Aw, Yeah

Boof Bonser served up six runs in the first inning of yesterday’s game, and although I was sorely tempted to find something better to do with my time, My Ho and I stuck it out, and my Darling Beloveds repaid our perseverance with a come-from-behind win that put them a game and a half in first place in the A.L. Central. This may be as fleeting as springtime in Minnesota, so let’s enjoy it while it lasts, shall we?

As if that wasn’t enough baseball joy for one day, last night My Ho, Demigoddess the Younger and I made a trip to the Champps in Eden Prairie to see Michael Cuddyer host a “Twins Unplugged” event featuring Jesse Crain and Nick “Is it warm in here, or is it just me?” Blackburn. I had never attended one of these events before, but when I heard who the guest Twins would be, I decided that Mr. Blackburn is definitely worth a drive to Eden Prairie. And I was so right.

I got an autograph and thanked him for restoring my will to live after the you-know-who trade. He looked straight at me and smiled (SWOON), and said he didn't think he'd be filling those particular shoes any time soon. It took considerable effort not to climb over the table and LICK HIM.

Boof Bonser was also there and appeared to be in good spirits despite the above-mentioned first inning. He confirmed that he is still letting Livan wear the big trousers.

How Bad it Got

The Day After

From: Concerned Co-Worker
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 9:41 AM
To: EverydaySuperGoddess

are u ok?


From: EverydaySuperGoddess
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 9:45 AM
To: Concerned Co-Worker

Pretty far from it, actually.


From: Concerned Co-Worker
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 9:46 AM
To: EverydaySuperGoddess

We got robbed - I don't know what they were thinking.


From: EverydaySuperGoddess
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 9:52 AM
To: Concerned Co-Worker

It doesn't matter any more. I've decided to become a Cleveland Indians fan.


From: Concerned Co-Worker
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 9:55 AM
To: EverydaySuperGoddess

That is crazy talk. You are not abandoning your team!!!


From: EverydaySuperGoddess
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 9:59 AM
To: Concerned Co-Worker

I can't take the Twins' brand of baseball any more. I need a team that's willing to pay to keep its talent, not pass it on for not even a handful of f*cking PROSPECTS.

Besides which, Grady Sizemore is HOTT.


From: Concerned Co-Worker
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 10:00 AM
To: EverydaySuperGoddess

You are changing teams for a piece of as$. I am so disappointed in you.


From: EverydaySuperGoddess
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 10:06 AM
To: Concerned Co-Worker

It's always been about the butts. I've never pretended differently.



The Day After The Day After

From: Sister Meghan
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008, 8:01 AM
To: EverydaySuperGoddess
Subject: HYA

How are you today? Feeling better?


From: EverydaySuperGoddess
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 8:08 AM
To: Sister Meghan
Subject: RE: HYA

I think I'm having an existential crisis. Asking the hard questions.

I'm also thinking of taking up ceramics. That seems like a nice, non-painful hobby, and at least I'd have something to SHOW for it.


From: Sister Meghan
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:18 AM
To: EverydaySuperGoddess
Subject: RE: HYA

What hard questions are you asking?


From: EverydaySuperGoddess
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:29 AM
To: Sister Meghan
Subject: RE: HYA

Oh, you know, questions like:

Why would I continue to be a Twins fan when every time I grow to really love a player, they disappear to the free agent market or get traded for a microphone?

Should I quit baseball all together? Could I if I even wanted to?

Or, should I just quit the Twins and find myself another team? Because, clearly, I am constitutionally incapable of NOT becoming overly emotionally invested, to the point where my mental stability is in peril.

And, if I do abandon baseball, or even just the Twins, then what exactly does that leave me with? Who would I be then?

Those kinds of hard questions.

And, of course, the hardest one of all—how interested am I, really, in living in a world without Johan?


From: Sister Meghan
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:32 AM
To: EverydaySuperGoddess
Subject: RE: HYA

Well, you could become a Mets fan. At least he didn't go to the Yankees....


From: EverydaySuperGoddess
Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2008 10:41 AM
To: Sister Meghan
Subject: RE: HYA

Yes, thank God for that. It is a small consolation that he's gone to the National League, which means I'll hardly ever have to SEE him pitch in another team's uniform. I don't know if my heart could take it.

Or, make that, I don't know if the cold, dead space that used to be my heart could take it.


