once I was a micro-celebrity

The other night there was a reception at our school for the parents of the incoming kindergarten class. The Sober Husband and I went to a great deal of logistical trouble to attend (now here's a logic problem much worse than anything I faced on the LSAT: A quasi-important reception both parents should attend begins at School A at 5:00, and no children may attend. At 4:30, Child A's fencing class ends at School A. Coincidentally at 4:30 Child B needs to be picked up from School B, a few miles away. Additionally, the babysitter obtained by the husband of the logician has been told to show up at the children's home at 4:30. Therefore the logician needs to be in three places at 4:30 on the dot. Additionally, the logician and Children A and B live halfway across San Francisco from Schools A and B, and traffic is slow and ornery after 4:30, meaning that it will take 30 minutes to travel between the schools and the home one way. I spent an entire cranky, cranky day solving this little puzzle).

As the reception was winding down, I was explaining to the Head of Lower School why I was informing them, after they're been so careful to use "Lola", that in fact my child is now named "Lucy." This explanation was quite embarrassing to me as a parent as it involved various epiphanies had by my child while vegetating before the worst sorts of children's pop culture, "Barney" and that wretched film, "Shark Tales." (Irritatingly enough "Lucy" is practically the "Jennifer" of her kindergarten class. There will be three Lucys and three Olivias, no Lolas. I hear one Lucy goes exclusively by "Goose", though).

While we were having that conversation, a parent charged up with a big head of steam and a huge grin. I assumed he wanted an audience with the Head of Lower School, so I angled my body at an inviting and modest angle, so he'd get the message that I wasn't hogging the Head and he could join our conversation. Instead, he blurted out loudly, "YOU'RE FAMOUS! YOU FOUNDED BURNING MAN!" to me. The Head, who knows me as an eccentric stay-at-home mom, gave me a double take and faded away. I said modestly, "Oh, no, I wasn't the founder. I was the lawyer. I came along later. I just put the LLC in 'Burning Man, LLC.'"

It's been a long time since this has happened. I used to be extensively involved in Burning Man and its organization, and people who attend that event tend to live their lives around it. Accordingly many have a hero worship for any of the top organizers, and as San Francisco is the epicenter for Burning Man, it used to be that I was accosted quite frequently by admirers, who often called me "The Lawyer." As I'd be walking, people would shout out, "Carole! Carole!" from cars, really wanting to get my attention for a second. If I were downtown, I'd overhear someone pointing me out: "That's her; she's THE LAWYER" in tones of awe. At parties, there'd be a little circle of sycophants. It's a shame my children will never experience When Mommy Was Cool, but then again, they wouldn't like it. They strongly prefer the spotlight to be directed unwaveringly at them.

After this reception, we drove downtown to a nightclub, where the Sober Husband's employer, Doggyo, was holding an event. The husband had a wristband to get him in, some drinks tickets (only good for beer and wine; the shame, Doggyo, the shame. Do not cheap out on the drinks!), and an official Doggyo name tag. I looked around upon entering. Everyone was filling out nametags, putting on their web or media affiliation. "Do you want one?" asked the Sober Husband, probably imagining that I'd write "Doggyo Spouse." "Oh, yes," I said, and I wrote "Carole www.drunkenhousewife.com" on mine. The husband laughed. (Later in the evening, someone asked me seriously, "Is Drunkenhousewife.com hiring?")

And here's how the coin has flipped: back in the day when the Sober Husband and I were dating, he came along as my arm candy to a variety of Burning Man events, where I was a Big Important Drunk. Nowadays I tag along with the husband, and my once massive ego has a hard time with my nonentity status. I've noticed in particular that my husband's female coworkers have exactly zero interest in getting to know me, which I assume is because they know I'm a stay-at-home mother, which means I'm some sort of braindead throwback to the fifties, something to be shuddered at and avoided lest, like a zombie, I devour their feminist brains. If a male colleague actually gets into a conversation with me, he'll usually enjoy talking to me, but a female coworker won't go there.

At this second event, the crowd of Web 2.0 enthusiasts was salivating when the youthful founder and the youthful CEO took the stage. These are pin-up boys for Silicon Valley: multi-millionaires before they turned thirty, with messy hair and untucked pinstriped shirts over their jeans. It was just like the hipsters used to react when we Burning Man board members spoke. At least I'd had the tiny thrill of a little hero worship from a stranger earlier in the day, a tiny residue from the Time When the Drunken Housewife Was A Cool Demi-celebrity.

there is no chocolate milk in hell

My old friend Elliott came by yesterday afternoon and was soon acquainted with our household theology, that five year-old Lucy is a god and sends people to hell, where they won't have any friends. Elliott opined that he himself would be going to hell, but he expected an icy cold martini to be waiting for him there.

Eight year-old Iris had never contemplated what one would drink in hell. We asked the God Lucy if Iris could have chocolate milk in hell.

"No! Plain WATER!"

Remembering the old saying, 'in hell they want ice water...", I suggested to Iris that indeed ice water is the very best possible drink to have in that fiery afterlife. Lucy interrupted: "HOT WATER! IRIS JUST GETS HOT WATER!" Elliott, not having incurred the Great God Lucy's wrath, has not had his martini forbidden, but the anger of the Great God Lucy is vast indeed against poor Iris Uber Alles.

breakfast with the god

This morning resident five year-old and self-proclaimed god, Lucy, had cinnamon toast (she has become inordinately fond of Cinnabon brand bread and its trademarked "cinnamon bursts") while I looked at the paper.

Musing to herself, Lucy said thoughtfully, "Mommy goes to heaven. IRIS GOES TO HELL! I go to heaven."

"Where does Daddy go?"

"With me."

He'll be happy to hear that his prior fate of being sent to hell where he would have no friends has been rescinded.

a proud husband

I was having a cup of coffee with my friend Joyce the other morning, and my husband wandered in and interrupted us.

"Did Carole tell you she reached level 70 on World of Warcraft?"

Joyce rolled her eyes and said, voice dripping with sarcasm, "You must be so proud."

The Sober Husband answered quite seriously, "It gives me something to brag about around the office."

Patrick Buchanan is an idiot

Failed ex-presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan is using San Francisco as a symbol of how Barack Obama is out-of-touch with mainstream America. Never mind that Obama has never lived here; he was here when he made his controversial remarks about bitter workers clinging to guns and religion for consolation. Buchanan won't let you forget that it was "behind closed doors to the Chablis-and-brie set of San Francisco, in response to a question as to why he was not doing better in that benighted and barbarous land they call Pennsylvania."

The people of San Francisco are not unacquainted with hardship. Indeed, within recent memory pretty much everyone has gone through hardship. Remember the dot com bubble? If we are to imagine it as a burst gum bubble, we'd see the very most gum over the faces of everyone in San Francisco and its surroundings. Nearly 20% of the population left. Landlords slashed their rental rates. Developers were devastated. Homeless shelters were overwhelmed. I could go on and on.

But never mind that: Oh, my poor idiotic Patrick, Chablis and Brie are FRENCH products. Here in San Francisco we take great pride in our local products. We are the Zinfandel and Cow Girl Creamery set, precious, and don't you forget it.

last call for contest entries in the Annual Readers' Photo Contest

You, my darlings, have this weekend to take a photo, which in some way contains the words "Drunken Housewife" or the URL "www.drunkenhousewife.com", and email it to me at drunkenhousewife@gmail.com (or to send me a compelling enough plea to get the deadline extended). Celebrity Guest Judge Hughman and I stand at the ready to issue our rulings next week.

Mind you, the picture need not contain your visage or be flattering to the Drunken Housewife. We're looking for wit and dash, my duckies, or photographic talent. Insulting images are as likely to win as charming ones.

the accusation and the tragedy and the short memories

THE ACCUSATION: This morning I ordered the children to get dressed if they wished to be conveyed to the Daly City Playhouse, an establishment comprised largely of a three story climbing structure shaped like a castle, abutted by a number of couches upon which a Drunken Housewife may recline. Their preparations were interrupted by conflict.

"MOM!! LUCY SAYS I HAVE A GOOGOL CLOTHES!!" shouted a livid eight year-old Iris.

"Well, you do have a lot of clothes. Maybe not a googol but that's not an insult."

"YES, IT IS!!"

I threatened cancelling our expedition if they didn't stop their squabbling, but I regretted that rash utterance once it had crossed my lips. If I didn't take them to the Playhouse, I'd be stuck with the fighting siblings all morning at home. Thankfully they did not realize the hollowness of my threat and instead toed the line, more or less.

SHORT MEMORY, PART I: Lucy

After the children had spent a delirious hour cavorting and giggling ecstatically in the Playhouse, I herded them out to the car. The sun shone into Lucy's eyes, and she said bitterly, "I'm having a TERRIBLE MORNING!"

"What! I just drove you guys here and paid for you to play, and that's a 'TERRIBLE MORNING?"

SHORT MEMORY, PART II: Iris

This evening, after a beautiful and full day, the Sober Husband asked Iris Uber Alles how her last day of spring break went.

"Terrible!"

"WHAT!" I interjected. "I took you to the Playhouse, and I took you out to lunch, and I bought you a comic book and a magazine, and I took you to the beach, and then I took you out to the Beach Chalet!! And I listened to your yammering! How can you say that was terrible??"

Iris hemmed and hawed.

"Look at your shirt!" (said shirt was bespeckled with sauce from the grilled asparagus and catsup from the garlic fries consumed sloppily by the child at the Beach Chalet). "It's evidence of spoilage! I have spoiled you!"

THE TRAGEDY: At home this evening, the children munched some goldfish crackers while watching a Simpsons episode. (Iris Uber Alles was horrified recently to learn that the Simpsons have been banned in Venezuela. "We must NEVER, NEVER go there!!!"). In doing so, they made a hellish mess of cracker crumbs upon the floor, which they were bade to sweep up. In tidying their mess, Iris put some crackers which were on a little table back into the bag of crackers. Five year-old Lucy burst into tears.

"I WAS GOING TO EAT THOSE!! I PUT THOSE THERE TO EAT!"

We consoled her, explaining that the crackers were fine and could still be eaten. She could still take some crackers from the bag if she wanted more.

'BUT I WON'T KNOW WHICH ONES WERE MINE!!" she sobbed. Oh, the humanity.

creepy contractor update

Over the past few months, I've had virtually no interactions with the sociopathic little contractor building a luxury house close to mine. There has been plenty of construction noise and dust, of course (I hear a loud, annoying drill as I type this).

