Scarlet Letters

First, thank you to all four million of you who wished me a happy birthday. I tried to respond to each message, but Facebook may have had apoplexy. Y'all sure make me feel loved. To reiterate what I said on Facebook: I want more birthdays for everyone. In lieu of gifts, please consider donating to my Relay for Life efforts. I have lost two more friends to cancer in 2018, not including Jim's father, who had multiple health problems. It's only March. Click here if you wish to donate.  (Of course, those of you who already sent gifts? Thank you, too!) I had a pleasant birthday with my menfolk. Boy actually managed to be off work for a change. We had lunch at Tucano's, one of our favorite special-occasion places, and saw A Wrinkle in Time  at the fancy-schmancy theater with the recliner seats. I tell you, I could get used to that. Then we went shopping and I bought a silly amount of chocolate for myself. And a shower curtain, because I'm exciting like that. The fin...

Thursday was a day off work, because I needed to get some work done on the car. It needed an oil change and tire rotation, plus it was time for the 48-month checkup and I was getting some funky error warnings on the dashboard. So I took the day to pile all those appointments on one day. First stop was CarZeus, the God of Automotives. I have written about CarZeus before , both the original CarZeus (long retired) and the current master of cars, who bought the business from him years ago. Both CarZeus I and II have kept a variety of sorry-ass Detroit iron rolling for me, quoted me fair prices, gotten the work done quickly, never upsold me on shit I don't need, and have never tacked on what I call the Female Surcharge: the strangely higher price we seem to get quoted when it's me doing the discussion, with bonus condescension because we little females don't know cars and frequent attempts to upsell.* I've been a longtime customer, going back to my dilapidated Chevy and ...

Or, why I have three more gray hairs and another few hours chopped off my life. You're gonna see the end of this one coming. As the work day wound to a close, Jim texted me that The Amazing Claire was off work today. Since she is his carpool ride, he needed the car to get home at 2 a.m. This meant a side trip to the university on my way home, so Jim would take his dinner break and ride home with me, drop me off and take the car back to the university. I texted the Spawn and told him I'd be picking him up at Founders Hall tonight instead of the Vadalabene Center where I usually retrieve him. Uh, last night. Because by the time you read this it'll be tomorrow. Post-dated blogs play merry havoc on the old verb tenses. Spawn replied that he had a ride home, so not to worry about him. I said that was fine, but try not to be out too late. I retrieved Jim, who was bearing two leftover pizzas to throw at Spawn because we can never have too much food to throw at the Spawn an...

I haven't blogged in a while, because May was a hell of a month. There was the Kentucky signing, the 175th anniversary of my church, a health issue that turned out okay, Jim's 50th birthday, Ian's graduation, the big barbecue celebration, Relay for Life, Ian's orchestra trip to Florida and now off to be a camp staffer for the Boy Scouts this summer. Frankly, I was too damn busy to blog. So I planned to come back to blogging with some profound statements about the big milestones we achieved in the last month. Emotions surrounding the graduation of my son, something profound about Jim's birthday, my elation at actually meeting our Relay goal despite my minimal effort this year, pictures from the family gatherings. Instead, I damn near killed my fool self today, so you get that instead. Our refrigerator door rail pops free all the time, and when it does, it spills condiments and bottles all over the floor. I did a grocery run after work, and I was putting away th...

It was a lovely, warm weekend here in the Midwest, so naturally Donald-Smith-Gillentine Inc. spent it indoors. We had one of those lovely rare weekends where we had no obligations, but the far-less-rare status of no money. We spent all the funmoney this month on our Valentine's Day dinner (1808 Chophouse, and man, that was gooooood). So we tackled two long-delayed projects: my office and the Boy's room. Now, he's a teenage boy. I don't expect pin-straight neatness. The only young male I ever knew who could keep a room tidy was my friend Stephen, and we've all agreed he's a mutant. At one point in Boy's youth, I turned to a fellow choir member in frustration for advice. His children are brilliant, personable, super-achievers, poster children for the new millennium. ME: Tom, it's all agreed you raised the perfect kids. TOM: ... okay? ME: You did this! Successfully! So please, share the secret: How did you get them to clean their rooms? TOM: We did...

