn't stop me from using bad puns for blog titles. I'm not really packing heat,literally or figuratively. I'm just packing, and it's hot.

See why it's a good idea to not read crap with puns in the title? It's a huge indicator that bad writing will follow.

I made it home from my hometown late Sunday night, once again loving the delays that come with train travel despite the whining of everyone else.

Clara Jane has been doing fine at my parents' house, despite clinging to me all weekend.I'm sure her clinginess had everything to do with the recent uprooting,and absolutely nothing to do with Saturday night's lesson in pet amputation.

You might recall a post I recently made regarding my grandparents' cats, who have no tails. It's not pretty, especially in the case of Elmer #2:

Don't worry, he does have a head. It's not pretty, either.

He's sweet, I'll give him that. He's had a rough life, so it makes sense that he looks like holy hell. Elmer #2 is somewhere between 12-17 years old. The neighbor ran over Elmer #2's mother when he was an kitten. His father, Elmer #1, stowed away in my grandparents' RV during a camping trip to the Truman Lake. Despite having Elmer #1 for several years, my grandparents didn't recognize this as being their cat, and therefore booted him from the RV. It wasn't until they got home and said, "Hmmm ... have you seen Elmer?" that they realized what had happened.

I didn't take a photo of Elmer #2's neck. He recently tussled with a bobcat. The results? Really not pretty.

A few years ago, Elmer #2 got into a tussle with another animal - a regular occurance, even though he never learned how to fight and routinely gets his ass kicked. In this tussle, he received a tail injury that led to an infection that led to amputation.

On Saturday night, my granny invited us to dinner. I can't remember the last time Granny cooked dinner for me. I do know that as of this past weekend, B. and I have been together for nine years, and in that time Granny has never cooked for us.

Friday morning I texted The Cuz to tell her where we'd be having lunch. She texted me back to inform me that she was preparing to eat fried chicken at Granny's.

Was I invited? Uh, no. So I whined and pissed and moaned until I guilted my 81-year-old grandmother into making dinner for me on Saturday night.

After dinner, we were outside, where Elmer (the #2 is somewhat pointless, since #1 made his trip to the lake in 1995.) attached himself to Clara Jane. Which, incidentally, is how the Elmers got their name. Grandpa Chuck claimed that Elmer #1 stuck to Lady, their morbidly obsese, gravy-eating dog, like glue. Anyway, I pointed out Elmer's lack of a tail to Clara Jane, who went about the business of looking for Elmer's tail:

He, in turn, looked for Clara Jane's missing tail:

Otherwise, the weekend was low-key, which I needed. B. rebuilt the house from the bottom up while we were gone. Yesterday, he continued while I packed. And packed. And packed and packed and sweated and packed.

Today, I went in search of more cheap furniture. Scored at two thrift stores: an $11 solid wood coffee table and a $5 antique floor lamp. I also made my first-ever trip to Old Time Pottery. I've already made this request of my spouse and mother, and now I'm going to make it to all of you. I want you to make me a solemn vow that, if I ever say that I'm considering a trip to Old Time Pottery, you will slap me hard across my face.

Tonight? I pack some more. Seventeen days to finish it all.

Posted by Robin at 03:58 PM | Comments (124)

April 09, 2007

Burn, Peep, Burn

Instead of starting with every detail of my Easter weekend, I'll jump directly to what you've all been waiting for...

What happens when you roast a Peep over an open flame, as illustrated by my cousin Hillary, better known as The Peep Reaper:

While some party-goers weren't impressed with the delightfully crunchy, caramel-coated runny marshmallow, most of us thought they were pretty damn good. Even a few avowed Peep-haters, like B.

For this, I spent a year and a half of my life in culinary school. So I could figure out that hey! Peeps cooked over an open flame might be good! And it was worth every tuition dollar, I tell ya.

Besides, they looked pretty cool. This is how traditions are born.

In case you haven't figured it out by now - which means you're probably new - my family's not big on doing things the way "normal" families do things. To whit: did your Easter dinner look something like this:

Ours looked like this:

We're a weenie-roasting family, but until now the weenie-roasting was a little more seasonally appropriate. My grandpa, uncle, and I have birthdays in late October, and that's when we used to set fire to our food. But recently my parents bought one of those patio-sized fire pits on clearance, and my mom decided that there would be no finer way to celebrate Christ rolling away the rock than to stab some tube steaks and set them aflame.

You know the awful cold snap that's hit the midwest, killing crops and causing havok? I think my blasphemous weenie-roasting kin might be responsible. I'm sorry.

Despite the fact that it was 27 degrees with a wind chill of "My God, my tit just fell off!", some of us brave souls loaded into the surrey for a ride:

That's my dad, family pal Blake, and Chiggar in the front seat. Clara Jane and I sat in the middle. The Peep Reaper and B. sat in the back. And all of our faces fell off from the cold.

Out of the 2309 people who attended the weenie roast on Saturday night - seriously, I don't know where all these people come from; our family's not very big - only a few of us were hearty enough to brave the cold: the two pre-adolescent boys, B., Peep Reaper, and me. You might recall that B.'s from Up Nort' - Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where he was raised in the woods and most of his meals were cooked with fire, often after being run through with an arrow. He was in his element and barely set foot inside all evening, opting instead to stay in the cold and seeing what would be tasty fresh from the fire. At one point he was muttering, "That spot right there ... the flames are perfect. I wish I had a chicken leg to stick in there."

Great Aunt Helen Hottie came out for some marshmallows in front of the freezing-dead magnolia tree:

Chiggar the Dingo stayed with us, too. How lucky are we? Blake almost got him airborne through the magic of centrifugal force:

But that was nothing compared to the moment when we realized that the large stick in Chiggar's mouth had flames burning on one end. Alas, no photos of that event, as I was running for my life.

It wouldn't be a holiday gathering in my family if someone didn't run for her life sooner or later. Speaking of which...

The Cuz is the source of many of our family's funniest sagas. My personal favorite happened when we were kids; she probably wasn't more than 5 or 6. Our whole family was doing what we used to do in those days: sleeping outside and providing ample feasts for the mosquitos at Truman Lake. Of course, every night involved weenies and marshmallows cooked over an open fire, and fried potatoes cooked in the electric skillet because no way was my mom camping without electricity, real toilets and showers, and shelter, for which I'm eternally grateful. Anyway, Wendy had achieved what every marshmallow-roaster aims for - the nirvana of having a ball of molten, blackened, sugar fireball on a stick. She stepped away from the fire with her flaming fireball and promptly dropped it into the center of Granny Viv's great big bouffant hairdo.

It's an important moment in every family when torches are passed to the next generation. Even if the torch is a flaming marshmallow on a stick.

Granny Viv remained inside all evening. I don't blame her. Not one bit.

Posted by Robin at 09:16 AM | Comments (8)

December 27, 2006

Dogs Love the Great Taste of Gravy. And Babies

Now that the holiday has passed, I know the question you're asking yourself. You're asking, "Gee, I wonder what Robin's family did with all that leftover creamy chicken gravy?"

As I mentioned before, my grandmother used to have a dog that subsisted on leftover gravy. This dog died six years ago. I think you can guess why.

Well, Christmas miracle of miracles, there's a new stray dog/gravy disposal unit hanging out at Granny's house. It was a good Christmas for him. As for Granny, I think she takes the brand name Gravy Train a smidge too seriously.

As for last night's dots:

Still home. Still exhausted.

You know what I love? Amazon.com wish lists. This year B. and I did all of our shopping for each other from our wish lists. My parents and grandparents also stuck to our wish lists. From a purely materialistic standpoint, I can't think of a more perfect Christmas booty than a big stack of books with a few CDs and DVDs tossed in. Shopping was sans stress for everyone. We still had some surprises. Everyone's happy.

I got two delightful surprises. The Cuz got us a goodie box from Hell's Kitchen.

My brother-in-law - the one I haven't talked to in over five years - gave me a subscription to Craft. I almost had to craft myself some new pants when I got this information, for I nearly crapped the ones I was wearing. This happens every year, but the level gets higher each year. I've never had a good relationship with my brother-in-law, and have always said that it's just as well he moved to Germany shortly after I married his brother. Otherwise, I have no doubt there would be a lot of family feuding going on. Last time I talked to him was in October, 2001, when he was briefly stateside between moving from Germany to Portugal. We were barely more than civil to each other. And yet, every single year, something great shows up from him. Last year it was a lovely Portuguese cookbook. The year before that, he had his girlfriend paint a portrait of Clara Jane for us. I don't understand it at all, but I appreciate it a lot.

His mother sent me the same icky cookbook she gave me for Christmas two years ago. That's all I'll say about that at the risk of sounding like the ungrateful asshole I feel like. I'm just baffled that my brother-in-law, who has no relationship with me at all, has a better grasp on my personality than my mother-in-law. Baffled and fascinated.

Clara Jane got more toys than any child should be allowed to have. I'm a bit sickened by it all. I'm also a bit terrified that The Army of Dolls that has joined our family is going to attack me while I sleep. Perhaps I should have brought Chiggar home with me. Dingos eat babies, you know.

And then he moves in for the kill...

Unfortunately, I was unable to snap a photo a nanosecond after that last one, when he had his gaping, fang-filled maw over the babydoll's head.

The Army of Dolls resided on top of very tall pieces of furniture during our visit. I'm still a bit surprised that he didn't bring down the entire china cabinet in his babydoll bloodlust.

In lieu of babydolls, Chiggar busied himself by trying to steal every single bottle of water I drank while the bottles were at my mouth. At one point he attempted such a feat while I was stirring a big, boiling, popping pot of cheese grits. At which time I informed Chiggar, "You know, the Rev. Al Green found religion when a women threw a pot of boiling-hot grits on his back. If you don't leave me the fuck alone, we'll be recreating that 'come to Jesus' moment. Go eat a damn baby and leave me alone."

Clara Jane doesn't care much about The Army of Dolls. She's too busy digging her doctor's kit. So much so that gift-unwrapping came to a dead hault once she discovered the gift contained plastic scissors. "I don't want to open presents. I just want to be a doctor." Fine by me, Toots!

Clara Jane's idea of being a doctor is a bit skewed, though. She hasn't spent much time at the doctor, since she's been blessed with freakishly good health. Apparently, the time she hasn't spent at the doctor has been spent watching old episodes of "Saturday Night Live" featuring Theodoric of York: Medieval Barber. With a stethoscope around her neck and scissors in hand, she spent four hours doing this to her father:

The pained expression on his face? Not pretend, my friends.

I gave homemade gifts almost exclusively this year. I think the only thing I bought were two shirts for my dad, some tealights that smell like dirty hippy for my mom, and two cans of pirouette cookies for Grandpa Chuck, although I think he would have been happier if I'd handed over the Johnny Cash: Legend box set my parents gave me.

For my parents, in-laws, and grandparents, I did hand-made scrapbooks of the best photos I have of Clara Jane in 2006. Upon finishing the last one at 11:24 PM last Friday night, I swore that in the near future, all scrapbooking materials will be burned in a ritualistic ceremony on the backyard during the next full moon. I am completely over gluing shit onto other shit.

