Caustically Optimistic

rules, regulations, and requirements

Everyone has rules they want everyone to follow and rules that they ignore because they think those rules are stupid.  Driving offers us a plethora of examples.  I think that using blinkers is more important than obeying the speed limit.  I don’t think that people aren’t handicapped should park in handicapped parking but the handicapped shouldn’t park in our spaces either.  I jaywalk like it’s my job on Dixie Highway no less but I’d like you to be ticketed when you do it – especially if you’re the [insert feminine hygiene product here] that stairs me down while doing it.  I’m a terrible driver so I’m not going to talk a great deal about how to move a car around.

The area where I am most concerned about rules, regulations, and my hypocritical application thereof would be in the writing, speaking, and presentation of the English language.  The English language follows Jesus, comes before the Republic, and ties my family and students in the order of things that I love with my whole heart.  Studies in the English Language was my favorite class at University and I would have taken Language and Linguistics but there was the small matter of a nervous breakdown and a larger matter of an oppositional/defiant disorder when in a formal learning setting with my debate coach who was the instructor. 

There are words I’d like you to stop using, “a lot,” and “got” are the ones that run to the front of my mind.  There are a multitude of better words to use when you’re describing the state of having heaps of stuff.  When I teach English I teach two lessons early in the year where we go over better methods to express one self than using those two words.  I lose my religion quickly when someone writes “a lot” as one word instead of two.  Consequently motherfucker is one word, not two and I’d rather have that dropped into conversations and formal writing than other words. 

Another rule I am a big fan of serial commas; you call them Oxford/Harvard Commas.  I have permission from Dr. Jewett to use them as well as Chaos Bean.  There are several authorities whom would argue against the use of the serial comma but the last time I was told not Dr. Jewett referred to the rule as “Canadian” which probably meant “normative in Canada” but I took with the pejorative Midwestern, “not quite Minnesotan” meaning of the word.  I like them because they add form and cadence to the visual form of writing chiefly since my writing turns into rants where I rattle off a list of adjectives without warning, credence, or need. 

However, double negatives and ending sentences in prepositions are things that are not Canadian rules but rather Latin.  The prohibition against double negatives comes from a time before time when monks were conforming English to Latin grammar so that we might have grammar at all.  Double negatives add emphasis to words written and spoken and go well with soda crackers, and serial commas.  I add the double negative rule because it one that I don’t follow along with the idea of ending sentences in prepositions being tawdry.  Hemmingway did it, so it does imply that the practice is suspect and probably crude, but the difference between Hemmingway, and you and I would be that Hemmingway moved paper and we’re reliant on other bored nerds surfing the internet begging for attention, validation, and companionship. 

There are a ton of rules that I get wrong and don’t care about.  You have your rules about the English Language that you’d like everyone to adhere to.  I know I am putting myself in jeopardy of my comments being spammed unto death by people who are barely clever inundating it with words like, “a lot” and “got.” 

If you find her: I am looking for a woman who follows these rules without trepidation, and breaks the other rules with abandon.   Also, a woman who knows how to use a semicolon and ‘whom’ correctly is more important to me than anything. 

 

it doesn't end well

I turned thirty-one this week and unfortunately have not yet grown up.  Birthdays aren’t a big deal for me, but people like to do nice things for you on your birthday and it’s rude not to let them do it.  My parents and sister got me frames to frame things from the campaign to match the frames they gave me at Christmas.  They also each gave me the same birthday card, it’s an inside joke in our family about disregarding Stefanie (ostensibly and in sensibleness our voice of reason).  However, my sister gave me the gift that we all want from our family without intending to.  

No, she did not die and leave me a huge sum of money. 

And people do like to do things for your birthday.  When I lived in Phoenix the birthdays were epic.  I knew by the time I was there to ‘go with the flow’ of a birthday.  When I was twenty-one I didn’t know this and despite James’ best efforts I wouldn’t drink and didn’t get so drunk I was sick from it so James had to do it FOR me.  When things happen on my birthday or if we do something it’s always spectacular: mullet hunting in Philadelphia comes to mind or climbing the Coliseum in Rome.  I didn’t know it at the time, but this would be the birthday that will (hopefully) end all birthdays.  This was the mother of all birthdays.  It was birthdatgate.  Is there a cliché I am leaving out? 

My sister took me out for dinner after work.  I had worked about ten hours and it was a depressing, unproductive day.  I didn’t really want to go out for dinner but I was hungry and I wanted to cook and clean up a dinner less than I wanted to go out for one.  We agreed up on a restaurant and as soon as I got home we were supposed to turn around and leave again.  My sister made me change clothes because I didn’t want to go anything on my work clothes.  I did what she wanted but wasn’t totally aware of why at the time. 

My sister and I don’t get along very well because I am a jerk.  I try to go along with things when we are and not upset the boat.  We went to a place she likes to go with her friends (and can now never show her face in again).  We ordered wings and French-fried potatoes, she had diet Coke and as per Lent I had iced tea.  I will own the truth: I wanted a beer or a diet Coke, but because it is Lent and I had to work the following morning I passed on both respectively.  I should not have passed. 

