Beware of free donuts.

I just want to clarify my position on superfluous touching. Many of you have expressed concern for my poor husband. Well, he isn't suffering, believe me. Just because I'm not some leech who likes to have constant physical contact with "my man" doesn't mean that I don't approve of touching at appropriate times.

Okay, now I sound like a member of the "touch police". I assure you...just because I have issues with touching doesn't mean I have issues with affection. I just prefer to have people show me affection verbally. What's wrong with that? It's not like I'm walking around with Purell Hand Sanitizer in my back pocket all the time just waiting to go all Monk on your ass. I just don't see the point in having to handle others.

For example...I attend a neighborhood Bible Study. You see, one of my neighbors is a pastor and so he started this a couple of years ago in an attempt to get to know people in the neighborhood better. (You'd think with all these Bible Studies I attend I would be more pious. Well...)Anyway, there is this one couple in the study (that have college age kids for crying out loud) and they are always touching each other. He's rubbing her calf or she's running her fingers up and down his arm or she's resting her hand on his thigh. Come on! It's Bible Study...give it a rest. It reminds me of when I was in high school and the couples who were dating were always meeting up in the hall between classes to make out. Why didn't they just pee on each other to mark their territory? I never really dated anyone from my high school (I was into older guys. I didn't want hallway make-out sessions to interfere with my studies.) therefore earning the reputation of being either a lesbian or an ice queen. I never did anything to refute either of these, but if I had to choose one to deny it would have definitely been ice queen. If everyone thought I was a lesbian then no one would have EVER bothered me. That would have been fabulous. As it was, the guys preferred to think I was really just waiting for the right man to come along so they bugged me constantly. As if any of them were even remotely "the right man".

Anyway, back to Mr. and Mrs. Toucher...it's almost like they are playing a game in which if they lose physical contact with each other they lose. I don't get it. I thought wedding bands proved you were committed, not stroking. In any case, all the touching makes me uncomfortable. It's like my friend from Wales always says, "There's a time and a place for that." (When she said that she was talking about this woman in our weight lifting class who wears the absolute shortest, tightest shorts to class, and then works out directly in front of us. Keep in mind that in this class we do a lot of squatting and bending over, so imagine our view. But, neither of us can seem to stop looking at her! We are the kind of people that would pay money to go to a freak show but never tell anyone. In any case, when we leave class we always talk about her. "Why would she wear those ?" "Who is she trying to impress?" and then my friend says, "There's a time and a place for that." Ok, when exactly is that time and where is the place? I actually asked her that exact question once after she had said that phrase about this woman for the 3rd or 4th time. She said, "I don't know. That's just what we always say in Wales." Not having ever been to Wales I am just going to have to take that on faith.)

So, I guess the bottom line is that it is not just people touching me that I have an issue with...I also have issues with people touching each other. Maybe I'm more screwed up than I originally thought. You know what, though? I don't care. Recently I went to a Youth Specialties seminar about how to recognize and help kids at risk in your youth group. (They mean kids who are cutting, or abusing alcohol or drugs, or who has a tough home life...stuff like that.) Anyway, it is a big Christian group and at the end of this incredible day of hearing about how much kids need strong youth leaders they told each group of folks who were attending together to come up to the front and get some aromatic oil and we were to stand in a circle and anoint each other with oil and pray for the person we were anointing so they could go forth and be helpful to kids. What the..??!?!? I turned to my friend next to me and said, "I'm not doing this. I have to go to the bathroom." She said, "Oh yes you are. Stay put." I said, "No. I'm sick. I'm gonna puke." She said, "Shut up. No you're not. You're going to do this."

Well, I really did feel sick. You see, they had boxes and boxes of free doughnuts in the hall and I ate three really, really fast so no one would see how many I was eating. So between the deep fat fried dough balls in my stomach and the idea of someone putting oil on my forehead, puking was a definite possibility.

In the end, I stayed and anointed someone and was anointed. It was horrible. I know these sorts of gestures are helpful to some people, but I don't really see how. I hope the girl I anointed didn't see me shudder and reach for the hand sanitizer as soon as we were done. I think that may have taken away from the experience for her. And, for some reason, when they said we were going to anoint each other with fragrant oil I was thinking it was going to be garlic or rosemary infused olive oil or something. I suppose someone who got massages and stuff would have known better, but I associate oil with cooking, so the idea of having someone rub some on my head was totally disgusting. Plus, I was afraid it was going to make me break out. I mean, who puts OIL on their face? That's just stupid. And, being the control freak that I am, when the person who was praying for and anointing me was just about to put the sign of the cross on my forehead with the oil I interrupted her blessing and asked her if she could just wipe some of the oil off her fingers first because I didn't want to be all shiny.

