Personally, I would have stabbed somebody if I couldn’t take my little ones to story hour when I lived in Chesaning. On purpose. I would have deliberated and planned it and then done it. And a jury of my peers would have said, “That seems reasonable.”  I’m not suggesting that people get stabby, but I am suggesting that they call their township supervisor and harass yell at cry at let them know that it’s quite ok if they put this issue up for a vote so you all can decide if you want to pay less than 1 mil on your tax bill in order to have a FRICKIN’ LIBRARY. It’s a library. It seems like a no-brainer.

Oh, look! A list of township supervisors. With phone numbers and addresses! Just for you:

Albee Township Supervisor: Leon Turnwald (989) 770-4387  3395 W. Birch Run Rd., Burt MI 48417

Brady Supervisor: Ron Gasper (989) 845-3450  16172 Baldwin, Chesaning MI 48616

Maple Grove: Kevin M. Krupp (989) 845-6789 6352 Ditch Rd., Chesaning MI 48616

Edited to add: I forgot about New Haven! (thanks, Aunt Angie) New Haven Township Supervisor – Don Dickinson – 989-729-1043

Chesaning  and Chapin are both in support of the library, so send these guys some chocolate. Or your panties, whichever you think they’ll appreciate more. Bob Corrin used to be my neighbor. I don’t think he’d want your panties, but you never know. People change and I’ve been gone a long time.

Chesaning: Robert Corrin 429 S. Chapman St., Chesaning MI 48616

Chapin: Robb C. Maynard 19650 Fenmore, Elsie MI 48831

And to the school board members and township supervisors who are against even putting it on the ballot, this is what people say about  your town behind your back, and it’s all your fault:

h/t for the video goes to my friend Schmarol (not her real name because she might not want me to mention her in this post).

1. We didn’t have a phone even though my dad worked at the phone company.

My brother ran the phone bill up talking to his girlfriend. His Ecuadorian girlfriend. She had been an exchange student and when she moved back to Ecuador, my brother called her a million times until we owed $500 or something like that. That’s $500 in 1987 money. This was pretty much right exactly when my dad moved out. Some people might say it was my brother’s fault my dad moved out, but I won’t go that far. Anyway, we owed my father’s employer $500 and we couldn’t pay it. And, in fact, never paid it. That’s a little embarrassing. And trashy.

Some time after we moved to the apartment, my mom decided to just see what would happen if she tried to get a phone in her name.  I think she thought that because she and my dad weren’t divorced, the phone company wouldn’t allow it, but they did! Anyway, she didn’t tell me her plan, but there was a phone attached to the wall in the apartment and one day, it started ringing! I’m not kidding when I tell you I just about shit myself with joy. I was 15 by then, and had been using  payphones for at least 3 years.

2. I thought the Rathskellar was a restaurant, not a bar. It happens.

After my parents separated, my mom spent a lot of time at the Rathskellar, where I would occasionally meet her for food and drunken conversation. Her sister was a waitress there and sometimes we would get free drinks and snacks. This was before the days of the computers in restaurants. God bless the “human error” aspect of keeping a bar tab. Anyway, I always thought of the Rathskellar as a restaurant and it wasn’t until I was much older that Bryan heard me refer to it as a restaurant and he said, “That was a bar, not a restaurant. Just because you could get nachos there, doesn’t make it a restaurant.” I said, “Well, we always ate there when we were kids.” And he said, “Were there ever any other kids eating there after 5 pm? No? That’s because it was a bar.” Know-it-all. I still think this point is debatable, but because most parents wouldn’t have taken their kids to the Rathskellar, I will cop to the fact that the fact that it was my favorite restaurant as a kid might add to the trashiness.

