Oh, give me a home –

Okay, home from church and dinner, consisting of a GF grilled chicken breast and left-over basically broccoli soup (where did that word come from, broccoli?  Does it sound French to you?  Latin?  Old high German?  And that spelling? Somebody made it up.  “Broccoli”—uh-huh. Somebody dead and gone now, probably from laughing so hard they bust a gut), eaten.  Guy said the soup was really, really good.  I made it.  From scratch.  Two days ago when I wanted something that wasn’t—what have I been eating? Anyway, something I could make with my eyes closed—at the same time, saving vegetables from a ugly plunge into old age.

It has been an interesting day.  I wrote to M.  Prepared (what a loose word that is) my SS lesson.  We ascertained that the cable box is, indeed, dead (this is the third box in a year downstairs—and it’s NOT because we overwork the dang thing.  Good-bye Gregory Peck in The Big County, good-bye several installments of Stargate Atlantis, a couple of Raymonds and an old Burn Notice.  The boxes just turn belly up and die, flashing, “Stand-by” at us, or telling us it’s two in the morning when it’s actually six at night.  Tomorrow I get to drive it out to Comcast.  Why can’t they drive out to ME once in a while?), so we can’t record Oliver Twist. 

I know.  Life is hard.

So, after I’d fed the horses (who have to eat, Sabbath or not) and changed into something-more-comfortable, I settled on the couch to catch up with blogs.  I shouldn’t do this.  Especially, I shouldn’tdo this when I’m caught up on everything but Pioneer Woman, which I always save till later. Which was today.  Which I never should have done.  Because it isn’t fair.  How does a woman who lives on a ranch, cooks, homeschools, messes around with Photoshop all day and looks utterly smashing have time to be so funny and engaging and charming?  And why do I, along with the 993 commenters and a small country of other lurkers, want to be her flipping Best Friend?

I think she’s made up.  I think some person with really honed marketing skills made her up so he could rake in the ad revenue.  Really.  Think about it.  How could anybody who cooks the kind of stuff she does not be HUGE?  And what right does she have to write that she loves horse muzzles, when I  love horse muzzles?  Because now that she’s said it, if I say it, it’s going to sound like I got if from her.  And I did not.

Like I said. Unfair.  You think the Fairness Doctrine will make her stop her awful charisma and redistribute some of that sunny wit to the more challenged among us?  Which would be me.  ME.  Does she wander into political complaint?  Does she wallow in philosophical diatribes about religion and parenting and  . . .and . . .stuff?  No.  She just tells all these wonderful stories which are really not all that wonderful – just they seem wonderful and funny and odd because not only does she have a great eye for composition, she’s tuned to the affectionate absurd, too.  And she NEVER writes as much as I do – like going on and on and on.  Deft.  I resent deftness.

Which brings me to lament number two – that thing that Sue  wrote about phone paranoia?  (I can’t remember how to get to it.  You’ll just have to find it yourself.) I didn’t relate to it at all until Tuesday, after the Frazz left my house.  We had a really great time.  We had a great time when Gin was here with him for almost a week, and then on Monday after and Tuesday morning when he was here alone.  With me.   For once, I’d actually remembered to ferret out every toy I’d ever saved for someday when I’d be a grandmother, and the dinosaur sandwich cutters and the adorable kid plates, and I washed a decade of in-the-garage-loft-with-the-bugs off of the hot wheel tracks.  (I was, in short, for once in my life, actually prepared.)  We read, and we played games, and we ate, and we ran around.  It was a GREAT time.

Then he left.  And all the air went out of me.  Right there in the middle of all the motionless cars and buildings and blocks and books and animals and craft supplies. Pffffffff.  “Well,” I thought, balanced between sorrow that he’d gone and elation that he’d gone, “now I can do my own stuff.”  But I couldn’t remember what that was.  So I wandered around, packing things away, looking for my old life.  And then I sat down on the couch with this keyboard in my lap—and the phone rang.

Nobody calls on the land line anymore.  I’ve talked about that.  Except those people who have now given me 967 last chances to get a really really great rate on my credit card.  And the people who want me to do something.  For them.  Right now.  Or even later.  And then I understood Sue.  Because there was no way under heaven I was going to answer that phone.  Or even look at the ID.  Or even get off the couch.  And nobody could make me.  NOBODY.  I wasn’t going to answer the door, either.  One time, I even closed all the blinds so nobody could see that I was actually at home, sitting still.  NOT DOING ANYTHING.

(This is the sound of me gently touching my forehead to the wall)

Kathy, Frazz’ other grandmother is so good at grandmothering.  She is so beautiful and so wonderful and she never breaks a sweat.  And I was good, too.  Honest, I was.  I just don’t think she’s going to have  to hire a crane to get her off the couch after the kids leave on Tuesday.

Now look.  I meant to go deft with this one.  I meant to be pithy.  Short and sweet.  And all I did was whine.  And if you say one WORD about wordiness, Michael, I will drive out to the boondocks where you live and smack you in the nose.  That concise enough for you?

I can’t help this.  Any of it.  So don’t feel like you have to tell me not to be so hard on myself.  I’m Irish.  And maybe Jewish.  Somewhere.