Month: August 2012

Twenty years ago when we moved to Kansas we rented a townhouse.  Coming from the D.C./Maryland area, the idea of actually buying a home was absurd.  It didn’t take long for us to figure out that here in the heartland, home ownership was a real possibility.

The Big Daddy was all about scouting out a new homestead, and so we’d map out the Sunday open houses, pack up the kids and snoop in other people’s lives.

We argued a lot in these open houses.  The Big Daddy, enamored with the bells and whistles, and me not so much.  I’m not hauling groceries up a flight of stairs to a kitchen that some idiot put on the second floor.  Another time we were in a house with gold-flocked wallpaper on the entire first floor and when I said I’d seen enough he told me I was being too negative.  When we got to the backyard with the above-ground swimming pool coated in algae, we both barfed a little in our mouth.

On the way home from one of our shopping trips we passed an Open House sign in a neighborhood we weren’t familiar with.  We stopped anyhow and oh, how we could see ourselves living in those digs with the wide open downstairs “great room” that the kids were already running around in.

We likeyed that place.

When we inquired about the price it was $450,000.00.  Hmmmm…….that’s several hundred thousand dollars more than we intended to spend.

The realtor nodded knowingly and wished us well as she pointed us and our sweaty kids to the proper exit.

She stood in the doorway and watched us pull away in our Oldsmobile Firenza, and I bet it was the faux wood paneling on the side of our station wagon that was a dead giveaway that we had stumbled into the wrong neighborhood.

“How long til my soul gets it right?”   

Maybe not so long.

Or an eternity.

My new favorite video and I found it without kid intervention.   

I got that right 😉

When Maggie was little, she liked to play school.  As is often the case with the bossy first-born, she was always the teacher.  She’d gather her brother and kids from down the street into the basement to educate them, and why they put up with it every day when they’d already spent all day in school is beyond me.

When she went to college, she decided to go into journalism with hopes of being the next Katie Couric.  When the greeter at Costco told her that her smile was so pretty she should be on t.v., that sealed the deal.  After one semester, she decided to change to media relations.  Her father said, “Oh, so when a company recalls a drug that makes people sicker instead of better, you’ll be writing the bullshit to make it look like they weren’t really in it for the money?”  They may have sealed the deal on that major being short-lived.

Her second year of college, she listened to the universe and became an education major.  

She is now a 3rd year teacher and at 25 years old, she’s worked harder than I have my entire life.  She chose to work in the inner-city and this is her second year as an ELL (English language learner) teacher.  Throughout the week she works with every kid in the school whose home language is not English, the goal being to fast-track these kids ability to learn.  It is daunting.

This year her student population has gone from 60 to 100.

One teacher.  One part-time aide.  Lunch on the fly.

While her father and I have instilled social justice and awareness in all of our kids, this bossy first-born has walked the walk, and all those years of playing school in the basement was a precursor for the seismic shift she would make in the lives of hopeful families.

Before Mallie Bee went off to school, we were in the car and a Taylor Swift song came on.  Oh Lordie, I really can’t take her.   After the song, they were talking about how she writes her own stuff and wow, really?  She might consider turning that over to somebody who’s interesting.

When a new song of hers comes out, the internet is buzzing over what boyfriend did her wrong that she had to write about, but does anybody care?

Every time I hear Bonnie Raitt sing “I Can’t Make You Love Me” it kills me.  When I hear Taylor Swift sing anything I want to kill the radio.

She’s young, attractive and wealthy, but talented?  Meh.  If I were this chick I’d sue for theft of character…………….

The first time I ever rode a bus was when I would visit my Grandma.  She didn’t drive and counted on the bus to take her everywhere.  She let me sit by the window so I could watch the scenery, and when it was time to pull the cord to ring for our stop I had the honor.

For a few years before I started taking the train, I was a daily bus rider from the suburbs into Chicago.  My friend, Pat, got on about a mile before me and would save me a seat in the back.  Every morning we had the same driver whose job it was to get his riders into the city and to our jobs.  If the expressway was a hot backed-up mess, somebody up front would pass the hat to pay the tolls so our driver could take the Skyway and get us downtown faster.  He wasn’t supposed to do this, but he did.

The bus was full of interesting characters.  There was the guy that Pat and I went to school with who was an epileptic.  He was working at a bakery making donuts when he had a seizure and burnt both his hands so badly in the hot oil for making donuts that they had to be amputated.  Another guy watched people sleep and if your head started bobbing, he’d straighten it out for you.  The pervy old guy who checked the girls out every morning.  It didn’t occur to us that we were better than these people.   We were just trying to get to work.

Mark and I were discussing the disconnect in society these days, the lack of empathy for the less thans, and even outright disdain.

