My personal leading economic indicators

I knew something was happening:

• summer 2007 -- fountain cokes at several lunch joints are flat or improperly syrup'ed.
• fall 2007 -- increased incidence of food poisoning.
• winter 2007 -- deli meat has been frozen, texture ruined.
• nov 1, 2007 -- no one brings leftover Halloween candy in to the office.
• fall 2008 -- lots of broken windows in neighborhood, with handwritten "we're open" signs.
  
• september 2008 -- half of restaurants with flat cokes close.
• october 2008 -- dumpster divers in Harpers Ferry, W.V., report that grocery stores are no longer throwing out food.
• november 2008 -- windows still broken, signs still handwritten.
• nov 1, 2008 -- a little bit of candy makes it in, but you have to ask.
  

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Better late than never

It's bad enough that it takes me until the first week in October to look at the harvest. I find a ton of deliciousness that's gone to seed or squirrels. Among the asters, there are leftovers for us anyway and I'm grateful to have them:

World of difference

I've done the exact opposite of what my mother did for me:
1. I purchased.
2. A Disney.
3. Branded.
4. Character (Belle) Costume for my daughter for Halloween.
5. From a major chain store.
6. At retail.

If only the costume were pink, it would be perfect -- a giant "F.U." to Grandma ER (although I did it to make SS happy, and to avoid any kind of fight, or extra labor, and not as any kind of secret message that bears on my therapy. No, definitely not that.).

Two truths and a lie.

1) I hate Barney the big purple dinosaur. 2) I have developed a plan that could save American businesses a million bucks, but I haven't figured out how to make money from it. 3) I think a goldfish is a perfectly fun pet for a 4-year-old and I am not lying.

I was sharing this list with some old friends of HF and I got a lot of crap from Wild Man, a burly redhead: "No way, fish are HORRIBLE pets, they die all the time. They only live like a week!"

FW: "That doesn't make them a bad pet. Many of the parents I know seem to be getting their young kids a pet in part because it's a good way to teach them about death."

WM: "So you're going to get her a goldfish and name it after her dead father?!"

Then WM's wife hit him, but HF and I laughed our tuchuses off. (For the record, I am pretty sure SS will name it "Jeffrey" or one of the phonetic girls' names -- "Leela," "Lita," "Meeta," "Loolee," etc.).

Palin: the real chatter from the playground

It’s peculiar to me that most of what I’ve heard and read in the "media" (old or new) about Sarah Palin is along the lines of, “How dare you suggest that she won’t do a good job because she has five kids. A man would never have to answer a question like that -- how offensive!” And brilliantly, defensively, of course this argument is being used by the right to make it seem as if feminists are now on the wrong side, more right-wing than the right.

Now come on. What I've heard, and what I would expect to hear as a fellow mother of a young child, has nothing to do with feminism. The line that I hear through the jungle gym, next to the stroller parking area, is more like, “How dare she consider such a demanding job when her poor kids need her.”

Her peers in motherhood and neighborhoods don’t care about her professional competence – we judge her, we question her judgment as a mom. We're perfectly fine feminists, we're just horrible people.

It's sort of like that Seinfeld where Elaine and Jerry are talking about wedgies in the locker room:
Elaine: Boys are sick.
Jerry: Well, what do girls do?
Elaine: We just tease someone ’til they develop an eating disorder.

Widows' Bedrooms Redecorating Club (Flashback)

After my first (platonic, psychotic with lust) sleepover with Mr. Perfect, I could write. It did seem that many of my friends were in a conundrum about where to have sex, with such need for comfort of home but those homes so full of memories, and kids, kids with ears and eyes. Fantasizing about my upcoming Hilton date with Mr. P, anticipating two steps ahead (at HOME?), I conjured a vision for my widow BFFs:

Subject: The Widows' Bedrooms Redecorating Club

"I can't do it on that old thing anymore," she said, sipping wearily on her Pomegranate Cosmopolitan. Her eyes turned to the shaggy gray indoor-outdoor rug, 20 years old, stained with grape juice and salted from snowstorms long gone, which lay in the foyer. It was one space in her home that didn't remind her of her late husband, Mortimer, and it was the only place she felt comfortable horsing around with Diego, the stable hand. The surface was unforgiving, chafing them alternately, adding odd scents to their discarded hosiery, and they caught drafts in both hot and cold weather, but the hall provided neutral territory, unattached, unsentimental, and that was what she needed.

