Big Boys and Little Boys

Last night I watched the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. I always enjoy watching this event, especially the parade of nations and the lighting of the torch. My favorite torchlighting had to be at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, when an archer fired a flaming arrow in pitch darkness from the bottom of the stadium all the way up to the torch.

Mr. Lucky slept through that. I thought it was very cool. Since then, I've thought they tried too hard to come up with ingenious ways of lighting that torch--I'm still trying to figure out what the one in Atlanta, 1996, was all about. I liked how they did it last night, with the guy flying around the inner rim of the stadium like Tinkerbell, before he finally lit the torch and the flames spiraled upward into the cauldron.

The fireworks were scintillating and amazing, but then the Chinese invented them.

I was glad to see President Bush there in his shirt sleeves, only to don his coat as he and Mrs. Bush stood up to cheer the U.S. athletes.

But what really grabbed my heart was the above image of the 7'6" Yao Ming, a Chinese basketball player who carried his country's flag for the host nation's team, accompanied by a little 9 year old boy named Lin Hao who was a survivor and hero of the recent earthquake in the Sichuan province (he saved a couple of his classmates).

What is it about these two guys that sticks with me and plays havoc with my mushy, sentimental old heart? After sleeping on it, I realized this morning that they remind me of my own two boys--the 19 year old (20 in October) 6'5" Crown Prince, and Baby Bear who used to be dwarfed by his big brother, but now, at 5'8" (and he's only 10 years old, turning 11 next week!) is swiftly closing the gap.

The Crown Prince is fond of saying that he's "a big boy" while Baby Bear "is a little boy."

Too soon they'll both be very big boys. How tall will Baby Bear be at next Summer Olympics, in 2012? He'll be 15 years old. Will he be as tall as his big brother? Or will he become the bigger brother, if still the younger?

Stay tuned.

P.S. This was my first ever attempt at uploading an image all by myself! (Photo from The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games)

My Wealthy, Well Connected Family

When I was a single girl in the Air Force, I went out on dates with Air Force guys who had very common last names, like Smith and Harris and Kelley. Yet somehow I ended up falling in love with and marrying an airman with a decidedly uncommon and (for many people) unpronounceable German name.

I never even heard of the name Lingefelt till I met the man who later became my husband. So rare is the name that if you happen to know anyone else named Lingefelt, chances are very good that person is related to me through marriage. I’ve even received a couple of e-mails from strange Lingefelts wondering if perchance they might share DNA with the romance author of that name.

For years I thought most Lingefelts were found in the southeastern United States. Wrong!

Judging from the e-mails that show up in my spam folder, most Lingefelts are, in fact, literally living out their days in Third World countries. I find it absolutely fascinating that among this small, unusually named group of Americans:

--None of them know how to drive, because they’re all getting killed in car accidents in those countries.

--All of them are fabulously wealthy.

--All of them are intimate friends with the royal family of whatever country they’re in.

(Considering their wealth and connections, maybe it’s the Lingefelt chauffeurs who need to find another line of work.)

--And all of them meet their grisly ends intestate.

Meanwhile, I always happen to be the closest next of kin the investigators can find. I might be the most prominent, for what it’s worth, but the closest? Even if there aren’t that many Lingefelts out there to begin with, I should think their bosom bows at the royal palace would have the resources to hire investigators who can dig deeper than just typing “Lingefelt” into their favorite search engine, and settling on the first result.

These are just the little demons I see in the details.

Our Wedding Anniversary

Mr. Lucky and I were married twenty-one years ago today on July 23, 1987, at the town hall in Odense, Denmark, birthplace of fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen.

At the time we were both in the Air Force, stationed in Germany, where getting married was a drawn out, complicated process that took months. Getting married in Denmark required only our birth certificates, our military ID cards, and a three day waiting period. We were both due for reassignment back to the States the following year, and we had to get married by that fall if we wanted to be eligible for joint assignment at the same base. So off to Denmark we went.

We took the overnight train from Frankfurt up to Hamburg on the previous Sunday night. Being in Europe, we shared a sleeping compartment with several golden-haired, luscious looking, scantily clad Rhineland sirens who surely must’ve given Mr. Lucky some second thoughts. We changed trains in Hamburg and arrived in Odense the following Monday afternoon, where we found the town hall and applied to get hitched. We were told we’d be married that Thursday at 9 am.