A Few Days After That

From: EverydaySuperGoddess
Sent: Monday, February 4, 2008, 10:50 AM
To: Batgirl
Subject: Johan

None of my co-workers were at all surprised that I took a sick day on Wednesday.

On Thursday I took down all the photos that I had up at work.

The next, and most painful, step will be to take down all the stuff at home and put away my jersey.

And I am straight-up mad at everybody.


From: Batgirl
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 1:41 PM
To: EverydaySuperGoddess
Subject: Johan

i know, i know. i've chosen to pretend it hasn't happened.


From: EverydaySuperGoddess
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 1:49 PM
To: Batgirl
Subject: Johan

Yes. That's probably best.

Except that, well, the change will become painfully apparent on opening day, when a certain butt is noticeably not doing a certain waggle on the pitcher's mound.

(*Insert pained, weepy sigh here.*)

But then again, I probably won't be able to see anything through the tears, anyway.

I serously cried for five hours on Tuesday night. I came home from work, grunted in the general direction of the children, and then went directly to bed with a box of tissues and a pizza. The girls didn't even know it had happened until My Ho called and told them.

DemiGoddess the Elder made me snickerdoodles.

Ugh.

So, Torii is an Angel. We all knew it was coming, I've been braced for it for two years, and given that the last couple of weeks have been jam-packed with school musical performances, the Thanksgiving holiday, Mother Bear Project appearances and preparing for DemiGoddess the Elder's Super Sweet Sixteen Birthday Blowout Bonanza (I've hired Hannah Montana to entertain, Ben & Jerry will be staffing the ice cream bar, and each guest will receive their own Hummer in a pink satin party bag), I haven't had a lot of time to get overly upset about it.

But now the speculation vacuum that Mr. Hunter left behind is filling in with rumors concerning Mi Corazón. I warned my boss yesterday that I've already started saving up sick time, because if Johan goes anywhere, it will be a few days before I'll be able to get out of bed.

He actually thought I was joking.

Making Room for Jesus

The homecoming dance was Saturday night, and the DemiGoddesses both looked appropriately sparkly and fabulous, in spite of the fact that I cruelly forced them to do housework on Saturday afternoon. This caused major dismay on the part of Demi the Younger, who voiced concern that she might "smell like bleach" at the dance. As the bathroom-cleaning she was engaged in at the time was five hours before her scheduled departure, I assured her that she would have plenty of time to take a shower and de-bleach her loveliness.

Another crisis was narrowly averted when I realized that I had absolutely no idea what to do with Demi the Elder’s hair. It’s curly, you see, which my own most definitely is not, and so the wash/volumize/blowdry routine that works so well on my head was not translating well on hers at all, and my ineptitude with a diffuser attachment soon became painfully apparent. Fortunately, my sister Molly, who is gorgeous and who has almost the exact same hair as Ms. Elder, arrived in time to save the day. A little conditioner, a little scrunch-scrunch-scrunch, and sister Betsy was ready to add the finishing touches with the curling iron. Voila!

Demi the Elder’s date was the Adorably Geeky Boyfriend (the AGB, for short), who apparently has not been to a lot of dances with girls, because when presented with the yellow rose boutonniere Ms. Elder brought for him, he tried to pin it on HER. There was no sign of a corsage. (Does this boy not have a mother?)

Grandma and grandpa, the aunts and I all fussed and admired and took pictures, and as Ms. Elder was on her way out the door, Demi the Younger reminded her sister to “make good choices” and “make room for Jesus.” This is Demi-speak for keeping enough space between oneself and one’s date to allow for the holy spirit to interpose and preserve the purity of all involved.


I have no doubt that Demi the Elder would have behaved herself at the dance anyway, but it was reassuring to know I’d have a mole in attendance who would be more than willing to report back on any Jesus-squeezing that might have been going on.

The Party’s Over

Well, so much for that, then. Nice that my Darling Beloveds could go out with a win (at Fenway no less) but they end the season under .500, and that makes me very, very sad.

Nobody seems to be able to explain exactly what happened. The bats died, Liriano was out recovering from Tommy John surgery, and the “Piranhas” were laugably un-piranha-like. There was the hand-licking greasiness of Sidney Ponson and the futility of Ramon Ortiz. Catchers dropped right and left, the bullpen faltered, and Mi Corazón was used and abused by Cleveland again and again and again. That hurt.

