Midnight blue

My sister said midnight blue and I didn't know what that meant. There was blue. Dark blue and light, like the sky. What shade was midnight blue?

Like our car.

The Ford Galaxie 500. Running my finger over the pattern pressed into the back of the seat, that No Man's Land between me and my sister. Clicking my fingernail over the ridges in the clear plastic knob you used to roll down the window. I always sat behind Dad, Denise behind Mom. Baby David sat in between them on the front bench seat. He would turn around and look at us and we responded as if he'd committed a crime against humanity.

Mom! Make him stop!

Do you remember the sound when the windows were rolled up, but the wings were open?

I threw up once on the floor of that car. Was it car sickness? Something else? I can't remember, but I do remember that my father wasn't happy. A stickler about his vehicles, the last thing he wanted was a car that reeked of sick. I cried and then he felt bad.

When I overreact to my children, I see my father in me.

The Summer of '69.

That Ford took us to movies at the Starlite Drive-In on Highway 50. The speaker hooked over the window rolled to half-mast. The sound of ice cubes rattling in fluorescent plastic tumblers because we brought our own drinks. Pepsi and Big Red and Dad's Root Beer. David climbed up into the back window and fell asleep.

To keep the dust down, the gravel was oiled. The smells of petroleum and popcorn, french fries and sickly sweet snow cones hung in the air as we watched the movies and the people coming and going from the cinder block concession stand, an oasis of light and treats in the middle of the parking lot. The teenagers were of particular interest to me.

We sat in the car at the Big Boy under the awning and ate our cheeseburgers with tartar sauce and drank cherry cokes. I preferred the squishy crinkle fries. The carhops weren't on rollerskates, but I was fascinated by the silver coin dispensers they wore at their waists.

I don't know why my parents sold this car, but I know that my father is sorry that he did. The last he heard, the person he'd sold it to resold it to someone in Michigan, which is, I suppose, somehow fitting.

Your turn. What is the first car you remember?

Take a good look around

The trip to Cincinnati was more than a business trip, more than meetings. It was a quick trip to the past, a visit to my childhood. A return, but with the knowledge I have today. Which, when you're playing penny slots, isn't much.

During the meeting, we stayed at the Hilton Netherland Plaza, a Depression era hotel that has been restored to its original opulence. I loved it, not only for its French Art Deco design, but for the history, the sense of stepping back in time. Until you realized you had to Instagram the shit out of the place.

Which hardly does the place justice, I know.

Then I posted this photo and what I'd been thinking and what my colleagues had been thinking was confirmed by tweets.

What? No twins?

The room corridors are reminiscent of The Overlook Hotel. At fourteen, I saw The Shining at least twice in movie theaters in the Cincinnati area. I loved it for its psychological thrill. I'd enjoyed a steady diet of slasher films, but this movie frightened me in a much deeper way.

One evening, my boss, another coworker and I skipped the optional group activity, had pizza in my room  and watched The Shining. It didn't frighten me like it used to - that exciting, fun kind of scared, but I confess - when I went to bed, I conveniently forgot to turn off the closet light.

The Netherland has its own ghost story. A woman in a green ball gown appears in the elevators, the guest room corridors and The Hall of Mirrors. Many of us joked about hoping to see her.

One afternoon I stepped onto the empty elevator and pushed the button to my floor. 28. At the mezzanine level the elevator stopped and a man from another large group meeting at the hotel got on. He smiled a hello as he fumbled with his tote bag of meeting goodies and pushed number 23.

On the seventh floor, the elevator stopped. The doors opened, but no one got on. Both the man and I leaned forward and craned our necks to see if we should hold the door for someone. There wasn't anyone there. The doors slid closed.

I could feel the man glance at me. Once, twice.

"Do you think she's on here with us?" I asked him.

He laughed. "I wondered that, too."

We both looked around at the gleaming wood, the Art Deco details. There was no green ball gown, no rush of cold air one might expect during a ghostly encounter.

We chatted about how pretty the hotel was as the floors ticked off. At floor twenty-three, he gave me a wink and said "Maybe she'll show herself on your way up to twenty-eight."

I laughed as the door closed behind him. Alone, I gave a shiver and pressed my back against the paneled wall. If the ghost was going to appear, I didn't want to be taken by surprise. I was in serious need of a pee as it was.

I never did see the ghost, but I did get to relive another part of my youth. Our group went to the Great American Ballpark to watch the Reds play the Mets. It was a great game with far better seats than I ever had in Riverfront Stadium back when the Cincinnati Enquirer gave free tickets to straight A students. We had a gorgeous night for it and the Reds were in fine form.

After the meeting, my brother collected me and deposited me at my parents' house in Rising Sun where there was homemade ice cream and Texas sheet cake waiting.

For a day and half, I wasn't a wife or a mother. I was simply a daughter again.

Before my brother arrived at the hotel, I mentioned to my colleagues that I was a little worried that the time would drag. My parents and I don't see each other very often. We don't have much in common. They don't have internet service. How would I survive?

My boss said that her parents were coming for a two week stay one day after she returned home from this trip. My coworker noted that she only wished her parents were still around to visit.

Ah. Perspective.

After the traditional family meal at the Big Boy, where my brother, sister and I reminisced over cherry cokes about eating there when it was a drive-in with carhops, I returned home with my parents. Now what would we do? I was stuck there - no car, no internet. I looked at my phone longingly.

Dad turned on the Reds game and I asked Mother if I could look through some of her boxes of photos.

The rest of the time flew.

We drove around town so I could see what had changed. And what had not.

Over coffee and donuts, they told me about their adventures with private health insurance and doctors visits. Without a lick of irony, Moter mentioned I should really take better care of myself. And I know she's right.

She helped me identify people in old family photos. It's become a project of mine to know these people ever since we accidentally got the Ancestry.com account.

My father called me Liza Jane, his pet name for me. He helped me find some photos of our former family cars. I've had an obsession with them since going to some car shows this summer.

I dragged them to the library to use the wi-fi to show them all the cool things I'd found on Ancestry.com. There they were - listed on the 1940 census. Their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, some going all the way back to the 1850 census.

In retaliation, they dragged me to the casino on the riverfront.

My mother and I split a twenty on slots. I played for pennies and she suggested I'd become quite the skinflint. I remembered the story my friend told me about watching a guy over the security cameras. The guy masturbated and ejaculated onto one of the machines.

"It's your turn," my mother said.

"No, that's okay. You go ahead."

When the twenty was gone, we retired to the pub to watch baseball and wait for the Friday night drawings for cash prizes. I tried not to dwell on the fact that the casino was one of the most depressing places I've been in years. And that's coming from me, who for the last two years spent at least one day a month at the Department of Labor with all the other unemployed and desperate.

