All posts by SassenFrassen

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About SassenFrassen

If you're here, you probably know me already. If you don't know me already, you probably know someone just like me. If you don't know someone just like me, then you must be an alien life form, and I'm pleased to be the first to welcome you to our glorious yet humble planet.

Garage Sale Grump

Maya, Moving, New House, , , , , , , ,

First, I want to say that it took me three days to write a post that would normally take me 20 minutes or so, because of THE PUPPY. It’s just like having a newborn again, except it’s completely different. My human newborns didn’t bite me with tiny razor-sharp teeth, nor did they bark, dump their water bowls over, or chase the cat. Yesterday, Benjamin said, “Can we get some more puppies?” and immediately, in perfect unison, The Daddy and I issued a firm NO.

Despite the rambunctious streak, she’s very sweet and amazingly cute. See?

MAYA, 10 WEEKS OLD

The other big thing going on is that we have a closing date on our new house. In July! Which means we’re moving! And we need to get serious about it. We definitely don’t want to take everything with us, so I’ve finally decided to have a garage sale. For real.

I say “for real” because I claim to be planning a garage sale every single spring. Someone will say to me, “I’m having a garage sale next week,” and I invariably reply, “Oh! I’m going to have a garage sale this summer too!” And then I spend some time explaining how I say the same thing every year, but THIS year is going to be different. THIS will be the year I actually DO it. But have I ever done it?

Nope.

And here’s the reason: I am completely stymied when I start thinking about the logistics of the whole thing. It’s not the location – no siree, I currently live on the corner of an extremely busy 4-lane street. Hundreds, possibly thousands of people will see my garage sale without any advertising or signage at all. Nor am I worried about placing ads or collecting money or talking to strangers or fighting off the pushy early birds. I’m not even really worried about pricing, because pricing can and will change throughout the weekend, based upon what it is, what time it is, and if they are genuinely nice when they ask me for a lower price.

What I’m worried about is organization. Displaying things. I don’t want to put stuff on the ground on blankets because nothing annoys me more than to go to a garage sale and spend my time looking at the ground. So I need tables, or some other manner of raised flat surface. I don’t have a surplus of tables in my house, so then I think, “Okay, I’ll rent some.” And then I look into that and realize the cost will take a major bite out of my profits. Without fail, someone responds to this complaint with something like, “Get creative! Put old doors on saw horses. Hang things on a ladder. Put a piece of wood on a barrel and use that as a table!”

I want to kick the people who say that to me right in their well-meaning shins, because if I was creative I wouldn’t be suffering this mental organization disorder, and plus, who has a collection of barrels just lying around? Whatever would I have bought in barrel form? What are all you people buying in barrels, for heaven’s sake? Wine? Whiskey? Monkeys? Laughs?  And after the monkeys have climbed out and are swinging from your curtains, where are you storing the empty barrels? I can’t even think of anything I would need an entire barrel of, other than maybe chocolate. Or patience.

So you can see my dilemma. My brain gets overwhelmed by hellish visions of being up all night, feverishly constructing complicated, multi-tiered displays out of ladders and fishing line and saw horses and BARRELS and duct tape, and then I just call the whole thing off. Who needs that kind of stress?

Anyway – off to Costco to buy a barrel of laughs for my garage sale. If you have a barrel at your house, I seriously want to know the following things: 1) what came in it (beer doesn’t count…we’re not in college anymore), 2) where you got it,  3) if it’s ever come in handy, and 4) where you store it. And if I can borrow it.

SELFISH BARREL HOARDERS
Image via Wikipedia

Doodle Oodle Oodle

Kids, Pets, , , , , , , , , ,

As I mentioned, Benjamin had a hard time after all of the Trouble with Rex and his subsequent return to the animal shelter.  The Daddy and I decided that perhaps a puppy (a girl puppy) was a better idea, one that we could train from the start, with the goal of avoiding any Rexist repeats.

So we started deliberating over what kind of puppy to get. I took a cursory look around in the paper and online, but didn’t see anything that struck me. Bulldog? Too snorty. King Charles Spaniel? Cute, but too fussy. Boston terriers? Too Boston terrier-y. Golden retrievers? I love them, but they all seemed to be ONE MILLION DOLLARS.

