Of Gods and Demigods

Under the Friday night lights, on any given Sunday, American football fans sit in rapt attention as their gridiron gods face the longest yard at fourth and goal.

Once again, football season is upon us. Soon, the temperature will fall, leaves will begin to change color, and fans will huddle under blankets and drink hot chocolate while cheering on the home team from the stands. Homecoming will be celebrated at every high school and on every college campus across this nation, and grown men with paunches and jowls will fondly reminisce about their glory days in uniform while little boys dream of throwing footballs and scoring touchdowns, and little girls aspire to being cheerleaders or members of pom pom squads.

Make no mistake, we are a polytheistic society in America and our true religion is football. We worship an entire pantheon of football gods and demigods, from peewee to pro.We celebrate their victories and revile their defeats. The hiring and firing of football coaches is more important than the election of a new president or pope. And only in America can a man quit his job in order to play fantasy football full-time.

Recently, we took Darling Daughter to Blue and Gold night at her school. Boys from fifth to twelfth grade wore football jerseys and were introduced to the crowd as this year's line-up of gridiron heroes. I was struck anew by the swagger those boys possess while proudly wearing their football jerseys, even the youngest of them. They move with the confidence of warriors, sure of victory and its spoils.

Darling Daughter and three of her BFFs were walking in front of me, Darling Husband and two other moms. As the girls made their way past a group of fifth grade football players, I noticed the openly appraising looks a number of them gave my daughter and her friends. The girls were completely oblivious to the boys, not even sparing them the most fleeting of glances - they are still at that magical age when boys' opinions of their looks do not matter and boys' romantic attentions are not sought. I was stunned and torn. Stunned because it was the first time I saw my daughter looked at in a boy-likes-girl kind of way. Torn because I can remember wanting to be the object of those same kinds of appraising glances from the football gods of my day, but I'm not sure I want DD to be the object of those glances even when she's older. I worry that today's boys are more reckless, insensitive and narcissistic than they were thirty years ago. Or perhaps today's football gods are no more reckless, insensitive and narcissistic than the ones of yore, perhaps the difference is that my perspective has changed. I am no longer a young girl yearning to win the attention of a football player; instead, I am the mother of a young girl.

That changes everything.

Adventures in Grocery Shopping

Kroger opened its first Marketplace megastore in Arkansas over the weekend. Here's what was missing from my shopping experience:

• Exorcist on aisle 9 for the tot who was in the throes of a major demonic possession over a toy he couldn't have
• Fashion police in produce for the white trashionista who failed to properly bag her melons and left them dangling near her navel
• Sniper at register 4 to shoot either the clueless cashier or the coupon freak in line in front of me

Maybe it's me, but I don't want to hike over 124,000 square feet in order to do my weekly grocery shopping. I don't want to buy furniture and bed linens along with my milk and eggs. I hate shopping in cavernous warehouse-like buildings that magnify rather than diminish the ambient noise - if I wanted to shop in such a store, I'd just go to the white trash Mecca otherwise known as a Walmart Superstore. I don't need a sushi bar or a café, and I would never in a million years purchase a piece of so-called fine jewelry from the same place I get my deli meat. I am seriously considering defecting to the Fresh Market for most of my shopping - at least the store is a manageable size and there is beautiful classical music playing every time I shop there. Who cares if I don't recognize any of the brands and have to pay twice as much for meat and cheese? It might be worth it to avoid having to march through acres of useless crap to get to the things on my shopping list ...

Looking For Me?

If you're looking for me, you'll have to wander over to I Wonder Wye to read my latest musings on age (aptly titled "Musings on Age"). I am doing my good friend AGL a.k.a. Wye a solid by providing blog fodder for her while she and her beloved Excy are otherwise occupied at the Cleveland Clinic getting Excy a new heart valve and stem. Madam Wye is one of the few bloggers I know IRL (that's computer/IM/text-speak for 'in real life' for you analog types). She's a class act and one of my closest, dearest friends. She's also the most beautiful woman I've ever heard drop the f-bomb, and I am delighted and enchanted anew each time she does. The juxtaposition of the two things amuses me no end. But that's probably because I'm an incorrigible and incurable potty mouth IRL as well as in my blog writing. I doubt you'll ever see any f-bombs on AGL's blog, though - nonetheless, you should check her blog out. Her blog is a perfect sorbet course you can read to cleanse your palate between my saucy rantings ...

