Friday Orts and a Blurb

Yesterday's spelling bee winner

Oh, city spelling bee, how I love thee! How I love pronouncing the words for thee every year, as I did yesterday! 

I love the little girl in the sparkly shirt who spelled well and confidently until her final word, which she misspelled so spectacularly that my mouth dropped open before I could say "that is incorrect." I love the microphone that no one can figure out how to turn on. I love the words that are spelled the way they sound (looking at you, "implicit") and the words that I cannot fathom a fourth grader would know (and at you, "succumb"). 

I do not, however, love the Webster's Third New International Dictionary which is so enormously huge and has type so incredibly small that when stalling spellers asked for definitions of the word they got much more stall than they bargained for. Next year, we're looking up definitions on my iPhone. Or I can just make them up. Either of those options works for me.

*****

It's Homecoming weekend at Small College, one of my favorite weekends of the year. The only thing I can't figure out is why all the people I thought graduated just a year or so ago are back for their 10-year reunions. Obviously time is flying again. (And of course, time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.)

*****

While Congress is on staycation I'm going to start making some legislative decrees of my own. The first one is going to be that all women's skirts must have pockets. Carrying a cell phone around in my hand is stupid. Also, siestas for everyone! Every day!

*****

Amazon image

I've been reminded again lately how I can love, love, love a book that many of my friends hate, hate, hate. Such is The Book Thief.  I've been reading this as I sweat on the elliptical every morning, and reader(s), looking forward to the next few pages every morning has caused me to (almost) love exercise. My friends, however, were at best "meh" on the book. 

It does worry me that this is a young adult book. It is very dark, and my 12-year-old self would have sobbed and sobbed. But the writing is simple and evocative and I have stopped to read some paragraphs two or three times over. Of course, that might have been because I was sweating on the screen, but it also might have been the narration by Death. Really!

Read this before the movie comes out on Nov. 15. I, myself, no intention of seeing the movie because the only movie I've ever liked as much as the book was To Kill a Mockingbird and I saw that when I was eight. I'm going to store The Book Thief in my mind in its original form.

What's good on your bookshelf this week?

I'm Making a Hat

Boy#1 wanted YOU in 1995.

We're three weeks away now from the Wedding of the Century, and friends, being the mother of the groom is the best possible role one can have in this kind of production. All I've had to do is find something to wear, which I have done (and no, it is not beige), and voila! Ready to go!

Boy#1, Lovely Girl, and her mother all are so completely efficient and organized that I have been able to bask in the glow of the upcoming nuptials without lifting as much as a pinky finger to help. It's been so much fun, in fact, that I have felt a little guilty so this week I asked One if I was falling down on my responsibilities.

"Is there anything I need to be doing?" I asked him.

A few hours later he had conferred with Lovely Girl, and yes, there was something they needed. Could I order the candy for the candy buffet? Here's the website, he said, just pick out something in our price range. I immediately was transported back exactly 18 years, to when Boy#1 was nine years old.

It was the week before Halloween and all of the Boys knew exactly what they wanted to be on this most wonderful of kid holidays. Boy#2 was Robin Hood, Boy#3 was pirate (or was that a different year?, and I believe Boy #4 was...a bumblebee, maybe? Anyway, Boy#1 wanted to be Uncle Sam, which was the perfect choice for my politics-obsessed third grader.

As I always did, I left the costuming until just a wee bit late but I had a PLAN. I knew exactly which pieces I needed to sew, which elements I would buy at the thrift shop, which accessories I would cannibalize from other years and other closets. I would be cutting it close to get all four kids decked out in time for the costume parades, but I was ON IT. The night before Halloween I was a veritable whirlwind as I cut and sewed and hot-glued and costumed.

And then Husband's parents showed up. As they saw me whirling the first words out of their mouths were "What can we do to help?"

You know how much I loved them, right? I did, honestly. They could not have been better in-laws, and I truly miss them. But at that moment, I felt as if I had acquired the kind of help one acquires when a toddler wants to help. It's the kind of help that starts with the letters U and N and ends with FUL. They were completely well-intentioned, but I had my PLAN. It was a delicately balanced thing, and too much help would be...not so much.

So I grabbed a sheet of posterboard and threw it toward them.

"Here!" I said. "Make an Uncle Sam hat."

Do you know how long it took two fully-grown, completely competent, manually-dextrous adults to turn out one cardboard hat for an eight-year-old? Four hours. Each. A total of eight man-hours to cut out a brim and a hat body, and glue a ribbon around it.

My friends, that hat was a work of art. It was contoured to fit a nine-year-old head, and as of a couple of years ago, it was still in our costume stash in the attic. (Oh, yeah, I'm ready for grandkids.) In that same amount of time, though, I finished Uncle Sam's vest, found the tiny American flag he would wave, made the entire Robin Hood costume (including a quiver of bow and arrows), and kitted out the younger two boys. I had my plan, and it worked to perfection. Including the part of the plan that kept my in-laws out of my hair.

