Painting with Passive Aggression

At long, long last we have banished the last of the beige in this house. There was much rejoicing and some shouting with glee to be heard, that's for sure. The last remaining area was the vast, echoing living-room, dining-room area and the transformative powers of having a color I don't despise on the walls cannot be underestimated. I wish I could hug the entire room at once, now that it has stopped offending my eyes. I'll attach pictures in a bit, after I take them, that is.

In photographs that color just looks dull, or neutral. In life it looked like the sad after effect of food poisoning following the consumption of oatmeal. Grayish-brown, tinged with an underlying bile-yellow. Despite looking like a course of antibiotics was needed to cure the walls of some dreadful infection, it had been in place for years before we got here.

Although we frequently do our own painting, we opted for pros in the two-story room. Visions of plummeting from scaffolding or high ladders danced in our heads, so we called in people who merrily balance atop these precarious perches as a profession. Really, that's just not something you wish to discover is outside of your skill set in the middle of a project. Gravity being a harsh task master, and all that.

At our old house we were the veterans of many a remodeling project. During one six-month period we had an addition constructed that was close to 1000 square feet. On another occasion we had the kitchen and bath ripped down to the studs and reconstructed from scratch, thereby releasing dust circa 1912. Even the dust was made of tougher stuff a century ago. Swiffers were not equal to the task, by a long shot, I had to mop the walls to be rid of the last of it, and even then, I have my doubts. There is likely a pile of it remaining in that old house, and it is probably hatching a plot for world domination even as I type. The darned stuff clung with such determination that I can only assume it had an actual, sentient quality to it. It seemed to elude me with ease. That's a story for another time, though.

Just saying, we've danced our way through many a quote process, and dealt with contractors of every description. We even had one general contractor (briefly) die mid-project. His heart stopped entirely in the midst of a round of golf, and four retired Navy SEALs waiting to play through brought the man back from complete heart failure. We could never quite decide if that meant we had been cursed by some really perverse fairy or not. After all, I've heard a lot of remodeling horror stories but we are the only people I know who experienced a work stoppage because their contractor was recovering from a brief bout with death.

In a complete aside, my very favorite part about that story is that the four men who saved Hal went on to play the rest of the round before stopping by the hospital to see how he was doing. I'm no shrinking violet, but I think having someone briefly perish in front of me would likely fell me like a tree for, at least, the rest of the day. For these guys, a man down on the seventh hole was something that happened before the eighth, I guess.

We've been around the block and heard the various stories that people will put forth to try and disparage their competition. It's just the nature of the business, and in a tough economy, it becomes more so as various contractors wrangle for jobs. Now, with painting, there are only so many ways a job can go wrong. It's not like construction, where other contractors will hint that so-and-sos company didn't lay duct work correctly, and their poor clients now live in an airless box, to this day. Pretty much the worst a painting contractor can imply about an interior job is that so-and-so won't provide proper coverage, or will buy inferior paint while charging for the superior stuff. Or paint everything puce before disappearing into the ether forever, money in hand.

The quotes ranged around so wildly there was absolutely no way to determine how much the actual job was worth. The highest quote was well over three thousand, leading me to remark that I assumed the paint would be kissed onto the walls by a host of angels for that price. The lowest turned out to be eight hundred and I can only assume that involves hopefully hurling paint around by the bucketful and calling it a day.

But the strangest sales technique I encountered was from a painter I had used previously, one I knew to quote a bit high, but do good work. He actually didn't end up quoting on the job. I had him scheduled, he had to cancel, and we re-scheduled. In the interim, I met the painter I hired, and who did a beautiful job, I might add. So I sent off an email telling the other painter that I had no wish to waste his time, and that hopefully we could work together in the future. Thus began the weirdest volley of emails I've ever had from any contractor.

I probably shouldn't have mentioned the fact that the reason I was canceling was that I'd received a low quote that, having worked with him before, I was sure he wasn't going to be able to match. I completely understand that anyone trying to keep a business afloat in tough times would be irked by that. I wish I'd thought of that before, you see, it might have stopped this painter, who I'll call Ted, from implying that the men I hired were likely vagabonds, thieves and would-be murders.

This is one of those instances wherein people reading can end up thinking, "Oh har, har, surely you are overstating for humor." You'd think, right? So I'm going to cut and paste from the emails:

"Does he have current liability insurance?
Do you know the reference and/or the kind of work he has done for the references?
Has he given you a thorough estimate that spells out the project?

Okay, now first of all that's none of his concern, but I'm not rude by nature. They are also fair questions to ask when hiring someone. I answered in the affirmative on the first two, and knew enough about contractors and estimates to know that the third one is actually one of the bigger tricks contractors pull. For instance, one contractor looked me dead in the eye and gave me a piece of paper that listed the paint cost as $775 dollars, which only if the meaning of life is contained in the pigment could that be true, and I've done enough painting to know that. Another told me it would be over a thousand for paint and materials. The painter who did the job gave me the receipts and the actual cost on paint and materials: $238.49. Just because there's a number in a box on an estimate, it doesn't mean much.

I didn't bother to tell Ted that because implying that a person is in a trade involving much broad fiction is not exactly a polite move.

I again bid him a good day, and told him I was pleased he was so busy, as he assured me he was. I'm quite willing to believe that, his company does very good work. I was a little surprised that he was fighting so hard to try and dissuade me from hiring someone else, but hey, in that kind of business you really do have to expect that contractors will do their best to win your business. It was actually the paragraph proceeding it that made my jaw drop:

"I am not trying to scare you, but a lot of times when guys are in the desperate mode, they do irrational things. I would be highly suspect if the guy is half of what others have quoted you. I know we are not the least expensive out there, but know that we provide exceptional value for the quality we provide. Not to mention the caliber of individuals that I would bring into your home."

Holy crow. Desperate and irrational? Plus an implication that I was hiring criminals? Also, in my personal experience, when anyone says, "I'm not trying to scare you..." and it isn't a close friend? They're doing their level best to scare the tar out of you.

There's always some risk attendant to letting people you don't know well into your home. It's just part of the risk of being alive. Or in leaving the house, for that matter. I'm even willing to believe that Ted was honestly concerned about our welfare, because I had mentioned that I knew this guy had quoted low because he needed the work. I knew this because the man had told me that, to my face. In turn I had asked him, "Okay, so what would your quote be normally?" He said, "On labor, it's a twelve hundred dollar job. Don't let anyone charge you more than that."

That's the guy I ended up hiring, and I paid his regular price. He'd showed up on time, been very forthright, and he didn't impugn anyone else's character to get the job.

In my own turn I lobbed back something to Ted that, while true, is also a way of pulling a passive aggressive end to a debate. I told Ted, truthfully, that this was a painter my husband had found, and that when stubborn people marry you end up ceding to each other on a regular basis. It's true, but it was also an attempt to shut the door on the conversation. Another thing I've found is that male contractors tend to back down when someone, in this case me, produces a stubborn 6'4" husband as the buck-stops-there. People may assume, because my appearance doesn't quite match my interior, that I'm easy to push around. Oddly enough, no one ever assumes that about my husband. So yes, I played the card that essentially reads, "Yeah, take that up with my large, obstinate husband, it'll go well. Ha. Ha. Ha."

