Karen Lingefelt

CONFESSIONS OF A LADY RUINED by Karen Lingefelt

2011-12-06T12:03:00.005-05:00

I never dreamed I’d say this twice in one year . . . but I am published again!

This is another romantic comedy set in Regency England:

Julia Bassett can’t bear living in the household of the handsome lord who once charmed and then ruined her—especially while he prowls London’s ballrooms for a wife! Forced to act as his sister’s chaperone, Julia will do anything to be sent packing—even if it means engaging in the same scandalous behavior that years earlier got her banished to the country and separated from this dashing earl she still secretly loves.

Colin Everett, Earl of Danforth, enjoys seeing how far Julia will go to jeopardize her position—even to brazenly seducing him. He regrets breaking her heart so long ago, and now he’d like to win her back. But when several attempts are made on his life, he must find out if this bold vixen is seeking love…or vengeance.

Can Colin and Julia learn to trust each other—and their own hearts?

CONFESSIONS OF A LADY RUINED is one of those “second chance at love” stories—a tale of two people who fell in love years earlier, only to be separated by mutual misunderstandings and the machinations of scheming, manipulative relatives. (Yes, a lot of M words there.) Those misunderstandings and machinations are still in force when Colin and Julia meet again, but this time they have—here comes another M word—the maturity and hindsight to face and ultimately fight those obstacles.

As a result, Julia is one of my oldest romance heroines at age twenty-seven, which may seem not so old by today’s standards, but in the year 1815, she was practically today’s forty, with almost no hope of ever marrying.

Yet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet’s best friend, Charlotte Lucas, was also twenty-seven years old, and thus considered herself very lucky to land the cringeworthy Mr. Collins. At her age, Charlotte didn’t think she could afford to be picky.

Julia Bassett, however, refuses to surrender to convention, in spite of her seemingly advanced age and status as a lady ruined.

Julia does not give up. And that’s why she’s one of my favorite heroines.

Buy it here: http://www.bookstrand.com/confessions-of-a-lady-ruined

There's a reason they're called Wal-Mart Greeters and not Wal-Mart Small Talk Makers

2011-10-07T12:44:00.000-04:00

This is the sort of thing for which I tend to have a very unique gift, yet being on the receiving end made me feel just as dumb.

The person who did The Sort Of Thing I Usually Do was the Wal-Mart Greeter. My relationship with this particular greeter has never progressed beyond greetings either coming or going: “Welcome to Wal-Mart” and “Have a nice day.” She sees me at least once a week.

But the other day, as I was leaving with my purchases, she called out something to me that didn’t sound anything like “have a nice day.” It sounded more like, “I hear [garbled] is doing really well in school.”

Maybe I should’ve kept pushing my cart out the door and acted like I didn’t hear. But no, I had to stop and acknowledge what she said. There was no one else around, so she must have been talking to me.

She’d heard Baby Bear was doing really well in school? But how did she know about him? I’d never mentioned him to her, and he hadn’t been to Wal-Mart in a very long time. What to do? I thought of replying, “Thank you—school’s been in session for over a month now, and we have yet to get a summons from the principal, or a petition from his classmates’ parents, or another resolution from the school board. We’re very proud of him.”

But that garbled proper noun she’d used didn’t sound anything like his name. So instead I cupped a hand behind my ear, leaned forward, and asked, “Pardon me?”

She replied, a bit more loudly and distinctly, “I hear Gabby is doing really well in school this year.”

Gabby? I don’t have a child named Gabby. I didn’t know what horrified me more—this very awkward situation, or the notion that she had me confused with another Wal-Mart shopper when I pride myself on being the best dressed patron here, even if it doesn’t take a whole lot of effort.

I suppose I could have just said, “Thank you,” and moved on with my cart and my life, but my mind raced with the ramifications of that. I was reminded of that episode of Seinfeld where a co-worker called Elaine “Susie” and what happened when she didn’t bother to correct the co-worker. What if the greeter started asking about Gabby every time I came to Wal-Mart hereafter? I’d have to make up a new story about Gabby with each visit. This could go on for years, and who’s to say it wouldn’t contradict anything Gabby’s real mother might say?

What if I told the greeter, for instance, that Gabby went to jail, just to get her out of the picture and end the whole Gabby saga? Imagine the look on Gabby’s mother’s face (or even my face, since apparently I look just like her), should the perpetually confused greeter happen to ask her if Gabby’s up for parole yet?

I couldn’t have that on my conscience, and I didn’t have the energy for it, anyway. Feeling very sheepish—and why I should have felt sheepish, I have no idea—I said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t have a child named Gabby.”

She didn’t say a word. She just stared at me, as if I were the one who’d said something wrong. (Well? I really don’t have a child named Gabby!) Meanwhile, a line was forming behind me. People wanted to leave the store, and I was blocking them. I hastily added, “But that’s okay—have a nice day,” which was supposed to be HER line.

Then I got the hell out of there and have been using the other Wal-Mart entrance ever since.

These Are Not My Grandmother's Magazines

2011-09-14T16:49:00.000-04:00

I remember when I was a young girl, my paternal grandmother subscribed to just about every women’s magazine save Cosmopolitan. She once spoke of picking up a copy of Cosmo in the beauty parlor one day, only to fling it from her hands in shock because the contents were too burning hot for her old-fashioned sensibilities.

But she enjoyed all the other magazines, and after reading them she’d bring them to our house, in thick stacks.

I read them voraciously. I learned household hints and etiquette. I informed myself of matters gynecological. I pored over tales of marriages that might not be saved, yet somehow they always were. At the risk of dating myself, I must have read a story about the Kennedy family, in particular Jackie, in just about every issue; back in those pre-Diana days, stories about royalty were rare, except for the occasional article about Princess Grace.

I always enjoyed what I read, and learned a lot about marriage and family and relationships.

Fast forward to today—this morning, to be exact, when I found myself sitting in a very crowded waiting room and hadn’t brought my Nook.

Until this morning, I hadn’t read any of those women’s magazines in years. And I mean years, for which I can either blame or credit the Internet and less time and curiosity than I had as a young girl.

The magazines I read this morning had the same titles as those my grandmother once subscribed to—yet these were not my grandmother’s magazines. There wasn’t a single Cosmo in the stack, yet I still nearly flung them from my hands in shock.

I’m not a prude, for crying out loud—I write historical romance novels with steamy love scenes in them, and I occasionally bought Cosmopolitan in the days when I was a twenty-something globetrotting playgirl—but I must admit I was stunned by how much my grandmother’s favorite magazines have changed over the years, and become quite indistinguishable from the once very unique Cosmo.

No, I think my real problem was that I couldn’t actually read the magazines, or stay on one page for very long, because I had two men wedged on either side of me in that packed waiting room, and being the paranoid neurotic that I am, I didn’t feel comfortable sandwiched between them with the magazine open to a page with words printed so big, they could easily be read from the far side of the room, blaring at me about “rejuvenating” a very explicitly identified part of the female anatomy. I don’t think I’ve ever turned a page so fast, only to find a collection of humorous anecdotes from readers about the time their little darlings walked in on them while they were otherwise amorously engaged; and oh, looky here! A list of helpful tips if you get a hankerin’ to do it in public.

But no handy household hints, or answers to etiquette questions, or accounts of marriages saved when it seemed all was lost. And no articles on Kennedys or Royals, even though the latter have been very much in the news this year.

If my very proper grandmother were still alive today, I don’t know if she’d still enjoy reading these women’s magazines.

But I’ll bet the men would . . . if only they knew.

BRIDE IN HIDING by Karen Lingefelt

2011-08-02T15:00:00.004-04:00

I am published again!

While Bride in Hiding is my second book to be published, it’s the tenth book out of the seventeen which, by my reckoning, I have written in my lifetime. (Nearly half of those books will never see the light of day unless the temperature in hell drops even lower.) That number doesn’t include books started and then abandoned for whatever reason.

I have heard authors say that they link certain books they’ve written to events in their lives; that such-and-such a book was the one they were writing when they were pregnant with their first or tenth child, or when their husband was laid off, or when their house disappeared into a sinkhole.

For instance, I’d just started writing True Pretenses when our daughter Fiona passed away, only three days after I’d completed Chapter Two, where I left Kit standing on the doorstep of Serena’s cottage, staring at the door and wondering if his next voyage would be to Australia. He stood out there shivering on that doorstep for many months before I finally brought myself to start work on Chapter Three.

Bride in Hiding is the book I was writing when I sold True Pretenses. I even remember what chapter was I was working on at the time—Chapter Twelve. It was accepted for publication on the very same day our firstborn graduated.

That was an unusually good day for me.

She thought hiding in plain sight would be the perfect plan—but alas! Susannah Kirk hopes to escape an unwanted marriage by posing as a lady’s companion in the bridegroom’s ancestral home. Surely it’s the last place anyone would look for her—but as Susannah’s luck would have it, a surprise visitor from London isn’t just anyone. He’s Trevor Dalton, one of her reclusive lady’s grandsons—and he may or may not be the very rogue she’s trying to flee.

After learning his wastrel cousin plans to satisfy gambling debts by taking a bride he’s never met, Trevor races to Derbyshire to avert scandal. But his efforts are hampered at every turn by his grandmother’s strong-willed, mysterious companion. Suspicious as well as charmed, he’s determined to uncover Susannah’s secrets—even if he has to seduce them out of her...and risk losing his heart.

Available now: http://www.bookstrand.com/bride-in-hiding

The Saga of Baby Bear's Keyboard

2011-07-18T09:41:00.007-04:00

Once upon a time, Baby Bear received a battery-powered Yamaha keyboard for Christmas 2008:

He played it constantly. How often? Well, let’s just say that before that year was out—a mere sennight—we learned that it might be more economical to use rechargeable batteries, unless we wanted to buy a fresh pack of regulars every week.

The batteries had to be recharged almost every day.

The keyboard was lightweight enough that he carried it all over the house, from room to room, so it would always be with him. He even took it to bed with him, and went to sleep while it repetitiously played some rhythm that we found absolutely annoying, yet somehow it mysteriously lulled him to sleep. At that point I would turn it off for the night. If I didn’t remove it from his room, I might be awakened at three in the morning by the sound of his playing. (See previous blog entry for my position on this issue.)

He made up his own tunes and melodies, many of which have become as familiar to me as any classics or old standards or songs by the Beatles.

He even plays with two hands. All this on his own.

But sometimes he could really pound on that keyboard, with the result that this finally happened:

As time went by, more teeth were knocked out, and the keyboard was on the verge of losing a fifth when it finally died.

Of course, it had to die the day before the start of a three-day holiday weekend. I had only a few hours to find a replacement before Baby Bear came home from summer school. I didn't want to think of what kind of weekend I might have if that kid didn't have a keyboard to plunk on. His passion for it was that profound.

Being pinched for time and money (not that we didn't have the money for it, but I didn't want to spend that much without first consulting Mr. Lucky, who wouldn't be home until after the Bear), I found this cheap $25.00 model at Wal-Mart:

Baby Bear played with it for just a bit, and then abandoned it. It simply did not meet his high quality standards.

But I couldn't bear to see him give up playing, especially his own tunes, no matter how annoying it is when I'm trying to watch the evening news--a great deal of which tends to annoy me more than his piano-playing, anyway.

The Yamaha keyboard got him doing something constructive. It lit a fire in him, and I didn't want that fire to go out.

So we shopped around and bought him another Yamaha keyboard:

It's not the same one as his original--that model has apparently been discontinued--but it's very much like it, just as lightweight, and it takes the same six AA batteries that I've gone back to recharging every day.

Most importantly, he's gone back to playing his tunes.

The Boom Box on the Shelf is Always Repeating Itself

2011-07-07T15:35:00.000-04:00

Baby Bear has a boom box, and he likes to play CD’s by ABBA while he sits on his bed and rocks back and forth. His favorite song—at least for this week—is “Waterloo.”

How do I know this? Recently he’s taken to playing that particular song over and over and over. But oddly enough, not the whole song. He plays it only as far as the part about the history book on the shelf. Then he stops and goes back and starts the song again.

Over . . . and over . . . and over. I have no idea why. If I weren’t already familiar with this song that dates back to when I was almost his age (and there’s a scary thought), I might drive myself insane wondering what that history book is always doing that he keeps censoring. Ironically, it’s exactly what Baby Bear is doing with the song.

But why he’s repeating it, only he knows.

Yet it reminds me of an incident early in my Air Force career. I was stationed at Keesler AFB near Biloxi, Mississippi to receive training in my particular career field of administration. I had to live in the barracks where the dorm chief had one of them newfangled boom boxes (yes, it was that many years ago). So powerful were its speakers that it could be heard all over the barracks of World War II vintage.

One morning, at around 3:30 am, she woke up me and probably a lot of other people by repeatedly playing the opening notes of “When You’re in Love With a Beautiful Woman” by Doctor Hook. She’d play it all the way up until the good Doctor started singing, then she’d rewind it back to the beginning and play those opening notes again.

Over . . . and over . . . and over. I don’t think she was doing it because she was autistic like my son. She certainly wasn’t doing it because she’d been put in charge of sounding Reveille with the song of her choice. No, she was doing it because she was the Dorm Chief, ergo she could.

I longed to break down her door, seize her blasting boom box, then raise it over my head and smash it like Moses with the Ten Commandments over hers. Or at the very least, scream at her to turn that expletive thing off. But she was the Dorm Chief, so all I could do was suffer. No one dared complain, or maybe all the other women liked it and I was the one with the problem.

Either way, I’ve loathed that song ever since. Anytime I hear those first few notes coming out of the oldies station, I switch stations in disgust. It’s a good thing I’m not a sleeper agent, or it might “activate” me to go out and blow something up.

Yet I’m not tired of “Waterloo” yet. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t play it full blast at 3:30 in the morning, but that’s because I remove it from his room at night.

It’s good to be the Dorm Chief—or just a mom.

Do You Suffer the Outbreak of Sticky Slider Thigh?

2011-07-03T17:52:00.006-04:00

Sticky Slider Thigh, or SST, is a rare condition caused when your sliding glass door gets stuck along the track as the result of prolonged rainy weather, and you find yourself having to press your thigh against the back edge of the door to get the damned thing to close after the dogs come in from doing their business.

When these multiple bruises suddenly broke out on my left thigh, I couldn’t figure out where they came from or how I got them. If I’d stumbled into a heavy piece of furniture hard enough to produce such pitiful patches of purple as portrayed in the posted picture, I’m sure I would’ve remembered.

Mr. Lucky hadn’t been beating me. Nor could I pin this on another brouhaha with the Bear. And the bruises aren’t at all painful or tender. They’re just . . . there.

Only how was I supposed to go out among other humans looking like this? Sure, I could wear long pants, but this is Florida in July. My leg looks as if it’s sporting a tattoo of the Shroud of Turin.

I went a-googling under thigh bruises, leg bruises, multiple leg bruises, and read all sorts of unhelpful things till I worked myself into a lather worthy of George Costanza (“Lupus? Is it lupus?!?) at his panic-stricken worst.

Then this afternoon, Mr. Lucky casually said, “Oh, by the way, I oiled the tracks in the back door earlier, so you should find it easier to open and close now.”

I said that was good, because I was having to use both hands and all my weight on the front of my leg to close that door. And that’s when it hit me like a gong: I realized my bruises were the result of something I hadn’t seen in all my Googling and Binging and Dogpiling. Sure enough, when I went to close the sliding glass door, out of habit (it’s been raining a LOT this past week), I assumed my usual rainy weather position along with the standard grumble of “Why can’t we replace these with French doors?” and my left thigh met the door’s back edge right where the bruises are.

So I have dubbed this condition “Sticky Slider Thigh” or SST.

That’s all it is, folks. No need to make a pilgrimage to my house with lighted candles and whatnot, because you think that’s a holy image on my leg and maybe if you touch it, you’ll be healed of whatever ails you.

You may, however, bring me chocolate.

Baby Bear's Hellacious Household Hints

2011-06-16T17:01:00.001-04:00

When you try one of Baby Bear’s Hellacious Household Hints, you can be sure that whatever in blazes you think you’re doing has been repeatedly tried and tested for success and/or maximum destruction by none other than Baby Bear himself.

How to check if the dog’s water dish needs refilling: Place as much of your foot as possible into the dish and commence stomping until water is splattered all around it. If there’s still water remaining in the dish, then repeat with other foot. Should water still be observed in the dish, then flip it upside-down on the kitchen counter. At this point you should be able to confirm that the dish needs refilling.

How to check if there’s water in the toilet: Do not flush as that is environmentally incorrect; also the noise causes inconvenience to parental units by prompting them to stop whatever they’re doing to come and see what you’re up to. Instead, place a sock on your foot, dip it in the toilet, then take a walk around the house. If you see wet footprints on the carpet, then there’s water in the toilet bowl.

Is your Playstation controller waterproof? There’s only one way to find out—soak it and see if it still works. Meanwhile, you’ll enjoy the parental units speculating whether you dipped it in the toilet or dropped it into the dog’s water dish.

How to check curtain rods for strength: Push the curtains aside, then grip the rod in both hands and do a chin-up. If the rod rips out of the wall, then a stronger rod and better hardware will be required.

How to tell Mom it’s time to clean the chandelier: Hit the chandelier with enough force to make it swing. If possible, hit it in such a way to make it spin. Keep doing this until visible specks of dust rain down on the dining room table. Food on the table optional.

How to open a locked door without a key or similar device: Kick, hit, and do body slams against the door until it finally comes off the hinges. Most effective at five in the morning.

How effective are those drain plugs? Close them, turn on the water, then wait for Mom’s blood-curdling scream.

How to tell her it’s time to recharge the batteries in your electronic keyboard: Before approaching her, first remove all six batteries yourself. Fling five of them to the floor or onto the nearest end table, but always in plain sight. Hide the sixth one. Then go get her.

Our Firstborn, the Graduate

2011-06-06T14:50:00.004-04:00

Our firstborn and heir apparent, the Crown Prince, has graduated from school.

He’s mentally retarded and autistic, and has been going to the same school for special needs students for the better part of his life. Indeed, he’d become something of an institution at his school; many members of the faculty remarked on how the place will never be the same without him.

He practically ran the campus, and was proclaimed King of his senior prom. With his stentorian voice, he did all the morning announcements on the P.A. system, and each day he led the whole school in saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

In fact, he could probably do voiceover work. One of his hobbies is parroting commercial slogans from TV and the radio, whether it’s The Home Depot (“You can do it. We can help.”) or a prominent local law firm (“Morgan and Morgan. For the People. Offices Tampa.”)

He knew everyone’s schedules (woe betide anyone who dared to change their plans for whatever reason), the lunch menus, and even the calendar for months in advance, down to what day of the week a particular date fell. If the computers at that school ever crashed, they could still rely on my oldest son to keep them organized.

At the graduation ceremony, when they called out his full name and he marched up the aisle in his cap and gown (my favorite color—royal blue!), I couldn’t help the tears streaming down my cheeks as everyone stood up and applauded him. Later, he and his fellow graduates (two young ladies) presented flowers to the mothers.

We are so very proud of him.

A Day of Waiting . . . and Waiting . . . and Waiting at the Lab

2011-05-11T17:11:00.002-04:00

Actually, it was only two hours, but it seemed like all day.

Once a year I’m sent to the lab for routine blood work. This year was no different from last year. Every year it’s the same:

I always manage to go on the day when only one phlebotomist is available, which means a two hour wait. And the only available seat for waiting is always next to the guy who (a) is a heavy smoker who stinks like the bottom of a filthy butt can, and (b) wears a tank top and spends way too much time stretching his arms over and behind his head.

I try to lean over the other way, but there’s a water cooler there and another man keeps drinking from it (I can only assume he must be trying to manufacture a urine sample). While he’s drinking cup after cup of water, he’s hovering over me and I can’t help wondering if he’s trying to read my Nookcolor over my shoulder, or pathetically hoping for a cheap glimpse of cleavage.

More people are called to the back than come out. This could be because the phlebotomist seems to only summon people who aren’t there. Like Ben Stein calling out in vain for Bueller, the phlebotomist will repeat a name several times, and even try different pronunciations of the name, but no one in that crowded waiting room so much as budges, though there might be one or two yawns. Finally she’ll give up and call out the next name on the list. Everyone still remains slumped in their chairs.

Where are these people? Why can’t she call out the names of people who are actually there? Like my name? I’ll spring up for anything that sounds even remotely like “Lingefelt” just to get away from Waterboy and Smelly Guy.

There can only be two reasons for this annoying phenomenon: Either the phlebotomist has today’s roster mixed up with the one from last Wednesday, or those people really are there, but they’ve long since lapsed into boredom-induced comas.

Sometimes it’s tempting to claim to be one of those people who never respond when their name is called, just to get in and out and on with my life. But who’s to say they didn’t sign in for something a lot more intrusive than blood work—which might even explain why they’re no longer there. They lost all nerve and fled after signing in.

I was the only person there who brought something to read. There were no magazines or newspapers lying about, and more than one person grumbled about how there should have been a TV.

Indeed, there was a lot of loud grumbling, mostly from little old ladies, about the long wait and how it was interfering with more important places to go and infinitely more interesting people to see. You’d think after eighty or ninety years on this mortal coil, it might have dawned on them that anytime they go to a lab or doctor’s office, they’re bloody well going to be waiting awhile and should plan accordingly.

I didn’t like the long wait, either, but reading helped pass the time and kept me from getting sucked into that gripefest.

I save my griping for this blog.

What I Loved Best About the Royal Wedding

2011-04-30T16:07:00.009-04:00

Surprisingly, it wasn’t her gown or his uniform or the two balcony kisses, though I certainly took immense delight in all those elements. No, in the end, I have to admit that what I loved most was simply the overall happiness, the much-needed joy, however fleeting, that the Royal Wedding brought to so many people around the world.

Yes, I’m one of those who cared and couldn’t get enough of it. (I feel the complete opposite about the Charlie Sheen saga.) But I’ve heard others wonder how anyone could possibly care about it with all the horrors plaguing the world lately. They think the Royal Wedding should not matter.

I’m acutely aware of the wars, the earthquakes, the tornados, the wildfires, the economy, the gas prices, the ominous sense that civilization as we know it is circling a giant drain threatening to suck us all into the dark sewers of hell. I’ve definitely had more than enough of these terrible things. Yet I dare not ignore them, as that could mean the difference between going down that drain or keeping a grip, however tenuous, on the rim of the bowl.

But if I can’t ignore the bad news, then why should I ignore the good? Indeed, why would I want to? The Royal Wedding is a rare bright spot, a single beam of light shining through the otherwise fathomless dark. How can I not go toward that light?

Many see the Royal Wedding as a waste of money, a frivolous sideshow that serves no purpose except to needlessly glorify a small group of undeserving people, who got where they are thanks to ancestors who ransacked castles, stole land, and chopped off heads. Valid point taken.

But at its core—its heart—are two young people willing to join hands and go forward not so much with hope, but with faith that a better, brighter future awaits, and is theirs for the forging if only they seize the opportunity to do so. Who gets married with the idea that it’s not going to do anyone any good, or even make any sort of difference? Ordinary people get married every day, but this is a time when high-profile nuptials like William and Catherine’s offer a welcome reminder to everyone.

I love the Royal Wedding for much the same reason I enjoy romance novels. They’re positive. They lift the heart. And in a world where so much is negative, where so many hearts and spirits hang heavy, why shouldn’t we turn to whatever it takes to lift them—and so motivated, ultimately lift ourselves out of the drain and safely over the rim of that bowl?

Taken at face value, it certainly seems as if the Royal Wedding doesn’t matter in a world awash with strife and sadness. But when one considers how many hearts and spirits it’s raised in a way nothing else has lately, it’s hard to deny that it does, in fact, matter a lot.

Bear's Adventures Through the Breaking Glass, Bedroom Window Edition

2011-03-23T14:59:00.003-04:00

Only he didn’t really go through it this time. But it is officially broken.

Baby Bear’s bedroom window is covered with an adhesive tinted sheet to cut down on glare from the sun and the neighbor’s white vinyl fence. We gave up trying to keep blinds or shades on the window, because he kept tearing them down. Fortunately his bedroom window is behind the gate leading to our back yard, so I don’t have to fret about passers-by peering inside (like they did when we lived in publicly accessible military housing out in California twenty years ago).

Anyway, it seems we should credit the tinted sheet with preventing shattered glass from flying everywhere and potentially cutting the Ursine Terror. The pane is still in place, boasting a lovely jagged pattern that could be a spider web or even a giant snowflake.

The point of impact is at roughly the same height to match his forehead (he’s now 6’4”), so I’m guessing this was another headbutting job.

“We knew he was going to do it eventually,” was all Mr. Lucky had to say about it.

But I suppose this means all betting books are now closed on the sliding glass door to the patio.

My Other Claim to Fame: Born in Forks, Washington

2011-03-16T11:08:00.012-04:00

I am not a vampire, but I was born half a century ago in the very tiny town of Forks, Washington.

We moved to Port Angeles, an hour’s drive away, when I was still an infant; but my paternal grandmother remained in Forks, where she owned and operated the town’s only theater through at least five decades and nine U.S. presidents. It poured rain just about every time we visited her. To this day, I honestly have no idea which way is east or west in Forks, because I don’t recall ever seeing the sun out there. No wonder it became a very popular hangout for vampires!

Growing up in Port Angeles, I enjoyed, or at least in adolescence suffered, the less than stellar distinction of being just about the only person in my high school class born in dreary, piddly, puddly old Forks.

I dreamed of becoming a famous writer, the kind whose fans would descend like a plague of locusts upon little Forks, Washington, where they would make pilgrimages to the hospital where I was born (the doctor who brought me into the world was a refugee from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, to which I attribute my penchant for cooking and enjoying huge quantities of goulash). They would visit the charming little house where I used to visit my grandmother. And they would pose for photos in front of the theater where I first saw Gone With the Wind at the age of eight, when I would’ve much preferred to stay at home with the younger siblings and their babysitter to watch Heidi on TV—or come back to Forks the following weekend to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Maybe Forks would name a street after me. Or do like Myrtle Beach, SC did with Vanna White, and post a sign at the city limits proclaiming itself the birthplace of author Karen Lingefelt. Or do like Salzburg, Austria did with Mozart, and sell chocolates and cookie tins with my picture on them.

