It's falling all over. And right now, there is no wind, so it gathers heavy on the limbs of all the trees around the house. Earlier, I leaned out of the upstairs window to sweep it off the satellite that keeps me connected to the outside world. And tomorrow is supposed to bring more.
I am hoping the wind blows a little tomorrow to ease the trees' burden and decrease the likelihood that limbs might fall.
Sunday morning, HSH went to The Little Church that Could by himself because he had committed to reading. I stayed home because I was working on a presentation for my boss.
TVs are a great babysitter, by the way, when it's Sunday morning and you have to make a really amateurish powerpoint. The parenting tips are free.
When HSH got back from church, he told us that a.) the congregation has added Posey's upcoming Easter baptism to their prayers for the people and b.) our rector is retiring in two months.
HSH has been asked to be part of the search committee to find a new rector, which should be interesting, considering that the current rector oversees two tiny, aging congregations. He also has been asked to coordinate another massive fundraiser. He is my hero.
So Posey will be baptized on Easter in the Little Church that Could by the priest who is retiring.
Why do I feel like a traitor for even imagining a different church?
(Apologies to the squeamish)
I found a deer leg in the yard today. No deer. No blood or grossness on the leg. Just bone and furry hoof.The dogs were all, "Hey, look, we found a bone! But, whoa, it's too big! Freaky! Makes me want to run off into the woods for half an hour!"
That was Nora, by the way.
My ruralness hit home when I went inside with Zuzu and the first thing I told HSH was that Nora had run off again. I did NOT walk in and say, "OH MY GOD, THERE'S A SEVERED DEER LEG IN THE YARD!"
I just casually mentioned as I was getting my soda out of the fridge.
"There's a deer leg out there."
HSH took the news with equal nonchalance.
Then he said, "Can you imagine if we had found a deer leg in our yard back in Florida?"
I snorted. "We would have thought it was the mafia."
Skunk smell? It totally sticks around. My HSH took a bite out of an apple he brought to work from home today, and it was utterly skunkified, and he was appropriately repulsed. Ick.
And Nora, she is still very skunky. Very. Skunky.
Let's not talk about it.
Instead, I will alienate half my readers* by talking church again.
*And to those readers - I am not That Person. I am not even remotely interested in saving your soul. I don't care how you live your life. It's your life. I have ZERO interest in converting, evangelizing or witnessing. The fact that I am writing about my own search for the perfectly liberal Episcopal congregation is in no way a judgment on the way you are living, your spiritual life or any comment whatsoever on you and yours. I grew up an agnostic in the Bible Belt. I wouldn't do that to you.
So we attended a service on Sunday at the church in O-town (not Orlando, btw), which is where I work and about a 40-minute drive from our house.
We arrived early and deposited the girls in child care. Is it a sin to be so grateful not to have a toddler crawling on you during the Confession?
I had hoped the priest's sermon would cement his political position. Maybe something on the importance of welcoming everyone to the table to keep the feast. Maybe something on Family Values and the way that everyone but upper-middle-class, white, heterosexual males are eroding the core values of the church, country and world.
Alas, he did not make my decisions quite so easy.
I learned that he is conducting a series of classes based on a Church thinker who is conservative, yet not as conservative as many others. I learned that he and his wife and his daughter are very sweet people.
I learned that it is very nice to sit through a service without saying "Shhh, we whisper in church. Don't stand on that. Put the books back. No, we don't rip the pages out. No, we don't color in the books...."
It's not a huge church. It's not even as big as our own Village Church. But there seem to be parishioners who still have most of their own teeth and are not yet eligible for government sponsored health care insurance.
HSH and I were sitting in the back pew waiting for the service to start when a family walked in with a child around 10.
"Why is that person so small?" HSH asked.
"And his skin is weirdly smooth."
"And his hair, it's not white or silver! What is that about?"
One of my colleagues found out today that her baby - the one that is steadily growing inside her and causing her blouses to blouse ever more prominently - is a boy.
She had the same reaction that many women have when they find out they're having boys.
"I'm happy! Really. And it won't be my last one. I'm definitely having more."
Girls want a baby to dress in perfect little clothes and tiny patent leather Mary Janes. Of course, we also want daughters for other reasons. But the fact is that almost every woman I've known who was pregnant wanted a daughter.
Why is that?
I've now been the mother of both a son and daughters, and I have to say that sons are much, much easier. They're the perfect first child for the ill-prepared. Sorry, guys, but it's true.
Years ago, when another friend found out she was carrying a son, we had a similar conversation. She told me that, when she found out her baby was a boy, she thought of all the stupid, redneck, hot-dog colored men she met in the course of her business day, and she fretted that her son might become one of them.
"Leave the South," was my first advice.
My second advice was, "Look at your husband."
As women, we carry with us this archetype of The Boor. Sweaty. Willfully, gleefully stupid. Leering. Boozy. Bigoted. Sexist. Borderline illiterate. Maybe he belongs to a particularly unsavory fraternity. Maybe he commits a date rape or three every weekend.
When we women are lying on the exam table while the sonographer oils us up and slides the sensor over our taut bellies and proclaims, "It's a boy!" what we hear is, "It's a Boor!"
But to all you women who are mourning just a little the fact that you won't be buying Mary Janes this time around, let me entreat you to stop thinking about The Boor, and start thinking about your husbands. Think about the way that he loves you because you're strong and independent and smart. Think about the way that he is adorable and sweet and funny. Think about how diametrically opposed he is to The Boor.
The world needs more men like that. The world needs more men who were sons of strong, smart, independent women. The world needs more men who are feminists, for goodness' sake.
And if it's clothes you're worried about, there are options.
