Sundays with Stretchy Pants

We’re going to Chesaning to roll around in snow drifts with our family for the holidays. I hope we don’t have to be pulled out of a snow-drifted ditch, but if we do, we know lots of people who will pull us out. That’s nice. And that’s why we return again and again.

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.

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This is heavy, but not blogging it seems to be blocking any fun blogging I might do. And, dammit, I am nothing if not a fun blogger.

We don’t have a lot of family traditions that have been lovingly passed down from generation to generation. I used to think it was just because my parents were kind of lazy and drunk a lot, but now I know the truth. Because I’m kind of lazy and drunk from time to time, too, but we still have some first-generation traditions.

My mom used to make cinnamon rolls once every few years on Christmas morning. I don’t really remember it too often from my childhood, but that could be because I wasn’t really into them back then. In the past few years she has told me that she made them every year, so what do I know? I know she used frozen bread dough and joked about how her insane mom used to make them from scratch. Adding to the “joke,” she’d say, “Of course, then she’d end up pulling our hair and calling us all sluts,” and she’d laugh. Hahahaha. “So, see? It’s better to use frozen dough.” So funny.

I like to bake, but I don’t do the cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning. And it’s because I don’t want to pass down my grandmother’s tradition. Because she’s mean. And I don’t want her little mean pieces being passed on through her stupid, yummy cinnamon rolls. This is the first time I’ve really understood that her meanness is the reason I don’t pass it on. I know this because the one and only passed-down tradition I loved to cling to was my dad’s family tradition of Christmas Eve hot cocoa in a Santa mug. It’s a tradition from my long-dead Grandma Lena. I’ve written about her before. She’s the one that died when my dad was 14. I never knew her, but there she sits on her pedestal.

We did not practice Grandma Lena’s tradition when we were growing up. My dad had his original Santa mug from when he was a little boy and it was always used as decoration during Christmas; never for function. It wasn’t until, I don’t know, between 8 and 10 years ago, that all of his grandkids started receiving Santa mugs in order to carry out the Christmas Eve cocoa tradition. I, as the one who always craved this kind of tradition, jumped all over it enthusiastically every single Christmas. This year? I’m dreading it. I don’t want to pass it on. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to keep the Santa mugs sacred until the big day. I don’t want Christmas to come. I couldn’t figure out why there was this niggling dread in the back of my mind, but now I realize it’s because my dad is, this year and not for the first time, a big schmuck.

After my parents divorced when I was 12, I worked hard to get to a good relationship place with him and his second wife, whom my kids refer to as “Grandma.” Really hard. It took all the way until I was about 24 or 25, but it was good. It was good until last year when he left his second wife and her kids and grandkids for another woman. He sacrificed us, his first family, for this second family and then he left them. And I don’t like that. And I’m having trouble with him. And so I’m having trouble with his traditions. And now I know that this is what kills family traditions. Family connections are broken, so what’s the point of traditions? If that connection is gone and you don’t want it back, then you don’t need the traditions. It feels false to carry it on with my kids with the usual, cheery, “This is how Grandpa used to spend his Christmas Eve with his little brother and your Great-Grandma Lena,” because who cares? Who really cares? I don’t care.

*sigh*

But I will do it again this year. I will. Probably. Because it really has become our own tradition and, I think, being aware of the reason I don’t want to do it helps a little. It’s our tradition. Yes, my dad’s bits and pieces are all over it. And part of me believes that his bits and pieces should be shunned forever. But I don’t want to pass on our truest and most-followed family tradition: detachment. I don’t. I’ll make the stupid, yummy cinnamon rolls too. And I’ll tell the kids that their Great-Grandma Devereaux (the one that they’ve seen only a handful of times and, no, she’s not dead yet) used to make them, and their Grandma Marilyn used to make them and we’ll talk about traditions and sadness and detachment and connection and disconnection and how sometimes it’s too late, but how we can do better. It’ll be more fun than it sounds.

It will be just like when we make my mother-in-law’s peanut butter balls and we talk about how Nana gave us the recipe and she’s been making them for a looong time. And how we talk about Grandma Hattie’s cut-out cookie recipe (even though she was just my babysitter and not a real relative at all, but more real than most.) And how we talk about most of the ornaments on our tree. They all came from somewhere else. My parents made some of them together when they made folk art in the ’80s. The rest have been gifts from my mom, my inlaws, my dad and my ex-stepmom. There is connection all over this disjointed family, in spite of ourselves. And it’s ok to pass it on.

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And it’s a little bit freaky. Because they’ll die and then we’re next.

