50 Things About My Mother

50 Things About My Mother

for Cathy Jean Kelly, 9/11/1958 - 10/12/2011

Inspired by Laura Lynn Brown’s essay of the same title, originally published in The Iowa Review

1.      She could just look at something and make her own, only hers was always better.  We teased her about this, and we started calling her China because she would be happy to sit at her art table and paint 100 of some little thing like a snowman face.  She found joy in making each one have a slightly different smile.  Or maybe she’d put a tiny different wrinkle on each of their noses or twinkles in their eyes.  And then she’d sell them for one dollar. 

2.      Cathy Jean Kelly was born September 11, 1958.  She always celebrated "birthday week."  In 2001, she had no idea the towers had fallen.  She was eating dinner with her friends, and they were wearing party hats at the White Bear Inn.  She wondered why everyone was staring.  

3.      It was cervical cancer that did her in.  It had spread all over before we ever knew she was even sick.  For about two years, she had these infections every once in a while, and her doctor told her they were resulting from a spider bite and that staph infections were hard to get rid of.  They never checked for cancer, and we never suspected it.

4.      People thought she was cranky when they’d ask her to go someplace and she’d say, “I don’t know how I’m going to be feeling.  I still have that spider bite.”  I can’t blame them.  Everything she ever said, she said it with a smile.  People can tell when you’re smiling, even over the phone. 

5.      It drove other people crazy, the way my mother found some way to be happy all of the time. 

6.      My mother went to Computer Tech in Pittsburgh in the fall of 1976.  She didn’t like her roommates. 

7.      My father’s mother had a Catalina, one of those huge old boat-sized cars.  My mother quit college, and she and my father drove to Florida in it.  They were going to live with a few friends who had already moved down there, but someone peed on my dad the first night they stayed there.  They rented a lanai that had been turned into a one-room apartment, but my mom said it had too many windows, so they lived in the car. 

8.      Her first job was cleaning hotel rooms in Sarasota.  Then she found a dead woman in one of the rooms.  She came home pregnant.  My grandparents let my dad move in, but they weren’t allowed to sleep together, even though the damage was done.

9.      I was born November 14, 1977.  Nine months earlier was Valentine’s Day.  I always wondered if I was conceived in that Catalina.

10.  When I was really little, my mother, my father, and I moved into the upstairs of a house in Canton, Ohio.  The downstairs neighbors were always cooking something that smelled awful.  She imagined it was goats.  My dad worked at Timken, and when she dropped him off at work every day, we went to my grandmother’s house all day until it was time to go back to Canton and pick him up again.  I got to stand up in the front seat.  It took almost a half tank of gas in her guzzling Valiant, a hand-me-down car from my grandpa, but gas was cheap in the early 80s and she loved to cruise around.  It had an 8-track player, and we rolled the windows down and sang along. 

11.  My father liked to give my mother black eyes.  When my mother got pregnant with my brother, we moved back in with my grandparents.  My father went hitchhiking around the country.  He sent my mother letters from all over the place.  He sent her photos of himself with women who looked like her to make her jealous.

12.    My father had bipolar disorder.  My grandmother called him “the bastard.”  My mother and her friend, Cindy Allender, used to communicate with my dad and his brother Dan by Walkie Talkie.  My grandmother found Cindy’s Walkie Talkie when they were all seventeen years old and confiscated it.  She gave it back to her when my mom and Cindy were well into their thirties. 

13.  When she blow-dried her hair, the blow-dryer always overheated.  Her hair smelled like hot and strawberries. 

14.  After my parents divorced, my mother dated a short little hairy man named John.  One night, my grandmother sat my mom in the middle of the living room and picked at her hair for hours because John put his arm around my mom.  She said there were crabs on his arms.  It was years before I understood.  I was sad because John always liked to play Atari. 

15.  Her second job was at the jewelry counter at Hart’s department store in Wintersville, Ohio.  She loved to detangle the necklaces.  She liked to do any kind of little thing that took hours and drove any normal person crazy. 

16.  My father was murdered on Venice Beach when I was five years old.  My mother had nightmares her whole life that he faked his death and he was going to kidnap me.  This continued throughout my adult life right up until she died. 

17.  She had an entire closet full of high-heeled shoes and fancy dresses and shiny coats. 

18.  She suffered fools well. 

19.  My mother had PJ parties with her girlfriends Cindy Allender and Mary Stacey until they were at least 28 years old.  They brought their children, and we thought this was completely normal.  She always made popcorn balls with melted Red Hots, and we jumped on the beds.  My grandfather always said we were “raisin’ hell.” 

20.  She really came into her own as a Tupperware Lady.  She was always shy, but she was talked into it, and once she got going, she found out she was really good at it.  She was the manager of her own unit, Cathy’s Clowns.  She received a company station wagon every year.  We always had a new Oldsmobile.  I was a Tupperkid.  It was really good while it lasted. 

21.  When she was 33, she was in a head-on collision with a Napa Auto Parts van.  The driver swore he didn’t see her because the summer sun was shining in his eyes.  She had a crushed ankle and a broken knee, and she had to spend a year in a cast up to her hip.  No more Tupperware Lady. 

