Deb's Travel Journal: Arkansas

I love Arkansas. It is the only state where I can go into Walmart wearing bedroom slippers, no make-up, and a greasy hairdo and still hold my own, attractiveness-wise.

It is also the state that allowed me to visit an actual, functioning outhouse. Today.

(Disclaimer: for those of you of the male persuasion who read my blog, the following contains sensitive terms regarding certain aspects of life exclusive to women. Explicit terms such as "cramps" and "breeze" will be used. Read on at your own peril.)

Whilst traveling the "scenic" route from Hot Springs to Harrison, I became aware that I had the need to visit a comfort station. My "friend" came to "visit" Sunday, the day we left Texas, but, curiously, her "welcome" is already worn. I only mention this to illustrate that my "calls of nature" have become "emergency bulletins," and I received one in the proverbial "middle of nowhere." I, following the primitive instincts that have allowed our species to thrive, alerted Sven, who was driving. My man would take care of it, I knew.

Sven, ever alert, saw this sign: "Comfort Station 1000 feet." It had a picture of the international restroom symbols. I thought all would be well.

How wrong I was.

We found ourselves in a parking lot. There was a sidewalk. At the end of the sidewalk was a small brick building. Each half of the building had an inexplicable smokestack-like protuberance emerging from its roof.

I approached the building with supplies in my hand and trepidation in my heart.

At the door, dead wasps. What could have killed them? I wondered, but hastened in to perform what was necessary.

The door slammed shut behind me, making a sound reminiscent of a jail cell slamming shut.

There was no electricity. There was no sink. There were three rolls of toilet paper padlocked to the wall.

Then, I saw it. The apparatus.

I cannot call it a toilet. To call it a toilet would give you, my dear reader, the wrong impression.

It was a plastic pickle drum with a seat.

Beneath it: the hole.

I couldn't study the hole too closely. The lack of tank and handle unnerved me, but I soldiered on, necessity making me brave.

It must be some sort of "port-a-potty," I thought. Surely, I won't be sitting over some hole in the middle of the woods. That would simply be...barbaric.

Yet, I felt the breeze. I know the truth.

I shall speak of this no more. Heed me, my friends. Route 7 is not the way of those accustomed to comfort. It is for the bold. The adventurous.

It is not for me.

Confessions: Salespeople

I am the worst negotiator in the world.

When Sven took me to buy our first car together, it went like this:

{Scene: Used car lot, the year 2000}

Deb: I want this car. Can I have this car? I love this car.

Sven: The salesman's coming. Just let me do the talking. Act like you don't care about the car.

Deb: Okay. {Attempts to look suave and unconcerned}

Sven: You look constipated.

Salesman: How are we doing today?

Deb: I LOVE THIS CAR I WANT THIS CAR WE'LL PAY ANYTHING YOU WANT JUST PLEASE LET ME HAVE THIS CAR

Sven: (facepalm)

Salesman: Mwa ha ha ha ha.

{scene}

Sven, being the wonderful adorable caring conscientious strapping meat-loving lawn-mowing music-writing hazel-eyed guy that he is, bought me the car. We didn't get a very good deal, but he wanted to make me happy. So, he bought me the car, then told the story to everyone about how I probably cost him thousands of dollars because I couldn't keep my mouth shut around the salesman. Sven would point to the pretty little white sports coupe and say, "She loved the car that much."

I laughed and played along, of course, because I didn't want him to know the truth.

I did love the car. I loved it a lot. But the reason I blurted out those horrible words was not my love for the car, it was my fear of salespeople. The truth is, I would have told the salesman the same thing about whatever vehicle I was standing in front of. It's a problem. I confess it now: I am terrified of salespeople.

I bring this up because of a horrible new trend I have noticed at several malls I have visited: the Pushy Demonstration People. (I shall henceforth refer to them as PDP's.) PDP's populate those small booths that sit in the "roadways" that pave our malls. The PDP's have chairs at their booths, but they never use them.