I ordered a beer. My parents drank water. We ate baked potatoes and watched the Reds game on the big screen overhead. A duo played music on a keyboard and guitar. People came and went. My parents knew many of them. My former gym teacher and her husband, once the high school basketball coach and sports director, took a seat in a booth near us. I wouldn't have recognized Mr. W. if his wife hadn't been with him.

It's hard to see these once lively and physically fit people aging. I ordered another beer. My mother wondered aloud if I might have a drinking problem.

I offered the teetotalers a taste of the Blue Moon beer. It took some wheedling. When I finally threatened to hold my breath until my face turned blue, they tried it. Dad didn't hate it. Mother pulled a face and said it tasted like vinegar. This coming from people who willingly drank Fresca.

Or maybe they were clever - they knew their children wouldn't drink it. Not even on a dare.

"Some Baptist you are," I crowed to my mother. "Gambling and drinking!"

"If I weren't so arthritic, I'd be dancing, too," she shot back.

Without elaborating, I mentioned that when she comes to the casino, she should bring hand sanitizer in her purse.

At 10 p.m. sharp, we headed back to their house where I took as many photos of their family photos as I could before I finally tumped over, tired and happy to have had a chance to hang out with my mom and dad. It didn't matter what we did, it was just nice to be there.

Besides, coming from these party animals, what could I expect?

'Til there was you

Twenty-four years. Over half our lives.

Three children. Three houses, three apartments, two interstate moves, a plethora of cats, many and sundry jobs, two separations, one set of divorce papers, nine cars, too few vacations, too many bad decisions, a lifetime of late night discussion and laughs.

Daily I love yous. Sometimes in anger, confusion, ironic, stark contrast to actions.

Our mutual friends tried to introduce us several times. Things got in the way. Then we met on accident - without the intervention of friends. And ------ nothing. He was chatting up blonds in the kitchen. I went for a motorcycle ride with one of his friends.

Timing.  It deserves all those cliches.

On October 1, 1987, The Bodeans played at Jake's in Bloomington, Indiana. Jared wanted to know if I was going. Oh, yeah. I wouldn't miss it this time. I'd missed the band's swing through town the previous spring. One of those times when other plans got in the way.

Save four seats if you get there first. I'm coming with friends, Jared shouted over his shoulder. We were hurrying between classes.

Seats saved. One was for him.

August 21, 1988

Dear lord, why did I say yes to this dress? There is no way to explain it away. I've tried. I was young. I was drunk. I was in a hurry because my mother hadn't taken her nerve pill.

Shockingly and contrary to what our friends and family surely thought, but were to polite to mention, I only looked pregnant.

I thought his mullet was hot, loved running my fingers through his curls. I still love running my fingers through them, even if they're on his back. Literally.

Happy Anniversary, MathMan. Despite our lightening fast beginning. Despite ourselves.

I love  you.

...deserves a quiet night...

When I was a child, we had two mimosa trees. One dominated the front of the house, making the once dull yard with nothing but a waxy yew hedge seem somehow transformed.

The second stood sentry next to our three-foot swimming pool, lending it a tropical air with its fern-like leaves and fluffy pink flowers. On the rare occasion that I could swim alone, I was a mermaid. The flowers were birds, fluttering and hovering, perching on the leaves against the backdrop of the setting sun.

To me the trees were special. Exotic. Their multiple trunks arched like fountains with leaves making sprays of green. I'd never seen mimosas before and couldn't remember having ever seen them in anyone else's yard.

The trees didn't survive the winter of 1979.

Recently, I asked my mother where she got those mimosa trees. She said she hadn't thought of them in a long time. They were dug up as volunteer saplings along the Ohio River near the factory where my father worked. He brought them home and planted them sometime in the early 1970s. She asked my father to confirm this fact and he did.

Why did I want to know?

I was thinking about how things look at different times, in different places, I said. Perspective.

Here in Georgia, mimosas are invasive plants. They grow like weeds along highways, crowding out other plants, shoving forward, presenting, no - flaunting their flowers.

Exotic? Not at all. They're dead common. Flashy. Gauche. What seemed so unique to my young, Midwestern eyes is rendered nearly invisible by its ubiquity.

Until I stop and really notice them. Then I am transported. I'm a mermaid again, gliding through the warm water, breaking the surface into the cooling air, my dark hair slicked back. Now I'm a seal, glistening wet, my compact, young form all slick muscle, taut skin.

I glance up at the mimosa with its graceful arches and exotic pink flowers and push off the wall, smooth strokes taking me back across the small pool where the porch light reflects as diamonds on each ripple.

Has your perspective changed? What do you see with your new eyes?  What do you see with your old eyes?

I'm an excellent driver

I listened to a radio show from 1952. It was a space thriller set in the future. 1987.

That was twenty-five years ago. 1987. The year I went to France, fell in love, came home, met my future husband, made choices that altered lives. If you could boil down a life, it was probably my most significant year.

In an instant, I became obsessed with the passage of time. I started timestamping everything.

MathMan and I have been living together twenty-four years. It's been thirty years since I got my driver's license. I haven't seen my family in two years. It's been (mumble, mumble) since I wore a size 8, fourteen years since I was pregnant for the last time, six years since I started blogging, three years since we moved into this house, almost five years since I last colored my hair, going on twenty-two years since I've seen Ethan if you don't count Skyping, three years since my 25th high school class reunion, nine months since I've been in Chicago, five years since I lost my head, twenty-three years since I graduated from I.U., three years since I've been on an airplane, fourteen years since Seinfeld went off the air, too long since I've seen some of my friends,  two years since I began working on the now fallow novel, six months since I've had a drink, six months since I started taking the anti-Ds, eleven weeks since I started working.....

MathMan says sometimes it's like living with Rainman. With boobs. And slightly better social skills. Read:  I can, and often do, make eye contact. And I'm an excellent driver.

My husband tries to engage me in conversation about Calculus and I want to talk about how Nabisco has gotten freakin' stingy with the cream in the Oreos. No, really. I swear the cream used to be thicker and it reached almost to the edges. Now? It's a shrinking circle of delicious fat and sugar. Life is so unfair.

More idiot than savant, I became so enthralled with our past that I created a Spotify playlist so I can immerse myself in the early 1990s while I work. Pathetic? Perhaps. But so many of my mistakes were ahead of me, you know? The naivete of potential and a seemingly endless future are enough some days. Enough is nice.

Six days in a hotel with airline pilots brought my six months without a drink to a swift and bubbly end. It isn't so much that they're hard to be around - they're actually quite delightful even when they're busy making sausage.

See, each night they host a hospitality suite with a well-stocked bar. Tough gig, right?