Then my dad sent me an email that said something along the lines of, “I have a friend who has a Labradoodle, and it seems to be a good dog and it doesn’t shed much.”

This whiz-banged my memory back to an article I’d read a few years ago on the trend towards the designer dog breeds called “doodles,” meaning one breed mixed with a Poodle. Breeders are frequently mixing Labrador Retrievers with Poodles (Labradoodles) or Golden Retrievers with Poodles (Goldendoodles).  There are several benefits to these mixes, including dogs that don’t shed much, are low allergen producers, and have temperaments appropriate for family life or human assistance (therapy dogs or guide dogs). I seem to remember that the original Labradoodle was bred to be a guide dog for a woman whose husband was terribly allergic to dogs.

A quick Google search yielded a breeder with Labradoodle puppies ready for homes in a town 2 hours away. Better yet, she had a girl puppy. Even better still, the pups had already been exposed to the abuses charms of 2-year-old children, as she herself had a 2-year-old boy who loved to play with the puppies.

After some more research, we decided the Labradoodle was for us and scheduled to pick up the girl puppy that Saturday. We didn’t tell the kids; we simply told them we were going on a surprise adventure. Benjamin was confused when, after exhaustive questioning, I confirmed that the adventure wouldn’t include a museum, science center, or dinosaurs. I’m sure in his mind, he was thinking, “What other kind of freakin’ adventure is there?”

So now…drum roll…I’m pleased to present….Maya!

I'M REALLY REALLY CUTE, SEE?

After the brief honeymoon period in which it seemed like she was the most perfect puppy ever, we entered a more typical and sobering phase of nipping, chewing, jumping, and general naughtiness. For example, when a frightened 2-year-old runs away screaming from a nippy puppy, the puppy doesn’t think, “Uh-oh…I shouldn’t continue on this path. The child is scared.” 

Nope. Here’s what the puppy thinks:

“Yay! The small pink human-shaped thing wants to play with me! First, I’ll jump on top of her play-growling, and she’ll enjoy that so much that she’ll fall on me and smack me with her oddly shaped paws, and then we’ll nibble on each other for a while! It’ll be so great! And then I’ll tug on her hair and she’ll chew my ears! And everyone will be proud of me and I’ll get treats treats treats treats TREATS!!!!”

Despite the obvious communication difficulties, it’s clear that she’s sweet and very trainable, or perhaps we are, and I predict that she’s going to be a really great dog.

And if you made it all the way to the end of this post, here’s a video that made me laugh of a Labradoodle named Figaro who sings (attempts to drown out?) his owner’s horn playing.  Whoever made this video shot it at a weird angle, but I DO  appreciate seeing that his carpet is obviously free of dog hair, probably thanks to his non-shedding Doodle.
 

The 10 Laws of Chocolate

Food, , , ,

“I threw away the rest of the Easter candy.”

“What?”

“The Easter candy that was left over – I threw it away.”

“You mean the chocolate?”

“Yeah, the bag that was in the dining room. I threw it out.”

<horrified face> “But there was chocolate in there!”

“Uh-huh. I was sick of the kids asking me about it every day.”

(I will admit – this part about the harrassing children made perfect sense to me.)

“But it was….chocolate! Can you get it back?”

“Um…no? I threw it away, like in the trash.”

“Was it sealed up well in a plastic bag? Have they collected the trash already?”

“Yes, they picked it up already. It’s gone.”

That’s right, people, I considered digging through the trash. I most likely would not have followed through with an actual dumpster dive; the point is, it was an initial gut reaction to horrifying news.

Chocolate is practically a holy substance, rife with magical powers. In my mind, there are several important rules regarding the care, keeping and consumption of chocolate. Chocolate may be:

1. Hoarded
2. Coveted
3. Hidden where others won’t find it
4. Cherished
5. Resisted
6. Given or received as a gift
7. Used as a bartering or bribing tool (i.e., if you stop torturing your sister, you may have some chocolate)
8. Taken medicinally to cure bad feelings
9. Given a starring role in any and all household baking
10. And finally, most obviously, EATEN.

But it should never, ever be thrown away, unless it’s been proven without a doubt to have been tainted by some kind of poison. And even then, only if the poison is known to induce death. If it’s only going to, say, potentially paralyze one of my legs for a few hours, or cause a few patches of my hair to fall out…well, I guess it would depend on the quality of the chocolate. If it was the really good stuff? I’d probably decide that a temporary case of balding paralysis was completely worth it.

