The hard part of co-habitation.

I am basically happily married. Seriously. For someone who avoided any sort of romantic entanglement for decades and then had to be dragged kicking and screaming into a relationship, I am pretty damn contented. I love Bing and while I am not the best partner in the world, I do try. Much more than she knows. I think she sees me as always eying the door, but truly, I am committed to this.

But, I do get weary of the monotony of marriage, the lack of surprise. I have known Bing since I was 18 and we became dorm mates. She says that she fell in love me within one hour of our meeting but would have asked for a new roomie if she had known going in that I would take 28 years to finally fall in love with her.

I know her like I know the back of my hand. Before we were partners, we were best friends. She was the one who I called when I was almost date raped. I was the first person she called from the hospital when she was in a bad car wreck.

I know what she is going to say before she opens her mouth. I call them Bing-isms. And honestly? They sort of drive me nuts.

1) "Welcome to the world of fill-in-the-blank."

She says this about EVERYTHING. If I am bitching about a problem with our house, she says, "Welcome to the world of home ownership." If I am bitching about a problem I am having with Liv, she says, "Welcome to the world of parenting." If I am having trouble with my secretary at work, she says, "Welcome to the world of being the boss."

Sometimes when she starts saying, "Welcome to the world of...." I want to jump in and scream, "WELCOME to the world of living with a woman who sounds like some sort of folksy Jimmy Stewart movie."

2) "May I make a suggestion?"

Ugh. I HATE this one. This comes up when I am wearing high heels and it is icy outside. When I am baking anything. When I am loading the dishwasher.

I swear to sweet baby Hey Zeus that I hear her voice as a running soundtrack in my life. When I am teetering on heels on ice patches, I can hear her voice telling me that I should have worn sensible shoes. Or better yet: BOOTS. When I am baking cookies, I can hear her whispering that I am using that butter with too free a hand. When I am loading the dishwasher, I can hear her voice telling me that I am putting the silverware in incorrectly. The knives should go down. The spoons should go up.

I am not a practical rule-based person. I am an Aquarius (my bff would say and she knows this sort of shit) married to a Virgo. I kind of like slapping things in the dishwasher willy nilly. If I feel like wearing heels, I wear them. When I bake, a recipe is just a guide, not a dictation. Bing, on the other hand, has die hard rules that she follows to a T.

Swab down the faucets after every use.
Always be prepared to get stuck in the snow, have a bag of warm clothes in the back seat. Also salt.
Follow recipes to the letter. If it says to use a mixer, use a mixer. Don't decide that you don't feel like yanking down the mixer from the top shelf and you will just make a game with your daughter to see who can mix the hardest with the wooden spoon.
Read self help books religiously and make lists on how to improve yourself and your life.
Don't eat after seven p.m. Okay, once in a while if your spouse feels like having a bowl of ice cream while you watch Fringe together, give in. But then complain the next day that all that lactose made your boobs itch all night.
Save every piece of mail that you get. Who knows? That ad for Rogaine might come in handy for your cousin twice removed who is losing his hair.
Take five minute showers. Religiously. Try to enforce this rule with your wife and child too. Stand outside the shower when your wife is taking too long and remind her that she is not helping to save energy. Look shocked and hurt when she gives you the finger.
Regard junk food as the devil's play toys. When you see your wife eating a snickers bar, shake your head and remind her that this is not good for her blood sugar.
Always carry extra mittens. Your wife always forgets to put on gloves and she will sit hunched in the car with her hands up against the heaters, shivering. Sigh. Reach into the glove box and get the mittens out for her.
Have strict rules about how to water and feed plants. Chastise your wife when she over waters or feeds. Then frown when all of her plants do better than yours because this is illogical. She is not following the gardening rules! WHY do her plants thrive when yours don't?
Always remember to turn on the electric blanket an hour before bedtime so that it is warm when you turn in. When your wife sarcastically accuses you of wasting energy, tell her that you do it for HER. A loving gesture because you know how her feet are always cold.
Grocery shop like a fiend. Always have a stack of coupons. Even if your wife prefers Skippy Super Chunk peanut butter, buy Jif because it is on SALE and peanut butter is peanut butter. When your wife puts oreos in the cart, raise your eyebrow and read the list of ingredients OUT LOUD to her to show her how BAD these are for her. Try to convince her to put sprouts on her cheese sandwiches because seriously, broccoli sprouts are incredibly good for everyone.
Put all of your cds in alphabetical order according to the artist. When your wife feels like listening to your Sheryl Crow cd, remind her to put it back where it belongs. Don't even crack a smile when she says that she will put it back where it belongs if you remember to hang up your coat in the closet. And then shake your head when she listens to ONE song on the cd ("MISSISSIPPI") and then carelessly puts it back in the Sheryl Crow section but in the wrong order.
Each and every time it is supposed to snow, say, "It looks like there is a big one coming tonight, honey." Even if it is just supposed to be a dusting.
Eat Greek food and then try to kiss your wife even though she has told you 287 times that she DETESTS the way your breath smells after you eat Greek food.

Ok. Now. It would be easy for someone to think that I am unhappily married, wouldn't it? But, no. Actually, I have just come to the realization that

THIS IS MARRIAGE.

And I am not stupid. For every list of bitches I have concerning Bing, I could counter it with a list of things that I adore about her. And I know that she carries a list around in her head too about me.

I used to think that everyone else was blissfully in love with their spouse ALL THE TIME. And then one day, I sat in a diner with my bff and tearfully told her that I was having a very bad week with Bing and honestly, if she said, "May I make a suggestion?" one more freakin' time, I was going to throw a vase at her...Harriet, bff extraordinaire said:

"If I had a dollar for every time I wanted to slap my husband, I would be able to buy those new Ferragamo shoes."

And it hit me. THIS IS MARRIAGE.

You have the good: the times when she sits on the sofa and pulls your feet into her lap and gently rubs your bunions after a long day of work when you wore those heels that make your feet hurt.

And you have the bad: the times when she comes in the back door and leaves her god damn shoes ON THE RUG RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE DOOR SO THAT EVERYONE CAN TRIP ON THEM.

And it all comes down to this:

You put up with the bad parts because you acknowledge that this person is human and so are you. And the perk is that you have someone next to you to walk through this confusing world with, side by side, hand in hand and they will look over at you and smile.

Because honestly, you are so so lucky. And so is she. Or he. And you both know it.

So, now...time to get ready to go to Liv's basketball game. I know that Bing will ask me 46 times if we remembered to shut the garage door as we drive to the game. She will also ask me 12 times if the game is at Kiewit school even though it is ALWAYS there.

And if my hands get cold, she will sigh, shake her head and pull out extra mittens for me....

the promise of spring

It was the kind of weekend that I am not crazy about....too crammed with....stuff.

1) Grocery shopping. Ugh. HATE shopping. Especially with Bing, the label reader. She reads EVERY ingredient in EVERY product and drives me nuts by agonizing over small details. Does this cereal have enough fiber to warrant all those carbs? WHY is there sugar in this?

I'm a fast shopper. I stick to my list and grab whatever is on sale or looks okay. Milk is easy. I always buy Vitamin D. Believe it or not, it doesn't make my blood sugar go up as much as the skim does...fat CAN be good. Bread? I prefer rye but will get sourdough for Liv or multi grain for Bing if I am feeling charitable. Fruit? Easy. Honey Crisp apples are the best. Tangerines trump oranges. Green grapes are tastier than red. Peaches. Pears. Especially japanese pears. The best. Now, Bing likes what I call the yucky fruits; grapefruit, plums and prunes.

2) Stupid time consuming chores: picking up dry cleaning, gassing up the car, buying birthday cards for family members that I don't especially like, picking up books on hold at the library.

3) Too many extra curricular activities: a friend of ours is in town, giving a concert at the Holland Arts Center this week (hint: she was up for a GRAMMY!) so we are going to hear her sing. Afterward, we will go to the party that there always is. This will be hard for me and even harder for Bing because there will be um....drugs. Yes. Good ones too. Pot. No meth, etc. but some pretty good things. I will look longingly at the drugs and want to hit that bong but decide not to since Liv might be still up when we get home and I don't want her to smell it on me. I also wouldn't relish watching Bing look at me in horror as if I had a starring role in Reefer Madness. Bing will be MORTIFIED because as much as she loves our friend, she detests drugs of any kind and as she will say to me 497 times in the car on the way home: "I am a TEACHER. I have a RESPONSIBILITY to not only stay away from drugs but I feel TERRIBLE even being around them!"