Kato's Plan of War

Hi, I'm Kato*. I hate my frickin' diet. THIS MEANS WAR!!! Okay ... I overdone that. I have one question: Do you hate diets ... CUS I hate DIETS!!!! ... Okay now that that's over, I will sing a tune: I Hate Diiieeeettts!!!!!! Okay. I'm done now.
Sencirly,
Kato
P.S. I HATE DIETS!
Contact me: Kato@fuud.bowl

*Note: Kato is the other cat in the Dame Nuisance household. This post courtesy of Darling Daughter.

Nyet Diet

Greetings Readers of Blog, it is I, Cosmo, most magnificent of house kets! I em writing to you this day for hoping you will plead case with Dame. She nuisance now for to being sure since she, how you say? Put me on diet. Da! Diet. Ugly word is diet. And ugly is Cosmo for to being when Cosmo lose hees voluptuous roundness, no thanking to diet. Come winter, Cosmo too skinny to keeping Dame's toes warm. Dame sorry then. So please for to taking pity on thees poor star-ved house ket. Tell Dame nyet diet for Cosmo or I contacting ASPCA. Dame worry for own skin then. Da. ASPCA no laugh when seeing how skinny and bone Cosmo is with diet.

Existential Questions

I think I have taken leave of my senses. The question is: Is this a permanent vacation or a quick side trip? Answer: Only time will tell. (Yes, I know I'm being cryptic. But explaining just isn't in the cards today, my friends, and tomorrow's lookin' iffy, too ...)

Sometimes I wonder which is harder on me: The holding on or the letting go? Every time I think I know the answer, something happens to make me question it all over again. Maybe the answer is: Both (since I seem to hold on to and let go of the wrong things in equal measure).

How is it that my husband tells me he's had me on the brain for almost twenty years but can't manage to even start thinking about a gift for me for my birthday, our anniversary, Christmas or Valentine's Day more than two or three days in advance of the event? And yet this same man will spend weeks, months, and now years, completely obsessed about which hat or computer game to buy?

Is it me or is there a disconnect somewhere?

Xanax or Valium?

Coffee or tea?

Paper or plastic?

Ginger or Maryann?

Boxers or briefs?

To blog or not to blog? (Granted, it's not Shakespeare, but it will have to do.)

Why don't do-overs exist beyond the pages of fiction and edges of playgrounds?

What is the point? Answers welcome ...

Lebenszeichen

A sign of life. That's right. I. Am. Alive. I realize you've had absolutely no evidence of this the last (give or take) ten weeks, and I apologize.

They say life is what happens to you when you've already made plans. Actually, life is what happens to you no matter what. Or maybe we should just say life happens (like shit happens) and leave it at that.

But it's me and, of course, I can't leave it at that. Leaving it at that isn't fun. Or sporting. Or much of a blog post.

I have been struggling with a bit of an existential crisis. Deep in a funk for the last ten weeks, I have been unable to blog. Not only that, I haven't been able to read any of the blogs I follow. I have even considered committing blogicide.

Feel free to gasp collectively.

I can't promise this post means that I'm back in the saddle again on a regular basis, although I have put my foot down and told Darling Husband that I don't want to 'share' my laptop with him anymore - the first small baby step towards a new selfishness, a selfishness that doesn't so much take away from others as it gives to me. I am going to be focusing more on my writing - especially my novel. I need to finish editing it and get it published, one way or another. It's too important to me not to.

And in honor of these momentous changes, I have opted for a different look on the blog. Gave the old gal a little makeover. Haven't decided yet how long the new 'duds' will last, but at least it is an outward manifestation of some of the inward changes that have gone on the last few weeks.

