Month: February 2005 (Page 3 of 6)

So, we last left it where my dreams of driver’s ed were dashed on the rocks by my mother. Eventually, though, I did need to learn to drive, and who better to teach me than my mother?

That was a short-lived solution. First off, my father ruled the roost. You did not get emotional or loud or crazy around him because Mr.Logic would shut you down faster than the Health Department at a Typhoid Mary convention. But my mother and I had no such boundary, and when left to our own devices, and differences, the screaming and yelling was phenomenal and immediate. So you can imagine how well her instruction inside a Chevette would go over. Not. And it’s pretty confined in there, so the screaming seemed even worse. After one attempted lesson, she handed me over to my father. Phew! Finally, the rubber shall meet the road.

Now, if you’re thinking about teaching your kid to drive, I’d suggest driver’s ed. But if you refuse to listen to that, then start with a car that has an automatic transmission? Please?

Yes, the Chevette was a stick. And one of my father’s first instructions to me was to keep my left foot BACK by the seat, so as to not condition myself to ride the clutch. Dur. In my mind, I don’t even KNOW what riding the clutch is and there are three pedals and I have NO FUCKING CLUE how to listen to the engine and do all of these things, SIMULTANEOUSLY. However, he decided to eagle-eye my left foot and EVERY TIME it hesitatingly, insecurely worked itself up towards that clutch, he would BAM! slap his hand on my right knee. Causing me to jump out of my skin and completely kill the engine because I would let up on EVERYTHING.

Lord, I tested his patience, and we hadn’t even gotten the car into reverse.

Now, we lived a half-mile from the county road – a gravel road, no less. So once I got the car going, we travelled out to get the mail. Lurching, sputtering, slowing, speeding, we didn’t really pay attention to how much FOG was in the air. After all, our lane was as familiar as the back of my hand. So out we go, and all we’re gonna do is basically a three-point-turn, get the mail, and get back home. A couple of hand slaps on my knee scare the bejeebers out of me, but I don’t kill the engine. Hey, man, this driving thing’s not so bad! What’s the big deal? But once we’re on the county road, I kill the engine, and cannot, for the life of me, re-start the car. Try after try after try. My father is anxiously looking back and forth, because it’s basically pea soup and you can’t see more than five yards in any direction.
Dad, urgently: “Come on, Jennifer. Just give it some gas and eaaaaase up on the clutch.”
I can’t say anything. I’m becoming frantic, which means I can no longer remember anything we’ve learned in the past half hour. I kill the engine no less than ten times as I try to back up.

Dad: “Come ON, we can’t see, we have got to get out of the road!”
Me: (on the inside) “Really? Really? I hadn’t notice we can’t see anything and seriously, getting frantic panicky with me? -heavy sarcasm- THAT’s helping.”)

Good grief. It took fifteen minutes. It was awful. I was shaking, and my father obviously had an equal stress level to mine. The first driving lesson was over.

My father’s conclusion? Let’s not learn on the stick shift.

What did that leave me with for future lessons? A stretch van with no rear windows, and only one side window. Awesome. AWE. SOME. Frying pan into the fire.

To be continued…..

I figure since I lambast so many other people’s driving skills, I should tell some stories on myself, and that means the starting point is usually a good place to start.

First off, my mother wouldn’t let me take driver’s ed. I know, I KNOW. My memory’s a bit fuzzy on what the Iowa laws were back then, but I’m pretty sure you could get a learner’s permit at 14. Because of all the tractors and whatnot. You know, farming communities. There were all sorts of restrictions on what and where you can drive, obviously, but I think most of my classmates took driver’s ed in 10th grade. I was a year younger than my classmates, so despite the GRAVE insult of having to take driver’s ed with those idiots in the class behind me, I began lobbying my junior year to take the class.
Mother: “No. Our insurance will go up.”
Me: Excessive amounts of pleading.
Mother: “NO.”
And around and around we went. You remember how it was when you were 15. The world is your oyster and give me the Tabasco, bitch.

