Break this thing down

Do you ever have moments when you are looking at teetering piles of stuff all over your desk, and multiple people are demanding you make Project X, Y, or Z your main priority, and you're so overwhelmed you just can't pick something to start on? That seems to be the main theme of my life this month. I can't seem to break any of these things down into manageable bites, so it's easier to ignore it and do stupid stuff like delete old e-mails. At the same time, I realize full well that if I don't do what everyone wants when they want it, people are not going to die, puppies will not be tortured, illnesses will not spread, subways and buses will not stop running, science and progress will continue. A couple of clients might get annoyed, and my bosses may get a bit upset, but they also know I'm straddling two departments and being deluged with work at the moment. So the consequences of my inability to accomplish anything productive are not really motivating me either. And then I start thinking that maybe I need to find more meaningful work, instead of laboring endlessly over documents that will essentially be shelved as proof of some faceless government agency's compliance with certain laws, and never read except by the extremely few other people with jobs similar to mine. And pondering the relative meaning of my work, and whether it is the best use of my time and talents, is just a train of thought that runs in circles on an eternal track, it seems.

Maybe this means it's time for lunch?

And another thing...

Took this during fieldwork in northern Maryland because it was too incongruous to pass up. It also captured so many things that disturb me about certain aspects of American society. Isn't this nice? A cutesy-wutesy homemade bunny crossing sign with a Confederate flag flying proudly above. Note the gas-hogging RV in the background. We worry about the friggin' bunnies, but to hell with oil consumption or people who are different-colored than we are. I'm sure these tenants would be overjoyed to learn that they're living on a farm once owned by free black people. Yup, black people OWNED this nice property. Before this house was built, yes, but they owned the land and the house that was here before. And you're just renters.

As for me, I'll be sure to watch out for the bunnies next time I visit. Really I will.

Things that make you go hmmmm: Holiday Edition

There are many things in life that I just don't get:

1. Why anyone would stand in line outside a (fill-in-the-big-box-store) in the freezing cold at 4:15AM on Black Friday so they could spend 20 minutes shopping amidst hordes of other bargain-hunters, then stand in line for over 2 hours to check out, all to save a few bucks on holiday gifts. Nothing against Kohl's, but is there truly anything there worth getting up at 3AM to buy? Why not just buy less stuff, or spend less money, get some sleep, and shop at a sane time? Same expenditure, much more sanity.

2. Why anyone would run out the day after Thanksgiving to buy a cut Christmas tree from one of the multitude of roadside stands that's popped up in many a parking lot in the past week. First of all, the tree sellers aren't going anywhere for at least another month. Secondly, They. Never. Run. Out. Of. Trees. Believe me. There will be just as many trees there on Christmas Eve as there are right now. Thirdly, what's the big rush? You have a whole month to go! You're not going to save any money or win any awards for being the first to put up your tree! Do you just like dry crumbly trees and a carpet of needles on your floor for Santa to slip on Christmas morning?

3. Parents going through insane rituals of aggravation, sleep deprivation, and even hand-to-hand combat to get their kids some must-have toy or other item for the holidays. I personally will not EVER be one of those people camping out in line overnight, ready to rush a big-box store for some new video gaming system or the latest Whatever-Me Elmo. My parents did not do these things (not even for Cabbage Patch Kids!), and yet I still felt loved and cherished. It would be one thing if the item was lifesaving sustenance or medicine for my child. But it's not. My children's lives will not be irreparably ruined because their friends got Nintendo the first day it came out and they didn't get it until (horrors!) a few weeks or a month later. I am not giving up sleep to shop as a competitive sport and give my kids instant gratification. Also, see #1 above.

4. Why our modern-day lives have gotten so hectic and overwhelming that people who can afford it feel they need one of these. And why, despite my sad and regretful head-shaking over how hectic and overwhelming life has become, I'm still completely and insanely jealous of those who can afford it.

5. How my dog can possibly be comfortable sleeping like this (see above). Yes, his head is on his butt. He conks out in this pose quite often. He also can fall asleep with his front half on someone's lap and his back legs standing on the floor. Apparently he is a German shorthaired pointing contortionist.

