Not-At-All-Live Blogging of The Bachelor - Sunrise Edition

I didn't watch The Bachelor last night when it aired, because three evening hours in one week is simply too much to devote to Sean, the world's most boring bachelor.

Except that, Sean honey, you are not a virgin. Born-again virginity is not a real thing. Christians, please stop trying to make that a thing.

So this is your early-morning recap because I woke up at 5 am for no good reason. I think it's because I have a lot to do in a short amount of time because I am the world's most proficient procrastinator.

OK, here goes. Tonight's very special (drink) edition of The Bachelor: Sean Tells All.

Chris Harrison has to do a lot more work than usual this episode. He's really earning that paycheck.

These bachelor/bachelorettes always say they have developed strong feelings for the final three. Always. It must be in the contract. I have never had strong feelings for three people at once. Or even two people at once. I've had strong feelings for one person at once. I just don't have the stamina for more than that.

Sean is telling "all" about Desiree's brother confronting him on the show. I don't think the brother did anything that bad. Hello, Sean, you are on a TV SHOW WHERE YOU DATE 20 PLUS WOMEN AT ONCE. I'm pretty sure my brother would question your sincerity, too.

Sean is the furthest thing from a playboy, he says. And we know that since he's a born-again virgin celibate.

Ohhh, they edited out the part where the brother said Sean seems like a nice dude. Did he drink some crazy for dinner?

"What do you think precipitated that turn?" Chris asks. "Was it our producers pulling the brother aside and encouraging him to go off on you? That was it, wasn't it? Yep. This show is crap. Where's my paycheck? Are we done yet? I've worked ten minutes."

When Desiree got kicked off, she told Sean she thought she could make him happy. She cried in the limo about how she just wants to make someone happy.

Let's discuss this phrasing. It is extremely important to find someone you can be happy with. However, you can not make someone else happy. You can not be responsible for another person's happiness. This is old lady talk. At 24, you think you can make someone happy. By 40, you (hopefully) know better.

Make yourself happy. You can be incredibly awesome and loving and amazing and still not make someone else happy. So don't put that on yourself. Find someone who knows how to be happy on his own.

OK, Sean is about to tell all about the one-armed girl who I have finally learned is named Sarah. On Sean's first one-on-one with Sarah, he took her on this crazy zipline sort of ride down the side of a building, so she could possibly lose another limb.

While this show is on, Tweets about the show are flashing on the bottom of the screen and they are proof that humanity is doomed.  #IhateTwitter

Sean says he sent Sarah home because when he kissed her there was no passion.

Sarah getting kicked off the show was the one time I felt an emotion about this show other than disdain. Poor Sarah.

Now we're on to Selma, who was raised Muslim and wouldn't kiss Sean. "To hear I couldn't kiss her on the lips was shocking, to say the least," he says.

So instead they did some Eskimo kissing and butterfly kisses. I just threw up. I haven't been this nauseated in the morning since my pregnancies.

I bet the born-again virgin does a lot of creative stuff since he doesn't put the p in the v anymore.

Sean says he would have kept Lesley if she could have relaxed and said she loved him. Yes, ladies, RELAX and tell that guy you've been on one date with that you love him. Men love that.

Bachelor rules are totally applicable to real life.

OK, we're 30 minutes in and I'm questioning my life choices. But I do that every morning.

Commercial break.

And we're back with the "very special edition." That word has lost all meaning.

It's time to talk about Tierra, the most insane person to ever be on The Bachelor. Except for this woman from a previous season:


Now we get to relive Tierra's fight with AshLee about how both of them have stupid first names.

Sean says he feels like he was duped by Tierra. She was not "suited" for this show and couldn't handle herself in this environment.

Chris addresses the fact that people think Tierra was a plant, the producers made him keep Tierra, etc. Yes, Chris, everyone does think that.

Sean said he felt like the women were focusing too much on Tierra and "not on me."

Focus on the man, ladies. Never turn away. Look at Chris Harrison, now back at me. Now look at Chris. Sadly, he isn’t me, but if he stopped using ladies scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he’s me. Look down, back up, where are you? You’re on a boat with the man your man could smell like. What’s in your hand, back at me. I have it, it’s an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love. Look again, the tickets are now diamonds. Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady. I’m on a horse.

Showing all the women sniping at Tierra and her back at them is just...no...not for me. I hate this sort of "entertainment."

Kate says this kind of thing sounds like this:
"Mememememememe."

"No, you're a memememememememe."

 Kate doesn't watch The Bachelor. She does watch Pretty Little Liars and I constantly interrupt to say, "Now, you know that behavior is wrong, don't you?" And she says, "Yes, Mom, I know I shouldn't stalk my friends or set houses on fire."

Just making sure.

Back from commercial: Ashley P. is the one who introduced herself to Sean by pulling out a gray tie, a reference to the WORST BOOK EVER WRITTEN, Fifty Shades of Grey.

It's been awhile since this book has come up, so I'm just going to reiterate that I hate everyone who thinks that book is good. I guess Ashley wanted to entice Sean into a little S&M and fisting. Little did she know that Jesus is totally against fisting. (Confession: I honestly don't know what that is. I mean, I think I know, but my mind rejects any further thought on the logistics of it, so let's move on.)

Ashley didn't make it long on the show because she told Sean about a million times that her mom was in love with him. Yeah, that's weird.

"I have really started to fall for all three women," Sean says of the final three. "I have no idea who I'm going to send home."

Viewers have a certain expectation of what takes place in the fantasy suite, Chris says about the next episode, which will take place in Thailand.

Sean says it's a great opportunity to be alone with the women, blah, blah, blah.

Chris is pushing for some sex talk. "The expectation... is this is a chance to spend the night doing whatever you want, a chance to be physical. What do you say to that?"

Sean says, "It's really none of your business."

Yep. Fisting. That's what I thought.

We only have two episodes left! Then I will have my Mondays free again to do something productive like question my life choices.

Um, the show ends with a gratuitous shower scene showing Sean and featuring porn-movie music.

It's like Cinemax After Dark all of a sudden.

Sidenote: You know me, I FULLY support marriage equality. But I cannot get on board with this unholy pairing of the bowling ball and the mop in the Swiffer commercial. That's just wrong.

Happy Wednesday, my friends!

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An Unkindness of Ravens

Jacob and I were sitting in the dentist's waiting room yesterday morning discussing the Super Bowl. Well, not exactly the Super Bowl.

Neither of us cares about football and, admittedly, I only watched the halftime show and a few commercials. Until Sunday, I honestly didn't know the two teams were the Ravens and the 49ers. But I did pick up one interesting piece of knowledge along the way.