The Spring of ’84 brought us the Grandest Fight Ever over Driver’s Ed. We had a foreign exchange student, Maria, living with us, and she and my mother were sitting at the kitchen table. I was preparing dinner and had launched into yet another full-scale attack on the impenetrable walls of my mother’s decision.

Mother: “NO, Jennifer. You’re not taking driver’s ed. That’s final.” She and Maria went back to whatever the fuck they were doing, obviously not realizing what was coming next.

Now, let me give you a quick snapshot to set the stage. I started doing all of the baking for our family when I was in junior high. By 9th grade, I was preparing dinner every night. On the weekends, I had a large list of chores, and basically cleaning the entire house to the inspection of both parents was the first business of the day on Saturdays. I did not have a job outside of the home, but I sure had a buttload of jobs in the home. I also trace my dislike of housework to those formative years, when I could have spent more time perfecting my Sheena Easton and Cyndi Lauper renditions with my curling iron microphone, instead of serving as free labor to my parents. I digress, but it’s relevant.

Where were we? Oh yes, on an emphatic NO from my mother. I was making spaghetti sauce, as I recall, because I started waving the spoon while I LOST MY MIND.

Me, screaming: “DO YOU KNOW WHAT I DO FOR YOU? I DO ALL THE COOKING. ALL THE CLEANING. I DO EVERYTHING FOR YOU, WHILE YOU’RE OUT, OUT, (sputtering) DRIVIN’ AROUND.”

And she & Maria collapsed into laughter. Which only made me start to cry as I repeated my argument. My mother was doing that gasping thing, holding her stomach, as she said to Maria, “Oh yes, that’s me, just driving around and around in front of the house! Poor Jennifer, stuck in here COOKING!”

Ohhhhhhh. I can still remember the white-hot anger I felt. The absolute frustration and powerlessness, magnified by the fact they were LAUGHING at me.

I wouldn’t be 15 again for all the money in the world.

I think my dad came in eventually and stopped all the screaming and crying.
And the bitch still wouldn’t let me take Driver’s Ed. A decision she – and my father – would mightily regret later. Because teaching your own child to drive? Now that’s where the screaming really starts.

This, my friends, is what we call foreshadowing.

So I tried my hand (cough) at a pair of fingerless gloves, and ended up creating my own pattern. Which still needs fiddling with, and the fact that I’m going keep messing with the pattern until I’m happy with it flies completely in the face of my style, “Come out swinging and don’t look down!” But I’m going to do it, because a) I don’t want to rip these out and b) I want to have a pattern that I’ve made and I’m happy with! Bravissimo. And I got TWO requests in one night for more pictures. Therefore, I give you pictures of the original prototypes for Jen’s Fingerless Gloves, ribbed and beaded for your pleasure. :)

When I re-work these, I will have at least two more columns of beads. A shout goes out to my friend Chewdy for spending the time with me to show me some smart stuff about knitting with beads.

The yarn is from Knit Picks, it is the softest sock yarn – their Sock Landscapes, in the “Spring Prairie” colorway. I LOVE IT! I got some more in the Rocky Mountain Dusk to make the Clapotis that is sweeping the knitting knation by storm.

And as you can see, Miss Polly gives them a seal of approval and pronounces them “Tasty”.

The Toe-Up “Mother In Law” socks, pattern found here, knit in Lion Brand Magic Stripe.  

I was reading Becky’s blog and her musings on love in the wake of Valentine’s Day inspired some thoughts of my own.

The main thought being that nobody anywhere portrays love as work, and I think that’s a huge disservice to love. I can hear the sniffing, “Well, love shouldn’t BE work”, and I guess love in itself is not work, per se, but marriage, and healthy relationships do require it. (and it’s not BAD that it’s work, either.) It’s just that you have to put something into it, all the time. It’s not a painting that you save up and buy and hang on the wall and you’re done. I think that’s the big myth that is perpetuated, because how can you quantify 365 days of work each year into a 2-hour movie? Hollywood scripts it so we see
1. Initial attraction,
2. Ensuing pratfalls and hilarious obstacles,
3. Magical moment where all obstacles are swept away,
4. Happily Ever After.