We weren’t the only Americans getting married there that day; there were at least three other couples that I recall, all U.S. military personnel from Germany. We were the second couple in line. It took less than five minutes. I couldn’t get Mr. Lucky’s ring to fit on his ring finger, so I shoved it onto his pinky finger instead.

Our marriage certificate is in four languages, Danish, English, French and German.

We got married again four and a half months later in Mr. Lucky’s home town of Valdosta, Georgia—not because we had to, as the Danish marriage was quite legal--but because I still wanted a traditional church wedding with the white gown and veil and cake, etc.

Neither of my parents—who divorced less than amicably after twenty years—thought I was cut out for marriage and motherhood. I’ve now been married longer than they were married to each other. At the very least, I think they were wrong about the marriage part.

Now to see if Mr. Lucky remembers what day this is!

What Is That Horrible Noise?

I was in my office, type-type-tapping away on my laptop when I heard it from the next room, where Baby Bear was hanging out with the dogs: An explosively loud, very wet, razzy-whoopee noise that sounded as if a team of professional steam cleaners would be required to clean up the result.

As I got up to investigate, I heard it again—noisy, ominously spluttering, certainly messy. I didn’t know if it was Bear or Beagle, and I wasn’t sure which I preferred.

I entered the family room to find the dogs quietly curled up on the sofa. Bear was on the adjacent leather loveseat. I saw nothing, and smelled nothing. Bewildered, I asked Bear if he needed “to go.”

He responded by leaning over, pressing his open mouth against the arm of the leather loveseat, and blowing a slobbery raspberry on it.

That was the noise I’d heard. He sat up and repeated the procedure on his leg.

What do you call this act? I've done it to all three of my children--in fact, all I ever had to do was open my mouth wide, and they'd come running over hiking up their shirts. Mr. Lucky did it to me shortly after we were married, and I remember how it cracked him up fit to die. (No, he hasn’t done it lately; in fact, he hasn’t done it—well, since shortly after we were married. He hasn’t brought me any chocolate lately, either.) I could have sworn he called it a “belly buster”, but when I googled the phrase, all I got were sites related to weight loss. For some reason I thought of “belly blossom” but a search on that only led to expectant mother sites.

So I posed the question on the TARA message board, clearinghouse for “what do you call it when . . .” questions, describing it as: “The playful act of pressing your open mouth against another person’s flesh to create a sort of suctioning seal, and then you blow to make a sort of razzy whoopee noise.”

If they thought I needed this information for a steamy, spicy love scene I was writing for my latest historical romance, I wasn’t about to disabuse them of that notion.

Most considered it blowing a raspberry, which I thought applied only when you made the noise without touching another person or object with your spluttering mouth. Then new member Beth came up with a word I’d never heard before: zerbit. I googled that and was amazed to find it in the Urban Dictionary, where it also cited “belly bubbles” as a synonym (I just knew it was also called “belly something” but couldn’t nail it.)

Baby Bear was making zerbits on his leg and on the arm of the leather loveseat. I’m relieved that’s all he was doing.

Tonight we start a week of full moon, accompanied by low pressure systems. Please keep me in your mind while I lose my own.

He Did It Again!

For the second time in as many weeks, Baby Bear burned himself on the stove.

This time he waited exactly five minutes after I turned off the burner—I know because I timed what I was cooking, and when he popped out of nowhere to slap the burner again, I looked at the digital clock on the range to see how long it had been since I turned it off. Five minutes—and it was still hot enough to burn him.

You’d think he would have learned after the last time.

And you’d think I would have remembered to cover that burner with the teakettle after turning it off. I’m usually a fiend about it.

On the upside, he showed more initiative in giving himself first aid. He willingly dipped his paw into the bowl of ice water I set out for him—I didn’t need to dip a washcloth in it and press it to his burn like I did last time. And even if I was dumber about the teakettle this time, at least I was a little smarter about where I put the bowl—in the sink. He’d take a dip, run around the house flapping his hand, then come back to the sink for another dip.

Eventually he wanted to run water over his burn. Then came the splashing, and the spraying, leading to puddles all over the kitchen counter and floor, which needed a good mopping anyway.

