Happy Fourth of July

I realize it’s been some time since I last posted. Several of you that I saw in person over the holiday weekend reminded me of that so I’m stirring up the pot a bit and see what I can come up with over the next few days. Thank you for the poke in the butt to get going.

I like the Fourth of July. Believe it or not, it was always my favorite holiday as a kid, even better than Christmas, I think. The Fourth was usually a big to-do with my family and any kind of to-do with my family was unusual just because of the rarity of such. We didn’t do a lot of big get-togethers so I usually enjoyed those that actually occurred. Christmas was nice but the Fourth had two things that I really liked – homemade, hand-cranked ice cream and the danger of losing body parts in an explosion.

The ice-cream is self-explanatory only it wasn’t until I grew up that I figured out the physics of how the cranking and the cold actually made ice-cream. I just figured the cranking bit was something to keep us kids busy (which it probably was) and the ice was something to make the cranking harder to do.

See, my dad never bought crushed ice for the ice-cream maker. Shoot, I don’t think they even sold the stuff in our county. No, we had to make it with the regular kind of ice that was the size of rocks from a gravel road. Those things inevitably got stuck under the cylinder thing in the ice-cream maker and required a lot of reversals, banging, and poking with a long, flat-head screwdriver to get unstuck. It made an interminable process even longer.

The result was always worth it. Mom never made regular ice cream with eggs and cream. If it had to be cooked, Mom didn’t make it which was also the reason I spent most of my childhood eating out in restaurants. No, Mom made ice cream with regular milk, vanilla, and sugar. The result was very similar to snow cream and was fantastic. Of course, since we only got it once a year that made it even more special.

My other favorite thing about the Fourth is the threat to life and limb. There were two major ways to hurt yourself on the Fourth. The first was if you went to the Kiwanis fireworks show at the high school stadium and fell down the bleachers. I’ve done that – more than once. The risk of that happening went up if there was a sudden, unexpected lightning storm in the middle of the show that caused the entire population of the county to start running for their cars in a torrential downpour.

One of my most vivid Fourth of July memories is one of seeing my mom running in a torrential downpour in front of me headed for the car holding a program over her beehive hairdo. Lightning was snapping everywhere and Daddy had a death grip on my hand. We had made it to the back of the concession stand and were crossing the grass when Mom tripped headlong, face first into a water-filled ditch. Dad and I forgot the storm and doubled over laughing. Mom didn’t see the humor. I have to give her credit though – she saved the ‘do. The rest of her was a muddy polyester mess but that ‘do made it through. I suspect it was the build-up of Aqua-Net that made the difference.

Thereafter every Fourth, we always talked about the lightning storm when Mom fell in the ditch. It became a family legend. We have many family legends that revolve around the Fourth, mainly because my older brother has a condition that makes for an exciting experience – he loves home fireworks and he’s blind as a bat in the dark.

Brother is thirteen years older than I and has always worn Coke-bottle glasses. He can barely see in the daylight but in any dim light, he’s completely night-blind. He’s never seen a star. He has to be led into and out of the movie theater. When he was in the Navy, he was not allowed on the ship’s deck after twilight for fear he would walk off the side. He is completely and totally blind in the dark. That didn’t stop either him or my dad from putting on a massive fireworks display on our street every year. In fact, it added to the excitement!

The day before the Fourth, Dad, Brother and I would head down to the fireworks stand and load up two large grocery sacks (they were the paper kind back then) with all kinds of fireworks. It was cool because they usually let me pick everything out being the spoiled rotten baby girl I was. Of course, I’d get the girly stuff like sparklers and lady fingers but we’d also get Roman candles, showers-of-sparks, bottle rockets, regular Black Cats, chasers and whistlers. Cherry bombs, smoke bombs, and stink bombs were my brother’s favorites because they could be shot off before dark. M-80’s were Dad’s favorites and he had a stock-pile of them for years after they were made illegal. All total, Dad probably spent a hundred bucks on fireworks every year and that was when you could get a box of sparklers for a quarter and a gross of bottle rockets for two bucks. You can imagine the massive amount of firepower we had.