6. Why seemingly every '80s compilation out there has either the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams Are Made of This" or Blondie's "Call Me" on it? Those of us who love the '80s enough to buy compilations are sick of these two songs. They are overplayed as it is.

7. Why anyone likes that creepy Frank Sinatra-David Bowie "Do You Hear What I Hear" duet. Or that lame-ass song about the Christmas shoes. I'll take the entire Chipmunks Christmas album over either of those songs, any day.

8. Will Ferrell. He's just not funny to me. Ever. I try and I try to appreciate the guy, and every movie, every skit, seems to start out with some promise of hopefully being funny and ends up just being (IMHO) stupid and annoying. I wonder whether the current generation of teens and young adults finds him and the current SNL crop as funny as we did back in the days of oh, Dana Carvey and Mike Myers and Kevin Nealon. Of course, they're probably all too busy with MySpace, YouTube, and their iPods to pay attention to network TV comedy, unless it involves Justin Timberlake singing about a dick in a box. Sigh....

9. Rabid drunken sports fans. This story just made me ill. I don't know who I'm more ashamed of, the males or the females.

So call me The Grinch. I can live with that.

Run turkey, run turkey, run far away

Well, we're now on Day 2 of Kate's Thanksgiving Misadventures. Misadventure #1 is dealing with my first turkey, which I didn't actually buy because my brother-in-law got one free as part of a supermarket promotion and donated it to our cause. I didn't realize it takes a day to refrigerator-thaw for every 6 pounds (per The Joy of Cooking), so pulling our 21-pounder out of the freezer last night was done with intense panic as to whether it would really thaw in 36 hours. Fortunately The Today Show came to the rescue this morning with a segment on thawing your turkey in cold water, which apparently works much faster than thawing it in the fridge. Thanks, Today Show! I'm sure my in-laws will be equally thankful if I get the thing completely thawed and safely and well cooked by noon tomorrow. And thanks to my sister for the giant bright blue tin washtub she gave us as part of a housewarming gift 3 years ago--it's a perfect thawing tank for the turkey, having already come in handy as a beer-and-ice container at a couple of parties. My remaining panic is whether our lovely bird will fit in 1. our roasting pan, and 2. our 1980s wall oven, which is on the small side.

Turkey panic aside, I started cooking and getting ready last night. The meat thermometer has been located, silver serving dishes are polished, the extra leaf is in the table, and the taters are all ready to go (both mashed potatoes and sweet potato casserole). Tonight comes making the stuffing, and the table-setting. The goal is to have tomorrow morning free to deal solely with the mysterious turkey stuffing and roasting situation, while maybe taking a pre-emptive run and keeping the kids from completely trashing the house before everyone arrives.

My big fear is that the turkey won't cook well, or enough, or on time. I'm not a fan of the midday Thanksgiving dinner; late afternoon is more my family tradition, but we seem to be subject to local relatives' customs, and custody arrangements, the years when we're here. Also, the timing allows the kiddos to conveniently go down for a nap right afterward. But still, it makes the morning really hectic, and then after all that eating at midday, what do you do for the rest of the day after everyone goes home? It just seems kind of anticlimactic. At least when dinner is at normal dinnertime, you have all day to anticipate, prepare, inhale the yummy cooking aromas, drool, and afterward you only have a few hours of feeling disgustingly overstuffed and bloated before you can indulge the tryptophan effect and crash for the night.

On a more serious note, it's that time of the year when we freely express our thanks for what we have. So here are the things I might mention tomorrow, if I were at my parents' house and indulging in our annual tradition of going around the table and saying what we're thankful for during grace:

• for being healthy, employed, housed, clothed, literate, educated, and lucky enough to live in this beautiful part of the world;
• for being married and the parents of two healthy children;
• for our families, friends, and everyone's doggies;
• for the good choices we've made in life, and the ability to make them;
• for the church, schools, and organizations we're part of; and
• for our free country, even if we don't like what's going on right now.

Of course, if we were at my parents' house, continued annual tradition dictates that the dinner conversation would then rapidly degenerate into tasteless humor, stupid impersonations (think Tommy Boy and the "Ding! Fries are Done!" guy), and stories involving bodily functions that leave most of us either snarfing our drinks or paralyzed with laughter. And even while some of us mildly protest sullying the occasion with such crudeness, deep down we're thankful for our shared sick sense of humor.

