Damn But It's Been A Minute

It's been a month since I've written. There have been developments.

First off, tomorrow is my last day at Music Hall and though it has been physically exhausting, getting to work behind the scenes of the symphony has been extremely rewarding. Henceforth, any symphony, pops, opera, youth symphony, or ballet performance I attend is likely to feature music that I have actually held in my hands and that's a mighty big thought.

Also, there have been developments from former job and Huge Corporation. My manager (who was not my supervisor, the Word Murder) has been keeping me up to date on office drama.  The WM has officially LEFT THE BUILDING! She was shuffled of to another site where she is not in charge of managing other people and has very little contact with the public, which is for the best. The president of the contracting firm that I worked for (it is a very complex food chain) is filling in as supervisor in my former office and, if Manager is correct, the corporate overlords may be choosing the next supervisor, as the contractor has, at least in their eyes, thus far displayed a lack of good judgement in hiring managers. If the new permanent supervisor/room manager is who she thinks it will be, she would be a terrific choice. 

Also, the department I helped administrate has absolutely gone to shit in my absence. The hens were put in charge of my duties with no real training. Even if there had been attempts to train them, the job requires a level of technological skills (Excel for instance) that they cannot seem to wrap their hopelessly analog heads around, and a certain savvy in dealing with millenials that they will never, ever have. (Seriously, wrangling mommies into completing tasks required for the thing they signed up to do takes some real finesse -- you gotta be bossy without being bitchy.)

The corporate overlords directly in charge of my department, along with my manager (who is also contractor) are appealing to the BIG corporate overlord, who is in charge of all of the departments similar to mine, to request the contractor that I be brought back on board as the lack of my presence seems to be the reason for everything going to shit. (They really seemed to like me while I was there and often told me what a good job I was doing. I understand from Manager that they were quite distraught by the news of my abrupt departure.)

I am a week and a day from my stomach surgery -- the one that, ironically, I planned around the holiday so as not to disrupt the schedule of Huge Corporation. I should be recovered enough by the date they are scheduled to return from the holiday break to resume work, if Contractor decides she would like to have me back. I would be willing now that Word Murder is gone. Jesus I hated that woman. (Always respectful, compliant, and blah blah blah good employee, but I HATED that woman!)

If not, I am sure my agency will be able to find me something.  I'm just so tired of the endless string of short-term assignments. One of the reasons for my moving north was to find my Big Girl Job and actually launch a career. I really thought I was headed that direction at Huge Corporation. Temping is NOT a career.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying my new Twitter account, listening to lots of good music, trying to adjust to PHC being The Show Formerly Known As Prairie Home, watching the sex-crimes dominoes fall (Mario Batalli??? Really????). and trying have enough faith in Mueller and humanity in general to keep me from total despair over impending Armageddon at the hands of an orange buffoon.

That, and upping my smoothie game.

Maybe with all the excess down time I will find more time to blog.

My Rape Story (Because too many of us have one)

I was molested at the age of 7 by the uncle of a friend. The uncle was, at the time, living with the friend when I went for a sleep over. At some point, I found myself alone with the uncle in my friend's bedroom. He began rubbing my back. I hated it. It made me feel weird and gross. He asked if he could kiss my back. I was raised to always obey authority and adults are authority so I complied. That made me feel even grosser. He asked if he could kiss me on the lips but, even as timid of authority as I was, I couldn't bring myself to agree to that. He told me not to tell. He told me that it was our secret.

I kept the secret to myself until I returned home from the sleepover. The next morning, I told my sister as we were getting ready for church. I couldn't keep it to myself -- those feelings of shame and dirtiness. After church, at lunch, I sat at the table silently crying. My mother asked what was wrong and my sister blurted out my secret. I don't remember how my mother reacted. I know the news must have sickened her. I just remember being terrified that my abuser would somehow punish me for disobeying.

The church/school (I was at the time attending a parochial school) Christmas program was scheduled for that night. I knew that it was my mother's intention to speak to my friend's mother about the actions of her brother that night, which in turn probably meant that my friend's mother would speak to her brother, and HE was in the audience. I remember managing to keep myself together enough to perform with my classmates, but I could feel him staring at me. I just knew he was plotting his revenge.

A few days after the Christmas program, I was told that the uncle was asked to move elsewhere (to another of his siblings' homes, I believe, who did not have children to molest). I never saw him again, nor was the "situation" ever again mentioned. Something about the context of the conversation seemed to hint that this wasn't the first time this had happened and I'm sure it wasn't the last.

After this incident, my mother finally had the conversation with me about bodily autonomy and "bad touching" and formally gave me permission to say no to an adult if he (because she assumed any abuser would be a he) made me uncomfortable, and that I should tell her if anything like that ever happened again. Too little too late mom.

When I was 12, attending the same church, I had an extremely inappropriate relationship with a boy in my youth group who was 15. He was cute, popular, kind of a jock, and all the girls had crushes on him. I, on the other hand, was chubby, awkward, and unpopular. During a social gathering at the church, a half dozen or so rogue members of the youth group (including me) participated in a rather lewd game of truth or dare. (I have to wonder now how a half dozen tween-to-teens were so unsupervised AT CHURCH that this was even possible.) The dares mostly centered around the theme of show-me-yours-and-I'll-show-you-mine.

After the game, he coaxed me into a secluded room, showed me his erect penis, and told me it was hard because I was so hot. He asked me to show him my boobs, and asked if he could touch them. He asked me to give him a hand job. I'd had a crush on him forever, and of course consented. He kissed me and told me that he'd wanted me for a long time and I could be his girlfriend, but, even though he really did care for me, we had to keep it a secret. I was so excited that he liked me and so thrilled at the feeling of sexual awakening that I was about to pop, but I kept his secret. I kept his secret even while he bullied me in public "for show" he said.

Of course, it had to be kept secret because the caring about me part was utter bullshit and he was just too embarrassed, as the popular jock, to be "going with" the dumpy nerd girl, but he still wanted the sexy stuff from me. This relationship went on for several months and got as close as possible to actual having sex without ever crossing that line. He certainly wanted to, but at that time I was still committed to keeping my virginity for my husband.

I found out later from other girls in my youth group that they were also his "secret girlfriend". I kind of always dismissed his actions as a teenage boy being a teenage boy, and felt ashamed at being so foolish as to believe his ridiculous come-ons, but now I see it as the predatory behavior that it was and wonder how this behavior carried on into adulthood.

When I was 21 I was raped by a military guy. It was my first time out barhopping as a legal drinker. A friend took me out and offered to pay for the drinks. And honey were there drinks. I think I calculated that between the lemon drop shots and Cape Codders I had something like 20+ servings of vodka. I met a guy at the bar that I thought was cute. His name was Westley, with a T, like Westley from Princess Bride. He was tall and geeky and we had a nice conversation.

Meanwhile, my friend was over making nice with his buddy Mike, who I did not find remotely interesting or attractive. He was the cocky jock type, and I was so not (and still not) into that type. When my friend went to the bathroom, Mike and I had a slurred and drunken conversation about our mutual non-attraction and how we were both cool with that and could hang even though we didn't want to fuck and I thought that was pretty cool.

We closed down the bar and the boys invited us over to their place to continue the party. My friend readily agreed and we followed them back to their apartment. It was the two of us, the two of them, and two or three more of their military buddies. A bottle of tequila was being passed around and I managed one shot before passing out on the couch. One of the other guys kept trying to kiss me and I kept pushing him away. Finally Mike told me that I could go pass out in his roommate's bed as his roommate was gone on some training thing.

I don't know how long I was passed out in that bedroom before I woke to find someone leaning over me, trying to kiss me. I pushed him away, thinking he was the same guy as before, but it was Mike. I reminded him that we'd mutually agreed that we didn't want to fuck and what the fuck was his deal? He told me that he'd been "so wrong" and that he'd really been wanting me all night. Well, I didn't want him. And I made that clear!

My friend heard us arguing through the door and came to intervene, but he'd locked it when he came in and he yelled back to her that everything was just fine. So she left me there and went home! I was at the point of drunk where my mind was working but my body wasn't and he went on ahead and did what he wanted to do. I just laid there and let him. I didn't really have a choice at that point.

