The Book, Chapter 1

I got a text from Jo. It simply said, "Chapter 416: Beat Your Children Often." Since 1996, Jo and I have been writing "The Book." It started out as our own little Survival Guide for Women. I was going to write for The Single Woman, she would write for The Married Woman. Jo thinks we now have enough material for 3 survival books - Single Women, Married Women, and Raising Children. Of course she does not and never has beaten her children, but has thought about it. Often, apparently. Especially in their adolescence. Since it's been 20 years since we started The Book and we have pulled together half of 1 chapter, I think we need to get the first book written before we get lofty ideas about a trilogy.

When Jo and I met in 1996, we were from opposite worlds. Although we were both in our mid-20's, I left home for college at 18, had lived in several states and dated a spectrum of men. She commuted to college, never moved out of her parents' house, and married the only man she ever dated. She loved to hear my sordid tales of failed romances and bad dates; I loved to be with her family and loved being part of all their holidays, weddings and baby showers. I thought how nice it would be to have such a large, close family; she dreamed of how nice it would be to move away from them. We made a good pair then, and we make a good pair now.

Jo was there for the best of my Dating Years. She saw me date them all, from the high school drop-out Christian zealot who dropped to his knees in front of me to pray to God to ask for strength in avoiding temptation while we were making out, to the anesthesiologist who drove a convertible Porsche (which I mistook for a Mazda Miata, whoops) and called me "Doll." Her family tried to fix me up with every single man they knew, including Jo's brother. No thanks. Years before, in college, Lynn called me the One Date Wonder - I would date anyone, but rarely twice. Lynn warned me about Carl The Snarl, our dormitory Housing Director when we were sophomores. He flirted relentlessly until I finally agreed to a date. He picked me up on a motorcycle - surprise!!!- and drove us to a party while steering with one hand, caressing my bare leg with the other as I struggled to keep my dress from flapping off. It seemed I had a decent relationship once every 5 years, and countless dates with One Date Losers during the years in-between. I got married at 35.

Jo, on the other hand, grew up very rural, the youngest of five including two prim and proper sisters. By my worldly standards, Jo probably had slim pickins in the Eligible Bachelor department, but found someone who suited her. They moved from their parents' homes to a trailer in her parents' front yard as man and wife. Her mother-in-law treated her cooly, but Jo found joy in decorating her own place, invited me often, and believed in deep, undying love. She divorced his ass 10 years later. She remarried at 40 to the second man she ever dated, who had full custody of 3 children and an ex-wife who, let's just say, is in every way so very, very far from perfect.

Hence Chapter 416 will be Beat Your Children Often. Or Whatever You Do, Don't Remarry. In the early days, with limited life experience, our chapters of The Book were much more lighthearted before the realities of marriage, divorce, and stepchildren jaded us. Our original Table of Contents was this:

Section 1, The Single Woman
1. Mom's Couch: Not as Comfortable at 30 as It Was at 20
2. Dating: Choosing a Mate
3. What's Wrong with Everyone Else's Mate

Section 2, The Married Woman
4. How to Be Married to Another Woman's Son
5. How to Raise a Son Fit to Marry
6. Good Responses to "Are You Pregnant Yet?"

Section 3, The Childless Woman
7. How to Raise Children
8. How Other People Should Raise Their Children

Now we can add Chapters like:
9. Hope for an Arranged Marriage: Blame Your Parents When It All Turns to Shit
10. Men Are Useless: See Chapter 9
11. Divorce Solves All Your Problems
12. Food Solves All the Problems that Divorce Creates
13. Get a Personal Counselor: See Chapters 9, 10, 11, 12
14. Love Your Body but Tweeze Often
15. Widowed Mothers
16. Men Are Still Useless

Over the years, we have named a thousand chapters. We have a lot of work to do.

Resolutions for 2016

The New Year inspires us to improve our lives. We reflect on our mistakes and our goals and we resolve to achieve something. I try to make one or more resolutions each year, primarily to entertain myself. If I grow as a person in the process, that's just icing on the cake. My favorite New Year's Resolution was the year I declared I would watch every movie that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. I had already seen some and crossed those off the list, but there were over 50 remaining on the list going back to 1927. I watched every single one. I rented, I borrowed, and I purchased from Ebay on VHS. That was the year Million Dollar Baby won, and I have continued to watch all the winners since then.

This year I was thoughtful and contemplated what I want to achieve. I decided I would make a resolution in each of 4 areas of life: Physical, Mental, Spiritual, Community.

Physical: Touch My Toes
I can't touch my toes. I can barely touch my knees. One year I had plantar fasciitis and the doctor said it was from unusually tight ham strings. "The entire kinetic chain needs work" he told me. I went to physical therapy briefly, which did wonders for the plantar fasciitis, but I still can't touch my toes. Resolution #1 = Touch my toes comfortably. Planting my palms on the floor earns me bonus points.

Tight stretch, January 17, 2016

Mental: Read Books
I love to read. I don't make time for it. I like to buy used books at yard sales and at Goodwill. I like fiction and non-fiction alike. Now the books are just becoming part of the clutter in my life. Resolution #2 = Read 12 books that I already own, and pass them on. Note: the first book is Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy. 150 more pages to go!

Spiritual: Give Thanks
I am about to begin a study at work that requires me to recruit patients for whom there are no more cancer treatments available. I will talk to them regularly, and then their cancers will win, and I will document death after death. When I have studies like this, it forces me to stay grounded and be positive and remember not to sweat the small stuff. The people I meet in this study will be a constant reminder to me of how fragile and fleeting life is. Resolution #3 = Be continually and verbally thankful (pray).