They say you'll probably spend your whole year mostly doing what you do on New Year's Day. If so, I'm going to spend 2017 snuggled with my family, napping, cooking experimental dishes, drinking tasty-yet-cheap wine, and ignoring the internet for the most part. That is just fine by me. As I write this, Boy has come home from work, rested, and is now going for a jog at dusk because he is a space alien. (Actually, because he had to miss the Resolution Run this morning in order to work at McDonald's, and I think he regrets it.) Man is running to the store for a few ingredients I somehow forgot, which boggles the mind considering how full the fridge is. We just finished watching Spotlight,  which Jim had not seen despite the two (2) formal events I've hosted featuring it. More movies pending as the lasagna bakes! And I am contemplating my year. I do an extensive list of New Year's Resolutions, because I don't see them as flighty wishes for the new year; I l...

CultureGeek post: A Year in Memoriam , remembering those we've lost in 2016. This took a while to compile.

For the second time, I've reserved a room in a Chicago library. Um, not me. The other me. I've often joked that I must be two people at any given time, because the ethical and practical restrictions of my job require a separation between Elizabeth-me and Reporter-me. My worlds do collide, but rarely. Most of the time, the author-editor-person is doing one thing while the reporter-ethicist is doing something else. I've sometimes referred to one as my evil twin. (Note: the author is the evil one.) But unless I've developed a serious psychological problem heretofore unknown to me, I am not reserving study rooms at a library in a Chicago suburb. However, someone is doing so with my name and email address. The first time this happened, I received the email notification while I was on the road in.... you know, I honestly don't remember. It might have been Nashville, or Atlanta, or Kansas City. I only remember because I was sitting in my hotel room when I called th...

... but there are a number of thoughts in this week's review of The Affair  over on CultureGeek that I think might be interested in those of you reading this blog. It seems like the show is trying to say things about the roles we play in our lives, about striving to be more than we are and our inevitable failures to live up to our own expectations or the expectations of others. This is where  The Affair  stops being a soap opera: while it is certainly melodramatic, it does not ascribe to a candy-coated happily-ever-after view of love or marriage or even sex. Even the layers have layers, and there is no one who does not end up trapped at some point or another.  The Affair  seems to say that more than money, status, education or circumstances of birth, it is those we love who trap us the most - and yet money, status, education and circumstances of birth play the vital parts in each person's life as it unfolds. There is no action without consequence. Go check...

One of the fun (?) things about doing the taxes: Finding out you made a smart choice. And I'm going to share this one in detail, because if my Facebook feed is any indication, some of you are considering the same choice. Here's how it worked out for us. In February of last year, Jim and I decided to cancel our cable. Now, that was a big thing for people who watch as much (too much!) television as we do. We're selective-ish about what we watch, but even with our standards, we follow a good many shows. I pick what I watch for CultureGeek, and we also have a necessity to keep up with science fiction and horror television for our respective writing careers. We were paying Charter for internet, landline and a full cable package. That was running us about $1740 a year, or $145 a month. For the record, when we dumped them, they were about to jack that up to $175 a month, or $2100 a year. We opted to keep the landline for emergencies and so that we have a SpamPhone - you know...

I have pretty much one inescapable talent: Choosing hobbies at which I suck. I love to hike. I am the world's slowest hiker, and was even before my health issues. I used to weight-train before the Knee Incident, but you'd better believe I'm not posting my lifts. We won't even get into my "dancing." I played the cello from second grade until midway through high school, and still have my cello (albeit in grave need of repair). I was a terrible cellist. I learned the basics of piano from my mother, a virtuoso classical pianist who has performed at Carnegie and Tanglewood. The apple fell very far from the tree. I like to do needlework, and color, and decorate cakes, and keep plants, and various crafty things that help keep Michaels in business. I suck at all of the above (and I'm so slow on needlework I still haven't gotten to Boy's Christmas stocking by age 17). I have the creative heart of an artist without the... what's the word... talen...