UPDATE:

The turkey was still hard as a rock by late afternoon Wednesday despite the soaking treatment. So we stuck it back in the freezer and bought another, smaller turkey that wasn't frozen. And by some miracle it came out perfectly and right on time, even with me in charge. Luckily I remembered the sad story of my M-I-L's first attempt to cook a turkey and removed all the yicky parts stowed inside before rinsing, stuffing and roasting mine. B-I-L, despite enjoying his perfectly high-heat-roasted drumstick, seemed a tad offended that we'd not used his freebie turkey, and proceeded to take it with him when he left. Maybe we'll see it again at Christmastime.

The trouble with you is the trouble with me

I really and truly think parenthood is karma paying you back for whatever evils you committed against your own parents as a child. In my case, I seem to be atoning not only for my own committed sins, but for those I fantasized about and never actually committed. And maybe for those of some other people too. Karma always seems to rear its ugliest head when DH is on the road for major trips (i.e. out of our time zone and lasting 3 nights or more), and he's now on the most major trip level (out of country for 6 nights).

Last night was all about battling with the girl, who is almost 4 but seems to be in a phase this week of boycotting all toilets, on the grounds that "nasty potties" (i.e. those with autoflushers) exist in the rest stops and airports of the world. The mere existence of such apparatus is apparently sufficient justification to pee in your pants even though your home, school, supermarket, and general everyday surrounds have only "nice" facilities that you flush yourself. Why it matters that there are nasty potties at all the NJ and PA Turnpike rest stops when you're not on either highway and there's a perfectly harmless but unused toilet in the next room, just isn't making sense to me, but somehow makes perfect sense to my daughter. She has inherited her mom's tendency to make up her own logic and then stick to it unswervingly despite all evidence to the contrary. I did outgrow this to some extent myself, but not until I was somewhat older. But my bizarre turns of logic in no way involved bathroom habits. So we're pretty stumped at this point as to what to do with this child. Buy her a litterbox? Let her live in the barn?

Everyone keeps telling me she won't go to kindergarten in diapers. But I could easily see her being the first....

Also, if your preschooler is going to grab a forbidden indelible Sharpie marker and doodle on something in the house, you'd better hope it's your 1920s porcelain-top kitchen table. I was able to remove the artwork without much more effort than if she'd drawn on a whiteboard. Not bad for a piece of furniture we resurrected from my in-laws' basement!

Coming up on Reelection Day

OK, did I call it or what? It's been revealed that Vyxsin's name is indeed Jennifer!

And I did not read that TWoP Forum until just now during lunch break.

So does that mean we can call her Jyxsin? Or the Goth team Kyntifer?

I'd be interested to know who first started coining contracted combo names for celebrity couples, and how they caught on. The first one I recall was Bennifer, but then we get TomKat and Brangelina and on and on. Who decides when a couple is worthy of such a moniker and then publicizes their invention? Also, when (and why?) did people start in with the abbreviated nicknames, like J.Lo and LiLo and A-Rod and K-Fed? Was it all P-Diddy's fault, or some lazy media type who didn't want to type out "Jennifer Lopez" over and over? Procrastinating minds want to know.

In other news, the Republicans of my fair township have elected this guy to be our new Supervisor. He "campaigned" with recycled homemade Magic Markered signs and claims he spent less than $250 on his campaign because he didn't waste money sending letters out to residents (and apparently he and his supporters only spent $12 in gas, at 2007 gas prices, cluttering the landscape with his handiwork--which he drove around and removed late last night). He also claims he is a proponent of open space by proxy because his parents preserved their old farm IN ANOTHER TOWNSHIP--why is that relevant? I don't care if it's only a mile away, it's still not in our township, and it never belonged to him personally. And then somewhere else on the website he tells the real truth, that he will stand up for property rights and the ability to do whatever you want with your property. Which makes his claims of support for open space even more dubious. He thinks it's a conflict of interest that his opponent works for a nonprofit local land conservation trust, but I don't see why that's any more of a conflict of interest than working for the state. Anyway, property stewardship maven that I am, I'll save my rant about property-rights people for another day. Ditto for people who carry guns, hate taxes, and plaster American flags all over everything in sight.

