Category Archives: Humor

Christmas Tree Complexity

Christmas Tree day started off with the High School Band fundraising pancake breakfast at the VFW, which, I am sorry to say, nobody wanted to go to. It is a fine event and supporting the youth and community is SO important, but as a family, we don’t tolerate potlucks and community meals well. I was dragging the family along when a donation would have made more sense because imposing awkward social experiences on reluctant children is a hobby of mine. To top it off, Mr. Wordtabulous had developed a “stomach ache” and couldn’t come with us. I just bet he has a stomach ache, I thought as I watched volunteers sweep by with carafes of coffee and trays of orange juice in little plastic cups. I felt guilty for not volunteering, which added to my social wrongfootedness as I greeted the band moms I know, but who intimidate me. There is a metaphoric mask I wear on these occasions, much like the mask you might remember from the cartoon The Jetsons, the one Jane Jetson wore on her early morning video phone chats to hide the fact that she hadn’t done her hair or makeup yet. My mask is supposed to hide the fact that I am not relaxed or comfortable and that I suspect the person I am speaking with thinks I am an utter doofus. In the cartoon, the woman with whom Jane video-chats sneezes and her mask flies off to reveal that she isn’t made up for the day either. I didn’t sneeze, but I could feel the mask cracking a little around the edges, and I think the other women saw it, too. The music, the people, the place: what was probably cheerful and energetic for most of the other people there knocked me a little more off kilter. I hadn’t quite slipped off the shoulder of the road into the ‘bad day ditch,’ but I could feel things inching in that direction.

Leaving the VFW, with the strains of “Soul Man” escorting us on our way, I could have cut my losses. A reasonable woman would have said, “this is not your day to get a tree, honey; go home and read a book or take a nap.” But I had decided that Dec. 4th was Tree Day, and stubborn adherence to what has been decided, especially when it makes no sense at all, is an inherited insanity which I was not strong enough to overcome. Mr. W. was still claiming sick tummy, so it was up to me and the boys. We had decided to go back to an artificial tree after many years of Boy Scout tree sales and cut your own experiences. Still discombobulated from breakfast, we went to Menards’ Enchanted Forest, which I propose they rename Menards’ Enchanted Forest of the Damned. I like Menards, except for the fact that I can never find anything, including employees to help me find things. Enchanted Forest is basically an artificial tree lot, big enough to be found easily even in Menards. It had a pretty good variety of sizes and types of trees, which was where the decision became complicated. Pre-lit or standard? The boys voted pre-lit, openly voicing a preference to NEVER having to help me deck the tree with lights again. I don’t think it is unreasonable to try to space lights evenly, but evidently I am something of a Captain Bligh about it. 7 foot, which would fit nicely in the front room, or 9 foot, which would be lovely in the vaulted family room? Flocked or unflocked? Short or long needles? Hinged vs. hooked branches? I was feeling rushed, overwhelmed and burdened by my self-imposed need to make a decision without having done any research. Also, and here is the thing that was driving me right over the edge, there was a boombox nestled in the center of the trees, playing zippy synthesized Christmas carols at a nerve-scraping volume. That was bad enough, but in the background, you could still hear the more orchestral Christmas carols playing over the store’s sound system. The combination was unspeakable. After checking and re-checking the tree options I had to exit the Enchanted Forest to calm my auditory system and catch my breath. The boys were completely unphased by the noise, but nonplussed by my wild-eyed reaction to it. We had narrowed the choices down to two, but still needed to find out if the trees were available, which meant going back in and systematically checking fifty or so tags until the right boxes were found. I suggested that I might sneak into the copse of artificial trees, within which the demonic boombox was still spewing tin-can melodies and turn the thing off. Younger son looked down at me and calmly informed that if I did so, I would have to figure out where in the store was the furthest point away from Enchanted Forest and look for him there. I was lectured about the inadvisability of “turning off other people’s appliances,” and no rebuttal was allowed. My whole argument for bringing the boys along was that I wanted their advice and needed them to carry the tree for me (I can totally carry the tree, but was angling for some family teamwork.) Mutiny. Fine. I took a deep breath and we dove back into the Enchanted Forest. After some frantic sticker surfing, I gave up looking for option two and the boys grabbed the only one of our choices we could find, the 7 foot pre-lit Norfolk pine with hinged branches. Good-bye, Enchanted Forest. Of the Damned. Forever.