There's only one thing that gave me pause. Back when I met Ted and had him paint our kitchen/family room I had asked him another important question, "Do you use subcontractors for any of your work?"

I asked him because it's an important question, and one I urge people to ask. Some contractors use subs for labor, which is fine, but make sure they use the same ones over and over. That they are not contracting people they don't know well. Hal, our risen contractor, made a big mistake on our addition. He hired a sub contractor on drywall that he'd never worked with before. The crew did great work, but Hal, due to the entire "briefly dead, back soon!" footnote on our project, didn't pay this contractor in a timely manner. Causing the biggest drywalling crew boss in the land to walk into the half completed addition, knock on an interior door, and try to muscle a check out of me right then and there, by means of threatening me.

I'm married to a big guy, I barely even notice when someone tops six feet these days, because my daily reality is a guy who dwells far above me. This drywaller was Gigantic. Paul Bunyan's cousin who went into contracting, essentially. Probably somewhere around 6'8" and he was clearly trying to use that to his advantage. He encountered the fact that, realistically, I may look a bit China Doll-ish, but that conceals my inner Roller Derby Queen, who only comes out in special circumstances. For instance, when a mammoth contractor demands a check, while attempting to chase me backwards through my house. For the approximately six seconds I was backing away in confusion, I'll bet he thought it was working. The seventh second proved him wrong when I blew up like a volcano directly in his face. People across the street heard me, and we lived in a brick house. The man's hair practically blew back in the gale force of my extreme fury .

I simply lucked out in that the guy was all bluster, and not dangerous, but believe me when I say, the entire reason I flew into the loudest, and most threatening rage of my life was that as I took one last step backwards in shock, it occurred to me: The security door on the front door behind me was locked, if I didn't back that man out of my house, and he actually had any ill intent, I was in very, very serious trouble.

He retreated, practically cowering. I called Hal to inform him that the man needed to be paid by the end of the day, or there would be consequences beyond the telling of it. Make no mistake though, that had scared the bejeebers out of me and I've been very careful ever since. A further footnote to that is that my husband does not yell. I've heard him yell on exactly three occasions, the man doesn't shout unless safety is on the line and, to understate it, he got a little loud in his own turn. Poor Hal.

I mention this because, after I had retrieved my jaw from the floor, and rounded up my eyebrows from the lap they were taking around my entire skull after reading Ted's email, I remembered something. I'd told Ted the story of the Towering Drywall Man.

"I'm not trying to scare you, but..."

I do have to wonder if the end of that sentence should really have been, "...I know how to."

It remains possible that Ted truly was just concerned that the painter I'd hired was going to murder us all in our beds, and that I'd end up having my body identified by means of the remnants of my tattered left earlobe.

The last I heard from Ted and his portents of doom was to not pony up any dough until the job was done. That's sound advice.

I've dealt with a lot of contractors, I've seen a lot of sales techniques that range from the above-board to the sly implication, but I'll tell you something, I don't think Ted would have chosen that approach had he been communicating solely with my husband. Gender intimidation as a sales technique?

I'll pass.

An Unimaginable Choice

I feel like I should slap a warning label on this particular story. I love to write non-fiction humor but this is a story from the land that funny forgot. The point isn't the trauma, or the horror though. At the root of this there exists something beyond admirable, if difficult. It's the story of a difficult woman, who made some sad choices, some self-destructive ones too. That could be anyone's story, really. It describes most of us, but this woman did something I'm not sure I could do, and it is the stuff of nightmares. Some of them mine, I suppose.

It's the story of how my grandmother saved the life of a woman she hated, and in doing so made my entire life, as it stands, possible. She just had to do the unthinkable to accomplish that.

The thing is, with this sort of story, why tell it? There's the "well, it could help someone know that it's possible to overcome." That's entirely true. We are, all of us, more than the sum total of our traumas. I am, and I always have been. This part of my life is no more important today than any of the other things you might know about me. That I like to make people laugh is really how I'd rather be thought of, and about.

I'm very protective of other people when it comes to my childhood. I talk about my love of books, and the good memories I do have but I don't share many stories often, and there are only a select few who know of this memory. I don't like to upset people, why should I? I'm fine. Folks, I'm beyond fine. I'm happy, and I have a lovely life. It took hard work to get there, for instance, I wouldn't really recommend my twenties to anyone. It was what it was, and I made a good life, with some incidental tears, sweat, and the occasional horrific dream.

But this isn't really about me. I've tried to figure out a way to tell this story without referencing the center part of it, and there isn't a way to do that. So, with many a disclaimer, warnings galore and not a little trepidation on my part, I'm going to launch here in a moment, and tell you how thirty years after her death, I realized how much someone cared about me. I guess bravery can wear a lot of faces. That when I say, "We are more than the sum total of our traumas." We are also more than the sum total of our failings.

When I was six-years-old my mother left my father, an event with much drama around it. She took with her my half-brother, and I remained behind with my father and grandmother . She left because, as she will tell you, my father was going to end up killing her. She's not wrong, and her life has been hard. Please don't judge her. I don't, I love her even if I feel rather distant from her. If you knew her? You'd like her, she's a pretty good person on top of everything else.

I caught a bit of guff from a longtime friend not long ago when I referenced some of the more positive things about my father here, and didn't mention the bad. I wasn't concealing anything, the good parts of my father, of both of my parents really, are what I remember these days.

I suppose people could say that my mother is overly dramatic. That she's overstating something, but sadly, she wasn't. Whatever the official diagnosis on my father's problems might be it is lost to time. He's long dead, but he had a long, sad story and a violent one. Every now and then my father would snap, and it was as if he was an entirely different person. Honestly, I remember that, and it really was like being in the presence of someone I didn't know. My mother describes it as such, also. He fought in a war, and was pulled from combat following a breakdown. He was hospitalized for over a year, long before I was born, but ever after he had exceptionally violent episodes. Stress brought it out in him, and three times he very nearly killed my mom. He once beat her head on an asphalt driveway, as a for instance. A neighbor intervened. It was the seventies, the approach to domestic violence was quite different.

When you're five-years-old life is pretty simple, or rather, your assessment of a situation is pretty simple. The person who is bleeding is the wronged person. Whoever has the biggest owie has been done wrong, and that's all there is to it.

I've heard this story more than I've ever told it. My mother tells it frequently. She will tell it to people who know me, on the rare instances that they are in the same space. I really wish she wouldn't. For one thing, it scares the stuffing out of them. What exists in my memory is a slippery, rather terrifying thing. I was playing "boat" on the bed in my room, with my brother and two neighbor children. Heaven help them, by the way. Oddly enough they weren't allowed to play at my house again.

There was an argument about an oven, of all things. My father had cleaned the oven, and my mother was irritated, tired, and snapped at him about that oven. It could be something that small for him. The landing in front of my room was next to a staircase, with a radiator up against the bannister. It was a bending staircase, a back staircase. What I saw was this, my five foot tall mother, being choked by my six foot tall father, and a great deal of screaming. The force of the attack propelled my mother backwards into the radiator, and my father continued to choke her, bending her back over the staircase. The only thing that might have saved her life was actually if she had fallen, it would have been a fall of about six feet and she might have survived that. She wasn't going to survive being throttled, and my brother and I (along with our poor, terrified guests) were locked in place, screaming our collective lungs out.

