Some Pig

24 Hour Party Person

So what does our heroine do with herself of a Sunday, you may be wondering.  Or actually, you probably don't care at all, but since it's my blog post and I need an opening, this is what you get; you can have a giant helping of Take It or Leave It on the side if you wish, too.

Here is a list of what I have done with my day so far:

Got up

Forced children to eat, get dressed, brush teeth and comb hair

Herded children into coats, boots, hats, and mittens for trip to church

Taught Sunday School

Gathered up children for return engagement with aforementioned coats, et. al.

Brought children home (with stop along the way to procure present for birthday party)

Cleaned kitchen while Child #1 was supposedly cleaning her room

Made lunch for Child #2

Informed Child #1 that making paper flowers while listening to an audiobook did not qualify as "cleaning up your room," and that her attendance at the highly-desirable birthday party was incumbent upon her actually cleaning up her room.

Weathered floods of tears and wails of child claiming, "I don't know how to clean my room," (which is complete and utter horsesh!t because we go through this rigmarole every time I ask her to clean her room, and I mean every. single. time.) by giving distinct, separate orders for every motion she needed to make  ("Now pick up the clothes... ALL your clothes...now make two piles... put the clean pile away...no, you have to put them in the appropriate drawer...because I said is why...now put the dirty pile in the laundry...ad infinitum, ad nauseam.)

Gathered up Child #1, laundry detergent, and ginormous bedspread for trip to 1) birthday party; followed by 2) laundromat

Dropped off Child #1 at part and proceeded to laundromat to stuff ginormous bedspread into supersized washer (which required 24 quarters -  TWENTY. FOUR. QUARTERS!  I mean, damn)

Ran home and repeated the room cleaning-under-pain-of-duress routine with Child #2

Ferried Child #2 to her playdate, with a stop along the way to transfer wet ginormous bedspread to supersized dryer

Ran back to birthday party location to collect Child #1

Picked up now-dry ginormous bedspread

Dragged reluctant Child #1 to grocery store for direly-needed foodstuffs, and then to pick up Child #2 at playdate

Dragged reluctant Child #1 and #2 away from playdate

Cleaned up kitchen (AGAIN)

Walked dog

Lugged firewood

Restarted fire

Made dinner

Served dinner

Fin

And I haven't even begun to deal with our regular laundry yet.

Whoo, I don't know how I manage to lead this glamorous life.  I'm a regular Sheila E., I am.  What really kills me is the sheer, unrelenting nature of it all - I spend all day Saturday and Sunday catching up from the week that just ended and getting ready for the week that's coming, just so I can make it to the next weekend and start the cycle all over again.  Where's my day of rest, I ask you??  The Good Lord got one.  Sheesh, even Tim Tebow gets his Sundays off (and he's getting a lot more of 'em, after that last meeting the Broncs had with the Pats, heh heh); so why don't I???

I'm telling you this not because I want to bore you to death (too late!) or because I'm whining, but to illustrate just how plebeian and uninspiring my daily rounds can be.  It's no wonder I like going to work; work is a nine-hour stretch of time in which I'm guaranteed not to have to run errands.  [An aside:  This is also why I get all throat-punch-y when the latest megadiva to push out a crumbcrusher or two coos to the media about how much she loves motherhood and how it's such a privilege to spend every free moment possible with the child she simply adores and can't bear to be away from for even an hour.  You just know this mom ain't the one spending hours schlepping her kid to eleventy-seven birthday parties a month; she's letting the nanny put Mahlyssah and Jaxon into their Beaux et Belles mufti so the driver can truck them off to Dylan's Candy Bar.  Yeah, I'd think mothering was a trip to the spa, too, if I didn't have to, you know, do stuff for them.] 

But I digress.  Anywhat, I've decided that what I need is a soundtrack!!  And, since I am a great fan of irony, I've decided that this soundtrack needs to have a theme, that being one celebrating the nonstop whirl of the champagne-and-caviar life I lead.  In addition to the aforementioned Sheila E. tune, I was thinking of "Puttin' On The Ritz," either the real one or that disco version, and after that... well, I'm kinda stuck.  Maybe Paradise City?  Mo' Money Mo' Problems?  What do you think?   I'll let you know what I come up with, if I ever get enough time to pull such a playlist together.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be off.  My public needs me.  Those cat pans aren't going to scoop themselves, yanno.  You can entertain yourself with this while you think:

 

P.S. My hair?  Would totally do that, given the right (meaning bad) haircut and styling products.  And for several years, it did.

In Your Dreams

Last night, I had one of those dreams that makes you wonder just what the heck your psyche is trying to tell you, anyway.

It started with some very typical weird-illogical-dream sequence that's besides the point.  The real juicy stuff began when a young, shirtless Adonis with a mop of sun-blonded curls suddenly appeared.  He caught my eye and a knowing grin spread across his face.  As he sauntered closer, I shot him my best flirtatious sidelong glance.  He responded by leaning in closer to me, and...

"What's that," he asked, his smile turning into a frown.   He pointed to the skin just under my left eye. 

