Author: ME

Are You Stupid Or Somethin’?

ME Overly simple thoughts , , ,


I have lost all faith in my local school system, which is a real shame because a few years ago I packed up and left my paid-off house and moved my family into a nice, expensive, big new house specifically to get my kids into this awesome school. The school hasn’t done anything entirely wrong, per se, but I just can’t trust these people anymore.

They have decided my first born child is gifted. Sure, read that sentence again. Let it sink in.

Yup, I’m a little worried now. If this child is gifted and possibly poised to become the valedictorian of her graduating class, then there’s some real doorpost-type talent in her school or the administration of said school is handing out academic achievement certificates to everybody and his ugly cousin.

Shut up, you know I don’t really mean that, so don’t call child welfare. Yes, my kid is brilliant, and she’s super talented, and she’s even really, really pretty, but every once in a while this massive brain-fart-slash-logic-hemorrhage happens in her world that makes me wonder if maybe I should get a maternity test.

For example, we recently had a brief exchange that made me think I might need to start baby-proofing the house again, just in case:

ME: Sweetie, would you hand me my driver’s license from over on the table?

GENIUS CHILD: Sure, Mommy. (eerie pause) Mommy? Why does it say on this card that you’re an organ donor?

ME: Um, because I’m an organ donor.

GENIUS CHILD: (pained silence) How long have you been an organ donor???

ME: Ever since I got a driver’s license, so…um…well, carry the one…(I’m not a genius either, I couldn’t do the math)

GENIUS CHILD: (sob) Why haven’t you ever told me?!?

ME: Because I didn’t think you needed to know about it until I was dead.

GENIUS CHILD: (pregnant pause, followed by sniffling) What organ did you donate???

The next day…

GENIUS CHILD: MOMMY!!! WHY are the police arresting that dog?

ME: What??? Where?

GENIUS: That dog! They’re putting the poor dog in the back of the police car! WHY???

ME: Sweetie, he’s a police dog. He rides back because the human policemen get to ride in the front. It just looks better that way.

The next week…

ME: Sweetie, why did you decide to take off your belt and cinch it around your little girl boobs?

GENIUS CHILD: Because I spilled ice cream on my shirt and I didn’t want anyone to see the stain.

ME: And you’re really thinking this looks better than a dot of chocolate ice cream on your brown shirt?

GENIUS CHILD: Yup. I’m just glad the stain wasn’t on my back. Then I’d have to turn the belt around backwards and that would just look weird.

ME: Sweetie, how would you possibly get ice cream spilled on your back?

GENIUS CHILD: Duh, in case I walked backwards into someone who was eating an ice cream cone. Sheesh!

But never fear, I have a theory. For my own sanity and so I don’t wake up screaming during the night after dreaming that my daughter lives in my house until I die and then possibly for a couple of weeks after, I’ve convinced myself that not only is my child way smarter than everyone else’s child except for a mildly underdeveloped common sense, it’s also a biological fact (I make those up all the time) that you get stupid when you’re in the middle of a growth spurt.

Yep. I read it on the Internet. Or, at least, I will read it on the internet once I post this blog.

Here’s my theory: as your muscles and skeleton grow, blood flow is diverted away from the brain to keep the growing parts nice and squishy. If there wasn’t enough blood there, then the growing parts would dry out and crumble when they tried to grow.

Right now, re-read that part, only this time imagine the words flying out of Sarah Palin’s mouth and replace the word “brain” with “maverick.”

Fortunately, my child is barely in junior high school and has already topped five feet, so I think I might be on to something with this theory. She’s not actually dumb, she just grows too much; once she stops growing, she’ll be a National Merit Scholar. This theory works in the reverse, as I happen to be an exceedingly brilliant person and there are still several rides at Disney World that I am not tall enough to ride. Therefore, as the resident smart person in my house, I just declared that idea to be scientific fact.

Honey, You Been Lied To

ME Overly simple thoughts

I’ve been eagerly watching the news in hopes that this tragic story would die down and we could all just get on with our lives, but it seems like that’s not going to happen soon. When something this monumental takes place, as citizens we can’t just look for a band-aid solution and put it behind us. We have to investigate every angle and whip that dead horse until it gets up and rides again.

Yup, another famous man was so enamored of his own genitalia that he felt like more people should be allowed to appreciate its greatness. As a woman, I know of lots of other women who are outraged. I don’t think “rage” is exactly what I feel, mostly I just feel sorry for Congressman Weiner because he’s been operating under false assumptions for years.