Bryan’s dad turned 59 on Monday and Bryan and I talked all night about how that’s almost 60 and we remember when our parenst were 33 and 34 and weren’t they old? Yeah, but we’re not old, right? Nah! And our kids will be doing this when they’re in their 30s and they’ll talk about us like we’re about to die and that’s not cool! Those kids are mean! Let’s wake them up and beat them, thus proving our youthfulness. They’ll remember that, I bet!

My parents will be 60 in January and April. They’ve never seemed old before, but 60? It seems kind of old. Not because they’re old, but because I’m too young to have parents in their 60s. It’s about me! My parents were 26 when I was born, which is pretty young, so if they’re old, I’m old. It’s only logical.

Speaking of my parents, do you know that I still know the phone numbers to all of the bars in Chesaning, even the ones that are closed now (I’m looking at you Rathskellar and Farmers Inn) and the golf course? And of course Dave’s Bar, which has outlasted them all. I do. Because I used to call them a lot when I was a little girl. (No, not to order stuff, but if you know me in real life, I can see how you would think that). I’m not judging, but I can’t imagine a scenario in which my kids regularly had to call me or my husband at the bar. My parent shame would be unbearable and my wife rage would be, well, extremely unpleasant. Like the kind of unpleasant where you say, “Wow, this gunshot wound is extremely unpleasant.” But I guess if our kids had to call us at the bar, they would just call our cell phones and it wouldn’t suddenly hit them in adulthood that they know all of the phone numbers to the bars where they grew up. I guess that means we should go to the bar more often. Then we can forget about all of this oldness nonsense. Problem solved.

Adding to the oldness problem is a little theory that Bryan and I have. We believe that if you had kids before you turned 30, then you have to add the age of your oldest child to your actual calendar age and that gives you your true, social age. So we’re not 33 and 34. We’re 42 and 43, socially. It’s true. When we hang out with real 33 and 34 year olds, we have no idea what we’re doing. None. They talk differently. They drink differently. They care about different things. If they have children at all, they probably only have one so they’re still operating under the illusion that their child is interesting to other people. And it’s awkward when we laugh at them when they tell us their 18 month old is gifted. Because we think they’re joking, but they’re not. And then they think we’re mean, which we are, but that isn’t the point. The point is, we’re way older than everybody our age. And we’re all going to die. And now I have to take pictures again.

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Dawn sent me a link to this sweet and cushy granny. I never had a sweet and cushy granny and now I do. Her name is Clara and she cooks cheap meals while talking about the Depression. I love her and I cry every time I watch her peel a potato and talk about not being able to afford socks. All my grandma ever talked about was, “Don’t you think your parents could’ve stayed married until you graduated high school?” And I’d be all, “No, because then my mom wouldn’t have been able to marry that rich dude and I would still be driving a poop-brown Chevette* with no muffler instead of my sweet red Beretta. Duh!” Old people just don’t understand what’s important.

*It’s not that we just ignored the fact that the Chevette didn’t have a muffler; it’s just that the stupid thing rejected it every single time we put a new one on. We’d just pick it up from the shop and then by nightfall, sparks would be flying out from the under carriage where the muffler was dragging on the road. It was hot. Literally. From the friction.

Anyway, here’s my new grandma talking to me in a soothing voice, teaching me how to cook cheap, which is nice because I need to get groceries today.

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We’re just getting back and unpacked from our trip to Chesaning. I think I might have bitten my tongue off at certain points, but it grew back and the trip was still lots of fun. And my husband is proud of me for just shrugging, shaking my head, and hiding in the other room from time to time instead of shrieking, “ARE YOU F*CKING KIDDING ME WITH THIS TERRORIST CRAP?” over and over. Because, really, I can handle most any other reason why a person doesn’t want to vote for Obama, but the terrorist stuff? That’s just ignorant.

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!

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1. Electricity. I got some, bitches!

2. Dawn. She works my blogs and she invites me to free spaghetti dinners. And she makes me laugh.

3. Kristen. She makes her husband deliver coffee to me and she sets up free coffee for her neighbors because she has a generator. And she makes me laugh.

4. My other friends here and in Chesaning, and my extended family. They invite me to do laundry at their house and they invite me to stay with them and use up their electricity in order to get me to shut up with the whining. They remind me that I’m very lucky to have several places to which I could flee if I really needed to. And they make me laugh.

5. My husband and children. They’re just awesome. Bryan’s awesome because he puts up with me for-evah! And he’s cute. And the kids are awesome because, well, they’re 50% me. I’m kidding! They’re their own little bundles of funny electricity-addicted awesomeness. And they make me laugh.