Last night as I perused the bulk candy site, choosing between the delicious and the beautiful, toggling between the chocolate autumn leaves and the whimsical sourballs, pondering which would look most beautiful on the turquoise vanity that will hold the candy buffet, I wondered if I should consult Lovely Girl before I made any final decisions. Then I laughed at myself.

I'm not choosing candy here--I'm making a hat.

My Synapses Are Inept

Here are two things you may already know about me:

1. I grew up on a farm, surrounded by tractors and pickups and other vehicles that hauled every kind of trailer, and
2. Husband and I have camped in our pop-up camper practically every summer since Boy#4 was an infant.

What you may not know is this:

1. While I am an excellent pretty good adequate driver, I cannot back anything that is attached to whatever I am driving.
2. Not at all.

Really. I have tried, and tried, and tried some more, but I cannot get the logic of the operation through my head. When you back a car and want to steer it in a certain direction, you turn the wheel the opposite direction of the direction you want the rear end of the car to go, right? It's so instinctive you don't even think about it. When you're trying to back a trailer into a camping space, though, you turn the wheel--left to go left? maybe? right to go left? I think?

It takes a retraining of brain synapses to overcome the instincts ingrained by so many decades of driving, and I have not been patient or committed enough to do that retraining. Oh, it wasn't for lack of trying. Every summer, after I had decided this would be the year I'd learn to back the trailer and gotten behind the wheel to steer the camper into its spot under the trees, I would veer it to the right, pull forward, veer to the left, pull forward, stop, take a deep breath, veer whichever direction would be most inconvenient, then give up and huffily hand the steering wheel back to Husband. (It didn't help that every time I would try to get into a camping spot there would be a couple of old farmers sitting on their lawn chairs in the next spot laughing heartily at my inepititude. Or if there weren't, I imagined there were.)

I thought of this inability to back a trailer this morning when the computer guys installed a second monitor on my desk. The Boys and Husband have been urging me to make this upgrade for years. It's going to be FABULOUS!, they tell me. And improve my productivity to an INFINITE DEGREE!, they add. I'll have all my work done by 8:12 a.m. every day!, they promise.

Except that because of a glitch in my operating system, I have to move the cursor to the right to have it show up on the left screen. I can't just drag windows logically from east to west across the gap between the two monitors, I have to drag a window completely around the world and come in from west to east. At least a dozen times I've been reminded why that little white arrow is called a "cursor" as I tried to figure out exactly where the blankety-blank thing disappeared over the Atlantic.

My friends the computer guys are going to fix the glitch within the next couple of days, and then I'll be able to once again navigate using logic and reason. Until then, they're going to be sitting in lawn chairs next to my desk and laughing at me as I try fruitlessly to retrain the navigation synapses in my brain.

I'm pretty sure the camper is laughing, too.

More Comfortable All the Time

Boy#1 and I were having a cyber-discussion about a woman of a Certain Age (which happens to be a couple of years more than my age) and I mentioned that she has gorgeous skin. He's a good boy so he immediately jumped in to quash my insecurities.

One: Your skin is just fine.

MomQueen Bee: I'm fine with my skin, too.

One: You're comfortable in it?

MomQueenBee: I am. It's all soft and loose and baggy, like a really good bathrobe.

You know how happy puppies always look? It's because they have loose skin, too.

I'm going to be the happiest old lady in the retirement home. 

Friday Orts and Blurb

The Friday selected shorts start with a picture unearthed this week. Lovely Girl had asked me to find old pictures to be used for table decorations at the Wedding of the Century (less than a month away! Squeeee!) and I came across this one of Husband, Boy#1, and me taken in the fall of 1986.

Oh, church directory pictures. You are CRUEL in reminding us of the unfortunate growing-out shapeless curliness of 1986 hair and the enormous face-eclipsing of 1986 glasses glasses.You are CRUEL in bringing up the un-saggy 1986 neck that didn't have to be artificially tautened by imagining a string pulling up the top of my head when I see a camera pointed my way.

But those woochy-woochy-smoochy cheeks on that baby, and that snowman sweater that I can feel against my face just by looking at it? Thank you for reminding me how much I loved being the mother of babies. Almost, but not quite, as much as I love being the mother of grown-ups.

And that handsome dude holding that baby? He's still the one.

*****
What is it about someone saying "Now don't get mad about this..." that makes me want to punch that person in the face? Repeatedly?

If I hear this phrase and I am not already mad, I think "Huh--am I supposed to be mad?" If I'm already ticked off I wonder what it is about my personality that makes other people think they can DICTATE MY RIGHTEOUS ANGER and DERAIL IT WITH WORDS?

Because, of course, all my anger is righteous.