"Excuse me, can I ask you something?" their pitch begins. PDP's are almost unfailingly polite, at least in the beginning. The first time this was tried on me, I automatically responded by stopping and allowing her to ask her question. It turned out this young lady was deeply concerned about my nailbeds. It cost me $120 to get out of there, and I still have that Dead Sea salt scrub somewhere.

It has taken me years to train myself to not be polite to the PDP's. It was a long process. First, I avoided walking by them. I would walk outside the mall and around it before willingly passing a PDP. I soon recognized that I was ridiculous and sweaty, so I decided to head it off at the pass: a fake cell phone conversation. When I sighted the PDP, I would dig out my phone, flip it open, and begin babbling. Unfortunately, I got very involved in these fake conversations, and had to stop when my imaginary friend Ramona left her husband Thorny for Thorny's friend Paladin who had 35 hit points and +5 charisma. I had my own problems. It was just too draining.

It was go time. I was not going to allow these PDP's to run my life. I decided to ignore them. Most of them got the hint. I was free, though not satisfied. I longed to ask them some questions of my own. Like, "Do you really think bothering me like this will make me want to buy what you're selling?" Or, "Has it occurred to you that the fact that you are accosting me every time I walk by guarantees that I won't buy anything you're selling?" But I never did. I ignored them, they gave up easily, and the world went on.

But yesterday and today, I encountered two of the pushiest PDP's I had ever seen.

Number One was a man. He was tall, with wavy black hair and an intriguing accent that could have been Latvian, if I knew what Latvian sounded like. He was dressed in a black t-shirt and slacks. He was holding a stick of something that could have been wood or wood-colored chalk.

"Excuse me, I have a gift for you," he said, holding out the stick. I attempted to ignore him.

"Come on, take it, it's free," he said, moving so that he wasn't quite blocking me, but it was close.

"What's wrong? You can take it, it's free," he persisted. I took a deep breath, remembered a Very Special Punky Brewster, looked him in the eye, and said:

"No, thank you." What power! I felt as though years of restraint had fallen off of me in one fell swoop. I felt willowy and lithe and tall. I could conquer the world!

"Why not?" he asked. Again I was plush and short. It didn't work! I spoke to him directly, told him no, and he's still asking! Suddenly, it was like the end of the movie Labyrinth (except with different pants): he had no power over me.

"Seriously?" I said, stopping and looking up at him. "Really? I said no. Just, no. Excuse me." And I laughed.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I laughed.

That was yesterday.

Today, when he saw me pass by, he sat down. Victory.

The second PDP ignored me yesterday, as I did her, but with other women she was very assertive, even aggressive. Today, emboldened by my defeat of PDP #1, I watched her, curious as to why she ignored me. I noticed that she was targeting women, but I couldn't see anything else. Then I looked more closely.

"Better than Botox" her booth was called.

I could only draw one conclusion: I looked too young for her to bother with.

Victory.

Here's The Pitch

Cast:

Deb: A comfortably plush yet devastatingly attractive working mom, trying to make it as a writer.

Princess: Deb's writing partner

Billiam: A slick Hollywood producer

Scene: Billiam's office at Award Winning Studio

{Deb and Princess are here to make a pitch for a new family film. They enter Billiam's office.}

Deb: Thank you so much for taking the time to see us.

Billiam (stunned at her beauty): Please, sit down. (They all sit.) All right, I'm listening.

Deb: What we have for you today is the ultimate family movie. It's very special.

Billiam (intrigued): What's the pitch?

Deb: I'm going to pass this to my writing partner, Princess. She comes up with all of the ideas. Go ahead, Princess.

Princess: There's a dinosaur and my friends the Backyardigans have to leave our house and go up in a tornado because the Red Bull was chasing the unicorns and I said "You don't do that!" and I chased the Red Bull to the chocolate factory and I was a good girl and I peed on the potty and the Little Einsteins showed me a snapping turtle and you have to sing a high note or they'll get you when Charlotte makes a word in her web and she drinks blood.

