"She has lost the power of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech."*

   Y’all ever feel weird and like things aren’t quite the way they ought to be? I’m not a person who fears change, but change does tend to wreak havoc on me. Lately I find myself feeling like I’m the central figure in some David Arkenstone album.

   In case you’re a normal person (or just someone with good taste), you've never heard of David Arkenstone. You should be able to find out everything about him here. My parents, who’ve instilled me with their excellent musical tastes over the years (The Beatles, Yes, Ravi Shankar, The Gershwins, The Allman Brothers, and Led Zeppelin as well as all things classical), had a dark period in the mid-nineties. It was the Arkenstone period, and I don’t want to talk too much about it. Because it’s embarrassing. But his “music” (if you can call it that) always made me feel as though it was about nomads wondering through the desert. But not, you know, like real nomads. These nomads (again, all in my head) were dressed like Olivia Newton-John in that “Physical” video. It was “Physical” meets Lawrence of Arabia. It was (is) terrible. Listen to Mr. Arkenstone sometime. You’ll get it.

   So I’ve been feeling all wandery-in-the-desert, and purposeless and also just epically removed. But maybe also a little bit like Olivia Newton-John in the "Physical" video (spandex, leg warmers, bad hair, headbands). When I get confused about my place in the world, I get tired and take a nap. But there’s really no time for that. I have to take math class (stats, finally!) and find a job (anywhere, anytime) and work on my summer bucket list.

   The bucket list isn’t long, as yet.

   Here it is:

1.  Do a pull-up.

2.  Run a mile.

3.  Run a mile in under 15 minutes (this was my time when I was on the track team in junior high and finished last at EVERY SINGLE MEET.)

4.  Get over fear of bugs, especially spiders, as there will be many of both in Texas.

   I’m currently running for 10 minutes IN A ROW and have accomplished only .63 miles. I’ve killed many spiders and one silverfish, but I’m not anywhere near over my fears. (Especially after hearing Ouisa's boyfriend, Matt, talk in a scholarly fashion about bedbugs, which I'm now convinced are crawling on me at all times.) I’m working on lat pull-downs to make my side muscles stronger.

   But I feel kind of like those people in that American Gothic** painting. I’m standing around with a bunch of tools (or just a broom?) and looking confused and angry in front of a big old barn house: the modern-day, Nebraska equivalent of wandering through the desert.

Nebraskan Gothic

*The quote is George Bernard Shaw. It should be my epitaph.

**Did you know that Grant Woods modeled the figures in American Gothic on his neighbor and his own sister? I also didn't know it was supposed to be a farmer and his spinster daughter. I always thought they were supposed to be a married couple. Wow, art.

"Not with that attitude, you won't."*

   Mother’s Day is a great holiday. Mothers have a really shitty job…okay that sounds mean, and I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot. They have a really hard job, we’ll say, and even if you’re adopted and your particular mom didn’t carry you around for 9 months and push you out the hard way, she’s busted her butt (if not her vaginal canal or abdominal wall or bladder or all three) trying to feed you and make sure you have semi-decent hygiene and some kind of ability to take care of yourself. Having been a childcare provider for a number of years I can assure you that you were a huge pain in the ass and your mother’s love was the only thing keeping you from dying in the streets and all you ever wanted to do was not eat your dinner and whine like a spoiled brat about every mundane thing you could possibly imagine. Maybe you were an easy child, but when people say their child is “easy” what they mean is “compared to other children, my kid is less suicide-inducing.” They love you, those moms. And they deserve a day (or 100 days) of attention and hugs and presents and trips to Europe.

   I didn’t get to see my mom today, but it should be said that she was and is a great mom.

   And so anyway. 

   My most vivid memory of Mother’s Day was when I was about 15 (one of my most asshole-ish periods). Like she always does, Mom spent the better part of the day preparing a feast for us and for our grandparents. She made all the food and cleaned the house and decorated the table and probably bought her own floral arrangements. We probably whined about sweeping or folding laundry and watched movies in the den while she roasted a lamb or some other ridiculously delicious and difficult meal.

   I remember it was a beautiful day and very sunny and my mom was making a point to fix Arnold Palmers, as she always did when Grandma Millie was coming over, because that was Grandma's favorite. And my mom was always very good to her mom. Moms!

   Grandma and Grandpa arrived for “dinner” around 2 in the afternoon along with my Aunt Mel, who most likely contributed to the eats as well. Everyone was gathered, Grandpa had a beer, and we were all about ready to sit down and eat.

   The tea was finished boiling on the stove and Mom had only to add it to the fresh batch of lemonade. She first dumped a pile of ice into the pitcher and then poured the tea on top. I mean, these Arnie Palmers weren't going to cool themselves. And, in a moment that I still can't quite see without everything going into slo-mo, the pitcher promptly exploded, dousing my mom in scalding tea and shooting shards of the glass pitcher into her leg and all over the room. 

Bloody Arnold Palmer horror.

   Despite the fact that she had a glass shard shoved into one of her perpetually bare feet (a hippie preference I’ve inherited from her) and was gushing jets of blood all over the floor, Mom remained remarkably calm. This was a bit of a miracle as the site or suggestion of blood makes her faint.

   I think she just sort of sat down on the floor in a state of bemused shock. (In retrospect, I think maybe she did faint. Hmmm...)

