Sheet love

Nope. No sex spilling story here.

We have sex. I'm just not going to do a blog about it. And frankly, we aren't porn stars, so I'm sure you're not missing anything. We are just two regular people who have sometimes spectacular, sometimes terrible, sometimes just-get-our-rocks-off, sometimes so-so, sometimes wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, sometimes really good, sometimes merely okay sex. Just like you and yours.

No. I'm talking about the sheets that most of the sex takes place on.

Now, the sheets are sensational. ALL THE TIME.

This is because I am a total snob about them. I insist on good sheets. Even in my salad days when I could only afford one meal a day, I owned a really good set of sheets. Okay. It was only ONE set. I would take them to the laundromat, bring them home and put them on the bed. They were white with pink roses on them. Cotton. And softer than soft.

Now, we own seven sets of sheets. And our guest rooms have one set each. Liv has four sets for her twin bed and they are all pricey, good sheets. People who stay at my house always comment on the incredibly soft sheets on their beds. I think we spend enough time in bed that we deserve good sheets.

So, I'm passing off my acquired sheet taste to you.

First off, I do not like flannel sheets. Bing does. I do not. I feel hot in flannel, even on cold winter days and it is not fun to wake up hot and sweaty in bed. Plus, in the winter time, I wear flannel to bed a lot and flannel on flannel is just icky.

Liv does own ONE pair of flannel sheets. They are her zippy the monkey sheets and she loves them. I'm cool with them as long as I don't have to sleep on them.

My favorite sheets are my untreated organic cotton aqua sheets. They are not a huge thread count (500, I think), but they are incredibly soft. And aqua is not my favorite color, but they were a gift from one of my sisters and I didn't get to pick the color. Still, I adore these sheets. She tells me that she bought them at JC Penney, so they weren't expensive either. But, it is the untreated organic all cotton that works here.

I've never had a bad time in those sheets. They are like...magic. When I crawl in at night, I sink in.

My next favorite sheets are my white jersey knit sheets. Again, not expensive. I bought them at Bed, Bath and Beyond for under 100 bucks. They are stretchy and so, so soft. Plus, they are snowy white. Not off white. Snowy white. And they are like a kiss on the forehead from a grandmother who bakes the best chocolate chip cookies. They are just comforting. Sweet smelling. And I use unscented detergent (I can't stand walking around feeling like I smell like lavender, a rain shower or roses, I like my own scent, thanks and I do wear Chanel #5 and Opium sometimes too) and free and clear dryer sheets. Yet, these sheets always smell like sunshine. Always.

I only bought white after I hit menopause. In my days of menstrual blood once a month, I would have never risked it. Now, I don't have to worry about Aunt Flo coming uninvited or expected, so I like nice white sheets.

My third favorite is a plain 100% bamboo set. They are brown. Or..mahogany, as the label reads. Now, these were a little pricey. About 200 bucks. But, they are lovely too. They aren't mouthwatering soft, but they are durable and plenty soft. Plus, I think they absorb sweat well. There is no late-in-the-week musty sheet smell. Ever. They always feel crisp and cool to the touch. Plus, I wasn't sure I would like the color brown, but I do. I had to choose from off white, pinkish or brown and decided that brown was a color I didn't have, so I selected them.

I have interesting dreams in them, I swear.

Next on the list are my green Irish linen sheets. I buy these for my guest beds too. They weren't cheap. About 300 bucks a pop, but they are exquisite. They are silky and feel...sort of decadent. Like you are Cleopatra or someone staying at a swanky hotel. They are very, very crisp. And while they are soft, they are also kind of thick feeling, like you pull hard and they would never tear. I prefer Ardea Prime brand. They are the nicest. Not the cheapest, but the nicest.

When I was really, really ill a few years ago, I often spent days on end in bed and they always stayed nice to the touch. They didn't wrinkle easily or feel slept in. Each and every time I woke up, I felt comfy cozy. That's important when you are sick.

Then comes my off white plain muslin sheets. Liv prefers muslin on her bed too. They are a lot like her: no nonsense, durable and they tell it like it is. They can get wrinkly, and they have to be sort of broken in before they soften up, but in the end, they feel like that pair of shoes that you know you can hike in and not get a blister. They are like an old friend who doesn't disappoint. Plus, they wash well and stains come up nicely with little work. I always feel very Little House on The Prairie when I sleep in them, like Ma just brought them in off the clothesline. And in the summer, I do hang my sheets out to dry, so it is entirely possible that they DID just come in off the clothesline. There is something so...simple about muslin. No fancy tags. All organic. None of my sheets are made in sweat shops, but if you go organic, you can almost be sure that they aren't.

Next are my 1200 thread count Egyptian cotton dark blue sheets. They were kind of pricey too and frankly, I have felt 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton that felt exactly the same, but I was snobbish that day and wanted to get the highest thread count possible. And they are fine. I don't usually harbor prejudice against sheets, but I do sort of feel peevish about these dark blue sheets from time to time. They were the most expensive sheets that I've purchased and while they are plenty soft and durable, I honestly think that my much cheaper aqua cotton sheets are more plush, more everything. I don't say this out loud, though. Ever. Don't want them to feel less than. Plus, for some reason...if Bing and I are going to have an argument, it almost always occurs in these sheets. Not the fault of the sheets, I know this inside. Maybe it is the color. I dunno. But, they ARE very nice.

Last on my list are my black silk sheets. They are very sexy, very elegant. Very, very silky and sensuous. But, I always feel a bit sheepish when I get in. Like I should be naked and have completely shaved legs and minty breath. Sheets like this beg for sex and I disappoint so often. Plus, I often feel like I am slipping on them, sliding over the edge of the bed and on to the floor.

But, sometimes....I just feel like black silk. Especially when I am feeling sultry and in a seduction frame of mind. There is something about knowing that I can use the whiteness of my skin to set off the blackness of the silk. And I am a first generation American Irish lass. My skin is very creamy white. It's a tool. What can I say? When I am sitting up in bed in the black silk sheets, holding them up against my breasts and smiling in my best come hither way at Bing, well...I KNOW I have sex appeal. And it works. Every time.

So, I put them on the bed occasionally and when Bing sees them, her eyes light up as she glances at me. It keeps the ooh la la in our marriage and let's face it, when you are 53, a little ooh la la goes a long, long way.

This morning, I took off the white jersey sheets and put on the aqua ones. I know that I will sleep like a baby tonight. But, then...I always do.

I'm a total sheet snob. Are you?

Nothing Goes Unnoticed

Sweet Bing,

How the hell do you put up with me? Sometimes, when we fight...it's like I leave my body and stand there watching myself acting all self righteous and cold and I cringe. But, I don't stop, do I?

I'm stubborn. I like to win and sometimes I forget that when we fight, nobody really gets to win. I am pretty good at not saying things that I don't mean, but I can be too honest at times and that is just unnecessary.

And we both know which buttons to push. And push them. I know it makes you crazy when I don't wipe down the faucets so yes, when I am angry, I deliberately smudge them up. Childish, I know.

I forget sometimes that you always have my back. That you always put us first and you second. You've been good at that right from the beginning.

I'm not all that adept at that, am I? I tend to think of myself in a solitary way and I don't know why I'm like that. I make decisions that are good for me and not always for us. When I say things like, "I want to live in a cottage by the sea at some point in my life"...I should say it differently. I should say that I hope that WE can life in a cottage by the sea at some point.

I picture you there, I swear it. I just tend to think in the personal, not the plural. I'll always be that pot that is just a little uncomfortable with a lid. It has nothing to do with my love for you. That is a given. It has everything to do with the fact that for many, many years, I fended for myself. It was just me against the world. And even after Liv was born, I tended to think that way.

Nothing you do goes unnoticed. All the times that you've sacrificed for the good of us, I did notice. I guess I am just used to you being the doer, the planner, the wind beneath us.

I love making love with you, somewhere inside yourself you have to know that. I know that I am slow to respond and that sometimes that must feel as if I am not attracted to you. I am. I just...have this sort of lethargic libido. It takes me a while to get going. You may have noticed that once I engage, I um...have a very nice time. And make sure that you do as well! I'm just not all that sexual, sex is not front and center in my life. It sort of sits to the side and I reach out for it occasionally. Not nearly enough for your tastes, I know. I will try harder at that. I never want you to feel unwanted or unattractive. Because, seriously? How can I NOT be attracted? You have a sensational body and you are very good in bed, honey. It's just that I tend to be more of a talker and less of a sexual being. When I think of us in bed, I go all honey inside. But, mostly...if left to my own devices, I'd choose to read. As I said, you are right...I need to make more of an effort. I will.

And when we argue, I won't resort to laughing or rolling my eyes. Okay. The truth? Sometimes I find your reasoning a little....odd. And I don't get your priorities. Like last night...the argument over why I chose to wear your beige cashmere scarf and then left it in the car where it ended up under the front seat and became stained. That was careless of me and I should have just admitted it instead of accusing you of being mercenary and stuck on possessions. The scarf is now at the dry cleaners and I will make sure to ask you if I can wear it next time. Promise.

Do you find it as ridiculous as I do that a fight over a scarf turned into a fight over me not wanting to make love much and you being a slob and me treating you as if you are stupid about literature and good movies and you treating me as if I am just as stupid about directions while driving (I still maintain that I do better with landmarks than "go north" or "go south"...if you just say turn left at the Dairy Queen, I am much more likely to find my destination...) and mechanics?

We are so above that sort of idiocy, don't you think?

I missed you in bed last night. I got up around 2 a.m. and was so tempted to get in with you in the guest room but you were so sweetly sleeping and I didn't want to disturb you. But, just for the record, I stood in the doorway for a long time watching you sleep.

Thank you for making my lunch this morning, even though I know we were still officially mad at each other. When I opened it and saw that you had cut my sandwich in quarters the way I like it, I smiled. And thank you for remembering to put that little container of rice pudding in too. And the golden delicious apple. It was so very golden and delicious...and the note with the smiley face and the "I love you" on it.

As I said, nothing goes unnoticed.

Let's find some time to make up properly soon. yes? Wanna take a shower together after Liv hits the hay? Mess around?

