It's My TV….It's My Peanut Butter

I love my family dearly, but they might drive me to beat my head against the wall soon if they don’t stop interrupting me.

The over-all interruption of having them back in the house for a visit is one thing–this is a welcome interruption.

It’s all the little things that come in between.  The worst being Mom’s habit of telling me to do one thing, then interrupting me before I can do it.  Prime example from this afternoon.  I have been home all of 10 minutes….

Mom: “Go take this laundry up to the linen closet.”

Me: “Okay.”

Half-way up the stairs…..

Mom [yelling from the laundry] : “Cammy!”

Me [paused on the stairs] “Yeah?”

Mom [still yelling from the laundry room] :”Come here!”

Me: [attempting to continue up the stairs] “I’m just going to finish putting this stuff up.”

Mom: I want to show you where I put the carpet cleaner!

Me:  I’ll be down in a minute.

Mom:  It will only take a second!

So, I give in, go back down the stairs, stuff still in my arms.  Mom proceeds to show me every detail of how she arranged the shelves in the laundry room.  During this 10 minute presentation, I have put the stack of towels and sheets on top of the drier.

Mom:  ”I thought you were going to put those away.”

Me [rolling eyes]: I was trying to.

Mom:  Well, you don’t have to have an attitude about it!

For the record, it took me four (4), yes FOUR (4) attempts before I made it up the stairs without being called back for something else.  And that final time, I essentially played stealth and when she called me, I pretended not to hear.

I’m SO looking forward to the men in white coats coming to take me to a nice padded cell.

I just got back from my family reunion and I’m running on about three hours’ sleep so this will be a short one.  My extended family has never been particularly close—I only have three first cousins and we have only seen each other a handful of times.  I didn’t meet my own godmother (my father’s cousin) until I was 23.  We do this family reunion every so often and it’s the only contact many of us have.  But I’m glad we do it.

Everyone’s always trying to arrange these things so they involve activities—trips to theme parks, shopping facilities, landmarks.  Me?  I wish we’d just sit around the whole time and talk.  Not only do I like getting to know them all, I like hearing the stories.  My grandmother’s generation are not getting younger and because I haven’t spent time with them I don’t know their stories.

Tonight I learned about how my great grandfather left home because he knew if he stayed he’d kill his step-father.  About how a great, great uncle finished a war with the local minister by tying said minister’s horse outside a notorious dance hall (so people would think he’d gone dancing).  About my great, great grandmother who loved to hunt but was so tiny her husband had to have a sawed off shotgun specially made for her (she also did beautiful needlework).  I also learned the truth about what happened at Roswell.  But no, I’m not telling.

I just wish I got to hear these stories more often.  It makes me kind of sad that I’m a folklorist, someone who spends her whole life studying stories, and I know so few of my own family’s stories.

Okay, gentle readers, join me in wishing a happy birthday to Kristy!  The appointed day is actually tomorrow, but every now and then I manage not to miss a deadline around here–not often, mind you, but birthday celebrations are important things–they often have better-than-average food, drink and activities.

However, given that our intrepid co-poster is currently in a location surrounded by family, she might not be experiencing any of the above-mentioned boons of one’s birthday.  Which makes me sad.  Your birthday should be the one day you should get to be as bossy and demanding as you want with zero guilt.  The rest of the world should be so lucky to bask in your presence, bow at your feet, let you pick the activities, give you total control of the remote, and bring you tasty food!

So, my fellow blogger, may you have a fabulous day, and feel free to put your foot down should anyone suggest anything not to your liking.  Make your demands!  You deserve them!

I’m currently on vacation with my entire family.  That means five children between the ages of three and twelve.  Anyone who knows me knows I’m not someone who loves hanging out with children.  I never babysat (okay, a couple times I got roped into it when I was a tween, but I hated it).  I don’t want kids of my own.  I love my nieces and nephews, but I have a tolerance level which is quickly reached.

I have, however, found something which seems to entertain and tame small children for enough time to wait in line, wait for a table, or wait for food.  (No one wants to be with antsy children at restaurants.)  Most adults in my family will hand the children their cell phone and allow them to play Angry Birds or some similar game.  I have a smart phone, but I don’t have any of those games.  What I do have is a camera.

