It’s that time again – turkey, football and gratitude, not necessarily in that order.   

It is, hands down, my favorite holiday.  I love it.  I love the planning, the decorations, the family and the food.   I love the history of it too.  I visited Plimoth Plantation as a young girl and I’ve never forgotten it.  Never mind that there are disputes regarding how the whole thing went down, the pilgrims were thankful to be alive (that is, what was left of them after the first winter) and that’s good enough for me.

So, since I happen to like lists, here’s my “I am truly thankful for…” run down for this year.

I Am Thankful For:

My Family:  They make me tired.  They make me worried. They give me much to blog about.  I wouldn’t know what to do without them.  Here’s to Banker Husband, Eldest Son, Teenage Daughter and Youngest Son, my beautiful family.  Sometimes I wonder how one wife and mom could be so lucky.

I’m also the proud daughter of two loving parents, middle sister to two fine brothers, adoring aunt of 11 fabulous nieces and nephews, sister-in-law to six sister-in-laws and four brother-in-laws.  Plus, I’m the daughter-in-law extraordinaire to my husband’s parents.  What a clan. 

My BFF J – Having a best friend for 30 years is truly a blessing from above.

My dog JoJo – God made dogs to make up for all of the evil in the world.  They are angels on earth. 

The Current Recession:  Don’t get me wrong – recessions suck.  I am certainly not happy about all of the job losses and foreclosures that have happened. People have been devastated and it’s going to take some time to recover. 

However, for myself, it’s been a wake-up call.   I pay way more attention to coupons and comparative shopping now.  I have a strict budget and I try to stick with it.  Kroger and Target fear me as a card-carrying, coupon clipping consumer.  I am saving, hear me roar.

Lysol Wipes: Good for wiping up after non-female people who have bad aim and for some who think it’s okay to come to the library with the H1N1 virus.  ‘Nuf said.

Cell Phones: Say what you want about them but it’s the only way that I can guarantee that someone can reach me.  Plus, I can call my kids on their phones and get more out of them than I would face to face.  Go figure. 

My husband’s laptop:  As I blogged about previously, I went back to school this semester.  I have spent hours on the Blackboard site that my school has for online classes and I don’t know what I would have done without this computer.  I’m waiting for the day that it greets me like HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Speaking of my school…

Wayne State University: I earned my library degree from WSU ten years ago and now I’m going to earn a Records and Information Management certificate from them.  In the middle of one of the saddest cities in the United States sits a university that helps people with their futures.  Seems kind of ironic to me.

Caffeine: Coffee, tea, pop – doesn’t matter.  I’m just happy that it’s part of my life.  It makes me a nicer person.

Wishing you the happiest Thanksgiving ever.  May you have yummy food, loving family, good friends and a grateful heart.

I had parent-teacher conferences last week.  Having our second and third children spread so far apart allows me to relive elementary school over and over again.  Did you ever see the movie “Groundhog Day?”  It’s kind of like that, except that things still surprise me every once in a while. 

Youngest Son had to make a report card for himself complete with smiley, neutral or frowny faces.  If you felt that you did a good job in a category (ie raising your hand), you’d fill in the smiley face.  If you didn’t have much of an opinion on how you’ve done, you’d fill in the neutral face and if you need some improvement, the frowny face is for you.

I was quickly scanning the report card when I came upon the seemingly innocent statement “I like coming to school” with a big, blue frowny face circled next to it.  Great… another kid with an attitude.   I looked to the teacher for some guidance to this glaring red flag.  “Well”, she said, “look below. When I questioned your son about why he didn’t like to come to school, he drew you a picture to explain his feelings.” (See visual aid above).

There we were, Youngest Son and me, smiling and eating french fries on a pier at Newburgh Pointe, not far from our house.  We were watching people fish and we both looked very happy.  There were no books or pencils to be seen.  We were school-free and content.  

I was floored.  I had taken him there only one time, when he was in kindergarten.  It was a nice spring afternoon, and I had bought french fries to eat as a treat.  We sat on a bench on the pier and watched a few fishermen catch and release.  Then we went home.   The end. 

Now I find out that this is the moment in his life to which everything else is compared.  It is the baseline of all his experiences.  Nothing was as wonderful as hanging with mom in Hines Park and now he just wants to be home with me and doesn’t want to go to school.

Part of me gets all maternal and mushy when I hear things like this.  My little boy just wants to be with his mom.  Never mind that I have no intentions of homeschooling anyone, including my dog.  He thinks I’m great.  Me.  Sniff….

