Reprise: Dumb Ads

My old bugbear is back. I just can't shake these things. While they may stick in my mind, they're completely ineffective as marketing tools. But perhaps I'm just an unusually discriminating, tough market.

First, I should again freely admit that I watch too much TV. But I do like it, especially since the advent of DVRs.

Second, there's a new smackdown child smarting off to parents in an ad. This is where our kids get a lot of ideas (ideas that don't fly in our house any more than pigs with wings). SMACK! DOWN! Last time it was the child who would consume nothing but liquid nutritional supplement. This time the winner is the fish-stick girl. She's no older than three, but she harangues her mother about feeding her "minced fish." She rolls her eyes and snottily corrects her mother (help me?) by saying something like, "Do you seriously think I'm gonna eat minced fish?" Or, "Did you ever try eating minced fish?" Mom looks crestfallen and afraid, and immediately produces something else. Instantly. The child rules her world. Are you effing kidding me? Then the child says something like, "That's more like it. Crunchy and tasty." As usual, I won't name the brand because I don't want to give it any credit in my column inches. But, mind, this is a three-year-old child and the items on her plate are no bigger than her little finger and almost entirely breading. To parody another, ancient ad, "Where's the fish?" Reminds me of the joke, "Mommy, mommy, I don't like little brother!" And Mommy says, "Shut up, Susie, and eat what's on your plate!"

Third, the "royal" fast-food joint has gone way too far with the Halloween mask character. They are paying an actor under there, but they have to add a molded plastic face? And they have a huge adult in costume riding around on a pocket bike? What's the intended audience? I am waiting for this chain to go bankrupt from bad advertising. The day can't be far away.

Fourth, another repeat offender: Charmin (R). Please, Mr. Whipple, come back to life! I'm not sure if I reported this particular "episode" earlier, but the bears are back from their nasty, water-fouling, urgent potty romp on the beach, and this time the baby bear requires help from parent bear with the toilet paper again. This time it's not about using too much paper. Oh, no. It's about the lint on the child's rear end. I think the parent chases the child to vacuum the lint (can't exactly remember), butt what I noticed was that lint was ABOVE the child's tail, not below it. That is not a vacuuming problem. And just between us, I don't carry a DustBuster or corded vacuum when I'm in the woods.

On the same subject, there's another--the bear family go driving into the woods. Is that environmentally sound? They stop the car, pile out and, you know, do what bears do in the woods. I just can't stand this campaign.

Fifth, and another SMACK! DOWN! is the screaming guy who does laundry detergent ads. Some random weird guy thinking it's okay for him to enter my family room and yell. Every time he comes on, everyone in the whole house starts screaming. "Mom! Why is this guy screaming?" And I reply, "Kids, I DON'T KNOW WHY THIS GUY IS SCREAMING!" Even so, I will avoid any such product like the plague. I will never, ever try it.

However, on the other side of the coin, there are some current ads I really like.

I love the PBS ad in which a frustrated composer is sitting at his piano, trying to write something, and looks out the window to see birds on wires that form the treble clef. He writes the notes as the birds are configured, and comes up with the PBS theme.

I like the series with the PC guy and the Apple guy.

An ad for a carpet-cleaning company shows a little boy upbraiding his Bassett hound for making a mess on the floor, lecturing him that he's not going to take the blame again.

I think the Windex birds are hilarious, leading the homeowner to smack himself into glass doors. Of course, this would not be funny in the least if it were real, but it's pretty amusing when you think of it as birds conspiring vengeance on humans for having clean windows. I must say that with people, at our house, such a thing would never happen. The windows are WAYYYY too dirty for anyone not to notice a barrier. We don't have any sliding doors, either; and because the house is on a hill, the big windows are almost three stories up--so people are pretty careful near them. Our house is in the woods, and despite the dirty windows, birds regularly kill themselves on windows too often, and it's very disturbing.

Then there's the Cheerios ad with Steve and his wife. This is one of the most honest, real home-life conversations I've ever seen in an ad. Steve stupidly says, "Are you trying to lose weight?" or "Are you watching your weight?" Wife is deeply offended. She stops eating, and says, "No. Why?" He says, "Nothing. It's just that the box says it has xxx calories." She says something like, "Do you think I need to lose weight?" He replies, "No, it's just the box." Finally she asks, "What else does the box say?" He says, dutifully, "The box says, 'Shut up, Steve.'" The wife beams at him.

Finally, I really enjoy the nerdy Jimmy Dean ads with the sun making breakfast, and the sun helping the moon be full (that's the cutest one), and the sun feeding all the planets so that they all become awesome. They're dopey and cute at the same time. Alas, I do not eat sausage, but the breakfasts look good--like your entire day's calories good!

