Taming Martha, or the Out of Law Mother Out of Law
May 12, 2008
Things were in a bit of a commotion at the mommies’ house. Their house needs a lot of repairs. A plumber is doing a lot of work on pipes under the house. The washer is sulking. For some reason the spare bedroom is full of boxes and furniture moved out of the way of other activities.
[A trap door in a closet provides entry to the crawl space under the house. Little cat Sylvie crawled down after the plumber to help him. He thought she had come back up when he came back up. However, the next day, my daughter heard the faintest of meows and finally discovered a trapped, very dirty cat in the crawl space.]
As I got ready for bed, they apologized. I said, “Don’t worry about it.” (I am a messy, untidy person, so other people’s messes only make me feel less guilty about my own flaws in this regard.)
I asked, “Do you have some towels I can use?” They are very good hostesses, and usually leave extra towels out for guests, but had forgotten. “I’m sorry,” said Mommy, and pulled some towels out of a closet. “They don’t all match in color,” she said, “but Mrs. Random isn’t here, so it will probably be all right.”
My antennae quivered.
As I was leaving the next day, Mommy pointed at a package of linens. “Tell Mrs. Random we have new sheets and new pillow cases for the guest bedroom,” she said.
I said, “Perhaps that will keep my wife’s inner Martha Stewart from rising to the surface.”
Mommy said, “It doesn’t have to rise very far.”
My wife has a very strong value system that when guests arrive, our house must look immaculate and very presentable. Before any guests arrive, including mommies and Random Granddaughter, my wife goes into a frenzied flurry of cleaning and arranging. If I have left anything obviously messy and amiss, I attend to it rapidly before my life ends prematurely; then I stay well out of my wife’s way until guests have arrived and it is clear they are not going to storm off in disgust. At that point my wife relaxes, and becomes not only a gracious hostess but a relaxed and friendly person.
This is a good value; it is much better than my male slovenliness. At the same time, I realized that when we visit the mommies, they feel they are under the eye of a critical and professional house keeper. They are not messy or unclean, but they are two very busy women with an active and imaginative four year old daughter who is into many busy projects at any given time. Compulsive tidiness is sometimes the second fiddle in the mix.
I mulled how to tactfully convey this to the mother out of law. I am thinking of suggesting she put out guest towels that don’t match in color.
Watching Manners
May 9, 2008
I had an interesting day taking care of Random Granddaughter. I will write more about it later, but for now a exchange from this morning.
RG was having a “trouble with good manners” morning. Mommy asked her three times to fetch some spoons for everybody at the breakfast table so everyone could eat their cereal. RG ignored her, though eventually enough gentle pressure was exerted that she fetched spoons. Each person received two spoons. I admired RG’s very subtle dig.
“How are the manners at pre-school?” I asked.
RG said, “Pretty good…but the boys don’t have very good manners,” she said.
I started laughing so hard, RG looked alarmed.
Mommy said, reassuringly, “Granddpa is not laughing at you. He just thought you were pointing out something that is true at other places.”
If I can get there in time, I may go watch RG at her swimming lesson tonight.
Weather the Terror
May 9, 2008
However, he made a distinction between our Allies in the War on Weather, such as hurricanes (clearly native American weather fronts) and alien weather using names such as “cyclones.”
“Now ‘Hurrican Katrina’ was clearly an ally in the ‘War on Weather,’” the President said. “Many of the victims were clearly related to what’s his face…’Obama I bin a Candidate for President.’ What could be more American than that?” he continued.
“On the other hand, the Cyclops in Mummadar is called ‘Nargis.’” He went on, “Does that sound like a Weatherist in the Axles of Evil or what?”
The President also said that he would invade Mummadar and force the government to let him give the people Aids or something.
At that point, the President’s wife told him that she had some nice hot chocolate grown in Texas waiting for him and that she would tell him a nice bedtime story as she tucked him in just as he had told the American people their bedtime story.
Someone was heard humming “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” Perhaps I was just hearing things.
Serious:
Pre-School Substitute Teachers
May 7, 2008
1) As I’ve mentioned previously, Random Granddaughter’s mommies (Random Daughter and her Out of Law partner, aka Mama and Mommy) are phasing her out of pre-school #3. This is not her fault.The mommies have asked Grandma and Grandpa to take care of RG at her house. Tomorrow (Thursday) is my first day of being a substitute pre-school.
I emailed my daughter and told her that I would not be at their house when RG leaves for preschool. I asked her to inform the pre-school that it is acceptable to let the strange man take RG out of school. RG is a little girl with a developing imagination. It is entirely possible for her to start screaming, “Help! Help! I don’t know this man! His name is Fritzl! I am being kidnapped! Call the Amber Alert line now! Call Sylvie on her batty cat emergency line!”