To be continued ... hopefully.

Memoir Monday: Confessions of a Former Control Freak

For this week's edition of Memoir Monday, I am going all the way back to the beginning of my marriage to Darling Husband. When you're done here, be sure to head on over to Travis's place at I Like To Fish to check out his memory and the memories of the other folks who are brave (or crazy) enough to bare it all for your bloggy pleasure ...

Darling Husband and I have been married nearly 15 years now, and sometimes I look back on my newly married self and marvel that DH put up with me. I was a bit of a control freak when we met, and my control freak tendencies intensified during the year we were engaged and planning our wedding. I wasn't a Bridezilla by any means, but suffice it to say, I definitely had the potential. What follows is the story of how DH began to cure me of my control freak ways ...

Instead of going on a honeymoon, we moved lock, stock and two cats to Nashville, TN right after we got married. We loaded up everything DH owned that had survived the Great Purge - you know, the one where most of what a bachelor owns in the way of home decor is usually deemed too fugly for the marriage home and is summarily purged before it has a chance to darken the doorstep of the new abode. DH's stuff was no exception. There's not a woman alive who's willing to live with a Rolling Rock banner, a coffee table made from a Do Not Enter sign, and the fugliest faux Naugahyde recliner ever bought from a flea market auction. Just trust me on this. And since we were moving into a two-bedroom apartment, there was no room for a Man Cave - the second bedroom was already designated as the office where I consequently spent many hours studying and writing research papers because I was a grad student at Vanderbilt.

Not long after we got settled in to the new apartment, DH told me he wanted to get his hair cut. At the time we got married, DH had been rocking a flat top for about two years. The flat top was not a leftover from military service as most people assumed, but rather a matter of convenience and expedience. DH was big into having a no-fuss, no-muss, wash-and-wear 'do, and the flat top was nothing if not that. Being the control freak that I was, I told DH to look in the phone book for a barber shop instead of just getting in the car and driving around. I had already been living in Nashville for a year and didn't recall seeing a single barber shop, only hair salons, and there's not a stylist on the planet who knows how to cut a flat top. You need the crustiest, crankiest ex-Marine-turned-barber for that. I knew there had to be barber shops in Nashville - every city has them, but they were a dying breed back then and not exactly on every street corner. DH looked at me and said, "Okay." Then I told DH to take only $10 out of our account because a flat top wasn't going to cost him more than $10, even in the big city. DH once again said, "Okay," and I left our apartment for the day, cloaked in the warm fuzzy glow of a new wife secure in the knowledge that she and her new Mister were seeing eye-to-eye.

 

Boy, was I wrong.

When I got home that afternoon, DH was not sporting a flat top any longer. Instead, he'd gotten a buzz cut, and it looked like he'd let a Kindergartner do it, to boot. The conversation that followed went like this:

Me: What the hell happened to you?
DH: (matter-of-factly) I got my hair cut.
Me: Well, I can see that, but that's not the haircut you said you were going to get.
DH: (agreeing) Not exactly.
Me: Was it at a barber shop? A barber did that to you?
DH: No.
Me: (exasperated) Where did you get your hair cut then?
DH: (looking a little sheepish) Fantastic Sam's.
Me: What?!? Fantastic Sam's? That's not a barber shop!
DH: I know. I couldn't find a barber shop.
Me: What do you mean you couldn't find a barber shop? You said you were going to look in the phone book for a barber ...
DH: (cutting his exasperated new bride off) No, YOU said I was going to look in the phone book.
Me: (eyes narrowed) But you agreed to it, you said, "Okay."
DH: I said, "Okay," but I wasn't agreeing with you.
Me: (non-plussed) So, what? 'Okay' doesn't mean 'I agree', it just means the sound waves are bouncing off your ear drums?!?
DH: Pretty much.
Me: (changing the subject, but not really) And did you take out only $10?
DH: (again matter-of-factly) No. I took out $20.
Me: What?!? But you said you were only going to take out $10!
DH: No, YOU said I was going to take out $10.
Me: (with teeth gritted) And. You. Agreed. With. Me.
DH: No, I said, "Okay," but I wasn't -
Me: (finishing DH's sentence) Agreeing with me.
DH: (nodding) Right.
Me: (sighing in defeat) And 'okay' just meant 'I hear you', not 'I agree with you'.
DH: (beaming) Exactly.

