A moment of unabashed and guilt-free gloating

HA! HA HA HA! There something I've wanted to be able to do for a long time here at InsomniMom, something I couldn't do because Blogger was being glitchy and weird and not allowing people to fix this particular problem that was occurring with their blogs. There were hundreds and hundreds of pleas in the Help center, begging the powers-that-be to get this thing fixed already. But yesterday? I just happened to check back and Blogger has resolved the issue with their software and I FIXED THE PROBLEM and if the problem occurs again, I CAN FIX IT THEN, TOO. So HA HA HA, stupid mean troublemakers. HAAAA!!!!

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger

HGTV's reality show House Hunters is one of my favorite television programs, but honestly, I don't know why. It drives me mad. It makes me speak to my TV, an inanimate object. It sometimes makes me change the channel with a belligerent click of a button so that I can watch something more edifying and soothing. Like Hell's Kitchen, or one of those cable news shows where people with opposing viewpoints gather around a table and interrupt one another with their shrill bickering.

The reason why House Hunters makes me so crazy is that it features a nearly endless parade of young couples -- and I'm sure they're thoroughly vetted to make sure the annoyance factor is firmly in place, because I am just that cynical -- who demand endless luxury on budgets that are neither.

For instance, the girls and I were watching a show filmed in Virginia a couple of days ago. They were newlyweds; he was an Army veteran whose back had been injured while he was serving in Iraq; she was working somewhere, obviously, but also studying for her Master's degree.

Their budget was about $230,000. The realtor, with a pained expression, expressed severe doubt that they were going to be able to find a house that met all their needs in that price range. That marked the first time in the half-hour program that I was so happy that my life's path didn't lead me to trying to get people to buy houses, because I'd be in jail.

The man was hoping for a large soaking tub, preferably with jets, so that he could continue the re-hab on his back at home, which I thought was reasonable. But he also wanted a swimming pool. She wanted a lot, starting with stainless steel appliances. Granite counter tops. Two sinks in the master bathroom. Hardwood floors. And pretty much every other big-ticket item you can think of.

So the realtor did his best. He took them to two different model homes where the items they desired were upgrades from the basic package. The couple was loudly horrified when they were told that those hardwood floors throughout the entire downstairs? A $7,000 upgrade. The granite counter tops instead of the standard upscale laminate? A $4,000 upgrade. An extra sink in the master bathroom? A $2,000 upgrade, due to the fact that more plumbing had to be run and the entire room's floor plan reconfigured to accommodate the longer vanity.

Outrageous! they exclaimed. Just totally, like, not fair!

In the end, they chose one of the model homes and added so many upgrades, they went over their original budget by some $30,000. Because, you know, black appliances (the standard package) are entirely unacceptable. So now they've got shiny luxe surfaces to prepare their generic boxes of mac-and-cheese on.

The second couple, in an episode filmed in North Carolina, had a bigger budget, but no more sense than the first couple. They, too, were rigid in their expectations and there was no intention of finding a house that met their basic needs -- four bedrooms, big back yard for the kiddies, open floor plan, office space for her home-based business -- that they could work to upgrade as they lived their lives. No, it all had to be there RIGHT NOW, THIS VERY MINUTE, even if it strained their budget to bursting.

One house was entirely eliminated from the running because the solid-surface kitchen counter tops weren't granite and the sink? It was not under-mounted.

"Oh, well, then, BURN IT DOWN," I said to the television. "Seriously. Light a match and set fire to that dump."

"Mom," cautioned Meelyn in a wary voice. "You know how you get..."

"It's their fault," I mumbled irritably.

The next property, a new build, caused the couple to view their hard-working, unappreciated realtor with barely disguised disdain. "There is....carpet," the woman of the couple said, uttering the word 'carpet' in the same tone that another person might have said 'hard-packed dirt.' "There is...carpet...in this room."

The room in question was a space that was meant to be either a formal living room or a home office, neither of which is exactly incompatible with....carpet. And the carpet was not bad. This was a new house, after all, and so the carpet was pristine and unviolated by someone else's incontinent dog. It was a low pile rough oatmeal color, which I found attractive, but.....carpet.

"Well, that will just have to go immediately," her husband said impatiently. "We don't want....carpet."

The couple and their realtor made their way to the kitchen, which had black appliances, all brand new. As one, they turned to the real estate agent with expressions of incredulous horror.

"Well, THIS certainly isn't what we were expecting," the woman finally managed to say through tight lips.

"We have to have stainless steel," her husband elaborated. "We won't consider any property that doesn't have stainless steel appliances. And the master bedroom had only the one walk-in closet."

Now, see, if I were the realtor, I would have taken my clipboard and started beating them with it about their heads and necks. But instead, seated on the sofa in my living room, I shouted, "Get the gasoline cans! The kerosene! THE MATCHES! Burn that heap down and tie the realtor up and leave him to roast like a luau pig! How dare he show you a property without stainless steel appliances!"