I will nod sweetly, but inside I will be thinking, "Oh, for fuck sakes, LOOSEN UP, DUDE!"

4) The weather sucks. It is cold, snowy and windy. No sunshine spilling anywhere. Just gloom.

So, imagine my surprise when this happened:

I had just come home from Whole Foods (and THANK YOU GOD, my partner...who reminds me of Will Geer when we shop, was NOT with me because she had left to do her own chores) and was getting ready to lug in the pricey groceries that I had indulged in (incredibly good goat milk yogurt and milk, some day lilies for our dining room table and steel cut Irish oatmeal) when I heard this sound that stopped me in my tracks.

What the hell was that?

I looked around wildly until I spied it.

A cardinal sitting up in the bare branches of our red bud tree.

It was dusk and he was SINGING.

I haven't heard a bird sing in SOOOOO long.

My eyes filled with tears.

"Oh, THANK YOU!" I called to him. "Thank you so much, bird!"

He kept singing.

And I stood there in my snowy driveway with bags of groceries in my arms, smiling like a loon.

Another month and it will be here.

Spring.

God...not again....:)

I swore that I would NOT watch IDOL this year. Last year, I only watched it to see what Ellen would be like on it and before I could say, "Simon is so fucking MEAN!" I was pulled in by Lee DeWyze. I became one of those fan girls who watch religiously. I DID NOT VOTE though...felt that I was not going to go that crazy route...but I watched every single episode, watching and melting each and every time Lee took the stage.

And then he WON the damn thing, so I made Bing take me to the American Idol concert when it came to Des Moines. I told her that it was the ONLY thing that I wanted for my birthday, so she could hardly turn me down. And she went...but thought that it was lame. She didn't even like Lee that much, called him a decent coffee house singer, no more no less.

So when IDOL came on this year, I said I wouldn't watch it and then Livvy and I decided to watch just to see if there was anyone interesting.

And....gulp...there was.

This guy:



Paul McDonald. I am predicting that once again, a white male guitar player is gonna take the whole thing.

And Bing is sitting on the sofa with her head in her hands thinking, "NOT AGAIN!"

Take a gander....

One of the best I've seen.....

Letter to Liv: I wish you could have known him.

Hi, sugarfoot,
I enjoyed our morning today at the Museum. I enjoyed our tasty lunch at Guaca Maya (and who knew that I liked cactus?) and had a blast at the Mexican grocery store with you, hunting down Mexican oatmeal and horchata mix. Now that we are back home and you are out to a movie with Mandy, I am sitting here thinking about your questions and other things that come to my mind.

Today at the Lincoln Exhibit at the Museum, you asked me why I kept getting choked up with tears. You said, "I knew that you liked Lincoln, but I didn't know that you liked him THAT much, Mama!"

Well, I almost cried for two reasons: 1) I truly do love Abraham Lincoln. I think he is one of my favorite people to study. I have read so many books about his life and watched so many documentaries about him that I feel that he is a good friend. 2) What you don't know is that my Da, your Grandpa, was the one who introduced me to Lincoln and his life. So, seeing this exhibit made me ache for my Da in a way that I hope you will never have to understand.

I was younger than you are now when he died, Liv. I was barely 10 years old. And he and I were as close as you and I are now. Last year, I often looked at you and wondered how you would fare if I died. Sounds gruesome, doesn't it? I'm sorry, honey. It's just...I wish so much that you could have known your grandpa. Oh, how he would have loved you!

He was born in a place called Killarney in County Kerry in southwestern Ireland. They moved to America when he was an infant. He grew up listening to his mother tell him stories of the black valley and achadh deo, places that she missed and hoped that he would get back to see.

My Da was very good looking in the way that some Irish men are in what is referred to as the black Irish look. He had jet black hair and light blue eyes and skin that was fair like mine is today. He loved learning and was the smartest man I ever knew even though he never went further than the eighth grade! He had to quit then, as his father's emphysema was getting bad and he was the oldest son, so needed to run the family farm. He didn't let lack of schooling stop him, though. He read anything and everything and he discovered that he loved poetry best, especially Walt Whitman although he always had a soft spot in his heart for the old Irish poets, Joyce and Yeats, too.

He married my mother when they were both 22. My mother, your grandmother, was his true opposite. She had her feet planted firmly on the ground while he lived in the clouds on a daily basis. She was thrifty and plain spoken, practical and not inclined to be a dreamer. To this day, I have no idea what they saw in each other but I do know that they did love each other, my aunts and uncles tell me so. Maybe they were attracted to the parts in each other that they lacked. At any rate, they had four daughters and while my Da and I were close, my mother and I knocked heads from my birth. I am told that I was born with the cord wrapped around my neck and that my ever practical mother reached down herself and untangled the cord before they doctor could do so.

"I'll not be wanting a half wit on my hands, thank you very much," she supposedly said. I'm pretty certain that she thought that maybe she hadn't got to me quite fast enough anyway. I was so much like my Da with my dreamy wanderings and tendency to get lost in imaginary places in my head that I drove her crazy. We never got along.

Liv, I adored my Da. He and I kept a running oral story between us called The Adventures of Da and Maria. He started the story when I was in kindergarten and it continued until he died when I was in fifth grade. He would go on for a while and then turn it over to me and I would continue. He often took us back to Killarney, to places I had never heard of but was enchanted by. When it was my turn to tell the story, I would put us in danger of being swallowed by a roving sea monster or a giant. He always saved the day by taking over the story and turning the sea monster into a sad creature who was just lonely and wanted a friend or making the giant a gourmet cook of buttermilk cherry pancakes who just wanted someone to try out his cooking SO BADLY. My Da and I would go for our long walks on our farm, holding hands in all weather or sitting on the porch together, me cuddled in his lap under his big warm coat while we talked and spun our stories as the autumn leaves fell around us.

And then my mother would come out, hands on her hips, shaking her red hair at us. She would command me to get up and come in and try on Celia's coat from last year to see if it could be made to fit me since it still had good use to it or she would haul me up and tell me to pull up my socks for the love of pete and come with her to buy some new shoes since my old ones were pinching my toes.

My mother supplied the wherewithal to keep me warm and dry. My Da supplied the warmth that circled my heart. I needed both of them to survive, but I needed him so much more.

My Da taught me the constellations. That is how I knew to teach you. My Da read me The Gettysburg Address and The Emancipation Proclamation when I was barely seven. He would read it, stopping line by line to make sure that I understood it and if I didn't, to clarify. He thought that Abraham Lincoln was one of the most interesting, most impressive men who had lived. He told me his entire life story and in the third grade, I stunned my teacher on President's day by reciting the Gettysburg Address by heart.

He read Walt Whitman to me, even the racier parts. He didn't explain them to me really, just told me to enjoy the language and that he would clarify for me when I was thirteen! He read "O Captain! my Captain!" to me and wept as he told me that it was a poem dedicated to Lincoln.

He read to me daily and not childrens books usually. He read Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" to me and when he wept at this passage, I did too, although I had no idea why I was doing so.

"My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath; a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I AM Heathcliff! He is always, always in my mind, not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being....

Later, we discussed it and he told me that he hoped that one day I would find a man to love that I could feel that way about. I don't think your grandpa really understood much about bi-sexuality or homosexuality, he was a product of his generation, so it would have never occurred to him to say marriage partner or significant other. Or...I dunno. Maybe he did, Liv, but felt that I was too young to speak of such things.

He read To Kill A Mockingbird to me and carefully tried to explain the concept of rape to my 9 year old self. I think he said something like rape was when a man "did things" to a lady that she did not wish him to do or some such thing. At any rate, I did not for one second believe that Tom Robinson could ever have hurt that girl and when the jury found him guilty, I made fists and cried and kept telling my Da that it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair! I remember him gently pulling me into his lap and suggesting that if I became a lawyer, perhaps I could right some of the wrongs in the judicial system.

