I want a "nothing box!"

So, I got to thinking about an interview I read a while back. It was about meditation and the interviewer asked the interviewee whether it was harder for women to meditate than it was for men. Her thinking here was from a historical background: how in meditation the goal is to let go of everything, to surrender one's mind and give ourselves over to nothing. Now, the interviewer was a big time feminist who argued that women have been made to surrender everything for thousands of years and now that they've begun climbing out of that mindset, it's harder for them to let themselves fall back into it.

I'm not sure I agree with the foundation of her argument but I have wondered the same thing myself from time to time. Especially sitting there on my cushion, wishing my monkey mind would stop all its chattering and settle down. However, MY curiosity stems from another line of thinking. Like this image of how a woman's brain supposedly works:

I don't claim to have a single CLUE as to how men's brains work in comparison (although I have asked myself that question a time or two). And then there's that comedian, Mark Gungor, who does a pretty good job describing the difference: 

A "nothing box" huh? I sure could use one of those sometimes. Especially sitting in meditation when all the balls are rolling off edges, pinging off walls and bouncing into each other. When all the wires are making countless connections and firing all at the same time. Or at 3:00 AM when my mind wakes me up to rehash some small little incident that seems larger than reality in the middle of the night. Boy would a nothing box come in handy then. 

I need a nothing box! 

My Queendom for a nothing box!

Are these things funny? Or is it just me?

There were four of us out to eat that first night in L.A.—Mary, Tina, Dana and I. We’d gone to Rock Sugar, an Eastern cuisine there in the mall close to the hotel. The food was outstanding and we got a chance to share some of it with Dana’s son’s dragon (the one who hitched a ride in her purse). The dragon ended up having many wonderful adventures and met some pretty famous writers during his trip. 

Dragon

But that’s not what this post is about. It’s about funny things people say and the even funnier way other people interpret them. 

Linda, Mary, Dana, Tina

For example, as we were leaving the restaurant, we decided to get a picture in the lounge. I was shooting my three friends when a nice woman came over and offered to get all four of us in the shot.

“Perfect!” I said, and “Thanks!” And I handed her my camera.

So she shot a few pictures and while she was still shooting, one of the nice waitstaff walked over and offered to take the camera from her so “we could all be in the shot.” 

We all laughed. I mean, can you imagine! It could have gone on and on with me having all sorts of strangers in my picture.

Four days later Dana and I shared a flight home. It might as well have been a red eye since we got into Houston so late . . . pretty much the middle of the night. After a really long, brain sucking day, we were pretty fried. Very tired, very giddy. So when we landed and the flight attendant was making all of his normal announcements, the last thing he added set us off way more than it should have.

“Hope you enjoyed your flight and have a pleasant stay here in Houston. Or wherever your final destination may be.”

That was all well and good but then he added: “Whoever needed the wheelchair can come on up and get it.”

Now how the heck was that supposed to happen? 

Killing the Rabbit

So I took a pregnancy test yesterday. I know, I know . . . pretty ridiculous at my age. But things that have been happening for years have stopped happening lately. And things that never happened before are happening now. And that’s all I’m gonna say about that. So I thought, what the heck, may as well eliminate that vague possibility.

Of course the test turned out negative. I mean, what kind of miracle do I think I am anyway? But the idea of it being positive conjured up some pretty scary images. Can you imagine having a teenager in your seventies! Heck, it’s hard enough reigning them in when you’re in your fifties — may as well just hand over the car keys on their tenth birthday. On the other hand, it might be nice having a strapping young kid to push your wheelchair around.

   

Anyway, my husband and I had a lively little conversation around it this morning, somehow ending up on the actual test itself: little blue line = yep / no blue line = nope. A far cry from the tests we used to take that involved a doctor, some urine and a rabbit. I don’t claim to know how all that worked but I remember the old phrase about how, if the rabbit died, you were pregnant. Dead rabbit = yep / rabbit still hopping = nope. Things have sure advanced a lot since then! All we have to do now is to pee on a little stick. As opposed to peeing on a little rabbit and hoping (or not hoping) that our urine turns out deadly.