Home again, the boys disappeared upstairs into their respective digital worlds where I could hear them laughing, (and was that singing?) while I examined the four pieces that, assembled, would be our decorative Christmas masterpiece for years to come. Twenty minutes later I was in a fetal position on the floor reconsidering my enslavement to traditional cultural practices. Also being very self-pitying. The next try went better. I figured out that I had started with the wrong piece, which had made the whole thing unstable. Now it was stable, but heavy and pinchy on the fingers, and increasingly irritating. I grumpily assembled and decorated that tree in the meanest Christmas spirit since Scrooge. By MY MARTYRED SELF. I picked out the most meaningful ornaments for everyone in my unfeeling, unhelpful family. And…it is beautiful. False start aside, it took half the time to decorate because of the pre-installed lights, and there were no dead strands to deal with. It fits the space perfectly. I had to devise a prosthetic branch to brace my angel tree topper, which I ingeniously did out of a pencil and some sticky wax (a win!) Then I took a nap. Reset. My horrible children were wonderful again, and my faker husband really did turn out to have a stomach ache which lasted well into the next day, but he still managed to tell me what a good tree we picked and how nice it looks.

After 45 years of hopping back and forth from the dark side to the bright, you’d think I would have learned more about how illusory and temporary these lapses are. In some alternate universe I am serene and confidently living my life with gracious good sense through good times and bad. In this one it appears I am a more of a cautionary tale about the hazards of unrealistic expectations and forgetting the point of Christmas: love and giving as exemplified by the life of Jesus. If this, or any other season is getting you down, I highly recommend prayerful meditation on the true value of all the activity in your life. Since I didn’t do that, I can also suggest hanging in there and doing the best you can until you can get a nap, but try to get the prayerful meditation in too. Support the community, spend time with the people you love, revel a little, and give to the less fortunate. Also, back away from the ‘best Christmas ever’ ideal and remember you are loved even when you are imperfect. You are in good company.

Top 10 Things I Do When I Should Be Noveling

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10. knitting, or crocheting, or some other archaic pastime (living history!)

9. checking my sons’ grades on the internet (terrifying)

8. searching my pantry for carbs (chocolate? graham crackers? stale crackers? good enough!)

7. playing beyond Tetris on my phone; I am not getting any better (so ashamed…)

6. checking my wordtabulous site stats (am I relevant?)

5. babytalking to the cat (we both like that)

4. checking my email; surely someone has sent me some charming forwards (see the silent monks singing the Hallelujah Chorus at http://voxvocispublicus.homestead.com/Index.html)

3. checking out the blogs I follow and trying to give some thoughtful comments to show I care (because I do!)

2. getting sucked into whatever reality nonsense Mr. Wordtabulous is watching at the time (Marathon Boy-horrifying and fascinating)

1. blogging my dysfunctional life approach for all to enjoy (Cheers! Now go get something done!)

Truly Wordtabulous

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Made up a new word today: ass-weasel, as in “Firing me was a real ass-weasel move.” I wasn’t fired, but the protagonist in my novel was. Bad luck. I guess I can’t claim to have made that word up, since what I did was only to combine two well-known words in a way that I have never heard used before, but which possibly lots of people use all the time. In case it is a new word, please consider it my gift to you. Use it wisely though, don’t want it getting all used up and grody. Like the phrase, “In it to win it.” I could be quite happy never hearing THAT again. Can I get an “Amen?”

I also came up with something last night while listening to my husband snore, and I am quite sure this IS a new word: Snufurgulent, as in “Snufurgulent tones emanated from deep in his throat and quivered in the night air. She laid awake next to him, thinking of new words.” Ladies, am I right?

A Groupon Breakup?