22.  My mother’s second husband, Bob, owned carnival games.  She married him to make my father jealous, she admitted years later.  The marriage didn’t last long.  When he left, his three daughters stayed at our house.  Months later, there was a woman looking at us every morning when we got on the bus.  She turned out to be the girls’ mother.  She had no idea where her ex-husband had taken them. 

23.  Ever since I was in elementary school, we sold crafts at craft shows and festivals.  We always talked all year about what we were going to make for the next one.  My mother always waited until the night before the show, and we would stay up all night and make as many things as we could.  It was tradition. 

24.  All four men my mother ever dated bought her an engagement ring.  She married three of them. 

25.  After my mom died, I went shopping at Reisbeck’s, a grocery store in WIntersville, Ohio where the old Hart’s department store used to be.  John works there.  The John with the crabs in his arms.  He opened up his line and said, “I can help you over here, m’am.”  I went through his line and when he made eye contact, I said, “I’m Cindy.  I used to be Cindy.  Kelly.  You knew my mom.  She died.  I don’t know if you knew that.”  He said, “That was a long time ago.”  I didn’t say anything else and I never go there anymore. 

26.  My mother had a special talent for finding zoos.  She could find a zoo anywhere.  We went to them all, and we rarely ever saw any animals. 

27.  Once, at a Tupperware party, she tried to move the demo table away from the television so she could stand behind it.  There was a man underneath the table watching a football game.  He was not to be disturbed, so she stood beside it instead.  My grandmother helped her carry in and out back then when she was just starting out, and she waited in the kitchen with the hostess’s pet birds, which flapped their wings profusely every now and again, right overtop of the buffet table.  My mother’s face always contorted into a grimace when she told the story of why my grandmother whispered, “Don’t eat the brownies.” 

28.  After my father died, my mother’s friend Linda Acconcia tried to fix her up.  And then Mary Stacy tried to fix her up.  And then Cindy Harding tried to fix her up.  Finally, Linda said, “Cathy, you’re never going to meet a man if you wait for him to show up on your front porch.

29.  When I was 8, she met Paul.  He stumbled over from the Village Inn.  Drunk.  He sat on the back porch with my Grand Aunt Mary Davis.  She wasn’t very hospitable.  A week later, he called my mother and asked her out on a date.  They were together until the day she died.  My mother wrote in her journal that Linda just didn’t know what porch to look on. 

30.  A year after the car accident, she used her settlement money to open The Olde Garage Crafts and Gifts.  She opened up the shop in an old garage that my grandfather bought off of a guy named Mark Mamula.  Mark Mamula bought it off of Paul’s father, Big Turk, who ran a mechanic shop there.

31.  My mother’s best friend was Rebecca Pilati.  When they were young, she would go out by the road and yell across the road, “Rebeeeeeeeeeeeeca, Rebeeeeeeeeeeeeecaaaaa” until Rebecca answered.  Children didn’t use the telephone back then.    

32.  She broke a tooth on a Panera salad once, and after she got home, she tried on my grandmother’s false tooth to see if it would fit.

33.  We ate at Pangea, a fancy fusion restaurant in Pittsburgh, for her birthday when she turned 52.  She ordered something with a fruit compote, and on the drive home, her lips started to swell up.  And then her face.  By the time we got home, she couldn’t talk right because her tongue was swollen.  But she said it was worth it. 

34.  After she recuperated from the car accident, she was told she would never wear another high-heeled shoe.  She had a bonfire.  If she couldn’t wear them, nobody would wear them. 

35.  My mother’s favorite websites were Cake Wrecks, Awkward Family Photos, The Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks, Regretsy, and Black and WTF. 

36.  One of our favorite pastimes was reading to each other.  I can’t imagine a lovelier way to spend an evening than listening to my mother read David Sedaris out loud to me. 

37.  Her favorite food was Lasagna.  But she never ate lasagna at a party because at parties people try to be sneaky and put cottage cheese in it.

38.  When I was twelve years old, and it was time for “the talk,” my mother and grandmother gave me a series of books called “The Life Cycle Library.” 

39.  When she was dying, her friend Annie, who suffers from multiple personality disorder, played the Viola for her in her hospital room.  Nobody complained. 

40.  When she was in 2^nd grade, she and Rebecca took the shortcut home from school behind the funeral home.  They found a bunch of flowers and ribbons in the trash, and so they put them around themselves as if they were beauty pageant sashes, and they sashayed home.  My mother was never allowed to walk home from school again. 

41.  When my mother was sick, her friend Michelle Thompson gave her a porcelain lamp shaped like an angel.  The lamp had the oddest pattern of blinking on and off.  After my mother died, the lamp wouldn’t blink anymore.  I told Michelle about it, and she checked with the florist.  The lamp was never supposed to blink at all. 

42.  My mother was fascinated with how people talk about violence on television influencing children “nowadays.”  She said that when she was young, when the sirens went off, everyone piled in the car to go see the actual bloody, gorey accidents.  The more gruesome the better, she told me. 