"Did you know a group of ravens is called an unkindness?"

"Really?" Jacob said.

"Like how there can be a murder of crows, there can be an unkindness of ravens."

 I love the names for animal groups. A pride of lions. A bloat of hippopotamuses. A shrewdness of apes.

Poetry.

We waited some more.

"Hey, what if Chris came over and gave you a shaving lesson?"

"Why don't you just show me how? You shave your legs."

"My legs are basically straight lines. Your face is all curvy. We could Google it and find a video."

"Sure." Laughing. "Let's have some strange man on the Internet show me how."

I had a moment when I thought about how it's sad that he doesn't have his dad here to show him things like that. But we were laughing about weirdos on YouTube, and it occurred to me that so many things are about timing and delivery. If you say something in the right way, people don't even notice the sad thing beneath the surface.

I decided I'd buy him a razor and shaving cream, and we'll just figure it out, as with most things.

After Jacob went back to a treatment room, a young couple came into the waiting room with a four-year-old boy and a baby girl. The dad was wearing brown work pants and boots. The little boy had on a button-down striped shirt and blue jeans and his own boots.

There are times when you feel very strongly the passage of time and I think it often happens when you spot people who remind you of certain times in your past. Younger with small children. Lugging an infant carrier around. Married to a "working man." Taking someone to his first dental appointment.

When Jacob was that little boy's age, he called the pest control guy the "Workin' man" and he followed him around the house and the yard. He called everyone who went to work in boots and who had to wash up first thing when they got home from a long day "workin' men." His dad was a "workin' man."

Jacob as a four-year-old with bright red hair seems to me like a million years ago and yesterday at the same time.

Kate as a baby in an infant carrier seems like another world, because now she dances around the house and asks me to watch her perform routines to the beat of the latest pop song. She steals my hair straightener and leaves bobby pins all over the house. She applies her makeup better than I do. She's the embodiment of everything I thought would make me happy when I was her age, the personification of my belief that "if only" I had blond hair and green eyes and was gorgeous all would be right with the world. She believes in all sorts of things like true love and her ever-changing dreams of what adulthood will bring. She rolls her eyes at me when I accidentally refer to the boy band One Direction as One Dimension. She pleads with me to please stop, Mom when I wave my arms around and sing the lyrics to "Thrift Shop" in the car pool line at the middle school.

Another parent came into the waiting room. She had a four-year-old daughter with bright red hair who immediately started climbing over the chairs. At the same time, the four-year-old boy started tossing magazines on the ground. The toddlers were in charge of the room. I think a group of toddlers would be called a chaos.

His mom caught my eye and we started laughing. I said if I was four I'd come in this room and do exactly the same thing. I would climb over the chairs that are begging to be climbed over and I would throw magazines on the floor.

The little boy's dad said, "That's why we're here. He's a climber. He fell down and broke a tooth."

There are a million ways that we will be broken in this life. Broken again and then fixed again. If you are a human being capable of loving other human beings, it can be overwhelming to imagine all the ways those you love will climb and fall and get up again and throw magazines on the floor.

When Jacob's appointment was finished, I went back to the treatment room and spoke to the dentist. I told him Jacob has given up soda. I hope next time you'll notice a big improvement, I told him. He approved, of course. The official dentist belief system is that soda is the worst and flossing is the greatest thing ever invented. I bet dentists think if only people would stop drinking soda and floss every evening that all would be right with the world.

Jacob and Kate have been going to the same dentist since we moved to Birmingham nearly a decade ago. When Jacob was 7, I brought him in to have a tooth pulled and they gave him something to relax him. When I took him home, he was like a belligerent little drunk. I made him get in his bed upstairs. I told him not to come downstairs until he felt better, and he aimed his out-of-focus gaze on me and said, in an intoxicated slur, "You won't let me do anything!"

It's a cliche that time goes by quickly, but - damn - it goes by so quickly. Everyone knows this but people don't really get it until they reach their 30s, and then it really starts going by more swiftly. My dad is a grandpa and, if you ask him, only a second ago he was a five-year-old watching his mother dance to American Bandstand. My mom is a grandmother and, if you ask her, only a second ago she was a little girl watching her elegant mother with the tiny waist and red hair go out for the evening with the little girl's tall, handsome father with the amazing grin.

Jacob is 16 now and he is everything I ever wanted to bring into the world. He's smart and funny and kind. He recognizes hypocrisy. He delights in irony. He's calm in the face of pretty much everything except his sister's requests to drive her and her friends to the mall. He asks me math questions just to watch me get flustered.

There are days when you realize you are OK with where you are and where you've been. The knowledge settles in your chest, the frenzied fluttering of a thousand wings stills for a moment. You feel the relief of it and hope it lasts. You realize it has been many months since you asked yourself what you did wrong or how you could change the past. You open yourself up to the truth that so many lovely things have happened and will happen. Is there a sadness beneath the surface? Of course. From time to time, everyone is visited by an unkindness of ravens.

But sometimes if you sit still for a minute and look around, you'll see that, at this moment, all is right with the world.

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Monday Ramblings - Half-Assed Live Blogging of The Bachelor

I watch The Bachelor so I can feel better about myself, because I enjoy judging stupid people.

There, I said it. It's not pretty. I use a reality dating show to boost my floundering ego.

I have decided to very actively and intentionally let go and let the Doobie Brothers. But today a Facebook friend posted about her recent trip to New York to meet her publishing team at Harper Collins.

I am SO happy for her.

I want to burn her house down. 

I'm kidding. I would never do that. I want to burn down Harper Collins.

So, here I sit, ready to watch idiots bounce around a mansion and make fools of themselves with the sole purpose of winning an engagement ring from the dopiest, most boring Ken Doll in Bachelor history.

Every story the girls tell Ken Doll during their private conversation sounds like this, "So when I was a child (insert sad childhood memory) and I was so, like, (appropriate sad emotion) and my dad never, like, (something dads should do). [wipes away tears] That's why, like, it's so important to me that (we make out now/you give me a rose/we start a family once you get rid of all those other bitches).

Every response Ken Doll gives sounds like this, "Every time I'm with you, you surprise me in a good way. You are so special. What's your name again?"

Here is what the other 110 minutes of the show sounds like: "I need to talk to Ken Doll. I can't take this anymore! None of these bitches are here for the right reason!"

Naturally, one of the commercials during The Bachelor is for Safe Haven, the Nicholas Sparks-penned film about Woman with Sad Past meeting Man with Dead Wife. Go here to read my review of it.

