And then I passed out, right there on the floor

Meelyn and I zipped over to the public library yesterday to pick up Thornton Wilder's Our Town in both book and DVD format for American Literature class -- if you're thinking about renting the DVD, don't bother; Hollywood entirely changed the ending and Emily turned out to just be having a happy dream that taught her how to appreciate her family and placid, everyday life, just like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Aarrgh.

We were also there, in a not incidental way, to pay the four dollar fine that had accrued on my account. You know how it is: You check out the books, you read the books, time passes, and so does the due date. You return the books a week late or so, and by the time you've done that four or five times, you've accrued a fee on your account. And that's one of those things that just ties me up in knots, probably because my mother raised me to have a conscience as soft as warm butter. Plus, you can't put any books on hold or renew them online if you have fines, so obviously, I wanted to get that paid.

Meelyn and I were standing at the circulation desk and a clerk was checking out our several items, having already accepted my four one-dollar bills and given me a receipt, when this weird looking dude who appeared to be cheerfully and completely stoned out of his gourd approached the clerk at the computer next to where we were standing and juicily slurred, "I wanna get a lie-ber-ary ID card, one of them whatchermacallerits."

"You mean a library card?" asked the clerk politely.

"Yeah! Yeah! That's the thing there I'm talkin' to yers about. One of them cards, so I can check me out some movies." He nodded amiably about a thousand times and leaned his elbows on the counter, fixing the clerk with a pleasant stare out of one eye, while the other eye wandered around inside his head, off on a little journey of its own.

"Do you have a piece of mail with you that lists your name and address?"

I was thinking that he might have the November issue of his Mother Jones subscription concealed about his person, maybe with a mailing label affixed. Or maybe he'd used the pages to roll, like, the world's biggest spliff. I don't know. But anyway, he patted himself down, looking in vain for an electric bill, a cable bill, a gas bill....anything that might have indicated he lived in our city -- a city which is not Amsterdam -- and had utilities hooked up at that address.

"I can't find a thing," he admitted with a loopy grin. "I doan have a ninvellope, but I did used to have one of them cards."

The clerk exchanged a brief sidelong glance with the person who was checking out our books and movies. "If you have a driver's license with you, I can check to see if your library card is current. If it is, it will just be two dollars to get a new one."

The man started the laborious process of searching his pockets again. I couldn't help an unseemly interest in what he might turn out: a roach clip? A pipe? A packet of rolling papers? A rasta bonnet? A Bob Marley CD? "I know I have a driver's license," he said confidingly. "Because I drove here."

Then the two clerks and I all looked at each other. Because, dude. Smoky McReefer was in no shape to be driving anything.

He turned up his license and the clerk scrutinized it carefully. She clicked around on the computer's keyboard in that confident manner that I, a non-typing kind of person, find so admirable. "Well, uhm, Mr. Miller," she said with a bit of sternness in her voice. "You do have a current library card and I can issue you a new one for that two dollar fee I mentioned, but I'm afraid you won't be able to use it because you have a four hundred dollar fine."

The man began to laugh gently, rocking back and forth on his arms. "Oh, ahahahaha....that's right. Wooo! That's a big fine! Four hundred dollars! Guess I'm not gonna be borrowin' no movies," he said good-naturedly.

I stood there, stunned. My four dollar fine was wreaking havoc with my soul, yet here was someone who had a fine that was, well, I can't do that kind of math, so I don't know how many times bigger his fine was than mine, but I do have an awesome vocabulary, which just happens to include the word "significant": He owed a significant amount more than I did.

And yet there he was, giggling gently to himself. Now granted, he had just recently smoked about a bale of pot, so maybe the seriousness of the situation hadn't yet communicated itself to his foggy brain, but I was electrified.

"Four hundred dollars?" I whispered to my clerk, who was bagging our items for us.

"Oh, that's not such a huge fine," she said comfortably, tearing my receipt off the little printer. "We have patrons whose fines are much bigger than that."

"BIGGER THAN FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS?!?!" I yelped in a muffled shriek, taking the bag from the clerk and stuffing the receipt in my pants pocket, where I'd be sure to run it through the wash and render the return dates of the movies and the book illegible. Resulting in more fines, of course.