For some time I had been looking forward to the expiration of the contractor's construction zone permit. He has two large signs warning "NO PARKING/VIOLATORS WILL BE TOWED" on posts embedded in concrete, which he deployed where he wished, moving them about. Indeed he moved one by my friend Joyce's car after she'd parked one day and then called DPT to have her ticketed, but she had the ticket overturned after pointing out that he'd moved the sign after she parked. Anyhow, his paid permit to deploy these signs expired last month, and for some time he didn't put them out. But then this last week he started setting the expired signs out again.

I found this maddening. Normally parking is easy on this block, but on street cleaning days, it can be quite stressful to find a spot. By putting his signs out, he's unlawfully preventing people from using several spaces.

While that was just irritating, another occurrence was unsettling. I stopped by my house briefly with Iris Uber Alles in tow the other day, and when we left, I heard one of the workers call, "SHE'S GOING OUT NOW." I looked around. Iris and I were the only "shes" in sight. Were they monitoring my movements?

I reported this to the Sober Husband, who was dismissive as usual. He even defended the little sociopath's use of his expired signs. "Think of it this way: the sign is just a way of saying 'Please don't park here.'"

"It's not saying 'please!' He's not the type to say please. It's saying "I will tow you!'"

"But you know he can't tow you. It's just stopping people who are too lazy to read it."

I seethed. How dare he side with a balding sociopath against his allegedly beloved wife!

Quickly switching into condescension mode, the husband pulled me close and hugged me. Speaking in the same tone of voice he uses to reassure toddlers, he murmured, "How dare he put those signs out! And watching when you come and go! How terrible!"

Dismissive husbands aside, the idea that the contractor has his workers monitor my comings and goings is profoundly unnerving.

spare the children! oh, spare them!

Eight and a half year-old Iris Uber Alles is on spring break this week, and I am in the mood to take in a matinee with her. Currently the only G rated film playing, "Horton Hears A Who", is one I can't contemplate attending (I do love Dr. Seuss, but in book form, please). There are two movies I dearly wish to see, "Juno" (yes, I'm virtually the last adult woman in North American who hasn't already seen it) and "The Band's Visit" (an obscure Egyptian film about a marching band stranded in a small Israeli town). However, they are both rated PG-13. Should I take Iris?

I decided to try out some of the special reviews for parents, which elaborate upon questionable and age-inappropriate material, to help me make my decision. First up, kids-in-mind.com.

Soon I reached my conclusion: the Kids-in-mind.com people are clearly idiots.

Under "Violence/Gore", they write, among other things, "We see a fetus on a sonogram screen and a teenage girl makes a remark about the size of the baby's head." Oooh, how gory! How utterly violent! Those black and white sonogram blobs are just so scary. They also list as Violence/Gore "a teenage girl talks about ripping off all her clothes and jumping into a shopping mall fountain." How is that gory? Are they imagining she'd slip and skin her knee?

The Kids-in-mind reviewer was also up in arms over a scene where a pregnant person vomits. The violence! Oh, the violence! My own children have not only seen me vomit (my still remembered salmonella bout provided many, many opportunities to see this), but they have also vomited themselves. I hope they aren't unduly traumatized by that "Violence/Gore."

These people are not only unclear upon what gore and violence are, they're a bit fuzzy on profanity. Under Profanity, they include "name-calling (jock, jerk, stupid, nerds, squares, stink eye)." I hear worse than those epithets every time I do a workday at Lucy's pre-k (not to mention that five year-old Lucy utters more profane insults than those, what with her proclivity, in her self-proclaimed role as "the God Lucy", of threatening her father with eternal hellfire and damnation).

Next, I turned to parentpreviews.com. Interestingly enough the Parent Previews people were able to sum up the questionable content of "Juno" in three sentences, while the Kids-in-mind idiots went on for pages. With their admirable succinctness, the Parent Previews folks said: "A teen pregnancy results from a one-night stand (depicted with near nudity) between Juno and Paulie. The ongoing crass and casual discussion of male body parts and sexual activity are included along with repeated profanities and strong sexual expletives. A brief comment on the abuse of prescription drugs and a bloody impaling scene from a horror movie are also contained in the film."

I still can't decide whether to take Iris or not, but I'm more fascinated by how the Kids-in-mind morons missed that "bloody impaling scene from a horror movie." I guess they were so stunned by the sonogram image that their scarred retinas were unable to register anything else for a while.

shopping list

Our shopping lists are a joint effort, particularly since Lucy became literate. I ran across an old one in my handbag I felt like sharing:

Bread (written in the Sober Husband's handwriting and then heavily marked out)
kitty litter (written in my own slapdash hand)

The next two items were in Iris Uber Alles's handwriting:

Whale milk (presumably she meant "whole milk")
MARSHMELLOW PASTE!!! (this was written in very large and dark handwriting; recently Iris has taken up a serious Fluffernutter habit and evidently she was really jonesing)

Then the list reverted back to the Sober Husband's writing, who was presumably planning a cocktail surprise for his very own Drunken Housewife:

Scotch
Bourbon
toothpicks
Cheese sticks

Finally five year-old Lucy makes an appearance, with a carefully scrawled
CHEEZ-ITS

And there you have it: cheese items, Fluffernutter supplies, liquor and kitty litter. What else does one need?

a vengeful god

The resident five year-old has had an eventful week, changing her name from Lola back to Lucy and declaring herself to be a god.

Last night the God Lucy was feeling inadequately served. Her tired and cranky father refused to get up and make her a cup of chocolate milk, and Lucy's divine and vengeful temper resonated throughout the land. "I'LL DESTROY YOU!! I'LL KILL YOU AND YOU'LL GO TO HELL!! AND THEN YOU WON'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS!!"

In disbelief, the Sober Husband queried her. "You're going to send me to hell?"

"AND YOU WON'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS THERE!!"

Photo contest!

There's another week to enter the Second Readers' Photo Contest. The entries are trickling in, with one photo taking the lead, but it's not sewn up yet. Get your entry in or ask for an extension! Celebrity Guest Judge Hughman is fairly lively, but I'm lazy and could push the deadline back if asked nicely enough.

Prizes! Bragging rights! The joys of victory! All can be yours, just for submitting an entertaining photo with the words "www.drunkenhousewife.com" or "Drunken Housewife" in it somewhere.

Coming soon: the exciting "Name Hokgardner's Baby" Contest! I'll post some guidelines on that soon, but in the meantime, while you're taking photos, you can mull some good names over in your fevered little brains.

reaching out and receiving support

It was a bad week here. Towards the end of it, I confided in my dear friend Joyce.

"I kind of hate talking about this, because I know it puts you in a bad position. Like, 'do I call 911 or not?' I was feeling suicidal again this week."

Joyce murmured some supportive things.

"But you know what kept me from doing anything? My tattoos. I can't stand the thought of them dying with me."

"Dude, that is so weird." Pause. "You have got to put that on your blog."

a Lola by any other name

When I was pregnant the second time around and learned from my amnio that I was expecting a girl, I felt stymied over a name. "I feel like we shot our wad with 'Iris Alison,'" I complained over and over again to my husband.

We soon settled upon "Antonia" as a middle name, partially after writer A.S. Byatt and partially after a relative, but a first name evaded us for months. We named Iris after novelist Dame Iris Murdoch and cartoonist Alison Bechdel, but no literary namesakes could be agreed upon the second time around. I lobbied for "Jane" after Jane Austen, to no avail. The Sober Husband had been traumatized by being made to read "Pride and Prejudice" in high school and could not countenance the name.

"How about naming her after a suffragette?" the Sober Husband offered in a moment of brilliance. I waddled off to the public library and pored through a book about the suffrage movement. The British suffragettes were, to a woman, stuck with unwieldy names, but there were a few Americans with pleasing names. We soon had two finalists, "Lucy" after Lucy Stone (a brilliant suffragette who campaigned for the reform of marriage laws and who pioneered the practice of women keeping their own last name after marriage) and "Julia," after Julia Ward Howe (author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" as well as a notable suffragette and abolitionist). Later we flirted with "Lydia," after Lydia Becker (editor of "The Women's Suffrage Journal").

We let then three year-old Iris Uber Alles decide. "The baby in your belly is named LUCY," she said emphatically, over and over again.

"If she doesn't like her name, I'll just tell her, 'We let your three year-old sister name you,'" I said presciently.

And she didn't like her name. As a toddler, Lucy referred to herself as "Baby." When she potty-trained, she decided that as she wasn't a baby any more, she would no longer be called "Baby." Refusing to answer to "Lucy", she was nameless for a while. She tried calling herself "Gaa" (which sadly enough I didn't realize until much, much later was her attempt to say "Girl" during her worst apraxia, before speech therapy), but that didn't get picked up by anyone. I frankly refused to introduce my child to anyone as "Gaa."

Then Iris Uber Alles rented the movie "Shark Tales", which the children watched over and over again one week. It was about the same time that Brad Pitt left Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie, and my nameless child was smitten with the glittering gold-digging fish, "Lola", voiced by Ms. Jolie. "Lola!" she said. "I Lola."

For the next three years, she was very insistent that the name "Lola" must be used. In our home, the word "Lucy" was on a par with the n-word, absolutely abhorrent. Lola went so far as to get upset whenever I listened to the Lucy channel on satellite radio, always forcibly changing the dial to "the one and the two", as she called the X-Country station, over her mother's ineffectual protest.

The only person who would not use the name "Lola" and persisted with "Lucy" was big sister Iris. Iris, very passive aggressively, insisted upon always saying, "Lola, oh I mean Lucy" in a way which made "Lucy" sound like an imprecation.

But then last week Lola saw a "Barney" show about the meaning of names. She then went on a kick, insisting I look up the meaning of everyone's names. I already knew the meaning of my name, "Carole", which means "bright sound", and the meanings of "Iris" (which means either the flower or a rainbow, after the goddess Iris who is the goddess of the rainbow). The children howled when it turned out that the Sober Husband's name has no known meaning. Lola's best friend's name, "Louise", means "fierce warrior", which is extremely appropriate given that she fights with Iris without regard for the usually daunting age difference.

The trouble came with looking up "Lola." As a derivative of "Dolores", it means "sorrows" or "pains." Lola found this frankly depressing. Lola was indeed so troubled by this that she actually reverted to "Lucy", which means "light." This shocking development caused Iris, who had stubbornly refused for years to ever use the name "Lola", to suddenly take it up. She now now refers to her sister as "Sorrows" or "Lola Sorrows."