I think he would have been very surprised at my choice of a career, Liv. He told me once that I would make a fine writer but not once did he tell me that I should be a doctor.

As I told you, I was only 10 when he died. He had always been frail healthwise. He had terrible migraines (yes, like I have now...and I can only hope that this somehow skips you) and like me, he was a type 1 diabetic. But, unlike me, he was just a magnet for colds and flu. I remember my mother being so edgy with him because he seemed to constantly have a cold or a sinus infection. If there was a rusty nail to be stepped on, he found it. Like me, he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in his thirties and like me, he had to use a cane sometimes when he walked.

Now, Liv, I don't want you to fret that I will die young because he did. There has been an almost remarkable amount of progress in the last twenty years treating diabetes, RA and even migraines. I am so much luckier than he was because I have so many more options than he did. I intend to dance at your wedding (if you choose to marry) and your college graduation (which I EXPECT you to have) and I want to hold any children that you decide you wish to have too. So, no worries.

My Da died of heart/kidney complications resulting from pneumonia. He died on Christmas Day when I was 10. It was easily the worst day of my life. My oldest sister, your Aunt Patrice remembers driving home from the hospital with my mother after he died and my mother sitting in the car outside and saying, "Oh, dear mother of Jesus (she was Irish too...so she said "Jaysus"!), how will I tell Maria? She's like the branch of his tree. This will kill her!"

It almost did. I went from being a playful dreamer slip of a girl to a silent waif. I refused to speak for nearly a year and then only began to do so again after my mother sat down with me and told me that if I did not start talking again, she would be forced to take me to a special doctor who helped little girls talk again and that would cost money, so what would we do for milk for baby Jessie?

You know who finally really saved me?

Abraham Lincoln.

I was paging through one of my Da's books on him when I found this letter that he wrote to a girl who had lost her father and was refusing to get out of her bed:

"You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say....." Lincoln to Fanny McCullough on the death of her father, December 23, 1862.

I still miss my Da. He has been dead for forty two years now. Oh, Livvie, he would have been so delighted with you! Your bright mind, your soft heart, your big wide jack o'lantern smile. He would have said that this was the Irish in you shining through. I think your dad would argue that, though! He would say it was your Native American blood shining through. Perhaps it is both. All I know is that he would have been with us at that Lincoln exhibit today if he were alive and able.

And that is why I felt like crying.

I just missed him.

After he died, I went on. Just as you will go on when I die. (Which hopefully will be when you are an older lady.) It was not easy, my mother and I never were able to really get along. Once, she shocked me when I was sixteen. I had said something to her about how she never wanted to read anything that I wrote and she whirled around at me, eyes blazing. She said, "Why would I want to? You are just like him with your dreamy words and lack of sense. You can put fancy words on paper but you act like you are too good to slop the pigs or milk the cows. You spend every minute with your head in a book, just like he did. Have you even noticed that the baseboards need dusting?"

And then she took the sheaf of poems out of my hands, threw them into the air and stalked out.

I sat on the bed after she left for a long time. I didn't cry, I was too much my mother's child to do that. But, yes, being my Da's girl too, my heart ached fiercely and my eyes, though dry, felt hot. And then, I got up and walked down the stairs one at a time with a dust rag in my hand and dusted the baseboards, which were yes, very dusty. And no, I hadn't noticed. When I got to the bottom, my mother came out of the kitchen and looked at me as if she wanted to apologize, but she didn't. Instead, she handed me a bowl of sugar peas to snap and we both sat on the porch together and snapped those peas, not saying a word. And then she went into the house and came out with a brush and some bands and brushed my hair and put it into a long french braid. It was her way of being close to me and I welcomed it.

She also gave me a piece of paper on the day that I left home for college. It was a list that my Da had written to his daughters about what sort of man to marry. It said:

1) Make sure that he opens doors for you. If he doesn't open your door, he was not raised with good manners.
2) Does he treat his mother well? Now, mind you, this doesn't mean that I want you to marry a mama's boy. He should be respectful of his mother, but not dote on her. If there is an argument, you want him to be on your side not hers.
3) Is he good with children? Does he hold them by their armpits and swing them around the yard? If he is good with children now, he will be a good father later.
4) He should never drink so much that he can't see you safely home.
5) Does he look at you like he can't believe he is so lucky? That is how I felt every time I gazed at my Lily, your mother.
6) Religion and politics do not matter all that much. Yes, I mean that, although your mother will disagree. Let me just say that she goes to mass every Sunday and I don't really see the need, god is in nature. And she is a republican and I am a democrat and in the end, it doesn't matter. It does make for some spirited discussion, though.
7) Lastly, never marry a man who raises a hand to anyone easily. Fists should never be used near a woman, Ever.

My mother gave all of her daughters copies of that list and I think it still stands today, although I think that it can be modernized to include all love choices, not just men.

Liv, this is your long winded mama giving you an answer to your simple question. That is why I almost cried today.

I love you, honey. Let's read together soon, yes. Your pick of the book. Promise.

How do I explain that this is just life?

Liv and Constance. Constance and Liv. Peanut butter and jelly. Peaches and cream. Chips and dip. Sunrise and sunset.

They have been best friends since kindergarten, both of them die hard Montessori girls, happy in their small, green, safe school.

They met in pre-school when Liv was a timid four year old, holding on to my skirt with both hands and then surprising me by suddenly flinging my skirt up into the air and taking refuge under it, her little face pressed tightly against my leg. Arms wrapped so tightly around me, tear strained face burrowed hot into the side of me.

Constance came over and stood in front of me, a chubby blond girl with a smattering of freckles across her nose.

"Is that your little girl?" she asked me. "Is she scared because it's her first day?"

I nodded, trying carefully to untangle myself from Liv without showing everyone in the room my underpants. The little girl peeked under my skirt.

"Come out!" she demanded. "We get muffins for a treat after dance time and most of us are nice except for Erik, he picks his nose and wipes it on people."

Eventually, between me, the little girl and Liv's teacher, we got Liv out from under my skirt. The teacher introduced Liv to the blond girl.

"This is Constance," she told her. "She was new last month and she can show you our pet rat. His name is Matt the rat."

Liv allowed Constance to take her hand and thus, took her first steps away from me into the land of school.

They didn't become best friends until the next year in kindergarten. And then they were tight.

They stayed tight through 1st grade, 2nd grade, 3rd grade, 4th grade and 5th grade. Constance lived about five blocks away from us and it seemed that either she was with us or Liv was with her family, a wonderful group of people consisting of an actor father, a massage therapist mother, a rollicking baby brother and a live in grandmother who baked the best lemon tarts that I have ever eaten.

Constance celebrated every birthday with Liv, who never wanted a big party, just a dinner out with Bing, me and Constance.

Liv celebrated every birthday with Constance, who always wanted a huge party with a theme, usually princesses or magicians.

Constance and Liv share the exact same hair color: honey blond that shines blonder in the summer and dark honeyed in the winter. Liv's hair is seal straight while Constance has unruly curls. Liv's skin tone is olive, Constance's more of a pinkish tone with the ever present freckles across her nose. Liv had and still has, exactly eight freckles on her nose. We count them every year on her birthday.

Liv's eyes are a dark, deep brown, Constance has light blue eyes that her father calls Paul Newman blue. Liv is almost always the tallest in the class, taller than even the boys while Constance is one of the smaller girls, petite and round, full cheeks to Liv's sharper cheekbones.

They have baked cakes together in my kitchen more times than I can say, starting with my supervision and finally getting so good at baking that I can leave them alone and go read my book assured that they won't burn down the house. Constance has slept over so many times that I no longer blush when she sees me walking around in my long tee shirt in the mornings. I've made pancakes many, many times and carried them out on paper plates to stand at the foot of Liv's tree house and call up, "Who's hungry for pancakes this morning?" Two sun splashed faces lean over the side and call back, "ME! ME!" and come scampering down to gobble up the pancakes, feeding pieces to Socks as he dances around them begging.

I have photos of the two of them everywhere, their two happy faces mashed together, Liv's jack o'lantern smile merging into Constance's slightly buck toothed grin.

They have ridden bikes together back and forth to each other's houses, had lemonade stands that we so successful in the summer that they were able to buy a brand new guinea pig with joint custody and when we went to hear that new upstart Barrack Obama speak at the auditorium, Constance was with us.