Or..even just smile at each other across the room so that we know that all is forgiven and we are back to us again.

Where we belong. Where I belong. Where you belong. Together.

I promise that I'll do better, honey.

I love you so much. This one is for you with all of my heart.

Because I really do love you in a place where there's no space or time. Always. Never doubt that.

I have your back and you have mine. Isn't that the way that love is supposed to be? We really do have so much figured out, love.

Meet you in the shower later?

The sweetest part of my day

I am a bird fancier. We all are in this house, really. We have two woodpeckers, Thelma and Louise, who have lived in our back yard oak tree for years. And yes, they are both female. I spoke to a bird expert at the university and he claimed that he had never seen two female woodpeckers living together.

"They mate for life," he said, "And a female woodpecker would never allow another one in her tree."

I told him to come to our house sometime.

Bing likes the woodpeckers, me not so much. Especially when I have a headache. All that hammering.

Liv has always liked the robins and the cardinals. We have a bluejay pair who sit on our balcony and actually canoodle. He is very protective of her, will swoop away in an instant and then return with a fat worm for her and while she eats, keeps a close guard, his beady black eyes looking fierce, his chest puffed out like a bluejay bodybuilder.

But, I like the sparrows the best. We have a lot of them and they make such a clatter in the morning. I go outside with my first cup of coffee, wearing my robe, barefoot, and sit on the top step, sipping and listening. Smiling. Their song is high pitched and lovely. Sometimes a cardinal comes to join the chorus and all the shy sparrows leave.

But, I like them still. They build sturdy nests and are not foolish as robins sometimes are. Every year, a robin builds a nest in our gutter and every year Bing removes it. Sparrows are little workers. Once, when Liv was a baby, there was a terrible rain storm and the next day, I found a beautiful nest on the ground. I picked it up gently and admired the artwork weaving of branches and twigs and then tears sprung in my eyes as I saw Liv's fine blonde baby hair and my nut brown hair intertwined in the twigs. Whenever I cleaned our brushes or combs, I always let the hair in them fly out to the wind, as my Da taught me.

Let's give the birdies a present," he would say. "They love hair, they use it to tighten up their nests."

I'd never seen it before, but that day I did.

I set the nest back down and waited for a few days, but of course, nothing happened. What did I expect, a gaggle of sparrows to come lift the nest together and put it back? No. They were already hard at work on a new one. The nest sat on the ledge above our kitchen sink for months. I would take it down a few times a day at Liv's request. She thought it lovely too.

I have an owl friend. No one believes me, but I do. When I come out with my coffee, it is just barely lightening outside. He stands quivering in the oak branches above me, very high. If I peer, I can sometimes find him, sometimes not. He is excellent at blending. I always throw my head back and call, "Whoooo....whoooo....whooo." It takes a minute, but he usually returns my call in a deeper, more dignified tone.

Whooo. Whooo. Whoooo?

And then there is a flutter of branches and he is gone home to sleep the day away. I've told Liv and Bing about him, but when they are with me, he never calls back. Ever. It is just for us.

I have never named him. It just seems wrong somehow. Like he is above it in some way. He is just the owl.

I sometimes worry that he misses me on weekends, but I like to think that he understands that no way am I getting out of my bed before 9 a.m. on a weekend.

We have whippoorwills too. But they only sing their songs at dusk in the summer time. And it does sound exactly like their name.

Whip-poor-will.

A friend told me that it is unusual for them to migrate this far, but even she can't deny their song. She's come over and listened with me on a few sultry summer nights.

Still, it is the sparrow who owns my heart. They are so cheerful and earnest. Their song is simple, and they don't show off. They just sing because it makes them happy, I think, and they want to say hello to everyone in their own shy way.

I start my weekday mornings listening to this:

Correction!

Um....I didn't mean that in the movie there was no flowers on Rue scene. There is. But there is no bread from District 11. THAT was my favorite part.

Adjusting/The Hunger Games/Spring is busting out all over

Well...I guess it's fine. Our new mattress. Our old one was over a decade old and Bing has done some mattress researching ala her new aching butt cheek and back. She decided that we all needed new mattresses, firm ones.

Our old one was more like a granny's feather bed type. I sank into it with pure bliss. But, no...Bing swears that our new one will be better for my back and hers. And Liv. Liv's old twin mattress originally belonged to her grandmother, so it was ancient. Now, she has a new firm one too.

At the mattress store, we all agreed that they were fine. Maybe not as comfy cozy, but okay. And yes, I did read all the research, so we opted for firm mattresses with something called a pillow top to ensure that it was at least a little soft.

Well, the mattresses are here and the old ones in our garage waiting for our tree guy to take them to his cabin in Minnesota this summer. He goes there with his fishing buddies and says that mattresses on the floor might be better than their sleeping bags. Fine.

Call me nitpicky but it sort of bothers me that I have to hop up on our new mattress because it is so damn HIGH. I feel like a shrimp.

Our full sized sheets just barely fit. They are as tight as a drum. But, I must admit that our old fashioned chenille bedspread looks much better now that it isn't dragging on the floor.

I think that I am just not good with change. I sort of liked the way our old mattress caused us to slide into the middle against each other. I feel almost crabby about all of this and how stupid is that? I have a fancy 1000 buck mattress now that is recommended by back doctors everywhere. What the hell is my problem?

We saw The Hunger Games yesterday. I liked it. I think. Again, the nitpicker in me rears her ugly head.

My favorite scene in the book is when Katniss puts flowers all over Rue's dead body and District 11 sends her a loaf of bread. It wasn't in the film and I felt cheated. I also thought that Peeta wasn't cast correctly, that the guy who played Gale should have been Peeta. What I did adore was Lenny Kravitz as Cinna and Woody Harrelson as Haymitch. Pitch perfect.

Unfortunately, half way through the movie, a teenage girl had an epileptic fit and they had to stop the movie and have her removed on a stretcher. I tried to be nice and caring about it, but this was the same teenager who came in wearing daisy duke shorts, a halter top that plainly showed her humungous nipples poking out and platform shoes that she teetered on stupidly. She also kept shouting out, "I am so psyched for this to start, bitches!" to her friends. Call me mean, but I think karma came into play here. Or not.

The movie started up again after they removed her from the theater as she was screaming and crying that she WAS FINE, DAMN IT, YOU FUCKERS! I am not an expert on epileptic fits but from my medical knowledge, this didn't appear to be one. Usually when the patient comes back from the fit, they are lethargic and weak. She was full of beans and ready to duke it out. But, when they called for a doctor, four men stood up, so I didn't bother and maybe they knew better than I did.

At any rate, I would say the movie was good, but couldn't match the book. But, really? The only movies that I've seen that equaled the books have been The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and To Kill A Mockingbird.

Today is Sunday, rest and lollygag day here. Bing and Liv are cranky because they go back to teaching and school tomorrow. Tough titty, I say. We've decided to spend the day kicking back. Liv and I are enjoying our new Ipads, courtesy of Bing, who bought them for us yesterday afternoon. But, I can only play Angry Birds for so long. Bing says that she will teach me how to work all the other applications. She's also arranged it so that I can write my blog and check my email on it, but since...AS YOU KNOW..I am bad with change, I am finding that I can't sit on the sofa and write my blog. I have to be in my office, looking out on the flowering dogwood tree and away from the sound of Bing's incessant viewing of CNN.
We ARE going to go out to dinner. Bing had planned on a chicken and rice casserole, but she just sold our old lawn mower for 200 smackers ad she doesn't feel like cooking, so lucky us. Now we just have to decide on a restaurant. If Bing had her way, we'd be eating sushi. She adores it. Liv likes Indian food, especially anything in a hot curry sauce and me? I sort of feel like an omelet. We might have to have Mexican food, something totally different from all of our cravings to keep everyone happy.

Socks is patiently sitting on my foot to remind me to take him for his walk. His girlfriend, Gigi the teacup poodle usually is out walking with her human about this time of day and he wants to get some prime butt sniffing in. He looks huge compared to her and he is not an overly big dog. Plus he is a no frills sort of guy and she likes to sport rainbow colored scarves tied daintily around her neck. She also has her toenails painted sky blue sometimes. It is sort of like Ernest Borgnine going out with a very short Lady Gaga. But, they make it work. Sometimes the best pairings are the strangest ones. I imagine her ducking her head at him and purring, "You are such a sweet big ole lug!" while he makes no bones about the fact that he is practically dying to get a whiff of her ass. He's a meat and potatoes sort of fella, no games, no silly seduction games. If he says she looks pretty, he means it. If he says that it's time for him to rustle on back to the ranch, Sally, it's time to herd those cows, he means it too.

And it is gorgeous outside, our windows are wide open all day and night now. A buttery soft breeze wafts through the house. Our dogwood and flowering crab trees are in full bloom as well as the wisteria and forsythia bushes and my pink and yellow tulips. Everything else is this close to blooming. I look longingly at our yard, but Bing has yet to till it for me. She usually does this in late April and we plant in early May. I dunno, though. Spring seems sprung to me.

I am wearing flip flops already. And a short sleeved tee shirt. Capris.

Close enough to Spring to touch her.

How is your weekend going? Is everybody bright eyed and bushy tailed. What's for supper at your house? And anyone watching The Amazing Race with me tonight and then...

YIPPEE SKIPPEEEEEEE

MAD MEN is baaaacccckkkkkkkkkk!!!!!

What happens when you start the day mad

Sometimes, I really, really dislike my partner.

Now, don't go and get all jumpy on me. I love her, that goes unsaid, but always there.

But, occasionally, I dislike her.

She's been on Spring Break all week as has my daughter and I've worked the whole week with the exception of leaving early on Wednesday to meet her at Nebraska Furniture Mart to buy new mattresses for all of our beds. We'd noticed that the mattresses are all sagging and decided to just bite the bullet and replace them. This means that we bought a new twin mattress for the guest room in the attic, full sized mattresses for our bedroom and our guest room and another twin mattress for Liv. We do have a pull out sofa in the basement that is used occasionally, but it is just going to have to wait. It was not all that fun, although we did end up spending some major bucks.

