Sweep for Phobias:Vintage Hints from Heloise

Jennifer of The Word Cellar very sweetly sk-rted this post. If you want to help spread the old school Heloise gospel, go give it a nod.

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One of my best friends has an unnatural fixation with the syndicated column, "Hints from Heloise". She will sit with her morning coffee, the newspaper, and come up with bizarre imaginary reader submissions to Heloise. I tell her frequently that God gave her that gift for blogging, but she comes from a good family and will have nothing to do with it.

Sometimes we'll marvel together over actual reader suggestions. Many of them are genuinely helpful and innovative. God knows, I need all the domestic wisdom I can get. But there's always a few that, well, I can see where the contributor might have thought—before their second cup of coffee in the morning, or after their second martini in the evening—that it was something the world needed to know. But I can't believe the conviction stayed with them all the way through the effort of writing it down, addressing an envelope and finding a stamp.

The contemporary Heloise, the beautiful silver-haired lady most of us recognize from the daily paper and womens' magazines, is actually the daughter of the original Heloise, who began publishing household hints in 1959. I am sure she was thoroughly delightful. The times must have been insane, as evidenced by the following gems excerpted from her 1961 booklet "Heloise's Housekeeping Hints," which I snapped up as a gift for my girlfriend when I found it in a used bookstore last week. The annotations are mine, but the quoted material is re-published verbatim.

I swear.

From the preface:

"Take all instructions in your stride. If you have a phobia or allergy...naturally sweep under your bed everyday."

A phobia of what? Monsters under the bed? Or it's a general phobia and you need to hide there?

"Keep in mind...the second wife ALWAYS has a maid!"

Note to self: ALWAYS be the second wife.

"Remember the paper sack, girls, it's used for so many things."

Like screaming into.

"May I remind you once again: that house will be there long after you are dead and buried. Funny, how houses outlive us!"

Ha-ha! Ha. Excuse me while I go sweep under my bed in an act of obsessive-compulsive self-soothing. And then crawl under it.

from "Dig into Closets":

"Wait until you are mad! This is the best time to clean. You will say to yoursef, 'I have kept this dress for two years thinking that I would remake it, but I am mad today so why not throw it out?'"

Stuff your anger (in paper sacks) to save for cleaning day.

once dug out of closets..."you will have this thought in your mind: 'Now I am ready in case I get sick or have a party, I will be prepared so that strange people in my kitchen won't talk about me.'"

Sweep for phobias; dust for paranoia.

on Laundry:

"DID YOU KNOW that table cloths can be bought now in pure dacron?"

Untainted by natural fiber.

The book includes a whole section on Heloise's innovative, labor-saving alternative to ironing: hanging the laundry on a line, then blasting the wrinkles out with the garden hose and letting it drip dry. It's unclear to me how this is more efficient than ironing, but she later notes that "A steam iron is worth its weight in gold," so perhaps hosing is a solution for first wives who's husbands won't buy them one.

Here is Heloise's hint for what then to do with the hosed, dry laundry:

"Put a sheet on the floor in front of the TV! This is Saturday night and the entire family will be there. Leave the clothes there...Psychologically, all the clothes that they have used during the week will be in front of their noses. Whether they are aware of it or not...they will absorb it. They are proud of that stack of clean clothes."

If not, next Saturday night, put all the dirty clothes in front of the TV. And the dishes, too. Psychologically, this is bound to have an impact.

But if not,

"A child's little wagon is a wonderful aid if you have no one to help you."

from "Paint Your Kitchen:"

"This is best done when your husband is home. Why? If he won't help you at least he can see how hard you have worked!"

Passive-aggressive tactics are marvelous for producing anger to stuff for future closet cleaning sessions.

on "Cleaning the Bathroom:"

"...but to save money and energy and get the best shine possible use an old washcloth slightly saturated with kerosene...the kerosene odor leaves in a few minutes."

Best not to do this while smoking.

"Alcohol is cheap, it removes soap film and leaves no water spots. But best of all, it is usually kept in the bathroom cabinet."

The laundry hamper is also a good place to hide it.

from "Mending Made Easy:"

"THE HOUSES will be here long after we wives are dead. Why kill yourself over them? I can think of lots better ways to die!"

The house is against you. The house is trying to kill you. The walls are whispering, "get out...get out..."

"Have you ever noticed how rested you feel after dinner when the dishes are done? This is the time to do some of your hard, time consuming chores."

Why, no! I hadn't! But why waste precious daytime hours on the tough stuff?

"Now is the time, if you have a daughter, to teach her how to sew her own buttons on! She will love it. Why! Because daddy is there to see her show off."

Best to have her stand in front of the TV, on the middle of the sheet piled with the laundry and the dishes.

"Red Dot Method:"

This section is a discourse on the discovery that a dot of red fingernail polish ("Every household woman's standby") is useful as a visual cue for a multitude of applications, such as marking the 450 degree setting on your oven, or

"TV channels! Another sourse of disgust. Just touch a small dot of fingernail polish on your favorite channel!"

