The Unsurprising Fakery of House Hunters

I enjoy watching the popular HGTV program House Hunters, but I wasn’t the least bit surprised to see on the news this last week that many elements of the program are faked.  Indeed, I don’t see how they couldn’t be.  I fail to see why this is newsworthy, well aware that others might question why it even merits a topic for my blog.   

Honestly!  What’s the big deal?  It’s always made sense to me that the show was staged to a certain extent; that by the time the people “chose” their dream home toward program’s end, not only had they long since selected it before the program was even taped, but they’d already signed the papers and been mercilessly wrung through that meat-grinder known as the mortgage application process.  (If you’ve ever bought a home, then you know it’s really not too different from making sausage.)  

For instance, you know those scenes where the couple is playing hearts in the cramped old apartment they hope to vacate soon, and his cell phone rings. “I wonder if that’s our agent,” he says, picking up the cell without even bothering to check his caller ID. “Hello?  Oh hi, Agent!” He leans across the card table and sotto voce, tells his wife as if she hasn’t already figured it out, “It’s the agent!”

She gasps. “Maybe it’s about the offer we made on the house!” 

He returns his attention to the cell. “What’s up, Agent?  Really!  That’s great news!” Whereupon he rudely cuts off the real estate agent and says to his wife, “Guess what, honey?  The seller accepted our offer!  We got the house!” And the wife shrieks in delight as playing cards go flying.   

Seriously!  Did anyone out there ever think for a moment that THAT wasn’t staged?  That the videographer didn’t move in with these people and keep the camera running at all times till the phone call came? 

Really!  It’s not as if House Hunters is some old game show where a favored long-term contestant is furtively being supplied with answers to trivia questions.  So the participants’ life stories are embellished!  Who among us hasn’t padded a resume, exaggerated an employee evaluation/performance report, or cobbled together composite characters in our memoirs?

Frankly, I’ve never cared about the participants’ life stories.  I watch House Hunters for—are you ready for this?—the houses!  I love looking at different houses, and how other people live.  I like to imagine that I’m the one checking out those houses and picking out my favorite.  For the record, the participants rarely pick out the one I like, but then I’m not looking for the same features they are.  

It seems to me that for most of these prospective homebuyers, their primary consideration is choosing a house that will best impress their friends.  They say they like to do lots of entertaining.  To this end, they want a house with an open floor plan.  They want the kitchen configured in such a way that they can talk to their guests while they prepare food and sip from a glass of wine.  I’ve lost count of how many episodes I’ve seen where they say this.  The kitchen could have cabinets galore and acres of counter space and fully upgraded appliances and recessed lighting to die for—but if there’s no way their guests can sit on barstools on the far side of that counter, slurping margaritas and listening to their hostess pontificate while she slices and dices and juliennes and takes an occasional sip from her glass of Zinfandel, then it’s thumbs down on an otherwise perfect house. 

Maybe I can’t relate because even though I do have an open kitchen, I can’t talk and prepare food at the same time.  Nor do I want people watching me do it.  It leaves me open to unsolicited comments and suggestions and critiques—but maybe that’s why I’m supposed to keep them plied with alcoholic beverages.  I do know it’s why I’d keep the bottle and the glass of Zinfandel handy, and all my knives sharpened.     

Of course, they also insist upon a guest room, preferably secluded with its own private entrance to the pool out back.  The wife wants it for when her mother comes to visit.  (Mr. Lucky: “Just give her a sleeping bag and a flashlight, and put her in a pup tent in the backyard.”) Every episode invariably ends with an elegant dinner party or backyard cookout attended by all the friends for whom the couple with their growing brood really bought the house.  

Because of Baby Bear, Mr. Lucky and I just want a house that’s built solidly enough that we’ll have a roof and at least four walls still standing by the time the mortgage is paid off and our Ursine Terror has left to rampage and ransack elsewhere.  I suppose if we wanted to buy another house and went on House Hunters, the producers would embellish our life story by portraying us as wanting an open floor plan not to give the Bear plenty of room to run around and fewer walls to knock down, but because we want to throw lots of parties for our many friends. 

Apparently viewers will find that more fascinating—and certainly less horrifying.    

These Are Not My Grandmother's Magazines

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.

Our Firstborn, the Graduate

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.

My Other Claim to Fame: Born in Forks, Washington

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.

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

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

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.