I'm like Francis in the movie "Stripes". Remember his tirade to his fellow army boot camp buddies? Don't call me Francis, don't touch my stuff and don't touch me. Then everything will be fine.

Thank God for other people's families.

I went to the best family reunion a week ago. No, it wasn't my family or even my husband's family...it was my dearest friend's family. I only got invited because I was taking care of her kids for a couple of days and the reunion was where I was to return them. Thank God for that! It was a riot. First of all let me tell you that it was a huge Italian family reunion. When I walked in with my two blond children I knew that we weren't in Kansas anymore. There was a lot of dark hair and black eyeliner. A woman about my age came up to me with a bunch of name tags and instructed me not only to put my name on it but what my connection to the family was. Then she looked me up and down and walked away shaking her head. Yep. There was no doubt that I was not one of them. The rest of the night people kept looking for my name-tag so they could see what the hell my connection was but I never put the stupid thing on. I mean, we all know how I feel about name tags!

Luckily, my friend found me right away. After she hugged me and kissed me on both cheeks she said, "Did you get something to drink yet?" and led me off to the bar. Now, this reunion was being held in the American Legion Hall and the cute little American Legion guys were manning the bar (which was a cash bar, by the way). However, my friend walked me right past the bar to a table set up in the corner with (I'm not kidding you) 45 bottles of wine on it and cases of wine on the floor to replenish the bottles when they were empty. I'm sure her father provided all the wine he thought his huge Italian family could drink because he's a wine importer. I don't think the American Legion guys did much but open cans of Sprite all night for the kids. The funny thing was, the men at the reunion would go pour themselves a free glass of wine and then go sit at the bar and talk to the bartenders. I'm telling you, this was the friendliest bunch of people! The bartenders didn't seem to mind at all because whenever some kid came up for a can of pop their parents would tip them $5 or so.

Anyway, once I had a glass of wine in my hand my friend led me around so I could say hello to everyone. I have been at a lot of her family parties, so I knew a fair amount of people, which meant I was in for a lot of hugging and kissing. Now, you need to keep in mind that I am SOOOO not a huggy-kissy kind of gal. I don't really like superfluous touching of any kind. No massages, or manicures or pedicures for me. When I get my hair cut I tell the shampoo lady that I will tip her two bucks if she does the regular wash, condition and scalp massage thing, but I will tip her five bucks if she can manage to wash and condition my hair without making contact with my scalp at all. At church after we sing the first hymn we always have that moment where we greet others with a handshake or whatever. You know what I mean...everyone turns to whoever is sitting next to them or behind them and shakes their hand or gives them a little embrace. I hate that part of the service. When we get to the last verse of the hymn we are singing right before that greeting time I get such a stomach ache. Sometimes I just grin and bear it, but lots of times I leave and go to the bathroom and come back AFTER the touching is over.

So, my friend is taking me around to all the people I sort-of know and some that I don't know at all and they all give me the double cheek kiss as a greeting. My family is not huggy-kissy either. If I would have been at my family reunion everyone would have been huddled together with their immediate family not talking to anyone else in the room. AND, if anyone approached our little family group my mother would probably warn us not to tell them anything. My family is very clannish and private and they all want to make the others believe they haven't got any problems at all. On the other hand at this family reunion I heard one woman saying to someone else, "Why does my son always pick the crazies? The last girl he dated was horrible and this one...pah! She dresses like that to go to HIS family's reunion?" Then the woman she was talking to said, "I heard she's bi polar and that she kicked her lawyer husband out of the house when she met your son. Who does that?"

Once I got done with the meet and greet with all the kissing and stuff I needed more wine. LOTS more wine. That's where I ran into my friend's father who hugged and kissed me (which was actually OK with me because he's such a big teddy bear of a guy it seems natural) and then asked me, "Did you eat?" I told him I was going to go eat as soon as I got more wine and he said, "Good. Good." Then someone else came up to him to say hello and he kissed them and asked, "Did you eat?" When my husband finally arrived (he was at a meeting and had to meet me and the kids there later) he said hello to my friend's father who shook his hand and asked, "Did you eat?" (By the way, my husband's name is Tony. He is a blond Iowa boy, but every time I would say something to someone about my husband Tony they would hopefully say, "Oh! Tony...is he Italian?" Then they would meet him and they would look down, shake their heads and wonder why his name was Tony. What a tease!)

