DON'T MIND MY MINDFULNESS

This evening's writing class focuses on meditation and mindfulness, including mindful eating.  I learn two things from the class:

            1.  Mindful eating is very noisy inside my head.

            2.  You cannot take the comedy out of the comedienne.

After doing some writing and discussion work, we are meditating.  Personally, I think meditating is a wonderful thing, and I want to be serious.  I truly do.  Eyes closed, we are focusing on our breathing.  I've had pneumonia about a dozen times, and every so often I will do deep breathing exercises just to make sure both of my lungs are inflating properly, so I have no problem with this part of the exercise. 

Except the "clear mind" part. 

My mind is going a mile a minute:  Are my lungs inflating?  Am I healthy? Should I exhale through my nose, too?  Is my nose whistling?  It's awfully dry in here. I wonder if anything good is on TV tonight.  When are the Bruins playing again?  Great shoot-out win Tuesday.  Is there an echo in here?  How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?  Hey, there's feta cheese in the fridge.  

I am supposed to be meditating, thinking of nothing, just breathing.  So I try applying a little Pilates -- breathe, feeling the rib cage expand then contract.  Expand then contract.  Expand then … what … what the hell is that noise?

Without opening my eyes, I realize the guy sitting across from me is snoring.  Snoring.  SNORING.  That's like ultra-meditation, right?  I try to control myself, but I'm smiling.  Thank goodness the teacher said she'd close her eyes, too, so hopefully she can't see me smirking and losing concentration. 

We are instructed to pay attention to our feet touching the floor (mine are not - I'm too short, so my feet are dangling about two inches away from the carpet), pay attention to our hands on our knees, pay attention to our shoulders, think about our heads being lifted straight as if our spine is being straightened by someone holding an invisible thread above our heads. 

A thread?  Holding up my head?!  Holy crap, I've meditated myself into a marionette.

The teacher rings a chime, and all I can think of is how long the sound echoes in the room… one second, two seconds, three… Suddenly a woman two seats to my right smacks her hand on the table and scares the shit out of all of us.  We still don't dare open our eyes because, hey, we're meditating.  Meditating.  MEDITATING.

Snoring Guy is still snoring, and now Fidgeting Girl is fidgeting.  I can hear them.  I listen, and then I listen some more, and I keep on listening.  Hmmmm, this has been an awfully long meditation session. I hope the professor is all right.  I don't think she has any outstanding heart conditions … does she?  What if she passed out and needs medical attention?  How will we know?  How long should we sit here like this?  Oh, shit, I'm supposed to be meditating.  Meditating.  MEDITATING.  Ommmmm.  Ommmmmm.  Wait, that's not it.  We're supposed to be breathing.  Is the professor breathing?  I know the guy across from me is breathing because he's snoring.  Snoring.  SNORING.  Breathe.  Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be concentrating on my breathing.  In.  Out.  Here.  Now.  Wax on.  Wax off.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

DING!  The chimes go off again, and I count the seconds again.  For some reason, I am obsessed with the length of time I am able to hear the chimes.  Maybe that makes me mindful and meditative.  Personally, I think it just makes me obsessive-compulsive.

Next comes the mindful eating.  First we are each given raisins.  I immediately make mine dance and start humming "I Heard It Through the Grapevine."  I look at the woman next to me and whisper, "Don't you wish you hadn't sat next to me?"  She nods slightly, closely examining her raisin. 

Eventually, after we've had our filthy paws all over them, we eat the raisins, chewing twenty-five times.  The noise inside my head is excruciating, and I am sure everyone else can hear it, as well.  I don't swallow my raisin right away because the professor only said to chew not swallow, and if it's anything like those Catholic communion wafers (I'm Protestant, so I don't honestly know this stuff), I don't want to fail meditation for finishing off the raisin if we're not being mindful of the poor sucker.

The same thing happens with the Ritz crackers, which are passed around after we've ingested the raisins.  We look at them, smell them, feel them, discuss them, chew them twenty-five times, and make a lot of noise with this progressive munching.

Then we are given slices of orange.  When we get to the "feel it" part, I start doinking mine with an index finger, watching the yellow-white end of it limply bounce back into place.  What does your orange slice feel like, we are asked. 

"Michael Jackson's nose," I reply.

The woman sitting next to me has clearly made the decision never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, to sit anywhere near me again.