"I figure if we collect them all at once, we'll have enough to build a whole new wing -- a new library -- where the south parking lot is and stock it with shelves and shelves of new books," she said drily. "Your four dollars will help us achieve our goal!"

How to: Make me want to inflict bodily harm on you

Aisling and I stopped by Kroger on the way home from religious ed classes at the church today. We needed to buy some eggs for the french toast I was going to make when we got home, plus I needed to go to the pharmacy and get some lancets for my blood glucose monitor's finger-poky device.

On my way back from getting the eggs (farthest point of the grocery, approximately fourteen miles from the front entrance), I spied a mother with her young child coming towards me. The little girl looked to be about four, and I'd say the woman was in her mid-twenties. They were both dressed in pajama-like garments, which are questionable for a pre-schooler, but just flat-out wrong for an adult, in my opinion. Has our society truly become so lazy that we can't even throw on a pair of jeans and a Colts sweatshirt for a trip to the store on a Sunday? Sheeesh!!

Anyway, as they approached, the mother began to cough, a loud, hacking, tickle-in-the-back-of-my-throat cough. Fortunately, they were still about twenty feet away from me, but still, with the coughing and all? COVER YOUR MOUTH, you cretin! Geez! This is the kind of thing you expect from fourth-grade boys, not from women of childbearing age.

I gave them a wide berth, scuttling around a display of tortilla chips in order to avoid whatever airborne pathogens the woman had just emitted with her unmannerly coughing, and went on to the pharmacy.

My transaction at the pharmacy took about five minutes, and when I left that area to go back over to the cosmetics-and-toiletries aisle where Aisling was looking at the eye shadows, I saw the woman and her child again, en route to the restrooms.

Having already tagged them as Germy & Company, I prepared to remove myself from their immediate vicinity again, but not before I had the chance to witness Germy purging herself of a series of violent sneezes, completely innocent of any form of mouth covering or -- as Kathleen Sebilius would prefer it, elbow covering, so that you get spit and germs and maybe some snot all over the sleeve of your coat that you just got back from the dry cleaner.

"AAAAAAAAAAAASHEEWWWWWWWWWW!!!! AAAAAAARRRRRAAAASHEWWWW!!! AAAAAACHEWWWWWW!!!!!!"

I was so grossed out by that, I actually looked up and grimly met her eye, giving her my best Teacher Is Displeased stony stare. Naturally, she looked back at me with that SUPER INTELLIGENT LOOK some people will give you, all, "Hunh? Whu'd Ah dew? Whatcher lookin' at me like that fower?"

I wanted to beat her senseless with a box of antibacterial wipes, but restrained myself. Because? It's Sunday and the Lord's Day and I think that would just be wrong, on the Sabbath and all.

My feelings about the two major US political parties

In my opinion, this song is a gem. "Stuck in the Middle" was the big hit from Stealers Wheel's debut album in 1972, and it has stood the test of time (in spite of Quentin Tarantiono's use of it in Reservoir Dogs, of which I disapprove.) Plus, it should have won an award for Most Effective Use of a Cowbell. In this video, I picture myself as Joe Egan, squished between two noxious stenches in my nostrils, Nancy and Newt.

Look! There they are, right there!

Eye think she's growing up

Ever since Meelyn got her part-time job last summer, she's been thinking about getting some contact lenses. I thought that was a smashing idea since she doesn't like wearing glasses; she needs to wear glasses for long-view activities like driving, and she didn't want to buy prescription sunglasses, which she said were "for moms." I tried not to take umbrage at that, remembering that I thought my mother was ancient when I was sixteen -- and she was ten years younger than I am. So, moms? Moms are, like, reeeaaaally old. Pffft.

My husband and I got Meelyn's new spectacle frames and lenses as we do every two years, but we told her that contact lenses are a luxury, not a necessity, and that if she wanted contacts, she'd have to get them with her own money. And you know what? She did!

She saved up her money for the appointment at the optometrist's where he'd measure her eyes and have one of his trained technicians initiate her into the ways of sticking a foreign object into the eye. She found out how much it would cost for six months' worth of lenses (which is how the optometrist sells them to wearers) and also how much it would be for the upkeep, what with buying lens solution and all that.