Billiam: Go on.

Princess: Well, Spongebob and Patrick and the Backyardigans and Imagination Movers all came to my birthday party and the big boy got stuck in the pipe because he was too greedy when the dogs ate the spaghetti the boy dog gave the girl dog the meatball and the princess didn't want to live in the castle she wanted to stay in the forest but the lion had to be the king and then we all dance like this: (Princess flails and spins on the floor.) And that's all.

Billiam: (Silence.)

Princess: (whispers) Mommy, why isn't he talking?

Deb: He's blown away. Let him absorb, baby.

Billiam: If you can put a mermaid in, we have a deal.

Deb: Yay!

Princess: I want a peanut butter sandwich.

{Fin.}

The above post is based on a story Princess told me this morning.

-Deb

Idiosyncrasies

My little family is wonderfully quirky.

Take my little Princess, for instance:

Princess is a very picky eater. Some things are typical "little-kid" picky things: she doesn't like "binchtables," she hates watermelon...all of these I can accept. But Princess takes picky to a new level.

She only eats the "good parts" of the food.

When she eats a peanut butter sandwich, she will return to me two absolutely clean pieces of bread carried in hands festooned with peanut butter.

When she eats a corn dog, the "shuckings" will be piled neatly on the plate with no trace of the hot dog that was in the center. (This is actually okay with me, as I continue to believe that the corn dog is actually a prank gone too far.)

She only eats the buttered side of her toast.

She sucks every noodle clean of alfredo sauce.

All of this I can accept and live with. But I can no longer be silent on the matter of kolaches.

A kolache, for those of you so unfortunate as to reside outside the land of Texas ("Land of the Free and Home of the Armed") or any other Bavarian-influenced cultural center, is a filled pastry. Here in Southeast Texas, the kolache is a savory pastry primarily consumed for breakfast and sold in most doughnut shops.

Imagine the kolache thusly: a warm, buttery yeast roll baked around savory cheese (which may or may not contain jalapenos) and sausage. (I know some people think kolaches can have ham or bacon, but I ignore them in public. I also know some people prefer their kolaches cheese-less, or "dry," and for them I believe jail time is warranted. Furthermore, real kolaches are only available at Snowflake Donut in Baytown, because they label their "hot" ones with a piece of jalapeno baked into the top of the roll, so you know what you're getting instead of the "surprise" hot ones that slip into your purchase elsewhere. But I digest.)

Princess only eats the "hot dog" out of her kolache, leaving the amazingly good and crusty bread and the savory warm cheese discarded on her plate like so much corn dog shuckings. This, of course, makes it necessary for Mommy to consume said leavings, lest they "go to waste."

The kicker: last night at dinner, Princess consumed her weight in calamari. Apparently there's no "yucky part" to deep-fried squid.

As for Dexy:

He will eat anything in the world, as long as it's not on his own plate. You can picture him easily, huge smile on his face, flitting from plate to plate, taking the choicest morsels, stuffing them in his face, and running like the wind. He is very protective of his own plate, though. The other day, Dexy took a Cheeto from Princess' plate (ignoring the pile on his own) and, chortling, ran off to eat it. Princess very calmly got up, went to Dexy's plate, and took two. Dexy cried for 30 minutes at the affront to his authority.

Dexy didn't care for the calamari. He did consume all of the bread.

As for Sven and me, our quirk is a simple one, but one that has been with us throughout the decade-plus of our relationship. I call it the Law of Groceries:

If both of us go to the grocery store and make a purchase designed to allow us to eat at home for a time period greater than one day, we cannot eat at home that day. It's just that simple.

Last night, we went to Sam's Club and stocked up on our "bulk" food needs. 50 bags of Cheetos, 48 bags of M&M's, and Q-tips. On the way out, we were ambushed by the Sample Lady who had prepared a chicken-and-four-cheese ravioli with fresh pesto. It was not only delicious, Dexy loved it, so we told ourselves, "Let's get it and we can have it for dinner when we get home." It would be quick, just heat-and-eat, really. I even bought some French bread to do some garlic toast (or Crustini, or whatever they're calling them now).