Look, I'm trying, really I am.  Meditating is a new concept for me; I'm not one to slow down, and I'm certainly not one to just shut off my brain voluntarily.  But you can't put me in a room with sleepers, jumpers, raisins, crackers, and wimpy orange slices and not expect me to come up with a treasure trove of material.  That's like locking a trained monkey in a round room and expecting it to find the corner.

I meditated, and the only deeper meaning I discovered is this:  While you may take the comedienne out of the comedy, you can never take the comedy out of the comedienne. 

Meditate for a while on that one.

ANGER MIS-MANAGEMENT

Did you ever have one of those days when you just wanted to punch someone?  When you truly needed to punch someone?  Or something?

I had one of those days today at work.  Don't panic; I didn't need nor want to punch a student.  I kept getting ridiculous, belittling emails from someone in the district administration.  Now, I have tried dealing with this Yoga style; I have tried the enlightened approach.  After all, I am better than he, this I know and believe.  I tried visualizing him into a gelatinous pile of goo and corking him into a ceramic urn.  I tired ignoring his incessant emails.  I tried deep breathing techniques…. Here…. Now …. Here …. Now ….

Nothing worked.  Nothing will work, at least nothing reasonable.

I know this because I drove home intermittently gripping the wheel with white knuckled rage and pumping a fisted hand madly through the air.  My hands were so tightly fisted, as a matter of fact, that I could feel the searing pain of my fingertips digging into my palms through my leather driving gloves. 

Something needed to hurt other than me.  

Years ago I decided sitting on my ass wasn't working for me.  I liked taking cardio-kickboxing classes but not for the air-punches; I thrived when we brought out the bags, especially the one that looked like a human.  I graduated from that to adult judo classes.  I was probably the smallest adult in the class, but there were times when I just needed to try choking someone, or throwing someone, or letting someone throw me because sometimes it just felt damn good to hit the mat and know I'd been trained how to fall and how to get back up.

No one is ever going to keep me on the mat again.  No one.

So today I decided that I needed to punch something.

Lacking something to actually punch, I changed into workout clothes, went to the gym, and ran a mile on the treadmill.  Unfortunately, I was right back where I started from when the tread finally stopped, and I was still pissed off.  

I moved to the machines and pumped the steam clear out of my legs.  I moved from my legs to my arms.  When the moron little kids tried to jump onto the bicep machine, I damn near tore their heads off.  They (and their trainer) gave me wide berth until I had exhausted myself and the machine about twenty reps later.

I was still ticked off.

I went into the weight room, a place that used to intimidate me until I played judo.  I'll never be as strong as the men, but I'm damn strong enough.  I've lifted 45-pound weights (that assholes left behind) off bars so I could replace them with weights I wanted.  I've had chivalrous men of all ages come running over to "help" me.  I smile and tell them I can do it, and I truly can.  If I can carry a 165-pound man on my back one way across the dojo and carry him in my arms back the other way, I can lift a damn 45-pound weight off a bar.  If I can drag someone who outweighs me by 70+ pounds across the tatami while he holds my obi, I can go into the weight room at a gym.

But today … today I was pissed.  I was a walking shit-storm today.  The truck driver who pulled out in front of me then drove 20 mph felt my wrath.  The idiot kids in the gym with their "trainer" (babysitter) felt my wrath today.  The weights and the treadmill and the machines felt my wrath today.

My body felt my wrath today.

 

I have the gloves.  I have the full boxing gloves and I have the fingerless gloves.  All I need is the bag.  I'm going to order the bag that looks like a man, the Bob Bag, and not the cheap-ass one.  I want the one that includes the bottom half so on days like today, I can give him a name and kick him in the cajones the same way I got kicked in mine today at work.

You see, today is just one of those days, a day when I truly need to punch something, and no amount of pain, sweat, or muscular torture is going to resolve that.  I just hope to order that punching bag soon because the computer, whose only sin is being the bearer of the email exchange that started this whole bullshit, is going to be next, and I've got two gloved fists just raring to go.

SNOW PICTURES

It is snowing.

I am distracted from my afternoon meeting,

Watching flakes fall (so close, so far) on the other side of the window pane.

I cannot wait to get home.

Driving on slick streets is not my idea of entertainment.

I stop to buy a small jug of milk just in case I need it later.

I turn down the street that connects to mine,

The street that runs between two cemeteries.