Ah, but my caffeine-fueled, feverish imagination didn’t stop there. Before True Pretenses, I wrote a series of books that chronicled seven generations of a fictional European royal family. I used to think how cool it would be if the series ever got published and became so wildly popular, that people planning their European vacations would try to book flights and bus tours and hotels in this make-believe kingdom that existed nowhere but in my head. How gleefully I would laugh all the way to the bank!

Obviously such hilarity never ensued. But I was reminded of all this recently when my father sent me an e-mail which, with his permission, I have excerpted here:

As you know Forks has become a destination place because of this "Twilight Saga." There are stores there and in Port Angeles, (and maybe Port Townsend) that cater to the enthusiasts. In Forks you see tourists having their pictures taken in front of anything described in the first book. One moron (24 years old) got himself stranded on James Island at LaPush because he wanted to see one of the love nest "sites" described there in the book. The Coast Guard picked him off with a helicopter.

Anyway, I guess all this hoopla makes you an original Twilight Child seeing as how you were born in this now-famous place! I know you've considered Forks as a sort of backwater town. But it has now evolved and you can say: ".........Forks? Oh.......yeah, I was born there."

Alas, when reality bites, it bites with the fangs of a vampire, for ’twas not to be Karen Lingefelt of True Pretenses fame who put Forks on the map, but another author, Stephenie Meyer of Twilight fame.

But I think it’s just as well. The idea of chocolates with my likeness on the wrappers is embarrassing, and I’d hate to think a fan of mine who wanted to see the ravine where Lausanne crashed her car, would get stuck down there and have to be plucked out by a Coast Guard helicopter and treated for exposure. Lausanne survived—but what if the fan hadn’t?

I sometimes wonder what my grandmother, who passed away in 2000, would think of the whole Twilight thing—but not as much as I wonder what she would think of the whole True Pretenses thing.

Except for Chapter 15, I think she would have been thrilled to pieces.

Was This Guy Hoping To Hit On Me?

2011-03-09T09:32:00.003-05:00

Mr. Lucky and I went out for a late lunch at an all-you-can-eat pizza buffet that was practically deserted—save for another couple on the far side of the room. We sat at a table across from each other. I’ve never counted the tables and chairs or checked the Maximum Occupancy sign, but the entire establishment can seat over a hundred patrons at once.

After a while, the other couple got up and left. Then an average-looking fortyish man in a baseball cap came in, affably chatting with the cashier while Mr. Lucky got up to load another plate at the buffet, and I remained at our table.

I didn’t notice anything unusual going on until we got up to leave some time later. Imagine my surprise to see that man sitting in the chair directly behind mine, dunking his bread stick into a bowl of marinara sauce.

Had I pushed my chair back just another couple of inches, it would have smacked into his or worse, we’d have an embarrassment of tangled legs—chair legs, chair legs! As it was, I wondered how I hadn’t even been aware that he’d sat down behind me. Neurotic, mistrustful creature that I am, I’m usually very sensitive about my sacred space and who dares to hover along its extensive periphery. He must have been very stealthy about it.

But why?

And why did he choose to sit there of all places, when there were more than a hundred other places he could have sat—some of them closer to the buffet, others closer to the televisions, still others near the restrooms and emergency exits.

At the very least, why didn’t he sit on the other side of the table behind me?

I’m not one of those women who slings her purse over the back of her chair—I keep it between my feet with the strap over one knee—so I don’t think he was after the purse.

Even Mr. Lucky was initially baffled when he returned to our table and saw this man’s back only inches from mine, but he said nothing until after we left. No doubt he knew it would freak me out if I’d been aware of this bewildering development, and he’d just sat down with a plate piled high with slices of pizza that he meant to enjoy.

By the time we reached our car, Mr. Lucky thought he knew what that man was up to: “He saw you sitting there alone, so he assumed you were single and saw an opportunity. He was probably hoping to hit on you.”

It wasn’t until we got home that I finally managed to stop laughing at such a preposterous notion. So the guy was scheming to pull the old and thoroughly pitiful, “Excuse me, but could I borrow your salt shaker?” stunt.

Next he’d ask to borrow the pepper, followed by a request for a few napkins and a painfully obvious, totally lame, “So you like pepperoni, huh? Everyone seems to like pepperoni, why is that?”, and if all went according to his tired, worn out, dog-eared, grease-spotted script, I would soon tell him how silly it was for us to keep chitchatting over our shoulders, and invite him to join me at my table.

But for the return of my husband.

Honestly, I didn’t think I looked that desperate. Pathetic, maybe.

Back Into the Vault You Go, My Venetian Pretties!

2011-03-01T14:27:00.009-05:00

Venice, Italy, 1986. I was younger. Thinner. And now that I think about it, a lot wealthier, too.

Being single helped on all counts.

Back in those days I was in the Air Force, stationed in Germany. On weekends I would go on bus tours to various locales throughout Europe. Venice was one of my favorite destinations.

For the equivalent of $10.00, I rode a gondola—just so a quarter of a century later, I could write in my blog that I did it.

I walked from Piazza San Marco to the Rialto Bridge and back. I probably saw as many cats as I did pigeons.

I ate lunch in a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant near the Basilica. I said two words to the waiter: “Ice cream!” He brought me an elaborate Neapolitan sundae, complete with whipped cream, cherry, and a wafer. I was delighted, and cared not what it cost or how many calories it had. For I was young, thin, and loaded with lira.

I’ll never forget the W.C. in that place. The toilet had no seat, and flushing was facilitated by a dribbling garden hose threaded through a high window.

On a trip to nearby Burano, I hit my head on an overhead beam as I climbed the stairs in a tiny shop selling the lace for which the island is famous.

I also visited Murano, where others in our group bought huge, ornate chandeliers they planned to hang in homes they had, or hoped to have someday, back in the States.

Shallow person that I am, I bought this set of glassware strictly for its looks:

I love the royal blue. I love the gold trim. And I love the enameled flowers with the tiny pearls at their centers.

Once acquired, these exquisite pieces remained in their original box for nearly twenty years, until we moved into our new home. By then, I decided my children were old enough and sufficiently distracted by video games, that it was safe to unpack the glassware so it could finally do what Old World master artisans had meticulously and lovingly crafted it to do: Collect dust.

And that’s what my royal blue Venetian pretties did in the hutch until yesterday, when Baby Bear smashed one of the glass doors. While they all survived with nary a nick, I’m afraid it’s for their own good that they must be packed away again until further notice.

I just hope it doesn’t take another twenty years.

Bear's Adventures Through the Breaking Glass, Redux

2011-02-28T11:29:00.003-05:00

Last summer it was the living room window. Several months ago it was one of the glass doors in my living room curio cabinet.

Today it was one of the glass doors on the dining room hutch, and this time I actually saw him do it. He shattered it by slamming both paws flat against it.

I’m thankful none of it got into his eyes, since pieces of it went flying in all directions. In fact, he walked away with nothing but a small cut on the palm of his left hand.

This particular glass will be next to impossible to replace, as it was very uniquely cut and designed for that hutch, which was bought at a place no longer in business. The doors were opened by pressing gently on the glass with a fingertip.

It’s only a matter of time before he follows suit with the bathroom mirror, the sliding glass door to the patio, and his bedroom window.

Knock on wood. (Oh yes, he does that, too; ditto the drywall.)

But not glass. Please, not the glass.

Chiding My Choice of Cheese

2011-02-21T17:26:00.014-05:00

I’m all for friendly cashiers, and I always appreciate their cheerfulness in the face of all they do, and the crap they must put up with while spending so much time on their feet.

But sometimes, I really sort of wish they would refrain from questioning my purchases and expecting me to explain them.

Yes, I know ramen noodles are high in sodium. Thank you, I’m well aware there’s a hurricane out in the Gulf, and that these frozen chicken nuggets will be no good if the power goes out. But I’m going to buy them for my son anyway, because he loves them, and who knows? Maybe, just maybe, we won’t have a power outage. As it turned out, we didn’t, because the hurricane shifted elsewhere. But the clerk in that scenario actually chastised us for not stocking up on canned goods instead, and Mr. Lucky grumbled about her busybodying all the way home.

Today it was about cheese, specifically the kind pictured below:

From Sargento, it’s a six ounce resealable bag of mild and white cheddar cheese pieces shaped like Mickey Mouse. Unlike most cheese products, the pieces within are not individually wrapped; you just unzip the bag and devour.

They are perfect for Baby Bear, who loves cheese in any form. He’ll go through all 64 slices of sandwich cheese (which means lots of little wrappers everywhere) and even break into bags of shredded cheese bought for nights we do Mexican.

I’ve been known to buy bags of Mickey Mouse cheese by the truckload. In all fairness, most cashiers simply declare the cheese “cute” and leave it at that, for which I’m grateful.

But not today’s cashier. “Who’s the cheese freak?” she wanted to know.

“My son,” I replied. “He loves cheese, and it’s good for him.”

She just had to ask how old he was, and I told her. It was clear from her stupefied reaction that she thought it very strange I was buying Mickey Mouse cheese for a thirteen year old, when there are so many other cheese products out there packaged in a more sophisticated manner. She mentioned her own teenager who, just like our Bear, ate all kinds of cheese—slices, cubes, blocks—but never in Mickey Mouse form.

To her credit, she stopped short of asserting her teenager wouldn’t be caught dead with a bag of this stuff, but guilt-receptive parental unit that I am, the vibe was there and duly picked up: I was babying my son, embarrassing him, and he’d probably never get a date or hold down a decent job, and would grow up to become some crazed sniper in a bell tower, all because I made him eat cheese shaped like Mickey Mouse when he would’ve preferred it shaped like air guitars.*

As there was a long line behind us, I thought the better of getting into an equally long explanation of my son’s autism and other issues; how because of that alone, and not the shape of his cheese, it was not outside the realm of possibility that he’d still be living with us at age forty anyway; and why Mickey Mouse cheese really is easier for him than that string stuff that has to be peeled open, and is designed for people with super fine motor skills, none of whom live in my house.

You might say I was feeling a little cheesed off.

*He does, however, prefer vegetables shaped like air guitars.

Better the Piano Keys Than My Teeth

2011-02-12T07:22:00.004-05:00

The result of Baby Bear's relentless pounding:

They just don't make them like they used to. Alas, cheap plastic is no substitute for the gazelle-goring, impala-impaling toughness of ivory.

Living with my youngest son is like living in the midst of an elephant stampede.

In Search of Another Wal-Mart

2011-01-28T16:42:00.001-05:00

Our neighborhood Wal-Mart has lately been overrun with what I can only describe as press gangs from Sam’s Club. Sam is building a new Club in the vicinity, and he wants to sign up members. His minions lie in wait about thirty feet beyond the senior citizen greeter, and if I don’t slip by them fast enough to avoid their ambush, I’m likely to get clubbed over the head with a clipboard, only to regain consciousness with a Sam’s Club membership card in my hand.

I half-jokingly suggested to Mr. Lucky that we needed to find a new Wal-Mart. So we drove up to the Great Shopping Vortex better known as Brandon Town Center, where first we had lunch at Romano’s Macaroni Grill. (We wanted to do The Olive Garden, but they were so swamped, I think there was a second waiting list just to get one of those little round pagers that light up and vibrate once you are promoted to one of The Chosen who get To Be Seated.)

After committing the deadly sin of gluttony, we headed to the nearby Wal-Mart, where no press gangs accosted us.

This wasn’t the first time we’d been to this particular Wal-Mart. Indeed, I don’t think it was the first time we’d pushed the particular cart we got, as it came with an all-too-familiar, loudly clunking wheel that caused the cart to jerk with every revolution. We used to shop here all the time in the last century, before a couple of subsequent moves finally placed us near the Wal-Mart now rife with press gangs. Yet this was like a sparkling new Wal-Mart, since it had been recently renovated—and totally rearranged.

The pharmacy, for instance, had been moved from the front of the store to the very center, where fitting rooms used to be. The health and beauty items were now directly across from the food section, which I think makes better sense than putting them at separate ends of the store.

We were there mainly to stock up on food for Baby Bear, and once that was accomplished, Mr. Lucky decided he wanted to get more dog food. Dog food, he declared, was always near the garden center at every Wal-Mart he knew, so that meant a trek to the opposite side of the store.

The dog food wasn’t there. The pet supply section had been replaced with toys.

We turned right and headed toward the back of the store, where in front of paints we finally saw a sign that said “Pet Supplies” pointing us to the right—the direction from whence we just came.

So we turned right again, and saw nothing ahead of us but the Men’s Toy Department (better known as Electronics)—which, I might add, was in the same place it had always been because men can never find anything and won’t ask directions and if you dare move it, you’ll only get them more confused and surly. We clunked past—and after circumnavigating the entire store, we finally found the dog food where the baby stuff used to be—the same corner where I once bought diapers and formula and teething rings when Baby Bear really was a baby.

After that heavy lunch, we needed the exercise anyway. And we still haven’t been pressed aboard Sam’s Club membership—but never say never.

Baby Bear Ransacks My Office

2011-01-19T16:45:00.001-05:00

Honestly, I thought all that noise was coming from his own room. At least once a day he rearranges his bedroom furniture, empties his toy box (one of those heavy duty plastic storage bins), then lies on his back on the bed, lifts his legs, and sets about balancing the box on his feet, spinning it until he finally sends it flying across the room to hit the wall or door with a horrific banging noise.

That’s what I thought he was doing, until I went into his room to find he wasn’t there. His toys were in the toy box, and his furniture did not appear to have been rearranged since the last time I dared to venture into his booby-trapped domain armed with whip, fedora, and Grail diary.

But there was a lot of thumping coming from across the hall, behind the closed door of my office.

I found him sitting in my desk chair, surrounded by wreckage. He’d knocked over framed photos; pushed my laptop and a flat screen monitor into the dead space beyond where my desk curves; tipped over five stacked letter trays, the contents spread all over the floor; dumped the pencil and paper clip receptacles; and relocated the printer from the desk to the top of the two-drawer file cabinet where the letter trays had been.

I suppose I should be thankful he didn’t pull the books off the bookcases—or maybe he would have had I not discovered him when I did.

At least my laptop still works. I keep it closed when not in use, and that may well have saved it.

But it’s for this very reason that I usually keep my office door locked when I’m not in there. Usually. Why the lapse this time? Well, lately Baby Bear has developed a knack for locking doors before closing them. Even if I leave my office for just a minute, he’ll swoop in to push the button on the door knob, then close the door before returning to his own room. So why didn’t he do it this time? Why, instead of locking my door and going back to his own affairs, did he make himself comfortable within? (And trust me—ransacking a room IS his way of making himself comfortable!)

Perhaps the recent door locking has been all one big diversionary ploy, designed to trick me into keeping my office door unlocked for more prolonged periods, lulling me into thinking I don’t have to lock it, because he’ll do it and that’s it.

Or perhaps—in fact, most likely—I’m just losing my mind.

Guess Who Destroyed a Smoke Alarm? (Hint: Not Baby Bear, and Not Mr. Lucky)

2010-12-30T12:54:00.019-05:00

It was me—yes, Karen!—in another one of those “this could only happen when the husband’s away” moments:

The day after Christmas, Mr. Lucky went up to Georgia to see his parents, taking with him the Crown Prince and Bart the chocolate beagle. I’d had trouble sleeping the previous night, and so was not at my best—whatever that is, since I’m not sure I’ve ever been there. Part of the problem was two boys who don’t seem to need as much sleep as I do—both the Crown Prince and Baby Bear were up very early Sunday morning, and I simply cannot sleep when the younger boy is awake. Terrible things are more likely to happen if I do. Mr. Lucky attributed our sons’ wakefulness and energy to the excitement of Christmas.

After they went to Georgia, I was really hoping to get a better night’s sleep. But alas . . .

At approximately 2:30 am, I was awakened by the regular chirping of the smoke alarm. It chirped about every minute or so, calling for a new battery.

Why? Why, oh why did it have to start doing this at 2:30 in the morning? Why did it have to do this when I had very little sleep the previous night? And why did it have to be on a night when Mr. Lucky was away?

At first, I thought I could ignore it and go back to sleep, but that wasn’t happening. As I stumbled out of our bedroom, which is just off the family room, I could hear the chirping right over my head, where there was one of the many smoke alarms scattered throughout our house.

We have ten foot ceilings, and I was in no mood to go out to the garage and drag in the stepladder. I grabbed a broom and a chair from the dining table, and poked at the smoke alarm till it fell open to reveal the battery.

I tore out the battery. Still the alarm chirped. I said some very, very bad words and began beating the smoke alarm till the casing broke off, revealing all the tiny little bits and wires and doodads inside.

And still it chirped.

More banging and stabbing with the broomstick ensued, till something snapped and sparked, and the other half of the smoke alarm clattered to the floor, leaving only wires dangling out of a hole in the ceiling. YET IT WAS STILL CHIRPING!

How to shut it up? I didn’t know where Mr. Lucky was keeping the hammer this week, and I was in no mood to ransack the house looking for it.

I thought of grabbing the shovel and digging a hole in the backyard to bury the alarm, but it was too cold and dark outside. So I did the next best thing—I rushed it out to the garage and shoved it under a pile of stuff, hoping that would stifle the persistent chirping.

Yet when I returned to the family room, I could still hear loud chirping from the ceiling.

So I started yanking at the wires that dangled from the hole, till there was nothing left to yank. After the snap and spark, I dared not go further. But it wouldn’t stop chirping.

I was furious and frustrated. I went back to bed and drove myself insane wondering how I could muffle that infernal chirping until Mr. Lucky came home . . . in another three days.

Where’s the duct tape? Suppose I took that whole bag of cotton balls beneath the bathroom sink, and taped it over the hole? And suppose I added the complete Sunday edition of the St. Pete Times, would that be enough?

These were the crazed, deranged thoughts racing through my mind as I struggled in vain to go back to sleep. I was at least thankful that Bart was in Georgia. That particular dog would’ve gone nuts from the chirping. Only Jasper has the good sense to go into hiding and stay there.

It didn’t help my mood when Mr. Lucky’s alarm clock went off at 7:30 am. My own alarm clock is so easy to turn on and off—it has a huge snooze button I can pound with my fist—but Mr. Lucky’s clock is all tiny identical buttons set into the casing, and you have to hope you hit the right one with either your fingernail or a very pointy stylus sold separately.

That’s why whenever his alarm clock goes off and he’s not here, I just rip the cord out of the socket.

To continue with the smoke alarm that wouldn’t die, it wasn’t till after I’d had at least one cup of coffee that I realized the chirping came not from that ugly hole I’d left in the ceiling outside our bedroom, but from the smoke alarm in the opposite corner of the family room . . . outside Mr. Lucky’s man-cave.

I’d attacked the wrong smoke alarm.

Well? It was the middle of the night! I was tired! I was ticked! And I swear the chirping had been coming from the smoke alarm outside our bedroom!

I wasn’t even sure we had any 9-volt batteries in the house. There were none in the cupboard where I kept all the other batteries (mostly AA’s for Baby Bear’s toys), so I rummaged through the “junk drawer” in the kitchen. Whenever he deigns to put anything away, no matter what it is, Mr. Lucky always crams it into that drawer.

But it was there that I unearthed an unopened package of 9-volt batteries. They’d probably been there since we moved in, and with my rotten luck, they were no longer any good.

Yet when I switched one out with the old battery in the smoke alarm, the chirping finally ceased.

When Mr. Lucky came home, he was appalled by what I’d done to the other smoke alarm. “I can’t believe you totally destroyed it,” he said.

“You had to be here,” was all I could say. “Under the circumstances, I really think you would’ve done the same. I’ve seen how you are whenever you use the broiler and the one in the kitchen goes off.”

“But I’ve never torn the whole thing off the ceiling and smashed it to smithereens!” he exclaimed. “You’re dangerous, Karen.”

I don’t know if he’s ever given me a finer compliment.

Fiona's Christmas Wish List

2010-12-20T08:03:00.006-05:00

Today is Fiona’s birthday, and she would’ve been twenty-one.

Earlier this month, I attended the meeting of Bereaved Parents, a support group for those who have lost a child. We were asked to share a special Christmas memory concerning our departed offspring. What sprang instantly to my mind was not any particular Christmas holiday out of the ten we had with Fiona, but of the Christmas list she made up shortly before she passed away a decade ago.

I still have that handwritten list, carefully preserved. What’s unique about it is that she didn’t just list stuff for herself—she decided what everyone in the family would want that Christmas. Still, she claimed the lion’s share of wishes.

What Fiona wanted:

Sailor Moon “S” The Movie
Pokemon the Movie 2000
The Simpsons’ Wrestling (Playstation game)
Mr. Driller (also a Playstation game)
Putt-Putt Enters the Race (computer game)
PaRappa the Rapper (Playstation game to replace the one that was too scratched up to work anymore)
Lammy Tee (Lammy was a friend of PaRapper and she had a T-shirt)
PaRappa Ski Cap (He always wore a ski cap. Now you could, too!)

She wrote “Rugrats” but crossed it out. Not on the list but also requested was a video game called Threads of Fate (she’d been playing the promotional demo and wrote the game’s name on the calendar in the kitchen), and a complete set of Sailor Moon Dolls. She saw those advertised on a TV commercial and called me to come and see. “Mom! Mom! Look!” she said.

I came, I saw, I noted. Her father bought the complete set on October 14th of that year, and we put them in our closet to wait until Christmas, but alas—she passed away the next day, October 15th. All of the Sailor Moon dolls are with her now. Mr. Lucky said, “They’ll be our final gift to her.”

That was what Fiona wanted for that Christmas. Somehow she managed to find room on that single sheet of paper for the rest of us.

For her older brother, she wanted him to have a “Crash Bandicoot Color Block Long Sleeve Crew.” Obviously she copied the words out of a catalog. I think it was supposed to be a sweatshirt.

For her dad, she wanted him to have a Playstation game called Duke Nukem: Planet of the Babes. (I don’t think so, Bunny Buttons.)

She wasn’t as specific about what I should get for Christmas, or maybe she was starting to run out of space, but she knew Santa Claus could never go wrong with “Book’s” (sic) for Mom.

When she showed me the list, I told her that she forgot her baby brother. Even if he was her archnemesis, wouldn’t she like to put something down for him?

Fiona promptly amended her list. She wrote down the name of her younger brother, and next to it added the word, “Bear”.

He got a stuffed Teddy Bear that Christmas.

That’s how the Baby of the family came to be known as our Bear . . . by the final Christmas wish of our Bunny.

"Christmas Tree Up!"

2010-12-17T10:42:00.001-05:00

. . . as our firstborn would say.

When My Husband Cooks, I Always Realize Smoke Gets in My Eyes

2010-12-12T17:23:00.005-05:00

A long time ago, in another house we lived in far, far away, I clipped a Family Circus cartoon from the newspaper and stuck it on the refrigerator. It had one of the boys, probably Billy, commenting that the smoke alarm in the house always went off only when Daddy cooked.

It was one of those “it’s funny because it’s true” things. That clipping disappeared in the next move, but it remains with us in spirit, since it continues to happen in fact.

For every time Mr. Lucky uses the broiler—which is several times a week—the smoke alarm goes off in a loud, piercing shriek.

Every. Single. Time.

Once he turns on that broiler, he also runs the fan over the stove full blast. I’ll open the sliding glass door leading to the patio. Mr. Lucky even waves the removable lid from Baby Bear’s toy box at the smoke alarm, which is on the ceiling in a hallway just off the kitchen. And still it goes off.

He always has to jab a broomstick at the smoke alarm to shut it up. Sometimes it’s like watching a kid trying to whack a piñata. It’ll break open and the battery will bungee out, dangling by its wires, yet the alarm continues to screech. This is usually followed by his standard rant about the hypersensitivity of the alarm (at least we know it works), that segues into a litany of everything he did to prevent it from going off, and then he wraps up with the same old empty threats (not that I can describe his threats any other way) to just remove the alarm altogether.

Meanwhile, the beagles go ballistic. Jasper flees outside, partly to escape the alarm and partly to avoid Mr. Lucky’s yelling, while Bart shakes as if he just swallowed a full bottle of Acme Earthquake Pills. Once dinner is served, he takes refuge beneath the dining room table, where he treats my feet to a massage with his vibrating torso.

The smoke alarm never goes off when I use the oven. Then again, I don’t use the broiler.

Yet I’ve noticed recently that even when I turn on the oven just to bake something, the dogs go into panic mode. Jasper dashes to the back door and does his gotta-go-now-before-I-explode dance, while a whimpering Bart trots around the house all atremble. They hate the sound of the fan over the stove. They know it’s a harbinger. They just haven’t figured out yet that they only need fear it when their master takes over the kitchen.

Oddly enough, Baby Bear isn’t bothered by it. In fact, he doesn’t even seem to notice when it goes off, possibly because it fits so smoothly with his regular program of routine chaos as to be nothing out of the ordinary to him.

Now that I think about it, I hardly blink myself when it goes off. I just wonder if it’s for the same reason, and if I should be worried about that.

A Rant About Gift Wrap

2010-12-07T15:02:00.001-05:00

I like to use as many different kinds of gift wrap as possible each Christmas—the more varied, the better. I love wrapping paper covered with candy canes, poinsettias, holly, snowmen and snowflakes, teddy bears, gingerbread men, Santa Claus in numerous poses, and of course Disney characters.

But when it comes to gift wrap, I do not like solid colors, plaids, or stripes (except on my candy canes). I find them boring, unimaginative, and not the least bit festive. I don’t like seeing any of them on bed sheets, either.