As we've discussed before, when it comes to romantic movies, dead wives are the BEST!  Here's why: Because the dead spouse shows that the man is capable of committing, but there's no annoying living ex-wife to deal with. This also shows the man has a deep wound - deep wounds are sexy - and that deep wound needs to be healed by Woman with Sad Past's sweet lovin' up against a tree in the rain.

Oh yeah.

Nicholas Sparks is the Mark Twain of romance novels. In that Mark Twain can't write worth a damn. Because he's dead. That's a pretty good excuse. Nicholas Sparks, however, has no excuse.


Oh my gosh, one of the girls on The Bachelor just spoke about herself in the third person! "When Selma gets angry, Selma gets angry." Direct quote.

I'm not even going to make fun of it because that is hilarious. I'm going to do that next time I get SO angry about how some man is dating me PLUS 25 women with whom I am sharing a house.

In the next segment, one of the crazy girls came up behind Ken Doll and put her hands over his eyes.

Let's just clear this up right now: Only hugely annoying people sneak up behind you and cover your eyes. In fact, people who do this are THE WORST. That's not hyperbole. They are literally the worst.

Ooh, which brings me to this fun snippet from a day in the life of me and my spawn. Jacob was unhappy with a parenting decision I made and he said, "Mom, you are literally Hitler."

I said, " I am literally Hitler?"

"OK, you are metaphorically Hitler."

He makes me proud every day.


Oh man, now some woman is crying on The Bachelor. I feel like someone's mean dad, but seriously, I'll come back there and give you dummies something worth crying about!


Speaking of bachelors and marriage, today Kate asked me if I was ever going to get married again.

I said, "I don't know. Maybe. If I meet someone and love him and I want to spend my life with him."

She said, "You can't just go your whole life not getting married!"

I reminded her that I have, in fact, been married before. "Duh, Mom, I know that. You were married to Cherles."

That's not a misspelling. This is how she and her brother have always said Charles: Cherles rhymes with pearls. I really have no idea why. It's like an inside joke that everyone has forgotten the origin of. It's one of my favorite things for some weird reason.

She said, "Yes, but you need to find your true love!"

Oh goodness, someone is a romantic.

I said, "You're right. Where is he?"

"I don't know. Maybe he's stuck in a tree."

Uh...

ACK! Back to The Bachelor! This woman just used her dead fiance story to get a rose from Ken Doll.

Gross. So gross.


There are 45 minutes left in this show. How in the world do they drag this show out to two hours every week?

I think I'm too bored to carry on. I will sum up the rest of the show:

"You are so special. I can tell how special you are. I will now make out with you for ten minutes before I meet with the next girl in line and make out with her."

Rose Ceremony.

"I'm so sorry I had to let [random girl] go. She was so special."

Tiny pause for appropriate sadness.

"BUT next week we're all going to [insert tropical destination here]."

Woo hoo!

Cut to [random girl] crying in limo.

Next week's promo: The most dramatic rose ceremony/group date/one-on-one/transmission of VD yet.


Good night!

Related posts:
Withholding Judgement Is For Losers: A Film Review
A Very Special Lifetime Christmas Movie
Letting Go and Letting the Doobie Brothers

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I Don't Feel Like Writing Anything

So why am I here?

I don't even know.

I thought I'd try to write something - anything - since it's been several days since I posted. I haven't written anything since last week because I've been so busy eating my weight in Thanksgiving leftovers while sitting on my sofa reading Broken Harbor, a novel by Tana French, and watching Lifetime movies.

The beautiful thing about Lifetime movies is that you can watch them while you read, because Lifetime movies are so predictable. They are like comfort food for your brain. Lifetime movies are also excellent when you have a hangover.

Here's a little leftover from last year about Lifetime movies and why I am perfect for one: A Very Special Lifetime Christmas Movie...Starring Me.

This weekend I watched a movie that takes the characters of Little Women and puts them in a modern-day setting. It was complete crap. Louisa May Alcott is rolling over in her grave.

I watched Dear Santa, a movie about a psycho who stalks a widower and his daughter after she finds the daughter's letter to Santa asking for a new wife for her dad. OK, it's not presented as stalking. It's presented as FATE and LOVE and a whole host of other bullshit things that would make a woman track down a man so she can be some little girl's new mom. (The dead spouse is key in these movies, in case you didn't read my post about A Very Special Lifetime Christmas Movie.)

I also watched Love at the Christmas Table about two people who grow up spending Christmas Eve together every year. Over the years, they fall in love. At the end, of course, they get engaged. Because deciding to marry someone with whom you have spent one day out of the year is totally reasonable and that marriage is definitely going to work out.

After all that, I fixed myself a cocktail and I watched Lindsay Lohan play the role of Elizabeth Taylor in Liz & Dick. When I told Kate the title of what I was watching, she started giggling uncontrollably. And this is why you never hear about little boys being named Dick anymore.

The movie was pretty bad (everyone MUST stop pretending that Lindsay Lohan would be a great actress if only she didn't get in so much trouble). But the movie isn't bad enough to become campy fun. There aren't any good lines you can take from it and repeat obnoxiously. For instance, over the holiday I also watched some of R. Kelly's "hip-hopera" Trapped In The Closet and, if you visit me and stand in my kitchen for more than five minutes, you are likely to hear me sing this: He looks at the cabinet, he walks to the cabinet, he's close to the cabinet, now he's opening the cabinet. 

While "watching" all these masterpieces, I finished Broken Harbor. I recommend all of Tana French's books. She's an excellent writer. All of her books are murder mysteries set in Ireland, but they go beyond your standard detective novels.

Broken Harbor really hit home for me in a lot of ways. I don't want to give too much away, but basically there were things that were painfully familiar to me, like how things can go so wrong in a short amount of time, how you can spend your entire life getting over something and still blaming yourself for it, and how dealing with someone who is mentally unstable is exhausting and frustrating and damaging to your own mental health.

I cried a little yesterday because I always cry after a holiday. Even when everything goes well, the holidays are difficult. We spent Thanksgiving Day with The Great Chris and Heather Talley™ and it was a wonderful day. The food was amazing. The company was excellent. I have asked Chris and Heather to officially adopt me and Kate and Jacob. They'd be fools not to at least consider it!

Having dinner with the Talleys allowed me to continue my 39-year streak of not cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

Friday, Kate convinced me we should put up the tree and decorate it. I was a little grumpy about it at first, but I'm glad we did it. The living room was festive for the arrival of Charles's parents, who we call MeMe and Bob. They arrived Friday afternoon bearing Thanksgiving leftovers. They left early yesterday morning and, about 20 minutes later, I noticed that they'd left a laptop behind. I called and they turned around to come pick it up.