We spent between $3-400 at Sam's. On the way home, we were congratulating ourselves on how much money we'd save in the long run, that we had enough to make lunches at home for weeks and dinner at home for days, we'd even gotten breakfast foods the kids liked! Yes, no more eating out for us, no sir. Not for a long time.

Then we hit traffic.

By the time we got home, we literally left the car running while Sven and I hurriedly put the groceries away, then headed to Antonio's Italian Restaurant. The children were hungry enough to be well-behaved, and other than the guilt oozing from our pores at spending $50 on a meal out when we had just spent over $300 on groceries, a wonderful time was had by all.

We did skip dessert. I can sacrifice.

Sometimes.

Word of the Week: Festoon

I was talking to Momz yesterday, and during the course of our conversation, I was able to use one of my favorite all-time words:

Festoon.

I don't know about you, but I don't festoon things enough. I should be downstairs right now, festooning something. Sure, my kids won't know I've been festooning, but I... I bet they'll know something special has happened.

The problem with "festoon" is it brings to mind cobwebs, as in the following sentence:

"The sad lady sat among the ruins of her long-past debutante ball, the once-jaunty decorations now festooned with cobwebs."

So can one deliberately festoon? According to Miriam Webster dictionary, here is the definition:

1 : a decorative chain or strip hanging between two points2 : a carved, molded, or painted ornament representing a decorative chain

Of course, both of those definitions are nouns, so that brings a whole new spin to the word. I cannot festoon, alas, because it is a noun. Though I know it is possible to make some nouns into verbs in the past tense (hence the "festooned" in the above sentence), present tense is just kind of weird.

However, I can BEDECK my wall with a FESTOON! Then my wall shall be FESTOONED with a FESTIVE ADORNMENT! I should stop now, before I cause a kerfuffle.

Ah. I should have been an English teacher.

Minister of New Media

I recently was appointed to a very high position in an exclusive club. The Kettle Social Club is an invitation-only Facebook group made up of a group of us who used to hang out at a 24-hour diner and philosophize, play chess, and swap lies. For whatever reason, I have been appointed Minister of New Media. (Before you get too impressed, my friend Danny is Minster of Midget Porn, a title that makes a lot of sense if you know Danny.)

The Kettle Social club started with Sven and his friend Zeb (short for Zebalebadingalingadingdongshoobop). Sven and Zeb have been friends since middle school. In college, they discovered that late nights combined with gallons of coffee and cartons of cigarettes rendered them intelligent and interesting, so they began hanging around at the Kettle every night. I began dating Sven in January of 1994 and was absorbed seamlessly into the group, bringing along my friends, who brought along their friends. Before we knew it, we had a "core group" of about 8 people, with additional pals that brought the group to as many as 20 people. We had some real characters.

Cowboy Dave, for example, was a pipe fitter, chess player, and AA sponsor who had the most colorful way of putting things. His standard greeting to me was, "Come sit on Paw-Paw's knee." To this day, Sven talks like Cowboy Dave when he's trying to be cute.

Drew was a bit older than most of us, and was a semi-professional magician who worked at the Texas Renaissance Festival. He would bring his latest card tricks to wow mostly me, who was the only one at the table who didn't get how they worked.

Danny, the aforementioned Minister of MP, was (at the time) an aspiring stand-up comedian whose humor was based on surprising you with something completely unexpected, then repeating it again and again until it was funny. One night he had me in stitches for hours by chanting "It's a human thumb!" and showing me his thumb. Really. You kind of had to be there.

Richard was the chess player in his 70's who left the group when he reconnected with his high school sweetheart, who he married.

Cowhig had a pet 'possum. I held it on my shoulder once.

Kim and Tom were our on-again, off-again couple.

Robert was an usher at my wedding.