The other, more practical side of me, thinks that this is a good lesson for the future.  I could have saved an awful lot of angst and guilt in the past if I had just hung out with him.  Who needs expensive birthday parties?  Just hang out with your kid.  Why plan educational and stimulating vacations?  Just pay attention to your kid.  Kind of reminds me of when you buy an expensive toy for your child and all they want to do is play with the box. 

The other thing I realized, as I sat puzzling over this report card of truth, is that it’s the little moments in life that matter.  The ones that happen on a whim.  The ones that happen when you aren’t really paying attention.  The “eat french fries and watch people fish on a dock” moments. 

I guess going through elementary school yet another time isn’t so bad.  Apparently, I still have lots to learn.

I just finished one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read.  In the vast sea of that genre, forget “Eat, Pray, Love“, the book group favorite memoir du jour.  Instead, check out Rhoda Janzen’s “Mennonite In a Little Black Dress” and you’ll never look at a horse drawn buggy the same.

Not that Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite family rode around in a buggy – they would be driven off the road in her native California.  Nor does she now, living right here in the Great Lakes state and teaching at Hope College.  However, it was a serious automobile accident that sent her packing to see her parents.  That, and the fact that her psycho husband left her for another man who he found on Gay.com.

Janzen describes her Mennonite childhood with humor, if not fondness.  Her hair “braided with neurotic precision, like Heidi on crack”, her homemade clothes (complete with strips of fabric to lengthen her pants) and the Shame-Based Lunches that smelled of the vinegar-based ingredients that all Germans love. 

Speaking of Mennonite food, who wouldn’t want a cute little Cotletten and Ketchup sandwich, with the little saltine cracker meatballs so endearing to Mennonites all over the world?  Or, how about a nice pungent bowl of Borscht?  For a hearty appetite, nothing but a plate of Warmer Kartoffelsalata (translation – hot potato salad) will do. (Incidentally, while reading this particular chapter, I kind of felt like I was at a Lutheran potluck in the church’s basement with the Schroeder, Schwartz and Krueger families.   However, the thought that any associations that I have could relate to Mennonitism startled me, so I quickly put it out of my mind). 

Janzen, in her poetic and deadpan funny way, reminisces about her peculiar Mennonite childhood and the realization that she didn’t want to be part of that group anymore when she grew up.  She describes her hilarious family in detail including her serious father, endearing non-religious sister and pious brothers (who did not leave the Mennonite faith).  Her most detailed descriptions are saved for her quirky mother, whose quiet acceptance of all of her children, Mennonite or not, is heart-warming. 

However, it was her description of her husband that made me both angry and sad.  Angry at him for being such a complete jerk and sad for her for taking it for so long.  Despite the fact that she describes him as “brilliant but tortured”, I can’t help but think of him as “narcissistic but cruel”. 

That said, this is a minor quibble since Janzen has worked for so long to overcome her sadness and move on.  The last guy she was dating before the book ended was a 27-year-old motorcycle-riding Mennonite.  She’s my age, so the age difference kind of weirded me out.  Then I figured that there were worse fates, so I moved on myself.

In the meantime, I absolutely loved Janzen’s memoir, Shamed-Based Food and all.  She’s the kind of person with whom I would like to sit and eat lunch, chit-chatting amiably about her Menno and worldly lives.   She might even Google her name and find this blog saying, “Mein Gott!  One of my biggest fans is on the other side of the state!”  Just as long as she doesn’t study my grammar too carefully, we could be friends.  I’m sure of it. 

Pass the saurkraut, please.  Danke.

Yesterday would have been my Grandma Heinzman’s 101st birthday.  Amazing. 

When she was born, the 20th century was a new idea, automobiles were a newfangled thing and women still wore long skirts.  Not long after her birth, World War I began and life for our country would never be the same.  Life for my grandma would never be the same after her own mother died when she was three years old.

Despite hardship (two of my mother’s siblings were born during the depression) and losing her husband when he was in his early 50’s, my grandma raised six kids and never lost her faith in God or in humanity.   

I knew her as the loving grandma whose condominium smelled of rising bread dough, and who played a pretty mean game of pinochole.  She taught me and all of my 12 cousins to play every card game she knew and every dice game she could remember including my favorites, Yahtzee and Kismet. 

She was the kind of grandma whose home-cooked meals are still in my sensory memory.  There was nothing quite like her chicken and dumplings and to this day, I wish I could make gravy like her. 

I remember her “grandma-isms”.  A couch was a davenport, and a purse was a pocketbook, and the vacuum was a “vack-um”.  When I complained about a rain, snow or inclement weather in general, she would say, “This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”  That would stop me in my tracks – how do you respond to that?

