NEVER WATER THE CHRISTMAS TREE NUDE.

Since everybody knows I don't do New Years' Resolutions, but because I am loathe to let the holiday go quite yet (although that tree MUST come down, no matter how prickly and temper-flaring a task it may be, it's started giving me the stinkeye and no longer glows, it glowers), I've been pondering on what I learned throughout the past year of my life On This Planet. I may not set goals, but I do learn. So in no particular order, they are as follows:

Men Who Fix Cars Do Not Find Me Funny. I know nothing about cars. I don't care about knowing about cars. I know I should. I know that, like Dane Cook, when I drive in to get my car fixed they will say to me "It looks like you had unicorns in your muffler." "Really?" I will say. "Unicorns? Imagine that. I wondered what that noise was." "Yeah, it'll cost you $700." "Goody. That's about what I figured it would be for a unicorn extraction. So reasonably priced, too." And the guy will smile, and throw away my old wiper blades, and I will drive away and the car will still make that noise, and I will decide that the unicorn probably had a baby, but it must be nothing to worry about or they would have caught it. So when we had a giant snowstorm and I signaled that I was turning left and then sailed majestically forward into oncoming traffic despite pumping of said brakes, I figured it was time to get new tires.

"When did you last replace your tires, ma'am?" the Tire Guy asked me.

"I dunno, I think about the last time I had a bean sidhe in my carburetor," I told him, and he just looked at me.

"And what kind of tires do you want, ma'am?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "Ones that I can drive on in the snow."

"Any particular brand or model?" he asked, rubbing the bridge of hise nose with that impending-migraine look.

"What do you recommend?"

"Well, what sort of driving do you do?"

"Cautious," I said. "Like old people having sex level of cautious. I'm not a very good driver."

"I mean, where do you drive?"

"Um, you know. Work. The store. Over medians sometimes."

"Right," he said, resting his head on the counter. "We'll take care of you. Can I have your keys, please?"

I handed them over, and he glared at the eight inches of red-polka-dot scarf tied around them.

"I lose them," I explained. "I lose them a lot."

"I'm really surprised, lady," he said, and went into the back room while I wondered what I did to get demoted from ma'am to lady. I didn't see him again. Someone else came and helped me, someone younger and presumably without a daughter so he didn't have to imagine her fifteen years hence, having this conversation with the Tire Guy.

I Find Once Boring Things Exciting. Now, I'm not talking about the stuff that SOME people think is boring. (I'm primarily thinking of Whitney and Kirk, who love to play the game where they pick the Most Boring Thing On TV and wait for me to come in. "Oh, wow, this is that special on Jules Verne," I will enthuse, and they will both cackle and then change the channel.) No, I mean wish lists. In the days of yore I always had a wish list a mile long; this year, though, when mom and dad asked me what I wanted for my birthday..."I'd really like some food storage," I said.

And I meant it.

The Great Mouse Hunt of '08 took quite a bit out of me; having discovered evidence of nasty, filthy, hanta-disease-bearing vermin prancing their way through my vermicelli, bouillon, and Ghiradelli bars (BLASPHEMY, DARLING!) I commenced to toss everything that couldn't be washed in bleach. Then I had to live like a shopkeeper with canned food perched on counters while I played Lucrecia Borgia to Fievel the Marauder.

It's not bad enough that I have no idea what to do with most food storage. I don't EAT most of those things, because my theory is that those things are there for when there isn't REAL food and then they will taste better. My food storage has vanilla beans, and artichoke hearts, and tomatoes...and very little else. I should quit worrying about skills for Bartertown, because I won't MAKE it to Bartertown. I will have expired when I tried to make a casserole and didn't check the dates on the cans of soup. Anyway, if someone had presented me with canned chicken breast, thirty pounds of sugar, and evaporated milk ten years ago, I would have been grateful for the thought that counted. Now I'm just delighted. I open the cupboard doors and coo at my bounty.

Never water the Christmas tree nude. You'd think I'd remember, but every! Damn! Year! I get a very pointed reminder, as well as a few wounds in places I can't show anyone and get symathy.

Time really will deliver the genetic betrayal that is your legacy. I don't like to exercise. In fact, that's probably the biggest understatement that I can say without involving the words "Daniel Craig" and "attractive". I don't like anything about it. I don't like to sweat, I don't like to wear the special outfits, I don't like to jump around or run or jog or jazzercise or do any of it. In fact, I have long maintained that exercise goes against our very genetic code. Seriously. Thousands of years of human history, and everything we do is designed to MAKE LIFE EASIER. If it was so much fun chasing dinner with pointy sticks and eating dirt and scavenging, why aren't we still doing it? Because it's not fun. People want to relax. They don't want to walk ten miles to find wild carrots, they figured out that sucked and planted gardens and raised farm animals so they could sit down at some point and not have to constantly be moving around in order to survive. Every invention has been to lessen man's need to be involved in the work process. So when faced with physical activity, what is my natural instinct? TO STOP WORKING SO DAMN HARD. I get on the exercise bike and start working away, and look down and realize that I've slowed down because I was getting overheated. What is the point, I ask you?