3. At a certain point, none of my friends were allowed to spend time at my house anymore.

My friends’ parents always said, “No, you can’t go Abby’s house, but she can come over here.” There’s a lot of reasons for that, but I think the very last time I had a friend over was when Jenny V. came over and her parents came to pick her up earlier than expected. We lived in a 2-story house in town (walking distance to the Rathskellar of course). When my dad moved away, we rented the upstairs out. At this point, one of my brother’s friends was living there and he happened to be having a party. Mr. and Mrs. V. came to pick Jenny up and accidentally went to the door that lead to the upstairs instead of where my mom, sister, and I actually lived. (Had they gone to the correct door, they would have seen a note, written on a paper plate and shut into the door that said, “At the Rathskellar!” which, in their very stable minds, maybe wouldn’t have been any better than what they found when they went to the upstairs apartment). So they went upstairs to look for 12 or 13-year-old Jenny and there were all of these teenagers and maybe some young 20-somethings drinking and smoking and probably getting high. Mrs. V might have flipped out a little bit and I’m pretty sure my sister accidentally called her a bitch for harshing her mellow or something like that. My sister feels bad about it, but she said, “I might have been a little tipsy,” which totally makes sense. After that, Jenny couldn’t come over anymore.

3a. We used to write notes to each other on paper plates and shut the paper plate in the door. That’s low on the trashiness spectrum, but still. At any given moment, you could find a paper plate note shut in the door that said, “At the Rathskellar!” or “Chicken patties in the freezer!” or “Do the dishes!” or “Stop taking my wine coolers!”

3b. Our upstairs tenant grew pot in my baby cradle.

It wasn’t the cradle that I used as a baby, it was a cradle that my parents made together when they had a folk-art business in the 80s. It was wooden and it had my name stenciled on it. And it was a perfect spot to grow weed. Apparently.

4. One of our porch steps had a great big hole in it, which we covered with a couple of pieces of wood (that’s not the trashy part). One of our porch steps had a great big hole in it, which we covered with a couple of pieces of wood, and that’s where I hid my wine coolers (it gets better). One of our porch steps had a great big hole in it, which we covered with a couple of pieces of wood, and that’s where I hid my wine coolers when I was 12.

*cough* Moving on.

5. I liked Debbie Gibson. (Maybe that doesn’t prove anything, but it’s still embarrassing).

6. I used to drive our Chevette to school when I was 14 or 15.

By then, we lived in that apartment up above the stores and my mom worked at one of those stores, so she never needed the car during the day. I made a bunch of copies of the keys to the Chevette so every time I got caught and my mom told me to “Hand over the keys! All of them!” I could safely hand her 3 copies without running out. Trashy, but clever. Maybe the most clever thing ever!

7. Our family car was a Chevette.

You guys, I could go on and on, I swear. You have no choice but to agree with me. I had a good perm that may have covered up the smell, but I was a bit trashy.

I stole this picture from flickr user oldbrushes. I asked permission, but I haven’t heard back. If she wants me to take it down, I will, so enjoy it while you can.

When I was just a wee little girl, waiting for the school bus in the wee hours of the crispy fall mornings, far off in the distance I could hear the sound of Farmer Peet’s wee little pigs squealing at the slaughterhouse. At least, that’s what my brother and sister told me I was listening to. It was definitely the sound of pigs squealing, but I don’t know if they were actually being slaughtered at that moment in time.

On a related note, pork is my favorite meat.

The pigs were at the Peet Packing Company, which is no longer around thanks, in part, to Denny McLain and his thieving, but I very rarely eat pork without remembering that sound. It’s oddly soothing, like jingle bells at Christmas. If you lived in Chesaning and had a job that wasn’t on the family farm or in one of the family-owned shops and restaurants back then, it’s very likely that you worked for Farmer Peet’s. Or GM. Or maybe you were a teacher, I don’t know. My dad worked at the local phone company and my mom worked at one of the family-owned shops. Bryan’s dad worked at GM and his mom worked at the same shop that my mom did, but lots of my friends’ parents worked at Peet’s. Anyway, it was a huge bummer when they closed.

Chesaning was lovely when I was young, and sometimes I think I would kill a person in order to have a blueberry muffin from the Heritage House. Why were they so yummy, you guys? Because I was white trash, I never ate them at the Heritage House. I ate them at the Heritage House’s basement bar, The Rathskellar, or at the Carriage Shoppe, which was an antique shop behind the Heritage House.

From the time I was 12-15, we didn’t have a phone, which put my popularity at risk, so instead of reading books and embracing my solitude, I walked to the nearest payphone to be in the loop with my friends. That phone was at a “mini mall” called Market Street Square, which was next to the Heritage House/Rathskellar/Carriage Shoppe lot. On the way to the phone, I would stop at the Carriage Shoppe and buy one of those magic muffins for 50 cents! I would have paid a whole dollar. Besides the great payphone, Market Street Square had a bunch of cute shops and a yummy deli, none of which are there anymore. Well, it looks like Market Street Square is still there, but now it’s a church and Christian bookstore, with plans for a deli and resale shop to be added later. But it’s not the mini mall from my childhood. And I think my sister told me that the local phone company took the payphone out of there.

