Suburban Bliss:: Birth Control Via The Written Word

The one where I put every awkward thing into one event and see what happens!

Logan and I have set up three couples and two of those couples are now married and I wouldn't be surprised if the third couple ends up walking down the aisle. I like to think this is because we have excellent friends and when they meet they're all, "Hey! We are excellent. Let's make out."

Then, the magic happens.

This weekend we attended a wedding for our friends Brad and Debra and it was all very exciting. The bride was lovely, the groom happy, the party lots of fun.

However, I'd be lying if I didn't mention how little I was looking forward to some awkward interactions.

Brad used to live across the street from Logan while they were growing up in Brighton. This means my Mother In Law and Father In Law would be at the wedding because they are very good friends with Brad's parents. You know....the ones I haven't spoken to in years and I'm not allowed to talk about why? [Edited: After a really disturbing comment, I've removed this reference. Until I can actually say how things fell apart between my in laws and me, hints like the one I left earlier leave things WAY too out of control horribly misunderstood. They're terrible but Oh. My. Lord. Not like that.]

Also Logan's brother is angry I guess, so that was yet another layer of the awkward.

Additionally, remember this story? How my child-less, non-married, non-mortgaged friends couldn't understand why I would feel so worn out by motherhood? And suggested I get a job to combat the utter exhaustion of the whole thing? That group of friends I hadn't spoken to in almost the same amount of time that I haven't spoken to my in laws.....some of them were going to be there!

Isn't this sounding super duper fun!?

We arrive at the rehearsal so Logan can practice the reading Brad and Debra asked him to do. (This one, that was also part of our wedding ceremony and makes me cry a little.)

As we walk in I see Brad's older brother and start to say hello and then I see another old friend I haven't seen in years and have missed a lot. So I, being socially inept, start to ignore my original intent of greeting Brad's brother.

This starts an amazing chain of events ending with me being half hugged by Brad's brother while attempting to hug our old friend at the same time. This is the Most Awkward Hug Of All Time. One I never could have imagined in all my years of giving ridiculously terrible hugs. I think I pulled a muscle in performing it.

Picture it for a minute. Yep, it was that bad.

Things go along fine, I see Brad's parents, and though they have undoubtedly heard an earful about the type of person I am, they pretend that I don't have horns and cloven hooves for hands. I see another old friend who is the spouse of one of the helpful Starbucks Suggestion gals.

Luckily he could care less about stupid girl drama and it's great hearing about their life together and their little girl.

The next day is the wedding and we arrive just before the ceremony allowing us to sit closer to the back of the church. This is nice because I don't end up with daggers being aimed at my head by certain wedding guests who aren't particularly fond of me. Not that I blame them.

Right before the ceremony starts, a woman turns around to say hello to Logan. It's the mother of the girl he dated the longest besides me. The girl he thought he would marry, except she turned out to not be a  good fit for reasons I am not at liberty to share. (Logan just passed out from the stress of that sentence. "She's not going to....What is she DOING!?)

And just like that I wished I'd bought a new dress and gotten my hair done for this wedding because you know she's telling her daughter right now, "Well, she didn't have fangs or hooves. But my God her roots were ridiculous!"

With all that out of the way we went on to the reception, found our table and Logan went over to say hello to the table with his parents and all the people from the neighborhood he grew up in. Me and my cloven hooves stayed over at the other side of the room at a table by myself awkwardly sipping wine while trying to avoid eye contact with my angry brother in law and his new wife who is pregnant.

What a disaster soap opera we've all created! But really the best part was when Logan had to ask one of his brother's high school friends what his own sister-in-law's name is. Almost as good as the hug from the night before.

After Logan is done sharing pictures of our kids with the table across the room, things become much more fun. We sit at a great table with old friends, we catch up, talk about the Starbucks Suggestion. One of the guys is now a doctor and ENT so I show him my tonsils and ask him if he can do the surgery right here. He declines. Another guy at the table is a rocket scientist, no, I'm not being sarcastic.

He talks about his work and I explain my job. "Well I shop....and then I put those things into the computer....and then....people....look at it.....sometimes I puke my guts all over the internet as well."

At some point Logan's father came over to the table to chat and he did say hello to me and that was awfully kind. Someday maybe I'll be as grown up.

Once all the awkwardness was done I realized what I'd just had was the closest thing to a high school reunion as I'll ever get. I finally understood why people put themselves through the torture of revisiting high school. It's amazing to get to see people who knew you at one particular time in your life, then you all go off and grow and change, but there's something so satisfying about reminiscing about that one time in your life.

For Logan and I it was especially rewarding to see these friends we had 5 years ago finally starting on the life we were in the throes of when we were trying to make a friendship work with them.

Back then I liked that we had friends who were living the life I should have been living in my 20's. I had Maddie much earlier than we'd planned, I didn't want to have kids until my 30s. All the parents we knew seemed to have let the part of themselves that has fun with and without kids die. The problem was we were missing people we could relate to and who could understand what it's like to love something so much but feel dissatisfied by a lot of the day-to-day work of raising a family and balancing a marriage.

We still have friends who don't have kids and I'm glad we do. They can come over at the drop of a hat without having to organize a babysitter a month out. But I'm also glad we have friends who are parents and can have fun without the kids some of the time. Things are balanced now.

But there was something to be said for the time in our lives when we'd get a weekend sitter, cram 10 people into a couple of cars and drive 4 hours just to spend an evening at a Tiki bar in Columbus, Ohio.

Those friendships let me hold onto my 20's a little longer.

Did They Eat It?: Queso with Chicken, Black Beans and Rice Velveeta Edition

Finally! The (Rather Lamely Named) RECIPE!!!!!!!!