"Those are bags.  Under my eyes.  Because I'm old, and I'm tired all the time," I explained.

"...oh," he said, clearly nonplussed.  "It doesn't matter," I continued.  "I'm married, so I shouldn't be flirting anyway."

So do you all get this?  Are you picking up what I'm putting down???  If not, here it is:  I'm old, married and boring all the way down to my subconscious.  And if that ain't a sorry state of affairs, I don't know what is!

 

In The Swim Of Things

Like every other nice, all-American family, we have our holiday traditions.  In recent years, we've made a tradition of going on a short family getaway with some friends right after Christmas.  Being us and not multimillionaires, our getaway consists of a few nights in a condo resort up north, not a week next to the ocean in Cabo (Note to holidaymaking friends who insist on calling it 'Cabo' - the place has a name, which is Cabo San Lucas.  When you insist on telling me in your holiday newsletter that you had a great time in Cabo, in between watching your captain-of-industry husband engineer a ragingly successful IPO and having Martha Stewart borrow your sugar cookie recipe for the holiday edition of Martha Stewart Living, well, my friend, that is when I officially start hating you around the edges a little, KWIM?). 

Anywhat, we go to this one particular resort because the condos have everything we need, that being a washer/dryer, a kitchen, and a pool.   Actually, the girls need the pool.  I, on the other hand, could live perfectly happily for the balance of my life without ever getting in another pool again, especially if that pool is located north of the Mason-Dixon line between the months of September and May.   Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those hothouse flower types who wrinkles her nose at the very thought of water;  in fact, I spent the better part of my young-adult summers on waterfront duty, either teaching lessons or watching people not drown.  Which means I already have had a lifetime's worth of being soggy, uncomfortable, and cold, thank you very much, and I choose not to travel down that path any more frequently than absolutely necessary.  But the girls LOVE the pool, love love love luuuuuurrrrve it, and so I pull on my big-girl suit and go... resentfully and with great reluctance, but I go.  So, to entertain myself while I stewed in the semi-heated, uncomfortably chlorinated hellhole pool on this trip, I decided to quantify my hatred of swimming in the off-season.  I tried to rank order them, but gave up when I realized they all shared equal billing.  So I bring you:

REASONS TO HATE SWIMMING OUT OF SEASON:

1a.  As someone who has spent her entire adult life seeking internal temperature stasis, I find going to the pool during the winter season completely f&*%s up the personal thermometer both coming and going.  First, you have to put on eighteen layers of jackets and scarves and so on just to set foot outside, so you get all HOT.  Then you go outside into the frigid air to get in the freezing cold car, so you're COLD.  Then you have to drive to the pool complex and walk through the pool to get to the changing rooms in your eighteen layers of clothes, so you're BOILING until you get to the changing room, which is all of about fifty-five degrees and FREEZING, whereupon you're expected to take OFF your eighteen layers and put on a swimsuit, of all ghastly things, and then you're supposed to take a shower and walk through the barely-fifty-five-degree locker room down the hallway (the perfect conduit for drafts of frigid winter air) in your wet suit to the pool.  Then, when you're done swimming, you have to get out of the barely-tepid-despite-the-claim-it's-"heated" water, go back down the drafty hallway in the COLD, then shower again in the barely-fifty-five-degree locker room until you're BLUE, then put your eighteen layers BACK on, including wrestling on the one sock that always falls on the wet, slushy floor, the act of which gets you uncomfortably WARM again, just in time to walk outside with wet hair so that you're a mix of hot under your coat, cold on top of your head, and miserable all over.  And this is fun?!?

1b.  My children make up in enthusiasm for watery pursuits what they lack in actual swimming ability.  This means that while I'm engaged in the pursuit of not allowing the fruit of my loins to drown, I am guaranteed to get kicked in the stomach, grabbed around the neck, splashed in the face, and caught by the hair, not just once, but multiple times.  Again, I do not consider this to be fun.

1c.  Hotel pools, especially indoor pools, are kept marginally sanitary by the use of copious amounts of chlorine.  After three days of dunking in the pool every day, my hair assumes the texture, dimension, and moisture level of a tumbleweed; my skin gets so dry, my heels crack; and my eyes take on a color and overall appearance bound to cause passing law enforcement officials to pull me over and ask if there's something they oughta know about me.  Look, I'm no Mrs. Tom Brady and I know it, but I also like to take some pride in my appearance.  Once I go in the pool, I may as well just throw in the towel (ha!  pool pun!) and figure I'm going to have a bad hair day.  And a bad face, skin, and everything else day, too.

1d.  I will admit it: I tend to get a little lackadaisical about certain elements of my personal grooming during the darker months.  After all, no one can see your stubble under long johns, now, can they?  I look upon winter as a welcome hiatus from the need for constant vigilance with razor and tweezer, and I do not take kindly to sudden interruptions to the off-season. It's bad enough having to put on a swimsuit during the peak of the cookie-and-candy-and-hors-d'oeuvres season; putting on that swimsuit and then confronting the prospect of razors and shaving foam is truly repugnant.