GOOD, NOT GARBAGE

Art Wrecko

Hobbies, , , , , , , , , ,

So I get these LivingSocial emails every day, offering me deals on stuff that I probably wouldn’t normally buy. The deals are usually really good, like “pay $20 and get $4,000 to spend at weonlyselltotallyawesomestuff.com!” I try not to get sucked in to the excitement of it all, but it’s really hard not to.

A recent email offered 50% off art classes at a local studio. A good deal, to be sure, but I saw it and laughed out loud. Do you sense a story coming on? I sure do!

Way back in the dark ages, meaning before kids, I decided to take an art class. After grade school, instruction in the visual arts was a gaping hole in my education. I was a musician and only did musical things. While my non-musical friends went off to Drawing I, I went to band or choir. When they went to Drawing II, I went to band or choir. When they went to Painting, I went to band or choir. When they went to Alternative Mediums: Trash,  I went to band. Or choir.

I’d always regretted my lack of art instruction, and then around 2003, I saw some adult art classes listed in a catalog from the local recreation & education organization. I eagerly signed up for “Introduction to Drawing and Painting” and then waited impatiently for the class to start. I was POSITIVE there was a frustrated artist inside just waiting to get out. I was a fantastic doodler; how could that not translate into artistic greatness? My doodles generally consisted of women’s eyes and various types of leaves (fern, oak, maple), but I was sure that I was capable of so much more.

The class finally started. It was taught by a sweet elderly gentleman named Robert. He taught a cartooning class to adolescents right before the adult flunky class. I was heartened on the first day to see him speaking encouragingly to his young cartooning students as they packed up their projects and belongings. “You really nailed that bird’s facial expression!” he said to one boy, patting him on the shoulder. “With a little more work next week, that mouse is really going to be perfect,” he said to another.

The first day, we worked on drawing some simple forms. Simple for some people, I should say. The perfectionist next to me with the steady hand drew her cup and bowl with exacting precision, while my cup and bowl looked more like an urn next to a beach ball. Robert tried to help, but I couldn’t even carry out the simplest of  his suggested revisions with anything even approaching accuracy. Undeterred, I came back week after week, optimistic that this time, it was all going to come together.

It didn’t.

My drawings looked like they’d been done by a 6-year-old. While Robert was duly impressed by my prowess with creepy disembodied eyeballs and tree-less leaves, I seemed incapable of much else. I found watercolors to be impossible to control. I thought acrylics would be easier, but I was wrong. The only bit of “success” I had was with pastels.  One Saturday morning, I managed to scrawl a comparably spectacular lily on a blue background. Robert even uttered, “Hooray!” and gave me a congratulatory pat. I was so excited that I had produced something recognizable that I went out and got an acrylic frame and thought I might hang it on an actual wall. But when I started holding it up in potential hanging spots in the house, I realized that I really didn’t want to look at that thing every day. I tried to blame the walls first, then the rooms, but in the end, it was the picture that was the problem.

Never one to be discouraged, I signed up for a second 6-week session of the class once the first session ended. When he saw me walk in on the first day, I caught the look of exhaustion mixed with acid indigestion and anxiety that washed over poor Robert’s face. To his credit, he made a speedy recovery and was able to greet me cheerily. Maybe he hoped, as I did, that I would do better the second time. But I didn’t.

My artistic disability was kept secret until recently, when Benjamin started wanting us to draw dinosaurs all the time. I would try pretty hard; I’d say, “Bring me the figurine of the dinosaur you want me to draw, and I’ll give it a shot.” When I was finished, I’d proudly present my work to the boy. “There! What do you think?” He’d say, “Mama, the T. Rex didn’t have wings,” or “Mama, a Diplodocus had FOUR legs, not three.” I’d respond, “Those aren’t wings, that’s his knee!” or “There ARE four legs, see?” Eventually he’d sigh heavily and say, “I’ll just ask Daddy to draw it later.”

At first it made me feel bad, but now I realize my incompetence has bought me hours of time that otherwise would’ve been spent drawing frills and horns on a Triceratops.

Once in a blue moon, mediocrity really pays off.