I simply hold it up and tell the bored child to make a crazy face.  When you have kids who are constantly being told not to act silly in pictures and (in my nephews’ cases) being punished for making faces in photos, the opportunity to deliberately look like a goofball is a picture is apparently thrilling.  And all it costs me is battery power and I’m saved the aggravation of obnoxious children.  And everyone else around us is spared the aggravation of obnoxious children they aren’t related to.  Victory for all.

My mother is constantly asking where all her time goes.  She’s decreased her work schedule to two 12 hour shifts per week and no longer has any kids at home, so it does seem like she should have some amount of free time, but it doesn’t.  So staying with her this summer I’ve paid attention, and I’ve come up with a few ideas of the things that are sucking my mother’s time away.

1.  My father.  My mother likes to say she’s from the generation of women who thought they had to do it all.  The women who were encouraged to get jobs outside the home, but who didn’t realize that meant they could ask the men in their lives to help around the house.  My father’s a good old boy who thinks that house work makes you girly.  When us kids moved out she finally convinced him to vacuum (though he complains and procrastinates about it).  Add to that he’s constantly tracking mud and saw dust into the house and gets highly offended if asked to wipe his feet.  If he could do that alone I think it would give her at least a couple hours a week.

2.  Laundry.  Yes, laundry is a necessary evil, but I strongly feel like she does a lot more of it than she needs to.  Yes, I have a tendency to not wash as often as I need to because I have to go to a Laundromat to do it.  I can understand not wearing the same pajamas for a week like I do, but I’m not sure they need to be washed every day either.  She does the same with hand towels, wash clothes, kitchen towels, etc, etc.  The end result is that nearly every day off she does a minimum of two loads of laundry.  If she’d let the hand towels go three days instead of one or two I think she could buy herself at least two or three hours a week.

3.  Grocery shopping.  Now let me give this to my mom: she can get in and out of a store with astounding speed.  Cammy once went shopping with her and was stunned by this.  But no matter how fast you are, every trip to the store takes about half an hour travel time, five minutes to park, five minutes to walk to and from the car…  So it’s easy for each trip to the grocery store to take at least an hour.  And my mother can’t just go to one store.  She goes to Wal-Mart (often twice a week), Trader Joe’s, Costco, Sam’s Club, and sometimes more.  I realize she goes to all these stores based on who has the best prices on what, but given her crazy schedule if she would just consolidate, or make one or two of those trips a bi-weekly thing she could save a lot of time.

Of course, this is probably one of those things that is much easier to see from the outside.  Maybe it’s easier to see other people’s time vampires than our own because our own seem so essential while other people’s seem silly.

In one of my most dastardly schemes yet, I convinced my mother to buy my father an ice cream maker as a Father’s Day present.  Well, I convinced her to buy it (in my defense, it was a fantastic price for the model in question), she was the one who decided to make it a Father’s Day present.  This is absurd mostly because my father is never going to make ice cream.  But, as my mother pointed out, he’ll get to reap the benefits when we do.  For me, this means I can make frozen treats when I’m here visiting.  Score!

We stewed a little over what to make first and finally settled on raspberry sorbet.  So today I was getting the batter ready (sorbet won’t be made till tomorrow since I neglected to tell my Mom it needed to be put in the freezer ahead of time).  My father walked in and asked me what I was making and I told him.  He asked me what sorbet was.

I managed not to laugh.  I suppose it’s a valid question.  Except that I know he’s had sorbet because I made him sorbet the last time they visited me.  So I reminded him of that occasion, thinking it had slipped his mind.  He said he remembered, but he still didn’t know what the heck it was.

At first that made the whole thing seem even more absurd until it occurred to me I’m sure he’s not alone.  I’m fairly confident there are loads of people who eat foods every day without having the first idea what they’re eating.  I know that there was a British study done about five years ago where they discovered that most school children had no concept of what animals their meat came from.  (This perhaps says something about British cooking as well as modern ignorance)  It’s horrible, but perhaps not unexpected.  I know where my meat comes from, but I make a conscious effort not to think about that as I eat it.