   Luckily Dad and Aunt Mel, both medical professionals, didn’t seem as completely frozen with ineptitude as the rest of us and managed to figure out that she would need stitches pretty soon and they wrapped her foot in a kitchen towel and drove her to the ER.

   I think they’d been gone for a full 5 minutes before my grandparents and my sisters and I moved at all. We’d all been put to the test and we’d all failed miserably. We were straight useless in a crisis, and apparently incapable of even reacting to the situation. So we stood in a line around the kitchen counter and stared at the pool of blood on the floor. Huh. Blood. 

Blood. Glass. Huh.

   Finally, slowly, while making small talk with our Grandma and Grandpa and keeping some sort of tabs on Penelope, Ouisa and I started cleaning the blood. I guess we decided it would be nice if, on Mother’s Day, my mom didn’t have to clean her own blood off the kitchen floor when she arrived home from the ER. Surprise! Happy Mother’s Day! Your gift is to spend a full day NOT cleaning your blood off the floor! You’re welcome! We even did the soap thing, the way Dad had taught us, so the floor wouldn't be sticky. It seemed doubly important since we'd all know that it was sticky because of blood. And that's just gross.

   They came back from the ER an hour or so later and we sat down to our meal. And I’m sure it was delicious. I think Grandma and I had even managed to make a second batch of Arnie Palmers without incident while they were out. But I learned a valuable lesson that day: don’t put boiling fluids into a glass container filled with ice.**

   Just kidding.

   I didn’t really learn anything.

   But doing something that was actually useful for my mom was a nice feeling. And I wish I could do it more often. But she hasn’t bled on the floor in a while. Kidding! (Not about the blood part...she really hasn't had a bloody accident. But about the doing nice things for her part. Ugh. Too much back-peddling here. Let's move on.)

   It’s important to do the things that help your Momma, is what I think you can take away from this, if you are greedy and feel that you need to take something away from this heart-warming post. My mom always wants me to fold laundry before her dinner parties and I never understood why: the guests don’t see the laundry! But over the years I’ve realized that the laundry is just one of the 47 other things she has to finish before she can go to sleep tonight, so doing it does help, even if no one can tell it’s been done. So I try to do that whenever I’m home. And empty the dishwasher. Take out the garbage. You know, stuff like that. Maybe it’s because now that I’m an adult and maybe ever so slightly less of a jackass, I appreciate the value of having clean clothes and a place to put my newly dirtied dishes. I’m grateful to my mom for having always done it for me.

   Along with a billion other things she's done for me. 

   Say thanks to your Mom and fold her laundry and clean up her blood. It's the least you can do. 

   And flowers are nice, too.

Happy Mother's Day, Maman!

*I'm not sure if my mom invented this quote, but it has long been her response to any statement of negativity. ("I won't get into that college." "Not with that attitude, you won't." "I will never find those shorts!" "Not with that attitude you won't.") I find myself using it all the time nowadays. My mom is the Queen of The Positive Attitude.

**To this day I'm afraid to add ice to anything hot. But I think it's more about a glass container + ice + boiling fluids. I think. But I always shield my face when making iced coffee from hot.

"Before you can read me you've got to learn how to see me. I said, Free your mind and the rest will follow. Be color blind. Don't be so shallow."*

   En Vogue’s epic R&B tune “Free Your Mind” found its way onto my iPhone the other morning and I was so excited. I hadn’t heard the song in years and it’s always brought back memories of my childhood. I was especially excited to hear the opening lyrics: “Prejudice. Wrote a song about it. Like to hear it? Hear it go.”

   When I was 10, my best friend and next-door neighbor, Rachel, choreographed a dance routine to this song. She taught it to me in her dad Mike's pristine garage (I know it was pristine because I often had to help clean it...and pick up twigs from his lawn and sing lullabies to his rose bushes). Once I had the moves down (which probably took a really long time, because I’m bad with moves), we taught it to our two younger sisters—Ouisa and Emily. I remember it involved a lot of cartwheels and the classic move of running our hands from our ankles to our thighs—like we were putting on invisible thigh-high stockings. (I just tried to spell that “stalkings.” Weird. And surely somehow Freudian?)

   A week of hard-core rehearsals later, I was very excited to perform the dance for our parents. Rachel had the boom box all plugged in to the side of the Kelleys’ house, and we lined up lawn chairs for our parents to sit on while we danced. The littler Kelley kids sat on the grass in front of us, and Hannah Kelley and Penelope were just babies, so most likely parents held them on their laps. To the outside world, it probably looked gloriously middle-class American and family-oriented.

Boom box with 90's style effects.

   And so we danced. And it was spectacular.

   But when I was in my car on the Hollywood Freeway listening to “Free Your Mind” at 9:15 a.m. on Thursday morning, the whole event suddenly took on a different shade. For one thing, the opening lyrics after the intro I wrote above are:

“I wear tight clothing/

High-heeled shoes/

That doesn’t mean that I’m a prostitute.

I like rap music/

Wear hip-hop clothes/

That doesn’t mean that I’m out selling dope.”

   Um…how the hell did our parents sit through this performance without laughing their asses off or dragging us off to our bedrooms?

   I still love the song, and the message is on point: just because I’m a sexy black woman who dates other races and wears scandalous duds, it doesn’t mean I’m a slut or a traitor to black people: “Be colorblind. Don’t be so shallow.”