I think it would be more fun to marry this technique with Amy Sedaris' prediliction for affixing google eyes to household items. Unless digging out your closet didn't alleviate your paranoia.

"How to Have a Whiter Wash:"

"...add your bleach and you detergent to your hot water. If you have Pine Sol in the house, add some of that...Lysol is just as good."

Lighter fluid, anti-freeze...anything that has a skull and cross bones on the bottle. Just toss it all in. Then,

"Have another cup of coffee, little laundress, and let's get something done."

Because everything until now was just a warm-up.

"Care of Blue Jeans:"

"Anyone who has a child, boy or girl, probably has blue jeans to launder."

It was a primitive era, before the dawn of Sevens. On the up side, no Mom jeans.

There is a great deal more exposition on the garden hose method of ironing here. And this comforting aside:

"And don't feel bad about not ironing underwear. It is an accepted fact today that not one man in a hundred whose wife has children wears ironed underwear."

The second wife does it. With the steam iron he bought her. Tramp.

Heloise suggests that if you must, you can remove wrinkles from your husbands boxers with the garden hose set to a light sprinkle. For futher time saving, I suggest you do this while he is wearing them.

The section ends with this non-sequitur:

"A funny thought just struck me. I wonder if Napoleon's underwear was ever ironed? But I bet you one thing, if he were living in this modern age, his modern housewife would use this method!"

In the final section of the book, a miscellany of household hints, Heloise also absolves you from the sin of not making the bed perfectly:

"Besides, when a wife pulls down the covers at night, she usually gives the bottom sheet a 'whack and a brush.'"

You could give your husband the same, while you're at it.

Folding and rolling instructions for jeans: "When you get to the crotch, stop."

This doubled as early sixties birth control.

Before there was Woolite, there was this method of hand washing:

Use a toilet plunger to "wash mens socks and all sorts of hand washing in the kitchen sink!"

Do it in the toilet bowl! Let your flush box do the rinsing!

"Rubbing alchohol is the most wonderful thing invented since tranquilizers."

even more wonderful than...

"Dishwashers. These are fabulous gadgets."

Finally, here is a bonus, free pattern for

Heloise Sack Blouse:

"For cleaning house, make a Heloise Sack Blouse from an old bath towel. Fold towel in half, sew up sides, leave opening for arms, make opening for neck. Don't forget the pockets! Grand for housework. Needs no ironing. Cool in summer, doesn't show water spots, etc. Towels make good shorts, too."

Now, put on your bath towel outfit, pile all the hosed laundry onto a sheet on the living room floor, pour kerosene, rubbing alcohol, bleach, and lysol into the washing machine. Add your pure dacron table cloths, and run.

HA-HA, EVIL HOUSE! WHO'S OUTLIVED WHO?

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Santa, You Bastard

The year I was nine, I wrote to Santa Claus asking if he would bring me a Ken doll for Christmas. Sun Lovin' Malibu Ken, Hawaiian Ken, Superstar Ken--I didn't care. Just a Ken, to go with my Barbie dolls. All two of them.

As you might deduce by the photograph above, my parents did not swim in the cultural mainstream. I had Free to Be You and Me. I had Shel Silverstein. I had a crocheted poncho and a fringed suede vest. I had some Star Wars action figures. And I had two Barbies. Three, if you counted the Bionic Woman, a big-boned and flat-footed gal who towered awkwardly over Ballerina and Superstar by a full inch. They shunned her, and she lived out her days as a recluse under the bed.

The girls had nothing to wear but the clothes they had on their backs the day they arrived, probably as birthday presents from party guests. They had no Corvette, no Camper, no Horse, no exciting jobs like Stewardess to suit up for each day. I thought a man around the place would brighten things up. They could at least go dancing and have threesomes.

I suspect that the reason that little girls today are awash in a tide of pink feathered boas and rhinestones tiaras has to do largely with female marketing executives who grew up in homes like mine. When my friends with daughters wring their hands about Barbie, I tell them to give in to it. It's an archetypal attraction and it will only bite them in the ass later if not given an outlet. Barbie is the modern-day Venus of Willendorf: stylized, exaggerated, and unable to stand. She must be held, literally and symbolically. You think paleolithic moms worried that their little girls would grow up feeling something was wrong with them because they had facial features? You bet they did. But Santa came through anyway.

Which is more than I could say he did for me on December 25th, 1978.

Behold my valiant attempt to disguise my disappointment and rage, as my father holds up "Chuck" and his 4 Outfits. That's not red eye; those are actual flames in my eyes. Chuck was a squat and swarthy fellow with an olive complexion. He was made of thin hollow plastic, not the beefy solid vinyl of a real Mattel man. His outfits, as I recall, were the uniforms of manual labor. I seem to remember a lumberjack's red flannel jacket. That's an actual blue collar shirt visible through the cellophane (Chuck didn't even have the class to come in a proper box). He did not have an Olympic medal, or a bitchin' sailboard, or even a pair of sunglasses and swim trunks. Chuck's the kind of guy who'd wear cutoffs to the pool, you know? I'm suprised he didn't come with a six-pack.

