The little boy said he wanted to play soccer. His father told him that soccer was unAmerican, and he should want to play a real sport, like football.
My dad looked up from his paper to say, “Soccer is the most widely-played sport in America,” and then resumed reading his paper.
2010 sassy is front and center
One-Liner Wednesday is brought to you by LindaGHill
As many of you know, I don’t eat much meat, and I’m persnickety about it when I do eat it. However, I cook for two rapacious carnivores, so trips to the deli counter are made at least twice a month.
Typically, it’s a pound of whatever turkey is whitest and driest, because even the carnivores turn their noses up at slimy pink turkey. But sometimes I get ham, pastrami, roast beef — always shaved.
I’ve been placing these orders at deli counters at various stores in various locations for, oh, let’s say, 16 years.
I hate going to the deli counter. I already miss the commissary, where often they allow you to scribble down your order and come back for it when you’re done shopping. Without that option, it’s a lot of standing around, wondering why it takes so fucking long. Many times I have been convinced they had to go kill a bird behind the store. I do not pretend to know the intricate details involved in working at a deli counter, but I do acknowledge and express gratitude when I get someone competent.
In my years of trips to deli counters, I have encountered more than my share of idiots and noobs.
But this last time was extra special.
The Mister and I walked up to the deli counter of our local grocer. I told the lady I would like one pound of oven roasted turkey, shaved. She nodded and reached for the big ball of meat.
The Mister and I embraced and kissed and whispered sweet nothings, and the lady STOPPED slicing the meat to interrupt us, “Do you want it sliced real thin or do you want it fallin apart?”
“Fallin apart.”
“That’s shredded.”
We stared at her blankly.
“That’s shredded, not shaved.”
She seemed to be seeking a response from us. We didn’t give her one. So she lectured us about how to properly order luncheon meat. She said, “Blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah, Blah! Blah blah blah, that’s shredded. You want shredded.”
(Or somethin like that.)
I said, “Okay, we’d like it shredded.” I smiled a wry smile.
The Mister and I had a brief conversation about the wtfness of it all. Then the lady gave me a bag of shaved oven roasted turkey, adding, “You want shredded. Next time, ask for shredded.” We resumed our blank stares.
You hafta be like me to understand, but this woman is very unhappy. I mean, she’s the type of miserable that has an aura of funk followin her around like Pig Pen’s dirt.
This might be a speech she regularly gives customers, I don’t know. But I know this: She didn’t confirm with me until she’d already begun and we were kissing.
JOY ROBBER! My brain points a finger at this lady and j’accuse her like Tituba.
She wants to be petty? Oh, I can do petty!
Now, if I see that lady at the deli counter again, I’m still going to ask for shaved meat. If she lectures me again, I’m going to pretend we have not had this conversation. Over and over and over. She is my elder, so she can give me her lil speech all she wants. I will merely say, “Oh that’s right, I think you’ve told me that before.”
Did I already tell you I’m a bitch, or did you figure it out on your own? What kinda petty stupid shit have you dealt with lately? If you don’t have a blog, how do you handle wtfness?
The Mister and I have this crazy idea that the goal of rearing children is to create productive adult citizens who help make the world a better place. As people send their kids off to college for the first time and weep about it for days and days, we find ourselves perplexed. We don’t know what’s going on that people are overwhelmed by this. We make a focused effort to understand and be supportive, but it’s really all we can do to wrestle our tongues with one particular thought, “What did you think was going to happen?!?”
We thought that was the goal?
I mean, if they’re not going to college, then they gotta go somewhere, do somethin — trade school, military, fall in love and make babies, find a nice cardboard box, backpack across Europe, rent a crap apartment with five other kids — somethin! Am I right?
I’m certainly not immune to feelings or sentiment, but every milestone a kid passes should be bittersweet — not traumatic.
I’ve done 13 twice. I think 13 is a big deal. A kid who’s 5 years from adulthood should be self-motivated and largely independent. Bubba was neither. He was very typical on the teenage lack of motivation and nowhere near independent.
“Are you doin that walkathon thingy?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you have some paperwork?”