1e.  I have contact lenses.  I do not have swim goggles, since the $10 jobbies sold in the sports stores don't fit me well and I am constitutionally unwilling to spend the equivalent of a pair of prescription glasses on a custom set so I can go swimming once a year.  After an hour of swim activity as described in 1b, my eyes feel like the Mojave.  During a windstorm.  In August. 

1f.  I am not a patient person, and swimming tries my small stores of patience to their limits.  Clearly I had my children way, WAY too late in life.  All the other mothers who appear to be roughly my age are at a very different stage of life, the stage where they get to sit on the side of the pool, reading paperback bestsellers and quaffing expensive coffee drinks while their erstwhile offspring amuse themselves with endless games of push-my-sibling-under-water.  I, on the other hand, get to spend this same time of life listening to, "Watch THIS, Mommy, watch!  Watch me, Mommy, watch, Mommy!  Mommy!  Mooommmmmm-eeeeee!" followed by an enactment of the exact same underwater-flailing motion this selfsame child has made twenty-five times before.  And then my head blows up.

1f.  I am short.  As in, can't reach the top shelf of the medicine cabinet short.  Barely above you-must-be-this-high-to-go-on-the-ride short.  Short.  The pool, on the other hand, is deep.  Where do my children like to swim?  In the deep end, of course.  What counts as the 'deep end' for me?  Pretty much the whole damn pool.  So even if I TRY to keep my head out of the water, which I do, I am basically doomed to get wet - which leads to all the issues listed above:  The tumbleweed hair, the blistered eyes, the freezing cold head, et. al.

As I stood up to my neck in tepid pee pool water, counting down the minutes til I could feasibly claim we'd been in the water long enough, I felt like a world-class heel.  How could I resent an activity my children so clearly love and enjoy?  How could I dread spending time doing something any number of families can't enjoy because of the poor economy?  How could I be such an entitled, spoiled heel that I would actually voice my dislike of going swimming at a resort?  What kind of jackass does that?? 

Then enlightenment struck:  I am, after all, a New Englander.  Being of sound Protestant New England stock, suffering?  Is in my blood.  We northern types don't trust good fortune or easy circumstances that come with no strings attached; we know all too well that there's another karmic shoe hovering overhead, waiting to clang down on our crania the moment we let down our guard.  So for me, swimming represents a kind of insurance policy taken out against the gods!  By suffering through something I really dislike in the name of being on vacation, I'm appeasing the fortunes that would strike me down if I were heedlessly enjoying myself without regard for the consequences!  By resenting and hating every minute I'm in the pool, I'm actually ensuring my family a fun and satisfying vacation experience!  I can't WAIT til the girls are old enough for me to lay that guilt trip on 'em!  Who says there's no spirit of sacrifice left in the world anymore???

Mom Always Liked You Best

Over the Independence Day holiday, we decamped from the First In The Nation Primary State and headed for the State Formerly Known As Home, as is our annual custom.  The Town With A Famous Private School has a perfectly lovely 4th of July celebration, I'm sure, but my small hometown, a tourist mecca my friend Sue and I fondly refer to as "Funkytown", offers the trifecta of a bang-up parade, a big fireworks celebration AND a town beach mere steps away from the house.  Funkytown-ward we were bound, and as the saying goes, a good time was had by all. 

As is my wont, I managed to leave a few items behind, items that aren't necessary for daily functioning, but that you don't want to have to replace in a fast hurry, either. So I called home to make sure I hadn't done something epically stupid, like the time the arm of the futon couch frame bounced out of the back of the truck while I was on the highway and I didn't even notice.  (Yeah, I still have no idea how I managed that one.)  "They're right here," my mom said, after I told her where the missing items might be located.  "Well, Warren and the girls will be up for the weekend in a few weeks, so he'll pick them up then," I said.

"Warren?" my mom queried.  "Yeah, that's the weekend I'm going away with my friend, so he's bringing the girls up, remember?"

"Hmm," my mother mused.  "We'll have to do something special."

Okay, did any of you catch that???  Warren's coming up without me, so my mom wants to do 'something special' for him???  This is proof - COLD, HARD PROOF - that Warren is now my parents' favorite child!  I can understand why Warren might have golden-boy status in their eyes.  He did take one of their financially feckless and eternally single daughters off their hands, after all, promising to love and cherish and share a near-perfect credit rating with her til death do us part.  Then there's the small matter of providing my mother with two lovely granddaughters to dote over and stuff with junk food, when poor Mom had thought that train had left the station. I know my father appreciates having a fellow Y-chromosome bearer around with whom he can share a lifetime of accrued wisdom, such as which cheaper brands of liquors taste best (Old Overholt and Lukso- Lucksa- some kind of Polish potato vodka).  But planning something special?  Specifically because he's going to be there without ME?  That makes him their favorite - and he's not even their own flesh and blood!  I ask you! 

Is it possible to have feelings of sibling rivalry - with your spouse??? 