My mom likes illegal goods, and a few months ago she dropped the huge hint that she'd love it if I'd whip up a CD set of CMT's 100 Greatest Country Duets. Sure! No problem! There's a great gift idea! You see, back in my file-sharing days, I would whip up compilations of all those VH1 and CMT countdown shows that caught my fancy. I haven't done one in nearly four years, and I no longer do the file-sharing thing. No problem! I have a huge music collection, including tons of classic country. I'll have a bunch!

I had 20 songs. So, for the past two months, I've been checking out heaps of country CDs from the library. Because of the Patriot Act, there's a possibility that the government might someday check my library records and see that I once checked out a Toby Keith CD and had it in my possession for two days. You can't imagine the fear and dread I live with because of this.

Everyone else got samplings of the mountains of canned stuff I've been making since summer. The in-laws got 13 jars of assorted homemade jams, jellies, pickles, and sauces, all made with my very own hands. Did I mention the cookbook I got from them? Yeah.

Next year, everyone's getting a Fuck It Bucket.

On Christmas day, we participated in my family's annual 11-person domino death match. Do you have any idea how hard it is to conduct a game with that many people, especially when three of them are hard of hearing, half of them can't shut up, six of them are so consumed with cheating that they forget to play, two of them are horking loogies on each other, everyone's in a post-dinner stupor, and four dogs are fighting under the table with such a vengence that they keep ramming their heads into the table, displacing the dominoes? You can't accuse us of laziness; my family does love a challenge. In this case, the challenge of trying to keep track of whose turn it is. The solution: after you make your play, screech like a baby pteradactyl.

When you think about it, few of life's social problems can be solved with baby pteradactyl noises. I'm proud that it was my family who discovered one that can be. BWRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAK!

It was a lovely holiday, really. Much good family-time, especially since Clara Jane recently decided that her grandpa is a-ok. For most of this year she's been down-right scared of him, along with most men. She appears to be over that stage. For the three days we were in my hometown, every sentence began with, "Hey Grandpa!" Not only that, but she's also developed a fondness for Old Grandpa Chuck and she professed her love for my cousin Travis.

Christmas Eve morning, Clara Jane and I started our own little tradition: we made gingerbread men together, which she left for Santa. I always swore I'd never get gung-ho over Santa with my kids because I'm uncomfortable with the idea of lying to her about anything. But I did it, and she loved it. We went outside before bedtime on Christmas Eve and scattered glitter-studded oats on the lawn for the reindeers to eat.

Right now, that's what Christmas magic is to her - flying reindeer and the Santa story we've fed her. Hopefully someday she'll realize the magic from making the cookies in our pajamas, showing her great-grandpa her favorite ornaments on the tree, her father doing permanent damage to his neck while she cut his hair, a questionable dog attempting to eat the heads off her dolls, and awaking from her Christmas Day nap to the sounds of her extended family, screaming like prehistoric beasts. That's what it's all about, right?

Oh, and for the record, Baby Jesus doesn't have a monopoly on that "asleep on the hay" business. Lexi and her baby, Cash, are pretty good at it themselves:

Posted by Robin at 09:23 PM | Comments (12)

December 09, 2006

About My Mother, Who is Nearly 60

My mom turns 59 on Sunday, and she's in town with my father to celebrate.

My mother talks to me on the phone daily. Sometimes several times a day. That's just the kind of mother-daughter relationship we have. In honor of her birthday, what follows is a transcription (as best as I can remember) of a call we shared earlier this week.

Mom (hissing softly): Hello?

Me: What's wrong? Why are you talking like that?

Mom (still hissing): There are Jehovah's Witnesses in the dining room and I'm hiding in the bedroom.

Me: Are they alone?

Mom (you guessed it - hissing): Of course not. They're with your father.

Me: Why are you hissing?

Mom (aghast at the stupidity of my question which she expresses through, that's right, hissing): Because I don't want them to know I'm here.

(I think she might have inserted a "Duh" at the end of the sentence, but I'm not 100% sure.)

Me: Who in the hell let in the Jehovah's Witnesses?

Mom (hissing while simultaneously yelling - a vocal feat she mastered when I was a child misbehaving in public) Your father!

(I think there might have been another "Duh" in there, but again, not sure.)

Me: Well, you know how suseptable Dad is to pursuation. I'll bet they're in the living room, taking down all your Christmas decorations.

Mom (abandoning her hiss momentarily): THEY BETTER NOT BE!

Me: Yeah, they are. I think you should go stop them. They're disemboweling all of your animated Santas that singing "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree". I can hear them.

Mom: I can't. I'm just wearing my nightgown. That's why I didn't answer the door. I was sitting at the computer, in my nightgown, when they knocked. I ran away. I think it's the barbeque man. Remember Big Jim who used to deliver barbeque? Dad saw him the other day, and he mentioned that he converted. I'm pretty sure that's him in the dining room.

Me: So, Christmas is cancelled because Dad's being converted by Big Jim the Jehovah's Witness Barbeque Man while you hide in the bedroom? "Yep, we were gonna have a big Christmas celebration, but your grandfather had to go let the Jehovah's Witnesses convert him on December 6th while Mimi hid in the bedroom in her nightie and let it happen. No Christmas for you, Clara Jane."

Mom: Shut up.

Happy birthday, Mom. Way to save Christmas.

Posted by Robin at 09:59 PM | Comments (5)

November 25, 2006

Day Twenty-Five - Bring Me My Cape Before We Crash

This has to be quick because 1) B.'s redoing my mom's network and things aren't going well, and 2) I've got one hour before the day ends.

Tonight we had a little gathering with my dad's side of the family. My eldest aunt is showing signs of age, illness, stress, and just the general consequences of leading a rough life. She and her husband live part-time in Branson, Missouri, and they're always begging family members to join them. Personally, I'd rather cross the gate into Hell instead of going into the Branson city limits.

My mom had warned me that my aunt is working in a clothing outlet store and keeps encouraging her to purchase a particular item for me. Tonight, though, I got the sales pitch first-hand.

"I know you like peacocks," she started. And I do. Somewhat. I like vintage peacock chenille bedspreads. That's about it. "We've got this cape with a peacock on it at the store, and I keep telling your mom to get it for you, since you like peacocks so much. There's this great big ol' gal who comes into the store a lot, and she wears hers all the time. You should get one. They're only 70 dollars."

I think she's on to something. From now on, I won't leave the house unless I'm wearing a cape, adorned with at least one colorful bird. Maybe more, as that's the great big ol' gal way.

Posted by Robin at 10:58 PM | Comments (8)

November 24, 2006

Day Twenty-Four - Trussing up Loose Ends Like a Turkey

Seriously. If I eat anything else for the rest of my life, I'll die. I'm sure of it. I think my spleen has been forced out of my body by the 3.8 pounds of cornbread stuffing I've consumed in the past 24 hours. However, I promised to tell you about some stuff, and I intend to do so, hopefully before my fingers expand to a size too large to be accomodated by a standard keyboard.

Sadly, I will not be poking fun at Two-Finger Bill and the Harmonica Man. Today we had a big family lunch at the cafe where they hang out. It was just Two-Finger Bill, and he was crying. Nothing breaks my heart quite like someone sad, all alone in a restaurant. I overheard the server consoling him, and it was obvious someone died. No word on whether it was Harmonica Man or not. Regardless, I can't make fun of someone when they've been all human like that.

I can, however, make fun of my family.

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit this, but in my family, when dinner's complete, everyone under the age of 50 disappears, leaving clean-up duty to the moms and old ladies. I know. I know. We're terrible human beings and need to be horse-whipped. Wait here and I'll go get the whip for you.

I blame this on the fact that, before Clara Jane was born, the last baby born in our family arrived in 1981. This lack of children has allowed us, the last generation of children, to remain as such well into adulthood. Either that, or we're just a bunch of lazy assholes content to let our mothers, grandmother, and great-aunt all the hard work.

Really, I'd like you to smack me.

Yesterday, my mom informed B., my cousin Travis, The Cuz and I that we were going to be on clean-up duty. First we tried to convince her that we all had pressing engagements to attend at 12:30. When that didn't work, we tried our usual tactic of lying on the couch while our overfed carcasses bloated. Not exactly a good tactic, but we really couldn't muster the energy to do much else. We were shooed into the kitchen, and rightfully so.

We restrained ourselves for a full five minutes before food started being flung:

Dear Jesus: I'm so thankful for the abundance you've granted me. I'm especially thankful that you've blessed us with so many dinner rolls that we can freely whip them at my cousin's face. Thank you.

We found a good home for the rolls that were spared from being whipped at Travis' face:

Then Travis found an efficient way to wash the pots:

Not only will we never have to clean up again, I'm pretty sure none of us will be invited back. Shut up, Mom.

After clean-up, the weather was so gorgeous that we all went outside to watch the horses.

Chloe had her Thanksgiving feast: horse shit.

It was almost as abundant as dinner rolls to be whipped at Travis' face. My parents have the best naturally-fertilized yard ever.

While sitting outside in the horse latrine, my granny - the sweet Pentecostal granny who never says anything bad - was talking about circus peanuts. Only it came out as "circuit penis". Wendy died a little inside at that moment:

I was starting to worry that this might be a sign of Granny's advancing age. Because one of my biggest skills is spotting signs of impending death and/or decreption and then panicking about them. You might recall back in October when Granny had a similar verbal slip-up involving erection-shooting. But my mom told me that when she was little, Granny once told the minister, "Maxine (my mom) likes to chew the tits off of bobby pins," so apparently she's lived a life full of accidental verbal porn. Who knew?

We didn't actually put paper plates in the dishwasher, but after our clean-up, we realized we should have, just to guarantee that we wouldn't be asked back.

After the family left, my parents, B., Clara Jane and I headed downtown. Every Thanksgiving night, they light up the restored old hotel, followed with fireworks set to "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy".

I destroyed my back and got my glasses snatched right off my face:

This lighting/fireworks business is pretty new. As in, this isn't something that we always did after Thanksgiving. For most of the time I lived in my hometown, the hotel was a rat-trap flophouse. A few years ago it was fully restored to its Jazz Age splendor. B. and I spent our wedding night there. It's rather astounding to see the transformation of my little town.

I was also amazed that I only recognized one person in the crowd. I had assumed that I would see people I knew, and would be recognized by people from my past. I neglected to remember that I lived here for 18 years, but I've lived elsewhere for over 15 years. My mark in my hometown is mostly gone. It's a different place now, one that shoots fireworks off the roof of an 80-year-old building. And that's fine with me.

Posted by Robin at 08:11 PM | Comments (11)

November 23, 2006

Day Twenty-Three? Four? The Things to Remember for Later

I'm far too triptophaned out to do any justice to ... what was I saying? Right. So here's a list of things I'm going to try to tell you tomorrow:

• Cleaning the kitchen. With photos! It was that exciting. Really.
• Two-Finger Bill and the harmonica player.
• Circuit penis.
• Paper plates in the dishwasher.
• Downtown in the hometown.
• Horse shit.
• High blood pressure diagnosed by one of the "Trading Spaces" designers who was scarfing down pizza with her family at the time.

Yep, that's pretty much Thanksgiving in these parts.