The next morning I called my friend and she came and picked me up and took me back to her house. I sat in her shower, as hot as I could stand it, trying to wash the ick of the night's events off of me. I felt so ashamed and dirty. I'd gotten drunk. I'd put myself in this situation. It was my fault. And I'd cheated on my boyfriend. (I was already dating Grumpy at this point but he was stationed elsewhere and I was living with my parents.)

When I got home I repeated the hot shower thing in another attempt to wash off the shame and guilt and the feeling of him touching me. I told my mother what had happened and she informed me that I had been raped and that even though she didn't approve of me drinking, being drunk didn't give him permission to have sex with me if I said no. She took me to the police station where I gave my statement. The cop there told me he didn't think I had much of a case since I was drunk and had willingly gone to his house. It would just be my word against his and I would probably be better off not pursuing, so I let it drop.

I called Grumpy and told him what had happened. He said it wasn't rape because I didn't fight back hard enough. He also confirmed my own self-accusation that I had cheated on him. (He has since admitted that he was very, very wrong about this and has apologized profusely.)

I now wish that I had pressed charges. Even if there'd been no legal consequences, there'd have been some resulting unpleasantness from his chain of command -- enough, at least, to make him think a little harder about the potential consequences of his actions. But because I let it go, he never had to face any consequences whatsoever. I'm sure I wasn't his first and I'm sure I wasn't his last. The lack of consequences for shit like this just reinforces the entitlement complexes that perpetuate rape culture.

I feel like I've moved past and healed from whatever injury or trauma occurred as a result of these events. But I feel like I have to tell these stories. My stories are only a drop in the proverbial rape culture bucket. All women, and many men, have these stories. We all need to tell them. We all need to speak up. I feel like predators, like the men in these stories, have to be called out publicly, even if the calling out does not result in legal consequences. We cannot just quietly shuffle these things off to the side and pretend they didn't happen, you know, for the best interests of all involved.

We, as humans, all have urges to do things we know are wrong. We, as a society, have both a spoken and unspoken set of rules that keeps us, as individuals, from acting out those urges. We aren't just nice and generally well behaved because deep down we know it's the right thing. We are generally polite and well behaved - in public at least - because we fear the social consequences of being rude and obnoxious. (Really, I do so miss those happy days of my youth when racist assholes knew to keep their deplorable attitudes in their own rumpus rooms.)

This epidemic of predatory behavior has to end. The justice system and our politicians aren't going to protect future generations from this bullshit. We, as a society, need to end it. We need to teach our children early that they own their bodies and NOBODY has a right to touch them without their consent. We need to let our children know that allowing someone in a position of power to manipulate them into doing things that they find humiliating and gross is NEVER okay. We need to stop the victim shaming and start supporting those -- and believing those -- who are willing to speak out. We need to make it known to those who would be predators that they will be called out, the stories will be told, and that they will face serious consequences to their social standing and career status. We need to make it crystal clear that this behavior will no longer be tolerated. Period.

Peanut Butter and Shostakovich

I'm loving my new job. The combined music libraries of the symphony, youth symphony, ballet, and opera are being reorganized and I've been brought in to help with the project. I have specifically been tasked to the youth symphony, moving sheet music from old archive boxes to new archive boxes and relabeling them. 

I am in awe of the papers that are passing through my hands -- some of them dating back to the 60's when the youth symphony was founded. (There are pieces in other parts of the library that predate the founding of the main symphony in the 1800's -- I'm hoping to get my hands on that collection at some point.) The sheets are embellished here and there with the pencil notes young musicians have made to accommodate various conductors interpretations of the pieces -- noting cues, dynamic changes, and inserted or emphasized rests. I am handling years of history, and who knows what musical careers some of the previous holders of this music have gone on to accomplish. 

Many of the pieces brought back memories for me -- Smetana's Moldau has been my favorite piece of classical music since my 4th grade class went on a field trip to a concert the state symphony put on just for elementary students. I aided in murdering the William Tell Overture that same year by the all-county elementary orchestra as a first-year viola player. (My viola career came to an abrupt halt after only two years when my mother switched me to a private school with no music program.) And so much Sound of Music. That soundtrack and that movie are woven throughout my entire life like a thread through a tapestry. 

The dearest recollection a piece evoked today was during a battle with several large boxes comprising an entire Shostakovich symphony. My hands and wrists are covered in paper cuts and I'm sporting three bandaids. (Wouldn't want to bleed on the music!) Wrestling with this symphony brought back memories of a blog entry that I wrote almost 15 years ago -- February of 2003 -- about a toddler having a tantrum and then mellowing out in a most bizarre way. In honor of Shostakovich, and my paper cuts, I present it to you now. 

My life is strange. Granted, life with children is always strange in that crazy, wild, unpredictable, loud, chaotic way that children make life strange, but my life is strange in the quiet, subdued moments -- strange like scenes from surreal foreign films with softly lit backdrops of grey, overcast skies, and soothing baroque music wafting through the air.

My obstreperous middle child was in the midst of a typical 2 year old tantrum. He was in the kitchen laying on the floor gurgling out protests. "I don`t want it!! It`s STUPID!" As nothing was being forced on the child -- or even offered to the child -- I`ve absolutely no clue as to what IT could be. I made him a sandwich and got him a glass of milk, which he flatly refused mid-gurgle, preferring instead to lay on the floor and bemoan his lot in life.

Abruptly, he changed his mind. He stood up, picked up his sandwich and sippy cup, and requested that I "hold him to bed" which is his way of asking I carry him to my room for a nap.

This is where we pick up with the soft classical music and the muted light from the overcast sky through the window. He settled himself on my bed and put his finger to his lips to signal a hush. He lay meditatively, very deliberately chewing bits of sandwich, nosily smacking his lips while conducting an imaginary symphony with his one free hand and one chubby little leg waving in the air. I laid on my side, head propped on my arm watching this miniature Shostakovich in a none-too-clean t-shirt, diaper, and stained sock (he was only wearing one) as he smeared my white cotton pillowcases with Welch`s strawberry preserves.

The moment lasted until he`d chewed and swallowed his last bite of sandwich and drained the last drops of milk from his cup. The magic was over. He has returned to his tantrum and is acting sleepy. Perhaps he will nap soon.

Yeah, My Stomach Is Screwed

This is an illustration of a procedure called Vertical Banded Gastroplasty. I had this procedure in 2004, after the birth of Andro. This procedure is no longer approved by the FDA as it has been replaced by a safer, less invasive procedure -- the adjustable lap band -- that has a much lower rate of complications. Complications such as vomiting, malnutrition, high rate of failure (meaning patients gained back the weight), acid erosion of the stomach lining and esophagus, and general inability to eat almost everything, especially healthy foods.

I've always been self conscious about my weight. I remember having to shop in the pretty-plus section throughout elementary school. But I was never like FAT fat. I don't think I ever exceeded a size 20, which, while certainly not thin, isn't absurd for 5'8". In high school I joined the cross country team, ran about 3 miles 3 or 4 times a week, and dropped all the way down to a mind-bogglingly thin size 14 and about 185 pounds. I even had some people who suggested I try for a gig as a plus-sized model, though I never pursued that. (I did do art modeling in college, but that's entirely different.)

I struggled with my weight on and off through college to my early 20's, gaining and losing the same 30 pounds over and over. I tried to eat right and exercise, but fell off the wagon now and again. When Grumpy and I were stationed in Colorado, we were constantly hiking and camping and at the age of 22 I was about a size 16 and just under 200 pounds. And I looked good. And I felt healthy.

And then pregnancy. I got pregnant for the first time at 22, but I miscarried at 11 weeks. Even though I was pretty much nauseous the entire time, I managed to pack on about 30-40 pounds that hadn't even begun to budge before I got pregnant again, a month and a half after the miscarriage. Again, extreme nausea. The term "morning sickness" was a cruel joke. I was sick 24/7 and it didn't end with the first trimester. I was sick the entire 41.5 weeks. (He was late, stubborn boy.) I was in the ER 15 times for rehydration. I once threw up 18 times in one day day (pregnancy plus food poisoning) and it took several tries to get the IV started. They eventually nailed it with a pediatric-gauge needle - the kind they use for newborns. Even with the extreme nausea though, I managed to pack on pounds.

