the_Old_Woman_in_a_Shoe's blog

Of all the odd things my boyfriend's ex-wife did, the oddest was discouraging him from going to see his mama. If he had told me nothing else about her, this would have convinced me of her general unfitness as a wife.

In my relationship with this same fella, "Go See Your Mama" is a mantra. A motto. A recurring theme. Had a bad day at work? Go see your mama. Feeling stressed? Go see your mama. There's only one thing I can really do for the man that will make him feel any better, and I'm far too busy running the kids all over creation. So his mama is just the ticket, if you ask me.

My church participates in Operation Christmas Child.  We fill shoe boxes with toys for children in the developing world.  This year I decided to fill one shoe box for a boy aged 2-4 and one for a girl aged 5-9.  On Sunday, after the special service praying over and blessing the shoe boxes of non-procrastinating participants, I figured I could fill my shoe boxes and get them to the church on Monday morning, muttering a prayer of blessing over them myself.  Since my children and I were already in Wal-Mart on Sunday, I thought grabbing shoe-box fillin's would be no problem.

Was. Not. Going. To. Happen.

I just finished last year's "green" bestseller, Hot, Flat, and Crowded by Thomas L. Friedman, and I gotta tell you, I'm not optimistic about preventing this planet from beoming a seething oven by 2050.  My grandkids are gonna need an awful lot of sunscreen, and probably filtration masks. 

Short of someone miraculously inventing flying trees, which--running on nothing but water vapor--convert carbon dioxide into oxygen faster than we can pump it into the atmosphere, the planet is screwed.  By my calculations, to offset current CO2 emissions we would need about 100 billion of these flying trees, we need them five years ago, and they need to convert CO2 into oxygen a whole lot faster than ordinary trees.  Even if the technology existed, which it doesn't, what company can be trusted to build 100 billion flying trees?  What country can be trusted to launch them?

I am a driver who is perpetually lost.  I get lost going places I've been to dozens of times; to wit:  last month I got lost going to my university, from which I drove home on the weekends for four years.

People say, "You know how to get here, right?"

Sheepish silence.

"Well, you've been here, right?"

More sheepish silence.

"Shoedame, you were just here last weekend!"  And here they throw up their hands and start mentioning landmarks.  Well, do you know where the 50-foot grain silo is?  With the robin's-egg-blue top?  Teenagers spray-painted profane graffiti on it in bright red paint."

No response.

My laundry pile was just proclaimed "Virginia's 27th Highest Peak" by Governor Kaine.  A stack of dirty clothes and linens so high, I could climb to the top and yodel.

I'm no mathematician, but shouldn't there be less laundry in the summertime, with the children wearing only shorts, tank tops, and sandals?  God help me, our dirty laundry is everywhere.

I have a 14-year old daughter, size 6, who is convinced she is still a size 2.  This is nothing unusual.  This country is full of women in denial about their actual pants size, who routinely starve and stuff themselves into their former size—pre-pregnancy, pre-Thanksgiving, pre-audition for the lead in the remake of "The Blob."

I could, of course, buy her blue jeans and cut out the labels.  Sometimes I do.

This is not a problem.

However, she has a 12-year-old sister who actually IS a size 2.

This, friends, is a problem.

The short story "Liking Men," from Margaret Atwood's Simple Murders, begins:  "It's time to start liking men again.  Where shall we begin"?  Atwood finally concludes that the feet of the sleeping man presently in her bed are kinda cute and, all in all, acceptable.  She'll begin, by liking his feet.

There is nothing like online dating to make me read Atwood, all Atwood, and nothing but Atwood. The most rabidly feminist man-hating screed in the world is mother's milk to me after just one date with a guy I meet online.  Nothing will sink men in my estimation quicker.  Since I published my Online Dating Dictionary in my blog last year ( http://www.ls.net/node/448 ),some of my girlfriends have suspected that I have online dating horror stories which I've yet to spill.  They want to read about them.  They think they will be amusing.

So.  Here goes.

If your most hated movie of all time is "Mary Poppins," what does this mean about you as a mother?

Nothing good, I imagine.

I detest that film with every fiber of my being.  I always object to musicals with no decent songs, but this movie manages to sink lower than its music.  The music is supercalifragilistic specially atrocious.  "I love to laugh, yuk yuk yuk yuk. . ."feed the birds, tuppence a bag". . ."Good luck will rub orf when I shakes 'ands with you". . .
 

 Being "wired" to your friends, neighbors, and even scant acquaintances has its advantages.

For antisocial misanthropes like me, networking on the Internet (my tool of choice is Facebook) keeps me aware that there are, in fact, other people in the world.  Who knew?  In my own neighborhood, even.  People who are related to me, went to high school or college with me, and who, inexplicably, even care about me.

And the more caring we express about each other, the more caring we feel.  Social networking builds friendships.  Keeping up with one another via the tools on the internet overcomes the embarrassment we shy folk might have over, for instance, walking up to a former high school classmate and saying, "Happy Birthday."

Newsflash #1:  Man beheads his wife when he finds out she wants a divorce.
Newsflash #2:  Man kidnaps woman and puts her in a diaper and chains and reads her passages from the Bible.  Sometimes he tries to smother her with a blanket or pillow.
Newsflash #3:  Woman who already has six kids has octoplets out of wedlock.

Whole world outraged--by newsflash three.  Nadya Suleman, the octuplets' mother, hired a public relations agency to deal with the crush of media attention, but the PR firm quit when they started receiving death threats.  Even Suleman's own father has attacked her in the media. 

I'm downtown late one night, picking up a copy of USA Today, when Richard Gere drives up in a silver Lotus.  I am "workin' it," if I do say so myself, in a corduroy jumper, ribbed tights, and clogs.  Mr. Gere offers me $3,000.00 to spend the week with him.  "Mister Gere," I retort, "a Christian lady and a feminist such as I would never dream did you say three thousand dollars?  In light of a lack of child support and the lousy economy, I accept."  I call my mom to arrange child care and fall asleep before we even reach the hotel.  I wake up the next morning with my real hair color:  gray.  Crap!  I knew I should have scheduled that salon visit.

Math and I got along just swimmingly in kindergarten.  My kindergarten teacher had a box of counting bears in bright, primary colors.  I could paint a pretty picture, read an interesting book, or—entirely at my option—go and mess with the counting bears and, if so inclined, count them.  The teacher gave me high praise for looking at a fully labeled calendar and figuring out what day it was.

Within a few short years, I was thrust into a world of heartless commands like "find" and "compute" and "calculate."  Even when I could "estimate," there were strictly proscribed limits such as "to the nearest tenth."  My artistic, creative, right-brain-dominant self kicked against the pricks, but I muddled along. Then I met my nemesis.  From the day he entered my life, the academic world was divided into into two parts:  the "can-do" and the "huh?"

His name was X.  He stood for stuff.