This is the same grandma who continually gave rides to the same hitchhiking teen every week.  Horrified, I asked her why on earth she would pick up a hitchhiker, even though we lived in a relatively safe city.  She would just say that she knew that hitchhiker was a good girl and it was better that she pick her up than someone else.  She also told the girl just that every time she let her off at her requested destination. 

I can still see the picture of Jesus that hung by her front door and the pictures of every one of her children and grandchildren on the opposite wall or scattered throughout her living room.  In one small room, one could determine what meant most to her in life. 

To honor that, I named my daughter after her so that we could remember her as the years go by.   And, the day before her 101st birthday, my brother and his wife had their first child.  That baby would be Doris Rachel’s 16th great-grandchild.  I know she would have been proud.  

She would have thanked God for her blessings, just like I thank God for having had her as my grandma.

Hi – it’s me, JoJo.  Amy has been neglecting her blog lately and I decided to take matters into my own paws and be her guest blogger.  I’m thinking of calling this a “dog blog”.  (I’m also very clever – not just another pretty furry face). 

This blogging stuff is challenging because I don’t have opposable thumbs and I need to take frequent bark breaks.   You never know who’s going to walk by the front window.

In case you don’t know me, here’s a mug shot for you:

This was taken a few years back and I’m not quite so scruffy these days.  I was practicing for my license photo when I realized that dogs don’t drive.  In fact, the only place I go in Amy’s car is to that “vet” building where they try to talk nicely to me while sticking me in the butt with some sharp instrument.  I swear that I’m going to revolt and refuse to take that crap anymore, but I forget between visits why I hate it there. 

Anyhow, Amy has always been a little squirrely but she’s especially distracted these days.  She hasn’t been feeling great and has been known to lie on the floor lately, which I especially like.  She also has a lot of homework and housework.  I know all this because she has a running dialogue with me all day long.  Her teenage daughter said that it’s strange to talk to dogs, but I don’t mind.  We all have our quirks.  I personally like to chase cars, so who am I to judge?

Anyhow, while we’re waiting for Amy to get her stuff together and become clever once more, I thought I’d give you a recommendation of my own.  It’s a book called The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein.  It’s told in first dog by Enzo, a very wise lab-terrier mix.  You just gotta love books about dogs of mixed lab background.   Although I found some of the human characters in this book to be so annoying that I wanted to pee on them, I generally enjoyed it.

I’m off now – I’ve got a fence that needs watching and there are lots of people to bark at.  I’ll leave you with one of my very favorite cartoons, with many thanks to Gary Larson.

Wishing you a tummy-rub happy day. 

JoJo

Last week I realized that I had thrown away my fork when I tossed what was left of my lunch.  This is a huge problem since we are down quite a few utensils in the silverware drawer.  Perhaps the fact that I have a bad habit of dropping them down the garbage disposal might explain it.  All of our teaspoons could double as grapefruit spoons due to their garbage disposal induced serrated edges. 

I was then putting plates away and I smashed two together, sending shards of Sakura all over me and the counter.  Upon closer inspection, ALL of my salad plates are chipped.  The dinner plates are looking pretty worn out too.  I’m also slightly embarrassed that half of my dishes are a fetching mix of Correlle ware and plastic plates that my kids made me in preschool and kindergarten.

The drinking glass cupboard is really no better.  I have Buzz Lightyear and Woody cups circa 1994 along with plastic tumblers that don’t match my unmatched dishes.   If you’re really thirsty, you could use one of the many special edition Seven Eleven Slurpee cups that my family has collected over the years.  Or, how about a Cedar Point Snoopy cup?  Any of these classy options would make a guest feel young again.

You’re getting the picture, right?  I really don’t need to add that my mother took pity upon me this past birthday and bought me a Farberware cookware set because my children complained to her that there was a pan drought.  Nor do I need to talk about the fact that our sheets are so old that the fitted ones no longer have elastic at the corners.  They’re beyond pathetic.  Yes, things have seen better days at my house.

So, I propose that women should be allowed a shower every ten years.  I am eight years overdue for my 10-year shower, and that would explain why things have gone downhill so rapidly around these parts. 

These showers (let’s call them”pimp my cupboard” parties) would be very casual affairs.  The needy hostess would send e-vites to sympathetic friends and family along with a wish list (no Waterford crystal or ridiculously expensive china settings, please - this is for everyday items only).  This event could double as a coupon-swap, wine tasting session or bitchfest.  Lunch would be included, of course and games such as euchre would be allowed. 

What do you think?  I think that this would be a smashing success.  Target and Macy’s may even want to add another gift registry category. 