Or I would have asked you before realizing that my ability to consume my own weight in dairy products and bacon meant that i was eating MORE dairy products and bacon, to make up for the additional body weight. Stupid, stupid mid-thirties. They are clearly working against me.

The family is going to do the Biggest Loser game. Originally, I said I'd participate, if by participating it meant not doing anything. "But don't you feel like it inspires you a little, you know, to have someone else to answer to?" Whit said.

"Nope. I have NO SHAME," I said. "I don't care if someone knows I didn't exercise, or if I ate a pound of bacon last night by myself."

"You didn't."

"Fine, have it your way."

So I'm on the game, largely because I can't get into those Chinese-red silk cigarette pants that I love more than...well, apparently more than bacon.

Home Isn't Always Safe. Your BED isn't always safe. My ankle still hurts. On the plus side, I can now Basil Fawlty it and scream about how I'm getting twinges from the old war wound to distract people during conversation. This will be a nice counterpoint to my usual feigned narcolepsy.

You can never have too many books. This can also be listed under the subset of "She Who Dies with the Most Books Wins." I'd like to at least be in the running someday. Shelf space is currently at a premium, but I cannot stop myself. No interventions, thank you very much. I'm a junkie of the printed word, and there are very few things in life more satisfying than having a stockpile of Things To Read.

A Random Sampling of Favorite Books I've Read 2008: I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith. If you haven't read it, READ IT. I love it. I heart it. I would put it under my pillow except that space is already occupied by a box of crackers (in case I get hungry in the night) and whatever book I'm reading at the moment. (That way you get to screech through the whole place looking for it, yelling imprecations and tearing books off of shelves until you remember you were reading it last night and fell asleep with your finger marking your place.) I'm just angry I never read it sooner, but I attribute that to the crappy, crappy, innocuous book jacket description. DON'T LET IT FOOL YOU.

Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean. I read this as a kid (okay, late teens) and couldn't for the life of me remember much about it, other than it was set in a college and I liked it tremendously. I found it again and devoured it. Full of literary references and very little Magic until the last...oh, fifty pages or so, it makes me happy and feel like I could have pretended to be a Brainy Classics Major at some upscale private university.

Confederates in the Attic, by Tony Horwitz. I am not a nonfiction reader, generally. I don't know why I'll read a contemporary novel set now if it's fiction, but refuse to pick up anything about anyone in history outside of the Tudor period...but there it is. Nevertheless, this was recommended by the Great Carriesnow, and I could not put it down. I read it on my way to visit The Brother in AlaBAMA (as it must be said, a la Forrest Gump) and it's on my read and re-read list. Hysterical reenactors? C'mon, that's my bread and butter! They may not say "milady" and whack each other in the park with padded PVC pipe swords...no, these are the HARDCORE. Absolutely not to be missed.

The Lodger Shakespeare, by Charles Nicholl. See my aforementioned caveat regarding nonfiction...but, as GOB says, "COME ON!" It's Shakespeare. It's history. It's researched history about Shakespeare. What else would you expect? DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT.

And as a final note, I have achieved my heart's desire. Santa Claus brought me...a Kindle. For this, I might need an intervention. Those of you who question technology...or its place in the world...clearly, you are the people who have not been forced to give up packing socks and underwear, because you require at least five paperbacks on the "getting there" portion of your trip. And then you buy two in the airport wandering around because they looked interesting, and when you get to your destination you find your host doesn't have ANYTHING worth reading, and while you'll read John Grisham because there's nothing else there, when you're out at the supermarket you inadvertently buy two more paperbacks waiting in the checkout line, and then you talk them into visiting a bookstore, and then on your way home you realize you packed the one you were reading in your big checked suitcase and the ones you have with you don't look interesting, so you are forced to buy a few more and you return home with 15 new paperbacks and a walking pattern Igor would envy due to the extra weight in your carry on. As it is, I can have 200 books at my fingertips. If I don't want to read what I have, I can use the Whispernet (don't ask me what it is, I can only relay terms like a parrot) and download a new book in under a minute. I can read periodicals. I can check the NY Times. I can verify my claims to my seatmate using Wikipedia. It is, in short, a means to an end. They will pry it out of my cold, dead hand, and even so I will be annoyed that I didn't get to finish whatever book I was reading. It doesn't relieve the intense pressure of acquiring more of the printed word, but it does mean I will have clean underwear when I arrive at my destination.

Provided I did laundry before I left, that is.