Liv is the one in practical clothes, jeans and tee shirts. Constance is the one in prissy girl outfits, pink ruffles with bows in her braids. Liv helps Constance with her math, Constance helps Liv with....well....let's just say that Constance is more interested in dancing during gym class than in studying. Constance is the one who can never play the night before a project is due because her mother will lament to me on the phone that, "She ALWAYS does this! Waits until the last moment and then drives us all insane with her fretting and staying up until midnight finishing the damn thing!"

When Liv and Constance started a rock band with three other girls from their Montessori class, Mullet Proof, Constance was like Belinda Carlisle from The Go Gos with her strong vocals and wild front-and-center dancing. Liv was Jane Wiedlin parked in the back, playing the piano, violin or guitar, the one who composed most of their songs and threw back her head and laughed whenever Constance dramatically did a cartwheel across the parlor. When they played their songs for me as I listened from the kitchen as I started dinner, I would clap at the end and Constance was the one who would yell out, "Thank you, OMAHA! We're MULLET PROOF!"

This year seemed like it would be like the other years. It would be their last year at Montessori. Their school only goes to sixth grade. So...kind of a bittersweet year. Constance's mother,Daria and I had discussed junior highs. They were leaning towards sending Constance to the private school down the block from us but money was going to be very tight. Liv and I had looked into this school and neither one of us were impressed. Liv thought their sports, science and math teams sucked and frankly, I was horrified at the moneyed students that went there. One boy nonchalantly walked into the office as Liv and I sat waiting for our tour and asked the secretary if she could change a hundred dollar bill. His father had given it to him for lunch money that morning and he wanted to break it to buy a soda before school. I was not inclined to send my daughter there despite it's close proximity.

I told Daria that while I was hoping that she might choose another Montessori school in the far west area of our city, that I had left the final decision up to Liv and she had narrowed it down to St. Peter's or St. Brigid's. She had liked the robotics lab at St. Peter's but thought that the kids seemed friendlier at St. Brigid's. Daria and I had smiled sadly at each other, knowing that our girls would most likely be separated finally.

But now, it seems that they have done it on their own.

I had noticed that we were seeing less and less of Constance and more and more of Mandy, a nice enough girl who lived at the other end of the city from us. Once or twice, I had asked Liv about it but she had just shrugged and seemed uninterested in going into details. More often than not, Liv was alone when I got home from work in the evenings. Bing told me that she'd noticed that when she picked Liv up from school every day, that Constance had been going off with one of the other girls, a black haired girl named Isobel who wore designer jeans and whose wealthy father often took her out of school to jet to Paris or Brussels. Isobel's mother, a noted cardiologist in our city, was known for setting the bar high when it was Isobel's week to bring treats to school. She often brought tiny cakes, beautifully decorated for each child or a big pan of peach strudel that was kept piping hot in it's own little warming pan.

Liv usually chose to bring apples or would ask me to bake up a quick pan of brownies (no nuts as the school is nut free). I could never compete with Isobel's treats.

On the weekends, Liv sometimes asked us to go pick up Mandy or one of Mandy's siblings (she is the youngest of TWELVE) would come to pick Liv up to go to her home. I like Mandy well enough. She is a sturdy girl, not pretty, not sporty...you can tell that she is probably the last picked for outdoor games, but she has a calm warmth to her that makes her likable to all. She doesn't excel at anything but doesn't fail either. To be honest, she is more Liv's type. She and Liv spend lots of time trading books back and forth and comparing notes. They study together and actually study. This was seldom the case when Constance would come over to study, she usually ended up coaxing Liv into a rousing game of Twister or Slap Seven or if it was warm, a bike ride.

So, last night as I was snuggling up to Liv in her bed, saying my good nights to her, I took one of her braids and gave myself a mustache with it as I casually asked her what was up with Constance. There was a long silence and then Liv tried to speak, failed and tried again. This time, her voice was thick with tears.

"I just don't know what is happening with Constance and me. I just...Mama...she is so DIFFERENT now..."

Her voice broke off and I cuddled her close, kissing her forehead. "Keep going," I encouraged.

"I guess it started when I got back from being away all summer with dad," she went on. "I noticed when I went over to her house for the first time that she had all these Justin Bieber posters up in her bedroom and she wanted to go shopping, so her mom took us to Target and she didn't want to look at the art supplies like we usually do. She wanted to look at.....CLOTHES. And then she wanted to buy all these teen magazines with Justin Bieber and the Jonas Brothers on them. It was just...weird. And then, at school, she and Isobel seemed to always be together talking about how cute Justin is and what they will wear to his concert when he comes and...and...I just felt so...lost. Mama, I think Justin Bieber is okay but it is like 16 or something, you know? And why would I think that I would go to a concert of his and he would pull me up on the stage to dance with him? That is what Constance and Isobel go on and on about, talking about how they will dress so...so...so...cute and sexy that he will want them to go on tour with him and stuff! I mean, get real! That is NEVER going to happen! And then, they go around asking all of us girls who we think is the cutest boy in the class and I just don't know...I never really noticed. I mean, I notice that Jon is smart and he and I both liked the project we did on Spanish explorers so we chose to work together, but I didn't want him to hold my hand or ask me to go roller skating or anything. I mean, we ate lunch together a couple of times but that was just to discuss who we thought better represented Spain, Vespucci or Balboa!"

She stops and takes a breath and goes on. I can tell that this has been bottled up for a long time in her.

"And then about a week ago, when I went over to house with Isobel, all they wanted to do was dance to Justin Bieber records and I danced for awhile but got bored and they asked me if I thought he was cute and I said that I thought he was okay looking but that his music was what was really interesting. I mean it is pretty sophisticated if you get around all that pop that he cases it in. Anyway, Isobel got this smarty pants look on her face and said, 'Maybe you are a lesbian like your mom.' And then she and Constance kind of laughed. Constance felt bad for laughing, I could see that, but she went along anyway with Isobel. Mama, that made me think. Do you think I am a lesbian?"

I swallowed. Thought a moment. Finally I told her that I didn't know. I asked her if she felt attracted to girls instead of boys or neither. Or what?

She said that she didn't really feel wildly attracted to anyone yet.

"Mama, I'm only 11. Don't you think there is time for all that stuff later?"

I hugged her, told her YES, I thought she was exactly right. That some girls start having those boy crazy feelings much earlier than others and that this is probably what was happening to Constance. That I didn't know if she was heterosexual or homosexual but that either way was perfectly fine, although to be honest, it was much easier to live in our world when one was heterosexual. I told her that there was PLENTY of time for these thoughts later, though. And that yes, she was just 11. Plenty of time still left to be a little girl. To be my little girl.

We snuggled and patted the bed for Socks to get up with us and nestle in between us. We discussed how she would know when she was attracted to a boy or a girl and how that might feel. I told her that it didn't happen to me until I was almost fifteen, so that she should not feel badly that it wasn't happening to her yet. And then I asked her the hard question:

"Honey, does it bother you that I am with a woman? That I am not with a man? Because it is okay for us to talk about it. It won't change who I am, but your feelings on the matter are important to me."

She replied that of course she didn't care, but she had never felt singled out for having a lesbian mother before Isobel said those things. She said that she LOVED Bing and she knew that we were happy together and that she thought that we were a happy family.

"I know that you and Bing argue sometimes, but I see Constance's parents argue too. Once Constance's mother threw a shoe at her dad and he left in the car when I was over there. I understand that parents argue sometimes. But, basically, I feel really good about us as a family, mama. Truly. And I don't have any stupid ideas about you and dad getting back together either. I told dad that last summer and he said he was glad because while he liked you fine, he thought that the two of you would not get along well as a team because you are kind of stubborn!"

Well, that made me laugh. Me? Stubborn???? Well, that particular shoe does fit...

So, it looks as if my Livvie is well on her way to learning the first of many, many lessons.

Sometimes we are meant to have friends for only a few years and then we grow away from each other and go on without each other.

Sometimes there are people in the world, the Isobels who try to make us feel small in order to puff themselves up.

Sometimes our time at one place ends and we have to begin something new at a new school, a new job, a new house.

Sometimes it takes a while to find our place in the world but knowing what matters to us helps.