Many, many years ago, someone, probably his sweet mother, held him in her lap (let’s hope this was a really long time ago) and told him he could be anything he wanted to be when he grew up. Well, she lied. You cannot run for President with the last name Weiner, and one of the sad truths to come out of this scandal was all the speculation that a lot of people in the higher up parts of politics really thought this guy had a chance at the White House. Even if he didn’t look sort of skinny-rodent-like, his last name is Weiner. That’s not a campaign I can live through.

But that’s not the worst of the lies this poor man was told. The real whopper, the one that was his ultimate undoing, has been told to men all across the planet since the dawn of time. Basically, ever since the first caveman looked down and wondered, “What is this extra part for?” and then figured out what it’s for, men have been SHOWING it to people. Sadly, most of the people who end up having to see it either have one of their own to look at or are people who thank God on a daily basis that they don’t have to put up with having one.

And the lie is that men still think other people want to see it. How many celebrities have been caught showing their extra parts to people, often in public restrooms or darkened movie theaters, only to get arrested for it? Why aren’t there more mammas smacking their sons in the back of the head and saying, “If I ever find out you did something like that, I will make you wish I’d never given birth to you?” And Weiner certainly isn’t the first man to not only show it to someone, but to provide permanent, fossil-record kind of permanent proof that he did it by taking a picture and putting it on the Internet.

What men don’t realize about this lie they’ve been told is that women are not enthralled with looking at them. Think for a minute about the meteoric rise in popularity of Playgirl magazine. It hasn’t happened, has it? There’s a reason for that: it’s not that hard to get a man to take his pants off. You basically just have to ask, you certainly don’t need to go pay $4.99 at the gas station on the other side of the railroad tracks to buy a copy. I know men who would proudly show it to you without even thinking sex might be involved, just because they, too, have been told the lie.

If you’ve never had the chance to peek between the pages of Playgirl, let me enlighten you. It’s full of pictures of very rugged-looking, handsome men, lounging naked on porch swings or in various locales like that. Let me tell you something important, men:

The sexy part of that photo isn’t the penis, it’s the porch swing! Pause and re-read that sentence. If you’re still thinking of flashing people, online or in person, read it again.

Women who can appreciate the beauty of a handsome, sexy man are appreciative of his “charms,” but what’s really got most of the readership excited is the thought that just maybe there will be sex but that afterwards there will be coffee and conversation on that freakin’ porch swing, and oh, my, is that porch overlooking waterfront property? Holy hell, does this sexy man own a lake house? Swoon!

And before I mistakenly give the impression that women are shallow creatures who will have sex with someone just to get access to a wrap-around porch with gleaming hardwood floors, I have to tell you men are just as guilty. That’s why Playboy magazine has pictures of women lounging naked in bed or in showers or sprawled across motorcycles, because men are also hoping that after sex there will be something else to do, like sleep, shower, or ride a motorcycle. My favorite was the photo array of a very beautiful naked woman in a kitchen, because you know after that joyride is over he’s gonna want a sammich.

It is still interesting to me that Weiner was so heinously lied to that he’s not willing to step down as a member of our nation’s legislative branch. What kind of career can you hope to have now, sir? All I can picture about this man now is him sitting naked at the family computer at night, possibly using the same digital camera that he and his wife took on their vacation to the Grand Canyon. I can’t let the man who votes on the nation’s healthcare plan be the same man who is one episode of Chris-Hanson-from-Dateline away from being caught by a camera crew in a fake kitchen trying to meet a girl who was planted by a To Catch A Predator sting operation.

In summary, poor Congressman Weiner is the victim here, the victim of lies perpetrated by society and history itself. Slap him on his extra part and send him home in shame. He might actually have a future ahead of him if he takes on a new identity and changes his name. But I would have recommended that in the first place.

The Tooth Fairy Cometh

ME Overly simple thoughts

Having a degree in biology means I’ve spent a combined total of about twenty years of my life voluntarily doing really gross stuff. I once spent three weeks shaving a dead wet cat, and if its facial expression was any indication, it did not die in its sleep. I’ve dissected somewhere in the ballpark of fifty oversized frogs, and once had to anesthetize a hefty turtle, cut its shell off with a saw, and mess with its innards before finishing it off mostly humanely. I don’t even need to describe the required coursework in microbiology and having to stir Petri dishes containing every manner of itty-bitty organism, down to E. coli. It is the end of drinking tap water after you look at flesh-eating bacteria under a microscope for weeks at a time.