In light of that stifling pressure, my alcohol fast dove head first into a sparkling glass of Prosecco. Chloe gets some of the blame, too. She joined me at the hotel for the evening and we finally had a drink together. Strange on one hand, really cool on another. Daughter peer pressure. Having her holler Chug! Chug! Chug! and make chicken noises at me was too much for me to resist.

And then I realized that Chloe is closer in age to some of my colleagues than I am. Excuse me while I schedule a Botox treatment.


I was just sitting at the kitchen table having lunch with my colleagues at my first real job. They were telling me about how cool it was to be post-menopausal. Sex without consequences! I listened politely, trying to keep the horror from showing on my face. That was 1990 when the idea of being their age (over 45!) was as foreign to me as the idea that I would one day resort to eating Dominos Pizza because it was so easy to order online.

There was a time when I would have eaten liver before I'd touch a Domino's Pizza because the founder was such an anti-reproductive rights bumblenut.

Time has a way of making us reluctant believers, hypocrites, sinners against ourselves.

By Friday night I'd taught my favorite bartender how to make a Monaco, relearned the secrets for warding off a hangover and embraced my inner beer drinker. There may have been karaoke, hijinks at Zocalo (try the guac), my successfully wheedling the stories of how they got their nicknames out of a few pilots, and cigars. However, I'm bound by a confidentiality statement so....

The good news is that the days spent in the hotel were productive. The bad news is that alcohol is still made up of delicious, empty calories, still likely to cause mild silliness and will definitely alter the passage of time if you consume enough of it.

Which brings me back to the beginning.

Imagine 1987 as the future and not the shrinking image in the rearview mirror. What do you see?

Legal

My twenty-first birthday was ant-climactic.

After the way I carried on in my teens, my 21st would have had to have been a five-star, red-letter, first taste of Veuve Cliquot, bike ride with Pee Wee Herman, sex with Judd Nelson, front row tickets to Letterman, black Firebird with a giant red bow, ride to the moon on Pegasus' back orgasm to have made an impression.

Bless their hearts, my friends tried. There was no way they could have secured those tickets to Letterman. I mean in 1986, he was the hottest thing in town. They did, however, decorate my dorm room and arranged two nights out. The first, the appetizer, so to speak, involved Chi Chis, a plate of nachos and a couple of big as a baby's head frozen strawberry margaritas. This was exactly midnight of my birthday.

The next day, the guy I was dating gave me a bottle of Liz Claiborne perfume. I'd pretty much already decided we were through after he stood me up to go to a fraternity rush party, but I couldn't be an ass, could I? I thanked him, spent some time being nice and sent him on his way. Probably to another fraternity function. I didn't inquire. I had plans and he wasn't twenty-one yet.

Another young romantic went to the trouble of chalking a beautiful birthday message on the sidewalk leading up to the dorm. He scattered rose petals and gave me a single red rose. I'd met him at the student union a couple of days before. He was sweet, a great conversationalist and good looking. He also had severe acne scars.

I ran downstairs and gave him a hug and thanked him. We took a short walk and he gave me a poem I've since lost because my understanding of what held real value wasn't fully formed even at twenty-one. I remember he had these green eyes. Uniquely green. We kissed and he said he'd call me. And he did. And did and did. And I was always busy. I was so shallow.

Shallow and still recovering from heartbreak. Ethan and I ended our relationship in June and this was only October, after all. I was still looking for him everywhere, walking around with this huge hole in my heart because I'd lost not just my boyfriend and roommate. I'd lost my best friend. And that sucked so hard.

But my birthday was about fun and celebration. It would not be about waiting around for the phone to ring. I told myself this over and over. So. My friends planned a progressive celebration. We shared a large, decorated chocolate chip cookie in the dorm hallway. Very wholesome. We grabbed our IDs and strolled across campus to Kirkwood Avenue. The real heart of Bloomington, Indiana. Some people think Assembly Hall is the heart. They've obviously never sat on the wall of People's Park reading Vonnegut.

We were treated to a round of the traditional Long Island Iced Tea at Kilroy's. And beer at Hooligans. And more Long Island Iced beers at Nick's. Beer and wild dancing with the pale, black-clad Collins folk at Second Story. And more Gilligan's Island Iced Icees at the Blue Bird. Happy birthdays and kisses from strangers at Jake's (where one year later, I would proposition the hot guy who would become MathMan). Shots of this, shots of that, something that would feel like a shot to the head a few hours later. And somewhere in there I threw up. Which meant I had more room for a coke. Loaded with rum.


Because my friends were the responsible types, they waited until I was half a drink away from requiring a piggyback ride home before we headed toward the dorm. We had to make a pit stop at the library. You know the gorgeous limestone library from Breaking Away? I may have desecrated a library carrel there. The stories conflicted.

My friends wished me one more happy 21st and then left me to the guy I had a crush on. He removed my jacket, shoes and jeans, poured me into my bed, kissed me on my forehead, curled up next to me and let me drunk snore in his ear until we were awakened by my friend Mary Moss who was banging on my door because we had a date to go tour Nashville, Indiana.

Clearly, I'm an optimist. Otherwise, why would I agree to a long, curvy drive in a fifteen passenger van? When we were little, our mother told us that roads like State Route 46 were made by throwing a snake on the ground and following its zigzag path.

I tried not to think of my mother and her zigzagging snakes as I sat with my head pressed against the cool window and hoped that I could hold off being sick until we arrived at our destination. Someone in the van smelled strongly of garlic and I made the mistake of squirting myself with some of that Liz Claiborne cologne to cover up the smell of alcohol seeping from my pores. I may have wished for a speedy death somewhere in there.

Thank goodness there was a huge tree behind which I could hide while I gulped in breaths of fresh air and castigated myself for thinking that drinking legally would make me impervious to the withering effects of alcohol. Oh youthful naivete.

I'm reminded of those days because today we're celebrating another twenty-first birthday. And I'm having a hard time believing it.

Your twenty-first - partying like it was 1999, rockin' around the clock or more like one of Mary Richard's parties? Or can't you remember?

Just don't call him baby

When we were children, my older sister Denise, younger brother David and I were like any other set of siblings. We fussed and fought and hung out watching television and snacking until our mother got home from her job at the courthouse. David went through a phase where he always wanted to watch Popeye. Of course, it's not like there five hundred channels to choose from back in the 1970s so Denise and I suffered through Popeye to watch The Flintstones, Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch.

I am ashamed of how we treated David sometimes. He was just a little boy, but to us he was the enemy. He was the Godzilla stomping through Barbieland, the pencil wielding homicidal maniac who stabbed the rag bodies of baby dolls, the kid who scribbled over my neatly colored pages in coloring books, the hair puller when I hurled the epithet Baby David his direction. Yeah, I deserved that bald spot.