After a bit I didn’t feel good and we asked for the check and I went outside for fresh air while she finished the transaction.  There was a bar two doors down from where we ate without an outside patio for working on lung cancer.  These people, who had gotten a beer and maybe even a diet Coke with a little something, something in it all watched me come to the realization that my dinner wasn’t staying with me and that I wouldn’t have time to make it to a respectable place to toss my cookies.  Instead, somewhere on Bardstown Road – a road once maintained by Abraham Lincoln’s father – there is a puddle of sick left by me on my birthday. 

I didn’t do this last year when I had a thing or seventeen to drink.  I didn’t do this ten years earlier in Rome with my college buddies when drunken vomiting would be considered a right of passage or cute.  I did this from food poisoning like an old person on a public sidewalk like trash.  I did this being heckled by drunks who, I hope, slipped in it on their way home.  You’ll notice that I had the presence of mind to take a picture of it but not to find a toilet.  I also text-messaged my sister mid-hurl to try and light a fire under her.  It did not work. 

I spent the ride home picking vomit out of my nose and fielding phone calls about my birthday and how it was going, “I made a big splash…”on the sidewalk of Bardstown Road. I'm really glad my sister made me change my clothes.  Vomit and argyle do not mix. 

And as an epilogue to my tale of sadness: today, when I was at a meeting at work one of my coworkers said, “I thought I saw you throwing up on the sidewalk last night but I realized that you wouldn’t do something cool enough to puke on the side of the road like a Hobo.  You don’t party seriously enough.”  Indeed, DeAnna pointed out, had I stayed in Phoenix and partied seriously I wouldn’t have had something on my stomach to make me sick.  How is leaving your dinner cool?  Seriously?  Upon elaboration as to how ‘cool’ the experience was or wasn’t, there is nothing cool about pulling a half-eaten fry out of your nose.  I really need to chew my food better. 

And this is what my sister gave me for my birthday: Blog Fodder.  I wasn’t going to have anything to say to all those well-meaning people who asked, “did you get anything nice for your birthday?” 

if I knew (how to save a life)

I lost some of my best friends because of my work on the Obama campaign.  I realize that they weren’t friends in that event or even best friends but I lost them anyway.  I am not hurt by that turn of events: eventually people show their true colors and I’d prefer that happen sooner rather than later.  I had hoped that during my work on the campaign I would meet people to fill the hole in my life created by the loss of my friends.  

Instead I learned something else about life. 

When you love someone, whether it is fraternal, familial, platonic, or romantic, you carve out a special place in your heart for that person.  No one else can fill it.  People are special in their own way and no one else can take that place. Alternately Whitney Houston tells us, “Once you love somebody, don’t you always love somebody,” and Nate said, “If everyone is special then no one is.” 

I realized this truth last year when I wrote on my white board that, “You are my favorite student.”  Each of my students is a person that I love and care about – in their own way – and while I had students that I loved more than, or favored, more than others I did love them all.  It is what makes me a better teacher than most.  Between the ones I could depend on to help me and the ones I could depend on to laugh at my jokes, and the ones that I could depend on to be delightfully mischievous and need every ounce of my patience I realized that I loved all of them in their own special way.  Renea told me to do this, I wasn’t sure what she was talking about and I knew I couldn’t do it.  Many a time I felt like Luke Skywalker on the side of the pond waiting for Yoda to pull my ship out until I realized that I was failing because I was failing to believe.  Love is the key to success in any pure endeavor. 

I realized this, but didn’t know it, when the debacle happened with my relatives so many years ago.  I realized that I didn’t love them and I was perhaps using them or allowing myself to be used.  I contend that I wasn’t using anyone but for the sake of argument let’s grant that I was.  I also realized that while my sister and I will eventually destroy each other in a titanic clash that will make the 2008 Democratic Primary look like a PTA election I do love her.  It also refined my definition of family, as articulated by my cousin Daniel, “your family are the people that you’re related to that you care about and care about you, and have a relationship with.”  I would expand that to include the people who are at the core of your life.  It is how Valerie and Ashley are important to me and for some reason I am important to them.  It’s why I know I would do anything for Gretchen or Michelle and I know that when I really need them Michelle or Gretchen will save me.  It’s what would drive me to watch Cindy’s mom for the weekend because I know that Cindy would do the same for me.  It's why I wasn't lying when I told that customer I had a lot of children who needed me - and that I need. 

What you need to know about living and loving is this: it is going to hurt.  People will tear themselves out of your heart and leave big, gaping holes that might get smaller over time but will always remain.  The key is learning to move around them and not fall into them.  You can’t fit new people in those holes: only around them.  

I didn't meet the people to plug the holes in my life caused when I started working for Obama but I did meet great people during that time.  Sure, there are a couple people I'm glad I will never see or break bread with again, but there are people I cannot wait to see again.  

Parts of this post were brought out, illuminated, during a conversation with Kristi.  

four rules for lying

We all have those moments when we feel stupid.  When we put the milk in the cabinet and the cereal in the refrigerator or back into a shopping cart in the Kroger parking lot where our friend works, sending it flying into a BMW.  Gretchen would call these human moments.  I thrive off these moments.  They’re when I feel alive, when I feel stupid.  What I could live without are moments when someone I realize that someone thinks I am stupid. 