Wrong Impressions

Every once in a while, a situtation arises that makes you mistakenly read a book by its cover. I've had this happen with neighbors and clients. You start off on a seemingly karmic wrong foot, and every subsequent encounter between you only intensifies the wrong impression you have of each other. One time we had neighbors who had different ideas about how socially close people should be with their neighbors. We had a very small party exclusively for people DH had hired into a team at work. They were talking company confidential stuff meant for no ears but each other's. The next day, the neighbor lady called me up, crying, and asking why I hated her and hadn't invited them to the party. Whuuuutttt??? On many occasions our children played together, and their children always made my elder son the bad guy or "the devil" because he wasn't a churchgoer. The final straw was when their idiot huge Golden Retriever pup got off their property and was roaming my backyard. I went out to take him home. He thought it was a rollicking game and dodged me for half an hour. By the time I finally corralled him, he had bitten my butt and torn my pants. I went to their door with my hand on his collar, and I looked pretty dishevelled. The neighbor man looked at me horrified, as if I had STOLEN the dog outright from their yard. It never occurred to him that someone in her household had turned off the invisible fence. He regaled me. What the heck was I, brazen hussy, doing with his champion bloodline (but idiot) dog? I politely suggested that the fence was not turned on. And did this neighbor ever thank me? Or replace my pants?

Well, that was a long preamble.

Anyway, the other day I was going to pick up my older kid at the high school. To get there I had to stop at a particular scary intersection that is renowned for causing accidents just because of its design. I was first in line at the very long light to cross the intersection, and noticed an unkempt elderly man on the corner. My wipers swept away a light drizzle. The man had wild, long white hair, a straggly white beard, and was wearing shorts that were too short, a regular tee shirt, and beat up athletic shoes with no socks. He'd topped the ensemble with a deeply wrinkled black trench coat that only a flasher would love--it looked as if it had been balled up under a bed for six months. Furthermore, he looked quite vague and was gazing around the intersection as if in confusion. He did not seem like a homeless person or bag person--just untidy and somewhat disoriented.

I thought, "Oh, great. This guy is going to start walking across the street in front of my car just the second my light turns green! I just know it!" As I said, the light is very long, so I had plenty of time to ponder and get all worked up about hitting him as he crossed. He kept casting his eyes about. And, finally, he did an extraordinary thing. My light was still red, but apparently he had been calculating the timing of every light in the intersection. When he had figured out that no one had a green, he strolled slowly and confidently across that very wide intersection on the diagonal to get to the other corner. He made it in perfect time before my light turned green. Will wonders never cease.

So I had gotten all worked up about a semi-deranged somewhat bag person who I was certain would walk in front of my moving vehicle, only to find out he knew exactly what he was doing. The very next day when I went to pick up elder kid at school again, I saw him again. Only this time he had cut his hair and beard, wore socks, and had put away the trench coat. He crossed straight rather than on the diagonal. And the only outstanding feature of his appearance was a huge walking stick that was definitely not the kind that's carved and polished, but some tree limb considerably taller than he was that he had found in a yard along his walking route.

Consolation for the Pity Party

Hoo, boy. I guess I went a little overboard in my preceding post about Mother's Day. Things could certainly be a lot worse . . . I just wish they would have a little consideration ONE DAY A YEAR. I truly have not raised them to be inconsiderate slobs.

But right after I finished that post, I remembered this and felt much better after I watched it, because it's so funny.

It's Mr. T honoring mothers in a thoroughly charming rap from way back in the '80's:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFNJLs-Ql0o

Random Mother's Day Musings

I've kind of run out of stupid things the Tyke says (which is quite unusual). So I have nothing to report there, although I'm sure he'll replenish the supply soon. Actually, that's not true; I do have one! Baseball season has gone into "full swing" as it were, and he is quite an accomplished and obsessed player. He's in a major league that has three ages and he is one of the "elders" this year so the coaches depend on him as a mentor. I'm not proud of the Tyke's smugness about his "elder" status. One of the newest, littlest kids on his team said this weekend, "I played center bench for four innings!" And the snarky Tyke shot back, "Oh, did you play LEFT OUT, too?" That was mean, and certainly does not belong in "a gentlemen's game."

In other news, I had one of my worst Mother's Days ever. Boo-hoo, I am having a little pity party! I myself do not have a mother anymore, so I could not fob off my disappointment on another generation. First off, the boys forgot until at least half way through the day (Tyke) and the big one demonstrated complete oblivion. In fact, the big one decided (without consulting anyone else in the household) that he was going to invite a bunch of boys over to have a band practice. This is a jazz kid. He majors in jazz piano and vocal at his arts academy. He decided to have a ROCK band practice. On my Mother's Day, which I had cleverly envisioned and deeply wished to be a day of specifically designated peace and quiet during which I would blissfully READ while receiving occasional hugs and whisperings of adoration from my offspring. Hah. Dream on.