Boo, Humbug! I Am a Halloween Scrooge

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.

Baby Bear Gets Down and Dirty

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.

Another Week Without My Laptop

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.

Like Father, Like Son

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.

Mom and Apple Pie (and Ice Cream and Chocolates)

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!

The Real Baby Bear Comes Back--and Strikes Back

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?

From the Nosebleed Section

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?

Looky What I Got for Mother's Day!

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.

Welcome to My Blog, I'm Married

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!

Look Up and You'll See Ursa Major--In My Kitchen

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)

"Christmas Tree Up!"

Our Christmas tree is up and ornamented, and if I had a camera, I would post a photo of it here. (I’ve asked Santa to bring me a camera so simple to use that even I, of the many thumbs and wits so dim, can figure it out.)

For over fifteen years now, we’ve had an artificial tree—or as Mr. Lucky calls it, “the tree that saved our marriage.” When he was in the Air Force and we were stationed in California back in the early 90’s, he insisted on driving from one end of the San Joaquin Valley to the other in search of the perfect tree—by his definition, a tall, lush fir that didn’t lose a single needle when he shook it, boasting a retail value of at least $35.00, but sold to him for less than $10.00 because he had a nice face.

We had some hideous arguments that once nearly got us into a car accident. After a whole day of searching in vain for his idea of the perfect tree, we came home without one, and weren’t speaking to each other. After dinner, he stormed out by himself and came home an hour later with the $35.00 tree that earlier that day almost landed us in divorce court.

Two days after that Christmas, he went to Sears and found an artificial tree on sale. It more than paid for itself the following year. It lasted for many years.

A couple of years ago we bought a new artificial tree that stands 7 feet tall, as no one chez Lingefelt is shorter than 5’10”. And God bless whoever came up with the idea of a pre-lit tree! It’s spared me a ton of aggravation. Every January when I put the ornaments away, I would carefully coil up the lights as neatly as possible to no avail. They’d spend the next eleven months in the box tying themselves into knots. Come the following December, I’d spend hours trying to untangle them, laying them out in long trails all over the house, plugging one strand into another to see if all them still worked (every year at least one had managed to strangle itself to death), before they could be added to the tree.

For many years we had musical lights that played seventeen Christmas carols over and over. The lights would blink in time to the music. The Crown Prince loved them, and when he was home and awake, that music had to be on. When the musical lights finally died, we elected not to buy new musical lights. Fortunately he didn’t mind. When he lived at home, he enjoyed helping to trim the tree, and always insisted we put it up the day after Thanksgiving. Failure to do so would result in an endless mantra of, “Christmas tree up, Christmas tree up, Christmas tree up . . .”

For many years we topped the tree with a star that twinkled with multi-colored lights. The Christmas after Fiona died, we didn’t put up a tree at all that year, but went to Georgia to spend the holidays with Mr. Lucky’s relatives. Since then, we’ve replaced the star with a dark-haired angel with outstretched arms. She looks as if she’s supposed to be holding something. Fiona loved pizza, but I have yet to find an artificial pizza the right size for that angel.

But a candy cane fits perfectly in her arms, so that’s what she holds every year. If only I had a picture!

Maybe next year, if Santa brings me that camera.

Baby Bear's Inexcusable School Holiday

Upon coming home Monday afternoon from a day of Christmas shopping with Mr. Lucky, we found a message on the answering machine from the nurse at Baby Bear’s school: He had a runny nose, and would I please call her?

The call came around mid-morning. She hadn’t called a second time, nor had she tried Mr. Lucky’s cell, and by the time we got this message, it was past two o’clock and Baby Bear would be out of school just after three. His school, an Exceptional Student Center (ESC) for children with special needs, is next to a high school that lets out at about the same time we listened to this message. The nurse said nothing about picking up Bear, which was just as well. There was no point in trying to go to his school now, especially with the high school getting out.

Several years ago, when the Crown Prince was a student at the ESC, they called me to get him after he cast up some accounts, and I arrived just as the high school was released. By the time I got the Crown Prince in the car, the People in Orange Vests, who patrolled the parking lots and thoroughfares around the three schools (there’s also a middle school on the other side of the ESC), would not let me out. A sign posted at the entrance to this vortex clearly stated “Buses Only 2:45-3:15 PM” and I was not driving a bus. We had to wait in the parking lot till all the buses had left. Meanwhile, the Crown Prince had to open the passenger door to toss more cookies to the ground. The Person in Orange Vest who stood in front of my vehicle glaring at me was unmoved by my firstborn’s plight. Rules were rules.

