Ephemera

The other day my five year old dragged me to McDonald's. I haven't been there for lunch in years (we went for breakfast a few times last year, when he was still in preschool) because, really, the food just doesn't taste good to me any more. Perhaps you need to be a starving, dining-hall-bound college student to appreciate it. But, anyway, I ordered a Big Mac. And it was actually good.

Now, the Big Mac, unlike many of it's calorie-ridden compatriots, has been around for a very long time. I still remember seeing commercials for it when I was in elementary school, back in the Dawn of Time (that would be the 70's). One in particular showed people saying the ingredients backwards. Unlike my offspring, who can recite the entire script to any movie they've seen more than once, I have a hard time memorizing things. Always have and probably always will. My brain just doesn't want to do it. However, I was totally entranced by Backwards Big Mac, and I worked VERY HARD to learn to do it. Despite forgetting many a memorized classic poem and Shakespearean speech, I can still do it today. Bun seed sesame a on onions pickles cheese lettuce sauce special patties beef all two. It's probably more impressive in person, a few hours into a cocktail party, but there you go.

Another thing I memorized in my youth was this:

Drink Coca-Cola cigarettes,
Smoke Wrigley's spearmint beer.
Kennel Ration dog food makes your complexion clear.
Simonize your baby with a Hershey's candy bar.
And Texaco's the beauty cream that's used by all the stars.

Take your next vacation in a brand new Frigidaire.
Learn to play the piano in your winter underwear.
Doctors say that babies should smoke until they're three.
And people over 65 should bathe in Lipton tea....with flow-through tea-bags.

I think it's funny what we remember. I cannot remember the phone number I had for seven years in Virginia or even what I had for dinner last Tuesday. I'm not one of those people who can tell you their seventh grade locker combination. I don't even remember the addresses I lived at over the years. I'd say that I'm like Sherlock Holmes, purging all extraneous information from my brain, but I'd also make a poor witness to a crime--I can't even tell you what vehicles my neighbors drive, and I stand next to their cars every morning at the bus stop. But, I can still play the first song I ever memorized in piano lessons, and I can still remember Backwards Big Mac and Mixed-Up Billboard. Sometimes, for whatever reason, these things will pop into my head from nowhere. I'll be driving along, mulling over adult problems and kid logistics and what's for dinner tonight and suddenly my head will be singing "Great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts/Mutilated monkey meat/Itty bitty birdie feet." And it makes me smile.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Fix or Repair Daily

I have vehicle envy right now. Every once in a while, my current vehicle gets to the point where I get this itch to ditch it and get a new one. Have you seen the LG washer commercial where the woman dreams of destroying her old washer in order to be able to get a new one? Well, I've started having those fantasies (note: if something DOES happen to my car in the near future--a tree falls on it, a sudden hailstorm squashes it like a bug, a freak tornado whisks it away to Kansas--I assure any and all insurance adjusters who stalk me and find this blog that I had nothing to do with it!!).

We bought our first Ford right after my husband moved to Connecticut in 1998 (I moved later, but that's a story for another day). OK, he bought it, and told me later. During our (large)-dual-income-one-kid period, this was not really unusual or a big deal, and he had asked me about it beforehand. He just didn't wait for the official concurrence. He traded in his Volkswagon Cabriolet sport coupe for a Ford Explorer after he decided that the combination of being out of warranty, not liking the service at the (then) one local VW dealership, and slipping on icy roads in October did not bode well for his sporty little pre-kid Grapemobile (yes, reader, it was PURPLE). It was a wise transaction, and the only lingering bit of annoyance I hold is the fact that he had conned me into trading in MY Saab 900S for our minivan because he really wanted to keep the sports car, and then, less than a year later, he got rid of it. I mean, I gave up my heated leather seats and sporty spoiler for this?