This Christmas we had our usual round of parties and this Christmas I even hosted one.  I’ve never hosted a party in my parent’s home before and I’ve only really co-hosted a party with Casey or Michelle before.  I have a social-anxiety disorder and I don’t like to go to parties, be at parties, or have one.  They’re an endurance test for me.  I think that’s why when I do need to do something of this nature I prefer to have a dinner party: it gives me something to do to absorb my nervous energy.  I spend the entire time nauseous and if I learned one thing from grandfather who served in the Navy it was, “having something on your stomach if you’re nauseous because if vomiting sucks you should try dry heaves.” 

I went to my friend’s acquaintance’s Super Bowl party this Sunday.  When I arrived at the party the host thanked me for coming to the party and apologized because they missed my party.  They had text-messaged the day of the party and said they could not attend.  They text-messaged days after the party and said they had missed the party because their stepmother’s father had died.  I put it out of my mind, save for concern for my friend acquaintance and their family.  I didn’t hold it against them:  I miss parties all the time for lesser reasons.  I preface my RSVP to social events with my social anxiety disorder in case I ‘freak out,’ and know in advance I can’t do it.  I once helped my friend Linda move in a valiant effort to avoid a meet and great with the Governor.

He told me they had missed my party because his wife had to prepare for a job interview on the telephone.  It was in that moment that I wanted to leave.  Had I not been parked in and had I not promised my friend Leslie I’d be at the party with them I would have left.  I reeled; I lost my balance.  I was furious: not that they had missed my party but because they didn’t have enough regard for me as a human being to coordinate their reason for standing me up.  If this wasn’t enough – because politeness would have dictating me writing off this indignity – his wife, also a friend acquaintance, apologized for us missing the party because he had been sick.  

I'm not mad they missed my party.  I could give a quick list of reasons why our party wasn't bereft of their society.  That' s tacky so I won't, what I am doing is tacky enough.  

I wanted upon to call Suburban Island because it says in the Bible in 2 Chaos Bean, 4:12, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the Suburban Island from whence cometh my scolding.  My scolding cometh from the Suburban Island; which made Web 2.0 and Social Networking.”  I need someone to right my ship.  I need someone to tell me to behave.  I needed to ask myself, “What Would Suburban Island Do?”  Simmer with rage, blog about it later!  I wanted to ask myself, “What Would Chaos Bean Do?  Use their toaster, a copy of US Weekly, and a bad gas line to blow up their house ala Jason Bourne.  If you can imagine, on my shoulders sit Chaos Bean in a red jack with a skeleton on it, she’s holding a martini telling me, “don’t get mad, get even,” on the other shoulder is a frazzled Suburban Island dressed in the manner of Glenda the Good Witch, she is juggling: a rosary, a lap top, cell phone, and a PDA with one hand, holding a Caramel Macchiato (double sugar-free caramel, skim milk) in the other saying Hail Mary’s entreating me to be good.  I don't like people treating me like I am stupid.  I hate it.  It disturbs my digestion.  

I let Suburban Island win this battle and endured the rest of the party and I wish I had done it better.  I had moments of rudeness of my own.  I was glad when game was over and I could leave.  I was glad when I left that I would never have to go back there.  The parking is impossible and I can never find their house anyway.  I think it was a hint from God: find other homies.  I've gotten the hint.  Please Lord, let those homies be Valerie and Doug.  Let me go home.  

I am not a good liar, and Chaos Bean isn’t either.  We have developed a few simple rules for lying to people to make your life easier and your friendships stronger. 

1. Don’t do it.  We try to be frank and explicit at all times – which creates it’s own confusion – people always know where we stand (near the open bar or the potato chips) and are never offended to learn we had led them to believe something false.  It’s easier to keep the truth together than it is to hold a lie in place. 
2. If you must lie, keep it simple.  It is very difficult to keep a complex lie straight.  For instance, when I taught elementary school Johnny’s great aunt Arlene died six times in one year.  Do not give a name of the relative who died and do not give them an important station.  Express that the relative wasn’t that close to you but you had to go because of family politics or your cousins needed you there.  Nothing makes you look like a bigger ass then being caught later in public with Dead Aunt Arlene.
3. “I am saying this because you want to hear it,” came right out of Chaos Bean’s mouth at our Grandmother’s funeral, and she proceed to tell my cousin a polite reason why we are not close with them.  Always preface what people want to hear with the fact that you’re only going to say it because of that.  You could see Chaos Bean’s deep and abiding love for humanity when she said this: she loved them enough to do this.  Normally we would suggest saying, “I know you want me to tell you that the name for the baby is clever, but really it is stupid,” or something similar. 
4. Coordinate your lie with the other liars.  In the rare occasions that Chaos Bean appear before Captain von Grandfather in a clothing made of curtains we do not profess that our faces are blue because the strawberries were so cold they turned blue.  We have a believable story prepared that is simple and easy to follow.  We have a scenario that is plausible in our lives.  I am a terrible driver and get pulled over a lot.  We live in the boonies and there are always cows in the median, tractors on the highway, or bizarre accidents.  Chaos Bean’s legendary pompadour doesn’t just happen. 

