this woman’s work

Last night Brett installed a chin-up bar across one of the doorways so that when Noah shimmies up the frame, he has something to stop and hang on to. He’s swinging around behind me as I type.
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Noah summed up our lesson for the day: “Never leave the house without your keys.”

I locked us out today at about noon when we were leaving to go to Junior Great Books. We got in the van and I ran a check: Noah’s book? Check. Noah’s snack? Check. Noah’s drink? Check. Keys? Ummm, no check.

I went back and tried the front door, the side door, and the back door. Nada. I tried the windows I could reach and then got a lawn chair for the windows I couldn’t reach. Nope. I pried up screens and tried to pry open windows. Futile.

I stood there and thought. Thought deeply. Contemplated our sturdy little house and rummaged through my brains for brilliance. Needless to say, I came up empty. It was snowing and we were cold since we hadn’t planned to be outside for very long and hadn’t worn useful things like hats or gloves so I was thinking I might have to hurl a brick through a window if I couldn’t find another way in.

Fortunately, we live in a semi-urban place and we were able to tramp to a phone booth. I got my quarter out but the phone wouldn’t take it so I had to call my sister collect and holler at her (bad connection). She stuck her son, Frankie, in the car and came and got Noah and me then we all drove to my inlaws who weren’t at home. We used their spare key (unlike us, they have one cleverly hidden outside) to get in and get our spare key then drove back. Well, it turns out their spare key wasn’t upgraded when we replaced our front door. Off we went to my sister’s where Noah watched tons of television and played with his cousin Frankie and I drank tons of coffee and played with my sister Erica. I watched her paint a cookie jar, a giant glass thingamajig, a small shelf, and a phone with pink roses (she does fourteen projects at once) and we gabbed for six hours. That’s right, six hours. I’m exhausted.

I had to call customer service at Brett’s behometh national insurance company to try and find him because their offices moved and I haven’t memorized his new phone number. I was supposed to pick him up after work and that certainly wasn’t going to happen. I moved around in various phone trees before finding a live person in Vegas to transfer me to Columbus, OH, to his department, and finally to his desk. Stupidly, I didn’t think to tell him that Erica and I would drive up to get his keys, which is why I burdened my sister with my company all day.

I got nothing done (no writing, no cleaning, no cooking) but I had fun and Noah learned a valuable lesson. As Brett said, “That’s the kind of real-world experience you just can’t get from schoolbooks.”

Noah: Mommy, what’s sex?
Me: (taking a shortcut) Sex is when people try to make a baby.
Noah: I know how people do *that!*
Me: How?
Noah: They get naked and wriggle their tushies all around!
Me: Well, it’s a little more complicated than that.
Noah: And I know you just had sex, sexy mama!
Me: ?!
Noah: Yeah, ‘cuz you just made ME!

It’s snowing right now. We’re supposed to get 2 to 3 inches by tonight. Noah and I took Peanut for a walk and let her run free in the doggie park that’s in the center of our neighborhood since there were no other dogs there. It’s the first time I’ve let her off the leash (Brett has done it before) and I was pleased that she came back when I called.

She’s a fast little dog. She can outrun dogs much bigger than she is and she has stamina, too. Watching her racing around and around in big, open circles was very satisfying; she doesn’t get enough of that.

On the way back we met a neighbor from a couple blocks away, walking her beagle. Her name is Dolores, which is a name I don’t hear very often these days. Don’t you love those old fashioned names?

We came home to a warm house that still smells like the cranberry muffins that we cooked in our new scratch and dent oven this morning and played with Noah’s dreidle. Ahh yes, life is good!

Things my grandmother says that make me laugh:
“He’s busier than a seven-peckered sheep herder!”
(In response to a complaint) “Tough titty said the kitty but the milk’s still good.”

My mom’s mom is a tiny little woman, used to work at Boeing during the war. She’s our own little Rosie the Riveter but she’ll get pissed off if you say that ‘cuz she didn’t rivet. And you don’t want to get Betty pissed off so you may as well just skip it. She’s incredibly liberal, too, so it’s best that you don’t talk politics with her even if you agree; it just reminds her of how screwed up the country is right now and that, of course, pisses her off. She is also strongly pro-union.

Really, with Betty, it’s best to listen and keep your thoughts — even if you’re in agreement with her — to yourself. Besides it’s more fun that way because then she’ll talk more.

She lives in Portland and one holiday Brett and I were over there with her getting our annual tin of fudge (including peanut butter fudge made with — gulp — Velveeta cheese) and she asked me if I’d ever been in a fist fight. (The answer is no, by the way.) So she started telling us about the union and the strikes. She said one time after they had spent the day on the picket line they went to this bar across the street. The waitress said, as she served the drinks, “You ought to be grateful that you even have jobs!” So my grandma knocked her out and got thrown out of the bar.

“Wow, Betty,” said Brett. “Was that right after the war?”
“Hell no!” she exploded at him. “That was just a couple of years before I retired!”

You look up spit-fire in the dictionary and there she is, scowling at you.

My mom inherited her spirit but thank goodness the mean seems to dissipate in each successive generation. I’d say Erica (my sister) and I are downright nice but we’re not nearly as colorful.

By the way, Noah is out playing with Peanut in a smattering of snow right now.