Happy Fathers' Day

Today is another stupid Hallmark card-selling holiday like Valentine's Day, Grandparents' Day, Bosses' Day, Administrative Professionals' Day, and Christmas. These earmarked days do provide a chance for us to reflect a bit and thank those who matter to us, but I resent having a calendar tell me when to express my love or appreciation to anyone. Then again, were it not for the calendar or a brightly-colored display in the card section of Target, I might forget to share any sentiments at all. While I don't much care for the so-called "holidays," I've felt a bit left out on this one since 2006. Like being rejected by a club I didn't really want to join in the first place.

But Fathers' Day now gives me a chance to watch my happy kids pick out, sign, and hand-deliver cards to their dad. (Well worth the cost of a couple of $6.00 cards.) Katy called him this morning from my in-laws' house to tell him she loves him and misses him. Her sweet voice on the phone is priceless. She's nine, but on the phone she still sounds like a four-year-old. I guess it's OK to give in to this calendar-scheduled love-offering just for that.

This morning I overheard Mike talking to his dad and telling him how fortunate he is to have such a supportive, generous, and loving father. (I did get lucky in the in-laws department.) I sat there wishing I had at least picked out a card for us to send.

I think of my dad and miss him every day. I can't tell him I love him like I used to no matter what day it is.

But hey, one less card to buy.

Bits of Quick Wit From my Kids

I may have mentioned this one somewhere before, but it bears repeating:

As the kids and I were walking from the carwash to a nearby restaurant, Katy got all excited when she found a penny. A few steps later, I found a dime. (Lots of change falls out of cars, I guess, and I say finders = keepers.) I sort of taunted her and said, "So what? I found a dime." She did not miss a beat. She replied, "There's nothing lucky about dimes."

And this will become a family classic, I'm afraid:

On a windy day not long ago, Luke was grabbing his package (as all males do--and apparently never outgrow). I pointed and asked, "You afraid it's gonna blow away?" "Nope," he said, "I've got a pretty good hold of it." When I told him he doesn't need to grab it all the time, he said, "Oh, I get it. Kind of like, 'If you love something, set it free.'"

Dang, they crack me up.

My Apologies to my Facebook Readers

Sorry folks, this is the only bone I can throw right now. I again realized that this blog's pulse/ox is rapidly dropping, so I thought I'd publish something here that was meant to go here a long time ago, but I treated my few Facebook "friends" to it instead while neglecting, you, my loyal and more diverse group of friends, fans, and freaks who return to this address or stumble upon it by sheer good fortune.

So here it is. Don't get your hopes up. It is indeed pure drivel. Yet exquisite, nevertheless:

TWENTY THINGS I WONDER ABOUT

1. Why do people say "literally" when they don't mean it? Don't they know what "literally" means? "He was so mad; he literally bit my head off." Oh really?

2. How can certain leg hairs escape my razor so many times that they grow up to an inch long before I notice them?

3. What is it about an elevator that causes people to avoid eye contact or conversation?

4. Who has the job of putting the one square of pork in the top of the pork 'n' beans can?

5. Why are some people so interested and upset to know that one consenting person's body part may be touching another consenting person's body part in private? And how many closeted gay people do they know and like?

6. Why do I wait for the gas pump to thank me before I go?

7. Why am I not someone else? Or am I?

8. Where did God come from? I just can't buy the "He was always there" answer. And as someone asked, why did he let a snake cause such grief?

9. How many Bed Bath & Beyond coupons are in my house and in my car? And why do I never bring one with me when I go there?

10. How many pairs of black shoes is it OK to have before it becomes a problem?

11. When I drive across a bridge, why am I always afraid that a little voice will tell me to drive off?

12. How and why do some moms home-school their children? Good for them, but I just can't even wrap my mind around it.

13. Why do I get constipated every time I go on vacation?

14. Will I ever understand daylight savings time? Do I need to?

15. Why do I buy stationery when I can never seem to write a thank you note?

16. Why does my cleaning lady always rearrange my nightstand and replace the novel I'm reading with my Bible?

17. Why do I sometimes have trouble distinguishing the dancers from the "stars"?

18. Why am I polite to telemarketers?

19. Why can I never find a pen when I need one? And why is my purse full of them when I don't?

20. Why does my snooze button give me nine minutes? Why not a more even number like 10? Why not 30? If I set the alarm for 5:30, I might get up at 5:40, but 5:39, no way. At 5:39, I tell myself, "one more minute" but then two minutes go by and it's 5:41 and I don't think I can stare at the clock until 5:45, so I go for another 9 minutes. Then it's 5:50 and I know I have to get up right then because otherwise, I'll snooze till 5:59 and start the cycle all over again. Should I discuss this with my psychiatrist?