My husband got to wondering if other animals peed on rabbits to see if they’re pregnant, and whether that might be the reason why rabbits tend to be so quick when you try to catch one. Their mommas much teach ‘em young: “ya see another kind of animal approaching, don’t ask any questions — just hop your furry little self out a there ‘for you find yourself all peed on.”

So anyway, thank you technology for coming so far in the arena of pregnancy testing. Thank you little blue line for staying the hell off of my pregnancy test. And, thank you aging body for dodging that miraculous bullet. 

Everybody's Grand

I was walking today, listening to a talk I'd downloaded onto my MP3 player. The discussion was about the ego and how full of it we are. There was a comment made, comparing us to our parents and/or grandparents, suggesting that we take a moment to ponder the differences between their lives and the lives of us narcissistic baby boomers. While I didn't do much pondering over that, the comment did make me realize something that I'd never considered before - how I'd never had a "normal" set of grandparents.

First there was my dad's mom who, as near as I could tell, never had a husband. Over the years there were hints made of one but the impression I got was that he was a useless, shiftless excuse for a man whom grandma either divorced or killed. I never really knew which but some part of me could imagine the later, especially given Grandma's wild, Irish tempter that would flair and curse and throw things. Of course, none of that was ever directed toward us grandkids. But the mere mention of dad's dad and sparks would fly from Grandma's eyeballs and all us grandkids would scramble for cover. I never did find out what happened to him, but, as I grew older, I found myself wondering how the man ever got close enough for Grandma to have born him three children.

Then there was my mom's mom who stirred that same question in me. But Chub (which is what everyone called her - don't ask me why), unlike Grandma, did not limit her wrath to just her ex husband (grandpa Pop who I'll get to in a minute). Nope, Chub believed that all men were created equal and none of them were good for anything. There's not much else I remember about Chub, other than the fact that I managed to become her favorite grandkid. Maybe it was my own devil-may-care, hell-bent-for-trouble attitude that she could identify with. Whatever reason, she would always have a gift waiting for me whenever I'd go for a visit - odd things like a lace shawl that was so out of style all I could do was love if for its beauty and then hang it in my closet with other things I never wore. Or a set of silverware with three pronged forks that reminded me of mini pitchforks. If QVC were a thing back then, I'm sure Grandma Chub would have been all over it.

I felt bad for her when health forced her into my parents' home. She took my old bedroom, which obviously meant I'd moved out by then. And she stayed tucked away in it as much as possible, far from my father - the man. Chub died right there in my room, in the chair in the corner by the window.

Grandpa Pop, her ex, might have been the reason for her deep seeded hatred of men. He went on to marry five more times after their divorce. This in spite of the fact that he was paralyzed from the waist down and was "useless as a eunuch" as my uncle used to say. But Pop never let a small thing like paraplegia stop him. He'd had his accident at 34 when a motor boat he'd been fixing up slid off its braces and toppled onto him, crushing his pelvic area. He lived out the rest of his 29 years in a wheelchair that me and the rest of the grandkids thought was wonderful. We'd wait 'till he was out of it and then push each other up and down the ramps that peppered his customized house.

His car was a cool thing too. He'd heft himself up into it and then lean out far enough to fold up his chair. Then he'd muscle it into the car behind him and off he'd go. Of course without the use of his legs, he'd had to have the car modified so that, instead of a brake peddle, there was a hand brake up by the steering wheel. Pop drove himself everywhere he needed to go.

His favorite thing to do was to travel. And collect wives. I remember once, when I was about eight, he went to Mexico on a fishing trip. Came home with a boatload of different kinds of fish that my mom cooked up and we ate on for weeks. He also came home with a wife named Maria who was younger than my mom. Maria's two kids were younger than I was too and for a while there, my older sister had an uncle and an aunt who she got to babysit. Then there was Junga and Shumbay from Korea. Don't ask me how Pop ended up married to a Korean woman. All I remember are their names. And the time Shumbay tricked me into sticking my finger in a light socket, the mean little jerk.

I can't remember the rest of Pop's miscellaneous wives but it sure seemed like there were enough of them. Even so, between my five step-grams and four biological ones, I never once had a normal sense of grandparentcy. Don't get me wrong, I loved them all (the biological ones at least). And I have to admit, they had a collective spice to them that kept life interesting.

