Holy Hiatus, Batman!

Dear Blogfriends,

As you may have noticed, I ain't posted shit lately. And I couldn't tell you what's going on on your blogs.

Here's the thing: I'm moving in two weeks. And moving is kind of a clusterfuck even when you're not moving 1000 miles away from everything (okay, maybe not EVERYthing) you hold dear. For starters there's the packing, which if packing doesn't sound like a very big deal to you, it's only because A) you haven't seen my bookshelves and B) it probably hasn't occurred to you that books should be packed alphabetically by subject. So the packing is a bit time consuming.

It's not really the packing though, and it's not even so much the physical act of moving that has kept me from the internets. It's that I am consumed by the IDEA of moving. For weeks all of my mental and emotional energy has been devoted to what it means to move, and I have busied myself with a series of bittersweet lasts: my last weekend at the beach, the last time I'll make crabcakes, my last Cogan's Thursday, the last visit with my brother/sister/parents/friends, my last chance to tousle my pseudo-nephews' hair, the last time I'll see the Atlantic Ocean or walk down this particular street. You name it, I'm crying about it. Even the last rent check elicited a few tears. I'm obsessive like that.

I've picked up the phone at least 25 times to call my best friend -- a military wife who's moved five times in the past nine years -- and wail, "How do you DO it?!" But each time I've put it down because I know how she does it: by not picking the phone up all the time and carrying on about how much she misses us all. That and she has a husband who's just about as perfect for her as my boyfriend is for me, and when you find a guy like that you really have no choice but to follow him to the ends of the earth. Or at least to Michigan.

So the bittersweet lasts are tempered by an array of exciting firsts, none of which, I assure you, will involve jerky and some of which I may even tell you about.

Actually, If They DO Win It's A Shame

A few years ago my friend and colleague G was fired from his position as baseball coach for our school. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but here's the basics: G was starting a promising freshman at a position theretofor occupied by a mediocre senior. The senior's well-connected parents and their well-connected friends pitched a fit, and the principal told G to start the senior instead of the freshman. Being both a man of principle and a stubborn Italian, G refused. Being, above all, a man of politics -- and a stubborn Italian to boot -- the principal fired him.*

G is an avid baseball fan who loves coaching perhaps even more than he loves teaching, so I probably don't need to tell you that he took this hard. (Although not hard enough to cave. When the principal asked him for a letter of resignation G scoffed, "I didn't resign; you fired me.") Anyone who knows G can see how much he's missed coaching baseball, which is why we were all so excited for him when a rival school hired him to coach their bad news bears this season.

G's Bears played our Silver Spoons on Friday, after getting trounced by the Spoons earlier in the season. Now, I'm no Roger Angell, but I know a good baseball story when it bites me in the ass. So for the love of the game -- but even more for the love of G -- I lifted a long-standing ban on attending high school sporting events and ventured out to Silver Spoons Stadium on Friday afternoon.

The score was 1-0 Bears when I arrived at the bottom of the 1st. I crossed my fingers and sent up a prayer to the gods of baseball and justice as I joined the lone fan in the Bears bleachers. "Who are you here for?" this baseball mom asked me, scrutinizing me as if trying to determine which of the teenaged team members I might belong to. "I'm here for G," I explained.

Over the course of the next inning, the Bears bleachers filled with one part Bears fans and two parts fellow Spoons there strictly for G. And the Bears kept winning. Spoons heckled the cheering defectors sitting on the Bears side, shouting things like, "Mr. [Principal] says none a y'all are graduating" and "first one back on the Spoons side gets a diploma," which elicited laughter from both Spoons and Bears fan, but didn't even register with G's fans.

Oh, and the Bears kept winning. At least until the 5th inning, when the Spoons scored two runs on Bears errors and turned the game into a nail biter.

The score was 3-2 Bears at the bottom of the 7th (and last) inning. The Bears pitcher struck out the first batter. (I think. I was busy biting my nails, so I might be a little off. The first batter definitely did not get on base though.) The second batter hit a short fly to the pitcher, for two outs with no men on. Which brings us to the third batter for the Spoons, who, PS, is a kid I teach. There were some strikes and a ball and maybe a few fouls (I SAID I wasn't Roger Angell), and then, with a 1-2 count, my kid hit a line drive to third base.

The Bears third baseman bobbled the ball for what seemed like an eternity and then, when he finally got his hands on it, overthrew first base. By approximately 8012 miles. "That's it, it's over" I thought sadly as I bit my nails and watched the batter round first base. But then I heard G shouting, "Make the tag!" and I blinked back tears just in time to see a Bear (the first baseman, I think) make baseball's most beautiful tag. A tag that, if you've been keeping track, ended the game. 3-2 Bears.

