The diagnosis was confirmed when I was watching Caillou (a core symptom right there) with Little Unit and silently cursing myself because it was above freezing, surely not so cold to begin tubing out without even attempting to run around outside. 

But then it happened. 

“Sweet!” I said a little too enthusiastically when I realized what episode it was. (Having a canon of Caillou episodes in one’s memory is surely also clinically significant; having a favorite, probably moreso. )

It was the one where Caillou’s friend’s older brother Billy totally rocks the house with his tuba. His marching band friends join in, and– wait for it–they take the jam session to the street for a balls-out impromptu parade!

Rock on, Billy!

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The masterminds of the Christmas Index determine the prices of similar real-world items as stand-ins for those listed in the song when necessary. Those eight maids a’milking, for example, aren’t really scrub-cheeked virgins in pinafores, but farm workers earning 2008 wages.

Before you dismiss the whole exercise as a bit of frivolity designed to make NPR listeners chuckle archly into their organic-cotton dinner napkins, take note: although relatively few of us are throwing French hens (fresh, not frozen!) into our carts at Costco, The Experts maintain that the Christmas Index actually does an okay job of reflecting larger trends in the economy each year.

The news this year is not great. Get the full scoop here.

Why, even the lowly partridge is up five bucks, from $15 last year to $20 this Christmas. And if you want a place for your fine feathered friend to roost, that’ll be a cool $200: In ‘07, a pear tree could be had for $150.

So, my apologies in advance, giftees on my list. I just can’t swing any of the thoughtful gifts in “The 12 Days of Christmas.” In my desperation, I even clicked over to that old retail chestnut, Fingerhut. Surely, I could find some holiday tchotchkes there for a pittance….

But no. These days, they’ll trick you out like your favorite Real Housewife in 10 easy payments.

But wait! They do have goats: Seven-eighths-length goats, to be exact. Must be some cute pygmy variety, de-horned and ready for companionship. It lacks the cachet of calling birds, but when was the last time you got cheese from a bird? And they’ll cute up any live nativity, for sure.

Thanks Fingerhut, for getting me thisclose to the 12 Days of Christmas.

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Be patient, gentle reader. There is a point lurking somewhere around here. I think it’s this: At the tender age of Pushing Forty, I find myself clutching at straws, employment-wise. The writing jobs that have afforded me some measure of income without having to shell out for childcare are ebbing away. This has never happened before, and now I’m competing with hordes of overqualified people for the chance to answer phones, to sell dog food. To do things I once considered swell endeavors for a struggling college student. 

Well,  college was back in the Jurassic Period for me, and I feel no small measure of shame for having failed to plan, failed to knuckle down and choose a career/life that had a definite trajectory, rather than enjoying all the side trips along the way. Having an abstract expressionist resume was cute back when I was cute, but now? My cheeks blaze and a sense of failure roils up in my throat with every online application completed.

But wait a minute. This just might be ennobling. I need to keep my family afloat, and it’s time to take care of business. There is no room for small, dumb, or awkward feelings here. 

One of my long-ago vocational side trips involved working as an activities person in a nursing home. The stories I heard back then have all melded into one emblematic voice. Never once did that collective voice complain about taking care of business during the Depression. In repose, glancing back over the yawning expanse of years, the men and women who talked to me seemed to be calmly enumerating corners cut and sacrifices made. But never was there any bellyaching: “We paid for milk with potatoes,” or “Mother would give us kids beer at the dinner table to keep the meat on our bones when food was scarce.” 

Back then, I thought it must have been resignation–the sense that there wasn’t anything better out there, so why not apply your fancy schooling to operating an elevator?

And so far, what’s going on now versus the Great Depression is a hangnail versus a decapitation.

What filled those gray heads was maturity. May God grant me some soon. 

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I’ll admit it: you weren’t my first choice, or my second one, either. 

But I sure was happy to see you stride onto the stage at Grant Park two Tuesdays ago. And props to you for even wanting the job. You’ve inherited one big flipping mess. 