NOT AN EYEBALL, NOT A LEAF

Aftermath

Benjamin, Pets, , , ,

“Mama, I miss Rex.”

“I know you do. I’m really sorry we couldn’t keep him.”

“But he was such a good dog!”

“He will eventually be a good dog.  But until he turned into a good dog, he was going to be too rough for our family, and we couldn’t get him to listen. Weren’t you a little scared when he knocked you down?”

“Well…I was very brave.”

“Yes, you were very, very brave. But not scared?”

“I was a little scared.”

“Yeah, I thought so.”

“But Mama, he listened to me and Daddy. And not you and Ellie. Because Daddy and me are boys, and you and Ellie are girls, and dogs don’t listen to you. Because you’re girls.”

Two thoughts:

1) I’m so glad I know the reason now! There are so many times that I think I am speaking out loud – I can hear myself talking, I can put my hand out in front of my mouth and feel air moving – but no adjacent ears are receiving the sound waves. It’s because I’m a girl.

2) My kid is turning into quite the little sexist. This + his recent pronouncement that BOYS ONLY will be invited to his 5th birthday party + his insistence that he not be subjected to “girl things” = a distinct potential for developing into a club-swinging, knuckle-dragging brute. Or he’s just a normal 5-year-old boy going through the gender identification process.

I’d talk to him about it, but unfortunately he CAN’T HEAR ME. *sigh*

The Trouble With Rex

family, Pets, , , , , , , , , ,

Several months ago, we lost our 13-year-old Border Collie to cancer. It’s never easy to lose a furry member of the family, and this time we had to try to explain death to Benjamin. When Simon the cat died a few years back, Benjamin was only 2, and we didn’t think he could possibly understand. So our explanation for the cat’s sudden absence was, “He went to visit friends!” But now he’s 4, so we did our best to discuss her death in a way he could grasp. And once he wrapped his little brain around the fact that the dog had died and wasn’t coming back, he said, “That’s what happened to Simon, too, ISN’T IT?!”

Busted.

As the grieving process moved on, we started to feel like we were ready to have a dog in our family again. We took several exploratory trips to the Humane Society to see what was what, and what’s what is that all the dogs at our local shelter were Pit Bulls.

I know there are all kinds of Pit Bull cheerleaders out there who say they are wonderful family dogs with sunshiny temperaments, their reputation is unfair, prejudice is cruel, etc. But with two little kids, I just can’t take the chance that I adopt the one dog that is going to rip Ellie’s arm off for a midafternoon snack.  What my brain has come up with on the subject is this: I’ve had hunting dogs and a herding dog. None of these dogs were expected to hunt or herd, but they did it anyway. They naturally did the things they were bred to do, and Pit Bulls are bred to fight and kill. I’m sure I’m wrong, but I’d rather be wrong than risk being right.

Anyway, hopeful people that we are, we made one final trip to the Humane Society on Sunday. And WAH-LAH, there he was…a gorgeous yellow lab mix named Rex. Everyone who walked by his cage stopped to make some sort of enthusiastic exclamation.

“Oh, what a beautiful dog!”
“Now, that’s a dog.”
“Son, this is what you call a real American dog.” (Notably, this was uttered by a man with a thick Irish accent.)

We asked to play with Rex and they let us take him outside. Then we played with him inside. I liked the way he behaved with the kids. Then we tested his ability to tolerate a cat, which went well after a brief hissy-spitty-growly introductory period. Everyone on staff at the shelter said some version of, “Oh, that’s such a great dog!”

He was gorgeous, fun, widely loved and adored…how could we go wrong?

We decided to take him home and make him part of our lives after a brief family meeting in the reception area over popcorn and M&Ms. After an exhaustive adoption process, during which my brain melted into a quivering mass of gelatinous glop, we gleefully left the shelter with our new family member.

He did a great job in the car on the way home. I’ll give him that.

At the house, we kept him on a leash for the first hour or so. We walked him around the neighborhood. We introduced him to the yard. We walked him around the house on the leash. He met the cat, and they both did very well. “Fantastic!” I thought. “This is going to be great!”

Then I let him off the leash in the family room, which I blocked off from the kitchen with a baby gate. “Better not to overwhelm him,” I thought.

