Palm Springs

is gorgeous this time around.  My husband and I have been here in 116-degree heat, and in snow flurries.  This trip the weather has delivered sun and mild temperatures, with breathtaking views of snow-capped mountains ringing the Coachella Valley.

Yesterday we rambled around in Palm Springs, where the 50's are forever preserved.  Today we'll visit the Living Desert and hike a bit.  Tomorrow we'll go home, stopping at either the Palm Springs Air Museum or the Art Museum on our way out of town. Wednesday I'll be back to bugging my teenager when I'm not blogging, and on Thursday we'll mark our thirty-second wedding anniversary, most likely by watching the Rose Parade on tv, and napping in the afternoon. 

So, happy week-between-the-holidays to you all!

Merry Christmas

I wish you all joyful giving (and receiving), happy feasting, and some deeply satisfying lounging between the two.

(And to my dear friend Linda, your good news was all the gift I needed.  It's a Merry Christmas indeed.)

I'll be back after the big day.

Rain

Yes. It's raining again. We parched inhabitants of Southern California consider this good weather, so we're all sparkly and smiley and full of holiday cheer.

Today's rain is the excellent kind, slow and steady and nourishing, the kind the Navajos call a female rain. We can walk our dogs in it without getting soaked to the skin, and we can shop in it without risking the integrity of our purchases. Instead of knocking down hillsides, it helps the native wildflowers germinate, which keeps the soil in place. This rain doesn't create a mad rush down the arroyos to get to the ocean. It sinks into the soil and makes itself at home. We don't get white Christmases here, SoCal being semi-arid and all, but this year we're getting the next best thing - a green one!

Now that I've painted this inviting picture of our winter weather, I think I'll go walk the dog in the rain, and then I'll do some last minute shopping. And then, because it's chilly, I think I'll make soup.

Happy Rainy Monday to you all.

Origins

Yesterday I attended a Bar Mitzvah, my first ever. For this fallen-away-Catholic girl, the experience was more than interesting; it was thought-provoking, moving, and weirdly familiar.

Yeah, that's right. Familiar. To my surprise, I discovered strong parallels between the Catholic Mass of my childhood and the Jewish service I attended yesterday. Both services employ a liturgy. Both make ample use of an ancient language. There's sitting and standing, and an ark which is opened to remove a sacred object central to the service. There are even chapel veils for the women - little lacy hats. And - in the ultimate parallel - in recent years, the use of ladies' chapel veils has become voluntary in both venues!

There are clear differences, of course. The men are required to wear their own version of the chapel veil, kippehs, to synagogue, while in the Catholic church men have always had to bare their heads as a sign of respect. The use of Latin in the Mass has become rare. There isn't much kneeling in synagogue, but there's clapping, which you won't find in Catholic churches. The ark in synagogue is much larger than the little one set on the altar in Catholic churches, and what comes out of the Catholic ark are tiny edible wafers as opposed to the large (and wonderfully ancient-looking) Torah scroll. And, yowser, those readings - we covered Onanism, duplicity, harlotry, single-motherhood! Youngest Daughter and I, sharing the prayerbook, kept reading ahead in the translation because, let's face it, it was wa-aa-ay more interesting than any letter Paul ever wrote to anybody!

The differences seemed just details, though. I had never felt so strongly the shared origins of Judasim, Christianity, and Islam (with its own liturgy complete with risings and kneelings and traditional head-coverings) as I did yesterday.

Most striking, in the end, was the feeling of community, of ancient roots, of the ritual binding of families and friends together in the presence of an Almighty Being. I don't go to Mass anymore for reasons I've thought through and embraced. But attending yesterday's service reminded me of how much I will always enjoy a good, mysterious, religious rite.

My Favorite Christmas Memory

I wish I had a video tape of this.

Middle Kid was two. I had to do some Christmas shopping and was at a gift shop in Sierra Madre, California. Sierra Madre is quaint and as out-of-the way as a town can get in the San Gabriel Valley, meaning it doesn't have a freeway, Route 66, Foothill Avenue, Huntington Drive, or Mission Boulevard running through it. It's packed right up against the foothills and is famous for its quaintness, its community-built Rose Parade entry, its search and rescue team, and its volunteer fire department. Firemen get the call in Sierra Madre via a horn that is the loudest quacker you ever heard in your life.

So. MK and I left the little gift shop. I had bought a lot of stuff, much of it breakable, and when we left my arms were so stacked with packages that I was having trouble just keeping it all balanced. Of course I didn't have a hand free to hold onto MK, but the car was only about a block away so I didn't anticipate a problem.

Mistake. Sensing his advantage, MK began walking down the sidewalk in the opposite direction from the car.

I called him. He ignored me. I called him again. He half-glanced at me over his shoulder and continued on his way. I yelled at him. He kept going. I started following him down the sidewalk, cajoling (okay, in a not-very-friendly voice), urging, pleading, threatening. Now and then he'd stop and look at me, but he would not come. I turned around and marched towards the car. He kept going in the wrong direction. I stopped and stared after him. I was tired. The packages were heavy. I needed divine intervention.

