When I first sat down to write about noise, I was thinking about babies, not because I want to have them, but because visiting Illinois made me realize how people my age beyond the L.A. foothills-coast-loop live. And how they procreate. I have to be careful here, because I could very easily slip into contempt, which is not what I want to do. I have respect for people who choose to be parents -- it seems sort of akin to joining the army or maybe the peace corps, complete with the tagline, "The hardest job you'll ever love." Fine. Great.
But as everyone knows, I have respect for deep sleep, reading corners, days spent at the computer. I have respect for the late movie and the buying of (sometimes) ridiculously expensive cockatils at fun restaurants. Most importantly, though, I don't know if I could be a dedicated parent and a dedicated writer. It seems to me that, as Anne Lamott put it, "When a child comes out, it arrives clutching a third of your brain." So the issue isn't so much that I don't like kids, but that I like writing (and ridiculously expensive cocktails) better. I'm not sure, but I don't think good parents are allowed to love other things more than their kids. And that I want to keep my as much of my brain as possible.
So it's obvious why there may be compatibility issues here.
But being in Illinois sort of threw me for a loop. There were babies and children everywhere, spilling out of minivans and roaming like organized herds through the malls. It felt like almost everyone I know had a baby, or at least wanted one. Even my friend Rebekah, who had at one point joined me in wrinkling her nose at the prospect of kids, now looks forward to the day (way in the future, granted) when she and her man will start their family. And that's all fine by me. It's a question of values, I think, and deciding what you value. Kids are definitely worth valuing and so is writing. So is anything that you love. What happened to me in Illinois, though, was that I began to question what I valued because there was no one else around me who valued it. Appreciated, definitely. But it's not the same.
I was at my aunt Kathy's wedding when all of this struck me. It was sort of a strange day, because I hadn't seen most of my cousins or aunts and uncles in a few years, some even longer. As I was reaquainting myself with my cousin Tom, who is close in age, my cousin Ricky, rambunctious and seven, ran by and Tom stopped him. Ricky had no idea who I was, and so Tom told him that I was his cousin who lived in California. Ricky looked at me for a moment, then shrugged and said, "Okay." I smiled at this response because it felt so authentic for a seven-year old boy -- so I have a girl cousin I've never met before who lives in California. Big deal. (Ricky later told me that I was old enough to be a grandma, which really tickled me.) Tom stopped him from running off and said something along the lines of, "Hey, you guys are cousins. And cousins have to hug." So Ricky gave me a hug and I hugged him back and then he ran off, probably to wash off the cooties I'd inevitably given him via contact.
I've thought about that moment a lot, not only because it was touching of Tom to say that and for Ricky to give me, this grandma-old cousin he's never met, a hug, but because I've always thought that having family was difficult. My parents didn't get along, my sister and I fought for days, my dad was always causing havoc with his sisters and parents -- and it struck me that maybe part of why I've never been interested in forming my own clan was because everything familial was always so grueling. Granted, I've had some fun with my parents and my sister; not everything was Flowers in the Attic. It was just always a lot of work to keep treading water, keep myself above the fights and arguments and incessant noise that happens when people who don't really like each other all that much are forced to interact on a regular basis as family.
This is where my thoughts started looping themselves, as in, maybe all this time, I've been valuing writing as a future because it'd always been easy, uncomplicated. Maybe all these Illinis have it right, that cousins have to hug, that hanging out with family might not end in tears, that children might have more to offer to me than noise and confusion and whininess. That even those horribly posed Sears family portraits have their place in the world.
When I got home that night and dived back into Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, my love for good writing and clever plotlines and characterization was renewed and even heightened. That isn't to say I didn't appreciate my new insights about how families can be easy and breezy, but that I remembered again what is my core and that's writing. Kids are great, too, but they don't fit as comfortably on me as they do on some of my friends. Not that kids and writing are an either/or proposition -- but I figure if I'm going to split my time between such huge commitments, I better have more of a balanced admiration. And at this point I don't. Nor does having a family of my own seem easy. And that really matters, I think. Not everything that is hard is right.