Until the Widows' Bedrooms Redecorating Club came into her life. A trio of Corona-clutching cronies in sweatsuits and large diamonds solitaire, they showed up one afternoon on her doorstop, so close to the well-used gray runner, and pushed their way through. "Let us in," they cajoled, wielding measuring tapes, swatchbooks, and the latest Pottery Barn catalog. "We're going to help you get your groove back, the expensive way."

But it didn't really cost that much. They worked together, breaking nails and gulping double JavaChip ExtraWhips as they lay down swatches and pointed out sightlines. "A nice canopy here," one would say. "And this wild jungle toile for curtains!" another would chime in. New linens were ordered; the old torn up and sent to dress the horses' cannons. Baubles and doodads were weighed, purchased with hard earned coin, and lovingly placed next to old mementos and new fakes.

Before she knew it, her bedroom was her own again. Her favorite colors glowed at her from all sides. The sun shone in a new way -- had that dresser really blocked so much light all those years? Pictures of the loving first family spawned there were nicely framed and set up in the front hall to greet visitors, and stay away from the action. A young couple, just setting up home a few miles away, dreaming of late-night wakings by screaming babies, were sleeping in the Freecycled heirloom mahogany California King frame with orthopedic pillow-top.

She smelled the fresh coffee from downstairs. Diego was inside, and he'd slept well.

By jingo!

A friend shares: She is driving her three-year-old on some fast, busy road. She misses a turnoff and exclaims, "Oh G…" (catching herself) "… golly!"

"Mommy, what does 'golly' mean?"

"It's something people say when they are surprised."

From the crease in his tiny forehead she can tell that the little wheels are turning around. Sure enough, a few minutes later, he has figured it out.

"Mommy, Mommy! Does 'golly' mean 'fuck-it?!'"

Why a blog is like a will

You need to start it when you don't think you need it. You'll really benefit from it only when your situation is totally, inconceivably different from when you initiated it.

This is my thought as I read a neighbor's blog. She started it, wrote about her kids and her life, so that then when her husband got a girlfriend she was able to talk.

I started this blog in a flurry one day, but realized after a week of tinkering that I had a clear idea of an audience but nothing worth telling them. My life was already fallen apart with no sign of light. My online diary would have read:
Monday.
This sucks.
Tuesday.
This really sucks.
Wednesday.
This totally sucks.
Saturday.
OMG it's the weekend already, and everything still totally sucks.

So I say, never start a blog when you are going through something intense. Write when things are peaceful and you can set aside some time. Then when your world falls apart, you don't have to commit to anything big except survival.

More important -- talk to your loved ones about scary stuff now. Don't be afraid of life insurance. Give your honey permission to love again. If you get a lump somewhere, you'll never be able to deal with these things and they will suffer after you (whether the lump gets you or not).

At the first meeting of my young widow/ers group, I found out I was the only one who had talked about remarriage with their spouse. We had only done that because he'd had a previous health scare. After he got sick -- really sick -- it was too threatening to both of us to do anything concrete. No social security, no life insurance, a lot of things were much more difficult for we survivors. During the almost-two-years he spent dying, we had that magical thinking where we believed that thoughts could make things happen, but our plans could not do anything.

You never know when your story will end. You don't have to be cautious, enjoy your risks as you wish to, but be responsible and generous too. A word to the wise.

So while I was blogless (or publishing a blank blog) for a year and a half, I was sharing in many other ways (believe you me, many). I'll try to go back and recreate some of the missing entries 'cause I'm sure there's some insight in there (plus the wacky dating stories).

You -- DO IT NOW.