So I’ve always considered myself to have a strong stomach, but I have to admit that I have one, true heebeejeebee reaction to a commonplace biological occurrence: I cannot pull teeth.

I admit that’s weird. If we’re on a plane that goes down in the Alaskan wilderness, I can catch a squirrel, use its intestines to make twine, whittle a needle from some bark, then use both of those to stitch up any life threatening injuries you may have. But if a six-year-old plants himself in front of me and shows me a wiggly tooth, I’m going to vomit.

Ordinarily, tooth pulling isn’t considered a life skill. But when you have children, you sometimes find yourself reaching into a tiny mouth to finally snap the little piece of meat holding the corner of pearly baby tooth in place. There is always screaming involved, and sometimes the child cries, too.

I discovered early that I don’t have to have much to do with teeth. I can manage to brush our kids’ teeth before school, but that’s about all. I often had to send our kids and their ejecting body parts to other family members, friends, even school teachers, to get the disgustingness over with.

One horrible tooth pulling involved sending our firstborn next door to her grandfather to have one of her front teeth pulled. She cried when we announced it was time, but went with her daddy while I stayed comfortably inside our house with the window blinds shut.

Forty-five minutes later, they hadn’t returned, with or without the tooth. I went to investigate and was met with hysterical screaming at the door. Fortunately, my need to get away from what was a re-enactment of a Saw movie was overridden but my maternal instincts. Shut up, I do, too, have maternal instincts.

I tiptoed to the back room where I found my husband, my father-in-law, my wide-eyed and runny-nosed daughter, and a long piece of string tied to a doorknob. Those losers had actually spent most of an hour slamming a door with the string tied to my daughter’s tooth. With every slam, the string slid right off her little tooth, but not before scaring the crap out of her every time. Somebody alert the CIA, because repeatedly convincing someone that you’re about to rip a tooth out then not doing it is way more effective than waterboarding as a form of torture.

The end result was I had to pin my baby in my lap and let someone who supposedly loves her just rip the damn thing out by hand. But when it came time for a visit from the Tooth Fairy, there was a very brief argument before this mamma grizzly won out; at the time the Tooth Fairy only had a five and a twenty on him, and that much abuse warrants a heck of a lot more than five bucks. Yup, our baby girl got twenty bucks from the Tooth Fairy and we became the most hated parents at our church when she told all of the other kids.

No hablo Ingles, prometo

ME Overly simple thoughts

About a year ago, my sweet husband (I don’t want to kill him today) told me that since I had gone back to full-time employment and was bringing in a real salary, we could afford to have someone come to our house once a month for heavy cleaning, the chores that just don’t get done as often as they should in a two-income household with school-aged children.

After I was able to stop smiling enough to form words with my mouth, I asked if him if this magical person would also paint our daughter’s solar system project. That was the point where he forbade me to speak to this person, even going so far as to say that he would find and hire the housekeeper lest I scare all of the applicants away with weird requests. I thought it was a perfectly logical request. After all, I’d much rather paint your child’s science project than clean your toilets.

Within a month, my husband had hired a lovely, superhuman woman to do the basic essentials. He really didn’t do that much, other than ask his brother’s wife who cleans their house, then ask for her phone number. When he got the phone number from his sister-in-law, she cautioned us, “If you need to tell her anything, you’ll have to call her daughter. The housekeeper doesn’t speak any English.”

At that point he realized he was going to have to repeal the gag order and let me speak to the housekeeper on the phone, because she speaks Spanish and he doesn’t. It’s really cool that he thinks I speak Spanish. I don’t. But he doesn’t need to know that.

I actually can muddle my way through basic conversations in Spanish, but if you say things into a telephone in any foreign language while making sure not to use that American trait of speaking really loudly when talking to someone in a foreign language, you can fool anybody into thinking you are Berlitz’s long lost daughter.

So imagine my surprise when this angel, who had been coming to work for us for a few months, stuck her head out of the bathroom and asked in a lovely, exotic accent, “Excuse me, madam, where are the paper towels?”

She had been pretending not to speak English, and the only logical reason I could think of for letting people believe you don’t speak their language is because you don’t like them, not even a tiny bit. Therefore, since she speaks to me she must like me. I can’t wait to tell my sister-in-law.