I wonder now whether that's the kind of pondering the guy on my MP3 player was thinking of. But I kind of don't think so.

Mums the Word

Okay, so if you’re not familiar with Texas, you probably won’t get this. Trust me, I didn’t get it either until recently. It’s about a common custom here in the lone star state and, if I was interested enough, I might explore its origins. But I’m not… interested. Just caught up.

The first time I learned of it was when my daughter was in high school and was actually going to a homecoming dance. I say “actually” because my daughter in high school was much like her mother in high school - completely ambivalent when it came to the popular social gatherings like dances, glee clubs, sleepovers . . . neither of us gave a flip about such things. But on this particular occasion, my daughter was going and I had driven her there and was dropping her off.

“What the heck is hanging off all those girls?” I asked, watching a herd of teenagers cross the parking lot, headed for the school gymnasium. Not only were they dressed in Roper style jeans, cowboy shirts and boots (that particular dance happened to fall during the rodeo), but several of them sported massive arrangements that swung from their overly proportioned chests. From my vantage point, they looked like corsages on steroids. While a few were more delicate and modest, most were ornate to the point of being gaudy. I saw a full sized teddy bear glued to the center of an artificial flower and from it hung a multitude of streamers, ribbons, and bells. ‘Is that actually a cow bell?’ I wondered. Most of them centered around the school mascot - a fluffy stuffed eagle crammed into the middle of the flower. But the dangling mass of jiggling bobbles remained the same. Some were so large they had to be worn around the neck like a tie, suspended by a thick, decorative cord.

“Oh those are mums, mom.”

“What do they do?” I asked.

“They just hang there. The girls wear them to school on homecoming day and then to the dance.”

“Why?”

“It shows they have a date to the dance.”

‘Like a label?’ I wondered. A huge, heavy, dangling label. I couldn’t help but wonder what it said about all the mumless girls like my daughter. Did it scream wallflower like some stamp of disapproval? Not that my daughter gave a flip about that either. We gave each other a smirk and a hug and I told her to have a good time before I drove home thinking what a silly tradition was all this mumery.

Fast forward about ten years and you’ll get to this time last year when my son was a freshman at his sister’s alma mater. However (and isn’t there always a however?), unlike his sister, my son loved the social aspect of high school and couldn’t wait for the homecoming dance. He’d asked a little friend of his and I was tickled for him. Then, about a week before the dance, some of the other moms were talking about the mums they made for their son’s dates. ‘What?’ I thought, feeling a rush of panic spread from my gut up to my face. Was I supposed to make a mum?! I asked my son when he got home that day and he said his friend would be ‘okay’ without one. But I sensed a hint of dejection in his answer.

‘Okay? Just okay,’ I thought. What did that mean? I vacillated for days until finally I talked to some of the moms at the yoga center. They all gave me the same answer and yet still I clung fiercely to my denial – ‘it’s a silly tradition,’ I thought, ‘one we don’t need to feed.’ Nevertheless, from the parking lot, I picked up my cell and called a good friend who’d already gotten her two teenage girls through high school (and countless mums, I assume).

“Oh Linda, it’s a huge deal,” she told me and the emphasis was hers not mine. “His friend will be the only girl there with a date and no mum. In fact even girls without dates are starting to make their own mums because it’s such a loved tradition and everyone wants one as a memento.”

‘Oh good God!’ I thought. I’m about to commit a Texas-mom faux pas over something I think is ridiculous. But, regardless of how I felt about the tradition, it was my son’s reputation we were talking about here. Thankfully for me, there was a flower shop in the same strip as the yoga center and I popped myself in, asking about mums.

“Your lucky!” the florist said, “we happen to have one left.” And she showed me the gaudy, dangling thing strung with ribbons and garland and artificial everything. It was huge! And so was the price. I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t about to pay that much for something the girl herself would have been ‘okay’ without! It probably cost more than her jeans and cowboy boots combined! (Actually, they no longer had homecoming during the rodeo so the girls were back to wearing dresses.)

“So what are my options?” I asked and the florist told me about a grocery store that sold pre-made mums.