If any of you can give me some answers (even to the rhetorical ones), feel free to share. I may reject your answers as hogwash, but I will still take them under consideration--or at least let you think I did.

Waking up From Lost Time

Some epileptics have what's called "absence seizures" where they just sort of space out for a few seconds. Some people with mental illness suffer from bouts of "lost time." Some alcoholics have blackouts.

I recently discovered that I could very well be an epileptic mentally ill alcoholic. I haven't been diagnosed with any form of epilepsy, but I'm knocking real hard on the door of the other two.

I rarely know what the date is without looking at a calendar. Now, it's not at all uncommon for a perfectly sane person to be off by one day or so. But lately, I have not even been able to pin it down somewhere within a good seven to 10 day timeframe. I'm a little better at knowing what month it is, maybe because the month boxes on my "year-at-a-glance" wall calendar are good bit bigger than the day boxes. While I have trouble with dates, I do a little better with knowing what day it is, only because Tuesday is recycling day, Wednesday is American Idol, Thursday is The Office, and Friday is trash day. But bear in mind that this doesn't mean I will actually drop off the recycling on Tuesday, or have the trash out in time on Friday. I do know that the year is 2009, however.

Anyone who knows me is aware that I'm a slacker who cannot afford to be a slacker. I end up putting more effort into looking like I keep it all together rather than just keeping it all together in the first place. So I must not be a true slacker, seeing as how I actually care about keeping it all together. Real slackers don't give a shit about things like recycling day.

All this to say, I recently realized that a good month of my life has gone by without my attention or appreciation. Not that this hasn't happened several times before. It just seems that now, time is more valuable. It's that perspective you grow into the older you get.

When you're a child, you're on the floor with no sense of time and no horizon in sight. As a teenager, you're in the car with no sense of anything and no end in sight. In college, you can see the world from a 4th floor dorm room or from the roof of a fraternity house. It's all books and booze, love and lust, then probably just more booze and lust. Too busy living from one high to the other to notice the shrinking world below. Then comes career. Suddenly, you are supposed to act like a grown-up and take an elevator to a high-rise office or supervise young employees below you. Too busy working to hear the clock ticking minutes of your life away or to see the once endless sea of opportunity beginning to dry up. You settle into marriage and before you're ready (because no one ever is) along come the babies with all the crying and diapers and bottles and equipment. Sleepless, cranky, no-longer-just-a-couple parents hop on that roller coaster and stay on it until the last one starts school. With all the carseats and potty training and paraphernalia, you don't have much time to sit back and reflect on creating a new generation, much less on preparing to shift upward one day and take the place of your parents.

Now that my kids are a little older and for the most part, capable of bathing, feeding, and wiping themselves, I recently had the pleasure of stopping (just once for a fleeting moment) to take a breath and think. I see them looking up at me and I remember how my parents always seemed so tall. I see them looking up to me with wide eyes at a big world and I can only hope they'll see me as the smart, successful, and secure woman I sometimes so deftly can pretend to be.

The mirror and my aching bones are beginning to convince me that even though I may not think or act in accordance with some standard (of mysterious origin) as to how someone my age should think or act, I am nevertheless as young as I can possibly be at this very moment. Time flies when you're getting old, and I really don't want to lose any more of it. Not that I really missed anything over the past month or so. That I know of.

The only thing everyone on earth has in common is that we are all still alive. It's just that most are either too young to notice it or too busy to appreciate it. I'm now getting old enough to notice. I just wish I weren't always too busy to appreciate it, what with all my TV shows and household chores to keep up with.

43 on 4/3. Does that mean anything?