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My email inbox overfloweth. There is a lot of cool stuff in there: new post alerts for blogs I subscribe to, snappy back and forths from my friend, Kelly, important updates about stuff going on at school and with the family. I also get a staggering number of “deals of the day,” from the school, from amazon, and from Groupon, among others. In the interest of taking some sort of control in the areas of my life where I should reasonably expect to be able to do so, I decided to do some unsubscribing. This is what popped up after I ditched Groupon:

And yes, I did click “Punish Derrick.” Brilliant. I have to admit, I loved Groupon the most. Their deals have not saved me that much, and I actually lost money on one that expired (aarrrghhh!) but if you take the time to read their copy, they are very funny and that stuff is free, delivered just about daily on your email or smartphone. Almost makes me want to resubscribe…

Gate C40

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I grab my $5 lunch, a sesame bagel with garden veggie cream cheese and a bottle of water from Einstein Bros. and walk out onto the concourse. Five small chocolate chip cookies lie next to the exit. A sad waste, I think. Unless they were bad cookies. How much do bad cookies cost? Too much, undoubtedly. There is a bar cleverly masquerading as a steakhouse grill next door. I think, “A good stiff drink sounds nice,” and wonder why that has occurred to me more and more lately. I discard the thought as I usually do—too many calories, or knowing that the result will be disappointing—a lot like chocolate chip cookies. I make my way to the gate, and take a seat in a row of chairs that look out the windows directly onto the tarmac, mostly to avoid the gaze of an intensely cheerful guy in a middle row. With his long hair and full-on mustache, I instantly categorize him with Jagermeister and leftovers of an uncertain age: things best to be avoided. The tarmac is dead at first. A few planes are parked at jetways, but no people or moving vehicles are visible. I am reminded of The Langoliers, a short story by Stephen King. Always a comforting story to think of before a flight. Announcements play over the loudspeakers but I understand none of them. Periodically I glance at the counter to make sure my gate’s staff aren’t the ones making the announcements, even though I know it is way too early to board. Someone from another gate makes an announcement in a Kermit the Frog voice, which I do understand, but instantly forget because it has nothing to do with me. The voice might not be cool but I can’t be snide about it because I love Kermit. Boarding begins with the special people who need help or are encumbered with small children or hold first class tickets. I pick up my bagel garbage, arrange my belongings logistically and wander over to the outskirts of the gate area. I get a better look at the long-haired gentleman, whose hair is indeed well below his shoulders and more lustrous than mine has ever been. It is perfectly feathered back on the sides. If his ripped jeans were bell bottoms he would be straight from That 70’s Show. A woman shares McDonald’s French fries with her husband or aging boyfriend and I think, “I wonder what she’d do if I asked her for one?” The thought makes me smile and I realize I have no idea if my zone is boarding yet or not. I am between my mom, who I just visited for the week, and my husband and sons, who await me at my destination. I am here, in between, just me and my stream of consciousness. The loudspeaker calls for all zones to board. Time to go home.

What Would Socrates Say?

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“If you don’t write it down, it didn’t happen.” Okay, for the most part that isn’t true, but one area in which it is would be my “I should blog about…” list. After doing a few serious posts in a row, I felt like I wanted to write something fun, but life has been…well, serious lately and I was having trouble finding inspiration. Then it hit me–***. That is correct, I didn’t write it down and now I have no idea what I was thinking about doing. My hands were probably in dishwater, or I had an armload of laundry (yeah, I’m a fun girl.) I remember smiling with relief when this mystery topic popped into my head, and thinking, “yeah, that’s kind of amusing, people will relate to that. I’ve thought about writing on it before, so there’s no worry I am going to go and forget it…I’ll just finish what I’m doing first.” Great idea, Lynnette. This is really annoying because I should know better; I try to have notepads and pens handy at all times for just this reason, though I haven’t figured out an effective way to do this in the shower. Socrates wrote, “Know thyself.” Good advice. I bet he wrote that one down right when he thought of it.