After she'd done all that, Meelyn called the office, made and appointment, wrote it in my planner and reminded me early this week that yesterday was the big day. The two of us drove to the appointment together since the optometrist's office isn't in our city, and she went on in while I sat in the car and spent a delicious hour reading my book with no interruptions. Meelyn came out, beaming and slightly pink around the eye, and slid into the driver's seat of the van while I bookmarked my page and said, "Well, how'd it go?"

"I'm wearing them now," she said airily, giving me a mischievous sidelong look.

"No kidding!" I said in delight. "So it went very well, yes?"

"Yep. I have to get used to wearing these and make sure they work for me and then make an appointment to go back in for Dr. Carey to make any adjustments to the prescription if I need it and then I can get my lenses!"

I looked at her fondly, my lovely girl, such a reliable, dependable, admirable girl, and said, "I am really proud of you, the way you've dealt with this whole thing with such efficiency. I can't really see how an adult could have done any better."

"Thank you, Mama," she said, glowing. "Look! I can finally wear my sunglasses!" She perched them on her pert nose and checked the van's mirrors in preparation for backing out of the parking space, but also, like any woman, sneaking a peek at her ineffable cuteness at the same time.

"You know," I said seriously, "it's not too late to get a nice pair of prescription sunglasses. Or, you know, some of those big, dark shades that elderly ladies slip between their faces and their specs."

"Uhhh, no thanks."

"Sure? 'Cause that would be cheaper than contacts. I saw a commercial on TV the other day that said you can get those granny shades for only $19.99 plus processing and handling."

She stuck out the tip of her tongue at me. "I am totally and completely positive that I do not want granny shades, thank you for asking. But I'll be happy to get you some for Christmas, if you'd like."

"Touché!"

Things that go jingle in the night

Yesterday was one of the long ones, and by the time we got home from Shakespeare class, all I could think was, "Pajamas. Robe. Slippers. Now." And since we got home from class at five o'clock, you probably need no other explanation of how wiped out I was.

Luckily, dinner last night was Mexican Chili, which is delicious, kind of festive, and very easy to prepare. I highly recommend it for those nights when you feel like I did, which, let's face it, is not an uncommon way for middle-aged moms to feel at the end of a super-hectic day. *ahem* I posted the recipe for it (along with my traditional chili recipe) back on February 13, 2008, if you'd like to take a peek.

Ten o'clock p.m. found me trudging upstairs, brushing my teeth and falling into bed like a felled oak approximately fifteen minutes later. I did kiss the girls goodnight, and I drowsily wished my husband a good night's sleep, but other than that, I don't even remember when he turned the light off.

I awoke at two o'clock in the morning to the sound of Hershey's furious barking downstairs. I jerked into an immediate state of high-alert because last week, a group of Halloween vandals gleefully made its way through our quiet neighborhood in the wee hours, slashing tires on cars. It was a trick that offered no treat whatsoever, since the two new tires we had to buy wound up costing $150. Naturally, when I heard Hershey raising the welkins from his crate, I figured that the pranksters were back.

"Honey," I said, nudging my sleeping husband. "Hershey's going crazy downstairs. Do you think those tire-slashers are back?"

He was already awake. "That's what I was just wondering," he said grimly, and flung back the blankets. He ran down the stairs, leaving me in the bedroom alone, listening intently, with the bedcovers pulled up to my chin.

The next thing I knew, I was clinging to the ceiling fixture, gasping in terror. Right next to the bed, right there near my innocent and unwary head, a chorus of jingle bells began clamoring. I began having flashbacks to movies I injudiciously watched as a high school and college student: Poltergeist, The Amityville Horror, The Exorcist, Prancer.... It wasn't until the jingling sound made a wet, snuffling sneeze and that unmistakable flappy-eared shake that I realized that my ghost was actually Wimzie, a canine Houdini, who had apparently gone AWOL from her cage, thus raising Hershey's protest in a volley of tattle-tale barks. Her rabies vaccination and ID tags jangling together are a familiar sound during daylight hours (and often the way we know if she's trying to plunder used tissues out of the downstairs bathroom's wastebasket), but in the middle of the night, they have a much more sinister sound.