So..the rest of the week has pretty much been her own. Liv is old enough now that she doesn't need babysitting.

This was Bing's list of things that she was going to do:

1) Clean all my junk piles up and get piles ready to take to Goodwill.
2) Get the lawn mower cleaned and mow the yard. (YES! It is already needing a good mow...this wacky ass weather...)
3) Fix the fridge. It leaks from the ice maker.
4) Take apart the candy dish that we bought at Goodwill for a friend's housewarming gift and clean all the parts and make it shine like new.
5) Get us all tickets for The Hunger Games for Saturday morning.
6) Make room in the garage for the old mattresses and box springs since the new ones will delivered on Sunday.
7) Buy Maria and Liv new ipads. (She already has one and had promised us that if we just let HER buy the ipads, she can use her Apple discount and get all kinds of free shit on them to boot.)
8) Change the oil on my van and Maria's car.
9) Meet up with old flame from high school who has moved to our city for lunch.

This is what she managed to do:
1) Made a TINY dent in her junk piles. One sack for Goodwill. 1/4 of a point.
2)Instead of getting the lawn mower cleaned, she bought a new one even though the old one is only two years old. I didn't comment because I don't mow the lawn. She didn't mow the lawn but asked our tree trimmer guy to do it since it was late Friday and she still hadn't gotten around to it.
3) Fixed the fridge! YEAH! ONE POINT.
4) Hasn't touched the candy dish except to take it apart and leave all the parts sitting on the dining room table ALL WEEK.
5) Purchased the tickets. One point!
6) No work on making room in the garage. I know her like the back of my hand, she will end up doing this early Sunday morning, ten minutes before the new ones arrive. She will end up knocking over something and breaking it and then getting mad and yelling at Liv or me who about something that is totally unrelated because she is cranky that she procrastinated. Or...she will try to talk me into letting her put the old mattresses against the dining room wall since they will be leaving for the dump soon. (If I let her do this, the mattresses will sit there for weeks, I know this. I know HER.)
7) No new ipads. She will look up guiltily every time she plays on her brand spanking new one, though.
8) Oil wasn't changed on either vehicle.
9) Met up with the old flame but was very quiet when I asked her how it went. ("Well, she looked really, really dykey and she was kind of chunky. I showed her your photo and she remarked that I must still like those snotty looking girly girls." When I bristled, she said, "God, it isn't ALWAYS about YOU, Maria." I asked her if she defended me and she said, "I dunno. It wasn't like we talked nonstop about YOU.")

So, I felt mad all day long. I get sooo tired of her so seldom following through. I do know that her butt cheek and leg have been aching, so I am willing to cut her some slack. But, GOD...I really think she could have done better, you know?

Because the truth is that I am the one that gets things done, she isn't. I almost always get my lists done. She rarely does. So, a big star for me.

But, I tend to get really, really annoyed at procrastinators. This is probably because I am not the most laid back person. I work full time and raise a child and keep a marriage going. If I didn't follow through, everything would fall apart.

But, would it? Really? I say yes. And it's my blog and I'm the boss.

This morning, she annoyed the HELL out of me by getting in the shower right when I needed it. Now, I AM THE ONE WHO HAD TO GET TO WORK. So, WHY was SHE hogging the shower?

I sucked it in and even though I have a morning system, I changed it up. Instead of making the bed AFTER my shower, I did it before. I gave myself my insulin even though I do that AFTER my shower.

FINALLY, she was done. I got in and thought I saw someone sitting on the toilet right next to the shower. I peeked out and it was her. Reading a magazine. And you know...SHITTING.

Smelling up the bathroom when I was in the shower and we have FIVE bathrooms in the house. She could have easily used the one that is off of our bedroom. Or the one in the attic bedroom. Or the one off the guest room downstairs. Or the first floor bathroom. But, no. She plopped herself down and had her constitutional in my showering bathroom. She was done before I was and had the gall to call, "I put the lid the down, just flush it when you get out, ok?"

Icky.

I still kept my mouth shut. I dressed in my work clothes and went down stairs where she already had the morning news blasting. She is usually gone to work when I get downstairs and Liv and I like SILENT MORNINGS. We don't even turn on the radio. Nada. Peace and quiet to start our day.

So, the television was blaring and I had to start my day looking at Newt's smarmy face and listen to his even smarmier voice as he was interviewed. Ugh. Still..I kept my mouth shut.

Then, Bing comes up to me and says not what she SHOULD be saying; I am so sorry that I pooped while you were showering. And I promise that I will get each and every one of the chores on my list done today, my queen. Can I do anything at all for you? Would you like me to prepare you an omelet breakfast, dearest?

No.

She is holding a wash cloth. It is the one that I used in the shower, wrung out and left draped over the side of tub like I always do.

"Maria, this was dripping on the bathroom floor. You really need to learn to wring out wash cloths better."

All my anger came bubbling up to the surface.

I kind of wanted to call her a fucketty fuck face but I didn't. Because I am just so much better than that. Instead, I said, "I don't want to talk to you right now. Could you just TRY to get ANYTHING on your list done? And what the hell are you up so early for? Is it to get your CHORES done?"

She gave me her martyr look and said, "Maybe you should just not talk to me AT ALL."

So, I shrugged and ignored her. Left without saying goodbye. And then, yes, okay...I worried on the way to work that she would be hit by a bus or something and my last memory would be that I was snippy to her. But, then I consoled myself by thinking that she was probably not giving me a second thought, so I wouldn't give her one either. I went to work.

And felt crabby all day long. Especially at lunch time when I knew she was lunching with her old high school flame. And really, what the hell did she need to move HERE for? I pictured her looking like Joan Jett and having a deep sexy voice and asking Bing if she wanted to touch her there. Yeah, there. There. There. Where? There. And Bing would think about what a crab she was married to and decide that yes, she did want to touch her there.

When I pulled into the driveway when I got home, I saw that the lawn had been mowed and I was pleased. She couldn't have been touching anywhere THERE for too long if she mowed the lawn...

And when I walked into the kitchen, Bing was standing by the fridge, holding it open to show me that not only was it fixed, but also cleaned. The weird sour milk smell that has been there for the last month was gone.

I smiled. Asked her how the chore list went. She shrugged and changed the subject. I inwardly sighed and told myself to just chill. At least she had done ONE THING.

That was when I asked her about her lunch and she told me what the flame had said when she saw my photo.

And now I am back to feeling mad, although we have both agreed to not fight and try to be nice to each other, agreeing that it usually works for us to fake it until we can feel it again.

Plus, it is better for Liv to have two parents who are kind to each other.

But, inside I am sort of screaming:

WHERE IS MY NEW IPAD?
WHY DIDN'T YOU CHANGE THE OIL IN MY CAR?
WHY DID YOU HAVE THE YARD GUY MOW? FIFTY BUCKS SPENT!
WHY IS THERE ONE PUNY BAG FOR GOODWILL?
WHY IS THE GARAGE NOT CLEANED UP TO MAKE ROOM FOR THE MATTRESSES?
WHY IS THE CANDY DISH STILL TAKEN APART AND ON THE DINING ROOM TABLE?
HOW DARE THAT FUCKING FLAME SAY I LOOKED SNOTTY! WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL HER THAT I AM NOT SNOTTY, THAT I AM PRACTICALLY PERFECT IN EVERY WAY?

So, do you ever just want to haul off and throw something at YOUR SPOUSE?

I need to know that I am not that much of a bitch and that you are very sure that Bing DIDN'T want to touch the flame there. Yeah, there. There.

Any opinions?

I often wonder...

...what our house thinks of us.

We are only her second set of owners. The first was the man who had her built in 1917. He was a wealthy banker whose wife died and left him three daughters. He did what most men of his stature did back then: he married an 18 year old girl when he was age 43 and had her become the new mother. He also had a fancy house built for her in the popular Victorian style. She produced three more sons and a daughter and the house now had seven children, two parents and a live in nanny/cook/housekeeper. The children grew up and left home, the father died, the domestic left to move back to Ireland and the house was empty except for the women who came there as a bride. Her youngest child, a spinster daughter, moved back in with her and cared for her until her death and then the daughter lived alone in the house until her death. When she died, the house was in a fairly bad state of disrepair and I bought it because I was astounded at how cheap it was in such a grand neighborhood and had no idea just how bad of shape it was in. I found out little by little. Now, it is in fairly good shape again and we have worked hard to keep things true to her original state.

We know all this history because within the first few years of moving in, we discovered that we had a ghost. So, we did some research and found out who the original owners were. We got in touch with one of the only remaining children, a man of advanced years now, the one who sold the house to me. We invited him back to see the house under the guise of asking him some questions about her original bones, but really...we were so curious to see if the ghost would appear when he visited.

She didn't. But, he did bring photos and Bing and I exchanged a guarded look when we realized that our ghost was his mother, the woman who had died in our bedroom. We were kind, we didn't tell him that his mother was haunting our home. We didn't want to scare him and it seemed somehow...rude.

But the photo was her. We did ask about her and he told us that she was a very young hearted mother, that she was a rather selfish, vain woman but that she loved to play in the yard with the children. We told him that we had found an old croquet set in the attic and when we showed it to him, he said that yes, that was theirs. It was a lovely set, all heavy wooden balls and mallets. We asked him if he might like them back and he laughed gently at our idiocy.

"I'm a little old for a croquet set, dears," he answered.

He was able to tell us that we had managed to restore the vintage polished marbled green of the fireplace bricks. We asked him about the buzzer that was on the floor under our dining room table and he said that it originally went off in the kitchen to let Moira, their housekeeper/nanny/cook know to bring in dessert or to remove the soup bowls, etc. We showed him two other buzzers, one on the top of the landing to the second floor and the other in our bedroom on the wall by our bed. He said that those were to summon help after his mother became infirm and pretty much bedridden. They still work and can be heard in the attic, which used to be the maid's quarters. When Liv's father visits us, he stays in the attic bedroom and Liv delights in pressing the buzzer at an early hour to wake him up. Or..she did until he dismantled it.

He marveled that the original claw foot bathtubs were still in the upstairs bathroom and the maid's quarters. "We used to have to share bath water," he observed, "and no one wanted to be last, plus Moira used her knuckles to scrub our heads and it hurt like the dickens."