Community: Pay It Forward
This is the resolution I can't quite describe. Yet. I think I will know when to act as opportunities arise. This might take the form of volunteerism, or buying groceries for a stranger. Resolution #4 = At least quarterly, make a direct positive impact on the life of a stranger.

Cheers to 2016!

Power Ball Fever

The Powerball lottery is estimated at $1.5 billion right now. It's been the top news story for more than a week as the jackpot grows and nobody holds winning tickets.

We rarely buy lottery tickets, maybe 3 times in the last 15 years. But today Marty texted: "Did u get us lottery tix today?"

We joked earlier in the week that we need to get tickets. So did millions of other Americans. The odds of winning are one in 292.2 million, according to the New York Times. To me, that's the exact same chance as "one in umpteen zillion." Our odds of winning are entirely fictitious. I am just as likely likely to run into Scooby Doo in Gotham City on the way to the Oscars. I replied to Marty:

"When is the drawing? Get them on your way home unless the drawing is tonight."

"It's tonight."

"For Pete's sake, how many?"

He wanted five. He asked me to do this because he knew I was working from home. This is the problem with working from home. People don't think you're working. I may be doing laundry, but I am also running spreadsheets while boss-ordained tasks crowd my day. The only difference in working from home versus working from the office is basically whether or not I shower, dress, and put on make-up. Today I did none of these but dress. I wore a 10-year old sweatshirt with a stain on the front, track pants, and fuzzy orange-striped slipper-socks. I had bed head. Sexy. Briefly I thought about changing clothes for my errand, or putting on mascara. Then I decided I didn't care. Nobody goes to the QualityMart except to buy gas, cigarettes or Red Bull, and at least one of them was bound to be less showered and more stained than me. I slipped a pair of blue floral clogs over my slipper-socks, and chose a wool coat suitable for church. On the 60-second drive to QM, I applied lip gloss that I found in the console. There. Now I was presentable.

I waited in line, and passed the time by trying to fluff out the flat spot in the back of my greasy hair. A guy asked me if I knew where the kerosene was. No. Why does he need kerosene? I felt like he might use it to burn felonious evidence in his creepy backyard. But his hair looked clean, which was more than I could say for myself.

I bought 5 machine-generated tickets, and 1 ticket with my own selection of numbers. I started with sacred number 4, and then combinations of numbers 2,3,5. These are my 3 lucky numbers - not alone, but in various combinations with each other. So much of my life involves mixtures of 2s 3s and sometimes 5s - the highways near my home town, the house I grew up in (before and after they changed the rural delivery number to a house number), former apartment numbers, phone numbers of loved ones, and my birthdate. It would be highly unlikely that the winning Powerball number would be 04-23-35-52-53-32 (one chance in umpteen zillion to be exact) but somebody's got to win so it might as well be me.

I texted Marty a picture of the numbers. He studied them. He didn't like them. He bought 5 more tickets on his way home from work after all.

The drawing isn't until 11:00 p.m., but I will miss it. I will be in bed, dreaming of Scooby and me frolicking together in Gotham City with my Oscar for Best Hair.

Home Sewn

I remember the first pair of new jeans I owned. They were dark blue Wranglers with yellow loopy stitching on the back pockets. We bought them at Good's Store run by Mennonites. I wore them on the first day of school in Mr. Kern's 5th grade class.

Until then, Mom sewed all our clothes except underpants, winter sweaters and hand-me-downs. This is why I remember it being a big deal to have jeans like all the other kids. We had homemade dresses, pants, tops, pajamas, bathrobes, Halloween costumes - you name it. She even crocheted us slippers - a new pair every year.

The last time I wore a jumpsuit. Or yellow. 1978. Probably bell bottoms.

The benefit of home sewing was that sometimes Mom took me to the fabric store to pick out the material and buttons I wanted for a new dress or blouse. Everything fit properly. Everything was coordinated. But then I reached the age where I started to notice that other kids had things I didn't, like jeans. Not denim pants like the ones Mom sewed me, but actual jeans with stitching on the back pockets and a thick leather tag emblazoned with a brand name affixed on or near a buttock.

Mom's sewing machine was in the basement, along with twenty years of fabric remnants, boxes of zippers, buttons, trim and other materials. In fact she was sewing in the basement the day I was home sick from school and shouted down the steps to her that the Challenger had exploded. My favorite things she sewed were turtlenecks. Every time there was a cute jersey print for sale, Mom made me a turtleneck. I had turtlenecks galore - flowers, apples, frogs - every color and pattern imaginable to fit my every mood. And there were a lot of vests.

I recently found a vest in the back of my closet that Mom made for me in high school. I kept it all these years, not to wear, but because like the dodo bird and the passenger pigeon, it was the last of its kind and I knew it. It is constructed from floral upholstery fabric (?) in the front with a shiny polyester back panel with anchors patterned in the fabric. It is impeccably sewn, complete with coin pocket. And it still fits. Not in flattering way, but the buttons do close and that's what matters. A girdle, perhaps?

Study fabric for a sturdy girl.

I don't remember Mom ever wearing a vest, but she kept her kids clad in them for a decade. Dozens of photos of cotton, plaid and fake suede vests with bright multi-colored buttons pollute the old photo albums. One of the most prized childhood outfits was a vest and skirt combo. I was 5 years old, and it was an Easter outfit. Mom posed us on the walkway that year, I think to capture her masterpieces moreso than her dapper children. Regardless, she documented the moment in time as we squinted in the sun. My sister and I wore matching striped pastel vests and skirts, and my brother wore a blinding white plaid suit. Our posture and beaming smiles show my brother's and my pleasure, but my sister is less enthusiastic. Mom has since purged her sewing supplies to make room for other hobbies, and I have learned that store-bought jeans (and vests) are not what they are cracked up to be.