Bettie Bookish

How Deep Is Your Love?

Several small things and one big thing. First, the big thing.

Love Without Boundaries is competing in the Facebook cause challenge. For those unfamiliar with the organization, you can read more here. This group is staffed completely by volunteers and works 24-hours a day 7-days a week to improve the lives of children in Chinese orphanages by providing medical care, formula and other nutrition, foster care training and education to children who may never be adopted. I cannot say enough about the amazing work this group does.

Right now, they are running neck-and-neck with Tibetan Freedom Movement and Fight Poverty. Clearly, those are both worthy organizations.

I am going to be joining and donating to LWB, and I invite you to do the same. The organization that receives the most new donations of at least $10 will receive an award of $50,000. Love Without Boundaries plans to spend the money on 10 children who need heart surgery.

Seriously - for $10 you can save 10 kids' lives. What are you waiting for?

http://apps.facebook.com/causes/view_cause/51591

Little Things

When we were in Boston, I went to Lila's salon sorceress for a haircut, and it is fabulous. Photos? No, you'll have to trust me on this one.

As we were leaving, the haircut assistant gave me a list of the products that were used in my hair, including the shampoo, conditioner and leave-in conditioner, something shinifying, something curlifying, something holdifying.

My HSH looked at the list and said: Is this covered by insurance?

Teachers' Pet

I finally got my grades for my first semester back in school in 15 years, and I got two solid B+es. And while I ordinarily would be flagellating myself for not achieving straight A's, in this instance - when the courses in question were a science class and a social science course on the Middle East - I'll take it.

This semester proves to be as challenging, although a little closer to my comfort zone. One class is about the health care system in America, and the equity or inequity thereof. I am reading a heart-wrenching book called "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down." I want to blame someone.

I'm also taking a fiction writing seminar with a professor whom I have not yet met.

Partay

We attended a party last weekend where the primary activity was playing This Game. It was lots of fun, although I didn't get up and perform. I may have to get a copy for home so I can practice enough to go out in the world and represent.

People, put your trash IN the trash receptacle

From what I can gather, there are basically two types of housekeepers.

The first group views a clean house as the baseline normal. These folks hold their breaths when the house is in disarray; they know that it won't be long before they get things back in order.

The second group views clutter as baseline normal, and people in this camp hold their breath when the house is clean because they know it's just a matter of time before everything is strewn hither and yon again.

I'm definitely in that second group - the ones who clean up BEFORE company comes rather than AFTER company leaves.

Realistically, there is probably a continuum between those two poles, rather than hard-and-fast camps. My mother, who left us a house that could have been mistaken for a landfill, is at one end of the spectrum. My friend Smiley, who organizes grocery bags as she's loading them into the trunk of her immaculate car, is at the other end.

If Mom was a 1 and Smiles is a 10, I'm not sure where I fall. Probably somewhere around the 3 zone. It's bad enough that people know not to stop by my house when they're passing through. (Although, no one ever just "passes through" our section of county highway up here.)

It's not bad enough, though, that a government agency would consider taking my children away for their own safety. Maybe I'm a 4.

It's something that I really want to work on, but I face one substantial obstacle: I don't really want to work on it. I've determined that keeping the house as clean as I would like to it be would amount to a full-time job. I would have to never stop cleaning. Furthermore, I'd have to harp on my family, threaten violence and banishment, and generally be tense all the time.

Remember, we all fall into that second, clutter-as-normal group.

When I was a teenager, my best friend's mother was a born-again Christian and a born-again housewife. Their house was pristine - nothing out of place EVER. The living room carpet always had fresh vacuum stripes and the kitchen looked like it had never been used.

In the hallway there hung a "diploma" from the housekeeping course that had changed this family's life. My friend told me that, when she was younger, the house was always a mess. Then her mom went to this housekeeping course, and between that and gettin' Jesus, she had been cured of her sloth and sinful homemaking.

She was a full-on 10. I know I'll never be there. I don't even want to be.

But maybe a 6 or 7.

Dear readers - where do you fall on the spectrum? Have you always been there? Were you ever closer to 1 than you are now, and how did you change?

Maple-smoked links

If I tried to give you actual content today, it would look something like this:

Did you know I'm preparing for a trip to China? Have I shown you the photos of my daughter? Have I told you we're going to meet her soon? In China? Have I?

To spare you all of that, you should go read some other Innernets.

LOOK: Upscale Yoohoo!

At the risk of revisiting the whole real estate subject, you should buy her house. It's in a lovely community. And it never, ever snows there.

Some time ago, my good friend An' Beckay sent me a great song to sing with your Sunday school class. It's funny because it's true.

Wha??? Oh, I see.

I've asked my son to buy me this shirt, which he saw on a 13ish-year-old boy in the mall. Apparently, it's available at Hot Topic. And guess what! I'm no longer a 17-year-old alternamaton who automatically rejects products from Hot Topic because of the stain of corporate-engineered rebellion that comes free with every purchase. I can shop anywhere I want.

I've asked everyone else to buy me this. And lots of it.

Hey, YOU! Stay away from my Hot Shot Husband.