I knew I didn't want to go through that again anytime soon, and I knew I wasn't good at being consistent about things like taking pills, so I got the depo shot, which was supposed to last 3 months. It lasted a year and I just ballooned further, despite a healthy diet and a physically active lifestyle. Now, mind this was before the age of Google so I couldn't really research the side effects before I had the shot. It wasn't until after I'd gotten the shot that I found out my experience was super typical.

So, a little more than a year passed and I finally had a period -- ONE period -- and found out that I was pregnant AGAIN! (This seems to be something I do easily.) Cue the nausea. Cue the trips to the ER. Cue yet another round of weight gain. 

A few weeks after N2 was born, Grumpy was sent overseas and I moved back home to the South. Again, good diet, lots of walking and hiking, but the weight wouldn't budge. I went to the doctor. Nothing wrong with my blood work except my liver enzymes were high because of the fat in my liver. She said I needed to try to lose weight and put me on Prozac. I'm still not sure of the connection there, or why a PA for a liver specialist was handing out anti-depressants. I didn't lose any weight. And I didn't tolerate the Prozac well. I pretty much just slept. Constantly. So that didn't last long.

In December of 2001, Grumpy came home on a two-week leave. Two friggin weeks. And of course I get pregnant again. I miscarried that one at 10 weeks. I really tried to get myself together after that, eating right and exercising. And I think I lost maybe about 10 pounds over the next six months before Grumpy returned stateside for good. That's when we got sent to Bumfuck where medical care isn't really a thing. (Really, this is an AWFUL place -- the first question asked when anyone hears that you've been stationed there is, "Who did you piss off?")

We had about a month between his return and his report date. The plan was to get an IUD ASAP and look for job and like, be a person and stuff, but no. At my appointment to get an IUD, about a week after arrival, I found out it was too late because..,(drumroll)...I was pregnant again. (Seriously, you'd think my sex life was WAY better than it actually was, but no, I'm just really really fertile.) Again, all the nausea, all the vomiting -- once on N2's wee junk because while changing him, the smell of his poopy diaper overwhelmed my gag reflex. The smell of the rotisserie chicken at Walmart made me so sick that I was unable to make it fast enough to the restrooms and hurled on the floor of the dairy aisle at least twice. And somehow, I STILL gained weight. The fuck??

After the arrival of AndrogyNut, a full two weeks late, I lost exactly 9.5 pounds, which is exactly how much she weighed, and then proceeded to gain another 20. Again, I tried to eat right, exercise. There's pictures of me at 300+ pounds (I think I topped out at 320) with her strapped to me in a front-carrier, hiking with the family. (I spent a lot of time wearing all three of my babies, both front and back. I did most of my hiking then carrying a baby -- when the got older and moved to the backpack, my braids made for great reins.) But the weight would not budge.

By this time, I think Yahoo was the search engine of choice and was able to research options for bariatric surgery. I was just sick of this shit. My dad died at the age of 50, a few weeks after N1 was born, from liver disease. They said he had hepatitis from an unspecified source because they never isolated a virus. I don't think there was one. I think he was just fat. He topped out over 400 pounds. Either his doctors were never observant enough to come to this conclusion or they were just too polite to tell my dad he was morbidly obese and that his obesity was likely killing him. (Why would you not tell your morbidly obese patient dying of fatty liver that he was fat and it was killing him? You'd never be too polite to tell a patient they had cancer. Ugh.)

I knew I didn't want bypass, even though it put Carnie Wilson in the pages of Playboy. I researched that and the side effects and noped the fuck out. I read about the reversible, adjustable lap band, but I'd have to go to Mexico to get it because it wasn't FDA approved. Tricare wasn't going to pay for that. I decided on banding because it was reversible and didn't involve rearranging my intestines. (I think they're just fine where they are, thanks.) The closest qualified surgeon I could find was about 3 hours away. I asked my general practitioner at the military hospital for a referral. She said she was wondering if I was ever going to bring that up. (Again with the being too polite to tell your sick, fat patient she/he is sick and fat. This is just stupidity.)

Had the surgery. Went on a liquid diet for a month. Lost my mind. Slowly began eating regular food, being very conscious of what I could and could not eat. Lost a little over 100 pounds the first year. Reveled in my new body (which was just like my pre-baby body, only a lot saggier). Got used to throwing up. Grump got used to pulling to the side of the road on a moment's notice so I could throw up. Still totally thought the surgery worth it.

I STILL, almost 15 years later, think the surgery was worth it. Last check, I'm not pre-diabetic and my liver is just fine. I've kept the weight off, though I still battle that 30 or so pounds I battled before pregnancy. I'm not going to drop dead at 50. However, the not eating thing has gotten out of control. I've had to have several endoscopic procedures where the gastro doc goes down my throat with a balloon and blows the band back open because it keeps closing. The last time he did this, back in July, he told me he was willing to keep repeating this procedure but really, I needed to have it out.

I was still settling into what I thought was going to be my permanent job, and didn't want to take the time off for surgery, so I put it off, and off, and off. Finally in October I got frustrated enough (and felt fairly secure in my job, joke's on me hahaha, bitches) to go see the surgeon, who agreed that yes, it needed to come out and he could do that handily. I scheduled the surgery for Dec 20 when big corporation marketing shuts down for the holidays so as not to interrupt the job I no longer have. Jesus the irony.

Anyway, today I went in for an imaging appointment. I did the whole barium swallow thing. The band has completely shut and the yummy barium milkshake was exiting to the right, where my stomach tissue should be stapled shut, as illustrated in the above picture. I don't even know how that could happen. But yeah, fucker needs to come out.

Grumpy is afraid I will get fat again, but seeing as I had the doc go full scorched earth on my girly junk (slashed and burned) as soon as Andro was born, I think I will be fine.

Now the only thing is finding a new job once I'm healed.

Goddamit multinational corporation marketing department!

A Perfect Birthday

So much weekend. And time to write about it without anyone looking over my shoulder! Yay forced week's vacation!

First big news -- I am now on Twitter as @TheButternutty and this is my first foray into the Twitterverse. Expect much Punch Brothers stalkings. 

This birthday weekend was in the top three birthday weekends of all time. (I was volunteering for the Obama campaign and was the volunteer coordinator in the campaign office on election day, which was my birthday. That one is in serious competition for Best Birthday Ever. The other was my first time performing at a music/art festival at one of the coolest venues of all time called Pasaquan. Google it.)

We had a lovely drive out, lots of conversation. Lots of career angst, still reeling from being laid off, wondering if it was me personally or just that I was first in line to get cut. It's so frustrating trying to get any career traction starting from the bottom after two decades of staying home with children. But this is about my amazing birthday weekend, not my job angst.

When we arrived at the llama farm, the driveway gate was closed and a tortoise-shell llama (didn't know they came in tortoise-shell) was standing there at the gate, staring at us, looking very judgy. She did not know why we were there and she did not approve. You've never experienced condescension until you've been condescended to by a llama. We had to drive down back down the road to find cell service to call our host to open the gate for us. He apologized and shortly greeted us with the warmth of an old friend. 

His home is a gorgeous rambling farmhouse on 40 hilly acres. The back sides of the house are wrapped with an extensive deck with multiple gazebos (now that's a fun word to say out loud) and a fire pit that he had already set up with kindling and a stack of wood at the ready. Grumpy and I, being old and boring, had already planned ahead for the evening's drinkings. We picked up a few bottles of wine on the way there, thinking that relaxing in the room would be better than drinking in a bar and then attempting to drive the curving mountain roads back to the inn. Turns out it was a good decision as we were then fully prepared for the evening around the fire.

Our co-guests were a pair of 60-something newlyweds that were just adorable. Both had lost previous spouses and finally found post-widowhood happiness in each other. They were interesting, personable, and seemed to enjoy our company, even though I proceeded to get fairly more than tipsy and I don't exactly remember all of the details of the evening. (I asked her the next morning if I'd made an ass of myself and she replied that I was delightful and that even if I had made an ass of myself, she'd never have told me. That's a classy lady.)