"I'm not SORROWS!! I'M LIGHT!!" Lola/Lucy yells at her sister, with a dramatic flourish of her hands up towards whatever light fixture or heavenly body is visible.

The Sober Husband and I, long trained to refer to our child as "Lola", are having trouble adapting to this name change. We now call our daughter "Lola-I-mean-Lucy."

It's hard to predict whether this change will stick. I do know one thing, though: I'm glad we looked into role models, rather than relying upon baby name websites. I've become addicted in spare moments to hitting refresh on the random baby name generator at thinkbabynames.com. It invariably yields such gems as "Swanhild Damaris" and "Pocahontas Roderiga" (and the Thinkbabynames people insist "Pocahontas" is a Hebrew name meaning "playful", fascinatingly enough). I've just got to keep Lola/Lucy away from that site, though. I wouldn't put it past her to suddenly insist upon being addressed as "Pocahontas Roderiga."

children with too much self-esteem

'IRIS! I AM YOUR GOD!!!" shouted five year-old Lola.

the guilds and I

The Sober Husband introduced the World of Warcraft into our home before Christmas, against my express wishes. I had opposed WoW out of a fear that he, a former Warcraft II enthusiast, would become addicted to it, and I felt the children already spent too much time on the computer as it is. If he could go back in time and undo that action, I'm sure he would. The horrible truth is that I've become a Warcraft addict, and he is a WoW widower.

It's a solitary pursuit for me. At first, we played together, the Sober Husband, eight year-old Iris, and me. We ran around together, figuring out how to sit down, laugh, dance, and kill things. The earlier quests we all did together. But then I began to pull ahead. Now I have a level 64 Orc hunter. The Sober Husband's main character isn't even a level 20 yet, and he's ready to pull the plug on his account.

Lately I've been finding it frustrating, because there is so much I can't do as someone who customarily plays by herself doing solo quests. I can't run the good dungeons alone. I sometimes do quests with other players I run across, but I'm not good at keeping in touch with them later. I should be in a guild, I suppose, but my history with them has been so speckled.

When I was just starting out, I was solicited all the time to join guilds, but I never felt like making a commitment. One day Iris and I were goofing around, fishing in Ratchet, when someone struck up a conversation with us and asked us to join his guild. He seemed lively and polite, so we impulsively joined. Right off we were darting off to run the Wailing Caverns with our new guild members.

Within twenty minutes, it went south. Two of the guild members got into a fight before we even entered the Wailing Caverns. I got irked when one called someone else "fag" on the guild chat. The guild owner resigned, then resumed his post, then resigned again. The emotions flew over the guild chat. Several people on our WC run became so distracted by the guild infighting that they fell behind. Iris and I resigned from the guild, with Iris doing the honors of announcing to the guild that we were "quitting! We want a guild that's better!" (Oh, her very first flouncing off online! What a rite of passage!) Our first guild membership had lasted not much more than an hour. I don't even remember the name of that guild.

But! We were instantly on to our next guild. I signed a guild charter for a guild started by the very person called "fag", who said he could lure away the most adult members of that guild. It was all low level characters. I was, in fact, the highest level player.

At first, this seemed fine. I spent a lot of time questing with the guildmaster, who was a few levels below me (although he certainly spent a lot more time playing Warcraft than I did). This usually seemed more to his benefit than mine. I helped him and his wife complete some quests I'd already done myself, on the theory that I could get help with my own quests later.

But then this, too started going south. The guildmaster developed grand ambitions, and he came to rely upon me to be his helpmeet. His own wife didn't want to be bothered by him when playing, so I became his World of Warcraft wife. And he was a nagging and hyper-critical husband, telling me to change my professions, donate to the guild bank, ask permission before taking any loot in a dungeon (although he himself seemed quite grabby and, worse yet, gloated about his newfound treasure)... The final straw came when he was hounding me to donate to the guild bank when he knew full well I was saving for my first mount (oh, that special time in a Warcraft player's life, when she first reaches level 40 and may acquire a giant wolf or dinosaur or zombie horse to ride on, rather than having to shamble about on foot). It was all for the Guildmaster's glory and empire-building, as he promised a brand new recruit that the guild would pay for his professional training and help him get new equipment.

I resigned from the guild, and of course I got some guilt-tripping messages from the guildmaster. He then dropped out of direct communication with me, but yet, with the stalking instincts of an ex-boyfriend, kept tabs on me from afar. He, nicely but creepily, congratulated me when I reached level 50, and he got back in touch again to gloat when he passed me and achieved a higher level AND acquired an epic mount first. (I'd cut back on my playing so I could make a quilt for Lola's preschool auction and because my husband was out of town keeping vigil at a dying friend's bedside. It's nice that this hectic and stressful time in my life brought joy to someone else).

Next I tried another guild after playing with a polite and helpful fellow one day. He assured me his guild was drama-free, and it seemed so for a while, until a rather immature member picked a fight with me one day. I quit quickly.

The time that came next was the happiest in my Warcraft life since those halcyon days when I started. I played alone, guildless, free of nagging or oversight. Whenever anyone I happened to pay with incidentally suggested I join their guild, I'd tell them, "I'm taking a break from guilds right now. Too much drama." They always found that amusing.

I flew through the forties and fifties, but finally after reaching level 60, I felt like I was stagnating. I felt frustrated by not being able to run dungeon quests. Trying to get an impromptu group together with strangers was maddening. When I finally had gotten into a sizeable enough group to run Zul'Farrak after weeks of trying, the group fell apart when our leader's mother made him log off and go outside to play in the fresh air. As a mother and alleged grown-up myself, I found this ironic.

By accident I met another player of the same level in Orgrimmar one day, who asked me to join forces with him. His idea was that we would focus on getting other 60ish level players to join us and we'd all work together to reach level 70, and it sounded reasonable to me. I joined his guild. Two days later, when I logged on, the guild didn't exist any more. I'd had no warning.

Subsequently I joined another guild on the basis that it had upper level players who would ostensibly run instances with me. Over the next few days, all the upper level players quit (including the one who recruited me, the only one I knew). At least the drama went on behind the scenes, but soon I was the highest level left by far in the guild. Needless to say, there was no point asking any of my guildmates to help me run my quests, as they'd be killed instantly.

Then the true insult came: my new guildmaster asked me repeatedly over several days to buy the guild from him! He found another patsy, at a much lower level, and I resigned to be guild-free again.

Realistically I know that I need to join a guild if I ever want the finest epic equipment and to raise money for a flying mount. This time, I think I'm making a more rational decision. I plan to pay the Warcraft people to transfer me to a different server, where an online acquaintance tells me there are delightful guilds which will nourish and cherish my character. I'm happy to join her guild and leave my server behind, land of a thousand flawed guilds. I wonder if my stalkerish ex-guildmaster will track me down.

our ongoing study of hypochondria in the young

I've been sick off and on for two weeks, with first a terrible sore throat and torturous lung congestion accompanied by a racking and dramatic cough, followed by a rather humdrum head cold which reduced my IQ by about half.

Now any sensible person would have distanced herself from this contagion and instead rejoiced in her own relative health, but not my offspring. They were jealous and continually cajoled me to feel their perfectly normal foreheads for imaginary fevers.

On Thursday Iris had a headache (believed by me to be genuine). Five year-old Lola, competitive as ever, interrupted her big sister. "I have a headache, too! And I am sick!"

"LUCY!" shouted Iris. "YOU ARE NOT SICK!"

I quieted Iris. "Tell me your symptoms, Lola."

"I have a headache. And my arm hurts." She stopped to ponder, then smiled brightly. "And the bottom of my foot hurts!" Needless to say this assemblage of symptoms did not win her the coveted Officially Ill status.

Eight year-old Iris Uber Alles is not above a bit of hypochondria as well. At her school many of her classmates are being diagnosed with "learning differences", and Iris has become convinced that she has dysgraphia. She finds her parents' indifference maddening. Brandishing a purple brochure she had obtained somewhere, Iris cried out, "But all of these apply to me!" On another occasion, she said emotionally, "My handwriting is bad, and my papers are always a mess! I have dysgraphia! It explains everything!" Not the drama queen behavior, honey, not the drama queen behavior. That is still a Mystery of Science.

the return of the Possibly Annual Readers' Photo Contest

My darlings, I am pleased to inform you that, after a rousing success last year, the Readers' Photo Contest is back! And with the return of our esteemed commenter, Hughman, as our Celebrity Guest Judge as well!

Last year the photos were supposed to be of the readers and were supposed to somehow encapsulate the spirit of the blog. We had some delightful pictures presented, with regular commenters Silliyak and Missy capturing the titles of Mr. Drunken Househusband and Mrs. Drunken Housewife for the year (can they defend their titles?), with stiff competition from other readers, including Brown, Lemonjuicer, grand prize winner Jack's Raging Mommy, Susie, and even the Sober Husband.

This year, the rules are a bit different. The photo may be of anyone or anything, but it must contain the words "Drunken Housewife" or "www.drunkenhousewife.com." The photo need not present those words in a flattering light (e.g., if you found some poor passed-out drunken skank, you could lean a piece of paper up next to him or her with the URL scrawled on it, and that would be a fine entry). Of course, the more humorous or beautiful or exotic or scathing the picture is, the more likely it is to win.

The prizes: some or all of the following will be rewarded (a truly great winning entry will sweep the board and could receive all of the following): I write a post on the topic of your choice; I let you write whatever you want here, uncensored (but I reserve the right to comment upon it); a good book from my vast collection; a funny geeky T-shirt modified by me in an artistic manner; the right to lord it over the other readers in an insufferable manner.

The deadline: two weeks from now, or longer if I get lazy or distracted. Submit yer entries to drunkenhousewife@gmail.com.

Let the contest begin!

the sorceress sings a sad, sad song

Yesterday morning five year-old Lola went off by herself. I was in the next room torturing myself over the daily paper's Sudoku (got it on the second try, but with shame at having needed a second go-round), and I used my Sudoku pencil to write down her lyrics (later Lola inquired, "Mama, why do you write on the newspaper?" "Because it was there").

Lola evidently was feeling the brunt of her older sister's displeasure, as she sang softly and sorrowfully,

"It's all my fault
It's all my fault
It's all my fault
That's all I want to say
I don't know what to put in your lunch
It's a big deal
It's a big deal
And that is that
And that is that
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah."