43.  There were two philosophies in the house when my mother was growing up.  My grandmother wanted to get rid of everything, and my grandfather wanted to keep it.  My mother has been gone since 2011, and I’m still finding boxes of things I never knew existed. 

44.  My mother was always keeping something “for good.”  She died before “good” ever got here.

45.  Any time I ever asked her for anything, she said, “You can have it when I die,” and now I don’t care about any of it. 

46.  One Christmas when I was in middle school, my mother told Paul that we were getting him something special.  He believed with all of his heart that it was going to be an air compressor.  When the box was opened on Christmas day, it turned out that she had bought a camcorder.  One of those big, huge ones that sits up on the shoulder.  She videotaped every moment of our lives after that.  I watched those home movies for three days straight after she died. 

47.  Paul was always buying and restoring old cars.  The best family car we ever had was the one my mom lost in the head-on collision.  It was a 1986 Chevy Caprice Classic, and it was metallic cherry red with leather seats that made the backs of my legs burn in the sun. 

48.  The first time my mother told the story about going to Florida in Betty Bateman’s Catalina, Paul just about spit out his false teeth.  He said, “My father gave that Catalina to Betty.  I been taking care of you your whole life.” 

49.  My mother never met my husband, but she used to talk to him on Skype.  One day, he told her, “Aunt Cathy, you have a treasure, not a daughter.”  And she said, “Oh, I know.  Cindy’s a real treat.”   And I know the sarcasm was lost on him, but when we hung up the Skype call that day, she giggled and said, “I love how he talks to you.  I can’t wait to meet him.” 

50.  My mother always called me “Sissy.”  The last message she ever left on our answering machine at home said, “I miss you, Sissy.”  I still listen to it when I want to hear her voice.

hEY

I am still alive.

I promise.

Crazy dream

My nephew keeps drawing this.

I don't know what it is. But it has several transformations. Sometimes the mouth is on sideways, and sometimes there is nothing written on its forehead. And most of the time it doesn't have a friend. It never has the same amount of legs.

Lately, he's been having what he refers to as a "crazy dre-eem" in which robots come to our living room and steal all of his toys and his Grammy, who ends up melted in the garage.

Crazy dream indeed.

School Yells

I found this in a box of stuff I got from my neighbor's auction. The Amsterdam High School mascot was apparently a Dutchman. And the colors were black and red.

If you click on the image, you can see it larger, so I'm not going to retype the entire thing, but some of my favorites are below, for various reasons.

Suzy Q and truckin' on down

Come on Amsterdam

Go to town

I always wondered about "go to town" (on the sheet, it says "got to town," but the "t" is erased. Sort of). What does "go to town" actually mean? I know it's always got some kind of either violent or sexual connotation when the old timers say it, but I always wonder where it came from. As in WHY it has that connotation. My grandfather used to say it. He would say it about people eating fast, someone getting blown up / defeated / murdered violently in a movie. I really still don't get it but I'll pretend.

Big chief, Little Chief,

Papoose Squaw

Amsterdam High School

Rah ! Rah ! Rah !

What does this have to do with Dutchmen exactly?

Signal Shift,

1-2-3-4-5

Come on you Dutchmen

Skin em' alive

Do Dutchmen skin people alive?

I'm assuming (and this is Amsterdam, so that could be my problem) that since the town is called Amsterdam, the obvious conclusion would be that the "Dutchman" as a mascot comes from having the town named after the city in the Netherlands, but as the Dutch cut diamonds and grow tulips and stuff, stereotypically anyway, which is where we get mascots, it doesn't make sense.

I googled "dutch papoose" and the only thing that came up that could possibly connect the two was a dutch tanker that was later renamed the Papoose, which had a habit of wrecking into things.

Unless it has something to do with the Dutch colonization of what's now NYC, and the American Indians that lived on Manhattan Island, and somebody back in the day morphed them.

I wouldn't put it past them.

Illustration Friday: Caution

This is Adelaide. She likes Pea Soup.

She always burns her tongue.

{the shop is painted. pictures coming soon}

My Hand-bound books

This is probably my favorite of all the coptic-stitched books I've made. It's really rather large, and I know it's going to make somebody an excellent sewing journal. There are 100 pages in the book (20 in each signature) and the signatures are wrapped in colored paper to divide the book into sections. This and eight others are left in my Etsy shop.

Illustration Friday: Wrapped

2nd week in a row for me completing and posting my Illustration Friday. It makes me feel good to just make something for fun. I don't know why I immediately thought of swings being wrapped up too high to swing them when "wrapped" should have inspired me to illustrate presents or candy, but this is what happened.

2010 is 1971 and that makes me happy.

Disclaimer: This post is very cheesy, and though I usually don't do cheese, sometimes it is necessary to indulge the urge to be happy and spread sunshine.

Friends are good. Especially the kind of friend who can go to a yard sale and see something and think, "Oh wow. Cindy would love that." And that's the kind of friend Shaun is.