   HOWEVER: what were a bunch of little, Catholic, white girls doing with this dance routine, which, in the clear light of 20 years of retrospect, seems ever-so-slightly…I don’t know…inappropriate?

   Our parents must have been frozen in shock and maybe mild-to-moderate nausea. I’m sure they wondered if we knew what the terms “prostitute” and “dope” meant, and I’m guessing they figured we did, since besides the repeated cart-wheeling, we kept acting like we were putting on our thigh-highs for a night of street walking. 

Really patient parents at an outdoor concert circa 1992.

   I’d like to think that they were trying really hard not to laugh at us. I’m sure Mike Kelley was probably smirking. Joan Kelley was probably rolling her eyes. But my parents were pretty straightedge at the time, and I’m sure that The Beatles-Beethoven-and Ravi Shankar-loving pair of them were wondering when and how this decidedly urban music had entered their 10-and-7-year-old daughters' worlds. 

   But they were kind and wise enough to applaud the performance and leave it alone. We were never admonished for play-acting at being hookers, and it seems to me that they played it just right in that moment. To draw attention to the lyrics would have only invited weeks or months of uncomfortable questions from us to which they would have to find clever answers (i.e. lies).

   Many years later, when I was in high school, my favorite pair of jeans went missing. They were wide-legged and made of thin denim and they’d split up the outer thighs (through no fault of my own). I’d proceeded to pin them at intervals with safety pins and I thought they were epically bad ass and I wore them everywhere with my black combat boots and long, cheetah-print coat. And one day during my junior year of high school they mysteriously disappeared. Mom never admitted to it, but I’m pretty sure they went into the garage garbage can sometime in the dead of night. Mom couldn’t take any chances that I’d turn into the dope-selling prostitute my childhood hinted at. Though, to reiterate, the song specifically stated, “That DOESN’T mean that I’m a Prostitute.”

*"Free Your Mind" by the incredible (though not very enduring) all-girl 90's group En Vogue. 

"Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things, he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it's very fine that gay people should be married in civil ceremonies."*

   It’s almost Easter and I thought I should acknowledge that somehow. I don’t go to Mass anymore, since 13 years of Catholic school pretty much gave me more than enough cumulative hours for the rest of my life. I consistently cook and eat brisket and matzo balls with Jewish people, so that seems like a jaunt away from Jesus territory as well (even though I think he was considered a Jew…but later converted? I’m not sure how that works).

   So yesterday, Good Thursday if I’m not mistaken, was the day that I was sure they had gone ahead and crucified Jesus. But on the phone, my mom tells me, “No, that was Holy Friday.”(OKAY...I WAS mistaken. I had those reversed. It was SUPPOSED to be Holy Thursday and Good Friday. I'll fix it in the rest of the post.)

   “So,” I asked, “Is Holy Good Friday the day when we had to go to church and reenact all the stations of the cross and then listen to some horrible, bloody retelling of Jesus’ awful, humiliating death?”

   She said yes, but I was confused.

   “But on the third day he rose again?”

   “Yes. On Sunday.”

   “But Friday to Sunday is only two days.”

   “Well he died around 3 p.m. on Friday, I know that. We're supposed to be quiet and mournful at that time.”

   “But that makes it even less than 2 days. Friday afternoon to Sunday morning is more like 36 hours. That’s a day-and-a-half.” I wasn’t trying to be belligerent. The information was not computing.

   “Well, Friday is the first day and then Saturday is the second day, and so on,” my Mom sounded like she was caught between laughing off the conversation and screaming into a pillow. “I don’t know why you’re asking me this. You went to Catholic school.”

   “I just think that maybe they measured time differently in olden times. Like maybe a day was only 12 hours back then? And it got written into the Bible that way and no one ever bothered to fix it? Of course, I guess if he’d stayed dead for too long, people would’ve lost interest and no one would be around when he came back?”

   “Lacey, I can’t talk to you about this anymore. Would you be interested in talking to your dad?”

   Dad got on the phone.

   “On the third day, Jesus came out and saw his shadow,” Dad began the conversation.

   “And then we had 1,980 more years of Easter?”

   “Right.”

   “But seriously, what’s with this three days thing? It just doesn’t ADD UP.”

   “The Bible doesn’t say, ‘Then, three days later, Jesus rose from the dead.’ It says ‘On the third day,’ so you have to start Friday as day one.”

   My brain was hurting a little by this point, but it didn’t change the fact that the Catholics had somehow duped me yet again. Somewhere in there, all those years ago and for so very long, they managed to have me at Mass three times in one week.

   I let the issue go for the moment—my Dad had had a long day.

   Here’s the thing: Christians, but Catholics really because most other Christians aren’t self-loathing masochists, can really find a way to ruin a good time. Mass itself is such a workout: sit, kneel, stand, kneel, stand, sit, stand, shake, kneel, kneel, kneel, kneel. Christmas is great because of presents and Santa and Christmas break. But Easter, the one that’s supposed to be the MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF ALL TIME, is so awful. You’ve got Mass on Thursday, which my mother tells me is NOT the day Jesus died, but the day he was SENTENCED to die. Then you’ve got Mass on Friday, where they go into extreme detail about just how awful his death was. You get Saturday off to rest up and then you’ve got to go back on Sunday, and now the Church is full of beautiful flowers, but sadly, Mass is an additional half-hour long. And let’s face it: the Easter Bunny is a weak tradition that gets dropped pretty quickly after you’ve turned 8 or 9. And, to top it all off, unless Easter happens to fall during Spring Break or you happen to go to Catholic school, you don’t get any time off. The Jews planned it right: all of their high holidays last a week or more and you get all kinds of time off from school.