On the other hand, my DH made me a lovely breakfast. Which is not his job because I am not his mother, but he did it anyway. That was the bright spot . . . it then went downhill . . . First of all, whoever decided that Mother's Day should be Summer Travel Baseball Tryout Day? DUH. Even the madrigal choir director figured out practice should be canceled.

So in troop the boys, who I must admit are a clean, courteous and personable (not to mention genuinely talented) lot. But LOUD. And since they were my guests I was obligated to provide snacks and beverages, which flies directly in the face of my Mother's Day credo: Do Not Lift A Finger for Anyone Else Today. This also one reason I hate previously unannounced invitees. I have no way of being prepared to be a courteous hostess. On a Sunday, I am likely to have few things left in Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, and they are certain not to go together. Such as, say, canned mushrooms and evaporated milk, or niblets corn, chicken broth and popsicles. You would think the popsicles would be okay, but not when one kid is madly drumming, another is pounding piano, and two others are banging away at guitar. The hands are heavily engaged.

Luckily I found a can of frozen lemonade and loads of popcorn.

This is one of my perennial gripes about 1) Mother's Day and 2) my birthday. They will not do anything to help. They will pile up dishes and mess and dirty laundry, etc. but not wash or clean up, because their theory (while misguided and disrespectful, not completely illogical) is that the "special" day only lasts ONE DAY and eventually, if they wait it out, it will not be Mother's Day or my birthday anymore, and then they will be off the hook and I will have to go back to doing it myself just as on regular days. BOO!!!

So the kitchen looks pretty much as though a bomb hit. The empty popcorn bowls and dutch oven full of little burnt kernels and water jug and lemonade pitcher are waiting for me right now, along with the breakfast, lunch and dinner dishes. I am disenchanted and unmotivated and mad and not a little vengeful.

Then what happened? The Tyke and dad escaped all the noise of the band (baseball tryouts), and got back after 5:00. The elder kid SAID his band would only go two hours, but they stayed until 6:00. Then the elder kid suddenly (and I thought suspiciously) asked if he could go to the reservoir. We live in a wooded area where there's a series of reservoirs that are treated as parks and recreation areas. I couldn't really understand this so I told him not to go inside the reservoir, just take the walk up and back. I associate the reservoir with places where people get into trouble or go for walks with friends to scheme or tell secrets. On the other hand, families go there for running, picnics, dog walking. You don't hear about crimes there--but I just don't like it.

This was the Insane Clown Mom Posse coming out of me. I am completely traumatized by the reservoir unless we all go there as a family and are roped or chained together. It has been many years, but in 6th grade big kid "left for school," but actually ran away to the reservoir on a rainy day (scheduled to snow) without adequate outerwear. He stole stuff out of his father's mountaineering pack, including a large knife. He took a book about Daniel Boone, thinking it would tell him everything he needed to know about living in the rough. He took a large amount of cash he had saved from pet-sitting. (Idiot.) He had bought into a local urban legend that a "hermit" lived on the island in the reservoir and he was going to go live a while with the hermit and kill deer to survive. This was, not coincidentally perhaps, the year he was in the musical "Tom Sawyer."

Since then I have refused to let him go to the reservoir alone. He wasn't the frantic mom who had to call school and 911 announcing a missing child, invite a policeman into the house and give a photo and other descriptions, and sit and worry sick. Three hours later the policeman drove him back to the house, with little to say to him other than, "Did you know I'm a certified diver with [local water district]? Why do you think our town needs certified divers at the reservoir?" And kid thought for a split second and said, "Uh . . . because people might get killed or drown at the reservoir?"

And that was that. To his surprise, when he came to the door I was not weeping with gratitude. I was MAD. I wasted no time, gave him a sandwich and took him straight back to school. I said, "You might not have started out your day at school, but there's no reason you can't finish it there." His teaching team thought my "tough love" strategy was brilliant. He didn't try it again.

But that spectre of horror has never left me. So last night I got very upset after he was gone about half an hour, then went hysterical. The Insane Clown came out and begged DH to please, please, drive up and search. The very very minute the car was in front of the house, kid came home. Everyone thought I was absolutely crazy, kid came in, and all was well. Almost.