“But it won’t be a custom job like this one,” she reminded me, holding the monolith up to her chest so I could get the full effect of her handiwork.

“I think that’s okay,” I said and I hopped into my car and headed toward the nearest Krogers. The florist had been right, there were plenty left there. And the price was only about half as much as she’d wanted for mum-the-gargantuan. But, it was obvious they were mass produced, not unique in the slightest and not nearly as creative as the one I’d just been introduced to.
‘I can do better than this,” I thought, ‘and probably for half the cost.’ And so it was that I spent the remaining two days before homecoming visiting all the Michaels and Hobby-Lobby stores in my locale, desperately searching for mum paraphernalia. The selection was scant this late in the game (or close to the game as was the case). There were no fuzzy eagles left at all so I had to find something else to stuff into the middle of the thing. And when it came time to find gold letters to spell out the happy couple’s names, the only ones left were Qs, Zs and Xs. I ended up buying gold lame paper and using my Cricut cutting device to create my own lettering. Then I ran the letters through my sticker maker to get the gummy surface on the back (yes, I scrapbook too).

While it probably wouldn’t have won any mum awards, it was passable and from what my son said, his date was appreciative.

I thought of mums whenever I visited the craft store for the next few months after homecoming. In fact, I was tempted to start buying little eagles, teddy bears and other such what-not, knowing there was a good chance I’d be making a mum this year too. But I didn’t. And now, as suspected, the saga has continued, only this time, with a new wrinkle.


See this year, my son has expanded his social networking and is dating a girl from a neighboring school. So, oh my gosh! What’s the mum protocol when you cross boundaries! Does the girl wear the boy’s school colors to show her social sophistication? Or does she stick with her own colors so as not to stand out in the homecoming crowd? And what if they decide to attend both school dances? Am I expected to make two mums, one for each school? And if I have to make a mum with her school colors, well, you know what that means - all different colors, all different gadgets and do-dads! And, instead of a fluffy eagle, I’ll have to figure out what the other mascot is and find a fluffy one of them.

But okay, nothing is worth getting so worked up over. And this was no exception. As it turned out there’s only one mum to be made and yes, it does need to be in her colors. But I learned that I can go to the Hobby-Lobby closest to her school and they will, of course, carry all the mum thingies in all the right shapes, sizes and colors. Whew! Just one trip instead of several. And the best part is that her homecoming is scheduled two weeks after my son’s so, unlike the two days I had last year, this year I’ll have plenty of time.

So I sent an email to a couple friends whose sons are the same age as mine. I asked if their sons were taking dates to the dance and if so, had they planned to make their own mums and if so, would they like to get together for a mom’s mum making party - sort of like a mother’s day in. Of course ours would include a lot of wine-drinking to enhance the whole experience for the mum moms themselves.

“You’re such a good mom!” one of my friends said after declining my invitation and confessing to having bought hers from Krogers. ‘It’s true,’ I thought, ‘I am a good mum mom.’ Silly or not, ridiculous a tradition as it is, I think I’ve done well. And I think even my daughter would be proud – of course, after she finishes razzing me about it.

It's Sunday night - do you know where your characters are?

Mine are still in my laptop. Tapping their fingers and waiting. Poor Theo probably thinks I've abandoned him altogether, left him stranded in that alternate reality he mistakenly stepped into the night before last. I guess if I think about it, it was the night before last for Theo but for me it was over a month ago. At any rate, he's still in there, ignored, forgotten, left to find his own way in that strange land.

But hey, at least I didn't leave him alone. Last I saw of him, he'd met up with a boy about his own age named Jayes and the two of them had put their heads together to come up with a plan to get Theo back home.

However, (and isn't there always a however?), unbeknownst to either of them, there are questionable characters lurking in the hard drive of my laptop. And they have no desire whatsoever to get Theo back home. And they certainly don't want Jayes to learn the secret to how Theo came to be there in the first place!

I suppose, if I were any sort of a writer, I'd get back in there and warn the boys before it's too late. Instead, I'm here, cowering in this blog, writing about them instead of for them. Shame on me! Shame, shame, shame.

Okay, that's enough self flagellation. I'm going in after them. Wish me luck!