Maid service(Or how to make money in your spare time without ever leaving your home)

Let's say I have this....friend.

My...friend....has several friends who employ people to come in and clean their homes: these people are called "cleaners." People who clean the house but also answer the telephone and the front door are "maids." People who live in residence and supervise the cleaning are "housekeepers." In this economy, the job my....friend... inadvertently fell into, much like Alice fell down that rabbit hole, was a job as a maid.

The house she currently works in, she already answered the phone and the front door bell, as well as letting the dogs in and out all day long. She also does almost all the laundry, cooks all the food, and loads and unloads the dishwasher about a hundred times a day, it seems. All in all, it keeps me her pretty busy, considering that she also has several part-time jobs, a husband and two teenage daughters.

This is how she came to be a maid, and how you may also find yourself with a calling to do as she has done.

This friend....she couldn't help but notice however much she ordered, begged, wheedled, cajoled, demanded, implored or nagged, those two teenage daughters - and lovely young ladies they are - were still inclined to leave their dirty unmentionables strung across the bathroom floor, abandon cruddy plates adorned with a half-eaten turkey sandwich and a banana peel on any available kitchen counter when the sink, and moreover, THE DISHWASHER, were sitting right there in plain view, not to mention various high-heeled shoes, schoolbooks, hoodies, volleyballs, earrings, iPods and other miscellaneous STUFF lying around everywhere until my friend was nearly distracted with the yuck of it all.

One time, she says that she left a coupon for 40-percent-off-your-purchase-of-50-dollars-or-more from Ulta Beauty on her dining room floor for three days, just to see when one of the girls would pick it up. Even though they daintily stepped over it day after day on their way from the living room to the kitchen and back again, neither girl so much as stooped over to lift the rectangular piece of paper from the floor, even though this coupon was much coveted by both daughters, who had planned to each spend $25 at Ulta and garner that whopping forty percent discount. Finally, on that third day, my friend cracked. She leaned over, picked up that coupon with trembling fingers, and took it to the kitchen wastebasket, where she defiantly tore it into tiny shreds and then flipped the switch to MASH IT MASH IT MASH IT with the rest of the trash.

She swears that not five minutes later, both girls were on her like weasels in a hen coop, demanding to know where their precious Ulta Beauty coupon was. She pressed her fingertips to her forehead, prayed a silent Hail Mary to the Blessed Mother with the plea that heaven's angels would hold her back from killing these two gifts from God standing before her with their accusatory stares and screechy voices and said, "Ladies, the coupon is gone. Yes, that's right. GONE. And do you know why? Because it laid there on the dining room floor, right where the two of you walk a hundred times every day, a bright pink and green coupon on our pale taupe carpet, and IF IT WAS THAT FRIGGING PRECIOUS, ONE OF YOU SHOULD HAVE BENT DOWN AND PICKED IT UP!"

Both girls sniffed disdainfully. "I always have to pick EVERYTHING up, " said the older girl, whose propensity for leaving a clump of soggy hair in the shower drain after each shampoo was driving her poor mother to the chardonnay as early as 5:05 p.m.

"You do not!" the younger one countered furiously. "I always have to pick everything up, EVERYTHING!" In spite of the fact that one of those "magic" bottles for feeding orange juice to baby dolls had been lying on the floor of her closet since she was seven.

My friend, that poor woman, shouldered past the two of them and went upstairs to her bedroom, where she sank into the comfy chair, that chair in which she used to nurse her sweet babies before they were ambulatory and able to scatter bright plastic pieces of Fisher-Price throughout the entire house. "Back then, it was easy," she muttered. "And then when they learned to walk, we made cleanup a game. They'd bring me the little toys and put them in the pretty willow laundry basket and we'd clap after they threw each thing in....But now, here they are, old enough to DRIVE, one of them old enough to VOTE, both of them nearly out of high school, and it's like they think their hands can no longer be used to pinch and grasp and their spines no longer curve to pick up coupons or dirty laundry or HAIR from the DRAIN.

"I feel like the maid around here, because both those stinkers know I can't stand a mess and if they leave something long enough, I'll just do it for them. But I am NOT the maid, I am the MOTHER, goshdarnit! I'd be getting PAID if I were a MAID, but I'm NOT, so...."

And then a little light bulb went on over my friend's rumpled head.

She could get paid for the little cleaning services she provided, doing it just the way a maid would: quietly, efficiently and steadily. No more shouting, no more nagging, just diligently getting the job done and then presenting her employers with a bill for services rendered. In this case, she thought, a dollar per service would be plenty. Both girls had the ability to hold onto their money more tightly than Lady Gaga holds onto a microphone, so even a meager little dollar would give them both a kick in the pants that would hopefully wake them up to the fact that piggish and slatternly behavior is rude and selfish in the family home, but even worse in adult life, when living, say, in a dorm. Or in a bachelor girl apartment with a roommate. Or with a brand new husband, who might be dismayed to find that his beautiful bride, with her sparkling eyes and sunshiny smile actually had the home management skills of a crack whore.

So that's how I've she's made a nice little sum of money over the past few weeks, and frankly, it looks like she's found a cash cow, because both girls just keep on leaving empty milk cartons in the fridge and pencil sharpener shavings spilled on the desk and coats draped over the newel post on the staircase. Both of them are naturally indignant at being charged for their familial misdemeanors, but my friend is adamant: either pick it up yourselves, darlings, or pay to have it picked up for you.

The house is tidy and my friend has been able to cut back on the chardonnay, and if her girls keep it up for a few more weeks, she may have enough money saved up to buy those really cute boots she saw at Macy's.

How was that again?

I was driving Aisling to her piano lesson today and she spent most of the twenty minute ride telling me about a boy she likes and bewailing the fact that the males of the species are just so difficult to understand.

"Doesn't it make you feel so lucky that you're old and have been married for a million years so that you don't have to worry about this stuff anymore?" she asked me with great seriousness.

I turned my head to give her a long, appraising look. "You might want to re-phrase that, dear."

She sat and thought for a moment, her brow furrowed. "You mean 'married for a thousand years'?" she asked.

I'm blaming it on the recession

I have long since stopped apologizing for being the kind of person who takes great pleasure in girly things; like jewelry (real is good, but fake will work) makeup (fake, but hopefully not as fake as, say, Disco Party 1979) and manicured fingernails (the faker, the better.) The job I have is one where people see my hands a lot - or at least my perception is that my hands can be seen a lot - and I have the world's worst fingernails, despite the fact that the only mammal that drinks more dairy than I do is a baby calf. I'm practically out there in the fields and meadows, skulking around and wresting calves away from their mothers, but do I have good fingernails? No, I do not. And I also eat yogurt every day, so if you really needed any more proof that life is not fair, there you have it.

Before the recession, I completely enjoyed being able to go to the salon to get my nails done. I've always favored a discreet french manicure and it was such a satisfying feeling to look down at my hands and see fresh, pretty nails instead of the dull, scraggly and prone-to-splitting things that God favored me with.

Then the recession happened and life changed.

[Pausing for a moment of piteous sobbing]

So now I do my own nails, mostly successfully because of my friend Juju. Juju does her own nails too and you would never know, they look so beautiful and professional. She claims that she finds life dismal and grey without manicured finger- and toenails, hardly worth getting out of bed for. So she gave me some tips (haha...a little nail-related humor there for those of us in the biz) and I got started and I've been ever so pleased with the results.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I broke a nail. So aggravating, but luckily I was headed back home anyway, so I stopped off at the Sally's in town to replenish my nail stash (I even craftily bought a packet of nails and a teeny glue bottle to keep in my purse just in case; I don't know why I've never thought of that before) and then drove home hurriedly. My husband was due home from work at about 5:15 and we were going out to dinner. Observing myself in the bathroom mirror, it was perfectly apparent that I needed to do a major overhaul before I was going to consider myself presentable at Applebee's or Ruby Tuesday's or Bob Evans or wherever we were going to end up. I needed to change my clothes, trowel on some makeup over the old makeup I'd put on at eight o'clock that morning, do something to control the mad frizz that had become my hair....and

fix that nail.

