Chicks Rule

When I was a kid growing up, my mom used to go to the Women’s Club meetings at church.  Sometimes to a bunco party.  With six kids, she didn’t have much opportunity to get out of the house, run the school board or get involved in much more than Scouts and Little League.

You don’t manage a house with that many people in it and not be more than capable, but she was never asked.

When I was in high school, there were no sports for girls.  Cheerleading or the dance team?  Take your pick.

Last night the field we were never invited onto looked a lot different as the women pushed the boys out of the way.

Tammy Duckworth.

Elizabeth Warren.

Tammy Baldwin.

New Hampshire.

Claire.

Claire.

Claire.

The female body has been a target in the crosshairs of misinformation and just plain bat-shit crazy statements.

Our ovaries capable of shutting down when attacked?  Not a chance, but they are well on their way to changing things in ways my mom never imagined.

Days & Light

My first adult job was with Peoples Energy Corp. in Chicago.  I don’t even know how I got it, how I knew about it, how any of it came to pass.  I processed health insurance claims for employees and retirees for six years.  It was long before computers and our office was a holding zone for mountains of paper.  Bills would pour in and be alphabetized and stacked each day.  The job of myself and two others was to go through every bill to make sure it was complete, accurate and payable under our plan.  Then we’d forward it to our insurance company for review and payment. 

It was a job that could make people really happy – like the sweet, old meter reader who came in with shoe boxes of bills that he didn’t know he could claim.  I spent an afternoon on the floor of an empty conference room organizing it all and he ended up with several thousand dollars.  He cried when he came to pick up his check and the next day a box of chocolates were delivered to my desk.

It was also a job that could infuriate employees who had their claim denied, and try as we might to make sure that didn’t happen, sometimes there wasn’t a thing we could do about it.  It wasn’t pretty to be on the receiving end of that, but when someone is sick or in a health crisis and denied payment the rage has to land somewhere.

When I got the job, my mom and dad were less than enthusiastic.  You’d have thought that having a kid with full-time employment and benefits would cause them to be elated but that was not the case.  Do you know you’ll have to take public transportation downtown?  Do you know how much that costs?   What about eating out all the time?  Have you thought about that?  Do you know what bad weather does to a bus schedule?

Well, no, no, no, no and no.

I threw their parental advice out the window, and when I landed on Michigan Avenue I found out I was a city girl.   That is not to say it wasn’t without challenges……….like the first time I went to Marshall Fields on my lunch hour.  I had no idea that there were different entrances on different streets and I found myself exiting a door blocks from where I entered with no idea how to get back to work.  Or missing the express train by seconds after an Olympic sprint through underground garages.  Cab drivers that were terrifying and Hare Krishna looking for new recruits.

But helping people when things weren’t going so well in their life is satisfying even on the hard days.  I never grew tired of it or that city, and on the first Monday of daylight savings time I would always gasp when I went outside to head towards the train station.

The early darkness made it seem as though I was walking right into a Christmas tree.

Source: 500px.com via

Rainman

The Big Daddy has some odd habits.  I don’t ask why anymore.  He does strange things that I have to ignore or I’ll go crazy.

For years he has waged a one-man war on squirrels.  Chasing them out of the yard, throwing things at them, cussing at them in the backyard when they were in his garden.  Sometimes he’d jump up in the middle of dinner yelling, “Sonofabitch” and I knew he was about to go Squirrel Chasing. 

A rodent.  Outdoors.

At a party we were at he was telling someone that he doesn’t have to worry about the squirrels anymore which was news to me.  The population has been decimated, he said with a smirk.  Decimated.

He had been talking with a neighbor who was doing yard work when the entrails of a squirrel were falling out of a tree onto his picnic table.

Ermahgawd.

The Mighty Hawk has moved into Mayberry and found a village of food.  

What will The Big Daddy do with his time if he doesn’t have squirrels to chase?

Besides the bags and buckets of tomatoes currently in the dining room, there are buckets of pond water in the basement.