Justin Morneau broke his nose and bruised a lung, Joe Mauer had a hernia, and Michael Cuddyer tried to kill himself with his own batting helmet. Mike Redmond took Jim Thome’s bat upside his head and lived to tell the tale… until a smashed-up hand finally took him out in September. I waited and hoped, hoped and waited, for a 2006-style turnaround that never materialized, and toward the end of the season, about the only thing worth talking about any more was whether or not Torii Hunter will be back. And as I’ve said, I don’t have a whole lot of patience for speculation. Terry Ryan’s announcement a couple of weeks ago was like the crappy cherry on top of a seriously crappy cake.

Which is too bad, because this year My Ho had season tickets, and we had a lot of fun getting to know the ladies in the seats next to his in the front row of section 220. We were in those very seats when My Ho and I were pictured on the Kiss Cam.

I brought DemiGoddess the Elder and a couple of her friends, including Ms. H., who has been passionately in love with Joe Mauer for a large percentage of her young life, to the game during which he was awarded his American League batting title:


And I watched Demi the Younger’s friend A. wrestle a foul ball from some twentysomething asshat who tried to take it from her (I was halfway out of my seat to intervene when the formidable Ms. A. prevailed).

I spent a glorious Fourth of July sitting in the sunshine, gazing out over the lake and listening to my Darling Beloveds win at Yankee Stadium, thanks to the miracle that is My Ho’s XM satellite radio. Even though we had to listen to the Yankees announcers call the game, their repeated mispronouncing of “Kubel” and “Guerrier” soon turned into an awesome drinking game.


There was Bat Baby’s complete game, as well as a visit from Dr. Dave, during which we caught a Royals game, just like old times. And then there was the 20th reunion party for the 1987 World Series team, where, thanks to MyHo (who knows people), I very much enjoyed some face time with Tom Brunansky, Frank Viola, Greg Gagne, Jeff Reardon, and other members of that celebrated Minnesota Twins team.

It wasn’t all bad on the field, either. Jason Tyner finally got his major league home run:


Torii Hunter, Justin Morneau and Johan were All-Stars, and Scott Baker very nearly pitched a perfect game:


And Mi Corazón’s 17-strikeout game will continue warming my heart well into this coming winter.

At least until Twins Fest, anyway.

Hello, Goodbye

A couple of months ago I had a very vivid dream. It was like one of those you have after somebody dies, when the person you miss so much is there with you, and you know it isn’t really happening, but you’re so happy to see them and to spend time with them that you don’t want to wake up. Except in my dream, the person I was so happy to see was Demigoddess the Elder, age two. She was little enough to fit in my lap, and I held her there, smelling her head and gratefully stroking her hair.

When you first bring that little newborn home, full of anticipation and new-parent fears, no one dares to tell you that someday that little person will walk out the door and down the street toward her first day of high school, with barely a look over her shoulder as you wave from the front step. No one talks about the ache you’ll feel in your chest when, in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, you spy a little girl with hair almost the same, or you hear a certain familiarity in someone else’s child’s laugh at the grocery store.

I always thought that when the Demis grew older, I’d feel a sense of accomplishment. A readiness to let them go out into the world and do what they will with the things I’ve tried to teach them. And I do feel a lot of that. But saying goodbye to those little people hurts a lot more than I expected. I wasn’t prepared for this very real grief.

I don’t wish they had never grown up. I don’t want them to think that I begrudge them their maturity and independence. I’m very proud of the opinionated, creative, busy young people they’ve become. Which is why, when DemiGoddess the Younger complained a few days after the fact that I hadn’t made a bigger fuss about her first day at the senior high school, I said, “Just because people aren’t behaving in ways you expect, that doesn’t mean they aren’t dealing with things in their own way. What you didn’t see is that I spent most of that day trying very hard not to cry.”

Very Much Keeping the Doctor Away

The return of Honeycrisp apple season has become one of my very favorite things about fall. It’s an especially welcome event this autumn, during which there will be no joy of post-season play for the Twins, and no, I really don’t want to talk about that, thanks.

I bought our first Honeycrisps of the year on Monday night, and while I remembered them being delicious, the reality of these apples is sooooooo much better than I even remembered. They are so delicious that I had to lay down an allocation as soon as I brought them into the house—one per Goddess/DemiGoddess per day—because last year the Demis demolished five pounds of them in two days.