There was a time in college when I wanted to study aviation and become a pilot. I thought it was an honorable profession, one in which I could work with organizations I believe in deeply, doing the kind of work that would change the world, one food drop or rescued refugee at a time. (I believe I saw Schindler's List around the same time.) But as I looked at all the math and dimensions that pilots work with, I knew that it would be a case of hard and not right. And though I wouldn't be flying supplies, like I'd dreamed, into war-torn countries, it didn't mean that working as a writer was any less valuable. It was less tangible, but not unimportant in the world. It harkens back to George Bailey (as so much in life does) -- he owned a Savings and Loan, a pretty meager existence, but look at how so much falls apart when he's not around.
In the past, I've felt a wee bit freaky for needing so much quiet time and for the feelings that came up when people like Donnie and my dad impugned on it. I've wondered about whether preferring to raise novels over children was going to turn me into a prematurely weird cat lady. But these are things I really value, freaky or not, and I want to embrace them. While it's sometimes hard to value things that only feel like they get an eyebrow raise from others, I like the fact that I'm shaping my own existence. Perhaps I'm just one of those square pegs when it comes to these things. Accepting it is always the first step to freedom.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Come on, Feel the Alleynoise! (Part 2)
The rumor my aunt Nancy tells me is that when I was a baby, I only cried on two or three occasions. I find this hard to believe, but maybe it's true. She says that every time she babysat me, I woke up angelically, cooing and giggling, happily entertaining myself until someone came and picked me up.
I've heard that there were times when my mom and dad, harried working-commuting people with a new baby, sometimes forgot I was in my crib because I was so quiet. (By contrast, my younger sister Julie, made crying into the casual sport for which Ralph Lauren would design a whole ready-to-wear line.) My aunt Sue once told me that when I used to spend the night at her house as a five-six year old, she would reach down in the middle of the night to touch my back -- I was such a deep sleeper, so quiet, that she was not altogether sure I was still alive.
So. This is where my need for quiet begins. When I think about who I was as a baby/child and who I am now, the differences are only minimal. I'm still a deep sleeper, so deep that whole scenarios have gone down in the middle of the night - with dogs and alley drug busts and thunderstorms - which I've missed completely. People may not describe me as angelic, but I get "nice" and "cute" quite a lot. I'm still pretty even-tempered, not one to get worked up about the proverbial shitty diaper.
A few weeks ago, I was in the Long Beach English Department, hanging with Chad, and he asked me about my family. "You never talk about them," he said. It surprised me. I spent years in therapy talking about them, years telling long-suffering friends about them, years writing in my notebooks about them. I guess I'm a little tapped out. But it did make me think about them, especially back in the day, when they were so different from me, so much louder. As she gets older, my mom is becoming much more quiet, reflective even, choosing to stay at home and listen to the Cubs games on her wind-up radio while floating in her pool. On the other hand, my sister, who has three kids under seven, is constantly in the middle of noise -- even if she wanted quiet, she'd have to work really hard for it and banish her kids somewhere soundproof. My dad, who died (un)suddenly a few years ago, was never quiet. He was the kind of person who talked straight through movies and then, became extremely hurt when I expressed I actually wanted to watch the movie. He was incapable of being quiet and I was usually quiet and so, we formed an odd dance of listening and talking.
My dad was a very opinionated man and like all extremely opinionated people, he liked nothing more than to talk about why he was right. He was extremely racist (he would say that he hated everyone equally) and that also found its way into his monolgues to me on the couch. As I got older, I began to chafe at his comments about celebrating MLK Jr. Day ("He cheated on his wife!") and his intolerance for the diversity of others ("I won't shop anywhere they post stuff in Spanish - this is America, let 'em learn English!"). My eighteen-year old self would sit and squirm and politely give him my attention, but I would feel my insides - my soul, my mind, my psyche - burning under these passionate but extremely offensive rambles. Just like with Donnie in the alley, I would begin contemplating my escape, in the form of a phone call, a bathroom break, a Diet Pepsi refill. But I stayed quiet and prayed for cases of strep throat, laryngitis, voice box removal.