Yesterday, he went to a yard sale and found me a calendar from 1971. It's a cloth calendar with three cats on it, and it is absolutely ridiculous how me it is. It immediately went up on the wall in my newly-painted, almost-finished, almost organized office space/studio space/press room.

Though it's fabulous all on its own, and though it makes my inner Cindy want to do cartwheels that the outer Cindy cannot hope to do, the coolest thing about it is that 1971 is the same as 2010. What luck!

Oh, happy day.

Shaun also hung up my Cindy Train for me the other night, above the door leading out into the showroom (which is not finished yet, but should be soon.)

Get on board!

We were cleaning out the games closet one night (still not done) when we found this train. I initially thought that it would have been Bobby's, and never expected it to have any name on it, but when we pulled it from its dusty bag (my grandmother loved to pack everything in plastic bags), not only was it in perfect condition, but it was also very obviously mine.

I now have a new theory about the place from where my love for all things illustrated in the style of Alexander Girard and his contemporaries comes. It's from being a baby with this train on my wall. I imagine that I used to love looking at it. Though I don't know why the baby has to chase the train with all the big kids hanging out the window. Or why the baby has no pants on, but is carrying a suitcase.

Illustration Friday: Impatience

I always start doing the Illustration Friday, and I never finish it. So I'm posting this today. Whee! The topic was Impatience. I was in a cute mood.

Construction Junction, What's Your Function?

Yesterday, Shaun and I went to Lawrenceville to check out some shops. I've been dying to get inside Fresh Heirlooms and Divertido, especially, and I figured there would be some others once we arrived there. However, much to my dismay, the entire street seems to be closed on Mondays. Well, except for the coffee houses and Dozen. Even Piccolo Forno, the restaurant about which I was amateur-foodie-lusting, was closed.

So we went on up Penn Ave. to Bloomfield, and struck gold. I have never seen Construction Junction so packed full of good stuff. I also did not know - because I haven't been there in a long while - that they started a discount price program, with a percentage off of merchandise based on how long it's been sitting there.

The only problem is how to get things home. I don't have money to buy a bunch of stuff right now anyway, but I can dream. Even if I had the money to buy all the stuff I wanted yesterday, I couldn't get it home. Well, without a big truck.

Fish that got away included: old square bar tables with colorful tops, probably from some restaurant for $30 each; a weird, old metal cupboard with no top on it for $2.50; 2 old library tables, about 10 feet long by 3.5 feet wide, which were not priced; several old doors that I fell in love with among the hundreds that were almost as cool along the back wall for $25 and up (one was almost $200); a huge display platform on wheels from a luggage store for $25; and these huge cornerstone pylons with flower design on them for $125 each.

I did get these treasures, though:

4 gallons of paint to repaint the front room of our shop for $5/gallon.

1 old dresser, appropriately and charmingly aged and weathered, and missing only one handle, for $15.

& 1 Vintage metal World Book Encyclopedia book cart, $5.

All of this had to fit in my car, in which my mother left four lawn chairs. But Shaun squeezed everything in somehow. Then, when we were on our way back down Penn toward the heart of the city again, we noticed several big heaps of stuff. Anyone who knows Shaun knows that he would, under normal circumstances, be adverse to picking through trash on Penn Avenue in the middle of the day, but he came up with a plan. I dropped him off at the corner, and he ran up the street and got ready. Then I waited for a lull in the traffic, and drove slowly down the street with my emergency flashers on, and pulled over. He shoved the following things in the backseat between the lawn chairs, the dresser, the book cart, and all the normal things (books and stuff) that I carry around with me:

This old, green metal cabinet drawer, out of which I have already planned a really cool shadow box.

2 wood drawers. One of them is definitely cooler (older vintage, completely solid wood) than the other (modern and made of pressed wood, probably mid-to-late 20th century).

The metal drawer had a label on it that said "programs" and I think that the drawers in general may have come from some kind of teacher's home office. Maybe they retired. It doesn't account for all the sawdust that was in them, but it's a thought.

We went to Legends of the North Shore for dinner, which was incredible. We both had wedding soup, which was probably the best wedding soup I've ever eaten. We also had an appetizer of Mozzerella, which was cut and breaded in-house. I have never eated a fried Mozzerella that good, and the difference has to be that it wasn't frozen in a box for a month before eating. Shaun had a lemon-chicken Rotolo with veggies and mashed potatoes, and I (unusually, but because I wanted the Mama's Gravy) had chicken parmesano, but with the chicken grilled instead of breaded and pan-fried. To my surprise - and delight - the pasta was homemade, too. I will definitely go back there again and again.

I didn't get to do anything in Lawrenceville but window shop, and I didn't get to go to Piccolo Forno, but the day was a good one. August is off to a fabulous start.

Hook, Line, and Sinker

Another nephew story. I really should be better about writing down how the little tyke stacks things up and makes trains out of household products and is picky about bathtub toys and how much he loves dumping water from one container into another before he gets too old to enjoy being uninhibited and I forget how fantastic it is to enjoy his childhood.