*****

And the blurb of the week:

Several months ago (eight, maybe?) I finally acknowledged that the dishwasher we bought when I was pregnant with...well, one of the Boys but I don't remember which one, was no longer cleaning our dishes well. In fact, it was kind of gross and that's not a descriptor I want to use with my eating utensils. So we bought a new dishwasher.

People, it was incredible. This machine practically cleaned the pattern off the plates for the first few months we had it. It was ah-may-zing! But then it stopped cleaning. The oatmeal bowls still had streaks of fiber slime after a full cycle and the peanut butter knives...ick. I knew it was a problem when Boy#4 pointed out there was old food on his dinner plate. Oops.

A visit from the repairman later ("Everything looks fine, ma'am,") I had a d-oh! moment when I realized that I had changed dishwashing soaps somewhere around the time that the dishes started retaining leftovers. I had wanted to use up the bottle of generic brand left over when my mother-in-law moved out of her apartment because I'm cheap frugal. After the repairman left I went out and bought some of the pod-with-rinse tabs I had always used and we're back to having shiny clean dishes in the House on the Corner. They're worth the money, folks.

You may resume visiting during mealtime.

Friends Against All Odds

The government shutdown is having a negative effect on the life of one of my oldest and dearest friends, one of the four classmates who gather every autumn for a couple days of non-stop talk and laughter. She and her husband were spending a few days of autumn relaxation in the Lower 48 before returning to their igloo (they live in Alaska) and I was included in a group e-mail she sent this morning.

"Hey, friends," she wrote, "thanks to the Tea Party and their shenanigans*, my husband and I will be unable to enter and hike in the national parks of Utah this week as planned. We are currently in Colorado and could easily head to Wyoming or places here in this state.   Do any of you have any recommendations for lovely camping and hiking in this general area?"

I had to respond immediately. 

"I'm sorry, but 'lovely' and 'hiking' never occur in the same sentence in my vocabulary," I pointed out. "However, I can send some good knitting patterns to be completed while binge-watching 'Damages' on Netflix and drinking coffee." 

I'm not at all sure why we've been friends for so long. I mean, it's one thing when the most powerful nation in the world shuts down because it's too haaaaaard to govern. But walking around in nature when your car is running just fine? That's just crazy.

*EDITOR'S NOTE: The political viewpoints expressed here are those of the e-mailer and not necessarily those of MomQueenBee, who has friends (and relatives) of many, many political denominations, and loves each and every one of those friends and relatives. We're talking about hiking here, people, so simmer down. I'm equally exasperated with all politicians right now.

Their Real Opponent

The winner of five gold medals

Even discounting the age differences it would not be hard to tell the Senior Olympics in which my father was competing from the Olympics that we watch every four years. There is the crowd, for example, which comprises a handful of spouses and adult children of the competitors rather than a world-wide television audience.

And there are the body markings. Unlike their younger counterparts these swimmers are not tattoed with sharks or Olympic rings or inspirational phrases. Their markings have come from lifetimes of wearing their bodies: At least half of the men bear a thin white line down the center of their chests where their sternums were split for open heart surgery. (My father acquired his scar in 1996.) Others have curving lines where knees were replaced, and one man's stomach obviously has been opened for some kind of repair.

The freestyle was one of the five races in which my father competed, and in this race was a man who was shaped just like Michael Phelps will be shaped when he is 60 years old. A head taller than anyone else, with long arms and broad shoulders, and a nose that plows through the water like a rudder. I learned later than he is the national age-group champion in several of the events, and he conducted himself like a champion--he blasted off the starting platform and didn't come up for air until he was halfway down the 25-meter lane. He finished the 50-yard race in something like 32 seconds.

My 86-year-old dad, on the other hand, starts the race in the water, pushing off from the side of the pool. He breathes with every stroke and his finishing time is somewhere around 1 minute 20 seconds.

But Dad wasn't racing the younger, taller guy. He was racing time. The doctor had told him, back in 1996, that he would need to exercise to overcome his genetic predisposition that had led to quintuple bypass and that if he wanted to extend his lifespan he would need to be conscientious about this commitment. So every day, in a community pool for which he helped raise the funds, my father goes through his five races. The 50-yard freestyle. The 100-yard freestyle. The 50-yard breast stroke. The 50-yard backstroke. The 100-yard backstroke. It is hard work; he has never been able to float so if he stops moving forward he sinks like a rock.

Yesterday, I called these senior Olympians valiant liars for their insistence that they are just doing this for fun. In one way they are, because without exception are all competitive enough that winning is fun for them. But they're also doing this because they are racing the clock and when they climb out of the pool to the dry towel that's waiting, they have beaten more than the competitors in the surrounding lanes.

They've beaten the years and the creaky bodies that don't always cooperate, and the crowds are applauding this accomplishment as much as they are marveling at the five gold medals in five races.

They are winners, and they are awesome.