Julia making an omelette

As one YouTube commenter put it, "She is an omelette ninja!"

She makes this look so easy and her omelettes look so perfect. Mine always come out looking like they've just gotten home from a hard day at work. Of course, I don't have one of those seven and a half inch bottom diameter non-stick skillets....I'm sure that's where the problem lies.

The dating game

Now that Meelyn has entered the workforce through her job at a local upper-end fast food establishment, she is having lots of new experiences, like resisting the temptation to vault over the counter and pull the hair from the head of the woman who orders a cheeseburger with tomato, ketchup and lettuce and, by the way, no cheese.

Another new experience is the one where men, attracted by the big smile on the cute little blonde at the register, ask her out on dates.

One good-looking guy with a great tan and light brown hair (as per Mee's description) came in last Tuesday and ordered his lunch in a mildly flirty way -- and here I have to interject that I am now so old that I can't imagine ordering a Beef-n-Cheddar combo in a come-hither-ish manner; I personally find that the Chicken Cordon Bleu makes me feel more the coquette -- and, as she counted out his change, said, "How old are you?"

Meelyn said she looked him straight in the eye and said, "Sixteen."

Crestfallen, he said, "Well, I guess I can't ask you out on a date then, seeing as how I'm twenty-one."

When she told this story at the dinner table, my husband and I locked glances across the Pfaltzgraff. He looked like he had swallowed an entire chicken leg without chewing, and I felt the need to pour a glass of iced tea over my head to cool the tide of protective mother bear rage that swept over me. Twenty-one? TWENTY-ONE!!

WRSOFSURFONSONWNDKGNSGSSM!!!!

[The nonsense letters above are intended to express the range of thoughts that were all jumping up and down and clamoring for attention inside my head, some of which were so poorly formulated that they just sounded like train whistles]

My first coherent thought was that at least this guy had the integrity to realize that it is a stupid thing for a man his age to date an underage girl. A lot of guys wouldn't have.

We talked about this incident, as you can imagine, with the Number One Important Topic being how young ladies do not accept dates from unknown men, even those of outward hotness, who attempt a casual pick up. Unless, of course, she wants to risk becoming the kind of girl who ties maraschino cherry stems into knots with her tongue at kegger parties.

The next day, Meelyn and I talked about it again, and she mentioned that she's taken to re-reading this excellent book, The ABCs of Choosing a Good Husband: How to Find and Marry a Great Guy by Steve Wood, founder of the Family Life Center International. She's read it once before as part of her freshman year health class, because I don't think a good time to tell a girl what to look for in a husband is when she's already started dating. Or, heaven forbid, engaged to an unsuitable guy, which is what we call in Indiana, "shuttin' the barn door after the horses done run off."

I've had Meelyn read several books about dating, courtship and marriage (this year it's Aisling's turn) and I've told both of them that there is no need for either of them to get involved with a total loser because there is already a substantial LINE formed to get messed up by those guys.

If there is a man who is:

1. addicted to drugs or alcohol

2. abusive

3. unemployed

4. mean to his mother

5. the father of several children by different babymamas

6. a great fan of the ganja

7. shiftless

8. criminally minded

9. constantly down on his luck through his own fault

10. a drop out

11. a big, fat liar

12. unfaithful

13. an eternal child

14. a "playa"

15. a stupid buffoon

IF, I say, there is a man who exhibits these qualities of low character and complete unfitness as a candidate for one's life's mate, there will be a queue of women fourteen miles long, panting and desperate to be with him, to prove how misunderstood he is, to attempt to take care of him, to weep over him and to bear (more of) his children who will grow up to perpetuate the cycle and be just as screwed up as the old man.

I used to listen to Dr. Laura when the girls were small, and although I stopped because my ears were starting to corrode, I do think that she had many things of value to say, and here's one that stuck with me:

In the animal kingdom, the males of some species fight to see who is a worthy enough mate for the female. The female mountain goat, let's say, gets the ram who is big and tough and aggressive, which in mountain goatworld is a good thing. That means that the tempting she-goat will pair up with a virile male goat and they'll hopefully have vigorously healthy goatbabies who will be able to leap from one peak to the next with great strength and agility.

Among humans, however, Dr. Laura said, many women have abdicated their role as the choosers of a worthy mate. Whether this is because some girls don't think they deserve a good man or whatever, I don't know. Or maybe they're just desperate for love and feel that even a bad man is better than no man at all? At any rate, when confronted with a man who has a rap sheet long enough to circle the track at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, or is mean, or has been spreading his seed, so to speak, over the tri-county area, some women will set out to make him their pet project instead of RUNNING AWAY.