Your shoulders are freighted with everyone’s hopes and fears right now. If the economic clouds part under your leadership, then you’ll truly be the Obamessiah (my favorite pejorative back when you handlers trotted you out on the campaign trail to the strains of “Jesus Christ, Superstar.” (Seriously, WTF were they thinking?) It made me want to throw up a little in my mouth–and throw my support to Hill or Edwards.

Hillary fought hard. Regarding Edwards, well, maybe I was thinking, “Charismatic and Shiny,” while everyone else was all like, “Preening Narcissist.” Everyone else got the memo before me on that one.

That’s when I started to pay attention to you, first as a consolation prize, but gradually, on your own merits. I still don’t really understand the Black Liberation Theology of Jeremiah Wright–and it feels presumptuous to say I ever could. Still, that’s my one little bone of contention, which your knockout speech in Philadelphia helped to dispel. 

But Former Senator/President-Elect Obama, the thing that got me was your grace and patience. The Repug ticket played to their wild-eyed, monster-in-the-closet base, whipping up tent-revival style hatred of you because of your race. There were even calls to do you bodily harm–which Gov. Flailin’ did nothing to extinguish. 

Still, you barely blinked. And even though they also gave you a banquet of low-hanging fruit to pluck when Flailin’s daughter’s teenage pregnancy was revealed, you adhered to the high road. 

Me? I was yelling  at MSNBC, wondering aloud why you didn’t just skewer ‘em with their own stupidity. 

You played it just right when the stakes were high. I only hope you can show us more of that in the future.

And if/when you have to disappoint some of us, some of the time, because of the limitations of your power and the world we’re all inheriting from Shrub, the Expert Marksman, and Turdblossom, I hope we can be as graceful and patient in return.

P.S. Good luck with Operation Nonallergenic Rover

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But first, there was always that damnable, mosquito-plagued waiting. And that hopping from foot to foot: it was the gotta-pee dance, since we’d been in the mall parking lot for so lo— –Alas, I’ve disclosed too much of my white-trashtastic roots. Yep, we pulled up lawn chairs at the local mall parking lot, “‘Cause why wouldja fight them pesky crowds at the park, when ya could see ‘em jest as well from the mall?” Ahhh, sweet youth! And if you’re anything like me, sweet youth also involved spying a Roman candle that belched out colorful balls of fire from a backyard near the public fireworks venue–and liking it better than the measly extravaganza your township put on that year.

Maybe most public displays are overrated. Besides, some of us are now thinking about the pollutants that these Conflagrations for Freedom release into the air. Sheesh! And I thought staying away from those roadside tents where sparklers are proffered by three-fingered merchants was the responsible thing to do! But now, we’re damned if we do patronize public fireworks displays and damned if we take matters into our own irresponsible, misguided, nanny-state-needing, potentially blown-off hands and set off those pretty Roman candles.

What to do? Well, maybe we should decouple fireworks from the Fourth and just blow up stuff for freedom whenever the urge strikes. The kids in my neighborhood blew stuff up on a year-round basis. In fact, I lost one mighty fine Muppets lunchbox to an M-80 and a majestic display of bad-assity. (I was fifteen; still tears me up to this day.). The point is, none of us has discovered the cure for cancer or become a captain of civics or industry. We’re probably of average or sub-average intelligence, all. And yet, we managed to retain our full complement of fingers, and not a singed eyebrow among the lot of us. It probably would have been even better and safer, however, had fireworks not been the slightly dangerous, illicit forbidden fruit that many state laws have made them. That way, we could have practiced our blowing-up of stuff without being sneaky–and under parental supervision. Who knows? Maybe we would’ve limited it to the Fourth.

Use common sense, be safe, but by all means, keep on exercising the freedom to blow stuff up in the name of America this Fourth of July–whether you outsource it (like it or not, there’ll probably always be a demand for those big old pollution-spewing monster displays) or take matters into your own powder-burned hands!

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Apparently, they won’t be stopping here. Oh, well, someone has to restock the black marching-band oxfords at Payless. And, whew! My spawn are safe! More precious years to spend eating Lucky Charms from the box and spinning around in the backyard till they topple over.