I regained my ability to draw breath as my husband returned to our room. "I went outside and looked around," he said. "but no one was there. Both the cars are fine. Nobody was lurking around the neighbors' cars either, so it must have been a false alarm. Maybe Hershey had a nightmare."

"It wasn't a false alarm," I said drily. "I have the criminal right here."

My husband switched on his bedside light and observed Wimzie, who was by then standing with her paws up on my side of the bed so that I could scratch her ears.

"Oh. Hello, there, you felonious mutt."

Wimzie had the grace to look sheepish.

"C'mere. You can't stay up here. You'll drive us crazy with those tags."

Naturally, Wimzie had to assert her supposed authority; she tried to crawl under the bed, forgetting, as she always does, that she's small enough to be hauled up from the floor and tucked comfortably under an arm. My husband caught her before she could creep to the middle, where she would have undoubtedly crouched, peering wickedly out at us and jingling her tags every thirty seconds. He scooped her up and she grrrred at him unpleasantly.

"Shut up," he told her. "No Snaussages tomorrow, jailbird. Back to the slammer with you."

Fun-liners

It has been, frankly, a sucktastic week so far for a variety of reasons, none of them worth mentioning here. Let me just say that my immediate inclination is to go upstairs to bed right now and stay there until Saturday has safely arrived, venturing down only for forays to the kitchen.

Since I can't do that, my only other option is to laugh about something, and I have to say that I've run across a goodly harvest of one-liners lately that have made me smile. So, being the BENEVOLENT AND CARING PERSON I AM, NO MATTER WHAT YOU MAY HAVE HEARD, I thought I'd share them with you. Because? I am all about other people's happiness, all the time. Shut up.

Some are on t-shirts, some are on coffee mugs, a couple are bumper stickers I've seen on cars, and a couple came via e-mail (thanks, Carol!)

1. If swimming is good for your figure, please explain whales to me.

2. I used to care, but I take medicine for that now.

3. I smile because you're my sister. I laugh because there's nothing you can do about it. (For Meelyn and Aisling)

4. Here. Let me drop everything and work on your problem.

5. I'll have a Cafe-Mocha-Vodka-Valium Latte to go, please.

6. Sarcasm: Just One More Service I Provide

7. I may be fat, but you're ugly and I can lose weight.

8. I am not tense. I am just terribly, terribly alert.

9. This isn't an office. It's hell with fluorescent lighting.

10. Boycott shampoo! Demand the real poo!


I feel better already.

Staff o' life

I'm trying a new no-knead bread recipe today, a maple oat bran concoction of my own devising. I began branching out with different combinations of flours and different types of sugars a couple of months ago, once I'd mastered the no-knead technique, which, frankly, was made for me. Being as how it is so uncomplicated, a mallard duck could turn out a nice loaf if it didn't have that unfortunate tendency to get feathers in the dough.

Kayte's friend Glynnis is the person I bow to when it comes to success with no-knead bread: she was the one who told Kayte, who then told me, that the no-knead bread recipes found in the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day were non-starters, not only because the yeast amount listed in each recipe is inadequate, but also because the brioche is the only recipe that includes sugar. Sugar, as it happens, is a necessary ingredient in yeast bread because it gives the yeast something to feed on, which makes the bread rise.

I've baked probably a hundred loaves of bread since that info came to me this summer and I've had success with every one of them. Some of them I bake in my cast iron Dutch oven in the traditional boule shape with a big X cut into the top; I've also made loaves in a regular loaf pan, adding a cup of hot water to a reservoir pan in the bottom of the oven. Both the Dutch oven's lid and the water in the reservoir pan create a necessary ingredient to light yeast bread, which is steam. Every loaf so far has come out of the oven light, high and goldeny-brown; the house smells comforting and cozy, and we've never eaten such sandwiches in our lives.