I can only think of one time when I had to pull a horrible fast one on people because I found myself in an equally horrible situation. I had gone to the video store (back in the days of video stores) and was thrilled to see that this store had an entire room devoted to animal documentaries. As a science teacher, I was proud of our little town and it’s progressive video store. Unfortunately, when I began to feel a little queasy from looking at the covers, I stepped back and found that the giant foam letters above the doorway to this section of the store did not spell out, “NATURE,” like I thought they did. The sign said, “MATURE.”

I pretended to be blind for the rest of that store visit as wide-eyed people watched me emerge from that room. I cannot be expected to explain why a blind person is renting a movie, or why she quickly got into a car and drove away without so much as Lassie telling her which way to go.

We all have our coping mechanisms, and whether we use them to remove ourselves from embarrassing situations or pretend that we don’t know our employer wants us to iron the shower curtains, they can prevent ugly arguments and death-inducing humiliation. The eensy-weensy deception is made acceptable by the greater good it can do, since dying of mortification in the porno section of the movie store and having my body removed while still clutching a tattered copy of Debbie Does Everybody She’s Ever Met will bring shame upon the family for generations. And if that happens, I think my housekeeper might talk about me behind my back.

What goes on behind closed doors…

ME Overly simple thoughts

I’ve been a marathon runner and triathlete for almost ten years. I’m not one of those crazy runners who lets it consume them, or one of those granola-runners who does it for the sense of inner peace and harmony with the world. I run for Doritos. More accurately, I run because of the Doritos, specifically the entire bag I ate last night.

But one of the things that makes running more interesting for me is the chance to travel to some great places for an upcoming event. I’ve run marathons in nine different states, ten if you count the marathon I recently had to drop out of because I had thrown up too many times according to the rule book. Apparently they measure the vomit output per ounce, not per liter.

My travels have taken me far. I’ve marathoned my way through a beautiful but hilly course in San Francisco, I’ve raced 26 miles through all four Disney theme parks in Orlando, I’ve punished myself good in a triathlon at the National Championships (well, that one was here in Alabama, but it was in the Warrior River which is an exotic locale all by itself). It’s a neat way to see the world.

Any large scale race in a major city will invariably mean thousands, even tens of thousands, of participants, and a lot of races use outside websites who specialize in race registration to handle the flood of paperwork and money. One website my husband and I typically have to go through to register for any of our events is Active.com. But I learned the hard way that when you Google the word “active” you really shouldn’t click on the first website you come to. That’s how I accidentally became a member of HealthyandActive.com, which still doesn’t sound like a bad group of people to know.

It’s a geriatric sex toy site.

If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’. And you know you just opened a new window to check it out for yourself so don’t you judge me.

Smiling, gray-haired couples in matching Keds sneakers and Sansabelt pants with coordinating cardigan sweaters walking along a beach, usually carrying a basket of some kind, are splashed all over a website that carries the Hitachi Magic Wand and faux leopard fur handcuffs.

Now I have said it before, I am a live-and-let-live person. What goes on in your bedroom with the blinds drawn and doesn’t involve children or animals (at least the types of animals that aren’t into that kind of thing) is completely your business.

But is this really safe? A man who already takes blood pressure pills, had a stint put in last year because one of his arteries is 80% blocked, then had to throw back a couple of Viagra to even fully enjoy the special outfit you bought (the one with Velcro instead of zippers for when your arthritis is flaring up), THIS is the guy who should be overly excited by something mechanical and rotating with more RPMs than your blender? Do you really want to find yourself handcuffed to the frame of your Craftmatic Adjustable Bed, knowing that this guy has collapsed twice before from the physical strain of waiting in line for popcorn at the movies?

Unless you plan to wear that LifeAlert necklace during canoodling, you had better have some backup plans. Forget a safe word, you might want to go ahead and duct tape the phone to your hand. The one that isn’t holding the whip, that is.

Any last words?

ME Overly simple thoughts

A terrible tragedy happened in the South last week, and I don’t just mean another baby born at a hospital and immediately swaddled in a crimson Roll Tide blanket. Unfortunately, the tragedy isn’t even close to being over; bodies are still being found, families are still getting phone calls telling them that the relative they couldn’t locate is gone. Volunteers are working without food or sleep hoping that the next piece of debris they lift will reveal an injured-but-living person, not another corpse. And this is only the beginning. It will take a very long time before we recover.

One of the coolest moments on television came the Saturday following September 11, 2001, when then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared on the stage of Saturday Night Live with the cast behind him and gave New Yorkers permission to laugh. The show went on. And so does my ridiculously weird blog.