I loved my girls too much to let Chuck anywhere near them. I don't know what happened to him. Probably he went under the bed to live in a tarpaper shack with the Bionic Woman. In their isolation and deprivation, Superstar and Ballerina gradually became more eccentric and unstable, rather like the Edies of Grey Gardens. They lay around disheveled and half-naked most of day, emotionally crippled by the broken promise of their own youthful beauty. Their prince had never come.

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grey gardens, little edie, barbie, ken, christmas disappointment, santa you bastard, seventies toys

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The Saint Nicholas Tree

After ten years in America, I still can't go along with bringing a Christmas tree into the house before the middle of December. As you are taking your chances to score a real tree after mid-month, my cultural non-compliance introduces a note of suspense to what would otherwise be a predictable and secure holiday season for the children. In recent years, we have staked our claim by driving to a local tree farm around Thanksgiving, tagging and paying for our tree, and going back nearer to Christmas for harvesting and hauling it home.

This year that just sounds like a lot of driving.

A service station around the corner is selling cut trees. I was thinking we might get one, prop it up in the wooded park near our house and take the kids in there to "find" it. Making memories founded on cultural and parental deceptions. That's the Christmas spirit.

I confess I gain a little more appreciation each year for people whose pre-lit, artifical trees will never touch a roof rack. But anytime I reach out to finger the lifelike tip of one, I hear my father's voice in my head, pronouncing, "Fake tree, fake Christmas!" and I pull my hand back like a two-year-old touching fire. Besides, I would feel bad about depriving my children of the more colorful sounds of the season: their father swearing over missing rope, burned out lights, and teetering tree stands. Far be it from me to break the chain.

Still, the two older boys get anxious when all the halls and all the trees in the world seem decked and trimmed but ours. I remember this feeling. My childhood home had no fireplace. I was extremely concerned that this was not up to code. Even after my parents explained that Santa could just as easily use the front door, I wasn't entirely convinced there wouldn't be some sort of penalty imposed; items crossed from my list. I knew it was unorthodox to nail your stocking to the plywood stereo stand.

To tide them over, we have the St. Nicholas Tree, a tabletop artificial tree that lives in the attic and comes out on December 6th, the Feast Day of St. Nicholas. I brought it down to their bedroom after bathtime tonight. They were so excited, opening their boxes of ornaments, stringing the lights. This is their tree, and I keep my mitts off it, no matter how clumped together all the red balls are or how big the hole in the lights is. This is where they get to hang all the ornaments that come from the fast food places, the plastic tv characters that I prefer to leave off the big tree. It's where the chintzier items that have been handed down from Patrick's family find a home. A dollar-store set of china nativity figurines--with pasty white complexions and painted-on eyelashes that resemble Tammy Faye Baker's--takes shelter under its boughs.

They arrange it, and rearrange it, a hundred times between St. Nick's Day and Christmas, and I let them keep the multicolored lights on until after they are asleep each night. No tasteful monotone schemes here. When I go in later to pull the plug, their sleeping faces are still turned toward their rainbow constellation and I watch them a long minute, nestled all snug in their beds.

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Crash into me

This afternoon I took the baby to a new pay-and-play facility here in town. It was a rare outing for just the two of us. No big brothers to chase around, no girlfriends to talk to; just me and Crash.

I call him that sometimes, because that's his style. My older sons are mild and gentle as little boys go (recent biting episodes aside), but this one is belligerent. He swaggers. He bellows. He punches and throws things. He's got an arm on him a Howitzer. He likes to stay up for hours past his brothers' bedtime, singing and staggering around like the last drunk at a party. He sticks his hand up my shirt and slaps me if I try to move it. If he were my boyfriend, we'd have broken up long ago.

I tell him that to his face, and worse besides. "You're wearing me out," I say to him. "Do you think you could stop following me for just five seconds?" I turn on the television and I sneak away to my coffee and the computer.

I feel bad for not being more gracious, but he just showed up here uninvited. That's the other reason I call him Crash.

I remember vividly the moment I decided that two children were enough for us. It was New Year's Day, and the two I had already were four and two years old. The three of us were taking a little nature walk behind the hotel, letting Patrick watch his football game. The four year old wanted to explore further, but it was too hard to manage the trail with the toddler. I had been lugging babies around, inside and out, for nearly five years. I was exhausted. I looked at my boys and thought how ready I was to be emancipated from the carrying, wiping, changing and nursing so we could move on to the fun stuff. I loved my babies wildly, but babies are work. Kids are too, but there is more give-and-take, more companionship as they become more physically independent and capable. I was ready for the long hikes, the campfire songs and the board games. The bouquets of dandelions and the mother's day breakfasts in bed.

I was 98 per cent sure. So I went with a birth control that had 98 per cent effectiveness. Ever wonder about that other two percent? Wonder no further. That would be me. The odds were even more fantastic, considering that I was still nursing the two year old, both kids were with us in the bed on most nights, and we were going through a rough patch. I was astounded to learn I was pregnant a third time. I still haven't completely gotten over it.