Anyone who has lived a while has seen this kind of thing played out over and over again and it is a huge tragedy for the women, but even more so for their children. In the interests of fairness, there are men who suffer at the hands of women, too: many of us have had the experience of seeing a guy who married a pretty girl who was a total princessy, high-maintenance [*bleep!*] To Catholics who believe what the Bible said about divorce and remarriage*, it is a thorny problem indeed. Marriage can be hard enough with two loving, stable, companionable adults without saddling themselves with a spouse who is clearly a liability.

So when it comes to the very beginnings, sweet-sixteen-and-never-been-kissed and all it implies, the very first flirtatious comments made by personable young are important. Kindness and civility are always a factor, but the immediate decision to go out on a date with anyone who asks is something that can only be tempered by age, experience, and lots and lots of talking with Mom and Dad.

And, I don't know, maybe a pack of wolves being turned loose on some impertinent dude.



****************************

Also from the Family Life Center International, The ABCs of Choosing a Good Wife: How to Find and Marry a Great Girl. In my opinion, teenagers need to read BOTH books, in order to know what they should be looking for, and also to know what's being looked for.

*Divorce and Remarriage
Malachi 2: 14-16 - for I hate divorce, says the Lord
Matthew 5: 32-33 - to divorce or marry divorced wife is adultery
Matthew 19: 4-6, 9 - to divorce wife and remarry is adultery
Mark 10: 11-12 - if either divorced and remarries = adultery
Luke 16:18 - to divorce and remarry or marry divorced = adultery
Romans 7: 2-3 wife consorts = adulteress if living, but not if dead
I Corinthians 7: 10-11 - if wife separates, stay single or reconcile

Copyright (c) 1999-2003 San Juan Catholic Seminars. All rights reserved.

Sweet dreams are made of this

Okay. Long story short: My parents have some friends named Don and Betty who are downsizing their house and have bought a cute place in Alabama with a master bedroom too small to accommodate their king-sized bed they had at their house in New Castle.

Accordingly, Betty, a jewel among women, asked my mother if she knew of anyone who'd like to have a really nice king-sized mattress, two twin-sized box springs and an oak headboard. My mother, always one to think of family first, said, "Oh, Shelley and the Prince of Salesmen would love to have it!" Which was true. We do have a very nice mattress and box springs, queen-sized, which we bought with our tax check ten years or so ago, but who would be goofy enough to pass up a free king-sized mattress, box springs and headboard? Especially ones that belonged to Don and Betty, who have an income bracket that is, oh, I don't know, several hundred thousand dollars a year higher than ours? So they buy nicer stuff? I'm just saying.

So this morning has been spent with making preparations to move our queen-sized bed to Aisling's room where she will have a queen-sized bed upon which to store 7,000 Build-a-Bear Workshop plush animals, all of whom wear clothes nicer than mine, and a twin bed, upon which she will rest her weary bones, all tired from unloading the dishwasher and doing algebra and dusting. She has also just asked me to add that she exercises a lot, which accounts for some of her fatigue.

And also moving the king sized bed and its accoutrements from New Castle to our city, using two minivans with all the seats taken out. Which is so easy to type, but so awful to actually experience, with all the lifting and heaving and sweating, not to mention the sweeping up of dust bunnies under my bed, which made me just want to die of shame when my mother came upstairs and saw. Inexplicably, I found a volume of the poetry of Byron, Shelley and Keats under the bed. Why?

Thankfully, my mother, who used to make me and my brother clean out the cracks between the boards of the hardwood floors with toothpicks when we were children, admitted to some dust bunnies of her own when her bed was last moved. Somewhere in heaven, our mutual grandma, Hazel Williams Houser, may be sitting on a speckless cloud right now, rigid with shock and determining to step up her prayers on our behalf.

Anyway, the king-sized mattress is in the upstairs hallway and the two twin-sized box springs are in my living room and the king-sized headboard is precariously leaning up against the wall in the foyer. My husband is disassembling the gorgeous wrought-iron headboard and footboard from the frame of our queen-sized bed; the queen-sized mattress and box springs are leaning up against the wall.

My dresser, armchair and ottoman in my bedroom still have to be moved in order to make room for the king-sized bed frame, which is also in our room. We also have two king-sized egg-crate mattress toppers rolled up and propped in the corner of our room like two giant burritos.

The four seats of our minivan are in the dining room, the first Station of the Cross got knocked off the wall in the foyer and the gorgeous Bouguereau print of the Madonna and infant Jesus my friend Lori gave us was safely removed to the kitchen table, along with the 30 inch statue of St. Thérèse, which usually sits on the piano.

"Tell me," I said bleakly to the statue, "do you think we'll have this sorted out by Christmas?"