This past week has given me a lot of opportunities to think about death, mostly my own. The number of people I’ve heard who have said that they went to their parents’ homes when news of the storms’ approach came has been shockingly nauseating. And I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong with those people for flocking to their families in times of pending danger. I just mean that if I heard violent storms were headed my way, winds that had already killed people, I’m damned sure that my mother-in-law’s face will not be the last thing I might ever see.

From time to time we all think about our own deaths, it’s only natural. And I’ve come to a certain feeling of peace where my death is concerned. It’s a normal part of the circle of life, Simba. It’s gonna happen. I just really, really hope it doesn’t hurt a lot.

I’ve given a lot more thought to my own last words than I probably should. I’m sure it’s unhealthy, but it worries me. These final spoken words—or written words, if I die by tripping and pumpkining my head open on the desk I rigged to my treadmill so I can type and run at the same time, something that almost happened one night when the power went out while I was running on the stupid thing—these words will be how history remembers me. Or at least all the people I know, since even I’m not too sure that I’m going to make the history books anytime soon for anything good.

Some key final phrases are awe-inspiring. Mother Teresa is remembered as simply saying, “Jesus, I love you,” over and over in her last moments. Recently exhumed and beatified Pope John Paul II apparently struggled to proclaim a breathy: “I go to the house of my Father,” but he said it in Polish, so there might be something lost in the translation. He might have been telling everyone to get out of his house and leave him alone, but that other thing sounded better so that’s what we went with. And why not, if anyone can say those words without looking a little arrogant by assuming he’s on his way to heaven, it’s the Pope.

I just really hope my last words aren’t something along the lines of, “Oh my god, we’re gonna die!” That would kind of indicate it was going to be painful and messy. Situations that warrant those words usually make headlines and the photos are withheld from the press so subscribers don’t vomit.

I also don’t want to be remembered for dining out and saying something like, “Oh, isn’t that one of those Japanese fish that you have to be specially licensed to prepare because slicing it wrong releases a fatal toxin that has no known antidote? Yum! I’ll have that!” You kind of had it coming to you if you die in a culinary game of Truth-or-Dare, asshat.

I’m sure the ideal situation would be to go surrounded by my family and dearest friends, lovingly telling them all how much they meant to me, but hopefully they won’t understand anything I’m saying because I’ll be so old and so heavily medicated that it just comes out all jumbled, plus not having my dentures in will make it hard to understand me anyway. And it would be great if I was already wearing something casket-appropriate and hadn’t just soiled myself. And I don’t want to wear shoes. I’m not going in the ground with shoes on.

Whatever my last words may end up being, I try to live from day-to-day so that anything that flies out of my mouth wouldn’t be the worst last words ever spoken. It would suck if I died of a heart attack right after screaming at my oldest child to pick up her underwear off the floor or make sure she remembered to put on deodorant, or if I was yelling over the sound of the TV to my husband that he needed to take the garbage out because the paper towels I had used to clean up after the dog were in there and were starting to smell. But whatever my last words will be, I want to go on the record right now as saying: you have permission to laugh. The show must go on.

On account of you never know…

ME Overly simple thoughts

As a Southerner and a lady, there are some key fashion concepts that are ingrained in girl children at birth. These are not guidelines or suggestions, they were written-in-stone by the hand of Moses, mostly because they’ve been around since the time of Moses. No white shoes between Labor Day and Easter, your hemline is in direct proportion to your age, spandex is a concept that is only appropriate for swimwear, et cetera. There are many more, but you either know them or you don’t, which translates into you either have class or you don’t.

As times have changed, these rules have become blurred by the misdeeds of society, or the mingling of the classes. I don’t mean income level, I mean those who went to college and those who went to the University of Alabama.

If you can’t possibly remember all of the rules for acceptable attire, and trust me there are more fashion laws than Kosher dietary laws, just remember to fit your wardrobe to every conceivable notion of what could possibly take place throughout your day.

Or as I like to call it, the “Tornado Fashion Guide.”

Here in the South, and literally as I type these words this scenario is playing out across our state and headed with gale-force speed in my direction, a freak thunderstorm can spin off a tornado faster than a frog fries on concrete (you will come to appreciate these colorful comparisons down the road). In other words, you never really know when severe weather can appear on the sweet elderly weatherman’s in-studio Doppler weather radar. So be prepared, namely, dress the part.