This is most of my ingredients: Multigrain tortilla chips, diced onion, brown rice, black beans, Ro-Tel, minced garlic, cumin and chili pepper. And, you know Velveeta (2%!)

Weekend Political Post: Are people still seriously buying this?

I have a bookmark folder titled "Weekend Political Rantings".

I'm not sure why I'm so fired up about this election. I guess the sense that there is a huge portion of this population who seem to believe that negative attacks far beyond policy criticism are an appropriate way to run a campaign and Christian Values are somehow appropriate for all of this country's diverse population.

It's making me furious, and I wish McCain's camp would just stop, mostly because every time I read one of these things or hear about a disgusting Robocall or campaign mailing. I have to give more money to the Obama camp. At the rate McCain's going, we'll be unable to pay our bills.

The best thing I saw all week was John McCain talking about negative ads.

Oh, you don't say. Weird.

After the stupid Terrorist garbage, McCain and Palin have moved onto the OMG HE'S A SOCIALIST!!!!! We won't have enough TOILET PAPER ONCE HE'S IN CHARGE!!!!

Funny thing is, he seemed to understand the basic tenets of Progressive Taxation just a few short years ago. I guess he was a socialist before it became a smear.

Progressive Taxation is okay, unless it's 2008 and I'm having my ass handed to me on a platter. Then it's SOCIALISM AND AMERICA!!!! YOU SHOULD BE TERRIFIED! A-hem. Here's a longer version of McCain's opinion, in fairness. Gee, maybe I would have voted for 2000McCain. 

Finally, this week I'd really like someone to explain why an abortion clinic bomber is not a domestic terrorist, while William Ayers is. Is it because Sarah Palin believes government should be smaller and "get out of the way" while she believes government should make personal moral decisions about who can get married and who can make decisions about one's own body? Does this make the abortion bomber's actions less reprehensible? Because she agrees with them? What?

At the very least, if you are not voting for Barack Obama because he is a "terrorist" and a "socialist", I honestly think you are ridiculous. Please at least find something real to motivate your vote for John McCain.

If you're not voting for Barack Obama because he's a black man, then please just stop reading.

Paging Nurse Logan.

Logan is very good at a lot of things. He is good at:

Running more than humans are supposed to.
Being thoughtful.
Working hard and exceeding expectations.
Doing fun things with the kids.
Eating a lot of protein.

Logan is not good at very few things:

He is not very good at keeping his schedule relatively open, if there's a minute? He'll fill it!
He isn't very good at throwing his clothes down the laundry chute. (They sit on the floor in front of the chute.)

He's probably worst at taking care of sick people.

In November I'm going to be a very sick person. That said, our neighbor told me she was "mostly fine" after her tonsillectomy years ago at age 30. She's around 60 years old now. I think she might be forgetting the pain, much like childbirth doesn't seem that bad after the fact. Although, I still remember in the throes of it all thinking, "I will never forget that this feels like I am splitting in two."

Also my neighbor is a lot tougher than me, she probably had her tonsils out after a shot of Jack with a rusty knife on her kitchen table. (Not really, it was at hospital). I have no doubt she could wash the floor with my limp and lifeless body if she chose to.

I am, on the other hand, an incredible wimp. As we've seen over and over in the last year as I've (we've all) suffered through throat infection after throat infection.

The nice thing about Logan's terrible lack of patience and empathy when taking care of sick people is that he knows he's really bad at it. We're all on the same page so that when he says, "Will you need a ride home from the surgery?"

And I look at him with the look that says, "What the hell are you talking about, dummy?"

He doesn't argue, he looks back and says, "Oh, right...."

When he says, "Maybe I'll just take a day off work?"

And I look at him and he says, "Why don't I take the rest of the week after the surgery off, I can work from home and then we'll see how you feel?"

It's just too bad I can't get that method to work when we're arguing over relocating to a different state.

Although I may have pushed the whole thing too far when I suggested he should wear a nurse's costume and give me a bell so I can call him when I need something, like my pillows fluffed.

Other Places: Maternity Hospital Bag at Mighty Junior

Yesterday we closed out a feature called, Maternity Hospital Bag: 16 Essentials for Moms in Labor at Mighty Junior. Some beautiful stuff, some things that made me think, Gee, I wish I could do that all over again.

Then I remembered how bad I was at it the first two times around. Poof. I can still have a new robe though, right?

The Velveeta Challenge Continued!

Today I'd like to tell you the story of how I went shopping for the supplies for my Casserole Challenge entry. It was a wonderful day when Max and I were hanging out whining in each other's arms about our most recent rounds of strep throat/tonsilitis. Then I remembered that my recipe was due to Velveeta's People that day. Also that day a handyman was coming by to replace the microwave and also to put tiles back on the walls. You know, the tiles we got wet? So they fell off the wall? Also that day the cleaning ladies were coming by.

You haven't lived until you've had tonsilitis and stood outside in the rain grilling chicken under umbrella. Procrastination strikes again!

Here are my two receipts, I have two receipts because the first market I went to was all out of Ro-Tel and I'd like to know how that happens? What is this Russia?

You'll see I bought a 12-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper so I had to remove that cost from the total bill. Please to note, boneless, skinless chicken breasts were on sale for $1.59 a pound. I couldn't believe it either.

So the total came to $17.15. This works out to be around $2.14 a serving, but technically less since I didn't use ALL of the ingredients I bought. But still, I'm not great with math and I'm not figuring out how much everything cost per ounce and then figure out how much I used and.....no thank you.