Our second Ford came about by happenstance. We had decided to get rid of the Dodge, as we did not really need two large vehicles, and the Explorer was, by far, a "keeper." So, I started shopping for a New Beetle. The terms of the loan from our credit union were extremely good, but the trade-in would have negated it (there was a minimum loan value), Beetles being not that expensive to begin with. So, we decided to sell the Dodge ourselves. Right about then, Consumer Reports rated the 1996 Dodge Grand Caravan as one of the worst deals in used cars (which was true--as I mentioned, Moby was a lemon). Plus, the husband I married--the one who subscribed to Smithsonian and National Geographic--started subscribing to Motor Trend and Car and Driver. I suppose this was his mid-life crisis. A wad of Navy severance pay and Moby in hand, my husband went to his trusty Ford salesman and purchased a 25th anniversary edition Mustang convertible, trading in Moby for $8000, which was far more than he was worth. We call it Convertible Summer: my husband was out of the Navy and very happy in his new job; I was preparing to get out; we were renting a home at the time, having sold our house in Virginia; and we had one easy-breasy toddler child. It didn't last long, but it was certainly fun while it lasted. That fall, he went back to his same trusty Ford salesman and sold back that Mustang for only $1000 less than he'd paid for it. So, we essentially laundered The Great White Whale for $7000, in a deal that I don't think we'll ever repeat in this lifetime. The proceeds of the sale were the down payment for the house I'm sitting in now.

So, now we're on our third Ford. We bought the Windstar when I was pregnant with Child Number Three (trading in the Explorer, which we really liked--it wasn't big enough for two carseats and three kids, though). It's been paid off for over a year and, like any six year old vehicle, it has its share of quirks, the biggest being that, despite repeated repair attempts, the internal lights don't work and neither does the now-totally-useless entertainment system (our number one suspect is the mouse that my husband trapped in the car a few years ago). It's a little disturbing to travel around at night and get in and out of the car with no cabin lighting. Unfortunately, our dear Beetle bit the dust two years ago, after setting the record for Longest Held Automobile, coming in at 8 years in service and over 150,000 miles traveled. My husband bought a 4WD Subaru Impreza for his commuter car, and it's a great little automobile. Luckily, he gets home from work in time for me to use it for my evening activities, so I don't very often have to drive the Lightless Wonder after dark. I say "unfortunately" because we really can't afford two car payments right now. Plus, we're at kind of a crossroads in the car-buying zone: we're almost to the point where there's only going to be one car seat to worry about fitting in.

That said, I don't know. My husband and I both remember car trips with three or four kids in the back seat of the car. Cars were wider back then, I guess. At least the seats were. Plus there was that really cool station wagon trunk to roll around in. We rented a medium-sized SUV on our trip to California, and the kids were crammed into the back seat like sardines. It wasn't very pleasant. But, they persevered and, really, we are considering buying a mid-sized hybrid sedan or SUV. In the meantime, we can afford to repair Wonder Windstar, and we're having fun looking at cars, discussing alternative energy sources, and seeing what we can see. Not to mention, dreaming about sudden car-destroying meteor showers!

And that's my silver lining for today.

Blogophobia

Have you ever started something and suddenly found you were in over your head? I've never been the journaling/diary-writing type of person, so doing this blog just seemed like a good way to mess around with the blogging software and learn how it all fits together. I have another blog where my performance has been spotty at best. The topic and format I set up take a lot of work because my ideas come from needlework projects I'm working on. Well, you may have figured it out by now, but I'm a bit of a Jane of all Trades. I don't chug away daily on projects like that. I tend to go in fits and starts, and then totally go and do something else for a few months. So, I'd do a few entries and then...poof...disappear for six months when I ran out of steam/interest/desire to knit and crochet things. Or I'd have a few months when all I was doing was mindlessly knitting dishcloths and, well, there isn't a lot you can say about that!

A friend of mine was after me to get blogging (waving at Kristin). When I was getting my other blog up and going again (note that I've since gone into yet another lull over there), I started this blog on the spur of the moment, and, as they say on 'Seinfeld,' it was pretty much about nothing. The first couple of weeks, I was doing really well in posting every day. I'm in some community activities; have neighbors; have kids; have a husband...it's all good fodder for rambling thoughts and colorful commentary.