We spent Saturday wandering around and exploring the local area. The town of Logan is ridiculously cute with some jaw-dropping architecture on the local churches. After stopping for a coffee (and replenishing the wine supply), we spent the rest of the afternoon driving up and down and around the hairpin curves of the foothills backroads. This extra-long, extra-warm summer -- a frightening indication of global warming -- has finally broken and the fall colors have peaked weeks later than usual, which, despite the frightening global consequences, made for some breathtaking views. Grumpy really wanted to do some hiking but my old-lady knee was protesting and so he had to be happy with a short walk around a cute pond.

We headed back to the room and gussied ourselves up for a nice dinner and an evening with NOAM PIKELNY!!! I was a little nervous about a two-hour, solo banjo show. I honestly wouldn't have traveled so far to see any other banjo player. (I'm not sure I'd have left the house to spend two hours listening to any other solo banjo player.) But, being as I'm seriously stalker level when it comes to the Punch Brothers on YouTube, and I've seem them together live several times, I was betting that he would use his droll humor to break up the banjoing and my bet paid off in a most delightful way. Between bits of pure genius instrumental work, he had me doubled over laughing so hard I couldn't breathe. 

At the end of the show, he announced that he'd be downstairs at the merch table signing things. Oh my wildest hopes! Oh the daydreams I dared joke about *maybe* becoming reality! I sort of shoved my way down to stairs to the merch table as soon as the house lights came up and was first in line with my Universal Favorite tour t-shirt and my program. After what seemed an eternity (maybe five minutes) he descended the stairs all sweaty. I was trembling. The program in my hand was trembling. My heart was pounding. I have never fangirled so hard in my life. I managed to pull myself together enough to tell him that I'd come all the way there to spend my birthday with him and could he please sign my program (although I did buy a t-shirt) because it had the date on it, which is my birthday? Did I mention birthday? After he signed it for me, I looked up at him, putting on my most adoring face and said, in my most earnest voice, "You're like, one of my top five favorite Punch Brothers ever, of all time. Seriously." And he laughed -- like a grunt-snort-chuckle. I MADE NOAM PIKELNY LAUGH!!! I'm framing the program and hanging it in my dining room with the rest of my religious relics. 

After the excitement of Saturday, I thought surely there was nothing Sunday that could even compare, but after breakfast our host let us walk the llamas. Like dogs. On leashes. And I got to walk the condescending tortie. She was so pretty and so soft, and actually quite sweet. Grumpy was assigned the tortie's mother, who was REALLY condescending and judgy. She actually spit at him. More of a "pfft" than an actual spit, but certainly a sign of disapproval. I didn't even try not to laugh out loud. 

We finished out our day with a lovely hike around the gorge at Conckle's Hollow and spent the drive back listening to the Prairie Home Companion podcast of the show we missed the night before -- a perfect benediction to a perfect weekend. 

Good night llamas. Goodnight Noam. Goodnight 42. Good night moon.

So, No More of That

I needn't worry about the Word Murderer anymore. I got laid off. Happy Birthday! I'm thinking they're going to end up regretting that. They needed to cut hours because that department lost 10% of their funding. They're moving towards more automated forms of communication like texting and emails. The old ladies that I worked with will NOT be able to keep up. But I was the temp and they've been there for years - seriously, pushing 80. My other two coworkers were younger than me. One, who was to be known as PsychoNut because she's a psyche major and extremely not psycho, will be able to keep up. But she works two days a week and will presumably be moving on to her big girl life when she graduates. Oh well. 

The agency I work with already has another job lined up that starts next week and will last through the end of December, which is fine. I have a surgery planned for Dec 20. (I deliberately planned it around the two week break the department takes over the holidays so as not to inconvenience anyone. That was productive.) It sounds like a fun gig. I will be helping the symphony reorganize their music filing system and I'll get to work in a gorgeous, historic building. 

Right now I'm blogging from the car. (Obviously not driving.) We are on our way to the foothills to spend my birthday weekend at a bed and breakfast llama farm and see Noam Pickelny (only the best banjo player of all time and also a Punch Brother) play at the historic Nelsonville Opera House, which seems pretty random as the opera house is, from what I can tell, the only thing in Nelsonville. Not sure where the rest of the audience is coming from. 

Grumpy thinks I should be paying attention to him and our picturesque surroundings rather than have my face in my phone so I'll cut this off here. 

Llama farm y'all! Happy birthday. 

Yay November!

It’s my favorite time of year. My birthday is this month. The weather is starting to get cold. And I get to complain about how much I hate the holidays and pumpkin spice. (While secretly and begrudgingly enjoying both.)

Quick tip – if you’re on the thick-middled and assless side of the hourglass spectrum and your jeans are a bit tighter in the waist than you’d like in order to not sag in the butt, you can run a small rubber band through the button hole and loop it over the button and give yourself an extra inch or so of waist and a little extra stretch.

So, I had an interesting weekend. We drove the long way out to Piqua to have burgers at what is supposed to be the best burger place in Piqua, but I’m now doubting the advice of Yelp! as the place appears to be permanently closed. We ended up having burgers at Rally’s. I haven’t eaten at a Rally’s in over 20 years and I was disappointed. They used to be so good. But I got a sad, dried up little burger on a stale bun. Bummer.

Piqua is an historic town in the northern Dayton metro area. (How pretentious is THAT bit of grammar – “an historic”?) It dates back to the French and Indian War (which was NOT between the French and the Indians, which is the only thing I remember about it from 11^th grade history) as a village that grew outside of a battle fort. The downtown area is adorable with quaint storefronts (that are actually fronting viable businesses) and houses that are regal and gorgeously weathered.

Piqua is also where my grandfather ran to when he ran off with my aunt’s English teacher in the early 70’s.  I wasn’t born yet, but I can only imagine that was a bit of an awkward time, particularly since my aunt was attending a very conservative religious high school in western North Carolina. I remember my mom coming up here a few times to visit my grandfather, but I never came along. It was weird walking around town Saturday, wondering if my grandfather had ever eaten at that diner, or gotten his hair cut at that barber’s. I wonder if he ever had burgers at that supposedly really great place that is out of business.

It was during the divorce that my grandmother found out some odd details about the man she married. My grandfather was an engineer of some sort at a manufacturing plant of some sort – the details have always been kind of vague – and met my grandmother during the lead-up to WW2. She was a factory floor worker at the time. He enlisted and spent the bulk of the war as an engineer, mostly digging latrines in the Philippines. When he got back, they bought a little farm and he continued to work in some sort of manufacturing facility in some engineering capacity. I’m sure he paid the major bills, but my grandmother raised goats and chickens and sold milk and eggs and also babysat for a little extra house-running money. My mom grew up thinking they were a working class family at best.

And then the divorce. Dude was a millionaire. Mostly inherited. His father, as it turns, was very successful and, although charming and gracious, apparently on the frugal side, and probably good with investments and such. I would imagine that my grandfather was raised have the idea that “we don’t always do what we want just because we can” heavily reinforced. I mean, one doesn’t get rich and stay rich by spending all of one’s money. And my grandfather, it would seem, took this quite to heart in his quirky, introverted way, and was a miser with his wife and children.

My grandmother, on the other hand, grew up in a subsistence farming family, the youngest of 15 children, and probably was told she couldn’t have everything she wanted because it simply wasn’t possible. When she got her half of the wad in the settlement, she finally COULD have everything she wanted and blew through close to a million bucks over the next 15-20 years on trips all over the world, winters in Florida, and an eclectic collection of doodads that would make anyone on Hoarders proud. (She had an insane collection of cigar boxes. And she was very much anti-smoking. Whatever.)

So, now we know where I don’t get my sense of fiscal responsibility, and possibly where I get my lack of same. I can blow through some money like you wouldn’t believe. At least that’s one thing I have/had in common with my grandmother.