(Incidentally, lest the reader condemn the Drunken Housewife for forcing little Lola to labor at her sister's behest, Lola had not been required to pack any lunches for her sister. Interestingly enough Iris insists on making the lunch for her little sister to take to pre-k whenever there's a chance, and Lola-hating Iris prides herself on making a fine boxed lunch. "Lucy, I put SEVEN THINGS IN!" she announced yesterday).

Iris had the day off from school and had been using it to torment her sister psychologically, with the occasional maternal intervention, but the hour came for Lola to be taken to pre-k. At pre-k, one of the parents drew me aside. Her daughter had come home the day before with an agenda. She had a long list of things, beginning with pine needles, which she needed to acquire and mix up together, stat. "What do you need all that for?" the mother asked bemusedly. "Lola says if I mix it all up together, I will get ANYTHING I WISH FOR," said the little girl with absolute faith.

I'm so happy to see Lola striking a tone of authority outside the home. It was also, as I discussed with this mother and one of my favorite dads, nice to hear of the girls playing something other than their endless dreary housekeeping and Cinderella games. "Why are they so obsessed with mopping," one parent said wonderingly.

"Lola certainly doesn't see that modeled in our home," I said guiltily. We laughed, and crabby old Iris pulled my sleeve to get me away on my assigned errand of buying candy as her thank-you present for working with our undersocialized foster cat. Why should a mother stand around discussing Lola when she could be buying candy for Iris? The mind boggles.

of cats and big breasts

It's been a time of great achievements, people, great achievements. First off, I captured the undersocialized foster cat who'd gotten out and was living in the crawl space under the house. Frankly, this cat is not the brightest light on the Christmas tree strand, and that was my salvation. Tux, as we call her, is an unbearably beautiful animal (who looks uncannily like the cat in the signature Drunken Housewife illustration) with the silkiest black-and-white fur in existence, but she's no genius. She clearly wants to be one of the herd of regular cats, who come and go with elan, but she's too timid and not clever enough to figure out how to join in. In the backyard, she would make eye contact with me and come a bit closer when I crooned, "here, kitty, kitty." She would come closer yet when she saw me petting the other cats, who are casual in their acceptance of the Drunken Housewife's love. But she would not come within reach. She did come a few steps in to the house, only to freak out and flee over and over again.

Today I ostentatiously went out into the yard, petting Frowst, the king of our block; Peter Robin aka "Defecto", our dearly beloved foster cat; and Princess Henry, my Christmas present cat. These cats all wandered about, accepting the odd pat while enjoying the day. Tux stood a bit away, mesmerized but terrified. Then I called all the cats in for food, and Tux obviously wanted to go (as part of my strategy, I stopped putting food out in the backyard for her). She tried over and over again to get the nerve to join the other cats for a meal, but something spooked her every time. Finally I went and stood behind the (glass-paned) door. She seemed to feel this way that I couldn't possibly grab her, since I was behind a barrier, and didn't understand that I could -- and did-- slam that glass-paned door shut.

Since her capture, she has been held and petted a lot. The poor half-witted cat has enjoyed the attention she can't bring herself to be bold enough to go get. I feel so glad that I have her back in the house.

On another note of achievement, I FINALLY got a mammogram. I'd been asked by my doctor to go get my first one nearly four years ago, and I could never bring myself to do it. Somehow it seemed morbid, and also I'd been traumatized by horrible forwarded email jokes about how it's like having your tits squashed by an automatic garage door or concrete blocks. When it came down to it, the Sober Husband issued various nagging ultimatums which got me to make the appointment. He was out of town when it came to keeping the appointment, but I sucked it up and went. Unfortunately for me it was a time of day when keeping my sobriety was vital (the children needed to be ferried about afterwards), so getting a little Dutch courage first was not possible.

I was, of course, just being silly avoiding that exam. After all, I have had natural childbirth (of a nine pound baby with a giant head, never again! I understand now why my fore-sisters fought for the right to painkillers in the delivery room), as well as a variety of tattoos and piercings. The tech who did my mammogram wondered aloud why I had been afraid of a mammogram when I'd gotten tattooed. "That was in my rockstar past," I explained. "I'm old and weak now."

In the event, it was a non-event. The last two films were uncomfortable, but not excruciating. The recently upgraded facilities at the Breast Health Center at the California Pacific Medical Center are lovely, just lovely. The staff are quite polite and caring. Even the hospital gowns provided were of higher quality than one would expect. The techs told me that all those old jokes and horror stories are outdated, from the days when the mammogram equipment was more unwieldy and the techs less skilled. Additionally, the small-breasted tech who took my x-rays explained that mammograms are easier for women with large breasts. Who knew that big tits had an extra perk, aside from attracting mates? It turns out that smaller breasts get pulled and pinched in those plates, while the more endowed may simply lay their assets out. If someone had told me that before, I would have gotten this taken care of years ago.

So now, cat captured and breasts mammogrammed with relative ease, I may relax and enjoy a Blood and Sand cocktail or two. The worst of my to-do list has been struck off.

I suck.

Lately I've been fostering a couple of reject cats left over from last kitten season. I have "Tux", a psychotically timid black and white cat, and "Peter Robin Rabbit" a/k/a "Defecto", a very confident young cat who is partially blind in one eye and appears to have an incurable upper respiratory infection. Today it was a spectacularly nice day, and I left the back door open for some time to air out the house, as is my wont. Iris and I think that Tux sneaked out the back and is lost to us. Words cannot convey how awful I feel about this. I am such an idiot. I've kept that door shut punctiliously for weeks, and now today I felt like airing the house out, and it was a tragic error. God, I suck.

On that note, I also forgot Iris's piano lesson today. I was congratulating myself on remembering to put out the trash and move my car to avoid street cleaning day but I forgot the frigging piano lesson. Sigh.

I feel so terrible. I have left out a can of tuna for Tux, but I despair of ever capturing her again.

Meanwhile, the Sober Husband's lifelong friend died today. The Sober Husband and another long-term friend were the only ones present at the actual moment of the death. The friend's parents accused the friend's wife of "letting him die." Dear Lord Goddess, when the day comes I have three different types of cancer and can only be sustained by a ventilator and extreme medical interventions, please do not let anyone argue over switching the ventilator off. Thanking you in advance, your pathetic servant, the Drunken Housewife.

Update: Tux is okay, but still out of the house. She is using the crawl space as a homebase, but she's coming out to socialize with Frowst (and then ducking back into hiding when people come near). She ate some cat food we put out for her. I think we'll get her back in the house at some point, and in the meantime, I feel better now she's coming out into sight occasionally. I talked to her old foster parent and learned that Tux was living on the street and was tormented by boys who threw rocks at her, which is probably why she's so obsessively scared of people.

weird days

The Sober Husband has been gone for three nights so far, keeping a vigil by his friend's deathbed. The friend's wife, who had her heart set upon getting her husband's condition stabilized enough so that he could be brought home from the hospital, gave up yesterday. It was very, very hard for her, but she issued the order to stop treating her husband's cancers. Today he will be taken off his ventilator, and he is expected to die soon.

This difficult decision made it much easier to spend time with poor Dan. Previously, with everyone valiantly and energetically trying to save Dan's life, the Sober Husband was required to wear surgical scrubs and a mask at the bedside. Now anything goes, and the dying man's bed has been lowered so that it is easier to touch him (previously he was kept up at a level making it easier for the staff to work on his mostly unconscious body).

Now that the end is near, the dying man's family is returning, so the Sober Husband's presence is less vital. I am so proud of him for being there this week. He consoled his friend's wife and told her, when she was crying and doubting herself, that she'd made the right decision, and he spent so much time alone at the bedside, holding his friend's arm (the actual hand was covered with medical devices).

I don't know when he'll be back. He has decided to stay up until the end. Meanwhile back at the homefront, the children are fussing and missing him. Lola insists that he is coming home today, and I'm not looking forward to her disappointment. I told her gently that he's not, but she dismissed me airily. "Daddy SAID. Daddy SAID he is coming home today. He SAID."

If you ever have to die of cancer and wish to be surrounded by loved ones, let me recommend the Johns Hopkin to you. The Sober Husband has been treated quite kindly by the staff and even put up in a special house, steps from the hospital, for family members of cancer victims. We had worried that as he wasn't technically family, he'd have issues getting into the hospital, but a red carpet was practically laid out for him. Dan's wife told the hospital in advance that the Sober Husband was coming, and so he had not only full access but also assistance from the staff in getting a spot at the family house. The doctors, nurses, and technicians have also taken time out to explain to the Sober Husband (ever curious and the son of a doctor) what procedures they are doing and why.

The only issue is internet access. The Sober Husband had previously intended to work while away, but the internet access is so weak and limited that he has been unable to do a thing. He reads email over his iPhone but is unable to program (or even to read this blog, which has been blocked by Johns Hopkins' firewall as a suspected unsavory site. This gives us a rare opportunity to talk about him behind his back, but under the circumstances, I'll pass. If he were off on a pleasure trip without blog access, no holds would be barred, but now I've got nothing but love and admiration going on for the man).

We have a trivial illness here. Iris and Lola had headaches and low grade fevers yesterday and so were kept home from school. Irritatingly enough, for the first time in my six years as a co-op workday parent, I was called yesterday to do a mandatory substitute shift. I didn't even get upset or worried; I simply called the director and said, "I just can't do it. My husband's out of town at a friend's deathbed, and I'm keeping the kids home with fevers." Our old director would have been inflexible, but the new director said kindly, "Oh, Carole, sometimes things happen. I'll work the phones and figure something out." This was such a happy change from three years ago, when I was dropping off then-preschooler Iris Uber Alles on my way to the airport to go to my teenaged nephew's funeral. Teary-eyed and semi-crazy, I stopped by the office to tell the then director and office manager that I had been unable to find anyone to cover my workshift and I was leaving right then for the funeral. I was heartlessly instructed to take the roster with me and make calls from Denver until I could get someone lined up to work my shift. (By the way, I didn't make those calls. I refused. I was too busy wrestling emotionally with my family dynamics and my grief over the senseless death, so my phone calls were limited to venting to my husband over my sister's incomprehensible behavior and crying long distance). I did send out an email yesterday to the pre-k parents offering bribes to anyone who could cover the shift (I offered cash, a traded workshift, homemade pies or ice cream... I did stop short of offering sexual favors, though), and then I devoted myself to watching "Spongebob Squarepants" with the children, feeling their foreheads as requested, and taking calls from my husband when he wanted to talk.