But when he sunk down in his red bean bag chair in front of the TV and uttered the words "will someone make me a PBJ," either Denise or I would make him one without even spitting on it. We loved him and his sweet dimpled cheeks. My first memory of him is when my mother rocked him as a baby swaddled in a blanket. I clung to the back of the chair my toes curled around the rocker's runners and we sang. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

Despite the horror of living with two older sisters and having survived the torture we bestowed upon him, Dave grew up to be a man I'm proud to call my brother. He's a great father, I hope he's a wonderful husband, he has an important job serving his community and he's a great son. He's a much better son than I am a daughter. He's also a talented graphic artist and now he's writing, too, about his love of the outdoors.

Aside from the crazy pride I feel for him, I also enjoy reading Dave's blog because it gives me insight into this man I grew up with, I get to see the past through his eyes. His perspective and experiences are unique.

As the only son and the youngest, Dave had a different relationship with our parents, especially with our father. They spent a lot of time together and while I don't want to give you the impression that it was all back-slapping manly jocularity, the two of them definitely shared interests, information and a language that none of us womenfolk (what?) understood.

When I see my own son Nate and my husband together, I have a better idea of what my brother's relationship is like with our father. Nate reminds me of David - impatient, energetic, occasionally hot-tempered, keenly observant, a deep thinker. At his core sensitive and kind with high expectations for justice. Sometimes when I'm not paying attention, I call Nathan by my brother's name.

Today our father turns seventy-five and Dave wrote a touching and funny post about Dad's influence on him. I wanted to share it with you because you all seem like part of the family, too.

I know, I'm sorry. You didn't ask to be part of this dysfunction, did you?

Also there's a post at that other blog.

He thought he was the only one

Okay, so maybe I was....

 I had a conversation tonight with a friend I've known since the first grade. We went through twelve years of school together and attended the same college for two years before I transferred to another school.

After we caught up on our families, we talked a little bit about what it was like when we were kids. He shared with me a story that will always stay with me. When we were at the toughest age on the life continuum, another friend of ours said something hurtful. One word. But he got hung up on the one word and it affected him for two long years, framing how he viewed himself, how he felt about his place in the world.

One word. And it may have been said in jest. But when you're thirteen, one word is all it takes to shatter you.

I remember being thirteen and feeling like the whole world was staring at me, that I never measured up, that I was awkward and uncool and a million other things that rhyme with spaz and goon.

I've survived the passage of two of my children through that year and have one more on the precipice of thirteen. It's pretty much a roller coaster through a lightening storm with razor blade raindrops. As a mother who is privy to only a fraction of what happens in the lives of my children, the most I can hope for is to be on the side of good, counteracting whatever mental poison is injected through the barbs of a single word.


What do you remember about being thirteen?

Bazaar

Each year we went to the Christmas Bazaar held in the high school gymnasium. Mom dressed us up for photos with Santa. When we got too old for Santa, we dressed ourselves in our holiday best. One year I wore a deep green velvet dress my mother made for me. It was the prettiest dress I'd ever had. It was long, to the tops of my shoes with white buttons and a high neckline.

Years later, I found the dress in the bottom of my mother's cedar chest. My brother, bless his teenage heart, had cut squares out of it to use for cleaning his guns.

The grade school kids sang Christmas songs. Frosty the Snow Man, Silent Night, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Up on the Housetop, one of our favorites.  A couple years in a row, David S. would put on the reindeer suit his mother sewed for him and entertain the crowd while we squirmed on the wooden bleachers and sang Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

In high school, I dated David S. for two years. I rarely teased him about his days as Rudolph, but if I could have gotten him to put that suit on just once....well......

The gym's wooden floor was protected by canvas tarps stretched across them and taped down. You had to be careful as you walked in your dress shoes. Many a kid caught their toe in a fold and went down, scattering candy canes and other collected loot when they tumbled.

There were tables set up in large squares and moms stood behind them. I can't quite remember what was on the tables. Crafts, I think. We kids walked around in clumps, chattering about the upcoming school break and wishes for snow. We shared our hopes about we hoped we'd find under the tree. We told on ourselves about snooping for gifts.

My favorite part was the Cake Walk. Folded metal chairs were set in a circle and you walked around it music played. When the parent who manned the record player lifted the arm and stopped the music, you looked at the number on the chair in front of you. If your number was called, you won a cake that somebody's mom had baked and brought wrapped in a box or in a Tupperware carrier. At the beginning of the night, I liked to look at the tables holding all the baked goods. My sweet tooth has always been one of my downfalls.

At the end of the evening, we'd gather near the lobby. Our mother would stuff us into our coats reminding us to make sure we hadn't lost a mitten or a dreaded knit cap. We'd go outside making smoke with our warm breath in the cold air. Stars flickered overhead in the winter sky. We'd climb into the car clutching our loot with our mittens and watch as Christmas lights made smudged kaleidoscope shapes on the fogged car windows as we made our way home.

Your turn.

Cotton Rushing By

I get the Rumpus emails from Stephen Elliott who wrote The Adderall Diaries. It's a favorite book of mine. I love those emails from Mr. E. as you're about to see if I can pull off imitation with any glimmer of success.

Stephen's from Chicago and the time period he writes about is when we lived just off of Warren Park. Stephen tells a story about his friend who busted the window of Devon Bank. I remember seeing that broken window all boarded up. My husband and I used to park next to that bank and walk the block to our apartment.

It's a neighborhood with several big pre-war three floor apartment buildings and some three-flats. Parking is a challenge. You circle the block a couple of times before finding a spot and when you come to an open spot on that first block, you take it. I wrote this paragraph in the past tense and then changed it to the present because I'll bet not much has changed.

It was a Jewish neighborhood. Then, I think, the Greeks moved in and the Jews moved to Buffalo Grove and Northbrook. By the time we lived there, it was full of Russian and Eastern European immigrants, Indians, Syrians and Pakistanis. Devon Avenue was a collection of electronic shops, Indian restaurants and stores with saris like sunbursts and peacocks in the windows. The Woolworth's was still there with its wood floors, that five and dime smell, and the goldfish and parakeets. I used to like to go there and kill time because I was newly married, new to the city, didn't have any friends and my husband worked all the time at his job managing an electronics chain store on Western Avenue.

At the end of our block was a tiny Indian restaurant called Shital. I could never force myself to eat there. The name was bad enough, but the fact that they never bothered to wipe the greasy handprints off the front window sealed it. Call me crazy - I love greasy food, not greasy handprints. There was also a Russian restaurant on Devon. I can't remember its name anymore, but I had a dream that we went there and on the menu was a dish called Beef, Brains and Borscht.

I may have been newly pregnant with Chloe when I had that dream. I got sick after eating fried chicken I'd made myself and we couldn't cook meat in the apartment for the next eight weeks or so. When my appetite returned, I craved McDonald's cheeseburgers. That was swell. The building across the alley had its roof retarred and I thought I was going to have to move back to Indiana to escape the petroleum smell.