I remember telling my mom and her crying, remembering that she was also a surprise baby, the uninvited guest in her family.
She told me what her mother had told her, that there would come a time I would never be able to imagine my life without this baby. She was right. I weaned the toddler, bought bunk beds, and fell in love all over again. And then again, with Crash.

Hardly a day goes by when I don't look at him and say, "Where did you come from?" With the other two, we knew right away we'd conceived. This one got by us somehow, without either of our permission or consent.

I'm so glad he did. Sitting on the floor today playing with him, I felt it had already been a hundred years since I used to get to do that with my firstborn. The longed-for time of campfires and board games has arrived, but so has the time of weekend sleepovers and all-day school. It goes by so fast, and I am always rushing to the next thing. Sometimes nothing short of a full-on collision can get me to slow down.

You wreck me, baby. I love you.

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Carry me back to the days I knew then



So, after cub scouts tonight, my son and I hit the bar.

I was planning to drop him at the house, put the younger kids to bed, put some lipstick on and join my friends at the Rod Bryan campaign party in the backroom of a local pizza joint. But then an impulse just swept over me, as impulses are prone to do, and instead of dropping him off, I told my second grader wolf cub to run inside and grab his homework so he could come downtown with me.

I am so glad I did. You know, in some ways I overcompensate for my unconventional upbringing. We do scouts. We do soccer. We do church on Sundays. We have regular bedtimes. And I never, ever take my children to bars.

My father's last years were dark, and they cast a long shadow. Being with my son tonight reminded me it wasn't always so. As I was turning my wallet inside out for quarters for the pinball machine, I remembered afternoons at the hotel pub with Dad, holding out my hand to receive quarters for the jukebox in the back. Play Mull of Kintyre, he'd say, and I'd skip back through the dark, smoky room and flip the 45s all the way through until I found it, and then come back to rest my head on his shoulder while he held court from his captain's chair.

I remembered the thrill of being privy to the adult conversation around the table. I didn't understand all of it, but I grasped the largesse of it. These were often faculty colleagues from the university, or visiting artists and musicians. They were excited about things. They had ideas.

I never had the sense that they talked any differently just because I was around. They never talked down to me. Neither were they indifferent to my presence. They seemed to regard me as a Person. They seemed to feel that I belonged.

This flashed through my mind tonight as Lennie and I were engaged in one of our typically passionate and intense discussions. You know, you have those friendships where you dispense with the small talk. You see each other, and you just Get Into It. I hope you do, anyway, because Lennie and I have that. At one point, I became aware that my son was raptly listening, and I had to pause and consider whether I was okay with that. I decided that I was. There was nothing harmful to him in our conversation, and probably nothing that he could retain from it come morning. But he was immersed in the energy that was flowing from it, the energy of his mother's Person. It's strong tonic. I am my father's daughter. But then, he is his mother's son. Maybe he came to me because there is something in me that he needs, something more essential and less manageable than cub scouts and an 8 o'clock bedtime.

I believe our parents are chosen for us. The people we are set up to love the best are themselves set up to wield the blade. To have a child is to consent to inflict our own woundedness on the innocent, to pile the sticks--knowingly, sorrowfully--upon the pyre. Mother and son. Father and daughter. Bound up together, counting on love to reprieve us, to be the hand that stays.

Far have I travelled, and much have I seen
Dark distant mountains with valleys of green
Past painted deserts, the sun sets on fire
As he carries me home to, the Mull of Kintyre

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A Pilgrim's Progress



Thanksgiving is coming. I can tell, because I am spending hours and hours on ebay shopping for a new me. This new me is the sort of person whose home will not only be clean and sparkling come the 23rd of November, but whose table will be so splendidly adorned with just the right vintage set of dishes--won at the last minute for a mere 1.99--as to draw the eye completely away from the unpainted trim, the ratty second-hand furnishings, the scribbled-on walls, the overhead lighting fixture with its several burnt out bulbs, and the ballpoint pen jammed under the dimmer switch to keep the rest lit.

Another reliable harbinger of the season is the proliferation of glossy four-color sales flyers in my mailbox, assuring me it will take much, much more than a few pieces of Franciscan or Stangl pottery to make me suitably thankful this year. It will take a moving truck of new furniture, stainless steel appliances, embroidered sweaters for all of us, and --this was in the Sam's Club flyer today--a Cessna Citation jet for $2,734,000 (I bet I can get it $500,000 cheaper on ebay).

This uniquely American holiday serves as a measure of my own assimilation into this culture. What I knew about it from growing up in Newfoundland was that it comes a month or so after the Canadian thanksgiving weekend, and that it often falls on my birthday, as it will this year. I didn't know then that the Canadian version (note my usage of the "small t") is quite a pallid imitation of the original. I guess someone noticed that our neighbors to the south were getting to feast on turkey and pies and thought we ought to follow suit, only, let's do it in October, so that we will have room for turkey and pies again on Christmas. Anything for a long weekend. I believe this is what keeps Canada in the Commonwealth. Hate to lose the Queen's birthday.

Without getting into a long exegesis of British colonialism and its aftermath, I will just point out the pointlessness of a Newfoundlander adopting a American custom adopted by Canada, our reluctantly adopted government. Take my word for it, a lot was lost in translation.