 Presenting believable lies to your friends, loved ones, and people with whom you share your life is the polite thing to do - if you must lie.  I would normally support any bad behavior: drinking, cursing, shoplifting, etc, but lying is so difficult and burns bridges so completely that it should just be avoided.  

As for me, this friendship has quickly gone from being that to an awkward social interaction that I am going to let die on the vine.  I feel that confronting the couple about this would be rude and pointless.  If they didn’t value me enough to tell the truth in the first place, to tell a believable lie, preface their lie, or coordinate it then they also don’t regard me enough as a human being to care that I think they’re rude.  This isn’t worth fighting fire with fire on, and it is never is: in situations like this it’s always best to walk away and not look back.  There are lessons to learn from everything and the lesson I’ve learned in this situation is that if they’re really your friends then they will tell you the truth or a quality lie.  If you can’t do that for someone then you are not a friend.  

my lord Katie

This Sunday we celebrated Luther’s Mass.  We use this Mass, or should, on important religious festivals.  This Sunday we commemorated the Baptism of Christ and I have a lot to say about that occasion but I don’t have a mind for theology; I only have a heart for Jesus.  Chaos Bean wasn’t excited about the prospect of Mass, having been warned yesterday while making lunch for a church group that the Mass wasn’t going to go well because of the music and songs we were going to sing with it.  I wasn't either.  I leaned over to her and said, “Don’t worry, Katherine von Bora,” Martin Luther’s wife, “didn’t like this Mass either.”  Chaos Bean and Katherine von Bora were trained by the same order of Benedictine Sisters subsequently they are armchair experts on each other.  What I said about Katherine von Bora isn’t true: I have no idea her opinion of Luther’s Mass.  What I do know, and what Chaos Bean knows, is that von Bora would have brought it to Luther if he needed it. Rightly translated her name would be Chaos von Bora in English.  

Katherine von Bora is used as the model for the wives of the clergy and members of the laity.  We have a pastor’s wife in our congregation who we use as a gauge for our behavior.  Lois is the model of piety, service to others, and good behavior in church.  If Lois is doing it, we should do it too.  If Lois isn’t doing it, you won’t catch Chaos Bean or I doing it either.  This comes in especially handy when we sing the few hymns we haven’t translated well into English and she closes her hymnbook and waits for the others to plod through the song.  Mass wasn’t horrible and had the choir practiced it the Mass it would have been fantastic.  I can’t help but wonder how it would have gone if Candace of Jurchen, Emily, or Leah Monster had been in church to lead us through it; or had we sung it in German - at least then the angels wouldn't have had to translate our worship for God.  

The little I do know about Katherine von Bora, again, is that she’d have called Luther to the carpet when he was wrong, made fun of him when he was ridiculous, and overlooked the former when in the latter he was right.  I have a coworker who, while selling a car that Hitler had a hand in making, will criticize me for being Lutheran because at the end of Luther’s life he went batshitcrazy during his prolonged, painful death and said some awful things about the Jews that the Nazis revived to make the case for their hatred.  He seeks to ignore the important contributions Luther made to the Christian faith or to the secular culture of the West to hang his hat on something the Nazis did to every German thinker, writer, and composer.  Under his analysis we can’t accept anything anyone has ever done if at some point they did something rather nasty.  If I applied his thinking I would have to disregard Lutheranism and (officially) become a Methodist (until I found something about the Wesley brothers that was dastardly).

Should Republicans reject their entire program because George W. Bush has said a thing or seventeen that were not exactly well thought or grammatically correct?  Should I abandon Progressive thought once Obama slips up?  Should we remember Senator Kennedy for Chappaquiddick or should we think about all the legislation he’s shepherded through the Senate that made our Republic and world a better place?  I think, and I think most people would agree, that people – being human – make mistakes but that doesn’t mean we should disregard their positive contributions.  I know I’d rather be remembered for the good I did as a teacher in total rather than the havoc that I created.

Instead, what I will do is follow the example of Katherine von Bora and craft a new resolution for living: I will hold people to the same standards I hold myself.  I will judge other people the way I judge myself.  Please, don’t think you’re getting off easy.  I am harder on myself than I am on anyone else.  However, I learned a while ago at Valerie’s church that we judge ourselves by our motives (do it, Luther wanted you to!) and we judge others by their actions.  Katherine called out Martin when he was wrong, made fun of him when he was ridiculous, and supported the old lug when he was right.  I am going to continue to do that, but I am going to be careful about it.  Certainly I’m not going to thank Hitler for the Autobahn and ignore the Shoah; but I can’t look at Luther and the contributions of standardizing language through translating the Bible into the vernacular of the people, reforming the Church, and prompting the Legal system to focus on motive instead of action because he wrote something crazy when he was crazy.  I'm going to follow Katherine's example the way I would follow Lois', you should too.  

At no point in this entry did I state or imply that anyone who trained me in anyway resembled either Luther in thought, word, deed, or appearance.  It was really just the hat.  Anyone would look like him in that hat.    

check engine light

Question: What did you get your sister for Christmas?
Answer: Hopefully, you’ll learn the meaning of Christmas BEFORE the check engine light comes on.