Right before he died, I broke my silence. For the first time in my life, I yelled at him. I told him to shut up. He hung up on me. That was the last time I ever talked to him. A few people who've heard this story ask if it was hard to end it that way, if there was any guilt involved, but let me tell you, I've never felt badly about that interaction. Instead of being the angelic one who never cried, never demanded, I let him know that quiet was something for which I would fight. It's ironic that my need for him to be quiet is what brought out my fighting side. Perhaps it's morbid to put it like this but, in a way, he respected my request.
When I was in Illinois (now) two weeks ago, I noticed lots of things, but the thing that struck me most was the lack of fences in the backyards of houses for whole blocks and courts and routes. One rolling green lawn melted into another and the kids ran between yards with no sense of this-is-mine-and-this-is-yours. Adults waved or conversed from patios and backyard gardens. In theory, it's a beautiful, communal type of living. But I don't think I'd like it and it may explain why I'm so comfortable in the alley where I live. Everywhere you look, there are boundaries and fences. There's no question where you stop and somewhere else begins.
I've heard that there were times when my mom and dad, harried working-commuting people with a new baby, sometimes forgot I was in my crib because I was so quiet. (By contrast, my younger sister Julie, made crying into the casual sport for which Ralph Lauren would design a whole ready-to-wear line.) My aunt Sue once told me that when I used to spend the night at her house as a five-six year old, she would reach down in the middle of the night to touch my back -- I was such a deep sleeper, so quiet, that she was not altogether sure I was still alive.
So. This is where my need for quiet begins. When I think about who I was as a baby/child and who I am now, the differences are only minimal. I'm still a deep sleeper, so deep that whole scenarios have gone down in the middle of the night - with dogs and alley drug busts and thunderstorms - which I've missed completely. People may not describe me as angelic, but I get "nice" and "cute" quite a lot. I'm still pretty even-tempered, not one to get worked up about the proverbial shitty diaper.
A few weeks ago, I was in the Long Beach English Department, hanging with Chad, and he asked me about my family. "You never talk about them," he said. It surprised me. I spent years in therapy talking about them, years telling long-suffering friends about them, years writing in my notebooks about them. I guess I'm a little tapped out. But it did make me think about them, especially back in the day, when they were so different from me, so much louder. As she gets older, my mom is becoming much more quiet, reflective even, choosing to stay at home and listen to the Cubs games on her wind-up radio while floating in her pool. On the other hand, my sister, who has three kids under seven, is constantly in the middle of noise -- even if she wanted quiet, she'd have to work really hard for it and banish her kids somewhere soundproof. My dad, who died (un)suddenly a few years ago, was never quiet. He was the kind of person who talked straight through movies and then, became extremely hurt when I expressed I actually wanted to watch the movie. He was incapable of being quiet and I was usually quiet and so, we formed an odd dance of listening and talking.
My dad was a very opinionated man and like all extremely opinionated people, he liked nothing more than to talk about why he was right. He was extremely racist (he would say that he hated everyone equally) and that also found its way into his monolgues to me on the couch. As I got older, I began to chafe at his comments about celebrating MLK Jr. Day ("He cheated on his wife!") and his intolerance for the diversity of others ("I won't shop anywhere they post stuff in Spanish - this is America, let 'em learn English!"). My eighteen-year old self would sit and squirm and politely give him my attention, but I would feel my insides - my soul, my mind, my psyche - burning under these passionate but extremely offensive rambles. Just like with Donnie in the alley, I would begin contemplating my escape, in the form of a phone call, a bathroom break, a Diet Pepsi refill. But I stayed quiet and prayed for cases of strep throat, laryngitis, voice box removal.
Right before he died, I broke my silence. For the first time in my life, I yelled at him. I told him to shut up. He hung up on me. That was the last time I ever talked to him. A few people who've heard this story ask if it was hard to end it that way, if there was any guilt involved, but let me tell you, I've never felt badly about that interaction. Instead of being the angelic one who never cried, never demanded, I let him know that quiet was something for which I would fight. It's ironic that my need for him to be quiet is what brought out my fighting side. Perhaps it's morbid to put it like this but, in a way, he respected my request.
