Hygiene!

On the way to the community college this morning I caught a whiff of something unpleasant and leaned over to sniff at my son who was riding next to me in the passenger seat. It wasn't him. Sam looked at me and raised an eyebrow. "It's me, isn't it," I said and he nodded. It's finally happened. I have worse hygiene than my kids.

When I was young, in my single digits, I showered as infrequently as I could get away with, or whenever my mother caught me and forcibly threw me into the tub. Dirt didn't bother me a bit, especially when it was on me. As I grew older, cleaning myself up got to be more important, so that it wasn't unusual to try to sneak in extra showers beyond the 5 minute one we were each allowed by my father in the mornings.

Dad not only timed us, he'd start flushing the toilets one after the other if we overran our official limit of hot water. And he was so proud of his own tried and true method for getting clean, that he used to demonstrate it to us when we got to be teenagers, acting out all the steps.

He started out by showing us how much shampoo to use, pointing to a nickel in his palm. "You don't need a lot of shampoo! Just a little bit is plenty! Wash your hair first and then, while you're rinsing your hair, take the soap and then work your way down all the way to your feet. By the time you're done your hair is all rinsed and you're done. It shouldn't take you any longer than five minutes!"

Bless the man, he was paying for the hot water contained in two 40 gallon hot water heaters, and there were ten kids to get clean and out the door every morning besides himself. But back then, we didn't use the shower just to get clean, we used it to wake up as well. So it is with my own children now. I get them out of bed, but it isn't until they're midway through their morning ablutions that they actually become conscious.

Maybe the reason that I'm so much less showered than they are these days is that they've actually got places to go. I'm merely the means for them to get there, so cleanliness doesn't really enter into it.

Sam's got classes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Nick and Sam have clubs on Mondays and Wednesdays. Already they have reason to jump in the shower five days a week. Some of these classes/clubs have (gasp!) girls in them.

I, on the other hand, am meeting no one of any significance whatsoever in person in any way. I'm a stay at home, work at home, trapped at home mother and destined to remain that way evermore. I've tried looking for work away from my cozy confines and no matter how carefully I craft my resume it always sounds like I'm being smug about the fact that I've managed to make a living for the past twenty years without benefit of office politics and a dress code.

Well, maybe the dress code thing could be useful, especially on those days like today, when I sniff my own armpits and realize that it's not just my t-shirt that's stinking, but the sports bra underneath has that unmistakable sulphurous vapor that comes when you forget to remove a load of laundry for more than a half an hour after the final spin cycle while living in a tropical climate.

And, I'm sick today, which means I'm feverish, which means all of me is warmer than usual and it makes everything about me that much more pungent. Truly, my son is heroic in his efforts not leap out of the car and attempt to flag down any passing stranger to carry him the rest of the way in to campus, rather than ride another mile in the car with me. At least it's not raining. We roll down the windows. The drivers behind us shrivel and die.

Announcing Drawing 101

I'm pleased to announce that Drawing 101, a basic drawing skills course that I'm doing for Not Your Average Homeschoolers, is up and available for your drawing pleasure.

I'm shooting for a new lesson every week, so bookmark this link Drawing 101, and check back often.

Mother on my mind

Woke up this morning thinking about my mother and wishing she felt better.

I told Steve last night that the worst thing about watching your parents decline is that it makes you re-think everything you thought you knew about them. He said, "Not me," and then he said, "Wait. Yeah, it does."

I guess that's not as tragic as I think it is. I mean, I spend most of my life re-thinking what I think I know about something or someone. Why should it be any different with my mother?

Tried to call her last night and this time someone who answered passed the request along to someone who knew who she was and that person went to find her and then came back with the message that Mom would call me back. She wasn't feeling well.

So, maybe she thought it was Mary, because Mary calls more often than I do, or maybe she thought it was me, thinking that I was overdue for a phone call, or maybe she thought it was me the same way that I thought it was time to give her a call. Some people are just connected to each other that way.

I don't like to think about her there. At the psyche unit, on the 8th floor. Joe told me that there are more nurses and doctors running around there than there are patients.

If she'd only. If I'd only.

I spend a lot of time thinking about four years ago (or was it five?) when I found her in her room, stretched out on the bed, hands folded on her chest, like she was laid out for a wake. I stared at her and she opened her eyes and looked at me. "Marie? I tried to kill myself last night." And all I could think to say was, "It didn't work."

