How Dolly Parton Saved my Cousin's Life

In which your humble narrator explains, on the occasion of her 65th birthday, why Dolly is revered in his household.

My mother and her sister (my eldest aunt) are less than a year apart in age and have traditionally done lots of major life steps nearly synchronously. They married near the same time, had children at the same time and divorced at the same time. As such, sister-of-me and I spent lots of time with our similarly-aged cousins during the tandem dissolution of our respective parents' marriages.

This time together includes one particularly interesting vacation; two Moms, four kids go on the road for good times and adventure. Predictably the squabbling began almost as soon as we crossed the border from Ohio into Kentucky (about 20 minutes into the trip). Six people. One crew-cab pick-up truck. 3,675 lbs. of luggage (Mom and Auntie are not adherents of the "packing light" philosophy). We drove down. We stayed in a beach house for a week sniping at each other. At the end of the week we packed up and left for home.

By the end of the week, each of us was harboring murderous impulses toward my cousin (lets's call him Fusspot). Fusspot had spent the week complaining. About everything. All the time. He picked fights with his Mom, with his sister, with seagulls, with inanimate objects. In all fairness, it wasn't really his fault. There is a long standing rule in my family of origin that someone must ruin vacation. If the usual vacation ruiner cannot perform his or her duties, a replacement will be appointed and proceed to do everything in his or her power to provide an unpleasant experience. It has been this way since time immemorial, and so it shall be done until the end of vacations/time.

As we meandered northerly toward home, the air seethed with murderous intent. Fusspot continued to loudly air every grievance that entered his adolescent brain. At rest stops my sister and I debated whether it would be better to throw Fusspot off of a mountain top in rural North Carolina, or if we should simply make a break for it and start new lives as country western singers in Tennessee. The long knives were unsheathed.

And at about this time my aunt remembered that she had brought a book on tape. Perhaps that would help pass the time through the surprisingly heavy traffic. It was Dolly Parton's recently published audio autobiography, "Dolly: My Life and other Unfinished Business."

Her dulcet-toned delivery of the story of her hardscrabble* upbringing in Sevierville, Tennessee, her marriage to a recluse, her entertainment career, and her many reflections on her hairdos were the music that soothed the savage beast. Every single one of us was mesmerized by Dolly's harrowing tale of poverty and triumph. We were transfixed by her tendency to break into song while she told the story of her childhood. It was weird. Dolly is weird. Dolly's take on her experiences is blithely optimistic to the point of delusion, but sort of awesome?  But most importantly, Dolly did the talking. For a blessed four hours everyone shut the hell up, and we didn't commit murder. And that's how Dolly Parton saved my cousin's life.

*The use of the word "hardscrabble" is mandatory in any piece of writing concerning Ms. Parton.

Spring, when a young man's fancy turns to avoiding being hit by an Audi

In which your humble narrator marvels at the natives' Jekyll and Hyde behavior when it comes to anything with wheels. 

Minnesotans are not friendly. They are "nice." They will tell you this themselves. There's an entire cottage industry of "Minnesota Nice" merchandise and paraphernalia. There's a freakin' Wikipedia page for Minnesota Nice! But as best as I can tell, the niceness generally only means that they will grudgingly answer direct questions put to them and they generally refrain from spitting on strangers.

All bets are off when you put these people on wheels. Cars, bikes, roller blades, put a Twin Citizen on wheels... and well, you have a wheeled menace. Amazingly this extends even to shopping carts. Back in my old Rust-Belt, Ohio home, people sort of moved out of the way in the Kroger so you could pass by them. Not here. Here, people are so militantly resistant to admitting that other human beings exist in the universe (when wheels are involved) that they will park their carts in the middle of the damn aisle and pretend you don't exist while you glare at them. Then you finally clear your throat and say "Pardon me," and the nasty local glares at you, because you've interrupted her careful meditation on Frosted Spelt Germ Puffs.

Cyclists here constantly write letters to the editors of numerous local publications about bastard car drivers and how we all have to share the road. Of course I've seen one cyclist stop at a stop sign in the last 60 days. Three have failed to stop and turned left in front of my car while I was stopped at the stop sign.