When I was in Illinois (now) two weeks ago, I noticed lots of things, but the thing that struck me most was the lack of fences in the backyards of houses for whole blocks and courts and routes. One rolling green lawn melted into another and the kids ran between yards with no sense of this-is-mine-and-this-is-yours. Adults waved or conversed from patios and backyard gardens. In theory, it's a beautiful, communal type of living. But I don't think I'd like it and it may explain why I'm so comfortable in the alley where I live. Everywhere you look, there are boundaries and fences. There's no question where you stop and somewhere else begins.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Come on, Feel the Alleynoise! (Part 1)
Noise isn't something to which I'm greatly accustomed these days. My adult life has been characterized by quiet reflection, sitting at a computer by myself and thinking thoughts that I try to put down on paper. It's not a very loud process, even though once in a while, I'll try out the lines I'm writing outloud, just to see if they work. Sometimes Russ is around and silently watches me doing this. He's reported that it's fascinating to observe. He says the voice he hears reading is not exactly my voice. It's quiet, but also, he says, commanding in a way that speaks of volume and projection and magnitude. I find this fascinating, too.
And yes, I live in an alley in L.A., which sometimes suffers from way-too-loud Norteño music on Saturday morning or annoying dogs (not mine, of course) that stand at their fences and bark continuously. But a funny thing has happened in the five years that I've lived in my house -- it's gotten oh so much quieter. When I first moved here, I was warned by neighbors that there was a coke-dealing 15-year old druggie that lived adjacent and played the drums at 10:00 at night. The old tenant of my house didn't improve alley relations by grabbing a portable boombox and a Micahel W. Smith CD, then proceeding to hold it over her head and blast it at him inside the garage. Because non-Christian rudeness is significantly different than Christian rudeness.
Oddly enough, though, Mr. Coke didn't play more than a few nights my whole time living here. He never bothered us, though we did see him face down on the alley with police kneeling on his back a few times. Then he and his family moved, as did the family of 15 - 12 of them being children under the age of nine - and just like that, the alley was quiet, serene, had all the makings of a secluded beach resort in Haiti, just with a few less armored cars zooming through.
When I first moved here, there was also a woman named Donnie whose garage faced out toward the alley. She and her husband Mick spent a lot of time in the garage, in what I can only imagine was a little daily weed habit combined with chain smoking, neither of which could be completed in the house with the two children. One day, when Russ and I were outside working in the front yard, we brought out our own boom box (ahh, the days before the Apple revolution) and were playing Ryan Adams' Gold. Donnie hopped over and said that she loved, loved, loved Ryan Adams and she was so excited that there were finally people in the neighborhood who liked him, too. We talked music for a while and then, she invited us to stop by their garage anytime.
But we didn't have to because Donnie was soon in our yard all the time, knocking on the door, asking us to come over and hang out. Giving us old cigar boxes full of CDs and junk from her garage. Talking so fast that you couldn't enter into the hurricane of her words and found yourself being pulled out your door and down the alley behind her. Then, we found out that she was manic-depressive. And that she was in a manic phase. As if we couldn't tell.
Even with the medical knowledge, I was seriously freaked out. I became a refugee in my own house, peeking through the blinds to see if she was outside before darting outside and slipping into my car. I declined to work in the front yard garden. I tucked Ryan Adams and Alison Krauss (her other favorite) away. Even with all my careful planning, she still found me a lot of times. I spent hours sitting in her garage, listening to her talk without taking a breath, jumping from one unrelated subject to the next, asking me questions but rarely requiring an answer. The longer I sat with her, the more I felt nauseated, and the more guilty I felt for being the kind of crook that was nauseated by people with bonafide mental disorders. All I wanted was a little quiet.
That Thanksgiving, Donnie came over and spent over an hour talking while our dinner coagulated on the counter. I thought I was going to cry out of pure rage. It's totally un-P.C. to be mad at someone who's dictated by her imbalances, not her logic, but I somehow managed to ignore correctness. When Mick finally came over, he looked drawn, world-weary, sagging. He pulled Russ and I aside and apologized profusely for not coming sooner, but Donnie had been at the local Vons and had unscrewed all the tops of the shampoo bottles in the beauty aisle. He had taken her home, instructing her to stay inside, and had gone back to help the store workers reattach the caps. But, she - imbalances, not logic - had wandered over to our house.