I'm Showing My Age

How am I revealing my advanced years?  First, I staggered my way through a four-mile road race.  Don't worry, I didn't actually run the damn thing. Once upon a time I looked down upon the kind of people who walked in road races, only to find myself lapped over and over en route to the finish line by middle-aged ladies cheerfully jabbering away as they strode past my twelve-minute-mile-ing, side-cramp-having self.  I have long since resigned myself to the fact that watching me run is akin to watching sausages being made or a car crashing into a telephone pole:  It's painful to watch as a bystander, sure, but it's far more painful to be involved as a participant. 

Once I finished the race (And please, race organizers, please don't insist that the finish-line announcer cheerfully announce my name over the loudspeaker while the official finish-line photographer snaps my picture next to the clock showing a finish time of over an hour for a FOUR MILE ROAD RACE.  I feel enough like Rosie Ruiz at these things as it is.) (And if you don't know who Rosie Ruiz is, you've just proven my title to be more than apt.), I found myself in the finish-area bullpen surrounded - nay, swarmed - by male pulchritude of every size and flavor.  There were semi-demi-hippie dudes with long hair and Tibetan-calligraphy tattoos next to barely legal shirtless Abercrombie preppies with formidably chiseled abs, side by each with silver foxes in hard-core marathoner gear. Seriously, ladies, I don't care how averse you are to physical exertion, if you are just looking for an opportunity to ogle the opposite sex shamelessly, just go to a road race and hang out around the finish line. 

Then I spotted something that really caught my attention.  "I'll see you at home," I told my sister, making a beeline across the parking lot, "I'm going to go check this out!"

What caught my eye in the middle of this parade of testosterone-laden delightfulness?  It was the sight of the "Open" sign in front of the junk store adjacent to the parking lot, where I found a small milk-glass vase last year for fifty cents.  FIFTY CENTS!  Jeez, I gave them a dollar for it because I couldn't find the owner and couldn't be bothered to get change!  And I do loves me some milk glass, particularly the hobnail kind, but not the really thin and cheap-looking stuff; it has to be a thick, opaque white milk glass that's not too frilly and maiden-auntie looking, because I'm looking for something to complement the pair of candlesticks and the two small vases I already have, and - See what I mean?  I might as well just make up a t-shirt that says, "FORGET IT, BOYS.  I'M MIDDLE AGED."  Just point me in the direction of your milk glass and I'll be happy as a pig in poop!

All I Wanna Do Is Have Some Fun

It's been a sucky week, what with the aforementioned testing and the subsequent schedule changes, and then just when that finally came to an end we had the Worst-Planned Field Trip Ever bring everything to a screeching halt again which resulted in mass panic and discombobulation on the part of the kids (not to mention the person running the aforementioned WPFTE, and should I mention that this person runs this exact same field trip four times a year???  And has done so for many, many years??  As in, DECADES?  As in, even if you are as slow and deliberate as a three-toed sloth, I would think that you would have had time to get it right by now!  But I digress.). So after six days in a row of screwed-up-ness, it's no surprise that the kids were nuttier than squirrel crap today, especially with the weekend just hours away, which was of course EXACTLY not the day to start a new activity they've never done before, but I can't afford to lose any more time since all the other 8th grade Social Studies teachers are already in the middle of the Revolutionary War and I just started the French and Indian War today, so damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead.  Which turned out to be not such a bad thing except for my last period class of the day, which happens to be the one most heavily loaded with students who are not overly gifted in the brains or social maturity departments BUT who FAR exceed the local, state, and national standards for Being Talkative Pains in the Bum.  So after pointing out to one of these cherubs that there is NO WAY IN HELL the French and Indian War could POSSIBLY have led directly to World War II since they were separated by, oh, ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS, and may I point out that this was not the DUMBEST question I answered all day, well, a girl needs a little decompression time.  And you MIGHT then think to yourself, "Hey!  At least it's the weekend!" and you would be right in thinking that the weekend is the perfect opportunity to pause and regroup, refreshed by a hiatus from the cares and woes of the workaday world spent with one's nearest and dearest, BUT...

You knew there would be a BUT, didn't you?

... BUT, the in-laws are coming.  Which means that instead of spending the weekend catching up on all the craziness of the previous week and getting my ducks in a row for the craziness to come, I am going to spend the next 48 hours wishing the whole damned weekend was over and done already.  And then, since I know the ILs love us and come visit because they want to be part of our girls' lives, I will feel guilty and ashamed of myself for being such a heartless, ungracious, bratty little beast.  Then I will resent the fact that I feel that way, which will be followed by resenting the fact that, for reasons that are way too long and complicated to go into here, they are very, very difficult to have around and to keep entertained.  And since Warren and I are both stressed out and resentful, naturally the girls pick up on our tension, which, coupled with the excitement of having Grandparents! Around! All!! Weekend!!!, means that at some point during the weekend, one of the girls will have the kind of Difficult Moment that doesn't show her in the best possible light, which invariably ends with my father-in-law trying to step in and play the role of Stern but Doting Grandparent, by which I mean scolding her while trying to make it sound like he's not scolding her.  Which pisses me off.  And makes me resentful.  And starts the cycle all over again.