Last weekend, my mother went to get a shower, and Drake came into the living room and said, "An Ninny, me watch ponjbob?"

I said, "No, you know I do not allow you to watch that when I'm here." (Everyone else allows him to watch it, but I really just don't think it's appropriate for a three year old, and I refuse to participate in his watching it).

To my surprise, he climbed into my lap and said, "OK me talk you. You talk me, Ninny."

I said, "OK. What would you like to talk about?"

He Hrrrmed a little, and then he answered, "Cor-a-ine" (He's not big on Ls).

"What do you like about Coraline?"

"Ye-ow raincoat"

"What else?"

"Her bwoo hair, make pancakes." (On the Coraline Wii game, there is a pancake-making mini-game).

Then he added, "And Wybie." (from the movie, not the book).

"What about Wybie?"

"Him bwack eyes and bwack hands him bwack coat bwack cat bu-unns eyes." As he said this, he made circles with his thumbs and first fingers and put them up to his eyes. Then he began to swish his arms around, and said, "Umm, an Misser Bixsy have him wats go shwoo shwoo on a wines."

This explanation of Mr. Bobinsky's mouse circus made me laugh, and Drake laughed, too. Then I asked, "who else lives in Coraline's house?"

Drake said, "Euum, the ladies." Then he swished his hands around in the motion he has to make with the Wii remote in order to play the mini-game in the Ladies' rooms.

Then he smiled at me and said, "Ninny?"

And I said, "What, honey?"

He gave me a hug and said, "All buttered up now? Me watch ponjbob?"

We (Don't Really) Want Your Business: Taking Customers for Granted in the Sad, Bad Economy

People love to argue, but there is one thing about which it seems that everyone is in agreement: The economy is in very bad shape. In light of that, businesses and services should be trying to build clientele, reinforce customer relationships, and gain customer loyalties. In times of economic hardship, our best bet for financial survival is a revival of the local economy. Money earned and spent within the smaller community means a better life for all who participate in the economy of that community.

Recently, I went to take the Praxis I exam in Pittsburgh, and on my drive into the city, I noticed a sign on the electronic billboard of a hotel in Greentree. It said, "We Want Your Business!" It sounds nice, but do signs like this mean anything? I think not. In this world full of cliché and trite buzz terms, advertising like this seems hollow and impersonal.

In writing workshops, people often remark, "Show me, don't tell me." Recently, the way that businesses have been "showing me" their appreciation for my patronage is something less than desirable.

The most offensive of the lot is the Amsterdam Post Office. I stopped going in last year, but my mother still sends things out for me through that branch. When the people who work there are not on a personal phone call, they will help customers to a certain extent, but only when they deem appropriate. They refuse to give itemized receipts. They refuse to help customers when it is near closing. Sometimes they close ten minutes early for no reason. However, it's a small town. People say it's best to not make waves.

I went to McDonald's a few weeks ago with a friend. I ordered the number 10, a chicken mcnuggets meal with fries and a drink. They have a self-serve soft drink bar. The cashier gave me the wrong size cup. When I reminded her that I had ordered a large, she waited until I walked away and said to her co-worker, "Does she really need the large?" When my friend told me that she made that remark, I went to the counter to complain to the manager, who assured me that there was no possible way that the employee would have said that, and that my friend must have been mistaken. He is a very articulate person, and very trustworthy, but I went to sit down and eat my then-cold lunch. Within ten minutes, the original cashier came to our table and said, "I have to come apologize, but I didn't say that." When my friend retorted, and said that she most certainly had said it, she said, "Well, I did what I had to do and apologized, so if you don't want to accept my apology then whatever." Instead of leaving, she kept stammering around, telling me that she was pregnant. I spoke to two other managers, one of which ended up being the woman to whom the remark had originally been made, but the end result was that the manager sent the only overweight employee out to tell me that the pregnant girl was not "against fat people" and that she knew this because she was fat herself. That's no McExcuse for the behavior.

These two experiences are not isolated instances. I have witnessed employees at several local businesses walk into the restroom and sign their initials on the restroom cleanliness check list without even glancing into the filthy stalls. I have seen checkout lanes closed in the faces of the slow-walking elderly at Wal-Mart. At G & J's One Stop, I have had cashiers treat me with such rude and obnoxious behavior that I haven't stepped foot in their store since November. Last week, I went to Arby's, and ordered a Roastburger with no tomatoes. When the sandwich came out, it had cheese sauce instead of the cheese slice that comes on it. When I complained about it, they made me another sandwich, but put tomatoes on it. The third time the sandwich came out wrong, I asked for my money back. The manager did not apologize. She said, "You know, people make mistakes."

Yes, people make mistakes. They make them, and they pretend that it is the customer's fault. They make mistakes and pretend like they did not. They make mistakes; they refuse to apologize. Their employers refuse to apologize. They are not sorry. They are indignant. They are doing the customer a favor by keeping their doors open. They are providing a service, so they can be obnoxious if they like.