Finally people started noticing that I had not set foot near the kitchen, so DH asked what I wanted for dinner. (This never changes year to year--it is always Asian or Indian takeout.) I said I was not in the mood for Indian. I had conveniently set out a menu from our new Japanese place, but it went unnoticed. UNFORTUNATELY our favorite Chinese restaurant, which was right around the corner, got very bad over the past couple of years--so bad we could not tolerate it anymore and quit ordering. Recently it opened up with a new name and new management. We had never bothered to venture in, for obvious reasons. UNFORTUNATELY it was a fast, easy choice, so DH went there (without asking).

Worst "Chinese food" I have EVER eaten. One dish was a seafood thing. I always like shrimp, but this had scallops in it (which I cannot eat, an DH knows this!) and purported to have lobster. I tried the [one tiny piece of] lobster and it was like shoe leather. I found only two shrimp, but this is a family of four. All the rest was icky sauce and scallops. I think there was one pea pod. So I tried the "chicken." One "chicken" dish was upposed to be sesame. It was not. I looked on the receipt and there was an "orange chicken." DH said he did not order orange chicken--that he had ordered General Tso's and sesame. Anyway, whatever it was, it was all nasty. All the chicken sauces tasted like ketchup thinned down with water and rethickened with cornstarch. I could not find any chicken in the chicken. It was all deep-fried batter that was tough and actually unchewable. Hardly any vegetables to be found anywhere, except a few pieces of broccoli. Then there was the eggroll--like dry brown kraft paper. Looked old and perhaps pre-frozen. I had a couple of bites of rice (hard to screw up), and left the table, throwing away what was on my plate.

I really hate to waste food and I know that even though it was bad, it was not cheap. I'm sure I set a bad example for the boys by leaving the table after voicing my disgust, but, honestly, YUCK.

Now it's not Mother's Day anymore. Hark, the dishes await.

Thought Salad

This post won't taste good, even if you put your favorite dressing on it. I just have a bunch of completely disparate things to toss together. And, just now, EEEK! There's a big ant walking across my keyboard, but that's irrelevant.

Spring is here, or rather, the seasons seem to have skipped straight from winter to summer with barely a visible warning from trees and flowers. Right now it's 84, and reportedly it's planning to be 90 tomorrow. Help me. While the trees still look positively lacy, the weekend was hot enough to make us switch from storm doors and windows to screens, open the windows, run the attic fan, and even break out a small turbo space fan. It was the hottest weekend in recorded history for this region. I hate it. I have no problem with cold. I can always go around the house wearing sweaters and blankets to get warm when the house is 52, but I can't get cool without wearing garments that I consider inappropriate and/or embarrassing, and I sweat like a pig. It is completely out of character for the weather to be hot in April. In fact, it is not unheard of for a surprise little flurry to occur.

Where did this stupid ant come from? Go away, ant. I'm going to have to capture him and put him out. He is putting footprints between the pages of a document I was given by its author, archivist and historian at Old Sturbridge Village, "Mail in 1830s New England." But I digress.

The main evidence of "spring" is that the road termites are out prowling around, weaving madly, cutting everyone else off, and making outrageous left turns starting half a mile from the intersection, thus requiring them to ride up the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic. This includes mentally unstable college girls and huge landscaping trucks with their trailers. Normally, any other time of year, this would simply be an obvious indicator that the license plates read Mass., but now it's just that people are buckwild crazya$ coming out of hibernation.

New word/title coinage: Tyke asks for eggs for breakfast on weekend. Dad is a master at eggs. Dad makes magnificent omelet containing all of Tyke's favorite flavors. Tyke howls for a full 30 minutes, "I don't want an omelet, I want scrambled." He sits at the table and picks. About then, Dad asks if I want some eggs. I say, "Sure, I'd like scrambled!" Dad goes berserk. "You're not helping me out here!" Hint, hint. "Actually, I'd like an OMELET." Then the big kid, G., says, "Who do you think you are, Dad, The Omelettier?"

Insomnia: I finally got two nights of sorta-sleep after four nights of wide-open eyelids. The primary reason was probably my anxiety over G's "final" surgery to remove his cardiac catheter, which took place Wednesday. The insomnia started Tuesday night. Then, Wednesday night, in case he needed help, water, food or meds I slept on the sofa and, for the comfort of the affected part, he stayed in one position on the huge comfy chair/ottoman.

I did get a few short-lived naps. But the cruelest thing is the meta-dreams. What the heck do I mean by "meta-dreams"? This is just evil, and my own head made it up to foist upon me. Here's an example. Wednesday night, as G snored lightly, I finally fell asleep and stayed asleep long enough to start dreaming. In the dream, G has come home from an evening at his girlfriend's house. Her dad has brought them back to our home in the van. As is often the case, I am talking to the congenial dad, and I tell him, "Gosh the last few nights have been murder; I can hardly sleep at all. All I get is a nap and then it's all over." He says, "Really?" Upon which admission I am rendered bolt-upright awake. Now Porky Pig stutters, not actually but metaphorically, "That's all, folks!" I hear every house and tree creak, mouse skitter, bird twitter and vehicle move in a ten-mile radius, see every lightwave and shadow, feel every little pain, my sinuses go berserk and I get a raging case of gas and heartburn that must be properly addressed. I am completely up until I'm supposed to be up, at which point I can hardly get up because I'm so tired.