Posted by Robin at 08:26 PM | Comments (4)

November 13, 2006

Day Thirteen - Clean Nuts

My life just isn't exciting enough to support 30 blog entries in a row, so I'm going into the vaults today. I can't remember if I've told this story here before. I do know that I've told it everywhere else, but so severe is my lack of material, I'm telling it yet again. I considered being really lazy and simply pasting the piece I wrote regarding this story years ago, the one that landed me a long-term gig with a food magazine, but I'm going to take the effort to retell it. Which actually means I'm too lazy to look for the original on my hard drive.

This isn't random, though. A few minutes ago I glanced at the book for my recent-acquired bread machine. There's a recipe on the cover, written in my mom's handwriting, for English toffee, which is where our story begins.

Back in 1995, I was fresh out of college, living in my first apartment without roommates, and discovering a love for cooking I didn't realize I had. That holiday season, I learned to make English toffee, one of my all-time favorite candies. I'd spread a cup of chopped pecans in a pan, then cook three-quarters of a cup of brown sugar with half a cup of butter until it did that thing that candy does that makes it, well, candy. I'd dump the hot sugar and butter over the pecans, then sprinkle it with half a cup of chopped chocolate, which would melt from the heat of the sugar-butter. An hour later, when everything had cooled and hardened, I'd have a pan filled with sugary, buttery, nutty, chocolatey goodness, which might be one of the best goodnesses known to humanity.

British food gets a bad rap, but they totally make up for it be virtue of inventing a food that it nothing but butter and sugar. That forgives a lot of culinary sins, even the existance of Marmite.

Anyway, I made pounds upon pounds of English toffee that holiday season. I made it for friends, for my office, for myself. I could even make it while slightly drunk on cheap white zinfindel, so adept I was at toffee-making.

For whatever reason, my mom and I made plans to have a big ol' cooking day on December 23rd. Unusual, because most holiday cooking in my family involves my mom standing in the middle of the kitchen, hands on her hips, sighing heavily while she says, "Either do something useful or get the hell out of the way." I was going to do my toffee and rum balls. She was going to make homemade rolls (with the bread machine that's currently sitting on my kitchen table, incubating an oat loaf) and I don't even remember what else. Before we got to work, we paid a visit to my granny.

Now, my granny knows something about making sweet stuff. We all know that she's the jelly-making queen of west-central Missouri. She's also a wiz with peanut brittle, and my parents and I ran for the tins of it that day. As we shoveled it in, not even a bit concerned about ripping our maws to shreads with jagged brittle bits, Granny told us what was, without question, the most disturbing thing I've ever heard her say.

Now, keep in mind my granny grew up poor with a huge family during the Great Depression. She's thrifty, and never throws anything away. Ever. She used to have a dog that I'm pretty sure subsisted entirely on leftover biscuits and gravy. When I was a kid and decided to start a stamp collection, Granny disappeared to her attic, returning with vases filled with several decades-worth of cancelled postage stamps. I had a collection in a day. Kind of takes the fun out of it, really.

"I just couldn't get that brittle to set," she said while we behaved like sugar-covered peanut-starved coyotes. "I left it for several hours and it was still liquid by the time I went to bed. But then I couldn't sleep for thinking about it. So I got up, dug it out of the trash, washed the peanuts and remade it."

We stopped the feeding frenzy.

"We're eating peanuts that have been in the trash?"

"Well, I washed them. They're just fine!"

And for the next hour, my family brutally teased a sweet, candy-making old lady for being so damn cheap that she couldn't sleep over $3-worth of discarded peanuts, which she later fed to her family.

Think about that the next time you try to swipe a handful of Granny's awesome holiday party mix.

A few hours later, my mom and I were back at her house, confident in our cooking abilities, knowing we would never, ever feed anyone discarded and washed peanuts.

Now, Granny is the sweetest person in the world and would wish no harm on anyone. But Granny is also a very devout Pentecostal. While I'm sure she would never ask God to unleash His wrath on anyone, I'm not convinced that, if God witnessed anyone making jabs at one of his finer followers that He wouldn't do a little manipulation. This is the only possible explaination for why I used butter-flavored Crisco in my rum balls and my English toffee. My butter toffee. Repeatedly. The rum balls had the texture of boozy mothballs, and I spent hours making toffee, waiting for it to set, watching it burn to the black tar that fills my soul, throwing it out, and starting over.

In the meantime, my mom had approximately 274 batches of dinner rolls fail to rise.

About six hours into this cooking melee, I left the house for real butter, and so I could weep in the car and while walking the aisles of the grocery store. When I returned home, I looked through the window in the back door before entering the kitchen, and immediately started backing away from what I witnessed.

The cabinet doors under the sink were flung open. The bottom half of my dad's body stuck out of the doors, surrounded by heaps of tools. My mom came running to the door to let me in, and I shook my head in horror.

I'm not going back into that culinary house of terror! You can't make me!

Dad was taking the pipes apart to retrieve a towel, which had been snatched from my mom's hands by the garbage disposal. "Next time it's your hand," it growled.

"My God! The authorities need to get over here and rope this unholy place off with police tape before we all die!" I wailed. And then I proceeded to make batch #492 of my English fucking toffee, because 1) I finally had real butter, 2) I'm tenacious, and 3) I'm an idiot.

Even with the real butter, something went horribly wrong and my golden toffee turned black. I didn't give a shit. I dumped it onto my now-stale pecans, tossed a handful of chocolate chips in their general directions, and took my ass to bed.

The next morning, I walked into the kitchen to find my mom standing at the work island, perfectly-sliced rectangles of toffee on a plate before her smiling face. "My toffee! It's perfect! Christmas miracle!" I squealed.

"Well, not quite. Yours never set up," she said. "I made this batch and it looks pretty good, don't you think? Have some."

I bit into the candy, and it was heaven. Sweet, buttery, tooth-shatteringly perfect.

"I didn't realize you had more pecans," I said. "I thought we only had the half a cup I used last night."

"Well, no, we didn't have more pecans. I, uh ... "

Oh lord, no.

"I rinsed your toffee goo off the pecans and reused them. But they never went into the trash can! I swear!"

I continued eating. "You know, the only part of this that gives me any hope at all is the fact that, at least you washed a slightly more expensive nut. When my turn comes to wash nuts, there's a chance it'll be something classy, like cashews. Or maybe macadamias, if I work really hard and marry well."

It was five years later, and they were really pricey locally-grown black walnuts from a botched batch of cookies that never got baked.

Shut up. They rocked.

Posted by Robin at 03:38 PM | Comments (9)

October 10, 2006

Please Don't Shoot the Gift Horse

I have a thing for green tomatoes. I love green tomatoes. I love them in all three of their edible forms: I love them in pie form; I love them in fried form, especially on the fried green tomato BLT at Lynn's Paradise Cafe; I love them in pickled form, especially on a Superdawg.

Last Friday morning, before my family came to town, I was talking to my mom and she relayed this message from my granny: would I like the last few green tomatoes from her garden? With this verbage, I thought perhaps I'd get enough tomatoes for a batch of fried ones, so I said yes, please.

With all the craziness of the weekend, I didn't get a good look at my green tomatoes. All I knew was that a grocery bag was placed near the air conditioner vent in my dining room. "That's a lot of tomatoes," B. said on Sunday when he walked past it. For some reason, this didn't register with me, and I continued about my business, noting that I should plan on making a pint or two of green tomato pickles.

While Clara Jane's visiting my parents, I had intentions of making some applesauce to accompany the spiced applesauce muffin mixes I'm going to sell on Etsy. Then I intended to make some apple pie filling and homemade granola, also to sell on Etsy as apple pie crisp kits. Today, I gathered my shopping list, prepped my canner, and at the last minute, I remembered that I needed salt and dill for my two or three jars of pickles.

By the time I returned home, I had about four trees' worth of Jonathan apples and was all set to go about my work when, dammit, pickles! Why do I keep forgetting this bag of green tomatoes?

I whipped out my trusty kitchen scale and plopped the green tomato bag one top, prepared to start dividing my recipe while I watched the dial whirl around. I think I even heard it go "SPROING!" when it surpassed its breaking point.

Just how many green tomatoes do I have, anyway?

Why, I have eight pounds of green tomatoes. Eight pounds on the dot.

This is what my "few tomatoes for a batch of fried green tomatoes" looks like:

And that's minus the jar I took to Angie tonight. So massive was my pickle-making undertaking that I wasn't finished with it in time for our 6:00 dinner date. I left the last batch gurgling in the canner under B.'s watchful eye while I ran out the door, reeking of dill, garlic and vinegar.

Thirteen pints of green tomato pickles.

Do you know how many hot dogs I'm going to have to eat to get rid of all those pickles? Well, I don't know either, but I'll bet it's gonna be a lot.

It's such an assholish thing to get irritated when someone's over-generous. But I do get a little irritated when people give me too much of a good thing, especially when that good thing requires work. But sweet Jesus, I have a dozen pints (well, ten, because I'm foisted that big quart jar onto Granny next time I see her) of pickled green tomatoes, made the way I like them with only vinegar, garlic, dill and hot peppers, not a lick of sugar or any other spice better suited to baked goods, unlike the recipe I linked above.

I'm trying to talk myself out of being irritated that I spent my day making these pickles instead of making stuff to sell, which I'm going to have to make tomorrow with Clara Jane underfoot, or on Thursday while she's at daycare because I've got about a bazillion apples that are going to go bad if I don't get busy.

I should have known I had the better part of a bushel of green tomatoes in my possession, and I should have known that's what I was getting when Granny asked if I wanted "a few" tomatoes. That's how Granny operates. "If you need one, she'll give you three!" my mom told me today while I was pissing and moaning about The Green Tomatoes That Ate My House.

This hyper-generosity is why Granny sends Clara Jane every Missouri, Michigan and Minnesota quarter she gets. It's also why, on the first of the month, I can count on an envelope in my mailbox with a card, some photos and a check for $30. It used to be a check for $10, but then I got married so B. got his monthly $10. And when Clara Jane was born, she was added to the $10 gravy train.

It's the reason why I have a cabinet full of vintage chenille bedspreads, the kind that sell for hundreds of dollars. Not only did she give me mine for free, but they also have our family history attached to them.

I was going through my chenille bedspread phase around the time B. and I got married. Granny was making my dress, and I commented on the pretty floral chenille bedspread on her bed. I mentioned that I was coveting a double-peacock bedspread. They were going for well over $300 on eBay, completely out of my price range.

The next time I went to her house to work on the dress, she told me to go into her room, there was something for me on her bed:

Not only was it a double-peacock chenille bedspread, but it was a gift from my grandpa. He was an over-the-road trucker, and the bedspread was a gift from a run he made to Georgia in the early 1960s.

There's a photo of me in one of the six albums of my childhood photos Granny made for me, bald-headed baby, rolling around on that bedspread.

I also have a twin-size purple peacock chenille bedspread that's earmarked for Clara Jane's bed, also a gift from Granny.

I guess the point I'm making is, I need to get over myself and just be thankful. Yeah, I spent my day doing a lot of extra work, but it's work I enjoy for something I love. Had I bought all those tomatoes, it would have set me back a pretty penny, assuming I'd be able to find that many green tomatoes for sale at this time of year.

When I learned to can about six years ago, I did it because I was upset that canning was becoming a lost art. I wanted to be able to have that creative cooking outlet, to embrace the DIY spirit, and to be able to have shelves and shelves of yummies I could share with loved ones, whether they wanted them or not.