The next thing I remember is a lot of blood spurting from my father's head. This is where the fact that I've been told this story so often comes in. I can tell you that what happened is that my grandmother hit my father in the head with a lamp, hard in order to stop him from killing my mom and that blow was no joke.

I have no memory of that blow, I only remember the blood afterward and screaming, "You hurt my daddy!" at someone. I didn't really understand choking, but I understood bleeding.

And having heard so often, "Nana hit your father in the head with a lamp." I assumed that it was my tiny, Scottish grandmother, over for a visit. I don't know why I never questioned that. I knew my grandmother lived in Scotland, but she visited, so that was possible. However, my grandmother from Scotland is four feet ten inches tall, and alive to this day. My other grandmother was 5'9". I don't know why I still have no memory of the fact that it was my father's own mother who brained her son with a lamp, and saved a bunch of lives that day.

My mother has a habit of repeating the same stories, over and over when I talk to her on the phone. Don't we all? I've gotten into the habit of trying to prod her along when I've heard one too often. I know why she brings up that memory so often. She feels guilty about having left me. People judge her for that, too. I forgave her long ago. I don't see her all that often, but I send her flowers on Mother's Day, give her the occasional spa certificate. My mother was in a terrible situation, and she had to make a terrible choice. It happens in life. She'll tell you that there was no way to take me, and she's right. I was my father's only child, and he never would have let me go.

My mother was telling me this story again, I don't know why. I tend to hear it every couple of years, and she doesn't need to ask for my compassion any longer. I prompted her, "And then Nana hit him in the head with a lamp."

"And he picked her up by the hair, and threw her." Yup, another delightful gem that I'd just as soon not revisit but, it is what it is. I probably sounded a little bored, or impatient.

"Yes, Pat...", my mother continued, and if life had a soundtrack, there would have been a needle screeching for me.

"What? What did you just say?"

"Pat hit your father in the head."

Pat was my father's mother. The woman I lived with growing up until I was twelve, and she died of cancer of the almost everything. She was an alcoholic, as it happened. One rather funny sticking point is that my mother remembers her as not drinking much before I was in bed, but I suppose that's because when my mother knew her best, that's what she did. Pat went on to drink all day, every day but she took care of me when I was little, almost from the time I was born. My mother worked and went to school.

A lot could probably be said about that, about my grandmother who had lost the husband she adored years before I was born. She wasn't fun, but she wasn't horrible either. She did sort of nearly kill me as one of her last acts, but it wasn't intentional. Pat was a smoker, who would take a bottle to bed with her. She managed to set her mattress on fire three separate times, and on the last occasion, didn't realize she'd done it. I assume she felt sick (because she truly was, the cancer was in her brain by the time it was discovered), and after she dropped her forgotten cigarette, she went downstairs to her den to watch TV. The house caught fire, with me on the same floor. I'm fine, but that's yet another thing I don't recommend. Waking up with the house on fire.

It is a sad, but true fact, that is the only time I ever lashed out at my grandmother. When I awoke to bedlam, I threw open the window -- dumb, but I was twelve, and couldn't breathe -- sucked in enough air to remain conscious and ran to the downstairs phone to call the fire department. When I discovered my grandmother, asleep in her den in our very large house, I woke her by yelling at her, "You almost killed me, you stupid drunk!"

Not my proudest moment, and luckily not the last thing I ever said to her. She was taken to the hospital by the firemen, as was I, for smoke inhalation and there she was diagnosed with a cancer that took her life six months later.

But for all her faults, when Pat saw her son attacking my mother, she tried to stop him. He evidently had pushed her down, hard, down the hall, out of my sight. Then she got up, grabbed a lamp, and did what I can't even imagine doing, she hit her own son with as much force as she humanly could. My mind always inserted my mother's mother into that, no image required. I knew the story, and it's very easy to think that a mother would attack the man attacking her daughter. It is a very different thing entirely for a mother to do that to her own child. My father was not the product of an abusive home, by the way. All of his problems seem to have started with Korea, his childhood was happy, even though he was a kid in the Depression.

It becomes important to tell you that both of my parents were only children. I have no uncles, aunts or cousins. I have no idea what would have happened to me if my father had killed my mother. None. I suspect it would have changed a great deal. Foster care seems likely, although poor drunken Pat probably would have fought for me. I also suppose it's possible that my father would have simply stopped killing my mother, and jeez, you'd hope. Rather unlikely, and you'll just have to trust me on that. He never really just snapped out of his fits by himself.

Pat stood by the side of her only son through all of his troubles. She hated my mother because Pat blamed my mom for many of them. Evidently my dad had been doing well for years. He'd studied in Ireland, he'd gotten his doctorate. When he came back from Ireland with his Scottish wife, and her son, he stopped doing well. If you think I'm blaming my mother, that's not the case, at all. My poor, tiny, rather brilliant, and exceptionally pretty mother had no clue what she was getting herself into when she married my father.

I cannot imagine the horror of the choice Pat made. If you're a parent, heck, if you're able to read this and therefore human, I doubt you can imagine it either. I cannot imagine hitting my son with a lamp, or anyone for that matter. There'd have to be imminent peril for another human being involved. I cannot imagine the desperate moment in which she realized it was the only way to keep him from killing that Scottish woman. And then she did it, and he threw her across the room.

So she didn't stop him, did she? No, but she set in motion the thing that did, and she tried like hell to stop him. The thing that stopped him, as he turned around to get my mother was a five-year-old's reaction to blood. When I saw my father bleeding, I ran directly into the proceedings, and it all ground to a halt.

Why tell this story? Well, you see, when I hung up the phone, I had to sit down. Everything in my life, the one I cobbled together through sheer force of will. My determination to be happy, meeting my ex-husband who is the father of my son, meeting my husband now and being loved, and happy? All of that is a path that would have changed forever had my father killed my mother. I never realized that the person I had to thank for that was a woman who made a very hard choice, a choice I wouldn't wish upon another soul. Even if my father hadn't managed to kill my mother, that was the catalyst for leaving my dad. If it hadn't been such a complete horror show, she might have continued to stay, particularly if he had stopped on his own. Because he had to be stopped, my mother knew that he was capable of killing her, or at least she came to believe it firmly that day.

What really struck me is that it clicked with something else. When I woke my grandmother up, tearfully shouting at her in a the sort of blind howl of outrage only a truly terrified kid can muster, she did something. Something I never mention when I tell the story of the night I woke up to the house afire. I never thought it mattered, because I had already called the fire department. And I have always been angry about that fire.

Pat got up, and ran towards the fire, to try and put it out. She collapsed, and as she lay on the floor struggling she yelled, "Call the fire department."

She was still trying to crawl up the stairs when the firemen got there. I never thought about how I lived with a very unhappy, troubled, but almost insanely brave woman until I found out about that lamp and her impossible choice. One of many, I suspect. Until that phone call, I never thought about my grandmother in any positive sense, or her courage in continuing to stay in an impossible situation she hated. Pat didn't like me much, but I guess she must have loved me.