It is silent,

Windless,

The snow adhering to the everything it touches:

The trees, the stone walls, the grave markers, the church, the ground.

As soon as I back the car into the driveway,

I unload my work gear, throw the milk in the fridge, and grab

My camera.

I am still in work clothes but smartly wore hiking boots,

Anticipating a snowy homeward commute.

I change my jacket to one that will zip up to protect the Canon as I walk

Through the snow that is falling steadier now.

Light fades.

Evening falls too early during the winter, earlier still with the storm.

I bring the camera to my eye, making sure it sees exactly what I see, sees exactly as I see.

Its lens and my eye's lens melt together like the wet snow that

Lands and melts on my gloves.

It is snowing,

Covering the silent graves with its wordless white,

The only sounds coming from my boots crunching across the surface and the steady

Click … click … click …

Of the mechanism shooting frame after frame after frame.

I stay until I am frozen, hands crippled into claws, and

Use my leathered talons to readjust the memory machine inside my coat

Before I zipper it shut as high as it will go all coated with ice crystals.

It is difficult to untie the laces of my boots, but once I do,

Water is set to boil.

A flashback - warm milk, unsweetened cocoa, and sugar, 

Melting together in a deep pan -

Leads me away from tea and to hot chocolate.

I open the milk I wisely purchased, adding it to
Marshmallows and cocoa.

For a moment I am distracted from my day,

Watching flakes fall (so close, so far) on the other side of the window pane.

The wait is over;

I am home.

FILM AT ELEVEN

The News - Part II:

I want to speak to the Boston news stations, since they were on my mind this weekend.  I have some advice for all of you. 

The first piece of advice is for NECN.  Please allow Scott Montminy to be seen on camera.  He's funny as hell, and he makes me smile.  Why on earth you ever relegated him to voice-overs is beyond me.  Bring him out and parade him around, t-shirt and all; the man has charisma and a wry sense of humor.  Embrace him.

Another tidbit for NECN - Matt Noyes is never wrong with his weather predictions.  Never.  Ever.  The man is a radar magician and a meteorological genius.  Whatever you're paying him, it cannot possibly be enough.  Cage him and make sure he never leaves the studio, or perform some kind of brain sharing thingee so all New England weather people can thrive on whatever makes this guy tick.

WMUR in Manchester - You've come a long way from Manchester Coal & Oil jingles and the likes of the Uncle Gus show (which I was on once, by the way, when I was seven).  Whatever you're doing, keep doing it.  I travel in New Hampshire a lot more often than I get to Boston, so you really have become my go-to-station lately.

Hey, WCVB, I don't care how many times Randy price gets arrested; the man is still handsome.  Let him anchor, for crying out loud.  And don't ever allow married couples to co-anchor your show.  Natalie Jacobson was a twat.

WBZ, this isn't the Our Gang show.  Tell Robie we love him, but he has to stop the schtick; he's really not that good at it.  Keller, I used to hate you because your voice grated on me and your mustache never moved, then I loved you because your blog had integrity, then you allowed those stupid bitches to take over your blog so I hate you again.  May Mumbles Menino haunt your eternal unrest.  And for goodness sake, tell those women to eat something. Seriously, eat a marshmallow or something.  A couple of them look like they'll choke on a mini-chocolate chip.  Have some food or lettuce or something.  You look like gerbils on screen.  Lastly, please do NOT continue dressing the female anchors in the same color then putting David Wade in a matching tie.  It's like watching Tony Orlando and Dawn, for chrissakes.

Fox, I was never a big fan of VB.  He and Sandy both sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard when they worked for the Howie Carr radio show.  (Sandy is still there and still makes me twitch when she speaks.)  But VB, sometimes you act like Robie's (WBZ) goofy younger brother.  You need your own persona.  Or maybe the two of you just need to re-integrate.  I'm not sure which.

 

WHDH, you escape my wrath tonight.  Well, mostly.  I will say your website is annoying, but your weather radar online works pretty decently, so I guess you can have kudos.  But it seems like even though you have a comment section to your site, no one ever comments.  What's that all about?  Okay, so I guess you didn't escape my wrath.

That's my advice.  Now it's time for the news, so I'll back tomorrow.  Film at eleven.

WHAT'S NEW(S)?