Please let me know what days work for you and if you prefer chicken pot pie or a sandwich.  I’ll be posting my list shortly.

This past Sunday, after a long day working at the library, I was finishing up my dinner with Youngest Son.  We were chatting amiably when he casually mentioned that  he was the only kid in his class who didn’t have a parent at lunch on Friday.   The kids had gone to the one room schoolhouse in our township for the day and the teacher had invited parents to come to lunch, but I had to work. 

He continued, “Yeah, I was feeling pretty bad.  I ate with my head down.  I felt really sad.”  

This was almost too much to take.  Never mind that I work to feed my family, pay for their essentials and send them one day to college.  Never mind that I would donate a vital organ to any of my three kids if they needed it or take a bullet to shield them.  Never mind that I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in 16 years.  Disregard all the laundry, cooking and caring for sick children that I’ve done over the years.  Don’t pay attention to any of the field trips that I have indeed gone on.  Forget all that. 

The bottom line was that I didn’t show up for lunch and, therefore, I am a bad mom and just one step closer to Bad Mommy Hell.

I’d like to say that I can take the advice of Working Mother magazine and “allow yourself to not feel guilty”.  However, this would require a lobotomy on my part.  I wonder what the editor of this magazine would do if HER 8-year-old son came home from school and stuck a knife in her heart by saying that he was singled out because his mother worked?  Would she “allow” herself to not feel like pond scum?

Not long ago, I ran into a woman whose daughter had been my friend growing up.  When I inquired how she was doing, she gushed about what a fantastic mother her daughter was.  She breastfed all her babies for a year, took long maternity leaves and cooked all her food organically from scratch.  She marvelled at what a natural her daughter was with motherhood since she had been a working mother.

After listening politely and saying  how nice it was to hear about her daughter, I “allowed” myself to think of a word that rhymes with rich and is generally thought to be rude. 

And I didn’t feel guilty.  Imagine that.

Meet you in Bad Mommy Hell.  If you need a ride, let me know.  I call front seat.

In honor of one of my very favorite days of the year (that would be Halloween), I’d like to tell you all about a book I finished recently called The Graveyard Book by the strange and creative author, Neil Gaiman.

Nobody (better know as “Bod”) Owens has a very interesting life.  At the tender age of 18 months, Bod’s entire family was murdered by an evil and incredibly creepy man named “Jack.”  Bod, being a curious toddler, miraculously escaped and found his way up the hill to the ancient cemetery located there. 

The dead, who took up permanent residence at this particular graveyard centuries before, take pity on the little tot and give him the “privileges of the graveyard”, thereby allowing him to talk to the spirits as well as find his way around the forgotten place.  Silas, a figure shrouded in mystery, vows to be Bod’s guardian, since Silas can living amongst the living as well as the deceased and can therefore provide Bod with all of his human necessities. 

Gaiman relays the stories of Bod’s life in the cemetery bit by bit, with each chapter containing a new story.  We watch while the residents of the graveyard raise young Bod to become a young man, determined to find out what happened to his parents and sister. 

One of the best things about The Graveyard Book is that it’s written for upper elementary tweens/teens.  I happen to like YA literature because it reflects the audience very well.  It’s real and down to earth because that’s how young people view the world.

Gaiman’s snippets of Bod’s world are sweet, endearing, creepy and absolutely captivating.  I have to say that this is one of my favorite books of all time. (Bonus points to Gaiman for narrating as well.  He’s a great reader who adds a lot of character to his books). 

I used to be afraid of cemeteries – I thought that they were incredibly creepy.  However, I think back to something my grandma used to say to me. She’d tell me, “It’s not the dead you have to worry about, it’s the living.” 

So true, especially in The Graveyard Book. 

Happy hauntings!

I’m reading a brand new book called “Mennonite in a Little Black Dress” by Rhoda Janzen. (It hasn’t even been published, but thanks to LibraryThing, I got a pre-pub copy.  Run, run, run and sign up for their Early Reviewers group.  You will thank me.)

This book is worthy of an entire blog post (stay tuned), but I will share with you one small passage.  Janzen, an English professor at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, while talking about reading a friend’s dissertation writes,

 ”It is not unreasonable that English professors are often targeted for this favor.  If you also happen to be a grammarian who creepily who knows how to diagram every sentence in the English language, there is an even more urgent need for your services.  I’m the sicko who can explain why a gerundive phrase must attach to a possessive adjective pronoun rather than an object pronoun.  True, you wouldn’t want me at a party, but if the survival of the human race depended on the successful parsing of the Constitution, you’d be knockin’ on my door, baby.”