Whenever you reach for what you consider to be a fashion-forward outfit, ask yourself how that’s going to look in any given crisis situation. Are those new Lycra jeggings going to melt to your legs due to their high plastic content as you run through the flames of your burning house? Are those really boxy Elton John glasses going to gouge your eyeballs out and get stuck in the sockets when the airbag goes off in your car?

There is a horrifically sad but equally horrifically true story about the sweet overall-clad heroes of the Ohatchee Volunteer Fire Department being dispatched during a streak of violent tornados. As they cleared the rubble of one of many storm-tossed shacks, they unearthed the sad remains of a middle-aged gentleman who had perished when his home collapsed above him. That’s tragic enough on every level, but the man was found wearing an entirely black-vinyl S&M outfit, complete with zipper-mouthed hood and a whip still clutched in his fist. Unfortunately, a fellow consenting adult was never located, so the citizenry was left to believe that he just liked to wear this outfit while watching Wheel of Fortune. I would love to tell you that everyone in attendance swore a respectful oath of secrecy on this, but that is not the case. We have all now heard about Sexy Old Man Durbins and his fashion faux pas.

In some cases, it can be far worse to survive the tragedy than die as a result, all because someone lacked the good sense to choose her outfit more carefully. Watch the evening news, any time an overly loud woman is being interviewed about the calamity she is undoubtedly wearing pink hair curlers and a stained wife-beater tank top.

Hopefully your mother raised you from an early age with stern warnings to always have on clean underwear in case of a car accident, and I should hope that nothing worse would ever befall you. But please don’t tarnish your family’s good name by being rescued from a plane crash with peep-toe shoes and a four-week-old pedicure. It would be far less embarassing to your relatives if you had been the couple who survived only because they were renewing their membership dues to the Mile High Club within the safety of the steel-walled restroom.

Consider yourself schooled on the proper etiquette for any near tragedy. If bad weather is predicted for late hours in the evening, make sure are wearing pajamas to bed. Don’t get in your car without a bra on, unless you’re a man in which case you’d better take it off before driving. According to a policeman friend of mine, the overwhelming majority of high-speed car chases end in the suspect being pulled over and arrested for evading, only to find that the man is in fact a respected member of the community who happens to be dressed in his wife’s clothes and makeup. Guess what? Now you’re in jail dressed in your wife’s clothes and makeup. That’s going to be a whole other tragedy when they finish with you.

Crossing the pond

ME Overly simple thoughts

My family recently hosted some members of the FlyV Australia men’s pro cycling team, who had come to our fair town for a bike race.  Right off the bat, it was kind of shocking that there is a bike race in our little village at all, let alone one that is apparently a big dog race in the cycling world.  Who knew?
 
So a few of these gentlemen were extremely grateful to crash at our house for the better part of a weekend. I can only imagine that touring the world hitting all of the cycling hotspots actually means living out of a very small suitcase and lugging a bicycle with you on every international and domestic flight.  The opportunity to sleep in a bed that had not been shared by hundreds of other people and use a shower that meets that same criteria would be a real crowd-pleaser to me, and I don’t even travel that much.
 
If you’re an avid reader of my blog, you already know that my family and I are weirdos.  I don’t just mean that we’re quirky, or not your every day run-of-the-mill next-door neighbor.  We’re strange folks.  One or two of us are medically strange, the rest of us just grew up that way.
 
So we all had our own personal observations regarding these nice people.  My first observation was, “Damn, they don’t make ‘em ugly in Australia.”  All those times that I’ve listened to narrow-minded idiots spout off at the mouth about how we should just take all the prisoners and put them on an island somewhere, they weren’t taking into account the fact that we already tried that.  It was called Australia.
 
Well, the joke’s on us.  Apparently, when you take a bunch of convicts and let them battle it out for survival surrounded on all sides by water, they evolve.  They turn out tanned and gorgeous with sexy accents and an uncanny ability for surfing.  Go figure.
 
My husband observed about these people that they didn’t use the right terminology for anything.  He still doesn’t know why the one man asked for tomato sauce for his eggs that first morning.  I can’t get him to understand that the man was asking for ketchup. “Well, why didn’t he just say ketchup?” sweet husband demanded. “He did,” I explained patiently, speaking in slow, soothing words, “but in his language it’s pronounced tomato sauce. Now move on.”
 