If I take to my bed with a bottle of gin, do you think anyone would notice?

"Sex" and Lies and What I Learned

Well, I saw it!  ... and if you have to ask what "it" is, never mind.  Toasty met me halfway, bearing bootleg cocktails in her purse (something called a "French Silk," I think, and I insist that you tell everyone the secret formula in the comments now), and we settled in for a visit with Carrie and the girls.  I have to admit that what the reviewers said is true:  As a movie, it is not a resounding success.  One of the many things I loved about the show, the snappy pacing, clearly owed a lot to the half-hour format of the series, and with the movie clocking in at two hours and forty minutes, there were long stretches of ... well, long stretches.  That led to a domino effect in which the funny moments and sentimental moments and thought-provoking moments that make up the appeal of SATC were spread so  far apart that they lost much of their punch.  As an example [spoiler alert here], was it really necessary for the storyline to follow the girls through most of a Bryant Park fashion show just to put Samantha in a position to have red paint thrown on her fur coat by PETA types?  The moment resonated in the previews, but it took so long to get there in the movie, it almost went unnoticed.  A subplot featuring Jennifer Hudson playing a PA named Louise from St. Louis who longs for her own Louis Vuitton handbag  is so lame, it limps.  A sharp editor with some good computer software could've trimmed this down to under two hours and ended up with a much better movie.

But in the end, I don't think whether or not the film is any good even matters.  I'm willing to wager that most of us who are flocking to the movie, myself included, pretty much don't give a damn if it's good or bad or halfway in between as long as it's Sex And The City.  For those of us who loved the show, the movie is like a long visit with your friends who moved away after you spent years in each other's back pockets.  Everyone's changed a little, but fundamentally the same; the conversation takes some time to get rolling and the immediate shorthand references don't work right away, but after awhile it's like - well, not like you've never gone away, but like the time you spent apart doesn't matter as much as the time you spent together.  The characters stay fairly true to form, I think, although not everyone agrees with me, and some of the same logistical impossibilities remain.  For example, if Miranda is such a driven career woman who's made partner at her firm, how is it that she has three days to spend helping Carrie pack her clothes to move?  Who's watching Charlotte's daughter while she's gallivanting about to dress fittings and taking the dogs for a run?  I presume there's a nanny, but we never get even a whiff of a helpful au pair about the place. 

As I was driving home, I pondered the situation.  Given the stark differences between my life and the SATC  gals, why do I feel such a fierce loyalty to the show?  I came to a realization - aside from the one about popcorn and Nestle Crunch not being a real dinner, I mean.  I realized that I love SATC because it's the one show that doesn't lie.  Oh, sure, it isn't exactly real life.  There's the oft-noted conundrum of [insert query here concerning Carrie's a) wardrobe, b) social life, and c) evident disposable income on a freelance writer's salary].  Even the dorky guys are cute (Steve), and while Carrie bounces from heartbreak to heartbreak, there always seems to be another straight, solvent, good-looking guy right around the corner to rebound with.  (Trust me, that was not my single-in-the-city experience by a long chalk.  I used to joke that I could be airlifted into Alcatraz and I'd still be home reading an improving book of a Saturday night.)  But what SATC gets right is the fact that life - real, grown-up life - is hard, and even when you get what you want, it usually comes with some kind of trade-off or unforeseen complication attached.  Carrie gets her man in the end, but has to sacrifice the fairy-tale wedding and penthouse apartment along the way.  Miranda has to find a balance between her ambition and her marriage.  Even Charlotte, she of the charmed life and Park Ave apartment, wound up changing her entire religious outlook along the way.  And even living in the center of the social universe, they still wind up alone watching old movies or going out to dinner with the girls on New Year's.  In a way, Carrie and the girls represented an idealized version of my own single life: Sometimes confusing, sometimes seemingly directionless, sometimes astonishingly exhilarating.  They were me, only in much more expensive clothes and attending much cooler parties (And having a lot more sex, too, hence the title of the show.  After all, no one wants to see Sex-Deprived in the City, do they?).  I don't know if Darren Star actually meant for me to interpret the show this way, but I loved the show because it portrayed how hard it is to find - and hold onto - true happiness.  Unlike most shows, in which being happy is a foregone conclusion and the perfect ending is right around the corner, the characters in SATC have to work at their happiness.  They find it and lose it; work at regaining their balance and discover they have to negotiate the terms all over again.  That's what feels most honest about the show to me.

May I Have This Spance?

Well, the Class of 2009, for which I am one of the advisors, held a dance on Friday.  As an intended fundraiser, it was a bust.  Around 90 kids showed up at $5 a head, and with the DJ running $275 and the PO-lice running over $100, well, you do the math.  But in a way, the fact that we had such a small turnout made the evening all the more fun.  Of the 90-some-odd kids who showed, 99 and 44/100ths of them were freshmen, since, according to one girl, "all the upperclassmen are out drinking tonight."  And freshmen are always highly entertaining to watch.