“I dunno. Maybe. Somewhere.” *watches 4,000 loose papers pour from bookbag* I could tell you he was a preemie with developmental delays, and that he had ADD and his social skills suffered, but really, at 13, I’d say he was lazy and petulant, and that his brain probably had a graphics card three sizes too big for his head. His 11-year-old sister could take better care of him than he could. At 13, Sissy was so competent at ‘life-ing,’ we probably could have abandoned her anywhere, and within a week, she’d have a job and a place to live.
My point here is that all kids are different, and parenting is a per-child adjustment.
Sassy’s nearing 13 and as such, her perimeters are growing with her responsibility. She’s incredibly mature. I don’t know why, maybe she’s an old soul.
In the last year I’ve had to do really awful parent-y stuff, stuff that’s bad for my anxiety — let her go and watch her fail.
I don’t mean that with cruelty, but that’s how it goes. They have to fail like the rest of us. To learn. Life is a lot of trial and error, and if we’re always there, they don’t learn nearly as much. As soon as you give them a shred of autonomy, they fuck up. They’re supposed to. Remember young you? I do. I was a good kid, but I still look back and think I was naive, reckless, even stupid at times. My parents were super duper laissez-faire, so I had plenty of time to be an idiot and learn from my mistakes.
My mistakes.
I made them.
They expected me to make mistakes.
We get heartbroken when our children suffer. We suffer with them, we suffer for them. It’s tragic. But I take such great offense at this popular trend to hover over and intervene in every aspect of a child’s life to prevent anything from happening. It creeps me out, like Santa, like puppeteers, like deus et machina.
If we prevent anything from happening, NOTHING HAPPENS.
We’re not trying to protect our children, we’re trying to protect our children so we can protect ourselves. We think we’ve got it all figured out, we know what’s best, so we’ll make all the best choices, and our children will do what we tell them to, want what we tell them to, like what we like — that is not how it works — not even a little bit. On the off chance that your kid does any of those things, you feel pleased, and rightly so. But you can only take so much credit, and you can only accept so much blame, on either side of the pendulum. Did you score that winning point? No? Well you didn’t fail that entrance exam, either. It’s not about you, it’s about them.
So — with Sassy, it has begun. She knows she’s involved in the experiment that is herself. More freedom, more privilege, more responsibilities, trust, expectation, reflection, consequences — these are all discussed. In the last year:
— I let her go to the fallow field to play with her friends, unsupervised. She lay down in the tall grass and immediately got contact dermatitis that lasted for three days. I had to check her and her two feet of hair for ticks.
— I sent her into the grocery for a gallon of whole organic milk. She came back with whole milk. Enjoy the extra hormonal shifts!
— I sent her into the transportation office to claim her own lost bookbag. I don’t think she’ll leave it on the bus again.
— I made her write her own essay on the application for independent study. She got in.
— I let her stay the night with people I don’t know. They walked to a gas station to get snacks and a Redbox at 10pm and she got scared.
— I let her go to the movies at night! with people I don’t know! They didn’t buy tickets early enough and had to go again the next day.
— I dropped her off at birthday parties in crowded public places with people I don’t know. She had a good time.
— I let her go to a pool party with strangers. She did not put the sunscreen on her face. Her face was red and painful for five days.
— I make her carry her own damn cello, and laptop, and bookbag, onto the bus, all at once.
— I let her roam the neighborhood with a group including BOYS.
— I make her go ask for her own things, like packets of ketchup, library books, shoes in her size. People give them to her.
— I leave her home alone.
— I let her join Goodreads and now she’s friends with strangers.
All of these baby-step things terrify me, because I don’t trust the world and at this point, I’m only hoping I can trust her. For her, I’m frightened of everything. I don’t even like to let her walk home alone. What if Stephen doesn’t get off the bus with her? Anything could happen! She could get hit by a car or be abducted and sold into sex trade! I’ve been known to stand in the street and will her late bus to arrive. Yes, I believe motherhood is strong enough to summon 15-ton vehicles, don’t you?
Denial is my most convenient vacation destination, y’all.
But I let go. It’s a leap of faith, and as each of them grow up, I gotta let go more and more and more…
…until leaving is no big deal, because they’ve been treated like and acting like adults for some time now. This has always been the goal.
I’m not some kinda parenting role-model, but I do enjoy sharing what I’ve learned. I like to think I’ve done 13 better every time, but I look at Moo, and I think, at 13 she’ll be like, 10 inside…and I know my greatest challenge lingers still.