When I was ten or so, Brother was in on leave from the Navy for the holiday. We were just getting started and the lightning bugs were just starting to come up out of the grass. For those of you who live in the South, you’ll realize that means there was still some light, at least enough to see fuses without flashlights. Or so we thought.

Brother was attempting to light a mortar shot and had just gotten the fuse going when, being blind, he tripped and knocked the mortar over. Dad yelled out “Incoming!” and bolted. Ice tea cups flew and lawn chairs tumbled as family and neighbors evacuated the area. My best friend Laura and I took cover in a ditch. Mom passed us doing about 35 with her cigarette clamped between her lips in an attempt to get around the side of the house to safety. We’d never seen grownups move so fast in our entire lives. Brother stood stock-still while the entire neighborhood made for cover around him. He later said he figured his odds of not getting shot were better than his odds of not running into a tree so he just froze. Turns out the only casualty was the neighbor’s cat who got a singed tail and lost three lives out of sheer terror when the mortar round missed its ass by millimeters. I swear that cat flew like Superman.

Brother always had close calls with fireworks but it didn’t deter him and it made for great entertainment for the rest of us. One year he lit a Roman candle and was holding it out in front of him like all the safety experts tell you not to do. The fact that he was holding it out in front of him turned out not to be the problem. The problem was he had it turned around backwards and shot himself in the stomach. After two shots, he got a clue and dropped it. Burned a hole straight through his shirt and made a big red mark on his belly. When he dropped it, it shot off toward Mom who again passed us doing 30 (she was older that year) trying to get around the corner of the house.

The Fourth before his wedding, Brother had his fiancée Susan to our house for the holiday. Susan, bless her sweet Baptist heart, hates fireworks; she is absolutely terrified of them. But, in her attempt to be a part of the family, she compromised that year and decided to sit in the car in the driveway while we shot off the annual display. She settled herself into her yellow Datsun and felt safe with the windows rolled up and the doors all locked. All was going well and the display was good, if a tad boring. Susan, feeling a bit comforted, not to mention sweaty walled up in an enclosed Datsun in July in Tennessee, decided to crack her window about an inch. Brother lit off a chaser right about then and a legend was made.

That chaser did the absolute impossible and flew a beeline directly through that one-inch gap in that window and got in the car with Susan. I couldn’t see her face but I could see the chaser going round and round inside that car and the screams that emanated from the interior were those of someone in free fall without a parachute. She couldn’t get out because she had locked the doors. She couldn’t get away and she couldn’t hide in a two-door subcompact of the seventies. Those of us watching could just see fire bouncing off walls and windows, and see the Datsun rocking as she tried to fight the thing off.

Of course, none of us were any help. We couldn’t even stand up because we were laughing so hard. When the chaser finally burned out and she was able to unlock the door, that sweet Baptist girl emerged cussing like a sailor. Her denim skirt was burned in multiple places and her perfectly hot-rollered hair was smoking in several quadrants. For twenty years thereafter, Susan spent the Fourth of July locked in the window-less bathroom at our house from 4:00 pm onward.

After he was married and had children of his own, Brother was still fun on the Fourth. I was with him and his kids one year in an undeveloped cul-de-sac of their neighborhood as they were putting on their own homegrown display. Brother had just lit a chaser and was backing away when he disappeared altogether. We all ran over to see what had happened to him to discover he had backed away too far in the dark and had fallen into a six-foot ditch flat of his back. Lucky for him, it was full of muddy water or he could have been hurt.

You know, now that I think about it, the Fourth of July and ditches seem to have some sort of weird connection for our family. I bet Susan wishes she had taken the ditch instead of the Datsun. At least she could have run for her life like Mom did.

The fireworks bug has been genetically passed to my son but unfortunately, due to circumstances, we have yet been able to spend a Fourth with my brother since my son has been old enough to get involved in the annual fireworks display. Maybe next year.

I saw on the news this afternoon that 37 people were hurt nationwide by fireworks this year. Heck, that’s not bad. I don’t see what gets safety people into such a tizzy about fireworks. I survived 42 years of near proximity to a blind man with a punk in his hand surrounded by explosives. If I made it through unscathed, the odds are good that most other people will. Unless of course, you are stuck in a yellow Datsun with the doors locked.