My mom told us how when she lived in France and was newly pregnant with my sister, she would put Chanel No. 5 on a hankie and hold it over her nose when she took the bus because the very natural and human scent of people who didn't see the point of deodorant made her morning sickness worse.

As I dashed into the bathroom to return the Kellogg's something or other I'd just eaten, I totally got what my mother was talking about.

When I took the bus to the Loyola station where I'd get the train downtown to my job in the old Polish Consulate building on Lake Shore Drive, I would watch the mouths of the people who spoke Russian and the other languages from the crumbling Soviet Bloc. No vowels. I swear, no vowels. I was fascinated by their clenched jaws and the women with their bleached blond hair, flashy clothes and manicures. I tried not to stare as I listened to the 10,000 Maniacs on my Walkman and pretended to read whatever F.Scott Fitzgerald book happened to be in my hand. I read all his work in those days. Even the Pat Hobby Stories which I quite liked, if I recall.

I've been picking random books off the shelves and looking at tense. Past tense or present? First person,  third or something else? My manuscript is inching along, but not enough to suit me because the rent is late and that creates a special kind of pressure. Every day is a mental wrestling match. Work on something that has no guaranteed payoff, spend all day looking for a job and bloody my head on that wall, drive up to the adult superstore on I75 and see if I can make a few dollars in the parking lot. I might opt for the adult superstore idea, but there's no guaranteed payoff there either. It would cost me so much in gas money to get there and who knows how many other young, hot women and men have already staked out the territory. Times are tough for a lot of people, yo.

I'd fumble the whole thing anyway trying to keep things neat and tidy. I'd be fussing at fellas to pick up their used condoms and dispose of them according to appropriate medical waste procedures and suggesting that people watch their aim. If we don't make a mess in the first place......

Old habits die hard.

And then there's the possibility that I'd end up having to entertain one of these anti-government lunatics who seem to gravitate toward Georgia. I'll bet they're shitty tippers, too.

Oh the hell with that idea. I'll stick to getting exciting that a big box store is going to move its call center back from India to Georgia. Maybe my fortune will lie there in a job with a cubicle and a headset.  It's all about customer service in the end, isn't it?

MathMan thinks I'm chasing my tail in trying to perfect this manuscript before I send out queries. Uh huh. This coming from a man who spends the hours from 7pm until 11pm doing lesson plans so his students will have the best possible chance for success. He's right, of course. At some point I am going to have to say that this book is good enough and move on, but I know that it's not baked yet. I feel kind of guilty for handing it off to beta readers as it is. And they've been wonderful. I'm so grateful for their feedback. There's nothing like seeing something you've created from another person's perspective.

When all else fails to settle down the magpie brain, I read. And take pictures when I'm driving. Here's what mornings look like here.

As a Midwestern transplant to the South, I marvel at the cotton fields no matter how long I live here.

xoxoxo,

Lisa

30 Day Photography Challenge - A Childhood Memory

It was a snow day in January of 1978, but it came before the Great Blizzard, I think.

We'd played in the snow all morning - sledding down the hill at McMurray's where the kids at the bottom watched out for cars for the kids at the top. We were a snow dusted, ragtag bunch. Kids didn't come outfitted in squishy snowsuits back then.

Snowpants? Nah. We toughed it out in layers - a pair of long underwear, jeans, some fleece sweatpants if you had them. On top we wore more layers - those itchy long underwear shirts, a turtleneck that choked you, maybe a sweater, a thin coat and all of it covered with an enormous hoodie you dug from the back of the hall closet.

We were shrouded in knit scarves until they became too caked with snow and became a nuisance. We discarded into a colorful pile of knit hats, lonely mittens and the occasional odd boot.

We wore our fathers' old work gloves when we couldn't find any dry ones (someone forgot to turn the dryer on) and whatever hat made us look the least dorky. I remember my blue and white knit cap with Rising Sun Shiners emblazoned across the front. By the time I got home, the words were twisted around to the back. But who cared? What mattered were the number of times you made it from the top of the hill to all the way across the street without turning over, colliding with a tree or crashing into one of  your siblings. A crash with them could turn into a brawl.

We breathed in the cold air, but didn't really feel it. Just like when you jump into the pool during the summer and your skin tingles and goosebumps cover you, it only takes a few minutes to get used to the cold. And besides, you had so many layers on you looked like that poor kid in A Christmas Story and you were sweating down your back anyway.

After hours of that, we finally dragged ourselves inside to thaw out in front of the television. New Christmas toys still held their novelty. Kelly from next door - the same little blond beauty who had once paid the ice cream truck man with gravel - wanted to play at my house. Her mom had worked the swing shift at Seagram's or was it Schinley? and she was asleep in her perfect blue bedroom with her super chic sleep mask over her eyes. Kelly's brother Michael who was dying of something I never quite understood would yell at us if we got too loud and he'd ask her to bring him stuff - one thing at a time. He was dying angry and who could blame him? He never got to have a life the poor kid.

If we played at Kelly's house, we'd have to be quiet. If we played at my house, we'd have to put up with my little brother. We chose my house and settled in front of the TV - we were probably watching soaps on ABC before the afternoon reruns of The Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island came on - I dragged out the TV trays so we could play beauty shop.

My aunt worked for Kenner and so we got a lot of cool Kenner toys for Christmas each year. That particular year, I got a styling head based on Lindsay Wagner aka Jamie Sommers, the Bionic Woman. Kelly had the classic Barbie styling head. There's a photo of us on that day. My sister took it with the Polaroid camera she got that same Christmas.

I wonder what ever happened to Kelly? Did she keep her Barbie head? I can't believe my mother saved Jamie Sommers. She kind of creeps me out sitting on the shelf of this weird little closet over the stairs, but I can't bring myself to toss her out. She's bionic, after all, and I might want her around to keep me company after the kids put me in a home.

Jersey Shore Style

What did you do on snow days?

P.S. I'm kind of sick today and our internet connection is full of attitude so I'm not sure I'll be back to put up links. Don't forget to check out what Randal, Geoffrey and Summer are getting up to. xoxoxo

Geoffrey takes a stroll down Memory Lane.
Eeek - it looks like Randal has what I have.
I could use some of Summer's bad habit.

Did I tell you about the place called Doo Wah Diddy?

Another sultry day in the middle of nowhere...

I'm going to go do some sweating and swatting at flies while I peruse the books at the library's used book sale. I've got my church fan and tote bag and I'm ready to go

Later, I'll be committing acts of the domestic kind. There's a big ole watermelon to cut up and a layer cakey to bake. I'm reading Grand Duchy by Kevin Edwards and I hope to have it finished this weekend, too. And naps. I foresee naps. Dr. Who is on tonight and that's our family night activity. A bucket of popcorn and Dr. Who. Jump back, we're a wild bunch.