Two days before Christmas I had an excuse to slip my earthly bonds and escape Kentucky and travel to Ohio for work. We needed to drop off a driver at another dealership to take delivery of one of their cars. There is a store in Cincinnati that Chaos Bean likes to buy clothes at so I used this as an opportunity for someone else to put gas in my car for a trip to ‘the big city,’ and get something for Chaos Bean that she would like and use. Unfortunately, on the way to Cincinnati a truck overturned delaying six hours and by the time the accident was cleared the malls were closed. No one died in the accident but I’m pretty confident that I’d have liked to choke-out whoever caused the accident because that, combined with my unruly work schedule left me without a gift for the Bean. The trip took us thirteen hours and left use wasted for Christmas Eve.

After work on Christmas Eve we suffered through a trip to the grocery for our parents and then went to a mission church being pastured by our former, and very boring, vicar. It was possibly the worst church service I have ever been to. The sermon was off-point, wrong on the facts, and poorly delivered; the liturgy wasn’t delivered correctly or in order, and the music could best be summed up best as, “a joyful noise unto the Lord,” and nothing much else. Christmas, for me, isn’t about family or Hallmark: it’s a religious holiday.

The only religious thing I get to do around the holiday is going to church. I’m bombarded by the sacrilegious dross from Santa and Frost the Snowman, trees adorned with pagan symbols, to hearing how we should de-Christ Christmas. This irritates me like nothing else because if this happened to a holiday that belonged to a group other than the Christians it would be called cultural imperialism and other nasty things. Imagine, if you can, Hanukkah being a holiday about a magical unicorn that pees gasoline and defecates gold coins or Ramadan being the time of year when Ronald McDonald and the Whooper put aside their differences to burn Colonel Sanders in effigy. Sure, a lot of what you do at Christmas makes you feel good and ‘stuff’ but does it direct you back to the message or purpose of Christmas, which was to displace a pagan holiday and remember the birth of Christ? I’d guess it does not.

So, after not getting Chaos Bean a remarkable gift, and just some small things found here and there, and church being a bust I was convinced that the observation of Christmas would be ruined this year for me. I would place emphasis on gifts so much but I can count the biological family we have a relationship with on my hands so expressing appreciation for that at Christmas and other times of the year is important. As we were leaving the worst Christmas Eve service, ever, Chaos Bean announced that we could make it to Mass at the monastery where she went to school. I decided that since gas was inexpensive and the weather was dry that I would go along with her and make that a present for her. She mentions it every year and gas is either too expensive, the weather to wet, or the hour too late.

After dropping my parents off at home we turned the car around and pointed it towards the monastery. During the hour-plus trip we talked about a lot of things including how we’re estranged from our mother’s relatives, something that pains my sister but to me comes as a great relief. I never understood people who fought to be among people who didn’t accept them; my mother’s family doesn’t like me (or my sister) so I’ve created another ‘family’ around myself of people I care about that care about me and fit the creed of any healthy family, “We love you for who you are and where you’re at, but too much to let you stay there.” Chaos Bean lamented the fact that very few relatives like her but until recently adored me. They’ve never really given her a chance and to be fair, they only liked the idea of me; not the person they took the time to get to know. Perhaps, I thought, our family is normal and I’m expecting something unreasonable from them – and this kids is what we call foreshadowing in the profession – perhaps everyone’s family is psychotic, nasty, and conniving and I’m expecting something from (ironically) a Hallmark movie.

The reason I am saying this is that when we arrived at the monastery Chaos Bean gradually morphed into a different person. There was an appreciable air of anticipation in her gait and her normally crisp attitude softened. I wasn’t sure what it was but as we hurried past the Lourdes Shrine, Madonna Hall where she lived, the Academy where she went to school, and mounted the steps to the Cathedral of Mary Immaculate and the Nunnery it became more intense. I understood as we encountered the Sisters greeting people at the doors. When you visit our Great Grandmother her face lights up in a way that lets everyone in the room know she’s happy to see you and that you are a person she loves very much. With the exception of nuns who’ve joined the order or the convent since my sister’s time there, every one of the Sisters made this face when they saw, greeted, and hugged Chaos Bean. You could attribute this to a standard feeling towards visiting people from the outside world but you’d be wrong, they didn’t great me or anyone beyond the girls who went to school there with such happiness.

Chaos Bean, who helps me in my running critique of everything under heaven was the model of good behavior during the Mass speaking twice, once to tell me not to talk and other time to indicate that priest had knocked the sermon out the park. I could write a book about the sermon but I will say this: it was Christ-centered, direct, and spared no punches on account the holiday. It was fantastic. After the service Chaos Bean stayed behind to clean up the overflow seating and encourage others to do so as well and then pointed out some of the features of the Cathedral unique to that sanctuary – as we both grew up in Germany and have seen more than a couple Cathedrals in our day. We then followed the other worshipers through the gates of the nunnery into their living area – while Chaos Bean discussed what we’d be eating, not unlike how people in normal families describe what Christmas or a holiday would be like at their home with their family and I realized something important.