Final Instructions

I warn you - this post might be considered irreverent by some people, especially if you are unfamiliar with me or my family; however, it's something that I think is rather funny in a weird kind of way so I'm going to share it.

First of all, I have to back up a few years to about 1999 (I think). We were living in Texas and my grandmother passed away. My mother was an only child and she and my grandmother did NOT get along. My grandmother had been taken care of by my brother and I for several years, but my brother took over when we moved to Austin. My mother did not have much involvement with Mommo (what we called my grandma) but when Mommo died, it was up to Mom to take care of the final arrangements because she was the direct next of kin.

My grandmother had always loved a good funeral. We called her a professional funeral-goer. She'd often go to funerals of people she had never met but were friends of friends. She just loved the socializing they offered. When my grandfather died, she made sure that the traditions were followed and she was in high cotton because at that funeral, she was the center of attention. She made the most of it, too. She could be a bit of a drama queen and a good Southern funeral was just the stage she needed.

Needless to say, my mother had little patience with all that. She considered it a waste of time and good money (Mom was cheap). Therefore, when my grandmother died, my mother didn't do the whole funeral thing but rather just had Mommo cremated (because it was cheaper), gave away her few possessions, and was done with it. When the remains (funeral professionals call them "cremains", I've discovered) were returned to Mom, she simply put the box in the trunk of her car. And that is where they stayed until last month. That's nine years, people. For nine years, my mother rode around with my grandmother in the trunk of her car.

Mom's original intention was to take the ashes to Alexander City, Alabama and have them buried next to my granddad but somehow she just never got around to making the trip. So Mommo rode around in the trunk of Mom's car for years. She even got transferred from one trunk to another when Mom bought a NEW car. It got to be a bit of a family joke, really. I always told Mom that if she was ever in an accident she would have a hard time explaining when the police asked her what was in the box - "Uh, well officer, that would be my mother".

In a way, it was rather appropriate (remember, I said you have to know my family) because my grandmother was a big traveler. She was always on the go and moved a LOT. Once she even moved from one side of a duplex to the other side - just because. We kind of figured she was having a good time sitting there next to the spare tire. I told Mom "what goes around, comes around" and that I had every intention of riding her around in the trunk when she died. Mom thought that was pretty funny.

Well, on January 5th Mom passed away. Her written directions were to be cremated. So now I was stuck with both Mommo in a box and Mom in a box. When we went to pick up Mom's "cremains" Scott carried the box out to the car for me. As we were nearing the Honda, he said, "Do you want me to put her in the backseat?" and I said "Nope. She goes in the trunk. I always told her I was going to ride her around like she did Mommo and I'm keeping my promise." And by golly I did - at least for a few hours. I brought her in the house at the end of the day and sat her box on top of Mommo's box on the floor under my desk with strict instructions to the two of them "No fighting, you two. I've had enough of your antics already."

A week after Mom died, we held a memorial service. Cremation is a relatively new thing for Southerners. We are accustomed to the traditional funeral process. You know - the visitation, the open casket, the service at the funeral home, the graveside service, and then the big dinner spread afterwards. People flood the family with casseroles and cakes. Everyone talks about how "good" the dead person looks, discusses the choice of flower blanket and casket, etc. It's a good gossip fest.

All Southern women can put on a funeral with little to no problem because we know the routine. Southern funerals are big occasions to see long-lost family, catch up with friends, eat big, and generally give the deceased a good send-off. When you have someone cremated, you can't really do that. What do you do? Put the box on the table at the front of the church? Remark how "good" it looks? The whole process is odd. I mean, really, I wrote a check for cremation services and they handed me my mother in a box in return. How weird is that?

I wasn't about to hang on to both Mom and Mommo for another nine years with both of them sitting under my desk. In my normal fashion, I was going to take care of disposal of "cremains" as soon as possible and move on. (How can people put their family members in an urn on the mantel? I just don't get it.) The day after the memorial service, my brother, my nephew, my son and I took both boxes and rode up into the Smoky Mountains where I knew of a good mountain stream that was easily accessible from the road. I figured this was as good a place as any to "bury" them both. Mommo could travel all the way to the Gulf of Mexico eventually and Mom had always enjoyed camping in the mountains in her younger days.