Buckets. Of. Pond. Water.  Indoors.

I am Charlie Babbitt.

He is Rainman.

He’s a good driver.

Holy Spirits

For a couple of years, I was a 4th grade teacher of religious ed.  Classes would meet on Monday afternoons at 4:00 for one hour once a week.

It was Religion 101 for those of us who were raising our kids Catholic but sending them to public school.

The absolute worst time to try to teach a kid anything would have to be on a late Monday afternoon after a full weekend and seven hours of sitting at school.  While I started out with the highest hopes, it soon became my goal that while these kids were in my care nobody got hurt, fell asleep, were bullied or bored out of their mind.

On a lesson about the presence of the Holy Spirit, I went over some of the gifts we receive from him/her, such as wisdom, understanding, knowledge.  My little explanation went over like every other one – blankety blank stares.  When I opened it up for a discussion……….and please kids don’t ask me anything hard because I’m not exactly gifted in this area.………I got more blank stares.

Until one kid equated it to ghosts.  Ghosts that lived in his house and that’s when the whole class perked up and wanted to tell a story about their own encounters with the Spirit……holy or otherwise.  It went on for awhile and ended when the kid with Asperger’s explained the inner workings of your basic lawn mower motor.

You could say that I lost control, but within my own low achiever parameters it was a success and everybody left ready to share the gift of wisdom with their parents.  As off the rails as they happened to be.

In the Spirit of some spirited nine year olds…………

Always look in the closets and under your bed because they like dark places.

They’re scary but their mouths don’t work and they have no arms so they can’t bite you or grab you.

Your parents can’t see them but usually act like they can.

Jesus made the holy ones to send when you’re fighting with your siblings.

And…………..

For optimal engine performance while mulching your fall leaves, it is important to maintain recommended fluid levels at all times.

One Voice

I come from a long line of bad singers.  We cannot carry a tune, can’t identify a tune, are unable to snap along with the tune.

But it does not stop us from belting out a little Motown as if we are the offspring of Aretha.

We have other skills.  We can cook.  We’re sensible.  We smile and nod a lot.  But, oh, to be able to sing.

On Saturday night, The Big Daddy and I went to church and when I cracked open the hymnal for the very first song, Mr. Smartass leaned over and said, “Bring it on home, Kath.”

And I lost it……..like I was on the verge of snorting.

We went out for pizza afterwards and met some friends later for a date night.  He was cranked up the whole night for if you really, really think he’s funny he will continue to perform.

The evening ended at 11:00 when I found him in the garden of our friend’s yard, excitedly helping him pick tomatoes by flashlight like he had done in his own garden earlier so they wouldn’t freeze overnight, and I was entertained yet again by my boyfriend of the last thirty five years.

It makes up for this…………..

And this……………

And especially this……..

Hey……..You’re Welcome

The Big Daddy worked for several years with a guy from Canada.  Eh.  He had many observations about Americans including the fact that whenever somebody says “thank you” to one of us we respond with……….

No problem.

Sure thing.

You bet.

No worries.

Got you covered.

Absolutely.

…………..but we rarely, if ever, say “you’re welcome.”  And he was right.

I have found that I start most conversations with “hey.”

Hey, how’s it going?

Hey, it’s been a long time.

Hey, I’ve been meaning to call you.

Hey, are you getting hungry yet?

Hey, where’s my glasses?

You can only imagine how many times I’ve cracked myself up since I started working with a woman named Jude.

Guns and Angels

Last year when I went to the flea market, I bought some deer antlers.  They were 3/$12.00 and hot diggety…..I was right on trend with the antler decor theme.  This year I had cash in my pocket to buy some more, but alas no sellers.  I talked to another dealer and he said that everybody wants them which is making them harder and harder to come by.  Ebay had thousands of pages of antlers and I was overwhelmed by the time I got to the teens.  And the mounted set for $18,000.00

Some tourists came into the store, and in the course of conversation the husband mentioned being a hunter so I asked him about antlers.  The kind you want are called sheds, he said.  The deer do it every year and you need to look for them in the woods in the spring.  Alrighty then, but I was kind of thinking sooner than that for a wintery Christmas antler plan I’m hatching.