G's Bears went crazy. G's fans went crazy. G himself went a bit crazy. "I love you, G!" a Bear yelled genuinely, jumping into his arms and remaining there until just before additional Bears doused G with the contents of the water cooler. I don't know that I've ever seen a happier G.

The best part, though? Two dejected-looking Silver Spoons broke with their team to shake G's hand and congratulate him on a game well played. Oh, and the second-best part is that the Bears are going to the playoffs for the first time in 20 years. Because, as a poster in the stands noted, my buddy G rocks.

*from coaching, not from teaching

It's That Little Souvenir Of A Colorful Year That Makes Me Smile Inside

I haven't talked to my best friend in AGES. Well, okay, it's been maybe a few weeks. But that's pretty much like ages. I miss her.

We've been playing phone tag for the past week and a half and have now gone for so long without talking that neither one of us really wants to call the other unless we have a significant chunk of time to devote to catching up. Sure I could call her right now, but I have papers to grade and she has kids to put to bed, and while we might be able to chat for a few minutes, we'd hang up the phone still feeling like we hadn't talked in ages.

After eighteen years of friendship -- only five of which have been lived in close proximity to each other -- we're used to this. So I'm okay. I'm sure we'll each pour ourselves a glass or five of wine and have a good long talk this weekend. Fortunately I have The Sundays to tide me over until then.

More than any other band -- save perhaps Voice of the Beehive -- The Sundays remind me of Nisha. It was Nisha who discovered The Sundays and Nisha who refused to remove them from the tape deck no matter how many times I insisted I needed to hear "There's a Barbarian in the Back of My Car" RIGHT NOW. I swear, we listened to Reading, Writing and Arithmetic until it fell apart.

And although I'm partial to "Hideous Towns" simply because it makes me laugh every time I hear Harriet Wheeler sing sweetly, "Ooh, hideous towns make me throw. . .UP," the much more common "Here's Where the Story Ends" was the only one I could find on YouTube:

And Thus The Seeds Of Dorkiness Were Sown

As I contemplated Martin Luther King Day today I had a happy childhood memory. Anyone who knows me well could attest to the fact that this doesn't happen often, so humor me here.

One of the few things I remember fondly from my childhood is the long car rides my family took when we went to visit our relatives. I know most kids don't like long car rides, and I know all you hip, modern parents now have DVD players and skee-ball and kiddie pools in your vehicles to keep your children from driving you completely insane, and I'm sure my parents would have too, had that sort of thing been available back then, but my point is that as a young traveler I did not require even the potholder-weaving kits designed to occupy my attention. While my brother and sister bickered and whined and wondered if we were there yet, I was content to simply look out the window or read a library book.

Eventually everyone fell asleep except me and my dad, who was driving. And although we didn't speak -- perhaps because we didn't speak, it was during those long, silent road trips that I felt closest to my dad. We were sharing something the rest of the family was sleeping through, even if that something was nothing more than cow pasture after cornfield after Texaco station. Of course, the reason I didn't sleep through the car rides was that I found cow pastures and cornfields and Texaco stations sort of interesting, or rather, I just liked knowing about stuff.

I fault my parents for many things, but I am eternally grateful that they rarely missed an opportunity to foster and support this curiosity when I was a little girl. For one particular road trip when I was about eight, my mom borrowed an audio biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the public library. I'm not sure anything I was exposed to as a kid shaped me quite as much as the story of this man's life. Obviously I'd learned about Dr. King in school -- even if I DID live in Virginia where until very recently King had to share his day with Confederate generals Lee and Jackson -- but riding in the back of our station wagon listening to recordings of Dr. King's speeches, eyes wide with wonder; waking my mom up to flip the tape or change the batteries for me while I sat mesmerized, all that had a powerful effect on my little eight-year-old self.

It's possible that my parents simply wanted to hear King's biography themselves and hoped I'd suffer through it without complaints, but looking back I realize they probably did this for me. My sister couldn't have cared less about Martin Luther King, plus she slept through every road trip we ever took. My brother was a toddler in a carseat who certainly couldn't have appreciated the concept of soul force at that age any more than his militant ass can appreciate it now. So that leaves only me and my steadfast refusal, even then, to hit back.

What's amazing about all this is not that my conservative parents exposed me to something as weighty and un-conservative as nonviolent resistance at such a young age, but that the people who once gave their eight-year-old bookworm of a daughter ten hours of Martin Luther King, Jr. now routinely wonder how a thirty-one-year-old liberal pacifist snuck into their family.