Never again.

As Baby Bear got off the bus Monday afternoon, the bus driver handed me a letter signed by the school nurse. It was a form letter. “We will call you immediately if your child becomes ill during school hours. You are expected to arrange for your child to be picked up AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE after receiving our call.” (Caps theirs.)

This was followed by a list of the usual maladies that resulted in children being sent/kept home from school. The nurse had checked Item 8: “Excessive mucus from nose (runny nose), particularly greenish-yellow mucus.”

Neither Mr. Lucky nor I saw any mucus of any color seeping out of that kid’s nose Monday morning, nor did we see any Monday night after receiving this letter. But the bus driver was bound by that letter not to pick him up Tuesday morning. We were to keep him out of school for the next 24 hours.

Meanwhile, I read the teacher’s entry for that day in the notebook he and I use to communicate our thoughts about the progress and behavior of our autistic, non-verbal Baby Bear. According to the teacher, Bear was very active on this day, enjoying himself on the computer, etc. His nose ran a little after he was outside, but the weather's been cold lately. Otherwise, there was nothing to indicate he was unwell.

Tuesday, we still saw no sign of any mucus. Baby Bear was in his usual high spirits, banging on and bouncing off walls, dangling from the rafters, swinging from the chandeliers, and running an entire decathlon in the house. He wanted to go out for donuts, we took him out for donuts. He wasn’t sick. But he had a whale of a good time staying out of school.

Then we got a phone call from the school, a recording which informed us that our child (they referred to him by name) had “an unexcused absence”, and would we please call the school to explain.

ARGH! They’re the ones who ordered us to keep him home on Tuesday because they said he was sick—though he clearly (let alone greenly or yellowishly) wasn’t—and now they were calling it “an unexcused absence”? I was too incensed to call them back.

Today, Baby Bear went back to school without incident, and came home this afternoon with no note.

And still no mucus.

The Thanksgiving Report

I will never forget the first real turkey I ever cooked all by myself, fourteen years ago. Despite all the poking and prodding and other indignities required before roasting, we couldn’t find the giblets or gravy packet until Mr. Lucky carved up the bird some four hours later. Oddly enough—and may I say, thankfully—the turkey was unaffected, quite edible and wonderfully succulent.

Then last year, for reasons unknown, though I suspect he couldn’t wait to dig into the pies, he insisted I remove the bird from the oven after precisely three and a half hours of roasting, because the instructions said that was the maximum time for a turkey of that weight.

I was of the opinion that the turkey needed at least another fifteen minutes, perhaps thirty. But Mr. Lucky pointed out the evidence stacked against me: According to the instructions, it was supposed to be ready by now; the button that pops when it’s done had popped; and the tip of the needle on the meat thermometer just brushed the P for Poultry. The state rested.

Since when did he decide to become a stickler for following instructions? I tried telling him that unlike all the other instructions he promptly throws out (along with the corresponding sales receipts), these particular instructions are not set in stone, because ovens and turkeys vary; the button that pops when it’s supposedly done is nothing but a cheap gimmick; and it’s an old meat thermometer, not an oracle. The defense rested.

Justice is not only blind, but she knows precious little about turkey. Mr. Lucky prevailed.

To make a long story short, once the turkey was carved up, there was way too much pink in it. On the plus side, we were spared the usual week of leftovers.

This year I laid down the law to him. I’ve been doing this for years; I think I know my way around a turkey by now. I, AND I ALONE, WILL DECIDE WHEN IT’S DONE.

The turkey was the same size as last year, and came with the same instructions. I pronounced it done at three hours and forty-five minutes.

I was very pleased with it. Mr. Lucky gifted me with one of his rare compliments, and the Crown Prince, who came to stay for the holiday, devoured a whole heaping plate of it. Baby Bear wouldn’t touch it, but when I reheated some leftovers this evening and poured gravy over them, he was very interested and finally enjoyed some turkey.

I’m thankful.

And while reading my previous blog entry earlier this week, Mr. Lucky seized on Phyllis’s suggestion in the comments that we buy one of the smaller frozen pies, and bake it on Wednesday to create that baking pumpkin smell that makes me crazy. He agreed we couldn’t have too many pies.