The nail, I determined, was the easiest part. Just open the packet, choose the nail that fits, apply a dab of glue to your actual fingernail, press on the fake one and hold for ten seconds, et voila! A perfect fingernail, all shiny and pretty.

At least that's what you'd think. But remember, you're not reading Gwyneth Paltrow's blog about how your life can be just as perfect as hers if you had her fame and her money, you poor thing. Nor are you reading something by Michelle Phan, who is to the YouTube world of cosmetics what Martha Stewart is to doing crafts and putting sheets on your bed with properly mitered corners.

No, you're reading my blog, and you know something bad is getting ready to happen, right?

Well, you know me: always thinking of others, that's me. I wouldn't want to disappoint you, so I'll tell you -- and oh, is it ever true -- that I squeezed the glue bottle a little too hard because I was in a hurry, right? And the squeezing led that glue, which is a very liquidy liquid, to gush out all over my fingers. A LOT of my fingers.

In spite of (or perhaps because of?) its lack of viscosity, that glue dries fast. So in spite of the fact that my fingers were liberally bathed in wash of extremely liquid and fast-drying glue, I managed to grab that fingernail, press it on and hold it down.

If I'd just been able to continue holding that nail down for, say, another week or so, I think everything would have been okay. But there came a time, about thirty seconds later, when I needed to use my hands for the aforementioned clothes-changing, makeup-reapplying and hair-fixing. That was when I discovered that I'd glued about four of my fingers together.

I gasped and did the natural, yet so very stupid thing, which was try to pull my fingers apart. It hurt quite a bit, so I did the next thing I could think of: I went out the the upstairs hallway and yelled down the stairs, "GIRRRRRRRRRRLLLLLS!!! I NEED YOUR HELP!!!"

They were occupied with their own interests, the first and second of which were making their own dinner in the kitchen and listening to really loud music. I waited impatiently for the song they were listening to to end and then bawled out again, "GIRRRRRRRRRLSSSSSS! C'MERE!!! HURRY!"

"WHY?!?" they both yelled.

"BECAUSE I'M THE MOM AND I SAID TO COME HERE!" I hollered, agitated. If my fingers were all permanently glued together, how was I going to live life as I once knew it? My immediate worry, that of changing clothes, repairing my makeup and fixing my hair, wasn't a problem anymore because I knew quite well that there was no way I could go to a restaurant: I couldn't hold a fork.

Grumbling, the girls came up the stairs and met me in the hallway.

"Why are you wringing your hands?" Meelyn asked after looking me over.

"You'd better hurry up and get ready," Aisling advised helpfully. "I think I just heard Daddy's car pull in the driveway."

"Listen," I said. "I do not have time to explain. Just listen, because I need your help."

"If this is about rubbing that cream on your heels again, I am so out of here," Meelyn said, turning to go back downstairs.

"It's not my heels! It's my hands!" I said tightly.

"Can I see your phone?" asked Aisling. "I want to look up movie times."

"FORGET THE PHONE! FORGET MY HEELS!" I shouted. "MY FINGERS ARE GLUED TOGETHER!"

Meelyn said blankly, "How on earth did you manage to do that?"

Aisling said angrily, "You said I could go to the movies!"

I shot her the Ice Cold Glare of Maternal Displeasure and then turned to Meelyn and summarized the situation: "I was fixing a broken fingernail. I squeezed the glue bottle a little too hard. Glue came out everywhere. My fingers are stuck together."

Meelyn, as the take-charge and competent first-born, said, "Oh, that's bad. What do we need to do to unstick you?"

Aisling, the baby, for whom life is just one big party waiting to happen, doubled over laughing until a sudden thought struck her: "Hey, since you can't, like, use your hands anymore, can I have your phone?"

The next ten minutes weren't a lot of fun. They involved me putting my gluey hands into the sink and the girls pouring acetone-based fingernail polish remover, which dissolves this type of glue, over my hands again and again until I could finally work my fingers loose, unfortunately leaving a bit of skin behind in the process. It hurt. It still hurts, both on my hands and in my soul. Because you know what? I blame the recession.

If it weren't for the recession, I'd be at a nail salon, where any reasonable person would be, getting my nails done by an actual professional. If I broke a nail, I'd be able to swing by the salon, hold out the affected finger, and sit in a comfy chair sipping a Diet Coke while the technician tut-tutted over the damage, fixing it in a jiffy and maybe even giving me a coat of polish to match my outfit. I wouldn't have to be juggling packets of fake fingernails and tiny little obstreperous glue bottles in my bathroom, trying to give myself that ladylike and well-groomed appearance I enjoy.

RECESSSSSSSSSION!!! I HAAAAAATE YOUUUUUUU!!!!

Later on at the restaurant, I was holding a menu and my husband, who is such a gentleman for noticing little niceties like this, said gruffly, "Your fingernails look so pretty, honey."

I glanced down at my nails, which looked pristine, and thoughtfully considered the other side of my fingers, which were gouged and scraped and a little bloody. "Thanks, sweetie."

RECESSSSSSIOOOOONNNNNN!!!!!

As the mother of teenaged daughters, I'd like to say to God:

Dear God, it would be really helpful if all the crappy, nasty, jerkface teenaged boys could be ugly mutts, while all the honest, nice and honorable boys could look like Greek gods. That would cut down on a lot of confusion for the girls in our house, since recently they've encountered some real wolves in sheep's clothing. Or, more to the point, some truly sucky young men that, as you might remember? -- On Wednesday of last week? -- their father was inclined to punch in the face, but who looked, on the surface, like the handsome and charming proverbial Boys Next Door. If, by chance, you live next door to a brothel-slash-bus station-slash-public toilet.

If you could please see to this straight away, I would be very grateful.

Thank you,

Shelley

Advice from your mother

This morning the girls and I were in the van, driving Aisling to work; Meelyn and I were going to drive on to do the weekly shop after we dropped her off. They had control of the radio and the station we were listening to was an alternative rock station out of Indianapolis with a morning drive program that proposed to allow listeners to call in with a problem, which the a.m. "personalities" and other callers would help them solve.

As we pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant where Aisling works, the woman deejay said, "And coming up after the break, we'll have some advice for Alyssa, who was wondering if she should break up with her boyfriend before he goes to jail."

I snorted. "What's the number of this radio station. I've got some advice for that girl."

"I don't know what the number is," Meelyn replied in a voice of airy innocence.

"I don't either, but even if we did know, we wouldn't tell you," Aisling added with searing honesty.

They know me so well. "Why not?" I asked, smiling.

"Well, because for one thing, you'd be on the air," Meelyn began.

"And for another thing, your voice would be broadcast out over a large portion of Indiana," Aisling continued.

"And for a third thing, you don't think my advice would be well-received," I finished for them. "What do you think I'd say to that girl?"

Meelyn gave a little sigh. "Well, first you'd say, 'Hon, you need to respect yourself enough to find a man worthy of your love.'"

"Yes," I nodded. "Carry on..."

"And then you'd give that speech about how for every loser guy in the world, no matter how addicted or lazy or mean to his mama or stupid or half-witted or criminal or no gumption (whatever that means) or ungrateful or hateful or abusive -- there is a whole line of women standing there in front of him, convinced that they're the only ones ever to understand him, that they can change him with the power of their love and things would be even better if they had two or three babies together," Meelyn enumerated.

