I do’t mind a crowded nest … much

There are, I tell myself  — as I step over mountains of plaid flannel shirts, wade through rivers of paint-dabbed paper towels and climb through tangles of new electronic mysteries that have recently sprouted like aliens from my computer —  there are reasons to be happy my oldest son is back at home.

Really, there are.

There have to be.

So to keep from  killing him the next time I knock over an empty beer bottle or accidentally step on a bowl of vegetarian something or other that is hidden under the computer desk, I made this list to remind myself that he is my oldest child and I love him.

Really, I do.

I have to.

Top 10 reasons why Scott is still breathing

10. He makes sure the critters have food and water when we go camping on weekends. He also got one of our barn kittens a wonderful new home – and then promptly lost interest in the two that remained.

9. He keeps Buzz company. Buzz may not have the same idol worship he did for his big brother when Scott lived away and only came home fo cool events that usually involved food, Apples to Apples and new electronics, but now that Buzz himself is older, they are connecting on a whole new level … and there’s usually a gaming console at the end of it.

I knew the honeymoon was over when I heard Buzz slam into his room and mutter “When do I get to get on the computer!?!”

8. He makes us laugh. Scott has a great and unusual perspective on life and always tries to see both sides of every issue – and find the funny dimension on each side. Don’t know where he got that …

7. My computer is becoming a gallery of beauty. Scott knocks out these amazing “paintings” he does with  digital palette and every day, I seem to find more of them. I always remember he’s a wonderful artist, but until I see the next work, I forgot just how damn good he is.

6. He does his own laundry. The good thing about this I, if my laundry is in the way, he actually finishes it up, so he’s doing my laundry, too, and that alone buys him a ticket to stay for eternity.

5. We eat better. On the rare occasions I cook these days, what with the new schedule, I try to cook meals with more vegetables and fruits because he is a vegetarian. Also, I’m eating much, much less cheese because he is also a cheesetarian and I can’t keep a giant block of cheddar in the deli tray long enough to taste it.

4. Free IT services. Need I say more?

3. Amazing beer. He I determined to discover every microbrewery in the United States and sample just one of each kind, so we get to try out the leftovers. Naked Beach, pretty good. Three Philosophers, eh,  not so much.

2. Transportation! Being a one car family hasn’t been too difficult, but now that I’m working, it helps knowing I’ve got a chauffeur if Terry needs the van.

1. Company. Flanner, beer bottles and discarded art supplies aside, my son is just good, restful, happy company and fun to talk to. Movies, music, art, stupid dog videos, cute cat videos, and cheese – we can talk and laugh and just about anything.

So yeah, I’m really glad he’s home for a while. And I’m going to make myself re-read this every morning as I dance the Gottago dance outside the bathroom door while he takes his time inside – just to remember why.

Appracadabra

Orginal fiction

by Mary Mannon Reeves

All rights reserved

Gideon Ambrose stared at the final calculation and sat heavily in his office chair. He would have kicked it back and scooted around the tiny space that was his office , but the reams of ancient manuscripts, mountains of computer printouts and empty boxes of Chicken McNuggets impeded  his way.

I should shout something, he thought. Eureka! or Mr. Watson!

Instead, he looked at the formula again and leaned forward on his desks, put his head in his hands, stared down at the good old Ticonderoga No. 2 wooden yellow pencil with teeth marks and no eraser  and whispered.

Abracadabra.

Color seemed to leach out of the pencil, then wash back in, richer and darker. The bright yellow paint faded, then turned gold. The soft, pale wood whitened, and then gleamed gold.  The dark graphite tip … you get the idea.

Gideon flicked the pencil with his finger tip and it began a slow roll to the end of the desk. It fell, bounced off an empty McNugget carton, then clinked against the tile floor.

Clinked.

Like gold.

Like magic.

Ambrose picked the pencil up and studied it in the soft gleam of his desk lamp. More than fifteen hundred years of study. Notes from everyone from DaVinci to Asimov. Ages of  alchemic studies and the result was one formula that could turned one object into gold.

One time.

To specify the formula for another object – even another pencil, would take another hundred years. You had to specify each atom in the change, recognize the properties of each element…

“It’s hopeless,” he moaned.