 

I have to wait to give you the full recipe until next week. Grrrr. Voting starts on October 30th so I'll probably post the recipe on Monday of next week. Until then you can see my enormous head at the Velveeta site.

Wow, that was surprising!

You have a uterus? I think you'd be foolish to vote for John McCain.

I'm trying to keep my political posts to the weekends, even though for a couple of hours each day I read various political websites and watch various videos and alternately crap my pants or cry. My overall experience is anxiety. This election is worse than waiting for Christmas.

I started out with 80 some-odd pieces of flair to share with you but have broken it down to three.

First.

We've seen the videos of McCain-Palin rallies where people tell John McCain they're afraid of Barack Obama, or how they've read he's an Arab (because that's a horrible thing....?????). Then there's the booing, that leads to the "Treason!" and "Terrorist!" comments.

This pretty much sums up why I am voting for Barack Obama. This ability to shut down stupid responses to opposing viewpoints, is what this country needs going forward. To turn something negative into something everyone can get behind. "We just need to vote."

We just need to vote.

The top thing I came away from this week in politics is this "thing" "McCain" "did" "at" "the" "last" "debate".

The disdain in that set of words, usually politicians at least try to hide their disregard for the rights of women. The "health" of the "mother". An eloquent set of words meant to deceive grown women into aborting their own children when their own so called "health" is at risk. Weee! I've been waiting 24 weeks, thinking I was welcoming my baby into this world....and now my body is shutting down and I'm dying. I finally get that late term abortion I've been praying for.

What the ever loving fuck is McCain talking about?

This is as brilliant as it's going to get. And that's not brilliant. I'm stunned by his air quotes, by his total disregard for the fact that there are women. HUMAN BEINGS behind the decision to terminate wanted, prayed for babies to [finger quote] protect their health [/finger quote]. That could mean so many things. Why would we want to trust [finger quote] grown women [/finger quote] and their [finger quote] Doctors [/finger quote] to make those decisions? These people are just waiting around to kill their babies. Babies they planned for, went to great lengths to get pregnant with....

Usually politicians at least hide their disdain for women's rights.

But I am not nearly eloquent enough to discuss this so I'll defer to Julie at A Little Pregnant.

"Because even if you're implacably, unconditionally opposed to abortion, a matter on which reasonable people disagree, I don't see any way a thinking person can look at those air quotes and see anything but pandering, contempt, and a dangerous willful ignorance."

And Alexa at Flotsam.

"It is my understanding that McCain believes late-term abortion should be outlawed except when it is necessary to save the life of the mother. But when do you make that determination? When does “health of the mother” turn into “life of the mother,” anyway? What organs would the infection have to spread to and shut down before I would be permitted to terminate my pregnancy? Would they wait until I was on a ventilator, or merely until my lungs were beginning to fill with fluid?"

I hope you'll read these blogs and remember these are the women Barack Obama and John McCain are talking about. A neighbor I talked to this week said he and his wife just believed there should be limits on the timing of abortions.

These women tell true stories, they are not figments of the imagination from the [finger quotes] Culture of Death [/finger quotes].

=============================

Finally, I think this is an interesting read for anyone (like me) who is terribly disturbed by the crazy things happening outside McCain Palin rallies. Extremism at McCain Rallies Comes Naturally. (It talks about how groups of like minded people work. It's quite true on both sides.)

=============================

Update: Heather and I posted the same links within a day of each other. As such there have been some concerns about plagiary.

Here is my response to the two emails and one comment I've gotten on the topic. As well as the kerfluffle at Dooce.com. As an FYI:

Sharing the same links is not plagiarism. Julie and Alexa have thousands of readers each day.

I am a reader of Julie's and found Alexa's post via a Twitter earlier in the week by Alice Bradley.

I have made a decision to post about politics on weekends only which explains the date issue.

Thank you for "looking" out for me.

Posted by: MelissaS | 2008.10.21 at 02:54 PM

 

How to: Halloween Boo.

I wrote about the Halloween Boo or Halloween Ghosting tradition last year. It's a fun little thing neighborhoods that like to create a sense of community do. Someone secretly leaves a little treat on your porch, with a poem and a sign to hang in your door. When you're Boo'd you then do the same at two other houses. Those people do the same at two more houses and pretty soon almost everyone in your neighborhood have "Boo" signs in their windows.

In our neighborhood there's one family who puts a sign that reads, "Jesus is the only Holy Ghost in this house."

Which says to everyone, "We don't want to have fun with you!"

This is kind of like an annoying chain letter. Except if you find it annoying, you should really not live in the suburbs. I don't find this tradition annoying at all and I shouldn't live in the suburbs.

If you don't live in a neighborhood you like, as we did for the first 8 years of Maddie's life, you can also follow Skip To My Lou's example and just boo people you know, in any neighborhood you feel like.

That sounds like fun, just dropping treats off at a random person's door. A lot like putting money in the meter next to you when the Parking Police are coming up their expired meter.

Last year I sent candy, Littlest Pet Shop toys and Dora Band Aids to our recipients. This year I saw a funny idea in Cookie Magazine (or maybe Parents, I can't find any reference online....but I read it at the dentist office anyway).

I set out on a journey to find black decorating sugar (check), Halloween cupcake paper liners (check) and hands one uses to make dolls. The doll hands turned out to be a little difficult to find locally. Actually they're not that easy to find online either, not for super cheap.

I ended up at the dollar store buying three $1 baby dolls and removing their hands. This didn't strike me as disturbing until I saw the picture I posted on Flickr. But hey, it's Halloween and it's supposed to be creepy.