The greatest reaction in the family, of course, had to be from my youngest daughter, who is autistic.  She silently watched from the fringes for most of the weekend, a little bit disturbed by the intrusion of people in general, let alone people who walked through our home dressed from head-to-toe in spandex.  When they weren’t walking through our home wearing only a towel, that is.  I told you they don’t make ‘em ugly Down Under.  Take that statement however you wish.
 
Younger Child tended to follow our guests throughout the house, never taking her eyes off them (she must have heard about Australia’s dubious origins and thought they were all still sentenced there for various and sundry crimes).  The only time she vocalized an opinion was in response to one of them asking for more coffee by rolling her eyes and announcing, “He talks like Willy Wonka!”
 
Once the race was over and our guests packed up their bicycles, after winning for the second year in a row, I feel compelled to add, our youngest decided the fun had not gone on nearly long enough because she is now talking with a British accent. I am henceforth to be refered to as “Mummy” and my husband is just plain old “Da.” She cautions us that she is about to be “naughty.” The best part is watching her try to order in a restaurant, something that she never did when she was just an American. But now that she’s British, she keeps ordering tea “in a smaawll cup, if you please,” gesturing that she wants it with a saucer.

She’s not old enough to be an exchange student, so we can’t pretend that this child who sounds like a cross between Mary Poppins and Sweeny Todd is just here visiting. Therefore, we must have kidnapped her. Just when you think your child can’t embarrass you in public any worse than the time she stuck her head under the hand dryer in the ladies’ room of the museum and announced, “I just got a blow job!” you get to explain to the police that she’s just pretending. Wait. You get to explain to the bobbbies that she’s just pretending. I’ve now learned to carry her birth certificate around with me just in case someone accuses me of international child abduction. I never thought I’d need to forge a green card, ever, let alone for one of my children.

An interview with myself

ME Overly simple thoughts

I am a steadfast believer in not letting life pass you by. When you have the chance to seize happiness, dig your claws in and ride it rodeo-style. Unless the happiness involves actual rodeo riding, in which case you can skip the metaphor and actually just ride it normal-style. If your happiness involves anything of a sexual nature, I refuse to take part in encouraging you to ride anything.

While I absolutely love my job as a teacher, my dream job is as a writer. Apparently, there are about 42 million Americans who also envision being a writer as their dream job, so there’s some cutthroat competition out there for my dream job. But I have a leg up on the others: I have created a complete fantasy world in my mind in which I am already a writer. And in my fantasy world, I often have to field requests for interviews.

Unfortunately, I’ve learned through watching interview fiascos with everyone from reality TV stars to our nation’s President that giving in to the pressure from bad interviewers (or even good ones) can lead to a spin-doctorish nightmare. Apparently, Barbara Walters is so good at her job because she could get a nun to admit to where the bodies are hidden.

I’ve decided I can’t risk having my words twisted and my sentences carved apart, not to mention my grammar corrected, by a journalist who is just using me to further her career. Therefore, I will only grant interviews to myself.