If I had said, "Let me give you another opportunity at it, shall I? I'll be back in an hour," then maybe this would all be done. Betty would have gone out when she wanted to.

Instead, there is all this wriggling on the end of a hook going on.

I know she's crazy because a sane woman wouldn't put her kids through this. But how crazy is she?

Because, I think that craziness must be on a continuum, like autism and diabetes and pregnancy. I think you can be a little bit crazy, or only crazy in one aspect of your life. Mom seems to be crazy by turns. Like, she's normal, or at least, placid, for a few months, and then, she's nuts, and wants to die.

I envy my friend's grandmother, who still lives alone. I think it'd be easier to die, or at least, to quit living, if you lived alone.

Mom's wish to quit living is being carried out in front of a live audience, and it's an audience that wishes to have a vote.

Is this being very cynical to wish that she could just get on with dying?

If only she'd taken pills other than blood pressure medication. But that was only because she wanted to show her doctor who was boss.

I remember thinking that it was the most clear sign yet that she was damaged. Because who in their right mind would take blood pressure pills to try to kill themselves, especially if they had sleeping pills right there?

Someone who just needed attention?

But I seem to be incapable of giving that attention to someone. I hoard it, dole it out in bits and pieces. I think Mom needed more love from me than I had to give her.

I wonder if my lack of demonstrative loving made her want to do something to get my attention and the doctor's attention. Made her want to do something like threaten suicide but not actually do it.

I think, What is it you want? and it's like I'm screaming into a big wide dark hole. I don't think there is any answer coming out of it.

But I think that I must know what it is that she wants already and I can't give it to her.

I can stop whenever I want

I used the blue cup today for my coffee. Sometimes the blue cup is dirty and I have to use the white cup with the black handle. The white cup used to have a picture from Alice in Wonderland on it, and the Cheshire Cat disappeared (all except for his grin, of course) whenever you poured hot liquid in it, but I put it in the dishwasher one day and the whole thing just flaked off, so now it's just a plain white cup with a black handle. Shame, too, because it wasn't my cup, it was my daughter's cup, but she says I'm forgiven so I guess it's okay. Now I just like to use that cup because it's at least as big as the blue one.

I am not addicted to coffee. That's a good one. Hah! I only have one cup a day.

Unless my neighbor calls and invites me over for a cup of coffee at her house, in which case it's only polite to accept, and I never have more than one cup of coffee there (in a plain white cup, that's probably close to the same size as my own blue cup or the white cup with the black handle), sometimes going as far as two cups, but only if she's really bothered about something like her troglodyte son who is almost fifty years old and won't get a job and who drinks Natural Light and burns crap in the back yard all day. I mean, it's ridiculous. That lying hussy left him almost twenty years ago, and anyway, that's no excuse for living off your mother's social security income, never mind about mowing the grass. I bet my neighbor could mow the grass if she wanted and it would be cheaper than feeding and sheltering a grown man like her son who just bums cigarettes off her and beer money. It's a shame. And sometimes it takes more than one cup of coffee to feel better about it all.

Anyway, so I'm not addicted to coffee, AT ALL.

Sometimes my girlfriend calls up and I have to go over to see her and she doesn't drink caffeinated anything but if I'm coming she makes a cup of coffee just for me, using a French coffee press. That makes the best cup of coffee! It's not bitter at all and she always has real sugar for me and sets out the half and half. If we're walking she puts it in a thermos container for me and I carry it all around the park, pausing during our conversation to sip, sip, sip at that wonderful, warm coffee. Mmm. She's a good friend.

But she herself only ever drinks decaf because she says coffee just gets her completely wired and jittery. Not like me at all, because I know when to say when. I just have the one cup per day and then I'm good.

It's not like my own cups are that huge. I actually measured how much coffee fit in each cup and it's hardly more than twelve ounces. Not too bad. I've been eyeing the cups that are selling in a little shop down the street from here. They're definitely cups because they have a handle on them, but man, they're really huge. Like soup bowl size. Still, I bet if I measured, they would turn out to be about the same size as the cups I've been using. Probably they just have really thick walls or something.