(Eat the cookies! Snack on chips! Walk up to the McDonald’s and buy yourselves a couple of Big Macs! But stay away from the Honeycrisps, you fresh-fruit gluttons!)

They're big apples. One per day is not unreasonable.

The Demis were not happy about the rationing, but clever Demi the Younger has found a way to prolong enjoyment of her daily allotment by cutting her apple in half in the morning. One half goes into her lunch, and the other half she stashes in the refrigerator for after school. She even sprinkles the after-school half with a little lemon juice so it doesn't turn brown before she gets home.

They are exactly THAT good.

But these morsels of September heaven also present a problem. The crisp, the juicy, the crunching and lip-smacking and “mmmmm-mmmmmm-mmmmm…” noises are impossible to stifle here in cubicle-land. So this morning when I arrived at work I apologized in advance to the co-worker in the next cube over. Because Honeycrisp apples are cannot be eaten quietly, and I don't think I can wait until lunch.

Quack, Quackity, Quack

So there is this boy that DemiGoddess the Elder spent a lot of time with last summer. He's a year ahead of her in school, but they met when they both had parts in The Visit last spring. His only scene was at the very beginning of the play, and hers was waaaay at the end, so the two of them spent a lot of get-to-know-you time backstage in between, apparently.

Once the school year ended, about once a week they’d get together to go bowling, or for bike rides, or over to his house to play Scrabble. She pretended it was all very casual, and assured me repeatedly that he hadn’t tried to make any moves on her. But from where I was standing, the thing was walking and talking an awful lot like the proverbial duck.

Mid-summer my suspicions were confirmed when, via instant message, he asked her if she'd like to "go out." This, I have since learned, is 21st-century teen speak for becoming boyfriend/girlfriend. She replied, also via IM, that she totally did want to "go out" (while also gently reprimanding him for asking a question of such monumental import in an instant message), and we knew it was official when the boy in question changed the status on his Facebook page from "single" to "in a relationship with DemiGoddess the Elder."

I was a little bit nervous about this development, obviously. She and I talked at length about how love can cause even a smart DemiGoddess with demonstrated good judgment to sometimes make choices that are not always in her best interest. (I did not go into explicit detail regarding how, exactly, I know this to be true, of course.)

Then one day he brought over his stop-motion camera and the two of them spent an afternoon creating animated movies featuring Fisher Price Little People. How could I not approve of that? And when Ms. Elder informed me that she wouldn’t be seeing him for the next few days because he was spending a week at meteorology camp, I knew I had nothing to worry about. My daughter’s boyfriend is a great big geek, and I couldn’t be more pleased.

Now that school is back in session, they're both busy with school work and extracurriculars, including the school musical. (He's in the pit orchestra this time, because he plays like nine different instruments. 'Nuff said.) So interactions have mostly been limited to the phone and the IMs. Which, again, is just dandy with me.

Last year Demi the Elder went to a couple of dances with boys, but homecoming next week will be her first one with a “boyfriend.” We found her a sparkly gold Jessica McClintock dress-up dress (at a deep, deep discount at my favorite outlet store), which she is very excited about wearing. And because I am such a smart Goddess, I had already picked up some blingy dress-up shoes and genuine faux jewels at various end-of-summer sales, knowing that we’d likely have use for them in the near future. Luckily, they all work beautifully together. She’s been wearing the shoes around the house all week, practicing her walk in heels, just like the girls on America’s Next Top Model.

Tyra Banks and me, we’ve got her back.

Aftermath

The DemiGoddesses and I tried to walk over to the bridge after the Twins game on Friday night, but were met with police tape for blocks and blocks. The closest we could get was well upriver, below the Guthrie Theater, and all we could see from that vantage point above the locks was the very north end of the wreckage. The top of that slab that sticks straight up was illuminated by the floodlights, a glimpse of twisted green girders that was enough to me cry.

I can't understand why there hasn't been a place designated for us to go, a place where we can see what happened to our city. All of us who live here have had our sense of place violently altered. Even the people who weren't directly impacted need to grieve. The Stone Arch Bridge has opened, at least, but the police tape still blocks off a huge radius around the site.