ME: So, Lorca, I can call you Lorca, right?
ME: Oh, sure. There’s no reason for formality here, I’m just a regular person. It’s not like this can be used in court, right? (laughter) RIGHT?
ME: So, tell us about your early work as a writer.
ME: Well, my first published piece was a poem about a cat for the fourth grade newspaper…
ME: I meant more recent work than that.
ME: Oh. I’ve been writing for a few years now and I mostly fell into it by accident. I happened to know someone who needed several articles written on a specific event, which lead to a short six-part cereal piece in a well-known newspaper.
ME: Shouldn’t that be “led” and “serial?”
ME: (laughter) Sure, of course. Thanks for pointing that out.
ME: And more recently? When did you make the transition from journalism to writing novels?
ME: Well, that too, was pure coincidence. I was working for a complete ass who informed me that my job was not going to survive the next round of budget cuts. I took a good, hard look in the mirror and realized that I just wasn’t pretty enough to be a stripper, which is pretty much the only job in this economy that is still hiring. So I began work on a manuscript.
ME: Was that scary?
ME: Somewhat. You always open yourself up to scrutiny when you write something for the public to see.
ME: And from what I understand, the reviews of that first novel were not stellar. One reviewer even went so far as to say, “Lorca Damon needs to stick with what she knows and leave the writing to the professionals.”
ME: (laughter) Ouch! I hadn’t herd that one! Who wrote that?
ME: First of all, that should be “heard,” and second, that was from your mother. She went on to say, “I paid good money to send Lorca to college, and she’s spitting on my generosity with this writer business.”
ME: I’m going to have to argue on that one. My mother has, in fact, read my work and has had great things to say about all of my writings.
ME: All right. Aside from that, talk for a minute about your current project.
ME: Oh, right. Well, I don’t want to give away too much, but given the recent popularity of paranormal fiction, we’ve seen books on vampires, werewolves, zombies, faeries, it’s all been done to death. You know what we haven’t seen? Aliens. Sexy aliens fighting evil bad guys.
ME: You mean like in the recent blockbuster film I Am Number Four?
ME: What? They made a movie out of that?
ME: Tell us about the publishing process.
ME: It’s very important to write a whole book before you try to get one published.
ME: I’d say that’s pretty much a given. So where do you stand on the debate between self-publishing and a traditional publishing house model?
ME: People are seriously debating that?
ME: Have you published anything for e-readers?
ME: Yes, in fact my second novel made the bestseller list for Amazon Kindle.
ME: I don’t want to misconstrue what you’re saying, but your second novel is currently #13,584 on the Amazon Free For Kindle list.
ME: Exactly. It made the list, didn’t it?
ME: Tell me about the current trend for authors to try to go it alone, skipping over querying agents altogether and going straight to publishers with their manuscripts.
ME: Geez, why would anybody do that? If you don’t have an agent, who is going to make sure you get to the airport on time?
ME: So, you have an agent?
ME: Yes. She just doesn’t know it yet.
ME: Lorca, it sounds a lot like you have written parts of several different novels, have not found anyone willing to look over your entire material, and are resting on the laurels of tricking people into reading a document you uploaded to the Amazon website from your iPhone. Where do you see your writing career going in the next year?
ME: You know what? I don’t like your attitude! I do not have to put up with this! This interview is over! (angry stomping of feet)

It all sounded better in my head, before I thought about it too much. The happy part of this fantasy world is a whole lot more work than I thought. Luckily, I’ll have an agent to screen these potential interviewers and she can choose only the good interviewers who are going to ask important questions like, “What do you eat for breakfast?” I might have to finish writing a novel before I can get an agent, though…

All that is wrong in the world

ME Overly simple thoughts

I realize I haven’t written in a while, and it’s probably because life hasn’t been all that funny in at least a week. Well, it has been funny, but I find life to be a whole lot funnier when I’m not the one being laughed at. I got dizzy and fell down at work and everyone laughed at the surveillance camera replay; not all that funny. For some reason I own a coffee cup with a rhinoceros head built into the handle and I forgot and took a drink too quickly and that rhino horn poked me in the eye; not really funny. I got sixteen new followers on Twitter but they were all from Asian mail order bride websites for some reason and now I’m afraid to check my email; really not all that funny. Somebody gave my eight-year-old a harmonica and then showed her how it works; not funny.

I’m sure somebody, probably you, is laughing. And I guess I should be, too. But it’s not happening today.

I was waiting for a guard to transport my inmates out of my classroom the other day and while we waited we were chatting about nothing important, which somehow got us on the subject of Facebook. One of the inmates became very angry and said, “Do you know why I hate Facebook? Because people post up on there something about how they’re driving to the mall, and they’re just shocked that I broke into their house after they announced to the whole internet that they wasn’t home!” I found that funny, but he wasn’t very happy about it. I guess this funny-not-funny thing is a two-way street.

I’m trying really hard to figure out who would find the government shutdown funny, but so far I’ve come up with nothing. Surely Conan O’Brian and Bill Mahr will somehow make it humorous, and that’s why they get paid the big bucks. There was nothing funny about an earthquake followed by a tsunami followed by a nuclear reactor disaster followed by another earthquake, and there was really nothing funny about people who make big money to sit on their fat asses on TV and make erroneous claims about people in the earthquake/flood/nuclear disaster area incurring the wrath of God for something they must have done. I’m still waiting for that one to look brighter in the morning.

So how does a person keep her sense of humor in times like these? Yup. With a dance off. Squaring off against neighborhood ten-year-olds in the Wii version of the club scene from Saturday Night Fever, upstaging those little beasties in a battle of the hip-shaking finest. A good dance off death match never fails to make people laugh. But eventually the batteries in the remote fail and one has to face reality again, but for a brief stolen moment of time there is laughter and an impossibly altituded BeeGees soundtrack and a bunch of children who only know John Travolta as the voice of the dog in the movie Bolt.

I win this round, Universe. I’ll see you in a dance off.