Teen Life: Then/There and Here/Now

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I was driving around town yesterday and I realized for the first time that I might not know how to adequately parent my suburban kids. Adequate parenting isn’t a new concern for me–that goes back to prenatal days, but raising teenagers in a big town on the outskirts of two large cities brings a whole lot of possibilities and challenges I never dealt with growing up.

I grew up in De Smet, a South Dakota town with a population of about 1200 when I lived there. De Smet started out as a railroad town (as chronicled in By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder,) and later was blessed by being at the crossroad of two state highways. That crossroad had the only traffic light in town, a flashing yellow on Hwy. 14, and a flashing red on Hwy. 25. A glorified stop sign, really, nothing like my driver-in-training needs to contend with, which is how this whole train of thought got underway. Teaching a kid to drive where I live now is so different than where I learned. Here there are more people, more traffic, higher speeds in tighter quarters, and infinitely more complicated intersections. In De Smet, back in the day, other drivers not only probably knew who you were, they often also knew something about your driving. If you were very new at it (or very old,) you were given a little more berth and a bit of wry courtesy as you took a few precious seconds to figure out what you were doing. A few months ago my son was screamed at by another driver for going too slow, 28 mph in a 30 mph zone as he was approaching a stop sign. The same thing could happen in De Smet, but talk would go around, and that driver would soon find herself with a reputation as a hothead and on the short end of the neighborly goodwill stick. Karma can work quickly in a small town.

Driving isn’t the only area of difference, naturally. My graduating class was small, even for De Smet, with 25 students. If you wanted to help with yearbook, be in track, participate in choir, the all-school musical and be on the prom committee, that was fine. You probably didn’t even need to be particularly talented to get a spot, and yet De Smet produced very competitive athletic, musical and theatrical teams. No matter what group you were in, you more or less had known everyone for years. In a suburban high school of over 2,000 kids it could be easy to look at the masses of other people and think, “Let them do it; there are probably one (two, three) hundred kids that have been training since third grade to do that activity and I don’t know any of them.” In De Smet you almost felt obligated to join, somebody’s got to do it, right? I tried a lot of things and found my niche in some. I am highly amused to this day that I was an officer in the Future Homemakers of America club. I had no intention at that time of becoming a homemaker, I was going to be a big deal in international business or with the United Nations. I was going to eat out and have my laundry done for me. But all my friends were in FHA, it was huge, and we had the best times. I don’t know how to translate those experiences to the world my sons live in today. They must find their own way. Maybe it is less about parenting and more about wanting to hold on and stay connected to my children’s lives. It seems I am reaching the end of “Do the best you can,” and am entering “and then let them go.” Terrifying. Sad. Amazing. Life.

The First Step

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I am sorry I haven’t been around for a few days. I have been in Canada. In the 1960’s. In fact, part of me is still there because I am about 200 pages from the end of the way the crow flies, by Ann-Marie MacDonald. I could say a lot about the book, the author’s amazing use of language and the way she gets so completely inside the heads of her characters and her reader, but until I get to the very end, I hesitate to say more about it. So I am going to stick with a little problem I have: gluttony. Yes, yes, gluttony with chocolate, gluttony with TV marathons of Dr. Who and Project Runway, but our topic here today is book gluttony. I own stacks of books I haven’t read, and my (barnes & noble) nook is loaded with many more. Even with all those waiting for me, I still seek out bookstores and the library (LOVE the library!) for more, more, more. But that isn’t the real problem. The real problem is that I always start a book thinking that I am a normal person who can read a few chapters, decide if I like it, set it aside and get stuff done, then return to it if I like it enough. I am not a normal person. Even a pretty disappointing book can pull me from my real life and bury me. I am the nut without insight who thinks, “Just a few pages, what can be the harm?” until my husband comes home eight hours later to find me mortified with the lunch AND the breakfast dishes still strewn about, no idea of dinner, and quite possibly still in my jammies. To avoid this happening, I turn to evening reading, which all too frequently becomes reading into the wee hours, which results the next day in sluggish reflexes, sluggish thinking, and probably more dishes on the counter. I am a binge reader, able to go days, even a week or more without a book, but once one is opened I’m a goner. Even if I can force myself to put a marker between the pages and attempt to interact with my family, it is a sham. It might look like I am there, talking, cooking, helping build a deck, but that is just a shell in my clothing, walking around with the minimum consciousness needed to function. The rest of my brain is a dog straining against the leash, panting to get back to that intoxicating word-kibble. I try to justify my habit. I claim that carefully reading a variety of works helps me to become a better writer and I believe this is true. I just don’t think that all of the reading I get swept away with is helpful. Some of it is utter crap. I have a good life–strike that–I have a great life. Why my great life doesn’t tether me more tightly than a half-assed plot and a handful of two-dimensional characters is a great mystery to me. It hints of a character flaw. So in the interest of continuous self-improvement, I am determined to leave my unfinished book where it is until the errands have been run, the to-do list completed, the job boards have been scanned and dinner and dishes taken care of. But my thoughts creep back to the protagonist…Focus! Eye on the prize! Except this book isn’t crap at all, in fact reading it might make me a better person…Shake it off! You can do this! Right. Yes. I can do this and it will be better for all involved. I can become a better person by reading later. Now, I need to become a better person by not reading. My name is Lynnette and I am a Bibliomaniac. Thank you for listening and wish me luck.