You're making my life difficult, and not in the usual leaf-on-the-wind manner. (Too soon! Too soon!) We're in the middle of a Buffy rewatch, which doesn't really count as a rewatch when Boy has never seen it. Well, technically that's not true. A few years ago I tried to introduce him to the ways of the Buffster, but it seems I tried a little too early. He couldn't relate to "high school as a metaphor for hell" when he hadn't been to high school. He gets it now. It was fairly simple up to the end of Season Three (which was just as awesome as I remember). But now we have the complication of Angel.  It's a good show as well - it had its stumbles, but it's a bit more mature, a bit less black-and-white with its morality and has some interesting and complex storylines. There's also mega crossovers. And this is where you're making my life difficult. How do we handle it? Do we watch all of Buffy  through (uck) Season Seven, or do we sto...

You must understand, Jim is working on a paper comparing sexuality and the vampire mythos in Bram Stoker's Dracula  and Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot.  King himself addressed this dichotomy in his 1980 nonfiction overview of the horror genre, Danse Macabre.  My copy has mysteriously vanished from my library ( damn you isabel)  and copies of older King books are silly expensive. After the write-in, I stopped by BSR Books in Granite City to chat with the owners and check on their stock of my books. I managed to buy only four books, which is restraint for me. At one point, I texted Jim. Fun times with autocorrect. ME: Warning. I am hanging out in a used bookstore. JIM: See if they have dance Mac. ME: ? JIM: The boom I bedbugs JIM: The book I need JIM: Dance macrame JIM: Shit you what I need for the book report JIM: Know what I need ME: This is going on Facebook. JIM: Nooooooo! Alas, they did not have Danse Macabre.  Or Dance Macrame,  a Stephen ...

Nope, not talking about the KKK "outing" that should have caused waves of shame across the internet, but the internet is shameless. Or my annual rant about Guy Fawkes masks, though I'll probably be unable to resist reposting my column yet again. Not even whining that Halloween is over and I am officially in Holiday Mode, but everyone else is still in Grinch Mode, so I have no one with whom to sing Christmas carols. No, I'm going to complain because my wrists hurt. Yeah, somebody toss a fiver to Joshua Hart with the X-ray eyes, because last week I gave in and went to the ortho clinic in Chesterfield. There is a tiny fracture in the right wrist and there is serious tendon damage in both, thanks to my graceful pratfall in front of the Doubletree Hotel during Archon. So I'm supposed to spend four to six weeks in matching wrist braces and undergo physical therapy twice a week. There are a few problems with this plan. One: I find it damn near impossible to type in...

This is one of those "hell weeks" when we have something going on every. single. night. Tonight Boy is knocking on doors to sell popcorn. Which is due... today. It's only half his fault. He missed a meeting or two when I was on tour, because Jim works nights and neither of them thought to arrange his transportation to and from meetings. Then he sort of forgot that "gee, it's fall, shouldn't I be selling Boy Scout popcorn?" I looked at the calendar and saw "popcorn forms due" for today, which means he is scrambling to get some sales before his Scout meeting, where they will be untangling - er, sorting - Christmas lights for the city of Collinsville and turn in their popcorn forms. Note: Family and friends, if you would like to buy popcorn from Ian, you can still do so online. You can go to the Trail's End website , enter ZIP code 62025 and select Ian S - Troop 1031 St. Andrew's Episcopal Edwardsville as the Scout you would like to s...