They don’t show minor squabbles or the satisfying moments when you lean your head against your partner and feel their warmth transfer to your own skin.

And I do believe in Happily Ever After. You just have to live it one day at a time, and have realistic expectations that not every day will be scripted by an adept writer. I’ve talked to my dear friend who has been married for over thirty years – and she’s the first to acknowledge how much work goes into a successful marriage. I think there’s an unfair, negative association with the word “Work”, because in our society, it’s usually the opposite of “Fun”. So maybe the more palatable word is “Investment”. Or maybe we start using poker terminology.

JWo, I’m all in.

It’s funny, somewhere along the ride I intended this blog to be 90% knitting and the rest just flotsam and jetsam. Turns out I’ve flipped the ratios, so I thought I should do a quick Knittin’ Update.
Nearly Done: Self-designed, ribbed and BEADED (for my pleasure) fingerless gloves. Of course as I finally get down to the knitty-gritty and try them on, I find myself wishing I’d done another column of beads. Sigh. Not so much I’ll rip them back out. All I have to do are the thumbs and presto, Rocky, I’m done! Pics to come.
Still Slogging: My Folly. I want this sweater to be done. Teeth-gnashingly so. Not in a bad way, just an anxious, eh, come ON self, get this sweater done, with our Faux Spring days, I’m feeling the pressure of fewer cold days left and thus opportunity to wear this sweater.

I’m gone this weekend to Rocheport, MO, where I’m meeting up with some fellow knitters from the Ample Knitters list, and we’re going to have a great time. I’m hoping with all the time to focus on knitting, I’ll get the Folly that much closer to completion.

In the wings, waiting to leap onto needles:

-Bumblebee socks for JWo. (He wanted black and yellow socks. I will knit him some. Found some self-striping yarn, he will be buzzin’.)
-Maple Leaf scarf in some yummmy Lorna’s Laces
-Something springy/summery! And I will be shopping from my stash for the project, oh yes I will!
-Oh, and one of those popular Buttonhole Bags from Mason-Dixon knitting. I like anything with such immediate gratification!

So Miss Kristin and I enjoyed ourselves a little Thai food therapy, and then strolled over to Tea Drops in Westport, which is just a lovely space. Every time I go in there I want to plop down and hang out there for 3-4 hours. Especially on sunny afternoons. I got a peach-flavored black tea with boba (the black tapioca-esque blobs) – YUM! I chose a bright red straw because I felt, well, very bright. And red. This straw would make a serious spitwad shooter, if a person were so inclined. My lid/seal featured red tulips, too. Very springy, very happy. I enjoy the boxes that have Asian calligraphy next to them with English subtitles, “Few Sugar”, “No Sugar”, “Few Ice”, “No Ice”. Then I notice the small print on the right-half of my seal. It’s in English. It’s the lyrics from the Black Eyed Peas’ “Where Is the Love” song.

The first words I discern say, “people killin’, people dyin'” and I’m thinkin’ YO, I’m trying to enjoy a spot of tea and sunshine here, folks. Let my boba go.

Other random thought/observation: on the walk there, a young female dalmation was sunning on her dog bed in front of her owner’s store. It was the happiest thing, and as everyone went by, they just smiled, and some stopped to pet her. The world needs more smiles and less stress. I can’t wait to get home and hug my (very clean fresh-smelling) dog!

I don’t usually list out things I feel are dreadful, because who really needs a written reminder of awful things? But this week has gotten off to an abysmal start, and in the spirit of Best Things Ever, we have to have the rain and sad things to help our Best Things shine more brightly.

1. First item will be covered in tomorrow’s post. I’m still reeling. And also feeling way old, and that I’ve already turned into a squawking senior citizen about These Kids Today.