Chaos Bean knows what a family is and how it should operate because she has been in an extended family that operated well. The Monastery is not unlike what a Grandparent’s home should be for anyone: filled with happy and somber memories, a place that holds the promise that more of those memories will be made and later cherished. It was filled with classmates, other alumni, and of course the Sisters – and everyone was either happy to see each other or emotionally intelligent enough to fake it for the sake of the holiday. It was also filled with other things: cherished artifacts from the past, and foods set aside for special occasions. Mainly, the place was palpably filled with love and joy.

Perhaps, I hold onto the religious aspects of Christmas because those are the only ones left untainted by the trauma of an abusive extended family and abusive grandparents; perhaps its not just morbid religiosity but something more. I’m confident that even if I grew up with a healthy extended family that I would still feel the fervor for my faith but I’m also confident that I wouldn’t be so regimented and doctrinaire about religious observances if there had been other genuine and wholesome attributes to them as there are with other people’s.

Finally, this reminded the gifts given to commemorate the holidays should reinforce the special connections with family – biological and acquired. Sure, Chaos Bean would have liked a new pair of pants or a “Satan Dancing with Delight” hooded sweatshirt but I think the chance to visit the people who love her in a place full of happy memories is important. Going to Mary Immaculate certainly improved my Christmas and I hope it improved her Christmas and started her year on the right footing. She’s good enough, she’s smart enough, and gosh darn it: people love her.

of course we were willing to pay

I am not a nice person. I am a lackluster friend, a terrible son, and worse brother or cousin. Today, however, I did my annual good deed for my sister – the renowned Chaos Bean – I prevented a terrible, horrific disaster and possibly saved my sister’s life and the lives of many other people.

I will soon be going for job interviews and this means that I need to do a great deal before hand – study the organizations that will be interviewing me, having my clothing dry-cleaned, and I need my hair cut so that its manageable for the interview. I usually get the worst haircuts ever: I have a head the size of a small moon with three cowlicks and its as bumpy as the surface of the moon. I only speak English and Seventh Grader; Chaos Bean is important to this process because she is fluent in over six million forms of communication – including hairstylist.

However, this wasn’t my only reason for bringing Chaos Bean with me or allowing her to pick the stylist we went to. Chaos Bean is the good friend, daughter, and cousin and thus allowed our mother to cut her hair. I think something else in the Department of Making Mom Happy happened between Chaos Bean’s last haircut and Mom being near her with scissors and that may be an important part to the story that you’ll have to get from Chaos Bean. The important thing is that something horrible had happened to Chaos Bean with the passage of time and her stylist was needed to help her; I brought her in.

Chaos Bean’s hair was in danger of growing into a mullet. Indeed she was already starting to resemble Senator Clinton and her faux mullet. I have a faux hawk; a faux mullet while faux is still a mullet. It is not okay. I had to help her. She needed an intervention and I didn’t have time for Stacy and Clinton or any one else from TLC. I had to do it myself.

At first when I confronted Chaos Bean with the fact that she had a mullet growing on the back of her head she thought I was teasing her. She thought I was being a pig. There are definitely things that I tease Chaos Bean about, I would list them for you but if you were to mock Chaos Bean then I would throw you under a bus. The stylists, being licensed in the Commonwealth Kentucky, are bound by law not to mock a mullet whilst on duty and it took me a while to get someone to agree with me that she had a mullet and it needed to be fixed. It’s against the law for someone in a professional stylist position to imply or profess that there is anything wrong with a mullet.

Chaos Bean was distraught to learn that her haircut had turned into a mullet. I’m glad she agreed to have the mullet removed (its called a mulletectomy) because had she waited and the mullet had taken the procedure for removing it would be very similar to what they do to rabid animals. Also, had the mullet taken to Chaos Bean and attached itself to her head then she would have had her awesomeness revoked and they would have confiscated her Long Island accent.

Chaos Bean’s preemptive removal of the mullet was fortuitous because a mulletectomy is expensive and painful; they also rarely work and are only short-term solutions. Everyone agreed that the new hairstyle was superior to the Mullet and was very cute. Also, there will be no mullets in this family. I would have drown her.

food network star

I didn’t have television in Phoenix or Hartford so being back at my parent’s house has been an adjustment. I always forget how much I enjoy watching reality television – especially the shows that detail the lives of celebrities passed their prime.

I have also become a fan of food television, or is it the slow fat kid channel? I’m not sure what it’s called but we have been watching a lot of programs that show the cooking and eating of food. This has worked out brilliantly for me since that is what I tend to be doing while watching television.

I watched a show about a restaurant that I used to frequent when I lived in Phoenix and that made me want pancakes. There were other shows after that on pancakes and how different places make them. This inspired me to make pancakes for myself instead of my original impulse to have McDonald’s or Cracker Barrel make me pancakes. My parents are away at the family reunion so, while we do a lot of our own cooking, we’ve become too lazy to do anything.

Making the pancake batter was surprisingly simple. I have made pancake batter before – its not rocket science but this one show used their Kitchen Aide to make sure the batter was perfect, which I did as well. Then, following their advice to cook the pancakes I made breakfast for Chaos Bean and myself.