“It’s magic,” he whispered.

His phone chimed and vibrated beneath a pile of 12^th Century manuscripts from a monestary in East Bratislava, and they slipped to the floor, disgorging dust and dogma. Despite his  battle between despair and wonder,  or perhaps because if it, Ambrose grinned as his phone  buzzed its way free from ages of mathematical computations that it could complete in seconds. Nano seconds.

His eyes jumped from the golden pencil to the smart phone, then to the white board, where the last of the formula mocked fifteen centuries of frustration and forensics.

Could it be so easy? Could he break down the barriers between math and magic with modern technology?

Was there an app for that?

It took two years and, of course, the assistance of his teenaged son. It would have cost millions as far as processing, man hours, and paying for iPhones, iPads and Chicken McNuggets, but the initial formula, the golden pencil, was the easiest and first app to program  and gold Ticonderogas contributed covertly to the conversion of science to magic.

He son seemed mildly amused and happily incurious about just what the new app was supposed to do, other than convert formulas in time periods that turned nanoseconds into eons. Once he was confident his brilliant, but foggy, father had a good grasp on the concept behind building the apps, Matthew escaped. He wasn’t old enough to drive, care about girls, or be embarrassed by his brilliant but foggy father, and working for two solid years on one smart phone app had cured him of any desire to sit in front of a computer again.

He took up rock climbing and may have suffered a broken finger now and then, but not once a case of carpal tunnel.

At last, Gideon Ambrose had his app.

He spent days playing with it. He discovered that he could not only turn items into gold, he could turn gold into red cedar the perfect density for making number 2 pencils, but even Ambrose realized that was hardly cost efficient.

His office looked like Aladdin’s cave before he got bored enough  to act silly.

He pointed the phone’s lens at a at yet another pencil.

Not into gold this time,  he thought. I’m hungry.

“Ham sandwich,” he said. “Appracadabra.”

The next time, he would think to add mustard. It was a very thin sandwich to be sure – even magic has to obey certain laws of physics — but tasty. Mustard would have helped.

Next, he aimed at the cover of a book – one of his favorites, and one it made his heart hurt to read now because its creator, the great Dragonlady, was now flying in skies on a different plane of reality, having left mortality behind in her Irish home and immortality behind in the libraries, bookstores and dreams of would-be dragonriders.

“D…” he hesitated, then studied the small confines of his office. Not exactly the place for a giant, fire-breathing telepathic  dragon now was it?

“Fire lizard,” he said instead. “Appracadabra.”

Time and space and dimensions folded faster than a Starbucks franchise in a one-horse town, and the book now chirped at Ambrose.

Or rather the tiny, golden dragon perched on the book chirped at Ambrose, then  began stalking McNuggets  in the boxes on the floor.

Potential tornadoed in his mind, whipped up by excitement, pride, a touch of greed — and a sudden jet stream of terror.

What had he done?

He had not only learned how to transmute metal, he had learned how to transmute anything. He could create things that had previously only existed in the fertile imaginations of the McCaffreys and Heinleins of the world.

The fire lizard chirped and flapped and settled on his shoulder, where it dismembered a McNugget .

He had created life.

He had created a monster.

Imagine this app in the hands of just anybody>?  NeoNazis?  Halo addicts? Teenaged girls?

He had visions of hordes of Hitlers battling the monsters of Halo in the quiet streets of his town while the hipster vampires sparkled in the audience and pretended not to care.

No, no, no no, no. For every cancer cure the mathmagic app could produce, there were a thousand curses created by sullen neo Goths. For every Rembrandt masterpiece brought to light in subtlety and grace, there would be tens of thousands of cutesy thatched cottages with light shining from bizarre and physically impossible sources.

And what about the horrific creatures that only existed in fantasy form now? If he could bring a charming fire lizard to life, couldn’t – wouldn’t – the fans of Lovecraft, King and Jackie Collins do the same?

He shuddered , then shuddered again.

Anyone could  turn the app toward the Bible, the Koran , the Necronimicon …

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to his far distant son, thinking of the hard work the boy had put in on the app. “I could have given you Hogwarts – but someone else would have given you Mordor.”