The freshmen come to us novices in the ways of the high school dance.  As middle schoolers, they aren't allowed at high school functions, and our middle school actually doesn't host straight dances at all.  They refer to their socials as "spances," which are sports/dances.  This means the girls, the latent gay guys, and the romantically inclined boys dance in the cafeteria and all the other boys and the tomboys shoot hoops in the gym. Hence, "spance."  Our freshman-by-default dance had rather spance-ish overtones.  I could count the number of guys in the crowd on two hands and maybe a pinky toe; the rest of the crowd was all female.  Most of the guys limited themselves to hanging out on the periphery and occasionally being dragged in to dance for a few awkward beats (picture Billy Crystal doing the 'white man overbite' in When Harry Met Sally); one kid entertained himself all evening by stuffing balloons down his tshirt and daring other kids to try to hit it so it would pop out.  When he tired of that, he would take the balloon and jump on it near a group of girls in hopes of setting off a squeal.  Usually it worked.  And when he wasn't doing that, he was lurking around the support posts trying to jump out and scare me.  I figure he got his $5 worth of fun by the time the evening ended.  The major difference between a spance and a dance was pretty obvious, however, when I kicked a bunch of girls off one of the concrete benches and the watching-on-the-periphery guys complained loudly.  Shooting hoops seems to have lost its appeal.

A few things haven't changed at all since you were last at a high school dance, and some have changed beyond recognition.  You would recognize the group dynamics.  Girls dance with girls, an occasional brave and socially advanced boy dances with girls, and a couple guys will slow dance if forced to do so.  You wouldn't recognize the actual dancing, however.  When I was in high school, unaccompanied girls either walked around with their arms crossed protectively over their midsections or danced in a big circle - and I mean a biiiiiiiiiiig circle, big enough that no one could accuse you of incipient lesbianism for bouncing up and down near your friends.  Of course, our hair was so big we needed a lot of room.  Now, the girls today have no such concerns, uh-uh, nohow.  They dance like they're auditioning for Underage Girls Gone Wild.  No wonder the boys protested when I put the kibosh on the pseudo pole dance.  It is somewhat comforting to notice that slow dancing is just as awkward and unromantic as ever, though.  If you forgot how to do it, grab your partner, but hold them at arms' length.  Make sure you don't make anything resembling eye contact, and fix your gaze at least six feet in the distance.  Wear an expression of grim fortitude on your face, as though you're thinking of a particularly knotty algebra problem, and shuffle slowly in a circle.  When the song ends, drop arms like you've just gotten an electric shock and walk in the opposite direction of your dance partner without speaking.  Voila - slow dancing, freshman style!

Aside from the vertical hoochie coochie, which is all post-millennium, you'd be surprised by one other aspect of dance dynamics.  You definitely wouldn't recognize a lot of the music, unless you have encyclopedic knowledge of the Usher catalog, and of course you'd recognize the song "My Humps" because my God, once that song gets into your head, you hear it over and over and OVER until you either go insane or get a frontal lobotomy.  But you know what songs get all the kids on the floor?  Good ole 80's tunes, thank you very much.  Put on Marilyn singing "You Spin Me Right Round (Like A Record)" and kids who have never even seen an actual record album go ballistic.  What else got them going?  AC/DC.  Lynryd Skynyrd (okay, a little more late 70's than 80's, but still).  "Thriller".  "Superfreak." "Hey, Mickey." "Obsession" (a personal favorite of mine).  It was great.  It was also a little weird.  There I was, at a school dance, and I was neither desperately hoping for attention from a crush totally oblivious to my existence nor totally self-conscious about how my hair, boobs, and clothing weren't measuring up to expectations.  I already knew where my crush was (at home giving the kid a bath), and I am well aware that my hair, boobs, and sense of style are totally inadequate to meet most teenagers' exacting standards.  So I was free to have a good time, shock the shit out of my students by dancing on the speaker (hey, the DJ invited me to do it, what was I going to say?  No?), and go home knowing I wasn't going to wind up crying into my pillow all night.  Adolescence is a whole lot more fun when you experience it as a grownup.

Let Us Now Praise Boring Men

I can remember when I was sixteen, and therefore eminently qualified to pass judgement on everything and everyone, sitting at the familial dinner table and thinking, who are these boring people and why am I related to them?  From my lofty perch of omniscience, it seemed that the power and privileges of adulthood were being wasted on two people who had no interest in exercising them.  How, I wondered, could two intelligent human beings be so interested in such mundane matters?  And how could I be a blood relation of two people whose typical dinner table conversation usually ran something like this:

Dad:  Guess who I saw at the store today?
Mom:  Who?
Dad:  Boring Friend of Ours!
Mom:  Really?  How's he doing?
Dad:  You won't believe this news.
Mom:  What?
Dad:  Totally Yawnworthy Piece of Trivia!
Mom:  No.  What else did he say?
Dad:  Something Else Too Mundane to Remember!
Mom:  That's really something.  You know, he's related to Another Boring Friend of Ours by marriage.
Dad:  Oh, I had forgotten that.
Mom:  Yes, her mother is cousins with his stepbrother, who's Someone Else Not Worth Remembering, and he's one of the West Hiram Not Worth Rememberings, you know.
(continue until conversation finishes or adolescent daughter moans in mock agony and receives withering looks)

Given role models like that, I think it's a miracle I can carry on a conversation with another human being and not have them fall flat on their face, stunned by boredom. 