I used to mourn the end of summer, but these days I welcome it. The dog days aren't over here, but there's just the tiniest hint of change in the air. The light slants a little and by the late afternoon it's like you're tangoing in a tide, but cooler days are coming. I'm ready for it. I am itchin to be itchin in a wool sweater.

Wishing you a wonderful long weekend. What are your plans?

Take it away, Curly....

For blog commenter Denise. Oh, how I love Phil Harris. My favorite Jack Benny programs are the ones featuring Phil, Dennis Day, Don Wilson, Rochester and Mary Livingston.

Shift into freewheeling and let them follow

During our recent trip, we passed the time by listening to Radio Classics on XM radio. Of all that we listened to - some Phil Harris and Alice Faye, lots of Dick Powell playing various gumshoes, Bob Hope and Baby Snooks, we heard the best episode of Pat Novak for Hire featuring Jack Webb of Dragnet fame. The writing was pulp fantastic. Over the top is what the Radio Classics host Greg Bell called it. He's right.

Here are fragments of dialogue from the episode Rita Malloy from April 23, 1949. (You can listen to the full episode and find more info about the program here.)

It sneaks up and paws you like a wet ghost...
I'm not crazy about waking up with strangers sitting on my bed especially if they got baritone voices....
I don't want chatter and cocktails, now give me those keys....
He didn't even give me time to pick a dream....
I stretched out on the floor, dead as a Philadelphia night club....
If you get any good answers, save a couple for me...
I'd have to do something fast. I had about as much a chance as a pound of liver at a cat show....

Lots of fog tonight, huh, Joe?
You're walkin' on it....

Shift into freewheeling and let them follow.........

He's a good man except he thinks it's a waste of the taxpayers' money to put alcohol in torpedoes.

It was the perfect spot for a missionary. The lobby looked like the first act of Rain. There was a pinball machine in one corner, a couple of last year's girls in this year's slacks, and a bleary-eyed little night clerk. He looked like a well-groomed laundry bag. He gave us the fisheye as we started up the stairs....

I view you as my penance, Patsy. The sackcloth for a misspent life.

You'll always be in trouble because you're a patsy and you're dangerous because you move in the twilight
zone between good and evil without any predisposition toward either one.

I think you'd pick the lock to the gates of Heaven....

It was a pretty room if you like dead women on your rugs....

This all ties together since I've been immersed in researching wartime circa 1944 and I've recently developed a thing for listening to music from that era, as well. When I run on the elliptical, I watch episodes of Homefront on Youtube.

 Technology the time machine.

As I listened to these shows, I was listening for the rhythm of the words, the patter, the high points and pauses. For example, I noticed that David Letterman's monologue rhythm is very similar to that of Bob Hope, especially back when he was doing the USO stage shows. Hope, not Letterman. He's not quite that old yet.

Have your eyes glazed over like mine do when MathMan talks Calculus at me? I swear, I wonder sometimes if I couldn't be found on the autism spectrum in the high functioning segment - Asperger's or such because when I'm in, I'm all in. Until the next bright and shiny thing catches my fancy.

Ooooooor, perhaps as one of the bone idle unemployed, I have just a little too much time on my hands. Either way, I quite like escaping into the past where the future looked brighter and you didn't have to fuss with dropped cell phone calls when you're on the phone with AT&T's customer service. I mean, we're in two wars and a chick can't even find a factory job riveting shit.

I know, I know, I'm romanticizing the past, times were tough for a lot of people, you brushed your teeth with powder, tampons weren't mainstream and the internet wasn't even a gleam in the government's eye. I'd never survive without Google for chissakes. Please don't harsh my nostalgia buzz, okay? See this straw? I'm grasping it pretty hard. So.

I've done it again. Completely sidetracked. Back to what I meant to write about. The things that make the dialogue of The Pat Novak show pop are the similes and the wicked turns of phrases that, if you don't listen carefully, you might miss. Sure it's dated and corny, but what's not to love about it? It makes me want to start calling people Bub and Sister and prefacing my declarative sentences with "Listen, see......"

What kinds of dialogue do you like? What are your favorite similes, metaphors, phrases? What movie lines or sentences from novels do you repeat? What's your favorite era?

Suitcase of memories

On Saturday, Larry Kirwan, host of Sirius XM's Celtic Crush, talked about music that reminded him of first loves. He asked who was your first love?

What a question because, you see, I've been greedy. So very greedy in love.

I met Troy when I was twelve. Before I knew what love could be.We were a pair for almost two years and the entire time, he took my breath away when I saw him walk by the window of the middle school where I attended. He was in high school, on his way to the shared cafeteria. There were hayrides, and mash sessions in the tent where the farm kids slept during the 4H Fair. Making out to The Car's in the backseat of the Ford Granada. He was dark curly hair and dark eyes, tentative, at first. I was, too. His kisses were secrets I'd write in in my diary. I still think of him when I smell hay.

Or David. Long, languid summers, daring adventures on bridges and in muddy bottoms. A growing up and growing apart I still regret sometimes because he was adorable. When we were in elementary school, he played Rudolph in the Christmas show and I fell in love with him then. I hurt him later because the world was going to be my oyster and I didn't need any ties to home.

Or the other David. The one who gave me lessons in pleasure and pain. One door opened and another slammed shut. There was no looking back from him.

Or the new David. Fireworks exploding over our first kiss like something out of a cheesy movie. Brief and breathless. Barely deserves a mention except, well, you know...

Or maybe Chris. I begged my parents to let me stay with him because going away to school scared the hell out of me. 

I adjusted. Quickly.

Craig, the guy who sang to me Waiting for a Girl Like You the first time we met, helped. He's still helping me adjust, but this time it's to middle age. We skyped last week so I could test out my microphone and webcam because I might have a skype job interview. Yes, this is the world we live in. Anyway, if you don't count my husband who is far and away my BFF, Craig is my best friend. The years show on our faces, but we can still burn through an hour without noticing because we're so busy being ridiculous, trying to make the other laugh.

See? Greedy. I didn't even tell you about Dylan (not his real name) who was a two-fer. High school and college. His song is The Rain King. Or Abdel. I can't narrow the summer of 1987 down to one song. It's the entire cassette of Cat Stevens' Greatest Hits. But especially this song.

I want know who you think about when you think of first loves. What songs trigger a memory of young love, lost love, first love?

Close to my heart

I've been going through old posts from PoliTits to repost now that the old blog is live again. Six years of words. It reminds me how much we've all grown. Grown means different things when applied to different people.

What makes you want to swing for the fences?