Maybe SHE’ll get lucky.
This is the door to my favorite bar in Indy — Liberty Street.
The door itself is old, but who knows how old? Inside, the knob is extraordinarily low to The Mister, and just right for me.
It’s a mellow place. There’s a huge, timeless, wooden bar. There are architectural photos of various buildings in the city. They play music I like, with stuff from my own music library, and a good mix of music I don’t know, but still like.
photograph from the indianapolis star
It’s a magical place. They make amazing cocktails, and I get a lil mesmerized by the craft. It’s a place where I finish a drink and say, “I liked this a lot. What else would I like?” and the bartender says, “Everything,” and I believe him, because he’s a bloody genius.
I wanna say, “Make me all the drinks. I will drink all the drinks now, please.”
I did not drink all the drinks, but when we left, that first step out made my shoes wobble, so The Mister grabbed me, and I said, “Shh, watch your step. Oh hey, that’s kinda pretty.”
I love this place.
If we had a place like this within walking distance of our home, I’d be well on my way to a drinking problem.
Do you have a great bar where you live? Is it within walking distance of you? Do your shoes get wobbly there? Does it have an interesting door?
#ThursdayDoors is an inspired post series run by Norm Frampton. If you like interesting doors, visit his site and check out what people are sharing today.
Everyone’s always sharing their blog search terms for a laugh, but how about Contact Me emails?
For instance, “Teach me how to word.”
One-Liner Wednesday is brought to you by LindaGHill
After commenting on Dan’s post at No Facilities today, he reminded me I’ve mentioned the battle of the lights over here at my house. I’ve alluded to it, but never written about it.
About his wife, Dan wrote, “Turning a light on to make her happy is like bleeding in front of a shark to make it go away.” I lol’ed.
The Mister and I both go around shutting off lights, because we have a Moo, and Moos do not care about light bills or natural resources, but The Mister and I do. Hell hath no fury like a Moo during power outages.
For me, I walk around asking what the hell everyone’s so afraid of, and yelling about how we don’t need every light bulb in the house on when God’s light is on! Sassy started calling natural light “God’s light” before she was two, and when I’d go claim her from her crib in the morning, she’d be signing, Light! Light! Light! “God’s light ON, Mama!” Now she’s 12 and she assures me that if God had intended her to get up so early, He’da put the light on for her.
I prefer to read and well, do pretty much anything in natural light.
I like to get up and look at my trees.
I enjoy the southern exposure.
I believe I’ve mentioned my abhorrence for direct sunlight.
When natural light fades, well then I really only want enough light to see.
At night, I drive with my glasses on, because they have anti-glare. Anti-glare is my friend. Otherwise I get a headache, panic, and may or may not shout at oncoming traffic, “REALLY?!? WAS HARNESSING THE POWER OF THE SUN IN HEADLIGHTS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY?!?”
I despise overhead lighting. It’s overbearing. It gives me a headache. I can hear fluorescent lights. I do not like brightly lit places at all.
some version of hell
The Mister likes to turn on lights when the sun goes down. And not just one light, like, all the lights in the room. Meanwhile, I feel like I should wear shades. He actually wants to install an overhead light in the living room, but I will not let that happen! There are three lamps in the living room, and that’s enough! If he wants more light, he should move out.
This gets more interesting with contradiction, because I cannot see in the dark, whereas my husband has apparently been given vampire-like powers of night vision.
Before bed, as I go through the house, he stays behind me, shutting off all the lights as he follows.
This always begs the question, If you can see in the fucking dark, why do you need so many fucking lights on?!? But I don’t ask him that, I’m grateful he’s willing to help me get to bed without a terrible accident.
I didn’t know this was a thing — people who can see in the dark. I found out when we took our family to a haunted woods thingy. One HOT October night in Georgia, someone Army decided we should all have mandatory family fun at the freakin campground, in the swamp, after dark. I remember insisting Sissy put a glow stick (Pardon me, Sergeant, ‘chem light!’) in her back pocket so I could see her playing on the monkey bars and stuff. I was terrified that gators would come up from the pond and eat her. Sassy sat happily in the back of a truck, eating candy and being cute. Moo was a very Mooish two: she was hard to contain. I held her most of the night while I watched Sissy like a hawk.