I am watching the news in the morning before getting up for work.  I usually flip between six local stations.  I do this mostly because I am trying to catch a full weather report, but I am usually dozing while sitting up in bed, and once I realize I've missed the report on one station, I immediately flip to another.  I repeat this process for the sports report, too, which means the remote clicker gets an Olympic workout between 5:00 and 5:30 a.m. most weekdays.

My favorite used to be WBZ.  I've been a 'BZ girl since I was in elementary school because that station used to broadcast the school cancellations via the radio.  But their implosion of the Conversation Nation blog, once a fan-favorite news forum that turned into a politically stilted propaganda machine, makes it difficult for me to watch the station with any loyal regularity.  

I also watch WCVB, WHDH, and FOX25 occasionally.  If I want weather reports that are closer to my end of the state rather than the Boston forecasts, I'll switch over the WMUR out of Manchester, which was another childhood staple when growing up in southern New Hampshire.  I hold a special affinity for NECN, New England Cable News, mostly because so many Boston news people laughed at it when it first started airing, claiming it would never last.  It's actually the only local station that can get a weather forecast completely correct without Ollie Williams level histrionics.

Mostly the news just provides some background noise.  So much of it has been unwatchable in the last year.  I really can't stomach politics because the whole subject is just bad for my blood pressure, and that's all the news has been covering ad nauseam for the past year.  My blood pressure gets enough of a workout every time the news mentions snow… which it is mentioning right now … for Monday afternoon … when I'm supposed to have an after-school meeting.  

Already I am planning Monday's work escape.  I'm thinking early sign-out so that maybe I can crawl home before it gets too dangerous.

I'll check all six news stations before I make my final decision.

A BLARING UPDATE

Update on the blaring alarm story from Thursday:

Remember the alarms that woke me up at 4:30 a.m. the other day?

After I re-set the screeching fire alarms, I set off for work then a class forty-five minutes from home.  I did not get back until 8:00 at night, thirteen hours after I shut and locked the front door for the day.  I was exhausted but nervous that the damn alarms would go off again at any second.  I took a lightweight decorative pillow and put it over my head while I slept, hoping it might muffle the jolt I would experience if the hardwired smoke detectors went off again errantly during the night.

I was relieved to discover that I had gotten a full, uninterrupted night's sleep.  I started the car early, in case the battery had died in the sub-zero weather, and left for work before 7:00 a.m.  Around 3:00 my phone indicated one voicemail.  The voicemail was my landlady, telling my not to worry, it was a faulty fire alarm, and they disconnected the bad one for the time being.

Uh … I didn't know there had been a problem while I was gone.

Apparently sometime after I left the house, the alarms tripped again, and the landlords had to enter my house to figure out the problem.  They had come in and unhooked the faulty alarm, thus making sure the alarms would not go off except in the case of an actual fire.

I felt awful knowing I left the house and the alarms were blaring.  And yet, I was also relieved.  I'm sorry that the owners and my neighbors were inconvenienced and/or scared, but that's why I rent.  Better their problem (ultimately) than mine... especially since I can't even read a fuse panel.

Now, THAT'S alarming.

TELL-TALE THERMOMETER

TRUE!  -- chilly, very, very dreadfully chilly I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am cold? 

The temperature had frozen my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them.  Above all was the sense of frostbite acute.  I shivered from icy winds in Heaven and on Earth.  I shivered because it was cold as Hell.  How then am I chilly? 

Hearken! And observe how frigidly, how frostily, I can tell you the whole story.

It is impossible to say how the icicles first entered my brain, but, once conceived, they haunted me day and night.  Warmth, there was none.  Defrosting, there was none.  I loved Old Man Winter.  He had never wronged me, even in 1978.  He had never given me insulation.  For his snow, I had no desire.  

I think it was the eye of his blizzard! Yes, it was this!  The eye of his blizzard resembled that of a vulture ice sculpture -- a pale grayish eye with a snowy film over it.  Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold, and so by falling subzero degrees, very gradually, I made up my frozen mind to take the flakes of Old Man Winter, and thus rid myself of the Blizzard Eye forever.

Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But you should have seen me.  You should have seen how coldly I proceeded -- with what caution -- with what foresight, with what numbness of circulation, I went to work!

I was never kinder to Old Man Winter than during the whole week before I thought about killing him but was too frikkin' frostbitten to do it.