Mea Culpa

I had a strange dream the other night:

My sister was hanging out at my house (which wasn't my actual house, but was supposed to be my house in the dream) and she called me over to the computer to discuss what she did and did not like about my blog. "All this stuff about politics -- ugh -- so boring!" she admonished. "So I just got rid of it," she announced happily. "What do you mean you got rid of it?" I asked with a hint of panic. "I just clicked those little boxes next to the posts I don't wanna read so they won't show up when I come here," she explained.

And then, as I began to freak out, my brother appeared out of nowhere and explained to my sister that clicking those little boxes deletes the posts for everyone, not just for the person doing the clicking. (For the record, I have no idea what "those little boxes" are -- I just made 'em up.)

The rest of the dream kind of happened in a jumble. I started interrogating my sister to determine which posts she'd deleted while she apologized repeatedly and my brother tried to calm us both down. But the more missing posts I discovered, the more upset I became, until I realized my sister had deleted one of my all-time favorite posts, at which point I began to cry, prompting my sister to apologize yet again. "Oh my god I'm so sorry!" she said, trying to hug me. And instead of doing what any normal person would do and accepting both her hug and her apology, I grabbed a nearby aerosol can (of what I don't know) and sprayed my sister IN THE FACE while I screamed at her, "How could you be so stupid?!"

So.

Obviously this raises a number of issues. First, that of the aerosol can. Doesn't my dream self know how bad that shit is for the planet? Second, the fact that I'm now dreaming about my friggin' BLOG indicates a certain level of blog obsession one might expect to find only among the clinically insane. But most importantly, my dream self is a BITCH!

Generally speaking, I do not A) scream at people, B) call them stupid, or C) spray them in the face with unknown substances. If I WERE to do any of those things, it certainly wouldn't be in response to an apology.

I have strict rules about apologies despite the fact that I come from a non-apologizing family. Oh, and we're Irish, which means we drink too much and we have bad tempers. But do we say we're sorry when we let our besotted tempers get the best of us? Hell no! Because that, my blogfriends, would mean we're not always right about everything. And being wrong is apparently something one should never admit. Sure, when we were kids, my parents TOLD us to apologize, but I don't think I ever saw them apologize to each other, and they rarely apologized to us.

In fact, my sister and I are the only members of our family who apologize, and that's a fairly recent (in the grand scheme of things) development. Apologies do not come easily to girls who were raised to believe that admitting you're wrong is a sign of weakness, but we're working on it. One thing we've got down is that when someone apologizes to you, you accept their apology. End of story.

Of course, if you're asleep and there's a spray can nearby, all bets are off.

Weddings And Crabs And Horses, Oh My!

Once again, I spent the weekend at my parents' beach house, this time with my sister and her boyfriend Mark. I mentioned last weekend how beautiful October on the Outer Banks is, and this weekend was particularly beautiful. The weather was great -- sunny and in the mid-60s with a brisk west wind. AND the olive bushes are in bloom, which means the whole island smells like heaven, or at least like heaven SHOULD smell.

It was a great weekend for a wedding, which was why we were there. Our friend MC, who my sister and I have been friends with since the early 90s when we all worked at a bathing suit shop together, finally got hitched to the great guy she's been dating for years.

The wedding was about 42 miles from our house, all but 15 miles of which were down 45 mph two-lane rural roads. We left the house at 1:23. For a wedding that started at 2:00. You do the math.

I was driving and I'm proud to say we rolled up to the wedding at 2:15, in time to catch almost all of the ceremony. I am, however, sorry that I scared Mark by passing three cars at once, although if he'd gotten in the shower sometime before 12:50 such maniacal driving might have been avoidable.

Anyway, the ceremony was awesome -- a small casual affair right on the beach, with bare feet all around.

Everyone slipped back into their flip-flops for the reception, which was on the Sound (west side of the island), and which, with the west wind, was fucking freezing. We spent most of our time chatting with our former bathing suit store employers about the evils of chain stores and then left right after cake, which was not too long after my sister looked at me and said, "Um, your nose is running" and I said, "Oh crap. I can't even FEEL my nose."

We snuck out the back to say goodbye to the caterer, who I used to work for and who was still cooking. "Damn, ya'll are still steamin' crabs?" I asked as I watched the poor little bastards scrambling around in a cardboard box. "Shit, we have about a bushel left, and there's still a bunch inside," the guy said. "What are you gonna do with them all?" I laughed. "Do you wanna take some home with you?" he asked.