Kate said, "Oh, good! I missed them already!"

Saying goodbye to your grandparents is hard. There's one thing that's hard about holidays. They always involve saying goodbye.

The holidays also are hard because they naturally evoke memories of past holidays. Thanksgiving was Charles's favorite holiday. Eating, watching football, eating some more. Taking home leftovers. Eating again. I told the kids that I think their dad loved the leftovers even more than the original meal.

We have one  piece of apple pie left in the house and I am so grateful that it's almost gone. It turns out I can not be trusted around apple pie. I hope one of the kids comes home from school and eats it before tonight to save me from myself.

This morning I had scrambled egg whites for breakfast, a little post-Thanksgiving penance. As much as I love wearing elastic-waist pants, I would like to be able to fit into the rest of my clothes come January.

But first...

Maybe I should eat that last piece of apple pie before the kids get home.

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Thankful for...Vodka

I spent several hours today cleaning my 12-year-old daughter's bedroom.

Below is what I discovered when I moved her bed.

A few things you can't see in the photo: 

That purple plaid backpack is crammed full of things I asked her to clean up one day. 

A hamburger bun shoved between the pages of a notebook.

An entire container of French fries. 

A YA novel "glued" shut with a grape Jolly Rancher. 

I'm so tired. My body is aching. 

I'm sitting down with a cocktail. Self-medication is real and it is amazing.

Also real and amazing? Motherly love. Only motherly love could keep me from whipping a certain someone's ass today. 

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Thankful for...Comfort Food

Potato soup. Food Styling by Kate Mercer

I will never be a foodie. I will never be a bon vivant. And if I had a cooking show on television it would be called The Frantic Chef.™ Don't try to steal that. It's mine. It's the latest hit on Food Network because it's full of drama.

If I have more than one dish going on the stove at once or one dish that requires a lot of work, I am FRANTIC. I'm kind of shocked I haven't chopped off a digit yet in my rare, misguided attempts to prepare gourmet meals from Cooking Light and Bon Appetit.

I will never be the person who is calm and cool in the kitchen, sipping wine, visiting with company, and with seeming effortlessness, whipping up an elaborate meal that makes everyone swoon. That's not me. 

I am, however, the person sipping wine and whipping up the one-dish meal while wearing her pajama pants and fuzzy socks. Oh yeah, I am all about one-dish meals. 

Tonight, I made potato soup. Tina sent me the recipe earlier today. It was easy to make and delicious. 

POTATO SOUP

2 packages O’Brien-style hash browns

2 cans cream of chicken soup

2 cans milk

2 cans water

2 chicken bouillon cubes

½ TO 1 lb. Velveeta, chopped (Life is short. Go for the full pound!)

Salt and pepper to taste

Mix together the hash browns, soup, milk, water, bouillon cubes, Velveeta cheese, salt and pepper. Cook 30 to 45 minutes over medium heat, stirring often, careful not to scorch. 

Serve with French bread. 

(Need meat? Add chopped ham, chicken, crab, crawfish or shrimp.) 

Sometimes I worry myself to the point of anxiety. I do this at night in private. I work myself up about Jacob going to college in a year and a half. He has no college fund. I work myself up about how I am an irresponsible parent. My son is so intelligent. I want him to have every opportunity to succeed. It feels like he was born barely a moment ago and here he is practically a grown man, taller than me, driving, applying for a job at the movie theater up the road. He is *thisclose* to applying to colleges. Here's me: FRANTIC. 

I freak out about bills. I am not making as much money as I once did. I am wondering what will happen when I am too old and senile to work, and I end up on the streets pushing a shopping cart full of books, wearing a tin foil hat and a T-shirt that reads, "I still (heart) George Clooney." 

On the outside I look calm and together, but inside my nerves are a jangled mess of FUTURE FUTURE FUTURE OH MY GOD THE FUCKING FUTURE! 

See, that's me: The Frantic Chef. 

So it should be no surprise that I like comfort food. A warm meal in a bowl? Oh, hell yes. 

Bring. It. To. Me.

I will eat it while I am curled up on the sofa, my feet tucked up under a throw blanket, the television tuned to something funny, a cloth napkin draped over the arm of the sofa. 

Is the world ending? Some say it is (because they are idiots). OK, let's say the world is ending. A meteor in the shape of Barack Obama's beautiful, big-eared head is hurtling toward the planet. Oh, so sad. Are you wearing your apocalypse pants? Do you have all your doomsday gear stacked up in the garage? 

I have no doomsday gear in the garage. 

But I have some cheesy, warm goodness in a bowl and my apocalypse pants have an elastic waist. 

I feel better already.

I am thankful for comfort food. I am thankful for one-dish meals that can be made by cranking open can after can after can. There is nothing frantic about working a can opener and dumping stuff in a big ol' pot, turning the heat to medium, stirring occasionally, and warming a loaf of crusty bread in the oven. Don't forget the butter. 

 If this world goes down, it will go down with me on the sofa eating cheesy potatoes out of a bowl, my friends. Mmm, good. 

Note: This week I'll write each day about something for which I'm thankful.

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Thankful for...Home

Note: This week I'll write each day about something for which I'm thankful. 

Dorm life was never for me. Even twenty years later, I can recall that feeling of just how much I wanted to go home. When I was a freshman in a college only a few miles from my mother's duplex, I would sometimes walk there in the afternoon. My mother would still be at work. I would fix a glass of water. I would sit on the sofa surrounded by my mother's things. I'd feel comforted.

I never did live at home again, though. I lived with my grandmother for a bit in college and I loved that. I liked how she had a routine that could be counted on. She was up early. She ate half a grapefruit. She worked the puzzles in the daily paper. She ran errands and went to meetings and walked around her neighborhood. She had a cocktail at 5. She watched the news. At 9 pm, she took a phone call from her friend Mrs. Nance.

The freedom of college never held as much appeal for me as the comfort of a routine like my grandmother's. My grandmother's house felt like a home. It was full of things that were familiar to me, things I'd been seeing in her home since I was born.

When I look back at the places I've lived in my adulthood, I can tell you the places that felt most like home to me.

The townhouse Charles and I lived in when Jacob was born. Home.
The first house we bought in Shreveport when Kate was 1 and Jacob was 5. Home.
The house we bought a few months after we moved to Birmingham. Home.
The first rent house the kids and I lived in after the divorce. Home.

There were places in between these homes. Places we lived to save money. Places that were transitions, an attempt to repair something damaged in the place before so that we could move forward.