I ended up with enough hands to Boo two houses. I put them through the dishwasher and then kept them in a bowl, (only for two days....seriously...it would have been less but Logan took the camera to work and forgot it over the weekend). And now looking at it, is also a little creepy. But hey! It's Halloween!

So I made a batch of cupcakes. I put them in these lovely boxes with labels and ribbon.

The boxes are from Michael's and so are the labels, although those are from the Martha collection.

Here is a close up of one of the labels. That's my handwriting, with less scribbling than usual.

On top, you ask? It's the note....it's coming (down below).

Inside the package was the really spooky stuff though.

Whoa. Spooky!

Here they are in all their spooky glory.....spooooky.....

Then here it is solo.

Scary. Getting these cupcakes would totally freak your shit out, right? You'd be all, "Oh My GOD!!!! Tiny hands emerging from delicious chocolate baked goods (WITH SPRINKLES!!!!)."

And then you'd eat the cupcake, leaving the hands behind. And they'd come alive in the night, crawling up the stairs to tickle you. OR KILL YOU.

This is scary stuff and that's why we chose to boo two families in our neighborhood with grown up kids. Little kids can't handle baby hands crawling up the stairs to tickle torture them.

 

Here are the Halloween Boo pages I attached to the packages. Feel free to use them to start your own Halloween Boo in your neighborhood.

This PDF includes the note explaining what it is, along with the sign you hang in your window so no one sends you more creepy cupcakes with hands coming out of them. (Download PDF here)

Other Places: The Awkward Segue Edition!

I completed the Halloween Decor guide at Mighty Haus this week. Your house will be eerie all without animatronics.

Outside of the guides, OhMyGod I never thought I'd be in love with a fire extinguisher, but I am. So are you. Right?

I guess I'm not done talking.

So this is an awkward segue. I'm not sure there's an easy way to do this. Politics wasn't exactly the smoothest thing...

In fairness to my republican friends and readers. My father was a democrat. A racist shit head democrat but still. You'd think I'd have come away from that with some republican viewpoints, just to be as different as I could possibly be, but...yeah, there's no way.

I wrote that last post for Heather's book. I finished it last year in August right after we moved. It was the only source of stress in the month of August after the joyous day we moved into the Dream Neighborhood.

The assignment was to write about fatherhood and somehow I couldn't help it, every time I sat down it just came pouring out. It was impossible to write about Logan as a father without talking about my father. In the way I've always wanted to but rarely have.

The piece obviously wasn't a fit for the book because it's really kind of a blog post, like everything I write is.

Also, the only other piece about an abusive childhood was about coming to a place of forgiveness and understanding. I think everyone should proceed through abuse and resolving the feelings they have about it in whatever way fits for them.

I also tend to believe the world isn't nearly angry enough about child abuse. My healing process will never include forgiveness. I spent a lot of time trying to forgive my father for the insanity of what he put me through. That left me with only anger at myself and that anger left me painfully depressed and full of intense self loathing.

I know my father was a child once. I know he didn't come into this world evil. But I will never forgive him. I will never forgive my mother and I will never be at peace with what happened to me. I don't have nightmares about it anymore. I don't think about it every day. I have forgiven myself and the little girl I was.

I decided many many years ago that I would never forgive the people who failed me. Instead I would find joy in my family, happiness in my marriage and peace with my anger. Finding peace in forgiveness is not in my own plan for recovering.

So the edits on the piece for the editors...didn't go over very well.

So far the anger has gotten me pretty far and I'm comfortable with it. I'm not sure why that is so threatening to so many people?

If I could give you all a gift it would be intense rage against anyone who hurts children. Unrelenting, unending rage aimed directly at people who hurt children. I hope every time you look at your child you feel that rage bubble up inside of you and you imagine clawing the eyes out of anyone who would hurt them.

When I looked at this picture 18 years ago, I couldn't stand that little girl. I thought she was stupid and trusting and bad. That something about her was evil and made these terrible things happen to her.

Today, as a mother of a little girl, I look at that picture and I want to claw that man's eyes out. I am at peace with that feeling. That's certainly not a nice thing to say, but it is my truth.

And I want you to be okay with feeling that same kind of rage at evil.

================================

I wrote about the time I dropped out of high school for a couple of days when I was fifteen.

My father was furious and insisted I go back to school and also insisted I see the school crisis counselor. My father had moved out of our house at the time but several times I saw him following my school bus in the family station wagon. I had hidden from him in a drugstore once. A girl at school asked me if I was dating an older man. My father had come in to the fast food restaurant she worked at and asked if she knew Melissa Williams. He was her boyfriend.

So he was gone, but not really and I was terrified of him. My very own boogeyman driving around in a Town and Country wood sided station wagon.

The thing is I don't think he knew what he was doing when he insisted I talk to someone, or maybe he did. But I went to see the counselor at school and for a month I stared at the ground wanting to talk but being unable to even make the words come out of my mouth. And finally, very, very slowly I told him what happened to me. I told him everything. Once I started I didn't think I could stop.

Sometimes when I was telling I would only be able to whisper. Sometimes my breath would catch in my throat and I would feel like I was being suffocated for a minute in the office.

Because of legal concerns, my counselor made me tell my mother about what had happened. That went...not very well.

Within a year my father killed himself, although I still don't know if he knew I told anyone. I had no indication anyone had informed him. Somehow he did manage to hurt me another time before he died.

After that I didn't tell another person for years until Logan and I started getting serious.

Then I kept it to myself for more years. I went back to therapy a few times and revisited the topic in varying degrees.

About three years ago I told my best girlfriends and it was surprisingly healing.

After that I told my other best friends.