The next day I told a coworker about the conversation and said, “I thought that was kind of weird.  I’d have thought that fall would be when they’d shed them.”  Kind of like me and The Big Daddy shedding weight before the holiday buffets start.

“No, no,” she said.  “Not fall.  You wouldn’t want to go trekking in the woods in the fall for that.”

Why not?

“Because if you’re out in the woods in the fall looking for deer antlers you’d probably get shot by the hunters looking for the whole deer.”

Oh.  Yeah.  Right.  Of course.

Sometimes God puts guardian angels right next to you at the workplace for the times when you’re extra dumb.

Publish

I met with my writers group today and the subject of publishing came up.  It always does.  A local Kansas City writer who had just filed for bankruptcy, landed a three book deal and publishers were falling all over themselves to meet her and get her signed.  She hit the writing lottery.

Please, God, tell me how that happens?

Or a writer does a piece on how the mom is never in the picture and it explodes across the internet, makes the national news and everybody is talking about it.

I have boxes of photos that verify my children came from storks because I’m nowhere to be found.

Whenever the subject of this blog comes up, I am very self deprecating.  It’s just a little thing I do for fun, I’ll say.  And if someone asks what I write about or have I been published my voice gets even smaller and I say, “No, never.  And I kinda just write observations of life.”  Wow.  What a ringing endorsement of my own work.

I have trouble tooting my own horn.  I’m more than happy to have somebody do it for me, but me selling the goods?  Not so much.

Yet next to Mark and the kids, it is the most important thing to me.  I often wake up during the night and think of things to write.  Whenever I’m driving I think of writing.  I compose sentences in my head all day at work.  I read other people’s stuff and sigh that heavy breath of deep respect and wish that I could write that well.

A few years ago I met a woman at a Christmas party and instantly liked her.  Every year I’d see her at that same party and we’d chat like we’d known each other since our kids were in preschool.  I often thought of calling her for coffee but I heard she was a writer and I was too intimidated.  Now she’s moved across the country and we message back and forth on Facebook and a kindred spirit was right in my backyard. 

This morning when we met I was nursing a crappy night’s sleep hangover.  My head was pounding.  We were on our last clean towel and every bra I owned was in the washing machine.  I had nothing to offer as far as written work.  It is my life these days……..phoning everything in.   In the midst of my Pity Party of One, Martha said to me, “I’ve loved what you’ve been writing lately.  You’re on fire.”

You do?  Really???  Oh.  Oh.  Thank you.   Thank you for saying that cuz I don’t know lately.  

Or ever.

Comparison is the thief of joy.  As off kilter as the day started, joy definitely came into play.

The File

My first job was at the Dairy Queen.  I was sixteen years old and ready to work.  And The Queen Mum wasn’t paying for anything fun.  The first week on the job was to learn cone-making with the fancy shmancy DQ swirl at the top.

Once that was perfected, it was on to Dilly Bars.  The same swirl was used but in the form of an ice cream bar.  You’d make several bars on top of a stainless tray, insert a wooden stick into each and carry them into the walk-in freezer.  The next day they would be dipped in chocolate.

I was proudly carrying my first tray of Dilly Bars into the freezer when the end one slid right off and onto the floor of the freezer……….where it instantly stuck.  In a first-job-sixteen-year-old-panic, I tried everything to get it off the floor.  Did I ask for help?  Did I fess up to what happened?

No.

I got a wet dishrag from the sink and tried using that to get the Dilly Bar off the floor.  And then the rag stuck to the floor.  I yanked and yanked on that thing and it did not budge so I closed the door and pretended nothing happened.  It would soon become clear that The New Girl made one big mess in the freezer.

I managed to keep the job for six months until winter came and the hours disappeared, but I’m pretty sure they never forgot me.

That kind of information and skill set gets preserved.

Somewhere.