Which brings us to those multi-packs of Christmas gift wrap you can buy, usually three or four rolls to a package. They’re a great, economical way to get a variety of designs, except for one teensy little problem: It seems as if every multi-pack out there includes one roll of either solid-colored, striped, or plaid wrapping paper. If I buy these convenient packs, then I’m going to be stuck with unexciting solids, silly stripes, and plaid. Ordinarily I like plaid, but not on my gift wrap—or the bed sheets—unless there’s a sexy Scotsman underneath.

I can’t shake the feeling that each pack includes a solid, stripe or plaid because the gift wrap manufacturers can’t get rid of them any other way. But then why would they make them—unless there’s a very powerful lobby out there dedicated to Saving Our Solid, Striped, and Plaid Christmas Gift Wrap?

I won’t use them. In fact, unless the other rolls in the package have designs that totally blow me away, I’ll just not buy them at all and pay a little extra for individual rolls that allow me to choose exactly what I want, instead of having S, S, and P forced on me through some Spread the Monotony scheme.

In that spirit, I try not to use the same gift wrap design more than once for each person whose gift I wrap. I only wish I could get Mr. Lucky to do the same without having to beat him over the head with that old Claxton fruitcake I pull out of storage along with the ornaments and lights every year. Each Yuletide, he waits until five minutes before midnight on Christmas Eve to wrap my presents. I give him every single roll of wrapping paper in the house, a dozen or more different designs (save any S, S, or P), and I exhort him not to use the same design twice. His usual response is to roll his eyes, but he also knows I must be humored.

Yes, yes, I know that what’s inside the gift wrap is more important than the wrap itself. But I like the variety, the dearth of sameness, the wild explosion of many colors and patterns beneath the tree, a kaleidoscopic chaos with the promise of never knowing what’s next but it’s certain to be a feast for the senses.

In other words, it’s what I know.

When Bears Attack Furniture

2010-11-30T12:26:00.010-05:00

Simply hideous:

No, Baby Bear did not do this by chewing on it, or otherwise ripping it apart with his bare paws. This damage was caused by his constant rocking, one of autism’s many self-stimulatory behaviors.

With the prolonged rocking came heavy sweating, which is why I am so not into leather. He’d sit in the middle of this love seat in our family room and endlessly rock back and forth—think of a single player “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” The kid must have abs that Harry Houdini might never have died for. But as he got older and bigger and stronger, the rocking became more rollicking, sometimes lifting the furniture off its stubby feet and sending the back of his head into the drywall.

I suppose if we pulled the leather over the back of the sofa, we could tack it back into place, but only if we use steel rivets like the kind they use to construct battleships.

There used to be a matching sofa. He did the same thing to the family room sofa (as well as the one in the living room, pictured below with Bear in Rare Repose), until the springs sprang and the wooden framework splintered.

When we had all three children, we had a curved sectional sofa that served very well and we loved it (despite the pile of toys and junk that accumulated in the space behind the curve), but that was over ten years ago and we’re not sure a new one would be “rocking proof.”

I have told Mr. Lucky that we are fated to be a house of armchairs, and that’s just the way it is. He frets over how weird it looks to not have a sofa in either the living room or family room. But who’s going to know and be offended—the Sofa Police? We only have one child living at home now. We don’t entertain, and we have to be practical.

Oh, and as if Baby Bear hasn’t committed enough atrocities lately—this morning I went into his room to find he’d ripped the tag off his new Toy Story 3 comforter.

If anyone from Homeland Security is reading this, then we’re doomed—unless the Sofa Police get here first. But if they want something to haul away in the dead of night, they’re welcome to take the loveseat.

Giving Thanks for Bigger Pies

2010-11-19T15:26:00.007-05:00

Someone out there listens to me. And it’s dear old Mrs. Smith of frozen pie fame, who’s gone back to bigger pies. I’m so happy I’ll forgive her for not labeling the new package with the words, “Bigger size back by Karen Lingefelt’s demand. She spoke and we heard. Now maybe she’ll shut up.”

Two years ago I ranted here about how her pies were shrinking into something closer to tarts, and that simply would not do for this family of pumpkin pie connoisseurs. To be fair, she wasn’t the only manufacturer jumping on the let’s-make-the-product-smaller-for-the-same-price-and-maybe-consumers-won’t-notice bandwagon, but we notice what’s important to us, and at Schloss Lingefelt, that’s pie.

But as much as I appreciate the intentions of Mesdames Smith, Crocker, Callendar, Butterworth, et al to keep us from overindulging and overspending, and while Goodman and Goodwife Lingefelt are certainly grateful for what they do have, the fact remains that on the last Thursday of every November, like their pilgrim forebears they prefer to give thanks for all the bounty, not the rations.

We give thanks for the prosperity and exceptionalism of America—and really, what says “prosperous” and “exceptional” and “American” more deliciously than a large, thick pie topped with towering dollops of whipped cream?

Thank you for bigger pies.

P.O.'d at the P.O.

2010-11-12T15:36:00.005-05:00

Last December we received what appeared to be a Christmas card. The house number and town matched ours, but the addressee’s name and street were completely different. For all we knew, it might have included family photos, baby pictures for someone’s grandparents, or a check from a generous friend or relative to make the addressee’s holiday a little merrier. We took it back to the Post Office, only to have it show up in our mailbox again the very next day. Fortunately, Mr. Lucky knew where the street was, and because he’s such a nice guy, he ended up delivering it to the folks in person.

The following March, I found in my mailbox several post cards from the Census Bureau, all reminding me to fill out my Census form and mail it back by April 1st. Only one of the cards was correctly addressed to me. The others were for residences scattered to the four corners of the town. I trust THEY remembered to fill out their Census forms, even without the reminder.

Then last week it happened again—we received a regular business sized envelope so thick, that the sender (whose return address was a P.O. Box) had to stand in line at the post office to pay for the extra postage. I don’t know why she didn’t just slap on an extra stamp.

Notwithstanding, whatever it was, it was addressed to my house number, my street, my town, state and ZIP code—but the addressee was not the name of anyone who lives here. Neither the first nor last name was even close to that of anyone who lives around here.

I looked for both the sender and addressee in the White Pages, but neither was listed.

The sender went to a lot of trouble to pay for extra postage on this thick, stiff envelope. There may have been photos enclosed. It was certainly important to the parties concerned. So I took it to the Post Office.

I waited in line. And waited and waited. I don’t know why they have three windows, when only two are ever open. Finally it was my turn—and I made a point of informing the clerk that while that was my address on the envelope, I was not that person, nor did any person by that name live at my address. Could he please return it to the sender?

He made some weird mark on it and declared he would take care of it. I thanked him and went on my way.

The next day it was back in our mailbox. That weird mark looked something like “ANK”—not “UNK” which might have made more sense to me. No one had bothered to pull out the “Return to Sender” stamp with that rude pointy finger. Hadn’t that clerk heard of Elvis?

Back to the Post Office I went, contemplating how to confront the clerk about this without—well, going postal. When I arrived, the same two clerks manned the same two windows, while the same third window remained closed. But the same old long line snaked all the way back to the door—each person with a stack of boxes probably going overseas, and of course no one will fill out a customs form while waiting, because they're hoping the clerk will forget to tell them they must have one. Alas, he may forget to use a "Return to Sender" stamp, but he never forgets to make YOU step aside and fill out a form.

Did I really want to stand in line for half an hour just to ask the clerk to please, for the love of God and Country, stamp RETURN TO SENDER on this bad penny of an envelope, only to have it boomerang back to my mailbox? No, I did not. Could I trust him to do his job this time? No, I could not. Would he even want to see me again, especially when I was in a foul mood? (All right, a fouler mood than usual.) Unless he was doing this to make me come back so he could get my phone number and ask me on a date, I think not. Besides, I'm already married.

So I went over to the table, pulled a pen out of my purse, and wrote RETURN TO SENDER, ADDRESSEE NOT AT THIS ADDRESS!!! in huge black letters, complete with those exclamation marks (though there should also be a double underline under NOT). Tempting as it was, I resisted the urge to add epithets and a raving manifesto on why the Post Office was losing money. There was only so much available space on the envelope anyway.

I slipped it into the mail slot just like I do with the bills, pulled the slot open again to make sure the letter dropped down like I always do (I felt validated when I saw Meg Ryan’s character doing the same O/C thing in When Harry Met Sally . . .), and for the second time that week, I went on my way—but didn’t thank anyone.

It’s been over a week now, and I haven’t seen that letter since. I hope—nay, trust—it went where it’s supposed to go.

Boo, Humbug! I Am a Halloween Scrooge

2010-11-01T15:14:00.002-04:00

We didn’t do Halloween this year. The Crown Prince wanted to come and hand out treats as always, but his group home, as well as his school, are nearly thirty miles away. It would’ve been too late to drive him back to the home afterward. In the morning I would’ve had to wait until Baby Bear was on the bus to take the Crown Prince to school/group home and yada yada yada the whole thing was just a logistical mess, especially since Mr. Lucky had to work Halloween night.

While I’m no fan of Halloween to begin with—maybe because I do enough dressing like a freak and scaring people and yelling for candy the other 364 days of the year—I still felt bad about all of this. The Crown Prince talked non-stop for months of coming to our house on “Sunday, October 31, 2010” (he knows which day of the week for every holiday each year), and wearing what he calls his “pumpkin shirt” (orange T-shirt with a jack o’lantern face on it) for the occasion. The group home even called on Friday afternoon wanting to know what time we were picking him up. He’d decided. But I had to overrule him, and got utterly no pleasure out of it.

After 6 pm Halloween night, I closed the living room blinds and curtains, and made sure all the outdoor lights were off. We didn’t have any jack o’lanterns or Halloween decorations of any kind; just a generic fall wreath made up of autumn leaves hanging on the front door (after Thanksgiving I’ll switch it out for the Christmas wreath).

Baby Bear and I repaired to the family room toward the back of the house to play Crash Bandicoot on the Sony Playstation.

Despite all my humbug precautions, there were still two separate incidents of trick-or-treaters at the door, sending the dogs into a frenzy of barking. The second group of trick-or-treaters was a little more persistent than the first—they rang and knocked and rang again. The house was dark but dogs were barking at the window, so surely there had to be humans with candy.

Are there new rules out there I didn’t hear about? Kiddies, you don’t go to homes with no lights. I remember years ago when we took our two older children trick-or-treating on MacDill Air Force Base, at one house the doofus resident kept opening the door to tell trick-or-treaters that he had no candy. He’d close the door, then another swarm of kids would come up to knock, and he’d open the door again to tell them there was no candy here, rinse and repeat.

Yet his porch light was on. All he had to do was turn it off and he could go back to his beer and Cheetos in peace. The rules in military housing are quite clear about that, and I could’ve sworn similar guidelines were in place in the civilian community.

I simply didn’t answer the door. There was no point when I had nothing to give, and the overexcited dogs might have escaped to wreak more havoc on the children, and besides, I do it with solicitors all the time. I love that peephole that lets me see not only who’s ringing my doorbell, but what they have clutched in their hands. And it’s never balloons and a video camera and an oversized check with my name on it.

The Crown Prince will definitely be coming over for Thanksgiving (I count on him to rattle off the complete menu for me and to harangue his father about putting up the Christmas tree the very next day).

But the creepiest thing of all about our non-Halloween Halloween? Mr. Lucky has yet to bring home bags and bags and bags of half-price candy.

Another "I Feel Like the World's Worst Mother" Moment

2010-10-24T16:45:00.002-04:00

I was sitting in the softly lit family room last night with the TV on, when Baby Bear burst out of his bedroom—he never just comes out of there; he always shoots out as if he’s been catapulted or fired from a cannon.

He bounded into the family room and threw himself onto the love seat—because he never just enters a room or sits on the furniture, either. Every move that kid makes is as if he has turbo power.

After all these years, I’m accustomed to the bursting and catapulting and bounding and throwing, so I didn’t even glance his way as he commenced rocking back and forth on the love seat.

It probably wasn’t more than a few minutes before I finally deigned to look at him, but in retrospect, I can’t help feeling it was a few minutes too long, and I really should’ve looked at him as soon as he appeared.

He had a nosebleed, and as is usually the case when these things happen, he was—well, a bloody mess.

But what is also usually the case is that in the past, whether he’s covered in blood or mud or something guaranteed to make me jump out of my seat with a scream, he’ll come and stand before me or, if I’m seated at the computer, quietly stand behind me until I turn to look at him.

For his own part, he never makes a sound; he just has to show himself to me. But last night, he apparently didn’t seem concerned enough to strike his familiar but dreaded, “Hey Mom, look at what a mess I am!” pose.

I found bloodstains in his bedroom, so he was like this when he barreled into the family room. I really should have noticed.

By the time I cleaned him up, the bleeding seemed to have subsided. Afterward, he still insisted on rocking back and forth, which I feared would cause the bleeding to resume, but it didn’t. An hour later his meds finally kicked in and he fell asleep, but I continued to check that nose.

He is fine.

These things upset me more than they do him; in fact, he never seems upset. I don’t know if it’s because he’s a boy or if I should be worried about that, but just to be on the safe side, I am.

Fiona, Ten Years Later

2010-10-15T15:13:00.000-04:00

Dear Fiona:

It’s now been ten years since you left us—almost the same length of time you were with us. We still miss you, and not a single day goes by that my brain doesn’t hit the replay button on those final moments.

I can talk to people about you and what happened to you, and remain stoic and dry-eyed. But then I go to Wal-Mart, where we happen to casually pass through the ladies’ lingerie department. I see a rack of bras and panties adorned with Disney characters, and just like that I turn into a watering pot because I wish I could buy them for you.

This actually happened a few months ago—and this wasn’t little girls’ underwear, either—these were bras and panties for grown females with bosoms. I froze in my tracks to stare at them, and told your dad, “Fiona would love these. You know she’d love to wear them. And if she were still here, she could wear them, and they would fit,” because you’d be twenty years old now. The waterworks started gushing right there in the middle of Wal-Mart, and your dad had to drag me away. Perhaps it affected him, too, but he wouldn’t admit it.

For a fleeting time frame of only three short years, I had all three of my children and our family was complete. Those were the days when we went bowling as a family every Sunday afternoon. Baby Bear sat in his stroller while the rest of us bowled, and you got a kick out of lofting balls like Mr. Burns. Afterwards we always went to CiCi’s for pizza.

I’ve told your older brother that whenever we hear thunder, that’s you bowling up in heaven. “What’s that sound?” I ask him whenever thunder rolls, and he always replies, “Fiona’s bowling.” He still talks about your last day, of the paramedics who came to the house that morning, and of going to see you in the hospital afterward, but he seems to understand you’re now an angel in heaven.

When you were still here, every morning when I got up, I always went first into your room, because your school bus came earlier than your brother’s, and after you got sick, you had medical needs that had to be taken care of first thing. The day after you died, a Monday morning, I got out of bed and went straight to your pink bedroom without a second thought. It was purely out of habit, a reflex. But you weren’t there. The four-poster bed, with its canopy and comforter all covered with cheerful little hearts, was empty.

I still have your comforter, put away where the blanket-loving Bear can’t get to it. Those hundreds of little hearts are still whole, but my own heart is missing a piece.

At least I know where it is.

We love you, Bunny Buttons!

Baby Bear Gets Down and Dirty

2010-10-10T10:07:00.004-04:00

Last weekend we had the Crown Prince over because it was his birthday. (He’s now 22, Mr. Lucky’s age when he married me.) On Sunday evening we all piled into the car to take him back to the group home where he resides with other mentally disabled adult males.

Once there, Baby Bear refused to leave.

For a while we let him sit in the wooden lawn swing on the front porch of the house. Yet when we told him it was time to get up and go home, he made his usual squeal (that’s the best word to describe the sound) of protest and continued rocking in the swing.

We mentioned McDonald’s to him. He usually loves McDonald’s. Not this time. He wanted to stay where he was.

I started rummaging among all the McTrash in the car to show him something that might lure him back. I found an empty Dunkin’ Donuts box and waved it. “How about donuts?” I asked him. He never turns down the opportunity to go for donuts.

Until now.

Mr. Lucky finally attempted to physically remove Bear from the swing. I tried to hold the swing steady, thinking that would make it easier, but Mr. Lucky informed me in no uncertain terms that I was not helping, and to back off. And stay backed off.

I got in the car and started it up. Meanwhile, somewhere between the porch swing and the car, Mr. Lucky and Bear wrestled each other to the ground, which was all dirt. Very fine powdery dirt. Bear was already sweaty from his constant movements, and within seconds he was covered with grime.

Mr. Lucky was on his feet, trying with all his strength to get our son off the ground, but the boy was having none of it. He rolled away from his father, picking up more dirt.

At one point I was afraid he’d roll under the car and stay there, and then we’d never get him out. I turned off the ignition, because he was already too near the exhaust pipe.

And all the while Mr. Lucky was wrestling with him, Bear was yelling something that sounded like, “Nay nay nay nay nay!”

It was decidedly negative. He knows the word no, and he hates hearing it. But he’s never actually said it. He doesn’t talk. Yet I once heard or read somewhere that non-verbal autistic children, when under extreme duress, will suddenly burst out an exclamation in clear, concise Queen’s English to the amazement of all concerned. Was this going to be one of those moments? Would Bear suddenly go a la Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes and yell at his father to get his filthy hands off him?

Alas, no. I was to hear nothing but the endless staccato of nay-nay-nay-nay-nay, until Bear scrambled to his men’s size 13 feet and fled back into the group home.

Mr. Lucky instructed me to move the car so as to line up the rear passenger door with the sidewalk leading out of the front door. He followed Bear into the house, and managed to distract him with the aquarium they have in the foyer. We’d love to have our own aquarium, but—well, need I explain why that’s not a very good idea?

Somehow Mr. Lucky got the boy distracted enough by the pretty fishies that he was able to quickly propel him out the door and into the back seat of the car.

This whole fiasco took about an hour. Bear was filthy. Mr. Lucky was in a lot of pain from wrestling with him, and remains astonished at the kid’s Incredible Hulk-like strength.

The Crown Prince, meanwhile, had a very Happy Birthday.

Baby Bear Finally Notices the Dogs' Water

2010-10-02T17:24:00.009-04:00

Over a year ago, we bought our dogs a new water cooler similar to the old one (pictured below), after it sprang a leak that surreptitiously soaked the carpet in the linen closet. Phyllis rightly marveled at the fact that Aquaboy, aka Baby Bear, had never bothered with it.

She must’ve forgotten to knock on wood when she left that comment, because this afternoon he finally noticed it.

I was sitting at my computer when I heard the splattering sound, whereupon I leaped to my feet, yelled his name and demanded to know what he was doing (like he’s going to respond and confess, but hope springs eternal). I entered the kitchen just in time to see him place the water cooler on the counter, and don that nonchalant “who-knows-what-she’s-yelling-about-now” demeanor that he inherited from his father.

Apparently he picked it up from the floor, tipped it upside-down, and bombs away.

At least he dumped it on the kitchen floor instead of choosing a carpeted area. That’s progress enough for me.

But heaven help us if he ever figures out how to disassemble it while full. Knock on wood.

Another Week Without My Laptop

2010-09-30T11:55:00.002-04:00

My laptop acquired a virus from somewhere. Mr. Lucky tried to remove it without success, and suggested that it might have been (though he also acknowledged it might not have been) prevented had I installed Windows updates.

Every night when I shut the computer down, Windows has updates to install. He said those were different updates, and pointed out a little yellow shield in the lower right corner of the screen. Whenever it shows up, I’m supposed to click on it to install updates. But I hadn’t been doing that, because whenever I shut the computer down each night—

“That doesn’t matter,” he said for tenth time. I still needed to click on that yellow badge.

So the laptop spent nearly a week in the shop being nuked by geeks geekier than my husband. I had no Internet. No contact with the outside world. I tried watching the news channels on TV, but it’s hard to just sit there and try to absorb all that stuff. I can do an hour of the evening news and that’s it. I don’t watch a lot of TV, anyway—it stays off during the day, as I would rather listen to music.

We eventually got the laptop back, but it was still glitchy, so Mr. Lucky decided to install a new hard drive. Last time he did that on a computer of which I was a frequent user (before Baby Bear was born), I lost all the Word documents of all the books I’d written prior to that time, and to this day I only have hard copies of them.

This time, I had everything backed up on the flash drive. Even True Pretenses is still on there.

He spent a whole day working on my computer, even though he had a cold and hadn’t been sleeping well, and I’m now back in business. I felt guilty about the expense, but then I feel guilty about any expense, while he keeps telling me not to worry about it.

I told him he’s a prince, and that I would put in a good word for him. I might even bake him a cake, which must be done this weekend anyway, because one of my other princes, our firstborn Crown Prince, has a birthday on Sunday.

I nearly lost my mind not having a computer for a whole week. No, I take that back—I did lose my mind.

I actually did some housework for a change.

See Baby Bear. See Baby Bear Run. Then See Karen Turn Into a Basket Case.

2010-09-17T14:47:00.010-04:00

As our family unit trooped out the front door the other day, Baby Bear did something he hasn’t done in a very long time: He took off running.

Usually he goes straight to the car—actually, for reasons known only to him, he always goes around the back of the car to the other side—and then he gets in the back seat. But on this day, as he walked behind the car, something caught his attention, and he suddenly broke into a run down the street.

Mr. Lucky had just gone back into the house because he forgot something—he always forgets something, either his keys, or his wallet, or his cell phone, or his pants—occasionally the first three items will be in the pockets of the pants, but it’s never the pair he’s wearing. Sometimes I think he forgets his brain, which I suspect he keeps in a jar when not in use, but then he can’t find the jar. Since he even gets lost in the house while looking for stuff, I knew it was up to me to chase down the boy.

Our not-so-baby-anymore Bear is thirteen years old, and seventy-five inches tall. I’m—well, I’m a lot older than thirteen, and seventy-one inches tall. He was wearing athletic shoes. I was wearing sandals. Advantage: Bear.

I yelled his name as he ran down the street in a straight line. He has no sense of danger, and I feared he wouldn’t dodge out of the way of any oncoming vehicle. He thinks it’s fun to crash into me, so why not a Mack truck?

Indeed, there was a truck parked on the street, engine roaring, door wide open. It was a large truck, belonging to a lawn maintenance company that was fertilizing someone’s lawn. This meant loud machinery, hazardous chemicals, big hoses snaking everywhere, and people wielding tools that could easily double as weapons. Baby Bear was dashing headlong into a danger zone.

He rushed straight to the open door of the truck. Oh no, I thought, not again. He’s done this before—he sees a strange vehicle with a wide open door, he dives right in, and refuses to budge until we can get a hostage negotiator with a megaphone to promise him donuts, if only he’ll stop reprogramming the radio stations and redirecting the air vents, and come out.

There was no way I could catch up to him before he reached the truck and leaped into it. I only had to get him out of there before he put it into drive and took it for a joyride, careening down the street, knocking down garbage cans and mailboxes, and dragging behind him whoever was on the other end of the hose attached to that tank in the back end of the truck.

Oh yes, I had the whole ghastly picture in my head already--drawn, painted, signed, and framed, ready to hang on the wall and be admired and contemplated by wine-bibbing aficionados of art and connoisseurs of chaos. Why wait, when I can panic now?

I yelled his name again as he reached the open door and . . . He slammed it shut.

Then he did an about face and calmly walked toward me, oblivious to the workers and their noisy equipment. His own work was done.

The workers only smiled and waved at me, good sports all. Clearly they knew kids like mine.

Baby Bear went back to our car and got in, ready to go.

No hostage negotiations were necessary this time. But he still wanted his donuts.

He got them.

Does My Dog Hate Vivaldi?

2010-09-09T11:28:00.005-04:00

Baby Bear has a Yamaha keyboard that plays a wide variety of popular melodies across the music spectrum, from children’s favorites to classical. He seems to have a decided preference for classical music, and has favorite pieces that he’ll make the keyboard repeat over and over until I’m hearing them even when the keyboard is off and he’s asleep. Once it was Beethoven’s Turkish March that was Flavor of the Week. The other day it was Antonio Vivaldi’s “La Primavera” from The Four Seasons suite.

That first allegro evokes images of dancing and skipping through fields of wildflowers, chasing butterflies and rejoicing in the return of spring. It’s bright and happy. Who could possibly object to this masterpiece of baroque?

Our chocolate beagle, Bart, that’s who. Each time Baby Bear activated that first allegro, Bart started whimpering, then baying and howling. This upset our Bear, who communicated his displeasure and desires in his own inimitable fashion by grabbing me, gesturing to the dog, and then gesturing to the door. Translated, “Mom, put that dog outside so I can enjoy Vivaldi in peace.”

Bart was only too happy to go outside. But this got me to thinking: Does he really hate that particular tune? Is there something in it he can hear that no human can, something annoying? Yet the other beagle, Jasper, didn’t seem to be bothered by it.

So after Baby Bear went to school, I thought I’d conduct an experiment. We have Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons on CD, as played by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with Seiji Ozawa as conductor and Joseph Silverstein on the violin. It was part of Mr. Lucky’s vast CD collection when we got married way back in 1987. According to the text in the CD insert, Vivaldi also wrote a series of sonnets describing in words what he thought or saw in composing this quartet of famous concertos.

The Spring sonnet includes a reference to a sleeping goatherd’s faithful dog at his side. The second movement of “La Primavera” has repeated notes from the viola that according to the composer, were supposed to represent a barking dog. (At least we’re assured that someone was keeping an eye on those goats.) But it wasn’t this second movement, called a Largo, that upset Bart. It was the first Allegro that disagreed with him.

I played the entire suite on the stereo three times in a row to see what happened with Bart.

First Play: Bart didn’t make a sound. He did, however, head for the back door and wag his tail. Jasper did likewise. Of course, he tends to look up to Bart, but will quickly disavow him and go into hiding anytime he suspects they’re both in trouble. I let them outside, and they came back in during the Autumn movement.