I had been afraid of telling anyone for 30 years and the world didn't fall apart and no one thought I was bad. Everyone believed me. Everyone kind of acted like my high school counselor (and later therapist) acted when I told. Nothing I'd feared, that had kept me from telling, happened.

Every time I've told it's been a giant reality check, with a little hug at the end. It really was that bad. I really did survive. I really am okay.

I get that again when I write about it. When I tell this part of my story, I feel more complete and understood and that is one of the things that's always driven me to write this website.

Most of my life I was "The Difficult One". The one sitting on the wall at recess instead of playing with friends in third grade. I was the one collapsing in class and ending up hospitalized. I was the one who screamed at my mother all the time. I am even now unable to have a close relationship with my mother. I was angry and sad and I didn't hide it very well to the outside world. This made my family bristle at times, I'd like to think because they didn't know the whole story.

Being able to tell the whole story of my experience in that house, it feels like screaming, "NO!"  And having people actually listen to me.

Thank you.

My immediate family, aside from my little sister, haven't responded very well to this part of my story and there are about 1000 reasons for this. Some I empathize with and feel terrible for them about. Others, I don't quite understand. I know this is hurtful information for my family. But it happened and being silent about it is helping them avoid the pain of the reality. Not me, I've lived with it my entire life. I have a right to be "selfish" about my own story.

Like my therapist told me every time I sat in his office telling him about the things that happened to me and my throat tried to close up on me. "These things already happened. That was the hard part. Saying them out loud doesn't make the things that happened to you any worse and saying them will eventually make them better."

The good news is I'm far enough along in this process I understand that the expectation I will or should keep my story to myself, or that I am somehow wrong to tell whomever I choose about what happened to me is simply false. Though I am sorry for the pain it opens up for those who are part of my family, I have not created the pain, the pain was already there. I know that for sure. We all know that for sure.

Hopefully the relationships I care about will recover from this truth. I will grieve some of them if they do not.

================================

I may revisit this topic from time to time as I have more things I feel I'd like to release into the world. I may not. When this happens there may be awkward segues to totally unrelated topics. But that's where my life is right now. Sharing the story of my past is something I can do now without it absorbing me in a blanket of sadness and depression.

That I can let the thought of my father as a monster live right next to my latest crafty project, I think that might be the most healed I will ever be. It is a terribly painful black part of who I am. But it is small...just like my therapist told me it would be. It keeps getting smaller and I have no doubt talking about it has done that for me.

Thank you for listening. I hope every one of you reading this who have been touched by painful childhoods in all their many forms find your way through it, as many times as you have to go through it, and find whatever "peace" is for you, for just that day.

Random Political Weekend Post.

While instilling fear about Obama into their rallies ("Palling around with Terrorists"? Charming.) McCain and Palin have managed to drive their supporters into a racist frenzy. My street is littered with McCain/Palin signs, and I'm just praying they are as horrified by this angry mob as I am.

The problem as I see it is McCain and Palin want Americans to be afraid of Barack Obama enough not to vote for him, but not enough to want to kill him. Though some of Palin's words make me wonder if she doesn't love frothing up the crowd.

Unfortunately there are a lot of stupid assholes in the world and the line between not agreeing with someone's fundamental world view and creating a false sense of terror and fear is difficult to draw for people without brains.

I believe John McCain is an honorable man who wants the best for this country. I disagree with the foundation of what he believes will make this country better. I have nothing terribly kind to say about Sarah Palin so I won't. I believe John McCain is being forced to play to this lowest common denominator of mouth breathers ("I've heard Obama is an Arab..." WHAT THE HELL AMERICA!?), they're the only way he's going to be elected.

I'm trying not to lump all McCain supporters into this mass of stupidity. Still, I'm horrified at this turn in the election. I hope you are too. I don't want this kind of culture to rule our country for another four years.

This is a first draft.

I know very little about who my father was before he became my father. My sister has spent a lot of time collecting information about him. She's looked through all his personal belongings which were sent to my mother after he died. She's looked through all the photos he took while in Vietnam, and has even found some of the other soldiers in those pictures. Through those men she's found out tidbits about the Vietnamese woman in many of the pictures. She's looked at his death certificate and knows exactly where he shot himself to end his life. She's spent time asking my mother about him, about the way he grew up and she's learned a lot about the man he became through those stories.

I know very vague things about my father. I know he shot himself in a motel room on a road not far from where we lived when I was 16. I know he went to Vietnam but never saw actual combat, though post traumatic stress might lead you to believe otherwise. I know he was married before he married my mother at just 20 years old. He lived in a nice house in a nice part of the town I also grew up in and he attended a good Catholic high school. He was from a large family and they all had a tenuous connection which usually involved a lot of alcohol, a lot of reminiscing almost always ending in loud angry arguments over nothing I could understand. His mother died many years before I was born, in some way no one really ever talks about, and I'm not asking.

My sister has always wanted to understand our father, she was 12 when he died and 9 when my parents finally divorced and he was forcibly removed from the house. I have spent the 19 years since he died trying to forget everything about him.

My father read books to us and taught me to ride a bike. He made the very best root beer floats because he once drove an ice cream truck. Which, when you're 6, is just about the best job you could ever imagine. In fact I spent many hours wishing he hadn't given up that line of work for his career in computer technology something-or-other.

But then there was his temper he couldn't seem to control. God knows I understand how annoying the bickering of little kids can be, but I've never thought it a good idea to hurl my kids onto their beds because of it. The fact that he hated our bickering would be less surprising except for the fact that he often had screaming matches with my mother over things like the Little Debbie snack cakes she brought home from the market. That wasn't just bickering even, snack cakes were thrown, along with the contents of the refrigerator for emphasis. We didn't hurl him onto his bed. Though, we wanted to.