I'm really intrigued by this family's decision to stop shopping for the next year. I'm anxious to read about how it goes for them. I also think I could make a million dollars by creating a Sustainable Living Catalog. It figures.

In which I stay in bed all day whimpering to the real estate gods

Dear Innernets,

If you have any room in your heart or your day that would allow you to send a little positive real-estate-closing energy in the direction of my brother and me, we sure could use it.

We are supposed to close on our mother's house sometime this afternoon.

I will spare you the blow-by-blow account of this house-selling adventure (edited to add: No I won't, read on), but I will tell you that in the past four months, we have had three contracts - two of which fell apart. One of those fell apart on closing day. Twice.

For this third contract, we moved the closing day back one week from the 10th to the 17th. On the day of the 17th, it didn't happen, and we were told "tomorrow - Monday or Tuesday at the latest."

We've spent the last week hearing from the buyers' mortgage broker that it will be "tomorrow." We have spoken so often and so frustratingly with that broker, my sister-in-law Lila and I have started calling him K-Fed because he inspires in us the same slack-jawed disgust as the other K-Fed.

He is definitely in the cooker. We've already bought the paper plates.

On Friday evening, he assured me that FINALLY all the paperwork was in order and that "as long as we don't have a hurricane, we should be able to close on Monday afternoon."

Fuck.

I'm not getting out of bed until the house sells. Or until I get really hungry.

In which I act like a real mom

Thank goodness for girlfriends. And thank goodness my son has one.

If it were not for his girlfriend, we would not have spent two days last week driving across the state to visit a miniscule village in the middle of nowhere and the college campus that envelops Main Street.

Xerxes' girlfriend has fallen in love with this school and has every intention of attending. This is her third visit there, and she attended a weeklong writing program there this summer.

This is not the only campus she has visited. Her mother forced her into the car at the appropriate age and hauled her all over New York looking at institutions of higher learning.

I didn't know forcing was an option.

Apparently, the girlfriend also has taken her SAT and ACT exams. Again - I should have forced?

Frankly, no, I shouldn't have. My son is an amazing young man, but if I had stuffed him into the car and dragged his ass to one college after another, it would have been more likely to ensure that he never set foot in an accredited institution of his own free will.

This way is much better.

He loved visiting the campus, and he wants to visit others now. He has formed opinions about student-teacher ratios and meal plans. He is personally invested.

And I learned something, too. Visiting colleges is fun.

I didn't do it when I was in high school. I think it didn't occur to my mother to do that sort of thing. Or maybe she looked at my high school attendance record and decided that I wouldn't be able to hack it in a real school. Whatever the case, the summer after my senior year, she drove me to the local community college and signed me up.

In the end, I'm glad she did. I met JC the very first day of classes. I also met my first husband, my son's birth father. So I can't say I would have wanted things to happen any other way.

But to have walked a real campus at 16 or 17, and met those professors and eaten in a dining hall ... and to have had someone guiding me in that direction instead of telling me that those things were for other people. Well, that would have been pretty damn spiffy.

And, my own lesson learned, I'm going to start visiting colleges with Buttercup the year she enters kindergarten.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Edited to add: I have one toe on the floor. My Realtor just called and said that paperwork is moving, and a closure looks imminent. Did I spell that right? Probably not, and the blinking spellcheck doesn't work with blinking Safari.

My dear friends, this is the Little Real Estate Transaction That Could. Chant with me: I think it can, I think it can, I think it can...

Airport chatter

Overheard between two iPod-wearing fifth-grade boys in Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport:

"Whatter you listening to?"
"Dave Chappelle, I Want to Pee on You."
"Cool."

Welcome to my TypePad. Chardonnay?

Lookee - I figured out how to import my old blog into my new, improved, easier TypePad space.

Because, really, why would you do something for free when you could pay for it?

I'm still trying to figure out all the technical stuff, so while I do that, you can entertain yourselves with this (so lifelike!), and this (Sarah McLaughlin for the preschool set), and this (preschool for the Sarah McLaughlin set).

Enjoy.

Another million dollars I'm just giving away

The BathTop - a laptop you can bring in the bathtub. It comes in very momblogging-friendly colors and with momblogging-friendly quick keys.

It's perfect for the mom who left her demanding 10-hour-a-day corporate job so she could live a life of leisure at home, caring for her 1-3 toddlers, maintaining three blogs - plus a packed flickr account, shopping for the best prices on Nikon lenses, knitting kooky sweaters for all her internet friends' kids, designing T-shirts, searching for a literary agent, courting book deals, landing book deals, starting a home business, growing organic produce, thrifting, getting drunk at rock shows, going to blogger cons, speaking at blogger cons, watching TV, running marathons, getting a master's degree and contemplating getting pregnant again.

Bathtime is the only time she has in her day to post to flickr.

The BathTop comes with a washcloth that says, "I'm Blogging This."

Of course, mere weeks before the BathTop is released to the public, Apple will come out with the iTub, which does all the same things and is only the size of your wedding ring - the one you got, not the one you wanted.

Everything is oh, so far away

A question up front to all you readers out there who have brilliant ideas and actually follow through with them:

What the?

