Some Pig

Sitting Arrangements Seem To Be The Theme Here. Just Go With It.

Lately, Celeste has been agitating to get out of her awkwardly large and lunky Britax Safetysaurus and into a booster seat.  Every time it's just the two of us traveling together, she slides into her sister's minimalist booster.  Then she smiles her most beguiling smiles (and they are pretty damn beguiling, if I do say so myself), pleading, "Can I sit in India's seat, Mommy?  Pleeeeaaaaase?"  And, being no fan of the buckling process required of the Safetysaurus, I acquiesce.  [We have a predilection for thrift and fuel economy chez Pig, so we still drive small four-door cars that require elaborate contorting on the part of the adult in question, even when she is a full six inches or so shorter than the average US adult, to insert her upper body far enough into the car to close the buckles. Children's car seats have been the bane of my existence for lo these past five years as a result.] 

Yesterday, I was passing my favorite thrift store and I noticed they had a Britax Secure-o-rama, the large booster seat with a high back that is the first step out of the baby-style car seat, placed by the road.  I nearly gave myself and Celeste whiplash pulling off the road so I could pounce on it before some other stingy thrifty New England suburbanite snatched it up.  I looked at the price tag affixed to the side.  It said $4.  I SCORED A BRITAX SECURE-O-RAMA FOR FOUR MEASLY SMACKERS, PEOPLE!!!  The cover is a little sun-bleached and I need to wipe down the plastic bits, but for FOUR BUCKS I'd do a hell of a lot more than that.  

I've been secretly longing for the moment when we could ditch the baby seats once and for all.  I know a lot of mothers who mourn every outgrown baby accessory, but I am definitely not in their number.  I did heave a sigh of regret when Celeste outgrew the infant bucket seat, because those are just so damn convenient, and because I knew what awaited us; namely, several years of shuffling big, awkward car seats around.  Celeste being on the lower half of the growth chart, I was afraid that she would be in first grade before outgrowing the Safetysaurus.  I had basically reconciled myself to a few more years of the blasted thing, until a friend with little ones who aren't any bigger than Celeste opened her minivan door to reveal her twins happily ensconced in first-stage booster seats.  It was as a revelation.  At that moment, the clouds parted and a chorus of angels sang, while one piercing ray of light illuminated the middle row of seats with their lovely! lightweight! easily transported! seating.  The next day, we took our legendary ride past the thrift store as mentioned above and the rest, as they say, is history.

Unfortunately, Warren did not prove to be as amenable to this change as I might have hoped.  Every once in awhile. he gets contrarian on me and insists on playing devil's advocate.  "So why are you so eager to get her out of the baby seat?  What's the safest option?  Why not put her in the Safety First (another car seat we own, somewhat less bulky than the Safetysaurus but just as awkward otherwise) and tell her it's a booster seat?  After all, it's about Celeste, isn't it?"  My arguments about ease of transport and Celeste wanting a big-girl seat sounded weak in comparison. "Well, *I* think we should put her in the Safety First and tell her it's a booster," Warren humphed.  I sat by helplessly while my vision of clicking both girls into their seats in one smooth motion apiece dissipated into the ether.  Meanwhile, Cici was burbling happily about "my gwon-up seat," as in, "Do I have a gwon-up seat, Mommy," and, "Tomowwow I'm going to wide in my gwon-up seat!"  There I was, stuck between the Scylla of my hyper-conscientious husband and the Charybdis of my booster-craving daughter.

I was not without some counter-strategies of my own.  I waited until Warren was nearly asleep, exhausted by the day's head and humidity, and the exertion of getting our two mentally and emotionally demanding children to bed.  "I'm putting Cici in her new booster tomorrow," I informed him, phrasing it as a declarative statement and not a question."  "Unnhhh-hunnnh," he mumbled, giving me a small but important victory.  It's all in the timing, people.