Oh what a world, what a world - a political thought process, so avoid it if you're not in the mood

I spent the most historic night in my personal American history recollection on the phone with my parents.

"It's a part of being a revolution," my dad said. "Every election, we're a part of something historic."

"Have you gotten into the cooking sherry?" my mom asked me.

No, seriously. "I never in my life imagined this could happen," she said, softly, and I was struck anew by what a magnificent process actually exists.

I am, to put it lightly, a cynic. I live in a state where my vote didn't matter--other than to prove that 37% of the population thought the other 63% had a Really Bad Idea on what to do with the future. Practically speaking, what does the purported Head of Our Country have the ability to do? They can all promise whatever they want, but that doesn't mean they can persuade Congress or Senate or even states to do much of anything. They can pick up a red phone, and if we're lucky, they can avoid making a total ass of themselves and not foul up foreign policy more than we've already managed.

If possible.

It's all we can really ask of anyone, including ourselves. Short of sending a telegram to everyone up on The Hill that reads "As a part of this American Republic, you have failed to meet my expectations. As you are in my employ, please consider your contract terminated. Have your bags packed and vacate the premises no later than 4:00 p.m. today." And then what? I hear there are some monkeys at Hogle Zoo looking for an opening...

It's the first year in the entire year of my life--almost 18 years--that I've voted FOR someone instead of AGAINST someone. As I said, I don't hold any illusions. I just hold the hope that someone can at least uncrock politics slightly. And even if they can't, for it's a slippery slope, as Grayson Spaulding pointed out before taking that plunge off the New York Ferry, I can at least still hope for the next four years that someone will TRY. As I said to my mother, this is the closest thing to feeling like a part of the 60's revolution I can ever get. The times are a-changin', and whether you're for or against you're part of something unprecedented. "So flower power didn't work," John Lennon said. "We'll find something else."

Here's hoping, John. Here's hoping.

Of Ankles and Ankle Biters

In a moment both proud and pathetic, a week ago I arose victorious from my bed only to discover that, in fact, my ankle hurt like hell. Also, it was swollen to the size of a particularly creepy-looking cankle, cornered as well as a Winnebago, and did nothing to alleviate the rumors at work that I am the reincarnation of Francois le Clerc (can I help it if lax security in cubicles leads to plunder of staplers and post-its?).

Apparently that dream about having my foot caught in something had been based in reality, or perhaps unbeknownst even to myself I had taken up midnight jogging. In Via Spigas. (Because that's primarily what I have in my closet, aside from a large number of things I am not getting rid of because I'm Going To Lose Ten Pounds And They'll Fit Again, but that's neither here nor there at the moment.) How completely ridiculous is that? Who sprains their ankle alone in bed asleep? I'd love to claim a particularly heroic deed, something Indiana Jones-ish, or at the bare minimum that I was active, but the truth is that I was supine and am outdoing myself in levels of heretofore unsupposed klutziness. Oh well. I could be a cutter, I guess.

I have returned this evening from the seething pit of humanity known as Las Vegas. My nephew was being baptized, and I had supposed in capital letters that it was Important I Be There. His baptism itself was unbelievably sweet, as is said nephew; watching a tow-headed, blue-eyed little boy blink away tears while singing "I Am A Child Of God" is enough to make even my grinchy heart take a stab at growing at least half a size. Also, the other kid from his ward getting baptized looked like Ralphie from A Christmas Story, minus glasses and with a really stupid Spanky haircut. You can't beat that.

During the course of the visit, I got put on time out. Again. It wasn't even my sister this time; it was my sister's mother-in-law, who told all of us that we Knew Better.

Well, I do now.

Six boys and one girl under the age of 12 make for wild times, my friend. Wild times, indeed; especially when you have a sign over your head that reads "Pied Piper/Punching Bag, No Training Required". I don't know what I do, but they all want to destroy me. I walk into a room, they point, and voices scream "Get HER!" What do you do that that point? Get overrun by germbags? No, survival instinct kicks in and you Run Like Hell. Which is when I got put on time out for plunging down the stairs with the entire melee following. Adults can feel as superior as they want, but there's something about not having kids that allows you to wind them all up to high-pitched, wired like a hummingbird-on-crack vibrating hysteria, and then send them home. Parents hate it, but if it's a choice between listening to the weather and plans for house renovations or getting shot between the eyes by Wyatt Earp, I know which I'm gonna pick.

Plus, I still owe Tanner for telling the adults that "the big one" was the one who started it all. Your day will come, Tanner. Oh yes. It will come.

James - How Was It For You

For inspiration.