Second Play: Bart was lounging under the coffee table when the dreaded first movement of Spring kicked off. I got up from my chair. He also got up, and wanted to go back outside. He didn’t make a sound. Out he went, and again I let him back in around the autumnal equinox. Jasper slept through it.

Third Play: Upon the return of Spring, Bart was back under the coffee table. This time I remained seated and turned to look at him. He looked back at me. I got up. He didn’t move. Clearly he was bored with my silly experiment.

Could it be he simply found the keyboard rendition annoying? There was only one way to find out. I turned on Baby Bear’s keyboard, found “La Primavera”, and played it.

No reaction from Bart.

I even tried starting it over and over, letting it play for no more than a dozen notes or so each time, just like Bear does. Maybe that was what annoyed Bart. It certainly annoys me.

Still no reaction from Bart. In fact, he was practically snoring under the coffee table.

It’s quite possible he’s desensitized to it by now.

Otherwise, the results of my experiment: Inconclusive. But I did learn a few interesting things about Vivaldi and The Four Seasons that I hadn’t considered before.

Like Father, Like Son

2010-08-26T11:14:00.017-04:00

Mr. Lucky likes to watch Netflix movies on his computer, whereas I prefer to watch them on the TV in the family room. I sometimes watch Netflix while he works in the evening. Thanks to its “Recently Viewed” feature that allows us to check up on each other, several days later he’ll remark, “I see you watched (insert movie title here). How’d it look?”

“It looked fine,” I usually say, but what’s fine to me may not be acceptable to him. For as long as we’ve been married, he’s waxed obsessive over widescreen ratios and more recently, high definition. Unless it’s so extremely letterboxed as to resemble the view through Gort’s visor, and so high in definition that it’s 3-D without the kooky glasses, it is unacceptable to him.

So you’d think he’d be more particular than I am about what movies to watch. Not so. Judging from the Netflix viewing history, not only will that man watch just about anything, but I wonder where he finds the time to watch it all.

“Most of those movies I don’t watch all the way through,” he explains. “I only watch them long enough just to see how they look.”

Enter the Bear.

One Saturday while I was at a TARA meeting, Mr. Lucky introduced Baby Bear to the Netflix streaming disc that works off the PS3. He may as well have opened an institutional sized can of Extra Fancy Gourmet Worms in Heavy Syrup.

In terms of quantity, that boy has a viewing history to match his father’s. It’s mostly from the family/children category, but he has a few movies favored for an excess of stuff boys love. He goes nuts over the first third of The Fugitive (as did his older brother before him, who calls the movie, “Bus Train”). In addition to the bus and the train, there are police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, helicopters, and sirens galore. And let’s not forget the thousands and thousands of gallons of lovely water gushing in torrents over a dam, with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones running and yelling and slipping and splashing through ankle deep water while threatening to shoot somebody—just like Mom and Dad once did!

I’ve also seen him play the first few minutes of Die Hard over and over, just to watch the landing of the jet airliner.

One day recently, while I was in my office, Mr. Lucky set up the Netflix in the PS3 to play the movie Up on the TV. Shortly afterward, I heard a ruckus between him and Baby Bear, and I went out to investigate.

“He wants the Playstation controller and the remote, but I hid them,” Mr. Lucky explained. Funny, I used to do that myself—only I wasn’t hiding them from Baby Bear. “He wants to quit the movie and find something else.”

“Are you yourself watching it?” I asked. When he said no, I went on, “Then let him change movies if that’s what he wants.”

Mr. Lucky proceeded to steal my lines. “But that’s all he does. He doesn’t watch anything for more than a few minutes. He’s constantly changing out movies.”

“Oh, you mean sort of like you always do? And how about all your channel surfing? How many times have I had to sit there while you endlessly click-click-click and say, ‘I know I’m driving you crazy, Karen, but I can’t help it, I’m a man and men like to hunt’? Well, guess what? Our little boy is becoming a man—AND HE WANTS TO HUNT!”

I myself may not be a hunter, but my shot hit the mark. Grumbling under his breath, Mr. Lucky surrendered the PS3 controller and remote to Baby Bear, and then returned to the computer in his man-cave.

And thence resumed his own feverish hunting through Netflix.

Bear Hugs and Grumpy Old Men

2010-08-17T15:26:00.005-04:00

Yesterday we availed ourselves of our veterans’ benefits with a trip to MacDill Air Force Base, where we shopped for groceries at the commissary. We charged Baby Bear with pushing the grocery cart, but we still have to keep a close eye on him, especially when we get to the end of an aisle, for it is here that he often attempts to make an escape by pushing the cart in one direction, only to let go of it and dash off in the other.

I tend to keep in close physical contact with him at the end of aisles, usually by putting my arm around him. Occasionally he’ll respond by looping his own arm around my waist.

We were thus entwined at the entrance to a very crowded aisle, from which we needed only one item. Mr. Lucky volunteered to plunge into the mob and retrieve it while Baby Bear and I waited for him with the grocery cart.

Mr. Lucky was about to step away just as an old man shuffled by and mumbled something I couldn’t hear, but apparently Mr. Lucky did, for he only rolled his eyes at the old man, then grinned at me and Baby Bear before disappearing into the crowded aisle.

Baby Bear and I waited behind our cart, arms hooked around each other as he swayed from side to side, taking me with him. No doubt we looked like a pair of human windshield wipers. The old man continued glowering and muttering inaudibly before vanishing in the crowd of shoppers.

We’re used to disapproving scowls and inaudible grumbles from strangers.

Mr. Lucky soon returned, still shaking his head. “You didn’t hear what that old guy said, did you?”

No, I hadn’t. The commissary is a noisy place. Apparently we’d inadvertently blocked the old man’s path by stopping the cart while I put an arm around my son and he returned the gesture. Indignant, the old man had growled, “Why don’t you two find someplace else to fall in love?”

I must admit, that wasn’t as harsh as being barked at to “get a room.”

So the old guy thought my son, only a couple of inches taller than yours truly, was my boyfriend. He’s just turned thirteen and because of his height, he does look older. But as for me, “Do I really look that young?” I asked Mr. Lucky.

Talk about your missed opportunities. If only he’d said something like, “Well, of course, Karen! You look younger than everyone! Why, people mistake you for my daughter all the time!” I would have baked him a chocolate cake.

But no, instead he scoffed and said, “Oh, that guy is old and probably half-blind. All he saw were two people in his way. He was grumpy because he had to go around you.”

So much for a detour into the chocolate cake aisle.

Baby Bear's Adventures Through the Breaking Glass

2010-08-09T15:57:00.002-04:00

An alternate subject line considered was, “What took him so long to break a window?”

I always feared it would be the sliding glass door to the patio (into which he does the occasional body slam), or his bedroom window (where I once caught him perched on the window sill as if he were about to use it as a diving board), or the glass doors on the curio cabinet (he likes to sit in front of it and peer past the knickknacks to his reflection in the back mirror).

But no, it was the living room window he broke and since there were no witnesses and he doesn’t/can’t talk, I have no idea how he did it. As always when these things happen, Mr. Lucky was at work, but when he came home later that night and surveyed the damage, he surmised that Baby Bear must have banged his head against the glass hard enough to shatter it. The kid does enjoy headbanging and our walls have numerous dents to prove it.

Those dents are getting higher every year, and I could probably go through every room of the house and assign an approximate date to each dent based on how high it is from the floor. Who needs fancy growth charts?

But I digress.

It was shortly before 8 pm the other night and I’d just taken dinner out of the oven when I heard the ominous crash from the living room. I rushed in to find a jagged hole in the upper window pane, and a bewildered looking Bear just standing there. He never made a sound and he looked all right, so I led him to his room for safety’s sake while I cleaned up the broken glass from the floor.

Then I went back to his room where he sat quietly on the edge of his bed. He was covered with blood.

To my horror, the worst of it was streaming down the inside corner of his eye along his nose, striking fear in my heart that he’d gotten glass in his eye. But I soon ascertained that the blood was coming from a cut on his forehead. He also had a cut on his lower arm. The poor thing had smeared blood all over himself, so he only looked worse than he really was until he was properly cleaned up and bandaged.

All the while, he never let out a peep. He went back to playing his keyboard and making his usual crooning noises while rocking on the loveseat in the family room, as if nothing had happened.

I also found broken glass in the front yard; big shards that flew up to ten feet from the house. I retrieved his ball that he likes to carry around, but there’s no way it could’ve broken the window. It’s a baseball sized “sensory” ball that weighs no more than two ounces.

Perhaps Mr. Lucky is right. It must’ve been that boy’s big hard head that did it.

As for replacing the broken window, I had the usual worst case visions of window repair specialists who wouldn’t be able to come out until two weeks from next Tuesday and bills in the hundreds of dollars; but Mr. Lucky replaced the pane himself the very next day, and it only cost him $24.00.

I like being wrong.

Mom and Apple Pie (and Ice Cream and Chocolates)

2010-08-06T19:03:00.006-04:00

One of Mrs. Smith’s frozen, ready-to-bake apple pies has been taking up valuable real estate in our freezer since the holidays. I meant to bake it for New Year’s, but Mr. Lucky and the Crown Prince went up to Georgia to spend that holiday with the in-laws---leaving me to deal with Baby Bear and two dogs scared out of their wits by the next door neighbor's fireworks. At the time, I didn’t think it was right to bake that pie and eat it all by myself, so it remained in the freezer alongside a carton of vanilla ice cream.

Eventually Mr. Lucky couldn’t resist digging into the ice cream, leaving only the pie. Occasionally he’d ask, “So when are we going to have that pie, Karen?” and I’d mumble something about pie being “a weekend thing.”

Trouble is, Mr. Lucky works most weekends, and his overall schedule is such that, believe it or not, there’s never been an ideal time to take it out of the freezer and throw it into the oven.

I finally found the time this last week . . . when he and the Crown Prince returned to Georgia for another visit with his kinfolk. I remained at home for four days with two barking dogs and a roaring, rampaging Bear.

On the first evening with his dad out of town, Baby Bear emerged from his room in a deceptively cheery mood, bounced up to me in the middle of the kitchen, and with his trademark yell he pushed all five feet, eleven inches of me flat to the floor! I was barefooted on ceramic tile, so I had no traction to keep me on my feet, and because I happened to be in a part of the kitchen where there was nothing nearby to break my fall, down to the floor I crashed like the Colossus of Rhodes.

That hurt. But at least I came out of it better than old Colossus did. I think he broke into pieces at the bottom of the Aegean. I only got banged up (nice big bruise on the outer thigh), and was in a bit of pain for the next few days.

Since there’s no liquor in the house, I did the only other thing I could to maintain my sanity. I baked that apple pie and ate it with French vanilla ice cream.

I enjoyed a slice for every day Mr. Lucky and our firstborn were gone. That’s a quarter of a pie every day, covered with at least three scoops of the ice cream. I ate it all.

And I did not allow myself to feel so much as a scintilla of guilt.

Oh, and I consumed a whole bag of chocolates, too.

No guilt. Still no sanity, either, and certainly no weight lost, but NO GUILT!

Guess Who Broke the Dining Room Table?

2010-07-03T10:21:00.006-04:00

Summer. For other mortals, it means fireworks, water fights, and long, hot, sweat-soaked days that never seem to end.

For me, it means—oh wait, that IS what summer is like at my house. In fact, that’s what it’s like all year round. Let me start over.

Summer. For other mortals, it means cookouts, the beach (well, maybe not this year), long road trips, and warm evenings chatting on the patio beneath a purple sky.

At my house, it means this:

I have no idea how Baby Bear accomplished this feat of destruction. In the past I’ve caught him sitting on it, standing on it, and the day before this happened, I found him hovering next to it, all innocent nonchalance, while the overhead chandelier swayed like a pealing church bell over the center of the table.

Just when I find myself wondering what atrocity that kid is going to commit next, he shows me. I guess I really need to stop wondering. I'm just thankful he wasn't hurt.

Baby Bear is over six feet tall, doesn’t have an ounce of spare flesh to pinch, and has the strength of ten oxen.

Forget Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign. I need one called, “Let’s Just Sit.”

Adventures in Eating Out (Minus the Bear)

2010-06-10T15:35:00.001-04:00

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, when I was in the Air Force stationed at Rhein-Main Air Base near Frankfurt, Germany, I often took my meals in the cafeteria at the base hotel. Since I don’t like crowds and noise and chaos (yeah, yeah, I know), I tried to avoid going there during peak hours.

Sometimes I’d have the cafeteria all to myself, and I could sit wherever I wanted, eat my meal, and read The Stars and Stripes newspaper in peace.

Until a family came in. Mind you, it was always a different family, since the Rhein-Main hotel catered mainly to transient military personnel and their dependents. But the makeup of the family was pretty much the same each time: They always had ten kids (or at least it seemed like ten) all under the age of four, one of whom was invariably a baby who never stopped crying.

No matter where I sat in that cafeteria, they always took the booth right next to mine. Every single time. There were a hundred other places they could’ve sat, including some with more space for their brood that I swear actually multiplied by the time I got to my dessert and the back page of the paper. But no—they always picked the booth right next to that lone skinny girl who they must have thought was bored senseless with her newspaper and her solitude, and surely would not object to having green jello flung into her hair.

The parents never took the seat that would’ve put their backs to me. Oh no, they always took the opposite seat, so their kids could lean over into my booth and stare at me as if I were behind bars munching on grass while someone hosed me down. On one occasion, one toddler actually climbed over the booth and landed in the seat across from me. The parents did not even budge. Instead—once it dawned on them they were missing a kid—they called out to him to come back from wherever he was. They had to do this several times before he complied.

Back in those days, I wasn’t assertive enough to speak up and say, “Excuse me, but would you please come and get your kid.” Hell, I wasn’t even assertive enough to pick up my tray and newspaper, and move to the other side of the cafeteria. I feared it would offend the parents. How stupid is that?

But I’m getting a little better about it.

Recently, after putting Baby Bear on the bus, Mr. Lucky and I went out to breakfast. Fortunately, the restaurant wasn’t too crowded, mostly couples or groups of adults. There was only one family in there with three kids, all preschoolers.

So guess where the hostess seated us?

That’s right. At point blank range for flying globs of oatmeal. She handed us menus, told us the name of our server who would be with us shortly, then walked away, leaving us to stare at each other in dismay.

Don’t get me wrong. Mr. Lucky and I have nothing against kids. We’ve had three of our own, all of whom we love very much. But when just the two of us go out to eat, we do not want to be near any kids, no matter how well behaved they are. It sort of defeats the whole purpose of why we’re eating out.

You’d think a restaurant hostess would know that. It should be in a rule book somewhere: Avoid seating couples without children near couples with children.

When the server finally arrived, I whispered to her, “We were wondering if we could sit somewhere else?” She whispered back that she didn’t blame us, and discreetly led us to a quieter booth on the other side of the restaurant. If the parents were offended—assuming they even noticed—I certainly did not care.

Our new booth was a vast improvement. Four well behaved adults occupied the booth behind Mr. Lucky. We ordered, and while we were waiting for our food, a strange, disagreeable look came over Mr. Lucky’s face. Then he sniffed his shirt sleeve.

“What’s the matter, dear?” I asked. “Isn’t your shirt April fresh? Do I need to switch detergents?”

He gestured to the empty booth across the aisle from where we sat, and whispered, “Let’s move over there.”

“Why? We’ve moved once already. We’re going to drive the server insane.”

Without another word he moved to the other booth. Since I didn’t want to sit by myself, I followed suit. And that’s when he informed me that someone in the booth behind him reeked of rampant B.O.

Fortunately we had no reason to move again. When the server arrived with our food, she made a good-natured comment on the fact that we’d moved, but she didn’t ask why and we volunteered no information. Better to let her think whatever she wanted to think, which is probably what most people think about us anyway.

Mr. Lucky left her an extra big tip.

In My House: The Creature From the Black Lagoon

2010-05-27T11:53:00.007-04:00

The beagles have been digging more holes beneath the fence.

Meanwhile, the next door neighbor ran his sprinklers long enough that the water seeped over to our side of the fence, and flooded the beagles’ escape tunnel, making for deep puddles that have since turned into mud pits.

Add to the equation a back door left unlocked (Mr. Lucky pleads guilty), and one Bear with a knack for finding crisis in every opportunity, and what do you get?

Crime Scene Photo A: Paw prints from beagles observed in mud pit.

Crime Scene Photo B: Paw prints from Baby Bear visible on fence.

This is right outside my office window, and if the blinds hadn’t been closed against the glare of the sun against the neighbor’s formerly pristine white fence, then I most certainly would’ve seen Baby Bear.

As it is, I did hear a strange noise outside the window, reminiscent of those cheap sprinklers that go choop-choop-choop while they slowly jerk around in a semi-circle, spewing long jets of water over the grass, then go chuchuchuchuchu as they whip back like the return carriage on a typewriter.

I assumed the neighbor must be using that model sprinkler because the built-in system that came with his house was malfunctioning. Granted, the choop-chooping was more erratic than usual for such a sprinkler, but I thought little of it until I suddenly sensed a presence behind me, and turned in my chair.

Standing there just waiting to be noticed was a creature over six feet tall, made entirely of mud from head to toe.

I screamed for Mr. Lucky. The Mud Monster did not even flinch or attempt to pick me up and carry me back to his swamp like he might have back in the fifties.

Mr. Lucky found this very humorous. Fortunately Baby Bear’s bathroom is equipped with a handheld shower. Mr. Lucky applied it to the Mud Monster, and eventually the mud washed away to reveal our youngest son.

I’m just thankful the back gate was locked.

Why Did the Peacock Cross the Road?

2010-05-14T14:33:00.001-04:00

Coming back from lunch this afternoon, we saw a beautiful blue peacock literally sweeping his way eastward across Highway 301.

We see big gray cranes stalking along the roadside every day, usually in groups of three, but this must be the first time I’ve ever seen a peacock outside a zoo or formal garden. Where could he have come from? There are neither zoos nor formal gardens in the immediate vicinity. I’ve heard of neighborhoods down in Miami “terrorized” by peacocks run amok. For all their jewel-like beauty, they do make an awful screeching noise.

He scurried across that busy highway—a big garbage truck had to brake for him—and he safely reached the other side, where he started strutting down the newly paved bike path, his long tail gracefully stretched out behind him like a royal train.

I wanted to jump out of the car and go after him, though heaven alone knows why. He’d surely run away, and what would I do with him? I fear for his safety.

Mr. Lucky had his own idea about what to do with him: “I’ll bet he tastes like chicken.”

But romantic soul that I am, I remain enchanted. Does it mean anything if a peacock crosses your path—and if so, what?

Return of the Allamanda!

2010-05-06T15:23:00.005-04:00

This is what it looked like back in January, after all that freezing weather:

I was devastated. But the golden trumpets have rallied, and this is what it looks like today:

And to think Mr. Lucky talked of ripping it out and replacing it with a bench or garden gnome or a colored ball or . . . something. I believe our sunny little bells have earned a reprieve!

I wish I could say the same for the jasmine tree in the back yard, but alas. It's nothing now but a giant twig.

I refuse to replace it with anything other than another jasmine tree.

Most Dreaded Phrase in the English Language (Second in a Series)

2010-04-19T17:30:00.009-04:00

“What do you want to do with this?”

Uttered by Mr. Lucky when rerun season starts and he gets it into his head to clean out the garage, a closet, or his man-cave.

“What do you want to do with this?”

My heart sinks like an anchor into the pit of my stomach every time he says he’s going to “clean out” something, because it means I won’t get anything done for the rest of the day. Every five minutes he’ll crash into my office holding up something he’s unearthed and—

“What do you want to do with this?”

Most of the time I tell him to put it back where he found it—especially if it came out of a closet. “If I wanted to do anything with it,” I say, “I would have removed it already and done whatever it is I wanted to do with it.”

But no, he’s trying to create more space in the closet/garage/man-cave by moving everything into my office, till I can’t even budge from my chair for all the spoils of nearly twenty-three years of marriage piled around me like the inventory from Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu—

“What do you want to do with this?”

—Or what they found in the underground chamber in National Treasure, though I’ve always thought it looked like the same old junk minus the sled.

“What do you want to do with this?”

Trouble is, we’ve only accumulated the kind of stuff that would get us laughed off Antiques Roadshow and Pawn Stars.

“What do you want to do with this?”

I told you, every five minutes. See how annoying it is? He barges back into my office, nearly impaling himself on that cheap tarnished brass knock-off of Anubis that’s supposed to double as a “beverage butler”, and proceeds to empty a bag full of little odds and ends across the keyboard of my computer, even as I sit here typing an opus.

“Look what I found,” he says, thrusting a snow-globe under my nose. As “Lara’s Theme” plays, glitter swirls around a snowy tableau of Yuri Zhivago stealing scrap lumber from a dilapidated Moscow structure while his Party stooge of a half-brother contemplates shooting him for it. “Did you know we still had this?”

“Yes, now please—”

“What do you want to do with this?”

I tell him I had the snow globe put away to keep Baby Bear from dribbling and shooting hoops with it. It is, after all, made of glass and that kid has a thing for breakables. A destructive thing.

“I’ll just put it here for now.” And Mr. Lucky places it on the last square inch of space remaining on my desk.

For now, he says. I know how long “for now” is. Why does he think I can’t get out of my chair anymore? The room was already near capacity from junk he brought in here “for now” the last time he cleaned out another part of the house. I remember that well. Bush was still president. Bush 41.

Okay, so I’m exaggerating, since we haven’t lived in this house that long, but it really does seem as if—

“What do you want to do with this?”

Finally I lose it and yell at him to do whatever he wants with it, just leave me alone.

Why doesn’t he ever seek my input on the really important stuff? Like the time he waited till after he destroyed the receipt to announce he blew all our lottery winnings on the Bioflex 2000 Ultimate X-Treme Digital Family Gym for Home, Office, or Still in Its Original Box Under the Bed. We already had one that’s been holding up our mattress since, yes, Bush 41. With that lotto ticket we could’ve bought a brand new bed frame and paid someone to haul the Bioflex away.

Or the time he traded in my car for a handful of magic beans. That wasn’t what I had in mind when I told him I wanted something “that gets better gas.”

Funny how he never asks, “What do you want to do with this?” in regards to the Bioflex or beans.

Possibly he already knows what I’d say.

(For the first Most Dreaded Phrase in this series, click here.)

Why? WHY?

2010-04-14T12:34:00.002-04:00

Ever since we switched back to Daylight Savings Time, I’ve had a devil of a time getting Baby Bear to wake up in the morning. His school bus usually comes around 8:30, and I’m lucky if I can get him even halfway out of bed before 8:00.

But now that school is out for spring break, guess who’s up at 6:30 am playing Frogger with the volume turned up full blast, and the place lit up like Vegas?

I had to check the other side of the bed to make sure that was Mr. Lucky, and not some Elvis impersonator I didn’t remember picking up in the casino bar the night before. No one was there. Then I remembered he’s up in Georgia with the Crown Prince.

And there is no chocolate in the house.

At least I’m not waking up to find my bed floating in overflow from Baby Bear’s bathroom. Let me be grateful for that!

What the Easter Bunny Brought Me

2010-04-09T09:26:00.008-04:00

I woke up Easter morn to find this on my dining room table:

At first I thought that was a doily beneath the usual spoils, until I scooped up the bunny and chocolate kisses to find it was a sexy polka-dotted unmentionable with pink lace trim.

I must admit, I like that better than the stringy fake grass. For one thing, I won't be picking ladies' underwear out of the carpet between now and next Christmas.

Notes From the Teacher

2010-04-02T16:59:00.004-04:00

Baby Bear’s teacher and I communicate about the cub’s behavior and other issues via handwritten messages in a spiral notebook kept in the boy’s backpack. I like that this particular teacher takes the time to write detailed notes—no mean feat, considering the number of special needs students in his classroom.

One recent entry made me dizzy just reading it—and I don’t know why, since this is nothing our ursine terror doesn’t do at home every day:

[Baby Bear] used up a lot of energy today. He did not get into trouble but he did not spend much time on anything. He moved constantly from the keyboard to the computer to the television to the bathroom to the refrigerator to the door to the cabinets to the kitchen sink to the sofa and on the bed we use for changing.

You’d think he’d fall asleep from exhaustion at that point. I refer, of course, to the teacher. Baby Bear? Not bloody likely. It was the teacher’s energy he used up; Bear’s own reserves never run dry. If only I could figure out how to harness the power of that boy and sell it, I might rule the world.

In the meantime, the teacher stays on his toes just as the Bear stays on his paws and goes for another lap . . . and another . . . and another . . .

Seen Around the Neighborhood . . .

2010-03-18T18:13:00.002-04:00

While perambulating around the perimeter of our subdivision the other morning, I happened across a huge, rectangular cardboard box sitting in front of someone’s house.

Fools! Everyone knows that when you’re fortunate enough to acquire a big flat screen television, you don’t announce it to the world—and especially burglars casing the neighborhood—by giving its cardboard box pride of place in front of your house. Why, these people made no effort whatsoever to deface the box and break it down into unrecognizable little pieces. In fact, the box looked as if it had never even been opened.

Then I drew closer to it, and saw that it wasn’t a TV at all, but merely one of those objects As Seen On TV.

I refer to one of the many manifestations of the Bioflex 2000 Ultimate X-Treme Digital Family Gym for Home, Office, or Still in Its Original Box Under the Bed. Or in this case, on the homeowner’s curb.

Ah yes. Beware the Ides of March. Two and a half months since New Year’s and the accompanying resolutions that are seldom kept. Clearly someone’s wife was sick of stubbing her toe on this box.

I see variations of this thousand dollar “Look! It’s also a clothes rack!” advertised in the weekly Flyer all the time, with any one of the following interchangeable qualifiers: Barely Used. Rarely Used. Never Used. Free—Please come and get it out of my house!