My first impression of the real thing was, that's a hell of a lot of food. That was a common refrain from me that first year, going right back to my very first meal on American soil, in a Wendy's in Laredo. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, I'd had six months of supersizing, but I was still shocked. The turkey, gravy and pumpkin pie were familiar, but I was out of my depth after that. In addition to pumpkin, there was apple, chocolate and pecan pie. Instead of stuffing, there was an enormous pan of cornbread dressing, which had chicken baked into it, and made a main dish by itself. There was the marshmallow-topped sweet potato casserole and the french-fried onion-topped green bean casserole, both of which were totally alien to me. It seemed excessive, and redundant. Why the big feast and get-together, only to have to pull off a reprise at Christmas?

I didn't get it.

I was so focussed on the food, it took me a couple more years to become aware of the sentiment attached to Thanksgiving. This doesn't come over in the Canadian translation at all. Here in America, people practically kill themselves trying to get home for the holiday. In Canada, you have a big dinner with whoever happens to be around, and since it is a long weekend, your plans might involve travel, but it's not the emotional imperative it is in the States.

About five or six years into my residency, I became initiated in the day-after-Thanksgiving shopping custom, where people practically kill themselves and each other trying to get into Target before dawn, to catch the earlybird special. One thing I have particularly come to like about Thanksgiving is that it is, in and of itself, singularly uncommercial. Nobody gives gifts, or even cards. It is, I believe, the only day on which shops do not open. It is the one pause in the otherwise relentless carousel of commercialism in this country. And if you happen to be at Target at six the next morning, you will experience first hand the release of 24 hours worth of pent-up American consumerism. It is not for the faint of heart. Still, there is a carnival vibe to it that I dig, in the same way I wrote about taking in the state fair a couple of weeks back. I do most of my Christmas shopping online or at a neigborhood toy store these days, but for several years running I had fun hitting the stores with the rest of the mob, flyers and list in hand.

I was enjoying the spectacle, but I was still looking down my nose at the silly, unrestrained Americans who were putting up Christmas decorations and wrapping presents a whole month too soon.

Gradually, I came to realize that Thanksgiving isn't some kind of premature cultural ejaculation. It's the beginning of Christmas, with the whole season culminating on Christmas Day. Where I grew up, Christmas doesn't get going until Christmas week, and then we keep it going through New Year's and--for the purists--until the Ephiphany on January 6th (or as we call it on the island, Old Christmas Day). Also, in my native tradition, Christmas Day is the Big Show. That's when you brave blizzards to get across the country to your family. That's when we do all the eating and making merry. Christmas Day in America is a celebration, to be sure, but it's more for the kids. Even the dinner menu is different. Whereas at home turkey or goose would be mandatory, here we are more likely to have prime rib. It's a completely different paradigm.

It's taken me a while to find a middle ground. It helps that I have become an Episcopalian (American for Anglican), because it means I try to observe Advent. For the benefit of the rest of you godless heathens, Advent is by definition a time of waiting; of holding back and staying quiet. It's roots, like those of Christmas, are in pre-Christian northern European traditions. It is about yielding to the darkest time of the year, and it is starkly at odds with the secular culture, which doesn't care much for darkness or quiet, and which has Christmas decorations on the store shelves the day after Halloween.

It creates an interesting tension. On the one hand, I like the waiting. On the other, I hate to miss out on the festivities. So I pick and choose between traditions. I have come to love Thanksgiving more than nearly any other holiday. And even though it is almost always just the five of us, I bake pies and cornbread chicken dressing and spread the table as best as I am able. Although the house is never clean and sparkling, and I never find that perfect homemaker-me, on ebay or anywhere else, my mother sends flowers and they cover a multitude of sins. We drive to a tree farm like everyone else on Thanksgiving weekend, and we tag a tree and pay for it, but it stays in the ground until we come back for it mid-December. Lights go up on December 1st, and the creche comes out, empty, to be populated gradually by sheep and cows and Mary and Joseph and everyone else but the baby, until Christmas. The advent wreath comes out, and I light candles and pray the prayers over it. We go to mass on Christmas Eve and stay in our pyjamas until dinnertime the next day. The tree comes down in time for our New Year's party, but I keep a bough to toss on the bonfire at the church on Ephiphany.

It has become a bit of this and a bit of that. Like my table setting. Like me.

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Southern Signs of Fall

Growing up in the north, with its fleeting summers and epic winters, the first chilly days of autumn always ushered in a certain sense of melancholy, if not outright despair. It took years for my brain to quit associating the turning of the leaves with impending doom, but I am finally acclimated to epic summers (with heat as brutal as the deepest and most abiding snow) and fleeting winters (a bi- or even tri-annual occurance called "Snow-Day", triggering mass hysteria and looting in the supermarkets).

The last couple of years I have notice myself getting excited--exhilarated, even--at the first nip in the air. Autumn has become my favorite season. Mid-October to December is like one long festival here, building momentum with Halloween, peaking with Thanksgiving, sustained through Christmas and finally winding down on New Year's Day. The kick-off is the State Fair, to which I took my two older sons yesterday.