Then, as quickly as she walked into our yard, she was gone. She no longer came over to chat. She didn't sit in the garage and smoke. Mick explained that she was in a depressive phase and that he had no idea how long it was going to last. She wasn't eating, wasn't smoking, wasn't dressing. Just sitting in her bedroom. A few months later, after some hard January rain and a bad case of mold growing up the walls of their apartment, Donnie and Mick moved a few blocks away.
I would like to have a neat, tidy conclusion to this story, something along the lines of, "Some people might say I taught Donnie--but really, Donnie taught me." But I'm afraid it's just not so. I could probably somehow wrestle a connection between my own troubled relationship with my dad at the time, who was also all imbalances, and say that my response to her was really the transference of feelings I had about him. Which could be true. But it's also not that simple. A few weeks ago, I was walking Tanya and saw Donnie in her driveway. Immediately, all those feelings came back, my tight chest, my heart pounding, my need to find several convenient escape routes. I still worry that I'll see her somewhere in the neighborhood and not be able to run, hide, get away from the noise that she carries with her.
And yes, I live in an alley in L.A., which sometimes suffers from way-too-loud Norteño music on Saturday morning or annoying dogs (not mine, of course) that stand at their fences and bark continuously. But a funny thing has happened in the five years that I've lived in my house -- it's gotten oh so much quieter. When I first moved here, I was warned by neighbors that there was a coke-dealing 15-year old druggie that lived adjacent and played the drums at 10:00 at night. The old tenant of my house didn't improve alley relations by grabbing a portable boombox and a Micahel W. Smith CD, then proceeding to hold it over her head and blast it at him inside the garage. Because non-Christian rudeness is significantly different than Christian rudeness.
Oddly enough, though, Mr. Coke didn't play more than a few nights my whole time living here. He never bothered us, though we did see him face down on the alley with police kneeling on his back a few times. Then he and his family moved, as did the family of 15 - 12 of them being children under the age of nine - and just like that, the alley was quiet, serene, had all the makings of a secluded beach resort in Haiti, just with a few less armored cars zooming through.
When I first moved here, there was also a woman named Donnie whose garage faced out toward the alley. She and her husband Mick spent a lot of time in the garage, in what I can only imagine was a little daily weed habit combined with chain smoking, neither of which could be completed in the house with the two children. One day, when Russ and I were outside working in the front yard, we brought out our own boom box (ahh, the days before the Apple revolution) and were playing Ryan Adams' Gold. Donnie hopped over and said that she loved, loved, loved Ryan Adams and she was so excited that there were finally people in the neighborhood who liked him, too. We talked music for a while and then, she invited us to stop by their garage anytime.
But we didn't have to because Donnie was soon in our yard all the time, knocking on the door, asking us to come over and hang out. Giving us old cigar boxes full of CDs and junk from her garage. Talking so fast that you couldn't enter into the hurricane of her words and found yourself being pulled out your door and down the alley behind her. Then, we found out that she was manic-depressive. And that she was in a manic phase. As if we couldn't tell.
Even with the medical knowledge, I was seriously freaked out. I became a refugee in my own house, peeking through the blinds to see if she was outside before darting outside and slipping into my car. I declined to work in the front yard garden. I tucked Ryan Adams and Alison Krauss (her other favorite) away. Even with all my careful planning, she still found me a lot of times. I spent hours sitting in her garage, listening to her talk without taking a breath, jumping from one unrelated subject to the next, asking me questions but rarely requiring an answer. The longer I sat with her, the more I felt nauseated, and the more guilty I felt for being the kind of crook that was nauseated by people with bonafide mental disorders. All I wanted was a little quiet.
That Thanksgiving, Donnie came over and spent over an hour talking while our dinner coagulated on the counter. I thought I was going to cry out of pure rage. It's totally un-P.C. to be mad at someone who's dictated by her imbalances, not her logic, but I somehow managed to ignore correctness. When Mick finally came over, he looked drawn, world-weary, sagging. He pulled Russ and I aside and apologized profusely for not coming sooner, but Donnie had been at the local Vons and had unscrewed all the tops of the shampoo bottles in the beauty aisle. He had taken her home, instructing her to stay inside, and had gone back to help the store workers reattach the caps. But, she - imbalances, not logic - had wandered over to our house.