It was a very cold January day - clear, with temperatures in the teens. When we got to the spot, I was elected to do the honors. We decided we would start with Mommo first since she had been dead the longest. (We're making this up as we go along because we've never done anything like this before.) When I went to open the cardboard box she was in, I discovered to my dismay that Mom had taped her in. And I mean she had done a REALLY good job - she was being absolutely positive Mommo wasn't getting out. My goodness, she could have passed FedEx standards! I had to get my son's pocket knife to cut through the packing tape and once inside, I discovered she'd done the same to the plastic box on the inside! It took me fifteen minutes of hacking with a Swiss army knife to get in to the "cremains".

Okay, morbid curiosity abounds and I know you are wondering what it looked like. We did too. Basically, it looked like what you would expect it to look like - gray powder. I held the plastic bag out over the river and dumped it in. My son and nephew threw flowers in after. And the cloudy water just sat there. Without thinking about it, we had selected a spot where the current wasn't very strong so when dumped in, a big cloudy area resulted. Ahh, crap.

Learning as we went along on this, we decided it would be best to dump Mom a little further upstream and out a little further in the current. That meant me, the elected one, had to walk out on these slippery rocks over the sub-freezing temp water coming down from the mountains. I was saying a prayer - "please don't let me fall in" and then "please don't let me fall in after I dump Mom because that would just be too icky". Forget anything appropriate like the Lord's Prayer or the 23rd Psalm. I was concerned about myself at this point.

I made it to the appropriate place and opened the box. To our amazement, Mom didn't look like Mommo. Mom looked more like black volcanic sand. I commented "You don't think they gave us the wrong person do you?" but then I decided it was irrelevant at this point. I'm balancing my big ol' butt on a tiny, slippery rock over rushing freezing water and I was anxious to get this done and back to shore safely. We were going to dump SOMEONE even if it wasn't Mom.

I go through the same process and my son and nephew throw in flowers. I make it safely back to the bank and we stand there watching the stream. Now, this entire thing has been surreal from the start but here's where it gets really weird. As "Mom" and "Mommo" start mixing together in the stream, whirlpools start to form and the floating flowers actually start floating UPSTREAM. The three of us look at each other with eyes like saucers and we all exclaim at once "They're fighting again!"

Rapidly we backed up the bank out of the way and watch as the water seems to boil and churn and the flowers are going every which way but downstream. We are afraid we've created an EPA supersite or some sort of space/time wormhole by letting these two mix together.

We stood and watched for about 20 minutes, our noses turning blue and our breath freezing in the air until finally, finally, the flowers move on downstream and the waters smooth out. Not a word has been spoken. My son bends down and with a stick writes in the mud beside the stream "NO SWIMMING". I get the car keys out and say "Anyone up for Sonic? I could use some ice cream."

By the way, in case anyone needs to know, I've left written instructions for my burial. I want to be buried, in a casket, in jeans and a t-shirt, and I want chicken and dumplings served for dinner. And banana pudding. Just want to make that clear.

Plastic People Patrol on the Prowl

I suppose you've probably figured out by now that we are a bit of an odd family. It might have to do with having been military for so long and moving around so much that we have to make our own fun or at least come up with some innovative ways to entertain ourselves.

The Plastic People Patrol started several years ago when we lived in Texas. We were riding high on the dot-com bubble and were living in a fairly upscale neighborhood like all the other stock-option people in Austin. We had just finished hanging up our Christmas lights and were heading to the pool (Austin was 80 degrees at the time) when we walked past a house and were stopped in our tracks. The lawn (which was the size of a postage stamp in this zero-lot-line development) was absolutely FILLED with "internally illuminated" Christmas decorations - plastic people. How the communist-led neighborhood association had let this one get past their keen radar was beyond me! It was a sight to behold!

This family had the traditional nativity scene with Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus PLUS the wisemen, their camels, Santa and sleigh and all 9 reindeer (Rudolph included), Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, a full choir, an army of nutcracker soldiers, 3-foot-high candles, a snowman army, candy canes, and a Grinch. It was so red-neck, the ginormous modern house to which the lawn was attached was incongruent. It should have been a single-wide instead of a 5-bedroom, 3-car mortgage broker's dream. Even the Mercedes parked in the driveway now seemed out-of-place situated among the Plastic People population.