Maybe he did learn something from the last time: Burning himself results in the pursuit of his favorite pastime—turning the house into his own personal wild water adventure park. It’s a wonder we don’t have mildew.

Perhaps we should change his name to Aquaboy.

A Different Kind of Picky Eater

Our smaller beagle, Jasper, isn’t really finicky about what he eats. He’s only finicky about where he eats, to the extreme that he’ll refuse to eat until we set the bowl exactly where he wants it. We can’t just set the bowl down somewhere and leave it until he gets hungry enough to stop being such a prima doggie; otherwise the other dog—who’s bigger and finicky about nothing—will gobble it down.

To make matters more interesting, Jasper insists on a different spot every time, and we never know from one meal to the next where in the house he wants to eat today. Just because he ate in one spot this morning, doesn’t mean he wants to eat in that same spot come evening. He always appreciates—nay, demands—a change in scenery. Lately his favorite dining areas have included the following:

1. Underneath the end table between the living room window and the sofa. I don’t like him eating in my living room, because I worry about ants. (While stationed at an Air Force base in California, we lived in a house under constant siege from ants, so I have this complex.) Nothing ruins my day like sitting on my sofa, only to glimpse an ant crawling along the sofa’s arm; or worse, to feel one climbing up my leg. And since there’s no such thing as a single ant, I have to get up and find out where his million and one friends are.

2. In my office. I don’t like this either, because I’m afraid of ants conducting maneuvers in the hundreds of books I keep in there.

3. Out on the patio. I’d be happy if the dog food bowls could be out here all the time. But Mr. Lucky won’t allow it, mainly because the ants would be all over the bowls all the time. When Jasper is in the mood for dining alfresco (once in the rain), we keep it out there just long enough for him to eat, then the bowl comes back into the house. Still I worry a few ants might sneak into the house by hiding under the bowl and clinging to the bottom like escapees beneath a truck leaving a prison camp. Sure, I can always check the bowl before bringing it back into the house. But will Mr. Lucky?

4. Mr. Lucky’s office. No chance of ants coming in here. It’s so cluttered, they wouldn’t be able to find the bowl.

5. Inside Jasper’s crate. If he doesn’t mind sharing his own space with ants, I suppose that’s his business.

Does he ever lead me to the spot he wants? Of course not. I’m supposed to read his mind. I have to wander all over the house with a full dog food bowl in my hand, from the end table in the living room, to the patio, to Mr. Lucky’s office, to Jasper’s crate, and back to the patio, setting down the bowl at each place only to have Jasper turn up his nose and slink away in scorn, until I finally find the right place. When I do, he scurries forward to eat, and I can move on with my life until his next meal.

But if he ever wants to eat in Baby Bear’s room, he’s just going to have to go hungry.

It's a Boy Thing

I don’t know where he got the idea to do this, or why he’d want to do it at all, but a few months ago, Baby Bear started putting his hands on the stove. Not while the burners are on, because I always block him from the stove while I’m cooking. But when it’s not in use, anytime he goes into the kitchen, he pauses to press his hand on the stove as if for good luck.

It’s a flat, glass top ceramic range that’s easy to keep clean, and initially I thought he just liked putting his pawprints on the shiny surface, because that’s what he does every time I clean the bathroom mirror. Nothing in this house gleams or sparkles or shines for more than five minutes before it’s dulled by Bear’s touch. You might say it’s how he marks his territory—and he’s very territorial.

He’d never get very far as a criminal.

I keep a teakettle on the stove mainly to cover up a burner right after it’s been used, but the other day I wasn’t fast enough. No sooner did I remove a pot of noodles than Bear rushed forward—he was determined—and slapped his fingers on the burner. He leaped back as quickly as he’d lunged, and while he didn’t make a sound, he looked very astonished.

“Now you know!” I told him, and added that he’d have to hold his hand under cold water for a spell. I didn’t think this would be a problem since he considers this whole house his personal wild water park. For all I knew, touching the burner was part of an elaborate plot he’d hatched to play in the sink with Mom’s blessing. But to my surprise, he fled as if there was soap involved.