He showed us the faded nicks on our wooden floors where he and his siblings would roller skate when they were alone in the house and no one could stop them. He smiled at the original toilet in our downstairs bathroom, complete with a brown box topper and pull cord. When I said that it flushes so fast and hard that you could put a cat down there and have no problems, he laughed and admitted that he once flushed a bat down there when he was a boy. This brought us to the discussion of the bats we find every Autumn in our house.

"It was the same back then," he told us. "Moira would put our father's derby on her head and shoo them out the door with a broom."

We went outside and I asked him about what was now a sand box for Liv. When I moved in, it was grown over, but on close inspection you could see bits of blue rock and plaster and it had a ledge to sit on. He told me that his father kept a pool stocked with goldfish until he died and then his mother neglected to tend them and they all died.

"We used to be amazed every winter about how they all seemed to be dead, encased in solid white ice and then when the spring thaw came, they would sluggishly start swimming around," he told us.

Wow.

He thought that a sand box was a nice alternative. And he admired Liv's tree house that Bing and Tinton built.

"We used to beg our father for a tree house, but he never got around to seeing that one was built," he said. "He was a busy man, traveled a lot in his job. My mother used to be so much happier when he was gone, I don't think their marriage was ideal. Their ages were such a discrepancy. When he retired and was home, she used to complain that he was underfoot. And Moira practically hated him. Called him the dour faced one. But, I don't know. I think he was like most fathers of his time. He worked and we were well taken care of."

We invited him back in for some tea and cookies and he agreed and he told us a few stories. He told us that he and his siblings all loved Moira, their nanny/housekeeper/cook but that she missed Ireland so much. He said they often heard her crying in her attic room at night and would sneak up the stairs to sit in her lap and hug her, try to comfort her. "She never stopped pining for Ireland, though," he said, "and as soon as my youngest sister was old enough to look after herself, she gave notice and returned back home."

We didn't tell him about the times that we thought we heard crying upstairs in the attic, but assumed it was the wind. I don't know, maybe it was just the wind. One ghost in the house seemed more than enough!

After an hour or so, he asked if he had satisfied all our questions and we said yes, so he bid us goodbye. We didn't see him again and I saw his obituary in the paper a few years later.

But, now...I sometimes walk around my house and finger the original glass door knobs on the heavy oak doors. I think about the children that grew up here before Liv. On a kitchen door frame, I've recorded Liv's height from the age of 2 years old on up. She is now a few inches taller than me and only in the seventh grade! I wonder if other children before her were recorded. When I bought the house, it was empty and had been empty for years. The realtor told me that the man who was selling it had not been inclined to make repairs, just told her to sell it as is at a lowered price. Until me, no one had thought to make it their own.

So, I'm raising my child here. Have lived, first alone and then with a partner here. There have been so many guests through our doors, so much love and laughter, but I dunno...it must seem quiet to the house after the calls of seven children!

I wonder where they all slept? The house has one bedroom on the first floor that we use as a guest bedroom, but was originally used as a sewing room. We joke that when I am no longer able to climb steps with my RA, it will be MY room. On the second floor, there are four bedrooms and a smaller alcove off the master bedroom that I am told was used as a nursery. It is now a small library. Two of the other bedrooms are Bing's office and mine, and the last bedroom is Liv's. The attic is large and is used as a guest room as well. It has it's own bathroom and a tiny clawfoot bathtub that looks like it would be perfect for a dwarf. The basement has a huge laundry room with an original huge porcelain sink that was used to soak especially dirty linens, I was told. Now, we use it to give Socks his monthly bath. There is another large room in the basement that the son said was their playroom. It is now our rec room and Liv uses it often when she wants to read privately, watch television, listen to her Mumford and Sons cds, study or do crafts. I love it because it is out of the way and can be messy and not bother me. The basement has other smallish rooms that held interesting uses: one was to store the garden vegetables in the Autumn (we still do that!), another room held homemade root beer (we use it for storage, but it always has a scent that is not unlike root beer, it smells slightly foamy and frothy) and still another holds our huge red boiler, not the original one, though. That one broke down within five months of my purchasing the property. It cost nearly ten thousand dollars to replace it. I almost gave in and had the house wired for a furnace but at the last minute, paid the price to keep the house authentic. I am glad I did this most of the time, but admit that I do get weary of relying on window units for air conditioning in the summer instead of central air conditioning.

I hope our house likes us. We used to see our ghost (we named her Madge, after the bride who spent her life here) frequently. Or I did. At first, I was the only one who saw her. She would appear always in a long black dress and her face was serene and gentle. I didn't see any of the vain woman her son described. She came to me, standing behind me in a mirror the first time and I dropped my toothbrush in the sink in terrified surprise. After that, she would appear only as a watery shimmering facade of a person, never sharply defined or with any clarity. She never appeared to Liv and for that, I was grateful. To this day, Liv has never seen her. Once, right after I saw her briefly as I was going up to the attic to find an old box of books, I called out, "Please whatever you do, don't scare my daughter. She is only three and it would frighten her."

She never has. But, when Liv was younger, I often noticed a correlation between the times I would see her and the beginning of Liv getting sick with a cold or a virus. I began to wonder if she was warning me, cautioning me to pay attention.

As the years have gone by, I have seen her less and less. It's been over a year now since I last saw her.

Bing has only seen her once. But, once was enough. She scoffed for YEARS at my telling her of ghost sightings. Would gently taunt me that I was imagining things, had an active imagination. Until one night when she couldn't sleep and went downstairs to pour herself a glass of milk...naked as a jaybird. A few moments later, I heard her come scrambling up the steps and in seconds she was leaping back into our bed and flinging the covers over our heads, whispering frantically, "I SAW HER! THE GHOST! I SAW HER!"

I think that Madge and I are both still giggling over that. The next morning, I went downstairs to find an upended glass of milk on the counter and the gallon of milk sitting spoiling next to it. In Bing's fright, she had left them there.

I wonder what our house thinks of us. If she likes us, compares us to her first children. I walk up and down the steps, smiling. I look at the long unused sand box and wonder about a pond full of goldfish. I think about children roller skating on the wooden floors.

I wonder.

What do you think?

Rain, a good book, Tate's chocolate chip cookies and a Miramar candy dish

Ah...there is something so good about coming home from a hard day's work..

(and lordy, lordy...was it hard today...complete with an exploratory beginning interview where a mom called me a "fucketty fuck face" in front of her newly returned 4 year old daughter who had been taken away from her for 2 years for child abuse and neglect...she was furious with me because I used the word prerogative and told me to "can the fucking big ass words, bitch"...and yeah...after that we were DONE talking and I told her to leave and we might be able to revisit this conversation when she could speak respectfully to me...at which point she heaved her child on her hip and said, "bye cunt" and slammed out the door...yes, I do indeedy, boy howdy, fuckety fuckety love my job...)

I sat with a bowl of cream of rice in my lap and read Anne Lamott's new book, Some Assembly Required. After my dinner, I enjoyed a chocolate chip cookie and sat close to Bing on the sofa for a while canoodling and sharing our days.

Then, Bing showed me the exquisite 1953 Miramar candy dish that we discovered a few weekends ago at Goodwill. The one that cleaned up beautifully and is worth about 20 times what we paid for it. We decided to give it as a housewarming gift to Chloe, the daughter of a close friend who is just starting her professional editing life in New York and living in Brooklyn.

I have to say that life is not bad when there is a cool rain splashing down outside and I am in a warm, softly lit house with cream of rice and a Tate's chocolate chip cookie in my belly, reading a good book and watching Bing finish polishing up the Miramar candy dish.

Fuckety fuck...not bad t'all.

Have you ever....

....awakened from a dream that was so wonderful, so luscious, so...perfect in it's execution that you felt like weeping when you realized that it was 5:45 a.m. and the alarm would ring in a half hour's time?

Here's to a joyous dream of a cabin by a stream, huge roses and sweet smelling violets blooming right outside my door, a baby Liv in my arms, chortling and kicking her frog legs and the man with the child in his eyes telling me that my chicken stew was the most magnificent in the world.

I look at the dream now and it was so simple.

But, what can I say?

Those flowers still leave me breathless with joy.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty

I know that it is very wrong to be vain.

But, I can't help it. I wore my stella peplum wiggle dress today to work.

And my new Stuart Weitzman black kitten heeled pumps. (Would have loved to wear high heels but the old gray mare ain't what she used to be...or rather...can't wear high heels anymore without being crippled for days afterwards...so settled for black pumps instead. But, google Stu's shoes. They are gorgeous. Any kind, any color.)

I never wear hats, but this outfit begged for one, so I wore this one.

And topped it off with my sassy Duwop red lipstick.

I felt so good. All day.

I know that what matters is what is on the inside, but sometimes...I just need to feel like I look smashing.

Even when I am at work.

And the frosting on the cake is if I can make Bing go a little speechless when I click clack by her with my shoes on the hard wooden floor. I like to see her mouth go a bit slack.

Okay, sometimes I need to make her mouth go a bit slack....

Don't you need this too sometimes?

The Best Day

We planned it like pirates.

About twice a year, Liv and I plan a mother/daughter day. She gets to skip school and I get to skip work. No Bings allowed.

Just us.

Bing calls these days the spend-like-there's-no-tomorrow-times. She is half right. We do spend money, but we don't usually go overboard.

Friday was hooky day for us.

We slept in until nearly nine.

Went out for pancakes for breakfast at that little diner. Neither Liv nor I are big syrup fans. We like honey. Just a drizzle. Coffee for me, chocolate milk for her.

We talk about school, about how remember when she was so scared at the beginning and look at her now. She's on the honor roll, the basketball team and almost won the spelling bee. (Came in third!) She has a nice set of friends, 2 girls and 1 boy. Two are nerds, the other is a sports star.

There is this boy who likes her. Liv isn't completely sure how she feels yet about this or about him. One part of her is delighting in the attention, the other part of her wants to just go home and read. I get it. Boy, do I get it.