I didn't know until it was happening that our fine president was scheduled visit Minneapolis on Sunday morning. I wish I were a person who could simply accept without question another person’s attempt at kindness, but W's statements from the site just made me angry. I wanted to march down there and tell him to go back to Washington DC, because we are not interested in his brand of bad-grammar, staged-sympathy bullsh*t here. He said he was speaking "on behalf of the American people," but I'm pretty sure the American people can speak for themselves, thanks.

For example, there was this, a letter that arrived, along with a big box packed full of Moon Pies, pork rinds and other goodies, in the Minneapolis Star Tribune newsroom. It seems to me a much more genuine gesture, a gift from strangers in one part of the country to strangers in another part of the country, who suddenly find they have something in common:

“To Star Tribune Journalists:

A few days after the Virginia Tech shootings, a large box arrived in our newsroom. Inside was a note and lots of stress-relieving junk food like you'll find in this box. The note was from Joe Haight, managing editor of The Oklahoman of Oklahoma City. Joe wrote that similar boxes arrived in his newsroom after the McVeigh bombings. He recalled what that gesture meant to his staff, which had been worn down to a nub covering the catastrophic community event.

We were so moved that we vowed to pass it on when we next sensed a newsroom could use a little pick-me-up. So please consider this a journalistic chain letter of sorts, one that you'll pass on when the next bulletin breaks in a newsroom somewhere in America.

Enjoy the snacks. Sorry we couldn't send beer (company policy, ya know). And most of all, take care of yourselves.

The Roanoke Times Newsroom”

Examine My What?

I did not see Justin Morneau get his lung bruised on Friday night because sister-cousin Tiffany was in town from Seattle, and that is cause for much hoopla and celebration, as well as lots and lots of sangria.

Tiffany and the rest of the sister-cousins all attended parochial school back in the day, while my parents opted to send my sisters and me to public school. I always considered my 1970s Catholic upbringing to be very “Catholic Lite.” For us, CCD class was heavy on the touchy-feely, peace-and-love. We never once darkened the door of a confessional, and I couldn’t say a rosary to save my life. So we did not know until Friday night that in parochial school health classes, my sister-cousins and their little Catholic-school girlfriends learned some very interesting methods of birth control family planning. I won’t go into the gory details, but the phrase “examine your mucus” became the punchline at more than one point in the evening.

Gross, yes, but still arguably less traumatizing than seeing the American League MVP coughing up blood on TV.

DemiGoddess the Younger spent the weekend up north with my former mother-in-law, while Demi the Elder chose to stay home due to her numerous and pressing social obligations. Well, really, due to just one social obligation, which involved a certain sophomore boy from the cast of “The Visit,” with whom she shared a couple of spectacularly John Hughes-esque moments backstage during rehearsals. So this particular social obligation came in just a smidge higher on her priority list than spending the weekend in Brainerd with grandma. She had little heart bubbles bursting over her head all weekend.

I also took Ms. Elder out to practice driving on Saturday morning. The first time I let her drive my car was over Christmas vacation, and the fact that it took me six months to do it again is absolutely not a reflection on the quality of her driving. It simply took me that long to recover from the cramp in my right wrist, incurred as a result of an extended death grip on the passenger-side door handle during our first lesson.

For our second lesson, I chose the parkway around Lake Harriet, where the traffic is one way and the speed limit is 25 mph. She circled the lake three times, did not hit anything and was only honked at once. And I can still grip a pencil, so I’m calling it a success.

Signs that the School Year is Winding Down

DemiGoddess the Elder’s Girl Scout troop had a bridging ceremony the other night. She and the other girls in her troop, most of whom she’s been chums with since kindergarten, went from being “Cadettes” to “Seniors,” which is the last stop before adults. Looking at the little Brownies who were bridging to "Junior" Girl Scouts, it seemed like Ms. Elder was that little just a couple of days ago. I didn't bawl, though. I think that's progress.

During the ceremony, Ms. Elder paused mid-bridge, in front of all the parents of all the Scouts who were bridging that night, and did a hammy QEII-style wrist wave before crossing over to accept her new sash. I couldn't have been more proud.

Demi the Younger spent today at the pool with the rest of her eighth-grade class. She left for the bus this morning wearing flip-flops and her swimming suit under her clothes, even though it’s only about 70 degrees out today.