I assumed that the first thing he’d do was eat, but instead, he chose a different path, a bad path, a path that would change everything. Instead of eating the bowl of food I offered, he looked away, watched Ellie intently for a moment,  then chased her down and was…well, he was…inappropriate, if you know what I mean. Inappropriate in a very rude, mannerless, boy-dog kind of way.

Ellie was horrified and startled, and thankfully I was right there to snatch her up and away from the…inappropriateness.

Next he targeted Benjamin in the yard, knocking him over in the process. Then it was me. THEN it was The Daddy, which was followed immediately by a display of lunging and menacing barking at the lawn guy and later, our neighbor.

The Daddy said, “I don’t think this is working out.”

I said, “I WANT A GIRL DOG.”

So, three hours after his joyful homecoming, Rex went back to the shelter. The staff was very kind about it, agreeing that we couldn’t have that kind of behavior with little kids around.

We felt really bad. Benjamin felt really bad. We felt really bad for Benjamin, who had been so excited to have a dog again, especially one named after his favorite dinosaur.

Ellie didn’t care at all, perhaps because she was the first of Rex’s victims. At dinner, she asked, “Where’s Wex?” The Daddy replied, “Rex had to go home.” She looked at him, smiled sweetly, and said “Okay, Daddy!” And she’s right, it is okay, because handsome Rex will eventually find a home, and we will eventually find the right dog to complete our nutty little family. The right GIRL DOG, that is.

NAUGHTY

Angry Birds Nation

entertainment, Games, , , , , , , , ,

The Daddy and I got our iPhones just over a year ago. The negotiations over getting them went much like the TiVo Accords, only this time I was the one who made the move to seal the deal with a trip to the Apple Store.  “It’ll be so easy to check email,” I said to myself, “and I can get a few fun games for the kids to play.”

On my first day with it, I took it in to the office where my co-worker, a veteran iPhone user, helped me set up my email account. “What apps are you going to get?” he asked innocently. “Have you seen Angry Birds?”

And thus it began.

For those of you who have never seen nor heard of Angry Birds (Hi, Mom!), it’s a maddeningly addictive game created by a Finnish company called Rovio. In the game, evil green pigs have stolen eggs from a flock of birds. (According to Wikipedia, the game developers made the villains pigs because the original design process took place during the swine flu outbreak.) The birds are very angry at these pillaging pigs and you, the player, are charged with helping to get the eggs back.

The pigs jealously guard the eggs underneath structures made of various materials. The materials include wood, glass, ice, and stone. You launch the birds by slingshot at a section of the structure, and whether or not the bird breaks the structure and kills the pig(s) is decided by some kind of sophisticated algorithm that takes angle, force, and speed into account. Complicating matters is that each bird in your arsenal has a different skill or function. Red birds are boring – they go straight ahead at medium speed and will possibly break something if everything is perfect. The blue bird turns into three when you tap on the screen. The yellow bird accelerates when you tap. Black birds land and then explode like a bomb – they’re my favorite. The white birds (hate them) act like a boomerang. Etc.

The game is highly addictive (I keep saying that word) and trance-inducing. I’ll play for a while, put it down, and then think, “I could do better on that level,” and pick it up again. Any situation that involves waiting (doctor’s office, airport, grocery store lines) is now time in which I can potentially increase my score. But I’m not addicted. Nope! I prefer to say I’m loyally dedicated to learning. Current learning schedule:

6:00 pm: Waiting for water to boil. Playing Angry Birds.
6:10 pm: Waiting for spaghetti to cook. Playing Angry Birds.
6:40 pm: Quick round of Angry Birds before I clean up the kitchen.
7:30 pm: Kids’ bathtime. Benjamin prattling on about Transformers. Playing with kids, but plotting Angry Birds strategy in the back of my shriveled mind.
8:15 pm: Sitting in Ellie’s beanbag chair, waiting for her to fall asleep. Angry Birds.
11:00 pm: Can’t sleep…maybe just a few minutes of…

You get the picture.

It’s not always like this, thank heaven. The initial obsession has waned, and now I only go cuckoo when a new update or version is released. I’m not alone, though…over 12 million copies of Angry Birds have been purchased from the iTunes App Store. There’s a feature film in the works. I even read an article in a business publication not long ago outlining how Angry Birds can make you a better manager and leader. At first I thought, “Wha?” But the author made some compelling points.