And I got it. The fire horn, which was situated on top of a poll right smack between us, started blasting out that horrible quacking sound, BRAAAAAGHHHHH BRAAAAAGHHHHH BRAAAAGHHHHH, so loud it was like an explosion inside our heads. MK stiffened, his mouth formed a perfect O, his arms flew out, and he danced around like he was being electrocuted. As soon as the noise stopped he ran to me and flung his arms and legs around my shin.

A delicious calm descended over me. My son was quaking against me, but did I show him pity? I did not. I said, "That's what you get." And then I limped to the car with my arms still full of packages and MK stuck on my leg like a monkey.

I don't think this experience scarred him. I know it did me a world of good. For that one moment, I believed utterly that all was right with the universe, and isn't that what Christmas is about? So, Merry Christmas. Yo.

Forgiveness

A couple of days ago, when Tom Vilsack's name turned up as Secretary of Agriculture in Obama's administration, and then Ken Salazar got picked for Interior, a light bulb went on in my head. Ah-ha, I thought. Obama's idea of a big tent holds not just a variety of races, genders, and parties. He's accepting different points of view, too.

Today, defending his choice of Rick Warren as invocator-in-chief at the inauguration, he said so. We can disagree without being disagreeable, he said.

Hoo-boy. I suppose he thinks we should forgive the trespasses of the wingnuts on the right over the last eight years, and learn to live with those toads.

My first reaction is resentment. Why us? Why do the Democrats always have to make nice while the crazy wingnuts get away with bad-faith negotiating and vicious double dealing? Couldn't we slap them silly for a while, and then, when we feel a little better, start down that forgiveness path?

My second reaction is this: that's why we're Democrats. We believe in making nice, in being grownups, in for...for....(deep breath)...forgiveness. If that moronic crackpot in the White House had been a little less moronic and a little more mature - if he'd been accountable to everybody, and not just to the ultra-rich - we might not be in a world of hurt now. And continuing along the trail he blazed and then expecting to end up somewhere different is the definition of insanity.

Besides, we voted for change.

This is going be to a mind-expanding (character-building?) exercise. But okay. I'm ready. On with the show.

(Not giving up my Fox News voodoo dolls, though. Forgiveness can only take a person so far.)

Random thoughts on Christmas

I've been Christmas shopping in the rain. It's not white, but at least it feels like a season other than summer...

Every time I hit a Christmas milestone, like hosting twelve for dinner last Saturday night, I think, OK, that's done. Now I can coast. Then I remember the next milestone. Like shopping and cards, which I've ignored until now.

One of my favorite things about Christmas is visiting (fill in the blank) Museum with my granddaughter and whoever else wants to come along on Christmas Eve. This year it'll be the Natural History Museum of LA County - same as last year because we love it so much. On Christmas Eve you have the place to yourself, and they serve a darn good lunch. Sooo much fun.

Another of my favorite things is getting Christmas cards - particularly if they're fat with (oft-maligned) Christmas letters inside. I'm a total sucker for those letters.

I love Christmas music. Especially churchy Christmas music - Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel. The Hallelujah Chorus. O Come, All Ye Faithful. Silent Night. We Three Kings. Anything instrumental and flutey. (Hate hate hate Jingle Bell Rock. Argh.)

I love Christmas decorations with sparkly stuff - gold paint and glitter and that sort of thing. It's gotta stay inside, though - I'm not big on ostentatious yard displays; and plastic blow-up stuff? Puh-leeze. A simple strand of lights along the roof line is about all I want to see.

I love peppermint bark. 'Nuff said.

My son makes the most incredible eggnog. I was not sold on the idea the first time around - he puts the liquor and (raw) eggs together in the cupboard for some ungodly amount of time (countable in weeks!), which sounds like a recipe for a Christmas Day spent running to the bathroom, if not actual death. It doesn't turn out that way, though. Apparently the liquor renders the eggs harmless as well as delicious. He adds the cream at the very end because liquor doesn't work the same magic on milk products. Anyway, it tastes stupendous.

I'm pretty sure there are other things I like, having to do with hope and brotherhood and new beginnings. But those border on the maudlin so I won't get into it them now. I'll leave it at this: Christmas is the best anticipatory event of the year.

Update: In rereading this today, I find that I was a little hard on yard displays. I like lights in trees and bushes outside - especially the tiny multicolored ones that my neighbor has scattered over the rosemary growing under his tree in the front yard. Also, I'm partial to those deer shapes with the white lights, and I like wooden cutouts like the moose and deer I see here and there. I really don't like plastic blow-up santas, though, and I don't think I ever will.

Soup

I love soup. Here's a recipe for one of my favorites:

Dice an onion. In a large saucepan, saute it in some olive oil over medium heat until it turns golden. This should take at least five minutes.

Meanwhile, peel and chunk up about six medium potatoes. Clean and chunk up half of a head of cauliflower. When the onion is ready, add the potatoes and cauliflower and six cups of broth or water or a combination of both to the pot. Add a teaspoon of salt and coarse ground pepper to taste. Bring the mix to a boil, cover it, and simmer for awhile, until the veggies are a little mushy. (This could be done in twenty minutes or so, but if you want to let it go a little longer while you watch the news, feel free.)