Here's another one. In Thursday's dream I am in a whole other state of the union (who knows which one it's supposed to be) with a bunch of total strangers and none of my family. It's all adults and no kids. I start out in a gas station but the venue morphs into a very casual tiny Greek diner-type restaurant that has all outdoor tables on a flat lawn in back. People in the restaurant are raving and recommending a particular dish. It is described by them as huge wide noodles wrappped up with something like herbed rice inside (reminiscent of dolmades) with a thick, olive-laden sauce on top. I order it, and it is delivered to the white linen-covered picnic table where I wait. But---aaaaarrgggghh! It doesn't look anything like the item described. It looks like a pile of tiny dry burritos with a drizzle of what should have been green salsa, but which looks more like thick, golden motor oil. There aren't even any utensils or napkins. The sight of it in the dream made me need to throw up. It just shocked me in the dream because it was so unlike the dish described. Too unexpected. Once again, BING! Wide awake with the whole night/morning ahead of me.

We have conifers and Rotarians in our water supply: For the past almost week, our town has been one of ten locally that were identified as receiving "copepods and rotifers" in the water. No live critters have been found, according to the metropolitan water district. Furthermore, these particular strains of organisms are not known to cause illness and are present in almost all fresh water. YET we have been admonished to boil our drinking water "for at least one minute." Why? To beat a dead rotifer? Every day I look for a lift of the "boil order," and every day it's not there. The affected towns are now down to six, but ours is among them. I don't care if I DO boil my water; I don't want to ingest cooked rotifers and copepods, either. Fortunately, before this event I didn't think about the microorganisms in our water. Now I'll never be able to forget them, even if they're dead and known not to be pathogenic.

Friends were cleaning out their attic and found a lot of old books. Since I am a logophile, they gave me one called More Press Boners. It's a book-length list of funny grammar, typographical, spelling and punctuation mistakes made in the publishing media, primarily newspapers. For instance, "Read our new booklet, 'How To Increase Your Word Power, Think Better, Spell Perrectly,'" and "Mother can disassemble the boys at the end of play time and pack the little containers away neatly." (Don't I wish.) What's funniest to me, even more than the gaffes themselves, is the archaic nature of many of the topics and concepts in the book. If my boys were to read it (which they won't because they're lazy), they would find much of it baffling, because they wouldn't understand the context or some of the vocabulary. For example, there's a listing from a television guide: "9:00 p.m. Geo. Gobel show. 9:15 p.m. Geo. Gobel shot." They would never in a million years know who George Gobel was.

This is the other part of the book: The title cracks the boys up. They have another idea about the definition of the word "boner."

And now a note about customer service: I can't remember if I wrote about this months ago (or moths ago as might have been reported in Boners). We rarely dry clean our clothes. We try to buy exclusively washable garments, but there are the seasonal coats and heavy down comforter, and some of my summer linen items. Anyway, I went online to arrange an at-home dry cleaning pickup from the cleaners we usually use, only to discover that the company I had been using had been bought out and replaced by another company. I blithely signed up on their website. Within a few days, the van showed up and the guy collected my bag of cleaning.

Well, darn it, that's when the trouble started.

A couple of days later I got a call from a distressed woman who works for the dry cleaning company (which I will not name because I refuse to give them press). At first I thought something had gone wrong or gotten lost or the order was screwed up or something and this was a courtesy call to straighten it out. But no! This woman explained that she was the representative for a territory and my address was in her territory and that I should not have let blah-blah guy pick up my cleaning. In fact, I should call every time I need cleaning and ask for HER exclusively. Though she did not say as much, I'm guessing they work on commission and the guy who picked up after being alerted via web is her direct competition in this area. She had a whiskey voice and a mafioso manner. She practically made me sign on the dotted line that I would ALWAYS only use her as my pickup and delivery person. I felt summarily harassed. I hung up the phone feeling as if I'd been beaten up by a bully in elementary school.

Then I went to the internet and considered signing up for another company, called Edricks. When I was ready with a new bag I saw the Edricks van coming up the street and waited by the mailbox and waved. The Edricks guy stopped in the middle of the street, took my info and cleaning, was friendly as could be, got my info into their system and had the clothes (much more nicely presented than the other company) back at my door in a couple of days. Even before the items were returned, I got two courtesy calls from the company surveying about the service and confirming my order.