Blast From The Past

Today, we went to a local farm to pick strawberries, eat strawberries, go on a hayride, eat some more strawberries, get the girls' faces painted, eat strawberries, and eat strawberries.  I'm lucky they didn't weigh us before and after and make us pay the difference.

While we were there, the girls got a chance to crawl around and explore an antique fire engine, circa 1960'ish, give or take a decade.  Or two.  Hey, who do I look like, Lee Iacocca?  Anyway, it was definitely pre-air bags, and possibly pre-seat belts. The kids could play with the CB radio, pretend to steer, haul on the big hoses, whatever took their fancy.  Needless to say, it was a big hit with the toddler-boy set, but even my girlie-girls were interested.

Would you like to know what they found to be the most engrossing special feature of all?

The hand-cranked windows.  

I should've just kept that 1978 Ford Fiesta that was the first car I ever owned.  It might not have been a functioning car, but it would have made a hell of a playhouse!  Shoot, after a day or two of cranking those windows up and down, they'd both have forearms like Popeye.  Then I could rent them out to do something useful with themselves, like bounce drunks or open recalcitrant cans of spinach.  Shucks - yet another opportunity for the big payday, gone.

Letter From A Broad, Dance Fever Edition

Oh hooray, hooray!  Today is the day that ABC released the spring 2010 Dancing With the Stars lineup, and you know what that means:  Sequins!  Spandex!  Bruno Tonioli swiveling his hips suggestively!  Former megastars and current never-weres pretending they got game! You know I loves me my DWTS, so let 'er rip, I say!

Having said that, I do need to address a few concerns a little more directly.  Here goes:

Dear costume department,

I noticed that Pamela Anderson is one of the celebrities tapped for this season's competition.  Pamela Anderson is 42 years old.  You know who else is 42 years old?  Me.  Pamela Anderson has pushed two kids into the world.  You know who else has pushed two kids into the world?  Me.  Now granted, Pamela has the distinct advantage of the world's best cosmetic surgeons and the most advanced medical technology at her disposal, but after a couple go-rounds in Labor and Delivery and close relationships with several rather sketchy personalities, well, there's only so much 'maintenance' a girl can do, yanno?  So do your viewing audience and whatever scraps of Pamela's dignity remain a favor, and be kind.  Build in a little Lycra, stitch in some extra support and for heaven's sake, make sure there's more cloth on her body than she used to wear in that little red swimsuit, mmmmkay?

Keep on twinkling!

Some Pig

Dear Buzz Aldrin,

I admit, I was a little taken aback to see one such as you - by which I mean, a bona-fide American hero - signing on for what is really an exercise in ritual overexposure.  Okay, it's not as bad as Big Brother or I'm a Celebrity, Now Get Me Out of Here, but it sure as hell ain't no Charlie Rose interview. I like my serious and distant public figures to stay that way, instead of shuffling and grinning a la Tom "The Hammer" DeLay's performance (before his bunions mercifully put him out of our misery, that is).  In case you didn't get the memo, DWTS is supposed to be the province of former child actors, soap opera stars, legitimate celebrities long past their prime who would sell a major organ for just one more moment in the limelight, B-list movie and/or pop stars who never truly broke through, Olympian medalists, reality TV characters, aaaand one token representational professional athlete of the black persuasion.  So before you find yourself on live TV shakin' what yer mama gave ya in front of millions of people who are too ignerint to know who you are, think about whether or not you really want to be known that way.  Might I suggest a nice staid waltz, followed by a dignified and speedy exit? 

One step for man, one giant pas de bourre for all mankind!