I doubt I ever knew her very well. There was more to her. There was more to her than the unhappy drunk who set houses on fire, and always made me feel an unwelcome burden.

There's more to everyone, isn't there?

My Label Reads...

Sitting at a kitchen table in Texas, gathered for the wake of a man universally acknowledged to be quite the curmudgeon, the bomb was dropped.

"Tell me one thing about your dad he wouldn't want us to know," David prompted his nine-year-old nephew.

There wasn't any air conditioning, everyone had long since run out of things to say about David's deceased father, who had lived a long life and gone on to the hereafter without much tragedy being involved in the event. Everyone was at loose ends, sitting around talking over cups of coffee and beers that were rapidly becoming either too cool, or too warm to be enjoyable.

The young boy looked around, and with a decidedly delighted grin announced at such a volume it went booming out to the living room, "My dad has a pimple on his butt that won't go away!"

This is probably why whenever I think of Carl (whose name I am changing for extremely obvious reasons), I can't help but remember him as the unfortunate butt-pimple man. I don't know him well, to me he is one of my husband's Texas cousins, there's a passel of them, after all.

"Carl's been transferred to Phoenix," my husband told me.

"Carl..." I said vaguely, trying to search my memory banks, "which one is Carl, again?"

"You know, the guy with the..."

"Oh! Yes, him." And we went on to talk about Carl's promotion, as I wondered whether his backside was still blemished. What an association to have for a human being. If I ever see Carl again I'm going to have to stop myself from inquiring about the hindquarters in question, but you know I'll be wondering, wouldn't you?

As an aside, Carl's likely a wonderful human being. He was in that kitchen to witness his son's over-share and didn't promptly ship his son off for medical experiments. In fact, at the present time he's paying to put that same child through college. Parents are, generally speaking, a forgiving lot.

But we all know someone who exists in our memory with that sort of tag. So-and-sos niece, "You know, the one who used to be a stripper..." That woman's husband who had the unfortunate habit of writing bad checks. The neighbor who suffered from Lyme's disease, and in the grips of a delusion attacked his mailbox with a hammer at three o'clock in the morning.

You know you've got someone in your memory like that. Someone who is known by whatever ill-fated thing happened to them, whatever misfortune has befallen them, whatever weird tag is the thing that pulls them up in your memory. Their most easily identifying characteristic.

"You know, the one who lives in Seattle? Not the lawyer, the son who was going to make a fortune raising turtles? Him, anyway, turns out..."

Those identifying labels. Some of them are good, of course, and we all hope we're known to someone by a good label, a positive tag.

"Carolyn's son, the guy who married that beautiful Swedish girl? Yeah, that one. Anyway...."

"Larry, you remember him, don't you? He has that big house in Tahoe..."

For the most part we don't know how other people label us, remember us. Sometimes we do. Like my friend Tilly who found out she is known by the tag, "Oh, you did the raw food diet! Yes, of course, how are you?" and when she heard that, she had to flinch. Mainly what Tilly found out about the raw food diet was that it was only suitable for people living a hermetic existence, as it had certain side effects, you see. Luckily this did not seem to be the association being made. At least she hopes, better to be known as a Health-Nut than as being Self-Propelled. I changed her name, too just in case you were wondering. If it has to do with an individual's posterior, or the workings thereof, I tend to do that, funnily enough. No one wants to be known by anything relating to buttocks, that's my motto.

Yesterday, I found out one of my labels. Whereas I might like to think that people remember me with some sort of wonderful tag, some highly flattering means of identifying me, chances are good someone, somewhere associates me with something I'd just as soon they didn't. I'll spare you what the majority of those might be, as I'd just as soon not promote the idea of remembering me as, "Oh! That woman who set Marta's stove on fire at New Years?" Yippee, like it's my fault the flambe went that far wrong? Clean your drip pans, woman or "Oh yeah, she split her skirt on the subway, didn't she?" and then half of NYC got to see what I was wearing underneath for the hour it took me to troop back to my hotel. What a spiffy walk of shame that was. Thanks for burning it into the recesses of your brain for all time. I know that's what happened to me with that one, too.

I was taking a walk around the neighborhood, enjoying the beautiful day when I encountered my neighbor from across the street, Miranda, out for a stroll of her own. A lovely person, I might add. She had her mother with her, and took the trouble of introducing me.

"From across the street." Miranda indicated me.

"Hello, are you having a nice visit?" I asked, as Miranda's mother squinted at me.

" You're from Florida, aren't you?" She asked, and I allowed as how I wasn't. Miranda pointed out that I lived in the beige house. No, not the smaller beige house, the big one. The one with the pool. I am evidently not particularly memorable. Then a look of recognition crossed her face, "Oh, you're the one with the spiky things, aren't you?"

I managed to muster a laugh, as I nodded. I am indeed the one with the spiky things that I keep sticking up in the eaves, that kept falling out because the temperature had been too low for the epoxy to set properly.

"Yes, that's me. Winning the war, at last." I admitted, and began forming the sentence that would bid them both a good day.

"You're the one with the thing about birds, you're The Pigeon Lady."

Ah c'mon! Couldn't I at least be known by something that sounds imposing, intimidating? Something that would send a warning out into the avian world that I am not a woman with whom to trifle? Something featuring The Impaler? The Conquerer?

The Plucker, maybe?

Oh well, at least it doesn't involve my butt. I hope and pray.

Here, by the way, are the Spiky Things. That at least sounds vaguely imposing, right?

That Need to Know

Every now and then something catches my attention, and I am gripped by a need to know things that actually have nothing to do with my life. I referenced it a while back as being a desire to see both sides of a story before making up my own mind. That sounds terribly fair-minded of me, but I'm really not sure that's accurate. What it comes down to is this: my favorite dog breeds tend to run towards terriers, and there is no coincidence in that. I like tenacity in people, I tend to like it in animals too.

In other words, watch it when I get a hold of a bone, because I may not stop until such time as you wish to brain me with something heavy, only stopping when you are absolutely certain I've lost the ability to bring up the subject ever, again.

I know this about myself and sometimes, not often but sometimes, I will endeavor to stop myself when I find that I am teetering on that abyss. It's always something small that catches my attention. A doctored portrait, the mention of the role of early feminism in children's literature, or a line in a movie that contradicts something I already know.

Such was the case with Julie and Julia. See? There's no telling what the subject matter will be. Pop-culture, recorded history, people suffering the misery attendant to marrying someone they never loved; just something that catches me. In the aforementioned movie, I wondered why Nora Ephron and company weren't telling the level truth about Julia Child's reaction to Julie Powell's blog.

It bugged me that I somehow knew, through something I'd read, and forgotten the source on, that Child hadn't really been focused on the profanity in Powell's blog. Julia Child had not really gotten herself in a twist over flying F-bombs. No, somewhere in the recesses of my brain existed the knowledge that Julia Child had thought Powell did not love cooking. That she took no joy in food. That she was an opportunist who pulled a stunt, for attention, for fame, and that she had dragged Julia Child into the mix. Oh, and she wasn't thrilled that Julie Powell swore with wild abandon, either.