Every place I have lived in Birmingham, the first thing I have done is set up my bookshelves. A room is instantly inviting and comfortable if you cover a wall with books. Try it. Works every time. (I am thankful for my mother and my dear friend Gretchen who helped me move all my books during my last move.)

Next step: Set up your bed. Put a lamp on a bedside table. Put the book you are currently reading on the bedside table.

Home is never a place. Home is a feeling.

Homesickness is a longing in your soul, likely for something that no longer exists. Not in physical form anyway.

I have experienced homesickness for the house I lived in when I was 12 and I know what I am longing for is my mother.

I have experienced homesickness for my grandmother's townhouse and I know what I am longing for is my grandmother.

The house we live in now, the first house I bought on my own, is home. We have lived here longer than any place we've lived since Jacob was born.

Considering how often we have moved makes me realize how much upheaval there has been and how much I have attempted to temper the upheaval with things that can be counted on, with the comforts and routines of home.

Set up the books. Turn on the lamps. Hang pictures. Put a throw blanket on the sofa. Set out the things that remind you of those you love.

The past couple of days I have been cleaning the house and moving things around.

I hung several framed things that came from my dad and stepmother's home. They downsized last year and, when we drove home after a Thanksgiving visit, we brought home a trunk full of items: Framed menus from New Orleans restaurants they visited 30 years ago; a framed poster from a 1976 Shakespeare festival.

I realized these things have been stacked in a corner of my bedroom for nearly a full year. What have I been doing, I wonder. How has an entire year gone by?

But now these things are just where they belong. I like seeing them. I like how they remind me of my dad and stepmother, of their home in Indiana.

I've also been busy hanging art by my friend Chris. I look around and his work is everywhere. A dog painting in the kitchen. Three small dog paintings in the living room. A tiny platypus picture on the mantle. Four tiny platypus figures in a row. One of them, holding a tiny kitten, was sculpted especially for Kate. One of them is holding a four-leaf clover, ready for good luck. All of them have Chris's fingerprints pressed into the clay. All of them make me smile.

I am thankful for these things.

Of course, I realize the difference between a place feeling like home or not lies within me. I am thankful for the feeling that this is home, not simply a transition between one place and the next. Though it is undeniable that this is a place where things are repaired and healed, where life moves forward, where my children are transitioning from childhood into adulthood.

I am thankful that I get to share this place with Kate and Jacob. I suspect one day they will long for it the way I sometimes long for my mother's home. I hope they will figure out how to carry the feeling of home within them wherever they go.

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Take That Magic Somewhere Else, Buddy

If you're familiar with Elf Magic, then you already know that these little assholes show up every year after Thanksgiving and start playing pranks and making messes, all in the name of "holiday spirit."

Holiday spirit, my ass.

Here's one good thing about getting older. I now have one child who is nearly a grown man and could give two hoots about pretending certain things exist. I have another child who is not a girl, not yet a woman. No, wait, that's Britney Spears circa 2001. The person in my house is a pre-teen with a penchant for drama and drinking orange Fanta. She also likes to "believe."

Kate's enthusiasm for holiday traditions is one of the things I love about her. She is very different from me in this way. I am not a person who gets overly worked up about the holidays or making sure we do the same thing year after year.  Kate wants a tree the day after Thanksgiving. She wants to decorate the entire house. She wants to know why I won't decorate the house with lights. (No. 1, I don't own a ladder. No. 2, I don't want to have to take down the lights a month later.)

Keeping up with these mother-effing elves is not one of my favorite holiday activities. (My favorite holiday activities are drinking bourbon, making S'mores, watching The Sound of Music until right after the gazebo scene, and posting this 2007 photo of what Jacob did with my stepmother's salt and pepper shakers.)

I like all these things but I don't like anything that creates more clean-up work for me.

That is why I DO NOT condone the mess-making that is supposed to occur with these elves and their "magic."

No, no, no.

Are there parents out there who don't have enough to do? Because, if you're that hard up for activities, I've got about 6 loads of laundry you can come put away.

Why would you create a mess just so your child will believe that Santa's elves are complete jackasses?!

I don't get it.

Parents should sit their little freeloaders down and say, "Santa sent one of his elves to help us out this holiday season. The holidays are very busy and it's important that everyone pitch in."

Nope, apparently Santa Claus sends his elves to jack up your shit. Thanks for nothing, you fat bastard.

So this year, if the girl is still into playing pretend, these elves better make themselves useful and not behave like the worst houseguests in the history of houseguestery!

They will clean. Yea! Look what Eileen did, she cleaned the kitchen last night!

They will cook. Yea! Bedford made us a batch of macaroni and cheese.

Oh, look, the elves teamed up to make Mommy a drink.

There will be none of last year's shenanigans, like when Bedford got drunk and naked, took a bath in marshmallows, and shoved his face in whipped cream.

He also called your mother a whore.

Bedford, you so nasty.

The elves will not:

Mess up the living room with five gajillion post-it notes.

Seriously, who does this? 

Waste the toilet paper.
In this economy? Oh, hell no. Ain't nobody got money to waste on toilet paper.

Fish out of the toilet. Dude, that's gross.

Clean the toilet? Yes.

I expect the elves to be extremely well-behaved this year.

Or else I'll let our evil cat Lucy have her way with them.

Satan sent me here to destroy everything in your house.

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Required Reading

The world [Monday] breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. - Ernest Hemingway

The young, blond woman standing by the counter at the library this morning looked exactly how I felt.

I heard her ask about the cost of printing something. She said, "But I don't have any money. I'm trying to print something so I can get a payday loan."

You could hear in her voice the growing anxiousness, the panic that comes up when not one thing seems to go right or smoothly.

"Do you need a dollar?" A patron, waiting to check out, set down her pile of books and pulled out some change.

I could hear the woman say thank you and in the thank you I could hear the sound of something broken. Or breaking. It's that sound when you are trying so hard to hold it all together. Sometimes, kindness is the thing that shatters you. Her eyes filled with tears. She took the change and rushed back to the computer she was logged onto.

While I looked at the new books and wandered into the stacks, I saw her again. She was having trouble printing out whatever it was she needed. The librarian was going to help her.

I kept wishing I was the type of person who could walk right over and hand her everything in my wallet and say, "Here, take this money. Nope, just take it. You have no idea how many times I have been where you are. Please don't go to those vultures at the payday loan place."

But I don't have anything in my wallet.

I was at the library this morning because the library makes me feel better. It's like the bookstore without the price tags. There are times when I'm convinced the library is probably the best thing we as a society have ever created.