Then I started playing around with blog gadgets. I installed this thing called "FEEDJIT Live." You can see it on the edge of my blog (well, you can now--if you read this post a month from now, it may be gone, for reasons I'll get into). It lists people who visit my blog, by location of their server. And, suddenly, I had this overwhelming feeling of writing to an audience because people were actually visiting my blog! Then the fretting started. There was pressure. Was it all too sicky sweet? Did you like it that way? Why the heck are you all coming back here to read this, and how do I give you more of it?

OK, so I psyched myself out. I'm still a bit addicted to the FEEDJIT thing. When I should be blogging, I'm watching it to see who pops in. It's kind of like watching the news ticker at the bottom of CNN--once you see it, it's all the same, but you keep watching, anyway, because something new might pop up. But I'll try harder to not worry so much about what I'm writing and, as I originally intended, just write things as they occur to me. I'll trust that you'll let me know if I cross the border into the Land of Syrupy Sweetness. Because, after all, you're reading!

And that's my silver lining for today.

Pianissimo

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but I play the flute in a community orchestra. I also play piano for a community choir. This sounds impressive until I say that the conductor is the same for both, the orchestra is small and enthusiastic at best, and the choir is tiny (but with a lot of heart).

A few years ago I decided that I needed a hobby. So, I started playing the flute again. Practiced like mad, and approached the local orchestra in a very scared state of mind. Like most things in my working and non-working life (it's a curse), this has evolved to my being board president of that growing-but-struggling group, and, after suggesting that the conductor couldn't really conduct both groups on the same night, playing piano for a growing-but-struggling choir. How do I get myself into these messes?

That said, I'm not sure what's gotten into my conductor lately. It's not a bad thing--he's trying to improve us musically (and we need that). But, really, I'm not in middle school and don't need lectures. I do understand dynamics, and can do them when I'm not trying to figure out what tempo you want us to do it this time, or wondering what the heck the strings are up to. And, really, it's not necessary to tell the choir to sing louder by telling the eight whole members that the orchestra members are amateurs and CAN'T play more quietly. I did play for another group this past summer, and I know that it doesn't have to be this way.

The long and short of it is that I'm really ready to move on. I want to be part of a better group. But, I like these people. While the conductor is looking for greatness, I kind of see it as a group of local musicians who like to get together and play. So, I'll stick around. It's fun. As board president, I have control of what we play. I can play first flute or second flute or piccolo or whatever-the-heck part I want. I might double up and play with another group, but, really, why give up a good gig? Pianissimo is a musical term, but keeping quiet about the group-related drama of it all is a pretty universally respected thing.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Our House

Is a very, very, very fine house
With one cat in the yard...

OK, OK, sorry! And, yes, I know the song says "two cats"--I'm working on it!

I haven't been around and blogging because (1) I succumbed to the pressure of worrying that people were actually reading my ramblings (including my husband), and (2) I've been suffering from my seasonal affliction.

No, I don't need a doctor. I need a decorator, and a budget of about $20,000. OK, I'd settle for the $1000 Trading Spaces makeover at this point and a couple of extra bodies to do the labor. You see, every few months, I get this nagging urge to move furniture. And, if you've ever read "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie," then you know how this is going to go. It's a chain reaction that results in moving, cleaning, scrubbing walls and baseboards, patching mysterious (and not-so-mysterious, since moving furniture means moving artwork) holes in walls, painting...well, you get the picture.

It usually starts innocuously. My mother-in-law is coming for Thanksgiving, along with my brother-in-law and his fiancèe, so I started thinking about where people were sleeping, where people were sitting, where people were eating, etc, etc. After that, the Christmas tree will need to go somewhere. This stream of thought then leads to the terrors of Internet Diagnosis. You know--I start visiting decorating websites and THINKING. Stewing. Mulling. Waking up at 3 a.m. and wrapping my brain around it. And, then, one day I give in to the urge and start pulling things around.

My husband doesn't like it when I do this. My twelve year old son, as oblivious as he is to most of what goes on around here, refused to help me on Monday because "Dad wouldn't like it." My husband says he wants it to look "lived in." Well, husband dear, the problem is that "lived in" around here means "cluttered and dirty, with nests of pet hair behind the sofa." At least the furniture moving results in seasonal housecleaning! Besides, you're the one who told me you wanted the Christmas tree in the living room this year.