And so we did. Two dozen of them, in fact. Then we went home and I made some hushpuppies (30 of them, in fact) and we sat around and picked crabs for the rest of the night. Yum.

Yesterday morning we got up and drove up North to what everyone calls four-wheel drive country because, well, the only way to get to it is by driving on the beach, and you need a four-wheel-drive for that. I had some reservations about this, what with it being completely environmentally irresponsible, but I'd never been up there before and I kinda wanted to check it out. This is one of the least developed parts of the Outer Banks, and it's also where the wild horses, who used to roam freely throughout the area, now live.

When I was a kid, it was not uncommon to walk outside and find a horse in your front yard, but as Corolla got more and more built up, life for the horses became more and more dangerous. Tourists fed the horses from their cars and perched their children on top of them for photos, and oh! ran over them, until the herd was finally rounded up and moved north away from civilization.

I miss seeing the horses, but it's merely one of the many things I miss about the Corolla of 20 years ago. And moving them was probably the best possible compromise between "progress" (I mean "rampant development") and conservation. It's been a good thing for the horses. When they moved the herd in 1994 I think there were about 20 horses. Today the herd is about 75 strong. And we saw five of those 75 yesterday. You're not supposed to go near them, but there's no law against them coming near you.

Anyway, some pictures. . .

LYLAS

I'm headed to Jacksonville, Florida tomorrow morning to visit my best friend and to celebrate our 31st birthdays. The fact that A) I'm getting on a plane and that B) my flight leaves at 6:55 on a Saturday morning should indicate just how much I love her.

Nisha and I have been friends since the 8th grade, when we each suddenly found ourselves mysteriously befriended by the same band of cheerleader types and shortly thereafter (in the grand scheme of things) decided that wasn't our scene.

When you've been friends with the same chick since you were 13, it's hard to sit around drinking very expensive gin out of even more expensive glasses while holding her children in your lap and not experience just a teensy bit of cognitive dissonance. In my mind we're still 19, sitting around a bonfire drinking Boone's Farm out of paper cups and talking about boys.

There's really nothing quite like a friend who's known you and loved you since your big hair days, a friend who sometimes knows you better than you know yourself, a friend who simply pours you a glass of wine and curls up next to you on the couch when you show up on her doorstep unannounced in tears carrying a bag large enough to suggest you might be staying for a while, a friend who will ditch her husband and kids to pick you up from the airport at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, a friend who reminds you every damn year that you are three days older than she is.

And so, in honor of our birthday celebration, I offer a photographic history of our friendship. Fortunately, I have no record of the early years (1988-1989), although I bet Nisha does. Additionally, we had a bit of a falling out in 1994 -- I don't remember why, I think maybe she hated my boyfriend -- so I don't have a picture from that year. Lastly, for some reason, I couldn't find a photo from 1996. Other than that, here you go.

Happy Birthday to us.

Oh! I forgot to mention that there are exactly zero good pictures of us in existence. We don't know why.

I’m Actually Somewhat Articulate When Sober

I’m at my parents’ beach house this weekend for what was supposed to be a family reunion. Many family members backed out at the last minute, including my sister. I, however, am not the backing-out type (unless we’re taking about weddings) so I was doing some serious drinking with my cousin Kate last night. I was also, judging by the message I left my sister, waxing philosophical about skinny dipping in the community pool, a practice we and our girlfriends have been engaging in since we were teenagers.

Hey. I was just tryin’ to explain, like, the beauty of the community pool and it. . .it wasn’t really goin’ over well and then I realized, you know, how much I missed you and how, like, you know. . . community pool, no community pool. . .there’s somethin' to be said for like, oh and by the way I’m drunk, but there’s somethin' to be said for like the whole you and me thing and the whole like, you know (unintelligible whispering) um, so, oh and Kate says we’re gonna keep callin’ you back until you answer but don’t worry it’s like two o'clock in the mornin' so we’re not gonna do that ‘cause I'munna [I am going to] go to sleep.

But so like you know, the POOL and, like, the whole takin’ your clothes off and jumpin’ in the pool when you don’t have the “appropriate permission” to do so. . . like, there’s somethin’ to be said for the FUN of that that’s kinda lost on, like, people who are all about doin’ the right thing or whatever. ‘Cause I am actually all about doin’ the right thing but I’m not all about payin’ my money to jump in the community pool.

So anyway, uh, yeah, I’m drunk. Okay bye. I love you. Bye.

(several seconds of silence)

And you didn’t answer for the record no bye.