I heart the State Fair. To me, it is a microcosm of America. The lights. The crowds. The excess. The crassness. The sweetness. It's teenage farmboys in wrangler jeans and straw hats. It's a little goth family eating pink cotton candy from a bag. It's a fat black baby sucking on a bottle of coke. It's two Mexican guys in shearling coats lined up at the Old West photo booth. It's rednecks with mullets and white boys with dreadlocks. It's a middle-aged dad holding each of his teenage daughters under his arms as they fly in slow motion over the midway on a bungee cord and the P.A. system blasting Coldplay's "Yellow" and me getting choked up about it. It's the lemonade vendor who wants to charge me three bucks for an empty cup and it's the stranger who gives us a dozen ride tickets on her way out. It's a deep-fried twinkie and a staggering amount of pork.

As with the full-scale version of this country, I am more of a gawker than a participant. I am too timid to ride anything but the merry-go-round or ferris wheel. I am too carb-conscious to eat the twinkie, too skeptical to shoot the cans. My pleasure is entirely vicarious. I'm strictly in in it for the people-watching. And the people I love to watch best of all are my boys. They were beside themselves the whole time. My five-year-old, coming down the Super Slide, looked like one of those old Life magazine photos of pilots doing Mach-3. His eyes were popping out of his head and his mouth was set in a wrap-around grimace. Oh shit, I thought. Then he hit the bottom, and screamed, "That was WICKED!!" My seven-year-old could not be deflected from the games this year, as in past years. I finally relented and let him pick a floating duck, for which he "won" a cheap plastic sword. He pulled it out of the plastic wrapper like it was Excalibur in the anvil, he was so pleased with it.

I did join them on the Monkey Maze, which had a maze of mirrors to get through. No way were they going in there alone. One thing that characterizes our annual excursions to the fair is the relentless drilling I give the boys on stranger safety. I make them memorize my cell phone number. I quiz them on who to approach for help if they get lost. The first thing we do inside the gates is fill out i.d. bands and I point out all the police officers. It's a wonder they are able to have fun at all after I get through with the briefing.

Anyway, there we were running like hamsters through the Monkey Maze, banging into mirrors, and although there was a stampede of children ahead and behind us, I had each of mine firmly by the hand. My eldest, behind me, seemed to be hanging back a little. "Come on!," I shouted. "Stay together!"

"HEY!" I heard finally. "HEY!" "LADY! You've got the WRONG HAND!"

Poor kid. Now I have to expand my drill to warn my children about people like me.



Another rite of the season I get a kick out of observing is football. In the south, that means principally college ball, and in this state, it means the Southeastern Conference and the University of Arkansas Razorbacks, a.k.a. the Hogs. My husband is a Hogs fanatic. I have never seen an American football game of any stripe outside of television. I would like to go to one, but not to watch the game. As with the state fair, it's the cultural trappings that fascinate me. I especially like the food. I would probably be perfectly happy to attend the tailgate parties without ever entering the stadium.

I try to follow the game, but I'm just not wired for it. There's too many things happening on the field at once, and so many interruptions. It's not a patriotic bias; I'm the same with hockey. Baseball, I can grasp, because it's very linear. Man throws ball, man hits ball, man runs, team scores. Football seems to be all over the damn place.

I do enjoy listening in on the post-game commentary, however, much to my husband's irritation. I find their earnestness amusing, and I like to interject my own take on things.

"What happened out there today, Coach?"

"Well, Bob, there was a football game. There were a lot of guys chasing a ball on a field. One guy would get the ball, and the other guys would all jump on him. Then there'd be a commercial break."

"Describe the scene in the locker room, Jim."

"Rampant homoeroticism, Bob. Flagrant ass-slapping."

Curiously, my husband has yet to invite me to accompany him to a live game.

Woo-pig-sooie.

---

(Calling the faithful: today's post at Finslippy is soliciting recommendations of good, underexposed blogs. Just so you know. Because I'd hate any really good bloggers to go unmentioned.)

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Meet Fanny.



I know. You are staring aghast through the droplets of coffee you just sputtered all over your computer screen, whispering, "Dear God, what is it?" It's okay. Take a minute. Get a paper towel. Collect yourself.

Then meet Fanny, the hound from hell. No, don't shakey-paw. She bites.

I just thought you should know, mine is not the only face that I've kept hidden from you. (Incidentally, I also have glossy dark hair and an eager, forceful way of jumping up on people. A firm knee to the chest works well for us both).

Fanny is a Daschund-Rottweiler mix. I kid you not. We call her the dauttweiler. Or rottschund.

How is that even possible, you say? One can only hope the sire was an especially scrappy daschund and the dam was the rottie, and not the other way around. Extensive google searches have yielded a mere handful of such matings. This one, in England, merited an article in the local newspaper. Note how they quote a dog expert, like the obligatory scene in every monster movie where they bring in the wise old priest or professor, who gravely says, "it should never have been allowed to happen."