We counted up the number of Plastic People in that yard that year and came up with 34. The next year, the group had reproduced somehow (maybe Snow White and one of the dwarves?) and stood at 36. We started riding around the neighborhood and other developments in southwest Austin looking for another house that beat that record of 36 Plastic People. The Plastic People Patrol was born and a family tradition was launched.

That year in Texas, we decided the 36-count Plastic People home deserved a tribute for starting a family tradition so we printed up an award on Christmas paper, tucked a twenty-dollar bill in the envelope with it, and left it anonymously in the mailslot of the front door of that house. The Plastic People Patrol had awarded it's first annual recognition award!

Now, every year we go on Plastic People Patrol looking for the house in the county that has the most Plastic People included in their holiday exterior illumination display. Lighted things like Christmas trees, hanging icicles, and wire figures do not count. Plastic People have to be made out of plastic to qualify. With the advent of the blow-up holiday decorations, we've included them as qualifying Plastic People since they do contain some sort of petroleum-based or synthetic product in their covering and are illuminated internally. No matter the size, though, they only count once. A 14-foot inflatable carousel, while impressive, cannot count twice.

We've seen some interesting decorations in our yearly quest to find the winner of the Plastic People Award. The house that turned it's trampoline on it's side and put lights around the outside edge to make a 12-foot wreath was inventive. The house that just left up the Halloween decorations and added Christmas decorations to the mix was a bit schizophrenic. Some houses rival Clark Griswald's and you have to wonder what the electricity bill runs for the month of December.

It's been several years now that our Plastic People Patrol has been in operation. Families in two states and three counties have earned places in the Plastic People Award Hall of Fame and been awarded certificates placed in their mailboxes. Son has hit his teenage years so we are now making it a team effort among his group of friends. We'll be making our final enumeration tour one night soon. The boys will be piling into the Denali, hyped up on energy drinks while Mom (that's me), hyped up on Prozac to survive 5 teenage boys hyped up on energy drinks crammed into an SUV, drives them by all the houses they have noted as contenders. Head counts of Plastic People will be executed as a group and the contender with the highest population will win the coveted 2007 Plastic People Award and the cash award of $20 that accompanies it. A family tradition survives another year and perhaps will be passed on to future generations.

Are we weird or what?

What Would the Holidays Be without Firearms?

Ahhh, Thanksgiving Day has passed and the stampede on Wal-mart has passed for the moment. It is time to sit back and enjoy the essence of a Southern Christmas. Living in the bastion for the Second Amendment, firearms and the holidays have always been woven together around here.

For example, the Saturday after Thanksgiving is opening day for duck season. It's a wonderful tradition to be awoken at the lovely hour of 3:00 am as husband and son try to "quietly" gather all their equipment for a day of duck hunting. "Dad, did you get the Beanie Weanies?" and "Where did you put my socks? I laid them right here!" whispered sotto voice are common in Southern households everywhere. Once the dynamic duo are out the door and sleep mercifully returns, the annual recreation of the Battle of Chickamauga launches out on the river with shotguns blasting away at unsuspecting waterfowl. Said unsuspecting waterfowl get wise after losing a few of their comrades and decide to fly to other places less dangerous (like the wildlife refuge a half-mile away), leaving the ghosts of the Confederate Army (now dressed in camo and bright orange) to pretend they see a duck and just shoot to be making noise. The windows of the house rattle and the dogs hide under the bed all day. Yes, it's Christmas-time!

Another good example arose around here this past weekend after football games were over and turkey eaten. As I'm struggling to get the Christmas tree up and the decorations out, dearest son decides he's going to rid the household of that pesky varmint the skunk, affectionately known by me and our dog Buster as The Devil Incarnate after our little dustup a few weeks ago. Son has a complex plan of action. First of all, reconnaissance is required to determine just where the creature is sheltered using the highly developed olfactory sense. In other words, dear son went around the yard sniffing. He narrowed it down to several potential locations, with the two prime spots being the ivy covering the wellhead and the culvert under the road at the bottom of the orchard.