Seriously. I mean, do you just plunge right in? Do you do a little research? Once you start your research and find the arena is more (complex, difficult, flooded with talent), how do you plow right in without a satchel full of second guesses and anxiety?

I mean, didn't your parents ever TELL you that you sucked at follow-through, and they weren't going to pay for dance lessons because this was just going to be like horseback riding lessons, clarinet lessons and therapy, where you'd quit abruptly the minute things got the least bit difficult? And didn't you ever come to the realization, maybe in your upper-mid-thirties, that instead of being insensitive, maybe your parents were simply insightful and hit your nail square on the head?

IN A NEW YORK YARD SALE

So this weekend, I did something I've never done before - something pretty out of character. No, I didn't follow through on some creative idea. It wasn't THAT out of character.

Friday night I drove with Xerxes and most of the NY cousins to Syracuse, to hours away, where we spent the night at J&B's so we could wake up at the crack of doodle-doo and go yard sale-ing.

In Florida, yard sales happen every weekend all year long, and if you are so inclined, you watch the classifieds and show up on someone's lawn at 4 a.m. so you can watch them through night vision binoculars. The moment they stir inside the house - even if they are just turning over in bed - you rush in and offer them 35 cents for the bed they're sleeping in.

Up here, things are a little more ogranized, as was the case in Syracuse. Instead of leaving yard sales (tag sales?) to individual choice, the tradition here is to designate a certain weekend for everyone in a given area to trundle their shit onto the lawn and let the haggling begin.

We trolled the sales of a large housing development called Radisson, where the houses ranged from '80s condoriffic to Millennial McMansion.

The thing about yard sales? They kind of suck. I've never had good luck at them. And I never will, because I do not seize the buying opportunities correctly, I am easily convinced that something really crappy is kinda cool, and I slide right by the attic Rembrandts and sterling grape snips that eventually make their way to the Antiques Roadshow and inspire gasping from all involved.

But I did score two old school desks to use as end tables in our renovated schoolhouse house, and a really incredible oak trestle table for our kitchen. I'm especially proud of the table, because it was obviously well loved.

YOU ARE BUT DUST

This is an all-out plug for a line of cosmetics coming to the market soon. It's called Dust, and it's the brainchild of a young lady I know.

A couple months ago, we were at the home of one of our NY cousins and this woman, AZH, was all aflutter with her idea for creating a new cosmetic line in the same vein as bare minerals. She had researched a little online, and had come up with a name and some packaging ideas.

I am going to be utterly honest here when I tell you that my reaction was something along the lines of, "Hmmm. I guess that fantasy is a nice way to pass an evening." I didn't think much more about it until Friday night in Syracuse where she gave us all makeovers with her line.

Zoinks. (Also, see top of this entry.)

So, good for her. And when she gets her Web site up, I'll link it so everyone can order a little bit.

We can pretend

that I haven't gone almost two months without writing anything in this space.

More importantly, we can pretend that someone has been checking it every few hours wondering when that next post will appear.

Sorry, dude.

Update: We're in New York. It's breathtaking. I miss my Florida friends. It's snowing here. I promised myself I would find time to write every day. I haven't. We sold some cars. We bought a Jeep. Buttercup has been shoveling snow. Xerxes has what may be a date.

I'm in love with the view out of all my windows.

We have room - come visit.

I don't like Monday socks

Buttercup received for Christmas a pack of Barbie socks with the days of the week knitted into the cuffs.

Although she cannot read, or even recognize letters yet, she correctly identified in her drawer the socks intended for Monday, and told me she wanted to wear them to bed. I grabbed them from the drawer, and got ready to slip them onto her feet when she changed her mind.

"I don't like Monday socks," she said.

"That's a long way to go for a Boomtown Rats referrence," I told her. "Comedy is all about economy."

When will she learn?

TENTH AVENUE FREAK OUT
I haven't posted much in the past couple weeks (I say this like it is an alarming change in my behavior). Every time I sat down to write something, I invariably checked what was up with Moreena and just couldn't bring myself to inflict upon the world my flimsy ramblings.

But, as updates are in order, I decided to buckle down this morning.

We are now officially the owners of a huge amount of debt that represents a home and 15 acres in upstate New York. I've been interviewing movers and getting estimates and calling utility companies and generally freaking the fuck out because, holy shit, we're MOVING ACROSS THE COUNTRY in just three weeks.

And my house? IS NOT REMOTELY READY.

MY BRAIN IS WORKING ON ALL CAPS THESE DAYS, AND I WAKE UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT WONDERING IF I'VE FORGOTTEN SOMETHING VITAL, SUCH AS GETTING HOMEOWNER'S INSURANCE OR DECIDING WHETHER OR NOT TO BRING MY CATS TO NEW YORK.

On one hand, they're terrible animals who are not really fit for indoor living. On the other hand, we've been told that mice come into the house in the autumn. Do I want mice or cat urine in the house? It's a tough call.

If I write the list of things I must accomplish before our departure, your head would explode and all the goopy bits of blood and bone and brain would get stuck in your keyboard. Trust me - I'm going through, like, seven keyboards a week over here.

I need adult supervision to get through this.