The weathermen arrived at the door, the forecasters I had berated and belittled in pervious blogs.  I smiled -- for what had I to fear but another storm on the radar?  I bade the meteorologists welcome.  The shriek they had heard so early this morning was my own from stepping outside to make sure my car started.  I lied and told them Old Man Winter was absent in the country.  I took my visitors all over the house.  I bade them predict -- predict well! 

I led them at length to the radar maps.  I showed them Old Man Winter's snowmen, secure and undisturbed in the morning air.  In the enthusiasm of my cold-crippled state, I brought pre-made snowballs into the room and desired them here to stick out their mittened hands, while I, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own gloved hand around a snowball.  Inside that very snowball reposed the thermometer stolen from the frozen corpse that was Old Man Winter. 

The weather people were satisfied.  My frostbite had convinced them.  I was singularly frozen to the core.  They drank hot cocoa and chatted about the last time we all saw Old Man Winter, and I answered cheerily.

But ere long I felt myself getting paler and colder and wished them gone.  My nose froze and I fancied a stinging from the lobes of my ears.  But still they chatted.  The stinging became more distinct; I iced over more freely and though got rid of all feeling, it continued to gain definitiveness - until at length I found the seasonal temperature was NOT within my cold body.

No doubt I now grew VERY pale; but I froze more fluently, and wheezed with a heightened voice. Yet the temperature decreased -- and what could I do?  There was a low, dull, cracking sound, much such a sound as the ice floe makes when separating from winter's river.  I gasped for breath, yet the forecasters heard it not.  I froze more quickly, more vehemently, but the temperature steadily decreased.

I arose and argued about mittens versus gloves and fleece versus wool, all in a high key and with violent but ice-stiffened gesticulations; yet the cracking noise increased.  Why WOULD they not be gone?  I skated across the floor to and fro with sharpened blades, as if excited to fury by the observations of these forecasting experts, but the noise steadily increased.

O Frosty!  What COULD I do?  I froze -- I raved -- I swore (like THAT'S unusual)!  I swung the snowball which was still in my glove.  The noise grew louder --  louder -- LOUDER!  And still the weather professionals chatted pleasantly.

Was it possible they heard not?  No -- no -- they heard.  They suspected!  They KNEW!  They were making a mockery of my frostbite!

This I thought - and this I think.

But anything was better than this agony!  Anything was more tolerable than having meteorologists in my house.  I could bear those hypocritical forecasts no longer!  I felt that I must freeze or die! 

And now -- again -- hark!  Louder!  Louder!  LOUDER!

"Villains!"  I coughed, for my throat was iced hoarse, "Dissemble no more!  I admit the deed!  Here, take this snowball!  Throw it!  Melt it!  Tear it open… Here, HERE! 

The horrid sound is the dropping of the temperature from THIS HIDEOUS THERMOMETER!!!!!

WAKING UP IS ALARMING

Seriously?  SERIOUSLY?!  Are you even kidding me right now?!?!

I wake up at 4:30 a.m.  I think to myself, "It's cold.  Maybe I'll sneak downstairs to turn the heat up then go back to bed until the alarm goes…"

BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…

What the… What the holy hell is that? There are alarms going off all over the house.  I instantly think, "Goddamn furnace on the blink spewing carbon monoxide must've set off the sensors."  Wait.  I don't have a headache, and I am surprisingly alert for having just awakened moments earlier.  I grab the sensor from the stairs and carry it into the kitchen, preparing to surgically remove the battery, if necessary.

BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…

It isn't the CO₂ sensor.

I head back to the stairs for the back-up battery-operated smoke detector.  This one has tricked me before.  It's so near to the battery-operated ceiling ones that the landlady and I have wondered why resetting the fuses didn't stop the noise -- until we realized it wasn't the hardwired alarms going off.  I'm not getting tricked a second time, and I am not calling my landlady at 4:30 a.m., either.  I can do this.  I'm an adult … most of the time.  I pull the portable smoke detector from the stairs and haul it to the kitchen table, madly working the back cover.

BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…

Nope.  It's not the portable smoke detector, either.

It's the hardwired fire alarms.  All three of them -- cellar, center hallway, and back bedroom -- blaring loud enough to raise the dead in the cemetery behind the house.