My father was also a little prickly because he liked to drink a lot. He had a refrigerator filled with beer in our dining room, where normal people might think to put a buffet or perhaps a china cabinet. Instead my father kept his beer in his special fridge and from Friday night to Sunday night he emptied this fridge. As he emptied this fridge the desire to argue about snack cakes was heightened. His desire to listen to very loud music at 2 o'clock in the morning was also heightened.

That's the difficult thing about getting to know my father: he wasn't all bad, but he wasn't very good either.

My family likes to reminisce about my father, often viewing him as an affable sitcom dad. If Lucille Ball starred in a movie of my life, she'd play my mother and call out, "Pete-errrr" (ala "Rick-eeee") as he threw snack cakes at her head.

Our sitcom dad was manic about the condition of his lawn and would, when planes flew overhead, have flashbacks to 'Nam and begin screaming "Incoming!!!" We laugh about the night he drove our family home from dinner with his family while drunk, stopping at Quarton Lake to show us his favorite little bridge. When drunkenly jumping on a rock to cross a small river, (cue the laugh track), he landed wrong and sprained his ankle resulting in 6 weeks of crutches. Hysterical!

I have an uncle on my mother's side of the family who loves to spend a reasonable portion of our Christmas Eve gatherings discussing my father and his uncanny ability to bring the room to tears at every family gathering. Not tears of laughter rather tears of sadness, confusion or perhaps rage. And we all laugh, "Remember that Christmas I cried myself to sleep! What a riot!!!" Then we collectively sigh, our spouses feel uncomfortable and we play a game of charades to change the topic.

I think we laugh because it's easier to remember it that way.

Some memories even I can't muster the strength to laugh at. In those memories, my father is something worse than a bumbling drunken blow hard carefully mowing his lawn in perfect rows. In those memories my father is bringing me cough medicine in my dark bedroom for a cough I never had and he won't leave. Or I am left alone with him on Friday nights while my mother works, my brother is away at college and my sister spends the night with those people one calls "friends". Friends are something, by that point, I don't have any more.

It went on for as many years as I can remember. In first grade I would eat dinner and spend the rest of the night crying and clutching my stomach. The doctor sent us to the hospital for tests. For a week I couldn't eat anything but jello after breakfast until the next morning when they'd take more pictures of my insides. One day I snuck a handful of Trix cereal before we left for the test and the nurse could see it in my stomach as she took the pictures. As she ran the test, viewing my insides, I held my breath praying she couldn't also see the badness inside of me.

Later there were nightmares, my mother would sit on the sofa in the middle of the night annoyed, tired and unsure what to do with me. After weeks of this she took me to a psychiatrist where I drew pictures, talked about my nightmares and carefully avoided telling the truth. The best part of seeing the psychiatrist were the small gifts she'd give me, a barbie, a pack of crayons and my favorite candy bar at the end of the session.

Years later, just before my parents were divorced, I told my father I was going to tell and I was going to go live with someone else. Though I didn't know who.

Only I don't think I would have told, I just wanted him to leave our lives and I knew my mother was close to the end of her tolerance for him in general. That night he shut himself in his bedroom at the back of the house and shot himself while my sister, mother and I watched television in the front of the house.

Don't worry though, he didn't kill himself, he only shot himself in the shoulder like an asshole. Was this action meant to buy more time before my mother divorced him, to keep me silent or was it an act of desperate sadness?

I'm not really sure, but those two weeks he spent at an alcohol treatment facility were a tiny taste of what my life would be without him. I faked illness many times during those weeks he was away and my mother let me stay home probably because she felt badly about the trauma of one's father attempting suicide practically in front of you. I wasn't traumatized, I was angry he didn't die and I was mostly happy to be in the house alone. I could eat what I wanted, watch whatever shows I wanted and I wasn't afraid.

Of course then he came back and that feeling was almost worse than if he'd never left at all. Every day when I walked into that house after he came back it felt exactly like dying. When he finally left for good, escorted by the police, the nightmares came back and that horrible feeling of the freedom being taken away felt as real in my dreams as it had in real life. In the dreams, I would come home from school and he would be back. My mother would shrug saying, "Sorry, I can't do anything about it" and that sinking feeling in my stomach would start to choke me.

I think my sister tries to heal her sadness about who our father was by looking for answers about why he was the way he was. I've tried to heal by pretending he was only a nightmare or simply a monster because somehow that makes it easier to understand. My brain can't seem to reconcile my father as a drunken idiosyncratic dad and the night time father who tormented me for as long as I can remember.

I spent a lot of time studying the fathers I knew while growing up. I studied some really good ones so hard I'm sure their wives started to wonder if this 10 year old had a crush on their husbands. I knew I didn't want to marry someone like my father, but then since that was the relationship modeled for me my whole life I thought I might be doomed to a life of dodging snack cakes thrown at my head.

My daughter happens to have the father I always wanted.

Watching my husband and daughter develop a relationship has been incredibly healing for me, it's also opened up so many deep wounds in my soul I've gone rolling back to therapy in a heap of sadness more than once since becoming her mother. I've spent time back on the couch because motherhood is really kind of hard a lot of the time.

Other times I've been on the couch grieving from the darkest part of myself. This deep pit of sadness I mostly keep covered by not thinking much about how I grew up with my father.

The last time I was in therapy my husband and I stayed up late one night talking about the pain. The next day he left me a note before he left for work reading, "No child deserves to be betrayed by their father in such a profound way. I can't imagine destroying my own child."