The kids got to eat pizza at the pool for lunch, which is just as well. She tells me that the offerings in the school cafeteria get progressively weirder as the last day of school approaches, as the lunch ladies attempt to use up and sell whatever food is left. Last week’s menu included something called “sub sandwich hot dish.” I don’t even want to know.

Almost, But Not Quite, Entirely Unlike Chipotlé

Halfway through her burrito last night, DemiGoddess the Younger said, "We're eating Aztec food. I'm doing a report on the Aztecs for school."

"The Aztecs ate rice and black beans and tortillas?" I asked.

"No, they ate dogs and turkeys and humans and tortillas."

"Aah. Sounds tasty."

You Can’t Miss Her

Last night I lost DemiGoddess the Elder in Super Target. One moment she was right there, then she said, “I’m going to look for some eyeshadow,” and she was gone.

In our usual (regular, average, non-super) Target store, this isn’t a big deal. It’s a smallish store, and we always run across each other eventually as we’re shopping. But Super Target is, as the name implies, super big. All the departments where I usually find her are in different places than they are in our Target, and they are    very        far             apart.

On my third loop through the store, I called her name in the women’s dressing room and even checked the bathrooms with no luck. Demi the Elder is well past the age of easy abduction. It’s hard to snatch and run with a 5'5" high-school freshman without drawing a considerable amount of attention. But even so, I started to freak out.

In desperation, I went to the guest services desk and asked the two women working there if they’d page her. They said they only do pages for children under age 11, but they could send a call out to the store's employees over their walkie-talkies. They asked me what she looks like.

I said, “She has dark, wavy hair. And she’s wearing a bright pink T-shirt that says ‘You Have Died of Dysentery.’ ”

I found Ms. Elder a few minutes later in the shoe department.

Maybe With a Squeeze of Fresh Lime

It’s been a few days since I posted, so I thought that today I’d share the e-mail I wrote this morning in response to my lovely sister’s inquiry as to how I’m doing:

Well, yesterday I took the morning off of work to try and fix a pipe that was leaking water all over my basement. I thought I had fixed it, and it IS better, but it's still dripping. I think I put a part on wrong, which means I have to take it all apart again. Just about every six months, it seems, some random bit of my house starts dripping/leaking/spurting water. It's awesome.

Last night I busted a DemiGoddess (who shall remain nameless) in the middle of chatting online in Facebook. I've told the Demis that they're not allowed to do online chat rooms, and My Space is forbidden. I never mentioned Facebook specifically, but given that it wasn't until my third inquiry that she finally admitted what she was doing, I'm pretty sure she knew I would not be okay with it. The cable modem is in my purse until further notice.

Yesterday after a visit to her friend's house, the other DemiGoddess (who shall also remain nameless) walked in the door and said to me, "This is going in my memoir, and you are NOT going to look good." My offense? Making her walk home from her friend’s house, which is half a mile away (the same distance as the coffee shop that she walks to at least once a week). With gas at $3.40 a gallon, I will not be driving her a half mile to anywhere.

I didn’t bother to mention that the only reason she got to go to her friend's house after school at all was because I was so distracted by the dripping pipe yesterday morning that I forgot to tell her I had changed my mind about letting her go based on the latest grade update on the school website. Specifically, her grade in Chorus, which was a letter that a person would basically have to be sleeping through Chorus class to receive.

After fighting unsuccessfully with our CD-R drive and ending up listening to the playlists on the Demis' iPods in the car on the way to the lake for Mother’s Day weekend, last week I finally broke down and ordered a refurbished 4 GB Nano for myself. I'm simultaneously wracked with guilt over spending money on such a frivolity and obsessively checking the "Order Status" link on the Apple website to see when it’s coming and where it is today (Sacramento).

Other than that I've pretty much been driving the Demis around (to places that are more than half a mile away) and watching crappy-ass baseball on TV.

Except for last night's game, which was magnificent.

I bought a bottle of cherry lambic at Trader Joe's last week and I'm thinking seriously about drinking the entire thing tonight while I watch the "Lost" season finale.

Aren't you glad you asked?

DemiGoddess the Elder is a Poet

A few weeks ago, Demi the Elder told me that she’d entered a poem she had written into a poetry contest at school. I knew she was clever and creative in many ways, but until then I did not know she wrote poetry. Intrigued, I asked if I could read her submission.

No, she said. It’s too embarrassing.