6. Margaret Cho. Thanks to Dawny for this link because I couldn’t have said it better myself. And it makes me laugh: I’m Christian You Fuckers

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In the summer of 1984, my father built me a hurdle. And then he tried to teach me how to jump over it while running. I was 9 years old and there was nothing in my physical make-up that would have lead him to believe that I would be able to hurdle things. Mostly, I was the sort who would run into things, lumbering solidly, not gliding swiftly. I didn’t have long limbs that could stretch and snap over a hurdle in just the right way. My body was made for sturdiness, not grace.

The same day he made the hurdle, he also gave me just a plain piece of wood, explaining that I was to run up to the wood and then, just as my foot hit the board, I was to jump and hurl my body through the air, hopefully landing far away from the board. Yes, he made a long jump marker thingy.

I’ve often thought back to that one day that summer and wondered what in the hell my dad was thinking. At that point in time, I was playing softball and I was pretty good at it. I didn’t need another sport, and Track and Field wasn’t even an option for an extra-curricular activity until high school. Finally, after 24 years, I think I know what my dad was thinking. Watching the Olympics this year has given me a little bit of insight into his psyche during that time. Yes, I was a good little softball player, but softball wasn’t an Olympic event back in 1984. I think my dad had a brief bout of Olympic fever and he dealt with it by building a hurdle and a long jump board. For me, his short, sturdy little girl. It hit me while I was watching Misty May and Kerri Walsh play volleyball. I found myself looking at Lena and Liberty, thinking, “We should really buy a volleyball.” In that instant, I knew that watching Carl Lewis in 1984 had affected my dad the same way. My brother and sister would have been 15 and 14, way past their prime. All of his hopes rested with me. And then I dashed them. Just like my children are dashing my Olympic dreams for them.

I didn’t buy a volleyball because I’m sure they would just whine about how it hurts to hit it. And I don’t know why they can’t do a perfect cartwheel, let alone an entire floor routine. I don’t know why they won’t even attempt synchronized diving. And I don’t know why they insist upon running all willy-nilly, limbs swinging about with no rhyme or reason. They don’t pace themselves; they just sprint and then collapse giggling in the grass. That’s not technique! That’s just tom-foolery! The Olympics have taught me that my children don’t care about me and my needs, just like I didn’t care about my dad’s needs.  That Michael Phelps’ mom is a lucky woman. You can tell how much he loves her just by looking at all of his gold medals. *sigh*

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We’re all going to die. We’re all going to die and then people are going to run around trying to gather pictures of us to either put up on display at the funeral home or put into a nifty little slideshow set to music in order to play it at the funeral. While I was visiting Michigan this last time, I attended the funeral for the father of one of my oldest friends. He was one of those involved types, close to his daughters and their friends. His funeral was beautiful and sad and he had a slideshow with all of these pictures of him and all of the people he loved. Sad and lovely. Here’s what I did with my grief:

Those were all taken at my sister’s house immediately after the funeral. My kids weren’t there. They were camping, but I hooked up with them later:

We’re all going to die. Take pictures of yourself with people you love. Even if you think you’re ugly because you’re not. You’re somebody’s mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, daughter, son, niece, nephew, granny, pop-pop, cousin, or friend. And even if you really are ugly, your loved ones will want to look at pictures of you after you die.

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I have a lot of weird dreams. I used to keep a dream journal in order to try to interpret them. The more I wrote them down, the more vivid they became. I’m a lucid dreamer, though, so I’m not sure interpretation works when you’re going around changing things in the dream.

Last night I had a dream I was at Kristen’s house for a little party before park day. I wasn’t exactly sure how to get to the park, so I had to use her computer to mapquest it. So I’m using the computer and this jack-ass dude, dressed all businessy and acting all superior (the type Joe and Kristen would never be friends with; I’m sure he wasn’t even invited) just walked up and grabbed the mouse out of my hand because he had some “business” to look up. I was pissed and oh-so-ballsy as I ripped the mouse out of his hand and went on a rant about his business isn’t any more important than my business, just like a good stay-at-home mom who is not at all insecure about her choice. And then Steve Carell showed up and I went off on him: “I know everybody loves you and thinks you’re great, but I know you’re a smarmy bastard and I’m gonna tell the world!” And then my lucid-dreaming self was like, “You idiot! That’s Steve Carell. You will not find any smarminess about him and if you do, you will not tell the world.” In my dream I said, “Wait, you’re not who I thought you were. You’re awesome. I thought you were somebody else.” I don’t know what any of that means. I blame the jack-ass dude on a conversation I had with Dawn yesterday about her and her husband’s choice to have him be the stay-at-home parent and how jack-asses are weird about that, just like jack-asses are weird about stay-at-home moms. Jack-asses suck.