"Yada yada yada," Aisling put in.

"Yeah, it almost sounds like I know what I'm talking about, doesn't it?" I said smugly.

"And THEN you'd say," Aisling went on strenuously, "that the absolute BEST TIME EVER to break up with your boyfriend is when he's on his way to jail."

I shrugged. "Well, it's not like you're sending him off to the Marines or something. Why on earth would a girl tie herself to some dope who's going to jail?"

"Yes, Mother, we agree with you," said Meelyn with finality.

"I should totally be running that radio show," I said, and kissed Aisling goodbye.

Of parental concern

Sometimes it is extra-difficult to parent teenagers. You want them to have enough life experience so that they won't flounder helplessly out there in the big world of a college campus. But then again, you want to limit that life experience in a number of crucial ways, sometimes because you remember from your own painful experiences, or also because the state of the news today and how it tends to stand your hair on end.

Along the way, as your kids make friends, you get to know those kids and their parents, and you hope as your children's friendships develop that you're going to be able to trust the friends' parents to basically have the same goals and values that you do. I mean, we've all heard about the parents who have that notion that kids are going to drink anyway, so "they might as well drink at our house where they can be safe and where we can confiscate their car keys." Which is, let me say, a FABULOUS parenting philosophy until someone wanders off and drowns in the neighbors' pool. Or falls off a second story deck onto the patio below. And just for the record, without mincing any words, if you're one of those parents, my husband and I think you're an idiot and a criminal and our kids won't be visiting.

It's fairly easy to keep your kids away from people like that, although I have to say that home schooling has probably helped us a lot in this respect; our girls' friends are mostly other home schooled kids, and the parents of their public and private schooled friends are generally the more conservative type who'd never dream of doing something as boneheaded as deliberately serving alcohol to a group of minors.

But here's a problem I've come across several times as the girls have grown older and it's one that worries me a lot. This affliction is one that besets Christian parents, both Catholic and Protestant, and it's one that makes me utterly helpless with anger and turns me into the kind of mother who has to tell her children "No, absolutely not. You cannot spend the night at their house" much more often than I want to.

Because it isn't my kids' fault when adults are stupid, but they're the ones who end up suffering.

The affliction I'm speaking of is this: "My kids have been raised in a Christian home and they're very devout themselves, so I know I can trust them to behave in a Christlike manner and uphold the morality of Christianity in general and our home in particular."

This is a hard one. Because I really do trust my kids. I think Meelyn and Aisling are wonderful girls and I'm with them pretty much every hour of the day (or at least in near proximity) that they're not sleeping or working. I'm completely convinced that their relationship with Jesus is real and it's a relationship they experience personally on a daily basis; He's not just someone they take notice of in passing on Sundays as they go forward to receive Communion with a casual and disinterested "Hey, Jesus. What's up?"

However, I also know they're human. And they're young. Since they're young humans, there are things that my husband and I, as responsible parents, need to be on the lookout for, to protect them. Because we don't want bad things -- including unintentional bad things -- to happen to them.

The latest problem that's come up had to do with the prom. Aisling was invited to spend the night at a friend's house to have kind of an afterglow, where several girls could sit around eating popcorn and deconstructing every single minute of the evening. The friend's family lives on the opposite side of Indianapolis, and we had plans the next day that were going to make it difficult to drive all the way to the west side of the city to get her, so I told her no, she couldn't go this time. She was disappointed, but Aisling is a good girl and she understood the logistics of our schedule the next day and didn't kick up much of a fuss.

I'm so glad we didn't let her go. Because it turned out later that the friend's parents had a boy/girl after prom sleepover that night.

I heard later from another mother that the boys slept on one floor of the house and the girls slept on another, but they were all accessible to one another, of course, because they were under the same roof of a single family dwelling, albeit a big honkin' house. But I heard from Aisling that her particular friend, the girl whose house this was, stayed up all night with her date, cozily ensconced in the family room, and talked until dawn.

First of all, let me say this: If the girl told Aisling that nothing sexual happened between her and her boyfriend there on the sofa, I feel I have no choice but to believe her. I know the girl vaguely -- she's been here a couple of times for sleepovers -- and she seems to be a very nice girl. I know a lot of people would just brush this off and say, "Well, it was definitely a provocative situation, but nothing happened so just let it slide." But I don't roll that way, I just don't and I'm too far gone in this parenting thing to start letting situations like this slide now. My point is, something could have happened so easily. Not because the girl and her boyfriend are bad kids. Not because they don't love Jesus with their whole little hearts. Not because they're (theoretically) committed to staying chaste before marriage, which is what I have always assumed other Christian parents of my generation were teaching their kids with something more enlightened than what my parents told me, which was, "Don't have sex because you might get pregnant and we'll kill you."

My beef in this boy/girl sleepover situation isn't nearly so much with the kids as with the adults.

First of all, as I told Aisling when we were discussing the decision to just have her come home after prom, is there really anything wrong with just going back to your own house and falling asleep in your own bed while drowsily recalling all the lovely events of the evening? I really deplore this part of our culture, which has been around since I was in high school, where the prom just isn't a formal dance, but a huge cultural event that calls for dinner beforehand and then the actual dance, then an after-prom party, then an early breakfast cooked by several tired mothers before everyone heads home at seven o'clock in the morning. Often there's the rental of a Hummer limo involved, and not just the one formal gown, but also the cocktail dress for the after-party and a casual outfit for breakfast. It wears me out.

Secondly, this boy/girl sleepover thing strikes me as incredibly stupid, almost as dumb as renting a room at a hotel for a bunch of prom attendees to share. And it's even dumber when the kids in question have been raised in Christian homes where the virtue of chastity has been explained and taken somewhere beyond theory and into actual practical experience as the kids have grown older. Because we all know what can happen, right? An emotionally extravagant evening like the prom, the glamour and romance of formal gowns and tuxedos and dancing in a beautiful place with lots of friends around...and then the intimacy of hours spent together unchaperoned, in the small hours of the night. We all know what can happen. WE KNOW IT.

So why put our children -- and someone else's child -- in the way of temptation? Why would an adult do that? If sex outside of marriage is wrong, and most traditional Christians agree that it is, and we've been coaching our kids to save their virginity for their future spouses (and, as a bonus, avoiding unintended pregnancy and/or disease), then why put them in a situation where their self-discipline is going to put to a test that they might not be able to endure?

It's like saying to a kid, "Look, I know you're really, really hungry. And I know that I've told you that this big dinner, this thick, juicy slice of prime rib cooked to perfection and baked potato with melting butter and a crisp, green salad with garlic croutons and the best and richest blue cheese dressing, topped off with French silk pie, this is food that is for certain occasions only, not just any time you want to sit down and indulge. But listen, I'm going to put all this food on the table in front of you and I want you to sit close enough that you can see it and smell it, but DO NOT TASTE IT. Don't even think of taking one single bite. Because that would be all kinds of wrong, and if you do, I'll be so disappointed in you and so will your dad, and not only that, it will also be a sin. So don't even think about it, all right? Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go set the table."

It's not right and it's not fair. It's wrong to do this kind of thing to teenagers. It's immoral. And no Christian person with a brain in his or her head would ever do something like this, especially if they'd have the gall to be dismayed when their fifteen year old gets pregnant. Because she was a good girl! He was a good boy! And so much was expected of them, what with how they'd been brought up and all, as Christians!

This is the concern we've had lately. And this is why Aisling, who really likes this girl, can't go to sleep over at her friend's house. Not because the friend is a bad girl, but rather because her parents can't be trusted. Their judgement isn't sound. We don't know them all that well anyway, which is a bit of a strike against them these days. But now? Now that we know they feel that there's nothing wrong with hosting boy/girl sleepovers? They are off our list, forever. Let them do their social experimenting with someone's else kids, if other someones are thoughtless enough to let them do it.