Today I'm keeping Iris home again, but we'll have to venture out to a grocery store at some point as we're out of milk, bread, and other basic necessities. The children were stymied without their normal toast and cereal for breakfast, but I introduced them to the joys of cold pizza for breakfast. It feels so strange here, waiting to hear of the friend's death and staying home with the querulous children.

The six cats currently residing here have formed a sort of pack. Evidently once the number of cats in a home exceeds the number of humans by a ratio of 2:1, herd behaviors emerge and the bonds between individual humans and specific cats break down. Thankfully I have plenty of cat food on hand, so I needn't worry just yet for my personal safety.

death, overthinking & annoying metablogging

So the Sober Husband is away, keeping a vigil at his friend's deathbed. I feel guilty for having pressured him to go (although it wasn't just me; the friend's wife called him and asked him to please help out), because it sounds like a living hell. The friend is worse than imagined. My husband wants so much to be able to communicate with his friend, but the hospital staff are keeping the friend sedated. Evidently when he starts breathing on his own, it clashes with the rhythm of the ventilator, and that alone is grounds to keep him unconscious. The horrible truth is that it's no longer a question of Dan the person, Dan the unique individual whom I will always remember wearing his wristwatch strapped to his ankle. It's a matter of doing things to Dan the dying body. Shudder. So is it of any use whatsoever to have my husband, Dan's lifelong friend, by the sedated, dying body's side? Fuck if I know.

I do know that I don't want to go out that way myself and neither does the Sober Husband.

Iris Uber Alles was crying at bedtime last night. Immediately I assumed she was upset about death, since her pet rat is dying of cancer at the same time her father's friend (whom Iris knows) is also dying. I bucked myself up for a Big Talk and gently inquired about what Iris was feeling. It turns out that her father had just been away for a conference and now he was gone again, and she missed him. No big worries about mortality. I've got to give up on that overthinking.

Another thing I'm going to give up on is keeping track of what I read. It's only March, and I've already forgotten some of the books I've read, and I've failed to track them all here as I resolved. I looked at "The Homecoming" by Bernhard Schlink today at a bookstore and vaguely remembered having read it and not cared for it, but it took time for me to remember anything about the plot. I also suspect that I was driving the readers crazy with all those book reviews. Y'all come here for witty anecdotes of a sot beleaguered by her precocious children and cats, not book reviews and cancer stories. So! Fewer book reviews and less overthinking, but more "advance directives" all around, I think. Let's all make "living wills" or whatever you're supposed to call the things.

the Sober Husband mans up

When I met the Sober Husband, he had two very close, long-time friends whom he'd grown up with in Chicago. The three of them had a Peter Pan thing going on. Although they were turning thirty, they were all single, never engaged, no girlfriends in sight, and no serious careers, either (with the exception of the Sober Husband, who'd finished up a Ph.D. and was doing a post-doc). One was even still living at home.

The Sober Husband was the first of the lot to grow up, taking a perfectly good drunken litigator and turning her into a Drunken Housewife by impregnating her and buying her a house. His friends were rather appalled at all that domesticity but, years later, followed down that path as well.

Now at age 42, one of these old friends is dying of cancer. He has metastasized lymphoma, leukemia, brain tumors, and I don't know what else. He's being kept sedated, but reportedly when he wakes, he pulls at his ventilator and other equipment until he's talked down, whereupon he goes back to sleep. (This really gets to me, as I came to during surgery once. It was like those alien abduction experiences people rant about. There were blurry figures in white bent over strange equipment, and I felt so trapped and panicky and just instinctively started clawing at the tubes going down my throat, and the nurses and doctors shouted harshly at me, "HOLD STILL! HOLD STILL!" It was nightmarish, and then thankfully I lost consciousness. I think my surgeon was nervous I was going to sue him, but the day after the surgery, I felt so much better that I didn't bring it up when he came by my room in the hospital to check on me).

Anyhow, it's not as if we have the money or the time, but the Sober Husband is manning up and flying out to the East Coast tonight to spend some days by his old friend's side. I've never been close to this friend, but I can't bear to think of him waking up and freaking out in the hospital. I'm so glad the Sober Husband will be able to be with him. Sad to say the friend's wife, brother, parents, and in-laws all took time off work already and collectively need to get back to work (and their own lives occur in different states, aside from the wife).

The biggest sacrifice here will have to be made by our own Lola/Cupcake, who is accustomed to sleeping in. Lola will have to get up and leave the house at 7:45 with me, as I can't leave her home alone while I drive Iris Uber Alles to school. (The other sacrifice is unspoken; I was daydreaming of a trip to Bruges for myself and was mulling over a sort of proposed marital treaty, involving certain things to be done in exchange for a ticket to Belgium and a block of childfree time).

The husband is positively dreading this. He hates the thought of seeing his friend in this position. My point of view is that there is little point comparatively in going to the friend's funeral; funerals are for comforting the survivors. Spending time in the hospital comforts the dying person and is a huge service that can be done, the last chance to do something for a loved one. The Sober Husband is going to play some old "Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy" episodes for his friend as well as be there to comfort him when he wakes.

I'm proud of him for doing this. So many people are weak and selfish in life and won't go to hospitals. "It's just too depressing. I hate hospitals," they say with an air of self-discovery as though they were unique in a crowd of hospital-lovers who just can't be pried away from the sides of sickbeds. It also sets a good example for Iris and Lola, who will hopefully some day be willing to suck it up and sit next to their old mother's hospital bed.

again with the feeling lucky

Lately my reading has had a theme, "So Glad It's Not Me." I was feeling depressed, and what perks me up personally is not a comedy or a feel-good romance, but rather some down and dirty tales of other people's suffering. It's not exactly schadenfreude, but rather getting reminded of how fortunate I am.

In that genre, the Memoirs of Hellish Suffering, I must recommend the mindboggling "My Lobotomy" (2007) by Howard Dully (with Charles Fleming). Poor Howard Dully had the worst stepmother imaginable, who had him lobotomized when he was only twelve. This highly absorbing book tells not only about Dully's horrific childhood (right up there with Mary Karr's "The Liars' Club", that giant of the fucked-up childhood memoir genre), but also a lot about the history of lobotomies and the extremely strange man who did Mr. Dully's. Poor lobotomized little Howard first realized something was wrong about the operation when an audience of doctors at UCSF (where I gave birth to Iris Uber Alles and Lola, incidentally) booed his doctor off the stage. The doctor had taken Howard and two other lobotomized teens to use as living exhibits at a lecture promoting lobotomies, but the UCSF faculty was enraged at Howard's youth and interrupted the lecture.

Currently I'm reading "Tokyo Year Zero", a novel about a Japanese policeman in Tokyo in 1946. Although it's fiction, there's more than enough depressing historical fact to keep that one in the theme.

I think, though, it's time to wrap up this reading project, as real life is providing more than enough examples for me of How Damn Lucky I Am and How Grateful I Should Be. Over the weekend we learned that one of my husband's oldest, closest friends is severely ill. His previously unthreatening lymphoma has metastasized, and every day brings a new diagnosis: leukemia! Brain tumor! The poor man is only 40, the father of four year-old twins. In a completely inadequate gesture, we sent a gift basket to the hospital. The friend himself won't eat any of it (he's being kept under sedation), but we thought his loved ones conducting a bedside vigil could use some good snacks. Sending the gift basket caused a new dilemma: what to write on the card (even though it was optimistic to think the poor man would ever read the card, his wife and family would). Normally I am at no loss for words, but this was one time I felt tongue-tied. "Thinking of you" felt too cliched. Would "This sucks" be enough?

And then today we learned someone else we like has been facing a series of problems of a Biblical proportion. We knew one of his lovely and amazing daughters had an immune disorder, but we weren't aware that it had become much more serious. (She's only sixteen, poor girl, and having to undergo some gruesome treatments causing all her hair to fall out and also weight gain. That would be hard enough for an adult woman to handle, but a pretty teenager? So unfair). On top of that, his marriage has hit the rocks, and he lost his job. My God. Where does it end? We're having him over for drinks soon, but that seems so inadequate.

And meanwhile I'm enjoying nearly perfect health (a sore throat), a pleasant spouse (except for when the cats annoy him), two delightful children (apart from the occasional outbreak of intrasibling violence), and the companionship of far too many charming pets. I feel positively ashamed of my good fortune, so undeserved, really.

where does she pick up these things?

I can hear five year-old Lola on the stairs softly singing, "Funky cold..., Funky cold.." I am dying for her to add "Medina." Where has this eighties speak come from?

In other Lola news, she has announced that "I have three Mama names" and that she may be referred to as "Lola", "Lisa", or "Cupcake." Her legal name, "Lucy", is viewed as a hateful slur akin to the n word. I shared this with eight year-old Iris, who said that the world would come to an end before she addressed her sister as "Lisa", but she would consider changing "Lucy" to "Luce-a", so satisfying close to "Losah" in Iris's mouth.

the silence of the Drunken Housewife, redux

The Sober Husband is off at a conference, being wined and dined and wooed by people who would dearly love to lure him away from his employer, St. Doggyo, and generally having his (already largeish) ego stroked. (I also have a large ego, but it doesn't get as much stroking, sigh, except in the home, where the children markedly prefer me to him. I always imagined that if we ever procreated together, the children would adore their candy-toting, funny and handsome father and despise their evil, controlling mother, but in reality, they're all about the lazy but authoritative Drunken Housewife).

I'm home with what feels like six thousand cats (it's not kitten season yet, but I've taken in an undersocialized feral cat from a different rescue group who couldn't get her adopted out and who then turned to that crack team of crazy cat ladies, my rescue group; plus a cat with a wonky eye and uncurable wheezing; on top of the regular cats; plus my ex-cat decided to move back in), two children, one usually screaming parrot, one aged rat in mourning (her cagemate passed away but yet lingers on in the freezer in a paper towel shroud encased in a ziplock freezer bag; owner Iris Uber Alles resists burial), and a quilt in progress, in a cluttered and disheveled house (I have been abstaining from housework on the rather questionable basis that my energy must be reserved for finishing this quilt, destined to be auctioned off to profit Lola's preschool).