The next step of the battle plan is armament. Son spends some time on expedition inside his closet and emerges with his camo, paintball helmet, 20-gauge shotgun and 12-gauge shotgun. Pockets bulging with shells, he declares he's ready but explosives are needed. What's a good skunk hunt without being able to blow something up, right?

Son pulls the last remnants of his Fourth of July firecrackers from the box under his bed and is heard mumbling "Man, I wish I had some M-80s..." as he rummages through the junk drawer looking for the lighter. The Plan (note the capitalization because now we have form to this endeavor) is to flush the skunk out with the firecrackers and then shoot him with one of the two shotguns as he goes running across the yard. Bottle rockets were considered but rejected because of their unpredictability and proximity to firearms. In other words, mom (being me) said "no".

As dad and I stand at the back door - inside of course - watching the last male member of the family line stomp around the back yard looking like a skinny Rambo, we decided there was the potential here for side-splitting humor. We started wagering on which gun he was going to drop first in his flight from the skunk and which tree he'd run into during his getaway. There was no doubt in our minds that the skunk was going to come out on top if his Tora Bora cave was exposed.

Alas, the depth charges did not serve to flush out Mr. Stinky and son had to return to the house defeated and dejected, having used up all his explosives. However, the shotguns are handy and ready at the backdoor just in case the opportunity arises for battle. You can never be too well-armed, you know. The Battle of the Backyard shall continue another day.

And finally, it just wouldn't be a Southern Christmas without all the flyers arriving in the mail from Cabela's and Bass Pro advertising the latest and greatest in deer rifles, scopes, and intruder-deterrent pistolry. With Sharpies and ads in hand, the males of the species retreat to the "reading rooms" to make out their Christmas lists by circling the weapons of their dreams while taking care of other business. Man, if only I had some M-80s....

Keeping It in Perspective

Last night after a very long day and few sales (I work on commission), I was lying in bed watching Fox News and thinking about the upcoming holidays. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I've already purchased all the groceries for a traditional meal. Everything is ready to go and I'll start today with the things that can and should be done ahead of time for a good Southern Thanksgiving dinner.

As these fairly random thoughts are running through my head, my subconscious is set on "worry" mode. Day before yesterday, I got word that my aunt had had a stroke. I got a call yesterday from my nephew concerning an issue that my brother is having with his landlord. I realized that my quarterlies are due next month. And I haven't started Christmas shopping. My house is a wreck and I have a mouse that so far only I have seen (my husband and son think I'm hallucinating and who knows - I might be!).

Problems, problems, problems. I started thinking "if only I had a lot of money, most of these problems could be solved". I could hire a housekeeper for my house, not to mention a mouse-hunter (or a psychiatrist if the mouse is truly a figment of my imagination). I could afford to move my brother and mother into nice assisted living facilities where they would both be well-cared-for. I could not worry about a budget on Christmas and how I'm going to afford everything. Taxes - well, if you listen to any liberal Democrat I wouldn't be paying taxes because I'm rich but the reality would be that I would be paying an accountant and financial advisor to find as many tax breaks as possible so I wouldn't be supporting Sierra Leone all on my own. As for my aunt, not much money can do on that except help with expenses if needed.

Being human, I decided I had come up with the perfect solution. Money would solve all my problems. In my mind I said, "God, I need to win the lottery or something. Think you can arrange that?" Then one of those rare moments occurred. I heard God talking back to me. No, not out loud but in my head, very clearly and very distinctly. He said, "Okay. But which blessing do you want to give up for it?" What? What did He mean give up a blessing? He had my attention.

He went on to say "Here are the major blessings which I've given you: a good job, a great house, plenty of food, a great husband and a terrific son, enough income to meet all your bills and then some, two vehicles that operate well and look decent, good health, and good friends and neighbors. I've surrounded you with animals of both the domestic and wild variety which calms your spirit. I've given you the opportunity to pursue hobbies you enjoy. I've brought you home from around the world and settled you in one of my favorite spots. You are warm, clothed, fed, and loved. I can arrange the lottery or the windfall but which of these blessings are you going to give up for it?"

There's nothing more humbling than when God shows you your own lack of faith. I was so embarrassed and it's not a good feeling to be ashamed before the Lord.