"Mo-o-om...." sighed Aisling, "you remember that they can't hear you, right?"

In the end, that couple also went over their budget because living on tuna-noodle casserole seemed preferable to trying to scrape out an existence in a house -- one couldn't really call it a home -- with only one walk-in closet in the master bedroom. How could they subject themselves to that indignity?

Fortunately, there are just enough nice couples on House Hunters that I don't have to fall completely apart and sit there in my own living room (which has hardwood floors, the original ones to our 1880s house, underneath the carpet that covers them) biting the remote and tearing the stuffing out of the cushions. But, oh those horrible, smug people with their demands to have it all, right this very minute, unable to contemplate life in a standard kitchen! They make me insane.

I hope their stainless steel is a constant source of grief to them as they fight a losing battle with the fingerprints. I gain strength from this thought.

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.

This just in...

Remember these? I don't think I've seen pantyhose packaged in the actual L'eggs egg form since....the night of my high school graduation? Anyway, I was just browsing through the Femail section of the U.K. Daily Mail, and I have just discovered that panty hose are OUT, a total fashion no-no. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (the former Kate Middleton and new bride of Prince William) was excoriated with vigor in the Mail for wearing "nude tights," which the features editor severely claimed made her look "middle-aged and dated."

A couple of weeks ago, People online had an article with the breathless title "Is Kate Bringing Back Sheer Pantyhose?" which makes it sound as if she's hauling them in on a cargo ship and then driving around on a forklift in a warehouse, stacking pallets of hosiery.

I make no claims on being a fashionista, but I wasn't aware that tights, er....hose, ever went out of style. Are you telling me that businesswomen going to meetings and teachers in classrooms and female lawyers arguing cases in court, not to mention all the people going to church and funeral homes and fancy-dress dances are going to these places with bare legs? I know that our culture dresses down a lot and also that women don't wear skirts and dresses as often as they used to, but still. Still. I mean, not everyone has a perfect pair of pins that are ready to show off to the critical public eye.

What are you supposed to do with that scar you got from a bike wreck when you were fifteen? Or those veins on the backs of your knees? Or your pallid skin with variable hues that range from salt white to marble white to snow white? Well, I'll tell you: you're supposed to be smearing self-tanner on them, according to a How-To article I read on Yahoo. That way your undressed legs can go from Crayola orange to Sharpie orange to traffic cone orange, and won't that be a big improvement?

Nobody wants to wear those horrible "sun-tan" pantyhose from the seventies, but I thought the entire point of nude hosiery was to make your legs look, well, NUDE. As in, the color of your skin, with all the minor imperfections in texture and hue nicely covered up.

Why is that considered middle-aged?

If it is, then put me on the list with the duchess. When I wear skirts and dresses, I like that "nude tights" look.

My personal idea of hell on earth

I was at our local YMCA this morning, dragging myself out of the pool after an hour of water aerobics (don't be too impressed - I'm a member of the Silver Splash class where the lady closest to me in age graduated from high school with Calvin Coolidge) and one lady said, as she slipped on her flip-flops and picked up her towel and swim cap, "I'm going camping with my son and daughter-in-law and grandkids this weekend, so I'm going home to take a shower."

We all made that "ahhhhhh!!!" noise associated with grannies getting to spend time with the grandkids and she continued, "I just feel like I never really get my best shower here, and since we're going to be gone until Sunday evening and I won't get a bath or a shower until then, I want to make it a good one."

"You won't get to take a shower until Sunday evening?" another lady asked dubiously. "You must be camping rough."

"Yes, with a tent and everything," said camping lady, "but it's worth it to be able to spend time with the kids!"

My heart sank down to my bare toes. Honestly, I managed to find one of the few men in this area who, due to experiences in the Army with camping outdoors during the winter, refuses to camp, fish, hike or shoot animals with gun or arrow, thus extracting myself from the possibility of close association with the great outdoors. I have brought Meelyn and Aisling up to fervently believe that Nature is best viewed through windows, behind which we can enjoy either the central air conditioning or the central heating, whichever is appropriate. But I'd never really considered until that moment that someday, they meet men who actually want to go outside and stay there, and those men may influence my sweet girls into thinking that spending all weekend out in this terrible 90 degree summer heat and sweltering in an airless tent and cooking on a teeny little Coleman stove (or worse yet, a campfire) and going showerless for days on end is a fun way to bond.

And they may drag my innocent grandchildren into that mess.

And! I, as a doting grandma, might have to GO WITH THEM and live in outdoorsy squalor in order to prove my devotion.