What's most alarming is that at this moment, there is complete silence. God only knows what all those cats and children are up to. I just finished the Blood and Sand cocktails left for me by my husband so I would feel loved and nurtured in his absence, and I'm rather tipsy as I skipped lunch(I also skipped supper last night. I've been eating sporadically ever since the Great Food Poisoning Episode When The Blog Readers Came To Dinner, yet my weight loss remains slight. Incidentally Iris Uber Alles decided to read all the comments on the blog out loud today and, when informed that she'd met 2AM and Brown, let out a scream. I asked her to write a review of the blog readers in view of that strong reaction, but so far, no dice).

Silence, so scary, even to those of us feeling warm and relaxed due to the ministrations of Cherry Heering. I positively dread finding whatever those children and cats have got up to.

how to keep things in perspective

Lately my reading has taken a particular tone: histories of horrendous suffering. I started sliding into depression and dark thoughts lately, and what has pulled me out and got me back on stronger footing was reading accounts of suffering of a Biblical proportion.

This reading spree started with "The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival" (2007) by Stanley Alpert. This has just been released in paperback, and I strongly urge you to go pick up a copy. Poor Stanley, a Manhattan prosecutor, was abducted off the street by young thugs on a cold night before his birthday. His teenaged captors kept him in a filthy apartment for 25 hours while scheming to get the $100,000 in Mr. Alpert's savings account. Terrified for his life, for good reason (his captors kept him at gunpoint and threatened him and his family), Stanley tried to make friends with his captors with some surprising successes. When he was released, the cops didn't believe him at first, assuming Stanley had celebrated his birthday by going off on a coke binge and was making up a cover story out of embarrassment. This book was riveting. As someone who was the victim of a violent crime, I found Stanley's retelling of his feelings and reactions so true. (Thankfully my own crime didn't drag on for so long).

Later I quickly read "American Born Chinese" (2006) by Gene Yang, a graphic novel about a Chinese boy's hellish experiences in a suburban junior high, where he was only one of three Asian students. This is interspersed with the retelling of the Monkey King myth. I hated junior high myself and didn't enjoy revisiting it, but I did adore how Mr. Yang drew the Monkey King. Also, this is the first graphic novel to be nominated for a National Book Award. Go, Gene Yang!

Then I settled down for several days with the true winner, an amazing achievement in the field of Horrific Memoirs: "The Worst Journey in the World: Antarctic 1910-1913" vols. I and II, (1922) by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. My God, how much suffering poor Cherry-Garrard endured. He starts the first volume out by noting that it's a bit late in being published because by the time he healed up from his Antarctic travails, he had to answer his country's call to fight in World War I, where he was severely injured. Of the two, he felt the Antarctic was worse than the trenches of France. I felt so sad for him, thinking that there was no peaceful old age in his future, what with the Battle of Britain lurking around history's next corner.

Cherry-Garrard was part of Scott's Last Journey. I had a vague memory that this expedition ended with just about everyone dead. After reading the book, I learned that it was just the actual small group of five who reached the South Pole who died, but there were plenty of close calls for the rest.

"The Worst Journey in the World" is actually, to Cherry-Garrard, not the entire expedition but rather a smaller expedition taken by himself and two others (and both of the others later died with Scott after reaching the South Pole). Dr. Wilson had set his heart upon obtaining fertilized Emperor penguin eggs on this expedition, which meant a small number of men traveling a great distance in the middle of the Antarctic winter to the penguin breeding grounds. The three men who did this, Wilson, Bowers, and Cherry-Garrard, suffered immeasurable hardships and gave themselves up for dead. Dr. Wilson became severely ill with scurvy on this journey (fascinatingly at that time, the cause of scurvy was not known, and Cherry-Garrard presented a number of theories for what could cause it), and he asked the others to save themselves and leave him for dead. They gallantly refused, and Bowers bravely set off alone to try to reach help. As Cherry-Garrard waited with the invalid in a tiny tent, he rationed out the food and waited to die as a blizzard struck. It seemed inconceivable that Bowers could have reached safety alone (but of course the reader knows that there's a whole second volume ahead, so our brave Cherry-Garrard clearly must be saved, and so he was).

The result of that horrific, insanely dangerous journey was that three fertilized and pickled penguin eggs were delivered personally by Cherry-Garrard (as the sole survivor) to the British Museum, where poor old Cherry was treated like a nuisance and made to wait for hours before anyone would deign to receive the eggs and give him a receipt. Cherry went into a nigh-homicidal rage at this treatment, having expected rather more to be hailed as a man who had nearly given his life for the expansion of knowledge. He reprinted in his book the eventual report made after the penguin embryos' dissection, leaving it up to the reader to decide whether the contribution made to science was worth the horrific suffering it required.

Of course, "the Worst Journey in the World" occurs before the party actually sets off for the South Pole, only to discover that businesslike Amundsen had already planted a Norwegian flag there. Was the death of Scott and his companions worthwhile? The survivors of the expedition faced a lot of criticism for not having rescued Scott, and Cherry-Garrard devotes a large amount of volume II to explaining why the South Pole party was not saved (in a nutshell, the other men were largely emaciated, frostbitten and ridden with scurvy; it's not easy to rescue anyone in Antarctica; and by the time they realized the South Pole party wasn't coming back, it was too late anyhow).

I had heard of the heroic death of Capt. Oates before, but getting a sense for the man made it all the much more tragic. Capt. Oates was in charge of the poor ponies hauled down to Antarctica to haul supplies, and he was a hardworking, affectionate steward of those wretched animals. He became horrifically frostbitten and unable to proceed on the way back from the pole, and he requested that Scott, Wilson, and Bowers leave him for dead in his sleeping bag. They refused, and after a polite conversation (God, those Brits were so polite and genteel back in the days of Empire), Oates expressed the hope that he would die that night in his sleep. Disappointed at not having passed peacefully in the night and unwilling to risk his companions' survival, Oates said calmly the next morning, "I am going outside. I may be some time" and then walked to his death in a blizzard. Who among us would have that courage and sense of self-sacrifice?

There's nothing like a rousing tale of suffering to make one appreciate one's own life more. My own troubles fade in comparison with Cherry-Garrard's. Just to state a few: on his winter journey, Cherry-Garrard kept getting blisters... and the fluid inside the blisters would instantly freeze. Evidently walking upon little frozen icicles in side your very skin is agonizing beyond belief. Also, poor Cherry-Garrard was quite nearsighted, and it became impossible for him to wear his glasses in the most severe weather. The only time he complains about this is when his companions enjoyed the amazing aurora borealis at night, and he, poor nearsighted thing, was unable to make it out even squinting. (Oh, how I feel for him, my companion in astigmatism and myopia). Not to mention having to bury one of your closest friends...

Anyhow, if you are feeling down and wish to perk yourself up, I recommend heading for the nonfiction accounts of horrific suffering, rather than the romantic comedies or feel-good fluff. Next on my agenda: a memoir of a man forced to have a lobotomy as a 12 year-old by his evil stepmother (yes, really).

love, the Drunken Housewife

cry me a river

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran an article about how white men feel left out of the current Presidential campaign. "It seems like someone else should be there", whined Dan Leihgeber, a smelter in a Youngstown steel plant.

Oh, please. Women and minorities have been feeling that way FOREVER. Women are actually the majority in this country, and we've been underrepresented for the entire history of this country. Do you think we feel represented when we look at the Republican party candidates, the Supreme Court, the Senate, governors, mayors of large cities, etc..?? Think about all the people of Asian and Latino descent: they have NEVER had anyone who looked like them in the White House or on the Supreme Court.

Sorry, precious. I just can't feel your pain on this one. Why not hang some framed pin-ups of the Federal Reserve chairman, Dick Cheney and Justice Souter in your bedroom for comfort?

skoob skoob skoob

For once the name "Drunken Housewife" is a propos. I wrote these book reviews after getting moderately trashed at Las Ramblas (mother-in-law in town = time to self medicate). In the sober light of the morning after they aren't so bad. Enjoy!

I have not kept up with reviewing my reads here, and I know I won't remember all the books I've read this year. I don't mean that I've completely forgotten them, but some of them have entered a blurry sort of brainspace. It's scary to me, how much I read, when I stand back to look at it.

"The Cottagers" (2006) by Marshall Klimasewiski: a very intelligent and gripping literary novel about a peculiar teenager on a Canadian island who is obsessed with the wealthy summer residents. I loved this book; the plot goes in unpredictable directions. I only wish Marshall Klimasewiski will shave his horrible facial hair and get new glasses before publishing his next oeuvre, which leads me nicely to

"The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person In The World"" (2004)by A.J. Jacobs (the only non-fiction book on this list. I read a ton of non-fiction last year, and so far this year, I've been shoveling down novel after novel). Why did my stupid criticism of poor Mr. Klimasewiski's author photo make a nice segue? Because A.J. Jacobs forthrightly confesses that one of his books was rejected by a publisher because they considered him unattractive enough to represent the book. (Cheer yourself up, A.J. Jacobs, by taking in the unfortunate photo of the very talented Marshall Klimasewiski sometime).

It's distinctly weird to write about A.J. Jacobs, as he has stated in both "The Know-It-All" and "The Year of Living Biblically" that he googles himself obsessively. I'm not a stranger to authors finding my snarky remarks (indeed the irrepressible Ayun Halliday found my snarks within just a few hours of my writing them; I wish her children luck in getting one over on her), but it's different to write something with a reasonable expectation of the author reading it. I feel like a suck-up by saying that I love A.J. Jacobs and adored this account of the year he spent reading the Encyclopedia Britannica in its entirety (although he cops to skimming at times; for shame, A.J. Jacobs, for shame). This wasn't as deep yet snarky as "The Year of Living Biblically", which the Sober Husband and I enjoyed so much that we gave out a lot of copies for Christmas presents, but it satisfies. Jacobs is clever and obnoxious, but he wants to be wise and good. His epic attempts at self-improvement and inquiry are witty and thought-provoking.

"Taking Off" (2006) by Eric Kraft: I wanted to love this, as I have an affection for Eric Kraft stemming from "Herb 'n Lorna", which I read in the late '80s. I hated it. Mr. Kraft had an idea basically good for a novella or a short story, and he tried to spin it out and sell it as a hardback. I am so sick of seeing tiny little hardbacks with big fonts and overly-generous margins (and not-so-coincidentally tiny, undersized little plots). In this case, it's even more heinous because "Taking Off" is the first volume in a trilogy. What should be one short story is being spun out to THREE FRIGGING VOLUMES. Unforgivable, people, this is unforgivable.