   Where was I going with all this? I seriously don’t know. Oh yeah: so right now, in the height of the Passion and the horrendousness of the days leading up to the wonderful holiday that is Easter, the Supreme Court is doing some serious thinking about Gay Marriage Rights and whether or not to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act and so on. It seems like a great time to bust out the old: "what would Jesus do?" question. I’m told this guy was pretty nice and open-minded and a bit of a loving, free spirit type. Like, if you went to college with Jesus, he's be that guy that was always barefoot under a tree on the quad playing the three guitar chords he knows over and over and showing up at "Take Back the Night" rallies. When I try to wax political or religious I always come off sounding like a bona fide moron, so I’m not trying to do either. Alls I’m saying is: I think Jesus would be all about gay marriage.

My picture for Easter.

   Happy Easter.

*Jimmy Carter. Wow, I never thought I'd be quoting him, but stranger things have happened. Of course, the quote would be nicer if he hadn't tacked on the little qualifier at the end.

"Be careful who you're calling a child, Lois, because if I'm a child that makes you a pedophile. And I'll be damned if I'm gonna sit around and get lectured by a pervert."* Or, alternatively, "An ounce of perversion is worth a pound of cure."**

   The first time I saw a penis was at a fabric store.

   It may not have been the actual first penis I saw, because I’m not sure if babies’ penises count (and lord knows I had already changed a fair amount of diapers at that point), but it was definitely the first adult penis I saw and it was something I hadn’t been planning on seeing maybe ever. Mostly because I was 8 or so at the time and I wasn’t really in Penis Mode. (I’ve since seen thousands of penises! Just kidding, Mom. I’ve only seen that one.)

   Anyway, my mom had taken Ouisa and me, along with our best buddies, (who are also sisters) Erika and Morgan, to the fabric store during a play date because she just had to “run in and grab something.” If memory serves, as soon as we entered the store we were all over the place: rifling through buttons and hiding behind bolts of fabric and finding amazing build-a-bear kits that no parent ever wants to buy for fear they’ll have to keep that hideous, tacky bear in their home for the next five-to-eight years. You know how it was: we were being kids. The way you do.

I learned how to sew over the summer and took lots of romantic shots of my sewing supplies. This becomes relevant: wait for it.

   While wandering through the aisles, I saw a man squatting on his heels, examining a display. It was weird to see a man in a fabric store, so I think I paused briefly out of surprise more than anything. But then I saw that his athletic shorts were hitched up on one side and his penis was lying on his exposed thigh. Right out there in the open for anyone to see.

   I immediately started giggling and got Morgan. I pointed it out to her and we both thought it was hysterical. Here this poor man had come on his errand to the fabric store, and accidentally let his penis flop out of his pants while perusing miniature doll furniture (it probably wasn’t miniature doll furniture, but the memory wants what it wants). 

Then I made them all 70's and nostalgic (and bad, let's be honest) by editing them...but I didn't know what to do with them.

   We immediately grabbed Ouisa and Erika so they could see the unfortunate man with his penis accidentally COMPLETELY HANGING OUT OF HIS PANTS. One of us told my mom, who was several aisles away looking at fabric or thread or whatever it was she needed. I don’t remember who told her. I just remember her reaction:

   “Where?” She was seething. It had stopped being fun in an instant.

   “Over there,” one of us pointed.

   I think we sensed danger in the air. I had that same gut-wrenching feeling I had every time I thought things were about to get really real. Nowadays, I tend to relish that feeling: back then it made me tense, embarrassed and somehow keenly aware that life was not the wonderful time I thought it was.

   My mother took off after that man and chased him, screaming, out the door. I can’t remember what she said, but I’m sure it was to the point.

   It took me awhile to realize that he’d shown us his penis on purpose. I mean, why would anyone show you his junk in a fabric store on purpose? Life is embarrassing enough as it is. But that was my first and, sadly, last flashing experience. And now that I think about it, that man was a genius to hit up a fabric store for his penis show: it's mostly women and a lot of them too old to chase him.

   I have to hand it to my mom: she was a superhero in that moment (as well as many other moments during my life) and she did exactly what one should do in such a scenario. At the time, I felt sad that I’d thought it was funny and scared that my mom would get hurt or get in trouble. Now I know I’d behave in exactly the same manner if someone tried to show his wiener to a bunch of kids I was watching. Maybe especially at a fabric store. I’d probably add a lot more profanity, though. Mom is much classier than I am. 

Sammy made me a sewing kit for Hanukkah, because I love sewing so much (despite being terrible at it). And I think my adoration of the crafty arts shows that I wasn't permanently scarred by the Penis Incident. There. I've managed to devise a point for these photos I'm forcing you to look at.

   Anyway, so the other night, I was over at Morgan’s house visiting with her and Erika and I said to her at one point, “I found a picture of us at Lake Okoboji from fourth grade. You know what it reminded me of, for some reason?”

   Without a pause Mo said, “The time we saw the penis at the fabric store?”

   I shit you not.