Okay, so this neighbor—or at least the lady of the house, who probably had to push this behemoth out the door herself even as her husband sat in his recliner, swilling his beer and bellowing she would do no such thing because he had every intention to start using it for at least an hour each day beginning next week—isn’t so foolish, after all. No one was going to steal this thing, let alone burgle their house. Not even Mr. Lucky, the King of Scavengers, would bother with this waste of titanium and polymers.

Not when I’m still stubbing my toe and hanging clothes on the one he has already.

Baby Bear's Newest Weapon of Mass Destruction: The Banana

2010-03-05T12:38:00.009-05:00

The battle of wits continues. A better Bear trap has given rise—like a higher tide, heaven help us—to a better, more devious Bear.

Nearly two years ago, we removed the plug from his bathroom sink after we caught him soaking his backside in the basin while water poured over the edge of the vanity onto the floor.

The other day, Baby Bear was in his room playing a video game. Mr. Lucky was in his den playing a video game. And I was in my office—well, I wasn’t playing a video game. But I got up to use the master bathroom on the other side of the house.

When I emerged a short while later, Baby Bear had moved to the family room, where he was now watching TV, all innocence and nonchalance. (Yeah, I know—that should’ve been my first clue he was up to no good.) On my way back to my office, I noticed his bathroom door was closed and I could hear water running inside. I figured it was Mr. Lucky—but then on a hunch I went to Mr. Lucky’s den on the other side of the family room (some days I think this house is too big), only to find him at his desk, destroying planets and asteroids in his daily quest to become galactic overlord of twelve systems.

Now I dashed back to Baby Bear’s bathroom, just in time to see the water seeping out from under the door.

I threw open the bathroom door to find the sink overflowing. I turned off the water and saw what was plugging the drain.

A banana.

He peeled a banana, then shoved it into the bathroom drain. It was a perfect fit. Barely ripe, it was quite firm, and I could not pull it out; I could only break it off, leaving the lower half still clogging the drain.

I started bailing water, while Mr. Lucky got a long fork from the kitchen to try and extract the rest of the banana. It was going nowhere. Eventually the water softened it up enough that the sink slowly drained on its own.

How did that kid come up with the notion to do that? And WHY?

If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he must’ve conjured up this idea well in advance, and was just waiting for the right moment—i.e., for Mom to leave her office next door to his bathroom—to do it.

At least we caught it before we had another repeat of the Great Flood of 2006.

What to do now? No way are we going to ban bananas. They’re good for him, and he loves them—so much that I have to buy a bunch every day. He comes home from school, finds the bunch, and devours it till it’s gone:

Cheese doesn't last very long around here, either:

Baby Bear Becomes Baby Octopus

2010-02-25T09:47:00.004-05:00

The other morning, I spotted Baby Bear slowly making his way from kitchen to family room while carrying the following items all at the same time:

1. His bowl of oatmeal.

2. A DVD he'd selected for viewing.

3. His electronic keyboard, which is about three feet long.

4. A sensory ball that he's become very attached to. He had it wedged between his legs, which I've seen him do when he needs to free up his hands for other things, like standing at the bathroom sink to get a drink of water. He doesn't seem to want to lose contact with it. However, with every step he took, the ball would slip, and then he'd pause to try and reposition it--all while balancing the other three items.

Clearly he had plans, and wasn't about to waste time making separate trips to transport all the items he needed for his comfort.

I can't begin to describe how he did all of this. How he managed it for the length of time he did, I have no idea. I didn't have the camera handy to catch a photo of this amazing juggling act, but even if I had, the flash might have startled him into dropping a couple of things I'd rather not see crashing to the floor.

At the very least, I grabbed his bowl of oatmeal. I tried telling him to let the ball drop and kick it forward as he went on his way, but now that he was free of the oatmeal bowl, he just picked it up and continued on his precariously merry way.

I told him he needed more hands. But don't we all?

Too Tall For the School Bus

2010-02-04T15:40:00.002-05:00

I’m referring, of course, to the one known as Baby Bear.

Lately, I’ve noticed that when he comes home from school, he has to duck his head as he steps off the bus. I’m amazed as well as thankful that he has yet to conk his noggin on the top of the door (she writes as she knocks on wood).

Yesterday, the bus driver pointed out that he can no longer stand up straight on the school bus, that when walking down the aisle to or from his seat, he has to bow his head.

Before long he’ll be hunching over and stepping off the bus looking as if he’s ready to shake hands with an Imperial Majesty or two.

Eventually we’ll have to buy a convertible, or a car with a sun roof that allows his head to stick up and out like a giraffe on a circus train.

“Baby Bear” seems such a misnomer now, but that’s how I think of him. It’s that or Godzilla.

He’ll always be my Baby Bear even when he’s thirty years old, has a beard like one of the ZZ Top guitarists (oh, how we are so not looking forward to the sprouting of whiskers!) and stands I don’t want to think of how many feet tall.

But the fact remains he is still only twelve years old . . . and is now over six feet tall.

Not My Jasmine Tree!

2010-01-29T11:26:00.009-05:00

Once upon a time, in its most glorious full flower, it looked like this:

At the time I posted my last blog entry, my beloved jasmine tree was still very green and leafy, with only a few hints of brown here and there. In fact, it was in such splendid condition following the big freeze that I suspected it of being a weed doing a very convincing impersonation of a jasmine tree.

But my jasmine is--or was--quite real. Look at what's happened to it since:

A stark, reverse oasis amid the verdure of lush crabgrass and flourishing dollar weed!

Now, before anyone clubs me over the head and hollers, "Deciduous!" let me say we've had this tree for several years and it's never done this. In fact, the last time I saw a jasmine tree like this was several days after a certain beagle who shall remain nameless dug up the tree we had before this one. Mr. Lucky, knowing how much I love jasmine, drove all over the county before he finally found a nursery that had another jasmine tree.

When he planted this second one, I wanted him to dig a moat around it and stock it with gators to keep the dogs away. Instead he put some rocks and a decorative wire border around it until it took enough root to stand up to the dogs.

Whenever it bloomed, Mr. Lucky would break off small sprigs and bring them to me so I could have sweet smelling jasmine at my work space.

Now what? Say it ain't so! Say it will rally and come back.

And if not, just club me over the head.

Florida's Freeze Fells the Flowerbed

2010-01-19T13:44:00.008-05:00

Behold the aftermath of Florida's recent weeklong freeze:

The hardy gardenia bushes that were planted by the home's builder remain unscathed, leading me to suspect them of really being weeds. But that sad thing at the far end, planted by Mr. Lucky, used to be two proud hibiscus bushes that bloomed bright red and yellow flowers. I loved how tall it grew. I still have hope for it, as the branches closest to the house remain green.

Meanwhile, the Mexican petunias went totally south. And then there's my beloved allamanda:

I loved it when Mr. Lucky planted it near the front door. It bloomed with hundreds of sunny yellow flowers all trumpeting good cheer anytime we came up the front walk.

Our once lush St. Augustine lawn, like all the lawns in our subdivision, has turned yellow.

On the upside, our jasmine tree in the backyard is doing just fine. It doesn't get as much sunlight as the front flowerbed and I wonder if that played a role. (Or if it, too, is really a very sophisticated weed of the world.)

I spent the week wearing old sweaters from the 1980's (haven't had much need to buy new ones since then), while the static electricity gave me the same big hair from that decade. I can't say as it made me feel as young as I was back then.

In the sixteen years we've lived in Florida, that week must have been the first time we ran the heat non-stop. Usually when the weather gets cold, we only have to run it in the mornings.

Since I'm originally from the north, I really don't mind the cold weather. I like wearing sweaters and there's something cozy about a house when the heat is on.

But I really mind what it did to my hibiscus and allamanda. Mr. Lucky, on the other hand, is always looking for ways to change around that flowerbed (the battle over the brick border continues to rage), so it's a certainty that while I've lost my golden flowers, he's gained a golden opportunity.

Looky What Mr. Lucky Gave Me!

2009-12-31T20:36:00.003-05:00

I think I'll stay married to him for another year.

Christmas Tree with Angel Fiona

2009-12-17T16:43:00.004-05:00

I forgot to turn on the flash, but I think it looks prettier this way with the tree lights:
Our dark-haired angel Fiona (whose twentieth birthday would have been this Sunday) holds a giant candy cane. It wasn't till after I took this photo that I realized the pleated shade in the fan light above the living room window spreads behind her like a peacock's tail--or even a nimbus!

Fiona, of course, would look at it and see half a pizza.

A Midnight Visit from the Police, OR: Let's Scare Karen to Death, OR--Just a Thanksgiving Tale

2009-11-29T10:54:00.010-05:00

If your husband happens to be out late one night on a job, and a police car pulls up in front of your house past midnight but you didn’t even call 911, what are you supposed to think?

If you’re like me, you’ll think the very worst and go into Maximum Panic Mode.

I went to bed around 11:30 pm the night before Thanksgiving, only to be jolted awake less than an hour later by our two barking beagles. My first thought was they were calling out to a neighbor taking their own dog for a midnight stroll, but when the barking persisted, I had to get up and investigate—especially since I was afraid they would wake up the Crown Prince (who was staying with us for the holiday) and Baby Bear.

I carefully lifted a slat in the blinds covering the living room window and peered out. Terror slashed through me as I saw a police car parked right in front of our house. The silhouette of a very tall officer stood at the foot of the driveway, feet apart, facing our house, looking very much as if he were trying to ascertain if anyone was home. There were no cars parked in our driveway, and all the lights were off.

I could only think of one reason for him to be out there. My critique partner, Jean, who writes romantic suspense, has described this very scenario in a few of her books, and it usually includes dialogue along the lines of, “We’re very sorry to inform you . . . we need you to come with us so you can identify—”

NO-OOOHHH!!!

The cop remained standing at the end of the driveway, arms akimbo. Why didn’t he come up and ring the doorbell and put me out of my—or rather, plunge me into further misery? Perhaps I should go out there to meet him. “Excuse me, sir, would you mind telling me why you’re in front of my house? You’re making my dogs bark and you’re scaring the hell out of me.”

If only he didn’t look like Gort standing outside the flying saucer. I could almost hear the menacing theme music from the theremin.

But I wasn’t dressed to meet anyone save Mr. Lucky, so I ran back to the bedroom to throw some clothes on. Whimpering and trembling all over, my heart hammering, I returned to the living room window and . . . Gort and the police car were gone.

Now what? Was he on his way back to the station because he thought there was no one home except for the dogs? But he hadn’t rung the bell. At least I hadn’t heard the doorbell; maybe I was still asleep when he rang it and that’s what started the dogs barking.

I didn’t know what to do. Should I call up 911?

“What’s your emergency?” the dispatcher would ask.

“Well, I don’t know that it’s an emergency,” I would say in a tremulous voice broken with panicked sobs, “but my husband is out right now and I just saw a cop parked in front of my house like maybe he was here to—” Scratch that.

Instead I called Mr. Lucky’s cell phone. To my dismay, all I got was voice mail.

By now I was totally freaking. I tried his work place. Maybe he was still there, or maybe someone else there would tell me something . . . or would they?

One of his co-workers answered the phone, and to my everlasting relief, Mr. Lucky was there, safe and sound. His cell phone, he said, was out in the car. But he couldn’t explain anymore than I could why that cop might have been outside our house. The sprinklers hadn’t been running, so it couldn’t be because we were watering on the wrong night.

I was about to go back to bed when the dogs started barking again. I returned to the living room window and—GORT WAS BACK!

At least he remained inside his car, but now what? Was this part of a stakeout? Were we under surveillance? But for what?

I wondered what would happen if I just went out there to ask. Would I get shot? Thrown across the trunk of his squad car and handcuffed? Or be chided with a mere, “Ma’am, get back inside your dwelling, please, and stay there until further notice.”

At least if he came after me like Gort on Patricia Neal, there were no folding chairs in the driveway for me to stumble over and get tangled up in, and no conveniently placed partition for me to trap myself against, instead of just dodging around it and running like hell.

I didn’t want to go out the front door for fear the overexcited beagles would shoot past me and escape. So I turned on all the exterior lights and came out through the garage.

Fortunately, he turned out to be more like Klaatu than Gort.

He met me in the driveway, and politely explained. A neighbor called to complain of a barking dog. I’d heard this same dog several houses over as I fell asleep. But the neighbor seemed to think it was coming from my house. My dogs had been inside all evening, and only started barking when the cop showed up. After determining there was no barking dog outside my house, he’d moved on to see if he could find it elsewhere in the neighborhood, but by that time the owner had apparently wised up and brought his yappy little mutt inside.

The cop then returned to my address to make his report that the complaint was unfounded and our house appeared secure. He remarked that my dogs were actually doing their job very well, and apologized for scaring the bejabbers out of me. He was very nice and professional, and I’m just relieved that my initial fears were as unfounded as the neighbor’s complaint.

Plus, this gave me something to be grateful for on Thanksgiving.

Baby Bear Wrecks a Laptop

2009-11-12T09:56:00.003-05:00

That’s the bad news. The good news: It wasn’t mine.

Mr. Lucky likes to put his laptop on a folding tray in front of the sofa in the family room. This allows him to simultaneously watch TV and play Lord Master of the Universal Planetary Federation of Civilizations, Empires, and Neighborhood Associations, or whatever that game is that allows him to annihilate the inhabitants of entire galaxies for the resources to build his own shopping mall and theme park.

Except when he’s asleep or at work, he leaves the laptop yawning like a crocodile at all times.

I’ve warned him not to do it, especially if Baby Bear is on the prowl. Anytime Mr. Lucky turns his back on the open laptop, even for a few moments, Baby Bear swoops down and slaps it shut.

That’s all. He closes it and moves on to the next shiny object. That may not seem like a big deal, but on rare occasions, he’s been known to wreak havoc by the simple act of hitting a few random keys, and once he even toppled the tray table and open laptop to the floor, fortunately without consequences.

But it was only a matter of time before certain odds and laws dictated those consequences.

The other night, we sat down to dinner. While Baby Bear is more than willing to pull up a chair and join us, we have a hard time getting him to remain at the table until meal’s end. He always finds a reason to get up more than once during dinner to do something else, even if it’s to close a gaping laptop, which is exactly what he did in this case.

One of the things I like about my own laptop is that I don’t need a mouse. I just use the fingerpad. I find it liberating, especially as the mouse is one less thing for Baby Bear to steal and bury at the bottom of his toybox like a dog with a bone. I know because I’ve had to go on in-house archeological expeditions for his own mouse.

But Mr. Lucky, tool of the mouse industry, insists on having one. And on this day, he left it sitting on the keyboard.

Baby Bear did not remove the mouse; most likely he did not even notice it. All he saw was a wide open laptop, and that would not do. He slammed down the lid. Mr. Lucky yelled. Baby Bear returned to the table to resume dining. Mr. Lucky ran to the laptop, and opened it to discover one corner of the screen was smashed.

He didn’t think the kid would do it. He thought the laptop would be safe, since he could see it from where he sat at the table. He was positive Baby Bear wouldn’t touch it as long as he was watching.

Men. You just can’t warn them and tell them you’re right. They always have to find out for themselves—and it’s always the hard, expensive way that usually leads to a repair shop, the insurance company, an emergency room, or any combination of the three. It’s that Y chromosome.

But until he can get the screen fixed, he’s compelled to do what I had to do when my screen burned out earlier this year: He’s back to the desktop in his office.

Only now he can’t watch TV at the same time—unless he can figure out a way to make the whole setup fit on that folding tray table, or move the TV into his office.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Sluts

2009-11-03T14:46:00.010-05:00

A scene in the movie Apollo 13 portrays an astronaut’s wife arguing with her teenage daughter over her Halloween costume. The girl wanted to go trick-or-treating dressed as a hippie, over her mother’s dead body. Even considering the time period of 1969, and from a standpoint of modesty, I for one could find nothing objectionable about the costume, despite the loudmouthed kid sister’s exaggerated observation that, “She’s not even wearing a bra, you can see EVERYTHING!”

I wish that mother could’ve seen what knocked on my door this last Saturday night: Two girls who couldn’t have been more than twelve years old, thirteen tops, identically dressed as sexy barmaids. They wore white, low cut blouses with puffy sleeves off the shoulder, tightly laced bodices, and ruffled mini-skirts that stuck out like open umbrellas. The only things missing were fistfuls of foaming beer steins and some accordion-playing Chippendales in lederhosen.

I waited for them to chorus, “We’re from the escort service,” at which point I would’ve told them they had the wrong house, or demanded an explanation from my twenty-one year old son who stood next to me enjoying the sights. Instead, they chimed, “Trick or treat!”

But even that could’ve been taken the wrong way with the wrong person.

I don’t have the sort of confrontational personality that might have spurred me to ask, “Do your mothers know you’re dressed like that, or did you start out wearing these under the Mrs. Danvers and second Mrs. De Winter costumes that you doffed and ditched as soon as you got to the next block?”

I looked up the barmaid costumes online. I found many remarkably similar to what these girls wore, all very expensive, and sold alongside a wide variety of other adult costumes that—call me an old-fashioned stick in the you-know-where—do not belong on the bodies of young teenage girls. Especially after dark. Let alone on the street.

I’d rather see my daughter go out as a hippie. But only on Halloween.

Lady, Are You Dumb or Just Stupid?

2009-10-29T12:31:00.003-04:00

You didn’t notice me as you walked by me on your way into the convenience store the other day. In fact, you didn’t seem to notice anything.

I, on the other hand, noticed a lot about you, and I’m still astounded, or I wouldn’t be blogging about it two days later.

For starters, you were well dressed—better dressed than I was, but you were probably stopping en route to work or class, while I was merely slumming with Mr. Lucky. And you had a very nice car. I can’t remember the make (and nowadays most cars look alike to me), but it was a gleaming silver sedan that appeared to be a few years old, as well kept up as its driver.

You parked it next to the passenger side of our vehicle as I stepped out of the convenience store with my pumpkin cappuccino (available for a limited time only). Mr. Lucky held the door for you, and you didn’t even thank him.

I noticed several things as I stepped between your car and mine: Your window was down. Your stereo was playing. Your engine was running.

You had no other passengers, not even a yappy little dog or a great big slobbering dog with head and tongue both hanging out the window. I’m glad I didn’t see a baby.

But you left your purse wide open—as in unsnapped and unzipped with contents visible—on the passenger seat.

Maybe you took your money with you into the store. Or maybe you took just enough to buy your own pumpkin cappuccino. (Only 99 cents in those little “Domo” cups, and I just noticed for the first time ever that there is no cent sign on my keyboard. Didn’t it used to be above the 6?)

How easy it would’ve been for me to reach inside your car and grab that purse. What fun I could’ve had with your credit cards! And making long distance crank calls on your cell phone.

For that matter, I could’ve just hopped behind the wheel of your car and taken it for a joyride—as long as it was automatic transmission. Had it been a stick, chances are good you would’ve caught me before I could figure out how to back out of that parking space without crashing through the glass doors of the store. (I’m totally clueless when it comes to manual transmission.)

Did you think it would be safe to do this because it was broad daylight, it’s not all that bad a neighborhood, and the place—A CONVENIENCE STORE!—wasn’t all that crowded at three in the afternoon? Or do you do this all the time, even after dark?

Or were you taking part in one of those hidden camera shows, and this was an experiment to see what someone like me would do?

Nah. I think you’re just a fool and you’re pushing your luck. Besides, that sort of thing could never happen to you. “I’ll only be a minute, and I can see my car from inside the store the whole time.”

But someone who knows what they’re doing—someone besides me—can take your purse or even the whole car, and be gone before you can drop your partially filled Slurpee in mid-slush and dash back out the door—especially if Mr. Lucky’s no longer there to hold it open for you.

Oh, well. Someday you’ll learn. I just wish you’d learn from reading this blog.

Am I Trapped in a Pac-Man Game, or a Bald Convention?

2009-10-22T15:37:00.011-04:00

When I married Mr. Lucky twenty-two years ago, he had a full head of thick chestnut hair that started disappearing at about the same moment I tossed the bridal bouquet over my shoulder and into the hands of my already wedded brother-in-law.

Call it hereditary male pattern baldness or an unfortunate side effect of living with me and putting up with all my nonsense, but the fact remains he is quite bald today, even to shaving off what little he has left. In fact, I’m not even sure what he’d have left if he just left everything alone.

Baldness seems to be all the rage these days, and that caused a problem for me earlier this week.

After putting Baby Bear on the school bus, Mr. Lucky and I drove out to MacDill Air Force Base to shop at the exchange store. We hadn’t been out there in probably six months, and were dismayed the find it undergoing heavy renovations. The store was very much open for business as usual, but everything had been switched around and packed close together to make room for the renovation work, leaving aisles half as wide (or should I say narrow) as they were originally.

It was almost impossible to move in that place, especially with a shopping cart. Everyone had to travel in the same direction through any given aisle, or be trapped. It was like being inside a Pac-Man game: We’d turn into one aisle, only to run into a group of spooks coming in the opposite direction. We could either stand our ground and get chewed up, or we could try and back out, only to run into a rogue spook sneaking up behind us and then it’s Game Over.

Before we even had the chance to put a single item in the cart, we made the mistake of leaving it parked at the end of an aisle to make it easier to search and recover what we wanted off the shelves. Mr. Lucky was about to come out with several bags of Halloween candy and place them in the cart when a little old lady swiftly dropped her purse into the baby seat and seized control of it.

Though his arms were full, Mr. Lucky wasn’t about to say, “Excuse me, lady, but that’s my cart you just appropriated.” Old-fashioned gentleman that he is, he let her go (not that she was going to get very far in that crowded rat maze), and I returned to the front of the store to fetch another cart.

But then I couldn’t find my husband. No matter which aisle I went down, everyone else was moving in the opposite direction. At intersections I collided several times with the very same people. Finally I spotted a bald head over in the electronics department. But of course—where else would he be?

I zigged up one aisle and zagged down another to get to him; there was no other way to catch up to him. I finally pushed the cart alongside him and—“You’re not my husband.”

Well, from the back that bald head looked just like him. Mr. Lucky did say he wanted to look at shoes, so I burrowed my way to the shoe department.

Then I heard what sounded like a harmonica. Mr. Lucky enjoys playing his harmonica, but I didn’t know he’d brought it with him. Could he be trying to summon me, without yelling my name? (Only he usually whistles or makes a cricket noise.) Indeed, the sound came from the back of a bald head several aisles over. I pushed the cart that way and—“You’re not playing the harmonica.”

Nor was he my husband. It was yet another bald guy turning a tie rack that creaked with a sound very much like a harmonica.

I felt like I was in a scene eerily similar to one in the Hitchcock movie, North by Northwest, where the cops ran all over the train station grabbing and spinning around dozens of red capped porters in hopes of busting the one most closely resembling Cary Grant; or Raiders of the Lost Ark, with Indy toppling one basket after another in a frantic, futile search for the kidnapped Marion.

Me, I was slithering up to every bald guy I glimpsed as if I were planning to hit on him. I swear every man in the store was as smoothly bald as the aforementioned Pac-Man. The base exchange is always throwing “appreciation days” for the Military, or the Military Spouse, or the Military Family, or the Military Retiree. Did we happen to come here on Military Bald Guy Appreciation Day?

It didn’t help I couldn’t remember what color shirt my husband was wearing. In the end, he found me, as I stuck out more—something to do with being five foot eleven topped with long dark hair.

It could’ve been worse. We could’ve been chasing Baby Bear through this labyrinth—though he might have been easier to pin down. Just follow the thuds, crashes, and shattering of glass right before the alarms start shrieking and the sprinklers commence spraying.

About That Balloon Boy: A Grieving Mother's Perspective

2009-10-18T17:01:00.004-04:00

First, let me say I am beyond relieved and grateful to God that little boy was never in that balloon.

But it now appears the whole thing was a hoax, staged for a publicity stunt.

If that is true, then this boy’s father clearly has no clue what he did to millions of parents who have lost a child, whether through illness or accident or abduction, or that split second of distraction when a child wanders off, perhaps never to be found again . . . or found, but not alive. We’re all familiar with the old fable about crying wolf. Perhaps, when a child goes missing in the future, people are more apt to wonder if it’s another hoax. Precious moments may be wasted trying to discount that possibility before real action is taken, putting an innocent child in deeper, potentially irreversible danger. I hope to God I’m wrong about that—and as a chronic world class worrywart, there’s nothing I love more than to be wrong about something.

But this man did something else: He tore open the wounds of grieving parents all across the country who saw this story on TV, and were brutally reminded of the indescribable horror that comes with losing a child forever, sometimes in circumstances the parents can barely stand to think about—but must live with for the remainder of their lives.

I’m one of those bereaved parents. And to make matters worse, this hullaballoon took place on the anniversary of my daughter’s death. I heard it on the radio as I drove to the grocery store, and the tears started flowing almost immediately. I thought not only of Fiona, but of how easily something like this runaway balloon could happen to my fast and fearless Baby Bear who is autistic and can’t even talk.

I’m at least grateful that Fiona, who succumbed to complications from a rare autoimmune polyglandular disease, died at home surrounded by those who loved her most. But what if my precious Bear ever slipped away from me in the wink of an eye, and fell into a terrifying situation where he had no escape, no comprehension of what was happening, and no one to help him? It would tear me into so many pieces, I don’t know if I could ever pull myself back together again. It’s precisely because of his special needs and recklessness that I’m so overprotective of him, and can never stop worrying about him or what will become of him if—and someday, when—I’m no longer there.

I came home from the grocery store crying, wondering if they can put a man on the moon, then why can’t they figure out how to rescue someone from a runaway balloon? (I hereby confess: Hot air balloons are pretty, but you couldn’t pay me to ride in one, let alone allow one of my children to go up.) For several hours, my heart that’s been shattered before broke again for a helpless boy I thought was trapped in the balloon—and for the frantic parents. I was unable to function until the announcement he was safe—and what a relief it was!

Every time I see a story about the death or disappearance of a child, I know the hell that child’s parents are going through—a hell I would never wish on my worst enemy—that no grieving parent would ever wish on their worst enemy. It’s a nightmare from which there is no awakening.