"A Good and Happy Child" (2007)by Justin Evans: a very intelligent and gripping novel exploring the space between mental illness and religion. A boy is tormented by demons and in need of an exorcism... or does he simply need some lithium and perhaps a stay in a mental hospital? Is there room for extreme religious experience in the Prozac era?

"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (1964) by Roald Dahl: I picked this up for Iris Uber Alles, remembering it fondly from my childhood. It's much shorter than I remembered (evidently I read much more slowly back then). I love Roald Dahl, but sadly I think the book was ruined for me by seeing the movies. I liked the Willie Wonka of my childhood imagination better than Gene Wilder or Johnny Depp's versions.

"The Trouble Boy" (2004) by Tom Dolby: a coming of age story, about a young gay college graduate in Manhattan in search of a boyfriend. Perfect reading for fag hags! I loved it, but don't expect depth;

"The Sixth Form" (2008) by Tom Dolby: another coming of age story from the talented Mr. Dolby (NOT the "She Blinded Me With Science" Dolby, by the way). Boys at an exclusive boarding school grapple with homophobia and fears of coming out, sexually predatory teachers, mothers with cancer, and college applications.

Addendum: I left out "Surveillance" (2008) by Jonathan Raban, a novel which is a bit short on plot but nonetheless worthwhile, about the reactions to the post 9/11 obsession with security and terrorism. What's not to love about a novel starring an overweight, stuttering journalist working on a piece for the New Yorker?

cosmopolitan five year-olds

Lola's friend Stella said at playtime, "Follow me, Lola! I know a great hotel in Paris!"

"Do they have massages?" inquired world-weary Lola.

the news I hear and the news I don't hear

Recently second grader Iris Uber Alles came home with big news: her friend K.'s dog had gotten into a fight with another dog. This was a big, serious event which clearly eclipsed other issues of the day. Apart from that, the only other news reported to me for weeks was that an overly greasy grilled cheese sandwich was served to Iris at lunchtime (that is a subject for a rant: the new cafeteria service is oh-so-full-of-themselves, constantly yammering on and on about "Healthy Choices" and charging an arm and a leg for the food on the basis that it is Fresh and Nutritious, but yet every meal I hear about is pathetically lacking in redeeming nutritious quality. I'm not wild about paying $8 for a meal consisting of a overly greasy grilled cheese sandwich, and when that is accompanied by an annoying amount of propaganda about We Are Teaching Your Child How To Eat, well, I'm nigh-rabid. On the other hand, I'm also still too lazy to get up every morning to pack the child a lunch).

Yesterday at the second grade play, a big topic of conversation amongst the parents was The Big Car Accident. One of Iris's very best friends (the little girl whose Halloween costume I sewed so that she and Iris would match) was on the way to school with her sister, driven by their father, when a car ran a stop sign and rammed right into their car. The car flipped over, and the girls extricated themselves, but as their father's arm was shattered in two places, he couldn't get himself out. The girls were unharmed and the police and EMTs arrived quickly, but the father is still in a lot of pain (his left shoulder and arm were truly frightening to behold).

I went over to Iris's friend I. to tell her how glad I was that she hadn't been hurt. Iris was by I.'s side, and I added as an aside to her, "I can't believe you didn't tell me this! Your friend got in a big car accident on the way to school!"

"I meant to tell you, but I forgot."

I suspect that if there had been a dog or cat in the car, Iris would have reported the story to me. Somehow if there isn't an animal in peril, it's just not news to her.

a fairy tale

Lola often likes to make up and act out stories for my benefit. The stories are generally about fairies falling in love and stalking each other and then getting married (I worry a little about Lola's future love objects).

Last night, though, Lola had a darker tale to tell, which came spewing out as soon as Iris was ushered off to bed (unjust as it may seem, the younger child has a later bedtime. The older child must leave at 7:45 AM to arrive at second grade on time, whereas the younger one doesn't have to be at pre-k until 12:30 PM. When Iris herself was in pre-k, she traditionally stayed up until eleven most nights, which scandalized other parents. Lola is put to bed at the more modest hour of ten, as her mother has aged significantly over the past three years). Earlier in the evening Iris and Lola had fought over whether Lola was permitted to quit their paper doll game ("Lucy! YOU HAVE TO PLAY WITH ME!! Lucy!! You know all those nice things I do for you? Well, I'M NEVER DOING THEM AGAIN!" I could not help bursting into laughter at that point which no doubt earned me a spot on Iris's enemy list).

Clearly that recent conflict was on Lola's mind as, standing on the foot of the queen-sized bed, she began her narrative. "Once there was a fairy. She had fairy parents and a MEAN, EVIL, BIG SISTER FAIRY. But the big sister died. They were all very happy! Any questions?"

"How did the sister die?"

"She got very old." Lola paused to reflect. "No, she got murdered! She died!" Lola bounced happily on the bed.

"How was the big sister evil?"

"When the big sister was born, the first words she said were, 'You will all die! I will kill you all!' They looked at her personal area, you know, where she pees, and they saw she was a girl. They named her 'Servant' because she was evil." Lola bounced more. To bring the point on home, Lola added the details that the evil fairy was three years older than the heroine fairy and the good fairy was born on October 1st, surprise surprise! The same day Lola was born! After the evil big sister was murdered, the good fairy and her parents were so happy, they just danced and danced.

Before Lola could bring her story to its traditional denouement, the marriage of the good fairy, the Sober Husband intruded and required Lola to adjourn for toothbrushing.

Iris Uber Alles wants to teach the Dalai Lama a lesson

One night this week I sat at the dining room table to oversee Iris Uber Alles's homework. Usually the Sober Husband is in charge of nagging eight year-old Iris to do her homework and practice the piano, so he was at loose ends, for once with nothing to do while I performed the nagging duties. He drifted off with five year-old Lola.

After a while, I heard a lot of giggling from the next room, which eight year-old Iris and I loftily ignored. Finally the Sober Husband called, "Look at us! Look at us!"

We looked. They were sitting cross-legged next to each other on the couch, hands on their knees with palms-up, pretending to meditate with blissed-out expressions.

We all have our own personal source of authority upon meditation in this home. I once meditated with the Dalai Lama (okay, it was in a crowd of thousands at a speech given by his Holiness, but it was still magical. You could have heard a pin drop while we all meditated; not a person whispered or fidgeted). Lola saw Pee Wee Herman pretend to meditate on an old "Pee Wee's Playhouse" episode. And Iris somehow learned the Right Way To Meditate at her school and will brook no differences. She swept into the room and corrected her father and little sister authoritatively. "You have to put your foot up here! And your other foot here! You're doing it all wrong!"

As Iris fruitlessly tugged at her father and Lola, trying to push them into proper lotus position, I tried to reason with her. "The Dalai Lama says you don't have to sit in any special position. You can sit any way you like."

"Well, the Dalai Lama was wrong!" Iris said acidly.

only monkeys need apply

It's Chinese New Year, and five year-old Lola is enrapt. She pored over a Chinese horoscope chart Iris Uber Alles brought home from second grade. Lola was most taken by the description of those born in the Year of the Monkey: "Monkey people are very funny. They can always make people laugh. They are also very good at solving problems."

"Mommy, do you know any Monkeys?"

Sadly only my ex-husband came to mind, which I (a Dragon) kept to myself.

"I've been looking for someone to help me solve problems."

I suggested that Jim, her pre-k teacher, is good at problem-solving. "We could ask him if he was born in the year of the Monkey."

Lola carried the chart to her father (uselessly born in the year of the Horse). "Do you think Jim was born in the year of the Monkey? Do you know anyone born in the year of the Monkey?"

She sighed when her father was not helpful enough. "It's only I've been looking for someone to help me solve problems."

"What kind of problems do you have?" I asked. Lola was evasive. "Oh, just problems."

the silence of the Drunken Housewife

Yesterday was my day to work at Lola's pre-k. Oh, the joys of that liberal institution, the parent co-operative preschool. It's my sixth consecutive year of working at the co-op, and I'm ready to be done. (That feeling of counting-it-down and burn-out is mixed with plenty of guilt over not being as enthusiastic and involved for Lola, the way I was years ago for her big sister).

For a while, I supervised a group of twelve pre-k children playing freeze tag, which involved non-stop screaming (I am informed this was audible two blocks away). It was a beautiful day for once, and I am a firm believer that small children need to have the chance to tear around like radioactive mutants, and so I had to live up to my lofty parental ideals by standing in the midst of that hellish racket.

As if the freeze tag weren't enough, a number of the children cried at maximum volume. One fell down and hurt her hand (there was no visible injury, but she turned the volume on her crying up to 11). I rubbed her back and offered sympathy while she screamed a few inches from my ear. Another screamed in rage and frustration. A charismatic alpha child, this young boy was angry that the children wouldn't stop playing freeze tag to hear out his instructions on what they should be doing instead. I tried to explain to him that it's a lofty undertaking indeed to get twelve hyperactive five year-olds to shut up at once and listen, but discussion was fruitless. It was somewhat more helpful for me to sit in the dirt beside him and listen to him shouting, between noisy sobs and screams, about "they won't listen to me!"

Later we trudged on a long dreary field trip, and some of the little children were heightening their enjoyment of a rousing round of "red light, green light" by grabbing my aged rump on the "green light" command. "My butt is a private place! Personal and private!" I instructed the tiny miscreants.


By the time we got home, all I wanted was some peace and quiet. I wanted to finish my book ("Surveillance" by Jonathan Raban). Instead, Lola got upset (she often doesn't want to get out of the new-to-us Volvo and drags her feet, and Iris and I don't want to stand on the sidewalk waiting forever, a perennial conflict). She screamed her guts out for over half an hour. I was practically rabid.

The Sober Husband came home, and I instructed him to please talk as little as possible and not ask me what was wrong with Lola because NOTHING was wrong with Lola, Lola was FINE, and if I couldn't get some peace and quiet I was going to snap. A clever man, he shut up and fixed me a cocktail (a Blood and Sand, my current fave, popular back in the 1930's and perhaps the best use of the unduly obscure Cherry Heering spirit). After I'd had my drink and played a little Warcraft to unwind (and I turned the sound off on the computer for that, even though it makes it harder to play), I felt up to observing Super Tuesday by casting my vote for Barack Obama. The children got into a fight on the way back from the polls, meaning more noisy crying from Lola, which tends to echo around in a Volvo in an unbearable way.