So it nettled me, and I wasn't sure why. I came home, I found the material that had led me to believe this in the first place, and I was right there, about to take the leap, about to do my regular swan dive into whatever inane thing had caught my attention when I clicked a link that brought me up short.

It was an interview with Julie Powell about her second book called Cleaving. The interview said it detailed her apprenticeship with a butcher, and her two year long extra-marital affair following the publication of her book. That little burning need to know was extinguished almost immediately, but for a weird reason, it wasn't revulsion, it was that it became screamingly clear at that moment that I had no clue what I was about to get myself into, and I was pretty sure that I simply didn't want to know more.

Which makes it sort of a pity that my son gave me a copy of the movie for Christmas. I watched it and was bugged again. Why hadn't the movie just dealt with it? It was a straightforward enough thing. Not addressing it just mystified me because I didn't believe Powell simply was an opportunist. I read a bit of her blog, after being told by a friend that I would love her sense of humor. I actually didn't, it's a little too close to my own brand of humor for me to find it particularly funny. I don't sit around endlessly cracking myself up, and the similarities in phrasing meant the Powell was unlikely to reduce me to a giggling pile.

So I listened to the commentary.

A word about that: Don't do it. I am the sort of movie and TV geek who listens to commentary. Lighting, camera angles, back stage difficulties, the writing process; I love it all. However, Nora Ephron should be legally banned from doing commentary because she has an almost fatal failing in doing it. She continually forgets that she's actually supposed to be speaking, and filling in details. There are long periods of time where, basically, you'd be sitting there watching a Nora Ephron film right along with Nora Ephron, and whereas you might start musing about the neat time-activity-parrallels, you aren't going to learn much. Unless you actually give a hang that the suitcase seen in the film belonged to the real Paul Child. Now that's the kind of stuff I groove on but I learned exactly two things of that nature in the course of the entire film. When Ephron uncorks it and actually remembers to speak? It's fun.

And then she got to the part about Julia Child's reaction to Powell's blog and, as luck would have it, said the only fascinating thing she said in the entirety of that commentary: She knew about Child's reaction, of what, and why her complaint was comprised and Nora Ephron quite simply decided that Julia Child would have changed her mind.

Well, that was me hosed. I had to know why, because learning that Powell had used her own affair to try and sell more books had not disabused me of the notion, that's for sure.

I read Powell's archived blog, and her book based upon that blog. I should have stopped there. I had my answer, after all. I agreed with Nora Ephron, it is likely that had Julia Child lived a few more years, and read Powell's first book, she would have changed her mind. Stunt or not, Powell had real affection for Julia Child, and whereas Julia might have been right about Powell having no true respect for food, she likely would have understood the quest to find something of her own. Something she was good at, something to ground her in her life, and provide purpose for her.

As I often do when considering a book, I go to Amazon and check the reviews of that book. I did so with a fair amount of trepidation because, no matter from which angle you view it, the subject matter of Cleaving is deeply uncomfortable. Not just the marital shenanigans, but the subject of butchery.

I really don't recommend perusing those reviews unless you want to be exposed to every negative descriptor that can be leveled at a person. Words like "despicable" as well as every known synonym for prostitute, or a woman of low moral standards were just flying free and loose in there.

I think that was the moment I decided I'd better read Cleaving before making up my own mind. It is one of the stranger books I've ever read. Beyond the skin-crawling subject matter of much of the book, it's not well-written. It lacks any cohesion, with long descriptions of the butchering trade, contrasted with the destruction Julie Powell brought down on her own life. Then, bizarrely, there are recipes simply inserted willy-nilly and in the final chapters of the book, Powell takes off traveling and tries to provide a humorous travel log. Nothing in the book works well, and for anyone that cooks, it's easy to spot that even the recipes are rather suspect.

I think it would be easy to say that Powell's self-depricating sense of humor turned on its ear, and that the book is about self-debasement. Possibly an act of contrition, or atonement. Powell doesn't defend her actions, if anything she sounds rather disgusted with herself. Yet, the other inescapable part is that she is seeking to profit from this often lurid tale. She's complicated, and frequently the architect of her own misery. She seems to understand this about herself, that she took the opportunities afforded to her, and proceeded to wreak havoc within her own life. Powell eventually finds her way back to her husband, and he to her but only after he has had his own longterm affair.

The situation is not remarkable, or unusual, but the choice in writing about it is on both fronts. Julie Powell's next book was going to sell, no matter what she chose to write about.

I said I like tenacity both in people and in animals, but this willful self-destruction is a form of tenacity that left me confused. Somewhere inside of us all exists the memory, the knowledge of the least admirable thing we've ever done. When we're being honest with ourselves, even the best people have something they regret, something for which they would like to atone.

I'm not sure that is what Powell was trying to do, but I do think there was an element of that in it.

Nora Ephron sounded sadly thoughtful when she said Julia Child would have changed her mind about Julie Powell. I think I understand why now.

This isn't really a book review. When I set out to find out more about something that caught my attention, whenever I do that, I am doing so to try and understand a situation.

I think I have that in common with Julie Powell. Cleaving seems to be about Powell's desperate quest to understand her own actions. That the book is a confusing mess of a thing is not surprising as the subject matter certainly indicates that's going to be the end result. So I have trying to understand in common with Powell, and thankfully, that's all I have in common with her.

On the day I finished reading Cleaving, I went to Powell's active blog and read the entry for that day. The entry was about her dog dying. Just an everyday event in a life. She talked about her reaction, and her husband's reaction to losing their treasured friend. Something to which most of us can relate. Something easy to understand. Loss, pain, love.

It was oddly fitting as an end cap to the strange experience of reading Powell's self-dissection. Most reviews of Powell's second book contain the words "more mature" which I found amusing. Julie Powell's flailing journey through butchery, infidelity and trying to understand herself seems anything but to me.

Sometimes it is better not to know.

137 Pounds of Stink

The above does not refer to me, by the way. For one thing I weigh 131.5 lbs (curse, curse, swear, swear), and for another, I'm one of those people who thinks themselves ill-done to if I don't have a huge array of nice smelling bath products that I can use frequently. No, the stinking poundage refers to an investment of sorts. Let's begin:

Many years ago my husband, one of those people who thinks mountain biking a completely reasonable activity to undertake, because sweating in the merciless sun over rough terrain strikes him as fun, hit a patch of brush up in the high country. He was out with a group of friends and here is what they saw: My husband, scooting down a trail, astride his trusty bike, arms rigidly locked in place to absorb the shock of the many rocks, and the uneven quality of the ground, approaching a cliff. Then he appeared to attempt a motor-cross style stunt by performing a flying headstand on his handlebars, before disappearing from sight, over a cliff.

I'm told this was terribly unsettling to witness, and I'll just say, jeez, ya think? So, his friends rushed to the cliff, peered over it with a mixture of horror and nausea, where they spied my husband splayed out on a handy bush that had broken his fall, his bike at least thirty feet below, and his posture indicating that he had a few structural problems with which to contend.