So, why do I do it? Well, primarily because our family is slowly exiting the toddler/pre-school phase. As the big, chunky toys slowly meander out of our house (or, at least to the basement, since they're old enough to get it out themselves, or just go down there and play with it), it leaves SPACE. In the meantime, our needs change. We now need more room for hobbies and board games, rather than the vast floor space we needed when they were playing with Little People all over my kitchen floor. It's like one of those sliding puzzles--you move one piece, and that leaves a space into which you can now move something else.

This house has its issues, too. We bought it when we had only one child, so three bedrooms meant that I had a nice guest room. The cathedral-ceilinged foyer was bright and architecturally pleasing after a couple of years in The 1900 House (a dingy-but-charming Cape Cod that had last been updated in about 1957). We never used the formal living room in our house in Virginia, so it didn't matter that this house didn't have one--the other rooms were bigger because of it. Well, fast forward two kids later, and I wouldn't complain if the renovation fairy dropped a two-story addition onto my house in the middle of the night. Besides, I need a place to put my piano. I now call the foyer "my fourth bedroom" (if it HAD a ceiling, then there'd be a ROOM up there). The rooms are too big to just push the furniture against the walls and say "Well, that's the only way it will go," but too small to really float the furniture and group it the way the decorators suggest. And, some of the rooms (the foyer/fourth bedroom, and the large-but-undefined-space side of the kitchen) have too many doors. So, I shuffle stuff around. My husband says I'm "fenging my shui" and, really, it DOES have that effect for a while.

I drove a friend of mine home on Saturday night. I had never been to her home, and, when we pulled up, I laughed and said, "Hey, it looks like mine!" She's been here, so we sat in her driveway for a while, grousing about what was wrong with our houses. Finally, she laughed in the middle of a complaint and said, "As if we really have anything to complain about!" And, the truth is, I don't. I have more house than many people do, and part of my problem is that we have just plain more furniture and stuff than it will hold. So, I declutter it, I shift it, I Freecycle what we don't want or use any more, and I have a good time doing it.

And that's my silver lining for today.

P.S. My friend Carrie and I seem to be on the same wavelength. Read her blog if you want a little decluttering inspiration.

The Fall Doldrums

Autumn in New England is a thing of beauty. It brings warm days and cold nights; a new wardrobe (or, at least, bringing out stuff I'm not sick of!); and, oh the colors!

Then comes fall.

Now, you ask, aren't "autumn" and "fall" one and the same? I suppose, technically speaking, they are. But, to me, autumn is a time of promise, while fall is the reality. In autumn, the children return to school, excited to start a fresh, new year. We go shopping for new school clothes, and they excitedly wait for it to be cold enough to wear their new acquisitions. Homework isn't so bad when you can race through it and then go outside until dark. It's fun to settle down for the evening with the older members of the family after the younger ones (whose late summer bedtimes are now curtailed) are in bed, either watching the new TV shows, or sitting by the fire working on a crochet project that was too big and bulky to work on in the summer. Long autumn Saturdays and Sundays bring soccer games and the slowing up of yardwork, as the cooler weather makes the weeds and grass stop growing faster than you can cut them down. The same cooler weather, and the onset of late-season vegetables, brings out the Dutch oven for some good old-fashioned pot roast or roast chicken (and then the soups that result from the leftovers). Yes, life is good in autumn.

Then the bloom wears off the rose--or the leaves fall off the trees, to be more exact. I spent most of Sunday cleaning up leaves and getting flower beds ready for winter. I went out this morning for about an hour, and then later this afternoon, again. Well, I think I did--it's covered with leaves already. The weather is gray and rainy. It's been down in the 30's on many mornings, so I guess it's time to pull out the winter coats and figure out where to put them. Daylight savings time ended this past weekend, and now the kids race outside to play for a bit before doing homework--it's 4:50 pm as I sit here writing this, and it's already dark out, so the kids are now stuck in the house.