Sometimes others grow up faster than we do.

Sometimes others grow up too fast and we can't make them stay with us.

One day, she will meet a boy or a girl (and I am suspecting it will be a boy, just a mother's intuition) and she will suddenly notice that his smile makes her knees a little wobbly or that he has this great way of laughing. And then...well...another journey begins.

But, always, always, always, she has me. Always. Forever. I am here with her every step of the way and waiting right here to either catch her or hold my breath when she falls and just hope that I have taught her to get back up.

It is just this crazy thing called life. And we all have a ticket to ride.

Kick it

Some days you wake up in the morning and all your joints are aching and you don't feel like going in to work.

So, you get up and get the trash ready for the curb and make your daughter oatmeal with raisins anyway.

And then you go in your bedroom to get dressed for work and decide that today is the day that you wear that long black leather pencil skirt with your black shell top and black jacket. Black stockings and black nikki tea booties.

Cherries in the snow lipstick. Just enough black liner to look sassy but not slutty. And the final touch: Gorilla Snot in your hair to make it stand up and pay attention.

Some days when you feel like shit you have to make yourself look like you could kick it right in the ass.

No roses

Bing has never given me flowers on Valentine's Day.

We don't even really celebrate it. I kind of agree with a good friend of mine from NYC. She called last night to say hello and when I asked her if she and her man were going to go out for Valentine's Day, she said, "We absolutely refuse to act like morons on Valentine's Day. We are anti-valentine day." I laughed and said that I hoped that she was a big bitch to him all day, but you know...I get it.

I hate feeling forced to be lovey dovey.

Bing and I exchange cards. Funny cards. Not mushy ones. She gets me a box of sugarless candy every year (and then ends up eating most of it...that hog) and I get her a lottery ticket and a scratch ticket.

Big whoop.

This morning as she left for work, she stuck her head in the shower to kiss me goodbye and gave my breast a little stroke. I gave her a nice showery wet kiss. That's about as gooey as we get, dudes.

Then, just as I was leaving for work, the phone rang. I checked caller id and saw that it was her.

Maria: Hi. What's up? I'm kind of in a hurry here.

Bing: Okay. I just wanted to warn you that it is kind of slick out there today. All that melting snow froze up over night so be careful, okay? Especially right outside the garage, there is a really big patch of ice.

M: Okay, honey. Thanks. Hey? Liv and I are going over to my sister's house for dinner tonight. She's making homemade chicken noodle soup. Wanna come?

B: I think I'll skip it. But thanks.

M: Okay. See ya when we get home.

B: Love you, sugar.

M: Love you right back. Bye.

So, I warned Liv about the ice patch as we walked to the car and then I took her to school.

As I was driving to work, I listened to the DJ talk to people about their most romantic date for Valentine's Day.

It occurred to me that not once have Bing and I shared a mush head VD day.

But, you know? Having someone who calls to warn me about icy patches is about as good as it gets, in my opinion.

I don't need a dozen white roses. I don't need flower petals leading to my bed.

I just need her to call and say, "Hey, it's kind of slick out there today, be careful."

I believe you call that the real deal.

Who the hell needs roses?

A burly woman named George; Session with the psychic

Well, fuck.

I will get right to the meat: WHAT a sham. WHAT a disappointment. WHAT a charlatan.

I get why he makes the big bucks, though. I get why he had a very successful television show.

He was nothing if not congenial, very witty and fun loving...or well...he worked very hard at giving that impression.

And I really was in the mood to believe. So sucks for me.

My sister came to pick me up for the drive to Lincoln wearing what I call her "church lady" outfit: a purple pantsuit with deep purple piping. Purple pumps. Her shoulder length hair in a sort of disturbing football helmet pouf but flippy upped on the ends like THAT GIRL..

I wore jeans and a nirvana tee shirt, my converse sneakers and hair pulled back in a clippee. I did wear makeup. Because that's just me. And I probably should have chosen my raisin rage lipstick instead of cherries in the snow, but I felt like the nirvana shirt deserved some sass. I wore my bright red specs instead of my horn rims too.

I figured he would read us for exactly what we were: a conservative Republican woman and her aging hippie sister.

He did.

He walked in the room like a politician at a rally where his numbers were pretty good.

Shook both of our hands, looked probingly into our eyes. He sat down and gave us his standard pep talk about not being upset if something did not make sense now, it might later, etc. We nodded.

He began with my sister.

Patrice, I sense that you are a wild woman who feels a little trapped in her circumstances. Your family looks to you to be the nurturer, the mother figure...

My sister is nodding fervently. Oh, boy howdy. FINALLY understood by the man in the black tee shirt and jeans with the understanding eyes.

He goes on, looking at us both.

You two are sisters, very different in temperament, and although you love each other deeply, you also have many barriers in your relationship...

Meaning: One of you is dressed like the church lady and the other like someone who used to deal with bong water on a regular basis.

Maria, you are just the opposite of Patrice. You are seen as a wildflower, someone who bucks the system, yet I sense in you a need for order, a quiet personality in a brightly colored package...

I smirked. Because, COME ON. I didn't work as a jury selector for 5 years for nothing. I know how to read body language, clothes, facial expressions. And he was reading us.

I smiled as prettily as I could and asked if we could just get to the talking to the dead part. What I didn't say but wanted to was that time was money, buster. We had spend some big bucks and I didn't need him to slide through half of our time by reading our body language.

He smiled benignly at me. I could practically see the wheels turning in his head: this one is going to be the hard ass.

He sat back and looked deeply at us for a time and then sat up quickly and said, "Ok..who is George?" Neither of us reacted. No Georges in our family or circle. He kept pushing:

Maybe not George, but a name with a hard G sound. Gary? Glenn? Godfrey? He went a step further. This man was a heavy smoker. A large, burly man. Quite the big mouth.

I shrugged. Finally, Patrice said, "Well, our grandmother was named Jasmine..."

He smiled a huge smile, praising us for finally getting it right.

Yes! I knew we were close...

I frowned at him. Told him that our grandmother was not a large burly woman, had never smoked and was almost timid from what our parents said about her.

Well,maybe she felt thwarted, maybe she had a big personality that she could never really let come to the surface...

Oh, fuck me.

Poppycock.

He must have caught the skepticism in my eyes because he kept his eyes on my sister, the nice one who didn't smirk at him like he was an idiot.

I am seeing a bar fire. Someone died.

Again, no. Again, Patrice helps him out.

"Well," she said, slowly, "Our uncle owned a bar but I don't remember any fires..."

He takes this and runs with it.

Maybe there was tension because of the bar. A lot of fiery emotions. Did anyone in the family resent that he owned a bar?

Patrice told him that our Da had once tried to work for his brother at the bar but couldn't handle it because his brother was such a racist and would not serve blacks.

Psychic man is nearly delirious. YES! Tension between the brothers! He goes on to say that they even are fighting about this still on the other side.

I pop his bubble by telling him that while our Da is dead, his brother is still well in the land of the living.

He rubs his chin, as if in deep thought.

"I think perhaps that your father wants to come through to send apologies to his brother for not being more understanding and for being so quick to judge. He has learned much about anger management on the other side..."

Oh, for CHRIST SAKES.

Our Da was probably the most even tempered man on the planet. My mother used to tease him about being such a gentle romantic man and also about the fact that he tended to get misty eyed when he was moved by something.

I am no longer even pretending to pay much attention to this Bozo.

He leans forward and and touches my knee. I look at him, frowning.

"Maria, you are a skeptic and I find that admirable. Can I just tell you that your husband (you are married, I am sure of it) thinks he is the luckiest man on the planet to share your bed every night.

I flatly tell him that my partner is a woman.

So, does she have a man's name?

I admit it. I snickered.

The time was up soon after that and we had found out virtually nothing. Just some half ass premonitions and I have to hand it to the guy. He kept his smile in his front pocket and brought it out over and over again, even attempting to give me a hug afterward and told me that he was "stoked" by the fact that I made him work so hard.

"You're not an easy sell, Maria," he said. "I enjoy a challenge."

I don't think so. But, on the other hand, I have no illusions that he felt admonished by my calling him out. He was doing a "group reading" that night that cost 125$ a pop for tickets. The man was making money hand over fist and he must be doing something right.