There are a few hold-outs, however. Merrin's Market in Amsterdam is one of them. Family owned and operated, Father Doug and daughter Natalie will order in anything, try to get anything a loyal customer says they're willing to buy. I told Natalie I like homemade pizza making ingredients. They sell out fast, but they get them in. They carry more flavors of the Starbucks Double-Shot canned coffee than anywhere else in Jefferson County, and have more zero-calorie beverage choices than any other store in the area. They sell good, homemade hot foods like cabbage casserole and beef & noodles, and their meatball subs are the best I've had in Ohio. But that's not why I spend my money there.

What really makes the difference is that when their employees make a mistake, they take care of it. They apologize. It might seem unusual, but they show their customers kindness – a kindness that should not be the exception, but the rule.

So for the McDonald's and Arby's, the post office and Wal-Mart, for the G&J's and the myriad other businesses who take customers like me for granted, I say: Talk is cheap; actions speak louder than words; show me, don't tell me.

When you deserve my business, I'll be back.

Cavemen, human nature, and man versus machine

I'm currently taking a graduate course on human development.  Nevermind that I've already taken the same exact course before in undergrad, and nevermind that there isn't any new information between the two.  It's a different school, a different teacher, but the same hoops for jumping through have presented themselves.  

In my world, and through its eternal glass-half-full lens, I see that this is all just means to an uneventful end, in which I teach Secondary English for a few years, pay off some student loans, get my masters and Ph.D in something more meaningful, and move on.  

My professor is an interesting guy, though.  He's got some fun interpretations of the world.  One of these is this:  That human nature hasn't changed.  Everybody always talks about how children are different "these days" and how "in [their] day, school was like" this or that.  The thing that people are missing is that the slate, the chalkboard, the stack of paper, the composition book, the Five Star Notebook, and the word processor are one in the same.  The students have not changed any.  The way in which they see the world - in which we see the world - is what's different.  People pick on the methods of moving the knowledge from one person to the next - they don't see what's important - that the knowledge keeps moving.  Trying to force old ways on new dogs doesn't work.  

So my professor said, "People always speculate why people are the way they are.  But it's been that way since humanity's beginning.  You had Trog running around saying, "Why is Ugg such a jackass?" 

And I'm sitting here right now wondering the same thing.  Why are all these people with whom I go to class such class-A Idiots?  Why do people think I'm such a weird bitch?  

The other day, one of my classmates said that she has a "class full of morons." I don't think women like that need to be educating anyone, or passing those kinds of opinions on to students.  Kids pick up on that stuff.  When they think that adults around them think little of them, they in turn think little of themselves.  

And these adults are the same people who think that machines make everything.  They think human hands don't make the blue jeans they are wearing, that somewhere, some Chinese man throws a bolt of fabric, a spool of thread, a pair of scissors, a zipper, and a bag of buttons into a big black hole, and somewhere, in another part of the factory, a Pakistani woman drives by on the Wonkatania and blue jeans magically fall out of a chute into the truckbed behind her.  As if by Magic.

That is not real.  

That is the Easy Bake Oven version of the world.  

What's even more horribly offensive is that the people who manage the places in which things are actually made don't do anything about this modern misconception.  They let people think these things.  The public's ignorance is their bliss.  Why?  It allows people to allow other people to suffer all sorts of bad working conditions so that they can buy their pants for $20 and throw them away not when they wear out, but when they grow tired of them.  They don't feel bad about using resources because they think that everything is produced by magic machines.  

When I look at photographs of people from long ago, there is something endearing about a coat that's been patched where it's worn.  It reminds me of my grandfather.  He had this blue quilted winter jacket that he wore out in the wood shop, and it had been mended in a bunch of places.  Some of these stitches were done with white thread, and some had been done to match.  But they were there.  My grandmother fixed it.  When a pocket got a hole in it, she sewed it back shut.  

People don't do that anymore.  They think the machines will make more.  Why not just throw it away.  The machines spit new ones out all the time.  The machines will take care of us.  

I was at an open house at Christmas time.  There was a girl selling one of those home party plans like Home Interior, but with a more country bumpkin slant to it.  She had these embroidered pictures inside a cheap frame that cost $40.  I was trying to sell paintings and artwork, and this girl had these dumb pictures, and I was kind of offended because A) they were so expensive, and so carelessly put together; and B) the person who embroidered it probably didn't get a dollar for doing it.  She's probably living in Taiwan somewhere, doing piecework.  I said something about it, and this girl said, "That's made by a machine." 

When I tried to explain to her that machines can't tie knots like what were on this piece of fabric, that machines can't hand-emboider, she said, "Yes they can - they sell embroidery machines at Jo-Anne's." She thought I was stupid.  She thought I was a moron because I didn't know that machines make everything.  This girl couldn't tell the difference between something machine-done and something hand-done.  Not that it's important.  They think that handmade things aren't as good as machine-made ones.  They would rather buy something screen printed than something handpainted.  Is that why real art is such an elitist thing?  