This paragraph greatly distressed me.  Although she’s deadpan funny, Rhoda Janzen described something that’s been on my mind since I was in my 20’s.  Did I even know what a gerundive phrase was?  Obviously, it’s a phrase with a gerund stuck somewhere, but how about that possesive adjective pronoun stuff? 

It was all coming back to me.  No, not my English education – that’s tucked back in the recesses of my brain.  Alas, the fact that I tried so hard to avoid it was indeed becoming quite clear.

I used to love to write creatively, but when it came to breaking down the English language into minute, bite-sized portions, I just couldn’t have cared less.   True, I watched “Grammar Rock” with the rest of the gen-x kids, but it apparently wasn’t the answer to all of my questions beyond a noun being a person, place or thing (or being able to buy adverbs at Lolly’s).

I also never liked the constraints that proper English put upon a person.  For example, I happen to hate semicolons.  I find them to be awkward and stuffy.  I realize that I need them; I tend to write long sentences that just barely escape being considered run-on.  However, dashes are so much more vibrant.  They say, “Hey – I’m not done with my sentence yet.” 

You get the picture.  Teaching me English wasn’t going to be easy.

My inability to remember how to analyze my native language has bothered me for quite some time.  Coincidently, while looking for a book for a patron regarding verb tenses, I came across a very fun looking volume called “Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog: the Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences” by Kitty Burns Florey.   It had a cute boxer dog on the front and was an appealing shade of blue.  A good sign, thought I, so I took it home.

Florey, another fan of English grammar, reflects back upon her education under the tutelage of her sixth grade teacher, Sister Bernadette.  She writes, “I thought diagramming was fun, and most of my friends who were subjected to it look back with varying degrees of delight.  Some of us were better at it than others, but it was considered a kind of treat, a game that broke up the school day.”

Clearly, Kitty and I don’t exist on the same existential plane. I remember diagramming sentences, and, in my most sincere questioning mind, wondered what exactly the point was.  Ah, the folly of youth.

I’ve had conversations with people whose English abilities I revere about this parts-of-speech problem that I have.  I specifically remember talking to my BFF “J” about it one day. “So, J, I’ve been thinking that I missed out on learning the parts of speech and I wonder if you could help me review.”  ”Of course”, she said in her best school teacher voice, “what do you need to know?”  

At this point, I brought out a yellowing stack of papers that had the purple mimeograph type that smacked of the 1980’s.  Wondering where I got them, I explained that I had been saving them since middle school and would she be so kind to go over them with me?

So, for an hour we went over sentence structure.  The crisp answers that she gave are lost in time but I can still remember how I felt.  It’s too late to go home.

Perhaps I should accept my fate and move on.  Or, similar to my struggles with math, I can buy some sort of book like “Basic English for Dummies” in order to be a better role model for my children.  In the meantime, I will probably continue to dangle my participles and incorrectly punctuate my sentences.     

After all, ain’t nobody gonna correct me.  The English language police are too busy dealing with the effects of texting.  Theez daze there r wors problms than forgettin wut a possessive adjective pronoun is. K?

My life runs in two week cycles.  Here’s how it goes…

Week one is a payweek.  Things are pretty tight and there’s no milk until the paycheck goddess arrives and deposits money into my account.  Then, I am magically richer.  It’s like Christmas and I feel independent and blessed.

Dancing happily through the grocery aisles, I fill all requests.  Sure you can have that expensive, semi-nutritious breakfast treat!  Of course we can fill our freezer with frozen pizzas!  I am a worker!  I help the economy!  More wine!

Then I pay bills.  This is sobering.  In my head, I am wondering why I allowed the kids to talk me into spending so much at Target.  What was THAT charge for?  I need to stop this frivolity.  Ridiculous.  The school district should watch my child after school for free.  Blah blah blah.

Week two is fun free.  The bills are paid and the kids have eaten every crumb of the food that I had purchased the previous week.  I am crabby.  I say things like  “Does money grow on trees?”  “Do you really need a new kind of cereal?” or  “What do MEAN you need money for paper?” or  “Stop using so many pencils.” or  ”I don’t care if we have no snacks.  When I was growing up, we never had snacks.  Ever.”

Sometimes I exaggerate a little.  It gets my point across.

It doesn’t seem like the cupboard could get more echo-y.  The leftover hamburger buns are looking bad and we’re out of orange juice.  Somebody save us!  And then… miracles happen.  I get paid.

Just looked in my bread box.  The bread (what’s left of it) is looking sad and there is a package of buns from September. 

Must be a payweek.  Will be skipping through the supermarket aisles in just a few days. 

Thank you, paycheck goddess.