Before the first batch of pickles had a chance to cool, I was foisting a jar of them onto Angie, even though they're probably too spicy for her taste and there's a chance she's among the many, many sane people who don't enjoy unripe vegetables soaked in brine. And if I see you, there's probably a good chance I'll foist a jar onto you, too, whether you want it or not. When I do, blame Granny.

Posted by Robin at 09:31 PM | Comments (9)

October 09, 2006

An Erection-Shootin', Crazy-Soundin', House-Huntin' Good Time

I wrote this entry at least forty times last night during a bout of insomnia. Unfortunately, I only wrote it in my head, which is about as permanent as writing something with an invisible ink pen found in a box of Cap'n Crunch.

I know it involved pieces of my weekend with my visiting relatives. And pumpkins. There were definitely goofy sunglasses involved.

If Bono's alter-egos The Fly and Macphisto somehow found a way to asexually spawn, perhaps that's what the offspring would look like.

I definitely remember some domino-playing, which isn't saying much. Whenever more than five members of my family are in a room (or sometimes fewer, we're not picky), domino-playing tends to occur, as does cheating, cursing, and flinging of game-pieces.

Chickenfoot is the domino game of choice among my people. Everyone draws seven bones. Whoever has the double-sixteen places it in the center. Everyone plays off it. Whenever someone plays a double, the next three plays must contain the number on the double. First person out wins the round. Lowest score at the end of all the rounds wins the game. All bones are face value, except for the double-blank, which is worth 50 points.

In my family, avoiding those 50 points is a matter of life and death. We're not above lying, cheating, and inflicting bodily harm if it means forcing a handful of points on a loved one. No one is safe, not the family matriarch, not the littlest child.

Chickenfoot is the only thing in the world that brings my sweet Pentecostal grandmother to stray from her righteous path into the realm of lying, cussing and cheating. How bad does it make my granny? On Saturday night, when my father made a move that angered her, my usually sweet, kind granny aimed a finger-gun at him and announed, "I shot your erection!"

And then my mother and I died.

Granny claims she meant to say, "I shot in your direction" at my dad. Whatever you say, Granny. I think we now know the real reason why Grandpa often opts to not play with us.

Of course, it's time for Clara Jane to join the fray.

She's a quick study. By her third round, she was stealthily spying on Granny's dominoes and working on her method of snatching desired dominoes and ditching crappy ones. Like that dreaded double-blank. When she found it in her hands, she waved it in the air, snorted in disgust, and said, "It has no dots." She then picked up a less vile bone and said, "It's got dots. It's better."

We hadn't even started her lessons on cheating and double-blank ditching. She figured that out all by herself. She was born shortly after the holiday domino games; perhaps she was in utero, taking notes.

Hey! You wanna know what crazy sounds like? It sounds just like ten children armed with bicycle horns, crammed into ten cut-out polka-dotted buckets being pulled through a pumpkin patch by an ATV. B.'s the one who claimed that's what crazy sounds like. And since he was the one crammed into a bucket in the middle of those kids, I'm inclined to believe him.

By Sunday, my family, including my child, fled town. Do you blame them? And what do B. and I do anytime we find ourselves with unallotted time? Why, we haul ourselves over to Pretty Town, of course. Being Sunday, it was open house day. We got to see the interiors of three Pretty Town houses.

House #1 was a treat. I'd seen this house listed online, and it boasted a view of the St. Louis downtown skyline from the living room. I couldn't fathom how this could be, but I saw it and it was amazing. The whole house was amazing. Unique, interesting archetecture, a balcony and a downstairs deck, picket fence, fireplace, gorgeous views of the wooded bluff behind the house. I was smitten, until I had this conversation with the real estate agent:

Me: This is the Signal Hill school district, right?

Agent: Oh, no. Of course not. Signal Hill ends three houses from here. This is in the East St. Louis school district. But that was the school district to be in when this house was built. The original owners fought to be annexed into East St. Louis.

Me: __________________

Agent: Of course, you'll want to send your child to the Catholic school.

House #2 was, by B.'s definition, "icky". I wouldn't have gone that far, but it certainly wasn't the right house for us.

House #3 was a ranch house in a nice 1960s subdivision. While there's nothing wrong with ranch houses or nice 1960s subdivisions, that's not where I've ever wanted to live. It ranks right up there with my desire to live in a gorgeous house in one of the worst school districts in the country. That real estate agent was helpful, too. She had this to offer:

Agent: Have you been to any other open houses today?

Me: We went to two in the Signal Hill area.

Agent: I just don't understand the draw of that area.

Me: Um, beautifully restored old homes? A great school? A sense of neighborhood and community? Idyllic Rockwellian boulevards? Convenient access to Main Street?

Agent: *hmph* The taxes are higher.

Really, I'm not complaining. We weren't looking to buy; we were looking to get a better idea of where we want to be, and where we don't want to be. We explored. We fell a little more in love with the town. We partook in really, really terrible real estate photography:

This house has a stove as old as I am, a support beam, and a light fixture creeping up on the photographer:

This house is on the dark side:

This house has a big, big, big puffy couch:

This one has pine that's been very, very knotty:

This one has everything I ever wanted in a house, including a crescent moon and star on the chimney that you can't really see in the picture but believe me, it's there and it's killing me that I can't move in today:

This one has a neighbor who's using a Jack Daniel's Country Cocktails promotional banner as a storm door curtain, which is a little too similar to where I currently reside:

This one is fabulous, but not quite fabulous enough to sacrifice my daughter's education. Perhaps if she'd been born a smidge less smart, we'd reconsider:

This one features your cousin Treavor. He'll be staying with us while he waits for his band to get back together:

Posted by Robin at 06:15 PM | Comments (9)

September 12, 2006

Scenes From My Hometown

No, I'm not visiting my hometown; I'm safely ensconsed in my little suburban St. Louis world. But I had three things that made me think of my hometown yesterday:

#1 - I've been loving the photos from the Missouri State Fair posted on Flickr by St. Louisan Curioush. I haven't been to the fair in well over a decade, but it looks like it hasn't changed a bit.

#2 - My mom sent me The Scariest Email Ever yesterday. Apparently, the worst music festival in the history of the free world is coming to town! If you open that link without turning your speakers down first, may God have mercy on your souls and your hearing. Saliva! Drowning Pool! Some band fronted by a wrestler! This is some vile shit, people. Vile.

The summer before my second birthday, the Ozark Music Festival came to town. That's right, nearly 300,000 hippies converged on my little hometown to see Skynyrd, the Marshall Tucker Band, BTO, Jefferson Airplane, and, natch, Ozark Mountain Daredevils.

My dearly departed paternal grandpa, Don, was known to tell tales of seeing every single one of those hippies skinny-dipping in the creek that ran under highway 65 on the way to his farm.

While I was too young to remember this event, I wish I'd been able to see Grace Jones purchasing bottles of Robitussin at one of the proud-to-be-Sedalia-owned Bingaman Grocer stores in lieu of real drugs.

And you know what? I didn't know until just now, when I read the Wikipedia link, that Springsteen played the festival. Again, while I was too young to attend, I'd like to think that Springsteen's presence in my hometown during my tender age somehow turned me into the Springsteen nut I've been for most of my life. Maybe we skinny-dipped in the same creek at some point. I don't know, but knowing that he was there makes me far happier than it should.

Anyway, while the upcoming punkass angry metal-o-rama promises to only fill the town with 20,000 angry young white men and absolutely no talent, I've still warned my mom to not let my granny go to Wal-Mart that weekend. She's such a sweet lady and she doesn't need to see any of those people.

And no, I will most certainly not be attending that concert. Jesus, no.

#3 - You know you're gonna love this, because it involves The Cuz!

We don't come from the most touchy-feely of families, but damn if we don't come from funny people. In other words, don't expect a card covered with flowery shit when special occasions roll around. Expect an obscene bumper sticker stuck to your vehicle when you're not paying attention.

So, imagine my surprised when, through the powers of the internet, I learned that The Cuz had purchased an anniversary card for B. and me.

Aw, how pretty. A bird. And it's a bird that has something in its mouth, so it's unlike to peck my eyes. And peace. I love peace. It's one of my favorite things ever. Let's see what the inside of the card says.

And a happy Rosh Hashanah to you, too, my Baptist-raised kin! You do realize how badly this is going to confuse our Pentecostal granny come Christmastime, right?

But that's not all! There's a gift!

Mmmmmm ... anniverary tacos! Hometown anniversary tacos, even! Let's hurry on out and take advantage of this!

Oh, but wait! There's a catch!

Hmmmm ... I'm not familiar with Border Foods. Let's take a gander at their website.

Dammit! Looks like I have to go to Minnesota, Wisconsin, or Wyoming to get my damn anniversary/Rosh Hashanah taco. Best get in the car and get on it. Dinnertime's only three and a half hours away.

Best anniversary card ever! Because, although it's actually a card for a holiday I don't celebrate and includes a coupon for a free taco several states away, I can say in all honesty that I've never had an anniversary card that made me laugh so hard that Taco Bell Fire Sauce oozed from my ears until this one.

Brava, The Cuz. Brava.

Watch your ass come Shivaratri.

Posted by Robin at 01:50 PM | Comments (9)

July 06, 2006

"I'm one can of Schlitz away from living in a trailer"

That's what I told B. last night. We were watching CMT's 20 Greatest Southern Rock Songs, and I was completely lathered because "Freebird" was number three, when obviously it should have been in the top slot. What the fuck? Yeah, "Sweet Home Alabama" has that guitar riff that defines the genre. And there's a complexity to its narrative that mirrors life in the contemporary south. But it's not iconic, like "Freebird". You don't hear "Sweet Home Alabama" played at funerals, for God's sake!

Don't even talk to me about the omission of Whipping Post. Just ... don't.

At which point I realized I was far too emotionally invested in the show and the order of the countdown and I announced, "I'm one can of Schlitz away from living in a trailer, aren't I?" And by "trailer" I don't mean one of those new mobile homes that looks and feels just like a house. No. I mean a trailer. A tornado-taunting heap of metal, narrow enough that that a tall man can stand in the middle and touch both walls, just like the one my Aunt Earlene and Uncle Nash lived in.

Yes, I have an Aunt Earlene and Uncle Nash. I also have a cousin named Huck and know someone whose given name is Cletus. Someone named Skeeter stood with my parents when they got married.

Let's not mention how I yelled, "Those are my people!" when Ozark Mountain Daredevils were featured on the show.

I don't know if I'm getting more in touch with my roots as I get old, or if I've lived in this neighborhood too long and have inhaled too much dune buggy-tainted air, or if it's because summer brings with it the lure of the hillbilly good life, what with the fishing and camping - stuff I have never particularly enjoyed. But it seems like nearly every summer, something happens and I catch myself turning hillbilly. And each year, I seem to saunter a little further down that dirt road.

That business last week about driving through the fancy-ass neighborhood in my truck, blasting "Redneck Woman"? I wasn't making that up, or even exaggerating for comedic effect. That's the Gods-honest truth. Something deep within the core of who I am as a human being thought, "Damn prissy-pants rich bastards. Let's see how they like this!"

I'm blaming the woman who lives two houses away from me. She moved in a few months ago, mostly unnoticed. But in recent weeks, I can't help but notice. You see, her house is down the hill from ours, and when I look out my hall window, I can see directly into her backyard. And do you know what I'm seeing?