We hightailed it back home on the interstate to watch the livestream of PHC on YouTube, but there was no livestream, only audio, which we could have listened to in the car. I was sorely disappointed and Grumpy was, well, grumpy. It was still an awesome episode. 

It has been interesting, taking these drives through the Midwestern countryside over the past year, watching the cycle of life – farmers out planting, seedlings shooting through the dirt, talk stalks of corn and bushy green soybean plants thriving, and then maturing and turning brown, and finally farmers out on their tractors harvesting.

I was thinking about how idyllic it all seems, what with these little farming communities seeming so healthy and prosperous, until it occurred to me that I was seeing fields of future high fructose corn syrup, soybean oil, and whatever byproducts used in animal feed. Basically, we have spent the last year admiring picturesque fields of diabetes and heart disease.

I feel deflated. 

Oh Heck Yeah, It's Friday!

First Order of Business:

1.      Parker Milsap

2.      Lillie Mae

3.      John Mellencamp

4.      Dan Auerbach

5.      Valerie June

6.      Feist

7.      Rhiannon Giddens

8.      Devil Makes 3

9.      Justin Townes Earle

10.  John Mayer

11.  Pokey Lafarge

12.  Willie Nelson

13.  Sheryl Crowe

14.  Chris Stapleton

15.  Jeff Tweedy

16.  Ani DiFranco

17.  Shovels and Rope

18.  Adele

19.  Lumineers

20.  Regrettes

For posterity, my Prairie Home Companion list, if you’re playing along at home. It counts as a point if they appear on the show in any capacity, even just sitting in with the band. Although nobody on this list sat in with the band or appeared as featured duet artist last season, because that’s just way too easy. I’m really annoyed that I didn’t make the right call Fiona Apple, who is appearing this week as the featured duet artist. I considered her. She toured with Nickel Creek in the early naughties, but she’s been pretty quiet lately so I didn’t put her on the list.

Last year he stayed pretty consistent with Sarah Jaroz, Aoife O’Donovan, and Sara Watkins. This year he seems to be spreading the featured duet artist love around a bit more. Earlier this season he featured Rachael Price from Lake Street Dive. That episode made me ugly cry repeatedly. Damn you Thile!!! No, seriously, it was actually cathartic and I felt a little less alone in this crazy fucking world. Thile can be really effective at making one feel all of the feels when he sets his brilliant little mind to it.

Some of them will depend on timing. I almost left Chris Stapleton off the list because he’s pretty big and fairly mainstream, but it just happened that he was playing the arena across the street that night and was willing to take the time to appear on the show. I think that John Mayer and Adele would both be down with coming on the show for standard PHC pay scale if timing allows. I don’t think they would divert from a tour though. The show is produced by Minnesota Public Radio and just doesn’t have the budget to make that worth their whiles.

I’m still really tickled about being right on the Auerbach call. I can’t wait to see Thile go all fanboy over the Black Keys guy. He’s totally going to go all fan boy and it’s going to be adorable. He’s totally what Andro would refer to as a Cinnamon Roll. I’m not sure where she got that. I can’t keep up with the things the kids are saying these days, but when I get ahold of what she’s saying I sure do love mangling it just to annoy her. Yes, I’m THAT kind of mom.

Speaking of moms, I had a lovely bit of texting with mine last night. We just started talking again a few weeks ago. We had a bit of a falling out after the election and didn’t speak for a few months. Either enough time has passed to give us some distance from that shit, or she’s maybe starting to see that the current political climate is causing chaos and craziness and it’s out of control and the angry mango was as bad a thing and I’d feared.

We had a post-election conversation that went something like this:

Her: At least he isn’t a criminal. Benghazi and her emails. She’s had people killed.

Me: Yes, mom, yes he is, and a dangerous, narcissistic one at that. And those other two things aren’t actually real things and no she hasn’t.

Her: Well, that’s your opinion.

No! It isn’t my opinion. Whether or not actual events did or did not happen is a matter of fact. An opinion is a stance on whether or not pineapple belongs on pizza (it does). How did this woman raise me to have such acute critical thinking skills when it appears she has none of her own?  Now that we are on speaking terms again, she is carefully avoiding politics and religion. (Which I had been previously avoiding, but she always managed to bring them up and then proceed to call me hateful and intolerant for my views about things like, you know, facts, and whether or not the NYT is a credible news source. It is.)

In the time since we last spoke, she has learned how to insert GIFs into text messages and has become for all intensive purposes (the Word Murderer used that this week and I also spit coffee out of my nose, but more on her later) a texting tween girl. She also uses the tween text abbreviations like 2 and u and b and ur and 4 – like she’s writing lyrics to a Prince song or a DJT Jr. tweet. (Seriously though, he doesn’t know the difference between Maxine Waters and Frederica Wilson and then proceeds to slut shame her over a HAT??? How the fuck is a hat slutty?) And it makes me insane! This is the woman that raised me to be a grammar Nazi (although she said last night that she prefers the term Word Warrior, which I agree is much less fascist) and from whom I inherited my knack for writing and editing.

So, the Word Murderer. Well, this week she’s used the word “understandment” repeatedly, as in “It is to my understandment that…” and she’s referred to the Hawaiian word for hello and goodbye and thank you and welcome and probably a few other things like chicken, tree, papaya, and the color mauve, as “Haloha”.  She did this on Monday like six times in the space of an hour. She’s also been bragging about her IT skills dropping terms like “chat room” and “disc drive”, because those have been relevant at any point in the past ten years, but yeah, I totally believe you’re an expert. And of course continued discussion of the ubiquitous Swifter.

And proof that I’m a Word Warrior and not a grammar Nazi? I haven’t even attempted to correct her.

Thank the fucking goddesses it’s Friday. This week has been about a month long and I’m ready to go home and sit on the porch with Grumpy and Bucky and declare it wine-thirty. 

I am not Amish, and I am devastated.

Also, Amish potato salad is a lie.

I’ve been told my entire life that on my mother’s mother’s mother’s side my heritage is Pennsylvania Dutch. I’ve always taken that to mean Amish. Pennsylvania Dutch means Amish, right? Everyone knows that Pennsylvania Dutch means Amish, or at least everyone that knows that the Pennsylvania Dutch aren’t actually Dutch, like from Holland. The name came about because the English speaking population couldn’t differentiate the word Dutch from the word Deutche, which is the German word for German, but I’m sure you knew that, and I bet you thought Pennsylvania Dutch meant Amish too, am I right? Or at least Mennonite, which is just like Amish-light.

The mere mention of Pennsylvania Dutch evokes images of horse-drawn carts and men in plain black suits with broad-brimmed hats. It brings to mind ladies in homemade dresses and bonnets, selling hand-crafted cheeses and pickles and fruit preserves and that wonderful old-fashioned potato salad made from the recipe passed from mother to daughter, generation to generation, from the Old Country.

I’ve been seeing a lot of Amish/Mennonite culture since having moved to Ohio. On our Saturday drives deep into the rural back country we see Amish and Mennonite churches, horse-cart crossing signs, farmers plowing fields with mules, and road-side market stands everywhere. One time I saw a bearded guy in a thrift store in a small town in Indiana. He was wearing a white shirt, vest, and black pants with stove-pipe legs and I thought maybe he was a hipster (I mean, that kind of is the default for quirky-looking bearded guys in the city here) until I saw several more men wandering around the store sporting matching outfits, then it clicked.

On one of our drives out towards the Appalachian foothills of the eastern Ohio River Valley I got hungry, so we stopped at a small market with a deli that offered both regular and Amish potato salad. Now, I need to set up some back story here about my history with potato salad. I am PASSIONATE about potato salad. The only other food that rivals the emotional depth that potato salad evokes in me is squash casserole, and that is another story for another day. I learned how to make potato salad from my mother who learned from her mother – very simply with boiled potatoes, chopped boiled egg, finely diced onion and celery, maybe relish but that’s iffy, lots and lots of mayonnaise, and never EVER mustard. Almost every potato salad I’ve ever had that wasn’t made by either me or a family member has had mustard in it and it’s nigh inedible. So, when I walked into this small market and was given a sample of the Amish potato salad to taste and found that *sound of angels singing on high* it tasted almost exactly like my potato salad, I immediately felt a sense of connection. This Amish potato salad was all up in my personal DNA, flowing through my veins.