Plus, I'm really mad at them for making my job as a Christian mother even harder than it already is. They've given me one more thing that I have to say NO about in a list of no's that's already a long one. And they've let down our side, the side of Christian home schooling parents who I'd imagined before to be fairly well united on major things like this. The only bit of relief I have in the whole situation is that at least they're not Catholics. That would have just added insult to injury and this situation's already bad enough as it is.

This is one of the things we've been discussing a lot in our house lately.

Prom Night - behind the scenes

This picture, taken outside the Indiana Roof Ballroom at about 12:30 Saturday morning, is proof positive that the prom finally got here after months and months of waiting. We bought the tickets in late January. We bought the dresses in early May. We found the shoes, the jewelry, the desired hairstyles....as well as a glittery hair spray that made the girls' hair look like it had been sprinkled with diamonds. Everything was very lovely.

Unless you were at our house about ninety minutes before we left to take the girls to the dance.

You probably suspected that all had not gone smoothly, right? Because these things just never do. Formal dances exist, I believe, to give families practice for weddings, so that when a groomsman's shiny shoes aren't included with his tux, or when the cake turns out to be not exactly what the bride had asked for, or when certain individuals on one side of the family come to the celebration wearing faces more appropriate for a funeral with matching attitudes, or when the service is unaccountably messed up, or when the matron of honor turns out to be three months pregnant by the time the wedding rolls around and can just barely zip up her dress, people can deal with these things without flying into a thousand screaming pieces. I know, because all of the above things happened at my wedding. And see how normal and calm I am, all these years later?

Our only enormous problem with prom arose from something I told Meelyn she should do to treat herself, and that was have her makeup done by an associate at the local Salon Professional Academy. True, the associates are still students, I told her, but by the time they get to the point of being allowed to do prom makeup and hair, as the sign outside the academy advertised, they are competent and well-equipped to make a girl look like a fairy princess.

Or so I thought.

Aisling's appointment was first because she opted for the whole hair and makeup package. The associate who did her face came in, Aisling said, with an enormous suitcase fitted with different compartments for her huge collection of cosmetics. They talked about the look Aisling wanted -- pretty and pastel, no harsh colors -- and the student-artist went to work, creating a look that Aisling was thrilled with, and indeed she did look very lovely when the girls came home later.

But Meelyn, my poor Meelyn....

Meelyn was asked to work the lunch shift at the fast-food restaurant she's been employed at for the past couple of years: the manager is finding it difficult, despite these hard economic times, to find employees who will actually come in when they're scheduled to work, and then lift a finger once they're there. So Meelyn went in to pick up the slack, which meant that she didn't get to go for her makeup appointment until 3:30 (since her hair is short, she felt she could manage it by herself, unlike the updo Aisling had for her longer hair.) Meelyn drove home and took a quick shower and then set out for the salon, where I'd dropped Aisling off an hour before.

Thankfully, Aisling chose to sit in a nearby chair and watch Meelyn's makeup being done instead of sitting in the waiting area with her book: otherwise, we probably would have had to have Meelyn's face sandblasted to remove the thick layer of orange pancake makeup the technician -- not the same one who did Aisling's face -- trowelled on. While watching the student smear the awful stuff on her sister's face, Aisling, whose personality is more, well, forthright like mine, rather than sweet and more aquiescent like Meelyn's, said, "Uhhm, should you be trying to blend that a little more?" when a traffic-cone-colored line appeared along Meelyn's jaw.

"She looked at me and rolled her eyes," Aisling said indignantly. "She ROLLED HER EYES. Like she knew what she was doing over there with her stupid Cheeto foundation!"

"I was turned away from the mirror, so I didn't know anything bad was happening," Meelyn sobbed, bright-white tear streaks marked on her face. "But when Aisli said that about the blending, I could tell something was wrong. And then there was the look on her face, like she was about to scream or vomit or both."

Apparently, the technician replied, "That's all the foundation we have" and went back to slapping the orange on Meelyn's face. You see, the students at the salon academy have to supply their own beauty products, whether those products be for hair or skin or whatever, and somehow, someone missed the fact that Ms. Facepaint was not exactly ready for that advertised prom makeup, especially since her only other accoutrment was a black Sharpie marker, which she used to color in Meelyn's eyebrows.

That was the point where both girls cracked.

Aisling said, "Okay, that is just not right," and she went up to the front desk to request that an instructor be sent over to parlay. When the instructor came over and surveyed Meelyn, sitting tensely in the chair while the associate carried on with the eyebrows, she immediately offered the services of the same technician who did Aisling's makeup.

"The instructor turned me around in the chair so that I could see myself and I knew I was going to start bawling in front of them all, so I said I didn't want anyone else to work on me and that I just wanted to leave," Meelyn sniffled, scrubbing her face with a face cloth and about a pound of cleansing wash.

Horrified, I said, "You didn't PAY for this mess, did you?"

"No," said Meelyn. "I just walked out and Aisling scampered out behind me. She'd already paid for her hair and makeup."

The two of them spent the drive back across the city to our house with Meelyn sobbing and bewailing her fate and Aisling trying to hold back her own sympathetic tears as she came as close to the line between Cussing and Not Cussing as she could without incurring parental wrath, yelping the story out to me via mobile phone. When they flung themselves into the house, I was standing in the foyer, uselessly flapping my hands and trying to keep myself from reeling and writhing and fainting in coils.

"LOOK AT ME!" Meelyn screeched. "I'M A FREAK! HOW'S COME AISLI ALWAYS GETS THE GOOD PERSON AND I GET THE IDIOTS WHO WOULDN'T KNOW A MASCARA WAND FROM A GARDEN RAKE??!!"

I hugged her and she cried into my shoulder and I don't know if I'll ever get that dreadful orange color out of my top, so my Oxy-Clean has its work cut out for it. Meelyn charged up the stairs to go to work with the aforementioned facial wash and warm cloth and I threw myself into one of the chairs in the foyer, aghast.

"What on earth happened?" I asked Aisling. "How could this have gone so wrong?"

"That student was a....a....complete and total beeyotch," Aisling replied flatly.

I gave her a narrow-eyed stare. "Be very careful."

"Well, she was. How could you be that bad without knowing how bad you were? How could you agree to do someone's PROM MAKEUP and not even have a basic understanding of skin tones. And how could you make someone's eyebrows look like that?"

"I don't know," I responded wearily. "It's beyond me. But I do know that I'm going to place a strongly-worded telephone call just as soon as I can do it without screaming."

When Meelyn's skin was purged of the horrible color and the drawn-on black eyebrows, she and Aisling went to work and made her look very lovely indeed. How fortunate to have a young, fresh complexion, because I guarantee if we'd been trying to make ME look better, it just wouldn't. Have. Happened. Once her makeup was sorted and she was glowing, Meelyn did her hair, which looked very cute: a quick spritz with that really very nice glittery hairspray, and the two girls were ready to get into their formal gowns -- classic black and white for Meelyn, apple green for Aisling -- and then into their chariot (otherwise known as the minivan) to be taken to the ballroom for an evening of dining and dancing - the most grown-uppy fancy party they'd ever been to, especially without us.

We picked them up, yawning, five hours later. As we drove home, their happy voices spilled over each other as they told us about the dinner, their friends, the music, the dancing, and most of all, the beautiful Indiana Roof Ballroom, which looked like a fairyland with slowly swirling stars projected onto the floor all evening.

"When I went to the prom," I said reminiscently, "it was in the Girls' Gym at the high school and there were paper streamers hanging off the basketball goals."

"We know," said Meelyn. "You've told us a thousand times."

"Ten thousand," corrected Aisling.