At some point, grate a cup or two of cheddar cheese. (I like mild for this, but I'm sure some people would prefer a sharper cheese flavor. Suit yourself.)

Just before you're ready to eat, puree the soup mixture in a blender - you'll probably need to do this in three batches - and pour the puree into a tureen or very large bowl. Now, quick, while it's still really hot, stir the cheese in and keep stirring until it has melted and is incorporated in the puree. Adjust seasoning if necessary.

Eat with crusty bread and a green salad. You don't need anything else. The soup will make you full in a scarily short amount of time.

I mailed the gifts

that go to the Midwest this morning. This used to be a big accomplishment, but today I walked into the post office carrying only three small boxes containing, in all, six gifts. Wow. What a difference a decade-and-a-half makes.

I used to buy gifts for a whole slew of people. I'd get out my luggage carrier and strap a tower of boxes into it for the annual trip to the post office. But a few years ago we discontinued the practice of drawing names amongst the siblings, my mom died, my dad decided he didn't want gifts anymore, and the nieces and nephews grew up.

Is it easier? Sure. But it's not nearly as much fun. No more wandering the aisles at specialty shops and bookstores, no more keeping track (or trying to, anyway) of nieces' and nephews' changing interests, no more satisfaction at finding the perfect - and perfectly odd - item for so-and-so. I miss it. Not to wax too mundanely sentimental, but I've always enjoyed the giving more than the getting.

Ah well. There's still the Christmas letter to be written. I'm a long way from giving that practice up, no matter what the Grinches (those sad souls who find Christmas letters a massive irritation) say.

Oh, damn it!

I wanted to post on something all sweet and Christmasy, like my memory of the year Middle Kid had the flu on Christmas, slept on and off throughout the day, and was delighted during the following week to discover gifts he had unwrapped in a daze. "Is this mine?" he'd ask. "Cool."

Or, how about Youngest's first Christmas, when I wanted to get a picture of her with Santa? She was terrified of him, so I persuaded then-13-year-old Middle and recent-college-graduate and mall-store-manager Eldest to be in the picture with her, resulting in a fabulous portrait of my three kids which I display to this day.

Or how about the year Eldest was working at the checkout counter at her store, and moved from shopper one to shopper two with a cheery, "Hi, there! Merry Christmas." At this point shopper one-and-a-half, a seriously height-challenged lady, waved her hands and yelled, "Hey! What am I, chopped liver?"

But I'm too annoyed to blog about good stuff like that. Here's the thing: the punditry seems to be falling all over itself looking for a link between President Obama (screw the 'elect' part - I've moved on) and comically corrupt Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. Now, it's one thing for them to be curious. It's another entirely for the country to be subjected to an endless string of breathless pronouncements that begin with, "What if..."

Geez. It's like they're panting for something rotten to report about the new president. Maybe they don't feel relevant anymore - and maybe they aren't. As a class, they screwed up every major story for the last eight years, beginning with the one they failed to report on the complete incompetency of that idiot they were so helpful in foisting upon us.

Look, all you talking ass-heads. We're tired of you. Sit down and shut up. (Thank you, Helen Philpot, for my new favorite phrase.)

I love Christmas

but this year it's kicking my ass. So much to do, so little time. How on earth did I manage to bake all those cookies when I was a young working mother? I don't bake anything at all anymore, and I can't seem to find the chunk of time that should be freed up by my new (Spartan) regime. This is a question for Einstein, I think: does time being relative mean that as we age our days are actually shorter, and not just seemingly so?

Good-bye, Sam Zell

Talking Points Memo is reporting that the Tribune Company has filed for bankruptcy protection. I hope this will ultimately translate to deep personal anguish for Sam Zell, who has made it his business over the last many months to destroy one of the best, most vital newspapers in the nation - the Los Angeles Times.

Go to hell, Sam, you fatuous prick.

Call me crazy

but the jobs numbers released yesterday are starting to make sense.

I know, I know, I suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome and I'm paranoid as a coot. But this is what my tiny mind has noticed: for years now, the Bush Administration has released certain economic indicators only to quietly revise them a few weeks later. Now this isn't unusual, nor is it unusual for an administration to put a positive spin on information it makes public. But what was notable about the BA was that the first numbers were almost always better than the later numbers. A jobs report might show that 100,000 jobs had been created (which wasn't actually a great number, but the spinners would applaud like crazy and the public would say, Oh, good.) Then a few weeks later, on page 23 there'd be an announcement that that number had been revised downward to maybe 65,000. It seemed obvious to me that the BA was using the rosy numbers to push legislation or to make certain rule changes more palatable.

Then came this week's jobs report, and it was astonishingly, shockingly, awe-inspiringly bad. Scary bad. What-the-hell-is-going-on bad.

I thought, wow. They've really checked out. Or they've lost their mojo so completely that they can't influence their own bean counters anymore. Or 500,000 jobs lost is the rosy version. Or they've suddenly discovered a deep-seated desire to level with the public. (Snort.)

Then I heard the news on NPR. In light of the dreadful jobs report, Congress is close to agreeing with the White House to dip into the money set aside to develop fuel efficient vehicles in order to bail out the automobile industry.

Oh. Dang, they're good. (That would be the Orwellian good, of course.)