Her period hasn't started yet and she's 12 1/2. I tell her that I didn't start until I was 15 1/2. She stares at me. Seriously? THAT old? I nod, tell her that her grandmother Rosie informed me that if I didn't start by my sixteenth birthday, she would make me go in for a check up to see what the hold up was. I started the next month. I think it was terror that started it. Not terror of never menstruating, but terror of having the town doctor peer into my girl parts.

We finish up our pancakes and head to the fancy pants mall: Regency. Neither one of us are crazy about this ritzy place, but there is a great bedding store there and Liv's favorite store: Anthropologie. I used to buy all of her clothes from Hanna Andersson. Loved, loved, loved their clothes. I loved it when a new season came around and I could order her a new set of clothes. But, when Liv turned ten, she began to protest that Hanna clothes were too babyish for her, so I let her pick her own clothes. She's been totally no fuss, "let's just go to Target or Goodwill" until a few months ago. Then, she started finding her own style. And it came from Anthropologie. Now, I get her a piece here and there for birthdays or special days, but I seriously cannot afford to outfit her totally from there. But, we do love shopping there once in a while.

I park and we walk inside. Liv leans over and whispers that we should talk only in British accents. This delights me. Liv is a practical, pragmatic child, always has been. She isn't inclined to do this sort of thing. I am. So..yes, it pleases me.

We practice as we walk to the bedding store. I am stunned at how good she is at this. Far better than me. We link arms and walk into the ritziness of the bedding store and are immediately pounced on by a woman dressed completely in beige. She is stunning, with her hair up in a perfect french twist and perfectly applied coral lipstick. I immediately feel like Daisy Mae Fergus. I catch a look at myself in one of the many mirrors that dot the walls and suck my cheeks in. Better. I look snooty now.

We are looking for bamboo sheets. I have a set of pale blue ones and Liv has commented many times on their softness, so I decided to get us both a new set. We cross to bedding and finger the Egyptian cotton, the percale, the plain cotton muslin and eucalyptus fiber. We are using our best accents and seem to be getting away with it. I can't look at Liv. Every time I do, I start giggling like a school girl.

The french twisted sales woman comes up and starts pushing the satin sheets, saying that she so enjoys the way that satin just adheres to one's skin. Liv smiles sweetly at her and then says with her picture perfect English accent, "Oh, my no. We're quite enjoying this eucalyptus sheeting, though!"

French twist is intrigued with her accent, I can tell. She says, "Are you English?" I am tempted to say, "DUH!" but don't. Liv, however, goes into this lovely tale about how we are originally from London, but recently moved to Yorkshire.

"We've had quite a change, I'm afraid," she says, her voice clipped and sure. "Yorkshire is a lovely, peaceful, rural landscape compared to London, but the local dialect can be a bit of bear!"

French twist is fascinated. So am I.

Liv goes on to explain how we are staying with a friend here in town while we scout out UNL to see what the college atmosphere is like for her elder sister, Soxie, who declined to accompany us. We are buying some linens for our hosts as a thank you gift for allowing us to stay with them!

I try not to say anything else since I am not good at this, certainly nowhere near as good as my lithe tongued daughter. I am half delighted, half horrified. What a cool little liar she is!

We settle on eucalyptus fabric sheets in snowstorm white for me and Liv further astonishes me by selecting a pale shade of lavender for her color. All the sheets she currently has are plain ivory muslin, navy blue and tan. She also has some zippy monkey flannel sheets that we both love.

As French twist is ringing us up, I notice that she has begun to speak in a slight British accent as well, totally unintentional. Liv and I catch it at the same time. We look sheepishly at each other and then quickly look away, biting our cheeks so as not to laugh.

From there, we head to Anthropologie. Liv decides that she is going to speak entirely in French when we are there. I tell her that she can't, no! I am not fluent in French, will flounder around trying to understand her. She sighs. Decides to skip it.

Oh, dear. The new Spring line is in at the store. Liv and I walk around ooohing and aaahhhhing at everything in sight. So beautiful! I must admit that my daughter has acquired my taste in clothes, although she goes for a little bit more scandalous than I do. But, if memory serves me correctly, when I was in my teens, I WOULD have dressed more like this if my mother had allowed it.

The good news is that we don't have to buy much. Liv hasn't grown much this year and last year's clothes still fit, although they are showing wear. And since she has one more year at her Catholic junior high, she will be in uniform, so no need to buy much.

Still. She tries on an orange plume skirt that she looks lovely in. I pick up the price tag on the waistband and take a sharp breath. She nods and goes to take it off. We won't be buying it. I find a gray Akin tunic and am deeply in like. When I try it on, I am delighted with the fit. But, the price tag is not on sale. I decide to skip it.

We had agreed ahead of time that we would look at bathing suits and summer shoes. So, we do that. We find two suits for her, bikinis, her first. She is on a swim team in the summer and they have utilitarian plain blue maillots, so she's been wearing that when she swims with her friends. This year, she wants a prettier suit. One is a primrose colored bikini, the other a gorgeous turquoise sky and sand colored one. Of course, she likes the primrose one precisely because I like the other one.

I am having big problems with the bikinis, though. She is not yet 13. I don't really approve of them yet. Liv seems uncomfortable too, comments that she doesn't know how she will feel with all those boys at the pool when she will be wearing something so skimpy.

We decide to wait a month or two and revisit the decision. We turn to shoes.

And we both find TONS that we like. Liv finds a pair of Tapetti kitten heels that fit her size ten foot well. They have a low pump heel and even with that, she wobbles a bit. But, they would match that orange plume skirt so beautifully....

Impulsively, I go back and get the orange skirt and tell her to get both. AND those embroidered ikat sneakers. AND the dipped azalea flats.

I boldly go back and pick up the grey akin tunic and grab the embroidered succory boots for myself. I tell Liv we need to leave NOW before I change my mind.

We hustle to the register. As we leave the store, we look at each other and beam and then when we are about 10 feet past the store, Liv says, "Bing is going to freak, Mama."

I know. She will. I spent too much. But, I console myself by thinking that I rarely buy new clothes and Liv buys almost all her clothes at Target or thrift stores. She has size ten feet. Shoes are hard to find that are really pretty for her.

I tell Liv this and we agree that we will not feel guilty.

It's time for lunch. We agreed this morning that we wanted to go here for lunch and have our favorite: brie and pear crepes. So, that is what we do. We have the kind of talk at lunch that I fervently pray we will always have.

We discuss The Hunger Games. I tell Liv that she reminds me of Rue, always has. She retorts that she wishes she could be Kat. Then she asks me who Isak Dinesen is, a writer? I tell her that she wrote several books, but that the only one I have read was one that had a movie made out of it: Out of Africa.

"Nirand told me once that you reminded him of Isak Dinesen," she says. "Mama, I don't know if you've noticed this, but I think he sort of has a crush on you."

I smile. Tell her that it is nice to have someone crush on you. As long as it doesn't go anywhere. I'm with Bing, I tell her, raising an eyebrow.

She smiles, says that she knows that. "I don't think I'm the sort of girl who will get a lot of crushes," she says. "I'm more...I don't know, the kind of girl who you want to be lab partners with..."

I have to laugh. She is FAR more pretty and interesting than she realizes. Or? Hmmm. Maybe not. I look at her and just see this incredibly beautiful, funny, smart girl. Maybe she is more of a lab partner type. But, I actually like this better. I tell her that the girls who are the lab partners are far more interesting than the cheerleaders. Of course, that never really becomes evident until they are older. We discuss how important it is to not be one of those fake girls.

"I want you to be a Katniss or a Rue," I tell her. She nods, using her fork delicately to pierce through her crepes. I think to myself that I genuinely like my daughter, not just love her. I wonder why I am keeping this to myself, so I say it out loud and she flushes and rolls her eyes, but she is smiling.

We talk a little about the boy who likes her. She has never told me his name or many details about him. He's never come over to the house. He calls her occasionally but she never retreats to her bedroom to talk, just sits wherever she is and keeps the conversation relatively short. I suppose I could go through her phone records to spy, but since she isn't behaving badly, I hesitate to spy just out of curiosity. She now tells me that his name is George. That he is nice, not one of the popular "jocky" boys, but a reader. They became friends when they both read The Hunger Games. She says that he has asked her to "go" with him but she told him no, that she thought they were too young and really, what does "going together" mean? It just means that they are labeled a couple at school and sit together at lunch. Stupid.

To say I adore this child is an understatement.

"Was he sad when you said no?" I ask.

No, she says. "He told me that he was relieved. That he thought it was stupid too. That maybe in a few years if we're still interested in the same things, we could think about it. We're tabling this for now, just staying friends."

I am humbled at her maturity. And his. How many kids her age "table" discussions?

After lunch, we head to the movie that we have picked out.

21 Jump Street.

It is rated R, but I am not too concerned. I tell Liv that I LOVED this show when it was popular in the 80's. We are in a theater of about ten people. Not many out on a Friday afternoon.

This movie sucks so badly. Truly. It is AWFUL. What's more, I am disgusted by the constant refrain of motherfucker, motherfucking, motherfuck that seems to be in every single line of dialogue. I glance over at Liv. She looks bored, sips her Fanta grape soda. Hogs the popcorn.

Afterwards, we discuss the movie as we go back to the car. Neither one of us liked it. But for different reasons. Liv thought the acting was stupid. I thought the language was.

There is one more item on our agenda today. A bookstore.

Liv and I have a deep love for independent bookstores. We are especially fond of this book store.

This...we may have to keep from Bing. Bing does not get this fascination that Liv and I have with book stores. Especially the smaller, independent ones. She orders everything in a coldblooded fashion from Amazon and delights when she can find a gently used book. Bing will argue everyway to Saturday that you can get a book for so much cheaper if you order it from Amazon. My argument is that I can't smell Amazon. I can smell a book store. I can feel a book store seeping into my veins.

I am happiest when I am sinking my teeth into a small independent book store. Liv is as well. The first thing we both do when setting foot into The Bookworm is....SNIFF. We both take a long, delicious sniff of the place. Books. They have their own special smell.