Paws of Destruction

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I have been exchanging facebook comments with a friend of mine about our crazy, deadly cats. Joe, my only cat at this time, became a necessary addition to our household after my kids started getting their own ideas about how much cuddling is required for a happy household. It probably won’t surprise you to find out that their reckoning of optimal time spent snuggling is radically lower than mine. Hence the cat. We have had cats always, but they were more for fun, not necessity, and they really weren’t what you might call “cuddle compliant.” Joe is a different kind of cat. Indoors, when he isn’t sleeping, Joe is all about the petting, the baby talk, being carried like an infant, etc. I can’t decide if he really likes it or is just smart enough to understand that with the squishy food comes certain expectations, but either way he goes along with it and I’m happy. At night, we often gave Joe the choice about whether he wanted to be in or out. We tried to be reasonably safe about this, not letting him out until most of the traffic and the dogs were in, and for the most part he came home in the morning intact. There was the one time he got put in “kitty jail,” when one of the neighbors summoned animal control out of concern either for the songbirds or the poops roaming cats tend to leave behind in gardens. Those were a horrible couple of days as I waited for Joe to drag himself home, before I realized he might be in the slammer. We kept him inside for a week or so after that, but he can be very strident about his outside time (not to mention quick to slip out the door between our feet,) and we ended up allowing him his nocturnal freedom again. Joe gradually built up his hunting skills and started bringing home chipmunks, squirrels, very occasionally a bird, and often, rabbits. It became obvious that he prefers the heads, which I guess to him were rich delicious nuggets encased in a crunchy, edible shell. Most mornings we found small decapitated corpses on the lawn, which were unpleasant to clean up, but not as unsettling as the small beady eyeballs he often left behind, staring up at us through blades of grass. It was gross but being outside made him happy, and he was so fit from all the exercise and varied diet. The downside of buying and applying flea control and tapeworm pills seemed worth it. But recently, Joe has acquired a new interest, and it has been his downfall. It seems that on his nightly sojourns, he has developed a social streak and in the interest of finding new feline friends, has taken to launching himself onto neighbors’ window screens. Joe is not a small cat; he weighs a good twelve pounds. Evidently a cat of the right size can propel itself with sufficient force to pull a screen right out of a window, then enter, panicking feline and human inhabitants alike and leaving a swath of destruction in his wake. It has happened more than once. Multiple households. I am unshaken in my belief that his sole intention was to have a friendly visit, but I couldn’t argue with the damage. So now Joe is an inside cat, and we are all coming to terms with that. He is still vocal about his preference to be outside, especially as the evening slips into night. He seems to be putting on a little weight. We try to chase him around a little more often, and pull out the toys; overall we are making the transition. He might be a trespasser with a little bit of murder in his heart, but he is still my baby.

Unmentionables, Pt. 2: Marilyn’s Secret