Okay. So, customer-service tip: don't bully customers if you want to keep them. Gees.

Boys will be boys: This is how it is when you have more than one boy-child. Big kid G is returning to school after being out almost all year for cancer treatment. So he's getting up Thursday to have me drive him to his big half-day start-off. He appears on the stairs in boxers, hospital sox (he loves them), and a face covered with shaving cream. He says, quietly, "Mom. Mom." My face is a question mark. He says, "Tyke took my disposable razor and used it to clean the gum off his favorite basketball shorts. So I went in your bathroom looking for the razors and couldn't find one. Would you give me one?" Said shorts are a pet peeve of mine. I've been trying to get rid of them for a year, but Tyke keeps retrieving them. I didn't know about the Heloise "put item in freezer and pick off the gum" trick. It wasn't a big wad of gum at all, but still, gross! I got the new razor for G. Then when Tyke came home I inquired. He admitted shaving the pants. I said, "But did you make a hole in them?" And he said, "Yeah, but they're reversible so they have a liner so it doesn't matter."

Insomniac Journal

I was going to entitle this "sick thoughts at 4:00 a.m.," but they really aren't sick, just off-kilter, which I typically am.

Most nights when I have insomnia, I just try to burrow deeper in the dark blankies, wear a sleep mask (which is almost always completely light-permeable), hold onto a security pillow and rock a little. The rocking was not original to me, but my DH does it relentlessly and despite the annoyance I glean from his rocking, I sometimes find my own small foot wiggle is rather comforting and sometimes successful as a lulling tool. I definitely don't sleep, but I do achieve a sort of comfortable repose.

Anyway, the other night I had such hopeless sleeplessness that I just decided to throw in the blanket and sit up and turn on a reading light and read a little. But my own thoughts came buzzing in, distracting me from "The Secret Life of Bees." I was thinking about words that for some reason do not look right to me.

teargas (tee-ar-gus?) (tee Argus?) Argosy . . . Wide Sargasso Sea (I am a little sleepy, just not able to go all the way to sleep.

This one has thrown me for a loop ever since I first saw it:

biopic Many people are myopic. Or even cyclopic ("I can hardly believe my eye!"). But "biopic" doesn't look to me anything like what it is. It seems to be an ocular condition that fits just dandy with the other ones. I am always surprised when I see that someone is to star in a biopic, or that a biopic is to be made about some celebrity or historical figure. My mind ALWAYS reads and pronounces it bi-OP-ic. Are you myopic? I'm biopic.

Now, a little more esoteric:

t h e

Ubiquitous, we take it for granted. It sneaks into everything and almost every sentence. But look at it. It's nuts. See it by itself. Pathetic all by its lonesome. What in heck does it have to do with itself? It makes no sense. It is nothing. It doesn't look right; seems spelled wrong. It actually needs a noun to flesh it out and make it real, but then once the noun has come and gone it is just a sad phantom that briefly helped the perfectly self-capable noun get into a sentence. I wonder how many times and how much time in my life I've wasted spending my thoughts, reading eye movement, thoughts or mouth on t h e.

Why do I bother to examine it now? Oh, because I'm supposed to be sleeping. Well, I want to be sleeping! I don't have time for this three-letter anomaly bothering me in the middle of the night. Consider the marvelous concision of our communications if we did not use it. It makes me understand why whole languages dispense with articles. It has no identity and does not seem aware that it should have one. It's just an invisible lackey slinking its way into otherwise perfectly self-sufficient locutions. Why do we fall for it? I don't know. It feels awkward in your mouth, has no roundness or suppleness, and does not roll trippingly off the tongue.

Another hour of unproductive sleeplessness plunders by. I think, what are my favorite sounds? If I had favorite words, what would some of them be, and why?

It turns out that I had asked myself this many times before and the winners keep retaining their stations. I do not particularly like the letter "h" but find a strange consistency in the words I keep holding onto. It's just like hating the number "6," only in numbers "6" keeps never getting into the inner sanctum.

All-tiime favorites, some of which almost require a lithsp:

• halcyon
• hyacinth
• heliotrope
• helleborus niger

And suddenly the great ship, the renegade Helleborus Niger, loomed on the horizon, bringing thoughts of threat and horror to the castaways on shore. The anxious onlookers huddled together but soon saw another ship following in swift pursuit from behind: the battledore HMS Cistus Purpureus. (But, no, the Helleborus Niger is just the lowly and rather homely Christmas rose, grown in Greece and used to ward off witches.)