Funereal musings

Yes, we really have to think about these things. Lives end, funerals happen. It's cruel to leave all the decisions to your survivors, who may be in shock (if your end comes unexpectedly) and will certainly be grieving. In that spirit, I offer the following account of my husband's final plans:

(It should be noted here that my relationship with my late Mother-in-Law was difficult. My husband's relationship with her was complicated.)

MiL and my hus are sitting at the kitchen table during this discussion. Eldest Daughter and I are sitting together in the family room, just a few feet away.

MiL: I've decided to be cremated when I die. Does that bother you?
Hus: No.
MiL: I think it might bother some of the others.
Hus: Really? It doesn't bother me at all.
MiL: Are you sure? Because, you know, there won't be any remains to be viewed.
Hus: I'm fine with it, Mother. Viewing remains isn't my favorite thing.
MiL: But some people like to be able to see the deceased at the funeral.
Hus: Well, you know, we could have a viewing before the cremation if it made people feel better.
MiL: So, you're sure about this? I don't want anybody to be upset.
Hus (wearying of the discussion): You know, Mother, I've been making some plans for my own funeral. McMama doesn't know this, but when I die I want to be placed on a funeral pyre on a raft and floated out into the Long Beach Harbor in flames. Sort of a heroic end, you see what I mean?
MiL: But...can you do that?
Hus: I think so. McMama will find a way.
McMama and ED (burying faces in hands): Mfffff, fff, fff. Hee, hee, mffff, mm, mm.
MiL (suspiciously): Are you serious about this?
Hus: Uh.
McMama and ED: Choke, gasp, hee-hee-hee-hee-hee. Hee. Hah. Mfffff. Mm, mm, mm.
MiL: Do you want to go out to eat tomorrow night?
Hus: Sure. What do you have in mind?
...

Night terrors

I'm talking the motherhood variety, not the screaming-child type. My mother told me there's no age limit for this disorder and it turns out she's right. No matter how old your kids get, you still wake up at night worrying about them.

I've worried about some stunningly silly things during my 3am-wake-up calls. Suppose Youngest's date doesn't show up at the appointed meeting place, and she finds herself all alone at the ball - can she be persuaded to take along a warm coat so she doesn't freeze to death while she waits for me to rescue her?

Suppose Eldest keeps on smoking forever. Will she end up with a haggard smoker's face?

After a decade of higher education, have Middle's student loans grown so big that paying them back will affect his ability to buy a new car when he finishes his Ph.D.?

Oh, all right. I've worried about the real stuff, too. I suspect the silliness is a defense mechanism, my mind's attempt to knock the real worry down to size so I can go back to sleep.

But the point is that as a parent you'll never stop worrying. It doesn't end when they get big enough to cross the street alone, or to drive themselves to work, or to enroll their own kids in elementary school. It's as permanent as the designation, parent. It sucks, but there it is.

Not much to say today

But Bitchphd took care of me just fine. Go here and watch this. You'll be glad you did.

Update, December 4th: This video's being linked all over the place today. I just want you to remember, I did it before The Huffington Post or Crooks or Liars. So there.

Three decades, three kids

That's been my life.

Eldest Daughter was my seventies kid. I was young - just twenty, in college, still a bit of a hippie and joyfully idealistic. Young parents, driven partly by inexperience and partly by all the vagaries of youth, lean towards unrealistic expectations and insensitivity masquerading as cleverness. Poor ED was the victim of all that, as are most first children to varying degrees. Nevertheless, she was a sunny, cooperative, happy child, and I was confident her sweet disposition was due to me and my impressive mothering skills.

Middle Kid was a child of the eighties. I was almost thirty when he was born - a yuppie living in SoCal, working as a software engineer for a major aerospace company, and a bit smug. Having a second child would be easy, I figured. Look at my first - she was a great kid! I had this down cold.

I reckoned without an eight-month-long bout of colic followed by asthma set off by practically everything. Yikes. This wasn't as easy as I remembered. MK was nothing like ED.

Youngest Daughter was my nineties baby. She was as complete a surprise as a package can be, a change-of-life, medically complicated, other-worldly blast who exploded into my life just as I was turning forty-two. By that time I was sick of workplace politics, sick of the rat-race, sick of being tired, and definitely not up to another decade or so of arranging childcare. What's more, I finally knew that I didn't know what I was doing, motherhood-wise. I retired from my job and became a stay-at-home mom.

ED was a typical 'first,' eager to please, concerned with being correct, extroverted, a good student and a social butterfly. Her early years were sometimes chaotic: she had to deal with my divorce from her father, with having a single mother for a year and a half, and then with being a stepchild. She went to four different elementary schools in three states before we got settled in our new hometown.

MK was an introvert, uncommonly bright, and not nearly as anxious about pleasing me as he was about pleasing himself. His early childhood was spent in daycare and then in a private elementary school with after-school-care because both his parents worked. We moved once when he was an infant and again when he was a toddler, but otherwise his early years were remarkably stable compared to ED's.

YD is also an introvert, has a stay-at-home mom, displays amazing talent in both graphic arts and in creative writing, and is so far out of the box that her father says if we could just get her to see it off in the distance, he'd be satisfied. She still lives in the house we lived in when she was born, has never changed school districts, and has never attended a school where I wasn't a volunteer.