Ambrose leaned back and pushed away from the computer screen, where swirling bits and bytes sparkled and vanished and returned magic to the world of fiction and fantasy. Around him, the massive lab gleamed in its usual dust-free, Kubrick-inspired whiteness, brightness and sterility. Through the observation window, Ambrose’s colleagues shook their heads.

“It took him what, five hours of computer time to disprove the works of 15 centuries?”

“Not disprove, un-prove, all virtually” corrected the dean. “He created the world, the circumstances and explored the potential outcomes. All of it in his head – the golden pencils, the teenaged son, the ham sandwich. He wasn’t able to find a viable outcome for any of the paths the alchemists began, so he shut them down.”

“It’s a good thing they keep him in theoretical physics,” said the colleague. “In applied, he’d be dangerous.”

Under Ambrose’s desk, the fire lizard looked up and cheeped softly,  a happy blue swirling in its multifaceted eyes while Ambrose texted his rock-climbing son and told him to pack.

Copyright 2012 Mary Mannon Reeves

But it made such a great planter ….

Dear Mrs. Reeves:

It has recently come to our attention that there are no appliances, working or otherwise, located outside of your new residence. There was, in fact, one chest freezer that was removed and replaced with an upright freezer, but we are given to believe you actually took that model inside the home.

To use. Because it actually works.

We are also aware that your lawn has been mowed recently and you discovered that a good weed wacker will function after 5 years of neglect and atmospheric exposure. And Mrs. Reeves, we also noted that you planted something in the matching flower pots on your front porch with something other than cigarette butts.

In light of these recent actions on your part, and also taking into consideration the lack of front yard bathroom fixtures, non-working vehicles in side yard, and presence of only one canine — and it’s not a hound — we regret to inform you that your membership in the White Trash Society has been rescinded.

Ours has been a long and rewarding association, from the bathtub that housed plants in your first back yard as a married woman, to the ancient and non-functioning VW Microbus you used at your last home as a way to tell your brick ranch apart from all the other brick ranches.We understand that there a large number of huge, old tires on the property behind your home. Should you consider moving them to your front yard, painting them white with beer can borders and filling them with petunias we will reconsider.

But only after the paint starts to peel.

Yours truly,

Git R. Dunn

President

WhiteTrash Society

 

Less is more. More frustrating,that is. Day 8/9 of 366

I didn’t mean to skip a day yesterday. Sometimes stuff just happens. I usually  blog after 10 p.m. because  daylight hours are spent job hunting writing for the Shakespeare Festival and, yes, giving into to my online Bingo addiction (non-paying. I can’t afford a gambling addiction on top of the cigs and Diet Cokes.)

From 7 to 10, Bu has custody of the computer and as soon as he’s off, I start writing.

Unless, of course, I fall asleep sitting at the keyboard, which is what happened yesterday.

I don’t know why I am so tired all the time. I’m told it is an aspect of the depression, but all I know I it’s damned annoying. Sleep is overrated, except on weekends, when my only other entertainment option is washing the dog or listening to Buzz tell me all the endless details about his latest world-building adventures in Minecraft.

Wow, even typing it, my eyes start to glaze over. Once again, I find myself sending late apologies to my parents who listened to me talk about horses and comic books in much the same way.

Horses and comic books.

Life is so much easier when you’re a kid – and you can’t wait to grow up and get away for it. Not only are we programmed for self-destruction, we are programmed for discomfort.

When I was kid, if we talked about winning a truck load of money, my wish list was pretty short. Horses and comic books. A farm, of course, for the horses, but that was really about it. As I got older, the list got longer, and I found myself wishing for elaborate vacations, beach houses, rare books, indoor pools (with Brazilian pool boys named Raoul) and an in-home theater system, complete with popcorn maker and a heater because I get tired of freezing to death the few times I go to the movies these days.

And horses, of course. Walkers for trial riding, Friesians for showing, a couple of show jumpers and three-day eventers for my favorite young rider, Jessica Vihon, to show for me.