We separate and wander up and down the aisles. I get lost in the greeting card section for a bit. I am known as the sort of person who always sends the perfect card whether it be for a birthday, a wedding, an anniversary, a what the hell. And the cards in the store are the reason why. Eventually, I head over to the memoirs and find the book that I am seeking: Some Assembly Required by Anne Lamott. I meet Liv at the register. She has Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell. We both have the satiated, heavy lidded look of book lovers.

In the car, on the way home, we decide to stop at Cold Stone and pick up some ice cream for after dinner. Neither one of us mention it, but we buy Bing's favorite: pralines and cream. It may get a bit tense when she sees how we've spent our day.

I hate this. Hate feeling guilty for this day. But, the truth is that Bing simply does not get it. Does not get that yes, okay, my daughter and I sometimes bond by shopping together. Not always. We've bonded sitting in the back yard on a summer's night, riding in the car on the way to school and work, laying on the sofa together with our legs entangled and a dog sprawled on top of us watching a movie and many other scenarios.

But, taking these mother/daughter days is good for both of us. Reminds us of why we love each other. We talk about sometimes nothing, sometimes everything, but it is always the same: we find our way back to each other from the midst of our separate busy lives.

Bing would/will argue that we could do this without spending money. She's right, of course. But, seriously? It isn't that much. We aren't taking a cruise to the Bahamas. We aren't spending 4 thousand dollars on a stupid designer purse.

But, you can feel us both tensing on the way home. I reach over and smooth Liv's hair and she playfully ducks my hand.

"Mama, I mean..Mother...stop!"

"Hey," I tell her. "Let's not let Bing bring us down, okay? We had fun. Right?"

Liv looks at me carefully and then nods. "Yes, but we did spend a little too much money at Anthropologie," she notes.

"So what?" I say.

Liv looks at me and grins.

"I work hard for the money," I continue. "And I have no regrets about this beautiful day."

"Me either," admits Liv. "And...guess what I brought for us to listen to on the ride back home?"

I smile as I hear the familiar beginning notes of a song we both know well.

It is unusually mild for March 16. Our windows are wide open. The air feels fresh and intoxicating. My wonderful daughter is sitting next to me, smiling at me with that gap in her teeth that braces have not been able to restrain.

I am madly in love with my life and my daughter.

We sit quietly and just listen.

Did we just have us a lil' moment there?

I thought about eyes today.

Mostly Bing's soft brown ones with the tiny golden flecks...but other eyes too.

Last night, I was sitting on the sofa trying to read. Both Bing and I have had back pain recently. Actually...hers is more BUTT pain, but whatever. We both spent the weekend camped out like we were 80.

So, there I was sitting on the sofa, my bare feet propped up on the coffee table which is totally AGAINST the rules in this house, but since I am one of the bosses, suck it.

I was waiting for The Amazing Race to come on. (And if you watch...what did you think of that idiotic woman from Big Brother who started whimpering like a four year old, complete with making boo hoo noises behind her hands...and then of course when she took her hands away...there were NO tears! Didn't you just want to slap her silly? God, I wanted to scream at her to STOP this instantly. And of course, her dimwitted boyfriend kept trying to hold her hand and make up...and finally he ducked his head enough to make her agree to still marry him...I kid you not...I would have left her bawling her fake baby tears in the middle of the street and begged someone to please switch partners with me...)

So...um...back to our regularly scheduled blog...

I was sitting barefoot and trying to read while pain shot up and down my back and legs.

I looked up to see Bing sitting on the coffee table (another no-no...yeah, I am one of THOSE parents), facing me. We smiled at each other, joked about what a pair of elderly women we were with all our aches and pains this weekend. She picked up my bare foot and put it in her lap, gently massaging my hammer toe.

I know. The romance is just too much for you, isn't it?

She kept rubbing gently and for some reason, our eyes met and just...held.

And I suddenly felt a hitch in my breath and my heart in my throat. We didn't say a word, she kept rubbing my poor hideous toe back and forth and our eyes stayed locked.

My heart ached for her. Wanting her. Glad she was here with me. Happy to know her.

Finally, we both leaned gingerly towards each other, and she said in a voice barely above a whisper, "I love you so much, babe. So, so much."

I swallowed hard.

"So..," I said. "Wanna go make some eggs?" (If you've followed my blog for a while, you know that this is our quaint way of saying...WANNA FUCK? And we were shameless and almost unbelievably nauseating when Liv was younger. We would sit at the dinner table and pretty much talk in code about fucking each other's brains out, talking about how much we love scrambled eggs or omelettes, nice and goopy...)

She smiled back, ruefully.

"Oh, sweetheart," she said. "I have the inclination, but not the strength!"

This made us both laugh out loud and we settled for some more time making eyes at each other and a few very loving kisses.

Bing put my foot back on the table and looked over her shoulder at me as she rose.

"Did we just have us a lil' moment, there, sweetie? It felt like a nice lil' moment."

I agreed that yes, we had us a moment.

All with our eyes.

Later that night, I went in to Liv's bedroom to smooch her goodnight. She was tucked up reading Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. It pains me to say that she does not share the love of William Shakespeare that I do. When I saw her lugging home Shakespearean tomes, I practically cried with happiness, told her that he was brilliant, that she was in for a treat! She has since told me that I am insane. That she can't make heads or tails of his writing and much prefers math, thank you very much.

"At least, math makes sense!"

I've tried sitting with her and putting his gorgeous sonnets into every day modern English. She is not agog. She regards this reading assignment as punishment. Even when I rented Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet and sat clutching her hand while we watched it, she gave me looks of incredulity and rolled her eyes as I sat sobbing when Juliet held up the slim tube of poison, crying, "Oh churl! drunk all and left no friendly drop to help me after?"

She isn't digging Willie.

So, when I went in to say goodnight, I didn't wax poetically about her reading material, but sat down carefully next to her and petted Socks until she reached the end of a line and stopped, putting the book down, spine up, and smiling at me.

"Goodnight, my sweet Livvie," I said.

"'Night, mother," she said, coming up to place a smacky kiss on my lips. "I love you, sleep well. No bedbugs or bad dreams, okay?

I said okay.

And our eyes met briefly in pure mother/daughter love.

That happens less and less now that she is nearing her teens. But it does happen and I do love it so much.

When Liv was a baby, I would always rock her to sleep. My sisters told me that I was spoiling her rotten, that I was robbing her of the valuable lesson of self soothing.

I always thought that was nonsense. Why on earth should my daughter have to learn to self soothe when that was what I was there for? Soothing her fears, helping her fall into her dreams, smoothing her soft silky golden blonde hair away from her face.

I loved rocking her. I confess that I often spent her entire nap time holding her. I would plan to get laundry done or lay down myself for a brief siesta, but often ending up holding her closely, timing my breathing to hers, loving our closeness.

She never had to self soothe herself to sleep until she was about five or six and then it was because she wanted to do it herself, not because I insisted on it.

And often, in that time when I was holding her and her eyes were becoming milky with fatigue and letting go...that was when our eyes would meet and hold and we would fall into each other's souls.

We would stare dreamily at each other, besotted with love. A mother's love, a daughter's.

I miss those days. Now, I settle for times when our eyes meet for a brief flash of togetherness before we leave each other. I know that when I am on my death bed, it will be her eyes that soothe me, trading places with me finally.

When I was in high school, I learned that I had the power to seduce boys (and a few girls too.)

I liked having this power very much and used it to my advantage many times. I remember smiling inwardly as some guy or girl sat falling headfirst into my eyes while we sat on my college dorm bed or on a green lawn on campus. It was a heady experience to have that kind of power.

As I've aged, I've had to surrender that power. I no longer can be a mermaid singing a siren song to some limp eyed sailor or sailoress. Now, I am an older woman and I don't even get a second look from that hunky looking guy in the produce aisle. I might get a bag boy to carry out my groceries but that has nothing to do with my sex appeal and everything to do with looking frail and well...elderly.

So, Bing and I sharing a lil' moment there is a luminous gift for me.

And hey...she was holding my HAMMER TOE.

I think that says that I still have it, dudes.

Don't you?

Think about all those eyes in your life. The hot lusting eyes of your partner. The sweet helpless eyes of your babies, the warm, infectious laughing eyes of your friends.

Aren't we so lucky to have all those eyes?

Monday blues

Maybe it's daylight saving time, but I could barely get out of bed today.

I awakened at 4 a.m. and this took me by surprise. I awaken every morning at 3:10. Like clockwork. I get up. Pee. Get a drink. Check on Liv. Go back to bed, happy knowing that I get three more delicious hours of sleep.

But waking up at 4:10 just irritated me. My body isn't on daylight savings time yet. And somehow 2 more hours of sleep didn't seem nearly enough.

Woke up to Bing rooting around in the dark trying to find my face to kiss.

"Uh..time?" I asked, incoherently.

"It's 6:05," she countered. "You still have ten more minutes. I'm leaving early to get a start on doing my grades," she said. "Bye, love you, see ya tonight."

Ten more minutes. I inwardly growned. Because my body wanted ten more hours.

I'm up now. Functioning. But, I feel crabby. Bing and Liv are both in fairly good moods. They just have to get through this week and it will be spring break. But, I have the Monday blues.

I want to be a billionaire so freakin' bad. Even more than Travie McCoy and Bruno Mars. Who are much closer to it than me, btw.

I want someone else to make my coffee. I want to wake up and not have to be anywhere.

I want someone else to quiz Liv her spelling words.

Someone else to pick up Bing's blankets and pillows from the living room floor. (She may be in a lot of back pain, but she is still a world class slob.)

I don't want to go to work and help people. Do idiotic paperwork. Sign everything in triplicate. Make sure that all my i's are dotted and my t's crossed for government paperwork. Because if it is not, they send it back.

I don't want to deal with my secretary's prunish face.

I don't want to pick up dishwasher detergent at the store because we forgot to do that on Saturday. And might as well pick up laundry detergent, fabric softener, some of that expensive cobra venom at the health store that really does make my back feel better, Little Debbies for Liv's lunch and more orange juice too. Low on it all.

I don't want to put makeup on.

I just want to slide back into my sage colored soft sheets and sleep for another couple hours. I want to read a book all day long, slugged out on the sofa.