I eyed his ugly buzz cut, still fuming at how my new husband had pretty much smiled and nodded and did as he damn-well pleased. But then the strangest thing happened: I began to laugh. At myself. At him. At the situation. And most of all, at that ugly ass buzz cut he got. He looked at me with a slightly alarmed expression on his face, and I stopped laughing long enough to say, "I can't stay mad at you considering that haircut is poetic justice."

Cue canned laughter.

That was pretty much the beginning of the end of my control freak days. I have relapses every now and then, but for the most part, I don't have to micromanage every little thing in life, particularly when it comes to Darling Husband. To this day, however, whenever that man says "Okay," I still ask him, "Is that okay-the-sound-waves-are-bouncing-off-my-eardrum or is that okay-I-agree-with-you-and-or-will-do-whatever-it-is-you're-telling-me-to-do?"

Clear communication is definitely key to having a happy, harmonious and bad-haircut-free marriage.

Memoir Monday: Puking Drunk

I've been meaning to participate in my bloggy buddy Travis' Memoir Mondays, where those of us who are willing, take a stroll down memory lane. But life, with its usual twists and turns, has gotten in the way of late. It's still in the way, truth be told, but I'm going to regale you all with the story of the one and only time in my life I have ever been puking drunk. And when you're done here, head on over to I Like To Fish where Travis will have links to other participants' contributions.

It was April of 1993. I was 24 and had been living and working in Heidelberg, Germany for a little over six months at that point. My German host-parents invited me to go with them to Austria during Easter break, and I happily accepted their offer. When I had been an exchange student living with them during my senior year in high school, we'd taken a trip to Austria over Easter, and I had very fond memories of that trip, so it was a no-brainer for me when they offered to take me along.

We lucked out that year because there was a Heuriger in the same little village where we were staying that was already open for the season. The word Heuriger (pronounced 'hoy-ree-ger') literally means this year's, as in this year's wine. In Austria, local wine growers are allowed to open their doors to the general public and sell that year's wine, along with cheese and cold cuts, for a two-week period (give or take). Unlike restaurants, they are strictly prohibited from selling any wine that was not produced by their own vines. The various wine growers in the region try to stagger their two weeks so that there is always at least one or two Heurigen open from early spring through late summer.

So off we go, me, my host-mother Siegi (pronounced 'Zee-gee') and my host-father Karl. When we arrived at the Heuriger, things were in full swing, and every table was occupied by at least two or three people. In Europe, however, this is not a problem. If there are any unoccupied chairs at a table in a cafe, restaurant, bar or Heuriger, they are fair game whether you know the people sitting at that table or not. It is perfectly acceptable to walk up to the table and ask those already seated if the empty seats are available. If no one is sitting there, they will tell you the seats are available and you can sit down. This is an utterly alien concept to an American, but because I had already lived in Germany as an exchange student, it didn't faze me when we sat down at a table that was already occupied by a few of the locals.

We ordered wine and a plate with cheese and cold cuts, and then, as these things are wont to happen, particularly whenever my host-mother was around, we ended up in conversation with the folks at our table. I was a bit of a conversation piece because it soon came out that I was an American, but no ordinary one, since I was that strangest of all beasts, an American who could speak German. We talked and laughed, ate cheese and cold cuts, and drank lots and lots of wine. The wine was served in small glass tumblers that had a grape leaf motif along the top of the glass. One of the locals at our table was a spry and frisky 86-year-old named Ferdinand Däubl (pronounced doy-bel). Every time the level of wine in my glass fell below the grape leaf motif, ol' Ferdinand would pipe up and say to me with a wink and a leer "Deine Blätter sind welk!" as he poured more wine into my glass. Roughly translated, "Deine Blätter sind welk" means "Your leaves are wilting," and it was Ferdinand's way of saying I needed more wine in my glass. Before I knew it, the old rascal was proposing he and I take a walk in the tall rye grass. No doubt ol' Ferdinand had gone walking in the rye with quite a few Mädels in his day, but I wasn't going to join their ranks. I declined the offer, which only made the others at the table howl with laughter and ol' Ferdinand blush. Ferdinand was aptly named because 'Däubl' is a dialect version of devil. Ferdinand was definitely a devil, even at 86.