At home, the Sober Husband put on a Klezmer CD he'd dredged up somewhere from the depths of hell, and he turned it up so loud that he allegedly couldn't hear my multiple screams of "CAN YOU TURN THAT DOWN NOW" which eventually became something more like "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CAN YOU TURN THAT FUCKING NOISE DOWN." To me, that music is like the soundtrack for demented clowns, evil, evil clowns, and I fully expect that it will play in my damned afterlife. I fled upstairs with "Surveillance" and closed the door to the bedroom. Before I knew it, children were there, wanting to "watch Simpsons with Mama" (why do I have to be present for this? Evidently it's not satisfying to watch TV, if you don't have the captive corpse of poor old Mommy present in the room. The children fight viciously over who sits next to me, and oddly enough, it's unsatisfactory to everyone if I sit in the middle with one on each side. If there's no clear winner, then everyone is a loser). After Iris was banished to bed, Lola wanted to act out a story about a banal fairy who wanted to get married, which normally is very charming but by ten o'clock at night after a hard day was driving me crazy. By the time she went to bed, I was too sleepy to read. A silent room with a book: that was all I wanted, and I couldn't get it.

Fear not, gentle reader, for the sanity of your Drunken Housewife, as chronic insomnia has solved her problem. I've just enjoyed two consecutive hours of quiet, broken only by the raucous purrs and meows of the annoying cats. Silence. Beautiful silence. I was able to give "Surveillance" the quiet attention it so much deserved. The only sad part is that I know I'll pay for this idyll tomorrow, when I'm severely sleep-deprived, but oh God, the quiet is so beautiful. I wouldn't mind adding a few sounds to it, such as perhaps the happy sound of a klezmer CD snapping in half, but eh, I'll take what I can get.

capsule book reviews

I recently read three amazing books, and astoundingly enough each of these accomplished works was a first novel.

"Fieldwork" by Mischa Berlinski (2007): a recent college graduate is at loose ends in Northern Thailand when he becomes obsessed with the story of a brilliant female anthropologist serving a life sentence in a Thai prison. This is one of the best books I've read in years: full of ideas, realistic characters (I love the way his missionaries talk in particular. A horrendous family argument sparked by one teenaged child's unauthorized viewing of "Star Wars" was brilliant), and atmosphere. It is mindboggling that something this perfect could be a first novel. Grade: A+.

"The Red Tent" by Anita Diamant (1997): I am probably the last middle-aged North American woman to get around to reading this beloved mainstay of Oprah's book club. My friend Kim I's copy sat around on my shelf for over a year before I cracked it open. Of course, like practically everyone, I loved it. "The Red Tent" is the retelling of the story of Jacob's daughter Dinah from the Old Testament/Torah. I loved the women's animistic rituals. My one complaint: Diamant didn't have a gift for dialogue. All of the characters spoke in the same voice. One could excuse that by saying that it was all supposed to be in the voice of Dinah retelling her life story, but still... Grade: A-.

"Them" by Nathan McCall (2007): the story of the gentrification of Atlanta's Fourth Ward, told by a middle-aged black loner who lives with his ex-con nephew in an old rented house. Barlowe hates white people and calls the cops when some white folks show up to look at the house next door. "They'd call the cops if I came into their neighborhood" was his reasoning. Little does he know that the white liberal wife finds this to be evidence of community looking out for one another, and it convinces her to buy this particular fixer-upper in a "rapidly-improving" neighborhood. What is the impact on an old, established neighborhood when suddenly white artists and young couples start buying up houses? The Fourth Ward residents have very different feelings about whether an espresso house with internet access is a welcome arrival that will be "good for the neighborhood"; the unemployed men who enjoy spending their days chatting don't feel welcome there.

"Them" gave me a lot to think about. My ex-husband and I were the only white people living in a particular largeish apartment building in the Western Addition back in 1987-88. Our block was best known for having been the place where the SLA held poor Patty Hearst captive in a closet (my own walk-in closet there was the best thing about the small, cockroach-infested apartment. I used to show it off to visitors and wisecrack, "Like the SLA, we took it for the closets"). We were part of the thin edge of the gentrification wedge. Back then, I was terrified to go anywhere alone in my neighborhood after dark. Now, in 2008, there are espresso bars, vegan restaurants, upscale cocktail bars, and expensive boutiques there. Reading "Them" has made me look at all this in a different way. I used to think this gentrification was all good; now I'm focusing a little more on the losses. In particular, the huge African-American church is gone, where we used to love to slouch by in our hipster all-black to see all the ladies' colorful Sunday hats and hear the singing. Where are those women and their hats now? The Chronicle reports that the black middle class is largely being driven out of San Francisco to the East Bay, and people like me have a hand in it. "Them" should be mandatory reading for all white liberals. Grade: A.

the duty of the juror

Some weeks ago, the Sober Husband came upstairs all wound up. "This came for you," he said, holding out a jury duty summons.

His anxiety only built as the weeks went by, building to a fever pitch last weekend. "I can't plan anything," he muttered darkly, "since I may have to spend all week driving the children around while you're on jury duty." This was said in tones which implied that I was a shameless hedonist, abandoning my family for exotic jury pleasures.

I was dozing off one night when the Sober Husband woke me. Looming over me and looking very intense, he said, "I don't want you to feel any pressure about jury duty." I mumbled something and went back to sleep. I thought he was trying to make me feel better about his pressuring me to get off jury duty, and it wasn't for some days that I realized he was in fact nagging me to stand up to the court personnel's pressure and refuse to be chivvied into serving on an actual jury.

On the first three days of my jury duty, I dutifully checked with the court after 4:30 to learn that my group was not required to show up the next day. The Sober Husband seemed to feel that this pattern was well-established, and his dread seemed to abate. I noticed on Tuesday that only two groups had not yet been called in, all the others having been activated, and I mentioned this to the husband with my theory that this guaranteed I'd have to go to court on Thursday or Friday, but he dismissed this. Predictably the next day the last two groups were required, and equally predictably the husband got panicky. "but I just sent out email announcing my talk!"

"What talk?"

"I'm giving a talk at work."

"You KNEW I could have jury duty." I was unapologetic.

Today was the actual day. The other group, which I dubbed "Loser Group", was mandated to report by 8:30. Mine, which I called "Slacker Group", was supposed to turn up by a more leisurely ten a.m. I enjoyed leaving the house alone, kissing the sad husband good-bye, and walking to the subway, just like the old days when I was childless and held paying employment outside the home. The civil court's jury assembly room is actually quite attractive, with plenty of burled wood and subdued lighting. I scored a seat at a nice table, and I became friendly with the gay man nearby, who was pouring over People's annual People Who Lost Half Their Weight issue. I was deeply absorbed in my novel when my name was called, and a large number of potential jurors trudged up to courtroom 303. There the dignified yet perky Judge Tang informed us that we were there to serve in a two month trial. The potential jurors all stiffened in horror at this pronouncement.

Judge Tang withdrew in a dignified manner to her chambers, leaving her clerk to have those of us who wished to weasel out of the trial fill out excuse forms. I wrote on my form that I was the stay-at-home mother of a small child and my husband was unable to take two months off work to care for her. My excuse was one of the very first ones granted, and I scurried off to get my official release form from the jury room. There I saw my poor bored acquaintance from the morning. I tipped him off that he'd most likely be called up to potentially serve on the two month trial. "Why did they call the names from the ten o'clock group when we were still here from 8:30?" he said frustratedly. I shrugged apologetically, and I left after only two hours of jury duty.

Once on the sidewalk, I called the husband. He was incredulous and overjoyed that I was done so soon. So much stress and worry, over losing just two hours of the Drunken Housewife's time. Secretly I had been daydreaming of a nice week-long trial ... escaping from everyday life into the posher confines of the jury box. In reality, it's extremely unlikely I could ever get on any jury, given that I'm not only a former lawyer but also rather bossy. One can always dream, but sadly one spouse's daydream is another's nighmare.

irrational behavior in and out of the World of Warcraft

The husband is lagging behind me in our exploration of the World of Warcraft. Over the weekend, he abandoned his first character and created a new character after some research. I had done the same ages ago. We both created our first characters impulsively (mine a Night Elf rogue, his an Orc warrior) and then later realized they weren't the right choices (the Elf lived in a sickeningly cute environment; the "warrior" was too weak and was constantly being killed). We differed in our research to create the right new character. I read up online and in the Warcraft manual about the different classes before determining that my personality was suited towards becoming an Orc hunter. The Sober Husband asked around at work which type of character is the most "overpowered" and then made himself an Orc warlock, killing off his old character with no mercy.

Although my character was thoughtfully chosen, she has a pet which was impulsively picked. My character, a hunter, has the ability to tame a wild animal, which is her immensely helpful sidekick. I picked a cougar because I like cats and it was the most convenient sort of wildcat to tame, since it was around when I was looking for a pet. I put no analysis into it. Now my character is much more advanced (level 51, if you're following this geeky saga more closely than you'd like to admit), and I'm running across more sophisticated sorts of wild animals which have special abilities and exotic appearances. I'm contemplating getting a new pet, but it feels disloyal.

I confessed this to the husband. "Can I tell you something irrational?"

"Sure."

"I'm thinking I should get a new pet, and there are two kinds I'm really interested in. But it feels really mean and wrong. I know my cat is just a computer image, but it feels disloyal."

"That's irrational, but it's kind of cute. I think it's okay to be loyal to a computer cat."

"Can I tell you something even crazier?"

"Sure."

"I swear that since I started thinking of getting a new pet and checking out other ones, my cat has started being disloyal. He runs off all the time now, and he never used to. I have to call him with my whistle all the time now."

There was a pause, and then the husband said, "I want you to write about this on your blog."

I thought that he meant this was the sort of amusing anecdote worth sharing, but now I suspect he wanted me to humiliate myself publicly as a Warcraft idiot/addict. Later in the day, I called my mother to wish her a happy birthday. The Sober Husband got on the phone and, during a break, announced portentously, "Carole plays Warcraft six hours a day now."

"I do not! You played Warcraft as much as me today!"

After we hung up the phone, I dug into the husband. "You were tattling on me! What kind of spouse tattles to his spouse's mother?"

"Evidently me," said the husband unrepentantly.