That didn’t happen on the bus.  We all paid the same fare, we all had someplace to get to, and when the hat was passed it didn’t matter how much money you threw in so long as we all got where we needed to be on time.

On those occasions when weather wreaked havoc on the buses for the return trip, sometimes you would run into a rider from your morning bus and things would seem better……..for making your way home in the dark during a storm can be frightening, but isn’t that what we’re all trying to do every day? 

As if the universe couldn’t have timed this any better, I started working this week.  I had an interview more than a month ago for a place I previously worked at that is opening a second store.  I think I’ve become an expert on interviews and if I ever wrote a book it would be about that.

Kathleen, tell us a little something about yourself.  Well, first off, I’m questioning whether applying for this job was a good idea.

What about ________________ interested you?  It was the only legitimate listing on Craigslist in the last week.

How do you handle criticism?  Isn’t there some sort of honeymoon period before we jump to that?

What do you expect to get paid for this job?  Trick question.  Not playing.

I’m approaching shift #3 of the week and have already been on the hunt for new-standing-all-days shoes.  Next week I’ll have twice as many hours.  I’m not sure how much I’ll be writing given my new working life, however, I’m a frequent mind wanderer and an-in-my-head-story-writer……..which I intend to keep on the down low from my new employer.  

At least until they bust me.

A couple of weeks ago, I looked up the campaign website for Claire McCaskill.  She does not represent my state, but the Missouri border is a mere five miles from my house.  Since Kansas is a lost cause for electing smart representatives, I thought I’d volunteer for one even if I couldn’t cast a vote for one.  I have always liked Claire, but millions of dollars were being spent to defeat her and keeping her Senate seat was not going to be easy

Up until Sunday.  That’s when Todd Akin handed her a present when he said that we women have some heebie-jeebie magic up our girl parts that can expel rape semen and prevent pregnancy.  Who actually wrote a check to this idiot?

Later on Sunday, it was reported that my representative in Kansas was on a trip to Israel with other members of Congress when he got himself likkered up and swam nekked in the Sea of Galilee.   Not for very long, he said, as if that makes it any more professional behavior.

The last few years have been a constant attack on women and in one weekend we’ve seen some sterling examples of what dumbing down the vote gets you.  In more upbeat news, Condoleeza Rice became the first woman invited to be a member of Augusta National.

A barrier was broken and the chairman of the club said, “It is a joyous occasion.”

They were only ninety years late to the party, but kudos for finally succumbing to that pesky suffrage movement and joining the rest of the country.

By the way, your newest member raised the I.Q. of the entire club just by walking in the door.

On Friday morning, we arrived on the Campus of Higher Learning and Mallie Bee’s new home.  Since this is my third time moving a freshman into a dorm room, I know what to expect.

We loaded the car the night before and it seemed to me that it was the smallest load we’d ever had.  From what I remember of Time #1 and Time #2, the car was packed, with barely enough room to cram in the student who was expected to arrive with all this stuff.  BD, don’t forget to leave space for the kid.

Move-in day, despite the best of intentions or planning by the higher-ups, is always a cluster and we spent 45 minutes creeping inch by inch to the dorm entrance.  Two lines to make it go faster?  Nope, and chatting it up with campus security during the process found him in agreement, “Ma’am, they don’t ask me my opinion, but I’ll be damned if that wouldn’t make a whole lot more sense.” 

Directly ahead of us was a family with a U-Haul.

A U-haul.

It took them twenty minutes to unload their rented trailer and Target must have met their daily sales goal every time they walked down the back-to-school aisle.  It just kept coming with a shoutout to Costco for the cases of bottled water, snacks, Gatorade and Propel, toilet paper and paper towels.  Then they took pictures of it.  The crammed U-Haul, the pile on the curb waiting for the volunteers to load it up, the student with the pile, Mom and student with the pile, brother and student with the pile, Auntie and Grandma and student with the pile, and then finally the empty U-Haul.

I. Was. Losing. It. 

When we finally reached The Promised Land we had our car unloaded and out of the way in five minutes.  Five.

We forgot a few things, but Mallie Bee’s a smart one and she’ll figure it out, make do, borrow or get it next time she’s home.

The broom and ironing board that the U-Haul family brought?  Will never be touched.

Today is move-in day for the Beester.  The Big Daddy is out of town and Nathan has oh so kindly offered to help us haul stuff up to her dorm room.  Last night, he and Maggie came by and he told us how he started bawling on his move-in day of freshman year and “it turned into a shit show.”

The new son-in-law is a perfect family fit.

One of the many things I will miss about not having the kids around is the videos and music they show me.  I feel like it keeps me hip to the youngins.  Except nobody hip would say that.

Mallie Bee told me about this one.  Blogworthy, she said, you’ll like it.

Yes, Beester,  I do love this video.  Now go off and meet new people, expand your mind and your world, call home once a week and make good choices.