I didn't mother any two of these children in the same way. They were different, I was different, the circumstances were different for each of my kids. It was a gift to have had them spaced so far apart. They each had the luxury of being only children, at least for a while, and I had the luxury of getting to know them as individuals.

And you know what? It makes our family gatherings lively - nobody remembers anything the same way, because nobody had the same childhood.

It's Sunday, so let's have a passage from the Bible

Youngest Daughter discovered this passage via Uncle Tom's Cabin, which she read this weekend for her American history class:

"Let not your heart be troubled: believe in God, believe also in me. ²In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you." - John 14:1-2

In Uncle Tom's Cabin, it occurs in a shortened version: "Let not your heart be troubled. In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you."

She preferred the second version to the first. True to the church-deficient nature of her upbringing, she's not comfortable with exhortations to belief; but the idea of preparing a place for a loved one in God's mansion appealed to her mightily.

Thanksgiving

I have a contentious relationship with time. It's always leaving me behind, and I'm always playing catch-up with it. In that spirit, I'm finally ready to write my Thanksgiving post.

Yes, I know Thanksgiving was two days ago. It was noisy, crowded, complicated, emotional, hectic, and highly aromatic. It was also delicious. We brined the turkey using Alton Brown's recipe, with amazing results, though my husband and I have already decided on the ways in which we'll alter the recipe for next year. (To us, a recipe is more than a set of directions. It's the beginning of a journey.)

Because our extended family is in the Midwest, we've had to create our Thanksgiving crowd by supplementing our meager numbers with friends. After decades of doing this, we've come up with a multi-family, multi-racial, multi-ethnic feast which begins with every single feaster having the floor to give their own special thanks. This can take as long as fifteen minutes, but this year there was a short, sweet consensus view: we are thankful for Barack Obama! (There was a minor contingent which was also grateful for turkey, dressing, pie, and Australian white wines.)

So. Here's hoping everyone in America had a happy, or at least a hopeful, Thanksgiving. We did.

Family lexicons

All families have them. Ours is sprinkled with made-up words from when the kids were small, and phrases of mysterious origin. Here are a few of my favorites:

Creamo: whipped cream. This refers to real whipped cream and not Cool-Whip, which should always be called Cool-Whip, obviously. (Does anybody want creamo on their pie?)

Stander: any stool or other object called into service as a makeshift stool. If you stand on the kitchen table to remove a splatter of spaghetti sauce from the ceiling, the kitchen table is your stander. (I can't reach that without a stander.)

Fuzzy pigs: dogs and cats. Left over from a childhood spent on and about hog farms filled to capacity with pigs and fuzzy pigs. (Has anybody fed the fuzzy pigs?)

A suzy: the act of walking in front of someone repeatedly, the way our calico cat Suzy used to do. (If you keep that suzy up, I'm going to trip over you.)

Rebel scum: teenagers. (Quiet, rebel scum!)

Blank's on the roof: means someone or something is near death/ruin/failure. (At the moment, my washer's on the roof.)

Darth: the black refrigerator in the kitchen, as distinct from the white refrigerator in the family room. (Darth has no beer!)

Booze, rump, pie, bacon: terms of endearment. (Move over, bacon.)

The big room: a large bonus room my husband added to our house around the time Youngest Kid was born, and which now serves as a combination office, art room, television theater, and playroom. For a long time we called it The Woom, but we got over that.

Home Despot: Home Depot. It rules us.

YD reminds me in the comments to include caticated: the state of being trapped in a comfortable chair by the cat in your lap. (I can't get the phone. I'm caticated.)

DiL left me a phone message yesterday, reminding me of another biggie - minie: a favorite blanket. (Your minie's in the dryer.)

Family lexicons are funny, uniquely descriptive, and intimate in the way they keep memories alive long after they might otherwise have faded. They're like mini-family-histories. Here are a few of the families whose lexicons I'd really like to hear about: the Obamas, the (Ted) Kennedys, the Schwartzeneggers, the (Jon) Stewarts, the Cheneys, the Scalias, the Olbermans, the Moyers. Really, don't you just wonder if any of them ever say stuff like, "Booze, I think Darth's on the roof?"

Enough of the warm and fuzzy

I need to talk politics today. But because it's the day before Thanksgiving, and I have a million things to do, and the election's over, and I have dear friends and family members who subscribe to the conservative view, I'll keep it to a minimum. Here's my question: why do so many conservatives obsess over imaginary dangers while ignoring the shit that's actually killing us?

Case in point: according to Juliet Eilperin writing in the Washington Post today, the White House has issued an email urging mayors across the country to oppose mandatory limits on greenhouse gases.

The e-mail notes in bold, underlined text that the comment period for the rulemaking "closes on November 28" and provides a link to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce blog post that warns that a federal cap on greenhouse gases "will operate as a de facto moratorium on major construction and infrastructure projects."

Ooooh, scary. Next thing you know, our recession will become a depression because we can't fund infrastructure projects, and then we'll all be standing in soup lines! And the soup will be cold, because of the federal greenhouse gas cap!