Of course, this didn’t go as planned. First, the Food Network shows you how to make something but it doesn’t condescend to describe cleaning up after the cooking. So while I had followed their directions to the letter and eventually enjoyed the pancakes cleaning the mess took twice as long as the preparation and eating did together. Also, one batch of pancakes shouldn’t make that much mess because I used the Kitchen Aide but my father is a chef and the Kitchen Aide on our counter is the size of a Volkswagen. We have others but I have no idea where in the equipment pantry they are or if I can lift them.

I also cooked the pancakes using the wrong frying pan, and thank Jesus (or whatever demon you worship)* that Chaos Bean realized this before I washed this – not realizing that some pots and pans, while mixed with the pedestrian pots and pans are not for everyday or untrained use. These same pots and pans also need to be washed with care. These same super pans burned the pancakes because, well, they’re magic. I’m Lutheran; we don’t have magic, free well, or predetermination. We do have Oxford Commas, chips on our shoulders, and an engrossment with bar-shaped desserts and cookies but no magic. Chaos Bean was gracious and said they were, “too brown,” which would have been like saying that Hiroshima had experienced urban renewal.

If I hadn’t used the wrong pan the pancakes would have still been terrible. I know this because when I realized how I was making them wrong I adjusted how I was cooking so that I could give Chaos Bean a breakfast of pancakes that didn’t look like so many denizens of Long Island and Phoenix have been in the sun too long. Chaos Bean has an awful job, I know because she hired me on part-time, and she deserves a good breakfast because that’s the only good thing that may happen in her day.

My point is this: I used special flour for baking special breads and this flour is very salty. My uncle is talented in making pancakes and has pioneered methods of putting fruit in them without burning them or the pancakes being disgusting. My friend, who writes Suburban Island, makes the best reservations for breakfast that you’ll ever take someone up on. I have pioneered a new pancake: the Pretzel Pancake. So, beyond making a mess of the kitchen and being over-cooked they were salty. I was really disappointed that I hadn’t gotten good pancakes out of the deal and had to face an enormous mess as a result of my efforts. I wonder if this was some sort of rare kitchen karma.

To ward against this happening again Chaos Bean and I went to the place where restaurants buy their food and stocked up on things you throw in the oven and then take back out. Sure, it’s not nutritious, delicious, or in any way something you should ingest but so far its not been burnt or tasted the way it should not so we’re going with what is successful.

*Spritopias: now 33% more inclusive and fortified with your daily serving of political correctness.

like donkey kong

This weekend I went to IKEA with Vicki with an invented reason and to have breakfast. While we were there we were looking for a baby present for the English teacher on my team. Specifically, we were looking for a name for the baby, something unique and Swedish. I am returning my gift because the English teacher threw down the gauntlet and now it’s on, like Donkey Kong.

Here’s how things went down:

The English teacher’s son needed a mentor and I took it upon myself to be his irresponsibility mentor. His stepfather is a great man, a really amazing person who you would learn nothing but virtue from and his father is apparently some type of religious leader. It is oxymoronic to take on the responsibility of irresponsibility mentoring so it fell to me as the only man in his life who is moronic to take on this imperative task. If I hadn’t stepped in when I did he might have grown up to be a productive member of society. As a teacher it is my sworn duty to do everything in my power to prevent that from happening.

I have been diligently undermining her and her husband’s best efforts to mold him into a fine young man and contributor to society. People think that like shit*, “Spritopias Happens®,” but a great deal of work goes into being this crass, offensive, and charming. It is indeed so important that I be myself that I have a Vice-President to fill in for me in the instance that I am incapacitated or unable to fill my duties. These are skills I need to hone before Chaos Bean has her own children because my own son seems incorruptible and Jon and Melissa’s son will require greater skill than even I have.

A good example of this would be his backpack. He was doing what he should be doing, which is the wrong thing, and destroyed his backpack. He packed it all wrong and the bag fell apart. His parents, rightly, declined to buy him a new one since he didn’t take care of the one they bought him in August. He would have to use an old one. I offered to bring him one from home but I went to target with another Social Science teacher**,*** and bought him a new one instead. If that weren’t enough, I filled it with toys and hid them under school supplies – offending not only his own parents but hopefully a swath of eighth grade teachers as well, maybe an assistant principal or guidance councilor, too.

Another example of my shenanigans was when they thought it would be a good idea to take me out in public and invited me to a baseball game with them. We were so bad that two people left the game and another couple interrupted their regularly scheduled public domestic dispute to point out that we were at a baseball game and that we were being obnoxious. I forget what I said in response but I definitely didn’t apologize.

They have also invited me to church, but I won’t be fooled. I can see an exorcism attempt a mile off. It would be a waste of time anyway. You would be amazed at how many times people have tried that on either myself, or Chaos Bean. Besides, one of my best friends is a Catholic priest and he’s been trying to exorcise me for years – at least that’s what I think he’s trying to do. I’m not sure, he tells me not to question him.