SP

Dear Kate Gosselin,

Okay, so were the twenty hours you were rumored to have spent in the salon getting your hair extensions all in preparation for this?  So you could toss your long locks as you order around Tony Dovilani or whatever other poor sap gets stuck with you?  And might I just ask if ABC is footing the bill for the nanny you're undoubtedly going to need to take care of the kids who made you semi-famous in the first place?  Look, I know you have only 40% of the number of kids the Duggars have, just by way of comparison, but you also have only 50% of the number of on-duty parents at any one time, too.  So are you going to let your Ed-Hardy-wearing, jail-bait-screwing ex of yours hang out at the house with his latest chippie while you go off trying to perfect your mambo for a minimum of six weeks and probably longer?  Katie, my girl, as a working mother myself I have some measure of sympathy for a gal who wants to maintain her identity and individuality and not become subsumed by the all-encompassing job of motherhood.  HOWEVER, you DO have a whole flock of kids at home who are not old enough yet to fend for themselves for any length of time, and you're choosing to devote a big chunk of the immediate future to a TV show.  Look, as much as I'd like to hike the Himalayas, meet the Dalai Lama, perfect my French and learn to crochet, I realize that I have two small humans who have a superior claim to my time right now.  You call these kids your "Bles8ings," and I'm sure you mean it, but along with those blessings comes a good two decades of responsibility.  You get to pursue your fifteen minutes of fame when your kids are done needing you around on a daily basis.  And please, do not - DO. NOT. - drag your kids on the show so we can all watch them pretending to be a dancer like Mommy.  I'm already booked to spend two hours watching my own kids stumble around to music; I don't need to watch yours too.

Yours,

Some Pig

Dear chat forum participants,

Before this season gets officially underway, I'd like to set a few ground rules. 

1) DWTS is, by design, partly a popularity contest.  Therefore, when someone whom you feel is the better dancer gets voted off or loses to a less-skilled but better-known candidate, please keep your poorly-worded and badly spelled diatribes about how the better dancer lost and you're never watching the show again to yourself.  Your just JELUS anyway.

2) If you're disgusted by the lineup and think the show has gone downhill and hate the judges, then rejoice!  YOU DON'T HAVE TO WATCH.  Your remote comes with this nifty little feature, called an OFF button.  When you press it, then like magic, poof!  The whole show disappears!  Then you can go spend your time reading an improving book, or alphabetizing the spice rack, or whatever it is people who aren't addicted to DWTS do with their time.

3) No less a figure than George Bernard Shaw said that dance is "the vertical expression of a horizontal desire."  As Don Draper could tell you, sex sells.  So yes, the costumes are seriously skimpy and some of the dances are seriously suggestive.  Deal with it.  If you're easily offended, go watch a retrospective of Hee Haw and leave the dancin' gals alone.

Lurve,

Some Pig

Dear producers,

Would you ever consider inviting Apolo Anton Ohno back?  I'm kicking myself that I didn't watch that season.

Yours,

SP

Baby, You Can Drive My Car

Bad news.

I just got off the phone with the service center.  I took the family truckster in earlier today for a realignment and a diagnostic check.  The "Check Engine" light has been turning on and off at irregular intervals over the past two weeks, which both scares me and annoys the bejabbers out of me at the same time.  It scares me because I'm convinced that any minute my car will blow up, and it annoys the bejabbers out of me because I can't ignore it.  I remember the good old days, when cars were cars and not rolling computers, and I could handle any incipient malfunction by turning the radio up louder and ignoring whatever sounds of impending doom were emanating from the engine block.  But now we have "Check Engine" lights, so I duly took the engine to be checked.  The service center guy said a bunch of things I don't understand, and then he said "twelve hundred dollars," which I understand all too well, and then I went and got Warren on the phone.  Apparently my catalytic converter is converting into a catatonic converter and we will eventually have to do something about it.  Sigh.

It amazes me how I have taken the $1200 figure in stride.  There was a time when the thought of sinking $1200 into a car would have put me on the floor.  I don't think I spent $1200 on purchasing and repairing my first car in total.  Man, I miss that car!  It was a 1978 Ford Fiesta - remember those?  Nah, of course not.  The Fiesta was Ford's knockoff of the VW Rabbit, a feeble attempt to capture a slice of the economy car market.  It did get great gas mileage, mostly because it didn't take much gas to wind up the rubber bands that ran the thing.  The car couldn't go above 50 mph unless I was traveling downhill with a stiff breeze behind me, but if you need to drive faster than that, you should have left home earlier anyway. 