   I couldn’t believe she remembered it, or that she ever thought of it. I don’t think we were traumatized the way we probably should have been. It made me feel better that Morgan's reaction was similar to my own (this is how I measure my sanity). This is also, I think, largely due to my mom grabbing that man by his ear (or his too-short gym shorts?) and throwing him bodily out of the store. And maybe Mo remembering it has something to do with the fact that she’s a mom now, so she probably has to be more alert about perverts than the rest of us.

   But it was fun to reminisce about our "My First Penis" story.

   And, incidentally, I think that place used to be called Northwest Fabrics; but I’m almost positive it’s now called Hancock Fabrics. Perfect. And somehow a much more appropriate name.

*The quote is from Peter Griffin on Family Guy (Seth MacFarlane, 1999). You know how I love circular logic...if that even happens to be an example of circular logic. That's a post for another time.
**This is a Ted Baxter quote from The Mary Tyler Moore Show (James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, 1970).

***Sorry for all the sewing pictures. I just really like to take pictures of things I care about and share them here. Whatever. It's my blog. I do what I want.

"I'll be seeing you, in every lovely summer's day; in everything that's bright and gay; I'll always think of you that way; I'll find you in the morning sun and when the night is new; I'll be looking at the moon, but I'll be seeing you."*

   Grandma was angry at the state of Colorado.

   Aunt Dudie had gone to reheat Grandma’s soup so we were alone for a minute at our little booth inside Panera.

   “People are uncouth here,” she said. She was mad. “When I was trying to fill my drink, those people acted like I was invisible.”

   “Well, if it makes you feel any better, they didn’t let me in there, either,” I offered. “Even those big, burly men pretended I wasn’t there so they could refill their Mountain Dews. Not very chivalrous!”

   “That’s the word! They aren’t chivalrous! I think it’s just the way people are in Denver,” Grandma decided.

   Now, Grandma and I both spent a fair number of years living in Omaha, Nebraska, a smallish city, where people will regularly turn themselves into human doormats before they offend or inconvenience someone, so I don’t know that our perspectives are very accurate as a basis of comparison to the fine people of Denver.

   “You seem pissed off,” I suggested.

   “I am pissed off!”

   My Grandma is so funny.

   “Don’t get too mad, Grandma! People are much more polite here than they are in Los Angeles.”

   “Well, I’m sure that’s true,” she harrumphed.

   “Maybe it’s a big city thing? The bigger the city, the less patience and manners people have?”

   “Oh, poor Julie,” Grandma sighed, referring to Aunt Dudie, my Grandma’s fourth of five daughters, my Godmother, and my hostess for the weekend. “She must get so tired of taking care of me.”

   “She does not! She likes it. And Julie’s boys are chivalrous, so it can’t be Colorado that’s doing it. It’s not where you are, it’s who you are, and some people are just nicer and better bred than others.”

   “Well, none of my grandchildren are uncouth, that’s for sure.” She was very proud of this fact and, as a way of proving it, took a huge bite out of her roll.

I wrote this nearly a year ago. Apparently Grandma and I had all our conversations in exclamation points!!!!

   I’d just spent a weekend in Parker, CO, with my family: Aunt Julie and Uncle Rick, my cousins, Connor and Trevor, and my Grandma. Grandma had just moved out there from Omaha and I was lonesome for her, as I was used to seeing her every day growing up and, later, every time I was home to visit. And this year she wasn’t in town for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

   But by January she was fully ensconced in the Leahy’s ENORMOUS basement, and it was as though her entire house had been replicated into an apartment in the suburbs of Denver. All her pictures and tchotchkes were there, along with her voluptuous cat Lucy/Alice, and the best of her beautiful furniture. She was super excited about all the deer she could see in her backyard (and spying on deer seemed to be almost as interesting as her old hobby, which was spying on the neighbors). We spent two days talking and watching movies and running errands all over town.

   My grandmother was born Mildred Rose Wilson in 1925 in Washington, Indiana (pronounced “Warshington,” which, as my cousin Connor pointed out, is the only thing Hoosiers pronounce funny. I’m not entirely sure that’s true). And when she was growing up in Washington, she was so beautiful it makes my face ache to look at pictures of her. It makes me proud that her DNA is floating around in me. She had brown, wavy hair and high cheekbones, big eyes, big boobs, narrow hips, and long, long legs. What’s even more interesting about Millie Wilson is that she was an amazing dancer, something that seems to have eluded most of her progeny. She used to go out jitterbugging with her friends every day after school, taking breaks only for a soda (pop) or a hamburger. And then they’d all run home for dinner and homework. Ah, the “good old days”. It all sounds like a scene from Back To The Future to me (funny...'cuz that movie was made in the 80's).

   Sadly, her kids are helpless fools when it comes to dancing: her daughters do lots of weird disco-era thumbing and pathetic gyrations along with the occasional Prince in “Dirty Mind” imitations (picture middle-aged women doing the splits and bouncing off a mock-velveteen couch. Yeah, that’s what I grew up watching. It's one of my earliest memories of Aunt Krissy who, for some reason, I always thought was "the cool one." Kids are stupid. And it’s a miracle I didn’t run away from home. Or stab my own eyes out).