A blue above-ground swimming pool with two black innertubes floating on the surface.

I'm jealous.

This jealousy concerns me. It concerns me greatly. For most of my adult life, I've looked at the shoddy, hastily-erected above-ground pools as being a sure sign of the owners' redneck pedigree. And really, if you can afford the pool, you should be able to afford proper floatation devices that don't have 10,000 highway miles on them.

But damn if it wouldn't feel good to park my ass in one of those 'tubes, crank up Eat a Peach, cold can of beer in my hand, and spend the day doing nothing but drinkin' and floatin'.

Being drug across a lake in one of those 'tubes wouldn't be bad, either. Well, not until the dragging is over and the full-body-bruise starts to form, that is.

While I'm looking in the mirror, watching my neck turn from pale pastey white to flaming hot poker red, my dad is undergoing his own cultural transformation. Today's his 57th birthday, and he's spending it the same way he spent his 56th birthday - by driving a vanload of Amish men to a horse sale in Iowa. They think it's evil to operate a horseless carriage, but they have few qualms about riding in them with some poor soul who doesn't mind being doomed to damnation behind the wheel.

My dad has been spending a lot of time among the Amish in recent years. There's a large Amish and Mennonite population near my hometown, and my dad utilizes their horse-related services. Last year's Iowa jaunt, I understood. He was newly retired and looking for something work-like to do. But this year ... there's no excuse.

I fear my dad is one day without shaving away from changing his name to Zebulon and shunning my mom because she uses an electric stove when she cans their home-grown green beans.

Do you know what all this means? Next July 6th, once Zebulon has shunned motor vehicles, I'll be driving him and the other Amish to Iowa to earn my Schlitz money. Probably in a custom van with the images of Ronnie Van Zandt and Duane Allman, playing guitars as angels in heaven airbrushed on the side. While wearing a one-size-fits-all tube top.

Posted by Robin at 08:33 AM | Comments (17)

April 18, 2006

Easter Weekend: An Illustrated Photo Essay with Pictures

Friday morning, the whole family got up and prepared for the trip to visit my parents in my hometown for the three-day holiday weekend. There was dancing:

As I mentioned on Friday, we stopped for lunch at my beloved Shakespeare's Pizza in fabulous downtown Columbia, Missouri. I later learned that Melissa was having lunch a few tables away from us, but she didn't introduce herself. Something about not wanting her co-workers to think she's an internet stalker or something. I understand. Of course, now I'm all paranoid that I might have picked my nose, kicked an old lady, or farted loudly while I was there. Really, I think the most humiliating thing I did was walk past her table 53 times while getting drink refills. I've done worse.

Here's a photo of Clara Jane, devouring the pepperoni that led to her sleeping through her geology final. She'd already polished off the beer. She's the one who should be afraid she did something embarrassing.

When we arrived at my parents' house, we met Baby Cash.


He's cute, when he's not gnawing on a schlong that doesn't belong to him. Then, he's horrifying.

Why yes, that small red building in the background is indeed an outhouse. Do you think I'm exaggerating when I talk about my family being hillbillies?

The Easter bunny came early, and he brought a mountain of Tinky-Winkys.


Anytime there's a big and small version of similar items, she dubs them Mama and Baby. Hence, the backpack was named Mama Tinky-Winky, which reminded me of the time my friend PKB's little boy told her, "You can tell Tinky-Winky's the mommy because she's got a big butt."

We spent more time with the horses.


Bubba's such a good daddy. He spends so much time with his little boy, Cash, often nuzzling and loving him like this. When Cash does horrible things, like chew Bubba's penis like a wad of gum, Bubba calmly escorts Cash back to his mama and ditches him.

I'm going to take a brief interlude from the photo portion of this photo essay to tell you about Saturday morning and a bit of Saturday evening. There were some things that not only weren't photo-worthy, but would probably get my ass into some severely hot water if I posted photos.

My dad's oldest sister came over Saturday morning with her two granddaughters and one of their friends. You might recall her oldest granddaughter, Ditzy Little Obnoxious Eighth Grader. Yeah, you know where this is going. Truth is, DLO8thG comes by it honestly. This family's a whirlwind. They talk loudly and constantly, usually about how the world has turned and left them. Their senses of hearing are completely wasted, as they never bother to use them. My dad claims that, in the case of his sister, she wasn't always like this. She was in a terrible car accident in 1998 and suffered a head injury. He thinks that's what causes her behavior. Personally, I don't think she acts that different than she did prior to the accident. Regardless of why, she's exhausting. I got a double-dose of her two favorite conversational battering rams: computer techinical help, and which ethnic groups are ruining the world.

The morning visit brought the first battering ram. It goes something like this:

Aunt: We want to get this internet service through our cell phone provider but we don't know how it works. Do you know anything about it?

Me: I...

Aunt: We know this guy who drives his RV around until he gets an internet signal and then he just stops. How do we do that?

Me: Tha...

Aunt: We couldn't get the last internet to work and that Eye-Rain-E-Ann on the help line told us we bought the wrong computer and I know we didn't buy the wrong computer because we spent over a thousand dollars on it so it's got to work and he just doesn't want to help us.

Me: *thud* (hitting head against kitchen sink)

Repeat the same conversation 12 hours later, only with B. in my place.

Consider this image: thousands and thousands of retirees, driving around in their massive RVs, frantically searching for Wi-Fi signals to steal, noses pressed to laptop screens, expecting the internet to magically appear, then placing irate phone calls to tech support and blaming the Eye-Rain-E-Anns because they can't download the latest forwarded slide show of cute puppy pictures set to the MIDI version of "Wind Beneth My Wings". It's happening, People. It's happening right now as I type.

She surprised me this time, though. My aunt, who's one of the most racist people I've ever met, told a story about how someone was making unfair generalizations about truck drivers. Now, her son-in-law's a trucker. My dad drove a truck for 14 years. My paternal grandfather was a trucker. You don't fuck with truckers in my family. In regards to this, my aunt said, "You just can't make generalizations about entire groups of people like that. It's unfair. In every group some people are good and some are bad. And I told her that. Anyway ... let me tell you, those damn French-Canadians are awful!" At which point my brain slammed into the wall of my skull when it tried in vain to shift from the "love thy neighbor" lecture to the "horrible French-Canadians" lecture.

For the record, I'm not sure why she hates French-Canadians. I couldn't bear to listen. From what I heard, she dislikes the entire group because someone from Montreal yelled at her when she nearly backed over him with her RV. Just cause for hating an entire cultural group if I ever saw one, non?

While Clara Jane was in the other room, playing with her shopping cart, my mom's cat, Slim, came thundering through the kitchen. He went straight to the front door, frantically digging for freedom. Clara Jane came through with her cart, yelling, "Slim! Come back!" I don't even want to know what transpired before that.

We colored Easter eggs.

Then we writhed around on the floor with them in a naked Pagen ritual.

Bunny cake! Bunny dress! Mimi (my mom) apparently didn't make the cake right, so Clara Jane did some rearranging that involved putting all the purple jelly beans in her mouth, then making a large bunny nose with them. Remember this next time you eat at my mom's house.

My cousin Hillary brought a kite.

It caused much running
and glee.

We played a new game. It's called "Idiot in a Tree". My dad placed a large trash can in their backyard sitting area for their empties. This story would be more interesting if it was for their empty Stag cans. Alas, my parents rarely drink, so it's just boring old water bottle and diet soda can empties. Anyway, they couldn't keep Chiggar, my dad's dingo, out of the can. Chiggar's under the impression that empty bottles and cans exist solely for his entertainment. So, my dad tied the can up in a tree. Chigger learned how to jump up and tip it. Dad keeps moving the can higher and higher into the tree, and Chiggar keeps learning how to get into it. Hence, the idiot in the tree. Chiggar always finds a way into it, even if it means getting stuck in a trash can in a tree. It's a game where everyone wins.

My most vivid childhood memories involve my mom, digging through my thick hair, in search of bugs. Ticks and chiggars during the summer, lice during the school year. It was a nightly ritual. I'd sit in a kitchen chair, crying from my tenderheadedness while Mom fished through my hair with a fine-tooth comb. Granted, I remained bug-free for my entire childhood, so I shouldn't complain. While this photo looks like a tender moment between grandmother and granddaughter, it's actually a bug check.

There was chocolate, and it was the best Easter ever. The end.

Posted by Robin at 10:22 AM | Comments (7)

March 23, 2006

Everyone Loves Baby Horses!

I have nothing of import to post. You don't want to hear about my day. Trust me. You don't want to hear about the hissy fit Clara Jane threw when I refused to let her listen to Wilco's War on War for an 18th time in a row today. I mean, that's enough to put a dent in even my deep, abiding love for all things Wilco.

You also don't want to hear about the fit she threw because I had the audacity to first give her purple Play-Doh, and then orange Play-Doh, instead of the green Play-Doh she required to live.

And you really don't want to hear about the screaming that occured by multiple people when she slammed two of her fingers in one of my desk drawers.

You know what makes everything better? Pictures of baby horses.

Yeah, I ran like that a few hours after I gave birth. You know I did.

Because I'm an only child - or because my parents aren't right in the head, I'm not sure which - our pets were always referred to as being my siblings. So this baby horse is my new brother. By that accord, his parents are my sister and other brother, which means my family is far too Ozarkean for its own good. But that would explain some of the troubles they're having with this new little guy. His mother - my sister, the horse - is having nursing issues. Having been through breastfeeding hell two years ago, I find myself offering advice. To a horse.

I refuse to rent her a breast pump. I've gotta draw the line somewhere.

Also, to no one's surprise, the little guy was born on Wednesday, which means his name is supposed to be Ditzy Little Obnoxious Eighth Grader, after my cousin's child who shares the horse's birthday. I'm going to call him Obnoxy for short.

Posted by Robin at 10:31 PM | Comments (14)

March 12, 2006

Gimme Shelter

I'm sitting here with my new iPod on shuffle, and the first song to come up? Gimme Shelter:

Oh, a storm is threat’ning
My very life today
If I don’t get some shelter
Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away

Despite the fact that, an hour ago, I was organizing my music and thought, "Gee, I'm in the mood for some classic Stones. Maybe I'll listen to Let it Bleed while I'm writing tomorrow," this really isn't the song I want to hear right now. Even though it gets more ominous after that first verse, any mention of storms puts me further on edge tonight. I was thrilled when the iPod shuffled on to a little lighthearted Skeeter Davis.

This is the scene in my hometown, Sedalia, tonight, and it's not over. Just as one tornado warning lifts, another twister is sighted. It's bad enough that most of my family's there, but tonight, Clara Jane is there, too. She's sick of being hauled to the basement, and the sight of all my mom's home-canned green beans lining the cellar shelves is making her hungry, I'm told. For entertainment, she's been hauling my old Easter basket around, but even that's losing its charm as she gets further from her bedtime.

When the first tornado siren sounded this afternoon, she asked my mom, "What's that? I like it!"

You'll get over that soon, Kiddo. Trust me. Few sounds chill me to my core like that wail. It sounds like doom to me.