As I sat and chewed my dinner to these exchanges, I often pondered what I thought my adult life would be like.  In my mind's eye, I saw adulthood as an endless cocktail party with me at the center, swishing about in front of a glittering backdrop of skyscrapers and street lights.  My glamorous friends and I would exchange titillating bits of gossip and engrossing stories of our exotic travels.  I would have an ill-defined but highly paid and preferably not very demanding job, one for which I was not only encouraged but obligated to maintain a stellar social life and a ready supply of glittery frocks.  With my rakishly handsome neurosurgeon/lawyer/UN ambassador husband at my side, I'd put down my champagne flute long enough to wish our clean, well-mannered children goodnight and turn them back over to the nanny before returning to the social whirl.  I most certainly was not going to spend my evenings falling asleep in front of a PBS nature show with my mouth hanging open, the way my father did every Sunday night, while my mother read a magazine in the kitchen or chatted on the phone with her friends on the library committee, all as impenetrable cover for her habit of sneaking a post-dinner cig. 

So what happened on the way to the high life?  Well, first of all, I discovered that I really hate cocktail parties unless I've known everyone there for about forever.  The thought of having to project an aura that says, "I'm interesting!  I'm intriguing!  Get to know me!" while wearing uncomfortable clothes and trying to make social chitchat - urgh.  Warren dragged me to a meet-and-greet once for his work last fall, and I dreaded it for days ahead of time.  (And I was right to do so, as I barely made it out of the party before I had to run throw up in the bushes thanks to a fast-moving viral illness.  But that is neither here nor there.)  I've also managed to choose professions and hobbies and life pursuits (teaching, crew, motherhood) that absolutely demand early riser status, so opportunities for late night socializing are, shall we say, minimal at best.  Hell, I can barely get my butt out of bed the day after parent conferences, and those only last til 8:30!

All of this is merely window-dressing for the bottom-line reality, which is that I have inherited my parents' mantle of Boring Responsible Adult.  And strangely enough, I don't mind.  There's actually a lot to be said for being boring.  For one thing, I will never wind up on a talk show titled "Please Help Me Find My Babydaddy," facing four likely candidates and Maury Povich holding DNA test results.  I never have to worry about maintaining a stash of tryst-worthy underwear, I can just wear the cotton stuff I like.  I have never had a restraining order brought against me, and I have never stood in the driveway screeching profanities at a garishly-made-up woman who claims that SHE'S Warren's woman, beeyotch, you wanna piece a me, huh?  Huh?  I'm gonna call the cops on you, you and your fat ass, don't come around here telling lies cuz everyone knows you lied about that one time when you said that thing about me (et cetera, et cetera).  That, I must say, probably comes as a huge relief to all my friends.

There are other benefits to being boring besides social propriety.  If you admit you're boring, you can watch documentaries on PBS all you want and not feel guilty about it.  As Warren says, "There's nothing like a nice depressing Frontline once in a while."  My only quibble is, why do they put all the good stuff on so late?  Nine o'clock is when a middle-aged mother of very young children hits the hay, not fires up TV.  Dump the Antiques Roadshow for a measly week and start Frontline at 8 pm, when civilized people can watch it!

A [related] digression:  My parents are inveterate documentary watchers, and my mother has the simultaneously endearing and annoying habit of offering a running commentary, a meta-commentary if you will, on the contents of the screen.  Die-hard monarchist that she is, she's currently engrossed in a series on the inner workings of Windsor Castle.  Sample commentary runs something like this:

[Royal limousine pulls up and QEII and Prince Phillip disembark]  Sandra:  "They were very hard on those children.  He was a very demanding father and he never gave them much affection."

[Narrator mentions a portrait dating back to King Henry VIII]  Sandra:  "You know, after Henry died, England was not ready for a female monarch."

[Charles and Camilla proceed down the aisle at Windsor Cathedral] Sandra: "Diana was young and very glamorous, but she wasn't ever really right for Charles."

Now, this is endearing in a way, because it's my mom and it's fun to see her enjoying herself so much.  But it's also annoying, given that a) I teach history for a living, and a big chunk of history is British history; and b) I once wrote an entire paper on the application of Pauline versus Petrine religious theory in Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, so yes, I am fairly aware of Britain's issues with Elizabeth's ascension; and c) my mother's intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the royal family is shared by everyone who reads the cover of People in the grocery store checkout line.  But who am I to deny the woman who gave me breath her fun?  So anyway, yes. To summarize: documentaries - I am in favor of them, as they provide amusement to those naturally inclined to the Boring.