I chased him around the house and tried to drag him to the sink and get his hand under the running water, but he fought me off (he’s now almost as big as I am). He ran into his room and slammed the door. A few moments later, he emerged growling, and sat on the sofa in the family room, rubbing his hand on the cushion.

I tried an ice cube. He slapped it away. I wrapped the ice cube in a cloth. He still resisted. I tried a bag of frozen vegetables. He was convinced I was going to make him eat them.

He wouldn’t let me near him with anything, yet every time I backed off, he held out his burned hand to me and bellowed as if he were trying to say, “Do something, Mom! Just don’t do that!”

I took out a small plastic mixing bowl and filled it with water and ice cubes. “How about if we dip your paw into this?” I asked him. “We can pretend I’m Madge and you’re getting a manicure, only instead of dishwashing liquid, you’ll be soaking in ice water.”

Bear was having none of that. He dumped the ice water all over the kitchen floor and stormed back to sofa, snarling in pain.

Still searching for a solution, I refilled the bowl with ice water, then soaked a wash cloth in it, wrung it out, and pressed it to his hand.

That worked! He sat still and let me do it. Every few moments I would resoak the cloth, wring it out, and put it in his hand. He liked to curl his fingers around it and squeeze. Soon he wanted to dip the cloth himself—only he didn’t believe in that wringing-out nonsense.

Mr. Lucky came home and declared my method crude and primitive. “I’m surprised you don’t put a leech on his burn.”

“That’s because the ones I found in the medicine cabinet were past their expiration date,” I retorted.

Mr. Lucky filled a zip-loc bag with ice water and gave it to our son. Bear squeezed it and water squirted from a tiny leak in a corner of the bag, hitting his dad square in the eye. Not to mention the kid knows how to open a zip-loc.

Through it all, despite the horrible, heart-rending noises he made, Bear never shed a tear. Only why did he want to do it in the first place? And he still touches the stove—but not as often. What drives him?

“It’s a boy thing,” says Mr. Lucky, who enjoys reminiscing about all the stupid, dangerous “boy things” he did when he was Bear’s age.

How much do you want to bet he still does those boy things when I’m not looking?

The Romantic Little Things He Does

The message board for TARA members recently had a long, fascinating thread on all the romantic little things our husbands do to keep passion alive in our marriages.

I found myself going in the wrong direction with my contribution, saying lame backhanded stuff like, “He cooks dinner half the time, but I do the cleaning up all the time.”

And little does he know that I would cheerfully be his wildest fantasy sex slave for life, if only he’d keep the gas tank filled. He was running on fumes and letting the car die in the middle of the road long before high prices made it fashionable.

Let’s see if I can do better here: Instead of rattling off what I wish he’d do (more popularly known as nagging), what are some of the romantic little things he’s already done to keep me from running off with the pizza delivery guy?

1. On my birthday right after we married, he decorated our apartment with streamers and balloons and gave me a great big ice cream cake, because I never had anything like that when I was a child.

2. Whenever he buys me clothes, especially nightgowns, he always buys them in blue because he knows that’s my favorite color. (Yes, he also did my website/blog.)

3. Last fall, he bought me a three foot high jasmine tree because I love jasmine (I find the scent wonderfully intoxicating). I was heartbroken when the dog managed to dig it up only a week later, and Mr. Lucky said it couldn’t be saved as the roots had dried out very quickly. The place where he bought it didn’t have any more, so he embarked on a quest and found another one at a nursery about 30 miles away. When he planted that one, he put rocks around it and one of those decorative border fences to dogproof it, despite my demands for an enclosure to rival the Berlin Wall. The tree is still there, and it recently exploded with blossoms.

4. Sometimes he comes home and surprises me with either a Banana Royale from Baskin-Robbins, or a Blizzard from Dairy Queen, made with my favorite flavors. I never care if they’re partially melted. It’s still ice cream!

5. If he’s channel surfing and stumbles across a documentary having to do with royalty (a passion of mine), he tells me and lets me have the TV to watch it.

6. He says I look much better with long hair than short.

7. He watches movies and mini-series based on Jane Austen novels with me, and always manages to stay awake—because he likes them.