Now, living on this little farmhouse, having had to sacrifice a lot of “stuff” and juggling one income to pay for food AND utilities, my list is actually shorter. We are often told to simplify our lives to reduce stress and I can tell you, there is an element of truth there, even when the simplification is not voluntary. A smaller house means less to clean.

I just want a house, paid for, with no greedy bank hovering overhead like a vulture on steroids. I’d like a vehicle that wasn’t older than God, and new glasses and new teeth.

Okay, I wouldn’t say no to a horse, either.

Still, it’s not much, compared to Raoul and the indoor pool, huh?

Another computer would be nice … so I could get my blog in before my pending-50-obligatory-snoozefest begins at 9 p.m.

 

Recipe for adventure …. Day 7/366

How many little things go into the shaping of our character?

I was the fourth child, the second daughter, and as far as the “womanly arts” were concerned, I was definitely the spare, not the heir — and more than happy to keep it that way. Raised between two brothers in a neighborhood full of Y chromosomes, I was such a tomboy I made Peppermint Patty look like Paris Hilton.

My big sister was the one who loved to sew and my mother loved to cook and I was content with front yard baseball, backyard ponies, and chasing turtles into the creek behind the house.

In fact, I was such a tomboy and such a Daddy’s girl that the idea of being a {{shudder}}} housewife and mom was right down there with septic tank cleaner and tapioca tester in career choices for me. In high school, I swore I was going to go to New York and live in a garrett, write bad poetry and good books and live an artsy, Bohemian lifestyle that all of my siblings would ridicule but secretly envy.

Well, I got the Bohemian part right, but there’s a big difference between Bohemian by choice and Bohemian by bankruptcy…

So when poor Terry married me, I had conquered two culinary masterpieces — brownies and Hamburger Helper. After a solid of year of Hamburger Helper, he declared a moratorium and it was another 10 years before he let it back in the house. On probation.

I was Girl Scout for a few years and you’d think that would have helped, but I have to confess — my heart just wasn’t in scouting. I loved the camping and the crafts, but I would rather be eating those cookies than selling them.

I remember one day, my very nice scoulewader was atempting to teach me to cook French toast.(Somewhere in the distance, I could hea rmy mother giggling.) I mean, how hard can it be to cook French toast?

To this day, I can’t do it — mine come out soggy no matter what I do.

But these past six months, I’ve had housewifery forced upon me and I’ve come to a startling conclusion.

I kind of like it. I actually overheard my husband praising my cooking to a friend of his. I’ve invented recipes and so far my successes outnumber my failure by 10 to 1.

In fact, if it weren’t for that pesky needing money thingy, I wouldn’t mind staying at home. Does this make me a bad feminist? Am I ready to  throw in my Erica Jong library and start collecting cookbooks?

Nope. First of all, who needs cookbooks when they’ve got the internet? Secondly, part of growing up means learning that everything in the world is NOT a simple case of black and white, either or. Back in the dark ages when I was in school and nerddom was not cool, our biggest geek fights were between the Trekkies and the Star Wars fans (Star Warriors?) Now, well, duh, I realize I like them both. Why did I feel I had to choose?

These days, I get tickled at the Harry Potter camp squaring off against the Twilight camp. Why can’t you like both? It just gives you that much more to enjoy. (Of course, I can’t stand the Twilight stuff myself, but if you do, you have my permission to like Harry as well. And anything else you want to like — don;t let the camps divide you, or deprive you.)

Looking back now, I’d wish I’d paid more attention when Mrs. Cable was trying to teach me to make something other than s’mores. I wish I’d spent more time in the kitchen, basking beside my mother.

Now, I’m enjoying this work hiatus as it is letting me build some culinary muscle I never had before, but I really am going to have to get a job soon. I just found this great recipes, and the ingredients cost more than the gross national product of Belize. or at least as much as Mitt Romney spends on cars … which is about the same, I think.

 

 

 

Smokey the bear. The freaking huge, man-eating, slobbering bear. Day 5/366

We did a lot of camping when I was younger — and as wife who now does a lot of camping with her husband, I can tell you there is no surer sign of true love than a woman’s willingness for forego air-conditioning, microwave ovens, hot water and Top Chef reruns just to make her man happy.