"You both look beautiful, even after dancing for hours," my husband said. He took my hand and squeezed it. "Two young ladies, barely girls anymore."

"Unless they say 'beeyotch,'" I declared.

May I?

It's May, the glorious, blooming month of May. The month when our school year, like everyone else's, starts winding down, but in lots of ways the "winding down" is more like an application of sharp, pointy spurs than a gradual lessening of activity that winds up on Memorial Day weekend with a graceful fall into a hammock.

No, we are going all-out around here. The girls, at my insistence, have to finish every last chapter down to the final period in every book they have. Firstly, because I remember what it was like as a public school teacher, feeling so frustrated because there was never, ever enough time to complete a textbook. Could I honestly say that my students had taken a complete course in American Literature when they didn't finish the last four-chapter unit in the book? Maddening. Secondly, home schooling is really expensive and I want to know that we're getting every last penny's worth out of those books, darn it!

Thirdly, I'm a tiger mom. My friend Shaun called me that last week and I was thrilled. I admit that I have worked the girls really hard: they take about eleven subjects per semester and doing so has given them opportunities that they never would have had in either public or private school. Using the Indiana Core 40 webpage at the website of the Indiana Department of Education, I planned coursework for them that would give them the best education we could manage, so I feel like it's only fair to make sure they work to the back cover of every book. Rowr!!!

So they are working at top speed, remembering that I (tiger-mom) grade them on the 96-100 = A grading scale, trying to finish their books before our last day, which is Tuesday, May 31. On Wednesday, June 1, they're hoping to start Chemistry as a summer school course. Whew.

I am in the midst of preparing transcripts and we're all waiting with bated breath for Mee's SAT scores to show up on May 26. It doesn't leave a lot of time for blogging.

Typing is difficult for tigers, after all.

A typical conversation between Aisling and me

[In the van, driving to a babysitting gig at the church]

Me: I am so hungry. I didn't have a chance to eat anything before we left the house.

Aisling: Why don't we stop and get a cup of coffee?

Me: Because a cup of coffee doesn't have bacon in it. And besides, we're running late because you were upstairs singing a Taylor Swift song while you were doing your hair and you couldn't hear me hollering at you.

Aisling [with a palpable lack of sincerity]: I'm sorry.

Me: *rolls eyes*

Aisling: Hey, I have a protein bar in my purse! Do you want to share it with me?

Me: Is it one of the kind that tastes like a handful of leaves covered with carob?

Aisling [rummaging through her purse]: No, it's one of the good ones, you know, that hardly has any protein in it.

Me: Oh, no, that's okay. You save it.

Aisling: Oh, good. Because I just remembered that I gave it to Daddy yesterday.

Why no snow days for the home schoolers?

Last night we all tumbled into bed with a gentle rain pattering down and the (mistaken) idea that we were going to have little to no snow accumulation, according to the posted Winter Weather Advisory. I woke up coughing at about 5:15 and when I got out of bed to get a drink, I couldn't help but notice how strangely bright it seemed in the room. With a feeling of foreboding, I peeked through the blind and sure enough - there was snow. A LOT of snow. And it was blowing horizontally.

"Whuzzerdoin'?" my husband asked me drowsily, burrowing his head into his pillow. Zuzu, sleeping beside him, turned over on her back with all four paws in the air and sighed contentedly.

"Looking at the snow," I replied.

That woke him up a bit. "Diddit znow?" he mumbled, eyes blissfully closed. "Ow mudge?"

"Oh, about FIVE INCHES AND COUNTING," I announced with weary bitterness. Really, this is just ridiculous.

That woke him right up. He thrashed around in the blankets and began spluttering things at me that sounded like this: ARRRGH!!! LITTLE TO NO ACCUMULATION!! SICK OF THIS FRIGGING WINTER!! WHERE'S MY SHOVEL??!! ARRRGHHH!!!! %$#&$!!!!

I silently started getting dressed, thinking that I know two other people who were going to have the same reaction: Meelyn and Aisling. There have been so many snow days for the public schools this year -- and today is another one -- I've lost count. I've mentioned several times on Facebook that we don't have snow days here at Our Lady of Good Counsel and keep on pegging away through snow, sleet, hail and gloom of stormy afternoon. Several people have expressed surprise that I am such a big meanie, so I wanted to explain my bit of homeschooling philosophy in a place that allows me significantly more words-per-post than Facebook does.

First of all, home schooling is a completely different animal than public or private schooling. It just doesn't operate the same way, being a lot more efficient in the way time is managed. We don't have travel time, for one thing, and that makes the girls very happy because they're generally just yawning their way out of bed when their public/private school counterparts are already gathering their books from their lockers and heading off to their first class of the day.

Another way that home schooling is more efficient is that we don't have passing periods between classes or those moments of unavoidable delay when the students are filing into the room and taking their seats while the teacher does the attendance count. And we never have to deal with delaying the start of a lesson because someone doesn't have a book and someone else doesn't have paper and someone else doesn't have a pen and someone else's boyfriend just broke up with her so that she has to sit there and cry while her friends try to soothe her. And we don't have the discipline problems that keep so many teachers from being able to conduct their business and actually get through a planned lesson. These things were enormously frustrating to me as a classroom teacher.

The girls work for about six to six and a half hours a day and that is just what they spend on schoolwork; public and private school kids are actually at their schools for about six and a half hours, but only a portion of that time is actually allocated to study -- the books in the picture above are Aisling's and they include one of our many SAT reference books for her prep course, traditional logic, French vocabulary and world literature....and that's only part of them.

Meelyn and Aisling take a lunch break somewhere around noon and spend half an hour eating and relaxing. Both girls do geometry and composition and classes that require writing downstairs at the dining room table, but for subjects that require a lot of reading (world history and world lit this year) they have their favorite places to go: Meelyn goes upstairs to her room, which is cozily outfitted with a comfy place to read and Aisling curls up in the chair in front of the big window. They're usually accompanied by the dogs, Dobby upstairs and Zuzu down.

They'll be working today when everybody else is having a break for this reason: public and private schools go until the end of the school year: home schoolers go until the end of the books. In other words, even with make up days, there's only so long public schools can convene. Sooner or later, they're going to have to turn the kids loose in the summer. From my own experience I know that every single teacher out there HOPES to come to the end of the textbooks used in his or her classes, but that rarely happens. There's too much interruption, whether it's because of winter weather or too short a class period or a spirit convocation or whatever. It is a constant frustration and worry. One of the most freeing things about homeschooling is that we don't have a break off point where we have to abandon the books and go: the class continues until the very last page of each and every subject.

This is where the superior education of the typical home schooler really comes forward. We know a lot of public school kids and none of them are big, unmotivated dunces; they're great kids and I don't think they're receiving a horrible education by any means. I just think that home schoolers receive a better education. We can do so much more with our six hours, including taking on subjects like logic that most public school kids will never get a crack at. My kids have also studied more than a dozen of Shakespeare's plays (and even been to the Stratford Festival a couple of times), compared to the three studied in public school. Our physical education classes are real workouts at a real gym. (If it's extracurricular activites you want, there's really nothing closed to home schoolers anymore. If my husband and I weren't adamant about having family time and a life free of the stress of constant running, the girls could be in just about any activity you could name, up to and including speech and debate, girls' volleyball - which we participated in for three seasons during their middle school years - and all sorts of other tempting offerings.)

So when it comes to snow days, we just don't have the time. The girls have a lot to accomplish each day and they have to get it done in a timely manner so that they won't wind up sitting at the side of the pool at the swim club finishing up geometry in August. Meelyn had that experience a couple of years ago with Biology I and that was not an experience she'd care to repeat. Aisling learned from that mistake and has kept up with her work diligently.

