Vindauga

Cartoon Boy

My son loves cartoons. Not cartoons, grown-up cartoons. The New Yorker, The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes. Put a Peanuts or Garfield in front of him and he is bored. Likewise with his sister's Archie comics.

If we want him to entertained for hours, we just set him down in front of the big book of New Yorker cartoons and we could to a movie. Maybe a double feature. That's our theory, we haven't tried it, because we know that some pesky social worker would hear about it and spoil the fun.

He really looks at the work, studies them. Sometimes he laughs. When you question him about it, he shrugs his shoulders and looks annoyed. This seems to be private business with him. I don't know if he is reading them or just looking at the pictures.

I thought he may be studying the art to replicate, but he shows little interest in drawing. I don't know what pulls him to them, but I am thankful. If we take The Complete History of the Far Side to church, I have the quietest little boy in mass. Except when people around us read over his shoulder and snicker.

Pillow Talk- 8:04 a.m.

Bert: I can't believe it's 8:04 and they are still asleep.

Me: Maybe we have a gas leak or carbon monoxide poisoning or something and it just hasn't reached our room.

Bert: We could go check.

Me: Yeah, but if we don't, and we get out of bed, that will just wake them up. I really like the quiet.

Bert: Good point.

A letter to my teen-age self- because I love giving assvice to everyone

Dear Teenage Lisa,

For the love of Pete, please wear shorts. Quit thinking you are fat. You are a size 7. That is not large, even though your best friends are size 0 and size 3. In a couple of years you will find out how miserable they were dealing with eating disorders. So wear the shorts. And a bathing suit. In the not too distant future, you will get over your damn self. I just wish you had done it sooner.

You might want to put in a little more effort in your classes. Even the ones you don't like. Yes, you are completely right that some of this stuff has no relevance in your future. But trust me that paying attention in algebra will actually serve you well later. No, seriously. The guy in the green polyester leisure suit and the goatee actually has something valuable to teach you.

In a similar vein I would tell you to go to college right out of high school. But then the whole domino effect would mess up things. You would never meet Tom, you'd never meet Bert, you'd never have the four mostly cool, always beautiful, sometimes annoying, amazing, better than you deserve kids. So, go to beauty school. It all works out. You go to college eventually, and you know how to to cut a decent bob as a bonus.

Don't give your mother so much shit. Most of the time she is right. However the idealogical conflicts with Dad, really they are here to stay. Get used to them. Don't stress about it so much. He still loves you, even when he completely disagrees with you. Even when he is an ass.

That boy you spend six years loving? Doesn't work out. No high school sweetheart marriage in your future. Quit planning your life around him. Enjoy it now. You are lucky to have someone wonderful and funny to spend these years with. Don't be so devastated when it's over. Quit driving past his house, stopping by his work, "running" into him at parties. He may have been the first, but he is not the last. And really, the best fit is just around the corner.

Take some risks. You know the ones.  But quit riding with kids who are drunk. You're damn lucky you never become a statistic. Save your concert t-shirts and your pink Vans, your kids will want them one day. Quit trying to get tan. Wear sunscreen. Drive slower. Quit trying to grow up so fast.

Love, your older, kinda wiser self

Find more letters here.

Cooking like I had 17 kids

Today my friend Jane and I made 80 meals. Eighty. Eight-oh. A whole bunch.

We used to do cooking once a month, roughly 60 meals in one day. Today we cooked 40 meals for ourselves, and 40 meals as part of an auction item. It was long. We started at 6:30 a.m. and ended about 3:00 p.m.

On the menu-

Carrot Ginger Soup, Sweet Potato Enchiladas Mole, Beef Stew, Jambalaya, Barbecue Beef, Smoky Corn Chowder, Potatoes and Mini Chicken Pie, Asian Pizza. We made each of those 10 times, with six servings per meal. They are all now nicely tucked away in freezers, perfect for the days it's too much to cook. For me those days end in "y".

A lot of chopping. Enough onions to make anyone cry. So many cans of vegetable broth that I bought our store's entire stock. But I'm through cooking for awhile. Yahoo.

Water Babies

The summer Mace become our son we moved into this house, a house with a pool. He was 14 months old and had an obvious dislike for water. He always hated getting his face wet, even in the bath tub and had little interest in playing in sprinklers or with a slip and slide.

Since the house had a pool, I took some comfort in his aversion to water. The first thing everyone mentioned when seeing the house was the pool, and not in a good way. It was always "Wow, you are really going to have to watch Mace." It was lovely to have my own fears voiced over and over by others. I had already nearly let one of our children drown in a relative's pool. We were prepared to be vigilant, and it seemed Mace was going to help us out.

We never really knew where the fear came from. But when he was 18 months old he gave us a clue. Mal was bathing him and he said "Little boy drowned in the water." Mal thought she was getting too much water in his face, and just moved on. A few weeks later he told Bert "My friend Kenny drowned." When Bert asked him what he was talking about he said "Kenny died."  Bert asked him who Kenny was and Mace said "I'm Kenny." It sent chills down Bert's spine.

Mace had never seen a movie, and had seen only TV on PBS. We knew no one named Kenny. We hadn't talked about the pool (we moved in in September and didn't open the pool until the following summer). We couldn't think of anywhere he had gotten this story. He gave us more details over the next few months. Kenny had been scared, the water was "sloshing really hard", it was cold, it was dark. Kenny shouted and no one heard him. Mace listened to his inner Kenny and always cut a wide birth around our pool. He was like his own built in lifeguard.

None of us had really believed much in past lives or reincarnation. I still don't know that any of us do. But Mace made me (us) ponder it. If Mace was Kenny or had witnessed Kenny's demise maybe it was coming to surface because he was so young.

He stopped mentioning Kenny around three. When I questioned him last spring (two years after his last mention) he didn't respond. This summer his fear of water had decreased enough we put him in swimming lessons. He was tentative, but got over it pretty quickly. He begs to go to the pool at the Y now.

Tonight I sat by the pool and watched one of his lessons. There was a little girl in his class, who looked to be about three, and she was hysterical. She didn't want to get in the water. She kicked, she cried, she screamed. Her parents cajoled. They bribed. The set her firmly down in the pool and told her in a firm voice she must stay in. She lost it. They took her to a corner of the Y and gave her a "time-out" while she howled. I heard the mother ask the swimming teacher if there was someone who would do one on one lessons. A single instructor came and got in the pool with the sobbing child. We left then. I couldn't figure out why it was so important that a terrified three year-old learn to swim. Tonight Bert said she has been hysterical at all four previous lessons.

As we left I kept wondering if that child maybe had a "Kenny" inside of her. Kenny kept shouting but no one would hear him. Not even the overachieving parents who were now forcing a too young child to venture into water she wasn't ready for.