(Of course, I haven’t had hot, hot water in so long, that isn’t much of a sacrifice, especially considering that the showers at our favorite campsites are hotter than the one at home.)

My dad loved it. We had every new camping gadget minutes after Coleman got the patent — stoves, lanterns, portable johns, cots, and one strange little flask he said had a secret potion that would keep mosquitoes away but was really how he smuggled Wild Turkey into the state parks.

Dad would wake up at the crack of dawn, practically thumping his chest and sprouting caveman muscles as he strutted around the campsite, rousting us, and doing his manly-man camping things — mainly telling us to chop wood, fetch water and chase the skunks out of the garbage pit.

Mom — not so much a fan of camping as she was a woman who truly loved her husband, in spite of his bizarre, atavistic urges to spend vacations some place other than a Howard Johnson motel room. While Dad was doing his Tarzan-Drill Sergeant routine she was having a long, meaningful discussion with the Coleman stove. Everything I learned about cussing, I learned from my dad and the skunks. Everything I learned about cussing without actually saying any bad words, I learned from my mom and the camp stove.

The one concession Dad made to Mom as far as camping went was the Nimrod. It was a pop-up camper with a canvas tent-top and foam mattresses inside. No air mattresses back then, and there was no way Mom was going to sleep on a cot or (shudder) the ground. We tried the tent thing once, but keep in mind, this was in the dark ages, before lightweight, strong nylon tents were invented (or we would have had one. Immediately.)

The tent was heavy canvas and came with at least 150 different poles, all different sizes, and an engineer to help you put it together. Of course, ours was actually a second-hand Army surplus, so we didn’t get the engineer. At least, I think it was Army surplus. It smelled as though there had been a surplus of Army in it.

Dad was, grant you, an enginer — but he was one of the first computer engineers in the country. Ask him to print out a dot matrix banner reading “Merry Christmas” from a  bunch of orange punch cards fed into a computer the size of your average McDonald’s, no problem.

Ask him to assemble a second-hand tent with 150 poles of different sizes? Problem.

So after one attempt tent construction, we found ourselves the proud possessors of the Nimrod.

Besides the foam mattresses, threr was another reason Mom preferred it. Safety. We did most of our camping in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park — way back in the dark ages when the rest of the world hadn’t discovered it yet — and ruined it. We could actually park the camper in a site so isolated we couldn’t see the people camping in the next lot over. These days, you can’t just see them, you can read the fine print on their tattoos.

All that vast park and those few people, made it peaceful, quiet, and really, really tempting for the park’s year-round residents.

To quote Ditka: Da Bears.

The black bears, to be precise. We learned quickly not to leave food out when we weren’t in camp. We also learned quickly that Bondo does not cover claw marks in old station wagon hoods. We learned that following an adorable bear cub into a gully to capture it on film with the nifty new movie camera should only be done when you are filming the filmer with another nifty new movie camera so you can catch him barrelling out of the same gully with Mama Bear hot on his heels.

One night, when I was about 6, Dad left to take my little brother to the bathroom and left the door to the camper open. I heard a strange rasping, grunting noise and woke up. There, filling the doorway of the camper, hulking in the darkness, was a giant, black, drooling, snarling giant of a bear, its eyes glowing redly evil in the sputtering light of the Coleman lantern. I screamed and leaped from my bed into my Mom’s. She quickly proved that not only was she the most tolerant wife on earth, she was the most protective mom. She threw a pillow at the bear.

A pillow.

Seriously, Mom?

Lightweight defense or not, it worked, and the monster shambled off into the darkness, no doubt to be teased and tormented by its fellow bears, being called Beauty Rest for the rest of its big, hairy life.

Dad and David came back from the bathroom, laughing wildly about some camper they heard screaming in the night. They weren’t laughing quite so wildly when they ended up sleeping in the station wagon.

It’s a funny story, and one I love telling when the subjects of camping or bears or pillow fights come up, but is it relevant to my year-long quest of Figuring Out Life Before I’m 50?