My husband, upon realizing that miraculously he wasn't as dead as he thought he would be, stared back at them, his right arm at a crazy angle, and pinned partially beneath his body. He gingerly attempted to move, and his shoulder let out a sound that actually caused an echoing pop in the mountains, as the dislocated bone snapped merrily back into place. Evidently, at this time, he invented no less than four new swear words. I'm guessing it sort of hurt.

I am a mass of injuries long healed also, which is part of the reason I get to wave at my husband vaguely, with admonishments to don sunscreen as he heads off on his adventures, and I read in peace, wondering why I married such a lunatic but content with the fact that I am never expected to undertake these journeys myself. Oh happy healed, broken bones, I knew they were good for something.

However, the incident with the fortuitously placed bush, and my own long healed injuries from a car accident meant that as we both reached the summit of forty and beyond, we became achey, as a couple. It's good to do things together, I'm told. On the average morning it sounds like two twin Operatic Baritones are warming up as we attempt to rise from bed on a chilly January morning. We were also both doing a mean Tasmanian Devil impersonation in the dead of night, as we individually whirled around, trying to achieve new positions with less pressure on sore joints.

As a result neither of us were getting much sleep, and you know what you don't want to add to the stress of everyday life? A guarantee of some sleep deprivation-induced surliness in addition to whatever problems the gods of fate decide to hurl at your heads.

We used the excuse of our wedding anniversary, something for which we rarely buy each other extravagant gifts, to plunk down enough cash for a Tempur-pedic mattress. The amount was not insubstantial, but hey, ninety day money back guarantee, and an aura of desperation regarding the need to get some rest, convinced us both that it was an investment well made, and so we did.

Now, as it happens, I've been fortunate enough to learn from the mistakes of others when it came to this particular mattress. The space-foam mattress, some call it. Ten years ago a friend, with a bone depletion problem, decided to splurge on one as she battled her own aches and pains. In an effort to save money, she decided to forgo a box spring of any kind. She was also budget minded enough (read: broke) to decide that the mattress would be fine on the floor of the basement bedroom she had at the time.

She informed me that the thing was punishingly firm for the first few weeks, so I knew there would be a break-in period. Whatever else she might have eventually gleaned from her time with the foam thing was lost to those gods of fate. The water heater in her basement broke, flooding the area.

In case you were wondering, those beds make really efficient sponges. The water damage to her basement was minimal, thanks to the kindness of the bed she'd splurged upon helpfully soaking up every drop of moisture with which it came in contact. It took two weeks for the thing to dry out enough to make moving its water-logged foaminess to the dumpster even remotely possible, because we will be well into the next century before it dries.

So I knew two things: At first it will be an unyielding brick and, for the love of all things merciful, don't have one of those things near a source of water unless you decide you hate it enough to essentially water-board the thing.

No one told me about the smell though. My mother has an off-brand version, she didn't mention, "Oh, and you'll likely die from malodorous quality of this, dearheart, before you ever feel its benefits." Terrifyingly, this is exactly how my mother speaks, explains a lot about me, doesn't it? My friend with the giant plumbing-sponge-disaster didn't mention that a funk would arise from it that was practically visible. The salesman, rather understandably didn't bother to outline that feature. The specimens in the mattress-store had long since aired out enough that there was no smell of latex, or petroleum, or space related science experiments, or whatever the heck that smell might be.

He did, however, mention a break-in period in which I was encouraged to "walk up and down it, bounce, break in the cells". Okay then. Super-sponge, unyielding brick, at an ungodly price evidently has cells that must be expanded. That salesman is the person who I will blame when I inevitably am plagued by nightmares in which my bed consumes me whole. Then burps with satisfaction, in keeping with the cartoon theme, I suppose.

We've had it for three weeks. Luckily, we have spare bedrooms, and we evacuated there the first night when, as it was unwrapped by helpful, and god-awful loud, installation experts the smell began to waft out. It isn't exactly a bad smell. This is not the smell of redolent death, it's just a funky, chemical, rubbery smell that you wouldn't want to roll around on for eight hours per night. We closed all the heating vents in the room, threw open the windows, cast a terrifed look at the three thousand dollar brick of stink, and fled. I am assured that this brick weighs precisely 137 lbs, by the way. Trust me, it produces enough smell for six 137 lbs mattresses.

The next morning the smell had crept out from underneath our master bedroom door, and had reached the landing of the stairs. Every day we would check it, everyday the smell seemed to air out a bit more. Why, it took less than a week for us to be able to stand within mere feet of our extravagant anniversary gift, and eye it with increasing alarm.

By the end of the week, I could even stand to be on it long enough to flop around, trying desperately to "break in the cells" while breathing through my mouth, and quietly cursing. My husband, braver than I, and with a lesser sense of smell, took the plunge and began sleeping on it at the end of that week. I continued to huddle in the guest room. Eventually I girded up my loins enough to join my husband in trying to "expand the cells". This particular quote from the salesman fascinates me, what a lovely euphemism for "squish out the smell as much as you can so that they may someday quit reeking" (implied: sucker!).

The good news is that you really don't feel it when your partner turns over in one of these beds. You are less likely to awake because of various pains causing you to shift.

The bad news is that it still has a distinct odor. Long gone is my habit of gently easing out of bed in the morning. Now I spring up and dash towards the shower, intent upon scrubbing the scent of our wild indulgence from my person. It is lessening, and since we did insist upon the ninety day free trial, I'm not too concerned. The blessed thing has exactly 60 days to stop releasing a poof of stink each time we roll over.

I'm mentioning this because nearly every person I know at some point has wistfully contemplated a Tempur-pedic mattress. They are the most expensive, so it then follows, in our consumerist society that they are assumed to be the best. It is comfortable, and the smell is decreasing (that or my sense of smell is dying, inch by inch which I don't entirely discount as a possibility).

A handy internet search with the words "Tempur-pedic fumes" provided the information that I was far from alone in being alarmed as hell by the thousands of dollars I spent to to perfume my house in a manner reminiscent of the La Brea Tar Pits.

Let this serve as fair warning to those of you contemplating your own splurge into, what marketing assures us will be, a restful night's sleep. You may eventually achieve just that, but be prepared for the need to let the bloody thing air. Also, whatever you do, don't let them "remove your old mattress" which the installation techs will happily offer to do.

You're going to need old reliable and springy until such time as you can stand the smell of your new fangled, brick-like, handy dandy, thousands of dollars worth of sponge.

It comes with free pillows, by the way, made from the same material. They too, smell like a product of Exxon, and are firm enough that you could use them as weapons in the event of a home invasion. Whee.

Freedom of Flight and Sunflowers

For quite a while I've been meaning to tell a story, a true story, about a little girl who loved sunflowers best of all. I need to tell the story so that I am not the only person who knows it. I think you'll understand that a bit more when I tell the rest of the tale.

Airplanes are funny things. When we are on one, it is best not to think too much about the act of flight. Even if you understand the physics and engineering behind an aircraft, there is something rather magical about a metal tube, moving through the air, carrying us as cargo from one point to another. From the moment we leave the ground, until we touch down again, we have primarily placed our fate in the hands of others, and may they be capable of delivering us safely. There is little we can do to impact the outcome, we are free from responsibility to the determination of whether things will be all right, in the end. It's oddly freeing, our lives are full of responsibilities, our choices have weight. In flight, we are rather weightless, awaiting the outcome.