Now that I know I am not being poisoned by my already-faulty heating system, I sniff the air, which is incredibly difficult with a stuffy nose.  Is the house on fire?  It could be; Lord knows there's enough junk in here.  It seems to take an hour, but within seconds I have determined that my home is not on fire, nor is there a fire next door in the unit connected to mine, nor has my neighbor six feet away set his house on fire yet again.

On to the next step:  Re-setting the fuse. 

I stumble down the cellar stairs and throw open the fuse box.  I realize that I don't have my glasses on and can't see what is written for each fuse on the chart.  I run back up the stairs and grab one of the two thousand pairs of reading glasses that I keep hanging around the place and dash headlong back down into the basement. 

My eyes are still sleeping, and I can't read the fuse box notations even with the added ophthalmologic assistance.

I start throwing all of the fuses, one by one.  I hesitate slightly when I get to the one marked "Furnace."  I suck in a deep breath.  The noise must be stopped.  My housemates through the paper-thin walls must be swearing me up and down right now as their two kids are probably gripping the walls of their room by tiny fingernails after being awakened so harshly. 

Fuck it.  I throw the switch.

BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…

I finally happen to the fused marked "cellar."  I throw it.  I am now standing in the pitch black with my hand inside an electrical fuse box.  Mercifully, the sound has stopped.  Assuming the system has been reset, I move the switch back to the left and…

BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…

Goddamnit!  I throw it back off again.  Ahhhhh, silence.  Throw it back on.

BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…

Off.  On.

BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…

I start hand-wiping crud off the alarms -- gray matter, musty air, dusty bunnies, moldy particles, errant pieces of insulation -- and shut off the fuse again.  I stand alone in the dark at 4:45 a.m. on the coldest morning we've had in two years and begin to think that leaving the fuse off may be my only solution.  This debate rages on for about ninety minutes … okay, about twenty seconds.  I know I can't leave the fuse off.  It's not right.  What if I damage something?  And that means the hot water heater will be off.   

No, no, no; this just isn't good.  Shit.  I'm going to have to call the landlady.  Yup, I'm going to have to wake her at 4:45 and ask for her help because I'm too much of a fucking idiot to reset a fuse panel on my own.  I'm a moron who recently believed she might be capable of owning her own house.  I am a complete and utter failure.

I throw the fuse one more time before admitting defeat, and…

Silence.

That's right, that's what I hear:  Nothing.  Not a damn thing.  Not the alarms blaring, not the neighbors swearing at me for waking them up, nothing but the beautiful hum of the working furnace cranking up the heat into my chilly, breezy, humble abode.

It's now 5:30 a.m.  Usually the regular, normal, clock-radio alarm goes off at 5:05.  I set it for 5:05 so it says SOS when I wake up at look at it.  This morning, SOS isn't nearly as humorous to me.  Time to get my regular day started, which includes work then a long, frigid walk from the university parking lot, up the wind tunnel of a sidewalk, and about a half mile to the nearest building to attend class tonight.

I sure hope the alarm doesn't start whining while I'm at work, but if it does, I sure hope it's just because there's a speck of cellar-dirt stuck in the sensor and not because my house is actually on fire.  That would totally suck. 

To be blatantly honest, it would truly be alarming.

BRIDAL BONANZA

Saturday is Bridal Day. 

It is supposed to be My First Full Day Off Without Children since the week before Christmas.  However, I am invited out to lunch with my eldest son, future daughter-in-law, and her family, after which we will look for wedding invitations.   I find this prospect exciting because, as crazy as this may sound, I am a paper addict.  Yup - I could never work in a stationery store; it's almost as dangerous as when I worked at the bookstore.  As we peruse through the magnificent selection, I am little help in narrowing anything down because I am shell-shocked from all the exquisite paper stock, the glossy finishes, the lined envelopes, the embossed lettering, and the multitudes of manuscript styles. 

Apparently I am stricken with Oh-Shiny Syndrome.

Before the appointment, though, while we are walking along the sidewalk in front of the stationery store, I run into a co-worker and her daughter on their way to the bridal salon next door in search of a mother-of-the-bride dress.  We laugh (okay, I scream) with delight when we see each other, and we madly make introductions all around, as if either of us will remember whose-who in mere milliseconds.  I envy her just a bit for finally being decisive about shopping, something we've both bantered about for a while.  I have been window-shopping and Internet-eyeballing dresses.  I need two: One for son's black-tie wedding in September, and another for daughter's country club wedding in October.  The thought of actually trying on and buying these dresses is both seamless and daunting as neither bride has restricted me to colors or styles.  I like them all!