My Family Is Fucking Weird, Vol. II

Main Idea: Not OJ

Supporting Details: A few months ago when I was at home visiting my parents, my brother filled an empty orange juice jug with filtered water, wrote "Not OJ" on the outside of the jug to avoid confusion, and placed the jug in the fridge to keep the water cold. However, my family is not the type of family to just leave it at that. Which is why, if you look in our fridge, you will find a variety of items that could not possibly ever be mistaken for orange juice sporting the sharpied label "Not OJ."

Note, by the way, the conspicuous absence of any actual orange juice.

And, yes, the photos are staged, but only in so much as I artfully arranged all the "Not OJ" items before taking the pictures. Ordinarily we do not keep our pickles next to our milk. We keep them next to our dog's allergy injections.

Unsolicited

My mom, who will be visiting in a week or so, called me today. When I answered the phone she said, "I'm about to go in the package (liquor) store. Do you need anything besides Tanqueray?"

I would simply like to point out that I have the kind of mom who A) calls me from the package store to see if I need anything and B) views my need for Tanqueray as a given.

No you can't have her!

My Family Is Fucking Weird, Vol. I

Main Idea: Lip-Sync Routines

Supporting Details: The other night, my dad and I sat around drinking gin (he with Tom Collins mix and I with tonic) while listening to Dwight Yoakam's cover of Elvis Presley's "Suspicious Minds" on repeat. We listened so long and drank so much that my dad finally -- and very happily-- suggested we work on a "routine" to perform at our upcoming family reunion. He even demonstrated what that routine might look like, leaping into the living room from behind the dining room wall and crooning into his alcoholic-beverage-microphone as the singing began. He then left my brother approximately five messages in the hopes of discussing the routine and the rehearsal thereof. My brother's only response when he finally called back: "I'm not sure that's an Elvis song. I think it's just a Dwight Yoakam song."

Because he, like the rest of us, is used to this shit. It's a given. Any gathering of more than two of my family members, given enough time and enough alcohol, will result in a lip-sync routine. Actually, it's probably not lip-syncing, it's probably just regular old singing. It's just that the music's so loud by that point that it's hard to tell.

Some members of the family have a standard routine to a specific song. My sister does "Tiny Dancer." She's not above being a backup singer in someone else's routine, but "Tiny Dancer" is hers and hers alone.



Other members of the family, namely my dad, will get down to just about any song they know.



The rest of us will only get in on the lip-sync action given enough alcohol and the right song.



Lip-syncing is fun. Just ask the neighbors.

I don't know what other families do on Christmas, but I distinctly remember one Christmas that my mom looked out the window and noticed our neighbors across the street laughing their asses off at my sister and I singing and dancing around to Madonna's "Like a Prayer." It was on repeat. And we were in college.

Sure, it's a little odd. But if you'd spent your childhood watching your dad twirl around the kitchen singing "Leader of the Pack" and "Poison Ivy" into utensils while clearing the table and washing the dishes, you might have developed a penchant for lip-sync routines too.

Billions And Billions

The last serious conversation I had -- or attempted to have -- with my father was five years ago. It was my summer of Carl Sagan, a summer I spent sitting on the beach reading every book Sagan ever wrote (this is not a good way to pick up lifeguards, by the way). I started, of course, with Cosmos, and was completely enthralled. However, I didn't quite understand Chapter 8, which is about special relativity.

Special relativity is tricky and it boggled my mind, but in a way I enjoyed. I remember gazing at the stars and trying to wrap my mind around the possibility that a star I was looking at right then might very well no longer exist, that the light I was seeing had traveled years to get to me and that the star it left might have died in the meantime, yet I could still see it. I was fascinated by the thought that I might be looking at something that didn't exist. I loved this concept.

My dad is a nuclear engineer, so I knew he understood this far better than I did. I was excited -- excited that I knew someone who could help me understand relativity and excited that I had something to share with my dad. He’s a science-y person who I’ve always suspected was secretly disappointed he didn’t have science-y kids. I brought him my copy of Cosmos and asked him to read Chapter 8 and then discuss it with me.

My dad flipped through the book, glanced at me, and then said, "Stick to History, Megan" as he handed it back to me.

Maybe he was tired, maybe he’d had a bad day, maybe he’d long ago accepted me for the history type I was and not the science type he wanted. I don’t know. What I do know is that it was then that I stopped trying to be close to my father or to win his affection.

You Can Run, But You Can't Hide

My younger sister Laura, who is both a high school guidance counselor and a recovering die-hard Republican, and I just had a conversation about how No Child Left Behind is destroying public education.

Laura: Yeah, all because of that stupid George Bush.

Me: Who you voted for. Twice.