But oh, how exquisitely the Superparent™ tingles danced up and down my spine at Curriculum Night last evening:

Principal X, if we feed Festus intravenous Perrier and Boost to eliminate wasted time on that pesky eating thing, how many Advanced /Enriched courses can he fit into his schedule?

Will five Advanced/Enriched classes interfere with Madysson’s trip to Europe to serve on the Junior Mock-U.N. this fall?

I went into Middle School Curriculum Night thinking that the variety of classes they give these larval teenagers is pretty neat; I left feeling like the kid who got no Valentines in her shoebox. I was taking the gas, even though I knew better. Big Unit has enough of the ol’ ADD that waterboarding would be more Advancing/Enriching than one of those courses, despite knocking any kind of standardized test or IQ assessment outta the park.

Does any of this have anything to do with me, beyond my chaotic inner life and faulty DNA jumping into his chromosomes? With my success or failure as a parent, I mean? Probably not, unless I’m throwing raw meat on the floor, forcing the Units to fight it out with the dogs every night, and actively encouraging them to watch my DVD treasury of this for hours on end.

But…so….hard…not…to…get…sucked…iiiiinnnn. And yet, Glory be! The Black Plague of Genius has passed over our mediocre abode!

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But two-year-olds are not renowned for their empathy. And Little Unit is apparently determined to go to prom in a sequined pull-up, so she’s not above using words to eviscerate ( and to keep us busybodies from cajoling her into having a seat on the White Potty). Actually, it came out more like this:

“Ah hate-a mah potty, an’ Ah hatechoo!”

After that, I thought it best to let Little Unit remain naked after stripping for the second time. We weren’t having dinner at the White House, after all. On cue, Micro Unit wails for food. I feed Micro Unit, casually tracking Little Units movements as she putters around, stealing shoes from my closet and tottering around in a pair of red wedge sandals. Where is Larry Flynt when you need him?

Little Unit squats suspiciously.

Too late. I leave Micro Unit howling in the middle of the bed, lift Little Unit high in the air and hustle her to my own White Potty.

Sploosh! The “kids” miss the “pool” and land on my scampering foot. I gingerly peel off the offending shoe and hop downstairs to deposit Little Unit on her White Potty.

“Stay here,” I implore, leaving her on her perch and running back upstairs to:
1. Check on Micro Unit
2. Clorox the shyte outta my bathroom floor.

Moments later, I cauterize my hand, collect Micro Unit, and hustle back down to Little Unit, presumably on her throne.

Ieeeeeeyygh! Little Unit is, well, besmirched with poo.

Micro Unit is deposited somewhere again, howling. Wishing for child-size tongs, I pick up the clean parts of Little Unit and deposit her in a bubbly tub (wishing Clorox was gentle and tear-free).

Amazingly, I remained tear-free. But just barely

Oh, well, could be worse. What if giant snakes—wait a minute!

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But one car trip I made last week has managed to suck all the oxygen out of my lungs: I had to drive up to my dad’s hunting cabin to identify his body.

He had gone to bed satisfied. He’d spent the day in his favorite place in the world, setting up his turkey blind somewhere on the 40 mountain acres that cradled his one-bedroom “chalet.” (My mom had bothered to hang curtains inside and stock the place with dishes, prompting the undertaker who kept him for us to remark, “That was a woman’s hunting cabin. Real nice place.”)

And it was. It is. The other shoe has dropped. We all knew that Dad–a juvenile diabetic since grade school–was not going to live to be an old, old man. In fact, when my parents were engaged, a doctor counseled them to get cracking and have some kids ASAP if that was in the cards, so that he’d stand a chance of raising them and seeing them launched before his life was foreshortened by his disease.

Well, those hypothetical kids are long past the need for raising (on our good days) and he was able to share his mountainside, his river and the odd turkey sighting with his grandchildren. He beat expectations by a country mile, and kept going. A scientist who went corporate to support his desire to live in the woods , he knew the limitations of the human body in general–and his in particular.

“Why didn’t he just take up golf?” my mother would wail, wondering why a man saddled with a failing heart insisted on a solitary pursuit where success lay in the ability to hide in the woods. While things didn’t end quite the way she envisioned when her worries had her in a chokehold, my father’s final day was not too far afield from her darkest predictions.