Compare and contrast with actual, verifiable global warming, which is killing people all over the world right now, as we speak. Global warming is characterized by dead trees, forest fires, melting glaciers, extreme weather phenomena, famine, and massive species extinctions.

We're a species, people. And if we aren't very, very careful, we could be an extinct species.

Dogs

I came to dog ownership late in life - three years ago, to be exact, when we were adopted by a seven-month-old, escape-artist chocolate lab with a beguiling smile. The cats hated her on sight. My husband was both charmed and determined not to take her in. The kids adored her.

It all came about as my GrandDaughter and I were getting ready to go shopping. I had the car doors open (can't remember why they were all open, but they were...) and I was buckling GD into her booster seat when this gorgeous chocolate lab hopped into the car and sat down right next to her, tail thumping, tongue flapping, just pleased as punch to be going somewhere.

GD let out a scream I will never forget. She was terrified. Terrified.

The dog gave her a little tiny lick on the cheek.

This was not helpful. Also not helpful, I suppose, was the fact that I was whooping with laughter. My husband, who was working in the yard, got the dog out of the car. The rest of the family poured out of the house and surrounded the dog adoringly. Somebody said, "She's got a tag. We better call the owners." GD continued to wail.

GD and I left. The shopping calmed her down, but when we got back the dog was still there, still surrounded by worshipers, still thumping that tail. When the owners finally arrived they asked if we'd like to keep her; circumstances were making it very difficult for them to give her the attention she needed, and they wanted her to have a good home.

Here are some things I've learned:

Dogs will eat anything. And then they'll either throw it all back up or they'll crap it out in nasty puddles all over the yard.

Dogs are psychic. I don't mean they can read our minds (although they can). I mean they can make us read their minds. When Roxy wants something, she plants herself as close to me as she can get and gives me a meaningful stare. And I get up and let her out, or I fill her water bowl, or I get the leash off the hook and we go for a walk. My husband will see her staring at me while I'm trying to watch The News Hour, or Heroes, or some damn thing, and he'll say, "What does she want?" And I'll look at her for a minute and say, "She's thirsty." It's weird.

Dogs are really good at meeting people, and forcing their owners to meet people. I have a whole crew of friends who became my friends because of Roxy. My husband calls them the dog people. We have potlucks and go to football games and meet twice a week so our dogs can play.

You can't teach an old cat to like a young dog, but eventually the cat's sense of outrage will win out and the cat will reassert its property rights.

Dogs don't carry grudges. Lock them on the deck for hours while you're having the carpets cleaned, and they're thrilled when you let them back in the house. Same with leaving them at the vet's and the groomer's. Same with dropping them off at the kennel for a weekend. It's embarrassing. "Show some pride," I say to Roxy. "Hold me accountable." She wags her tail agreeably, which can be interpreted to mean, "Sure. Whatever you say."

Awkward introductions aside, grandchildren love dogs. Dogs love grandchildren. Dogs love to be trained by grandchildren because there are treats involved. Grandchildren love to train dogs because there are commands to be given. It's a match made in heaven.

Dogs know who will drop the most food at the dinner table, and they position themselves under that person's chair. That person's chair is never my husband's.

Dogs need to be walked every day, preferably twice, which results in improved behavior and health for the dogs and weight loss, lowered cholesterol, and lowered blood pressure for their owners. It's an all-around good deal.

Dogs can be taught to air kiss. Mwah, mwah. Good girl, aren't you clever?

Dogs can be shared. Eldest Daughter owns a house in the mountains near us, and Roxy lives there with her most weekends. She does not seem to find this confusing in the least. When she's on the mountain, she makes ED read her mind. When she's here, it's up to me.

A man can claim to be unhappy about owning a dog, but it won't keep him from playing with said dog at all hours of the day and night. The man might even be observed throwing balls for the dog in the house. Actions definitely speak louder than words when it comes to men and dogs.

There is no moral to this post, unless it's this: I was always a cat person. Now I'm a cat and dog person. It could happen to you, too, so don't be judgmental.

Memories can be tricky

My sisters tell me that I once fell off the plank bridge Grandpa laid across the creek. The creek was high with the spring melt, and I would have been swept away but my cousin Tom grabbed one of my hands as I fell and was able to drag me back out. I lost a shoe.

They love to tell this story. I have no memory of it at all. My mother didn't remember it, either, but Mom's memory of our early childhood was extremely spotty. She was overwhelmed by our sheer numbers and blocked most of it out.

My parents-in-law used to park their motor home in the street in front of our house, plug into our electrical service, and stay for months. This was a problem for us. It's exhausting to have guests week after week, whether they sleep in the guest room or at the curb. One year my husband took his mother aside and told her that we simply couldn't host them for such a long time. This provoked a painful argument between them which left my husband tight-lipped and pale.

Some years later, after both of my in-laws had passed away, I mentioned that argument to my husband. He had no memory of it. None. He was certain it had never happened.

My Younger Sister remembers my Older Sister and me going to extreme lengths to scare the bejesus out of her when we were all small and shared a bedroom. OS and I remember how frightened YS was of the dark but we don't think we ever intentionally provoked her. When she was scared she'd leap from her little bed (not wanting her feet to touch the floor, where a snake was likely waiting to bite her) into the big iron bed that OS and I shared, which made sleeping difficult for all of us.