Oh, yeah. You see, a few years back, Terry and I were prowling through an RV lot, fanasizing about winning the lottery and being able to camp in something that has a fridge, a bed and something other than cheesecloth for a roof. I found a Nimrod pop-up camper tucked away, an ancient shetland pony of a camper hidden behind the stable of giant, sleek Winnebago thoroughbreds. As I opened the door to step inside, I realized — the door was only about a foot and a half wide.

Any bear who could get through that door and into the camper could only have been, well, about a foot and a half wide.

For those of you who arn’t Animal Planet junkies, that’s not a very big bear.

Hell, that’s not a very big dog.

That giant, slobbering hulking, monstrous, grunting growling bear that terrorized me on the fateful night could only have been a cub.

Perspective is everything. Now, when something scares me, I try to step back and ask myself — Is this a bear of a problem, or is it just a cub, pretending to be bigger than it really is?

And has anyone got a pillow handy?

One small step for woman, one giant leap for support hose…

Happy birthday to me. Oh, rah. Huzzah.

Where’s the booze?

Isn’t it funny how our attitudes change towards birthdays as we age? When we’re kids, there are balloons and cakes and parties and sugar overdoses and the sense that there will always be more birthdays — and more parties — down the line.

Later, there are still balloons and cake, but the Koolaid has been hijacked by PGA or vodka, and we still have the sense of powerful youth and immortality.

About the time we realize that we’ve peaked — we have now celebrated more birthdays in the past than we will in the future, the last candle sort of fizzles out and the happy birthday song begins to sound like a dirge.

Most of the time, I don’t mind getting older. Sure, it’s a little creepy that my butt can now knuckle bump the backs of my knees while I’m still standing up, and I’m not happy that I’ve started falling asleep before 9 p.m. before I can take a pill, hot bath or alcoholic incentive to make me fall asleep by 10 p.m. But overall, despite bad fortune and unemployment, I like where I am.

I never had the perfect 10 body, and I’m now at the age where I can admit I don’t give a damn. I’m old enough to tell rude young snots what I think of them and not fear parental repercussions. Hell, I’m probably older than their parents.

Acne is a thing of the past, cramps soon will be (Please?!?!) and I now know that I can survive, thrive, and actually be happy even if I don’t have Coach bags or Prada shoes.

Okay, Ive always known that. I now know I can be happy even if I don’t have a $100,000 show horse and an Hermes saddle to put on it. That’s better.

But at the same time… it’s not this birthday that bothers me. It’s the next one … the big 5-0. The half century marks the beginning of the end, the grim reaper of girdles, the harvester of orthopedic soles, the doom of Depends ….

The late great George Harrison’s birthday is two days before mine and I realized he would have been 69 this year. Do you get that? The youngest Beatle would have been 69. My dear friend Susan, who turned 50 last week, and I talked about it and tried to figure out where the time wet.

It was sucked into the black hole of childrearing, making a living, and day-to-day existence. My years are not threads spun on Clothos’ spindle , to be woven by Lachesis and snipped dead by Atropos. My years are socks lost in the dryer, they are hours spent drowsing off in the pediatrician’s waiting rooms, and days spent shuttling offspring from one destination to another.

But another thing I noticed in my conversatrion with Susan is that the more we talked about those old days, the more memories came back. Just because the dryer ate the socks doesn’t mean it won’t regurgiatate them back up eventually.

(Hang on –  I’m about to realllly stretch the analogy here.)

True, there will be holes in the socks, but with a little creativity, they can be redarned and recreated and made almost as good as new.

In other words, I’m going to employ some revisionist history, creativity and outright lies to remember my life. All 49 years and counting….

Okay, I’ll skip the first three, since they’re pretty limited to eat, sleep, break things belonging to older siblings, and making doody in my diaper.

Come to think of it, I’ll probably skip the next 7 years too, for the same reasons (except for the doody in the diaper thing. I did actually outgrow that. Eventually.)

As far as I’m concerned, my life began on this same date in 1973, when my Dad woke me up to get my birthday present. It was a tiny toy black plastic horse, and taped around its barrel was a note.

“I.O.U.”

My life course was set then, in so many little and massive ways. That little black plastic horse would lead me to some of my greatest joys and sorrows, shames and triumphs, not to mention blisters, broken bones and romance….