His incumbent opponent, who lost by a very small margin, is wonderful and the epitome of what public service should be. Responsive, caring, knowledgeable, works hard to preserve our beautiful countryside, and so on. My dealings with her have been superb--she really takes the time to address your issues, and she will be missed. Unfortunately, she's a Democrat who ran a rather quiet campaign, and he's a Republican with a more in-your-face personality who made himself stand out more. And we're in a very red area of a red county. I really wish Pennsylvania townships had some kind of official debate or forum where candidates for local office could be presented in person, and you could publicly ask the tricky questions, debunk the rumors, and get some sense of which person represents you best. Campaign literature (or lack thereof) and websites just don't do it for me.

Also, I wish there was some way to get on a Do Not Make Recorded Campaign Calls To My House list. You can't ask a recording to put you on the Do Not Call list, nor can you find out where they got your number and ask those people to delete it. They don't leave a contact number or name. It's a horrible, impersonal way to campaign, there seems to be zero regulation of it or means of preventing such calls, and I personally will not vote for those who robocall me. I don't like the live-human callers either, but at least they're real and you can ask them to cease and desist. Not that anyone uses them anymore. Grrrrr.

The cutest little donkey, you'll never see him kick!

My random commentary on various random things:

The Amazing Race premiere: Loved it, even though Phil seriously OD'd on the hair gel in the opening scene. Especially when the whiny effeminate unbelievannoying Ari snipes to his immobile donkey, "If you make me lose, I'm going to cut you up and eat you!" The donkey's like, "So?" and refuses to budge. If you were the donkey and these two idiots were whining and "talking trash" and smacking you to move, would you carry 15 peat logs for them? Didn't think so. Then Ari and his hag teammate come in last and lose big. Ha ha! Go donkey!! Also, I discovered that the bizarre snorting sounds made by my dog when he gets something up his nose are not too far off from a hee-hawing Irish donkey.

Finally, my next top choice for elimination is the Goth couple. Not only are their names (Kynt and Vyxsin) way too affected, but they look like disturbingly androgynous byproducts of a clown and mime liaison in a back alley somewhere. We all know I'm not a fan of clowns or mimes. These two contestants just seem like prepackaged and overcoordinated stage caricatures somehow. Go back to playing D&D online and following Marilyn Manson and sci-fi conventions while you work in dead-end jobs to pay the bills under your real names, which are probably Jason and Jennifer. Speaking of jobs, I can't believe either of these people would get hired to work in a typical Louisville restaurant in their Goth getup, unless the Texas Roadhouse is a Goth theme restaurant.

King Tut unveiled: Fascinating. It's just incredible that a mummified corpse can survive so many centuries in such an unforgiving climate, despite having been rudely exposed and manhandled far too much by overconfident archaeology cowboys. But this unveiling only gives further support to my desire to be cremated upon my death, so nobody can ever dig me up and investigate how I really died or gape at my remains. I also don't understand why this revealing didn't happen BEFORE the big King Tut exhibit started traveling the world.

The Jessica Seinfeld plagiarism thing: The one question I'm not seeing addressed in all of the recent flap over this book is whether a woman who is extremely wealthy and married to a famous comedian and very much involved in the party-pictured social and philanthropic scene would realistically be regularly cooking her kids dinner all by herself. How many rich New York socialites or Hollywood big names cook for their families in between the benefits and facials and shopping sprees and Yogilates sessions? How many of them delegate such menial tasks to their nannies or personal chefs or housekeepers? I want to believe that Jessica is that rare exception, a person on the social fast track who persists in trying to give her kids a more "normal" home life, even if that home life is in a palatial house in the Hamptons or a zillion-dollar Manhattan penthouse. But maybe what we don't know is that she told her nanny that "my kids won't eat [name the vegetable], and YOU need to figure out a creative way to get it down their little gullets!"