Short Story: The Playlist

 1984 Sectional Champs - I'm the thrilled chick on the left.

I opened the package from Robert.  

In January, he'd organized an event to celebrate the retirement of the coach who'd lead our tiny high school basketball team to back-to-back championships.  Having just been laid off,  I felt selfish spending the money to take the trip.  I emailed Robert that I wouldn't be there and he emailed me back.

"Watch your mail."

Taking pity on me, I suppose, he'd mailed copies of the slideshow he'd put together and the local AM radio station's coverage of the games where our David beat the Goliath in the last second, creating one of the highlights of our senior year.

I popped some popcorn and settled in to watch the cd.  My daughter Sophia came and sat on the sofa next to me.

"What's this?"
"It's a slideshow from my senior year of high school."
"Is that you?"
"Yep."
"You were skinny."
"I was."
"Look at your hair."
"I know, right?  I miss my dark hair."
"Did you like being a cheerleader?"
"I did.  But cheerleading is different now.  It's more like dancing and stunts.  We didn't do a lot of that stuff."
"Everybody had big hair."
"Yep."

My son came in from outside and flopped on the love seat.  "Why did those guys wear such short shorts?"

"That was the style."

They sat with me for a few more minutes, reading the story of how the team had decided over the summer to give it their all, how no one expected a win two years in a row from this team because we were the smallest school in the tournament and we'd lost so many seniors from the previous year's winning team.  The slides slid over one by one with the story of how they did it.  Determination.  Practice.  Teamwork.  Know your strengths and play to them.

The cd ended.  Tears prickled behind my eyes.  I'd seen some of those people at my twenty-fifth class reunion in June.  I swallowed the lump that formed in my throat.  How silly.  Homesick for the place and the past?  What sentimental claptrap.

"Mom, what's this?"  Nate held up a cd with a colorful cover - pictures of downloaded music from itunes.

"Don't know.  It was in the box, but I haven't listened to it yet."

He opened it up and looked at the playlist.  "I don't know any of these songs except the last one.  Isn't that on Rock Band?"  He tossed the cd case into my outstretched hand.

I opened the cover and looked at the typed playlist.  "Songs for Lisa"
1.  Lonely Boy / Andrew Gold
2. Broken Hearted Savior / Big Head Todd and The Monsters
3.  Stand Tall / Burton Cummings
4.  Feels Like Home / Chatal Kreviazuk
5.  We Just Disagree / The Dave Mason Band
6.  Always Gonna Love You / Gary Moore
7.  The Air That I Breathe / The Hollies
8.  At Seventeen / Janis Ian
9.  Midnight Blue / Melissa Manchester
10.  Everytime You Cry / The Outfield
11.  Don't Give Up / Peter Gabriel
12.  Sad Eyes / Robert John
13.  I Don't Want to Talk About It / Rod Stewart
14.  Leather and Lace / Stevie Nicks & Don Henley
15.  I'm Not In Love / 10cc
16.  What's Up?  / 4 Non Blondes

"Man.  I haven't heard some of these songs in forever."

"Are you going to listen to it?  Or, what I really mean, is are you going to make us listen to it?"  He shifted from foot to foot, itching to make a break for it.  Sophia stood up and slunk out of the room.

I laughed.  "No.  I'll listen to it later.  Just put it on my desk, will you?"  I tossed it back to him and hit the rewind button on the slideshow.

********

"What's this?"  Doug pointed at the dashboard.

"Oh that?  It's the cd Robert sent me.  I put it in my purse for when the XM isn't working.  I'm not going to  drive around listening to commercial radio or my own thoughts.  I'd go mad."

"Well, that explains the Memissa Manchester tweet."

"Indeed.  Did you like that misspelling?"

"Are you supposed to be texting while you drive?  I think not."

"It was a stoplight.   A long one."

"Uh huh."  He stuck his arm out of the car window.  "Thanks for driving.  My leg is still swollen"

I looked down at his leg. "Ouch.  Ready?"

"Yep.  God, isn't this weather nice now?"  The humidity had dropped and we drove with the windows down.  The sun had just faded at the horizon, leaving brushstrokes of salmon and lavender at the top of the ridge ahead of us. 

I turned up the music.  "Let's sing."

"What?"

"Come on.  Sing with me.  Here's the Melissa Manchester song...."

"What year is this from?"  Doug pulled the cd case from my purse and looked at the playlist typed on the inside cover.

"I'm not sure.  But here's something kind of strange.  Some of these songs remind me of things from my childhood.  It's like Robert knows things about my past.  But I don't know how he could know.  Does that make sense?"

"Maybe he stalked you."

"Yeah....no.  But seriously.  Like, I remember I'd gotten my hot pink Huffy ten speed. I must have been about ten or eleven.  I was riding it out to my cousins' house and I was really excited because I learned how to go with no hands."

"Look ma!  No hands!"

"Just like that.  But here's the thing.  I remember riding along and singing that song Midnight Blue all by myself.  I probably did hand motions, I was so happy and carefree."

"Carefree?"

"Work with me here.  It was a long time ago."

Doug took up his phone and started messing with the buttons.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking up that song.  Did you know Smokey Robinson has a song titled Midnight Blue?"

"Come on.  Sing with me....I think we can make it, if we try....."

"Are you sure he didn't have a thing for you?"

"Who?  Robert?  Nah."

"Maybe he just never told you."

I shrugged.  No, that was silly.  We'd never dated.  I probably kissed him during a game of Spin the Bottle, but that was it.  He was always nice, always there, but he never said anything about liking me.  Not like that.  Not even when we went away to the same college.  By the third week at Ball State, I hardly saw my high school friends.

"It's a funny playlist though, isn't it?"

"Heh, cheese and more cheese.  Just your kind of thing."

I hit the button, skipping to another song .  "Okay, so how about this one.  It's 10cc.  You know this one.  Duet?"  I glanced at him.  "You don't have to do the hand motions.  Just do back up, okay?"

He glanced again at the playlist, holding his phone over it to illuminate it.  "This is 10cc?  No way. This is their worst song."

"Honey?  Come on.  I know you can sing.  I've heard you when we play Rock Band.  Come on, time to sing.  I'm not in love, so don't forget it.   It's just a silly phase I'm going through..."

We rode along for a few minutes, him scrolling through his phone messages, me singing both lead and backround, mentioning that I could really use a synthesizer on the steering wheel.  Sometimes doing hand motions or pretending to clutch a microphone and trying not to sing with my eyes closed.

"Be quiet, big boys don't cry, big boys don't cry, big boys don't cry...."

The song ended and I pushed the button again.  "Oh!  Leather and Lace.  Do you want to be Stevie Nicks or Don Henley?"