Fifteen years ago, on a flight to Orlando, with a change over in Dallas, I sat next to a very elderly couple. Like most travelers, I was armed with a book, something to do, something with which to ward off conversations we don't wish to have, if need be. Although I often tell stories of what a flake I can be, the fact of the matter is I'm a rather coolly capable sort of person. Good head in an emergency, and hard to shock. I'm also willing to converse with strangers, because people interest me. Truly, and without pretense, I'm often very interested in the lives of others. I'm not good at surface conversations, but I do love a good long, revealing talk.

I exchanged pleasantries with the couple, and did the polite thing, asked where they were bound, etc. These weren't outwardly happy, outgoing people, but neither were they ill-tempered. The man was farther away, at the window, and seemed absorbed in his own world. His face was dotted with bandaids, it looked as if he'd likely had some patches of skin cancer removed. I don't remember what led up to the moment, not really. I was doing the courteous, interested thing, but I like to hear people's stories, so my interest was real.

"Do you have any children?" I asked, and was told that yes, there was a son. A forty-year-old accountant, in Philly. I've no idea why that sticks in my head, but it does. There was a quality to the silence that followed, something else was there. A feeling of disappointment hung in the air.

I've never been gifted with a poker face. I'm positive that I must have done something at that moment, glanced pointedly, with an air of inquiry; something. Nothing followed though, and I was about to let the conversation drop, about to open my book and insulate us both from the need to continue when the woman next to me cleared her throat slightly:

"I had a daughter," she said tentatively. "I had a daughter too, but she died when she was eight."

I closed the book, half-turned in my seat towards the woman and nodded, "Oh, I'm sorry." I'm sure that in my tone was the expression of empathy. I put the book down on my lap and continued, "What was she like?"

There is something about the freedom of flight. The rules are different in the air. Sometimes we confide in strangers, sometimes was are confided in. For the next hour, this woman, this woman with an odd, wary quality about her at first, but only at first, told me about Sandy. An eight-year-old little girl who died long before I was even born.

She loved Sunflowers and on her last birthday party, her mother sewed her a dress with Sunflowers on the material. Baked her a cake with buttercream icing, and lemonade was made, and enjoyed on a sunny day. Sandy had a kitten she loved tremendously, too and she was a bright spirit. Liked to sing, all the time, her mother told me. She would hear her voice as she did housework, and that was hardest of all after Sandy was gone. The silence where there had once been a voice.

Every now and then, when someone tells you about someone they love, you will see that love so clearly, it is as if you are sharing in it. This woman, who had seemed so guarded at first, a little wary of the much younger woman beside her, dropped all barriers, and the love she felt for her long dead daughter was right there, in the plane with us.

It was a wonderful conversation, full of stories about children's books and favorite dolls. Treasured memories, shared with a stranger. Swing sets, and a garden.

Eventually the plane landed in Dallas, a bit delayed. Over the loud speaker the captain's voice asked that all passengers remain seated, and that people who needed to catch a connecting flight be allowed disembark first. I was one of those passengers. I rose to my feet, and grabbed my bag from the overhead bin, preparing to go. My hand was resting on the back of the seat, and my seat mate stood, and place her hand over mine giving it a squeeze.

"I haven't talked to anyone about my daughter in thirty years," She began, and I was slightly alarmed to see that she had tears in her eyes. "Thank you so much."

I was almost stunned into silence for a moment, because I was absolutely sure she was being literal. I'm positive she had told people in the years prior to that, that she had lost a daughter, but it was very clear, I was the first person she had talked to about her at any length in all that time.

"It was my pleasure, thank you for telling me about her," passengers were beginning to file out, it was time for me to go, "I won't forget her."

I never have. Every time I see a Sunflower, I think of that woman, and I think of Sandy, in her dress, drinking lemonade at the last birthday party she would ever have. Every time I see a Sunflower, Sandy lives in my memory.

As I rushed to catch my plane, I wondered why, why would this woman have told me so fully about her daughter? There is nothing particularly remarkable about me, I possess no secrets to the souls of others. I wield no magic. So why? Why did she tell me? I was honored, please don't get me wrong, I am to this day honored that someone would give me their most precious memory in such a manner, trust me so with something so delicate and fragile for them.

I don't remember who I sat next to on the plane to Orlando. I was still busy wondering but by the time the plane touched down in Florida, I knew.

Ask me how Sandy died, and I will not be able to tell you. I have suspicions, mind you. Her mother talked about Sandy being inside a great deal, not being able to play outside towards the end. If I've got my timelines right, Polio is a very likely suspect.

You see, I never asked how she had died. Or what had happened to her. I asked what she was like. That's what unlocked the memory for that woman, why she took out her most protected memories. By the time I met that woman, her daughter's death was something she had been asked about countless times. She didn't want to talk about how Sandy had died; she wanted to talk about how Sandy had lived.

The rules of flight are different, and perhaps best left unquestioned. I love a little girl named Sandy every time I think of Sunflowers. A stranger, probably no longer with us, shared her with me on a plane, long ago. Not because there is anything special about me, but because she loved her daughter so, and I asked what she was like.

I've always loved Sunflowers since, because they bring a little girl back to life, simply by remembering her.

The Occupation

On the day, that cannot be too far in the offing, that I lose my mind entirely, I'm likely to take out all the pigeons with me. Fair warning to the avian world. Yes, Fwup the, at least, 48th still does his very best to taunt me into madness. Fwup is a pigeon, an entirely deranged pigeon, named thus because the sound he/she/they make in flight sounds remarkably like "fwup, fwup, fwup".

"Oh ho! The neighbor's got a gun." My husband chortled.

Now this is normally bad news, you will agree. An armed neighbor running about the area is a sign of badness to come, no doubt. Only the neighbor had with him only an air rifle, and the good news was that my sanity had held out longer than his. He strode into the middle of the street, and took aim at a group of about thirty pigeons.

"Oh crap," I said ineloquently, "we can't just let him start shooting them."

The war has been long. We've purchased every bird dissuading product known to man at this point. To the extent that my UPS driver finally decided that I was worth meeting by the time we ordered a wooden hawk.

"Bird problem?" He asked, laughing as he handed over a package with the words The Hunter emblazoned right next to a picture of a truly goofy looking faux-hawk.

I allowed that, indeed, we were somewhat plagued by pigeons.

"You and everyone else here," the driver lingered for a moment, "everyone around here orders this stuff. What gives?"

I explained that our problem was that in this particular suburb, there are no outdoor cats. It's a rule and it's actually a very good rule, as we aren't far from the foothills and have various predators that frequent the area, mostly from the sky. One wonders why they eschew the freaking pigeons, but the pigeons thrive in what is, to them, a haven.

They weren't fooled by the Faux-Hawk, by the way. All of my gutters have a sticky substance adhered to them, guaranteed to make it uncomfortable for birds to roost. They apparently step over the sticky stuff. At this point I'd have to live in a giant ball of adherent goo to persuade them to zark off, and all that would really do is send them flapping to the neighbors, which is precisely what happened when we called the pest control company. They flew an entire twenty feet away, and expressed their outrage with a chorus of coos that was actually worse than the nesting.