Then there's the mighty dicotyledon. "What color was her jacket?" "Oh, sort of an off-dicotyledon, you know, a little more yellow than chartreuse, a shadow off celadon."

"What was the cause of death?" "The autopsy report makes it clear that it was a rampant 36-hour infection by the dreaded amoebic dicotyledon." Not flesh-eating or anything, but still. Except that a dicotyledon is just a flowering plant with two cotyledons.

Plebeian. I love the order of the vowels. When I was a little kid I had a Persian calico cat who had previously been the red-light-district stray cat of the neighborhood but for some reason after spewing out about eight litters of kittens decided to become a domestic--at our house. She had a wonderful and cheerful personality and was more dog than cat. No matter how far away she was she would come running home when you called her (amazing). She put up with quite a bit of being dressed up as a Glamour Cat (Woolworth pearls, voile, crinoline, etc.) and riding around in carriages and other dumb things little girls do to "bond with" [read humiliate] their pets. I was always making up songs for Calico and one of them involved the word "plebeian" just so I could weave it into the song. It happened that Calico was ONCE plebeian but after she became part of our household she was actually royalty. One time my parents went out and my mother wore her fur stole and instead of hanging it up afterward tossed it on the sofa in the sewing room. In the morning we found Calico purring in the center of it. Plebeian? Certainly Not!

Don McLean has a wonderful song called "On the Amazon," in which preposterous words are deeply misunderstood and used in very funny incorrect contexts. I think one of the lines is, "On the Amazon, the prophylactics prowl!'

Oh, boy, here's part of the song [this is NOT my material; copyright belongs to Don McLean and whichever record company recorded it, and I do not for one minute claim this material is originally mine]:

On the Amazon, the prophylactics prowl.
On the Amazon, the hypodermics howl.
On the Amazon, you’ll hear a scarab scowl and sting
Zodiacs on the wing.

All the stalactites and vicious vertebrae
Hunt the stalagmites, while laryngitis slay
All the parasites that come from Paraguay in spring.
Snarling equinox among the rocks will seize you,
And the Fahrenheit comes out at night to freeze you.
Wild duodenum are lurking in the trees,
And the jungle swarms with green apostrophes!
Oh, the Amazon is calling me.

On the Amazon, the pax vobiscum bite.
On the Amazon, the epiglottis fight.
On the Amazon, the hemispheres at night all slink
Where the agnostics drink.
All the hippodromes that lie concealed in mud
Hunt the metronomes, that live in swamp and flood.
Then the kodachromes come out and drink their blood - poor ginks.
While velocipedes among the weeds will scare you,
And the menopause with hungry jaws ensnares you!
Frenzied adenoids infest the hills and slopes;
Everyone avoids the deadly stethoscopes.
Oh the Amazon is calling,
Yes the Amazon is calling,
Oh, the Amazon is calling me!

One of my favorite songs in the world. I believe I could SLEEP if I were in a jungle swarming with comforting green apostrophes. As long as they were in the right places. Otherwise I'd be up all night editing them. And I'm a bit worried about the pax vobiscum biting.

Then we come to another fabulous word, o-n-o-m-a-t-o-p-o-e-i-a.

Are you asleep yet? I'm not, more's the pity.

I try this:

o n o m a t o p o e i a

Only four consonants to hold this baby together! And it sounds like itself. How delightful. Do I have a vowel obsession? I dunno. Is it diagnosable?

Here it is. I think it has some merit. It might have potential to sail me off with the sandman. The word:

M O N O T O N O U S

Even though I am wearing a black sleep mask, I see its letters as if projected on the ceiling. I chant it silently to myself, slowly: mo-no-to-nous, mo-no-to-nous, mo-no-to-nous . . .

Just by thinking of it and nothing else, I envision myself falling asleep. It is so monotonous, so like itself.

But my body can feel the precise time of morning somehow, which always throws me into insomniac hyperdrive. I first slept at 12:30, first woke at 1:30 and have been up until at least 4:30; that's only a couple of hours before everyone's alarms go on, and if their alarms don't go on I have to jump up and hustle them awake on time to get to school or drive to early jazz band practice . . . two hours isn't much to sleep, but it sure would be precious . . . But if I try to sleep now I'll just worry that I'll sleep through their alarms . . . I have to be awake for them . . . Then I'll have to get up and start calling them down . . .

Every night and morning is like this. No sleep at night but worry. M-O-N-O-T-O-N-O-U-S.

monotonousmonotonousmonotonousmonotonousmonotonous!

But instead of easing shut for, at best, a half-hour nap, my eyelids are banging open like Colonial shutters in a hurricane.