Someone needs to help me make decisions, because, alas, I have been struck again with Oh-Shiny Syndrome.

But before any of this happens, Bridal Day starts with an early appointment at the salon where my daughter purchased her gown.  There is a trunk sale, and she is hoping to at least score a veil.  I am hoping she scores a veil, too, because it will be 15% off.  We have a good idea of both length and style, and it's more a matter of finding one to match the dress than anything else. 

We are an easy appointment, and I have my daughter to thank for that.  Throughout this whole process, she has been the one to avoid the grippe of Oh-Shiny Syndrome.  That's not to say she doesn't love the bling, because my girl looooooves the bling.  And she's had a wonderful sense of adventure as I have forced her into every imaginable style of dress at every bridal store between here and Kalamazoo, mostly to her calming chant of, "Mom, no.  Seriously, noooo." 

My girl has wisely enlisted the help of her friend, and the veil possibilities change out rapidly.  I am fascinated watching the process.  I feel the same sense of positive anxiety here that I will feel later at the stationery store but for a different reason.  At the stationery store, I am overwhelmed by my own paper-lust.  At the bridal salon, I am overwhelmed by the bling.  Every veil looks good; the added headband looks fantastic; the drop earrings are gorgeous; the jewelry trunk show is within arm's distance … 

CRYSTAL, CRYSTAL, EVERYWHERE, I FEEL MY WALLET SHRINK; CRYSTAL, CRYSTAL, EVERYWHERE, OH HOW I NEED A DRINK!

Then I breathe, because daughter and her friend have everything under control.  They will not let me be distracted by the extras.  Focus.  Veil.  Breathe.  Minutes are all it takes to choose the final option.  We're in the clear, until I look down and see a giant pin at the edge of my daughter's gown.  A damn pin, shiny and silvery, threatening to cause some kind of damage to an otherwise perfect moment.  I lean over to pick up the sharp metal sliver, and… and … it slips out of my hand and into the skirt of my daughter's bridal gown.

Shit.  Damn.  Frig.

The friend sees my look of panic and knows instantly what I have done.  I know what she must be thinking.  If only I didn't have Oh-Shiny Syndrome, maybe I would have the presence of mind to move AWAY from the gown after grabbing a potential weapon of dress destruction.  My daughter's friend comes to my rescue and grabs the pin, carefully extracting it from the material without causing any damage.  I doubt very much that she's thinking, "My god, Heliand is a dumbass," but if she were, I would rightfully deserve it.  She saves the moment, saves the appointment, helps to pick the veil, and helps preserve about five years my heart almost takes off of my life.

We place her order at the register, pay, and get the hell out of there before I break, tear, or damage something else.  When we get to the car and start talking about the pin near-disaster, daughter reveals that the pin we found had also found its way into her foot at some point during the appointment.  We unlock doors, laughing about morbid things, like tetanus and blood poisoning and the transference of needle-borne viruses. 

As we maneuver into our seats, there is a distinctive, loud tearing noise. 

My mind reels back to the dress, the pin, and the almost-horror I caused by trying to get a piece of metal off the rug of the salon.  Suddenly my daughter screams with laughter (we do a lot of joyous screaming in our family) and bends over to show us her pants … which have ripped … right across the rear where her thigh meets her hip, exposing a slash of skin to the icy elements of New England winter.  And I'm not sure if it's the stress-release or simply because of the moment in general, but all three of us explode into hysterics. 

Do we think to take pictures of the veil with the dress?  Of course not.  We think instead to take pictures of my daughter's ass-cheek sunning itself in the January air along route 114 for all traffic, northbound and southbound, to enjoy.  And in that fleeting moment, as my brain is struggling to re-oxygenate after hyperventilating from laughter, I am suddenly enlightened to the reality:

It's Bridal Day; Veils, invitations, dress shopping, and errant ass cheeks are all worthy of the moment, and the whole experience is Oh-Shiny.

NO NAME-CALLING WEEK ... YOU MORONS

Today is the official start to No Name-Calling Week at school.

Thankfully, it is a short week, only four days, because I will be completely mute by Friday.  I mean, it's bad enough that I can't call the kids names at school:

 

ME:  Why do you have a sharpened pencil sticking out of your nose?