He laughed.  I could see him shaking his head out of the corner of my eye even as I kept my focus on the road stretching ahead of us into the dark.  The cool wind blew over us and he reached over and tucked some of my loose silver hair behind my ear. 

"I would never have given you a cd with Leather and Lace on it."

"But I saw Stevie Nicks in concert in 1983."

"So?"

I pushed the cd button one more time.  "Okay then.  How about this song - you can play the guitar solo, and I know you know the words to this one."

"This song does not go with the others."

"I know, right?  But let's sing it anyway.  Twenty-five years and my life is still trying to get up that great big hill of hope for a destination..."

"More like 44 years, Lisa."

"Don't remind me.  And I say, hey hey hey hey I said hey, what's going on?"

Okay, spill it - which of those songs did YOU sing along to? Hand motions? Were your eyes closed?

What Will Make You Believe Me?

I keep dreaming of tornadoes.  I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

Last night, I didn't dream of tornadoes, but at one point I did rest in that in-between state - not awake exactly, not quite gone.
And I thought about how lately I see an abundance of the Chevy trucks like the one I lost my virginity in all those years ago.
Having your cherry popped in the bed of a truck does not make for a great romantic tale.
Except there were stars overhead somewhere, I suppose.
I couldn't see them though because my eyes were probably squeezed shut and the camper shell would have made it impossible anyway.
Those were the days.
When I thought Micelob beer was the height of sophistication.
And he was pretty special.  Or, at the very least, convincing.  No, he didn't have to get me drunk or marry me first.  Yes, I'm now friends with him on Facebook.  I mean, how else would I have a complete set?  He's key to the Old Boyfriend Buffet, right?
So now I see those trucks all over town and here's the thing that causes me to notice:
Those Chevy trucks are adorned with those Antique Vehicle license plates and since it's all about me, I conclude:  My virginity is an antique.

The Detritus of Life So Far

I don't even remember why I started it, but there I was pulling things from the floor of the closet and asking myself rhetorical questions like "Why is she keeping all these shoeboxes?"

More boxes. Nifty metal rectangular ones from Ikea.  Boxes bursting with photos that will never be put into albums.  The boxes are dented from back in the days when they were pulled off the shelves of the built-in hutch and incorporated into some elaborate scheme involving Tonka trucks, Hotwheels, dinosaurs and those dark green molded plastic soldiers.

"Watch this, Mom!  See this guy, he's going to...."

That was two houses ago.

Stacks of cds, borrowed from the family's collection and never returned to the proper cabinet.  Books by Philip Roth, David McCullough and John Dean.  The entire set of Harry Potter novels in hardback plus some of the audio books.  Old cassettes of Jack Benny radio shows, a full set of David Sedaris books on cd.  Anthony Kiedis's autobiography Scar Tissue.  I wondered where that was.

Some Calculus books.  Did MathMan say he was going to be teaching Calculus next semester?

A Rubbermaid box of things belonging to MathMam.  Baseball memorabilia,  some concert programs from a 1989 Paul McCartney show we attended at the Rosemont Horizon when it was still the Horizon.  That was the same year we went to see Les Miserables at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago.  The same year we moved to Chicago after we graduated from I.U and it snowed on May 5th.  My dad was helping us move in with MathMan's mom.  He looked up at the sky showering us with fluffy snow, then back at me and asked if I was sure I wanted to live in Chicago.

I was sure.

A little box of jewelry, mostly broken, that had once cluttered the top of my dresser circa 1978.  I picked through it and saved the old spoon ring and two buttons:  I'm Like Freakin Out! and J'aime le Francais.  Stuck them right through some poster board so they can grace my "new" office space.  Tossed the rest.

Oh, right.  That's what started all this - I was going to shift Nate's clothes upstairs since we moved him back up to the small room that had been my office.  He was ready to have his own room again, was tired of sleeping in the wide open space of the basement family room with no door that locked.  He's a fourteen year old boy.  I'm not stupid.  I'm not going to be picking up discarded socks from his floor though.

With an assist from MathMan, the record albums in their milk crates were moved out of the closet and given a place, accessible, but out of the way in the corner of what was now my new office/weight room.

He also took down the mystery box from the top shelf.  So that's where they were - the few photo albums we owned, full of pictures form the early days of our life together.  Back when I had the time and inclination to sit down and enjoy the tedium of inserting photos into plastic sleeves.  Back when I had photos developed and the archivist in me had to sit down and write on the back of each one - the people, places and dates.  It was important.  Back before three kids and jobs and distractions.  Before I used the internet to do more than occasionally search for photos of houseplans people could order from Sears and other mail-order companies.  When I would have laughed at the idea of spending large amounts of time in front of the computer during my non-work hours.

We didn't even bother to unpack those photo albums when we moved into this house.

Time to refold those old baseball jerseys and put them into some kind of box for Nate.  And do we still have this iHome charger/player thing?  Here are the instructions.  Did I see that in Chloe's room?

Two Composition books with only a few pages used.  Those might be nice to have this coming school year. MathMan's bassoon repair kit, still housed in the 1970s orange Tupperware it's been in since I've know him.

Sit down and look through that basket of photos that never even made it into the IKEA boxes?

And when did I put this box of Little Tikes building blocks in here?  Those can go in the garage with the rest of the abandoned toys.  Maybe it's time to donate these things.  I don't see us moving them every time we change rentals just because we might have grandchildren some day.  Better to let some kid have them now to enjoy. 

The stack of board games teeters precariously next to my Conn trumpet case, completely ignored on the top shelf.  Dang, I thought that silver trumpet was hot and I was hot shit playing it.  Until I decided that I'd rather march as a flag twirler in a skimpy halter dress instead of those hideous band uniforms with those fuzzy white tall hats.  The joke was on us, though.  The band kids stayed toasty warm in their wool uniforms and we froze our nipples off when the parades took place on early autumn mornings that plunged down into the forties.  With fog.

Do I really need to keep this old cheerleading patch with my name on it?  It's yellowed.  Might be fun to put it on my desk though.  Just for kicks.

That ceramic tic-tac-toe set that Sophie made two years ago in Art Club should be put in something safe before it's crushed to dust.

What's this?  A Samsung phone box from which Hanukkah?  Must have been 2007 or 2008?  We were still in the John Kay Road house.  It was the used phone we bought for Chloe from her friend who'd upgraded to the first iPhone.  Or was it a Blackberry? It was the phone that she dropped in the Target parking lot then accidentally stepped on while wearing those brown suede boots we used to "share."  The ones with the heel that scraped the side of her newish used phone.  I unkindly teased her about not being so graceful for a dancer.

I finished matching up the pairs of shoes I'd fished from the bottom of the closet and stepped back to consider how they now had feet bigger than mine.

What kind of trouble are you getting into this Wednesday?