It's a common sound in this part of the world in the springtime, the low rumbling howl of the sirens. Sometimes you have to listen hard to hear them over the roar of the wind and claps of thunder. Other times, they blow when the sky's bright and calm. Only the pale green aura that surrounds everything indicates that it's not a mistake or a test. Those are the worst, because of the reminder of how quickly fate can fall out of the sky and blow lives apart.

A tornado hit Sedalia the spring of 1977 when I was four years old. I'd been excited that day, because Mom had been doing laundry in the basement and she was letting me come downstairs with her to help. When the sirens blew in the middle of the afternoon and she hustled me down the steep wood stairs to the concrete slab basement, I thought it was merely time to put the wet clothes in the dryer again. Instead, she directed me to a concrete-ensconced crawlspace, padded with blankets and pillows that we pulled over our heads.

My dad was a truck driver for a dairy, and he was on the road that day. While my mom and I sat in our cubby, I remember her telling me that we needed to pray for Dad to come home safe. Prayer wasn't a regular event in our house, aside from the usual "now I lay me down to sleep" and "God is great, God is good" childhood graces. Asking God to bring my dad home was new and terrifying.

I remember the roar of the wind, sounding like a giant truck engine surrounding the house. And then silence.

We emerged from the basement and our house was intact. So were the houses surrounding ours. Most of the damage had occured on the northwestern end of town, where the expensive new subdivisions had been built. Houses looked like their lids had been removed like those of tin cans of green beans. Fallen trees blocked the streets, their scattered leaves looking like a green autumn. The old drive-in movie theater was destroyed. The factory where my dad eventually worked for over twenty years was heavily damaged.

I sat in the backseat of my grandma's yellow Volkswagon Beatle, surveying the wreckage of the only place in the world I really knew while my mom and grandma sobbed in the front seat.

We were lucky. Everyone we knew and loved, including my dad, were fine, losing nothing more than some shingles and a few trees. A story floated around for years that a dog in one of the subdivisions was picked up by the storm, which set him down several miles away at the state fairgrounds, where he promptly took a large dump upon terra firma. Whether that really happened or not, I don't know. Sedalia recovered, and has since gone on to survive several other direct twister assaults.

Things are different now. B. and I were shopping when my mom called my cell phone after today's first storm. "Just wanted to catch you before you saw the news and panicked. There was a tornado and everyone's okay."

When we got home a few hours later, the helicopter news footage from Sedalia was already on the local news. I squinted while I watched, trying to see if I recognized any of the destroyed houses. I didn't. During the other storms, my mom and I kept in touch. While they were in the basement without news access, I called with storm updates from the Weather Channel. When we weren't talking, I sat glued to the motion weather maps, watching the giant red splotches of storm as they headed towards Sedalia, grabbing my phone when the spot moved past that dot on the map to make sure they got through it.

I can fill myself with information, presented in an unbiased, non-panicked tidy little animated box. I can plug a zip code into a website and find out exactly where a tornado was spotted minutes earlier, and I can go to a map site and see exactly how far it is from my parents' house, where my baby's trying to sleep. Then I can make a phone call that doesn't require possibly downed lines to make sure everyone's okay the minute it's over. Those endless hours of waiting to see if someone's going to come home have shrunk to seconds. But it doesn't make the fear any less. It just means that I might get hit with unthinkable news faster than we did thirty years ago.

All day I've been thinking about how I hate that Clara Jane's going through these storms, and that she wasn't safe in St. Louis with us. But now, the worst is probably past them. We're the ones who might be facing the same storms, only in the middle of the night. Suddenly, I'm glad she's not here. I'm glad we won't have to wake her at 3 a.m. to make that fast, frantic rush to the basement, half-asleep and bewildered, exhausted from trying to sleep and listen for those sirens at the same time.

I think all of my people in Sedalia have been accounted for, but I'm wondering who was killed, and who's lost. I'm wondering what local sights that I'm so used to seeing have been reduced to haystacks of shattered wood. I'm wondering what we're in for tonight. I'm wondering if Clara Jane was as scared as I was thirty years ago, and if she's wondering when her mom and dad are coming home.

Posted by Robin at 09:52 PM | Comments (12)

February 20, 2006

Plumbing Problems

Before I get started, I'd like to mention that voting ends today in the One Woman's World Share the Love Blog Awards. If you're home from work for the holiday (or at work, bored to death because everyone else is off), take some time to mosey over there and find some good reads on the nominee list.

I'm not exactly coherent today. At the risk of providing more knowledge regarding my innards than any of you want, I'm currently residing in menstrual hell. It's one of the many perks of polycystic ovarian syndrome: no period of months. I've recently had a change in my medications which is picking up the slack from the menstrualless months. Currently, I'm awaiting a side of raw beef to be delivered so I can commence gnawing, as I'm anemic enough to be more than a little wobbly. Should make for a fun post, don't you think?

Considering the current Deluge de la Uterus, I'm very glad to be back home with proper bathing facilities. When we bought our house seven years ago, B. gave us a souped-up rocket-powered shower. The previous owners, an old couple whose combined age averaged out to 108.3 years old, had somehow installed a kitchen sink faucet in the bathtub, which was corroded with lime deposits. I've met dogs who pissed faster and cleaner than our bathtub faucet and shower head. So, B. went all plumber on us, reworked the entire plumbing system, purchased a showerhead that was intended to be used in a professional car wash situation, and we're all happy. If you're filthy, come on over and we'll set you up.

An aside: if experiencing Deluge de la Uterus, don't listen to John Fogerty's I Will Walk With You, especially if a girl-child has ever resided in said uterus. Just don't. Your body won't be able to spare the extra moisture necessary for the tears the song and hormones will require.

Anyway, bathing.

I hate the bathing situation at my parents' house. Again, it's not like they're unkempt, even though my dad recently had a bug in his ear. Really, they're clean. They bathe often and well. But they've got several things working against them. For starters, they live in a beautiful 100-year-old farmhouse. But with beautiful old farmhouses comes tempermental plumbing. The septic system has filled their basement on several occasions, including my wedding day. I'll bet I'm one of the only brides who has a photo of a plumber, grinning knee-deep in raw sewage, in her wedding album.

The second and more worrisome problem comes from those who might happen to work on the troubling plumbing. Just to give you an idea of what we're dealing with:

Ten or eleven years ago, my parents decided to remodel their bathroom and add one of those oversized whirlpool bathtubs. Now, in my family, hiring a professional to do a job is for sissies. They put the "you" in do-it-yourself. Nothing wrong with that, except my dad has one speed when it comes to any project: warp. He's not the most careful person in the world, as you know if you've read this blog for any length of time.

The first time I used the new bathtub, I set the single water faucet in the middle to gauge the water temperature. It was too hot, so I turned the knob to the side marked with a giant blue "C", only to be greeted with steaming, flesh-searing scalding-hot water. The scary part is, this didn't surprise me. At all. As I tended my blisters I thought, "What's wrong here? Well, Dad installed it, so "C" is probably hot water and "H" is probably cold." And I was right.

It's one thing to accidentally install a faucet backwards. It's another thing entirely when people expect you to do so.

The latest plumbing situation at my parents' house involves the upstairs bathroom, next to the two spare bedrooms. For years it just had a bathtub, and I was thrilled last summer when they decided to add a shower. They didn't do this for my convenience; they did it because my little hometown hosts a lot of events and a lot of people rent their spare bedrooms to visitors. So they got the idea to fix things up and rent the spare rooms.

They haven't had any paying guests so far, just freeloaders like B. and me who don't seem to understand that beggers can't be choosers and we really have no room to complain about this shower. Not that this is going to stop me. Because even though I didn't pay one red cent to sleep and bathe in my childhood home, I asked for financial compensation for my bathing experience.

On Saturday, shortly before the 40 guests arrived for the mongo birthday three-way (Clara Jane, Granny Viv, and my 75-year-old great-aunt Helen), I stopped cooking long enough to bathe and make myself presentable. Since my last shower, I'd driven 3/4 of the way across the state, chased and wrangled my child, been repeatedly licked from shoulder to hand and back by Chiggar, ran around the way-overheated house helping with party preparations, spent a chunk of time on kitchen duty, and started The Deluge. I think it's fair to say I was a tad gamey. I didn't want to use the downstairs hot-is-cold-cold-is-hot shower because 1) I'd just straightened it up and didn't want to make a mess, 2) I didn't want to haul my crap downstairs, then back upstairs, and 3) Clara Jane was taking an entirely too delicate nap in the next room. So, the upstairs shower was it.

I didn't think this would be a problem. I've taken several showers in there and while it's not the finest of bathing experiences, it does the trick. I got undressed, turned on the water, and pulled the plunger to direct the water from the faucet to the showerhead.

Nothing.

I wrestled, pulled, tugged. Nothing. One thing worked: kneeling beside the bathtub while holding the faucet against the wall with my left hand and holding the plunger up with my right. While this provided a hefty shower spray, it didn't do me much good, what with being outside the tub and all.

After five minutes of wrangling, I put my clothes back on and yelled down the stairs for help. My mom came up a repeated the jiggling and jostling I had done. But something she did worked, and the water started to flow. With time ticking, I shooed her away, stripped again, hopped into the tub, and watched as my weight shifted the faucet just enough to send all the cold water through the bathtub faucet, leaving me under a scalding showerhead.

I jumped out of the shower, sweatier than I was when I started. I could have taken two showers in the time it took me to take, well, none. I gave up, admitted defeat, and took a most refreshing sponge bath in the sink, followed by a good dose of Lush's Candy Fluff, certain that I probably smelled just like my father-in-law: body odor encrusted with powder.

During the party I was standing with my cousin H, who never learned shame. H. says whatever crosses her mind. We were talking about her latest trip to Chicago, and I asked if she'd went to the Lush store. "What's Lush?" she asked.

I saw my chance. "Here," I said, getting right up against her. "Smell me." I knew that if I stunk, I could count on H. and her magnificent lack of tact to tell me so.

"Mmmmmmmm! That smells so good!"

Hallelujah! I was able to relax, confident that my sponge bath and expensive body powder had done their job. I didn't even flinch when, several hours later in the middle of the living room, H. hiked down her pants and demanded that I feel her underwear. That's just how things work in our family.

Posted by Robin at 01:10 PM | Comments (4)

February 13, 2006

For Viv

The day I got my positive pregnancy test, the first person I called was my mom, because she'd kill me if she wasn't first to know. The second person was my granny.

"I know this is really far in advance, but do you have anything planned for your birthday next year?" I asked when she answered the phone.

"Why, no. I don't think so," she chuckled, her voice nervous and expectant.

"Well, I think you might be busy, because it looks like that's the day you're finally going to get a great-grandbaby."

After the test and before the phone calls, I had went to one of those pregnancy websites where you enter the date of your last period, and it spits out an estimated due date. February 13th. Despite the dire predictions of infertility and high-risk pregnancy with increased miscarriage odds, seeing that date filled me with hope that the pregnancy was real, and it was going to succeed. All my life I'd said that, if I ever had a daughter she'd be named Clara Jane after my granny, Vivian Clara Jane Jones Berry. Having that baby due on her namesake's 78th birthday? There was no way it could fail. Absolutely no way would Mother Nature make a joke so cruel as let this pregnancy with its charmed due date end in tragedy. Especially not after the terribly meanness of taking my other grandmother the day before my own birthday.