The food was unbelievable. Pizzas, pastas, meatballs, chicken, Italian beef and sausage and peppers...I could go on and on. The sweets table was as big as the regular food table. It was like eating at the enchanted Italian castle too because no matter how many people went through the food line the dishes of food were always full! Remember that when I was growing up my mother never kept extra food in the house. To this day she goes to the grocery store every day to get what she needs for the day. For dinner, there was only enough for our family to eat...nothing extra and no second helpings. So, to be at this incredible buffet was almost more than I could handle. I had EVERYTHING. Then I went and sat down at one of the tables to enjoy this 15 pound plate of food. Well, the place I sat was the perfect place to see and hear people when they entered the room and saw someone they knew. I never heard the phrase, "How you doin' ?" so many times. The first time I heard someone say it I laughed because it's such a stereotype of Italian guys. However, after hearing it upwards of 50 times in a half-hour I no longer believe it to be a stereotype. It is a fact. Italian guys always greet each other with, "How you doin' ?"

After eating I looked around and didn't see my friend or my kids or anyone I knew, so I walked outside thinking they might be out there since my friend smokes and this was a non-smoking building. Well, it turns out that most of the reunion was now taking place in the parking lot. I'm telling you, there were people with coolers full of booze in their trunks. One guy was passing out cigars. The kids were running around playing. Someone had set up a beanbag toss game. Everyone (except the kids) was smoking. It was hilarious. I ran into my friend's sister who said, "I have a lot of friends who live around here. I already told them if they see a bunch of people hanging around wearing black not to worry because it's just my family reunion." At one point the DJ sent someone from the American Legion outside to beg people to come in and dance because there were only two kids on the dance floor and the only other people in the room were the 96 year old gramma and a few people who literally couldn't walk.

Right before we (reluctantly) left, everyone did come inside and sing Happy Birthday to the 96 year old gramma who they all call NaNa. (I always say it wrong and it infuriates my friend. I say NaNa like it rhymes with banana and it's really pronounced Nah-Nah. Honest to God, I have known these people for 15 years and I just can't seem to ever say it right. She also gets pissed at me when I try to say the word "ricotta" (as in cheese). I have to constantly remind her that I'm Irish!) So 200 people are singing Happy Birthday to this woman and she starts to cry. She's not even my NaNa and I started to cry (It's because I'm Irish. The never-ending glass of wine didn't hurt either). It was just beautiful. She was so touched. And this woman is not some feeble little 96 year old either. She is sharp as a tack. I felt so lucky to be there and see this! Too bad it wasn't my family...

The devil made me do it...

You know how many weeks are left in my Bible Study? Me neither because I quit!! Here's how it all happened...two weeks ago the kids were out of school on Thursday and Friday for Teacher Institute Days (I have no idea what the teachers do on those days, but I think it must involve alcohol. It certainly would if I had to teach all those rotten kids.) So, I emailed my discussion leader and told her that I couldn't come to Bible Study because the kids were home from school and I just couldn't bear to leave them. So I skipped Bible Study and went and worked out at the Y instead. (Couldn't bear to leave my kids??! Give me a break.) I got an email in return that told me to pray about skipping Bible Study and maybe finding play dates for the kids so that I could attend. God really wanted me to come to Bible Study. Well, I felt slightly guilty after reading this, but not enough to go to Bible Study. You see, every time I thought about it I would picture the women in my discussion group sitting around talking about being submissive to their husbands and telling me that the reason I didn't like all the rules was because Satan had a hold of me and was trying to get me to stop coming to Bible Study. Honestly. Now, I know that maybe Satan had something to do with some of the crap I did in college (which I feel bad about now, but really enjoyed in the moment) but I seriously doubted that Satan was the reason I hated to wear that retarded name-tag.

Anyway, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn't like anyone in my discussion group. There is this one woman in there that always wears pointy shoes and full makeup and sits there all self-righteous with her gold embossed King James version and makes us all feel stupid. The rest of us all have study Bibles with notes on each page to help us understand what the heck is going on but she's got this King James with no notes and she is always correcting the rest of us on our interpretations of scripture. Now, keep in mind that one of the stupid rules of the Bible Study is that we aren't supposed to use the Notes in our Bibles to help us understand what the scripture says; we are to ignore them and come up with our own answers. Please! That's like telling a 6th grader that even though the answers are in the back of the Math book you aren't to look at them when you do your homework. (This was actually the case in my 9th grade Algebra class. I looked at them each and every time I did my homework. My friends did too. They all would purposely get one answer wrong so it looked like they didn't cheat, but I said, "Screw that!" and got 100% every time. I mean, wasn't that the purpose of cheating in the first place?) Anyway, so here is Miss Pointy-Shoe Smarty Pants telling us that our interpretations were all wrong and correcting us and then having our discussion leader agree with her and thank her for her answer! It made me mad because I knew my interpretation wasn't wrong...I copied the answer right out of the margin notes for crying out loud! So, strike one for her and her King James version. The other thing I couldn't stand about her was how she would look everyone up and down when they were talking in the group and then smiling smugly like we were stupid little children that she was Christian enough to tolerate. I just wanted to beat her with her pointy little shoes.