   Her grandkids, of which I am the oldest (sigh), are a mixed bag. My youngest sister, Penelope, is a very gifted dancer, as are my cousins Ellie and Kate. Hell, Ellie and Kate are acrobats—they can do flips and Russians and all that crazy stuff. Connor and Trevor are natural athletes, but I doubt they’re dancers. Elizabeth, my other sister, could easily twirl her way through ballet lessons, but when is that appropriate at a club or school dance? I’m not sure how she handled it, but given her era in high school, there was no way it made her popular.

   I’m a total lost cause. My generation grew up in the Nirvana/Pearl Jam/Offspring era with flannel shirts and greasy hair and “dance” started to take on a sort of quality that made it look as though one were a drunk puppet randomly swinging his or her arms and pelvis around to no particular beat. I took classical ballet for a couple of years as a young child and it left me feeling as though I couldn’t get my rear end in the right position. It turns out, I just have a really sizable backseat and there was no way it was ever going to stop sticking out, no matter how many times my teacher told me to reign it in.            

   While I was in Denver, Grandma told me that Grandpa Charlie (who I’ve mentioned here and also here) once took Arthur Murray dance lessons, so he could take Grandma out stepping. This was around 1960, and my grandparents already had three of their eventual five children (Mom, Aunt Mel, and Aunt Mary). He went to the studio, without my grandma’s knowledge, and tried to learn to dance so he could keep up with her and take her to, as my grandma and her generation called it, “trip the light fantastic.” But, according to Grandma, he had no rhythm. I guess the majority of us must have inherited his dance moves.

   But when I was a tiny child, she used to pull up her skirts when no one else was looking and dance a little jig for me, and she still had a pair of the most beautiful Ginger Rogers-style legs. And the fact that Grandpa tried to fight his natural inability to dance so he could take my grandma dancing makes my heart heavy and happy all at once.

   Millie Wilson was a carefree dancing queen, but Millie Lett was a mother and a wife and a homemaker. Her husband, my Grandpa Charlie, tried to let her be all four. And that’s kind of what love is all about, right?

   My Grammy died yesterday at home, in Denver, with all her daughters around her. I think she would’ve liked that they were all there and I hope she knew they were. When I think of her, I think of good smells and stylish clothes and The BeeGees. And I think of gardens and picture frames and mac and cheese and small animals. But most of all, I think of dancing.

           

Mildred (right) with her friend Betty, 1946.

            

Mildred Rose Wilson Lett

February 20th, 1925 - December 10th, 2012

*I initially had a quote here from "Moon River," but Grandma really loved "I'll Be Seeing You" by Irving Kahal and Sammy Fain, because it was a song that reminded her of the 40's, when all her friends (and her brother) were off in WWII and all the kids would hear this song and think about the people they were missing. Seems more appropriate, somehow.

           

           

"I always thought the saddest feeling in life is when you're dancing in a really joyful way and then you hit your head on something."*

   I know what makes being a stripper so hard: it’s the dancing.

   Every time I see a scene in a movie or television series that takes place in a strip joint, I start watching the dancers' moves to determine what the budget was on said movie or TV show.

   If the budget is low, or it’s a half-hour comedy, the strippers will be terrible dancers. That’s because they aren’t really strippers, they’re extras who’ve agreed to get semi-nude in the hopes of one day getting their S.A.G. card.

   If the budget is high, the dancers will probably get naked and the dancing will be phenomenal because they’ve either hired real strippers for the scene and maybe shot on location in a strip club or they hired a stripper to train a famous actress to dance convincingly: Demi Moore in Striptease or Natalie Portman in Closer are good examples. Or Jessie Spano a.k.a. Elizabeth Berkeley in Showgirls, if you like (and I know I do).

   But if you watch an actual stripper dance, you can see that they are quite good at what they do and very unselfconscious about their movements and the exposure of their body parts. Especially if there’s a stripper pole involved because good lord, that looks tough (but I heard that their shoes are magnetic, so that probably helps a little bit).

   But I don’t think the nudity is really what keeps the majority of women (or men) away from stripping. I think it’s the dancing. Taking off your clothes is easy: we all do it every day. But dancing around while you’re taking off your clothes is hard: it probably feels silly and forced. And more than that, if you’re a bad dancer, you probably worry that everyone is judging your moves rather than focusing on your exposed vagina/penis. (Though I’m pretty sure they’re doing both.)

   I would like to see a stripper that is not a dancer. And I’m not talking Gypsy Rose Lee: she had a burlesque routine going on and while it wasn’t quite dancing, it was pretty darn choreographed. But what about a stripper who just comes out onto the stage, sits on a chair, and takes her (or his) clothes off? There could still be loud music playing so it’s not totally dead in the room, but no dancing or crawling around like a tiger. Just walk in, take your clothes off, and take a bow. Maybe stand there for a minute so the crowd can soak it all in like a solemn moment at a memorial service. Then flash some jazz hands as though to say, “Ta-da” and pick up your clothes and saunter back out. Or put your clothes back on and saunter out. A reverse strip tease! Wouldn’t that be something? It could be “performed” to the song “Eye of the Tiger” or “Working for the Weekend”** to give it some real oomph.

   In other (unrelated) news, my parents both called me in regards to my previous post. I felt guilty because I thought they were worried that I was sad and that they were calling to make sure I wasn’t in need of some professional psychiatric help. Or calling to make sure I wasn’t so crazy depressed as to run out and start stripping and crying at the same time (like Coco in Fame).