Laura: I didn't vote for him twice!

Me: Liar liar pants on fire.

Laura: No, the first time around I voted for Clinton.

Me: That's interesting. Because the first time around Clinton wasn't running.

Laura: Well I voted for Clinton when he ran against the first Bush.

Me: No you didn't. You couldn't vote then.

Laura: Of course I could.

Me: (mentally counting back) It was 1992. I couldn't vote then.

Laura: Well, I voted ahead. I think the first time I could vote I voted for Clinton. And then I voted for that Kilgerry guy.

Me: Kilgore?

Laura: Yeah.

Me: Great. He ran for governor of Virginia. Last fall. And he was crazy.

Laura: Well, who ran against Bush the first time?

Me: Gore.

Laura: Oh yeah. I definitely didn't vote for him. Who ran against him the second time?

Me: Kerry.

Laura: That's right, I said Kilgerry. Yeah, I think I voted for him.

Me: Liar liar pants on fire.

Laura: Okay, so I'm not as smart as you and Brian (our brother)! Big deal!

At least she admits that smart people don't vote for Bush.

Oh, and PS, I love my sister, so I'm not making fun of her in a mean way. She just proofread this and laughed her ass off. And as she proofread, I said, "You voted for Kilgore?!" But she didn't. "I just combined some names," she explained.

A Bonus BONUS Post For Patrick*

I'm not sure which my dad likes more, garbage night or the subsequent garbage day. For as long as I can remember, the man has been obsessed with what he calls garbage night, the night before the trash is picked up. Even as a child I can remember him hurrying around, emptying the small trash cans in all the bathrooms or opening the refrigerator, shaking nearly empty bottles and saying things like, "It's garbage night. Who wants to finish this ketchup?"

This has always struck me as odd because, you know, they'll be back to pick up the trash again next week. Couldn't the ketchup bottle wait until then?

I once asked my dad some variation of this very question. He seemed genuinely amazed that I didn't get it and explained, very seriously, that he didn't want the garbage men to be disappointed when they came to pick up our garbage. Other neighbors might fill their trash cans only halfway or three-quarters full, but my dad would be damned if he was going to treat our garbage men that way. As if tossing less than a full can of trash into the truck would be disappointing to those who actually have to lift the suckers.

Same deal with recycling, only considering some of the things stored in recyclables, this finishing things thing of my dad's can get interesting. I distinctly recall the Labor Day weekend of my 16th year, when my dad and I were charged with closing up the beach house at the end of the summer. In addition to all the cleaning and packing and ketchup-finishing, my dad also took it upon himself to finish every open bottle of liquor in the house, which was no small feat. Although he had to sleep on the floor that night to minimize the spins and probably found his throbbing head the next morning fairly disappointing, you can bet your ass the recycling men were not disappointed by a meager recycling take.

I mention all this because I received an email from my dad today with the subject line "garbage nites." After nearly ten years of living on my own, during which I have almost always remembered to put out the garbage on garbage night, I thought to myself, "Jesus Christ. Please tell me he is not emailing me to remind me when garbage night is." He wasn't. He was emailing me to tell me he'd noticed a lot of scrap wood lying around outside on his last visit to the beach and he thought it would be a great idea for me to "please take a few pieces of the scrap wood that is on the ground behind the house and put it in both of the garbage cans every garbage day so we can slowly get rid of it all."

It is obviously killing my dad that A) there is something lying around that he could be systematically getting rid of, B) he has two perfectly good garbage cans just languishing here in their relative emptiness, and C) his daughter is totally wasting the garbage men's time with her triflin' one trash bag a week.

What he doesn't know is that the recycling men are almost always thrilled with my weekly offering.

*Patrick, by the way, is my favorite student I never taught. He will be a junior at Colby next year. As a freshman he was named Colby's Most Wonderful and Awesome New Student, or something like that. Patrick is indeed both wonderful and awesome.

Pick Your Poison

As I emerged from a beautiful, bathwater-like Atlantic Ocean late in the afternoon on Saturday, I glanced up the beach to see my mom walking toward me carrying only her beach bag and a chair, no beach umbrella. Over the last five years, my mom has had various bits of herself scraped away as skin cancer creeps slowly over her body. After decades upon decades of sun-worshipping, she has been warned by doctors that any further exposure to UV rays will only add to the sun's damage. Her beachgoing children go to great lengths to ensure that she is appropriately sunscreened, umbrellaed, and floppy hatted. So, when she sat down next to me on Saturday my immediate response was not a cheerful, "Hey Mom" but a scowling, "Where's your umbrella?"