My father’s a farm boy, so he knows where his meat comes from.  But that’s probably where his knowledge of food ends.  He got married in college (where he lived in places that provided his meals) so aside from a two year stint in Korea for which my family did not join him the man has never been responsible for preparing his own meals.  (And I suspect he ate out a LOT in Korea.)  He’s a fairly typical man of his generation in that he does everything possible to stay out of the kitchen and therefore does not know what goes on in that mystical world.  He once stated that he really loved my brownie recipe.  Wanna know my brownie recipe?  Buy Ghirardelli brownie mix.  Follow directions on box.  But I can give them to him and tell them they were from scratch and he’d never be the wiser.  I could have probably just given him the sorbet and called it ice cream and he’d have never questioned why it didn’t seem creamy.

In 18^th Century Virginia cooking was considered a life skill.  Rich, poor, male, female, free slave all children were essentially kitchen staff.  Everyone grew up watching food prepared until they gained a working knowledge of it.  Enough that if responsible for their own meals, in a world with no instant prepared meals, they could do so.  How many people today could say the same? I’m never one that advocates reverting to the old way of doing things except some times when it comes to food.  Maybe we could pull the kids away from the game system and make them carry water in the kitchen for a while until they know sorbet from sherbet from ice cream.

We’ve previously mentioned that I adore being a cool aunt.  As a refresher I have three nephews and two nieces, all of whom I love to pieces (even though I’m really glad to see them go home at the end of the day) (even though they have all at their own moments served as walking birth control).  Last night we celebrated my oldest nephew’s twelfth birthday.

Damn.

I can still remember so vividly holding him for the first time.  He started hiccupping.  Since I’ve made it a point throughout my life to not hold babies I didn’t know if this was okay or not.  I’ve heard stories of adults having damage to their esophagus caused by hiccups, so I was imagining what it could do to a baby.  And when I asked if it was okay no one responded.  Over and over they just smiled and ignored me till I was nearly in a panic.

Yeah… don’t trust me with your children.

This week he and I had the following discussion:

Mom:  What do you want for your birthday?

J:  I dunno.

Kristy:  I know you really want it, but I’m not buying you a small nuclear device.

J:  That’s fine.  I’ll just make one out of legos.

Kristy:  See, that’s the thing.  It’s not that I don’t want you to have one, it’s that I feel like you should have to work for it.  If global domination comes too easily you’ll never appreciate it.

J:  That’s cool.  I totally understand.  So when I take over the world, what kind of job do you want?

Kristy:  One that pays well and doesn’t require too much actual work.

J:  Sweet.  I think that can be arranged.

Could I love this kid more?  Well yes, because he also came over in a “Many Moods of Darth Vader” t-shirt.  And he makes jokes involving Baba Yaga and Norse Mythology.  He plays the viola because “it’s much more manly” than the violin.  Kid is awesome.

So the whole point of this post is to say that my little hiccupping baby is nearly grown up in some socio-cultural traditions, and I couldn’t be prouder of him.

For years now, I’ve had the type of jobs were most of the actual “work” does not take place at “the office.”  I’ve either worked entirely from home or had jobs where I had to do a lot of work at home.  Over all, I really like this.  It gives me added flexibility.  It means I can run my errands while people with normal jobs are sequestered in office buildings.  It means I don’t have to be around people very much.  (Yes, hello, I’m an introvert).

The one thing I hate about this kind of job is that people with “normal” jobs don’t get it.  They don’t respect that the work you do at home is work.  It’s just as important and essential as the stuff that they do in their offices.  People think it’s perfectly acceptable to strike up a conversation with you while you’re doing said work.  They don’t understand why constant phone calls might be inappropriate.  At least now I’m salaried, but at one point I was working from home and being paid by the hour.  My mother would call and ask what I was doing.  If I answered, “Working,” she would continue talking.  I’d have to make note of the time she called and the time I got her off the damn phone (usually at least an hour later).  She would never call either of my siblings at their offices and think it’s appropriate to have an hour long personal conversation with them.

Right now I’m on an extended visit to my parents.  In order to do this, I brought a lot of work with me.  Admittedly I haven’t been accomplishing as much of it as I should have, but I’ve been setting aside a certain amount of time each day to do it.  Last week my father decided it was a good idea to lecture me about being a workaholic.  Since I know I’m anything but I asked him how he would know I’m a workaholic.  He explained it was because I was doing work while “on vacation.”  I asked him when the last time he took a two month vacation was. (Note:  If my father takes an extended weekend he takes work with him)  His response?  “Well I can’t.  I have a real job.” Thanks, Dad.  You know what would really help here?  Belittle my occupation a little more.