The kids had their six-month check-ups today. We don't have dental insurance so that's $266. They were due for X-rays. I declined the fluoride treatment ($35 each).

Kate's teeth look great. Jacob is going to need a few cavities filled. It's going to cost about $600.

I signed the treatment form and made an appointment for Jacob to go back in December. I jokingly said, "Merry Christmas, kids."

But I could tell Jacob was worried because he could tell I was worried. I got too quiet in the car.

Quiet is the thing that worries him.

Here's the cycle, here's how it goes, here's how loving people can twist your stomach into knots: I worry, he worries that I'm worried, I worry because I know he's worried about me worrying. I feel guilty that he worries. I feel guilty that he has to be aware of money issues at all.

I work it over in my head, where this money will come from. I am too quiet while I work it out. Jacob offers to give up drinking soda because soda causes cavities.

I keep doing stupid things like giving Kate $20 to go to the movies or $15 to spend on hair dye so she can color the ends of her hair purple. I keep buying myself $4 lattes. I keep not dealing with things like the car that won't start or the axle that needs to be replaced on the other car. I keep working it over in my mind. What should I take care of now and what can wait? What's the next right move?

I keep waiting for something to happen so that I can breath easy for a goddamn minute.

I took the kids to McDonald's after the dentist even though I should have saved that $15. But that is what we do after the dentist. We get breakfast. I'm so tired of having to give up things even if they seem silly and inconsequential.

Going to McDonald's with Jacob is one of the things I wrote about after Charles died. Jacob still had braces then.

After Jacob’s regular orthodontist appointments, we would stop at McDonald’s on the way to his school. Jacob would have two bacon and egg biscuits (no cheese) and a coke (no ice) and I would have a vanilla latte and we would make up stories about the old men who regularly met for coffee at the McDonald’s on Valleydale Road. We decided they were secret ninjas and they met here each day to discuss their secret ninja missions.  

During one of our McDonald’s breakfasts, Jacob told me his class was reading The Story of My Life by Helen Keller and they’d watched a movie about her.  

“Helen Keller freaks me out,” I said. “I mean, not the person but the situation. I’ve never understood how she learned anything. She was trapped in silence and darkness. How did she break free? I don’t get it.”  

It became a running joke between us, my inability to comprehend how Helen Keller could find her way out of that darkness and into the world. Jacob, because he was a teenager and liked to tease me, would ask me “Why?” questions about the vastness of the universe that I couldn’t answer. 

When I would say, “It really is so hard to comprehend, isn’t it?” he would laugh and say, “Yes and what about that Helen Keller?”  

But he never asked me any questions about his dad. 

After I dropped both kids at school, I cried in the car because that's what I do. I have no idea why, but I think the car is a good place to cry the way some people think the car is a good place to pick their noses. I mean, it's not like no one can see you so it doesn't really make sense. Mostly, I think it's because in the car you can be in a space between places. You can decide to cry there and pull yourself together before you get home or go to work or go inside the payday loan place.

I decided to go to the library on the way home and load myself down with free books, to comfort myself with stories that aren't mine.

I'm currently reading The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe. It's a memoir about a man whose mother has pancreatic cancer. For his entire life, he and his mother discussed books and, during her cancer treatment at the end of her life, they formed an official book club for themselves. The memoir is full of the books they have read and discussed.

I love coming across the titles of books I have read. Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach. Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies. The Hobbit. The Chronicles of Narnia.

My head is full of the names of books Will Schwalbe has mentioned that I haven't read. I was trying to remember the titles of some of them when I stopped at the library.

Will Schwalbe and his mother Mary Anne approached books the way I do. Books are sometimes a place to find answers, but most often they are a place to ask questions. The best books give you permission to think about things like faith and love and humanity. They give you a way to ponder your own mysteries by searching through the eyes of characters.

Books are such clear and convincing proof that we are all the same, we human beings who - in the name of politics or religion - shriek and yell and burn things and rip each other apart in order to prove how different we are.

We are not so different from one another, no matter what culture we are born into, no matter who we vote for or who we worship or who we love.

I was standing at the shelves full of new arrivals when I heard the young woman who needs the payday loan. I recognized her in that way that you recognize someone's struggle. I knew her in the way I know how demoralizing it is to not have enough and to feel exhausted by your attempts to fix things that are broken; the way I know what it sounds like when just one more thing going wrong will make you want to cry in front of strangers in the library; the way I am familiar with the truth that it will be a gentle offer of help that will actually make you cry.

It's all going to be OK.

That's what you want to say to someone you don't even know. She isn't even the first person I've seen crying in public in the past five days. Last week, I went to Walmart to buy Kate some black tights for her Halloween costume, and a girl at the door was on her cell phone crying. "His name is Thomas." That's what she said, sobbing, to whoever was on the other end of that call.

It's all going to be OK.

That's what you want someone to tell you. Hell, it doesn't even matter if they know what they're talking about. Most people, let's face it, don't know shit.

But there is power in hearing someone else say those words and say them with assurance. And the thing is, you can be dumb as a box of rocks and you'd still be right about that.

It is all going to be OK. (It's going to suck again, too, but then it'll be OK. Then it will suck...You get what I'm saying.)

One day I switched purses. I cleaned out the one that was in the closet so I could use it again. Everything in it was from the first few months after Charles died. There was the last half of a gift certificate to Saw's BBQ that I never used. A coworker had given it to us so we could get dinner one night. There was a letter from Blue Cross Blue Shield about how I owed them $600 for Jacob's orthodontic work, for a mistake they'd made in calculating benefits. I remember I cried about that, too. But the bill got paid, didn't it? And I hadn't thought about it since then.

Now the same purse holds a print-out of a new treatment plan and its dollar amount. It holds an estimate for car repairs. It holds a worn photograph of a haircut I like. It holds the book I'm reading. You never know when you're going to have a minute to sit down and read. You have to be prepared.

What's that phrase? It's not one thing after another. It's the same damn thing over and over again.

That is why it's all going to be OK over and over again, too. I don't know how. It's a mystery. But the passage of time somehow always solves that mystery.

I hope that woman from the library gets a hug from someone she loves today. I hope someone tells her it's going to be OK. I hope someone in her life offers to give up soda or something, just because he loves her and worries about her and is willing to give up something silly and inconsequential just to make her feel better.

I hope she checked out a good book or two before she left the library.

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Leftover Candy

Hey, remember when people used to write notes on Facebook? Yeah, me neither. But apparently, we did. I thought I'd share a few.

Yes, that means today's blog post is a rerun. Please don't judge me. I'm up in here churning out new material day in and day out, but today I am extremely preoccupied because it's Halloween and I have yet to decide what kind of slut I'm going to be!