Of course, that's why I married him and that's the part of watching my daughter grow up that heals the little girl I was. When Maddie was a baby, Logan always explained to me in serious tones that she was gifted. At three months old he said, "She holds her head up like a six month old! That's double her age, she's twice as good at it as other three month olds!" As a two year old when her talking started and didn't really ever stop he listened intently and reminded me she was talking as well as a four year old. "She's twice as brilliant as other two year olds."

Now Madison is nine and has the sensibility of an independence loving thirteen year old. She makes me literally insane and we often butt heads so hard I spend days massaging my temples and wondering how I ended up with this daughter I am not so good at mothering. Logan looks at our daughter and admires her maturity and complexity. He thinks she's twice as mature as other nine year olds. He thinks she's absolutely perfect.

When Maddie was three years old she had some gross motor delays the doctors were attempting to diagnose. We had to take her to the hospital for an MRI. Because the MRI machine is very loud, has a very small chamber and requires complete stillness, we also had to have her sedated for it. I voted Logan into the position of holding our daughter while they put a mask over her mouth to breathe in the gas that put her to sleep, I couldn't even be in the room.

She struggled against the doctor trying to put the mask over her mouth and Logan held onto her arms and tried to keep her head from moving so she could breathe in the gas. All Maddie saw was a scary man trying to hurt her while her father held her down.

We thought she would forget about it, she was only three, but for months afterward she would ask Logan, "Why did you hold me down while that man put that thing on my face Daddy?" Even better, she'd say, "Remember when they took a picture of my brain and Daddy held me down so the doctor could cover my face?"

One night after the MRI, I found Logan standing over Maddie's crib crying. He couldn't believe she thought he'd been trying to help someone hurt her. He'd explained to her over and over that the doctor wasn't trying to hurt her but he couldn't get over the betrayal she'd felt toward him in those moments.

I'm so happy my daughter has a father who loves every bit of who she is, I'm so happy she knows he would never betray her trust, I'm so happy she can feel safe and loved by the most important man in her life.

I like to think watching my daughter and my husband grow up together is helping to heal that little girl I was. Watching my daughter, it's easy to see how none of what happened to me was my fault, that my insides weren't bad, that I was betrayed by someone who was mentally ill. I was betrayed by my father.

Sometimes it does heal me, watching my daughter grow up having what I needed and deserved.

Still, it seems the older she gets the more aware I am of all I missed out on. As I watch her grow up, I continually grieve for the little girl I was and the father I wasn't given.

Did They Eat It?: Pumpkin Polenta with Chorizo and Black Beans

As I read this recipe, I found myself laughing a little to myself. As I've said before, I like making things my kids believe they'll die from eating. It makes me feel just a little more alive.

This one, had all the makings of a deadly recipe. Sausage! Polenta! Even onions. Onions I diced while my husband watched, remarking every 20 seconds, "That's a lot of onions, huh?" and "Jeez...how many onions are you putting in that?"

You can find the entire recipe here.

I skipped the red peppers (ever since I was pregnant with Maddie, I can't eat red peppers. Her pickiness made it's way into my blood a little. I also used sharp cheddar in place of the Manchego cheese, just because it seemed a little silly to search the cheese refrigerator at the market for a special cheese when I knew the kids were going to spend the entire meal gagging and dying on the floor.

This was a really, really easy meal to make.

Here are most of the ingredients I used...sloppily displayed with Logan and Max sharing a before dinner snack/drink.

Halloween Costumes: Dress Them While You Can

There are costumes my kids want to wear. Hannah Montana and Policeman With a Mustache come to mind. Okay, I can get behind mustached policeman, but that idea only came after we worked through several Marvel Comic heroes.

Gone are the days I got to spend all year planning what my kids would be for Halloween. Now I just sort of roll along, praying for something we'll both enjoy putting together. Do you think Max will go for a policeman with a mustache wearing short shorts? I'm guessing no.

My point in telling you all this is to point you to my collection of costumes you want them to wear at Mighty Junior. If your kid is more open to your ideas than mine, get over there.

Did They Eat It? The Velveeta Challenge Edition

The nice people from Velveeta, well not really Velveeta, Velveeta's People contacted me (I know! Velveeta has People!) and asked if they could hire me to develop my own recipe using Velveeta, make it, photograph it, share the recipe and feed it to my family. My final recipe would also be put in a competition with other blogger's Velveeta Creations.

Since I'm a fan of making things that might kill my children to eat, I said, "Sure!"

Stipulations were: it had to be a casserole, all the ingredients needed to cost less than $20, it had to serve 8 people, it had to be made in a 9x13 pan and it had to have at least 8oz of Velveeta in it.

My friend Chrissy makes this really oddly satisfying thing called Spamarama. It's grated Spam mixed with grated Velveeta stuffed into hot dog rolls, wrapped in aluminum foil and warmed up.

I admit, I'll put almost anything in my mouth [insert crude joke here] but yeah, I liked them. I'd eat them at a tail gate or maybe over a campfire. Too bad I couldn't enter it in the contest because it's not a casserole. Logan and Madison say, "Thank You Velveeta's People For Preventing Her From Serving Us Spam!"

Besides Spamarama our experience with Velveeta has been limited to shells and cheese and that delicious cheese queso you can make with Ro-Tel and Velveeta all melted up together. This is something Logan made for me when we first started dating and I remember being very impressed with his Tex-Mex cooking skills. He had just moved back to Michigan from Houston after all. Then again, I felt sophisticated drinking Lambrusco back then so you might say I was a little...I don't know, unsophisticated.