The pigs, payphone, and muffins from my childhood might be gone, but the dominant sounds from my teenhood aren’t. By the time I was a teenager, my parents were divorced and my mom and I lived in an apartment up above a row of shops and bars in downtown Chesaning. Sometimes on summer nights, we would wake up to the sound of drunk people leaving Dave’s Bar and Farmer’s Inn after last call. Drunk people are funny. One time we saw one get hit by a car. He wasn’t hurt, so it was extra funny. He just kind of bounced off the car and then yelled at it as it drove away. We saw a couple of fist fights, but mostly we just eavesdropped on drunken, “I love you soooooo much!” conversations. Farmer’s Inn isn’t there anymore, but Dave’s still is. Dave’s will never die. Never!

During the daytime, there were (usually) no drunks for entertainment, so I had to pass the time by watching the security camera feed from one of the shops underneath our apartment. Do I have to tell you that this shop is no longer there? I didn’t think so. The shop had a camera in the make-up aisle and our tv would pick up the feed. I didn’t have cable so my friends and I would naturally watch the security camera channel sometimes. Or a lot. One lucky, lucky day I saw a girl who was a year ahead of me in school browsing the Bonne Bell display. I was just about to turn it off when I saw her turn her head to the left and right to make sure no one was watching her. That piqued my interest. I thought I was totally going to see her steal a Dr. Pepper-flavored Lip Smacker or something, but she surprised me by picking her nose and then her butt in quick succession. It. Was. Awesome. Way better than cable. Unfortunately, I still didn’t have a phone by then so I had to run to the nearest payphone to call all of my friends and tell them. If that happened today, I totally would have tweeted it. Well, I probably would have missed it because I would have been watching actual tv shows instead of security cameras. Even white trash kids get to have cable and high-speed internet these days. Not like when I was young and only the rich kids had it.

Maybe all of the landmarks from my childhood are gone, but I still have my memories. And Dave’s bar. When one or both of those go under, then it will be like I was never even born.

Back to life in Columbus. Bryan and I think it’s unfair that we had to wake up to an alarm clock today and eat fibrous cereals instead of sleeping in until 9:00 and waking up to doughnuts. So many doughnuts! Do you know the thing about doughnuts? If they’re there, we’ll eat them. They taste good with coffee. And they taste good with ham.

I’ve written about my love of ring-shaped pastry before, but I’ve never actually succumbed to the seduction of Buckeye Donuts’ evil delivery system. In Chesaning, though, there are doughnuts to be had without even ordering them because my inlaws are extremely generous people and if they see you eat one doughnut, they will lovingly provide piles of them for you on a daily basis. And they won’t believe you when you say, “No, really, you don’t have to buy any more doughnuts.” Come to think of it, maybe they just couldn’t understand what we were saying with our mouth full of doughnuts. It’s hard to talk that way. Seriously, though, my body doesn’t know what to do with granola anymore. Here’s a hint, body: digest the shit out of it. Literally. Please.

So, I guess I hope I have a better year than the Parshallburg. Happy New Year! And happy birthday to my historic mother who turns 60 tomorrow.

I found the video here.

I’m sure life will go on as usual around here while we’re reveling, but whatever.

If I were the sort who sent out Christmas cards, I would totally send you one. But I’m not anymore because, for me, it’s all about the kid picture and my kids are all over the internets between here, Kids Know Stuff, and our Flickr page, so I don’t even bother anymore unless you’re an old person who doesn’t have the internet. Then you get one. If you got one and you didn’t know you were old, now you know.

I do like to give my brother and sister a holiday card, though, so I went to someecards.com and made one for them. It was inspired by true events. I’ll share it with you:

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We laugh, my family and I. And we laugh more when we drink. And we drink more when we laugh. It’s a vicious circle. Or a vicious cycle, depending on who you ask. Or whom. Whatever. I should be packing.