I immediately went home and started researching my Pennsylvania Dutch roots, searching for a documentable connection to my Amishness. I went on an ancestry website and started building a family tree that started with my mother’s roots in Indiana and followed my lineage back through generations to Lancaster, PA, and Lancaster, PA is Amish, right? Isn’t that why Lancaster, PA exists? I found generations and generations of German names and surnames, farming families with dozens of children. Oh the thrill of discovery – all of these Amish grandmothers passing along the recipe for their wonderful potato salad until it reached me.

I traced my line, grandmother to grandmother – Hubert to Neier to Figert to my great-great-great-great grandmother, Susanna Neifertin, (have you ever heard a more German list of surnames?) born in 1794, and here’s a really cool fun fact – my grandmother Susanna is buried in the cemetery of the oldest church in Lancaster County, known locally as The Old White Church. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was founded in 1842 as St. Paul’s Union Church.

A quick Google search gave me some insight into the history of the Union church in relation to the German population of Pennsylvania and across the Midwest. The Old Country ancestors of this group of immigrants were primarily followers of Lutheran theology until Calvin and his cohorts came along and started arguing certain details of Luther’s interpretation of biblical text which then split the church into the Lutheran Church and the Reformed Church of Germany. The members of the two denominations among the New World German communities often opted to join resources and form one congregation that politely agreed to disagree with each other on whatever points of theology that separated them. One thing that the Lutherans and the Calvinists did agree on, however, was that neither of them were Amish. Not even remotely.

I went back through my research, rechecking records. Every church where we have been recorded as being buried, married, or baptized was either Reformed, Lutheran, or Union. I am not Amish. The deliciousness of potatoes, egg, and mayonnaise in Amish potato salad is not imbedded in my DNA. Disappointing, yes, but still, my ancestry is decidedly Pennsylvania Dutch farm stock and they immigrated from the same region of Germany as the Amish and had access to the same Midwestern farm ingredients and probably cooked food very much like the Amish, right? I mean, Unionist potato salad isn’t a thing I’ve ever heard of, but it could be, right? German potato salad is a thing. Maybe Reformed German potato salad is also a thing?

No. No, it isn’t. Also, Amish potato salad isn’t some magical recipe passed down mother to daughter from the Old Country.

Another quick Google search gave me some insight into the history of mayonnaise, without which, potato salad as we know it is not possible. Recipes for mayonnaise first appeared in British and German cookbooks at the end of the 1800’s. I traced my family to Lancaster County to the mid 1700’s, before the invention of mayonnaise. Mayonnaise wasn’t even introduced to the US until the 1920’s and even then was considered a luxury item – the sort of thing a private chef might serve a president (Calvin Coolidge was a fan) – until the Kraft Foods company made it commercially available in the 1930’s. At best, my potato salad recipe is 3^rd generation. Mostly likely, my great grandmother’s first taste of potato salad as I know it came from a batch made by one of her children, possibly my grandmother.

So where did Amish potato salad come from? The very devout Amish eschew modern technology. They don’t drive cars or plow with tractors. Their houses aren’t wired for electricity or plumbed for running water. They make their own candles and clothes and grown their own food. I highly doubt a mass-produced Kraft Foods product is a dietary staple. Also, every recipe I found online for so-called Amish potato salad has mustard in it. What even?

So that’s disheartening. But in my search for a DNA connection to potato salad, I learned something that almost makes up for the disappointment. My family’s religious history centers around congregations that politely agreed to disagree on certain points of theology while worshipping together as a community. Before I was born, there was some diversion from this religious path, but as an adult I’ve found my way back to it as a Unitarian Universalist. The whole agree-to-disagree-while-worshipping-as-a-community thing is just kind of what we do. So in a way, I have come full circle in the search for my family.

And my potato salad is still the bomb. 

My Trivial Tragedies

It’s been a tragic weekend and this morning isn’t panning out to be much better.

First off, I have $0.13 in my bank account because the ancestry website I was working with are idiots. I signed up for the free two-week trial with the expectation that I would be charged $19.99 a month to continue because, well, because I CLICKED THAT OPTION! My two weeks were up on Thursday of last week and instead of charging my account the expected amount, they charged me $99 for the six month plan instead. What the fuck? And even though I called and had the charge refunded, it will be 3-5 or maybe 5-7 business days (the customer service lady didn’t quite seem to have it all together) until the money shows back up in my account. Goddammnitmotherfucker.

We didn’t starve over the weekend however because even though Grump’s account was down near empty, it allowed him to make a couple of purchases that threw him into the negative (we will have to pay the overdraft fees). We filled the tank of my car all the way and did major grocery shopping because if you’re going to throw your account into the negative, make it worthwhile, right?

So we had everything we needed for a road trip and a picnic on Saturday, which was nice. Although the day started off crappy because Grump decided to pick a fight over nothing (nothing being my pickity grammatical habits) and we squabbled until he had satisfactorily annoyed me (I may have referred to him as Mr. 3^rd-Grade-Math because he had to take the remedial refresher math course when he went back to school and still sort of struggles with fractions, as does, I realize, almost everyone else who isn’t a giant nerd and I do try really hard not to rub my giant nerd-ness in people’s faces until they start pushing my buttons and then it really isn’t my responsibility if a get a bit snarky and condescending, maybe) and then he was fine but I was seething – and feeling a bit guilty for the below-the-belt insult.

Why is this game even a thing? Has anyone else experienced this absurd game? The “I’m going to poke at you until I’ve succeeded in pissing you off and when you react I will call you a bitch and then proceed to move along with my day. Then I will act clueless as to why you are still acting like a bitch even though the fight is over” game. Ridiculous man behavior.

We made up over the making of egg salad and subsequent sandwiches, kind of. I was a bit touchy for a good while after that. We finished packing the picnic and gathered Andro and the puppy (10 month old lab-mix mutt, Bucky, after the Winter Soldier – because when he isn’t acting psycho, he’s just sort of vacant and confused and sweet), picked up the Goth Child, and drove out to a park in the foothills. We had our picnic and a lovely little walk and then *just* as I was getting into the car, something stung me on the ass. Ow! I felt fully justified in whining about that all the way home, much to the delight, I’m sure, of everyone else in the car.

We got home in time to watch the live stream of A Prairie Home Companion on YouTube. I’m a tad obsessed with all things Chris Thile and Punch Brothers and now PHC because I’m a great big progressive-folk-to-post-punk-indie-pop-music-spectrum nerd. (The scope of my nerdnesses is absurd.) When everyone in my office was excitedly compiling their fantasy prediction of sportsing things during March Madness basketball last spring, PHC had just wrapped its first season with Thile as host and I devised the game of guessing who is going to be on the 2017-2018 season. (Predicting sportsings just doesn’t seem fun to me, but I wanted to predict SOMETHING so as not to feel left out, which totally didn’t work in the end.) I picked 20 artists based on a matrix of scoring that included things like new album releases, previous participation in NPR music activities, especially Tiny Desk Concerts, and a few other really nerdy things I’d noticed as patterns from last season. (I think there was one guest last season who had not done Tiny Desk, and I’m guessing he just hasn’t done Tiny Desk *yet*.)

So far out of my list of 20 I’ve gotten two points and we are only a few weeks in to a 26 show season. I’m particularly proud of my call on Dan Auerbach, who is (if you didn’t know) half of the Black Keys and also released a folky solo album in late spring. I KNEW Thile would be a Black Keys fanboy. I mean he DID have Jack White on the first episode of his first season and acted like SUCH a giddy little fanboy and anyone who gets that giddy over Jack White is a White Stripes fan and thus is also going to be into the Black Keys because the Venn diagrams on those fandoms almost completely overlap. Neither The White Stripes nor The Black Keys would really be appropriate acts for PHC, but Jack White doing throwback-to-old-style-country-music things was perfect and solo Auerbach doing folky things is just too good to pass up. Am I right? Of course I’m right. He’s going to be on next week.

