Jesus and feathering lipstick

So Tim left this morning for DC.  He's gone for 2 days.  I need to get used to it because he's going to be teaching in DC and in NYC for the next few months.  Can't he find teaching jobs that don't interfere with trash night?  He DID empty the dishwasher at 6 am which is basically foreplay and made me my smoothie and salad.  However, he also bought 8 boxes of Girl Scout cookies and left me alone with them.  I keep walking up to the Samosa's and saying in a sultry french voice, under my breath, "So, my darlings, we meet again."  I stole that line from Colin, a college friend, who greeted a Sara Lee coffee cake in that manner for an entire weekend until it was gone.

I've had low expectations for this week.  First, I cannot get the Taylor Swift song, "We will NEVER EVER EVER get back together" out of my head.  Tim has been complaining about having "Farmer's Daughter" from Steel's Country Men Mix stuck in his head.  My sympathy isn't high because it's a better song, and Tim actually has to use his head during the day.  I can have a song go through my brain every 30 seconds for 8 hours when I'm glazing.

Speaking of glazing.  I've spoken before about my inability to withstand my pepto pink glaze.  I've had numerous people tell me how much they hate it.  The best was the following description accompanying an order:
My tendency is to like sad, snot dripping melodic music, w/a shimmering,  life validating inner resonnance.  Sure, it's so f.......g easy to say I like urbchic whites, golds and stoneware's lite blues.  I stand by  my  political views - to totally despise pink and everything it stands for. Who lives that life? Let's just walk away and say my pain is between Adele and Munchausen by Proxy.
This morning,with a subject line "Pink" I sent him this image with the following text:
I can't help it!  This morning's kiln offerings look so cute with my scary breakfast smoothie.  Don't worry, next week it'll be all the moody, angst-ridden, nihilistic pots.
His response:
It's the diabolical pink straw that makes it gangster.
You give me too much credit. Nihilism requires the realization of a moral dissolution.
Superficial ambiguity is more my style.
I really shouldn't complain about things when most of the people I deal with in my professional life are cooky gallery owners who don't bat an eye at being sent a random iPhone picture of a cappuccino cup and a collard green smoothie at 8:45 am on a Thursday.  I can't imagine what would happen if I had a real job.

I responded that if he found the straw diabolical, he should have seen the lipstick I nicked off of Steel to wear.  Straws ARE diabolical.  I've been trying to kick my straw habit.  My mom is a straw addict.  She washes hers.  I'm pretty green, but washing straws and ziplock bags really bugs me.  If I'm going to have a straw, I want a new one.  I'd be lying if I said I was trying to quit straws because of the trash factor.  It's the sucking.  Make-up people talk about lipstick "feathering" meaning it's going into the tiny wrinkles around your lips and making little lines around your mouth.  "Feathering" is a really nice way to say, "Your lipstick is foreshadowing how you'll look when you're corpse," assuming I live long enough to be old and super-wrinkly.  I'm making a conscious effort to smile more when I'm alone at the studio, and I'm going to stop sucking on things to stave off those hideous mouth wrinkles.  Some mornings, though, I just need a straw.

Tim is actually gone, but he's also metaphorically gone.  He's on the wagon again: reason number 2 for low expectations this week.  I'm trying to be supportive, but last night my kiln went late, and it fired poorly.  I NEEDED a rye and ginger.  This morning, I had the genius idea to pack a half a grapefruit in Steel's and Jack Peter's lunches.  They each only ate a third.  I took that as a sign that I should have a vodka/grapefruit to help me through trash night.  Sadly that's been accompanied by another and 8 girl scout cookies.  I want to start an alternative girl scout troop.  We'll make baked goods without high fructose corn syrup and all the other crap.  We'll sell them, and then use the proceeds to take the RV "camping."

My third reason for low expectations this week is that it's pledge week on NPR, but I've discovered KLUV. It's theme is, "positive and enthusiastic radio!"  I have not gone online to sign up for the 30-day challenge, only positive, enthusiastic Christian Music for a month, but I'm pretty taken with the station.  It's helping with my smile-more-at-the-studio agenda.  Let me ask you, if being a Christian were illegal, would there be enough evidence to indict you?  What?  That line almost got Taylor Swift out of my head.  What would it take to make me believe?  If I did listen to KLUV, and then I managed to write a book and have a 4th child, and my lipstick stopped feathering would I think that God or Jesus helped me?  I doubt it.

One of the positive and enthusiastic stories was about a burglar coming into a jewelry party.  Women have moved onto selling jewelry instead of tupperware or cosmetics.  The hostess screamed at him, "In the name of Jesus, get out of my house!"  All of the ladies started shouting JESUS! JESUS! JESUS!  The robber left.  One can deduce that Jesus was, in fact, there.  Maybe the NRA people need to hear that story.  See!  We don't need guns; Jesus will come!  Don't they all believe in Jesus?

My favorite story was about a female pianist and marshall artist.  She just got into the Guinness Book of Worlds Records because she's the first woman WITH NO ARMS to get a pilots' license.  The moral of the story is "Are your limitations really limitations?"  It made me think of my favorite friend of Tim's, 1-armed-Mike.  He came in drunk one night bitching about how hard it is to deal with cling wrap with only one arm.  Yeah, she can fly a plane, and play Chopin with her feet, but I'd like to see her wrap up a tuna sandwich!  The dj's also discuss challenges people face.  Weight challenges kept coming up, so I found myself adding lines into the songs.  "I was at the bottom again....of a bag of Doritos."