So this Thanksgiving, I'm giving thanks for all those blessings AND the problems because God's got it all under control. I just have to remember that and stop thinking that I have all the answers. Thank you God for letting me still have my brother and mother this side of heaven; I know my time with them is limited. Thank you for the income that is high enough that I have to pay quarterlies. Thank you for the mouse because, let's face it - he's cute as a button with those big ears. Thank you for the mess because it is in a wonderful house. But most of all God, thank you for Jesus, without whom we would have nothing for which to give thanks and certainly no Christmas to celebrate.

Red Letter Day

I love living in the country. While I was raised within the city limits of a small town, our environment was still fairly rural and my grandparents lived on a farm so I have always considered myself a country girl. I am beginning to suspect, however, that the years of city-living I've had over the past twenty years have softened me up too much.

Yesterday at the pre-dawn hour of 5:30, I took my dogs out for their morning potty break and sniff session. Our biggest one, Buster (who has the personality to match his name), took off after something in the dark. Buster is an 8-lb. Chihuahua who thinks he's a pit bull. There was a huge ruckus and I decided to go investigate thinking he'd maybe actually caught one of the wild cats that hangs around our bird feeders. Wrong. It was not a nice kitty. It must have looked kind of like a kitty to bird-brained Buster in the dark, but it was the devil in disguise. It was Pepe LePeue on steroids.

Oh heavens. I got close enough for my nose to tell me the story and I turned tail and beat it back to the house. The other two dogs (who have more than 3 brain cells) followed right along. They didn't want any part of this dust-up. Buster was on his own as far as they were concerned. There's fraternal loyalty and then there's stupidity.

I got them in and finally Buster comes dragging back to the porch looking shocked and appalled. His expression said it all - "What the heck WAS that thing? And how did it arm itself with pepper spray? Cats are supposed to run and then you get a nice chase in but this thing zapped me!" Poor Buster looked like a police academy cadet who had just undergone the pepper spray training exercise. His eyes were red and swollen, his chest and ears were cherry red.

My sympathy was only half-hearted, though, because I knew now I had to clean up this eight-pound mass of stink. Then I committed a cardinal sin - I brought him inside. Big, big mistake. Not only did I then have a contaminated dog but the house was soon an EPA Supersite, too. The husband comes downstairs clutching a wash rag over his face, gagging and saying "what are you doing???"

I guess my old vet-tech mindset had kicked in and I wasn't thinking that skunk smell permeates EVERYTHING. Those molecules are relentless. I had cleaned up enough skunked dogs when working for the vet as a teenager and I wasn't thinking "house" but rather "what was that deskunkifier recipe??" It had been twenty-five years since I'd last made a batch.

The rest of the story is a lesson in hazardous material handling. The house was unlivable for the rest of the day. Lucky for me, I had to drive 200 miles yesterday to pick up my son from grandma's house so I was out until afternoon. I stuck Buster in the basement, turned on the big house fan (1948 a/c) and left. Of course, those molecules were everywhere - in my hair, my clothes, my nose, and my purse. I finally stopped at a McDonalds and transferred the contents of my new leather purse to a Wal-mart bag and tossed the purse in the dumpster. It was a total loss. I rolled down all the windows in the Denali and put the seat heater on so I could see to drive without the fumes tearing my eyes too much. Ever drive 78 mph in 42-degree weather with all the windows down? Not fun.

When we got back to the house yesterday afternoon, it was possible to be in the house but we were all dripping Visine every fifteen minutes like dope heads and burning every candle we can find. Everything made of cloth has to be washed now. I want to kiss whoever decided to put Febreeze in Tide and Downy.

And to top off this lovely Red Letter Day in our household - Al Gore wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Good God.

Home Work a Hassle?

I was reading a blog posting this morning in our local large city newspaper concerning homework and how kids these days are bogged down with it. Read it here. A Wall Street Journal article (read it here) and the general consensus of parents seems to be that homework is just a time-consuming hassle. It interferes with life and stresses out kids.