I'm not a superstitious person, but I do have a hang-up with dates. B. and I share a wedding anniversary with my parents and grandparents because 1)I'm surprisingly fond of tradtion, and 2)getting married on the date that produced the two successful marriages that preceeded ours seemed like a smart idea. And I really do think that my birthday is cursed. Clara Jane's due date landing on Granny's birthday - that's the opposite of cursed. That was the most blessed piece of news I ever received. Having my first child share a birthday with the kindest, most loving person I have ever known would have been enough to prove the existance of God, the angels and inherent good of the universe to me.

Clara Jane and my cervix had other ideas, though; she didn't show up until February 15th. And that's fine. It's good for them to each have their seperate days, but in my mind and heart, they will both always be linked to February 13th.

That's Viv, and she's turning 80 today. Don't worry - this isn't going to be one of those sappy, heart-warming stories that ends in death, illness or any of the trappings of old age. Yes, she's 80, and she's not as spry as she used to be. But she's still pretty damn spry. She's aged beautifully and gracefully. She still makes her amazing turkey and noodles for every family get-together. Still makes the best pie crust I've ever tasted, filled with blackberries, apples, and gooseberries she grew and picked herself. She still ventures into the woods behind her house to pick wild elderberries for her homemade jelly. She makes homemade salsa so hot it'll blister the skin on the roof of your mouth, just the way she likes it. She still makes the occasional quilt, including one recently made for Clara Jane's dolls.

A poor child of the Depression, this woman has never thrown anything out, ever. When I was around nine years old, I decided to start a stamp collection. I told Granny, and she disappeared to the attic, returning with glass jars brimming with stamps she'd pulled from mail she'd received for decades. Granted, that took a lot of the fun out of the collecting, since I managed to fill my stamp book in one afternoon. But still - who keeps every stamp she's ever received? Viv, that's who.

Granny's a tough ol' bird, although I'd never seen her wear jeans until two months ago. She could be a tough ol' bird in skirts and dresses, thank you very much. With Grandpa being on the road so much, she often took both the male and female roles in the family. Even now, if shelves need to be built or a snake needs killing, don't ask Grandpa to do it. Granny's got her own power drill and a snake-killing rake; she'll take care of it.

Not only did she raise my mom and uncle with Grandpa on the road, but she's also taken care of every single stray that's come her way, animal or otherwise. Spare cousins, her siblings, nieces, nephews - anyone whose ever needed anything, she's always been there to provide, probably because of all that junk in her attic. She was the oldest child in a large, poor family. As a young adult, she paid for her mom to give birth to the youngest sibling in a hospital. A few years later, when my mom was born, she had to forgo that luxury herself. But that's how she is, always putting everyone else's comfort and needs before her own.

These days, she doesn't get nearly as many strays of the human variety. Which is just as well, considering that there's a sign above her house that only animals can see, leading them to her. I have never seen such a motley crew of critters in my life. Every summer a possum shows up, named Blossom. It's a different possum every year. Deer come from the woods to feed in her yard. Even the snakes sometimes catch a break. A few years ago two rather large black snakes took up residence in the rafters of Granny and Grandpa's A-frame storm shelter. Instead of going after them with the rake or a shotgun like she normally does, Granny let them be, but not before naming them ... I can't remember their names, but I want to say they were Adam and Eve.

There was Lady, the fattest dog in the history of obesity, who lived to be close to 20 years old on a diet that was 85% gravy. And Elmer, the yellow cat so named because he stuck to Lady like glue. Then there's Elmer 2, the spawn of Elmer 1. He's still around, along with Bobbi, so named because of her lack of tail. Elmer 2 and Bobbi have a relationship that mirrors Viv and Chuck. Elmer 2 would surely starve to death or die of horrific injuries to his person if Bobbi wasn't there to make sure he's taken care of.

A bit off-topic, but it should be noted that Elmer 2 had to have his tail amputated a few years ago. The story was that he'd gotten into a fight and suffered some sort of tail-rotting injury. Personally, I think Granny's trying to send a message to the strays: "Sure, you can stay here and I'll feed you, but it'll cost you. I'll be needing your tail now." For the record, I don't know if the tails are in her attic. I doubt it, but that's just not something I want to know for sure.

I do know that the braids that are piled on top of her head in that last picture are in a plastic bag in her attic. They were almost waist-length when she cut them. And you just never know when someone might need some perfectly good human hair.

Granny's been married to Grandpa Chuck for 60 years this September, bless her heart. No one knows for sure when that photo was taken; it mysteriously appeared shortly before their 50th anniversary. That photo still sums them up today: she's exuberant and affectionate, and while he seems rather aloof, he loves her, too. I can imagine them in that same pose right now, at ages 80 and 82.

When I was a little girl and hadn't learned that a person's outside doesn't necessarily represent their inside, I loved my granny more than just about anyone in the world, because she was so beautiful. She had this bouffant red hairdo that was almost as big as Dolly Parton's, and in my eyes, that made her just about perfect. Now that I'm old enough to know that outer beauty doesn't always equate inner beauty, I know that this isn't the case with Granny. She has always been even more beautiful on the inside than that magnificent beehive on its best, tallest day.

For the rest of my life, this is what my heart will look like every February 13th.

Posted by Robin at 01:11 PM | Comments (16)

February 07, 2006

Thinking About the Past ... Again

I know exactly what I was doing fifteen years ago; I was writing. Not that that's saying much, because like now, I was always writing. But fifteen years ago I was writing four things: my college application essay, a scholarship application essay on why I wanted to be a journalist, my opening arguments for the upcoming district debate tournament, and my high school commencement address. I guess the hard work and the crazy-making stress I put on myself was worth it because I got into my choice college, won the scholarship, placed first in the debate tournament and won the schoolwide contest to give the speech at graduation.

Along with writing, I was also glued to CNN's Gulf War coverage, which provided much fodder for that journalism scholarship essay. when I wasn't glued to war coverage I was listening to the unlikely mix of R.E.M.'s Out of Time and lots of Atlantic Records' classic R&B. At the time I was pretty sure I was the only white teenager in Sedalia, Missouri listening to the likes of Ann Peebles, Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett. Actually, thinking about it, I was probably right in thinking that.

Awhile back, B., Miss Codependence, Mindy and that Greenlight boy and I were talking about our teenage behavior. Not the adolescent behavior we currently enjoy, but our behavior when we were actual teenagers. I was a good kid, avoiding the Three Horsemen of the Apocolypse: alcohol, sex and drugs. Not so much because I was a goody-two-shoes. Although I think the fact that I just said "goody-two-shoes" indicates that I probably was, at least a little. It was more because I wanted to get the hell out. I was ready to move on from my hometown and get on with my life early on, and I didn't want to do anything that would jeopardize my escape. There would be plenty of time for debauchery later, I thought. And I was right.

While I was giving that commencement address, extolling our shared history, I remember looking into the crowd and thinking, "Wow. I could happily live the rest of my life without ever laying eyes on 98% of you people ever again." I was quite proud of myself for keeping that little nugget of contempt hidden under my mortar board, especially since I had a stage in front of the 212 members of my graduating class, their families, and the entire school faculty. Although there would have been something to be said for getting up there and saying, "Holy fuck, I'm so glad to be done with all of you. Kiss my ass."

Even though I was only an hour from home when I went to college, I broke ties quickly, remaining friends with only four people from my high school. Two of them graduated the year after me and one the year before. Only one of them was from my class, and we didn't become friends until our senior year. I lived with her during my sophomore and junior years of college, along with one of my younger friends from "back home", which is a sure-fire way to kill just about any friendship. One of these days I'll have to share some of the roommate stories with you. There's a book in those two years, I'm sure of it.

For most of my adult life I've maintained few of my childhood friendships, and I've been fine with that. I haven't attended any of my high school reunions. I saw most of those people five days a week, nine months a year for twelve years; I've had my fill, thanks.I'm happy to say that I have gotten over my childhood. Was it good? Sure. Was it bad? Of course. Did it make me the adult I am? Absolutely. But the fact is, it was only 18 years of my life, what I hope to be a very small portion.

(Funny ... I'm shuffling through my MP3s and what just came on? "Low" from R.E.M.'s "Out of Time", preceeded a few minutes ago by Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay"). The shuffle, it is wise and it knows.)

Anyway ...

Without going into too much detail, B. and I had a rather large fight this weekend regarding the ability to let go of the past. At one point I snarked, "You're still letting a bunch of fucking nine-year-olds rule your life. And nine-year-olds are stupid and don't know how to act right."

Oh. Where did that come from?

How many people are limping around as adults because of the things we were teased about as children, by other children? I had a year where I underwent some pretty brutal teasing; life as an overdeveloped third grader with a bunch of grabby little boys ain't fun. I was talking to an older friend of mine about that experience about five years ago and she gasped, "You know, that's sexual assault. They just didn't call it that in 1982." I responded, "Yes, but they were just kids." In that simple exchange, it all made sense. All those years of hurting, hating my body, and being convinced I was a freak were suddenly wiped away by 1) having someone call it what it was, and 2) recognizing that they were kids who didn't know any better. Not that their behavior didn't merit correction and punishment; it certainly did, and I learned quickly that I couldn't count on the teachers, school administrators or their parents to divvy up justice for me.

I do occasionally wonder if any of those boys have experienced fertility problems as adults, what with the stomping I administered their testicles. Looking back, I'm more than a little surprised at my willingness to adminster my own justice. To kick, to claw, and to fight when I knew no one else would do it for me. So while that experience taught me to loathe my body, it also taught me to be independent, to stand up for myself, and gave me confidence in my ability to fend for myself; the very traits that I eventually used to get over the body hatred.

In the past year I've made contact with several people from my high school. In one of those instance, I thought, "Shit, she hasn't changed at all. I could have gone at least another fifteen years without that." But in all the other instances I've been surprised by my happiness at the contact, and the immediate feeling of relief. What I'm relieved for, I'm not sure. Maybe that others made it out, grew, and have turned into good, interesting people.

This morning I had a message on MySpace from an old childhood friend of mine (hi K., if you're reading!). In her message she asked if I remembered the hours of listening to America's Top 40 on Sunday mornings when we were in fifth grade. Do I remember? I had completely forgotten, but it all came back with that one question. We used to spend Saturday night at each others' houses. We'd wake up Sunday morning and bounce around to whatever Casey Kasem was playing. It was 1983-4, which was such an important music year, and I know much of my music geek foundation was laid on those Sunday mornings. That was my church, and it still is. Not AT40, as the kids call it these days, but that church of music. I had forgotten that K. and I worshipped there together until this morning. How those hours of dancing to Michael Jackson and Madonna created a couple of Wilco fans, I'm not sure, but it makes me smile.

At the end of that school year there was a rift in our circle of friends. We were never close after that, but we always got along. But today, looking over her profile on MySpace, I realized that she's a lot like the people I've chosen as friends in my adulthood. It's further justification to that thought that slipped out of my mouth while arguing with B. on Saturday night, that it's stupid to hang on to the childhood hurts committed on us by other children. Just like it's stupid for me to nurse any contempt I held towards the kids in my childhood. Because we were that: kids. We were learning, and sometimes we didn't have the greatest of teachers teaching us. Just as none of us are probably the greatest of teachers to our own kids. But we're doing our best, just as our parents and teachers did their best. We not only have the shared history of graduating from the same school in the same year, but we also have the shared history of human fallability.