And yes, it’s true that my parents don’t really “get” or respect my career in general, but honestly, if I was doing the exact same job but doing all of my work in an office somewhere they would respect it a lot more.  It just seems a little absurd in this world of increasing telecommuters and such that working from home still doesn’t rate as work.

Before I go any further I want to pause to wish a happy birthday to my co-blogger Cammy!  Once again she is officially older than me!  And she gets to celebrate her birthday twice on account of that international date line craziness.  Does this mean she’s now two years older than me?  Anyway, Cammy, I hope you had a good one in the land down under.

On to my actual post.  Yesterday I went to go visit my sister’s place of employment which is putting on a great big Christmas Extravaganza.  This included, among other things, a whole bunch of Christmas themed shows involving music and dancing and all that cheesetastic stuff.  Since I danced from age six, minored in choreography, and work intermittently as an acrobat, my sister was eager for me to see said shows and let her know what I thought.

Here’s the thing:  One of my aerial dance teachers once said to me that once you acquire any sort of performance skill you become that person no one ever wants to see a show with.  You can’t not be critical.  And while people want to think that they enjoy your critical insight, the truth is, they want you to tell them that their opinions are correct.  My teacher had just been to see a touring Cirque de Soleil show—several of her non aerial dancer friends had been and couldn’t stop talking about how great it was.  She… was underwhelmed.  She could spot all the places where performers were cheating or just plain being lazy.  She knew that some moves were flashy, but deceptively simple.  She could see all the mistakes.  None of her friends were grateful for being enlightened on this.

My sister and I have been through this multiple times.  I see a show and I see where the choreography is disjointed.  Which dancers don’t know their parts.  Which male dancer needs to butch it up a little more if he’s going to play that part.  Which costumes don’t fit and worse don’t make sense.  The truth is, most of the shows were pretty frakkin’ bad.  But she doesn’t want to hear that.  She wants me to tell her that I loved the shows and found them charming.  The problem is, while I’m a good liar, there are times I’m just not willing to do it.

And while this added insight should be an advantage, it’s not.  It just annoys the crap out of everyone around you.  At the end of the day, sometimes I’d like to just sit back and enjoy the cute little show too.

The Family Favor is a time suck which damn near prevented me from posting (and is currently preventing me from getting to bed on time).

It happens to all of us.  You’re minding your own business, planning on a quiet evening of eating nachos and watching Bones and then in comes Mom/Dad/Brother/Sister/Third-Cousin-Once-Removed Wally.  If you’re lucky, they start out by flattering you.  ”You are such a sweetheart!”  ”Have I told you lately that you’re a genius?”

I say lucky not because the flattery is any good, but because at least when that happens you have a  warning.  A split second to bolt from the room or “accidentally” hang up the phone before….

“Could you do me a favor?”

Shit.

How do you turn down family?  Sure, there’s the obvious, “No, I’m sorry” which will earn you a hellish amount of payback for many a family holiday to come.  And the guilt of thinking “They’re family!  They’d do it for me!”  (Really?  Are you SURE?)

So much for nachos.

First there are the things that you somehow got known for, whether you meant to or not, and which you will never be able to shake, no matter what.  For example, that brief and ill-advised stint of time you spent in junior high track?  Congrats, you’re the family expert on sports injuries now.  Owned a telescope when you were 9?  You are the go-to for all questions about space exploration.  Played piano for 5 years about 15 years ago?  Well, naturally you can teach little Lucy to be Mozart.

And heaven help you if you choose a career path that’s got large amounts of practical application to the average person.  Even though everyone else in your profession would get to tell these people that they needed to wait until office hours so that you could properly deal with them, you as a doctor/lawyer/plumber/it-professional get to diagnose phlegmy coughs, evaluate cases so far out of your jurisdiction that you cringe, try to explain how to get a crap-clog out of the U-bend from two time zones away and figure out how to explain to your 80 year old Great-Aunt Milicent the concept of “dragging” a window on the desktop so that she can see the photos her friend Glenda sent of her new coon dog, Coco.

And, at the end of it, you’re frustrated, tired, and questioning whether the wasted evening was worth the effort.

Then you remember how it feels to be on the receiving end of a nearly lethal dose of family passive aggression over the course of a 4 day Thanksgiving feeding-frenzy/reunion.

Maybe it was worth one evening after all.