The songs are modified rock ballads and anthems.  Instead of "I want to f__k you forever" it's "Jesus is with you forever" It takes a minute to realize that they are all about Jesus.  One of the every-hour hits has the unintelligible line: "stuck in a valley of a shadow of death." He must be talking about lipstick feathering.

Saving the best for last

"WHAT'S MY NAME?  SKIP?" is usually shouted at a McDonald family gathering if one forgets to deliver a snack or drink to any of the 14 people sprawled on the couch in a post-roast coma watching a holiday special from the 60's.  I'm imagining that is what cousin Ashley barked when Jack Peter kissed everyone on the couch good-night but her.  He had, in fact, forgotten her, but without missing a beat, he pointed at her with two hands, sidled over, and said with slitted bedroom eyes, "I was saving the best for last!"

What?!  Where does that come from?  His dad and I are not the most suave people on Earth.  Tim took Toby with him to do some Christmas shopping on a cold morning in December.  She was perched on his shoulders walking down 2nd street.  I'm sure they were both happily chatting away.  A woman came up to Tim with a pained look on her face and said, "Sir, you might want to pull your daughter's pants up."  Her bare ass was wrapped around his neck like a stole for 4 blocks.  It was 35 degrees out.  How did neither of them notice that?

I remember in 4th grade being asked by my Aunt Penny if I had a crush on anyone in my new school.  My temples throbbed with the rush of blood that went to my face and I willed the back seat of their red Chevy station wagon to suck me down and dump me onto the road.  I did have a crush on Frankie Brown, and I was utterly humiliated that it had been detected by my best friend's mom.  Jack Peter (6) announced nonchalantly that he has a girlfriend and that he'd kissed her.  The hussy demanded a kiss at recess the day after Jack Peter had entered THE RED ZONE, punishment for two offenses: talking in class and bumming a cracker off of his friend at lunch.  Food sharing is against the rules.  According to Jack Peter this kid can spare a cracker or two "He's CHUBBY, and he's always going to be until 8th grade," but that's not the issue.

I'd told JP that movie night was going to be rescinded unless he stayed on green all day, AND he shut out Team NPA.  He wept and wailed, "I cant control team NPA!!!", but I held fast.  I must have been trying to prepare for the holiday break.  We spend it with my brother's family every year.  The subtext to any of the vacations with Curt's family is that he and his wife are better parents than Tim and I because they are better at disciplining their children.  I admit, Owen, Gillian and Kellan ARE better behaved.  For a few months after we see them, I can reign in my girls by saying, "Would GILLIAN be screaming and crying and freaking out the way you are right now?  NO she wouldn't; she'd roll with it!!!  (Incidentally, the only thing that really gets Gillian mad is Jack Peter's torturing her with The Magic 8 Ball.  He'd ask it repeatedly whether or not Gillian was his girlfriend and then he'd scream out the affirmative answers: YOU MAY RELY ON IT!!! WITHOUT A DOUBT! YES, DEFINITELY!)

I don't know what the Green Woods Charter School stance is on PDA, but if Jack Peter had lost movie night for kissing Rosalie Trojan, it might have affected his sex life forever!  Tim picks up the kids at the end of the day.  There were butterflies in my stomach when I texted How many points for NPA?  The joy I felt at seeing the response, 0, was completely disproportionate to the situation.  Yes, I am crap at disciplining my kids.


I always, think of Steel as a mini-me.  She's crafty, she's got WAY too much energy.  Her body is straight, strong and lean.  But, like Jack Peter, she's MUCH cooler than I will ever be, and I'm pretty sure she's smarter. This isn't the best example, but we were looking for sneakers online before school.  Jack Peter and Toby picked out light-up ones.  I showed Steel her light-up options, and she looked at me disdainfully and said, "I don't want light-up sneakers!"  as if I'd offered her a pacifier and a teething toy.  She's already finding the Santa story to be suspect.  Who questions Santa at 5?

I was wearing cat-eye make up the other day, and she told me it was WAY too make-up-y.  I'd have died with happiness if I'd seen my mom in cat-eye make-up.  It was foggy, and I told her that my brother used to tell me that fog was clouds that tripped and fell.  She looked at me and said, "What would they trip over?"  (omitted but implied: dumb-ass!)  If Curt had been Steel's older brother he would never have gotten her to chew up a mouthful of peppercorns by saying, "Open your mouth and close your eyes; I'll give you a BIG SURPRISE!"  I believed/trusted my brother because I admired him, and I wanted to please him.  I was/am inherently a pleaser, and I rarely bother to question authority.  Not one of my kids shares this trait.


My brother's kids have responded to his disciplining because THEY ARE LIKE ME!  I'd like to see how his methods would work with MY kids-probably as well as my mom's disciplining worked on HIM.

When I watched the Rosalie video, I remembered that Jack Peter and Steel were making out in the shower the night before.  It had struck me as a little odd, but I hadn't wanted to make a big deal about it.  I asked him if he'd been practicing the night before on Steel, and he said "Yes!"  I admire his foresight and planning, but ummmm....