And don’t give me any of that “closure” crap. Maybe for the rest of the world, closure comes with the autopsy results, or the funeral, or when a body is found or the killer sent to prison. But for that child’s parents, the doorway to hell always remains wide open, gaping before us as we teeter on the threshold, struggling not to plunge into that dark, bottomless abyss, as we rack our grief-crazed minds to figure out how we are supposed to get through the rest of our lives without ever seeing and holding our beloved child again, never to watch him or her grow up and become what could have been but never will be.

It’s a hell these publicity seekers know nothing about, or they wouldn’t have pulled this stunt.

And it’s a hell I hope they never have to know.

The Arrival of Fiona Season

2009-10-15T12:01:00.004-04:00

Yes, it’s that day again—the one without the cake and candles.

Every year on this day, we take one of those mini-pumpkins to Fiona, and we place it on the narrow ledge around the bottom of her heart-shaped headstone. Thus begins what I call “Fiona Season” which runs from this day until Christmas.

Fiona Season includes not only the best and happiest family holidays, but Fiona’s birthday, which falls on December 20th.

Her brothers have never cared about dressing up in costume for Halloween, but she always did. In fact, she enjoyed wearing costumes more than she liked the trick-or-treating part. On one Halloween I couldn’t even get her to go to anyone’s door for candy. Instead she wanted to just parade around the neighborhood showing off her pink fairy princess costume.

As Halloween 2000 approached, I wondered how we were going to do trick-or-treating in her wheelchair. I asked her if she wanted to be one of the Powerpuff Girls, for she loved Bubbles, Blossom and Buttercup, and since the popularity of those little superheroines was beginning to spike, the costumes were readily available.

But Fiona was adamant. She didn’t want to be one of the Powerpuff Girls. She wanted to be Cleon, a mischievous, giggly little pink fairy. Cleon was just one of numerous cute characters from Fiona’s favorite video game, Bust-A-Move 4:

Cleon is pictured in the lower left-hand corner

One has to give Fiona high marks for originality. Half the girls that year would probably come out as either Bubbles, Blossom or Buttercup, but what kind of girl would have the imagination to go out as the more obscure, but equally playful Cleon?

Fiona Lingefelt.

With only two weeks before Halloween, we were still pondering how to do a Cleon costume when the angels swooped down and took our mischievous, giggly little pink fairy away.

By the time Fiona Season ends, the little pumpkin is starting to go bad, and we toss it into the nearby woods.

In my fanciful thinking, I can’t help hoping that someday, all those little pumpkins will spawn some sort of enchanted pumpkin patch. I have yet to see it.

Or maybe it really is there, but it’s visible to no one but angels and mischievous, giggly little pink fairies.

Today's Border

2009-10-08T09:45:00.004-04:00

The rearranging continues:

I noticed this latest configuration only after putting Baby Bear on the school bus this morning.

A long, boring straight line with only two curves? Oh, this is SO not going to last.

Or Maybe It's Just Another Pile of Dirt

2009-10-02T12:40:00.005-04:00

I swear I didn’t do this on purpose. But after sweeping Baby Bear’s bedroom floor, I couldn’t help noticing the shape of the dirt pile. I honestly thought it looked like a heart. So I photographed it:

Afterward, as I plugged the camera’s USB cable into my laptop, Mr. Lucky happened to come into my office and ask what kind of photos I was about to upload.

“Let me show you,” I said. “I want to see if you see what I saw.”

In due course the photo appeared on my computer screen. Mr. Lucky was not impressed. “Yeah, so? It’s just a bunch of dirt. Slow picture-taking day? Desperate for an interesting subject? Or is it time I called those guys with the white coats and butterfly nets?”

“The shape!” I exclaimed. “Check out the shape of the dust pile. What does that look like to you?”

“Oh, the shape.” He leaned forward for a better look. “Oh, I think I see now. Is that supposed to be Mickey Mouse?”

So much for my fleeting dreams of the millions of people who would flock to my blog from all over the world, to behold this marvel of dust and dirt and debris, and ponder its cosmic significance.

I only know what it doesn’t signify. I do not love housework!

On the other hand, who doesn’t love Mickey Mouse?

Border Wars

2009-09-29T14:25:00.007-04:00

Mr. Lucky mows and trims the lawn. I pull weeds out of the flowerbeds. I hate doing it—in fact, I hate any kind of yard work, for all that I love a beautifully flourishing garden—but it must be done.

A couple of years ago he spiffed up the flowerbed in front of our house, adding a fancy brick border and covering the ground with reddish-brown rocks. He worked very hard on it and I’ve always liked what he did, especially adding the hibiscus and sunny alamanda bushes.

But this last summer, he got it into his head to expand the flowerbed by moving the bricks farther out. You can see from those reddish-brown rocks where the original flowerbed begins and the expansion ends—at least as of today:

Each time he goes outside, he shifts a few bricks around, saying the border either curves too much or not enough. Each time he calls me to come out afterward and admire his latest handiwork while he regales me with a detailed account of what he did.

“I pulled out these two bricks from over here, and put them down over there,” he’ll say. “I don’t want the border to be too straight, I want it to curve a little more, so I removed several bricks from over here and now I don’t know what to do with these leftover bricks.”

Not to worry. The next day, he figures out what to do with the leftover bricks: He uses them to stretch the flowerbed farther out. Again I am summoned to come out and praise his latest stroke of genius.

“But the border is too straight right along here,” he says. “So we’ll have to find some more bricks.”

And the beat goes on. The lawn is gradually becoming part of the flowerbed. In the meantime, he’s expanding the amount of space for weeds to flourish—and for me to pull.

For some reason, the weeds become more obvious on the flowerbed side of the border.

After putting Baby Bear on the school bus this morning, I went out to remove as much as I could. The sprinklers ran last night, so everything was still quite damp, and that’s when I learned something I never knew all these years: Weeds are easier to pull when the ground is wet.

As you can see by the photos, it doesn’t look as if I did much—but it looked a lot worse beforehand, and I filled a 13-gallon plastic bag! The green stuff pictured toward the front of the newly laid border was the lawn until about a week ago, and dollar weeds are already feasting on it:

My back still hurts from doing it. I know I shouldn’t bend over to pull them, and it’s death to squat. I didn’t want to sit on the bricks themselves as they had little ants scurrying all over them, and the last thing I need in my life right now is—well—ants in my pants.

I suppose I should accept that I’m getting old, and invest in some kneepads.

We still haven’t decided what to plant in the newly expanded place. I would like a flowering tree of some sort. He mentioned a birdbath. I like garden statuary (but no gnomes, please). And I love fountains and fish ponds, but we have to keep a few steps ahead of Aquaboy, aka Baby Bear.

I told Mr. Lucky if he keeps shuffling those bricks around and extending that border, before long there won’t be any lawn left for him to mow—just a whole front yard full of weeds for me to pull.

His reply? “That's the idea!”

Beethoven's Turkish March

2009-09-16T15:21:00.002-04:00

Guess who keeps playing it over . . . and over . . . and over . . . on his electronic keyboard?

The keyboard has some sort of function that plays a variety of popular classical tunes, as well as sound effects. The one simulating fireworks is guaranteed to upset the dogs, but fortunately our Bear isn’t as addicted to pops, whistles and explosions as he is to Beethoven’s marcia alla turca.

Earlier this week he was into Pachelbel’s Canon in D, of which I’m very fond, but to my frustration he’d only let the keyboard play the first six notes before he hit the start button again. Still, that’s infinitely preferable to the girl I knew in the Air Force, who woke up half the barracks at three-thirty in the morning by repeatedly playing Dr. Hook’s “When You’re in Love With a Beautiful Woman” on her boom box (thanks to her, I’ve absolutely hated that song ever since); or even the time Mr. Lucky dinged around with a CD and cassette player to make an obnoxious twenty-minute long version of the opening notes from Michael Jackson’s “Bad.”

I have to admit that Beethoven’s Turkish March is a festive, catchy tune, very upbeat and lighthearted. I wouldn’t mind Baby Bear playing it so much, except I find myself bouncing and skipping around the house in time to it. When I was a little girl, my father had it on a record, played by an orchestra, and I loved it because it reminded me of a merry-go-round.

It’s perfect background music for the three-ring circus that is my household.

The Real Baby Bear Comes Back--and Strikes Back

2009-08-23T16:42:00.013-04:00

On my bookshelf is a well worn book club edition of The Second Lady by Irving Wallace, published in 1980. It’s a Cold War political thriller about a KGB plot to abduct the First Lady of the United States and replace her with an almost perfect double in hopes of gleaning a vital piece of classified information from the President.* Needless to say, the imposter made a few blunders that nearly blew her cover and raised a few suspicions among certain members of her staff.

But not the President. A typical husband in the grand American tradition, he didn’t notice anything the least bit different about his wife.

The First Lady’s mother would have known something was amiss—if she weren’t conveniently deceased.

Which brings us to Baby Bear. I recently blogged about his uncharacteristically good behavior this summer. I’ve been wondering if he was replaced with a Second Bear these past two months, only to be switched back last week when Mr. Lucky took our older son up to Georgia to visit his grandparents. Baby Bear suddenly went back to being his old rampaging, pillaging, plundering self. Do I detect a sinister KGB plot, or a mere reaction to his father’s absence?

I wanted our chocolate beagle, Bart, to go to Georgia with them. Mr. Lucky agreed, until the night before his departure when his father called to declare, “No dogs!” Showing no fear of his own wife, Mr. Lucky complied. He was gone four days, leaving me with the Bear, two dogs, and no car. And—perhaps worst of all—no chocolate.

So what went wrong in his absence? An homage to the late Mr. Wallace and The Book of Lists of which he was co-author:

1. Bart is the same dog who balks at going outside when his master is away. I suppose I should be thankful that when he expresses his displeasure, at least he does it on the bathroom rug.

2. Barely an hour after Mr. Lucky left, the remote controller for Baby Bear’s Playstation went kaput and I couldn’t get it to work again, not even after charging it up or with the cable still plugged in. I had to call Mr. Lucky on his cellphone for advice. Well, okay, not so much for advice as to cuss him out for having the temerity to leave me when he should have known the controller would die an hour later. He instructed me to turn off the Playstation, unplug everything, then plug everything back in, and reboot the Playstation, talking me through a convoluted process that reminded me of when they tried to restore power to Jurassic Park and get it back online. And while I didn’t have any velociraptors chewing my arms off, I did have to contend with two barking dogs, one angry, frustrated Bear, and a thunderstorm that caused a sudden power surge, briefly knocking everything out and ending our phone conversation in a burst of static. Mr. Lucky probably thought I slammed the phone down on him in rage, and I wouldn’t have blamed him for making the assumption.

3. Later, the controller decided to work properly again. Then Baby Bear dropped it behind the entertainment center. Retrieving it was a job for Indiana Jones, complete with huge clouds of old dust, falling objects (note to self: next time, remove framed photos from top of entertainment center before venturing behind it), and sights no human has seen for seven hundred years.

4. Baby Bear has rediscovered water. When he isn’t dumping it on himself, he’s The Human Fountain, throwing and spewing it all over the house.

5. He’s figured out how to turn on the shower in his bathroom. The shower makes almost no noise compared to the tub faucet, and he seems to know it. I lost count of how many times I found him sitting in the tub beneath the shower spray. Sometimes he was clothed, sometimes not.

6. He loves to rock back and forth. He rocks hard enough on the family room sofa that he can actually make the sofa itself rock back, and a new hole in the drywall behind it.

7. Mr. Lucky called the next morning from his parents’ house. His father had taken his mother to an appointment, and since he didn’t have a key to their house, he and the Crown Prince would be stuck there for a few hours until the parental units came back. I was hard pressed to commiserate with his dilemma.

8. Not surprisingly, I have 0 words to report at the weekly check-in for the TARA Book Challenge.

9. I had no chocolate.

10. And I still have no chocolate. I AM OWED CHOCOLATE!

*Now why can't I write blurbs that concise for my own books?

Puzzle Time: Find the Hidden Stains in This Granite!

2009-08-12T13:58:00.004-04:00

What I like about my granite counter: It looks clean when it isn’t.

What I don’t like about my granite counter: It looks clean when it isn’t.

I can’t just wipe and walk away as I could with previous kitchen counters. No, I have to turn on every available light, and examine the counter from every possible angle, squatting down till I’m eye level with the surface, to better see the spots I missed. I may have to run my fingertips across the surface as if I’m reading Braille, when in fact I’m scanning for little dried blobs of food stuck to the counter, that require more elbow grease than in the initial routine wipe. Then comes the removal of fingerprints. This is followed by another examination that reveals streaks from the wiping.

What I need—but I don’t think it’s been invented yet—is a handheld “granite counter stain detector.” You wave it just over the surface of the counter and whenever it detects a hidden stain, it beeps. The bigger and gunkier the stain, the louder and quicker the detector beeps.

I’m reminded of something Dolly Parton’s character said in the movie Steel Magnolias: “There is no such thing as natural beauty.” She was referring to how a woman has to put a lot of effort into keeping herself attractive.

I think she could just as easily be referring to a granite countertop.

Portrait of a Blue One-Eyed Mummy

2009-08-03T11:29:00.005-04:00

That's really Baby Bear wrapped in a fitted bed sheet he pulled from the linen closet for an extremely rare midday nap on the living room sofa.

Baby Bear: 56 Days Without Making Me Scream in Horror

2009-08-01T17:11:00.003-04:00

You know how some construction sites come with signs boasting X number of days since an accident? Or maybe you’ve seen that old episode of The Simpsons and the trailer park with a sign crowing Y number of days since the last tornado. I may be tempting fate with this post, but as of today, it’s been 56 days since the last DOBBO, or Disaster Of Baby Bear Origin.

The last DOBBO was on June 6th, when he upended his TV onto the floor so he could use its table as a boost to reach the pull-chain on his ceiling fan.

Not that I’m complaining, but we’re more than halfway through summer vacation and he hasn’t committed any blogworthy atrocities. No floods. No new holes in the drywall. Nothing broken, either on him or around the house. No manager in a pizzeria walking up to me and saying, “Excuse me, ma’am, but is that your son behind the counter throwing calzones at the health inspector?” None of that. And I’ve even cut back on his medication doses!

His typical summer day consists of playing Crash Bandicoot Warped—every day he rips through most levels with minimal loss of life; he knows all the moves and where to jump and pick up gems, what to avoid and how. And yet, he doesn’t use his two thumbs to manipulate the Playstation controller like most mortals. He uses but one hand.

He’s also very much in love with his cordless battery-powered keyboard that we gave him for Christmas. It’s about 37 inches long and so lightweight, he carries it from one room to another. When he’s not playing Crash, he’s playing tunes and rhythms on this keyboard as he rocks back and forth. We use rechargeable batteries in it and I have to charge them up every night after he goes to bed—where he sometimes takes the keyboard to let the rhythm sounds lull him to sleep—because they’re never good for more than a day and if the keyboard dies on him—well, you don’t want to know.

Let us close by knocking on wood.

Someone Please Stop My Husband

2009-07-17T13:03:00.010-04:00

Mr. Lucky has long dreamed of replacing the carpet between the kitchen and children’s bathroom with something else. Initially he considered ceramic tile to match that in the kitchen and bathroom, but now that his dream is closer to reality (see previous blog entry) he speaks of laminate wood flooring.

I don’t have a problem with this.

He went on to talk of extending the wood flooring to the dining area and family room.

I can’t say as I have a problem with this, either. In fact, I think it might improve the appearance of the family room. And I’m not the one who’s going to have to unhook and dismantle every electronic component in the entertainment center.

He assured me this wouldn’t be done all at once; that we would do first the hallway, then a month or two later, the dining area, followed by the family room. Eventually, he said, he’d like to do the rest of the house.

Now, I do have a problem with this.

“Fine, but not my office,” I said.

“Yes your office,” he countered. “Think of it. No more dog hair, no more odors, and no more stains that have to be soaked up and sponged and worked out over time. All you have to do is wipe them up.”

I just stared at him in horror.

“What’s the problem?” he asked.

“Problem? Oh, no problem at all. Just that it would mean having to move all my books. Again!”

“Well, of course it would,” he said, with the blithe air of one who knew he would not have to get stuck with that thankless task, since he’d be the one laying the floor. “But it would only be for one day.”

He totally missed the point. The fact remains the books would have to be removed from the shelves, transported to another room along with the bookcases, then transported back and reshelved.

As Betty Boop might say, “No! No! A thousand times, NO!”

Please don’t make me move my books again. If necessary, I’ll start an online petition against it. I’ll stage a sit-in, and go on a housework strike!

So what if he thinks I’m already on day 8,031 of the latter.

Another Day, Another Flood . . . Another Drink, Please

2009-07-03T15:00:00.012-04:00

Last week I found a wet spot on the carpet, in the hallway leading from Bear Country to the kitchen. I chalked it up to a certain boy dumping cups of water onto the floor, and laid a towel over it.

Yet the spot wouldn’t go away. Or it would dry up the next day, then mysteriously appear again, usually in the evenings. Was it possible Aquaboy was pouring water in the exact same spot at about the same time every day? Mr. Lucky and I agreed this was quite likely; it was just a matter of catching him but we never did. Then I made a horrifying discovery yesterday morning, after nearly a week of drenching rain over the Sunshine State.

The wet spot had grown and spread—or actually, the spot had spread from an even larger splotch in the adjacent linen closet. I didn’t see it at first because I had about a hundred old worn out bed sheets stacked on the floor of the linen closet. That’s right, I never throw out old sheets because of some nutty idea I have that I might find another use for them one day.

I alerted Mr. Lucky and told him we had a serious problem. He’s been wanting to replace the hallway carpet with tile, and now that he had a good excuse, he promptly ripped up the carpet and padding beneath. Neither of us could find the source of the leak anywhere.

There was no way Baby Bear could have dumped that much water, only to have it soak straight through the carpet to the foundation and underneath all those sheets on the closet floor. The water would have had to show up on the kitchen floor, too, and surely I would have noticed it when I slipped and went flying onto my tush.

No, this was caused by something else, something infinitely more sinister, and what with all the rain we’d had lately, horrible visions filled my head—of plumbing doctors coming to the house with their fancy diagnostic equipment to detect leaks that can’t be seen with the naked eye. Of some guy in a hardhat taking a jackhammer to my floor to reach the pipes underneath, and of water spewing up through my roof like a geyser. Of a sinkhole forming beneath the house, threatening to suck our entire home and everything in it into the muddy bowels of the earth.

Worst of all, of having to move all my books YET AGAIN!

It only took about five minutes for me to become thoroughly freaked out, while Mr. Lucky counseled patience as the floor dried and he watched to see if the water returned.

Sure enough, it did after dinner last night. And he traced the water to this source:

A perfectly harmless canine water cooler

I’d filled it for the dogs about an hour before the water showed up in the linen closet again. It had a crack I never saw when filling it. The water just couldn’t flow across the kitchen floor where I’d be most likely to spot the problem right away, now could it? Oh no, instead it had to seep behind that knotty wooden object (which holds the garbage), beneath the molding and into the linen closet on the other side of the wall.

And here I thought the dogs had been slurping up so much water recently because of the hot summer weather. Lately I’ve been filling it every single night, about every twenty-four hours. Yet I never made the connection between the dogs’ water supply and the mysterious appearance of the water spot in the hallway each evening.

Thank heavens that’s all it was—and for once it wasn’t even an Act of Baby Bear.

We now return to our regularly scheduled insanity in progress.

Why Am I Not Surprised?

2009-06-27T10:07:00.002-04:00

Who Should Paint You: Pablo Picasso

You are an expressive soul who shows many emotions, with many subtleties

Only a master painter could represent your glorious contradictions

What Artist Should Paint Your Portrait?

From the Nosebleed Section

2009-06-14T17:29:00.005-04:00

So I was in my office, sitting at the computer, and I could hear Baby Bear running all over the house, whooping and laughing and evidently enjoying himself. I didn’t hear any crashing or shattering or house-shaking thumps. Finally he galloped into my office. I turned in my swivel chair to see two things on his face: A big smile . . . and blood. It was also splattered on his hands and arms and chest.

I shrieked. He laughed. Fortunately it only took a few seconds for me to ascertain he had a nosebleed and had been wiping at it, hence the horror flick appearance. I took him into the bathroom to ply him with damp washcloths, and called for his dad to look around for bloodstains or any evidence of how the nosebleed might have started. He found none.

Mr. Lucky had been watching TV, and said he hadn’t noticed anything amiss. And I believed him, because anytime I come home after having been out for several hours, the whole house looks as if it’s been pillaged and plundered by barbarians, and he always insists the kids must have done all of it just in the past few minutes, because up to that point he was watching them like a hawk the whole time. Uh huh. He watches them until I pull into the driveway, then he directs his attention elsewhere while my three little darlings gather in a huddle: “Mom just pulled up, so we have to act fast if we want to really make her yell. Sis, you ransack the living room and dining room, and this time, see if you can pull the chandelier low enough to swing it into the curio cabinet. Bro, you do the kitchen, and don’t forget to leave the fridge door open after you spread the leftovers all over the floor. I’ll take the bedrooms and bathroom and see how much stuff I can flush down the toilet before it finally overflows. Good thing we don’t have to worry about the family room, it’s always a wreck.”

It’s like Cat in the Hat in reverse, the part where the goldfish sees their mother's shapely leg out on the sidewalk and they must put everything back in order before she opens the door. I am to believe all this mass destruction took place in the less than single minute it takes me to pull into the driveway, get out of the car, and walk into a house that looks eligible for federal disaster aid, only to find Things One, Two and Three innocently occupied with a Disney cartoon, and Mr. Lucky on the computer playing Sim Galactic Empire or some such.

Fortunately Baby Bear was very cooperative while I stopped his nosebleed and cleaned him up, but of course he ignored my advice to take it easy for a while. I still don’t know what brought it on, and he’s been fine ever since.

But does nothing faze that child?

In Which Baby Bear Shows Off His Problem-Solving Skills

2009-06-06T16:22:00.020-04:00

Remember Baby Bear's Ceiling Fan Tetherball, that led to the shortening of the pull chain for his overhead light? Since then, he's taken to batting the pull chain on the ceiling fan in my office, while I've had to use a stepping-stool to turn his bedroom light off without having to turn off the fan.

So guess what happens when he wakes up at seven in the morning--and on a Saturday, too!--and he wants to turn on his light, but he can't reach that two-inch long pull chain under the ceiling fan? He doesn't have a chair or stepping stool handy, and he doesn't want to wake up Mom.

What's a Bear to do? How about this:

The ensuing thunk launched me out of bed, while Mr. Lucky remained sound asleep.

The table is supposed to sit lengthwise parallel to that wall. The 27-inch TV sat atop it. I think the above picture explains what he did in well under a thousand words. And yes, the TV is upside-down, still attached to the DVD player on the table's lower level.

I could not budge it, not even to turn it upright. I had to wait until Mr. Lucky woke up.

The amazing thing is, the TV still works, though the color is way off now. Everything has a purplish-greenish tinge to it.

Time to show off my own problem-solving skills: I suppose we'll have to get a new, longer pull chain for him to bat at and wind around the fan's motor housing. But do I dare leave the stepping stool in his room until then? Or do I use the wall switch to shut off the light and the fan? (I like to keep the air circulating in his room at night.)

Or do we get a TV table on wheels, and roll the TV out of his room at night? We're already doing that with his computer.

Oh, and did I mention we're only two days into summer vacation?

The bright side: Baby Bear isn't hurt.

I'll Believe Anything Except Reality

2009-05-30T17:09:00.005-04:00

Recently, I saw the latest film adaptation of the Jules Verne classic, Journey to the Center of the Earth, starring Brendan Fraser. While it didn’t blow me away, I also didn’t feel it was an hour and a half wasted. It was a vast improvement over a made-for-TV version I saw many years ago, that reeked of “pilot for a TV series that was never picked up” and stole two hours of my life I’ll never get back.

WARNING: Movie spoilers ahead, in case you haven’t seen it but it’s your lifelong dream to one day do so.

While I know the whole “Hollow Earth” idea is just a lot of hooey, I still like the idea of a world within a world. I thought it rather cool that they went in by way of Iceland, and came out via Italy. I didn’t question the speed and ease of their long descent, whether T-rex skulls are seaworthy, or if there should have been issues with gravity once they arrived at earth’s center. I was willing to suspend disbelief and go along with the giant fossilized mushrooms, the flat rocks floating in mid-air like an asteroid field, and the glow-in-the-dark birds sent to help the humans in Disneyesque fashion. And what movie about a lost world within our own real world is complete without the usual rampaging dinosaurs?

I was content to swallow every bite of this fantastic buffet of make-believe, except for one little scene in which they stretched things too far even for my wild imagination: Brendan and his leading lady get thrown out of a runaway mine cart and land flat on their backs—only to stand up, dust themselves off, and walk away.

It was one of those moments where I had to shout at the TV, “Oh, come on!” They should have been killed, or at the very least spent the rest of the movie in body casts and traction.

I have a similar reaction to the 2005 version of King Kong. I love that movie. I could believe the idea of a remote island in the farthest reaches of the South Seas, where a tiny civilization of people were forced to build a seaside fortress to protect themselves from the giant predatory beasts roaming the rest of the island. I was sold on the notion of the giant ape, the giant mosquitoes, the giant centipedes, the giant everything. I was willing to overlook the men’s superhuman ability to dodge and outrun the stampeding dinosaurs while toting heavy photographic equipment, though I would’ve just ducked into the nearest nook or cranny and let the beasts pass.

Yes, movie fans, I happily gulped it down, every outrageous morsel, till they returned to New York and Kong got to enjoy a playful, heartwarming few moments sliding around an ice-covered pond with Naomi Watts.

This is Mr. Lucky’s least favorite part of the movie. “Oh, come on!” he yells. “Do you know how thick that ice would have to be—and how deep that pond would have to be for ice that thick—to hold the weight of that ape?”