The best argument for being boring, however, is the fact that I now have a Young Life For Which I Am Responsible.  If there's two things kids need, it's stability and predictability, and that we boring folks have in spades.  I will let you in on a secret: Deep down, kids WANT their parents to be boring.  Oh, sure, they'll roll their eyes and piss and moan, but they do that when there's no cornflakes for breakfast, so you can't go by that as your sole measure. Most kids want excitement in their lives, but they want it to be self-generated, not brought upon them by outside forces.  Witness a conversation I overheard in homeroom recently:

Girl 1 (disgusted): My mom's getting a tattoo!

Girl 2:  Your mom's like a kid.

Girl 1:  I know!  Every time I want to do something, she goes out and does it, and then I can't do it!  I hate it!

Now, don't take this as a backhanded condemnation of adults getting tattoos, because that's not the intent.  It's not the tattoo that's the issue, it's the drama.  My little charge wasn't upset because her mom wanted to get inked, she was upset that her mother was usurping her right to be the center of attention, the most important dramatis personae in the family play.  It's Mom's job in this situation to be the boring voice of practicality and authority: "Not until you're eighteen you won't," or, "Now don't go getting some huge ugly thing all over your upper arm that you can't hide for a job interview," and of course, "What is that going to look like when you're eighty years old and all wrinkly?"  You can't be that voice if you're too busy fighting with your kid over who gets their tat first. 

The unfortunate aspect of being boring, from a blogger's point of view, is that it seriously limits your pool of topics.  Having a frigged-up personal life and a dysfunctional family may be agony on the psyche, but it does make for easy posting.  Some days I feel my life is perilously short on material and I am going to have to go out and start a torrid affair or get into a huge legal fracas with the neighbors in order to hold onto my loyal readership.  But then a new Frontline comes out, or the next Netflix shows up, or I finally get hold of that book I wanted to read, and it seems like having an affair would be so much effort, what with the leg shaving and all, and legal fracases (fracae?) seem like they would be expensive, and besides, I need to go to bed early since India doesn't adjust her internal clock just because I stayed up late, and ... well, it's a heck of a lot easier to stay boring.

Never Say Never Again

Recently I was struck by how frequently I violate firmly sworn promises to myself.  As proof, here is a short list of Things I Swore I'd Never Do As a Grownup:

Go to bed before 11:00 pm.  As a mere slip of a girl, I used to wail with dismay whenever forced to go to bed.  "When I grow up," I said to myself, "I'm going to stay up late EVERY night, and no one's going to stop me!"  Yeah, no one except ME, that is.  Here I am, carefully eyeing the little clock in the corner of the computer as it inches ever nearer to 9:30.  9:30!  Practically midnight!  If I don't go to bed now, it's going to be ugly tomorrow morning...

Have anything to do with wood heat.  For some time during my formative years, I secretly believed that my parents had me specifically so they could get their sick jollies by burdening me with unpleasant chores.  Never mind the orthodontia, glasses, dance lessons, etc. - that was all window dressing.  They really bore me so they would have someone to help stack wood.  As my sister and I grudgingly shuffled firewood so slowly that algae grew on our backs, I would imagine my future self, dressed in stylish and decidedly non-wood-stackable clothing, lounging about my elegantly appointed home.  Should a chill cross my bare shoulders, I would simply trip merrily across the floor to the thermostat and raise it to a more comfortable 75 degrees.  Tra la, tra lee, it's oil heat for me! 

My fall into apostasy started innocently enough.  Two years ago we wanted to use the three-season room in the back of the house, and hey, my parents had a small woodstove they weren't using, so why not?  And it just so happens that we had to take a tree down, so we had a cord of wood right there.  What the heck, it's just for every once in a while, right?  Yeah, right.  It costs $125 for a cord of wood, and a donation of a kidney for a tank of oil.  Do the math.

Wear Sensible Shoes.  Who's that idiot high school girl picking her way across a frozen parking lot in February wearing high-heeled shoes?  Oh, it's me, circa 1985!  Who's that woman standing on her feet all day teaching in three-inch heels?  Oh, it's me, circa 1998!  Who's that woman limping to the podiatrist to be fitted for $300 worth of orthotics?  Oh, it's me, circa 2000!

Go to Work in Non-flattering Clothing.  As high school students, my little friends and I would compare notes on our teachers' (lack of) sartorial sense.  "I would never wear something like that," we'd sniff, taking in the cardigan knit sweaters and the loose denim dresses around us.  Well, what can I say?  Cardigans come in mighty handy when one classroom's a boiler and the other's a meat locker!  As for denim dresses, um, I have one, but I don't actually wear it.  So does that count? 

Drive a family truckster.  Current vehicle:  2000 Subaru Legacy wagon.  Nuff said.

Rub my child's face with spit on a Kleenex.  My mom was the WORST violator of this one - she would check if the back of my neck was clean frequently.  In public.  When I was TWELVE!  It was so gross.  But now I do it - I'm a picker of the worst sort.  I pick at her nose.  I pick at ear wax.  I pick at dried-up food bits on her cheek.  "Watch out, India," Warren yells when I get that gleam in my eye, "Mommy's going to pick!"

I'm sure there are myriad others, and I may add to the list later.  But it's 9:45 pm now, which is way  past my bedtime.