It's just so hard to choose from so many slutty options. I think I'm leaning toward Slutty Rick Santorum. I'm also considering a Slutty Chris Christie™ ensemble. I just need someone to be that underdressed storm whore Hurricane Sandy.

(Someone please tell me when Halloween became scary, not based on ghouls and goblins, but based on the serious threat of catching an STD.)

My next favorite idea is to dress as someone who calls in sick to work... and then call in sick to work.

Anyway, I thought I'd gather a few sweet treats from the past for you guys. Don't choke on a razor blade.

Candy Smarts
(originally written September 10, 2009)
Recently I've been receiving a free subscription to Everyday with Rachael Ray. It just started arriving a month ago for reasons that are a mystery to me. I must be the target demographic. Except for one little thing: I can't stand Rachael Ray. Throughout the magazine, the stories refer to her as "Rach." It makes me gag every time I come across that nickname.

The magazine is a mess. It opens with a section called Talk and the background is black with white and multicolored type. I can't even read it because it looks so bad.

Everyday also is suffering from what most magazines have recently come down with: a serious case of the borings. There is absolutely nothing for a reader to sink her teeth into. There are bits and pieces, boxes and bites, but nothing satisfying. My friend Todd astutely calls the contents of current magazines "a meal of hors d'oeuvres."

The October issue is full of Halloween recipes and tips. Page 21 in the section titled "Yum" offers the worst tip of all. Ever.

"One thing that haunts us about Halloween: SAME OLD CANDIES. Shop for treats that will stand out in the candy exchange (like apple cider caramels) at asianfoodgrocer.com."

First of all, you can't find apple cider caramels on that Web site.

Secondly, kids hate that shit.

So here's my advice to you: Fill your Halloween candy bowl with the USUAL stuff (Snickers, Kit Kats, Nerds, tiny Hersheys bars). And have a happy Halloween.

AB4BOOS
(originally written September 27, 2010)

When I first moved to Birmingham, I was stunned at the number of personalized license plates on Alabama cars. I never saw that many in Louisiana. Maybe they are cheaper here. Maybe people are just that devoted to sharing with the world who they root "4". Over here, you are either "4AU" or you are "4UA" and never the 'tween shall meet.

I spend half my drive time trying to figure out the meaning of the personalized license plates that aren't clearly for Auburn or Alabama.

This morning, Jacob and I pulled up behind a car parked in front of his high school. It was a convertible BMW driven by an overweight, middle-aged guy. We didn't see a student get out. We only saw the man sitting in his car. He sat there for a good five minutes, while Jacob finished up his egg and bacon biscuit. The BMW's personalized llicense plate: 4 PLEASR

After a few minutes, Jacob said, "Why is that guy just sitting there?"

And I said, in my creepiest voice, "For pleasuuuuuure."

And then we laughed our asses off.


8th Grade Smartassery
(originally written October 6, 2009)

The other day I received a letter in the mail from Jacob. Students in several classes wrote letters and the teachers mailed them. I love Jacob's letter. It is full of his personality and a not-so-secret message.

Orange you glad I'm a smart ass and not a dumb ass?

Dear Mom, 

At school our team is doing this event called "Can you hear me now?" It's for parents and students to come and learn about each other. It's on October 5 7-8 PM in the cafeteria. It's similar to the newlywed game. (I don't wanna go.) Our school wasted more than $36 making us mail this when we could've brought it home free. 

Love, 
Jacob, your son 

P.S. I don't wanna go.



And now here is an assortment of past costume photos that are incredibly scary (but only because time is going by so quickly and my children are growing up way too fast).

Hope you and yours have a fabulous Halloween!

Modeling for Lowe's Home Improvement.  

Be grateful it's blurry.

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Ruining the McMuffins

The past couple of days I've read several stories online about yelling at children. How-to stories, of course, like how you should say FREAKING instead of the other  F-word when you're wondering very loudly why no one ever does the FREAKING dishes.

No, no. That's not right. The stories were about how not to yell and were prompted by a University of New Hampshire study that found that 90 percent of parents yell at their children. The study referred to this as "psychological aggression." The study of 1,000 parents found that these parents were "psychologically aggressive" toward their children 22 times a year.

I'm not great at math, so bear with me.

There are 365 days in a year.

There are 9 months' worth of homework assignments.

There are 52 weekends' worth of chores to be done.

Sure, 22 times a year seems about right. If your pants are on fire. liars.liars.

I yell. It's one of the things I can't stand about myself.

(Other things about myself that I can't stand: My tendency to leave laundry sitting in the washing machine so that I then have to wash that load a second time; My tendency to become a hormonal, hopeless, bloated mess one day of the month and to somehow fail to realize why; My tendency to avoid grocery shopping until we have run out of all decent food and I must feed my children ramen noodles; My tendency to buy far too many books and stack them up next to the bed instead of putting that money in savings or some other financially savvy thing Suze Orman would tell me to do.)*

*This is not the real list. This is the "Oh, I have flaws that are so relatable and charming" list. My real list is only available late at night when I can't sleep.

I get worked up when the house is a mess. You'd think the freeloaders who live with me would realize this and - oh, I don't know - pick up their crap.

I get worked up when Kate whines about doing her homework and then - are you kidding me? - cries about it. Seriously, the girl wastes 20 minutes whining when she could have finished the assignment in 15.

In some ways, I'm extremely patient. I think I can hold out an impressively long time before I start losing my shit. No, really, I can.

Even Claire Huxtable lost her shit sometimes.

Here's how, in an email to a friend, I described one such incident that went down last week:


Oh yeah, then I came home from the world's most boring job and I remained patient while kids turned their noses up at dinner, while Kate asked for money (every damn night it's something) for cheerleading clinic, while I took Kate to Best Buy to replace yet another iPod she broke (thank God for the protection plan), while I paid $35 for another protection plan, while she begged me for new $25 headphones and whined when I said no, while the kids fought about stupid shit, on and on, until finally I told everyone to "shut up" and I stomped around the house like Godzilla. The end. 


Then I wrote this Facebook post: "I had a little meltdown tonight because that is what good mothers do. They give their children stories to tell later about how their mother was a crazy person."

I do it for you, kids. All for you.

I like to share these things because it's the only way to see that you are not alone in the world. You are one of 9 out of 10 parents (that 10th parent is in a coma) who is "psychologically aggressive" *ahem* 22 times a year.

My friend Emily admitted that she threw her iPhone at her husband in front of their highly impressionable toddler who, I believe, will grow up to have no respect for technology or will grow up to be a pitcher.