Three-quarters of our family likes this dip, so that's the direction I went with our recipe.

After a few miserable failures: Rubbery toasted corn tortillas? Check! Too much sweet corn? Check!

I finally settled on Queso Chicken with Black Beans and Rice. Of course I used black beans, I include black beans in everything I eat.

I can't share my recipe quite yet and I can't tell you if they ate it until you've seen the recipe. I will as soon as I can. Voting for recipes will begin on October 30th, I'll have my recipe posted before then.

The other bloggers participating in this challenge are:

Confessions of An Apron Queen
Livin' With Me!
Miss Zoot
My Wooden Spoon

And after looking over all the sites, I'm afraid my limited kitchen skills are no match for these ladies. I'm in trouble.

In the meantime, here's a sneak peek at my entry with it's crispy tortilla chip topping.

Troubling.

On Thursday police in Detroit issued an Amber Alert for a missing two year old girl, Tangena Hussain.

Last night the Amber Alert was still flashing across the television screen and this morning I checked the paper to see if there had been a happy ending to the story. Or even an ending. I had to really dig into the website to even find a mention of the little girl and that is so troubling.

If this were a white little girl, especially one from the suburbs, her picture would be on the front page of the newspaper and eventually on the national news.

I realize this is nothing new, like pointing out that sometimes, people are.....[whisper] racist. SHOCKING!

I still can't get over how much less air time a poor, immigrant missing child story gets.

Additionally, the whole story sounds like a child abuse case more than a missing child case. She was left with her mother's boyfriend of five months while the mother went to work. The boyfriend says he stopped at a gas station to buy gum on his way to pick up the mother from work, leaving the little girl in the car.

When he came back out the little girl was gone. Instead of freaking the fuck out, he drove to pick up the girl's mother from work and then came back with her to look for the little girl.

There's a language barrier here (Police had trouble communicating with the couple) and also, maybe, a lack of knowing how things work in the United States. Still I have grave concerns that this isn't a missing child story, but a child abuse story. The burn scar reported on her face gives me even less confidence that police are looking for a living little girl.

This is Tangena if you've seen her please contact Detroit Police 313-596-1240.

My Triumphant Visit To The ENT

Yesterday I went to the Ear Nose and Throat specialist where I spent 1.5 hours in the waiting room (iPhone, you're a game changer). The weirdest thing happened, and in spite of myself I was touched.

Some rough-around-the-edges girls were sitting a couple seats away from me waiting for a friend who was seeing a doctor. One of the girls said she was going to smoke outside and told the other girl not to use her phone for more than 3 minutes because she was budgeting her minutes.

When she came back she looked at the phone and asked who she'd called. "You called him didn't you? Why did you do that? That's a lot of trust we just lost between us."

An older lady sitting across from the girls looked up and said, "Is that a shelter phone?"

(From a women's shelter?)

"Yeah, and she just called her ex-boyfriend who treated her like shit."

Older lady says, "Okay. I want you to listen to me. You are worth more than that. More than him. You need to stay away from him and find out how to love yourself."

Another lady, sitting a little farther away chimes in, "Never, ever give your power to any man. They'll use it up and use you up."

I wanted in on the moment so I offered, "Also never give a man a sandwich, he'll eat it up and want another."

No I didn't.

And that was it. They all went back to filling out paperwork or stewing silently about the breeched trust and the ex boyfriend who treated her like shit.

All this and I hadn't even seen the doctor yet. Intense.

I finally got called in and the doctor looked in my nose and my ears and in my throat. I told him how I've had my landlord's fist in my throat for the last week and how I also seem to be getting strep and tonsillitis at an alarming rate (my doctor and I counted: SEVEN times in the last NINE MONTHS!).

I thought I might have to convince him that I needed to have them taken out. You know since this has been a problem for my entire life. I guess in the 70's everyone was all, "Let's leave everything! Down with surgery! So what if your left tonsil is the size of an infant's fist. A few sore throats never killed anyone!"

Oh but they do. They nearly killed my family because I am, as we have established, a total fucking baby about being sick.

But I didn't have to convince him, he took a quick look and said, "Jesus, you have a man's fist in your throat. We need to get that out and your tonsils. In fact, they should have come out when you were a kid."

Thank you for all the natural medicine, Hippie Dr. Anne of my youth.

Still, I wanted to convince him because, as we have established, I am not only a total fucking baby, I also like to tell everyone about ALL of my symptoms because sharing the pain makes me feel better. So I started,

"It's so painful every time I get one of these things. It interrupts my whole life because all I want to do is talk about how painful it is. I want to describe the pain to anyone who will listen and, I have this website, and I can't even write on it because all I want to do is use metaphors to describe the pain and that's so boring...."

Then I heard slight snoring and the doctor had fallen asleep standing right next to me. Boring!

So I tiptoed out of the room and scheduled my surgery. They kept asking if I had any questions and I tried to think of something, anything to ask. Something other than, "Can't you just take them out right here, on the desk?"

But I couldn't come up with a single thing to ask, so I said, "How long does the surgery take?"

That was the best question I could come up with. Because, you know, I have a hair appointment afterwards! What?

I'm thrilled they're coming out. I know, it's going to be a hellish recovery and I'm going to be miserable and want to die.

But hopefully, when it's all over, I can spend about 90% less time fully aware of the what is going on in my throat.

November 11th I'll go in, hopefully I don't have uncontrolled bleeding during the surgery followed by death. That would ruin the holidays. I signed a paper saying something about how that could happen, or maybe it said it would happen. Maybe I signed a paper saying, "Let me bleed to death."

I should maybe call and ask about that.