2. My dear friend Kristin lost her gorgeous knitted Charlotte shawl on it’s debut day. Heartbreaking. I see she has a similarly titled post as well. I continue to get tears in my eyes for her, it is just so unfair.

3. My darling dog and I have opposing ideas about what constitutes Best Thing Ever. According to Polly, Best Thing Ever! list includes rolling in dog poo. That would come, of course, right after EATING cat poo. Yesterday morning, she thoroughly coated herself in excrement. Why not? It has the same detoxifying qualities as a mud bath, and people pay good money to be detoxified. Here, we have it in the front yard for FREE! Yippee skippy! James put her in the kennel right away and then gave both dogs a bath when he got home last night. We’re having Faux Spring right now, so he hooked up the hose and washed them outside. Unfortunately, Eau de PoochiePoo is a powerful, powerful cologne. She still wafted an ever-so-faint nasty scent every time she tried to snuggle up to me. So, before going to bed, we had an indoor bath as well, to wash away the last of the scent residue. Have you ever bathed a medium-to-large-sized dog in a tub? If so, you’ll understand why I choose to be half-clothed, otherwise I’m in the wet t-shirt contest, party of one. It may not be the sexiest thing on earth, but it’s functional & it works.

I told Miss Polly, while bathing her in the tub, that people would pay equally good money to be bathed and massaged and scrubbed by a topless woman. Some might even consider it to be a Best Thing Ever. However, I don’t think it makes her list…..or mine.

For reasons that will become clearer later, I was thinking about what age I was when I received SexEd, courtesy of the public school system. Of course, my mother also did her part throughout my pre-teen and teen years, but the older I got the more painfully awkward those became. For some reason, I think they started on the basest of basics, menstruation, in elementary school. I vividly remember a booklet filled with letters between three girls over the summer, as each of them (indicated by a different colored flower) got their periods, and the sheer excitement of it all.
I bought it, hook, line and sinker. I was intoxicated. Drunk on the glamour of menses and all the accoutrements that denoted you as a Woman. I am now going to make a very embarassing, yet hilarious, confession. The year is 1977. I am 9. I have begun to have Delusions of Grandeur, already. I beg, beg, beg and plead with my mother to buy me this particular item. I must have it. Have to have it. She is bewildered. She tries to talk me out of it. She tries to explain that I will not like it. All I hear is a whirring tuba noise as her mouth moves, and I sweepingly brush her arguments aside. I will have none of it. I MUST. HAVE. THIS.

For I, dear friends, had to have the Maxi Pad With Belt Configuration.

If you are much younger than me, you will not even know what I’m talking about. I think the product decline happened shortly after I finally got mine. You can see a picture of them here. Oh, but yes. My mother bought me the whole shootin’ match. I still remember my uncontainable excitement, when she brought it home with her after work one day. I could hardly STAND it, I was bubbling over with my imminent Womanhood.

Now, if you’ve never worn one of these, allow me to describe how it works. You have a maxipad, roughly the size of a body pillow, with a large amount of loose tulle at either end. This is what you will thread through the little jagged metal hooks to secure the pad in place. Then, much like a chastity belt, you step into this riggery and ignore that you cannot walk normally. In fact, I’m sure these were quite effective AS chastity belts in their heyday. Heyyyyyyyy, sailor! Gaze upon my body and this king-size pillow wedged between my legs. I am IRRESISTABLE.

So I wobbled off to school the next day, triumphant in my ascension into Womanhood before all of my other classmates. Good. Lord. Those delusions crashed mightily onto the Harsh Rocks of Reality. By ten a.m., I requested a bathroom pass. I still remember an overwhelming desire to chuck the entire thing into the trash, but since the belt had cost some coin, I only tossed the pad. (Mind you, I was nowhere near starting my period at this point.) I had to wear my crazy belt under my pants until I got off the schoolbus, where, in the privacy of my half-mile hike home, I removed the elastic gizmo and shoved it into my backpack.

And yes, my mother did say she told me so. And no, I no longer find menstruation to be a glamorous, accoutrement-filled event.