Oh, my child, I said. You have no idea about embarrassing. I told her that I had, buried in the basement, reams of my own high school poetry—self-obsessed, pretentious, over-the-top with angst high school poetry. Poetry that is the very definition of embarrassing. And which she might read, if she would let me read hers.

It was a deal.

Her poem is called “Soon They’ll Come Out with a Barbie Girl Mastercard.” It’s a commentary on some of the more rampant consumerists in her peer group, and is scathing, earnest and funny.

Yesterday at school Ms. Elder found out she won first place in that poetry contest at school.

I’m hoping she’ll use the Barnes & Noble gift card she received as a prize to purchase something a little more worthwhile to read than my eleventh-grade creative writing.

Ten Thousand Years in a School Auditorium Will Give You Such a Crick in the Neck

The four-day run of DemiGoddess the Younger’s school musical, “Aladdin Jr.,” took place over the weekend, and as a result I have had the song “Arabian Nights” circling in my head since Friday evening. Not even an excessively loud Flogging Molly session in the car on the way to work this morning had the power to exorcise the thing from my brain.

(“…more often than NOT, it’s hotter than HOT, in a lot of good waaaaaaays…”)

In the days leading up to opening night, Ms. Younger had expressed doubts about how the choreography was coming along, and commented disdainfully that some of the other actors were still not “off book” yet. (Apparently that’s theater speak, and means that they still hadn’t memorized their lines. Aren’t we just thespians?). But in spite of her reservations, it turned out to be a fun show, with colorful costumes and lots of high-energy musical numbers, and all the kids did an impressive job with the singing and the dancing.

Ms. Younger’s performance, including several spoken lines and a couple of short singing solos, was as spectacular as expected. And I was astonished to hear her good friend K., whom I had long been convinced was incapable of speech (she is almost always completely silent whenever she is at our house) belt out her solo parts at an ear-splitting decibel level. Who knew?

And after three hours of “The Visit” on the previous weekend (not to mention the rest of the past years' consistently lengthy productions) I am not too proud to admit that my favorite part about this particular show was that it was one hour long.

I kept checking my watch after it was over, feeling like someone had just sprung ME from a magic lamp.

1+1 = So Out of Luck

Remember a few months back, when I did some significant upgrading to my home PC? I had finally started using a digital camera, there was the blogging, the Demis were pining for iPods, and they were both increasingly using the computer for Important! Homework! My old desktop computer was just not cutting the mustard, so, with a little help, I installed a new processor and a new motherboard, boosted the memory and upgraded the software. And for a while, it was all very exciting and good.

The irony, of course, is that the upgrades have allowed the DemiGoddesses to become heavy users of things like iTunes, YouTube and instant messaging. And with just the one desktop PC for the three of us, well, let’s just say that the math hasn’t worked out quite the way I had hoped. I've been forced to come up with some very creative chore assignments just to be able to check my e-mail ("This dog needs waxing. And you, go rotate your dresser drawers. Do I have to do everything around here?").

Oh, the bickering.

So, a couple of weeks ago, when my workplace announced a drawing for a bunch of used IBM Thinkpads, I was all over it. With a laptop, thought I, I would finally be able to get some screen time at home. Why, I could even take a laptop to the neighborhood Cairbou Coffee, where I could drink expensive coffee drinks with whipped cream and candy bits piled on top while I blog, just like the cool kids.

So last week I was thrilled to learn that I had won one of those used IBM Thinkpads, and once again enlisted my skilled and generally high-quality friend Daniel to get me set up with a wireless network. Which he did, again, for the price of a sandwich from Jimmy John’s.

And just last night, after some network wrangling and one more trip to MicroCenter for an Ethernet cable (and, since I am incapable of leaving that store with only the item I went in to buy, a wireless mouse that is SO COOL), we went live.

…aaaaand within fifteen minutes, DemiGoddess the Elder was adding photos to her blog on the desktop PC, while DemiGoddess the Younger was researching current events for school on the Thinkpad.

At which point I went out to the backyard to scratch my next blog post in the dirt with a pointed stick.

In Which I Become a...

The DemiGoddesses have been busy, busy, busy young thespians lately. DemiGoddess the Younger is just finishing up rehearsals for her school musical, “Aladdin,” a junior-high-appropriate show based on the Disney movie. And, over the weekend, DemiGoddess the Elder played a news reporter in her high school’s production of “The Visit,” a play that is weird and dark and a lot like a three-hour episode of “The Twilight Zone.” With eunichs.