We live in occupied territory, and the neighbor had cracked first. He stood in the middle of the street, staging his resistance. Before I could make up my mind as to how to delicately approach the subject, my neighbor was joined by people from the adjoining houses, lining up to take a shot. Relieved to see that all they were doing was firing above the heads of the pigeons, in a desperate plea for some peace and quiet, I joined my husband in laughing. One man pivoted and aimed at the top of our house. We waved.

We've all lost large chunks of our sanity to Fwup and Friends. The air was filled with the sound of outraged pigeons departing, but they would be back, oh yes, they would be back. I am somewhat resigned to my fate, but on the inevitable day that I go berserk? I'm likely to be out there shaking a fist at the sky, too.

Also, my fridge pulled a Lazarus when the repair technician came. "I can't find anything wrong with it."

It sits empty, with a cup of water in the freezer, frozen solid. Mocking me with its functionality.

So, amidst fridges that rise from the grave, and neighbors reaching the end of their tethers, I was particularly heartened to see that Kyle, a lovely man over at Out Left had nominated me for something called a Kreativ Blogger award.

At this point, I must apologize to Kathryn, who nominated me a while back, but as I didn't realize I was meant to do anything with it? I failed to do anything other than say, "Thank You." My apologies for being remiss. Here is what I am to do, and since I think it is is a fun way to share some creative, and funny blogs you may, or may not know about, I'm not letting down the team this time!

Plus, it takes my mind off the infernal cooing. Here is what I am to do. I'm to tell you something about the person who nominated me:

Kyle is one of the most dedicated liberals I've ever found. His blog does a fantastic roundup of every liberal news piece imaginable. He links to and discusses all issues dear to liberal hearts (which is only one of the reasons I think he's great) and he's a champion of both Marriage Equality, and Gay rights the world over. He's also a friend to animals, a supporter of animal rights, and a champion of the environment.

Yes, yes, I'm a liberal. I'm assuming that is generally apparent, but if by some chance you didn't know? Now you do.

The other thing I get to do is nominate seven blogs in my own turn, with a brief description of why these people are so very worth your time, if by some chance you haven't discovered them. Then I am to let them know, and finally tell you seven things about myself you may not know. Let's wing our way towards this, shall we?

The B in Subtle is one of the blogs I follow, and with good reason. B is a gifted writer, with a gentle spirit and a good sense of humor. She's in Canada, a single mother who adores her young son, and you will too through her writing. She's also a very good photographer, and I was very lucky the day I stumbled across her.

This is is Frances' blog called Fairy Lanterns. I'm always in awe of people who create visual arts. I can't draw a convincing stick figure, but Frances brings a magical world to life with her tremendous talents. Honestly, you'll remember what it is like to be a child, believing all things beautiful are possible through her gifts.

I pause here to mention that I had a friend recently tease me, "Are you collecting Canadians? If so, what do you plan to do with them?" I'm enjoying them mightily, that's what.

This is ds at Third Storey Window. It's very clear that ds has a tremendous love of books, and language. Do you remember the best read you ever experienced? Where you couldn't put down a book until sleep forced you to do so? Then you slept only long enough to be able to have the energy to finish that book? ds will make you remember that feeling. Almost everyone I know loves words, and language, but ds makes me remember exactly why that is.

I'm always finding that I admire the ability to create tremendously. Most things are beyond my personal talents, and sewing is one of them. Jennifer at Pasquali Rumpus could likely sew a getaway car if you're ever in need of one. She's also a dab hand with a camera. Beyond all that? A lovely person.

I just found this blog last week, Life in the Expat Lane. Have you ever felt a yen to leave your country of origin, and experience life elsewhere, but your life circumstances didn't support that? If that's the case, this blog will take you around the world, from a seated position at your computer. I spent time with Armenian Bees last week, thanks to this blogger. She makes the world both larger, and more inclusive, at once.

This is Cricket, from Cricket and Porcupine. Again, another person who possesses the gift of creating visual art, but also writes exceptionally well. I'm hoping like mad that Cricket doesn't share Sol's penchant for roasting anyone who nominates him for a blog award of any kind, but I've got a suit of armor at the ready, just in case. Cricket's got a rare sense of humor, and deep ties to faith. I'm not religious myself, but Faith is one of Cricket's favorite subjects. The kindness, decency and love that is meant to be at the center of a belief system is something he focuses upon. I have a thing about valuing kindness, in case you've never noticed, and Cricket does but has that lovely, sharp sense of humor to go with it.

Amy, from Miscellany is quite simply one of my favorite people in the blogosphere. We encountered each other early on in my time in the blogs, and as Anne of Green Gables would say, we are kindred spirits. What makes that remarkable, and one of the neater things about blogs and the internet in general, is that Amy and I are at different stages of our lives. She's welcomed her first grandchild, I'm still trying to get my one child through college. Yet a difference in age makes no difference when there is that spark of recognition between people. I told my husband not long after we started conversing in comment sections that she's a person who if I knew her in life, we'd probably never stop talking about all manner of things. Not being present in each other's lives hasn't actually proved a barrier to that.

Finally, this is Gary from Gary's Third Pottery Blog. He's wonderfully nuts, and will take you on adventures with George, a sock monkey with an outrageous accent. He's also an insanely talented potter (I hope that's the correct term). Yet another person who spends his days creating, and sharing the results.

Now, what next? Seven things about me that you may not know:

1. I'm from the East Coast but don't have an East Coast accent. The reason for this is my mother is from the UK, my father was a Southerner. Really, it's something of a miracle I can speak in an understandable fashion at all. Every now and then I'll say a particular word and it will come out with a decided tang of places I've never lived.

2. If you have any plants, for heavens sake, don't ask me to house sit for you. Just being in my general vicinity seems to discourage them from living.

3. My cat has no name. Actually, he has about 300 of them. We call him a huge variety of things, often ending with "McGee". Such as "Tearing Down the House, Insane McGee. We meet again."

4. I frequently make a declaration of resignation from cooking altogether. My husband and son are quite used to it. Every few months I'll announce that I'm done cooking for a while, and it's sandwiches aplenty during those times. It was the only way I could combat the fact that whereas everyone in this house eats, I'm the only one who cooks well. Rather than be turned permanently into the chief cook and bottle washer, I have embraced the work stoppage. My husband and son support me in this.

5. When I was much younger, I would have described myself as conservative. This has solely to do with the fact that I'm uncomfortable in low-cut tops.

6. My husband almost never calls me by my name. We call each other nicknames for the most part. It always sounds odd to me when he uses my first name, and I once told him, "Stop that. You'll make me think you're having an affair."

7. There's an icon associated with this and I'll be over here losing large amounts of hair as I try to copy the darned thing. Wish me luck.

I also need to let anyone I nominated know that they have been nominated which I will do when I am done swearing at the icon. This could take time. (I eventually did conquer, but I had to switch from my relatively new Mac, to my PC to get it done, go figure)