So today is a new experiment - I'm using a combination of white flour and ground oat bran, which is really supposed to be a breakfast cereal, but it's so fun to try different things and work with the textures and tastes. I started adding four tablespoons of soft butter to each big batch of dough back in August when we realized that we prefer bread with a tender crust for our breakfast toast and luncheon turkey-and-cranberry jelly. I added milk a few times, but we all felt that made the bread a bit bland.

My new thing this time is the substitution of two tablespoons of pure maple syrup instead of two tablespoons of sugar. I don't see why it wouldn't work, and that faint maple flavor to the loaf is sure to be a crowd pleaser with both turkey and ham.

I throw all the ingredients into my big, inverted Rubbermaid cake carrier, give them a stirring with a wooden spoon, and set the whole thing aside to do the initial three hour rising. It's three hours now instead of summertime's two hours because the house is cooler. To insulate the rising dough a little more, I put the cake carrier with the lid lightly laid on inside the oven with the door slightly ajar so that the light comes on to warm the interior just a teeny bit.

I'll be baking a loaf when I get Meelyn home from work and Aisling home from piano later this afternoon. I hope it turns out nicely. And by the way - that picture up there? That is not my bread.


UPDATE: The bread is very, very tasty. I'm so excited! The oat bran gave it a very rustic, peasanty crumb texture, and for some reason, the crust didn't turn golden - more like a light brown. The girls are very pleased with it and so am I.

Tiny terror visits the library

I was browsing the public library's website this morning and noted that the Children's Department was offering Tiny Tot Storytime every Tuesday morning, and that brought back some fond memories for me, not so fond for Aisling.

Aisling, unlike Meelyn, who went to a public elementary school through her second grade year, has never been traditionally schooled. Has that made her kind of mavericky, I wonder? Or was she just naturally resistant to anyone who tries to parcel her into neat package labeled "Little Girl, one (1) - aged five years"?

Anyway, I signed her up for a story time for kindergarteners at our public library, thinking she would deeply enjoy it. She and Meelyn were the type of children, after all, who would lug a laundry basket of library books out to me in the living room, where I was peacefully sitting and enjoying my own library book and a Diet Coke, affixing me with Oliver Twist eyes and being all, "Please, mum, can we have some more? Books? Read to us?" And then I'd scootch to the center cushion of the couch and they'd climb up and plop down on either side of me and HEAVEN HELP ME if I tried to sneakily skip over a page here or there, especially in the nine-million-page books of that sadistic Dr. Seuss: a small finger would come down firmly to keep me from turning over to the next maddening bit of rhyming nonsense and two little voices would lisp, "You mittht thumthing, Mommy."

To get a bit of a break in which to rest my rasping throat, I started signing them up for library story times practically at birth.

So what was there to not like about Kindergarten Story Time?

On Tuesday mornings, then, we'd traipse off to the library. Meelyn would bring her math book or her reading book and we'd sit at a little table within sight of the Story Room, where Mrs. Dudley, who was a friend of my mother's and very fond of my girls, presided over the big rocking chair. Mrs. Dudley was the head librarian of the Children's Department and she did an excellent job with this program, always having several books that shared a theme (often seasonal), plus a nice little craft for the kids to do. It was a lovely way to while away an hour on a Tuesday morning, and I often wished the head librarian of the non-fiction department would devise a similar entertainment for Moms in their Early Thirties.

At nine o'clock sharp, Mrs. Dudley would press Play on a little CD player and the welcoming song would come on, summoning all kindergarteners to the Story Room for an hour of bliss: "Good morning! Good morning! Good morning to you!"

As soon as the song started playing, Aisling would shoot me a look that wavered between anguished and infuriated. "I don't want to go" would be her invariable comment, even as she slid off her chair.

"Why not, honey? Look at all your friends! There's Mackenzie! And Micayla and MacKenna! They all look like they're ready to have a great time!"

Aisling cast her three little story time companions a look of slitty-eyed contempt. "They are not my friends. I don't even know them," she informed me haughtily.

"Mrs. Dudley is waiting for you!" I said desperately, waving maniacally over at her, pretending that I was tying Aisling's shoe.

"I don't like this one bit."

"I'LL GIVE YOU TWO PIECES OF CANDY IF YOU'LL GO LISTEN TO THE STORIES."