In short, the house is in chaos and the mess is nothing short of overwhelming. I have dust in my hair and grit on my lips and I can hardly wait to take a shower tonight and go climb into my NEW KING-SIZED BED.

Thank you, dear, sweet, generous Don and Betty!

Twenty-eight years ago today

I was glued to the television set, wistful and kind of jealous. Eighteen years old, with braces, for heaven's sake. Boyfriendless at the moment. Ready to head out for my freshman year of college like some dumb kid.

Whereas Lady Diana Spencer, only two years my senior and part of a world I'd only read about in books like Brideshead Revisited and The Secret of Chimneys. She was so young and seemingly such a regular girl, a mass of contradictions: a kindergarten teacher, yet the daughter of an earl; set to become a member of the British royal family, Princess of Wales, yet so bashful, she blushed like a peony and dug the toe of her shoe onto the sidewalk when standing before the paparazzi.

My grandma was also watching the wedding from her house; we talked to one another at about five o'clock that morning and wondered why I hadn't just come out to spend the night with her. We talked several other times, too, but I can't remember when. Probably when Diana got out of that gorgeous state carriage that once belonged to Queen Victoria and that train unfurled like a triumphant banner as she walked down the aisle of St. Paul's Cathedral on her father's arm. Trumpet voluntary! Be-hatted congregants! Family heirloom-style diamond tiara!

It was the wedding of a lifetime and I remember it almost as well as I remember my own.

Why I should be your child's godmother

Being received into the Catholic Church at Easter Vigil 2003 was one of the greatest joys of my adult life, one gift -- a pearl of great price -- that I never expected to receive.

There have been so many blessings along the way, everything from being a religious education teacher to teaching my Shakespeare classes to...to....oh, gosh. There are too many to list.

There's one thing, however, that I haven't yet experienced and it's something I'm yearning for: I would love to be a godmother.

I think I may start a lobbying group to endorse myself as an excellent godmother. Here's my initial promotion strategy, offering, in snazzy bullet points, a list of attributes I possess that would make me an excellent candidate:

• Willing at any and all times to coo over a pee-soaked pregnancy test

• Will pray daily rosary for baby, both before and after birth, also novenas

• Still have all my own teeth

• Would acknowledge birthday and sacrament dates with nice Hallmark cards, not cheapos from Balloons, Etc. like I buy for other non-godchild people in my life

• Would never consider being one of those people who tips back the head and gulps to drain the chalice dry at Mass with five people in line behind (what is up with that?!?)

• Promises not to booty-pop during fast dance number at child's eventual wedding reception

• Will have Masses said for baby and family on anniversaries of baby's birth and sacrament receptions

• Will turn blind eye and step up the prayers if child ever dyes hair purple

• Will still like child, even if he/she is not a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Shakespeare

• Ready to take down Community Bible Church or similar relatives in parking lot after baptism if impertinent comments are made regarding baby's salvation and/or infant baptism; can do this through well-reasoned, Scripture-centered oral argument or through pummeling - parents' choice

I think it seems like a promising campaign.

This may be the best three minutes of your day

Oh, the fast-food folk song! Rhett and Link, seriously, I worked in a couple of fast-food restaurants in my younger years and I would have climbed through the drive-thru window and pummeled anyone who pulled this stunt on me, but I have to admit that the song is funny and as clever as all get out, especially to people like me who enjoy spoofs and song parodies. The people at this Taco Bell are obviously much, much nicer people than I was as a harassed employee at the Taco Bell in New Castle, which is incidentally where Pat and Angie met.

'Bout that time again

Today, my husband passed by my computer desk on his way to the kitchen. I was sitting in my chair, watching a YouTube video and singing quietly to myself.

"Ah. I see it's about that time of the month again," he noted, pausing with a wry smile.

I clicked the pause button on my video. "What makes you say that?" I wasn't aware of having been touchy or otherwise unpleasant, or having gone after anyone with a shotgun or a meat cleaver.

He nodded toward the computer. "You're listening to 'Kiss from a Rose' again."

"Well. Yeah. I love that song. Seal, you know."

"I've noted that you love it more at a certain time of the month. It's okay, though. It's like a distant early warning."

Touchily, maybe even a bit unpleasantly, I said, "How do you know when the event has actually occurred?"

He pondered a moment and replied, "Well, either you tell me by holding a pillow over my face in the middle of the night and waking me from a sound and healthful sleep by screaming 'STOP BREATHING LIKE THAT!' or I'll find you here at your desk listening to 'I'll Stand By You' by the Pretenders and crying."

Oh, he knows me so well.