He does have a point. The ice never so much as cracked beneath the weight of the giant ape. Yet a single volley from an army tank blew it to splinters, and Kong was off and running to the Empire State Building, blonde girl literally in hand.

And that’s where I usually get pulled out of the story. Shouldn’t it be so windy at the top of the Empire State Building, that she can barely stand up? And since it is made quite obvious to the viewer that they’re in New York in the dead of winter, one can only imagine the wind chill factor: Shouldn’t she be freezing to death in that skimpy, sleeveless white gown?

I try to explain that away by assuring myself it must be very warm and cozy clenched inside Kong’s fist. But what about when he puts her down to bat at the planes? Or when he finally falls?

Why am I so willing to accept the more fantastic elements of a story, while yelling, “Oh, come on!” at the more mundane, every day elements—the situations I’m more likely to experience than fleeing dinosaurs or falling almost four thousand miles down a cave in three minutes while carrying on a conversation with my fellow fallers?

One final thought on Journey: As I watched it, I found myself contemplating the idea that Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne were two different writers with two different voices, who each wrote a story with the same basic premise: A human ventures down a hole to find a completely different world.

It must have been those giant mushrooms.

Jasmine, Bees, and a Butterfly

2009-05-26T14:19:00.004-04:00

After some much needed rain every day for the past week, my jasmine tree has exploded with blossoms and buzzing bees dancing all around it:

And because of all the rain, the grass is growing and can't be mowed till everything dries out somewhat. But oh, our whole back yard is perfumed with jasmine and it smells wonderful!

In addition to the bees, yesterday I saw what looked like a huge monarch butterfly fluttering near the tree, which made me think of Fiona. A huge fan of The Simpsons, one of her favorite episodes was where Bart told Lisa that he believed when you die, you get to come back as whatever you want. And Bart planned to come back as a butterfly.

When Lisa asked why, he replied, "Because no one ever suspects the butterfly."

Fiona always cracked up at that. And now, every time a butterfly crosses my path, I wonder . . .

Some Unhappy Faces in the Cereal Bowl This Morning

2009-05-22T08:47:00.007-04:00

But at least no one appears to be screaming bloody murder.

If only you guys would come out of the bag looking like Elvis or Angelina or even the Virgin Mary, I could sell you on eBay, make a few bucks, and maybe get my 15 minutes on the local news.

Until then, you're still just Bear food.

About That New Washer

2009-05-18T18:54:00.003-04:00

Our old washing machine, almost ten years old and the cheapest we could afford at time of purchase, was starting to act up. Or rather, it was stopping, which required no acting whatsoever.

I would open the lid, thinking the load I’d started over an hour earlier was done, only to find the clothes still soaking in water. I closed the lid; it did not restart. I kicked and pounded it, loudly uttering the standard chant of four-letter, one-syllable words. Another lift and drop of the lid, another good fist-pounding, another proclamation of eternal condemnation, and the washer would grudgingly resume its cycle.

Changing cycles did not solve the problem, and soon I worried that one day the machine would simply die in the middle of a soak. I told Mr. Lucky we needed to do something before that happened and we’d have to find a Laundromat and start dedicating our lives to hoarding quarters.

I don’t even know where the nearest Laundromat is. I’ve heard they’re not the way they used to be, all hot and noisy and full of screaming kids and suspiciously shady characters; that nowadays some are just like Chuck E. Cheese. But with my luck, the nearest one is still the old-fashioned kind “where a laundress can be a laundress.”

’Twas not I, but Mr. Lucky who decided it would be cheaper to buy a new washer than to have the old one repaired. I coveted the front-loading type, if only because it didn’t have that annoying, aptly-named agitator. At least once a month we have to buy a new waterproof mattress pad for Baby Bear’s bed, because they get chewed up by the agitator. When loading the old washer, I had to put larger pieces in the bottom, saving smaller items for the top, lest they get trapped beneath the agitator, or in the case of bras, twisted around it. In fact, there’s nothing that agitates me more than trying to pull a single bra out of the washing machine, only to find one of the straps is tightly wound around the rest of the load.

Since Mr. Lucky also wanted a front-loader, we got one. I would have liked a matching dryer, too—not just on general principle, but because most of the time I have to run the old one through two cycles just to get the clothes dry. (And I do too clean out the lint trap every time.)

But I love my new washer, though it’s taken some getting used to. For one thing, unlike its predecessor, it makes almost no noise, so I find myself going into the laundry room every few minutes to reassure myself it’s still running. I don’t think it would soothe a colicky baby!

And in an odd twist, since the new washer was set up, the dryer has started working more efficiently again. I haven’t had to run double-cycles to get loads completely dry. Apparently there’d been a kink in the giant silver hose behind it all this time, and it became unkinked when Mr. Lucky shifted everything around to install the new washer.

That could have been a serious fire hazard.

I did have one reservation about a front-loading model: It’s—well—front-loading. Meaning a certain Bear might sneak into the laundry room during the rinse cycle, open the door, and presto! Indoor flash flood!

But a very smart washing machine designer/engineer, who obviously has small children and deserves a Nobel Prize, equipped it with a child safety lock!

Now why can’t they do that with refrigerators? Or even ovens?

In His Own Words: Mr. Lucky Has to Buy a New Washing Machine

2009-05-15T16:09:00.002-04:00

I bought a new (sigh) washing machine the other day at the behest of my loving wife . . . $600.00 for one of those fancy frontloading models! Why can’t she just be happy with a scrub board and an old bucket like my mama used? But NO! She needs a fancy state-of-the-art super deluxe cleaning machine.

I personally think the money could have been better spent on something that, in my opinion, is of greater importance . . . you know ... an LCD widescreen TV perhaps, maybe a set of professional harmonicas . . . I have always wanted to buy a motorcycle, to be an “Easy Rider” driving the American backroads with the wind blowing through my long flowing locks . . . any of these I would make better use of than a washer.

But alas, my wife demands that I wear clean clothes. That is when I actually put them in the hamper instead of the many little piles I have placed strategically around the house, guaranteeing that at least once a day she will shout, “I don’t wash clothes UNLESS they are in the hamper!” Or that other classic: “I am NOT your mother!” Of course I have, in the past, tried to wash them myself, but I was quickly chided for “doing it wrong.” What do I care if the darks and lights get combined, or whether my pockets get emptied . . . as long as they are cleaned. And yes, I know it’s a bit silly to wash just one shirt by itself . . . but I didn’t want any lint or dog hair on it from her clothes.

Well, next on Her list is a new dishwasher. I’m happy with our current method, piling the dirty dishes on the floor and letting the dogs lick them clean . . . aren’t dogs’ mouths the cleanest on the planet? . . . anyway that’s what my mama told me.

Looky What I Got for Mother's Day!

2009-05-10T10:09:00.004-04:00

Three peachy-pink roses and three little bears--brown for my two sons and white for my daughter--each bearing three heart-shaped boxes containing three heart-shaped candies that say "#1 Mom."

I love my bear cubs . . . and their Papa Bear. He's just right.

Even When the Moon Isn't Full . . .

2009-05-02T09:51:00.004-04:00

Baby Bear has been busy this week. Among his latest and most notable achievements/atrocities:

The Flying Toybox: Lately he’s taken to emptying his toybox, one of those all-purpose heavy-duty plastic storage containers. Then he lies on his bed and flips the box around on his feet, occasionally kicking it across the room. Object: To scare the bejabbers out of the dogs and the parental units every time the box slams into the wall with a thunderous bang. Bonus for knocking something over and breaking it. We believe this is why new dents are suddenly showing up in his bedroom wall so close to the ceiling. Though he’s getting there, he’s still not quite tall or long-legged enough to bang his head or kick his feet that high.

Ceiling Fan Tetherball: He loves to play a form of tetherball with the pull chains on ceiling fans. Object: To get the pull chain tangled every which way around the three light fixtures below the fan and the screws that hold them in place. Bonus for throwing the pull chain over the fan blades, causing it to get wound around the motor housing.

This particular chain is the one that turns the lights on and off. Of course he had to score his Bonus after dark, and of course the lights were off, so I couldn’t turn them on to see what I was doing. And of course he had to do it while Mr. Lucky was at work.

Usually I have to get out a foot high stepping stool to untangle the pull chain from the lights. But for the Bonus round, not only did I have to go out to the garage to get the stepladder, but I had move his bed and shovel all those toys he dumped out of the way to better reach the area above the fan blades, where the chain was tightly wound. Did I mention it was dark, with the only available light coming from the hallway?

I don’t know how long I was perched up there, turning the blades one way and then the other, occasionally having to step down and move the ladder to see what was happening to the chain on the other side (in near darkness), but eventually I managed to break the chain, and now all that remains is a two-inch pull.

Which means anytime I want to turn off his lights but leave his fan running (usually at night), I have to break out the stepping stool to do it.

When we bought this house, we figured the 10 foot ceilings would be nice to have because we’re all so tall. At least I thought we were.

The School Toilet: He broke the toilet seat in his classroom. I don’t know if we’re going to get a bill for this, but I only hope the school doesn’t buy their toilet seats from the same source as the Defense Department.

The Home Toilet: I find puddles and wet footprints all over the house, yet I don’t hear any water running in his bathroom, which is right next door to my office. Then, just last night, I caught him in flagrante delicto, dipping his stocking foot into the toilet bowl.

If he’s dipping anything else in there, I’d rather not know.

When One Phone Recording Talks to Another

2009-04-29T13:10:00.007-04:00

Our answering machine has picked up a bizarre recorded message several times over the past month or so. Oddly enough, the recording asks for a different person each time—but that person is never someone named Lingefelt.

A woman’s deceptively pleasant voice does most of the talking except when stating the name of the person they’re looking for, then the voice becomes deeper, stiffer, and—dare I say it—more menacing. (All proper nouns are fictional, see previous blog entry.)

“This is National Credit Data Collection Systems of America with an important phone call for Lausanne Davin. If you are Lausanne Davin, please press 1. If you are not Lausanne Davin, please press 2.”

I don’t pick up the phone to press anything, I just listen. Next comes my favorite part of the message:

“If you pressed 1, please stay on the line. If you pressed 2, please do not listen to the rest of this message.”

Excuse me? You dialed my phone number. You’re taking up valuable recording space on my answering machine. Your blathering has interrupted me and pulled me away from matters more important, even if they’re not as blogworthy. This is my home, my private domain, and through your own ineptitude, you have intruded upon it. Therefore, since you are now here, I jolly well intend to listen to every word you have to say henceforth.

It’s as if the recorded caller has never heard of answering machines or voice mail, or they might say, “If you are Lausanne Davin, please pick up.” But they can’t make her pick up anymore than they can make me not listen to the rest of their message.

So I listen to the rest of the message, even though I’m not supposed to. Apparently they don’t want me to know that Lausanne is in deep doo-doo debt and has some serious ’splainin’ to do to her creditors. She is to call a certain number between certain hours on certain days, unless she wants her name reported to certain agencies.

Only why don’t they want me to know? If they think she can be reached at this number, wouldn’t they appreciate me taking the message for her, perhaps even talking to her as a friend who cares, and persuade her to pay her bills? Not that I intend to give her a loan myself, now that I know from this message she'll never repay the money.

Or are they afraid I might use the information against her, spread mean gossip about her? “You remember Lausanne Davin, don’t you? Well, guess what I heard about her? She’s—(gasp!)—behind on her credit card payments! Can you believe it?”

In this day and age, that’s shockingly juicy.

But here’s what bewilders me about this phone call: If you have an answering machine or voice mail, why pick up and press 1 or 2, regardless of whether you’re Lausanne or Karen, if you’re going to hear their message anyway?

Given the circumstances and my own overly suspicious nature (oh, go ahead and call me paranoid if you like, it won't be the first time), I can’t help thinking that if—just for kicks—I picked up this phone call and pressed 1 pretending to be Lausanne, I would not get the same message I’m not supposed to listen to.

Instead, I would get trouble.

I could get trapped in a web of “reverse identity theft” in which I would somehow find myself on the hook for Lausanne’s debts—which could very well extend to overdue library books, parking tickets, arrest warrants, fines from her homeowner’s association for displaying the wrong colored gnome in her flower bed, and don’t even get me started on the unwanted “parting gifts” she might have accumulated from her string of ne’er-do-well exes. Lausanne Davin may not even exist at all, but only be a figment of someone’s imagination, invented solely for that person’s fiendish amusement and potential profit. (Hmm—rather like the “real” Lausanne Davin.)

On the other hand, if that were so, then why have the "press 2" option?

I would rather not know, but instead be thankful for the answering machine. It screens, baffles, and amuses.

Writers: Ever Googled Your Characters' Names?

2009-04-24T18:58:00.003-04:00

I did recently—not that I expected to find a few of them now have their own websites and blogs; nor was I looking to IM them (“Please check all the bars for my Muse, then both of you report to my current WIP immediately.”) I was planning to blog a particular subject that required me to use an alias instead of someone’s real name. And since I’ve written many books with many characters, I thought why not engage in some desperately cheap and shameless self-promotion by using one of my heroines’ names?

But considering the somewhat delicate nature of the proposed blog topic—it could potentially cause embarrassment to a person who really does have that name—I thought I’d better Google the first and last names of some of my heroines to see who could be affected.

As it turns out, with the exception of female characters born into a fictional European royal family that starred in earlier novels now crammed under my bed—where I believe they will remain until they turn to compost (the novels, not the princesses)—all my girls are out there.

I was especially shocked to find both Natalie and Athena have posted racy pictures of themselves online. Well, maybe not Natalie so much—when I was working with her, she was always being haunted and bitten on the butt by past embarrassments and indiscretions, and I don’t doubt she continues to be dogged to this day; but I always thought Athena was too goody-goody gracious to stumble into such antics. Sheesh, you think you know somebody . . . Until now I would’ve trusted that woman with my kid, my house key, maybe even my PIN number . . . but alas, my opinion of her has just been flushed down the toilet. And to add insult to injury, it’s now backed up, because unlike Athena’s high and mighty royal throne, mine is just a low-flow.

I finally Googled the name of her husband’s grandmother, who was born Lausanne Davin. That particular first/last name combo didn’t pop up anywhere. And yes, she was born in and named after the Swiss city on Lake Geneva. I’ve heard “Geneva” used as a girl’s name, and I always thought “Lausanne” would be just as pretty a name, so that’s how she got her name. And while she will always be one of my favorite heroines of my own creation, the books in which she appeared absolutely sucked and will never see the light of day again. She was one of my lab mice who endured many explosions of smoke in different colors while I learned how to write something resembling a novel. In those novels and in her file I might have a ton of dirt on her, while on the World Wide Web, she’s so clean she squeaks—and being a lab mouse has nothing to do with it.

But that’s about to change once I use her in my next blog entry.

In Which Karen Jumps Mr. Lucky's Claim

2009-04-17T14:44:00.005-04:00

Remember when Mr. Lucky found a computer work center at the side of the road and brought it home? Initially he thought it would be ideal for me, but it wouldn’t fit in my office--formerly the Crown Prince’s bedchamber located just off the family room. (For all the gory and literally soaking wet details on how that became my office, click here.) So Mr. Lucky installed it in his own office--a somewhat more secluded room located in the same hallway as Baby Bear’s lair and private waterpark aka the bathroom—and gave me the table he’d been using for his desktop.

This arrangement worked well for a while, until several months later when Mr. Lucky treated himself to a brand new flat screen TV for Christmas. The phone company was here all day installing gadgets and wiring to make the acquisition worthwhile, and when Mr. Lucky said their package came with free HBO and a zillion other channels that played the same two-star movies ad nauseam while saving the good stuff for their occasional promotional weekends, I knew wild horses couldn’t drag him into his office again. No force in heaven or on earth can fight the power of free HBO over my husband.

Sure enough, he took his laptop and has since built himself a formidable nest at the best end of the sofa. Papers pile up on the end table in the corner between sofa and love seat. While I haven’t actually seen him do it, I am quite sure that when he runs out of space on the end table, he takes his arm and slides it part way across the table, sending a pile of junk on the far side over the edge and giving himself a few inches of new space to fill up.

From the nest, he had a straight shot of less than half a dozen paces to the door of my office. Even with the door closed while I worked, I had this eerie sense of him camping right outside with an ice chest, sleeping bag and oversized umbrella, as if he were waiting for Hannah Montana tickets to go on sale.

My writing suffered. I started agitating to take over his office. Doing so would give me better insulation from the constant drivel of 10 Ways to Break Up in 30 Days with a 40 Year Old Virgin droning right outside my door 24/7; plus I’d be right across the hall from Baby Bear’s lair and better able to monitor him.

“I wouldn’t always be running in front of the TV and blocking your view to stop the kid from flooding the house again,” I argued. (I could always hear Bear turning on the tub from my office, while Mr. Lucky would remain in his nest with water sloshing up to his chin before he finally noticed something amiss—usually when sparks flew out of the back of the waterlogged TV and blew it out.)

But Mr. Lucky’s answer was always, “No!” He had every intention of going back in there . . . someday. After the holidays . . . then it was after he got his W-2’s . . . then Baby Bear got a cold and had to stay home from school on the very day Mr. Lucky said he planned to do the taxes . . . after Baby Bear goes back to school . . . oops, now Mr. Lucky caught Baby Bear’s cold, but as soon as he recovered, he’d go back . . . now spring break was coming and Baby Bear would be home for a whole week, so now Mr. Lucky had to wait until after spring break to go back to his office.

That's when I yelled, “No!” I wanted that office, and I wanted it before spring break, even if I had to move his stuff out of there myself. When he bellowed I would do no such thing, I challenged him to try and peel himself off that sofa and stop me.

In the end, I did indeed do such a thing, and he didn’t try to stop me. I now have triple the workspace with plenty of drawers. I’m only two steps away from Baby Bear Country, and when the door is open, I can see the kitchen and catch unauthorized foraging. I’m writing more, submitting more (it helps to be in the same room as the printer, even with a wireless remote hookup), and am feeling much happier and more productive.

Most amazing of all, I even moved all my books and bookcases (to his credit, Mr. Lucky did help with the bookcases)—and after I declared on this blog that no force in heaven or on earth—save an act of God or Baby Bear—would ever make me do it again.

Obviously, that was before I learned the power of free HBO can have its own effects on me, too.

I See You Checking Out My Goodies, Mister

2009-04-05T15:19:00.016-04:00

You can’t find anything else to do while you stand here waiting, so what do you do? You check out my goodies. Take a gander at my stuff. Oh yes, I see the look on your face. I know that look. I’ve seen it before, on countless other men just like you. You think I don’t know what you’re up to?

As long as you're gawking, I’ll bet you see a couple of things you’d love to get your big meaty paws on, certainly your mouth; but your wife, who’s waiting for you back home, very likely wouldn’t be too pleased about that. For one thing, she didn’t send you here to partake of such pleasures, and for another, she probably thinks those treats—even if they’re her own—are bad for you.

“Remember what the doctor says, Harold,” she’s always chiding. You poor thing. Maybe you have to sneak out of the house for a chance to sample these delights. Or at least look at them and remember the good old days when you could indulge in such delectations without worrying about the long-term consequences.

Honestly, mister—I don’t blame you for wanting to scrutinize what I have, especially considering your motive. That’s why I see no need to hide it from you or the rest of the world. If anything, I feel blessed by the bounty you see, and you can be sure my husband shares that sentiment. Like your wife, he’s also waiting for me at home, but unlike her (trust me, I know this from checking out what you have), he’s absolutely salivating at the prospect of my return.

Believe me, I fully understand and appreciate your interest. I completely sympathize, because I too am a human being just like you, with the same needs and frustrations.

Still, do you have to be so obvious in your perusal? I realize you don’t have a clear view standing behind me. But do you have to step forward, lean over to one side, and practically stick your face in what I have?

Not that I object. In fact, I’d be perfectly happy to satisfy your—shall we say, curiosity. All you have to do is ask.

I’m just that easy. Yes, my husband knows it, and of course he doesn’t mind.

So you should be lucky I don’t hit you over the head with my purse and say, “Look, mister, you can stop counting the number of groceries in my cart—I swear I have less than twenty items, so I have just as much right to be in the express line as you do!”

And my husband can salivate all he wants, but that bag of chocolate is mine and he’s not getting it.

It’s bad for him, too.

Life in the Military, Part II: The Quest for a Floor Buffer

2009-04-01T11:43:00.010-04:00

Legend had it that buffers were available for free checkout from the base self-help store. Mind you, there were three hundred housing units on the base. Three hundred military families with floors that regulations “recommended” be waxed and buffed at least once a week.

The self-help store had only three buffers in its inventory, two of which were always checked out while the third was in a constant state of repair. Everyone wanted to know why they didn’t buy more buffers. The answer was always, “The budget only allows us to maintain three buffers. We can’t buy any additional buffers unless it turns out the third one can’t be repaired. Only then can we order a new one.”

Ha! When I was in the Air Force, I got stuck with supply monitor duty, and let me tell you, no one alive today will live to see that new buffer. I know, because I once had to order one.

Somewhere downtown is a store specializing in appliances like vacuums, zambonis, buffers—anything you use on a floor. When I was supply monitor, you couldn’t just go in there, say “I’d like to buy a buffer, will you take a company check?” then walk out of there with said buffer thrust into a plastic bag with the sales slip and a coupon for a dollar off your next purchase of Johnson Wax.

No, nothing that simple or efficient. Instead I had to fill out Air Force Form 601b in quadruplicate, and submit it to the squadron commander for his signature. The 601b included a huge blank block headed JUSTIFICATION. This was an essay question worth more points than anything else on the form. Here I had to explain why it was necessary to spend taxpayers’ money on a new buffer for the office.

“Buffer is needed to buff office floors after waxing,” I wrote.

No matter what you ordered, whether it was a Number 2 pencil or a Stealth bomber, the form invariably came back stamped with the word DISAPPROVED followed by one of two reasons for disapproval. It was either CANNOT IDENTIFY ITEM or INSUFFICIENT JUSTIFICATION.

In the case of the buffer, the form came back stamped INSUFFICIENT JUSTIFICATION.

What the heck more does anyone need than that? What else do you do with a floor buffer?

I called up the supply squadron and asked the clerk there to elaborate.

“You also need a popcorn popper to pop popcorn,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean the government’s going to buy you one. You have to explain why you need to pop popcorn.”

The supply monitor for the crew of the Enola Gay probably put “Atom bomb is needed to end the war with Japan” on his 601b, and it still came back stamped INSUFFICIENT JUSTIFICATION. He would’ve had to explain why America needed to end the war with Japan.

So I redid the form. Under JUSTIFICATION, I wrote, “Buffer is needed to buff office floors after waxing. Floors must be waxed because they are dirty. Dirt has a negative impact on the Air Force mission.”

Again, the form came back stamped INSUFFICIENT JUSTIFICATION. Seems I didn’t explain how dirt had a negative impact on the Air Force mission. How did it keep the planes from flying? Well, too much of it could clog up the engines and—oh, what the hell. The JUSTIFICATION was still INSUFFICIENT.

Eventually I managed to spin such a convincing story (I borrowed a few details from the movie Independence Day—something about aliens attacking military installations in search of wax residue to oil and fuel their spacecraft before moving on to another planet big on military—or wax, if you will—buildup), that the disapproval was changed to CANNOT IDENTIFY ITEM.

Considering the rarity of buffers, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that no one in the Supply Squadron knew what I was talking about.

The supply clerk advised me—with a perfectly straight face, mind you—to attach a sample of the requested item to the 601b.

Hello? Planet Earth calling, will you accept the charges? If I had a “sample” I wouldn’t have needed to order one! Not to mention that even if I did have a sample to attach, it would have required me to order extra large heavy duty industrial strength paper clips—which Supply couldn’t identify, either. I should know. I’ve sent them 601b’s with whole chains of different paper clips dangling from the upper left-hand corner.

The supply squadron clerk, who seemed to have a witty comeback for everything, said if a sample wasn’t available or attachable, to just include a picture of it instead. See previous paragraph above.

Obtaining a picture of a buffer would have further required me to hire a private investigator to hide out in alleys and dumpsters, waiting for one to skulk by. How much do you want to bet I could have gotten government approval—oh, better than approval, but a federal grant for that?

It was too much. Several months earlier I’d gone through a similar rigmarole ordering envelopes. Long, white, Number 10 business size envelopes. You know what I’m talking about. I know what I’m talking about (at least some of the time). I could interview fifty people on the street and every last one of them would know exactly what I was talking about . . . unless they happened to be assigned to the Supply Squadron.

Apparently the stock number I’d given them for the envelopes—which I got straight from the box containing our remaining inventory—was no longer listed in the supply roster. Some bureaucrat at the Pentagon had been charged with the all-important task of changing the stock number, so who knew how to find it now? The supply clerk presented me with a foot thick binder that constituted the roster, and turned to the section listing envelopes.

“Find your envelope here,” he said.

There were more envelopes listed in that roster than there are Smiths in the Manhattan white pages.

Who knew there were so many different kinds? The kind I wanted was so standard, so common, that it should have been at the top of the list.

But I never found it. We had to wait till they mysteriously appeared in the warehouse months later.

Meanwhile, I went to the commander to tell him of my dilemma with the buffer. He fired off a letter to the commander of the Supply Squadron, and finally got (some) results.

The request was finally approved.

And, like everything else in the military supply system, promptly placed on backorder.

In the meantime, we had to continue borrowing the buffer from another squadron across the street. I asked how they’d gotten it and when, but no one knew. The form used to order it was no longer on file. Regulations dictated such forms were kept in active files for one year, inactive for another year, then moved to archives somewhere in the Ozarks. The person who ordered it had long since gone to that great big VA waiting room in the sky.

It seemed the buffers on hand had always been there, even before the base was built; the buildings and aircrafts and runways had merely sprung up around them.