"Do I have to do the craft?"

"THREE PIECES, AISLING!"

"All right. I'll go. But I'm not going to like it. With those girls and all. And the books. And the craft." She picked up her little backpack, her constant companion, which was stuffed with a plush bear, a naked Barbie doll, a handful of Hello, Kitty barrettes and, of course, her favorite books, and trudged off to the Story Room, head down, scowling.

I slumped back onto my chair, exhausted. "Tell them your name is McKinney. You'll fit right in," I called after her.

Meelyn looked up from the subtraction problems she was working on, her smooth blonde head combed sweetly into curly ponytails decorated with pale blue feathery puffs. "She finally went. Do you think she'll stay?"

I glanced surreptitiously over at Aisling and accidentally met her furious stare. "I HATE THIS," she mouthed at me, pointing to Mrs. Dudley and the book she was reading and then at all her rapt companions.

That was always a special feature of Story Time for our family. Sometimes, Aisling would decide she'd just had enough and she'd get up and stalk off, even as I made shooing motions with my hands, indicating that she was to return to the group and SIDDOWN.

I sighed. "Oh, geeez, I don't know. Let's hope for the best. Maybe we should move to that table over there where she can't see us."

"But if she can't see us, we can't see her," Meelyn observed shrewdly. "And remember that one time? When she said that boy's head was in her way and she couldn't see the pictures in the book?"

I laid my own head on the table, overcome with dismay. "We'd better stay right here. Just let's not look over there anymore."

"Too late. Here she comes," said Meelyn, pointing with her sparkly pink pencil. "And, boy...she looks mad."

Sure enough, there was Aisling, striding back over to us with her chin thrust out. "I hate it over there," she said wrathfully, slinging her backpack onto the table. It careened into Meelyn's math book and sent it arc-ing to the floor.

"Oh, Aisling," I groaned. "Why? What could you POSSIBLY HATE about having a story read to you by Nanny's dear friend Mrs. Dudley who likes you so much? What could be so awful about sitting there with all those other little boys and girls your own age?"

"I don't like being TREATED LIKE A CHILD," she stormed.

Oh. Well, of course.

Health care reform sounds good to me

I am a big fan of health care reform. Not the "public option" part of the plan, because I've seen firsthand how incompetently the government handled the whole Cash for Clunkers program -- $24,000 per car that little scheme cost the U.S. taxpayers, not to mention a website for dealers that was apparently designed by a chimpanzee, ridiculous mountains of paperwork and a foot-dragging delay in getting the dealers paid back -- and don't get me started on the ridiculousness of Social Security or even the whole H1N1 vaccine distribution thing. All these things alert me to the wisdom of not letting our federal government take over our health care system.

But there's no question that the system needs radical improvement, and as it turns out, I have a for instance for you.

My husband and I pay over $500 a month for health insurance through his employer. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS A MONTH. And that's for our insurance, just the two of us. We had to find alternate health insurance for the girls because having the four of us on the employees' group plan? It was running about $900 a month. And as it turns out, we just don't make that kind of money these days, with $900 skimmed right off the top like a mere bagatelle.

So. Five hundred dollars a month.

Which brings me to the fact that I recently went to visit my doctor, who wanted me to take a series of four classes from a diabetes educator. The first class is a personal one-hour meeting with the educator and the other three are group events held in a big conference room at the hospital my doctor is affiliated with. The doctor's office contacted the diabetes educator and gave her office my insurance information; all I had to do was wait until the educator's office contacted me to set up the appointments.

The call came about five days ago. "Mrs. McKinney? This is Cathy from Karen Whosit's office, calling to schedule your classes for diabetes education."

"Oh!" I said. "Thank you for calling. Let me grab my appointment calendar."

We talked for a moment about days and times - as it turned out, the only hard-and-fast date I had to schedule was the one-on-one with Karen. The other group meetings had several scheduled dates and I could just call up to say when I was coming. Nice! That was easy!

But then Cathy dropped the bomb. "Mrs. McKinney, we've talked to your insurance company and they say they won't pay for the classes until you've met your deductible. Do you know how much you've paid on it?"