The other woman in the group that just made my butt cheeks clench was this woman in her early 50's who was so sad for all her family members who hadn't found Jesus she just could barely talk about it. She always requested that we pray for Cousin George who just needed to "find Jesus" or brother Bob who hadn't yet "seen the light". She was also the one who told me that the reason I hated the rule about not wearing perfume was because Satan was working inside me. I was tempted to write "666" on my inner arm with a black Sharpie and casually push my sleeves up one day when I was sitting next to her. Bet that would have made her fall to her knees and speak in tongues. She always wore clothes that were so tragically hip too. Ugg boots and fur lined vests and square green glasses that she took out of a Prada glasses case every time she had to read one of her answers from the work-sheet. BARF!

I'm sure that some of the other women in the group didn't like these two either. I mean, we all nodded and shook our heads in agreement every time "Susie King James" corrected us and we all piously vowed to pray for Miss Tragically Hip's misguided family members, but we all secretly loathed them both...I just know it. I mean, no one is that full of the love of Jesus right? I know that Jesus would want me to pray for them and love them, etc. but their holier than everyone else attitude got to me! They always made me feel like I was less than a good Christian just because I wasn't in agony over all the people I couldn't convert or because I couldn't figure out what Paul was talking about in Romans without the Cliff Notes. (By the way, I found out that Pointy Shoe girl has a Master's Degree in Theology. How dare she try to pass herself off as some genius house-wife who just understood the Bible better than everyone else!)

Bottom line, I enjoyed my morning off from Bible Study SO MUCH that I decided to make skipping it a regular thing. I emailed my discussion leader and told her that I wouldn't be back. She emailed me back and told me to pray about this decision and that I was welcome back anytime. She also told me what a good attendance taker I was! No kidding. Suffice it to say that I am pretty sure I am a fixture on the Bible Study prayer list. Poor Carolyn. Looks like Satan wins this time!!

Where have you been??

I was driving Bronte home from a birthday party last Saturday when I saw the perfect man. Seriously. I looked in my rear-view mirror and there he was in the car behind me. I can't even tell you what he looked like or what kind of car he was driving but he immediately became my hero. You know why? He was multi-tasking, which is something most men are completely incapable of. We were at a red light and he was taking advantage of this moment of sitting still to (and I kid you not here) Swiffer his dashboard. And he was talking on his cell-phone at the same time! Not only that, he was obviously keeping track of what was going on around him because he honked his horn at me when the light turned green. (I missed the light turning green because I was completely mesmerized by the sight of a man voluntarily cleaning something. I still get the chills thinking about it.)

Now, I realize that this man is probably some kind of neat-freakish controlling asshole, but for that moment he looked pretty darn good to me. Did I question why anyone would just happen to have a Swiffer Duster sitting in his car on a Saturday afternoon? No, but now that I think about it, it is kind of weird...especially for a guy. My husband doesn't even know what a Swiffer Duster is. If he saw one in his car he would just say, "What the hell is this?" as he threw it on the passenger side floor with his 12 coffee cups, baseball spikes, blue bath towel and empty cigarette packs.

So, now I am thinking about putting a Swiffer Duster in my car so I can take advantage of all the red lights I hit. I am thinking that Swiffer ought to start a new marketing campaign in which they extol the benefits of keeping a Swiffer Duster in your car. "You can clean your dashboard with it one minute and smack your kids in the backseat with it the next!!" (I actually know someone who keeps a fly-swatter in their car so that when their kids start bickering in the back seat she can swat them without even turning around. Brilliant!! I also heard about a woman who kept a wooden spoon in her purse so that she could hit her kids on the head with it whenever they were smarting off. Apparently she used it often too because it got to the point that all she had to do was open her purse and show her kids the spoon and they would immediately start behaving. Only an Italian woman would think of that.)

So, where do you suppose the guy with the Swiffer was going on a Saturday afternoon? To the car wash to vacuum his floor mats? To Jewel to get more Swiffer refills? My guess is that he was on his way to see his boyfriend because any man who keeps a Swiffer Duster in his car has got to be gay.