"I've decided I'd rather die of skin cancer than Alzheimer's," my mom answered matter-of-factly, but in a tone that indicated she'd clearly given this a lot of thought. I thought about it for a few seconds myself before I said, "Fair enough" and I then allowed her to sun herself for the rest of the day, even helping her to time her flips for an even tan (30 minutes on the front, 30 minutes on the back).

Because, you know what, Alzheimer's is a bitch. Skin cancer's no picnic either, but given those two options for my mom (or, let's be honest here, for myself in 30 years or so) I'll take skin cancer all the way. Every single person on my maternal grandmother's side of the family has had Alzheimer's -- including my grandmother, who died a couple months ago no longer knowing who anyone was, and my grandmother's sister, who is like a second grandmother and who was escorted home by the police yesterday after going for a walk and being unable to find her way back.

I don't want this to happen to my mother. I can't bear the thought of reminding her who I am every time I see her. Or later, of reminding her who I am and realizing she cannot place me, that she has no recollection of ever having had a daughter named Megan. I do not look forward to agonizing over whether she can best be cared for by an institution or by myself and my siblings. It will break my heart to watch as she struggles to call up information she knows she should have and knows she used to have but that now eludes her. I do not wish to register my mom with the National Alzheimer's Association as I would a pet whose wandering off I fear, nor do I wish to live in very real fear of her wandering off.

So, if my mom wants to lie in the sun all summer long and tell me the same stories over and over again, I'm going to let her. At least she knows who I am, and at least she's wearing SPF 30.

Perhaps Her Thumb Is A Bit Too Green

My mom is an avid gardener, and her garden kicks ass.

(www.annetaintor.com)

In the warmer months (i.e., March-November), she can usually be found doing one of the following:

• planting plants
• watering plants
• digging up plants and replanting them elsewhere
• pruning, dead-heading, or otherwise tending to plants
• weeding around plants
• shopping for plants
• reading about plants in one of her many plant/gardening encyclopedias
• talking to plants.

She takes this gardening thing seriously, and she's really good at it -- I think because she truly loves plants and thinks of them almost like children.

My brother did a post yesterday about how he found a plant in my mom's garden and thought, just for a second, that she might be growing pot. She wasn't, but that reminded us of our favorite mom gardening story.

A few summers ago, my brother removed some seeds from an otherwise empty cigarette box in the freezer and planted them in this thicket behind our beach house. Only one of the seeds actually sprouted, and it grew into a scraggly little excuse for a plant. My brother was understandably concerned for the welfare of his wee plant and frequently asked me for advice on how to make it flourish. Having once dated a boy who'd secretly converted the back corner of his mother's basement into a small-scale hydroponic marijuana farm, I was no stranger to illicit gardening, but his operation was entirely different from my brother's and I couldn't help. The plant continued to struggle, and the situation grew dire. (It probably didn't help that my brother kept pinching off bits of the plant for his own recreational use, but whatever.)

One evening after we'd returned from the beach, my brother was hosing off the dog while my mom stood nearby lecturing me on my poor care of my drooping tomato plants. My brother listened attentively and then said, "Hey Mom, come here and tell me what's wrong with this plant," grabbing her hand and tromping off with her into the bushes as my jaw dropped. When they emerged a minute later, my mom looked pissed.

"Jesus, Brian, that plant needs fertilizer!," she declared indignantly. "And it's not getting nearly enough light. Go get the pruners* and trim some of those branches back there!," she commanded, waving in the general direction of the bushes as I looked on in amazement. "Mom," I said, "do you know what that plant is?" "Well I'm assuming it's marijuana, Megan," she answered huffily, "but that's no way to treat a plant."

She then marched off to direct the chopping of limbs, and carefully tended to the plant for the rest of the summer.

*The tool my mom instructed my brother to get is actually called loppers, but she told me no one would know what I was talking about unless I called them pruners.

Fashion Sense

I'm always a bit dumbfounded when I read the care instructions inside a t-shirt and find the recommendation "warm iron as needed." I don't iron much. I don't really believe in it. My primary fashion consideration is comfort, which is not to say that I don't have some kick-ass clothes. I just don't own anything that requires tucking. . .or ironing, really. So anyway, whenever I see that bit about using a warm iron on my t-shirts, I laugh a little. Because who the hell irons their t-shirts?

My mother, that's who. The other day I walked into her laundry room and found her happily ironing her outfit for the day, which included a red Polo (also not part of my wardrobe) t-shirt that wasn't even wrinkled.

You think that's bad? I've caught the woman ironing sheets before.