And the drivers are terrible. After an awful winter, the warm weather has made people even more hell-bent on driving like maniacs now that there's no ice or snow to contend with. Drunk driving is tolerated to a degree that's both embarrassing and completely contradictory to our image as a northern socialist nanny-state. Ten people died this past weekend in traffic accidents. In a metro area of 3.5 million, that's high.

Last session, the legislature passed a ban on texting while driving. This was before Oprah's crusade too. But since we only have about 7 highway patrol officers nobody pays a damn bit of attention.

Wheels go on, brains go off.

Reflections on an undocumented week

In which your humble narrator writes a list rather than composing a substantive essay about something of interest.

• Lists are easier to write than regular posts.
• This is the earliest spring I've ever seen in 12 years in Minnesota.
• Undergraduates have a hard time focusing when the temperature is above 60 degrees.
• A friend applying to the bar (you know, like, lawyering) asked me to write a a character reference for her application (being her friend with the best ratio of "length of time known" to "ability to write sentences"). I emailed the first line of my draft letter to her: 

"Dear State Board of Lawyerliness: J.R.T. is one of the finest, most ethical hoboes that it has ever been my privilege to drink with under a bridge. She only stole my bottle of gin once and that was my fault since I pushed her shopping cart into the river."

• Child #2 has taken to signaling that she has finished her meal by hurling the remainder of her food to the floor, or grasping it and rubbing it vigorously into her scalp.
• Potty training Child #1 is a total drag.
• Apparently, I like talking about the Large Hadron Collider way more than most people. Particle acceleration is cool and "Large Hadron Collider" is fun to say. 
• On a related note: I am made inordinately happy when man-made calamities do not end life as we know it. First they fired up the Large Hadron Collider and we didn't get blinkered out of existence in an "oopsie-doodle" accidental black hole. Second, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann appeared together on stage in Minneapolis and the resulting explosion of jingoistic malarkey proved to be entirely metaphorical, leaving my beloved adopted homeland relatively unscathed.
• Manchego is a tasty cheese.

Smurf Impression

In which your humble narrator recounts his latest health care adventure.

Child #2 abruptly turned blue on Thursday. She got fussy, started panting, demanded to be held and turned blue in the arms, legs and around her mouth. Needless to say this put a damper on my morning. After several frantic calls to our clinic and some discussions with spectacularly unhelpful people, I packed her up and took her to the emergency room at Children's Hospital in St. Paul. Sister-of-me came over to watch Child #1 and to call Wife-a-roo.

By the time we had been through triage, Child #2 had slowed her breathing and turned a nice, healthy looking pink color again. The doctor checked her out and ordered a couple of chest x-rays to rule out any lung problems. In case you don't know, babies do not like being tied down to tables for x-rays.

She seems to be fine now. The doctor suspects that she has some vascular weirdness which is unsurprising since I have something called Raynaud's Syndrome which makes my blood vessels act all crazy in response to temperature fluctuations or stress. So I'm used to seeing my hands turn blue, but it's a little different when it's your infant daughter. 

I think I hate children's hospitals even more than the regular variety. The attempt to decorate in kicky, fun ways to lighten up the place always manages to sink me into a greater and greater depression. It's like hiring a clown to be a funeral director.

Mailbag Monday is Late

In which your humble narrator answers the mail.

Dear Rotten Baby,
How do I convince my mother-in-law that she is totally capable of taking care of our wonderful children (ages 1 1/2 and 3 1/2) for just 48 hours so that my estranged husband and I can go to the Florida Keys for an all expense paid trip?
                                     Needing some alone time together

Dear NSATT,
First of all: where did you get an all-expense paid trip to the Keys? I want an all expense-paid trip. I would settle for an all-expense-paid trip to Dubuque, Iowa and be very, very happy with it. Actually, you know what? I'd settle for being able to go to the bathroom without an accompanying two-year-old and the inevitable discussion of whether I'm peeing or pooping in the potty.

But I digress. When I was just a wee little boy, before I became an internet sensation known to, literally, tens of people, my Grandma said to me the following: "If you want somebody to do something for you, it works best to let them think that it's their decision. If you can't make them decide to do what you want, then you put the screws to 'em and nail their ass to the wall."

As you may have guessed, my grandma was Lyndon Baines Johnson.