I've been a loyal TiVo customer since The Leprechauns first sent me one. Waaaaaay back in 2005 or so, a TiVo with a year's service prepaid arrived on my doorstep shortly before my birthday. The card was signed only, "The Leprechauns." I was doing a lot more with CultureGeek back then, since it was part of my day job. When the column was canceled, I relaunched it independently. The upside was that I got to say "piece of shit" in my reviews. The downside was that I couldn't use work time for writing reviews anymore, which is why I go waaaaaay too long between posts. There are only so many hours in the day, and I spin too many plates as it is. I always assumed the Leprechauns were friends who were fond of the column and wanted to assist me in finding stuff to review. I never wanted to know, frankly; some things should stay secret. It was immensely helpful in that regard, and I became a loyal TiVo customer - even converted my long-resistant dad to the wo...

A pleasant surprise today as Boy and I exited the local grocery store: a clerk reached out and handed me a small bouquet of flowers. "Free today, ma'am," she said, smiling. I am a sucker for cut flowers. I prefer the live ones, but they don't stay that way around me. I'm working on it. Man tends to mock me about this, because he likes to play fast and loose with his life. These were exceptionally bright daisies, in colors practically neon-strong that rarely occur in nature - at least in daisies. I knew they'd been dyed, which I usually try to avoid, but hey - free. The white and red roses adorning my living room had become desiccated corpses by now, and I lacked the cash to replace them with something more pseudo-alive. After putting the groceries away, I carried the dried-out roses to the sort-of compost pile in the yard, behind the trees. I cleaned the wedding vase and filled it with water and the little packet of preservative that came with the daisie...

Let me preface this by saying that snarky or even well-meaning comments about Apple really will not be welcome at this time. I can't believe how often I have to say this, but seriously, guys. I am quite stupid. It's not like I don't know the golden rule of computers: Thou Shalt Back Up. I'm actually quite good about it, usually. My mobile devices back up daily to the cloud. My laptop backs up to an external drive I keep on my desk. It isn't wireless, so I had to remember to physically plug in my laptop for backing up, but it works. Or it did. A few months ago, my external drive went kablooey. That's a technical term. We planned to replace it, but we were stony broke that month - like, tuna and macaroni broke. We also knew that the house wifi router was three years old and getting twitchy. So we discussed it, and decided that we would kill two birds with one expensive stone. The Airport Time Capsule is an awesome dual-band router and a 3TB wireles...

The Good • Boy's theatrical debut was delightful fun, and he had a smashing time. I had not seen the scaled-down community theater version of Les Miserables before, and as my dad put it, the very young, energetic cast was obviously giving it absolutely everything they had. Boy was terrific as an ensemble player. He was a disturbingly convincing drunk, which means he's seen too many cons, and died most heroically on the barricade. (Spoilers!) I was not prepared for it to be so stressful! I was much more nervous than he was, hoping nothing went wrong. My stomach was in knots! But I was even less prepared for my emotional reaction to seeing Boy on the stage. The theater meant a great deal to me as a young woman, and I have never once regretted my decision to study it. I also have not regretted my decision to give it up, but I was overwhelmed by emotion when I saw Boy up on the stage obviously having so much fun "At the End of the Day." • The Author Fair went off ni...

I expended all my rants earlier. I'm too tired for any more. Instead, you get a cross-section of my life. • This week is shaping up to be Hell Week. We get these from time to time here at Donald Smith Gillentine Inc., and usually it's those weeks when I have meetings every night after work. For once it's not me. This week is Boy's final dress rehearsals for Les Miserables. He is working hard, five or six hours a night after school AND after math tutoring, without complaint. Boy has never been one for a strong work ethic, so to speak, so I am pretty impressed with him. Even if he has broken his glasses yet again. Man is gearing up for finals and as usual is apoplectic. The folks are coming this weekend, so I am attempting to clean up the house, in between all the other nonsense. Of course the play falls on finals weekend and  the Author Fair/Relay Cafe and  Relay Sunday, because that's how we roll, and we have Cardinals tickets and  will likely miss the baby ...