I think it means "Grow up and get real!"

I went to wake Katy up this morning and as I hugged her, her first words were: "Happy Birthday, Mama . . . 43." I'm always impressed by the way she is so on top of things. But this time, I could have done without her wise-ass grin.

I once wrote an essay called "37." Apparently that was some sort of milestone for me. Now I'm reminded that I'm still old enough to be a grandmother. Sure glad I'm not.

I'll never forget a conversation I had with some of the squadron wives when we were at Cannon Air Force Base about 10 years ago. Most of those women were about five to seven years younger than I was. One of them was lamenting her upcoming 29th birthday. In all of my sage wisdom, I replied, "Try 34."

I'm understanding now those middle-age crazies I heard about when I was a kid. I wouldn't necessarily refer to this "midlife" feeling as a "crisis," but it is this sort of second adolescence. Again, I feel uncomfortable in my body. Not so much awkward as unwieldy. When I was awkward, I knew I would eventually catch up with myself and get it. Now (in this unwieldy body that is out-of-sync with my brain), when I try to turn flips on a trampoline or roller skate too fast, for example, my body tells me that I've lost it (and not just mentally). My chiropractor says, "Jill, just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should."

Why am I so afraid of aging? A friend (who shall remain nameless lest he get more publicity than he deserves) posted this on my Facebook wall: "I sure hope you enjoy your birthday. You don't have that many left." Pretty funny, unless I end up dead soon. Then who will they suspect, huh?

First, I'll count my blessings about this aging shell my soul is stuck with. I don't have much of a gray hair problem seeing as how I just try to stay bleached blonde. Sure, those wiry grays tend to stand up and make themselves known, but I just weigh them down with some product or other, or pluck them if they don't behave. I don't really have any crows' feet around my eyes yet. At least not that I can see. I don't have saggy boobs, but only because they are too small to sag. So that gives the illusion that they are still somewhat perky. I'm not overweight, and cellulite has yet to replace every square inch of my thighs. So I still have all those things to look forward to.

Now, I may look healthy and in shape, but I can't even fold a basket of laundry without getting winded. My heart rate only rises to a calorie-burning level when I look at my bank account to see how much I pay for my unused gym membership every month. When I do go to the gym, I'm always afraid the buff youngsters parading themselves at the front desk can tell when my last visit was when they scan my membership tag. Then they scoff at me after seeing how old I am and think, "Oh, give it up lady," when really they probably don't give me another thought. Other than maybe, "Hmm, my mom was born in 1966, too."

And just yesterday afternoon as I sat in the sunlight (bad idea), I started noticing—for the first time—spider veins in my ankles and thinning skin on my already bony hands. I swear that these conditions arose right before my trifocal-wearing eyes. But the most troubling thing for me is my neck. If any of you got a copy of our family Christmas picture and still have it, look at my neck. I wish I had had the photographer airbrush some of that tree-trunk look out of it. Age often shows in the neck—especially on women who have had their faces all pinned up and stretched out and Restylaned and Botoxed. I haven't gone to that extreme, and I won't because I think looking naturally old is more attractive than looking freakishly pathetic. Who do they think they're fooling? And why? But my neck has really aged out of proportion to the rest of me. And it's long, so that just doubles the attention it gets. I guess I'll start wearing some smart-looking Talbot's turtlenecks and sassy scarves from Chico's. Remember ladies, sunscreen that neck. I must have neglected mine for years.

Anyway, all this to say: Vanity sucks. Sucks your spirit dry. Michael J. Fox recently said that vanity is the first thing to go. The first thing you gladly and even unknowingly toss out the window when you find yourself in a life or death situation. English writer Anthony Powell (whom I have never heard of before) said, "Self-love seems so often unrequited." How true. And French philosopher Henri Bergson (whom I had also never heard of) said, "The only cure for vanity is laughter, and the only fault that's laughable is vanity." I say: Vanity pretends to run deep but it's shallow. It can fill us up, but it's hollow.

I'm just glad to know that when the last drop of my incredible hotness is all gone, I'll still be able to rely on my vastly superior intelligence and unparalleled sense of humor to keep me in the spotlight. What a relief.