My daughter said my suggestion is a good tip and she will send a note to pre-school with RG. I hope it gets there.
2) Actually, I figure RG is very excited about the idea of having Grandpa take care of her for a day. After about half an hour or so, the disappointment will set in. She will look at me and say, “Is this it? Is this all there is? Please take me back to pre-school.”
Actually, negative fantasy #2 is really Mrs. Random’s. Mrs. Random is a woman who seeks perfection much of the time. She feels an obligation to be a perfect Grandma. She doesn’t know how a perfect Grandma behaves, but she knows there is a Platonic ideal of Grandmotherhood and she doesn’t live in that hood.
I will tell RG to say to Grandma, when it is Grandma’s turn, “It is OK Grandma. I love you even if you are not the Platonic ideal of Grandmas. Grandpa read a story by Plato before my nap. It put me right to sleep, but Sylvie liked it. Grandpa said that Sylvie is a Platonic idea of family cats.”
The Amstetten Project
May 3, 2008
About 30 years ago, I was teaching high school in Oregon. One of my students, a quiet, well-behaved young woman, seemed bothered by something, and her (average-level) school work seemed to be suffering. Her boyfriend, a pleasant, quiet young man asked me if they could have a conversation with me. I don’t remember the names; I’ll call her Lisa and I’ll call him Chad.
We sat in an empty classroom and talked. I asked her if something was bothering her.
“No,” she said. I talked with her a few more minutes, though the conversation seemed to be going nowhere. I was getting peculiar vibes, but I didn’t know what to do with them.
Suddenly, she blurted out, “My stepfather is raping me.”
I gasped in shock, but tried to keep my composure in front of Lisa and Chad (who obviously knew about the situation).
It general, it was my tendency to maintain confidentiality with what students told me, but in a situation such as this, school employees were required by law to report incidents of child abuse and sexual molestation and my conscience also told me that I had to take action.
Lisa told me that her stepfather had also raped her older sister, who had eventually run away from home. She would not have told me about the situation, except that she had a younger brother and she feared he would be next.
I asked Lisa about her mother. She said that mom probably knew, but was pretending not to. My heart pounded with some anxiety, but as I continued to try and speak very calmly and reassuringly. Lisa was reluctant and fearful about calling the police, but there was no other choice; it had to be done.
I decided to pass the buck. I said I would like to bring the school nurse into the conversation.
Lisa reluctantly agreed, close to tears.
The nurse did call the sheriff’s office. A detective who specialized in such cases eventually called me and explained the procedure they had followed in their police work. The procedure horrified me, but made ghastly sense.
They prearranged to have an unmarked police car stake out her house. The next time her stepfather raped her, she sneaked out of the house after her stepfather fell asleep. The police drove her to a hospital to collect sperm from her vagina.
Eventually, they filed charges. A week before the case began, Lisa ran away from home. She called me from Los Angeles; she told me she could not bring herself to go through the trauma of testifying in a trial.
Without her testimony, even with the hospital evidence, there was no case. The stepfather was released. Chad told me that Lisa had joined her sister (the previous runaway). The stepfather, the mother, and the younger son quickly moved out of the county.
I felt sick to my stomach.
I appreciate the fact that Austria has severe privacy protections, but there is an argument for studying the case of Josef Fritzl as intensively and thoroughly and publicly as possible. I don’t even know if there is any point in “punishing” this 73-year old retired electrician with a prison sentence.
I will offer a shocking, unethical, and misguided alternative. It will be something like Guantanamo Bay, only handled a little more gently and skillfully. I don’t think waterboarding will help in this situation.
I would suggest having the best psychotherapists and anthropologists in the world study Josef Fritzl as best as they can. All their sessions with him should be videotaped. Investigators should also study, as well as they can after all this time, all that can be determined about his family and life history. Once the world operated the “Manhattan project.” We can call this the Amstetten Project
Eventually, all the recordings of the investigation should be skillfully edited down and broadcast internationally as a “reality television” show, with subtitles for most major languages.
It’s easy for me to describe Josef Fritzl as the strongest example of pure evil as one may find, but realistically one can probably find equally undeserving examples of the “banality of evil” in any day’s news.
I won’t resist the cliché of mentioning the country where this took place–Austria–but we all know such an incident could as easily take place in any country on earth. Austria as the location is just a coincidence.
Even though I would support the perhaps smaller evil of my cold-blooded and pathologically curious forensic investigation, in the end we would know no more about what caused Josef Fritzl to be Josef the good dad then we know about why a cockroach is a cockroach, though cockroaches probably are less disgusting than Josef.