The BEST DARN DAY IN SEVENTEEN YEARS

WARNING: Theater kid. Performing artist. Loves to make stupid faces. Wish the Jack Nicholson one were here, but I can't find it.

After an exhausting long day of scans, x-rays, blood-draws and appointments that took up most of Monday, April 6, on the morning of April 7 our son G, who just had his seventeenth birthday

WAS DECLARED CANCER-FREE!

!!!!WootWootWootWootWootWootWootWootWootWootWootWootWootWootWootWootWootWoot!!!!!

We are doing the party dances. We are collapsing in crying, laughing silliness. We are having the ultimate, well-deserved emotional breakdowns that have been waiting in the wings for months.I haven't been able to get on the phone because I just start weeping and babbling uncontrollably.

WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS! (link) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdCrZfTkG1c

Heartfelt thanks to all of you who prayed, helped, drove, called, asked about his welfare, taught and tutored, waited for belated work (his and mine), complimented his hair at various stages, and otherwise supported us and cheered us on. Thanks also for listening to our worries, grousing, and frustration when we had periodic breakdown rants and displayed other inexplicably weird, forgetful, or rude behavior! We apologize.

I hate the traditional "happy face," but actually went out and deliberately got a balloon of one today, and for once I wasn't even being ironic.

I got stupid stuff at iParty and made a shambles of an already hopelessly cluttered house. (Did you know, for example, that in the Children's Medical Center latex balloons are banned? I was so accustomed to that that I never even considered latex, but got mylar . . . these experiences stick with you in odd ways.) I got little strings of happy-colored Chinese lanterns and gobs of garlands and crepe paper and paper lanterns that don't seem to fit any of our lights, but who cares?


I dress up Al O. Pecia (his radiation therapy mask/bust) differently every day. In the photo above, he was Scottish, sporting my favorite knitted pillbox hat with a Celtic design.Today he is Truman Capote (will post pic later). He has also been quite gallant as George Gordon, Lord Byron, in Turkish Dress. G says he will put him on his piano, since everyone has a bust of a famous composer on the piano. And, if he gets in a real muddle, Al will double nicely as a pasta strainer. Good ol' Al O. Pecia. G's hair is coming back in like gangbusters, but oddly a lot lighter than before.

Sputnik.

P.S. I sincerely regret leaving out anyone when I sent thank yous, and for some folks I don't have current contact info. If you know someone else who knows G the phenomenal music kid, please share the joy!
Typically abnormal. loads of medical attention was not able to cure this.


Pretending to behave normally. It's just a clever ruse.

How to Cook Frozen Snacks

Just a short one this time.

Crazy schedules sometimes call for desperate measures. I had a measure a few days ago--I purchased a box of frozen snacks that are supposed to resemble a cross between a sliced bagel and a little pizza bit. I'm deliberately not naming the product because I don't want to give it any press.

I open the box, and, first of all, the snacks were about 1/2 the size they were advertised as. I guess that's not a surprise. I should be fully accustomed to being misled.

It was the box that really got me. The instructions baffled me. These items come arranged in a reflective cardboard "crisping tray." So if you want to heat the snacks to crispy . . . in bold capital letters, do not use crisping tray!

All right. I won't use it. Because it's not for crisping. I give up.

Swim Brain

One of my favorite, but relatively dull lines is in Twelfth Night, I iii, "I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit." In graduate school, a colleague, knowing I was then entirely vegetarian, gave me a button bearing those words. Well, I am not a great eater of beef. I made the mistake of eating a single tiny bite of corned beef one year ago today and it literally nearly killed me.

My younger son, to whom I still refer as Tyke (his older brother, a jazz musician, calls him T-Bone), is a swimmer part of the year and plays baseball the rest of the year. Swim season just ended and he came home so laden with clanky medals, trophies, pins and ribbons that we will have to start a Wall of Fame right next to the multiple Michael Phelps posters (oh, and the now "commemorative" Kellogg's Corn Flakes cereal boxes which we could sell on eBay) in his room. A few days ago he was looking online and happened to discover that not only had he garnered a bunch of team records this year, but he was also second in the state in one event and third in another. Surprisingly, he has not developed a swelled head about this.

However, I believe he HAS developed some sort of encephalitis or mental problem from spending too much time in the pool. This calls for a new button, which should say, "I am a great inhaler of chlorine, and I believe that does harm to my wit." For here is an exchange between us from the other day:

Me: Why is it still so cold? It's actually somewhat spring-like outside, and I'm never cold, but today I'm really cold.

Tyke: Mom, think about what the badger said.

Me: ??????

Tyke: The gopher.

Me: ???? [staring at him] You mean, the GROUNDHOG?

Tyke: Mom. Whatever. Stop making fun of me.