   Well, they were, in fact, worried but they were only worried about my battle with the diarrhea. Ah, they know me so well. Because, you see, I’m a product of their collective gene pools and they know how I feel about regularity because they feel the exact same way. And in an odd sense, that cheered me up much more than anything else has in the last few days. You will also be relieved to know that things have cleared up in my intestines. But now I have a cold.

Here's how much my Momma loves me: she sent me a huge supply of facial tissues. To use whenever I want! Like a rich person! Unfortunately, they're currently being put to use on this cold. But look at all the extras I'll have when I'm well!

   And when I was putting away my groceries this afternoon, I dropped the grocery bag with only one item remaining in it: a bottle of red wine. It shattered into a quadrillion pieces and bled through the bag and all over the floor and crept behind the fridge to get at the power cord. And when I moved the bag to the sink, it splashed all over the counter and the cabinets. It looked like a goddamn murder scene. When I started cleaning it, I ran out of paper towels and started using kitchen towels. I decided to just throw the kitchen towels away because I have nowhere to put them until I next do laundry and I’ll be damned if my clothes hamper is going to smell like a distillery the way my kitchen does. Also my floors are incredibly sticky. But good news: I did not electrocute myself while cleaning the wine away from the refrigerator cord. AND it’s much, much cleaner under my refrigerator. It was gnarly under there, I’m not gonna lie.

   The best part: the wine was shattered inside a bag, so I didn’t end up stomping through glass and adding real, live human blood to the crime scene. The worst part: none of the wine was salvageable. 

The remains of the wine. It would've been weird if I'd taken a picture DURING the catastrophe, no matter how artistic.

   I’d like to philosophize about the wine debacle moment. I think that when I’m feeling blue I create more drama for myself through the sheer powers of negative thought. I’ve heard people say that the opposite is possible as well, but how do I begin to dig myself out of this trench of self-inflicted poopiness?

   Which leads me, albeit sloppily, back to my initial thought: I would love to see someone stripping without dancing. I think that would really make me chuckle and put my life problems into some legitimate perspective (hey, at least I'm not a stripper!). And yeah, that’s probably not going to happen, so I just gotta ride this out like the Great Shit Storm of 2006-2007,*** and know that things will eventually get better.

*The quote is Lena Dunham, my imaginary BFF. 

**Lover Boy's classic "Working for the Weekend" is also the song in a great stripping scene from S.N.L. featuring the late Chris Farley and the late Patrick Swayze. Such a good sketch. Such great actors. For serious.

***I may talk about the Great Shit Storm at some point, but suffice it to say I had a run of really bad luck during this time that lasted about 6 months. It was so bad, I almost joined the Church of Scientology.

"What the hell are you driving here?" "We had a small fire last night, but we caught it in the nick of time." "Do you have any idea how fast you were going?" "Funny enough, I was just talking to my friend about that. Our speedometer has melted and as a result it's very hard to see with any degree of accuracy exactly how fast we were going."*

   I regret the decision to write about Planes, Trains and Automobiles in my last post. For those who haven’t seen it because they care nothing about culture or the world in which they live, it is a movie about a man (Neal/Steve Martin) who is attempting to get home to Chicago from a work trip in New York in time to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family. In New York he stumbles upon Del (John Candy) a shower ring salesman who inadvertently poops all over every attempt Neal makes to get home. The two wind up traveling together on planes, trains (though I honestly don’t remember a train part—but I’m sure it’s in there) and also in automobiles. And it’s rough. It takes days. And Del is a slobbish buffoon who makes life hell for Neal, who doesn’t really have the holiday spirit (Thanksgiving holiday spirit, not Christmas) in his heart to begin with. But then it stops being funny and gets sad and I can’t stand it. Intrigued? Because you probably should be.

Neal and Del have an accident. (Photo)

   I regret my decision to bring this movie up because I’m pretty sure I planes, trains and automobiles-ed myself by even mentioning it. It’s like saying Candy Man three times or mentioning the name Macbeth in a theatre. It’s bad luck and/or certain death. I’m Irish, was raised Catholic, and spent the first 28 years of my life in theatres so it’s okay for me to be superstitious to a decidedly ridiculous degree. I have no choice in the matter and can't do anything about it, anyway. Just ask my Tarot deck and my Ouija Board.

   The shit started with a phone call around 12:30 on the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving. It was Primetime Shuttle calling to inform me that my shuttle would be arriving at 1:05 pm instead of 1:20. That was surprising in and of itself because I’d scheduled the ride for 1:50. So despite being butt-naked and just out of the shower (you're welcome for that imagery) I had to bust ass to get ready on time and having done that, I sat on the couch and turned on My Best Friend’s Wedding to pass the 5 minutes until the shuttle arrived. At 1:25, I called Primetime Shuttle and said, “Hey, not to be a pest, but where the fuck are you? I’m already to the part where Cameron Diaz sings karaoke.” And they said don’t worry, the driver will be there at 1:35. Then the driver called at 1:45 and said he was 5 minutes away. So I went outside and waited and he showed up at 2:10. (He also took a truly asinine way to the airport and had trouble realizing he was driving a conversion van and not a Camaro and nearly killed us about 8 times. Whatever.)

Traveling image: Best part of Thanksgiving. I walked with my family at Neale Woods. Omaha skyline in the background. Traveling on foot seems to be the best mode of transit for me, across-the-board.