As for the buffers designated for residents in base housing, I’ve never met anyone in base housing who ever actually checked out one of them. In fact, no one seemed to know anyone in housing who’d ever used one of them, simply because they were never available. No one wanted to go off base and spend hundreds of dollars to buy one of their own, but if you wanted to buff the floors in your on-base house, that’s what you had to do, unless you could find a place that rented them.

I didn’t want to, so I didn’t. At the time I had young children. I swept and mopped, and that was it. When it came time to move to another base, we hired a professional cleaning service to clean the housing unit to the standards required by the Air Force, and let them buff the floors.

All military organizations have mottos. I have one for the supply system:

ACQUISITION IS FUTILE!

Life in Military Housing, Part I

2009-03-25T09:53:00.005-04:00

When we were in the military and had to live on base, we resided in housing built half a century ago.

Have you ever watched any of the one hundred and eighteen different types of remodeling shows on that home and garden cable channel? Of all those one hundred and eighteen shows, eighty-six have the root word “design” in the title, the remaining thirty-two “decorate.” Whether it’s design or decorate, I loved to watch them all, and dream of the day when I could have a home of my own to do all the things the people on those programs seemed to have so much fun doing.

The camera would follow a house-hunting husband and wife into a cute 1940’s cottage, a cozy 1930’s bungalow, or even a charming 1920’s craftsman house boasting one of them new-fangled Kelvinators, and the enchanted wife would sigh blissfully and say, “I love the rest of the house, especially the hardwood floors . . .”

“I like the detached garage,” the husband chimes in. “It’s the perfect place for me to work on my boat.” Where they currently live, he has no place to work on his boat, which he keeps parked in his friend’s backyard. His friend’s wife would like to see the boat removed and replaced with a koi pond and pergola, but that’s for another program on the same channel.

“But the kitchen really needs updating,” the wife says.

As much as we delight in quaint décor and believe in preserving the past, we women do appreciate having updated kitchens.

By program’s end, they’ve gutted and removed everything that doesn’t date back to next week, and the house that was built during the Coolidge Administration now has a kitchen bearing an uncanny resemblance to the bridge on the Starship Enterprise—the NCC-1701-D model, for those of you Trekkies who tend to be particular about these things.

And somehow, they always manage to do it all for just under two thousand dollars.

You can’t do any of that in military housing. After you move out, and before the next family moves in, the military might put in a new toilet seat . . . for over two thousand dollars.

The house we occupied on base still retained much of its New Deal era charm, though over time, the square footage had been reduced significantly with each new coat of paint applied to the interior walls whenever the house changed hands—usually every two to three years, and always in an off-blah white. Residents were forbidden to be creative and use colored paint or wallpaper. Consistency and uniformity in all areas of our lives, even on our walls—these were the things that kept our happy little Air Force flying.

We were allowed to make minor little improvements—like installing a vanity around a sink that otherwise had nothing beneath it but ugly pipes—but only with the commander’s approval (someone in authority would have to come in and inspect it after it was installed), and only using materials from what was known in the Air Force as the “self-help store.” This was like a hardware store on the base, where everything was free, but you had to be a resident of military housing to patronize it. In keeping with the aforementioned uniformity in all things, you couldn’t choose between Early American or French Provincial or whatever era you were going for. There was only one style available, best described as “Eleanor Roosevelt Colonial.”

Military housing residents could not buy remodeling materials from a hardware or home improvement store off base, because (1) the government would not reimburse you for your purchase, and (2) whatever item you bought there—like replacement tiles for the kitchen or bathroom—would very likely not be a design authorized by the government, and you would be ordered to remove it and reimburse the government for any damage incurred, as well as the cost for replacing it properly.

But who would want to pick out tiles like those used in military housing? All floors still had the original, albeit formerly white tiles flecked with streaks of gray for that cheap faux marble look—though after so many decades, it was hard to distinguish the flecks and streaks from the rest of the tile. This same cold, dull tile was laid all through the house—living room, kitchen, bedrooms, bathroom. We bought lots of area rugs.

Furthermore, what self-respecting off-base establishment of the twenty-first century would stock that hideous design? They probably discontinued selling it after World War II. Yet somewhere, some defense contractor continues manufacturing them exclusively for the military.

Ideally these floors were supposed to be waxed and buffed at least once a week. Ideally. Theoretically. And only if you got down on your hands and knees with a pile of old rags and buffed the floors manually.

It’s one thing having to do that with fifty other people during boot camp—which I did, and it was called a “G.I. Party”—but quite another when you have two active children and a lot of other, more important things to do with your life. Then it’s no party at all.

“For God’s sake, Karen,” you say, “this is the twenty-first century already. Haven’t you ever heard of ‘buffers’?”

Buffers? Oh, those things! Huge electric monsters that spin along the floor and, unless you weigh at least two hundred pounds and bench press twelve thousand, will spin you along with them till your spinal cord is severed. Yes, I’ve heard of them. But hearing of ain’t seeing, and it definitely ain’t having—at least not on a military installation.

Next entry: The Quest for a Floor Buffer

The Laptop is fixed--and all is Write with the World

2009-03-19T20:47:00.002-04:00

The repair shop called last Thursday with the news that the replacement screen had come in for my laptop. So we brought them the laptop, and in an unusual burst of optimism, I thought they could replace it right there on the spot.

But no, the clerk said, “It should be ready this evening or sometime tomorrow.”

That’s what I get for trying to see the glass as half full. I keep telling all you perky and peppy, cheery and chirpy Pollyannas there’s something to be said for pessimism. It saves you so much disappointment.

It wasn’t ready by that evening. Nor was it ready the next day, and I started going through severe withdrawal. I couldn’t write. Everything I had was on the laptop. And while it was backed up on zip drive, what could I do with Mr. Zippy? Mr. Lucky’s desktop no longer had a word processing program, because several months ago, the desktop crashed and everything on it was lost. Even my website. Oh, it’s still there, if you click on the link. But Mr. Lucky says he’ll have to rebuild it from scratch before I can post any updates to it. He never backed it up and has no record of the exact colors, etc.

AARRGH!!!

Miraculously, I could still do e-mail and surf the Internet on the desktop. At least now I had a guilt-free good excuse to goof off at all my favorite goof-off sites.

On Saturday afternoon I came home from TARA, freshly motivated to do some serious writing. But the computer repair shop still hadn’t called, and they were closed on Sundays. I was started to get frazzled. I felt as if I were missing a vital body part.

Monday was my birthday, and Mr. Lucky took me to lunch at my favorite restaurant, The Olive Garden. We didn’t tell them it was my birthday, because I didn’t want the entire staff coming out and crowding around our booth to bang pots and sing songs or anything else that would call attention to me and the new ring around my trunk.

Afterward, Mr. Lucky suggested swinging by the computer repair shop to see if my laptop was ready, since it seemed they were never going to call. Sure enough, it was all set. Whereas the old screen was no-glare, the new one is shiny. I was worried I’d see my reflection in it every time I opened it, but my fears were unfounded. Once it boots up, it looks no different than the no-glare.

And I started writing again. And writing. Writing!

Getting it back was the best part of my birthday. Well, maybe next to The Olive Garden’s Black Tie Mousse Cake.

Guess Whose Birthday?

2009-03-16T16:47:00.001-04:00

You Are a Philosopher

You're incredibly introverted and introspective. You live inside your head.

You spend a lot of alone time meditating and thinking.

People see you as withdrawn, and at times they are right.

You are caring and deep, but it may be difficult for you to show this side of yourself.

Your strength: Your original approach to thinking

Your weakness: You tend to shy away from others

Your power color: Pale blue

Your power symbol: Wavy line

Your power month: July

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

My Laptop Screen Burns Out

2009-03-09T12:34:00.010-04:00

I am a neurotic fiend about closing my laptop if I think I’m going to be away from it for more than 15-20 minutes. Part of the reason for this is to make it less attractive to the marauding Baby Bear, who on at least one occasion flipped Mr. Lucky’s open laptop to the floor.

My laptop is three years old and one of my prized possessions, so I treat it as I would a piece of fine crystal or delicate porcelain. It’s never even been out of the house except when I took it to a TARA writers’ retreat in Sarasota last year. I usually work at a desk, but occasionally I’ll unplug the laptop from the AC adapter and sit in an armchair with it.

That’s exactly what I did on Thursday when I made my last blog entry, and the screen started flashing and flickering in a very annoying manner. It stopped when I set it back on the desk and plugged it back in. Mr. Lucky surmised it might be the battery. Yet he replaced it only three months ago.

At 5:30 pm, I left the laptop and locked my office (again, to keep out Baby Bear who’s always ransacking Mr. Lucky’s). I cooked dinner, we ate the dinner, watched the news and a couple of Seinfeld reruns followed by Survivor (some of those people would never last in the military); then at 9 pm I returned to my office.

To my dismay, I’d left my laptop wide open for over three hours—something I never did—and the screen was black.

I tapped buttons, closed the lid and opened it again; I even rebooted it—but no picture lit up the screen. Not even the computer geekery of Mr. Lucky could bring it back to life. The screen was kaput.

Of course, I was convinced this happened because I left it open all that time—never mind Mr. Lucky leaves his own laptop agape 24/7. He declared it was going to happen no matter what, and it was probably just as well that it fizzled out when it did. Had it done so when I was in the middle of writing something, I might have lost the work, since I couldn’t see anything to save it.

Which brings us to the inevitable awkward moment all writers have at one time or another: “You do have everything backed up, don’t you?” he asked, in a tone of voice that clearly indicated he already knew the answer was, “Of course not, because I’m a lazy procrastinating idiot who never learns.”

Only the current WIP wasn't backed up, but all was not lost if it was, in fact—well, lost. I’ve only written four chapters and a “sucknopsis” as Anne-Marie so aptly puts it; my critique partner has seen three of them as well as the sucknopsis, and her corrected copies were still in my e-mail folder (I never clean out my e-mail folder, either). At worst I’d have to rewrite Chapter 4 off the top of my head.

I’ve had to rewrite whole chapters off the top of my head before. It’s no fun, though it still beats cleaning soap scum off the shower tiles.

The next day, Mr. Lucky took it to a computer repair place where he’s done business before, and they determined it needed new bulbs, yet it would be cheaper just to replace the whole screen.

Until the new screen arrives, he’s hooked up his desktop monitor to my laptop. Watching him do this nearly freaked me out. He opened my laptop flat—I’ve never opened my laptop flat before—and I almost screamed as if he were King Solomon about to rip my baby in half. (I know what my problem is—I don’t have enough chocolate in my diet.)

“It’s designed to do that,” he assured me.

Yes, but why? I can only think of one reason to open your laptop flat, and that’s so you can hook it up to a desktop monitor because your laptop screen burned out after you carelessly left it open for more than three hours. Mr. Lucky: "FOR THE LAST TIME--" (in his dreams) "--THAT'S NOT WHY IT BURNED OUT!"

Either way, those computer geeks think of everything, don't they?

Since the problem was only the screen, no work was lost. But having been chastened by this event (which is not to say I've finally learned the importance of always backing up work), I promptly added the WIP to the zip drive.

Mr. Lucky's final piece of sage advice? "Don't try moving all of this to your armchair."

He thinks of everything, too--except securing his own keep against the incursions of a certain Bear.

Baby Bear's Gone Wild

2009-03-05T09:42:00.008-05:00

The autistic Baby Bear is prone to head banging. Unfortunately, he's so good at it that over time he's managed to put holes through the drywall in his bedroom, which Mr. Lucky patched as seen below:

As you can see, Baby Bear has a system. He bangs till he makes one hole, then he steps to one side and starts work on another, till he's banged out a nice row of holes.

More recently, he's taken to lying on his bed and kicking his feet against the wall, leaving these lower holes:

Clearly, drywall and Baby Bears do not mix. We've searched the usual home improvement places in hopes of replacing his walls with wood panels, reminiscent of the paneling that was so fashionable in the '60's and '70's. But we can't find it anywhere, anymore than we can find shag carpeting, orange polyurethane chairs, or kitchen appliances in our choice of Avocado, Harvest Gold, or Coppertone.

Yet the local oldies station still plays disco on Saturday nights.

In the meantime, we're settling for this:

Eventually, I'd like to see the boards painted, perhaps in different colors. They're thicker than the paneling I remember from my childhood, so with luck they'll be more impervious to Bear's hard head and big feet. And even if we'd found the more attractive (and undoubtedly more expensive) paneling, I would still be concerned that eventually he'd break through it and then we'd have a major splinter problem.

If this doesn't work, our next stop is a brick wall and a cask of Mr. Poe's best Amontillado--for me, of course!

Welcome to My Blog, I'm Married

2009-02-27T14:33:00.010-05:00

Mr. Lucky came in from walking the dogs and said we had a New Neighbor, a chatty woman moving into a house down the street. He didn’t even have to inquire, “Is there a Mr. New Neighbor?” She eagerly volunteered the fact that she was divorced, and he was bewildered by her alacrity in doing so.

I had a ready explanation for that. “She’s letting you know she’s available. Remember what happened the last time some woman told you she was available? It was only twenty-one years, three kids, and two mortgages ago.” He, for his part, never got around to telling Ms. New Neighbor he was already leg-shackled; he’s not one to offer his CV to every stranger he meets.

I explained how she must have assumed he’s a lonely bachelor with no one for love and companionship except two beagles. He never wears his wedding ring because he keeps losing it, so there’s no telltale tan line on his finger. The ring is safe in my jewelry box, and lest any of you scandalmongers out there think he keeps losing it because of some subconscious desire to be a bachelor again, remind me to blog someday about Mr. Lucky’s penchant for losing (or “misplacing” as he likes to sugarcoat it) anything of value. He doesn’t even own a watch for this very reason, but I digress. Ms. New Neighbor will learn the ghastly truth soon enough.

But I confess I’m just as perplexed, and even alarmed by women—like my own mother—who volunteer such personal information to strangers.

My parents divorced when I was sixteen. About a week after the divorce was final, the water heater sprang a leak, and my mother called a repairman who’d never been to the house before. This stranger had barely reached the bottom of the basement stairs when Mother—a notorious extrovert—told him she was recently divorced.

Now what in the name of Marvin Mitchelson did that have to do with the leaky water heater? I couldn’t have been more shocked than if she’d turned to me and my siblings and said, “Kids, say hello to your new stepdaddy!” (Which, thank heavens, never happened.) Even more baffling, over the previous year our parents’ divorce was The Big Secret: We weren’t allowed to say a peep about it to anyone, not even the grandparents—who I remain convinced to this day were the last people on the planet to know. And now here she was singing the whole opera to some strange man in our basement!

During that same time period, I’d just received my driver’s license and was very interested in buying a car. Scanning the classified ads, I noticed many of those placed by women included the word divorce. They had to sell the cars because they were going through a divorce. I didn’t understand—and still don’t—why any woman would include that information, unless she was also on the prowl for a new guy. Ads were sold by the word, so mentioning a divorce had to cost extra money. Maybe trumpeting her new availability while hawking the used car saved money on buying a separate ad under the personals. Still, there must be a better, safer way to meet a new Prince Charming.

Call me paranoid (it won’t be the first time), but there are lots of wackos out there, and for all Ms. New Neighbor or even my mother knew, Mr. Lucky and the water heater repairman could have been Exhibits A and B.

To his credit, Mr. Lucky didn’t come away from this encounter with the smug feeling he’s “still got it.” He said she was about my age, but he thinks I look younger and better.

Sounds like someone wants cake and ice cream for dessert!

I Got My Chocolate, So What More Do I Want?

2009-02-20T11:42:00.009-05:00

Every year, around the first of February, Mr. Lucky points out that Valentine’s Day is coming up. “What do you want?” he always asks.

And my response is always, “A big heart-shaped box of chocolate—that I can have all to myself!”

I have to add those last seven words, or he’ll break into the box before I do and devour two-thirds of the contents before leaving the rest for me. Usually he’ll buy an extra box for himself.

Then last Thursday, Mr. Lucky and I got into a terrible, screaming argument, so awful that we didn’t speak to each other for nearly a week. Depending on whose side you’re on, the fight was either about my total lack of patience or his failure to show up at the time I specified.

Suffice it to say I’m a stickler for punctuality, while outside of work he basks in his very own time zone. This has been a never ending source of conflict during twenty-one years of marriage, more than the sex, money, or dirty socks touted by the women’s magazines. I doubt we will ever find common ground on this issue. It wasn’t the first skirmish in this volatile territory, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

But the timing of this particular fight—only two days before Valentine’s Day—left me with the cold, sickening realization that I’d probably just screwed myself out of any goodies the following Saturday.

O me of little faith! After he left for work early Saturday morning, I got out of bed and went into the kitchen to find a heart-shaped box of chocolates sitting on the counter. It was very plain, with no lace or bows or plastic roses. At least it wasn’t the one I’d seen at Walgreens earlier in the week, that boasted a sepia picture of a scowling old grouch with the snarling inscription, “Here are your chocolates—what more do you want?”

Mr. Lucky left no note with the chocolates. No mushy card. No teddy bear. No flowers. No balloons. No jewelry. No faux Faberge eggs. No fishing tackle, golf clubs, or the Bowflex Ultimate X-Treme Deluxe Digital Family Gym for Home, Office, or Still in Its Original Box Under the Bed. (“Fine, Karen. If you don’t want them, then I can always find a use for them.”) And—thank heavens—no weird lingerie for me to string and lace and hook around my body. It’s not that I have anything against sexy lingerie. I just happen to know other, more dignified ways to make him fall to the floor laughing.

One of my TARA sisters, upon hearing the gorier details of this sordid tale, said I should have told him where to put the chocolates.

Good advice and very tempting, but in the end (ahem) I couldn’t do it. For one thing, if I didn’t eat them—HE would have! And he wouldn’t have felt the least bit guilty about it, either. Why, he would have considered himself the victor then and there. For all I know, he was even hoping I would reject the chocolates, just so he could have them all to himself.

And for another thing, I can’t possibly turn my back on chocolate. Not on any principle or for any cause. Besides, I’d earned them. So I ate them.

The important thing is we’re speaking again—oh, and that I still got the chocolate.

What My Candy Heart Says

2009-02-14T08:06:00.006-05:00

Your Candy Heart Says "Hug Me"

A total sweetheart, you always have a lot of love to give out.

Your heart is open to where ever love takes you!

Your ideal Valentine's Day date: a surprise romantic evening that you've planned out

Your flirting style: lots of listening and talking

What turns you off: fighting and conflict

Why you're hot: you're fearless about falling in love

What Does Your Candy Heart Say?

When Dogs Attack Window Blinds

2009-02-06T11:41:00.009-05:00

When Mr. Lucky and I came home from shopping yesterday, this was what we saw in our front window:
This was obviously the work of our beagles, who attack the blinds in this way only when a stranger comes to the door.

We don't know how many times the stranger rang the bell, but it wasn't the postman, as no packages were left behind, nor did we find any notices in the mailbox.

It wasn't one of those people who hang advertisements on the doorknob, because nothing hung there, nor did anything hang from the neighbors' doorknobs.

Most likely it was one of those pesky salespeople who thought the better of leaving his or her card for fear I'd track them down and make them pay for new blinds. Especially since I probably won't be kindly disposed toward buying their vacuum cleaner with 64 attachments, all of which will end up at the bottom of Baby Bear's toybox.

It may even have been that red-headed woman from some carpet cleaning company who shows up every few months, asking which room of our house gets the most traffic. I keep telling her "the whole house" but she insists I pick a room and she'll clean it for free--after which I should be so amazed by the results that I simply can't let her leave the premises until I sign a contract agreeing to let her do the rest of the house for as much as we're paying on the mortgage.

I took both these photos. The first one is crooked because--well, sheesh! YOU try finding a picture in that LCD screen when the sun is glaring directly behind you! Mr. Lucky might have done better with it, since he's a photographer by profession, but alas, he tends to take after the cobbler with the barefoot children.

By the same token, I didn't think the interior shot was much better. He told me afterward that I should have used a flash (I thought I did); still, the artistic side of him said he liked this shot because of what he called the play of light (call me an Impressionist photographer) spilling through the blinds:

Mind you, we used to keep these blinds raised above the six bottom panes for the sole purpose of allowing the dogs to bark at passers-by and callers without destroying them (the blinds, not the callers). But recently the cord broke and we could no longer raise them.

The dogs left these in such a tangled mess of destruction that Mr. Lucky took scissors and cut off the bottom half of the blinds.

"But now I can't lower the blinds when it gets dark out," I told him. "And I won't be able to sit in my reading chair in the evenings, unless you don't mind people looking through the window at my legs."

"Put on those fishnet stockings I gave you for your birthday, and wear a lampshade," he suggested.

In his dreams and my nightmares. My plan is to replace the sheer curtains--which are more decorative than functional--with more opaque ones.

The same goes for those fishnet stockings.

I Don't Mind the Snow, Except . . .

2009-02-01T11:44:00.007-05:00

Georgiana usually liked the snow.

She liked how the snowflakes fluttered like bits of lace torn from the gowns of angels amid an odd hush, as if the snow were a thick white blanket muffling the world’s noises.

She liked the way the snow shone through the windows at midday, lighting up the room brighter than any chandelier. And she especially liked it when the sun came out and set the snow all aglitter, sparkling like a frosty fairyland of diamonds.

The above is an excerpt from one of my unpublished Regency historicals. Like Georgiana, those are things I like about the snow. And I like it as long as I don’t have to be in a car, whether as driver or passenger. I also like it as long as the power doesn’t go out. That’s where my heroine and I part company. Georgiana didn’t have electricity, but she still liked the snow—usually.

When I turn on the news in the evening and see what the snow is doing to other parts of the country, I’m glad to live in Florida. I’m glad I don’t have to bundle up Baby Bear like Mrs. Parker did to Randy in A Christmas Story, then worry that he’s going to take everything off once he’s outside. And I’m glad I don’t have to nag Mr. Lucky to shovel the front walk or get the snow tires put on before the first flurries fly.

I have a hang-up about the latter. I grew up in Washington State, where my father owned a service station in my hometown—this was back in the days before they morphed into self-service pumps and convenience stores. At the first flutter of a snowflake, everyone in town would mob my father’s business, wanting their snow tires put on that very day.

I learned from that. After I grew up and was on my own, I never wanted to be caught in the snow without the snow tires on and the engine winterized. When I was in the Air Force stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, WA, I took my Chevy in to be winterized the first weekend of November, even though there was still no sign of snow, because I wanted to avoid the rush. Indeed, the manager told me that on the first snowfall the previous winter, they were so swamped with customers wanting their snow tires mounted that same day, that the employees didn’t even realize there were local news cameras present, making a story out of the chaos. They didn't know till they went home that night and saw themselves on TV.

I was reminiscing about this the other day when Mr. Lucky looked at me funny and said, “Snow tires?”

Except for the three years he spent in Germany while in the Air Force, my husband has never lived anywhere above 40 degrees latitude north. Apparently he knows about chains, but not snow tires. And that’s not all: I learned the first winter of our marriage (in Germany) that he knew next to nothing about scraping ice off a windshield.

I've made up a lot of stuff about Georgiana, but I swear to you, I am not making this up about Mr. Lucky.

He didn’t scrape--he chipped, one flake of frost at a time. Maybe he thought the scraper would scratch the windshield. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and had never been so annoyed with him before. “For crying out loud, it’s not an ice chipper,” I told him. “It’s an ice scraper. GIMME THAT!” I could scrape the ice off every window of the car in less than three minutes; he was going to take three hours just for the driver’s side of the windshield. But he wouldn’t let me have the scraper. He insisted on doing it in his own way, and ordered me to sit in the car and wait. And sit. And wait. And seethe. And—I popped out of the car again and tackled him. “Give that to me and let me do it!”

Honestly. The way he was doing it, why even bother? Why didn’t we just wait for spring to come and melt everything away? I finally managed to wrest the ice scraper away from him, and I showed him the Northern way of doing it. (I may also have told him this was another reason the South lost, because you can't scrape an icy windshield with cotton and a lot of arrogance--just ask Rhett Butler.)

Mr. Lucky's explanation today for not wanting to let me have the scraper? “It’s a man thing.”

And like my heroine, there’s one last thing I don’t like about the snow:

But Georgiana didn’t like it when it kept people from venturing out of doors. Especially when three days went by before Anthony came calling again. The snow that had fallen upon his first visit had turned into lumpy, grayish-brown slush that reminded her of a bad batch of mashed turnips.

I don’t miss the slush, either.

Look Up and You'll See Ursa Major--In My Kitchen

2009-01-26T17:03:00.003-05:00

I was standing in the kitchen with eleven-year-old Baby Bear the other day, when Mr. Lucky, sitting in the family room, looked our way and said, “Karen. That kid is as tall as you. Maybe taller.”

No way. I glanced at Baby Bear in disbelief. Darned if his eyes weren’t level with mine.

There was only one way to make myself feel better about this colossal development. “If he’s as tall as me,” I said to Mr. Lucky, “then he’s also as tall as you.”

“No!” he bellowed.

“Oh yes,” I assured him. “In fact, to quote you . . . maybe taller.”

“NO-OH!”

My husband and I—and now our youngest son—are all 5 feet, 11 inches tall. Our firstborn was only about 5’7” at this age, and today, at age 20, he’s 6’5”. Who knows what heights the Bear will hit. Yes, we are scared yet.

I don’t seem to realize day to day how tall Baby Bear is, even when I see him next to his father. On the other hand, when we attended the holiday program at his school last month and spotted him among a large group of people (who am I kidding, it was hard to miss him), I found myself amazed by how huge he was. Not only was he the tallest student, but he towered over many of the adults.

But once we got home, I couldn’t see the goliath, even though his height matched mine. All I saw was my Baby Bear, who still snuggles up to me, but can no longer sit on my lap.

My Ursa Minor has been promoted to a Major. Maybe I should start calling him the Big Dipper. (You should see him plunge his hand into a bowl to scoop out a fistful of popcorn.)

He no longer looks up at me. It won’t be long before I’ll have to look up at him.

(Sniff)