Then, as quickly as she walked into our yard, she was gone. She no longer came over to chat. She didn't sit in the garage and smoke. Mick explained that she was in a depressive phase and that he had no idea how long it was going to last. She wasn't eating, wasn't smoking, wasn't dressing. Just sitting in her bedroom. A few months later, after some hard January rain and a bad case of mold growing up the walls of their apartment, Donnie and Mick moved a few blocks away.
I would like to have a neat, tidy conclusion to this story, something along the lines of, "Some people might say I taught Donnie--but really, Donnie taught me." But I'm afraid it's just not so. I could probably somehow wrestle a connection between my own troubled relationship with my dad at the time, who was also all imbalances, and say that my response to her was really the transference of feelings I had about him. Which could be true. But it's also not that simple. A few weeks ago, I was walking Tanya and saw Donnie in her driveway. Immediately, all those feelings came back, my tight chest, my heart pounding, my need to find several convenient escape routes. I still worry that I'll see her somewhere in the neighborhood and not be able to run, hide, get away from the noise that she carries with her.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
California, Land of Public Toilet Seat Covers
I'm back in L.A. and better than ever (Isn't that a Will Smith song?). I'm currently OD-ed on 1. greenery, 2. babies, and 3. Panera Bread Company and greatly relieved to be back in the land of publicly provided toilet seat covers.
I'm glad I live in a place where toilet seat covers are a right, not a priviledge.
I'm glad I live in a place where toilet seat covers are a right, not a priviledge.
Thursday, June 08, 2006
A Two Minute Illini Ramble
I just spent over 10 inexplicable moments trying to post to this blog. It totally refused until my computer battery is now in the red and I have 32 minutes of battery life left for the rest of my stay here in Aurora. My computer is conspiring against me and I'm thinking about asking the man sitting here in Panera Bread company (the only WiFi station in Aurora and a yummy one at that) if I can borrow his power cord. Unlike the various coffeehouses of my acquaintance in the greater Pasadena area, I see many more PCs here than Macs, so to see one with a Powerbook is a connection, indeed.
Speaking of new old stories, Aurora is on the up and up, in a suburban sprawl-strip mall sort of way. There's finally a Starbucks here, after years of suffering through Dunkin' Donuts coffee that tastes like coffee grounds soaked in battery acid. The suburban sprawl is spreading here and unlike L.A., which was always conceived as a centerless city, Aurora (and the greater Chicagoland) was always conceived with a center in mind. But I'm starting to wonder if Aurora-Chicago is more centerless now than L.A. Most cities in L.A. have a "downtown," an "old-town," or a "street" that serves as sort of center of at least commercial shopping. Aurora, on the other hand, started with a downtown that has fallen into disrepair (for the most part). A testament to this was a few nights ago when Rebekah and I were driving around looking for a place to get a drink and decided that the downtown drink scene was a big pass. As in, Mario Cantone shouting, "Next!"
Watch for more two minute Illini Rambles, pending miraculous battery life extension.
Speaking of new old stories, Aurora is on the up and up, in a suburban sprawl-strip mall sort of way. There's finally a Starbucks here, after years of suffering through Dunkin' Donuts coffee that tastes like coffee grounds soaked in battery acid. The suburban sprawl is spreading here and unlike L.A., which was always conceived as a centerless city, Aurora (and the greater Chicagoland) was always conceived with a center in mind. But I'm starting to wonder if Aurora-Chicago is more centerless now than L.A. Most cities in L.A. have a "downtown," an "old-town," or a "street" that serves as sort of center of at least commercial shopping. Aurora, on the other hand, started with a downtown that has fallen into disrepair (for the most part). A testament to this was a few nights ago when Rebekah and I were driving around looking for a place to get a drink and decided that the downtown drink scene was a big pass. As in, Mario Cantone shouting, "Next!"