That the majority of people would rather just sit around and think that machines do everything, that we should be thankful to them for what they do, and stop trying to make good things with our hands, stop trying to learn, stop trying to find the truth, stop trying to find new truths, make new discoveries?  

It makes me feel incredibly helpless to think that people don't care that we're proving Plato right.  He said that Gold is precious, so you make jewelry, not swords.  You don't make crowns out of steel, either.  And in this steel belt, where the collars are blue, education is much like gold.  Plato thought that people were in society, in the places where they should be, and that you might as well not waste education on people who aren't going to amount to much of anything, anyway.

I think back now, on that open house, where all these people were wearing the jewelry that they'd bought from the jewelry party plan girl, and it seems so surreal:  

The girl in the blue Lane Bryant sweat suit wearing the $50 Coral elasticized bracelet. 

Made by machines.  

Her matching $70 Coral necklace.  

Made by machines.  

The old lady with the sparkly rhinestone earrings/bracelet/necklace set. 

Made by machines. 

All these women, in their down-homey clothing, wearing overpriced costume jewelry, fauning around over home party plan decor.

Made by machines.  

Demanding not that the quality of the things they buy be anything other than exactly the same as the other people around them, gobbling up the plastic Christmas clock, the screen-printed tin sign that says "Friends Welcome / Relatives by Appointment" (and in Comic Sans, of all fonts!), the hand-embroidered muslin square in the cheap, glued-together frame.  

Made by machines.  

Demanding not that their children receive a good public education, but that their kids "get good grades," as if one was any indication of another.  I heard a woman say recently, upon moving her two children from one school to another, that the new school was a better school because her daughter, who had previously been "a C student" was now "an A student" - never thinking that the quality of the teacher may have gone down, that the standards were lower.  No.  Obviously, what's happened is that her daughter magically became more intelligent because of her mother's wise decision to enroll her in a different school.  Yes, that must be it.  As if by Magic.  

Demanding that their jewelry, their lives, and their children's educations be made entirely of fool's gold - and wallowing in that paradise. 

A Last Summer Anecdote

One night, when it was hot and humid (it's Ohio), my brother kept us up until past 4am. 

When my mother went to sleep, she dreamt 

of my father and his father, of that other very stressful

time in her life. 

The next day, a man came to the shop, 

smiling.  He said he was on his way 

to West Virginia.  

I did not know him,

my father's father.  

I am beginning to have faith in my mother's ability 

to conjure people. 

I think she is too.

The Book of Good Cheer

I found this book.  It's called "The Book of Good Cheer." The subtitle is "A Little Bundle of Cheery Thoughts" and it's edited by some guy named Edwin Osgood Grover.  It's small and the paper is cheerfully yellowed, and there's a cheery little basket of orange flowers illustrated on the title page.  The thing is, it's a "wealth of wisdon and good cheer, gathered from all countries and all times" that was published by the Algonquin Publishing Company in 1913.  

And I've read through it several times, and I feel no cheerier, no better.  

One of the quips included says that what we see depends mainly on what we look for.  

Though I'm often tired of feeling like I see the worst in people, I find that when I try to see the good in them, I feel lousier about it still.  

For example, a woman in my Human Development class said of her students last week, that she always gets "a class of morons." I yelled at her.  I yelled at her in class, and I said that I found it horrifying that she was a teacher and had that shitty of an attitude toward the young people who depend on her to teach them.  She had an equally horrible opinion of me, but I found solace in that.  I felt good knowing that, in her ignorance, she didn't understand what I was talking about because it was that ignorance that separated us, that gave my anger validity.  She couldn't see how self-perpetuating it was for a stupid person to treat an entire group of children as if they were, in turn, stupid themselves.  That's what's wrong with public education.  It's why I know that I will never be a career teacher, why I know that I could never live with having people like her as colleagues.  I can't think of a worse place to be than a teacher's lounge, and yet I'm getting a teaching license so that I can pay some student loans and get my finances straight.  I know I'll be a good teacher, but I know that I won't last long at it.  A few years, maybe, at most, and then I'll be frustrated enough to direct my aspirations elsewhere, where they should be directed presently, except that this in-between time is necessary.  It's necessary so that I can get there.  The getting there is important.  

I often feel like a monster in a girl suit.  Embracing that inner-monster, I'll put the book of good cheer on the shelf, and I'll turn to something one of my best and favorite friends said earlier this evening.

"Sometimes, it's kind of fun to be a nasty grown-up." 

Yes.  It is.  

Tomorrow: Chapbooks, Plain Spoke, Clearing my desk for the new year. Tonight: Sleep.

Bitchy Power

So my nephew, who is three, comes up to me and says, "Ninny? Ninny Bitchy Power, Bitchy Power. It's in his whisper-whine voice, and I have no idea, obviously, what Bitchy Power is.

Lots of things cross my mind, but none of them make sense. Is it some kind of new cartoon? Some kind of weird superhero power? Austin Powers' niece? I have no idea.

At times it sounds as if he's saying powDer, but no, that's not right. I ask him to repeat it.