Owen missed the wedding (he overslept) but he was there when my dad died.

I think my love for all of these folks can be summed up by the following quote from Danny, left on my Facebook wall:

"I've got a heart full of love and a hand full of smackin'."

And I know he means it.

Beginning of Summer: How Things Change

During the school year, Sven and I have precious little time to parent. We leave the house before 7:00 a.m. (if we're on time) and the earliest I get the kids is 3:45. A more typical day has me getting there at 4:30 or even later. By the time we get them home and feed them, there's not much left. Each child has devised a way to combat this: Princess stays up all night, and Dexy only sleeps when he's in our bed. We figure it's only fair; they want to spend time with us at night since they can't during the day.

Enter summer. For 10-12 straight bewildering weeks, Sven and I are both stay at home parents. You can see the euphoria in the eyes of my children. Mommy and Daddy at our mercy 24 hours a day! Again, each has devised a particular way to take advantage of the additional Mommy/Daddy time.

Dexy is injuring himself to get kisses. I watched him yesterday slowly lower himself to the floor (picture big toddler belly and fat toddler legs), put his head on the linoleum, and gently bonk his head. He stood up, rubbing his head, and his eyes found me.

"Ouch," he moaned, sounding not at all like E.T.

"Oh, sweet baby," I crooned. "Do you need a kiss?" Eyes solemn, he nodded, presenting his golden little head for me to kiss. He has now thus "injured" himself approximately once every fifteen minutes for the past two days. I am now typing this one handed, since Dexy is in my left arm, a fistful of my hair and his own thumb providing comfort.

Princess, on the other hand, is alternating between really excellent behavior and tantrum-throwing brattiness. Sven has decided to deal with this by spending more time with her (yay!) and teaching her to be more like him (yay?). So far her innate femininity has conquered his attempt to get her to befriend the backyard junebugs (my least favorite outdoor summer flying non-biting insect) and wear t-shirts and shorts. On the other hand, she can name several different species of sharks and dinosaurs and demonstrated the correct way to throw a punch tonight.

We are so very grateful for the loves my kids have in common:

1. Swimming

2. Backyardigans (For Kristina: The Backyardigans is a show on Nickelodeon featuring three improbably-colored, incorrectly scaled animal kids (see image below) who imagine themselves in different situations each week. They dance and sing in different styles every week, familiarizing children with genres such as rap, zydeco, and Gilbert and Sullivan. Seriously. I love this show.)

3. Spongebob

4. Shrieking

5. Inappropriate TV (The Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama, CNN)

The first part of every vacation is spent reasserting our dominance. Princess meets every command with "No" and Dexy just grins and runs away. I know it will be a rough couple of days, but a wonderful summer awaits us.

Really.

I hope.

Summer, ah summer...

I am a public school teacher. I teach music for grades K-5. At work, I try to adhere to the high standards of my profession. (See figure below.)

Friday was our last day. Now is the time when I get to "let my hair down," so to speak. Until 2005, my lifestyle changed drastically each summer. (See figure below.)

What happened in 2005 to change this relaxed, Transylvanian lifestyle? (See figure below.)

And again, in 2007, my wings were clipped even further. (See figure below.)

Farewell to the days of sleeping until 10:00 a.m., eating microwave popcorn or cold pizza for breakfast, and wearing the same clothes all day. I became a mom. We all know where this ends. (See figure below.)

But, being the kind of upbeat, go-get-'em gal that I am, I prefer to list the positive things that being a mom has added to my summer:

1. I am no longer in danger of missing a single episode of Spongebob Squarepants. I strongly identify with Patrick. He's good people. (See figure below.)

2. I now officially have an excuse to buy clay, chalk, watercolors, felt, and glue. It's for the children.

3. I now officially have an excuse to eat peanut butter every day. Sven can roll his eyes all he wants.

4. I now officially have an excuse to have a membership to the zoo, and can visit weekly, if I so desire. (See figure below.)

5. Kool-Aid.

I think I got a great deal.