When it was time to go through the haunted woods, of course Moo wanted to go. Since her father was one of the scary things in the woods, I had to take her. You can imagine my excitement.
I began on a path through the woods, and was about ten feet in when I realized I couldn’t see a thing. I mean, I couldn’t see the path, I couldn’t see the baby in my arms, I couldn’t see! I was creep-walking like the fucking Pink Panther, and still tripping over branches. This seemed to go on forever.
Suddenly, Moo said, “Daddy!”
“Daddy?”
“Daddy!” she leaned away from me.
“Daddy where?”
“There!”
I could not see anything. I stopped moving and held her close, fearing my child was about to leap into the arms of a bansheegnomewerewolfdryadfairymonster.
“C’mere Baby,” he said.
The Mister was right there. Right in front of me. I could not see him. He took Moo. I held onto his waist and high-stepped behind him, out of the woods, back to the campground.
Moo can see in the dark, which again begs the question, If you can see in the dark, why are you always turning lights on?!?
As some of you know, Friday was our anniversary, and we spent the weekend CHILDLESSLY celebrating.
Our very sexy anniversary weekend began when The Mister paid two tattooed, sinuous, half-naked men to … mow our lawn.
I keep tellin ya, this is not that kinda blog.
We had an absolutely marvelous time.
We talked a lot, about important stuff and the future. We reminisced some. Like the shock of telling people we were getting married. How some people claim they’d always known, and how other people still can’t get over how we happened to begin with.
You can tell a lot about people by the way they react to, “It’s our sixteenth wedding anniversary!” Many people cannot hide their revulsion. Same kinda people who say, “FOUR? You have FOUR kids? On purpose?”
I live in a state of constant surprise myself. If you’d told age twenty me that by thirty, I’d be married with four kids, I would have laughed and laughed, “Oh yeah, right! And I bet at thirty, I’ll be good at math, too, huh?”
If you’da told me that I’d only grow more in love and more satisfied over time, I woulda said, “Stop it now, you’re scaring me.”
People are always going on about how life is so unpredictable, but too many forget that life is surprisingly good in the most unexpected ways.
My face still lights up when he enters the room. I still get butterflies when he touches me.
Um, I’ve also never come so close to hating anyone.
So yeah, we took a weekend to celebrate that — In the car, at Starbucks, at the liquor store, on Mass Ave, on the sidewalks, in restaurants and bars, at the deli, at home, in Broad Ripple, on park benches — we were happily married all over the place. It was absolutely disgusting.
Since it’s not that kinda blog, these are the sexiest pictures I can show you.
When I rolled out of bed at noon today, I took a selfie with my Boston Cream doughnut from Dunkin, but I spared you that one, because it’s really just a tangle of hair and icing. You’re welcome.
Did you do anything wonderful (I presume to celebrate our anniversary) over the weekend?
I need to give you an impression of the size of the Indiana State fair. It’s 250 acres, a million square feet of stuff. There are many larger state fairs, but Indiana’s is big. One can easily spend the entire day at the fair. Walking miles and miles is part of the gig.
I love how this map shows a parking lot. The parking lot is only for special people. People like us have to pay to park in the yards of strangers who are mean and cannot explain how they want us to park at an angle on the edge of their porch.
Attendance at the state fair topped out at about 978,000 people in 2013. Last year they permitted samples of alcoholic beverages and 23,000 fewer people went. That’s right, I live in a place where people are offended by alcoholic intake, even when per person consumption is limited to a total of 12 ounces of beer or 5 ounces of wine. I do not know. We still have dry counties out there in the boonies.
Still, admission sales brought in $3.5 million last year.
This year, school started before the state fair, and I did not want to go on a weekend. Trying to avoid the massive crowds forced me to go after school, so this was possibly my least favorite trip to the fair. Even on a Tuesday, there were too many times we gripped hand to elbow and pressed through throngs of people.
This experience is different for females, and even less pleasant when coupled with anxiety. I think I did really well, considering.
I still loved going.