Me: What did you say?
Drake: you say
Me: No, what did you ask me?
Drake: Ninny.
Me: Yes?
Drake: Bitchy Power. Peeeeeeeez? (This one I know. It's supposed to be "Please."
Me: What is Bitchy Power?
Drake: Ninny shing ut?

OK Now I know it's supposed to be a song. However, I'm still laughing about his rendition of Lip Gloss from a couple weeks ago, and I have no idea what Bitchy Power could be.

Me: No, you sing it.
Drake: Bitchy bitchy Powder up waa-erpot.....

Itsy Bitsy Spider. I had no idea. I guess I'd better start keeping a list of songs kids sing and when I can't figure out what he's talking about, I could try to match it up or something.

Otherwise, I'm wondering why my nephew's all running around like "Power to the Bitches!" or something.

Not good.

Thrive

I just joined Thrive (justthrive.com) because they promised me they would help me watch my money grow.

After adding my bank account and other info, this is what they told me:

1. I can afford a home worth 72,280.

2. I can retire with $0/year.

3. I can survive without an income for 0 days.

My financial health is 2.8 out of 10.

Which of those three things does not make sense? I have no idea how I could afford a house payment right now, even on a 70-thousand-dollar house. Argh.

For everything I scratch off my to-do list, a bunch of other things jump on it.

My Favorite Junk House

My friend George is opening a business. It's going to be called the Salt Kettle Gallery. He's going to have a florist/gift shop/art gallery. We've been planning for months how we're going to make this paper mache kettle because nobody actually has a kettle anymore. This becomes more important later in the story.

There used to be these people who lived in this ancient old red house on a really curvy turn on the way to Carrollton.

Once, I saw an old steamer trunk sitting out by their garbage, and I stopped and asked the woman who lived there if I could buy it from her. She gave it to me for free. My friend Shaun fixed it up a little, and then I used it for a display at my shows. Eventually, I sold it to my cousin for $40, who thought that was a steal, and she got it refurbished. It's probably worth several hundred at this point.

Another time I stopped there, I got a pile of old dishes. I found my favorite spoon there (some old silver thing with a star on the handle) and I've picked up odds and ends now and again that have proved useful, valuable, or just plain odd and interesting.

A few months ago, they moved. They had a sale, and my mom went to it and got an antique metal bed and some old, old lighting fixtures and crates.

I was sad, because My Favorite Junk House wasn't going to be a Junk House anymore.

However. Some new people moved in the house.

I stopped in Bonnie's, the antique store in town that's only open from Easter to Halloween, and I asked her to look for old jars for me so I can make lights from them. She said she would.

She also said that she knew some people who were trying to sell her some jars like the ones that I wanted. I told her to send them on up to the shop.

So I was sitting here the other day, and these people pulled in the parking lot in a mini-van stuffed full of stuff. The woman came in and she said she was looking for Cindy. She said that Bonnie had sent her up here, and that she'd talked to my mom the day before, and they were here to pick up the carpet. (There was this big roll of carpeting on our porch that we were going to use in the candle room at one time and then decided against it, so it was waiting on someone with a truck to take it to the dump). I was all for someone taking the carpet, so I walked outside to where her daughter was waiting. The girl was around eleven years old and she asked me if I was in the band. I said, "what band?"

She said, "The band. I play the clarinet."

I said, "I can play the clarinet, but no, I'm not in the band."

She looked at me funny, like she was disappointed, and started picking her cold sore.

Her mother was still talking about the carpet. Then she said she had glass jars for me to look at. They were in boxes in the mini-van. I chose some, and she said she had to take them home and clean them before I could have them, and also decide on a price.

At this point her boyfriend/husband (he looks much younger than she does, and at first I wasn't certain that he wasn't her son) is finished packing the huge roll of carpet into the back of the van. He had a big rigmarole getting it in there, and I was surprised the hatch closed. But it did. Small miracles.

Then he says to me, "Do you think you might be interested in a big black pot like you stir a witch's brew in?"

I said, "a what?"

And he said, "A pot, like yea high, with three legs, about three inches long apiece on the bottom. Like a witch would have. Like a cauldron."

I tried to swallow my excitement at the thought of not having to paper mache one. I didn't say, "Oh my gosh a kettle blah blah blah."

I did say, "Maybe. I have a friend who might be interested in it. I'll have to get back with you."

They just stopped again today, about 15 minutes ago, and we settled on $1 each for the small jars and $2 to $3 for the large ones.

Then he started with the cauldron. I think he thinks that it's high-dollar cauldron time because it's Halloween. I've talked to George about it since the first mention of it, and he said he wanted it definitely. So when Jessy (that's the guy's name with the "Cauldron") said, "Do you think it's worth $30? It's really nice and all" I just about jumped out of my shoes with joy.

They were talking about "thanks for the carpet" and "we really needed it for our new house" so I asked the question.

"Where is your new house?"

And they said, "It's a big old red house up halfway to Harlem Springs on the way to Carrollton. It's on the left. You can't miss it."

My Favorite Junk House is now doing DELIVERIES!