If I were a good person, I would have written something more like this, which when I found it in my inbox today from my friend Melissa, made me cry a little. So you all should watch this and pretend I wrote something like it for you. Because I would have. If only I had a soul.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_4qwVLqt9Q

She was only blind in one eye and I didn’t cheat because she was blind, that just made it easier. I was a junior, and I accidentally signed up for trig because I thought I had to. Turns out, it was really, really hard for me and then I found out I didn’t even need the stupid credit to graduate so I wanted to drop it.

Playing sports was a big deal for me and there were certain things I had to do in order to be eligible to play. Passing all of my classes was one of them. Staying away from alcohol was another, but that was different. I was genuinely afraid that I would fail trig and then I would be benched. And without sports, how would I know if my parents loved me? I wouldn’t! So you can see it was a bigger deal than it seems at first glance.

I asked my guidance counselor to let me drop the class, and let me just note right here that the very fact that I was willing to enter my guidance counselor’s office is proof of how desperate I was. Suffering through a conversation with this guy was, quite possibly, the most painful thing about high school. He had a chronic and unreasonable amount of spittle gathered in the corners of his mouth that he tried to slurp between words. And his breath was like something from The Great Beyond (not the Good Great Beyond, The Other One). It was just like my science teacher’s. In my entire life before and since, I’ve never smelled breath like these two guys had. I don’t know how I was so unfortunate to have them both at my high school. All of you CHS grads, back me up. You know who I’m talking about. I just don’t want to write their names because I mentioned the science teacher in that other post and now sometimes people google his son’s name and find my blog. Makes me uncomfortable.

So I was desperate enough to go to the guidance counselor, and he said something like this: “I know you don’t need it to *slurp* graduate, but *slurp* it will help you in *slurp* college because then you’ll *slurp* be able to skip the *slurp* entry-level math *slurp* classes.” To which I replied, “If I take this class and fail it, I won’t get into college,” and he said, “You can *slurp* do this work. *slurp* You just have to *slurp* put your mind *slurp* to it.” No help. So I went and told my daddy.

My dad, spurred on by my I-will-have-to-sit-the-bench threat, went in and talked to the counselor and the principal who both gave him the same song and dance about potential and stupid college and all that. So then I had to cry. My dad IGNORED MY TEARS as if they weren’t magical daughter tears and said, “Well, they seem to think you just need to apply yourself,” and I said, “They don’t know! They have no idea!” and then I said something about my life being ruined and I hope he’s happy when I’m sitting the bench and I cried. I didn’t even fake cry; I was really that upset about this class. I, in fact, was applying myself and I could not do the work. It didn’t make sense.

My bad luck was that the math department was trying this new self-teaching kind of thing where they put us in small groups and we were supposed to help each other and learn on our f*cking own. I was born to be coached. I don’t have a single instinct otherwise. Also, it would have been better if I had had algebra right before, but I didn’t. The stupid schedule was set up so that you have algebra one year, geometry the next, then trig (if you’re dumb/motivated enough to sign up for it). Stupid. I was a victim of circumstance.

I sulked my way through the next couple of weeks and then I decided to take advantage of my teacher’s blind eye. If the adults were going to turn a blind eye toward my pain, I would use my teacher’s blind eye for my pleasure. When the gradebook was on her blind side, I changed my grades (just my homework grades, not my abysmal test grades). And I felt justified. And I still kind of feel justified. I know I’m an adult now and I’m supposed to know it was wrong and all that, but I told those people to let me drop it. I was failing, and I fixed it. Maybe I could’ve gone to tutoring, but I don’t remember that being an option because of sports. I couldn’t stay after school an hour to get tutored without missing an hour of practice, which would result in being benched, which is what I was trying to avoid. I believe that’s called a conundrum.

And, by the way, I think my teacher knew what I did, but she was almost 100 and in an unhappy marriage. (I know this because a couple years later, when she was almost 102, she left her husband. For her stepbrother.) I know, right? So see? There are worse things.

I went on to graduate and get awards and drop out of college. There are people who might say that this means I didn’t earn the scholarships and awards that I got, but I disagree. A little. If somebody wants to strip me of my Army Scholar/Athlete award, have at it. But you’ll never take my Foreign Language award! Well, if you know where it is, I guess you can take it. Because I don’t know where it is. I just carry the memory of it in my cold, black, trig-cheating heart.