8. For our fifteenth wedding anniversary, he gave me a ladybug pin, because he hadn’t forgotten the time that two ladybugs landed on me, and I thought it was a sign of good luck to come—and only two days later, he proposed marriage to me. He thought the ladybug pin would bring me luck with my writing—and sure enough, only a few months later I sold True Pretenses.

9. And when I sold it, he told everybody he knew, and he surprised me by mounting and framing the cover flat himself.

10. Most importantly, he taught me to stand up for myself and not let other people push me around.

Could any of these be considered “romantic little things” that keep the spark in our marriage, or is this just a dress rehearsal for the day we might have to attend one of those “Save-Your-Marriage-In-One-Weekend” retreats, where I’ll be told to go off by myself and make a list of ten things he’s done right?

They do keep the pizza guy at bay.

The Politics of Pantyhose

The wife of a presidential candidate recently revealed that she’d stopped wearing pantyhose a long time ago. She can’t wear them without ripping them, due to her height of 5’11”.

I can vouch for this. I’m also 5’11”, and I have the same problem. In fact, anything to do with dressing my legs and feet is a hassle because of my height, but today we’re talking pantyhose.

Forget the size charts on the pantyhose packages, which I’ve never been able to decipher anyway. I just look for the biggest size I can find. Ideally, this would be “Extra Plus Amazon Empress—Official Pantyhose of the U.S. Women’s Olympic Basketball Team!”

I open the package and pull out something that looks as if it wouldn’t fit a Barbie doll. I pull them on and the crotch barely clears my knees. If I try to pull any harder or higher, it splits into a hole bigger than the waistband. This prevents me from wearing shorter skirts than I’d like.

Karen, have you ever tried garters and stockings? They’re so sexy!

Again, the height gets in the way. The trick is finding garters long enough and stockings that stretch high enough to meet on the upper thigh. When I tried to seduce my husband with garters and stockings, he wondered why I was wearing knee-highs.

“I’m not wearing knee-highs,” I replied. “These are supposed to go up to my thighs—the package said ‘one size fits all’—but they don’t reach because my legs are too long.”

“I see. And what are all those big diamond-shaped holes?”

“It’s fishnet,” I said. “It’s just stretched so tight because of my height.”

“That’s fishnet?” he asked in amazement. “Just how big a fish are you hoping to catch? A whale could slip through that.”

The garters, meanwhile, were stretched so taut that he could pluck “Dueling Banjos” on them. And that was the sexy, romantic evening that spiced up our marriage.

Karen, it’s the 21st century, and we've come a long way! Try spray-on pantyhose!

I’ll confess I haven’t tried this, in part because of my experience with “sunless tanning” that made me look like a giant carrot. Rabbits gathered and multiplied outside the house for a week.

I assume that despite its name, spray-on pantyhose shouldn’t be sprayed on the “panty part.” The trick would be to apply it evenly, so my legs don’t have a “dappled tan” look. I imagine it’s a lot of fun trying to do the backs of the legs—not too unlike the old days, when ladies’ stockings had back seams and our grandmothers had to contort themselves trying to get those seams straight.

Hm, maybe we've come a long way, but I’m not sure we’ve come all that far.

But if I can go bare-legged in shorts, then why not in a skirt? Do I dare?

Happy Father's Day to Mr. Lucky!

Since none of our special needs children are able to write the usual “Why My Dad is the World’s Greatest” essays that win him gift cards to hardware and sporting goods stores, I will attempt to compose a little something on their behalf.

To Mr. Lucky:

Our oldest son thinks you’re pretty cool because you take him to the movies and Busch Gardens, where he gets to ride on the train and get wet on the “circle boat” (Congo River Rapids), and “rectangle boat” (Tanganyika Tidal Wave).

You’re our daughter’s hero, because during all those weeks when she was in the hospital, you watched all those Pokemon videos with her (to include the baffling Pikachu’s Vacation), and you went all the way out to CiCi’s every day to get her the cheese pizza she loved, so she wouldn’t have to eat that other stuff the hospital called “food.”

Our youngest son looks up to you as the Bringer of Donuts, the Unlocker of Locked-Up Computers, the Parent Most Easily Conned, and the Only Thing Standing Between Baby Bear and the Total Insanity That is Mom.

I cannot imagine a better father for my children. I could not do any of this without you.

I love you!