Fifteen years after I officially ended my childhood, I'd love to gather some of those old kids for a beer, where we can toast, and wipe our brow and say, "Whew! So glad we made it through that!" like old war buddies. As long as we can avoid falling into the big hair and pouf dress trap, we're gonna be just fine.

I know there are quite a few readers from my hometown. I know of at least two old high school friends who read (Yo! Julie Han and Big Daddy B! I'm buying your first rounds, and quite possibly the second one, too.) In an unpresidented show of school ... feeling the bile rise in my throat as I try to say it ... spirit, give me a hollar if we knew each other in those younger, dumber days. Or give a hollar with your own high school confidentials.

Posted by Robin at 01:22 PM | Comments (15)

December 27, 2005

Holiday Post Script of the Damned

Hello. My name is Robin. I want to go to sleep. Unlike my daughter, who has decided that her holiday gift to the world will be two-fold:

1) She will never, ever nap again, lest she rob the world of her delightful presence.

-and-

2)She will single-handledly end world hunger by refusing to ever eat a meal again, subsisting solely on stale dinner rolls, chocolate-covered pretzels (which she will also feed to the 1,847 animatronic Santas at her grandmother's house) and her great-granny's spicy party mix.

This does not feel like a vacation.

We arrived in my hometown Christmas Eve afternoon, which was blessedly uneventful. Gift-opening, dinner with my grandparents, and such. This year's Christmas miracle: during our Christmas eve dinner of mushroom omelets, sausage, hash browns, biscuits, and fruit salad, Clara Jane loudly counted to five and acknowledged the number four!! God bless us everyone one two three four five!

It was quite peaceful. Well, as peaceful as can be expected considering this:

Hello. My name is Chigger. You might remember me as Robin's dads 2004 Christmas surprise. I'm a dingo. Don't tell the government.

Why does he have that large stick shoved in his mouth? Because I was sick to death of him chewing on my arm, leg, boobs and face.

Much to my chagrin, Chigger has decided that he likes, nay, loves me. And let me tell you, it's a love that hurts, what with all the nipping, biting, pawing and being herded like a goat.

Christmas day brought the morning phone call from my in-laws in Michigan where the phone gets passed to everyone in the house. My in-laws say a few pleasantries, then patiently wait for us to talk. Which isn't much different than their non-holiday phone calls. They dial, then wait expectantly, like they're calling us just so we can get any pent-up talking out of our systems.

The big news really didn't surprise me much. B.'s brother, who has lived on an island off the coast of Portugal for four years, is moving to Vienna. With a girl. She's from Portugal and her name has been bandied around for most of the time M. has lived there. So I'm not sure why everyone seems so surprised that M. and A. are more than friends. Come on. M.'s a heterosexual man in his 30s. Heterosexual men in their 30s aren't looking for women to be their friends. They already have friends by that point in their lives.

So, 2005 will be the year that I got a quasi-sister-in-law that I will probably never meet for Christmas.

It's also been pointed out that, even though I moved to another city to be with B., A. is moving to an entirely different country to be with M. Which means they win. I guess.

While all conversations with my in-laws are awkward at best, I particularly hate the Christmas conversation. While I'm not exactly of beacon of Jesus, I do feel particularly bad about the fact that, every Christmas, I'm forced to lie through my teeth to my in-laws. Somewhere, there's a baby Jesus in a nativity scene who weeps for my soul every Christmas morning as I partake in this conversation:

MIL: So, how did you like your gift from us?
Me: Oh! That! I was just going to bring that up. (Here's where Baby Jesus begins to well slightly.) It's lovely! Just ... wonderful (And here's where the first teardrop falls.) I'd been meaning to get myself a velour bathrobe that covers me from chin to floor/a set of polyester Linda Evans-style scarves/a pair of beady-eyed ceramic seagull wallhangings whose heads project from the wall! (Right here? This is when the sobbing begins.) I just love them. Really. They're perfect. (And here's where Baby Jesus becomes so racked with hysterical sobbing that he shoots spit-up through his nose, sealing my soul's eternal damnation.)

I don't mean for this to sound ungrateful. Truth is, I think holiday gift-giving is entirely out of control. I know my mother-in-law gets really stressed, trying to find things to buy for me, and that's the last thing I want. Gift-giving should be fun and fulfilling, not something that makes the giver feel like crap.

That being said, I do love that, every year when I open my gift, the first words out of B.'s mouth are always - always - "Boy, they really don't know you at all." I've also reached a point where I hope for really awful gifts from them.

But I digress.

Christmas day was spent with these people:


That's the extended maternal lineage. From the bottom left we have my uncle and aunt, my mom (Yes, I posted the family photo that was the least flattering of her, just as a bit of punishment for her insistance on reading my blog. Hi Ma!), and The Cuz. From the back left, we have The Cuz's little brother (commonly known as the younger male cuz), my dad, Granny, Grandpa, B., Clara Jane and me.

There were a few others, like the older couple that lives across the road from my parents. They're lovely people, really, and I always enjoy seeing them. However, I think the male half of the couple purposefully touched my boob when he hugged me goodbye. I intended to take a photo of him to share with you because, sweet Jesus, that man has the most impressively swirly comb-over in the history of bad hairstyles. On a good day, his head looks like a soft-serve Dairy Queen cone. But I refrained. Had I known he was going to get a cheap thrill, I wouldn't have exercised such restraint.

The other visitors: an aunt and uncle from my dad's side, their daughter (10 years my senior), her husband (my dad's age) and their daughters (ages 14 and 12). I do love my aunt; I really do. She's generous to a fault and works her ass off to keep our family together. The rest of 'em, I can do without. I wrote a bit about that cousin last year, which really explains a lot.

Anyway, every single person in that family has name issues. I have been with B. (whose name is Brian) for almost eight years. We've been married for over six of those years. Clara Jane, whose name was made public long before her birth, has been with us for almost two years. Despite the lengthy amounts of time my husband and child have been in my family, if you ask my aunt, uncle or cousin who those people in my family are, they will tell you, "Why, that's Claire and Byron!"

It's not a simple mispronounciation, either. We get cards addressed to Claire and Byron. To my aunt's credit, she did get Clara Jane's name correct on her Christmas card this year, which constitutes Christmas Miracle #2.

I'm not sure why my Neil Diamond-obsessed cousin and her two teen daughters have dyed their hair Goth black. Nor do I really want to know.

Of course, Christmas is all about the kiddies. Clara Jane got a mountain of presents to which she responded with a great big "Eh. More presents. Right. Can I go to the dining room and listen to my 'Sesame Street' CD?"

We did have a bit of unwanted excitement. During the frenzied gift distribution part of the day, my nearly-80-year-old granny tripped over a gift and fell. She's fine, save for a little bruise, but it scared the shit out of everyone. And just so you don't think my own issues with panic and anxiety are an anomoly in my family, this was my mother's reaction:

"I just knew when she fell that she had broken her hip, and I read somewhere that once a woman breaks a hip she almost always dies within a year and I kept thinking, 'Oh no! This is her last Christmas!'."

I don't know where I get my penchant for over-reaction. I really don't. (Hi Ma!)

Hello. My name is Bubba. I'm a stallion. Wanna ride me?

Ride, we did. Bubba's trained to pull carts and carriages, so we went riding on Monday afternoon before departing for home.

Cart riding's fun, until Bubba decides to unload the contents of his intestines mere inches from my child's face. Not that it bothered her much. She just pointed and said, "Ooooooh, look at that! It's good!" Considering that Clara Jane has spent her entire life constipated, I can understand why she was impressed.

Hello. My name is still Chigger. I find that after a day of grazing in horse pies, nothing cleans the system quite like a tasty bottle of Suave shampoo.

And with that we hit the road home, and I think our current state can best be described with this parting shot from the three-hour drive home:

(Why yes, I got a new camera for Christmas. However did you guess?)

Posted by Robin at 02:02 PM | Comments (11)

December 10, 2005

Happy Birthday, Ma. Quit Reading My Blog

This is my ma, taking a little doze with Clara "Mimi's Girl" Jane way back when. Today's my mom's 58th birthday. And in true fashion, we're going to let Christmas totally usurp her day. Since we're still ate up with the Christmas spirit around here, I'll be spending my day deocorating our tree instead of writing something loving, yet witty in tribute. I'll also be frantically cleaning my house in preparation for her arrival. Otherwise, you know she'll spend her birthday scrubbing my stove and playing the martyr. I'm serious. She's done it before.

So, in honor of my holiday distraction, I'm recycling one of my favorite stories about my mom. Originally posted last May, please enjoy the tale of the time my mom got shat on by a condor, then really embarrassed herself in a public restroom. We love you, Mom!

The original post is right here, but in case you only want to read the juicy parts about my mom:

My family, accompanied by my best friend drove to the Grand Canyon, spending a few days in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

At 14, my friends and I weren't exactly girly-girls. Eighth grade turned us into a pack of sailors, and we had taken up habits such as excessive profanity usage and blatant passing of bodily gases. My dad was 40 going on 14 at the time, so we had a lot in common.

When planning the trip I guess my mom didn't take into consideration the overabundance of Tex-Mex cuisine in the region. If Clara Jane goes through this sailor phase - and she will, for she is of my loins - we'll be vacationing somewhere with very, very bland food. Like Upper Michigan, where they have three seasonings: salt, pepper, and ketchup.

After a few days of being trapped in the Fartmobile, my mom made a new rule: if we belched outloud, we had to give her a quarter. Public farts would cost us fifty cents apiece.

The next day, we paid a visit to the Rio Grande Zoo. While standing under a large tree, my mom said, "Is it raining?"

It wasn't.

Well, not in the scientific sense. Moisture was falling from the sky in the form of bird shit. From a bird the size of a condor, perched in the tree directly above my mom's head, which was soon covered in about a pint of fresh bird dookie.

You can only imagine the reaction from The Mighty Fart Brigade on that one.

"Don't worry! It's just a little sap!" an onlooker told my mom as she went into a full-blown palsey of a freak-out attack. Yeah, it's ass-sap!

My mom high-tailed it to the bathroom, where she hoped to regain her composure and take a quick bath in one of the sinks. While she was convulsing and washing her hair, my friend and I took a little potty break, since we were both on the verge of pissing our pants with hysteria.

Mom finished her little clean-up and entered a stall before my friend and I exited our stalls. In her trauma-deminished capacity, my mom hadn't noticed that we had left the stalls and were sitting on the counter ('cause we were cool 14-year-olds), waiting for her. All she knew was there was a someone in the stall next to hers, wearing shoes just like mine, and cutting the most tremendous fart in the history of mankind.

Now, my poor Mom - incapacitated and absolutely furious, did the one thing she could to try to regain control of the day. She pounded on the wall between her stall and the farter and bellowed, "That'll be fifty cents!"

My friend and I didn't even have to say a word to each other; we just knew that it was time to get the hell out of that restroom.

Mom, with her soaking wet hair dripping down her shirt, came marching out of the bathroom shortly after us, with the farter right behind her. She spotted us under the tree - the same tree, 'cause we were cool 14-year-olds - and turned roughly the shade of a baboon's ass as she realized she had demanded fart money from a stranger.

Posted by Robin at 01:11 PM |