I used to have a little cup that I bought at a thrift store that was like that. It had really thick walls and the handle fit the crook of my finger just perfectly. It was a genuine diner-restaurant-style coffee cup and cute as a button. It was so small that I used to drink two cups of coffee from it every day. But eventually, I had to stop kidding myself and started using the blue cup (and the white one with the black handle, but this was before my daughter brought that cup home), but just one of those. And I accidently broke the little white one anyway, so it's just as well I'd already gone on to the blue cup.

Still, sometimes I miss that little white one. Especially at times like just this moment, when I've just finished drinking all the coffee from the blue cup. If I still had the white one, I could fill it up again. But I only get one and, since I'm not addicted to coffee AT ALL, that's that.

I wonder if my neighbor might need to talk?

Grounded

When I pick up the phone it's my mother. She asks me if I can reach my daughter, Alice. She says to tell Alice not to come today because she's not feeling well.

“Is Steve there?” she asks.

“No, he's still in Michigan. Do you need something?”

“Does he have a gun?”

“No, he doesn't.”

After a moment, I say, “He's got an airgun, Mom. It would just hurt you, not kill you.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. There just isn’t any easy way out.”’

“You get a hold of Alice for me,” she says. “Tell her not to come.”

Making allowances

The experts say that giving your children an allowance helps instill in them a sense of the value of money. It encourages them to establish spending priorities, set goals and save up for what they really want.

With this in mind, I dutifully offered my children a dollar a week when they were young and then waited for the miracle of fiscal responsibility to take root in their brains.

It would have been a more effective training tool if I'd actually paid them. What would happen is I'd forget to get cash prior to payday (Saturday) and then offer to take them shopping at Goodwill instead. At the store, the kids' purchases would eerily reflect their frustration with the paymaster. Nick would pick out a toy that transformed into a weapon of mass destruction, Sam would get something sad-eyed and fuzzy, and Alice would fall in love with a bridesmaid's dress which cost twenty times what I owed her.

Eventually, the kids got tired of shopping at thrift stores. Alice went to work at the bed and breakfast down the street and the boys got a paper route. Once my children got a taste of regular paychecks, allowance went by the wayside. Now it's interesting to see how their experiences with the world of money has shaped them.

Alice is frugal, works hard and budgets for expenses. I think this is a natural reaction to being raised by a spendthrift who prefers reading "best of craigslist" to actual work and who balances her checking account by intuition. However, a bad example is still an example, so this counts as good parenting.

My youngest son, Nick, is an opportunistic money manager. There are things he'd like to have but, if at all possible, he'd rather have someone else pay for them. And though he's willing to wait for what he wants, his patience has its limits.

"Mom, when's my birthday?"

"In 364 more days, Nick."

"Oh. When's Christmas?"

Sam doesn't care enough about money, in my opinion, which explains why I frequently find dollar bills scattered in his dresser drawers, balled up under his bed, or being used as bookmarks in his favorite novels. I have told him that this is not interest earning behavior but he only rolls his eyes at me and says that I'm not being properly philosophical towards money.

"You shouldn't think that there's not enough money, Mom. You should think of it as sufficient for your needs."

It's not that I don't get what he's saying, it's just that I don't understand how philosophy will persuade the universe to put money in his college fund.

When I was young, I didn't get an allowance. If I needed money to go somewhere, like a dance or a ball game, I'd ask my dad for it.

"Dad, can I have three dollars?"

"If I had three dollars, I wouldn't speak to you."

"Please?"

He'd reach into his pocket and I'd hold my breath, wondering what might come out of it. Sometimes there were a couple of singles in there, sometimes a twenty, sometimes nothing but a handful of loose change. With Dad's pockets, you never knew. I had a large number of siblings who might've cleaned him out already or he might have had to cover an overdraft on the checking account or there could have been a closing on a house the day before. It was feast or famine at our house, growing up.

Last week the subject of allowances came up again. I asked Sam whether any of his friends still got one. He looked embarrassed.

"Yeah, I think Kerrian does."

"So, what is it? Like, five bucks or something?"

"Heh, no. Actually, it's more like fifteen or twenty."

"What? A week? Are you kidding me?"

He shook his head and smiled and I thought it best to leave the subject alone for a while. My kids are very understanding as far as a dollar a week goes, but I hate to think what they'd be picking out at the Goodwill store if I owed them each twenty dollars come payday.

Epitaph for a nasty vegetable

Here lies okra,
pulled out by the roots.
It tasted like crap,
so now it's kaputs.