The way it was

I came of age in a totally retarded time period. The grunge scene hit it big, the Cold War ended, unprotected sex equaled death, and the vice president couldn't spell potato (ironically, considering he had all the appeal of one). Riots ran rampant after the police offers were aquitted, the presidential candidate appeared on national television playing a saxophone, and a bald woman ripped up pictures of the Pope. Douglas Copeland had an underground hit with Generation X, which of course we refused to accept as defining our generation, since our generation was all about refusing to be defined period, even by something as innocuous as an X-standing-for-nothing.

You know what I miss?

It's definitely not the bad perm, although something is to be said for extra-large men's t-shirts and boxers as a daily wardrobe choice (saucily accessorized with thermal underwear when the cold weather hit, of course). Absolutely not those wild dot-matrix printers, and PARTICULARLY not The Real World, no matter how true the story of seven people living together might have been at the time.

No, what I miss is the dancing.

While there are those who will subscribe to the early-nineties affinity magic of 2 Legit 2 Quit, and/or the lingering after-effects of applying an Ice, Ice Baby to their homecoming, I am talking about the absolutely free-form dancing.

It's hard to describe; it's not as hippie-ish as the Deadhead Twirl, and certainly in no way choreographed as the completely idiotic Electric Slide. It has nothing to do with Busting a Move, or even appearing sexy; the best way to describe it is a sort of weird, giving yourself up to the music spasticated seizure.

It's not the dance moves--or lack thereof--that really sway me; it's that feeling of just letting it all go, galloping around the dance floor because you FEEL like it, riding on pure exhilaration and joy. It's the fun of holding the entire world in disregard, because it's got no place in where you are at that moment. It's release and happiness and relaxation and celebration all in one; a total suspension of reality.

Also a suspension of coordination, I'm not gonna lie.

Don't care. It's all about the exuberance. Where do you get to have that as an adult? I'm picturing myself galloping through the office tomorrow, twirling and dipping and flailing as the mood strikes, bouncing down stairs and flinging myself into chairs to talk with people; is this before or after property management sends out a team for deportation and possibly exorcism? Because I can guarantee they're gonna take me down, and it will be painful. (When the office goes feral and everyone starts hunting in packs, I figure property management will be the legal department's biggest opponents; architecture will be hunted for meat, like the slothful and weak creatures that they are, and accounting will simply set up its own empire with which we will have to establish trade. Property management, man. Biggest problem. It's why I'm campaigning so heavily for development to be on our side; it's the only way we can hold our own against property management. They're big, and they move fast, and they're ruthless.) So inbetween being tackled by property management and fitted for my straight jacket, will anyone listen to me? The capacity for ultimate, soul-expanding joy is there; we just don't have anyplace to express it anymore. We're caught up in the throes of adulthood, and Playing the Role. Grownups don't gallop, or turn cartwheels, or drop on someone from out of a tree and butter them. It's a tragedy, really it is. Do those urges really ever go away? I defy you to respond in the affirmative when faced with the company's fantasy football leagues. There are the same heartfelt exchanges about people's mothers and innuendo that there is when they're 15; if the urge really died after adulthood would people be sneaking around logging onto other people's computers so they can change said other people's teamnames to "The Teabaggers"?

So this week I'm going to regress. This week my plan is to live three inches outside my skin, the way I did before climbing into the adult equivalent of ten pounds of baloney in a five pound bag, and ENJOY. Try it.

I dare you.

For inspiration: James - How Was It For You

If Not For You - Dylan/Harrison Duet

Neither Master nor Blaster

I went to lunch today with two of my former students. Both are bright, funny, witty, self-possessed, well-read, pleasant, and responsible. These gorgeous creatures are making their way through the world, not sure what their mark will be but bright eyed and energetic and epic enough for possibilities to be limitless. And they really are limitless for them. It's breathtaking to see.

I used to think I could keep up with the treacherous little darlings, you know? It was the final vanity before an ever-expanding waistline and the "Naw, you go out, there's a really cool Nova special on PBS tonight." was accepted as reality. Now, of course, while I have always, ALWAYS been old to them, I'm old to myself as well.

"WHAT ABOUT BARTERTOWN?" I demanded of them.

First of all, they've never seen Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome and have no idea what I am talking about; secondly, halfway through the conversation it occurs to me--they have nothing to worry about. Adaptable, resilient, resourceful, Bartertown can come as it pleases, they'll survive and do beautifully. I, on the other hand, have absolutely no skills for Bartertown. I'm too right-brained for any applicable scientific knowledge like how to create energy from methane, have never been big on camping/survival skills (roughing it is one-ply toilet paper), and neither young nor limber enough to make it as a prostitute. Somehow I don't think Bartertown is going to be interested in a dilettante chef or knitter with 15,000 paperbacks who can recite the entire lyrics catalogue to the Beatles' Help album by rote.

If I don't cack it, since I have never actually been young in their eyes perhaps I can prevail on one of them to take pity on Auntie Del and she'll bring me food. It'll make for a good minute-and-a-half scene in the movie.