We don’t keep any pets in our house in the woods, and I haven’t noticed any cockroaches running around our yard, but if I see one, I may adopt it as a pet. I’m not sure how I will explain its presence to my wife, who usually squashes bugs in the house without much ado.
Raising a Better Candidate
May 2, 2008
Some unfortunate children are born without an immune system. To survive, such children often placed in a sterile bubble. However, scientists are making progress in providing gene therapy to cure such children.Fortunately, foundations that support such bubble life have created a new kind of bubble therapy so their foundations can survive. They now create bubbles for raising your child to be a Presidential candidate. Future candidate bubbles protect your child against exposure to inappropriate clergymen such as Jeremiah Wright (in the case of Obama) or John Hagee (an influence on John McCain), inappropriate skin colors or names (problems for Obama) or inappropriate spouses (Bill) or waters (white) (encumbrances for Hillary).
Sign up to protect your infant today before it’s too late for him or her (or it) to become a future American President.
Marie’s Descendant Now Manages a Costco in Paris
April 23, 2008
Historians have long doubted that Marie actually made such a statement. Desultory research by the highly disesteemed Random Institute for Bogus Research has discovered the true remarks uttered by the queen:
She said: Let them eat ethanol.
Marie’s great-great-grand something now manages a Costco warehouse store in Paris.
Expedition to the Pole
April 21, 2008
As a person who will retire in nine months (which is eight months and 30 days too long) and due to a life of improvidence and stupid mistakes does not have enough money put away to buy loo paper,much less other necessities of life, I have been trying to inch my pathetic little stock portfolio up a tiny bit. As my wife (who just drove up with another load of compost for our garden in her little truck) puts it, “We are land rich and dirt poor.”
As I check my portfolio on cnn’s web page, I notice that one day the stock market is wildly down and the next day it is wildly up. This behavioral pattern leads me to conclude that the stock market suffers from bi-polar disease.
Fortunately, secret sources (otherwise known as my imaginary friends) have informed me that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake has formed a partnership with famed psychologist Dr. Phil to provide mental health treatment for the market.
After Ben and Phil get done with straightening out the stock market, they will take care of my imaginary friends.
Mystery No More
April 19, 2008
I was struggling futilely down by the basement with the enchanted generator trying to figure out how to remove the evil spell cast by the witch we hadn’t invited to the house-warning, when I went up to the main level of the house to get a drink of water and saw my wife talking with several people.
We seldom get visitors, as we live on an island. Furthermore, we live off a private gravel road. Even more further, you can’t see our little house from the private gravel road because our driveway curls down behind some trees so our house hides from the road.
And people who get that far tend to be sorry. A census taker came to our house twice. We had been selected to answer an extra set of questions about our dwelling. My wife said, “We answered the basic census questions. We don’t have to answer extra questions. Frankly, our dwelling is none of your business.”
She didn’t take the fish bonker that hangs by the door to the census worker, but it was a near thing.
However, my wife was talking to the strangers in a cheerful and friendly manner, so I approached in wonder to see what was going on.
“These are our neighbors on lot #4,” my wife said.
She performed introductions. The man is named Carl. Originally from Virginia, he now works for Boeing. “My daughter’s partner is from Virginia,” I said.
The woman’s name Mae (a Westernized adaptation of a Malaysian name too complex for Western tongues to wrap around). She told us she is a botanist.
“My daughter majored in biology and thought she would be a horticulturalist,” I said. “What kind of work do you do in botany?”
“I teach grade school. But I am working part time while I care for our son.” Their son, Chad, was picking up and examining rocks from the collection of pretty pebbles piled on the side of one of the steps to our front porch.
“Our granddaughter collects rocks when she comes to visit us,” I said. “However, her mommies won’t let her take them back to the mainland, so she leaves them on the step when the leave.”
“How old is your granddaughter?” Mae asked.
“Four years old. But she tells us that she is almost all grown up.” I said.
“Chad is five. He thinks he is about grown up also.”
I know RG likes older men, but I figured it was a little early to bring up that topic. Also, RG’s best friend Mia’s diversity heritage may be closer to Chad’s. This may get interesting and complicated when they’re all 15, or maybe not.
Mae told Chad to put the rocks back because they belonged to our granddaughter. He didn’t look very happy, but he complied. One of these days he will figure out that the trick is to bring pretty pebbles to pretty girls, but they probably don’t cover that in kindergarten.
We were getting a good impression. Mae spoke politely to Chat, but she required him to be respectful of other people’s property.
After we had chatted a bit, I raised another property issue. “The person who sold you the property cleared some trees into our property,” I said.