But you can’t say I’ve lost that peculiar brand of enthusiasm.

I moved to St. Louis in 1995. I didn’t really know what to expect, and while I still have fond memories of my time there, it wasn’t exactly the greatest time of my life, and a rather lonely one, in retrospect. Lot o’ growin’ up, not to mention some funny-ass drama (Car Burnt to Crisp, Women’s Prison Experience, etc.) So when I moved to Kansas City a couple years later, I focused most of my apartment-hunting on the Missouri side, out of convenience – my driver’s license and car plates were already Missouri, why not keep it easy? And I found out later, if you work in one state and live in another, tax time can be crazy. So! Keep it on the Mighty Mo. And good gravy, I wasn’t taking another driving test – for all my complaints about drivers, the Missouri driver’s license test is freakin’ HARD! Two co-workers in St. Louis flipped through the book, having been drivers for years before moving there, and in most other states, your general driving experience will be enough to pass. YOU WOULD THINK. NOT SO! They both failed the first time! Even with all the studying, I choked on the correct length at which you must tie a (white? red?) flag to something protruding from your vehicle. Good grief! If anything’s sticking out more than 6″, I’m putting a freakin’ balloon bouquet on it and hiring a “Wide Load” car to escort me.

After moving to K.C., I discovered this odd little border war that has never died. A guy at work was talking about how Kansas was “O.K.”, but when I said, “Would you live there?” the response was emphatically, “OH no. Never.” My husband tells me the feud traces back to the Civil War. I said, “So, what side was Missouri on?” His answer: “Slavery.” Ah. Well, then, that’s a good reason to keep ourselves divided. (?) But it isn’t all about that anymore. It’s this strange rooted upbringing, a level of disdain and wariness about that side of town. For the longest time, we’d drive over to Johnson County, to do some shopping, or to go out to eat, and literally five minutes after crossing the state line, James would slump in his seat and with an air of disdain state, “I’m totally lost.” I would start pointing out consistent landmarks, like the SUN, and the fact that they, too, use a numbering system with their East-West streets. Just like us! To no avail. “I’m turned around. Completely. I have no idea where we are.” I was astonished until I figured out it was his auto-reaction to being in the Land of the Devil, a.k.a., Kansas. I’m just saying, when I lived in Minnesota and Iowa, we engaged in border jibing, always. The poor Dakotas – there are so few people left to even defend their great, frozen, funny-talkin’ states. :) But there wasn’t this crazy-wonkers-blinders thing going on, it’s really quite amusing coming from the outside, to see how galvanized people get over sides of a city that are divided only by a four-lane (sometimes two-lane) street called “State Line”.

People, it has taken several YEARS to unstick that learned response in my husband. And only as it relates to finding his way around. He’d still never live there, and that’s ok. Shall the leopard change his spots? I’m just relieved he’s no longer “immediately lost” once we’ve hit Kansas soil.

How did I do it? We started with desirable, easy-to-find locations, like Hooters. And Galyan’s, a source for Hunting Supplies. By stringing together desirable eating establishments, and appealing shopping, a little trail of duck decoys and chicken wings have proven to be the shoehorn that allows my husband to slide into the neighboring state and not be immediately transported to the State of Flummoxed. And I have realized I’m getting older (and more of a Missouri resident myself) when I’m happy to see more shopping opening on the Missouri side, because I want to keep my tax dollars in my state.

(Speaking of Galyan’s. Now they’re Dick’s Sporting Goods. And did you know if you thought you could go online to look at sporting goods, and you innocently typed in dicks dot com? You get 8,000 pop up windows showing you 16,000 Mr.Happys and very tan naked men in every position trying to entice you, and it’s not to buy sporting equipment. Some of those Mr.Happys would even require a red flag tied on them if they were being transported in the trunk of a Missouri car. And did you know if you do this innocent search at work, you will eventually have to turn your computer OFF in a panic because you do not posess the ability to click a mouse fast enough to make those pop-ups go away? Did you know this? Hm? Well, now you have been warned.)