So in return for this undermining of her parenting the English teacher has enacted revenge. Today in the middle of a very serious staff meeting she decided to fight back and hit below the belt. No, she didn’t share how I have worse table manners than her four-year-old or how she caught me dancing and singing along to my iPod. She disclosed my blog to the rest of the people at this meeting – people who I have snowed into believing that I am a decent human being who goes to church, pays his taxes and votes for Democrats. Now they are going to know that the last part isn’t true. The last thing I needed confirmed for the coworkers is that I am a crass, immature sloth.

I know you can’t fool all the people all of the time but you can fool some of the people some of the time. Sure, one of the people in that meeting thinks I’m an unprofessional jerk (true) and her friend in the Science department thinks I’m a pompous ass (also true) but the rest of those chumps think I am a nice guy who works hard and other things that simply aren’t true. This blog has put me through more lawyers and girlfriends than I care to count.

This is truly a disaster. It would be better for me that there were naked pictures of me on the internet, at least that way I would know that people were laughing with me not just at me. I feel so exposed and violated. The next time her son needs a new backpack, which should be in three or four weeks, instead of toys I am going to fill it with cigarettes and pornography.

*Suburban Island might say shit when no one is listening but she protests my inability to stop saying it in this forum.
** Teachers, like zombies and missionaries, move in packs.
*** I call it Social Science purely for comedy

Labor Day

Labor Day heralds the end of summer and is traditionally when I would have my last hurrah before beginning the school year. I have been back to work for a month so this weekend, far from being the ‘deep breath before the plunge,’ is an early, but welcome break. I spent my day at a resort in Scottsdale with friends here from New Zealand and on Saturday, as I’ve mentioned, Gretchen crucified me on Squaw Peak. Monday, I will prepare lessons and reminisce about the days when I spent this weekend on the Connecticut shore.

My favorite Labor Day was when Emily and Elizabeth visited me and we traveled around New England. Emily had lived in Connecticut for a short time before I did and knew a lot more about the area that I had time to learn. We went to this Inn in Essex featuring live music that Emily really enjoyed during her time there.

Emily loves live music. I tend to detest it in small spaces because a small venue usually means a terrible performance. At first we were glued to the wall waiting for a seat but eyeing this family of six that was watching the live music with children clearly agitating to leave the venue and go to bed. The mother at the table, who was a dead ringer for the Duchess of York – only stylish and in shape – motioned for us to take the children’s seats as she put them to bed and left us with her husband who looked like Miles from Murphy Brown. In fact, I was convinced it was Miles from Murphy Brown for a better part of the evening and still hold out a little hope that it was.

We enjoyed the evening and after a bit got to the small talk that Germans tend to skip – we think its rude – and learned that Miles and the Duchess were actually on vacation from San Francisco where he was a lawyer for Greenpeace. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina he exhorted us, lectured us on being active in the community and in politics. The people in our party consisted of teachers, missionaries, and political activists – albeit for more conservative causes – but he was barking up the wrong tree. We were young but not disengaged. My sister has been on more political campaigns than Barack Obama and has advocated for more causes than most.

The rubber hit the road when he the liberal limousine took another hard left turn away from the center and started to talk to us about the environment. My sister and I grew up in Socialist Disneyland where everything this person wanted us to do is a stale, ten or twenty-year-old idea we’ve been doing forever. Anyone my age grew up on a steady diet of fuel economy and recycling will save the world, not to mention those hapless but adorable toads and owls. Everyone, but me, had been drinking so I decided – with the help of my stalwart friend Elizabeth to take the man to task on why people my age don’t drive hybrid cars.

The English teacher on my team wants to read this, can you tell I’m avoiding my signature, “its not a run-on, its just long,” sentence?

Elizabeth and I informed him that people our age do not want to wait in line and pay more for a car that would make us look like an ‘away team’ from the Starship Dork when there was very little positive net impact on the environment – look into the production of those cars, it’s murder on the ecosystem. We knew that ethanol wasn’t perfect either but would prefer to turn Iowa into a Saudi-like economy, growing fat off our energy consumption and fueling their own brand of hate. As Lutherans we’d like to see the sectarian violence directed at and perpetrated between Lutherans since the ELCA is clearly not Lutheran and needs to be taken down a notch.

At one point in the discussion Miles and the Duchess made our Labor Day weekend the best Labor Day weekend there ever was. At one point, and we’re not sure what it was, the Duchess tried to calm him down – pointing out that we were right – and he told her Shut the f*$% up, I’m trying to facilitate a conversation. The liberal limousine – which isn’t hybrid, by the way – came crashing to a halt. Miles got up to go do something, we later learned to pay our tab, and the Duchess assured us not to be worried because he is a f*$%ing judgmental cracker. I’m not sure how the grammar works on that honorific but I know the honorific works for me.

For the rest of the weekend everything was preceded or ended with, “shut the (curse word) up, I’m trying to facilitate a conversation” or “you’re a (curse word) judgmental cracker.” Even simple things like, “thank you for passing the corn,” became opportunities to add in either comment and made the whole weekend really special.

Last weekend, as I have mentioned, a mean drunk that I work with called me a pompous ass and I was offended. Not because she called me a pompous ass (I am) but because the people who know and love me best know to call me a judgmental cracker and tell me to shut the (curse word) up when they’re trying to facilitate a conversation.

Adding to my misery, people here just don’t seem to know how to appreciate me.