Have Joseph, our trusty butler and jack of all trades, make me a sandwich for lunch and get gas in the car too.

And clean it.

He can help Liv with her homework too. And give me a back rub since he is a jack of all trades and that is in his job description.

He could watch a movie with me.

And then make supper.

Hot turkey sandwiches please.

But, well...I need to fly. I need to drop Liv off at school and then get myself to work too. Hear my low heels click clacking across the marble floor as I head to the elevator. Say good morning to Mike, the doorman.

He probably has the Monday blues too, but won't show it. So neither will I.

But they're there. Inside my skin. Swirling around.

Aching for bed and a carefree day.

Mornin' y'all.

Tired, but riding the wave

I miss Bing. Actually, what I should say is that I miss Bing well.

I miss her being healthy. Because she ALWAYS is. Healthy.

Around Christmas, she said that her back was aching a little bit. So, since she is very health conscious, she cut back on her work out routine, stopped running and walked instead. It seemed to help.

Until Valentine's Day. Then she told me that she was having a lot of pain in her...um...right butt cheek. Pain that radiated down her leg and into the inside of her ankle. It wasn't too bad when she walked, but she couldn't sit down for more than a few moments without intense pain and could only lay down for a few hours at a time before the pain woke her up.

I suggested that she see an internist. She balked. Not her. No sirree bob. No drugs. Not even an aspirin.

This lasted for about two weeks. Two weeks where she slept in the guest room so as not to wake me when she had to get up every two hours to pace away the pain. I woke up anyway. Mother's sleep. Before I had Liv, I slept like I was dead. After Liv, I woke up if a squirrel sneezed in the back yard. I would hear Bing's tread walking around downstairs. Sometimes, I got up to check on her. I quickly discovered that this upset her, she didn't want to wake me...so I started staying put. Awake. But staying put.

We stopped all our usual activities together because she just wasn't up to them. She stopped walking the dog with me, she was fine for a few blocks but then the pain would set in. She and I tried to go to a movie. She ended up standing at the side of the theater. It hurt too much to sit. She could barely drive herself to work every day, so I drove everywhere on the weekends. Not that we went anywhere. She would stand up, leaning against a counter and read. She did our taxes standing up in the dining room while I sat and did the paperwork. Since she was sleep deprived, she took to laying flat on the living room floor. I would put the green wool blanket that she liked over her and a space heater running close by. She could sleep for an hour or two, with the television on.

She started getting black rings under her eyes.

She finally consented to see a doctor. He did blood tests and gave her a MRI. It didn't show much, mostly that two of her spinal discs had compressed. When she brought her ex ray copy home, we compared it to one I had done several years ago. I had four discs compressed to her two. She said she felt like a light weight. I told her that pain is funny. A lot of people go well into old age without even knowing they have a back problem. Some feel pain from the first slip of a disc. Bodies are funny.

So, she let the doctor give her a shot of cortisone in her back. When I had that done several years ago, it helped immensely. It's been 4 days and so far, she feels no relief. But, she says she is sleeping better. And I think she is. I no longer wake up every two hours and hear her pacing. Now it is every four, sometimes five. The rings around her eyes are lessening.

I told her that sometimes those pain shots take a while to work, up to two weeks. She is hopeful.

Her doctor isn't giving her much in the way of pain meds. This annoys the hell out of me, although, truthfully, I think that Bing wasn't honest with him about how much pain that she is experiencing. She is ever stoic, rarely complains. When he asked her about pain, she probably said what she told me: It hurts some. But, it's not horrible. I'm dealing.

This said as she bites her lip hard every time she tries to get up from a chair.

If she were a sedentary person, this would not get to me so much. But, my Bing leaps up steps two at a time, she runs every morning with the dog (and Socks is missing her sooooo much), sprints up ladders and cleans out gutters licketty split and has enough energy for us both on days when I'm dragging.

Our roles have switched, although I am not all that energetic or capable. With my rheumatoid arthritis, I am seldom nimble. I detest going up steps, my knees ache at the top. I have enough pain that I have medication on hand at all times for flare ups.

We are both learning lessons, we admit. We talked last night (and I can't tell you how badly I miss our nights talking, in bed, in each other's arms) for a short while. I sat at the kitchen table, she leaned against me, arm around my shoulder. She said, "I have to say that this pain is instructive. I will never, ever be able to look at you and think to myself that for god sakes, why doesn't she just take a long walk and shake off that pain?"

I looked up at her. "Did you often think that? That I wasn't trying hard enough?"

She blushed, looked away for a moment and then, slowly...nodded.

I sighed.

"But now, I get it," she says. "Pain has a way of just...beating you down. I'm so tired all the time and I just want my life back, you know? I just want to be able to do all the things I used to do without thinking about them. I want to go for a bike ride, run with Socks in the morning, run upstairs and get your shawl when I see you shivering, get the garden ready for you to plant in a couple months. Sleep. God, I miss sleeping for eight hours and waking up feeling like I'm rarin' to go, you know?"

I nodded. Yes. I understood perfectly.

I told her, "You know, I've learned too. I've learned how hard it is to watch someone you love suffer. I hear you wandering at night. I see your face looking so tired, I see you laying on the floor, almost helpless with pain and it KILLS me. I want to help you so badly!"

She smiled. "That's exactly how I feel about you," she said. "When you first had trouble with your back and joints, I used to just ache for the old Maria. I've had to adapt to this version of you. But, you know...you're still in there. You just aren't as...mobile."

We both smiled then and held each other for a while. Said some lovey dovey talk that you don't need to know. Re-connected. Because, this isn't going to take us down. It's minor. But, it is something that we have to endure.

Bing will either get better or she will learn to deal with this new way of living. I will step up to the plate and be the caregiver instead of the one who gets tended to.

It's new for both of us, but we aren't licked.

Still...we miss so much.

And, Bing is absolutely right. Pain, in all versions, is instructive.

So, my question to you is this: Do you have a bad back story? I've come to believe that everyone either has one or knows someone who does? And if not a back story, a health one? How did you deal with it? Did you surprise yourself? Is there a happy ending or did you end up like I did? Just learning to live with what you can't change?

Sex on the brain...

Today was one of those stupid touchy feely meetings that our whole office staff had to go to since we are partly state funded.

NONE of us would have chosen this meeting. Actually, it wasn't called a meeting. It is called a "session."

There were three other offices besides ours. One was a branch of health and human service. Another was an audiology clinic and the last was an office of mostly men who worked for some office that was not clear to me. Something about assigning children to "city branches."

Whatever. Of course, they won't let you sit with your co-workers. Not all of them anyway. We all had to count off in numbers from one to seven and then you had to go find other people who had your number. Mine was 4. I did have Milagros and Lori in my group. Milagros is our nurse and Lori is our account billing specialist.

There were 5 others besides us. 3 were men from the whatever office and one was an audiologist. The last was an incredibly beautiful woman who worked as a social worker for health and human services.

We had to play more stupid get-to-know-your-buddies games. I blacked out on most of them. I do remember trying to get away with telling people that I was named Gigi, but Milagros ratted me out accidentally.

Anyway.

At the near end of the 3 hour session, we had to sit down and write ourselves an affirmative wish about what we want in our lives for 2012. Things like 1) I want to be more giving in the workplace or 2) I want to lose ten pounds or 3) I want to see more movies. It could be anything really.

We then had to write it down ten times and then slide it to the person to our left. Then this person had to stand up and introduce us to the rest of the class and say out loud what our affirmation was. This session was moderated by one by-the-book facilitator, a woman named Dr. Lesley. Not sure if she was a medical doctor or what, she never said or actually she might have and I was half asleep and not listening. Or texting things to Bing like, "This SO sucks. Come rescue me. Bring me a knife in a cake."

At any rate, I actually put some thought in to what my affirmation would be. I ended up thinking that it should be I would like to have good health in 2012. I was proud of not acting like a smart ass and really writing something halfway ok.

So, I scribbled it down and handed it carelessly to the guy sitting on my left. I think his name was George but as I said, I didn't properly pay attention to much of what was going on, so I couldn't be sure. The woman to my right, the beautiful social worker, handed me her affirmation. It said, "I will run for a half hour each day."

I nodded.

It was time to read our affirmations to the rest of the group. George sort of nudged me and said, "Really? This is yours?"

I just nodded brusquely. I mean, God...it wasn't that radical was it?

So, we started reading our affirmations. It was George's turn. I glanced over at him and noticed that his face was bright red.

God, I thought to myself...he is REALLY uptight about talking in front of groups.

And then, he said this:

"Hello, everyone. This is Maria on my right. And um...well...um...she writes that she would like to have good SEX in 2012."

And then he sat down very quickly. The room was silent. I looked over at him, daggers in my eyes. And then my eyes fell to the paper he read from with my affirmations.

I had written TEN times (as requested): I would like to have good sex in 2012.

Oh, fuck. Was that MY writing?

It was.

People started tittering after that long silence. A few made disgusted noises in their throats. Some of the men from the whatever office started looking at me in a whole different way. A few of the woman rolled their eyes and shook their heads.

I wanted to stand up and scream that THIS WAS NOT WHAT I MEANT TO WRITE! But, um...I HAD written it.

All together now. Can we say Freudian slip?

And then, of course, I couldn't really say anything. I mean...it would have just looked worse, no matter what I said. So, I took ownership of it. Blushed furiously. And stood up and managed to say, "Hello everyone. This is Helena and she wants to run for a half hour each day."

And then, thankfully, we moved on.

When it was over, I tried to get out as quickly as I could. This was impossible because three of the men decided that it was very important that they converse with me. I mean, I was obviously a cougar in heat.

Cougar need some catnip?

I wanted to sink through the floor and disappear. Mostly, I was incredulous that I could have actually written that even if it was subliminal.

Because...well...I'm human. I WOULD like to have good sex in 2012. I just didn't want to say that. I mean...I must have felt it, ok. But..WHAT THE FUCK WAS WRONG WITH ME?

I had carpooled with Milagros, Julie, Piper and Becca. And they teased me ALL THE WAY HOME. I am dreading going to work tomorrow.