So every day for the next year, come hell or high water, I’m going to blog. It won’t always be reminiscing. There will be tears and outright lies, not to mention a few recipes, rants and regrets.

Maybe, a year from today, when I do hit the big 50, I’ll have a better idea of just how I got there.

 

Say “Please,” butthead

Someone once wrote that the surest sign of a failing society is the loss of its manners.

I’m inclined to agree. Someone called me on my cell phone tonight and after I said,”Hello,” he snapped, “Who is this?”

“Who is this?” I fired right back. “You called me.”

“I just wanted to know if  I had the wrong number,” he sputtered. “There’s no need to get snippy about it.”

Yes, there was. When you call someone and they answer, the proper response is “May I speak with So-and-So.” If it is a wrong number, the person will say (or should say) “I’m sorry, you must have the wrong number.”

At that point, Mr. Snippy should say, “Oh, I’m sorry” and hang up.

I called Buzz into the room and asked him if they taught phone etiquette at school.

“What’s to teach?” he asked. “You pick up the phone and say ‘Hello,.'”

I cringed. We will, no doubt, be having lessons in how to answer the phone shortly.

So why don’t they teach it? In today’s communications-heavy business world, you’d think being able to sound like an intelligent, reasonable, educated adult on the telephone would be considered a life skill.

I wonder if they teach emoticons instead?

Of course, being Southern — and a mom — the rudeness thing hits me harder than most. I get irritated watching TV or movies when someone does something for another person and there is no “Thank you.” I remember how startled the waitresses were in Arizona when my boys, 3, 9, and 11 at the time, said “Please” and “Thank you” when they brought the meals.

What’s wrong with a little courtesy? As Bill Kelly once wrote, “Good manners are just a way of showing other people that we have respect for them. ”

Of course, you can go overboard when expecting good behavior from others. When I returned to work aftr my first hospital stay, I ran into my boss. He said, “Hello, Mary.”

(NOTE: Not “Welcome back” or “How are you feeling.” Just “Hello.”)

I nodded my head and said “Hi,” then ducked into the breakroom before my ramen noodles could nuke their styrofoam bowl to death in the microwave.

Later, my failure to stop, ruin my lunch, and carry on a  properly grateful and subservient conversation with the man whose actions sent me to the hospital in the first place was apparently one of the many sins he tried to crucify me with during the Great Ambush.

What was I supposed to do? Genuflect?

But even so, I wasn’t rude. I said “Hello” back.

The rudeness is everywhere, but nowhere more so than in politics. It literally hurts my stomach to listen to the awful things these people say and their indifferent shrugs of non-apology when those things are exposed as blatant lies. There is no graciousness left in that world, no kindness, no caring, and certainly no class.

Call me old-fashioned. I refuse to stoop to their level and I will continue to say “Thank you” to the waitress when she brings me my coffee.

“The test of good manners is to be patient with bad ones,”  ~Gabirol (Solomon ben Yehuda ibn Gabirol),The Choice of Pearls.

And now, I’m going to go teach Buzz how to use the telephone.

Resolution solution

For about 15 years now, no matter where I was working or who was reading, I always wrote a column listing New Year’s Resolutions.

For other people.

Not that I thought myself perfect and incapable of improvement. Quite the contrary. I find myself horrifically imperfect — and incapable of improvement. It was much easier to tell Angelina Jolie to get her own man or Dog the Bounty Hunter to lose the mullet than it was to look at myself and say “Lose weight! Stop smoking! Stop making voodoo dolls of your boss and leaving them in your desk!”

(Man, I hope he found it. I really, really do.)

Despite my worst intentions, I actually did manage to lose about 35 pounds this year — I call it the Pain, Paxil and Poverty diet. Ironically, the doctor told me I might gain weight on Paxil. Little did he know that it robbed me of my desire to eat. Or clean. Or pack boxes. Or change the channel when Jerry Springer comes on … Or anything that requires anything more strenuous than opening the bottle of Paxil.