Home schooling's ways and means are just....different. Snow days are one thing for the majority of students in the area - they have a chance to have a day to sleep in and be free from their normal daily responsibilities. But for the home schoolers, it's pay now so that they can play later, with the knowledge that every single subject has been completed down to the very last sentence in each textbook.

Reflections on different directions

Aisling went to the annual youth retreat for the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana, Destination Jesus. We dropped her off at St. Theodore Guerin High School late on Friday afternoon and picked her up today at one o'clock, which was a very long time to live in an Aisling-free household, the rest of us agreed. When she climbed into the van, she began to talk in her exuberant way about the fun -- the skits, the conferences, the small-group discussions, the Eucharistic adoration, the music (so loud it made the chairs vibrate, she assured us), sleeping on the floor of the gym and even the long, long lines for the showers -- with the air of a person who has been transported by shining delight.

"It was so fun," she said, "doing hand motions to all the songs! And all the singing! And sitting in the bleachers with all my friends! And hanging out and talking before we fell asleep!I loved it! I loved every minute of it!"

"Aisling," my husband said solemnly. "I'm a bit unclear on this. Do you want to go back next year?"

She paused for a moment, obviously struggling with the truth, couched in diplomatic terms. "I'd like to go back right now."

I compared this joie de vivre with my own personality, which is not nearly so fun. My idea of a really inspirational spiritual retreat is to go to something like this, announced by the Our Lady of Fatima Retreat Center in Indianapolis:

“Come Away and Rest Awhile: Silent Reflection Day”

Join us for another opportunity for a silent non-guided reflection day. Relax in your own private room, read a book, walk the grounds, pray the labyrinth or the stations of the cross. The day is yours for reflection and time with God.

The cost is $25 per person and includes continental breakfast from 8:00-9:00 am, lunch at 12:00 noon, and a room to use for the day. The day concludes at 4:00 pm.

Now that's my kind of retreat. Quiet. Restful. No loud music. And definitely no hand motions.

Girls' nativity

I got this little nativity when the girls were tiny -- maybe one and three -- so that they could have one to actually play with, unlike my gorgeous porcelain nativity that few people are allowed to touch. This one actually came from Avon, which seems odd to me. There were three little sets to complete to whole shebang: the Holy Family, the three animals (cow, donkey and sheep) and the Three Wise Men. The little stable, which is the perfect size, is one I bought at Dollar Tree years and years ago.

This nativity used to sit on an end table in the living room where the girls could easily reach it, but it now sits on my kitchen window sill. In keeping with our tradition, Mary and Joseph are there waiting the birth of their Babe on Christmas Eve -- Jesus will appear in his little manger-bed right after we get home from Mass -- and the sheep, representing the shepherds, will arrive soon afterward. The three little Magi will travel around the kitchen (unlike their fancy-schmancy porcelain counterparts, who travel all over the house) and arrive bearing their gifts on Epiphany Day, January 6.

I really love this sweet little nativity set and it holds lots of happy memories for me whenever I look at it, not only of the Child Jesus, but also of my own children, once so very small and now getting so grown up.

The mall at Christmas time will do that to you.

The girls met some friends at Castleton Square Mall in Indianapolis today to celebrate the fourteenth birthday of their friend Chelsea and I designated myself as the mom who was going to follow them from store to store, lurking around outside (there aren't nearly enough places to sit in Castleton Square) and waiting for the herd of seven girls to exit, say, Bath & Body Works, so that I could follow them to the next store, say Aeropostale, and wait outside there. As it turns out, I am not one of those moms who is ever going to just drop my kids off at the mall and let them roam around unsupervised and Aisling told me that my methods of Teen Tracking and Security were about as subtle as a punch in the face.

"Don't you trust us?" wailed my friend Bridget's daughter Emily when I told her that she couldn't walk down to Borders with Meelyn. I squinched up my eyes to gaze down the long, long corridor with Borders at the end of it, looking small and far away.

"Oh, I trust you just fine," I replied, looking back at Emily. "But the other people, the ones who might try to snatch your purse or brush up next to you and pick your pocket or whatever? It's them I don't trust. And I prefer to have you in my sights so that if I see someone grab your purse -- or you -- I can run up behind them and make them deeply sorry they were ever born."

We walked around the mall for about an hour, me tagging along behind them, and by the time they went in the final store of their choice, I was completely tired of walking around and wanted to go straight home and put on my slippers. As I was shifting from foot to foot and more or less patiently waiting for my little herdlings to come back out of the shop they were in, I happened to see this large plushy white bear in the window of the candy store next door.

He looked, I decided, exactly like I felt, like he'd plopped down with an "oof!" and a dim hope that someone would ask him if he'd like a foot rub.

At the circus

Last week at this time, I just wistfully recalled as I looked at the clock, we were at Conseco Fieldhouse in downtown Indy at Ringling Brothers-Barnum & Bailey Circus, sitting in our amazing seats and settling down to watch the show with cold drinks, candy and a bucket of popcorn big enough to bathe a baby in. If the popcorn had been eaten first, of course.

The young man in the photo is my cousin Patrick, the guy who got us the FREE tickets and the VIP backstage passes. Isn't he handsome? He looks just like his dad, who is Susie's oldest brother, Skip. Patrick is twenty-five and is employed by the circus as a stagehand -- my husband and I were so impressed by this adventurous choice of jobs that we kept apologizing over and over again to Patrick for being so boring and middle-aged.

"I feel very, very forty-something," my husband said, sadly chomping on a Starburst. We watched Patrick and the rest of the stage crew rapidly dismantling and rolling up the enormous net the aerialists had been using in their act. "If I had to bend over and roll that net and walk forward in that crouching position, I'd never be able to stand upright again."

"I know," I agreed gloomily, digging into the popcorn vat. "The only thing I can see myself doing here with any competence at all is, well, what I'm doing right now. Popcorn?" I offered him the buttery tub and he shook his head disconsolately.

My husband took a drink of his soda pop and said, "I think we might as well face the fact that some people have interesting jobs that take them all over the country to see many different places and do all kinds of unusual things and other people are us."

"Look at Patrick now!" squealed the girls, who had taken to giggling slightly and blinking their eyes whenever his name was mentioned. Truly, it was almost as much fun watching him with his fellow stagehands as it was watching the show. Your eyes naturally tend to be distracted by the elephants and the white ponies wearing plumey hats and the trapeze artists flinging themselves around in the air, but watching the crew make the show happen so that everything goes smoothly and no tiger ran amok or llama went careening into the crowd and no high wire acrobat went crashing splat on the floor.

One of the best parts of the whole show was when Patrick took us backstage on the floor level, said with a smile, "Wait 'til you see this!" and then led us around a corner and down a ramp where we suddenly saw a fenced herd of elephants -- ELEPHANTS!!! -- standing placidly in some scattered straw. Among them was the sweetest little baby elephant you have ever seen, right there not ten feet in front of me, snuggling up next to his (her?) mother's side and looking around with innocent amazement.

He also showed us the clowns' dressing area -- the girls and I went past with a quick step, whistling, and looking everywhere we could but at the place where we might see that most dreaded of childhood terrors, a full-on clown.

We were able to meet lots of clowns later, out on the floor of Conseco during the pre-show and we found out that not all clowns are like the one from Stephen King's It or Xander's nightmare clown from his sixth birthday party, the one with the jolly laugh and the butcher knife on Buffy. That was a nice thing to know and one of Patrick's clown friends said to us -- well, okay, said to the girls -- with a flirty wink, "The white-face clowns are scary, but we don't have any white-face clowns in this circus. Besides, not many clowns are as handsome and personable as I am."

He really was cute, so I had to agree.