Because I am the aloof co-worker. The one who sticks to safe topics. I'm not the one who gets her shoulder cried on in bathrooms. I am good for a good morning salutation or a discussion of why Romney is an idiot. I can talk about how great The Walking Dead is. I will defend Lee DeWyze from all naysayers.

But...I am the LAST one who would talk about my sexual appetite in an...um...in a session. With STRANGERS!

Ai yi yi yi yi.

So, please tell me something incredibly embarrassing that happened to you sometime. Something worse than this.

Or just laugh. Because...seriously? I would, if the shoe wasn't on my foot.

I would be laughing like a loon if someone ELSE had done this.

Have a go....

Slumming

Warning: This post is going to sound snobbish. Fair warning.

I am not a fan of two things: buffets and cheap ass stores.

So, I attended both today. It happens.

Bing is a huge fan of "greens." She grew up in New Orleans and enjoys a variety of foods that aren't hugely available on the prairie. Mustard greens, collard greens and okra being her favorites.

Only one place serves them EVERY SINGLE DAY in our fair city. And it is a buffet. I have disliked buffets for decades. This happened when I was at one and saw a child of about five voraciously picking his nose and then fingering all the rolls on a platter. And each and every time I have been to a buffet since then, I see something else to add to my dismay:

Children under the age of 12 let loose to make mischief whilst their dumb ass parents sit and laugh with their friends and family. They play hide and seek, using the salad buffet as their free zone. They race around like monkeys let loose in a jungle. These kinds of children tend to have extremely lackadaisical parents who could care less if their offspring are acting like brats. And if you bring it to their attention, they look baffled, as if you just told them their child was running around naked in church doing devil chants. Not their Jimmy. One brave woman actually led a child to his parent after she found him with his mouth hanging under the ice cream dispenser. The child had a ring of chocolate ice cream around his mouth and his hands were sticky with the chocolate sauce that he had dunked his fingers into (proclaiming to his cousin that it wasn't hot, but felt as warm as "bath water!") The parent looked over at her son who was twitching with a sugar high and smiling like a dimwit and then asked him, "Did this lady hurt you?" Ugh.

One child who kept sneezing and coughing profusely all over everything in sight.

An extremely fat woman who cut in front of me and said, "Sorry, my blood sugar is low" and then proceeded to load her plate up with enough potatoes and gravy to send her blood sugar into the stratosphere.

The tables are always sticky and the plates and silverware are never completely clean.

But, Bing adores this buffet because they serve greens. They also serve grits. Each and every time we go to this buffet, she reminds me of the time when we went to North Carolina to visit some cousins of hers and went to a breakfast buffet and I commented, stupidly, to the entire table that I thought it was kind of odd that they had mashed potatoes next to the eggs.

I'd never eaten or seen grits.

Today, was a hard day for both of us. Bing has had terrible um...butt cheek pain lately and it keeps her up at night because she can't sleep for more than three hours without having to get up and walk the pain away. The joints in my hands decided to flare up, so I walked around with my hands looking like Mickey Mouse gloves. We were both kind of crabby. But, Bing, clearly, had the worst night. I woke up twice to find her wandering around walking with a blanket around her shoulders.

I wanted to mother her up a little. So, I suggested that we go to that buffet that she loves and get her some greens. She was surprised.

"You hate that place," she said. "Do I look like I'm dying?"

I said no and then I took it a step further. I had seen in the Sunday paper that Big Lots was having a 20% off sale. Bing loves Big Lots. I detest it.

Bing was even more excited. A buffet and Big Lots! In one day! And it wasn't even her birthday! PLUS...I offered to drive and she knows I don't like driving.

Well, I don't like driving with HER as a passenger. Bing is constantly telling me to change lanes because the one on the left or right is "moving faster." This annoys me when she does this changey lane thingy when I am a passenger. I feel like we are on our way to the emergency room or something. But, it irritates me LIKE CRAZY when she does it when I am driving. I usually ignore her, which drives her nuts. She also insists that "the driver gets to pick the radio station or cd." Unless I am driving. And then, she forgets that rule conveniently, punching at the radio every ten seconds and changing up the music just when I am starting to sing along to a song. She and I do NOT have the same taste in music at all. I will be humming along to Lady Antebellum's newest song and she will frown and call it "cheesy" and change the station. Over to some asinine country song asking "Are we gonna do this or what?"

Bing also thinks that I drive too slowly and "ride the brakes."

But beggars can't be choosers and with her butt cheek woes, she can barely drive herself to work and back without major pain. So me offering to drive is a good thing.

We made it to the buffet. She only complained once and that was to ask why I insisted on staying in the left lane behind a huge SUV that I couldn't see around.

Um..because in two more blocks, I need to turn LEFT!

We bought two dinners and went in. As always, it was packed. Mostly with families with 7 children or more, girl's basketball teams from small towns who love buffets, and ok...I apologize if this offends overweight readers...but really, really fat people who do NOT need to eat four desserts.

I spotted him right away. I am good at this. The tween boy dressed in a white tee shirt and jeans who galloped up and down the aisles as if he were at Chuckie Cheese. He pushed in front of elderly people who were unsteady on their feet to begin with and sloppily loaded his plate up with spaghetti and meatballs and then nonchalantly slid the spoon back into the meat sauce where it didn't hold and fell spinning to the floor, anointing everyone in a two foot radius with red sauce.

He was a noisy mouth breather and had a string of spittle on the side of it. Ugh.

He saw his cousin walk through the door and spilled his chocolate milk all over the table as he leaped up to go grab him in a headlock. His mother quickly grabbed a worker and pointed to their table. The poor woman did not speak English but spills are not language necessary and she hastily cleaned it up. Not one word of thanks from mom, who went back to talking loudly to a female relative about how she loved, loved, LOVED buffets because you didn't have to tip dumb servers. I looked over at her overly blonde dye job, tacky high heels, and garish rings on all but two of her fingers and wanted to go push her head in her son's sloppy ass uneaten plate of spaghetti. She kept using the word ain't over and over as well as double negatives. ("I ain't never seen such a beeyoitch in my life and she weren't even pretty." "Not no way am I ever votin for that dumb ass Muslim. Billy lost his job at Costco and it's all that "Bama's fault.") I wanted to tell her that Billy probably lost his job at Costco because he was late all the time and stole a case of beer but of course, I just sat there table watching as her beer bellied husband ate plate after plate of fried chicken, mashers and gravy and corn on the cob and then chased it all with plates of brownies smothered in ice cream, chocolate fudge cake and strawberry shortcake.

Bing was in hog heaven, eating her greens. I ate a (surprisingly good) bowl of chicken noodle soup, figuring that it was in a scalding hot pot and would probably be ignored by most children.

As we were leaving, we had to weave around the open mouthed brat and his cousin, who were throwing rolls at each other from behind the ice cream machine while their mothers sat talking with most of their lipstick eaten off but their lip lines still firmly penciled in.

Then, we moved on to Big Lots.

Now, sometimes I love Big Lots. If you can make your way around the junky stuff, you can sometimes find really good buys. Like the time I found Jones diet root beer or a tube of Pringles for 50 cents or Dawn dishwashing liquid for half the price at the grocery store or...my favorite: a Berber rug that was the perfect shade of green to match our upstairs bathroom. And only cost 3 bucks.

We went in. Big Lots is a lot like a cheap buffet. There are crowds and lots of people with children who are not supervised. It's part of their ambiance.

Today was no different. I immediately found a St. Patrick's day display with several Irish buttons. Liv had lost her button last year and so I found not only a button but some really, really cute hair barrettes that I am sure she will not like but let me put in her hair anyway....until I drop her off at school and they will be placed in her back pack before she gets ten feet into the door.

Bing found a speaker for our boom box whose speaker doesn't work anymore. For less than 20 dollars. I found some really beautifully sewn bath towels from India that were the kind of snowy white that I love until they get stained or until I wash them with my red shirt.

Diet pepsi. Little Debbie snack cakes (Liv loves those in her lunch..has since first grade and is unapologetic about it, which I love about her....) Sea salt. Those cookies from Hawaii that don't make my blood sugar go crazy. Paper towels.

After about a half hour, I needed to use the restroom and I hated to do that but it was unavoidable. Their restrooms always look and smell filthy. Today was no surprise. I coated the toilet seat with paper before I gingerly sat down and then had to flush twice before the water went down.

As I walked out of the end stall, a woman came rushing in with her toddler daughter, who was screaming, "NOW! I gotta go NOW. NOW, MOMMMMMMMMMEEEE!"

To my horror, instead of taking her into a stall, the mother unceremoniously whipped her daughter's Ariel panties off and let her hunch OVER THE SINK. She let out a strong smelling stream of urine and smiled charmingly at her mother. I stood mute with horror. After she finished peeing in the sink, her mother looked over at me and asked me if I could please get her some toilet paper.

"I don't want Maisy to fall off the sink," she said, smiling as if this was an every day thing to let your daughter urinate into a sink.

I rolled my eyes and grabbed her toilet paper but when I handed it to her, I commented that maybe it would have been more appropriate to use a toilet? The mom gave me a just us girls smile and said, "Oh, GOD no! It is so filthy in here and I'm sure the sinks get cleaned better than the potties do!"

With that, she yanked up Maisy's panties and they swooped out the door. Not washing their hands, of course. Or running hot water in the sink that they'd just soiled with urine.

I sighed and washed my hands in the sink as far away as possible, looking down carefully to check for urine first.

By the time I got back outside, Bing was ready to go. We had a full cart and the total cost was under 40 bucks. Sweet.

But...as I told Bing in the car on the way home, I don't want to go back anytime soon. I told her about the sink peeing child and she rolled her eyes with me but also said, "You know, we are all trying to save money in this economy. So, we'll meet all kinds, sweetie..."

I didn't say it, but I thought to myself that at least if we went to a regular restaurant I could keep my illusions of un-spit spattered food or booger smeared rolls. And when I shop at the more expensive, smaller stores, I may not save a lot of money, but it is unlikely that I will see anyone peeing in a sink.

Call me snotty. I don't care. I NEED my illusions.

How about you? What do you think? Where do you shop? Any good stories? Comments on how snooty I am?