So if you’ve got an iPhone, iPad, or Droid and you haven’t tried Angry Birds yet, you really should! Or maybe you value your spare time and you really shouldn’t. But if you do, just so you know, you’ll have a hard time catching up to me. I’m currently ranked number 2, 230,520 out of 12 million. Beat that, suckahs!

BEWARE THE EVIL EGG-THIEVING SWINE

Preschool Iron Man

Benjamin, , , , , , ,

“Mama, what does being strong mean?”

“It means that you are healthy and that your muscles can do a lot of work.”

“Am I strong?”

“I think you’re very strong for a boy your age. Why are you thinking about being strong?”

“I don’t know. If I can lift up the gime, does that make me strong?”

“What’s a gime?”

“You know, the gime, that people do for exercises.”

“No, I don’t know what a gime is.”

“How can boys get even stronger?”

“Well, you have to eat good foods, and get lots of sleep, and play a lot.”

“What are good foods?”

“You know…things like fruits and vegetables and all the stuff Mama always wants you to eat.”

“Oh. I like to eat chocolate. Is that a good food?”

“Not really. But you can have a little bit, as long as you eat your good stuff first.”

“Then I can lift up the gime?”

“I still don’t know what a gime is.”

“You spell it g-y-m, Mama. The gime.”

“OH! I think you mean gym.”

“No, I mean gime.”

(I think he actually means weights, but that’s an argument for a different day.)

“That’s not how you say it, buddy – it’s gym, like the name Jim, and if you could actually lift up a gym, then you really would be superduper strong.”

“I’m gonna say it gime.”

“Okay, but don’t be surprised if people tease you.”

“I WON’T!”

*sigh*

It occurred to me later that if he really did become superstrong, no one would tease him for saying gime. Would you bother to correct Mike Tyson if he told you he just got back from the gime?

Me neither.

Television Schmelevision

entertainment, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Oh, television…how we love to hate you, and how we hate to love you.

Growing up in a rural area in the northernmost part of Michigan, the big antenna that stood next to our house received three channels. One was from Canada, one was PBS, and one was a local channel that generally carried CBS shows. The CBS channel was the clearest channel we got. Canada and PBS were snowy all the time; any manner of inclement weather created problems. Even a particularly bad mood could create enough atmospheric interference to render those two channels unwatchable.

It wasn’t a bad thing, and I don’t remember feeling at all deprived or any more bored than any other kid.  True, I never saw a lot cultural milestone shows that “everyone” has seen, like Gilligan’s Island or The Brady Bunch. The Daddy still becomes occasionally horrified when he uncovers yet another TV show of his youth that I’ve never heard of.

Given that history, I hadn’t been much of a TV fan for most of my adult life. I preferred to socialize; I felt that contact with other human beings was a far better use of my time and energy. “Human relationships are based on give and take,” I’d sneer haughtily, “and you can’t have a two-way relationship with a television.” 

BUT THEN we got a TiVo. In the pre-purchasing period, I argued against it – what did we need it for?  But in his infinite wisdom of all things electronic, The Daddy ignored my anemic assertions and got one anyway. Once it took up residence in my very own living room, I finally understood.  TiVo freed me from TV schedule slavery. If I didn’t feel like watching something on Wednesday at 9:00 p.m., I could watch it Saturday at 10:00 a.m.  Or 2:00 p.m. Whenever!

Me – 1, Bondage to Television Scheduling – 0

Furthermore, I no longer had to watch a single commercial!

Me – 2, Greedy Corporate Advertisers – 0

The final nail in the coffin was the first baby.  For those of you who’ve never gone through it, there’s a lot of sitting around when you have a newborn. There’s feeding, and rocking, and holding them while they sleep.  And it’s not just part of the day – this is a 24-hour-a-day cycle. Sure, you spend a lot of time just gazing at that  adorable face, but you can only do that for so long. So what do you do? TV!

I learned that there really are a lot of great shows. True, many of them are geared towards the lowest common denominator, but not all of them. There are shows promoting creativity, such as Top Chef and Project Runway (I even watched those before baby brainlessness struck me). There are gripping dramas like Big Love, which I’m sad to say recently ended. Fun travel shows like Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. Spirit-expanding specials like the one we recently watched on PBS about the Buddha. Hilarious, gut-busting comedies like Modern Family.