Here's Seal. I wonder if he says that kind of impertinent stuff to Heidi Klum? And I wonder what she listens to when she has PMS? Oh, wait. I just read on Wikipedia that Seal announced in April 2009 that Heidi is expecting their fourth child. Guess she was spending less time watching videos on YouTube and more time doing other things.



And The Pretenders, with Chrissie singing "I'll Stand by You," a song that a lot of people insist is a song for lovers, but others insist is one she wrote for her two daughters, Natalie and Yasmin. Whichever, it is a great song.

I thought it was hilarious

Driving home from Mass today, my husband was rubbing the back of his neck.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"My neck hurts," he said. "I must have slept on it funny."

"Really?" I replied. "I didn't hear you laughing." Then I burst into laughter and said, "Get it? Funny? Laughing? Ha ha haha ha haaa...."

He gave me a long look.

I guess it wasn't quite as amusing as I thought it was.

Friday night date

Friday night was our last alone-together evening of vacation week, so my husband and I decided to go for the all-out romance and go for dinner at the local authentic Mexican restaurant where they have cheap, delicious food and wondrous-to-behold margaritas and then home to watch Slumdog Millionaire, a movie I have been urging my husband to watch ever since I returned from CousinFest.

To be honest, the Mexican restaurant is usually a bomb, and the only reason we continue going there is because it's so inexpensive. Let me explain: It's owned by members of the same extended family, all of them eye-achingly beautiful and as friendly as a pack of chupacabras. After you're seated, a waiter eventually comes to your table and slams down a basket of tortilla chips and a bowl of homemade salsa without comment; fortunately, the chips and salsa are good enough for you to overlook this surly behavior.

After a good, long time, a time in which I imagine a group of handsome servers are huddled in the kitchen drawing straws to see which of them has the misfortune of taking your order and suffering the unimaginable misery of refilling your Diet Coke, a fabulously beautiful young man with melting brown eyes and a curled lip will approach you with order pad and pencil held at the ready. If you have any questions about the food, he will answer them in the bare minimum of words, albeit in delightfully accented English, somewhat in the manner that his Spanish ancestors may have had to answer Torquemada. If you require an extra slice of lime in your margarita, a dish of the salsa caliente or a fork to replace the one you clumsily dropped on the floor, forget it.

On one memorable occasion, my mother was able to obtain a dish of the extra-hot salsa, but I attribute that to the fact that the waiter could see that she was fully capable of not stopping talking to him about what part of Mexico his family was from and how she'd once gone to Cancún and stepped on some coral, cutting her foot rather badly, and how much she'd enjoyed the missions trip she'd gone on, that he relented and brought the salsa, scurrying back to the kitchen after practically hurling it like a frisbee at our table from a distance of ten feet. But that's the only time I've ever had it. It was good.

This restaurant creates succulent beef tamales, the meat as tender and deliciously seasoned as any I've ever eaten. They can take humble foods such as rice and beans and turn them into masterpieces of ethnic culinary art. Their way with guacamole must surely be magic. But if you go there hoping to find mariachi and shining white teeth beaming from smiles in faces the rich color of café au lait, forget it. The atmosphere is brisk and businesslike with a vague underlying hint of irritability and you just have to get used to it because the food is so good.

After we were given the bum's rush from the restaurant, we came home to watch our movies, both Slumdog Millionaire and the Liam Neeson movie, Taken, about the man whose lying little poophead of a daughter gets kidnapped into a middle eastern prostitution ring while in France. We were going to watch both, but my husband ended up being too tired, so we watched Taken first. It was actually a very good action movie and the perps were given a very satisfying beatdown by Neeson's character, a ex-CIA agent who took early retirement in order to move to California to be closer to his teenage daughter.

We watched Slumdog Millionaire yesterday evening while waiting for the call from Pop, Nan and the girls that they were within an hour of New Castle so that we could go get Meelyn and Aisling. Our longing to see them had progressed to the point that my husband and I were both fidgeting and trying not to look at the DVR's clock every single second, so it was a good thing we had this movie to distract us.

Slumdog Millionaire was every bit as good the second time around, with Jamal once again proving to be the romantic hero of every girl's dreams, and maybe even some who couldn't really be classified as "girls" anymore. *ahem* ("Mr. Big," I thought scornfully. "Mr. Bug, more like.") Just as I did the first time, I spent the last ten minutes of the movie in an absolute storm of weeping, but my husband? What did he do?

Oh, nothing much. Just sat there in his seat, just at the point when Latika answered Salim's cell phone as Jamal's Phone-a-Friend and said, "I have never known," talking to the dogs.

"For twenty million rupees: Who. Was. The. Third. Musketeer," said the slimy game show host.