My sister and I went out to dinner to kill some time before the group show, which we also had tickets for.

"Maybe he just had a bad day," she said. "I mean, it must happen occasionally. He can't have a perfect batting record every time..."

I told her that I would keep an open mind until after the show and then tell her what I thought.

The show was worse than the private reading.

750 people, at least. And we were all crammed into a tiny room at a Marriott hotel. A ballroom, yes...but there was not a lot of wiggle room in there. It was general admission and we were there an hour early, but still were near the end of the line. A buxom college girl was selling books, tee shirts, posters of him standing arms akimbo and backlit to a ridiculous degree. Jewelry. Bracelets with small beads that spelled out B E L I E V E.

He came out to the stage to thunderous applause. He was certainly preaching to the choir here. He was BELOVED.

He wasted the first half hour talking about how he came to discover his "gift." I can't even tell you that story because his microphone was not loud enough and I was missing half of what he said and frankly, I became bored and started having a sexual fantasy in my head. No, he was not in it. But, Johnny Depp made a spectacular cameo appearance and Laura Linney was my co-star.

Then, the show began.

And it was a SHOW.

He closed his eyes and said in a dramatic voice, "I am picking up a recent death from cancer in this part of the room," he said, waving to the left general area of the room. Many, many sharp intakes of breath as a third of the people in the room fervently believed that Grandma Betsy or Great Aunt Florence was making an appearance just for them.

I looked at my sister and wrote quickly on the back of my grocery list and handed it to her.

CANCER!? IS THERE ANYONE WHO HASN'T LOST SOMEONE TO CANCER?

She smiled at me and shook her head.

It went on and on. Entities came through and he seemed to have a lot of trouble pinning down their names.

Now, call me crazy but I would think that this would be the easy part. I mean, your name is like your calling card. If I was dead, I would have no problem telling a psychic that I was MARIA and I wanted to say hi to Jessie or Patrice or Celia or whomever. Why would I make him guess as these entities seemed to be doing?

"I am getting a woman holding a rose. Is her name Rose? And now she is holding up a bowl of violets. Is her name Violet? The name of a flower?"

No, dude. They are TOYING with your dumb ass self. C"MON.

Often, an entity seemed to want to joke around with the person who had come to see them.

"He's holding up a whoopee cushion! Was he sort of a jolly jokester in his living life?"

Often, instead of fathers or mothers or siblings, great Aunts seemed to come through, or the spouse of a friend. The psychic dude would say a name and the person standing would frown and then say something like, "Welll, my ex-husband had a sister who was named Annabella. Is that close enough to Ann?"

IT SURE IS! And she is holding a white flag. Did you two fight a lot in life?"

"Um, no. Actually, I got along pretty well with her, it was him that pissed me off. And she thought he was a fool to leave me..."

"YES! THAT IS IT! She wants to say that she is so glad to see you and that you should go on with your life and not pine for her brother..."

"But, I'm not pining for him at all. I went out and celebrated with all of my friends the day that the divorce was final..but maybe she just wants to say hi so HI RAMONA!"

Seriously. We lasted for an hour and then Patrice and I got the giggles. At first it was just a funny stray line.

"I am seeing a man holding a dog. Does anyone have someone who passed who was an animal lover?"

I mean....good hell. I think the chances of knowing someone who was a dog lover are pretty high. Think about it. Was there someone in YOUR family who was an animal lover? See? Easy mark.

Finally, Patrice passed me a note that asked if I wanted to leave yet. I nodded vigorously and we stood up as quietly as we could and walked out. As I neared the door, I kept expecting him to call after me to ask me if I were sure I wanted to leave. Did I know someone who had passed who was vain about their hair?

Patrice and I didn't laugh until we were in the lobby and then we entertained each other all the way to car by throwing out some of his more ridiculous lines:

There is someone coming through who had a fondness for chocolate.

He didn't like to go to church.

She was a good hearted woman, not a mean bone in her body.

I am sensing that he was a bit of a ladies man!

We got to the car and as we drove the hour long ride home, we decided that it had been a terrible waste of money, but that we had enjoyed our time together.

And then she forced me to listen to a Barry Manilow cd.

I told her that I almost wished that I had bought the psychic's cd instead.

As she drove up my driveway, we joined fingers as we always do.

"Goodnight wild card," she said.

"Goodnight, Debby Boone," I answered.

And then we hugged as we always do, but this time she gave me a smacky kiss on my cheek.

"If I had to go through this experience, I am just glad it was with you," she said.

I smiled at her.

"Ditto," I said.

And we didn't need a psychic to tell us that we are two very different colors in the rainbow, but we are sisters and that kind of love is hard to kick in the pants.

"Read my mind," Patrice challenged me.

I pretended to frown and pinch the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger.

"You are thinking that you want to borrow my nirvana tee shirt. Sorry, sis. No way. Go buy your own, slacker," I said.

"Wow...you are soooo good," she said. "Because that is exactly what I was thinking....I want to look just like my sister who is a funky hipster. You do know that he said that underneath all these conservative clothes, I am just a wild woman waiting to fly my freak flag..."

"And I fly my freak flag daily, but all I really want is some man to make an honest woman out of me," I answered.

As I got out of the car, we both noticed it. A raccoon perched by the garbage cans.

"Do you think it is Mom coming through to say hi?" I asked, my hand over my heart.

I shut the door but could see my sister's laughing mouth in the driver's seat.

I went inside and went to bed and lay there thinking about the fact that this guy probably makes about ten times my salary. And for THAT?

I have to hand it to him.

That fucker might be a charlatan but he is a smart fucking one.

Wanna solve a mystery?

There are a few facts you need to know before you take on this task:

1) Bing is basically a slob, but she does have one incredibly tidy perk. She DETESTS dirty sinks. Every sink in our home shines like glass because either Bing has just cleaned it or Liv or I have because we don't want to hear her bitch about toothpaste in the sink or a fingerprinted faucet.

2) The only other people besides Bing, Liv or I who have keys to our home are A) my sisters, B) my niece who is in college and I only see if we are going to a movie and I'm buying, C) Our next door neighbor, Khan who is one of the nicest men I have ever known...he gets our mail when we are out of town, etc. He also fixes anything that Bing can't. When our snow blower broke down he scooped out our HUGE driveway with his until the new one we ordered came in.

Mystery:

Last night, Bing comes all the way downstairs to fetch Liv and me from our perches in front of GLEE. She knows that we adore this show but says that it is "very important."

She leads us into the bathroom and points to the side of the sink. There are um....WHISKERS there. Man whiskers. I have had enough boyfriends who spent the night to know that it looks like a man shaved in our sink. Not a HUGE amount, but several.

No males in our house.

CLUES:

Our house is very old. Indented into the wall above the sink are two places for water glasses. After a long winter two years ago when we passed one cold after another around, we switched to Dixie cups instead of a water glass. Now those two indentations are used for a tube of neosporin and some bandaids on one side (anyone who lives in climate like ours understands this need perfectly...our fingers crack in the winter) and on the other indentation there is a razor. A razor that is seldom used. I shave my legs in the bathroom off of our bedroom in the bathtub and Bing mostly shaves her legs at the gym. She occasionally shaves her legs at home in the shower and uses said razor. Liv is 11 and as far as we know, does not shave her legs yet. But, the razor was right above where the whiskers were.

Liv looked at the whiskers and said, "That's weird, I'm going back to GLEE." and left the room.

I picked up the razor and tapped it on the side of the sink to see if hair would come out. None. Bing and I looked at each other, bewildered. And then she pissed me off by saying, "Maria, WHY are there whiskers in the sink?"

AS IF THIS WAS MY DOING.

I shrugged. "Honey, I have no idea. This is so...so...odd."

BING: "Did you have a man friend over?"

I looked at her, incredulous.

A MAN FRIEND?

I bopped myself on the head with my hand and said in a dramatic voice, "OH. MY. GOD. It must have been Antonio, that new guy I met at work. We came home during the day and had some afternoon delight and then...well...I guess he decided to SHAVE with a USED razor that happened to be sitting on the sink."

Bing rolled her eyes. "I wasn't ACCUSING you of anything. I just...don't get this. No one in this house has WHISKERS, Maria. I thought that maybe someone, a guy, had come over to visit before I got home from work."