The other day I made an appointment for Fanny at the neighborhood doggie salon. The guy on the telephone asked what breed she was. I told him.

"Good god," he said. "Sounds like an alligator."

"Kind of," I said. "More like a monitor lizard, crossed with a badger."

I bet you are intriegued now; strangely fascinated. Where can I get a rottshchund? You are thinking. And can I get one in time for Halloween? Stop right there. Before you entertain that thought a moment further, I want you to consider the daschund. Get a really clear picture in your mind. Now, do the same with the rottweiller. Think about the very worst traits of both those breeds. Now imagine a 40-pound beast with the brute strength and aggression of a rottweiler, combined with the hyperactivity and non-stop barking of a daschund. Imagine it growling and snapping at small children, including your own. Imagine incessant barking. Imagine a neck too thick and a head too pointy to fit into any conventional restraint. Imagine fangs sharp enough to cut through every single retractable leash you ever buy the first second your attention is diverted. Imagine a problem that you couldn't feel good about foisting off on your worst enemy, let alone the wheelchair-bound strangers who respond to your ad on the animal rescue site.

Tintin had Snowy. Dorothy had Toto. Dooce has Chuck.

Me? I have Fanny.

Now you know. It's too late for me, but you go warn the others. Fix those weiners.

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D-I-Y spells die.

Yesterday afternoon our washing machine got through agitating a load of kids clothes, and then, drunk on power, decided to agitate me by refusing to drain. In a family of five, a laundry malfunction is a major emergency, a domestic Chernobyl. Two loads a day is the minimum it takes to keep laundry from backing up and overflowing into the hallways. I twiddled the dial and pulled the knob and wiggled the basket, and then I told Patrick the situation.

"Holy shit," he said, before retreating to his office.

I gave him a few minutes, then followed him back there.

"I think it's clogged," I offered.

"Could be," he nodded, avoiding eye contact.

I felt he could use a prompt, so I asked, "What needs to happen for us to find out?"

"Uh, let me think about that."

"Sure, but could you think about it quickly?" This elicited an injured look.

I ignored it. This was no time for kid gloves, and I've poked through all the fingers on mine anyhow. My husband is a man of innumerable charms and gifts, but being quickly roused to action is not one of them. "Let me think about that" is usually a euphemism for "let me not think about that for as long as you can possibly be put off."

It's not that he is lazy or as they say around here, "no-count" (Okay, I can say it, but you can't). It's just that he and I are wired very differently. I am an extrovert, ENFP in Meyer-Briggs terminology. I think fast and out loud. I process verbally. My opinions develop on the scene, and are revised constantly. I'm like the 24 hour news cycle, complete with screen crawl.

He, on the other hand, is an introvert--INFP--and processes information more like an in-depth weekly on public television. You have to wait days to get his perspective on any given event, and it comes out carefully considered and fact-checked. I think his brain has four stomachs.

Becoming educated about these differences has helped us navigate through many a minefield of potential misunderstanding. He has learned that the words "talk" and "later" uttered in the same sentence will cause me to chew my own leg off. I have learned that the deer-in-the-headlights stare I get in response to "Hey, let's do this..." is not necessarily an out-of-hand rejection. Sometimes, if I stand back and give him a little air, he will come around on his own. Ocassionally, I have to bring out the smelling salts.

In this instance, time was not on our side. The laundry clock was ticking. Towels were being used, clothes worn. I needed a specific commitment. I extracted a promise of "first thing in the morning". Morning came, and with it, low groans and complaints of a bad back. Pre-emptively, I devised a scheme of taking off for the laundromat all day and leaving him home with the kids, but I didn't get a chance to enact it. Late morning, I was directed to clear off the top of the appliances and bail out the wash water so he could examine the patient. Having done so, and impatient with waiting, I went ahead and pulled the washer and dryer out from the wall. I believe Patrick wandered in at this point, but I shooed him back out so I could vacuum the accumulated crud. By that time, mania was setting in. I was feeling resourceful and infinitely superior to my aged and invalid spouse. I sized up the hose and pipe attachments on the back of the washer. How hard could this be? I googled "washing machine clogged drain". Piece of cake.

Patrick, by now standing at the ready, was demoted to fetcher of pliers and towels. "Are you sure you don't want me to do that?" he'd offer periodically, looking amused.

"Not on your life." By my reckoning, I was sitting on a veritable goldmine of spousal guilt. Having missed his moment as appliance repairman, my husband would surely be driven to overcompensate in all other matters of household maintenance. His very manhood would be at stake.

Apparently not. "I find this whole pioneer woman thing incredibly sexy, you know," he said, leering, as I squatted in the corner with my skirt hitched up and rubber gloves on. (I have been teased about this before by my girlfriends, although I fail to see what is so damn survivalist about boiling up some overripe berries with sugar for Sunday morning at the cottage...it's just Jam, for godssake.)

I could see that my plan was now backfiring. I was dangerously close to becoming not only the appliance repairman, but the changer of lightbulbs and trash-transporter. A hasty retreat into helpless femininity was in order.