Anyway, we have homeschool park day today, and my sister TracEy (not to be confused with Tracy, my sister-in-law) and my other niece are coming to visit for the holiday weekend (can I get a “woohoo”?). TracEy , if you’re reading this, I’m not cleaning the house for you. I washed the sheets on the guest bed, but I am not doing anything else. It’s Thursday. After that, it’s a holiday weekend. I can’t be expected to clean stuff during a Thursday/holiday weekend combo. I will share my beers with you, unless I feel you’re bogarting them, in which case I will point you toward the liquor store to go buy me us some more. Don’t worry, we found one in a nice part of town, so it’s not across the street from the plasma bank. Nobody will ask you for money at the nice liquor store. You have nothing to fear from the rich drunks except roofies and date rape, so just don’t accept any drinks from anybody and you’ll be fine.

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Bryan screwed the front license plate on our cars. Did you hear me? Do you know what that means? He paid $2.50 for the proper screws and he screwed our Ohio license plates onto the front of my mini van and his falling-apart-type beater thing. We’ve been living in Ohio for 3 years now. We came from Michigan, land of the single, back-end only license plate. Apparently, there is no point in having one on the front and one on the back when there isn’t any money in the state budget for highway patrol.

So we’ve been driving around with our front license plate tucked on our dashboard for 3 years. Last year, Bryan was issued a $40 ticket for this very infraction, yet he still couldn’t bring himself to permanently attach the license plates. This type of to-do list inaction is so against his character as a man that even he, King Literal, Head of the Knights of the Anti-Allegorical Order, could see the symbolism. As Bo Schembechler, rest His soul (yes, that’s a capital “H”) would say, he’s a Michigan Man. He loves that when he looks at his veins, they’re running blue. And he tries to never actually bleed because, well, the blood is scarlet. Nothing makes him more annoyed than Buckeye fever. That’s hard when you live in Columbus. Attaching the license plates? That’s some permanent stuff.

This move was supposed to be temporary. It was a way to get out of the shit-hole AT&T customer service job that he had been in for 6 years. A voluntary transfer to a better department in a city that we were bred to hate. My dad said, “Columbus? I raised you better than that! Divorce him!” Not really, but close. Indeed, I never would’ve agreed to a permanent move. We lived in our hometown of Chesaning, near both of our families in a house that we transformed from a run-down hovel into a gorgeous historic home fit for Chesaning’s now-defunct Parade of Homes. Move? MOVE? “I never would’ve married somebody who was going to move me away from my family,” said I, Queen Co-Dependent, Head Lady in Charge of Seeking Approval from Extended Family At All Costs. Ouch.

Then we moved. I was ready to look at this as temporary to get him out of that job, and just do what I could to get by for a couple of years and then move back home. But Columbus, she’s a seductress. She found many, many ways to my heart. Usually food is the only way to my heart, and she definitely has that covered, but let’s just take homeschooling as another for instance.

Homeschooling is a huge part of our lives and in Chesaning, we were a very lonely minority. I had no idea how lonely until we moved here. Homeschooling Community, you had me at hello. The Homeschool Gym, Homeschool classes that are offered at art galleries, science museums, recreation centers, the zoo, the metro parks, and anywhere you want them. Seriously, you just call places and say, “we want a homeschool class/tour,” and they fall all over themselves to make it happen. The roller skating rink? Some homeschooler called up and said, “We be homeschoolers and we desire to trade cash for services. But the cash shall be of an amount that is less than what they who are not homeschoolers pay.” And the roller rink (and the ice skating rink, btw) said, “Let it be written. Let it be so.” Support for homeschooling instead of blank stares and defensiveness? I. Had. No. Idea.

Oh, and there are fun people here, too. We like you guys.

**Oh my, you should feel how my blood pressure went up and my pulse quickened and my brain screamed, “Don’t talk about how much you love your Ohio friends! The people in Michigan are going to think you don’t like them anymore! What if they call you and yell at you for making new friends? Omigod, you are going to be abandoned!”**

That reminds me, one more thing we love about Columbus is the many options for psychotherapy.

It’s ok. It’s really ok. It’s hard to come out, but we’re doing it…

We love Columbus: The people, the stuff to do, the stuff to eat, the therapists. Not the buckeyes. We’ll never love the buckeyes. But we have 2 license plates on our vehicles now and, dammit, it feels good.

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