I'm a former middle school teacher and the mother of a 14-year old so I have some exposure to this situation from both sides of the fence. When I taught in the public school system, I taught in a rural middle school where the majority of the students came from impoverished backgrounds. Today that would be called an at-risk school but at the time (twenty years ago) we weren't sweating over test scores so the term never arose. I would say we had a good school. We had dedicated teachers, a great administration, and average students. We had an exceptional program for the gifted and talented and for the "educationally challenged" students, too. Some parents were involved but most weren't (not any different than today).

What we DIDN'T have were students whose lives were scheduled down to the last second. If a student played a sport, it was a school sport. There were no community soccer associations or karate schools or other such things. If a student played an instrument, it was in the band. No violin lessons or trumpet lessons after school. A student went home, did homework, and hung out. Parents came home, fixed supper and hung out. There was no "living in the mini-van" as mom carted kids from one activity to the other all afternoon, every afternoon.

The writer of the WSJ blog probably doesn't realize it but his child has just caught his and his wife's anxiety disease. The parents have communicated that the child must get As and Bs and makes it such a priority that they are constantly in the kid's face with flashcards and lists of spelling words, even in restaurants. The school work isn't stressing the kid out - it's the parents! Give the kid a break! Let him do it on his own. How is he going to learn to study on his own if his parents are constantly there pushing this stuff down his throat? He's not anxious because he's getting Ds - he's anxious because his parents are getting Ds! They need to back off.

Home work has it's place. It provides additional practice for new concepts learned at school that day. It can provide supporting learning opportunities for concepts with which the student struggles. Should a parent be involved in all home work activities? NO! Let the child do the work! A parent should be there if the child has a question but the parent should butt out otherwise. Be encouraging and help when needed but let the kid do the work and shoulder the responsibility. The child isn't going to have the parent there by his or her side when they are away at college and then what will happen?

As to the amount of home work. I suggest the parents cut out all after-school activities and just have the child come home and do homework and see what that does to the pace of their lives. I bet they will discover that the home work wasn't the problem after all - it was the million and one activities they had the child doing after school that was sucking up time and creating stress.

It's a documented fact that American children are over-scheduled. Parents use after-school activities as a baby-sitting service. When people my age (41) and older were in school, most moms didn't work so you came home, ate a Twinkie, did your home work and then got to watch an hour of Gomer Pyle and Bewitched before going outside to play with your friends until it was too dark to see. If you had trouble with your home work, you asked mom but otherwise she was probably busy making supper or doing laundry. If it was a math problem, you waited for dad to come home.

Now, moms work so they have to put the kids somewhere until they get off work so they enroll them in after-school programs that are glorified day cares (or even real day cares). To assuage their guilty feelings, parent put pressure on their children to perform in school so they can prove that the lifestyle they've chosen is not detrimental to the child and that they can produce "super kids". Remember, those test scores are all important and now the fever that has infected our educational professionals has spread to the parents. Johnny has to score high on those tests in the spring or he'll be an outcast, won't get into a good college, blah, blah, blah.

What a load of crap. I'm sorry, but there are some children that should just be left behind. It's a good wake up call that no one uses anymore. It was embarrassing as heck to fail a grade when I was a kid and usually it took just once to wake you up. No one is left behind now. It would be too detrimental to the child's self-esteem. (read heavy sarcasm there)

But that's another soapbox for another day. Back to the home work issue. Did I assign home work as a teacher? Yes, when I thought it was necessary which was often. Many of my students didn't have a home life that was conducive to sitting down and studying (as in their parents were drug addicts, etc) so I kept it to a minimum but I did assign it when I felt it was called for. I often provided opportunities to work on it in class simply because I knew what their home lives were like. We also had study hall (something else that is disappearing from the educational landscape) where the student had a chance to work on home work.

Home work teaches a lot of things, but primarily it teaches responsibility. When a parent takes over the responsibility for homework, one of the main purposes of homework is nullified. Do I welcome homework for my own son? Absolutely. In fact, I don't think he gets enough home work assigned.

Bottom line is parents need to stop blaming teachers for trying to teach something to their children and instead cut out all the extra-curricular activities that they've laid on their children in the effort to produce super-kids. Give the kids a break. Moms - get your butts home by 3:00 so your kid can have a normal life if you are so concerned about the kids' stress level.

Beaver Cleaver didn't seem stressed out much. Wonder why?