   So then I got on a plane to Las Vegas and sat there for four hours due to circumstances beyond everyone’s control. I really don’t know why the flight was delayed so long. They never told me. But the Las Vegas airport is an especially depressing place and flights never leave on time from there, so I don’t know why I keep going back. Oh yeah, and I had to spend my eating money on tampons because…well, for obvious reasons, and the tampons cost way more than normal tampons and they were embarrassing to buy in a way they never are when I buy them at Target.

   When I arrived in Omaha, it was 1:40 in the morning. Normally Omaha's Epply Airfield stops receiving flights around 11:30. It's two terminals and 2 random dudes running baggage to the carousels. Seriously. So I called my Mom figuring she’d be glad that I’d gotten in 20 minutes earlier than expected, but she didn’t answer the phone. Because she was asleep. Which is totally fair because it was 2 in the goddamn morning. But she kept not answering her cell, so I finally called the home phone and no one answered that either. When she called me back at 2:06 a.m. I was relieved because most of the people were gone…and so were all of the (3) cabs. It wasn’t that big of a deal—she’d set her alarm for another day. And my mom doesn’t regularly keep finding projects to work on til 2 in the morning like I do. I blame it on Las Vegas, but more than that I blame it on the fact that I wrote about Planes, Trains and Automobiles right before I flew home for Thanksgiving. 

An Omaha gas station. Also loosely related to travel.

   Then on Saturday I ate lunch at Runza. If you’re not from Nebraska, there’s a good chance you don’t know what Runza is. Don’t worry about it. It’s kind of embarrassing, but all you need to know is it’s a fast-food place and my best friend Michelle wanted her boyfriend, Danny, to try it since he’s not from Nebraska, god love him. So I met them and ate Runza and then left and promptly backed into a car. Now, I didn’t back into the car going very fast. In fact I was going about .25 miles per hour. But I backed into a parked, empty car and then parked and got out to survey the damage. I circled the damn car and inspected it’s rear-end and saw no damage. While I was doing this, a family inside was watching me and laughing. I thought that was mean. But I saw no damage to the car so I left.

   Well, the highly-amused family of four must’ve been madder than they looked, because I guess they took down my license plate number and four hours later the cops showed up at my parents house looking for my mom.  I asked what they were there for and they said it was for a hit-and-run. And I said, “Oh, that wasn’t my mom. I guess you’re here for me.” And then they said they weren’t going to take me to jail (perhaps only because my mom said, "You officers aren't going to take my little girl to jail, are you?"**), but that they probably should and they gave me a citation and now I have a lawyer and I’m a big-time criminal. IT IS ILLEGAL TO HIT A PARKED CAR AND NOT CALL THE POLICE, REGARDLESS OF DAMAGE. Lesson learned. I’m an idiot. Again. Still?

   Did I mention we were on our way out the door for my dad’s birthday dinner? Happy Birthday, Dad! Guess what? I’m still a fuck-up at 30. Thanks for working hard every day so I can go out and raise your insurance rates during one of the 20 days you see me each year. Let's go eat fancy dinner!**

   My lawyer (that feels kind of grown-up to write…in a sad sort of way) says that it’s good that it was 1 in the afternoon at a Runza and not 1 in the morning at a Taco Bell, because the cops had/have no reason to think I was boozing it up and then running away. He says lots of people in Nebraska get drunk and hit cars and then go home and by the time the cops catch up with them they can say they got drunk at home. I was not drunk or drinking, but the whole event made me want to start drinking. And it cast a dark shadow on my favorite week of the year and I still feel really bad all-around. And I didn’t have the heart to write about it until now. I’m remorseful and, as is so often the case with me, full of self-pity.

   And I can’t help but think about scenes in movies like the one in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles where Del falls asleep in the rental car and somehow simultaneously starts a fire and ends up driving into oncoming traffic and they barely escape with their lives. Where’s the gruesome, icky and yet somehow also monotonous aftermath scene in the police station and the follow up scene in the lawyer's office? These events seem funny in the movies, but they really suck a whole lot in real life. And you know what else, they’re embarrassing moments that stick in your brain and run like reel-to-reels for days and days on end.

   Today I flew home to Los Angeles. It was uneventful, thank Shiva. I did however see the following text exchange on the phone of the woman seated next to me:

Incoming: I need drugs. And help.

My seatmate’s reply: Drugs I got. I don’t know about any help.

   Anyway.

   Needless to say, I think I’m pretty much traveled out for this year. Since January I’ve been to Denver, Phoenix, Omaha, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Omaha again, Chicago and now Omaha. It’s a miracle I didn’t relive that entire movie. My luck has officially run out. I’m a grounded eagle. I may never fly again.

   P.S. Sorry for being such a Debbie Downer.

*An interchange between a State Trooper and Del in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (John Hughes, 1987). 
**Despite my failings as their daughter, my parents are truly amazing, supportive, incredible people who keep loving me and being nice to me anyway. Which I don't think they are legally obliged to do at this point, seeing as I'm well over the age of 18. So my Negative Nancy attitude aside, I think I have to acknowledge that I'm VERY LUCKY INDEED. 

***As a tie on to this more-sane (saner?) train of thought, I'd like to tack on this link to Gabe's recent blog post, which put things Thanksgiving- and other-related into a bit of perspective.