As I drove home from the YMCA, I pondered whether or not I actually love anyone in this world enough to voluntarily spend the weekend in a tent, unbathed. I don't think I do. I will pack them up the most awesome picnic basket ever, and even tuck in some citronella candles and an Aim-n-Flame. I will stand on my front porch to wave goodbye and shout, "I love you! Have a great time! See you on Sunday!"

But I don't think I can actually go along. Unless maybe my husband and I can somehow obtain one of them camper-truck things like in the picture above. It looks like that vehicle is big enough to at least have a sink where I can splash my face, brush my teeth and take a sponge bath. I could probably do that for a weekend, for the sake of my daughters and grandchildren.

But I'm telling you, I already don't like those sons-in-law.

Things that make you go "eeeewwwww...."

So today for lunch I was scavenging around in the fridge looking for something to eat and I came across half a baked potato, left over from dinner the other night when the first half was enough and the second half too much.

"Tasty!" I thought, and pulled it off the shelf and popped it in the microwave.

While I was waiting for it to nuke, I got a package of shredded cheese out of that same fridge, and then happily remembered one of those little packets of Oscar Mayer bacon bits that was in the cupboard. A cheese and bacon potato (accompanied by a number of sliced jalapeno peppers, of course) sounded like a perfect lunch.

When the microwave timer dinged, I took out the potato and threw some shredded cheese and the bacon bits on it, added my hot peppers and a little salt and popped the top on a Diet Coke. It was really, really good.

Until I finished.

Getting up from the table, I picked up the packet of bacon bits, preparatory to putting them back in the cabinet. In doing so, my eye happened to fall on a sentence in red letters printed on the little zip-seal bag: BEST IF EATEN WITHIN FOURTEEN DAYS AFTER OPENING.

Oh dear, I thought. I know those things have been in there for at least three months. Maybe longer. I can't even remember when I bought them.

Which is when my eyes fell on the sentence directly below that one:

REFRIGERATE AFTER OPENING.

All of a sudden, my baked potato didn't seem so tasty. I've been waiting all afternoon with a sense of impending doom for the throwing up to start, but so far so good. Unless they make their way through my digestive tract and instead of throwy-uppy, I....

Oh, it just doesn't bear thinking about. Is it too late to get my stomach pumped?

When they heard about the new Mass translation coming this Advent...

...these sisters went a-frolicking! Seriously, a lot of us are looking forward to the new/old Mass, which is making its debut on November 27, 2011, the first Sunday of Advent. The reason why I call it new/old is because it is a more consistent translation of the Latin Mass, which was used throughout the world until the 1960s, when it became possible for people to pray the Mass in the vernacular: French in France, German in Germany, English in the United States, Spanish in Mexico. However, the general thought has always been that the Novus Ordo (New Order) translation was a bit, well, hippy-dippy.

For instance, during the Mass when the priest would say, "Dominus vobiscum" in Latin, the reply from the congregation was, "Et cum spiritu tuo." That means, "May the Lord be with you," the response being, "And with thy spirit."

In the Novus Ordo Mass, the priest would say in English, "May the Lord be with you," with the congregation responding, "And also with you."

Hmmm...

Mike McLeish, my fellow teacher in our parish's seventh/eighth grade religious education class, told our students one Sunday, "It's as if the phrase was dumbed down a bit, if you see what I mean. 'And also with you' isn't really a good translation of 'And with thy spirit.' It's a bit...." He looked over at me.

"Informal," I supplied.

One of our students, a smart eighth grader with a great sense of humor, spoke up: "It's sort of like the priest saying, 'May the Lord be with you,' and the congregation saying, 'And RIGHT BACK ATCHA.'"

Yes. Just exactly like that. So splash and leap and kick in the waves, Sisters! Rejoice in the coming of a new translation! But seriously, I would draw the line at jet-ski rental.

NUNDAY: It's a grand old flag

This Dominican sister is proud of being an American, waving her flag to welcome Pope Benedict XVI to the United States a few years back. There's just something very nice, I feel, in seeing a sister in a traditional habit seated amongst all the ordinary business suits and dresses. I liked this nun in particular because even clothed in the garb that Dominican religious have worn for hundreds of years, she's still very much the modern woman, so excited to see Il Papa, she's even brought her binoculars.

Bridesmaid revisited

My mom raised me to be a smiler, and also that it is a social solecism to point my finger in the shape of a gun and say "POW!" when they annoy me. So I go about smiling at folks, even when the best they offer me in return is a grim look from a sour face.

It used to be that you could generally coax a smile from another woman, and elderly ones would often say things like "Hello" or "Good morning" and men will generally nod pleasantly. But these days, it's hard to raise a smile from anyone and I'm starting to feel a bit stupid, pushing my shopping cart through the grocery store and beaming at people like a fruitcake. People never smile back anymore, and instead look at me at best as if I have some truly unfortunate assortment of dental problems going on (and I don't - I use tooth-whitening toothpaste and I wore braces on my teeth from ages 18-22 and I've only had one cavity in my whole life, so there's nothing there to offend anyone) or at worst as if they'd like to knock me down in the aisle and roll their buggies over my head.