"AND SHAVED?"

We both shook our heads. This was just too bizarre.

We've talked and talked. No ideas.

So, what do YOU think?

Those are the clues. We really don't think it could be Khan. We discussed the fact that maybe my niece might bring a guy over? But, she has her own apartment, no reason to need a place to um...bring a guy over to shave. My sister's husbands? But, why WHISKERS?

Any Sherlocks out there who want to take a gander at this one?

Or maybe I will just ask the psychic.....:)

What should I ask the psychic?

I am going with my sister to see a psychic on Thursday.

Yeah. I am surprised too. My ultra conservative, so-Catholic-that-she-pees-holy-water sister asked me to go see a psychic with her.

I can't remember his name. Sorry. All I know is that she and my other sister traveled all the way to Long Island about 15 years ago to see him. Our mother had recently died and the sisters were determined to talk to her. I've heard the tape and I am not sure if I am a believer or not. The guy could not pin down my mother's name. Her name is a flower's name and he kept making guesses that were not even close but simply had the same first letter. (Ruth? Rhonda? Rachel? Raydene?)

But, he did pick up on the fact that she was walking in the afterlife and that thrilled her greatly because she had been wheel chair bound when she died.

I'm on the fence about the dude.

Plus, I've been to psychics before. Three times. All of the times were basically just out of curiousity and did not cost me an arm and a leg. And they ALL have said the same thing to me:

1) My Da comes through all the readings and he is apologetic for leaving me to be raised by my mother, whom I did not get along with. He always says that he is so proud of me. In the only reading that brought me to tears, he came through and told me that I was an "excellent mother."

2) I am always told that I am on a quest and that I am a fairly old soul who is trying to learn about romantic love this time around since I sort of sucked at it in all my other lives and was sort of a femme fatale in my female past lives. That I hurt a lot of people with my lackadaisical attitude about love. One psychic told me that this was why I was bisexual, because I wanted "lots and lots of experiences to know all kinds of love."

Kind of makes me sound like a slut, doesn't it?

Another one told me that I deliberately picked out a "very pretty package" to live my life in but that I also gave myself a lot of physical challenges to learn to care for my body and be kind to it. Apparently, I was not a crackerjack body caretaker in my other lives. This may have not worked all that well because until I became a mother, I was not much of a body caretaker.

3) Virtually ALL the psychics mentioned the fact that my daughter, Liv and I are old, old friends from many lifetimes. This is the first time we have done the mother/daughter thing though and we are basically just enjoying the hell out of each other and glad to be spending time together.

4) One of the psychics told me that Bing and I are clearing up old business together. That in a previous lifetime, I broke her heart (she was a man back then...when I told her that she scowled and said that she didn't really believe in past lives and if she did, she would NEVER choose to be a male) and married her brother and she/he had to live out his/her life pining for me as I produced a brood of twelve (AI YI YI!) with the brother. I am just hoping the sex was spectacular and there was no birth control because do I look like I could handle a dozen children? Maybe there was a nanny or three nannies.

At any rate, I am apparently making up to her for marrying someone else. Sorry, honey.

I'm not sure how much I buy any of this but I am sort of looking forward to a private meeting with this guy Thursday afternoon (we will go to his public reading that night) and am especially excited because my sister bought the 200 dollar tickets for us.

So, what do you think? What should I ask if I get to ask questions and are you a believer? And what are the chances that I am actually Cleopatra re-born? Have you ever noticed that no one is ever told that they had a long line of boring lives and/or that they were a very young soul? What's up with that? I have a few psychic readers...what is your take on all of this? Curious....

What the fuck?

Why am I having dreams about being back in high school and being in a math class where I am flailing around struggling?

Why is John Grisham my teacher and why do I have this terrible need to wow him with my brilliance except I am dumb as a doorknob and know that I can't pass?

Why am I late for his class because I have my pajamas on and run back home to change and those are not my clothes in my closet and none of them fit me?

Why do I show up in my pajamas and he hands me the test after pointing to his watch and sighing at my lateness and the test makes no sense to me?

Find the square root of the simple point of Germany before the Third Reich. Use examples of how Julia Child's french recipes worked daily on the composing of Hawaii's tidal waves.

Why does this cute Justin Bieber-like dude take a shine to me and keeps walking by me and whispering the answers to me?

Why do I copy them diligently and know that they are right even though they make no sense to me?

32 kitchen tiles

Why is my sister suddenly sitting next to me telling me that she is going to give me "moral support" while I take this "super important life changing exam"?

Why do I tell my sister to take a hike because...JAYSUS....that Justin dude isn't giving me the answers while she is sitting next to me, but stands glowering at me from behind a stack of books and I do not want her to know that I am a cheater?

Why is my sister mad as hell at me and calls me a "fucker" when she can't even say that word in real life but says, "the f bomb" instead?

Why do I suddenly have to pee so badly and Justin-dude is running with me down the hall to show me where the ladies room is?

Why do I wake up and get up to pee (AGAIN) and sit on the toilet WORRYING about that exam in my dream as if it really happened and there will be repercussions?

I need a XANAX, people.

Have a good day. Go Packs. Or Steelers. Bing is a Steelers fan and since I don't really care who wins, I decide who I am rooting for by the colors of their uniforms (which I mistakenly called "outfits" and Bing rolled her eyes at me.)

As long as I am near to the bathroom, I'm good.

And Bing is already irritated at me because I snapped at her this morning and told her that I was half ready to call the show HOARDERS to come and take a look at our house because her pack ratting is verging on a personality disorder.

Liv has a basketball game before the Super Bowl and I will have to find where the bathroom is in the school before I sit down. Last week she made two baskets and on the way home said that she is thinking of attending a parochial school next year for junior high because they have better teams than the private schools we are looking at. I just may have a jock on my hands. How the hell did I produce a child who is actually GOOD at sports? And how the hell will I get her into a Catholic school when she has two mothers? We just may have to buck the system and teach them a thing or three. And what will I do if she decides to convert to Catholicism when it has taken me decades to disengage myself from the Catholic church?

I plan to peruse my seed catalogs during the big game because I swear that I am so sick of snow and cranberry juice that I felt like kicking the wall when the weather guy (Go to hell, Jim Flowers and take that smirk with you) said, "Ok, folks...we might get some of that pretty white stuff this afternoon!"

Why do I have so many questions that I have no answers for?

Why can't I escape them even when I dream?

Where is that fucking XANAX, peeps?

Bad old lady signs and one piece of luck

I am about as sick of cranberry juice as I can get. It isn't that sweet stuff, but the organic bitter, bitter stuff that makes your mouth pucker up with distaste at every sip.

And I think it is getting a little better. I DID sleep without waking up every hour to pee but I'm not sure if that is because I was so exhausted from nearly a week of waking up every hour or because I am getting better.

MAXI PADS suck the big one.

I have been walking around feeling like I have a towel between my legs for nearly a week now. I have this terror of wetting my pants during a session with a patient, so instead I must just look like I am extremely squirmish and jittery, shifting position nearly constantly with a pained look on my face. One of the parents of a child that I treat says she is a psychic. And she has surprised me more than once by reading my aura and asking me some questions that pretty much hit the nail on the head about what is going on in my life. For example, she can ALWAYS tell when I am annoyed with Bing. She will pat my shoulder on her way out and say, "Forgive the girl, she loves you so much...."

Once after a particularly hot night of sexual pleasure, the next day, she beamed at me as she and her four year old son left my office.

"Your private parts are emitting such a satisfied GLOW," she burbled.

Down, girl. Down, pussy.

Well, last week, she gently told me that she was sorry that I was feeling so angry at my aging body. "Takes a lot of URGENCY to hold back body anger," she said.

Urgent was the absolute correct word.

I do feel like I am not aging gracefully. I am not going gentle into that particular good night. I am fighting it tooth and nail. Here are my old lady signs:

1) I am noticing stray WHISKERS on my chin. Not a full beard, but I have two pesky hairs that keep growing back bristly and dark black.

ON MY FREAKING CHIN.

I pluck them regularly, but I should NOT be having chin hair. This is unacceptable. I do not want to be one of those older woman who sport a little mustache.