We’re in Chesaning right now, so I haven’t had time to really think about a post or anything, but every once in a while my brain goes, “How in the hell do we trample a Wal-Mart worker on Black Friday?”

I’ll admit my bias here: I worked retail for 5 years and, since then, I’ve never set foot in a store on the day after Thanksgiving. To me, there’s no sale worth that hell. I feel so strongly about this that I really believe that if it came down to Black Friday sales being the only way Christmas could happen in the Aldrich house, then Christmas would have to wait. I don’t like it. I don’t like that they advertise a super-huge deal on something fancy and then only stock 4 of them. That makes people want to kill each other, so maybe we shouldn’t do that. I don’t know.

Anyway, my brother-in-law’s dad died the day before Thanksgiving so we’re up here for his funeral today. And the snow is all piled up. Incidentally, piled-up snow is another thing I don’t like. Feeling curmudgeonly today, apparently.

Something I do like: Going to Dave’s Bar with my sister and brother-in-law and reminiscing about his dad. My brother-in-law is the youngest in his family, so he’s definitely more like an older brother to a couple of his of-age nephews who were at the bar, too. It was lovely to hear these men speak with such affection and, at times, derision (in a good way) about the family patriarch. Rolly will be missed, but he has most definitely left an enduring legacy of humor and sweetness that can be seen in all of his grandkids. Especially my sister’s kids. I’m super biased like that. I wish they were old enough to hang out at the bar with us. I told my sister they could because I used to when I was little and nothing’s wrong with me, but for some reason, she laughed at that. It wasn’t really a laugh, it was more of a “HA!” I don’t get it.

A couple of times when he saw my face turn red and noticed the arch of my eybrows and the cock of my head that usually signifies the beginning of a verbal onslaught accompanied by The Tone, he had to squeeze my shoulder and whisper through clenched teeth, “Do not get involved. Promise me you will not get involved. Here, drink this! Drink it faster!” I don’t know what he was so afraid of.

For the record, there are lots of Obama supporters in the family on both sides, but it was still plenty disconcerting scary interesting to be around the very few McCain supporters. My dad accused me of brainwashing my children, so I had to tell him and his girlfriend that brainwashing wasn’t necessary, as my daughters are afraid Sarah Palin is coming for their uteruses, which made Maya say, “Does Sarah Palin want to take my uterus?” To which I replied very sweetly, “No honey, she just wants to be the boss of your uterus. But we know she’s not the boss of your uterus, right? Who’s the boss of your uterus?” And she very proudly pointed to herself and said, “JUST ME!” Good times. In fact, that visit was so fun and has me feeling so bipartisan-ish today that I’m going to post a “Women for McCain” video that my sister-in-law, Tracy sent me.

Don’t forget to vote tomorrow!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tl6qKcMC3A

OMG, how did you guess that I’m going to Michigan? You’re so smart.

All the girls are going camping with my inlaws this weekend. They’ll be about two hours away from Chesaning for two nights and then I’ll join them for one night, unless it’s absolutely necessary that I join them sooner. I don’t think Maya has spent more than one night away from me at a time, but I’m not really worried about her. She digs my inlaws (and my inlaws’ food) and I know that if she’s having issues, they’ll call me. We used to camp with them for a weekend every summer when we lived in Michigan, but this will be the first time it’s happened since we moved to Columbus. Excitement abounds. I told my inlaws to just tell me when they want them, and I’d be sure to drive them up there. They requested this weekend, which turns out to be very convenient for me because my cousin is getting married Saturday. Wasn’t it lovely of her to plan her wedding around when we would be up in Michigan anyway? She’s always been sweet like that. I think I’ll put another $3-5 in her gift card just to show my appreciation.

So I’ll be packing today. I did my laundry and grocery shopping and baking yesterday. Baking? Yes, baking. My father-in-law needs to be compensated with chocolate chip cookies. He’s diabetic, so maybe I shouldn’t bake for him, but when I don’t bake for him, he whines about it. On the other hand, when I do bake for him, he tells me he’s diabetic and he shouldn’t be eating stuff like that. At least, I think that’s what he’s saying. It’s hard to understand him when he’s cramming cookies into his mouth.

Anyway, I’m going away again. I’ll miss you. I’ll be back Tuesday. And I’ll miss you.