I do not have a big appetite in the evening. This is counterproductive to my goal of being fair food fat. The heat did not help — it was 86 and partly cloudy. These things impinge upon the pleasure of eating one’s weight in fried foods, and reduce the desire to consume dairy. I still had to get my enormous $90 Coca-Cola, though. That was our first stop.
Here I am, standing in front of a misting fan the size of the moon. As usual, I am all about a carefully-coiffed head and fashionable clothes.
Sassy and I shared some jalapeño cheese curds at a table with a couple from Wisconsin. They were pleasant strangers, who chatted with us about where to buy the best long underwear.
Moo wanted to ride on the swings. I am glad we’re not midway folks, because I’m fairly certain that a day at an amusement park would cost less than a day of riding at the fair. One ride on the swings cost 3 tokens and tokens were sold in increments of 4 for $8. So I paid $8 for my child to take a three-minute spin on the swings, and gave the remaining ticket to the family behind us. They were not from here, because the father said, “No way! People here are so generous!”
Still, Moo loved it, and grinned a weird petrified grin the entire time. Sassy and I couldn’t keep watching her go round and round, we were getting soooo sick!
Sassy and I also shared a pulled pork sammich, because we neither one thought we could eat a whole one. It was delicious. We found a clean table in the shade and farther from bees. The bees were a little crazy this year. I didn’t photograph the bees, because I was too busy trying to pretend to be calm for the sake of the children. I am so brave.
Then we meandered into the arts building, where I took very few photos, because the best things are behind glass, and I do not have the patience to deal with that. The quilts were beautiful and I don’t know how one gets a job judging quilts, but I’d like a piece of that pie.
I did take this photo, in the Centennial building, because we all loved this dress. I know you cannot see it, but inside the hem of this dress rests a fine edge of lace.
We visited a coupla of the agricultural buildings, saw the plastic-perfect shiny eggplants and the largest pumpkin.
I stopped to buy honey, but this became more of an excursion than I had planned. Four beekeepers swarmed me and had me sampling honey after honey and honestly, I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but I simply wanted local honey. I didn’t really want to have a honey-tasting. Still, they were very…helpful.
I had gone into that building because there was a large sign out front about giant cheese. I asked the girls if they wanted to see giant cheese, and of course they did, but there were two young men who seemed to think I was asking them. We found this hysterical, and made jokes about how I make the world’s worst cougar, dressed like a missionary, inviting young men to see the giant cheese exhibit.
There’s a science center, so Moo was all about that. We went into a tunnel (cell) and looked at its innards. I am very old and do not remember much about cells. Now my cellular focus is on how I gotta drink lotsa water and eat lotsa veggies or my cells will shrink-up and die and this will make me look bad and potentially lead to an early death. The girls know a lot about cells, so that’s nice.
And then, Animals! We say manimals, but you know.
This topiary photo came with a free toddler. She just wanted to sit. Her parents were doin that thing where they pretended to go on without her.
We missed the bunnies and chickens. Usually there are nine-gazillion bunnies and chickens.
Finally, here are some random tidbits I collected:
Before we left, the girls got henna tattoos, which I suppose is now a tradition for them.
We really wanted funnel cakes and ice cream. We really did. Not one of us was even remotely hungry. Isn’t that sad?
Still, I had a great time, came home exhausted and gross, and with money to spare. That’s how to do the fair.
This is one of the many horse barns at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. I chose to snap this particular barn door because it’s much more well-worn than the others. I am a big fan of weathered, painted wood. Look at that overhang. Plus, I think the ferns add that certain somethin familiar and authentic to the photo.
To make it any more real, you’d hafta smell it and get your own splinters. Out of all the horse barn doors at the state fair, this door is, I’m sure, the one y’all wanted to see.
Barn doors have been making their way into interior design for some time now, but this one is the real deal. Notice the tracks that allow it to slide to the left, lock in, and then within its center, a door for people.
The plaque is about Sep Palin.
You can read more about him here. He’s kind of a big deal, I’ve learned. Here’s a photo of him in all his splendor.
it should be perfectly obvious that i did not take this picture
#ThursdayDoors is an inspired post series run by Norm Frampton. If you like interesting doors, visit his site and check out what people are sharing today.
When asked why she poked her brother in the eye, Sissy said, “Because I wanted to.”
One-Liner Wednesdays are brought to you by LindaGHill
joeyfullystated 
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