Well, since our fiscal year just started at the beginning of October with my husband's employer's group insurance plan, I'd estimate that we've paid, oh, I don't know, maybe a BIG FAT NOTHING on that deductible.

I drew a breath. "How much are the classes, just out of pocket?"

"Eight hundred dollars," replied Cathy. "Your insurance company said that they'd pay eighty percent of the total once you've met the deductible."

That conversation, as you might guess, ended badly. Oh, don't get me wrong, there was an excess of cordiality because it certainly isn't Cathy's fault that our health insurance provider -- which is a HUGE one in the state of Indiana -- is like a dollar-sucking vampire hovering over my husband's paychecks with greedy red eyes and glistening fangs. And it's not my husband's employers' fault, either: We're just thankful that they offer health insurance with a group plan because if they didn't, we'd be completely up THAT FAMOUS CREEK with my pre-existing condition, sans paddles.

But it is the health insurance company's fault. Oh, yes, it surely is. And you know what frosts my doughnuts even more? About once a week, they send me mailers urging me to learn all I can about Type II diabetes and take care of my health and test my blood glucose levels often and exercise and not eat frosted doughnuts. Yeah, they do all that and yet when I have the chance to attend some classes to add to my knowledge about this disease, it is a big no-go, in spite of the fact we pay the aforementioned FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS A MONTH to them for two people, one of whom goes to the doctor and gets two A1C tests per year and maybe three or four other times for the odd sinus infection or whatever, and the other of whom never goes at all.

So! Health insurance reform! I'm a big, big fan of that. When's it coming?

It's beginning to look a lot like, what?

Thanksmas? Is that what you'd call this time of year?

Because I know for sure that Halloween just passed - we've still got a giant jack-o-lantern taped to our big front window to prove it. Plus I remember going to the All Saints Vigil Mass on Saturday, seeing as how it was only two days ago.

And that means time is drawing closer to the final Thursday of the month, which is Thanksgiving Day this year, and Thanksgiving is always a nice holiday for, you know, being thankful and eating things. And then eating a dressing sandwich on Friday made of a slab of dressing cut in two with slices of turkey in the middle, garnished with lashings of gravy and then heated up in the microwave and eaten from a paper plate with a cornucopia printed on it. Maybe with a matching napkin.

So why then, when I walk into Hobby Lobby or Wal-Mart and similar establishments, am I accosted by festive Christmas displays featuring Mr. and Mrs. Clauses that really move (which could only be creepier if they were wearing clown suits), and enormous Christmas trees with lavish decorations and piles of Christmas cards, twinkle lights and candy dishes shaped like snowmen and trumpet-blowing angels?

(Last year the girls and I went into Hobby Lobby and employees were busily replacing the Christmas decorations with Valentine's Day decorations and it was still a week before Christmas. Hobby Lobby, you have got to be kidding me...)

What happened to Thanksgiving? If I try to eat a dressing sandwich on Friday, November 27 this year, is some retailer with a bureaucratic gleam in his eye going to force his way into my kitchen and slap the sandwich out of my hand, snarling, "Look here, YOU. It's been nothing but candy canes and sugarplums SINCE OCTOBER 15. SO PUT DOWN THAT TURKEY AND EAT THIS STOLLEN RIGHT NOW"?

Poor Thanksgiving, the forgotten holiday.

Do you think this is a little bit strange?

Last Tuesday, Aisling and I dropped off Meelyn at work and then stopped off at a gas station on our way back home to fill up the van's tank. It was one of those wet and windy days often seen at the end of October and I didn't feel like getting out of the vehicle in a pair of nice shoes to pump the gas myself, so I pulled up next to the station's full-service pump.

The attendant who came up to my driver's side window was a young guy who looked to be in his early twenties, a very handsome person indeed. More like an Abercrombie model than a humble gas station employee. He was very friendly and smiled at both me and Aisling (but more at her, naturally) as I told him that I wanted twenty dollars of the eighty-seven octane.

"Okay!" he said cheerfully, and went to open the fuel door at the side of the van. I got out my wallet to remove a couple of tens, chatting with Aisling in the meantime.