Watch for more two minute Illini Rambles, pending miraculous battery life extension.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
A Slice of Our Night Life
We are watching the Channel 7 news at 11:00. The weatherman transitions from a story about how average people are being priced out of L.A. housing to the blistering temperatures very, very badly.
"I could never be a weatherman," Russell says. "Those transitions."
I start laughing so hard I get the hiccups. "THAT'S why you couldn't be a weatherman? Not because of the meterological research, but because of the transitions?!"
Russell, by now, is laughing so hard that he can barely speak. "I guess -- the meterological research -- that could also hold me back."
The weather man points, then jumps into a crouch, a la Billy Blanks.
"He's very atheletic," Russell says. "That's another reason I could never be a weatherman. "
"I could never be a weatherman," Russell says. "Those transitions."
I start laughing so hard I get the hiccups. "THAT'S why you couldn't be a weatherman? Not because of the meterological research, but because of the transitions?!"
Russell, by now, is laughing so hard that he can barely speak. "I guess -- the meterological research -- that could also hold me back."
The weather man points, then jumps into a crouch, a la Billy Blanks.
"He's very atheletic," Russell says. "That's another reason I could never be a weatherman. "
Does the Aunt of the Year Award Exclude Songs About Pasties?
My six-year old niece Beyonce stayed with us for the last two days. Hilarious fun. Her favorite part of the weekend, she informed me, was when I took her to Toys 'R' Us for her early birthday present. Toys trump Aunt, I guess. She spent an hour there, figuring out the maximum amount of toys she could include in her birthday present price limit. But I can't complain. She's a good kid and really low maintenance -- although I've never seen Tanya's anus clenched so tight for two straight days. Tanya's not so big on kids with flip flops who sometimes shriek-sing when watching The Lion King for the SECOND time in five hours.
I love to hear Beyonce sing, though. She may be destined for American Idol, or perhaps, the Mickey Mouse Club 2010...
One of my favorite moments from this weekend was at church today, when Don Crumb, one of the oldest guys in the whole church came over and planted a big, wet smooch on Beyonce's cheek. Beyonce was a portrait of shock and then, made an unembarrassed gross-out face. Don Crumb likes to flirt. He often asks Russ, when I'm not in the vicinty, "So -- where's your wife?" But he's been taking care of his wife, who's suffering from Alzheimer's, for years. So I think he's entitled to flirt in church on Sundays. Maybe it is gross, but it seems to make his week, hugging and flattering females of all ages, so I try to cut him some slack. He's not perfect and neither am I. There are probably multiple peoples out there making gross-out faces at at things I do, too.
I'm not sure I'm that good of an aunt, though. I consider Kristan, who buys her nieces barrettes with streamers and beads, a really awesome aunt. I on the other hand, let Beyonce make a CD of her favorite songs off my computer and one of her choices was Tom Waits' "Pasties and a G-String." Do good aunts, even deadbeat aunts, let their six-year old nieces listen to music about brothels and loose women?
I love to hear Beyonce sing, though. She may be destined for American Idol, or perhaps, the Mickey Mouse Club 2010...
One of my favorite moments from this weekend was at church today, when Don Crumb, one of the oldest guys in the whole church came over and planted a big, wet smooch on Beyonce's cheek. Beyonce was a portrait of shock and then, made an unembarrassed gross-out face. Don Crumb likes to flirt. He often asks Russ, when I'm not in the vicinty, "So -- where's your wife?" But he's been taking care of his wife, who's suffering from Alzheimer's, for years. So I think he's entitled to flirt in church on Sundays. Maybe it is gross, but it seems to make his week, hugging and flattering females of all ages, so I try to cut him some slack. He's not perfect and neither am I. There are probably multiple peoples out there making gross-out faces at at things I do, too.
I'm not sure I'm that good of an aunt, though. I consider Kristan, who buys her nieces barrettes with streamers and beads, a really awesome aunt. I on the other hand, let Beyonce make a CD of her favorite songs off my computer and one of her choices was Tom Waits' "Pasties and a G-String." Do good aunts, even deadbeat aunts, let their six-year old nieces listen to music about brothels and loose women?
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