STUDENT:  Because I figured if I actually stuck the sharp end INTO my nose, that might be bad.

(This is where I would usually say something intelligent like "Doofus" or "Goober" because honestly there's just no arguing with that logic, yet the pencil would still be up the student's nose.)

What about family members?  So when my son calls to tell me that he re-opened the thumb wound that has already had stitched closed twice this year, or when a neighbor tells me my sister has jumped out her bathroom window yet again, or when my daughter invites me on a "little walk" that turns into seven miles, I can't say anything like, "You knuckleheads, are you trying to kill me?!"

What about the idiot drivers, yapping on their cell phones and ignoring stop signs or sitting at green lights?  You're  telling me that I can't swear at those assholes.  So, apparently I honk and wave at them.  May I please wave with only one finger raised?

Telephone solicitors?  Come on, people, you cannot be serious here.  That's not fair.  That's not right.  That's like letting them bully me and I can't fight back.  It's like being duct-taped to a chair and forced to listen to Abba music for days on end.  My ears will start bleeding if I can't hurl nasty epithets via the phone lines.

Okay, really.  The inauguration was Monday.  So many politicians, so little time.  That's not even politically correct having No Name-Calling Week in the same week when Washington resumes its status quo.  Please!  Please let me say something.  It's like shooting fish in a barrel.  So easy, so satisfying, and we'll all have something to chew on after we've skinned and scaled 'em.  

I haven't taken the official pledge yet, so I can still opt out of participating in No Name-Calling Week, but I was semi-tricked.  At a meeting last week, I was tricked into accepting one of those bracelets for No Name-Calling.  It's like accepting a flower on behalf of those cult-like religious organizations that hang out at the airport.  Once you've been touched, you're essentially infected.

I will do my best to live up to the No Name-Calling Week's higher standards.  Truthfully, I give myself fifteen minutes, figuring that I arrive at school at 7:30 and the kids arrive at my door at 7:45.  If I make it through homeroom announcements, I'll be amazed.  But do this for four days?  An entire week?  Good lord, I'd be dead by Friday afternoon, in which case the kids can start calling me names … or continue the mutual tradition we started in September.  Losers. 

TRASH PICKER WORKOUT

It's so windy out that I have to go trash picking.  Not the fun kind of trash picking, like when my friend and I drive by an old changing table that someone is disposing of, and we grab it so she can turn it into an awesome plant stand.  This is the not-fun kind of trash picking, like when I hear a crash outside and realize that my recycle bin has blown over.

I am still in my pajamas when I hear this.  Because it is sub-zero wind chill outside and I live in an old breezy building, my pajamas consist of a long-sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, heavy flannel pants, thick socks, and fleece-lined slippers.  This really isn't a bad outfit for appearing outside in front of the Sunday church-goers who line my street.  I am dressed well enough that no small children will be scarred for life if they spot me.

I make sure to unlock the door behind me and throw an extra set of keys into my pocket, just in case.  As soon as I step outside, a giant gust of wind threatens to knock me off the stoop.  Regaining my balance, I focus in time to see the same errant gale roll plastic and bottles and cans toward the road.  Suddenly I am chasing things and grabbing containers and picking up escaping cans as if I am gathering hundred dollars bills. 

It takes me a few minutes and several armfuls to get all the recycling back into the bin.  I weigh everything down by putting another bin on top and wedging everything next to the trash cans, which I learned two years ago will only stay put if tethered to the fence with strong rope and hardware screwed into the fencepost.  I haven't yet figured out how to secure the lid of the mailbox, though, and it flaps and slaps noisily whenever the breeze blows. 

It's always fun on trash and recycling days when the wind gusts are up over thirty miles an hour.  Sometimes it takes me hours, days even, to locate the missing bins that have blown down the street, through the intersection, and toward the train tracks.  It's like playing Where's Waldo with the blue plastic receptacles.  I finally write the address on them, but I feel funny about this -- People who happen by my trash (either where it belongs or to where it has blown) might say, "Holy crap, look at all the Cheezits that girl can go through!  Honey, did you see the number of empty pizza boxes?  There are enough beer bottles in here to melt down and build a glass house!" 

I wonder if I can put this in as exercise for the day:  I have to run, I have to bend over to pick things up, I have to twist and turn to secure the bins, and I have to curl my arms when refilling the recycling.   

Sounds like exercise to me.  Trash-Picking exercise.