For Attempt #1, "Vanity + Guilt," you try to get her to decide to do it herself. This is best accomplished by making a dual appeal to both her vanity and her guilt. Like this: "Oh mother-in-law (MIL) you're the only one I trust to care for my precious children* and... and (fake cry here) I'm just not sure that your child (your spouse, NSATT) is willing to tell you HOW MUCH S/HE NEEDS THIS." See? Vanity + Guilt

If this fails, then you move on to Attempt #2, "Ass to Wall."

"Look, MIL. Do this for me... or the next time we're at your house for dinner I'm telling the kids that you're serving Muppet."

*Feel free to sell your own Mom down the river here if you think it'll help... after all we're talking about a vacation away from the children, any reasonable court would sanction anything up to involuntary manslaughter under these circumstances.

"Off to the Races" or "Eat my dust, you old biddy!"

In which your humble narrator realizes that he's in a competition with a mean old lady, proceeds to calmly to glorious victory and offers her a heaping helping of loser pie.

I took the children to Target yesterday morning to buy all the things that I forgot to buy at Target on Sunday. On Sunday, we had been at the Midway Target (Targhetto) which is nice enough and close to our home. But Targhetto is always out of things and also it's full of a bizarre mix of annoying, urban, boutique liberals and poor people*. This makes it our natural habitat since we're poor, urban crabby-liberals who wish we had the cash to shop at boutiques.

But on Monday we went, instead, to the suburban paradise Target where everyone is glassy-eyed and dead inside and all the little girls are named "Ava." We collected our stuff and walked to the check-outs. We were proceeding along the mostly closed registers back toward the end of the store where we had parked when a mean old lady with flaring nostrils came up on the inside track to ace us out from the first open register. She scooted in ahead just as I was starting to turn the cart and stood stone-faced as if we did not exist.

But then, sweet vindication! The other old lady in front of the mean old bat had 147 coupons and was clearly paranoid that the 18-year-old cashier had malevolent designs on her social security money. We scooted down to the next lane and proceeded through check-out as the mean old bat started fuming, abandoned her lane and trotted down to the express lane, nostrils flaring violently all the merry way. We concluded our transaction just as she finally made it to a register. We just had enough time to cut her off at the front door and made it out into the parking lot before her. But did I pretend that she was not there?

No, gentle reader, I smirked at her.

*It's probably the only place they see each other.

This weekend I did not die

In which your humble narrator describes the horrors of code compliance and the likelihood that it will kill you in your sleep.

I almost never die on the weekend, and this past one was no exception, but it I did come closer to death than usual.

Regular readers (hi to all three of you!) will remember my water heater woes from a few weeks back in which we learned that we needed to have an expensive metal liner shoved down our chimney for many hundreds of dollars, so that we would not die of carbon monoxide poisoning. Last Thursday, after most of the coldest, wettest October in Minnesota that I can remember had passed, the chimney guy (I'll call him "Ron" because that's his name) came with his chimney helper (I refrained from referring to him as the "elf.") to put in the new liner. They worked for about three hours, finished up and went away. Hooray!

Then it warmed up, which was nice. So the furnace didn't really run Friday or Saturday. Then it got cold again, and since we don't like freezing it started kicking on Sunday. Everybody was sort of crabby and disagreeable all day. I had a headache that wouldn't go away, even though it never threatened to blossom into migraine-awfulness. It was just sort of a crappy day all the way around.

Then on Monday I woke up with a headache again. I went down to the basement to start one of 37 loads of laundry that needs to be done weekly and noticed that the basement was humid, smelly and was making me feel woozy. Also, the furnace was overheating and blowing stinky air out of the intake vent. Then I went outside and noticed that there was no smoke coming from the chimney. Then I turned the furnace off and opened a lot of windows and called Ron. Ron was there within a half an hour, and seemed more freaked out than I was. I sort of assume basic human decency coupled with visions of lawsuits danced in his head. I figured that since we hadn't already expired that we were probably all good at this point.

Anyway, he fixed it within about 3 hours. (Which is when my headache went away too!) Apparently a piece of the new liner came loose and blocked the furnace exhaust entrance to the flue, causing the furnace to backdraft into the house.

I'd just like to point out that the old, non-code-compliant, ostensibly dangerous chimney liner never tried to kill us all in our sleep.