Chad and Mae asked, “Where is the property line?” A good question for new neighbors to ask, I thought. We walked them over to the area where our property ends and theirs begins. We showed them the three little cedar trees and the Douglas fir we had planted a couple of years ago. “The Douglas fir doesn’t look too good,” I said. “It’s been damaged by deer. But it’s still alive”; I pointed at the branches growing at the top of the little tree above where the buck had rubbed it.
We showed the newer Douglas fir we had planted last year in the area improperly cleared. We had put a little fence around the latest tree to give it a fighting chance against the deer.
“We’re planning on planting some evergreens,” they told us. They seemed to be respectful of the property line and to share our desire for privacy.
“It’s very quiet,” Mae said approvingly. Mrs. Random beamed; she loves quiet; she loves quiet neighbors. There was a good feeling in the quiet air as we contemplated common values.
Mae and Carl had met Joe and his dog on his property. They hadn’t me the Friendly Neighbors yet. I told them the Friendly Neighbors have a cat.
“We have a cat,” said Mae. “But I don’t think we can let it out here. The coyotes would eat it.” I told them we had seen coyotes in our backyard, so that keeping the cat indoors was probably a good idea.
We walked back to our property. We exchanged phone numbers. They told us they probably wouldn’t be building on their property for a few years. Chad was restless; he asked if they could go home. However, he didn’t whine and fuss, and waited until the grown-ups had finished their boring grown-up business. We said goodbye, relieved that the neighbors on lot #4 were no longer a mystery.
Note Smuggled Out of a Tibetan Fortune Cookie Factory
April 16, 2008
Various commotions (to the point of crisis) seem to be coming to a head in my life at the moment. I will probably be blogging less for a while and concentrating on dealing with these “issues” until I can come up for air. Please don’t feel neglected or ignored. Including David, Pete, and abarclay and everyone else.
A brief summary of what’s going on until I get more time:
1) My idea of what should be happening in my job and my bosses’ ideas of what should be happening in my job differ dramatically. Trying to decide who is “correct” and who is not correct is difficult and ambiguous. In the meantime, the golden rule applies: “Those that have the gold make the rules.” As I don’t have enough gold to carry on without my job for the nine months until I retire, I better follow their rules, as much as I don’t care for them. This is going to take a lot of my time, leaving me little time to write about my angst, even in my secret blog.
My employer (as a benefit) offers free mental health “counseling”. (This seems only appropriate for an employer that seems bent on driving at least some of its employees…well, crazy.)
At various times in my life, I have taken advantage of various kinds of therapy, starting in my 20s and continuing at various intervals to the time a few years ago when I had a bout of clinical depression (leading to a funny episode I haven’t had time to write about). I am not the first comedian (I am sure) to find merriment in my own episodes of depression. Anyway, I have made an appointment to go see a counselor in a couple of weeks. I hope the coming session does not produce too much comedy. Given that the counselor is a) female and b) has a Jewish last name perhaps does not bode well in this regard.
2) My daughter was going to quit her job and start graduate school again in the fall. Her decision to leave her job seemed to make her employer appreciate her more. They asked her to work on revamping her job and on training a successor. They offered her more money to do so. She decided this is worth taking a year to do a good job on helping with the transition. She is postponing starting graduate school for a year (with the University’s agreement and permission).
3) Random Granddaughter has been taking swimming lessons, which she enjoys. The mommies have decided that lots of exercise and physical activity are good for her, so she has started gymnastics lessons as well. I am sure that soccer will be on the menu soon. Surely she will not be the first child in America with two soccer mommies?
In the meantime, the pre-school crisis continues. As mommies work on making other arrangements for day care, RG is striving to be a pre-school juvenile delinquent. Mommy (my daughter’s partner) called last night and said that RG’s return to pre-school (after being away for several days) did not go well.
Apparently she has joined the “bad boys” I wrote about earlier who are always being put on “time out.” First she did something “disruptive” with her chair in the classroom. Time out #1.
Then when she went outside to the playground she began climbing on a box of safety equipment (which is apparently not safe to climb on) and refused to stop when asked to do so. Inside for time out #2 went RG. I don’t know if the bad boys kept her company.
When she got home, she cried a lot but refused to talk about her feelings. “I feel so bad for her” said Mommy, talking about her feelings at least.
Mommy asked if I would be willing to spend some time with RG. Apparently even Grandpa is considered a better influence than pre-school. I have to be careful now; I used to be able to schedule my vacation time fairly casually; under the new regime at work (motto: “Making the world safe for bureaucracy”) I have to schedule my vacation days well in advance and get them signed in triplicate.
However, I will spend a day taking care of RG in May to protect her from pre-school or protect the pre-school from her. Grandma will schedule some time for a similar purpose.