The Fiesta was already a used car when it became part of our family in the early 80's.  It was bought off a family friend as a stopgap measure until my dad could get the car he really wanted, but then my sister went off to college, and I went off to college, and the car kept running, so what the hey.  Plus it was a stylin' ride - bright orange inside and out - and when we loaded our two large black dogs in the back, it looked like a mobile Halloween display, and what could top that?  I purchased it for the princely sum of $1 in 1990 and I soon came to appreciate its many amenities.  It was one of the first cars to come equipped with outside weather sensors:  If your feet got wet, it was raining.  If they were cold, it was winter.  It had 2/40 air conditioning (2 windows down, 40 miles per hour).  Best of all, it had these little, skinny inside door latches that frequently broke off, which meant I had to roll down the window and open the door from the outside or try to scootch over the stick shift and across the passenger seat to get out.  I dare any Hummer-driving troglodyte to make a more memorable arrival than that!

One of the hazards of driving an older, more obscure car is trying to obtain quality care.  While I don't normally enjoy dealing with car maintenance, the Fiesta was a snap.  I simply tootled back to my parents' house and my parents and I would ferry the car down to Rudy's Gararge, after which I would partake of all the amenities of home such as free food and washing machine access that one so sorely misses in one's early 20's.  I had full confidence in Rudy, mostly because he had been repairing cars since approximately the beginning of time.  In fact, one of the cave paintings in Lascaux is actually a message from Rudy's Garage.  (Rudy called.  The wheel is ready for pickup, any time after the equinox.  Oh, and we need more woolly mammoth hides for the baby.)  Rudy's encyclopedic knowledge of the internal combustion engine came in quite handy.  He didn't need any dang computer chip to tell HIM what was wrong, nossir. 

Another hazard of owning the Fiesta was finding the bits and pieces necessary to keep it going.  By the time I took ownership, the car was so old, and its presence so rare, that only the regional distributor could acquire replacement parts.  After Rudy got a gander at the ole Fiesta's latest issue, he'd call me in to give me the bad news.  Rudy didn't care for his store-boughten teeth and rarely wore them, which rendered his speech fairly unintelligible.  He would wax eloquent on my arthritic car's newest problem for a good quarter-hour, at the end of which he would invariably conclude, "Going to have to send off to South Paris for that part, dear," which was rendered as, "Gonna hafta shendof t'Sowf Pahis for that paahht, deah."  During this time all I had to do was throw in the occasional "okay" or "uh-huh".  As soon as I heard his traditional concluding statement, I would nod gravely and ask, "How long do you think that will take?"

"Two weeks, deah," was the inevitable answer.  This fortnight's pause always intrigued me.  Why two weeks?  Did Ripley and Fletcher have to call Detroit and have the part custom-made from antique molds?  Did Ford have to dig into its secret cache of archived parts deep in the bowels of the earth to find my accelerator pedal cable?  Did you even know accelerator pedals have cables?  I sure didn't, until mine broke on the Fiesta and it took two weeks to find a new one!

Alas, the time came to pass when the parts that failed got bigger and more important (like cooling systems), and the ability to find them even in salvage yards diminished precipitously.  The Fiesta became a friend's ice-driving car, and then a chicken coop. I imagine it's now probably rusting away quietly in a field, creating an eyesore, if not a Superfund-eligible environmental hazard.  I went off and bought a Honda Civic that had inside door latches that didn't break and no big rust holes in the floor, which I kept for ten years before selling it to a student of mine so I could buy another car off my father, and then I got married and got a family truckster.  Now when I get a call from the garage I can understand every word the service guy is saying, even if I don't comprehend what he means, and he never concludes by saying he's got to send off to South Paris for that paht, deah, and now car ownership isn't nearly as fun as it was.