I wonder if Phyllis could get him to mow the lawn?

Did Roger Rabbit Save My Marriage?

It all started several years ago, when we made our final move from the military base to our new house. Mr. Lucky destroyed a bunch of old VHS tapes, many of which were movies he’d recorded years ago from rentals or off the TV. Most of them were never watched; those that were favored had long since been replaced by DVD. He broke them open and unfurled miles and miles of tape before flinging them into the garbage. Why he felt it necessary to do all that, he has never been able to explain (I suspect it’s some grunting macho guy thing), but it planted in the head of our firstborn, the Crown Prince, an idea that we have yet to exorcise.

The Crown Prince took to destroying VHS tapes we wanted very much to keep. I’m not talking the cheap recorded copies, where the lighting in the picture sort of blinks on and off and is occasionally punctuated by some garbled mess representing a commercial break. No, I mean movies we went to the store and purchased—like Disney cartoons that are only available for a limited time. As in the deluxe widescreen version of Lady and the Tramp. When it came out on DVD several years later, I snapped it up and since keep it under lock and key.

Later, in an effort to keep up with changing technology, he moved on to DVD’s. He’d remove the disc from the case, snap it in two, drop the pieces into the garbage, then return the case to the shelf with the other DVD’s. Neither Mr. Lucky nor I had the slightest clue until we wanted to watch a particular movie, and opened the box only to find it empty.

A bewildering pattern soon emerged. The Crown Prince had removed and destroyed the following movies: The Abyss, True Lies, Independence Day, Speed, Titanic, and The Sound of Music. All were produced and distributed by Twentieth Century Fox; three were directed by James Cameron. I was shocked, as I thought the Crown Prince liked all these movies except for The Sound of Music. In particular, Speed has everything he and Baby Bear love: Explosions, elevators, a bus, helicopters, police cars, jet aircraft, subway trains, and flying baby buggies full of aluminum cans.

The Crown Prince enjoyed Titanic, though every time we watched it and got to the part where Leo and Kate came into her stateroom to engage in a little artwork, I’d say, “Okay, I don’t think we need to see this,” and hit the skip button to the next chapter. After a while, he took the initiative and started hitting that skip button himself at the start of that same scene, and yes, he’d always say, “Okay, I don’t think we need to see this.”

Poor guy doesn’t know what he’s missing. I’m such a mom.

The following Christmas, Mr. Lucky gave me new editions of the DVD’s that had been destroyed. While it was very sweet of him, I sort of wish he hadn’t done it, as they were very expensive to replace. However, I must confess I did appreciate the replacement of The Sound of Music and Titanic, as those were my favorites, especially since he upgraded the latter to a beautifully boxed, three-disc deluxe collector’s edition.

Then came the day I wanted to introduce Baby Bear to the delights of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (I thought he might enjoy identifying with the atrocities of Baby Herman).

Empty. Gone. Destroyed. I was devastated, because that was another movie that was no longer available. It had been a very nicely boxed deluxe set, too.

That was several years ago, when the Crown Prince was still living at home. Then last weekend, he was staying with us for an overnight visit. All was well, until Mr. Lucky woke up Sunday morning and went into the kitchen, where he found some broken DVD pieces in the garbage.

For reasons unknown, the Crown Prince had selected North by Northwest and Airport for destruction. These were another two movies I thought he liked. Planes, trains, and Cary Grant; it doesn’t get any better than that.

But it got worse than that. Already Mr. Lucky was not too happy about this, but then I had to make a point of telling him that under no circumstances were those DVD’s to be replaced. I could live without them, or watch them when they showed up on Turner Classics.

We had a very big argument, and stopped speaking for a while.

Then yesterday, we were at Wal-Mart and happened to be walking by all the racks full of DVD’s when I spotted one lone copy of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? I plucked it out and tossed it into the cart, telling Mr. Lucky, “We can replace that but no other.”

I’ll make exceptions for Disney cartoons—and Roger Rabbit qualifies—as those are as precious and rare as Faberge eggs. Only why do they have to be? It causes such grief.

The Crown Prince will be coming over for Thanksgiving next week, and I plan to hide away all the DVD’s.

Oh, and since finding Roger Rabbit, Mr. Lucky and I are speaking again.

Maybe I’ll do like Jessica Rabbit, and bake him a carrot cake.