"Here," I said, handing over the pliers. "I can't unscrew the hose. It's too hard for me." Patrick looked skeptical. I batted my eyelashes. Then pouted. "You should be doing this anyway."

"Why?" he asked. "Don't you feel proud of yourself tackling this? Doesn't it make you feel capable? Like I feel when you leave me alone to take care of the kids for a weekend?"

Well, he had a point there. But I wasn't about to give it to him. And at the end of the day, the washing machine had us both beat. After disconnecting and flushing and reconnecting every hose, the damn thing still won't drain. At least we are satisfied it is out of pure rebelliousness and not indigestion. Undoubtedly it is being passive-aggressive about something.

And it is most certainly an introvert.

filed under: domestic, marriage
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To market, to market

The audio is of an adorable ragamuffin who was sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk downtown, singing Irish and English folktunes, rocking back and forth with his eyes closed. He looked like a junkie or a refugee from the Potato Famine. Naturally, I was smitten, and snuck this recording with my cell phone.

This morning I made my first visit all year to the downtown farmer's market. I felt very cosmopolitan, ambling among the vegetable stalls and buskers, smelling peaches and melons and chitchatting with a concertina player from the U.K. When I first moved here, the downtown--like many American cities in the eighties and nineties--was completely vacant after 5 p.m. on Friday. I pined for a place to get a decent cup of coffee or fresh herbs or a chocolate croissant and sit and watch the people pass by on Saturday mornings. In theory, anyway. In actuality, it wouldn't have done me any good, as my coffee-drinking and people-watching was mostly happening in pancake joints at four in the morning, after my shift at the bar ended and the after-hours club had closed down. But in those early days, I was still trying to persuade Patrick that we should move on to Austin or some other more fashionable place and my inability to purchase bunches of fresh chevril at eight in the morning--should I need to--was a key point in my case.

The farmer's market, and the whole downtown revitalization program that incubated it, were just fledgling at the time. Now in its tenth anniversary year, I have not patronized it nearly as much I as I'd like. After I retired from the club scene, the children started coming, and while I was now up early enough to get the coffee and crossaint, I no longer had the free hands to do so.

Before you have children, you think you know exactly what kind of parent you are going to be. Then you have them, and you realize that you didn't allow for the fact that they were going to be small humans, not cool accessories. I pictured myself as the kind of hipmama who would take her kids everywhere. So I didn't get to backpack across Europe in my twenties. No problem. I'd just go with the kids. So we didn't make it back to Mexico in the timeframe we'd promised. We'll go back with our kids. So we don't have any family members within two thousand miles who can babysit for us. Where ever we need to go, we'll take the kids.

If I knew how to spell WA-HA-HA-HA! and the sound that a person makes with warmed-over Folgers coffee coming out of their nose, I'd insert it here.

The truth is, I don't even like to go to the grocery store with my kids. What on earth made me think we'd be up for Eurorail?

As my friend Sarah says, when the children outnumber the parents, you've got to weigh the schlepp factor against the merit of being at any given destination. More often than not, that calculation comes out to "Nah."

And so I haven't gotten to market more than a couple of times a season, and I didn't buy bunches of fresh herbs today because it is against my children's religion to eat chlorophyll; nor did I eat a croissant, because that would lead to a starch-and-sugar binge that would result in me living on the sidewalk outside the bakery stall, inhaling pastries from a paper sack. But I did make it there and back with all three children, one of whom--my lovely Prufrock--dared to eat a peach. We came home with zinnias and watermelon, and while it may have been a mere six miles round-trip, but we all felt like we'd been somewhere. Who knows, maybe next time we'll even ride the trolley, as practice for when we take Eurorail.

When everyone is over eighteen, appreciates chevril, and can carry their own backpack, that is.

filed under: culture, kids, goodtimes
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I'm With the Band



Went with a girlfriend and our six kids to the lake today. Note the cascade of inflatables spilling out of my van onto the sizzling asphalt parking lot. At that point, we had been parked on said asphalt for 25 minutes and were still inflating, unloading, sunscreening, and schlepping passengers and equipment. Next note the contents of my beachbag, not one, but two magazines for my reading pleasure. Just in case I got all the way through the first and was stuck for something to do. Now, note the foul yellow beastie smugly entrenched between me, my beachbag and any lingering illusion of leisure time I might blithely cling to.

More and more these days, I feel like a roadie for Motley Crue. For starters, there's the sheer physical exertion: the endless lifting, hauling, setting up and tearing down. "Put it over here, no, over there, there, THERE!" Then there is the ass-wiping, the puking, the tantrums, the trashing of rooms. There is the procurement of playmates. And the ridiculous demands about food.

As I imagine it goes with roadies, the job description sounds much more glamorous than it is. "But you get to hang with the band, dude!" Or as my husband would say (if he did not value his life), "What do you mean, you're exhausted?? You were lying around the beach all day!"

Okay, even on the worst days, it still beats working in a straight job. There are nights when the lights go down, and I stand in the boys' bedroom doorway with as much awe and gratitude as any starstruck stagehand ever felt standing in the wings.

But its no day at the beach.


filed under: kids, goodtimes
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