Sadly, I have nobody to compare points with because, despite several pleas to my fellow music nerds on my FB feed, nobody else will play this game with me. Tragic, right? If the Regrettes end up on the show, I will have nobody over whom I may triumphantly gloat because nobody else really…..cares. Why must my life be so tragic? (And if you haven’t, check out the Regrettes cover of Fox on the Run on A. V. Undercover on YouTube. It is AMAZING.)

Right before the beginning of the show, I managed to add insult to injury. Or injury to injury. Or something. On my way down to grab the wine – because one MUST have a tasty beverage while watching the YouTube livestream of PHC – I fell down the stairs and bruised my ass in the exact same place where I’d just been stung. The fuck?

And this morning – this morning – I walked my sore, bruised, stung ass all the way across the very large campus of the complex where I work to the cafeteria, because of course the cafeteria has to be as far away as possible, to get a piece of toast (costs 50 cents, which I happen to have on me) because I have half an avocado in my lunchbox and the idea of avocado toast for breakfast seemed lovely. There was no bread and the toaster was turned off and there were no cafeteria staff around to help. And because I have 13 cents in my account, I could not afford to buy something like a muffin or pastry that cost more than the 50 cents I have on me. So now I’m getting close to hangry and that usually gets ugly fast.

I’m telling you. Tragic. 

The Word Murderer

I love words. They are my playthings. I tell people that when I was a child my favorite toys were string, dirt, and words. (And if I’m being honest about this list, probably also paper. Lots and lots of paper. And scissors and glue. Paper and scissors and glue can provide endless amounts of rainy afternoon amusement.) But words…. Oh how I love them. They are physical objects that have shape and form in my mouth. Plethora. Pink. Bohemian. (You’re saying these out loud right now, aren’t you?) Maneuver. Slacks.

Slacks is my very favorite word of all time. It fills your entire mouth, rolling from the front of the mouth to the back to the front again. I’ve been known to just say the word “slacks” over and over and over and over without any context whatsoever. Some of these instances may have been booze-fueled, but I openly admit that many of them have happened while I was stone sober. I just really love saying “slacks”. And if anyone else happens to casually drop the word into a conversation in proper context, I will start giggling for (unless you know me well enough to know my obsession with the word) what seems to be absolutely no reason. And then trying to explain why I just started giggling at what the speaker probably thinks is a perfectly sane and valid word is just……inexplicable.

Akin to my love of language is a certain, hmmm, let’s call it pickiness, in regards to grammar. I inherited this pickiness from my parents, who inherited it from their parents. Grammar mistakes at the dinner table did NOT go uncorrected. If I were to say “Me and Hortense went to the hippopotamus store today,” my father would immediately have responded with “Hortense and I, Butternut, Hortense and I!” My grandfather tried to be a bit cleverer with his correction. He would ask, “Why is Hortense mean?” Because, you know, “me and” sounds so much like “mean”. (I said *tried* to be cleverer. I didn’t say succeeded.) Other linguistic quirks that were not tolerated were misuse or mispronunciation of words and/or sayings or phrases. Family pet peeves included “whole nuther”, “for all intensive purposes”, and “could care less”.

All of this drilling has resulted in me having the same sort of cringe reaction to poor grammar and word usage as I do to things like the sound of people chewing or the sound of styrofoam rubbing against itself. (It makes a most horrid squeak. The sound causes me actual, physical pain.) I’ve social skills enough to know better than to go around correcting other people’s grammar, pronunciation, and word usage. (Unless by other people we mean my husband and children, and they are oft corrected. And that is only because I love them and do not want them to sound illiterate.) But the cringing, oh the cringing. The speech patterns of a certain current political person – whom I will not dignify by naming or even labeling by position, but who much resembles an angry mango – are to me much like an ice pick to the eardrums.

I’m also kind of persnickety about the written word. I know it would be best if I just avoided the comment section of Facebook altogether, but it’s like gawking at an accident on the side of the road. The egregious mix-ups of they’re/there/their, to/too/two, and your/you’re make me sad for humanity and certainly render the commenter’s point moot. (Note that’s moot and not mute – the point is not incapable of speech, it is invalid. They’re two totally different words. Really y’all.) Also, I have very strong opinions about the Oxford comma. I am a big fan. I am also a big fan of Vampire Weekend even if they don’t give a fuck about the Oxford comma. And I would NEVER lie to them about how much coal I have. Why would I lie about something dumb like that? Why would I lie about anything at all? (I love that song so very much.)

So, having established this as background, let me tell you a bit about my job. I work for a very large, very well-known, multi-national corporation in a marketing/PR sort of-ish position. I and my coworkers (note that I did NOT say “me and my coworkers” because they are not mean) spend a good portion of our time on the phone with people outside of our organization. I spend most of my time talking to young mothers about poop. I am the Poop Whisperer of my shared office space. The other ladies in the room talk to consumers about things not related to poop. There are five of us in our shared space, along with a supervisor. And this is where the story gets sticky.

My supervisor, who, along with supervising us, the phone-talkers, also does a good bit of phone talking because that’s primarily what we do in this office. We talk to people outside of our organization as representatives of our very large, very well-known, multi-national corporation. And she can’t speak English. Like, she can’t say words. It’s baffling. I have never not once heard her say “supposed to”. It’s always either “opposed to” or just “posta”. She says fessball for festival – today she was going on and on and on about a punkin fessball, which she went to last year. She said”punkin” about twenty times in the span of about 90 seconds. This year she went to a batato fessball where she ate all kinds of batato foods like mashed and fried and SHE SAID BATATO!!!!

She adds the letter T into words randomly, but takes it out if it belongs there. The mop thing that you use to clean floors is a Swifter. Makes me wonder if there is perhaps a Less Swift or a Swiftest. You can buy said Swifter at a Walmark’s. She also said she wouldn’t check baggage on a plane because she was afraid it would get ramshacked and someone would steal her stuff. Today she told a lovely little story about a boy and his gadora – you know, the old fashioned hat that men wore with suits.

Also, any anecdote she tells will involve her saying repeatedly, “I says I says I says I says” like some female, nasal sounding incarnation of Foghorn Leghorn. And her grammar. Oh my sweet lord. She has a gift for mismatching her tenses and subject/verb number agreements. And I just sit here, without comment, wanting to bang my head on my desk. It wouldn’t be so awful if she weren’t my supervisor and in charge of representing our company on the phone to the public. I mean, how did she even get through the job interview? Why would anyone hire this word murderer to be their representative to the public? The other big gear grinder that makes things so much worse is that she is ever so condescending. My god, this woman can shut you down so hard that not only do you not know what you’re talking about, you aren’t even actually saying the words that are coming out of your mouth. That level of shut-down is a special talent.

So there’s that part of my life. I do really, really love my job. I love talking to moms about poop. I’m not being sarcastic or ironic about that. I like the interaction with people and poop is amusing. And almost everyone else I work with is amazing. It’s just this one woman. This one word murderer. 

Escalating Quickly

I started this little blog adventure off with a sweet enough little story, and now I’m going to escalate quickly to darker territory. I’m going to tell you about myself and introduce my family.

I’ve already stated that I am a wife and mother, and I’m going to be straight up honest with you – I have NOT enjoyed parenting. I doubt that I’d have taken to it even if I’d given birth to perfectly gifted little snowflakes. I have the kind of mind and personality that craves challenging employment and the company of adults. But my children, through no fault of their own – or mine, for that matter – weren’t the easiest children to raise. But I’m jumping ahead maybe……

My husband, who shall henceforth be known as GrumpyNut, is retired military. We have three children. Two boys, NutOne and NutTwo, who are in their late teens and living on their own in the house they grew up in (and which we still own and pay the mortgage on) in the smallish town in the south where we landed as our last duty station and where we stayed for the next several years.  They wanted to make an attempt at adulting so we allowed them to remain there when we moved to Ohio last year. N1 is old enough to be on his own, legally, but has some difficulties here and there with mild autism. He wasn’t diagnosed until he was nine. Our previous duty station was in a very small, backwater town and had no pediatric behavioral health services and all we could get from that particular military medical community was that he had ADHD and we should take parenting classes. The diagnosis (once we were transferred back to civilization) was a HUGE relief – he had something neurological and his issues weren’t a result of my poor parenting skills. We got a much later start with him than would have been ideal, but he did respond to some of the therapies we tried with him and he is functioning fairly well as an adult.