The next thing I knew, he had popped his face back into the window -- which was right next to my face -- and was growling, "GIMME YOUR MONEY!" in a voice that sounded like a cross between Hulk Hogan and John Wayne Gacy. Or at least what I imagine John Wayne Gacy's voice sounded like, which would be the voice of a whackjob homocidal maniac with a penchant for burying people in his basement.

It startled me, like, a LOT. I dropped my wallet and swiveled my head around so fast, it's a wonder I didn't dislodge a vertebrae. The gas station attendant bent over double laughing, holding onto the pump to keep from tumbling onto the ground. Aisling, likewise, was overcome with hilarity and sat there gasping, tears of mirth rolling down her cheeks.

"I'm sorry," the attendant said, heaving himself off the gas pump with a few final chortles. "I didn't know that would scare you that bad."

I managed a weak smile. "Dude, you are lucky I didn't bust out my taekwondo moves on you and chop you right in the windpipe."

"She thinks it's funny," he said, pleased with himself, pointing to Aisling, who was hiccuping and drying her eyes with a tissue.

"Yeah, well, it's always funny until someone's trachea collapses and then what are you going to do?" I said pertly.

"Aw, I'm tough. I've had that happen to me before. I used to be a prison guard," he offered, preening himself a bit as youngsters in their twenties are apt to do when they've got a female audience.

"Really? Why'd you quit? I think your powers for scaring the bejabers out of people would come in really handy in a prison situation," I observed, handing him my money.

He put my bills into his money belt and said offhandedly, "Oh, I quit because I got stabbed and I thought I'd better find another job where I was less likely to get hurt."

My private thought was that he was going to someday be falling to the ground and clutching his perfect, bloodied nose that had been tagged by a customer's flying elbow if he tried any more little tricks like he'd done with me. But I said, "Wow, you got it with a shiv, huh? Where were you stabbed?"

"Right here in the hand," he answered, showing Aisling and I a small scar between his thumb and index finger that might have been caused by the sharpened handle of an illegally obtained spoon or might have been caused by hitting his cousin over the head with a tea cup when he was four, who knows?

"That must have been painful," I said, starting the van's engine and preparing to pull away.

"It wasn't so much," he said with a modest shrug. "You both have a good day, now."

We went on home and Aisling rhapsodized about how cute he was, how high I'd jumped, how goofy I'd looked, how brave he'd been to work in a prison, blah blah blah. I, on the other hand, continued to feel kind of creeped out by the whole thing. I mean, if my husband or Kieren or Pat had done something like that to me, I'd just scream and smack them and then we'd all laugh. But some dude whom I do not know, right there at the gas station, all up in my business with his scary voice and all?

I don't know. Was that kind of strange, or is it just me?

All Saints Day

I really like this this sainty painting, titled The Adoration by Albrecht Dürer, depicting all of us here on earth gazing on Jesus crucified along with all the other souls that have already passed into eternity.

Celebrating the solemnity of All Saints and All Souls is something I remember from my childhood in the Episcopal church. I don't recall that we gave as much commemoration to the day as Catholics do, but it was a day given to remembering loved ones who had gone on to heaven. It struck a chord in me even as a child: I had three great-grandparents die within several years of one another, and the idea was comforting to me that they hadn't just drifted into some void.

Later on, of course, my family started attending a charistmatic evangelical Protestant denomination and such formal recollections of those who had died stopped. Somewhere on my spiritual journey, I was talking to the pastor's wife, fondly recalling All Saints and All Souls and how important it was to me as a child to think more deeply about life and death and how the thought of eternity is supposed to be....comforting....to Christians; a time when we'll see Jesus face to face and be reunited with our friends and families.

She looked at me, eyebrows drawn together. "I think that sounds weird," she said flatly.

"Weird to have a special day given over to remembering loved ones and the great people who gave their lives over to God?" I asked, bemused. How, by any stretch of the imagination, could that possibly be weird? Is it weird to be consoled by the thought of seeing my two grandmothers? Weird to think of meeting St. John Vianney or St. Thérèse and thank them for praying for me?

If those things are weird, then I am very glad to be a great big weirdo on November 1 and 2 every year. I love being Catholic.