An InsomniMom poll: Does my daughter owe me $5

Today Aisling was upstairs getting ready for church and I was downstairs loading the dishwasher. She came clomping down to the kitchen in her high heels and said, "How does this outfit look?"

She was wearing a very cute black and white herringbone skirt with a black scoop-neck sweater with a white camisole underneath and black heels. So far, so good. Then I noticed that her legs were bare.

"You look fine, you just need to put on some hose," I said, turning back to the sink to rinse a plate.

"I don't have any hose," Aisling said. "They all got holey and I threw them away."

I turned to look at her. "Well, you can't go out with nothing on your legs! It's forty degrees out there! What about your black dress pants?"

"They're dirty."

"Then you're going to have to find another outfit because you're not going out like that," I said with finality, channeling my own mother through some means that has either conferred great wisdom upon me or totally creeped me out, I can't decide which.

Aisling, who often complains that she doesn't have a shred of clothing to wear, like, EVER, in spite of a rather large closet (for our house) that is crammed so tightly you'd be hard pressed to wedge a Q-tip in there, immediately set up a noisy protestation: "I DON'T HAVE ANOTHER OUTFIT! I'M LIKE THE LITTLE FREAKING MATCH GIRL! MAYBE I SHOULD JUST CUT UP MY BLANKET OFF MY BED AND SEW A DRESS OUT OF THAT, WOULD THAT MAKE YOU HAPPY??!!"

I heaved a sigh and gave her the Mommy Glare. "Go. Find another outfit. Now."

She turned persuasive, a talent that all teenage girls possess in one degree or another: One moment they're shrieking and their heads are flaming skulls shooting around the room and the next minute, they're calling you Mummy Sweetums and unicorns approach them to be petted and brushed and have ribbons tied around their tails. You just never know.

"Mummy sweetums, could you just hop in the van and drive down to Walgreen's and buy me some hose while I do my hair? Please, Mommy? Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease?"

I heaved another sigh, this one resigned. "Okay. I'll go. I'll be back in ten minutes."

She threw her arms around my neck. "Oh, you are the BEST MOMMY in the whole world! I'm so lucky to have such a wonderful mom!" and I swear, a dozen butterflies flew out of her ears.

I went to Walgreen's, found the aisle with the pantyhose display and spent a grumpy ten minutes trying to locate Aisling's size and the color she needed. She is about 5'5 and weighs about one hundred and five pounds and the size that fits her is in short supply. Of course, there were no pantyhose in her size in the brand that cost $1.88, nor in the brand that cost $2.49. The brand that had her size was priced at $4.98 and I blanched, knowing how Aisling is with hose: she jams her little feet with the sparkly purple toenails into their delicate fibers like she's putting on a pair of wellies and ordinarily, I would never allow her to be alone in a room with a pair of $5 panty hose, but it was either that or bare legs, so I bought them.

Upon returning home, I handed her the Walgreen's bag and said, "Please be very, very careful with those. They cost $5."

"Okay," she replied and went into the downstairs bathroom to put them on. A couple of minutes later, she came back to the foyer with her heavy coat, which she shrugged on as she leaned over to pick up her purse. Two seconds later and she was squealing, "Look what the buckle on my purse strap did! It totally ripped a hole in my new hose!"

Yep, there it was. A hole. About as big as a silver dollar and getting bigger by the second. I stood there with my mouth hanging open for an eye-blink and then I launched into a tirade that was so concise, so purposeful, so TO THE POINT that it was like I'd rehearsed it. The theme of my rant was I TOLD YOU JUST NOW TO BE VERY CAREFUL AND NOW LOOK AT THOSE HOSE! YOU OWE ME FIVE DOLLARS, YOUNG LADY!

"It was an accident!" she hollered.

"AND I'LL THANK YOU NOT TO RAISE YOUR VOICE AT ME!" I shouted back.

Meelyn, who had been watching this whole thing with one raised eyebrow, herded us out the door and into the van, where our argument continued nearly all the way to the church, I standing firm on my insistence that she pay me $5 and Aisling countering that the buckle on her purse strap just reaching out and GRABBING her new pantyhose? Could have happened to anyone.

So what do you think? Should she pay me $5 or should she not?

Halloween sleepover

 Aisling's Halloween party/sleepover was a lot of fun. We started off with a trip to Jacobs Family Orchard in Mt. Summit, where the girls had fun climbing up on the tower of straw bales. From left to right, Chelsea, Amanda, Ella and Aisling. (Ella is holding Zuzu, who made the trip with us as one of the girls.)

 Zuzu was all agog with so many new sights to see and smells to sniff out. Is that... a GOAT IN THE DISTANCE??!!

 Beautiful pumpkins on a lovely autumn afternoon.

 Ah, yes....the goats! The girls thought the goats were adorable, but Zuzu was underwhelmed.

 Cider slushies all around for the trip home, because it turns out that corn mazes, penned goats, straw bales and the like are all very thirsty work.

 Papa Murphy's was doing the cutest Jack-o-Lantern pizzas, so we wanted one.

 A platter of apple-cinnamon doughnuts and brownies magically disappeared.

 A skeery-looking bowl of popcorn was handy by for nibbling while watching Hocus Pocus and a Harry Potter movie.

 Monkey bread is always a big draw at sleepovers. I make mine out of the finest, freshly-ground 

MONKEY MEAT. (No, really, just little canned biscuits, butter, cinnamon-sugar, butter, brown sugar, butter, vanilla, butter and a little more butter.

Just so we can make it clear that the entire sleepover wasn't spent eating, we offered everyone a handicure with a shea butter sugar scrub for, well, scrubbing (purple pot), cocoa butter enriched petroleum jelly for softening (green pot) and oatmeal/vitamin E lotion for smoothing (pink pot).. 

There were fancy orange, purple and lime green fingernail polishes for anyone who wanted 

a spooktacular manicure to go along with her soft paws.

Jack o' Lantern time

 'Twas pumpkin-carving time here last Saturday, because what better way is there to spend an hour on the weekend than in the harmless pursuit of digging the slimy guts out of a gourd?

We like happy pumpkins at our house, but Meelyn's smile is even brighter, although she isn't orange.

 Aisling screamed, "I LOOK UGLY!" when I pointed the camera at her and I said sharply, "I AM MAKING MEMORIES HERE" and took the picture anyway. So there you have it.

 Here's my little guy, a pie pumpkin I have named Binky.

Boo to you!

Stormy weather

Today is one of those Indian Summer days we often get around these parts, but instead of being a day of sapphire skies and big pouffy white clouds, we are all about the straight line winds, the pummeling rain and the TORNADO SIRENS. Gee, what a fun morning.

The tornado sirens went off about fifteen minutes ago, and without a word, Meelyn stood up from her seat at the dining room table where she was engaged in a geometry lesson, She took her book -- what a dedicated scholar that girl is! -- and went into the downstairs bathroom, shutting the door firmly behind her. Aisling stood up too, but she picked up her mug of hot chocolate instead of her vocabulary textbook.

"Why are you still sitting there at the computer?" she asked me fussily, one hand on her hip.

I, the veteran of many a tornado siren, tend to follow in the path of my forebears, which dictates that when the tornado sirens go off, you DO NOT go into hiding: you go out on your front porch and scan the heavens for a twister. I was too busy with my email to go to the front porch, but sitting at my desk gives me an excellent view of the western sky through the big window.

"I am monitoring the storm," I said absently, tapping away vigorously on the keyboard.

"Are you coming to the bathroom?" she asked me impatiently.

I glanced up at her. "No, I am not. Because if I'm closed in the bathroom with you, your sister and the dogs, I will not be able to see if there's something headed our way."

Meelyn opened the bathroom door a crack and peered out to say, "So are you planning to be one of those people on the news who says, 'I was just settin' there on t'porch and BLAM! That there tornado come by and throwed me out inta the yard and I broke my arm and got hit upside the head with the rake handle.'"