N2 isn’t quite old enough to legally be on his own yet, but is quickly approaching, and it’s perfectly legal for him to live with someone else who is of the age of majority. He has made it more than abundantly clear that he has zero interest in being parented. We certainly did try. We started worrying about his behavioral issues when he was just toddling. He was prone to horrible tantrums for no reason and extremely violent outbursts that were physically hard for me to deal with even then – tantrums and outbursts that lasted well past the “terrible” years. We had him evaluated when he was pre-K and got a diagnosis of ADHD. (They liked that diagnosis down there in Backwater.) Even at that age he refused to cooperate with any form of therapy or medical intervention. Later, he was diagnosed with “intermittent explosive disorder”, which means his mental thermostat goes from perfectly fine to Incredible Hulk without passing go or collecting $200. This is an actual neurological condition I did not know about until right at that moment.

Growing up, he stubbornly resisted every attempt to help, advise, discipline, treat, motivate, etc. We are a tall family and he shot up well over 6’ before he was 14. His violent outbursts became more than we could handle and the police had to get involved on several occasions. At 15, he decided he was done with school and that was that. On the rare occasions we were able to get him up and in school, he would act out until the school just sent him home in frustration. It’s like the school system just lost him, and I feel much like I’ve lost him too.

My daughter, AndrogyNut (she chose that as her blog name, btw), lives with us in our new home in Ohio. She is a large part of the reason we made the move. She is an odd little muffin too. She also was diagnosed early with severe ADHD and anger issues not *quite* as bad as her brother, but close. The school system was failing her just as hard as it had failed her brother and by middle school she seemed on the brink of just dropping out of life. She had no friends and spent all of her time alone in her room reading and drawing. She also resisted every attempt we made at therapy or medical intervention. I knew if I didn’t get her out of that school system and out from under the weight of her brother’s behavioral issues, I’d lose her too.

Since the move, she has made HUGE strides. I’m overwhelmed by the transformation she’s made from a feral, Nell-child thing to being an actual person functioning in society. I mean, she’s still a little weirdo with ADHD, but she is a freshman in high school working in an independent study program run by the school system and actually engaging in lessons and learning. She has a little group of friends that are just as geeky and adorkable and she is, and, as of about three weeks ago, is in her first romantic relationship. Her girlfriend is the most adorable little goth thing you’ve ever seen – like straight out of 1993. The boys never really dated so the whole teen-angst-romantic-relationship thing is entirely new to me. Oh boy.

I also made this move for myself. The situation I was in had gotten so bad that I had not only lost myself, but my sense of reality. I didn’t even know how dysfunctional my living situation was until I came up here to visit a friend (a fellow military wife from when we lived in Backwater) and got some distance and perspective. She convinced me that I had to get out and that I had to get Andro out if either of us were to survive. Grumpy was not initially very receptive to the idea, but I kind of only gave him the choice to come along or not, and he chose to come along.

So this is our life now – in the Midwest – which wasn’t even really a real place in my head until a couple of years ago. I mean, I knew it existed, but I knew it existed in the same way I know Mozambique exists.  I figured my chances of living – or even visiting either place – were probably about equal. I’ve survived the hardest part of the parenting thing. I’m finally in a place where I can actually hold a full time job. I kind of randomly stumbled into a position at a huge corporation in a capacity that is somewhat related to PR. Grumpy, who’s worked 40+ hours for the past nearly 30 years at the same basic job (he got a position with DoD directly after retirement doing pretty much exactly the same thing as a civilian as he did when he was active duty). He is working part time now and going to school full time to be a nurse. Our roles are almost entirely reversed with me being the 9-to-5-er and him being more the house-husband.

We have a cute little house with a front yard garden that is, for the most part, a pleasant place to be. Keeping house is much easier now without small children making messes faster than I can clean them up. The environment is much less stressful – enough so that Andro and her friends have decided our house is the best place to hang. I’m happy, for the most part, if a bit fragile. I still have some difficulty wanting to do anything but work and sleep unless Grumpy convinces me to go for a walk or a drive through the countryside. I’ve always been an extreme extrovert but found myself withdrawing over the past couple of years. I feel like I am finally beginning to regain my personhood.  We found a church we like and last spring I sang in the choir. I haven’t seemed to be able to motivate myself back to choir practice yet again this fall, but baby steps.

Baby steps. 

An introduction and also a funny story. 

Also kind of a metaphor for how my life pretty much works.

I moved to Ohio last year, so this summer was my first summer in the new house. The new house doesn’t really have a front yard. It is a very narrow house with a covered porch and below that a garage door that connects to the basement. An 8’x8’ raised flower bed runs alongside the porch steps at about waist height. The new house is in a neighborhood full of gorgeous front yard gardens – urban farming is all the rage where I live – and I wanted to join the party. I knew just what I wanted. I wanted lots of herbs, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and squash – the yellow crook-neck kind you use for squash casserole because squash casserole is my very favorite thing in the entire world.

We went to the farmer’s market on a Saturday in May and a nice farmer man had lots and lots of healthy looking seedlings in plastic crates clearly labeled in front. Summer sweet peppers, Japanese eggplant, chocolate cherry and sungold tomatoes, and summer squash – everything we were looking for. We carefully arranged all of our new babies in the cardboard flat he provided and carted them home to lovingly plant them in the flower bed.

Our babies were thrilled with their new home in our front yard garden. The tomatoes sprouted up tall and proud and had to be tied to the railing of the steps for support. The eggplant and peppers flowered. We kept the herbs well-trimmed and they bushed out as desired. Lemon basil is one of the most delicious things you will ever smell. The squash plants had some trouble taking off, but eventually they grew strong base stems and began to vine and flower as well.

Along with our lovely seedlings, we hung baskets of a mix of vivid pink and purple flowers from the porch roof, and those flowers, along with the wonderful herbs, helped to attract all of the bees and butterflies we needed to turn the blooms into fruits. It also attracted hummingbirds, which don’t help the garden but they’re amazing little buggers.

The peppers started out as tiny green bumps pushing out from a closed bud. The eggplant pushed forth tiny, oblong, deep-purple blobs from deep purple pods. They looked like alien egg pods growing. They're amazing. The tomatoes just went nuts with the fruiting.

The squash vines grew out from the bed and down along the driveway in front of the garage door. They reached out forward between the herbs and toward the street. They worked their way backwards and behind the tomatoes to climb the porch rails. And bloomed like CRAZY. And then finally, FINALLY, the squash blooms began to sprout tiny fruits – tiny, green striped, very-not-crook-neck shaped fruits.

I took a picture of the very-not-crook-neck fruit and posted it to my Facebook page. It was agreed among my Facebook friends that it very much resembled a butternut squash. But…..I didn’t plant butternut squash. I didn’t WANT butternut squash. I like eating butternut squash but I hate trying to cook it because I do not have the table saw one needs to get through one. I’m not a fan of cooking winter squash in general. And dammit, I wanted that yellow squash for casserole!

I did some research. Summer squash, like yellow squash and zucchini, do not vine. They bush. Winter squash, like butternut and acorn, vine. More evidence that I was not growing casserole squash. And then, upon further examination – well, upon actually bothering to look – I found the little plastic thing you stab in the dirt by a seedling to identify it – the one that comes with the seedling when you buy it.  It said butternut. The nice farmer man had mislabeled the crate of squash and I hadn’t bothered to look at the tag. Typical.

Our butternut squash thrived. Our fellow urban-farming neighbors often walked up and down the block and complimented us on our lovely garden. We ended up getting about five healthy, heavy, hard-fleshed fruits from our vines. I gave them all away to the fellow-farming neighbors. We bonded. Now we’re friends.

And that’s how my life goes – not as planned because most of the time I’m just not paying attention, but not badly either because the little things I don’t plan for end up pretty cool anyway. And my neighbors promised me pie. So there’s that.