After reading these three consecutive posts on my local Freecycle from a person whose user name includes the word "tax!derm!st" I think someone should call the authorities:
- Needed: Sewing Machine
- Wanted: Dog Kennel, any size
- I am in need of a crosscut saw - 1 man or 2 man - I will pick up
Today's post is both a glimpse into my glamorous weekend and a sneak peek at the newspaper column that will be published on Friday. Enjoy.
***
“Honey, I need you to wake up,” my husband said.
I blinked at the clock. 1:56 a.m.
He repeated, “Honey. There’s something going on. I need you to wake up.”
His voice had a certain urgency that immediately woke me. Something was very wrong.
“What? What is it?” I asked, climbing out of bed and finding my slippers so I could follow him downstairs.
He related the series of events. He had fallen asleep in the den. A gust of wind had blown open the front door, and the three dogs had taken the opportunity to enjoy a little mid-winter’s night romp in the slush and snow. Their playing woke him, and that’s when he noticed a smell.
By the time he got to that part of the story, I was already on the landing, and I could smell it myself. It smelled like a tire fire.
“Is it the furnace?” I asked, suddenly very concerned that our oil-powered boiler was on the verge of explosion.
“No – that’s what’s weird. I already checked in the basement, but I can hardly smell it down there.”
We paced from room to room. To call it an odor is just too feeble. It was a full-body experience. I tasted it, and it seemed to singe the back of my nose and throat.
We searched for the source. While he looked in the basement again, I opened the dishwasher to see if a plastic spoon – no, strike that, a plastic spoon FACTORY had slipped onto the coil and burned. Nothing there, and nothing in the basement.
“Could it be coming from outside?” I asked.
We walked out the garage, and there was definitely more than a trace of whatever it was in the air.
Perhaps, I thought, a neighbor has a secret crystal meth lab that has exploded and poisoned the breeze. Maybe a teenager detonated a stink bomb under our house’s foundation. Maybe it’s Napalm.
We went back into the house and did what any sane person would do during the threat of exploding furnaces or chemical spills. We got on the computer.
It was 2:45 in the morning, and we were Googling.
“Oil Furnace Rubber Smell”
“Oil Furnace Leak Smell”
“Electrical Fire Signs”
“Heating Oil Leak”
“Oil Danger”
It was no use. Nothing we searched for gave us any useful answers. Although I was able to reasonably reassure myself tbat we hadn’t been attacked with Napalm.
We weren’t throwing up or passing out, and neither were the dogs, whom we adore, but to whom we looked at that wee hour as little canaries in the coal mine of our odiferous home.
We were pretty sure it was a leak of some kind. And we became very sure that Nora the Fleet and Brave had gotten herself into whatever it was. We bathed her in dish detergent, just like those poor oil spill ducks in the commercial.
“I know this is going to sound crazy,” my husband said. “But do you think someone may have been trying to steal oil from the pipe outside?”
“Is that even possible?”
“I don’t know.”
A scenario began to form in our minds. Heating oil thieves, driven to crime by the high price of keeping
warm, roam the countryside in the dead of night armed with long hoses and portable oil tanks. When the wind blew open the door and let the dogs out, the thieves were startled and ran away quickly. With Nora the Toothsome at their heels, they shook her off with the only thing they had – a couple splashes of oil.
I know – the logic falls apart. To make their theft worthwhile, the thieves would have to drive an oil truck to collect their loot. A stealth oil truck.
But at 3 a.m., it seemed like a viable theory.
At 8:30 the next morning, when I was sitting in my desk at work, and my colleagues began wondering aloud what the weird smell was, I began to relay the story of the rank oil leak.
“Are you sure it wasn’t a skunk? It smells like a skunk,” she said.
When you Google “oil furnace burning rubber smell,” nothing much comes up. But when you Google “skunk burning rubber smell,” you hit paydirt. You also learn that, if you mishandle those crucial early minutes of a skunking, you could smell to regret it for a long, long time.
Here’s how I figure it happened:
In the dark of night, the wind rushed against the front door, and blew it open. The dogs – always up for a bit of unsupervised playful fun – headed into the snow and slush to play. And that’s when Nora – the fearless, the barksome, the wolflike – spotted the skunk.
Only one question remains: Why was a skunk stealing oil from our furnace?
It's the second Sunday in Lent. Do you know what saint you are?
I saw this quiz on Rev. Dr. Mom's blog, so I stole it.
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I'm Julian of Norwich! Where my mystics at!
Reclusive and optimistic - that's me.
This moment brought to you by the new Sephora catalog:
HSH: What the hell?
BB: Hot this spring.
HSH: Chemical burn, by Sephora.
BB: Look at my eye.
HSH: The hottest look is "Bad Boyfriend."
HSH: I'm 4-years old.
BB: You look so great. I would have thought you were in preschool!
Bedtime with Posey is not ideal, not least of all because it is still happening in our bed. In effect, she has pushed one or the other of us out. We try to trade off.
The routine is essentially composed of three part:
Stories. (Do-Wah!)
Hugs and Begging: Night-night, night-night. I have to go potty. I have to go potty again.
Waiting: I try to pay as little attention to her as possible so that she can grab her little corner of blanket and get lost in its soothing cornerness, and drift to sleep.
The waiting part is usually a productive time for me, because I can open my laptop and get some work done.
Last night, however, in the middle of waiting, suddly she placed her right foot directly on top of my computer screen. I lifted her foot off and replaced it onto the bed without saying much to her.
She lifted both feet in the air and began talking to them.
"Heddo, feet. Heddo, toes. What doin?"
She dropped her left foot to the bed, then dropped the right foot on top of it.
"No, Toes. Es not nice to hit friends. We don't hit friends. Time out!"
And she put her foot back on my computer screen.
"Time out, Toes! Okay?"