My daughter loves to bring up the time I threw a piece of bread at her dad. She was only four-years-old but you just don't forget watching as your mom stops, mid-sandwich-fixin', to launch a piece of mayonnaise-laden bread at your dad and that bread hits the wall and slides slowly down to the floor. I remember we laughed so hard that I forgot whatever it was I was angry about.

Emily wrote, "I have a term for when I go crazy: Throwing the McDonald's. Remember when Carrie did just that to Mr Big? So my close friends need no further explanation when I shamefully tell them I threw the McDonald's."

Jacob was sitting next to me when I read that and I showed it to him and we both burst out laughing.

This past summer, Jacob and I had an argument on a road trip. We were in the McDonald's drive-through, where - let's be honest - nothing good can happen.

It was before 10:30 in the morning so we were ordering breakfast. Jacob asked if they could fix him some chicken strips. I asked, the person said yes, but it would take at least five minutes. I looked at Jacob and he said, "Never mind." So I went on with the order and pulled forward. Then Jacob started sighing and acting put out.

And in the complicated emotions of motherhood, I felt bad that he was disappointed. Let's just forget that he disappointed himself by saying, "Never mind." I felt sorry that he wasn't getting what he wanted and so...I yelled at him.

I know. What the what?

But I felt bad for him and angry with him at the same time.

"Why didn't you just order what you wanted?!" I yelled.

He yelled back at me and then we pulled up to the window. When the guy handed me the bag full of hot breakfast sandwiches and hash browns, I threw it at Jacob.

Not my finest moment. Or his. He said something to me that you just don't write down in the baby book. Baby's first F word?

Not cool on either of our parts. I pulled into the gas station next door and I went in to the restroom and leaned against the wall and breathed in and out. When I came out to the car, I apologized for throwing the McDonald's bag at him and then I said, "Don't you ever speak to me that way again. Ever."

I told Emily that Jacob and I, having made peace shortly after that horrible incident in the drive-through, had laughed out loud at her use of the phrase "throwing the McDonald's" since I had literally thrown the McDonald's.



"But," I said, "we call it 'Ruining the McMuffins.'"

Being a parent is difficult. No one really tells you just how hard it's going to be. Sometimes you want to run away. Sometimes you want to grab short people by the shoulders and shake them into having some sense. Sometimes you are the one with no sense and your irritatingly reasonable teenage son will say, "Mom, you're getting worked up again. You should calm down."

Sometimes the yelling will feel good in the same way that pounding a punching bag feels good. You get into a rhythm and you don't want to stop. Sometimes it feels like the only response when NO ONE SEEMS TO BE LISTENING UP IN HERE!

If it makes a difference, my yelling is much like my rants about politics: mostly funny and no one takes me seriously.

But it's obviously not a good thing. We should all try to cut back from 22 times a year to two times. Two seems totally reasonable. I mean, Christmas isn't Christmas without yelling.

I don't have the answers for how to do this. The only thing I know to do is to leave the room when you feel a yell building up. Remind yourself that the mess does not matter in the grand scheme of things. Remind yourself that children in Africa are starving while you are throwing food around and ruining it. Remind yourself that these freeloaders are looking to you to show them how to react to things.

One of the articles I read said that it can be good for children to see a parent get angry and then to see that parent calm themselves down and that "the occasional, nonabusive freak-out is generally much less damaging than regular fireworks, which send a child the message that he or she is not safe and that there's something wrong with him...Kids can actually learn an important lesson from seeing you lose your temper and then regain your cool. 'This provides an opportunity to show kids that we all get angry, but what really counts is how we repair things afterward.'"

How we repair things around here is with humor and an appreciation for the absurd. If we can laugh at ourselves and forgive ourselves for how ridiculous we are, that's half the battle, I think.

The other half might be to stop eating crap from McDonald's.

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Fast-Talk and Wisdom (From the Kate Mercer Files)

When Kate talks, you have to pay attention.

The sentences come fast.

The enthusiasm is distracting.

So is the beauty. The girl is so gorgeous it's ridiculous. She's like this crazy mix of Charles and - I don't know - Hayden Panettiere.

+

=

Anyway, tonight when I got home from work, Kate and I curled up on the sofa and watched Castle on the DVR. About halfway through, she told me to pause it so she could show me the book she bought at the book fair today. She read the back cover to me. A girl who is a runner loses one of her legs and has to adjust to life with a prosthetic limb. She becomes friends with someone who has cereb- 

"How do you say that? Cerebral palsy? What's that?" 

"You know the son on Breaking Bad? Have you seen him? He uses the crutches to help him walk?" 

"Oh yeah. Ok." 

Then she continues - deep breath - 

"You know what's weird? Some of my friends from this year and last year don't know that Daddy is dead. They just don't know. My friend Emily didn't know. Her mom was driving us somewhere the other weekend and she asked me what my dad did for a living and I said, 'Oh, he's dead. But he used to be a plumber.' And they said-"

 Kate nods her head slowly, "They said, 'Cool. That's cool.'" 

"Oh yeah, cause dead dads are the awesome-est," I said, sardonically, laughing. 

Kate giggled uncontrollably. "No, no, they meant the plumber part. That's cool. You know what Dad would have loved? Breaking Bad. Dad would have loved watching Breaking Bad with you and Jacob. You know what else Dad would have loved? The Walking Dead! He would have woken up early in the morning and said, 'Come on, wake up, let's watch The Walking Dead!' He would have loved it! I bet he would have let me miss a whole day of school just to watch a Walking Dead marathon. What else would Dad have loved? He would have liked Castle." 

"Yes," I said. "He would have loved all of that. Oh my gosh, he would have loved Breaking Bad." 

"Yeah," Kate said.

"You know who's just like he was in the morning? Wide awake and excited?" 

"Who?" she said.

"You. You're just like him in the morning." 

And Kate laughed some more. "I am. I'm like that." 

Then she told me how she and her old boyfriend broke up. I said, "Oh honey, I'm sorry. Boys are such a pain." And she said, "That's OK." And then she told me that she has a new boyfriend. She told me his name and how he asked her to "go out with him" outside one of their classes today. 

Then she said, "You can un-pause it now." 

So I did. 

And that is how it goes. 

And here is what I know: 

Being a plumber is cool.

Kate's dad would have loved Breaking Bad. 

This is how you do it. This is how you keep a man alive for his children. 

And this is why it feels so weird when you meet new people and they don't know the thing about you that sometimes feels like the thing that defines you. 

And Kate is awesome. 

That is what I know. 

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