My Ho and I saw the show on Friday night, and just like when she performed in “Grease” and “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Anything Goes” and “Love’s Labours Lost,” I was astonished at how articulate and composed Ms. Elder is on stage. I had another one of those sobering moments when I wondered who that pretty dark-haired young woman was, and then realized suddenly that she was my daughter, so close to grown up that it knocked the wind right out of me. Again.

She had a good-sized bit of dialogue, all of it in a single scene toward the end of the play. Because there was no flash photography allowed during the performance, after they'd taken their bows, the kids returned to the stage and worked their way back through the show, re-creating a number of key scenes so that the parents could take pictures. I waited patiently while they set up props and changed costumes and posed for dramatic moment after dramatic moment. As the drama teacher called out scenes from nearer and nearer the beginning of the play, it became clear that she had skipped over Ms. Elder’s big scene. Conflicted, I watched the mass of parents jostling back and forth in front of the stage, cameras flashing as they elbowed each other out of the way, and considered whether the desire to capture my daughter's big moment for posterity outweighed my reluctance to become one of those parents.

The next thing I knew, I was standing behind the drama teacher saying, “Um, excuse me… Hi, I’m Demi the Elder’s mom. Do you think maybe you could have them do that town meeting scene? It’s the only one she had lines in.”

It turned out that the teacher had intended to set up that one, but she’d overlooked it in her notes. She thanked me for reminding her, and then quickly had the kids change back into their act three costumes. I got my superstar her photo, and I only had to hip check two bald guys with video cameras to do it.

DemiGoddess Guerilla Art

A couple of nights ago, I stepped out my front door to take out the trash and found this:


Spring, it seems, has sprung.

A Little Bit Like the Fireplace at the Cabin

My washing machine crapped out again a couple of weeks ago, which, while annoying, didn’t seem like a big deal at the time because (as I’ve written previously) I was wise enough to purchase the extended warranty when I bought the washer four years ago. So I will not have to pay for this latest $800 repair, just like I didn’t have to pay for the four previous $300 repairs on what has proved to be a highly unreliable home appliance. (I am not strong with the math, but it seems to me they would have been better off buying me a new washer by now, no?)

In fact, however, this latest crapping out has turned out to be a big, giant, smelly pile of a deal, because the repairman can’t fix my washing machine until all the parts arrive from the manufacturer, and to date only two of the four parts he ordered at the time of his first visit—three weeks ago—have arrived.

When the DemiGoddesses were little and we lived in an apartment, schlepping the laundry was a weekly ritual. Our building had only one coin-operated washer and dryer for eight apartments, and those machines were in constant use by other tenants. Not that it really mattered to us, of course, since we were always too broke to pay to use them anyway. For years, every Sunday morning, I hauled both kids and a carload of dirty clothes over to my parents’ house, and then stayed there all day long while I washed and dried load after load after endless bloody load. When we finally bought a house that had a washer and dryer, I swore that I would never complain about doing the laundry again, because my days of hauling baskets of dirty socks and underpants to and from the car were finally OVER.

But about a week and a half ago, strange aromas began to emanate from the DemiGoddesses. I could see that they had stopped wearing socks altogether. I did not ask about underwear. As much as I hated to admit it, I could no longer deny the inevitable. Laundry would have to be schlepped.

So two Thursdays ago I left work early, picked up $30 in quarters at the bank, and took a mountain of clothes to the nearest self-serve laundromat. I had never visited it before and, in fact, had only found the place by looking it up on the internet, even though it turned out to be less than two miles from my house and I have probably driven right past it a thousand times.


I fully expected the laundromat experience to suck rocks. So I was pleasantly surprised to find the place clean (relatively), quiet, and completely empty when I arrived. It smelled reassuringly of fabric softener, and, best of all, there were four triple-sized washers. I washed, dried and folded every article of clothing in the Goddess household in less than two hours.

By yesterday the Demis were running low on clean jeans again, and I was astonished to find myself actually looking forward to another visit to my good friend #40 Mega Washer. I even invited DemiGoddess the Younger to come with me. And, once there, she had to agree with me that it was strangely soothing, watching the suds and the water and her favorite jeans swish, swish, swishing in circles behind the round glass door.