2) I am so ashamed. Last week, I decided that I had HAD IT with wearing the freaking maxi pad. So, in the afternoon, I took it off. I also chugged that disgusting cranberry juice all afternoon. It never occurred to me that perhaps this would actually cause me to have to really pee instead of just feeling like I had to. So, I left work and had to do a few errands. I ignored the peeing urge, told myself that I would IGNORE it. By the time I pulled into my driveway, I knew I was in dire straits.

I had to pee so badly that I could taste it.

I armed myself as I got out of the car with my house key in hand and my purse over my shoulder. Left the dry cleaning and the grocery bags in the car and sprinted for the back door. I got the key in the lock and just as I was turning it, my bladder let go.

Yes, I peed on our mud porch. It is a sickening feeling to pee one's pants. I was thoroughly disgusted with myself and stripped naked on the porch and then immediately grabbed a dish towel, wet it in the kitchen sink and rubbed myself down. Ugh. Thank GOD no one was home yet. Well, except for Socks the dog, who looked at me with deep bewilderment.

Well, alpha woman...you would have my HIDE if I PEED ON THE MUD PORCH! What the fuck is going on here, missy?

I took my urine stained clothes downstairs to the wash and threw them into the washer. Turned the water to hot, then stood there crying like a baby as the water filled.

And realized that my skirt was dry clean only. Shit.

Then the phone rang and it was Bing saying that Hy-Vee had baked chickens for sale and she thought that she would pick one up for dinner, was that a good idea?

I bawled into the phone that I had just wet my FREAKING pants and I didn't give a fuck what we ate for dinner.

I could feel her smiling over the phone because she WOULD find this amusing.

"Honey, you just drank too much cranberry juice and were all confused about peeing since you can't tell when you really have to go and when you don't anymore. Calm down, now," she soothed.

"But," I told her, "I feel so OLD. I feel so unsexy. It is just...just....GROSS to be a grown woman and pee your pants...."

She assured me that she still found me sexy. "Maybe even more sexy, because you are always so fucking in control of every emotion in your body and now you sound all helpless and needy," she said.

Helpless, needy and smelly, that's me.

3) Today, I got up and got dressed, determined to drink a gallon of cranberry juice. I went out to the kitchen and was making toast and well, yes....JUICE. Bing glanced over her newspaper at me.

"Are you going into work today?" she asked.

I gave her a look.

"Do I LOOK like I am going into work today?" I asked in a snippy voice.

I was wearing gray sweat pants, a man's gray lumberjack flannel shirt that nearly fell to my knees and black ballet slippers. My hair up in a clippee. Not a shred of makeup on.

"Well, yes," she answered, gesturing at my chest.

I looked down.

I was wearing my work lanyard with the tag with my photo on it where I look just like someone has goosed me on it. I must have inadvertently put it on out of habit.

God, now I am not only peeing my pants but I am becoming senile too.

I am so freaking OLD.

Pretty soon, I will be wanting my dinner at 4:00. Talking about how I had to walk ten miles to school every day. Checking labels for sodium content. Holding the paper two feet away from my face to read it. Getting the senior special at movies and restaurants. Driving ten miles an hour with my head rotating back and forth like a bobble head. Slapping my knee and saying things like, "Well, shucks."

There is one saving grace, one nice piece of luck around all of this...elderly mayhem.

Bing is worried because I am not eating enough. She worries about me when I am not hungry. And I have not been particularly hungry lately, am only eating to keep my blood sugar up (OLD LADY, OLD LADY) so she is concerned.

When she is concerned, she deliberately makes all of my favorite foods, foods that she usually shies away from because they are not good for us.

Meatloaf. Fried Chicken. Brownies. Mashers with lots of butter. Creamed spinach as opposed to just the slimy plain spinach. Chocolate milk.

Liv and I are happy.

Last night, I told Bing that the only thing in the world that sounded good was a hamburger, so she suggested we go out for this. We also shared onion rings, sweet potato fries and we all got vanilla shakes. It was lovely to see my beloved with grease on her chin.

Tomorrow, she suggested that we order pizza for the Super Bowl viewing. PIZZA? My wife suggested PIZZA? She usually hates to order pizza and always suggests that we make our own disgusting homemade pizza with tomatoes and green and red peppers. I like a hamburger/black olive pizza with extra cheese from Don Carmelos Pizzeria. Half of the pizza will be mushroom for Liv and Bing, their favorite. And maybe some wangs too.

This is the one saving grace of me dealing with the onslaught of elderliness. Bing is so worried about my food intake that she will probably go out and get some Cold Stone Black Cherry ice cream with white chocolate pieces for me too. And I will manipulate her into getting Liv her favorite: Butter Brickle.

But, seriously....I would much rather have her making her vegetarian dinners with extra sprouts and me not feeling like I am going to pee any moment.

Youth is wasted on the young, you know.

When I was young, I never once worried about slipping on the ice outside and breaking a hip. I used to SLIDE on it when I would run out to my car in the mornings. I never once had trouble buttoning my own blouse because my hands were stiff in the mornings. I never thought it hard to peel an orange or get the lid off of an aspirin bottle.

I drank like a fish, smoked both cigarettes and bongs, and wore very high heels with impunity.

I am wiser now, smarter too.

But, god...I would love to have those perky breasts and shiny hair back.

And I would like to just NOT think about peeing anymore and just do it every few hours.

I don't ask for much. Can you just do this one thing for me?

Watch this video. It will take a little over 3 minutes of your time. Maybe you won't cry like my daughter and I did when we watched this together, but maybe it will make you think. The truth is that I am probably preaching to the choir here since most of my readers are incredibly open minded, good hearted people...but for those of you on the fence...please. Just watch this.



Opinions?

Under the category of too much information

All I do is pee...or think about peeing.

Started on Monday (also known as the beginning of the snowstorm days) when I noticed at work that I felt like I had to pee all the time. Went to the bathroom...was able to squeak out maybe a tablespoon of pee.

Called my family doctor, whom I love. He is such a small man that he is only slightly taller than a little person (can I say midget or is that just wrong?) He suggested that I come in and pee in a cup.

I took off work and did that. He prescribed antibiotics, said that it sounded like a urinary tract infection and I concurred.

Well, I should have felt better by Tuesday evening. I didn't. Plus, I was now stranded inside because of the snowstorm. Nothing like having an urgent need to pee and knowing that I am stranded in my house. Thank god I was close to three toilets.

I drove Bing crazy for three days. Refused to let her sleep with me because every time she moved, it just made my urgent need to pee...well....urgenter. Or I should be grammatically correct and say more urgent. But, truly...urgenter just sounds more like it feels.

I called Dr. back yesterday. Told him that the antibiotics were not helping. He suggested trying a different one and then calling him on Monday if I wasn't better and we would "take a few steps that I am sure you will not like."

This means those fun lab tests where one wears a napkin for a dressing gown and has to be poked and prodded by machines to see WHY THE GOD DAMN FUCK I FEEL LIKE I HAVE TO PEE ALL THE TIME.

Bing, as always, being Ms. Healthy Britches, was no help.

Here were her comments:

"Maybe you have a cyst that is pressing on your bladder."

"Maybe you are becoming incontinent. Should we go get you some DEPENDS to wear to work?"

"Honey, you aren't in a wheel chair. Things could be worse."

I would like to see HER feel like she has to pee every second and then when she sits down on the throne have nothing come out!

Plus, I am not an antibiotic person. I am allergic to most of them, break out in hives. So fun. So, I have to depend on the lesser known ones.

All I know is that I am losing my mind and I want to hear stories that are worse than mine. Tell me if you have ever had one and what helped. (Yes, I am gulping down cranberry juice by the gallon.) And if you have some other disgusting ailment that you can share to make me feel better, have at it.

In the meantime, I will be at work today squirming through my hour long appointments and then sprinting into the bathroom to pee my tablespoon out. And it may be a long weekend at home since I already told Bing not to plan a single solitary thing this weekend. I am hunkering down by the toilet all weekend. Unless these new antibiotics work.....fingers crossed.

She PISSED me off by saying, "Well, do you want to go see a movie?"

Yes, honey. Let's do that. I'll just sit in a dirty public bathroom while you enjoy the show.

Do I sound cranky?

Damn right I am.