"The rake is downstairs in the basement with all the other garden tools."

"SERIOUSLY, Mother!" Aisling yelled. "Come into the bathroom where it's safe! YOU ARE SETTING A TERRIBLE EXAMPLE." She snatched Zuzu up from the pillow upon which she was reclining like a Roman emperor's wife, and flounced into the bathroom, shutting the door with a sharp bang behind her.

I looked at Hershey, who was stretched out on the floor under the table. He has never gone willingly into a bathroom since he was a very young puppy, shrewdly construing that, bathrooms? Those are the places where you get a BATH and he's perfectly fine with his ingrained dirt. He met my eyes and his tail flopped on the floor three times -- wag wag wag -- as if to say, "Feel free to go on in there if you want to, but me? I think I'll just stay ri-i-i-ight here."

The storm was a quick-moving system and it blew by us in about six or seven minutes, leaving us with the strong winds, yes, but also with a nice, strong rain that is currently splashing against the windows. The girls came out of the bathroom rather sheepishly. Aisling set Zuzu (who seemed to think that we were playing some extra-fun new game and did it involve doggie treats?) back down on her pillow, where she stood for a moment, ears raised expectantly before lying back down with a deep sigh of disappointment.

"Well, that was much ado about nothing," Meelyn said.

"Late October, Tuesday morning, Indian Summer, changing seasons....nothing to see here," I added, returning to my email.

Sleepover!

Aisling is having a sleepover with some of her giggly friends this coming Friday (that little tiny kid in the picture is not invited); Meelyn has used the opportunity of Aisling being otherwise occupied to escape to Nanny and Poppy's house for the night. My husband and I are already steeling our middle-aged nerves for the hubbub of having a bevy of teenage girls in the house, although we wisely limited the number of guests to three.

Here's our agenda:

-- Pick up guests on Friday afternoon at the designated meeting place and drive to orchard.

-- Drive to orchard, where there are those stacked bales of straw pictured above to climb on and giggle about; a corn maze to wander through and giggle about; pygmy goats to feed and coo over; an old-fashioned cider press to completely disregard; homemade apple-cinnamon doughnuts to scarf down and cider slushies to quench one's sugary thirst.

-- Drive home and get girls settled (Aisling) and put Papa Murphy's pizza in oven (me)

-- Set out many snacks, which include ranch snack mix, popcorn, cider, soda pop, candy and monkey bread, which I make with only the finest prime freshly-ground MONKEY MEAT. MUUUAAAAHAHAHAHA!! (This duty also falls to me, as it turns out.)

-- Settle down to watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and The Haunted Mansion while eating a lot of junky food and giggling (girls) and get the kitchen cleaned up and the dishwasher loaded, with snacks left out on the counter, buffet-style, and cold drinks in the fridge so that the girls can help themselves (This would be me.)

-- Do Halloween manicures with a sugar scrub, shea butter moisturizer and cotton gloves, fingernail polish in neon orange, green, sparkly purple and witch's hat black.

-- Provide chaperonage in the form of coming downstairs every fifteen minutes to make sure no one is on the computer (learned this lesson at the LAST sleepover - no guests or hostesses allowed on the 'puter while the party's going on) and I'm happy to say that this chore belongs to my husband, who will also be bringing us our own pizza, which we will eat upstairs, probably while watching Sports Center.

-- Stagger downstairs at 3:00 a.m. where girls are still in full swing; put rest of dirty dishes, which is to say every single plate and glass in the house, including my good china and the crystal stemware, into the dishwasher; start it and sit, slumped, at the kitchen table until about four-thirty, when the girls finally decide to go up to bed. Guess who's doing this?

-- Get up at 9:00 and make breakfast -- scrambled eggs, sausage, pancakes, orange juice -- and get girls downstairs by about 10:00 to eat, urging them to go back upstairs afterward to dress and get their things together.

-- Set off at 11:30 for designated pick-up place, giving girls their goody-bags to take home (candy, caramel apples, hand lotion and various Dollar Tree doo-dads.

-- Come home and start planning, at Aisling's insistence, a Valentine's Day sleepover.

I think it sounds like a lot of fun, myself, and Aisling and I have had a fun time planning and shopping for it. Meelyn, however, says that she plans to head off for Nanny and Poppy's before the guests even arrive, enjoy a leisurely dinner with her grandparents, watch Monsters, Inc and The Incredibles and then get to bed by 11:00. Actually, both evenings sound like a lot of fun, don't they?

Getting to know you (again)

How could it possibly be that it's been TWO WEEKS since I last wrote on my blog? And perhaps an even bigger question is how have all of you, my twenty-four faithful blog followers (and maybe a few more people who accidentally stumbled across InsomniMom while doing an internet search for hasenpfeffer) been surviving without knowing what I've been serving my family for dinner for the past fourteen nights? How? How?

I'd like to think it's not a question of what Aisling just said as she was peering over my shoulder just now, watching me type: "I never read your blog because I'm already kind of sick of you from just being in the house with you all the time."

Gee, thanks.

Anyway, here's a list of my excuses. I have committed them to bandwidth because I may need to use them again someday and want to remember what they were.

1. I had some kitchen renovation stuff being done that started right after I posted the first French Fridays with Dorie recipe (gougeres) and it continued all week last week. Those of you who cook know that the kitchen is the heart of the home and when your kitchen is in pieces (at one time, I had two large refrigerators in the (small) room, one of which was partially blocking the laundry room door and plugged into the wall where I usually plug in the toaster. My microwave was not plugged in because it has to be plugged in to a special outlet. There was a third refrigerator in the laundry room. My portable dishwasher was in the middle of the room, requiring people to squeeze around it if they wanted, say, a slice of cheese for a sandwich. But if they actually got the slice of cheese it wouldn't have done them any good anyway because no one could find the bread.

2. I made the second French Fridays with Dorie recipe (Gerard's Mustard Tarte) last Friday and took some great photos, but then later that afternoon took the camera with me to a family birthday party at my parents' house -- and left it there. We live just far enough away from one another that there was no just popping over to get it, so I had to wait until they were running an errand in my town and brought it to me yesterday. It seems that I've grown so used to accompanying every post I make with a photograph, I am CRIPPLED without my camera.

3. Blogger has made a lot of changes to the website lately that I find irritating and discommoding, so I was in a snit. It's not as much fun blogging when it's harder to post images than it was before their "upgrade," not to mention all kinds of other glitches that have reared their hissing heads.

4. Shakespeare class, as always, keeps me very busy for the weeks the class is running, in this case, until mid-November. But my students are wonderful and so receptive and Hamlet is just as interesting as always.

5. Then there are my own two students, Meelyn and Aisling, who just took the PSAT last Wednesday. They have a lot more work to do this year, naturally -- Meelyn is a junior and Aisling is a sophomore -- and there are a few classes of theirs that I'm taking right along with them, namely Bible study, composition and SAT prep. It takes up a lot of time, but it is all great fun.

6. And we've been doing a lot of stuff at church. Aisling is doing child care for our parish mothers' group -- she likes it very much because the kids are funny and adorable and they pay her well -- plus all three of us are providing child care for the same mothers' group we worked with last year that meets at a Protesant church in our city, so we're busier than usual. That picture at the top of this post is one I took at our annual Pet Blessing which was held on the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi on October 4. It's fun being at the church more often. I use the time while Aisling is babysitting to work on my religious education lesson plans, as well as my Shakespeare stuff.

7. We've had colds. With fevers and headaches and sore throats and a severe lack of energy. Very unpleasant.

So! That's my list of excuses. I think they seem plausible, but I think it's going to be very hard to make my yearly goal.