But he was never afraid. He knew the risks, and instead of hand-wringing and taking it easy, decided to go run his life the way he wanted to. How many people can honestly make that claim?

Well done, Dad, even though I’ll miss you forever. You were improbably sweet and tender under your hard, crunchy shell. And improbably vigorous in the shadow of an “inborn error of metabolism,” as one of your old books called it.

And improbably patient with everyone you met, for someone who did not suffer fools gladly. Thanks to your remarkable self-restraint, for instance, I grew up believing that Saturday night’s back-to-back broadcasts of The Love Boat and Fantasy Island were the shining twin zeniths of television programming. All because you didn’t shoot the TV.

How did you resist the urge?

I wish I could ask you that, and so many other things.

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Well, maybe not even that many people. This is stale news, but the questions it raises have been festering in my brain for awhile. Does Ms. Shvartz’s ill-fated senior project at Yale constitute art?

I’ve gotta hold my nose and say “yes” on this one. The very idea of her alleged products of conception–which would’ve been lovingly displayed with the goal of starting a dialog about choice and mastery over one’s body–makes me reflexively gag. The blood, plastic cube and video diary of abortions-as-sporting events, in and of themselves, are art.

And so is me peeing in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to protest the war in Iraq. Which is to say, the materials responsible for such an uproar are sooo not art. But the uproar itself is, totally. The web of lunacy that Ms. Shvartz has woven around this nonevent (with a little help from university officials) is an unparalleled example of performance art for the 21st century.

By allegedly admitting that it was all smoke and mirrors to Yale brass, and then asserting that she really did inseminate/clean out her uterus, Ms. Shvartz has masterfully crafted a shitstorm of epic proportions. And in the end, she didn’t even have to unveil the material piece at all. Brava!

Still, I hate performance art with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns. And the worst part is, you never know when it’s gonna sneak up on you. There you’ll be, innocently watching a new “play,” then, WHAMMO! “It’s incomprehensible, therefore, it’s art!” sneaks up on you in all of its black trenchcoat-wearing, Smiths-listening glory.

Yep, it happened to me one time in the early ’90s. The scene of the crime was a large university’s black box theater. I was watching a bunch of thesis projects in directing. On comes a “play” whose dramatis personae consists of Man and Woman.

Uh-oh. Gallagher smashing up watermelons is starting to look like George Bernard Shaw.

They’re wearing masks a‘ la Ultraman. And they’re fighting…on the isle of Crete (insert cretin joke here).

Man: Submit to me, you damned woman!
Woman: Never! You cannot oppress me!

Repeat oh, I dunno, 25,000 times and you’ve captured the theatergoing experience that day.

What made it art was the question-and-answer session that followed. A young woman stood up on trembling legs, stammering and blushing as she asked:

“Um, no disrespect to the playwright, but what the hell did I just see?”

The theater erupted in applause and laughter. Brava!

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Met up at a bar, then progressed to the host’s hotel room. My husband thought it’d be all “immature” and stupid, but I think he was just pizzed about having to stay home with Big, Medium, Little and Micro Units while I (gasp!) had fun without him.

Turned out he was half right. It was totally immature! But it was also wonderful, and about a day too short. We’re all reaching that age where some lofty aspirations have been traded in for pragmatic concessions. Lots of our 21-year-old selves would call our 35-plus selves “sellouts,” but nobody went on an American Beauty-style bender about how their lives had played out.

This was a happy bunch of people! And I don’t think it was all attributable to the Molson. Or to a steady run of zippity-do-da events. There was plenty of sad intermixed with the good stuff, but I’m proud to still know these folks because of the way they respond the the maelstrom of life swirling around them. I drove down feeling nervous and vaguely frumpy and friendless, but I left reluctantly in the wee hours, just as the beer muscles were popping out and choice bons-mots like, “Man, how’d you get so fat?!” were wafting around the room like so much love-dust.

My only hope is that they derived the same reassurance that they were, in fact, still abundantly “friended” out of my presence. That I listened as much as I talked.

That they will stumble into the unlocked gym again next time. I want to stay for the second annual shirts vs. skins game.

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