Then, as I sat outside the middle school this afternoon (where I sit MOST afternoons these days), I thought I might have seen a flake. It wasn't--it's too warm and muggy this afternoon. But, for just a moment, I got excited, because, after all, winter is just around the corner. Every season has its beauties and, while I'll probably sit here complaining by mid-January, there's nothing more exciting than the first snow. And, I have that to look forward to.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Tradition!

I went to my polling place this morning, a little sad. Nostalgic, really. We moved to our rural Connecticut town in 1999. Until this morning, I had always voted in the old Town Hall, a tiny building built in 18-oh-something, with white clapboard sides, a pine floor, and a little pot-bellied stove providing whatever heat the warm bodies inside don't produce themselves. And, of course, old-fashioned lever-operated voting machines, complete with that satisfying "Click" when you open the curtain and finalize your vote. When I voted in the last presidential election, I stood in line with my then-toddler in tow, watching acquaintances and neighbors filter through, and feeling the heat ripple off of the wood stove as I stood by it in line. Sen. Dodd was behind me with his family and entourage, creating a bit of stir as he moved through the building. The process was ripe with small-town ambiance, and, even then, I appreciated that it really served to emphasize that governmental change and progress starts at the smallest, most local level and filters its way to the top.

As I've mentioned before, our new middle school opened this year. Due to changes in the voting process, our polling place has been moved to the old middle school gym. My husband and I went there to vote this morning. We were handed our OCR forms and folders, went to our little plastic cubbies, cast our votes with black felt-tip markers, and then went to the next line, where we waited to insert our forms into the scanner. The space was large, and the whole process was fast and efficient, but there was no satisfying "Click." Still, although the pine floor and pot-bellied stove ambiance is a thing of the past, it's, all in all, still a small town. As I walked out, my son's old Cubmaster was there to hand me my "I Voted Today" sticker. And Chris Dodd was still behind us in line.

And that's my silver lining for today.

Live from New York...

When I was a teenager and in my 20's, I could tell you what was on TV most nights of the week on all of the major networks, and what was coming up in the near future. Now, with the proliferation of cable channels (do we still call them that?), and the fact that my zoning-out TV-of-choice is HGTV rather than network television, I couldn't tell you anything about any TV show that I don't specifically choose to watch. For the most part, I don't watch anything on NBC right now, so, I was a little out of the loop and a bit surprised to turn Saturday Night Live on this past weekend and find John McCain on the show.

I saw Sarah Palin on SNL a few weeks ago. She did the opening bit, sat and took it while they poked fun of her during Weekend Update, engaged in some witty repartee with Lorne Michaels and Alec Baldwin, and that was that. She was never NOT Sarah Palin, herself, the candidate-for-Vice-President. John McCain lampooning himself as a QVC host, though? I don't know. It bothered me on some level. Now, I know that John McCain hosted SNL before, so this wasn't his first foray into skit-based comedy. But, I just don't know...he's running for President. Really, I don't care what you do as a Senator. I don't care what you do after you lose (Bob Dole made a great SNL host!). But, is it wrong for me to want a presidential candidate to look...Presidential?

So, I pondered this Saturday night. I pondered it a little more yesterday. And, really, I pondered it until there was nothing left to ponder. I still don't know what bothered me about it. My sister mentioned that it's weird for her to see presidential candidates on David Letterman. But, really, that doesn't bother me. It's comforting to know that the person who wants to be at the helm of the country has a sense of humor. They laugh, they (like Palin on SNL) exchange a little witty repartee with Dave, but, all-in-all, it's a talk show, and they don't ever leave their personas at the door and tread the boards as something they are not (OK, OK...not they we know what they really are, anyway. As McCain says in his SNL backstage interview, politics and acting are joined at the hip).

So, overall, I guess it doesn't matter that it bothers me. And, as McCain says, "You do get a difference audience and a different exposure" by going on SNL than you're going to get with any talk show, even Letterman. If McCain making a fool of himself on SNL gets more 18-22 voters out to the polls tomorrow, then it's all good. It's a free country. A really free country, and SNL is one of the biggest examples of how free it is.

And that's my silver lining for today.