My other beef is more philosophical. As a picky eater, and mother of same, I think deceiving kids about what's in their food will only make things worse, if and when they catch you. It's one thing if you simply dislike something, but if you have a major aversion to anything, deceptively adding that ingredient is cruel. For someone who is strongly averse to, say, eggs in all recognizable/tasteable permutations, discovering chopped-up egg embedded in a food where one normally wouldn't expect it will only cause dislike/distrust of even more foods, not to mention shattering trust in the person who made it. And in an era of food allergies, it's pretty important to be able to know exactly what is in your food, rather than encountering unexpected ingredients. In any case, I don't think I'll be buying the book.

Bishop Charles Bennison of the Diocese of Pennsylvania gets inhibited: Truly a sad moment for all Episcopalians, and proves that the Catholics don't have a monopoly on clergy sex abuse--they just get 98% of the media coverage. The bishop was already in deep trouble over blowing millions of diocesan funds on a camp in Maryland (that I doubt your average parishioner would ever set foot on because most churches that have adult retreats seem to use Catholic abbeys or monasteries these days, not rustic seasonal camps with bug juice and campfires). When news about this scandal with his brother first broke last year, people in the diocese had already been calling for his resignation over the alleged misspending for months. The reception was civil but clearly not warm when the Bishop visited our church a few weeks later as part of his rounds--his presence during the service almost seemed like an afterthought. My prayers and my props to the accuser and her family, who are bravely seeing this through to the bitter end, and have waited far too long for justice and healing.

The Eagles lose again: Oh, boo-frickety-hoo. Cry me a river. Along with love of cheesesteaks and familiarity with Rocky, Eaglesmania is one aspect of Philadelphia culture that continues to elude me completely. But don't tell that to the yahoo in the Eagles-flag-bedecked pickup tailgating me right now....

Darkness falls across the land

OK, this is an awesome story! I wonder if Klaes Oldenburg ever had this issue with his exhibits....

Halloween is over. We're still feeling our way with it, since it's a pretty different holiday in 2007 than it was in the early '80s, and our rural environs are quite different from the midcentury all-American suburban neighborhoods we grew up in. For one thing, no Daylight Savings time--that was kind of weird. For another, there doesn't seem to be any predictable time to go out trick-or-treating, or to be home in case you have small costumed visitors. Some people seem to go out as early as 4:30 or 5. For clueless parents like us, it's hard to tell when exactly you're supposed to go out, or when you're supposed to be home in case of visitors.

These are probably the easy years, since kids who are 1 and almost 4 can't dictate when, where, and with whom they go out, and since they've already been partying and parading in costume at preschool, it's no biggie if we don't go out at all. Eventually, should they decide to go with friends from out here, we're going to have to drive them to one of the development neighborhoods, since ours isn't pedestrian-friendly or dense enough to be overly profitable in the candy department. I mean, even if you moved fast, it would take an hour to hit 8-10 houses. And one of us will have to chaperone, wherever they go. Seems like these days you'd probably be arrested for neglect if your kids trick-or-treated without you. Even the oldest kids (i.e. ages 10-12) we saw out last night had a dad with them (dressed as Abe Lincoln, and who turned out to be our pediatrician who lives around the corner).

Last night we walked across the road to our neighbors who have twins and trick-or-treated at their place, then went with them to the house next door where we were royally received and entertained (wine! beer! good cheese!), then we went back, got in our cars, and drove in tandem down to a third neighbor whose place is a quarter mile down the road. The upside of being eternal chaperones is that our neighbors who don't have kids (or whose kids are now adults) are way excited to get any trick-or-treaters, and ply the parents with wine, beer, appetizers, and adult-size candy bars. But it does seem very sad that we carve the pumpkins and buy the candy and leave the porch lights on, and nobody ever comes to our house.

When I was little, everybody seemed to go out around 6-8pm, and when we got to be maybe 8 or 9, we went out alone with our friends. I remember being a swaggering sixth grader hitting my friends' neighborhoods in costume, all of us spraying shaving cream and experimenting with various curse words. And before that mayhem even began, Halloween morning was always fun. I loved getting up and seeing whose tree had been TP'd or whose driveway had a shaving cream message. Do kids today even know what Mischief Night is?