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

When I was a kid, my dad used to take me and my sister and brother to see the Tidewater Tides (now the Norfolk Tides) play minor league baseball. It was there that I developed a deep and abiding love of baseball and there that my brother, somehow, didn't. (Or maybe he just hates baseball because my dad likes it, I don't know.) Collectively, these Tides games with my dad are some of my fondest childhood memories. I remember how the anticipation would build as I rode to the games in the back of my dad's green VW bug. I remember scampering up to the cheap seats when it began to rain, waiting out the rain under the narrow overhang in the hopes that play would resume, and moving down to the abandoned expensive seats to enjoy the remainder of the game once it finally did. I remember dragging my mom to a game and looking at her like she had fourteen heads when I discovered she'd brought her cross-stitching in case the game got boring (boring?!). I remember bringing my glove (which I had to share with my sister) to the games and praying that I'd catch a foul ball. I remember being terrified that a foul ball might come my way and hit me in the face before I could get the glove up, and that my dad would be disappointed his little girl hadn't been keeping her eye on the ball. I remember seeing Darryl Strawberry (who we later cleverly took to calling Darryl Strawbaby, although I don't remember why. Coke?) play before he became famous. I remember getting lots and lots of promotional Tides and Mets stuff (the Tides are a Mets farm team), including a sweet Tides duffle bag that years later I let my now-baseball-hating brother have.

When I was older and we lived in DC, not Tidewater, I became a die-hard Orioles fan. I cut many a class in college to watch an important game, emailing my understanding professors: "Sorry, I can't make it to class this afternoon -- it's Opening Day. . .the O's might sweep the Yankees. . .it's game four of the ALCS." This lasted for years until Peter Angelos traded away half the team in 2000, scattering my favorite players far and wide. My beloved Mike Mussina willingly defected to the fucking Yankees, Harold Baines went to the White Sox, Mike Bordick to the Mets, and BJ Surhoff to the Braves (he cried when this was announced, and I cried the first time I saw him play for the Braves). Only Cal Ripken, Jr. remained, probably because that bastard Angelos knew he'd be assassinated if he so much of as thought about trading Cal. Even after this shake-up I hung in there through the signing of Albert Belle and the manager-ships of Ray Miller and Mike Hargrove. But it's been years since I really loved the Orioles and years since I've followed baseball religiously. I miss it.

And since I now live a mere five minutes from Harbor Park, home of the first baseball team I ever loved, I feel a Tides game coming on.

Sigh Of Relief

On behalf of the internets I'd like to welcome my little brother back to the blogosphere, which he abandoned (along with speaking to me) about two weeks ago after we had an argument about baseball, of all things. Little bro' insisted baseball was for pansies and that he (and anyone with two arms) could play major league ball. Big sis, who fucking loves baseball, asked if perhaps little bro' had grown a wee bit too angry and pointed out that he wasn't much fun to be around anymore.

My brother was less than receptive (to put it mildly), but I'm kind of the teacherish motherish make-everything-better type and I love him more than just about anything else in the world -- way more than baseball -- so I persisted, encouraging him to have hope for the future and to see the humor even in bad situations, even though I knew he didn't want to hear it. (And he didn't: "I'm gonna go now because I really have to pee," he said to me. "No you don't, you just don't want to talk to me anymore," I countered. "That's true," he acknowledged, "but I'm gonna go anyway.")

That was two weeks ago, and I've spent most of the last two weeks worrying about him (worrying about shit is my thing). But at long last my brother called me this afternoon just to chat, and then this evening he emailed me the link to his new blog, where I discovered this:

I'll just try to find some kind of humor or hope in all of it 'cause I'm really not that guy that's constantly complaining and bringing everyone down and what not and I think hope is an important thing to hang onto. . . .I'm gonna try and look for some kind of light somewhere and try to not get bogged down along the way.

And that just makes me smile.

That's My Girl

My best friend since we were 13 is in town this week visiting her parents, who still live out in Virginia Beach where we grew up. I've been taking advantage of her proximity by basically spending every possible minute with her (and her husband and her kids). This evening she called around 8:00 (after dinner with her mother-in-law) to give me directions to her sister's house (also in VB), and it was clear from the suckiness of those directions that she was already wasted. But I didn't realize just how wasted until I arrived and found her rocking out to the Muppet Movie soundtrack. On vinyl.

She was so wasted that her husband finally said, "Honey if you don't stop I'm gonna chain you to something. And I'm not kidding." (He was kidding.)

This would be the same bff whose baby peed on me yesterday. She totally deserves a little rocking out. But, um, the Muppets are an odd choice.