So does all this mean that my intelligence is waning, my energy is draining, my high-minded ideals are dwindling, my creative capacity is on the decline? Does it mean that my thoughts and ideals are being replaced by those of one-dimensional television characters?

Probably.

Television Brain Rot – 1, Me – 0

However, according to my (always questionable) math skills, that still puts me up by at least one point. I’d like to be able to say that I’m winning, but I can’t because Charlie Sheen ruined that word for the remainder of 2011, at the very least.

This is the opening to Big Love, which I felt was a work of art in itself. The song is by a band called Engineers; all of their music is just this enchanting. Even though Big Love is over now, you can get all the seasons on Netflix. And they didn’t pay me to say that. (Private note to Netflix: If you did want to pay me, I’d be fine with it. Call me!)

Blades of Glory

Figure Skating, Kids, , , , , , ,

The Daddy and I have been discussing when we should get Benjamin into some kind of martial arts class. I like the idea of disciplining and expanding his mind as early as possible. If  I drew you a map of his brain today, I would simply label one hemisphere “DINOSAURS” and the other “TRANSFORMERS.”  The end. Nothing else enters his mind, and nothing else exits.

Then we discussed Ellie and what she might want to do in the future, and I was reminded of my own childhood physical endeavor: figure skating.

I started figure skating at around age 5 or 6. My final hurrah came when I was around 13.  That year, my coach said I could go to the annual competition in Marquette. It was an international competition, which sounds really impressive, no? But all it really meant was there would be at least one skater from Canada.

I would be participating  in two events: ice dancing and the short compulsory program. So exciting! Issue number one (of course) was OMG WHAT WILL I WEAR? Issue number two was preparing the actual dance. To my distress, the dance I would be performing was the Canasta Tango.

At this point, I will fully disclose that I barely practiced that miserable tango. I had learned the Canasta years earlier and had no interest in revisiting it.  I halfheartedly lurched around the rink when the music came on. I rolled my eyes and sighed and said I was tired. Puh-leeze. I spent a fair amount of time just leaning against the boards, observing my fellow skaters as they prepared their dances. I watched jealously as the club’s celebrated superstar practiced her Rocker Foxtrot. The Rocker Foxtrot just oozed coolness and intrigue, while the Canasta had all the coolness and intrigue of a geriatric shuffleboard match.

I was uninspired, to say the very least.

On competition day, I skated purposefully out to the starting point on the ice and waited for the music to start. I was unafraid. My dress was gorgeous – black, with filmy handkerchief-cut sleeves and a matching skirt. I smiled winningly and looked for my mother in the stands. The music started…

And I just stood there.

It was as though someone had picked up an eraser and wiped my mind clean of any memory I had of the Canasta Tango. It was completely gone. Whoosh.

Any sane person would’ve just skated off the ice. Instead, I thought I’d give it a whirl. I skated aimlessly around, smiling like a deranged maniac, throwing in some out-of-sequence steps here and there.

Up in the stands, my mother was blissfully unaware until one of my fellow skaters said, “Oh, wow…she really blew it.”

After it was over, I met my mother in the locker room and cried. The most pressing issue at hand was that I still had another event to compete in, and I was too embarrassed to even think about going back out there. How could I face the panel of judges again? And my peers?

My mother looked at her pathetic, tear-stained daughter and said, “Well, it’ll be fine. You’ll be wearing a different dress. They won’t even know it’s you.”

At the time, I accepted this advice as being inarguably logical. Of course they wouldn’t know it was me! I’d be taking off my elegant black dress and changing into a jazzy purple dress with a vibrant Hawaiian sunset scene around the neckline.  I’d be completely unrecognizable!

And so, buoyed by this change your clothes/change into a different person idea, I went out there and skated my compulsory routine and won 3rd place. I even got to stand on risers with the medal around my neck and have my picture taken. Just like the Olympics!

As I consider my children entering the world of individual and team sports, I wonder how we’ll handle the highs and lows, the wins and losses, the triumphs and the embarrassments. I do think martial arts will be great for Benjamin. But I’m pretty sure there’s only one outfit choice in martial arts, so there’ll be no saving him from abject humiliation by simply changing his clothes.

Poor kid.

MICHELLE KWAN NEVER FORGOT THE CANASTA

Image via Wikipedia