When my second husband (then boyfriend) graduated from college he moved to SoCal to take a job he considered his dream-job. My whole family lived in the Midwest and I had no intention of ever leaving, so when I graduated six months later I took a job in Minnesota. Eventually my husband moved to Minnesota to be with me. Curiously, he never looked for a job while we lived there, but I was frantically busy with work and wedding plans and didn't have time to think about the implications of that. I nagged him a bit (a lot?) and let it go.

At some point, he admitted that he hadn't actually quit his job in SoCal. He was on a leave of absence and had to be back there a month after our wedding. This came as a terrific shock to me, one which rippled through the early years of our marriage and eventually forced us to seek marriage counseling. But here's the tricky part: for years I told that story as though he made his confession after the wedding. One day I got to thinking about it, and it occurred to me that he might have told me before the wedding. I asked him which way he remembered it and he doesn't. Remember it, I mean. He doesn't know when he told me.

You see how perfidious a thing memory is, don't you?

As I get older, I trust my memories less and less. The broad strokes are clear enough, but the details get fuzzy. If you had asked me a week ago how many lines I had in "The Man Who Came to Dinner" when we performed it at my high school, I'd have said five or six. Watching the play this weekend (as performed by The Shoestring Players at Youngest Daughter's high school), I was shocked to discover that I had four scenes with several lines apiece. Huh. How about that?

I always thought my grandmother lived with us for at least a year in the C Avenue house which we occupied from the summer of 1956 to the summer of 1958. Looking through old documents, I discover it couldn't have been more than a few months. A month is a long time to an eight-year-old, so a few months could easily translate to a whole year half-a-century down the road. And a small role in a high school drama could shrink to a tiny one. But what's up with that other stuff?

Was I so traumatized by falling in the creek that I buried the whole thing deep? Or maybe I just slipped a bit and lost a shoe, and in my sisters' memories a close thing became a near tragedy. Maybe my husband told me about his leave of absence much sooner than I remember, and the decision I had to make was whether or not to cancel the wedding and not whether or not I wanted to be twice-divorced.

I'm not as worried about what I've forgotten as I am about what I remember. Time, emotions, and other people's retellings of shared events have an effect on our memories. How do we reconcile our varied versions? Silly question. We settle things in our favor. We prefer our own lying eyes to anybody else's.

So, what's the upshot? Well, memory is unreliable. Perspective matters. And, damn it, reality turns out to be highly subjective.

How Barack Obama is changing my life

I can write again. The news is no longer unbearable. I am working wholeheartedly to clean up my filthy mouth.

Most importantly, I can sleep again. And when something does wake me up, it's the problem of how to seat 18 people in my dining room made for 10, on Thanksgiving Day.

Fall

Oh, boy. I can't believe I've just titled a blog post 'Fall.' But I did. Must be a habit left over from twelve years of essays assigned by the Sisters of Mercy somewhere between the first day of school and Thanksgiving week.

I like fall. When I was a kid, fall meant school. I was one of those dorky types who actually liked school, or at least never questioned it as a necessary experience. Fall meant new classes, new possibilities, new pencils and books and the smell of chalk. (Maybe kids today would like school better if they still had chalk. It was so much a part of the ambiance - not just the smell, but the dust and the scritching noise and the occasional tooth-shattering squeal of it.)

I remember crunching through piles of flame-red maple leaves, my cat's-eye glasses sliding on my nose, lunch in a brown paper bag being squashed between my green-plaid-adorned chest and the books piled in my arms. I remember the little butterfly-wriggle of excitement when I entered my new classroom, took my seat, and began assessing the new teacher.

Other good stuff: burning the leaves after we raked them, Halloween and its accompanying stomach-ache, Thanksgiving dinner with the forty or so members of the family who would make the trek to my uncle's farm. Buying sweaters and eating Jonathan apples. Watching The Twilight Zone on Friday nights. Listening to my father's voice floating out the window on Saturday afternoons: Hell's bells, he'd holler when the Chicago Bears failed to score. And somewhere in there, before Christmas came and winter smacked us down, was the first snowfall of the season.

Fall is a different experience now. Partly this is due to my living in SoCal, where the seasons are less in-your-face than in the Midwest; partly it's because I don't go to school anymore, except to tutor children wearing clothes which would have sent the Sisters into cardiac arrest, who have to be reminded to turn their cell phones off during class, and who have never smelled chalk. No one burns leaves, and my uncle's farm was sold off a couple of decades ago. Even so, fall still has its moments. In SoCal, the avocados and lemons ripen, the liquid amber trees put on a show in time for Thanksgiving, and the temperatures can be described as moderate on most days.

McMama: Do you know why they call it fall?
Granddaughter: No.
McMama: Because everything falls.
GD, skeptically: Everything?
McMama: Well, everything that's supposed to fall. Leaves, nuts, pine cones, avocados.

(An acorn smacks onto the roof and bounces to the floor of the deck where we're sitting on the porch swing.)

GD: I think you're kind of nutty.
McMama: Takes one to know one.