So I'm thinking maybe I'll be able to wake people up a little if I start doing the finger-pistol thing.

What do you think? Grin or gun?

Summertime, when the livin' is easy

This school year, unarguably, was one of the longest and most painful the girls and I have ever endured. Looking back on it, we can't really figure out why. I mean, it was largely the same as every other school year we've had. But it was a long one. And the winter was just abysmal. And, as high school students, they're doing work that's harder and takes more time and is just more involved than it was back when they were just little things, of course. So why, we don't know. We're just glad it's over. And to that end, when school let out, we fled to the pool as if wild dogs were snapping and snarling at our heels.

So that's where we've been: poolside. At first, we sat straight up on our lounge chairs, our eyes glazed and looking straight ahead in fixed stares, murmuring through stiff lips "Snow. The snow. The snowthesnowthesnowthesnow. THE ICE! THE ICE AND THE SNOW!"

Then we progressed to being able to lean back, although our limbs were all still rigid.

Then, as the sun began to warm our skin and our muscles and our weary bones, we relaxed. And we've been lugging in our favorite cooler stuffed with apples and peaches and popsicles and water bottles and diet soda and turkey sandwiches and those handy little one-hundred calorie snack packs. And we've been staying for hours, lathering ourselves with sunscreen and swimming laps and reading our library books and deploring -- DEPLORING! -- the hideous country music station that someone in the swim club's main office has decided would make a nice change from the "oldies" station (meaning "the music I listened to in high school") we'd all previously been enjoying.

We've been relaxing. Vacationing. Recovering.

You should see my tan.

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.

RANDOM: In which I meet the Random Topic Generator in an attempt to get past my writer's block

I've been suffering -- as have you, I'm sure -- from a terrible case of writer's block lately. It's not that I don't have ideas. It's just that every time I think about sitting down at my desk to write about them, they either seem too tedious to blather on about, or not funny enough, or not of general interest or just *yawn*.

My fellow blogger Amy came to my rescue by alerting me to the presence of a Random Blog Topic Generator, which turned out to be a great deal of fun. First, you pick a category from a range of suggestions, such as Current Events, Music, Politics, Health, Personal, Business and Recreation and then click the one that strikes your fancy. Because I'm just this kind of fussy little fart, I told myself that I could have three clicks: If I didn't like the first two random topics generated, I could move on to the next, but that I had to take the third one or the house would fall down. Yes, even at my age, I still play those little OCD games with myself, which is worrisome but it's too late to stop now and I can't afford therapy on our health insurance.

So my first two clicks were too hard. The first was "Which Do You Prefer: Classical or Baroque Music?" The lovely thing about this is that I DO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE between the two because I took piano lessons for twelve years. However, writing about it just left me cold. Although, for the record, I prefer baroque. Just so's you'll know. The second click generated this topic: "NATO countries." I had to get up from my desk, find an empty corner, and sit there, rocking and humming for a while. I managed to recover enough to crawl back to my desk by digging my elbows and my face into the carpet, knowing that I had to take whatever topic was generated next because THAT WAS THE RULE.

All a-tremble, I clicked. And the Random Blog Topic Generator fed me this one: "Getting a root canal."

So here we go!

Getting a root canal sounds like a terrible, terrible thing. I do know that it isn't quite the process it was, say, twenty years ago, and whenever I hear that someone I know has to get a root canal, I always jump in and say soothingly, "I hear it's not quite the process it was twenty years ago!" and then I offer to bring them some soup.

I know that my friend Beth has had to have a root canal, and my cousin Susie has had a root canal, and neither one of them threw a party to celebrate the good news when the dentist told them that he had to canal their roots or whatever it is that happens in a root canal, so I'm thinking that twenty years down the line or not, getting a root canal still isn't one of those memories you treasure in your heart and pull out to mull over during times of doubt and sorrow. Unless, of course, you were lucky enough to be pumped full of nitrous oxide like Susie was during her recent root canal; she solemnly assured me that nitrous oxide takes away all fear and inhibition, rendering the patient likely to say, "Doc, you don't have to just do this root canal - you can also take my sacred virtue if you'll just keep the good stuff coming."

Susie said her oral surgeon didn't take her up on the offer. She seemed disappointed, although I haven't yet been able to determine if that's because the laughing gas was such a treat, or if the surgeon was dishy.

At any rate, I still don't know what happens during a root canal or even why they're performed and I hope to retain that innocence for the rest of my life. So far, I've had one cavity and two abscessed wisdom teeth, plus I wore braces for four years, so I feel that I've had plenty, thank you.

Wow. this random blog topic generation-thingy is just wonderful. Thanks, Amy! IT HAS SET ME FREE.