"I have never known," said Latika.

"Do you have to go outside again?" said my husband, causing me to erupt in an explosion of outrage.

A few moments later, when Jamal finally reached Latika's side and embraced her, she said, "I thought we would be together only in death."

"No," Jamal said quietly, kissing the scars on her cheeks. "It was our destiny."

"Here, boy! Want a cookie? Sit!" said my husband and then I strangled him. It was his destiny, for being such a...such a....MAN during the final moments of what is possibly the happiest ending in the history of film.

When "It was written" appeared on the screen, I was using the cloth off the dining room table to staunch my flowing tears and my husband was looking at me, all, "What is your damage?"

Hmmmph. Wait until Meelyn and Aisling see it. They'll be able to appreciate it. Showtime starts after lunch this afternoon. Then we shall see, my fine man.

Here's the video for "Jai Ho," complete with stills from the movie.

And then he pulled my ponytail and knocked my books out of my arms

My husband came in from work late this afternoon, looking wrecked. It was one of those days, apparently, when people disguised as ACTUAL CAR BUYING CUSTOMERS came to the dealership to stand by the new Camaros and tell the salesmen, who were standing there silently plotting murder, all about the Camaro they had back in '68 or '74. Or '79 or even '83. Whatever.

"Dude, what a day," he said, coming into the kitchen and plopping onto a chair, a haunted expression on his face. "Camaro, Camaro, Camaro, and no, stupid, your 2002 Silverado with enough miles to have traveled to the freaking MOON and back is not worth $15,000."

I've heard this kind of thing before and carried on with dinner. "Do not call me 'dude,'" I said absently, stirring.

"Dudette, what a day," he began again without missing a beat. "Camaro, Camaro, Camaro...."

Sign of the times

We live next door -- and I mean, really next door, seeing as how the driveway was built wide enough to allow a horse-drawn buggy room to roll -- to a lovely old Craftsman style apartment house. It used to be one huge apartment upstairs and one huge apartment downstairs, but was renovated to a four-unit dwelling about ten years ago: one large and gracious downstairs apartment, one large and gracious upstairs apartment, both with heart-of-pine floors, fireplaces and built in bookcases, and two one bedroom apartments up and down. The larger apartments are just beautiful and the bed-sits, intended originally as furnished rentals for the university students in our city, are a very nice size and feature all new kitchen and bath fittings.

In the years we've lived here, there have been several tenants in the one-bedroom apartments, which are situated at the back of the building, shaded by the spreading branches of an old oak tree and snuggled cozily up to the little community theater (former textiles warehouse) next door. We share a common large gravel area for parking (and very convenient it is, too, when we have guests) that used to be our back yard.

But last week we got something new.

An entire family has moved into the downstairs bed-sit apartment, mom, dad, pretty teenage girl who looks to be about fourteen, a little blond boy about nine and their little Yorkshire terrier.

All four of them, plus the dog, in that apartment.

They have decent looking vehicles, a pickup truck and a black four-door family car, that look like ours: older but still respectable looking, not enough rust to activate your false pride sensitivities, paid for.

So far, they've kept strictly to themselves which is unusual for our little corner. We're all very matey and trade hellos and cookies and complaints about the unfriendly mail carrier. I imagine it's because the man and woman are still reeling from losing their house to foreclosure, actually ("We used to our our own home, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, garage, yard and the flowering trees we planted every Mother's Day. How are we here, now? What happened?") and are still carrying themselves very carefully, like you'd carry a glass of water that was too full, to keep from spilling it on the floor.

The girl keeps her eyes firmly fixed on the ground when we both happen to be outside at the same time. The boy is the only one who doesn't appear to be bruised on the inside; I saw him out of my laundry room window just now, playing in the grass with his dog.

Sometimes, life makes your heart hurt.

Homeward bound

The Florida travelers packed their bags tonight and apparently rented a trailer to bring home all the shells they picked up in their beachcombing expeditions and also all their purchases made in the shops they found, including a patchouli soap intended for me.

They were planning on staying overnight somewhere on Saturday night, but instead have decided to drive straight through. They should be back home late tomorrow evening, and my husband and I are planning to go and sit on my parents' driveway with all the determination of couple who used to compete in dance marathons, only stationary.

A week is too long. I am so READY to see the girls, I simply can't relax. It's taking every ounce of self control I possess not to get in the van and start driving with the one determined thought that maybe we'll cross paths somewhere in Tennessee.

I will never complain that Meelyn and Aisling are making me crazy ever, ever again. This Saturday. On Sunday, all bets may be off, depending on what kind of mess they create upstairs, unpacking their suitcases.