Speaking of age...

Happy birthday, Middle Kid!

Eldest says you don't know any of the lore about that day. Here it is, in a nutshell: you were one of the first babies born in Huntington Hospital's new birthing center. This meant the room was equipped with a brass bed and nice wallpaper, and we never left to go to the delivery room. The brass bed, as it turned out, had a break-away bottom that turned it into something analygous to a delivery table, but softer.

You were born in the late afternoon - 5:30ish, I think, after a very short labor. I was deeply into natural stuff, so we were unmedicated. Dad, who is never squeamish about such things, cut the cord. Eldest was staying with friends, and they brought her over right after dinner to meet you. I believe we left the hospital the next morning, so we weren't there even twenty-four hours.

You were, naturally, cute as a bug.

And, although this is your last twenty-something year, you're still very young. Rest assured. You won't be developing jowls for decades yet.

Aging

Getting old (as somebody once said) ain't for sissies. Reading this post made me sad. Because, you know, it's the way life is. One minute you're young and pretty, but oh so insecure about it. And the next minute you're not young anymore and pretty is in your past, and you're oh so insecure about it. So when, exactly, do you get to relax and enjoy?

There's way too much to be said - and quite a lot already has been said - about the exalted place appearance holds in our Western culture.

Even so, I don't know anyone my age who would go back and look the way we did at twenty, if it meant we had to give up what we've learned in the ensuing decades.

So there. It's not all bad.

To my kids

in case you discover this blog. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. And some of the dialog will be fictionalized, because frankly I don't always remember exactly what you said. I'm reporting the gist of the thing, okay? Try to just roll with it. After all, you don't have to admit you know me.

Love, Mom

Learning Curve

It's big and it's endless. You're never finished learning how to parent. The job is impossibly complex, and constantly shifting. Your instincts regarding your two-year-old are quite different from the instincts brought out by your teen-ager. And they're different for each child. Some children prove to be sturdy and capable; others are fragile, or creative, or ethereal. Or brilliant. They're all unique. Lessons learned from one rarely apply to the next.

In light of all that, I don't intend to offer advice. What I mean to do is simply to show you which doors I picked, which boxes I opened, which paths I trod; and how it turned out. Sometimes I was right. Sometimes - well, mistakes were made.

I refer, of course, to the Jesus incident.

Eldest Kid (at about the age of 20): I have to ask you something.
McMama: Okay.
EK: Don't laugh.
McMama: I won't.
EK: Was Jesus a Jew?
McMama: Er.
McMama: Uh.
McMama: Are you saying I never told you anything about Jesus? Nothing at all?
EK: Pretty much.
McMama: Well, to answer your question. Yes, he was a Jew.

A couple of weeks later, in consideration of above conversation:

Middle Kid (about 10 years): This is stupid.
McMama: What's stupid?
MK, holding up copy of illustrated Bible stories for children: This book.
McMama: Why do you say that?
MK: It says Adam and Eve were the first people.
McMama: Mm-hm.
MK: And they had two kids...
McMama: Right.
MK: ...and Cain killed Abel.
McMama: Right.
MK: ...and then he ran away to a far land and married some lady. But where did the lady come from if there was only Adam and Eve and him?
McMama: Er...
(Difficult conversation follows regarding literal and figurative readings.)

Many years pass.

Youngest Kid (aged about 10): Do you think we should go to church?
McMama: I don't know. Do you want to?
YK: Maybe. But not Camilla's.
McMama: Why not Camilla's? I thought you liked it when she invited you to go along.
YK: Not really. It makes me feel bad.
McMama: ???
YK: They always tell us that if we want to be saved, we have to love the Lord. But I don't even know him.
McMama: Ah.
YK: Do you love the Lord?
McMama: Do you mean Jesus?
YK: Yeah.
McMama: I admire him very much. He brought a difficult and necessary message to the world, and it's a message that would heal all our troubles if we paid attention to it. He said we should love each other and not get all caught up in revenge when somebody does something bad to us.
YK: Like not suing people and stuff.
McMama: Um. Yeah. I guess not suing people might be a good place to start.

More years pass:

Granddaughter (aged about 5): Yaya, did you ever go to church?
McMama: I did. Many times, when I was small.
GD: Do you think I should go?
McMama (cravenly): That's a question you should ask your parents.

In which I introduce myself

I'm a mother-blogger, but the purpose of this blog is not to share kid-whimsy; it's to blaze a trail through the wilderness on the other side of the cute stories - the land of grown-up kids, kids-in-law, and grandkids.

In that spirit, let me introduce the cast of characters:

McMama - me, AKA Mom, Ma, Yaya, Mo-therrr!

Dad - my husband of 30+ years, also called Papa for the purposes of this blog.

Eldest Kid (EK) - a thirty-something single daughter, product of my first marriage.

Middle Kid (MK) - a twenty-something married son.

Youngest Kid (YK) - a teen-aged daughter. Single. Of course.

Daughter-in-Law(DiL) - wife of Middle Kid. European, specifically (and typically) Irish.

Granddaughter (GD) - child of DiL and MK. Typical second-grader, will provide cuteness when required.

All rightie, then. On with the show.