But this is a brand new year (or will be soon) and this time, there will be changes. Waiting are a new home, a new job (I hope) and already, a new outlook. The house will stay clean this year. The book will get written – if for no other reason than to give me an excuse to stop cleaning the house. I will treasure each day as if it were my last and celebrate the fact that it isn’t.

I won’t get pissed off when someone makes snide comments on my living on family charity. I won’t question the legitimacy of the births of the poor telephone sales people who draw the short straw and get stuck with my number — I won’t even question the species with which their mother most closely identifies herself.

I will breathe deeply and laugh loudly (okay, that isn’t new) and I will learn to let my husband help me instead of pretending nothing is wrong. I will take my meds (although in slightly lower doses) and I will give my family the best of me — love, laughter and killer brownies whenever they want them.

I will forgive that sorry, lying, cruel, smug and talentless bastard who bullied me out of my job and I will even forgive the two-faced drone who helped him.

Someday.

I’ll try to, anyway.

Maybe.

I think I’ll quit smoking, first. It seems easier.

So here are the true New Year’s Resolutions I’m making — for me.

1. Let go and move forward. Karma is waiting quietly for me to step aside so she can go to work. Have at it, Lady.

2. Quit smoking

3. Keep writing

4. Keep breathing

5. Never let a day go by without being thankful for my blessings, for my friends and family, for those I love who have never known me and those who love me, but I’ve never known.

Have a happy, healthy New Year, all of you, and may your 2012 be a joy to experience!

It was the best of times, it was the … best of times

I don’t know what my children will remember about this particular Christmas, when the “pile” of presents looked like what the Grinch left behind and we finished off a pot of chili instead of cooking a giant bird.

Will my boys remember sitting around in the cluttered cottage we now call home, wishing they were still in the big ranch style? Will they recall it as the first Christmas where “Fill the woodbox” became the one thing I said more often than “Put the toilet seat down!”?

I know what I’ll remember. I’ll remember a Christmas filled with laughter and love.

A season of angels and miracles.

I’ll remember my friends at our campground, who sent us gift cards to make those presents possible. I’ll always remember and treasure other friends and family who contributed to the cause. From food boxes (we actually did get a turkey, but it didn’t thaw in time for Christmas dinner, so it will be a New Year’s bird instead) to friendly phone calls and funny cards, we witnessed the living Christmas, proof that the season is not really about buying or wrapping, but loving and caring.

We learned who our true friends were — those who remembered us. Even the ones who could not afford to help us called or came by, and their presence was a present in and of itself. A hug from a sister-in-law, a late night phone call that was nothing but a funny joke to be shared, a video game sent to my youngest, all of it, all of it, reminded me, the lapsed Christian, that’s all about the deeds, not the dogma.

One very special group of friends who helped us out immensely live an unusual lifestyle, one that would get raised eyebrows and even sniggers from “everyday” folks, and outraged sniffs from the Bible thumpers, proved to be the truest Christians of all, sending us a great deal of assistance, but anonymously. I only know it came from the group of special people, but not which ones, and there are very many of them.

Only one person from the institution that used to be my church home helped out — God bless you Darlene — and she joined the church long after we left it.

On Christmas morning, I realized I had taken enough. It was time to give back. Ben, the 19-year-old middle child, and I piled into the van and went out to deliver Christmas dinners to the home-bound. These were other people also down on their luck —  sick and elderly, unemployed, or just simply broke and lonesome. It was eye-opening.

One lovely elderly lady let us in  her apartment, where carols were playing softly in the background and warm cider smells filled the air with apple and cinnamon.

On every wall, there was a picture of Elvis. A dozen pictures of Elvis. Hundreds of pictures of Elvis.

“I wish we could stay for a while,” I told her. But we have other deliveries to make …”

“I’m fine,” she smiled, waving her hand at the walls. “I’m in good company.”

I understood what she meant. At the kitchen, surrounded by the other volunteer drivers, giving up their Christmas mornings to drive around on a cold, wet day, I realized I was in good company. Wrapping the presents I was able to get through the generosity of my friends and family, I appreciated more good company.

Watching my boys laugh and argue and play games togetehr for the first time since last Christmas, I knew I was in the best of company.

It was the best of times.