I had a great time that night but didn't realize how drunk I was until it was time to walk home. The damn pavement was suddenly a lot more uneven than it had been earlier in the evening as we walked to the Heuriger. When I got to my room and laid down, the room began to spin like mad and I was burning up. I managed to get myself upright and ripped off all my clothes in an effort to cool off, laid back down but kept a foot on the floor in the hopes it would keep the room from spinning. But I was way too drunk for even that to help. Next thing I knew, I had to hurl. I left my room and made a mad dash for the water closet just down the hall, buck naked. I made it just in time to puke all over the wall and floor of the water closet instead of in the toilet. Once I finished puking, I went and grabbed some towels and attempted to clean my godawful mess up and that's how my host-mother found me, kneeling buck naked in the hall, half in and half out of the WC. I was quite a sight, I'm sure. The only thing that would have been worse was if my host-father had found me instead. I tried to apologize for the mess, but Siegi just shooed me to bed, saying she'd clean the rest up.

The next morning, with the worst hangover of my life, Karl came into the kitchen. I was sitting at the breakfast table drinking coffee but in no condition to eat solid food yet. Karl said to Siegi that there was a funny smell in the WC and wanted to know if she had any idea what was causing it. I looked up quickly and thought my head was going to detach from my shoulders at the movement, and winced at both the pain and the imminent humiliation. But Siegi did something completely unexpected. She shrugged and told Karl she had no idea what was causing the smell. Then, when Karl wasn't looking, she gave me a little wink. It hurt to smile, so my smile was closer to a grimace, but I gave it my best.

Moral of the story, boys and girls: If you ever meet a man named 'Devil', do NOT drink wine with him.

Guest Post: Cosmo, Most Magnificent of All Cats

Greetings inferior human readers of Blog. It is I, Cosmo, most magnificent of all Cats. I have taken time from busy day (eating, sleeping, pooping, eating, sleeping, eating, sleeping) to hijack blog introduce my most magnificent self. Dame N. says I am merely domestic shorthair, but what know she? I am descending from greatest of all Cats, the Russian Blue. My Father risk life and paw to meet my Mother, but that is story for the telling another day. It is honor for her to be serving me, and she will be knowing my displeasure at her inglorious description when I, how you say? barfing on her shoes. Yes, that is it. I will barfing on her shoes to showing displeasure. It is what I do. I am Cat.

So, why is Cat writing blog, you are asking? Dame N. no write, Dame too busy mumbling about Mister hunting the job, but I no listen. Hunting is for proletariat, and I am indoor Cat, I no hunt. That's what human is for, da? Da. Also, Dame doing the battle with vicious invader, name of Paul Len. I no see him yet, but I plan to barfing on his shoes when I do. That Paul Len make Dame head for to aching, nose for to running, eyes for to itching and sinuses for to clogging - but I confuse on last one. Clogging is form of dancing, not good for Cats because tails for to getting step-ped on. But no matter. That Paul Len, he on barf list, number one spot, da!

Dame N. also do something called the monitor of batch. Was fun for Cosmo because Dame no sleep regular time, Dame stay up late keeping Cat hours, but Dame very tired, very cranky after. Cosmo think Dame need beauty sleep so Dame is for to being as magnificent as Cosmo. But what I say? That is not for to being possible - Dame lowly human, Dame no Cat. Please for to excusing me, Cosmo feeling hairball coming. Must for to barfing now.