Fraught With Failure

Today, I celebrate an old friend. It wasn't until recently that I realized just how much he prepared me for how life would be as an adult. As I have reflected on his experience many times lately, I've found, that in many ways, his life is a great representation of the human experience. And although on the outside, his life may seem to be a constant succession of failures, I believe that on the inside he teaches us what life is really all about. The friend? Wyle. E. Coyote.

As a young kid, I grew up watching LOONEY TUNES. It was the stuff that lazy, Saturday mornings were made of.  Wyle. E. Coyote was my favorite.  I don't know how many times I watched this guy fall, smashed, explode, sink, run-over by trucks and otherwise obliterated. I literally stopped counting after several hundred lives. And he didn't just die quietly; he went down in howling, burning misery.

And yet, sure enough, after each unsuccessful attempt to capture that blasted road runner, he always ended up, back in his cave, concocting a new plan. His keen mind focused on his all-important goal, and with a little help from the A.C.M.E. company, a new plan would arise like a phoenix from the ashes. Moments later, he would be back out on the road, seeing that new plan to come to fruition. And for a moment, just the smallest moment, he would catch a glimpse of glory! He could fly! And during that small sliver of time, he could actually taste just how sweet success would be!

That was usually RIGHT before he crashed and burned and was left as roadkill on the hot, desert ground.

The most note-worthy thing about Wyle E. Coyote is that after being shot down so many times, (literally), he still got up. Defying the odds by some gift of his intrinsic nature, he was able to recapture that gleam in his eye and the thirst for  his only ambition--Roast Road Runner.

I personally take a lot of strength from a guy like Wyle E.. Our lives run parallel to each other. Each of my days is fraught with many instances of failure: the times I let my temper get the better of me, forget about something or someone important, lose sight of the big picture, run off my big mouth, etc..  There is no end to the many things I do during the day to detonate the worthy goals I attempt to accomplish. Were I to accept defeat, I would go down in wrecking, burning flames. But I never say never! Sure, there are many times during the days and weeks that things don't go the way I had planned. Unforseen obstacles arise (like a giant truck barreling down the freeway), or there are elements that I just didn't plan for, (like the giant cliff looming in front of my face), or things I just failed to see, (like the huge boulder looming over my head when I look up). And just like Coyote, these things come between me and success.

But there are also fabulous glimpses of the glory--those few minutes or seconds of the day or week, when I really feel the sensation of perhaps, truly beginning to fly. And during that microscopic moment, the panorama becomes truly breathtaking. There really isn't a sensation like it in the world.  Pure bliss. And then, just like my canine friend, that surreal moment ends and punctuated with a crash. KABOOM!

Luckily for all of us, humans and coyotes alike, life isn't about the number of times you fall, explode or crash. It's about the number of times you get up afterward. When I'm on the ground, after I have just been run over, exploded, crashed, kicked down or all of the above, I think about my friend and a smile comes to my face. Slowly, gradually, the gleam in my eyes returns. Eventually, I get up, brush the dirt off and start again. (Or go to bed and at least resolve to start fresh tomorrow). In the end, it doesn't matter to me if it takes a batman suit, a canvas painted like a canyon tunnel, or a whole box of ACME explosives. What matters is that somehow, somewhere, I eventually cross that ever-elusive finish line.

I haven't done it yet. But I've had glimpses. And they alone are worth staying in the fight. At the very least, I know that the journey there will be one amazing road.  I want you there too.  You watch, we'll make it.  And there, at the finish line, coyote and I will greet you.  And we will be serving up huge, delicious bowls of "Road Runner Stew." Trust me.  Victory is going to be delicious!

It's All Angles Now

As a young mother, I always looked forward to snuggling up with my kids. Something about those chubby thighs and squishy biceps just made me want to squeeze! Cuddling up on the couch to watch the latest Disney movie for the 200th time was always a pleasure if there was a child on my lap with his/her head snuggled right below my chin. Those were the "oasis" moments that made all of the other hysteria that accompanied raising young children worthwhile.

On the rare occasion, when I was able to get away for a few days, I found that more than anything, I missed the tactile experience of holding my kids. This surprised me because I thought I would miss how the looks on their faces or the sounds they would make. But, no. I always missed knowing exactly how they felt in my arms.

Nowadays, the landscape is changing. This morning as I snuggled both of my girls in the recliner, I noticed how markedly their bodies have changed. The soft curves and padding have now been replaced with long, acute angles and lines. All I could think is, "It's all angles!" The soft tissue that once graced my ample thighs is now hard, lean muscle. The chubby thighs are now bony bums.  The bodies that once fit so perfectly in my arms or under my chin are now much too long for either. Instead of holding babies, I feel as if I'm holding life-size Tinker Toys. Carrying a child to bed now not only involves a great amount of strength but also Tetris-like puzzle solving skills--"How do I get this long angular body down this hall and then maneuvered through a doorway?!" Watching my babes sleeping, I wonder who comes in each night and stretches those bodies?! Even my baby is starting to fill up the bed. The geometry of motherhood has definitely changed.

Don't get me wrong. I love the stage of life that I'm at. The perks at this stage of motherhood are pretty great. I do NOT miss changing diapers, lugging huge baby bags around, back-breaking car seats, puke, poop, pee, crying, feedings, toting cheerios and discovering long-lost, sippy cups that were once filled with milk that have now become toxic. But I DO miss those soft, little limbs!  There's nothing like them.

Probability shows me that my days of being able to savor these little slices of heaven, angular or not, are on the downward slope.  So, no matter how long your list of to-do's is today, prioritize this one. Take a moment to cradle the little, or not so little, ones in your arms. Human Tinker-Toys or angel, baby fat, these days are numbered. At the very least, let's make 'em count. 

It's a Marshmallow World...EVERYDAY!

As I sifted through my cupboards this morning, in search of a yummy fix, my eyes lit up when they rested upon a somewhat expired jar of marshmallow creme. As I stuck my finger in and wrapped it around that celestial goodness, I knew exactly what I should write about. Today, I would like to pay homage to one of the greatest culinary masterpieces of all time--the marshmallow.

My love of this creamy, cloudy confection goes way back. One beautiful, afternoon, when I was a kindergartener, my brothers approached me and asked if I would to marry our next-door neighbor, Greg Hannig. Most certainly not! However, after several hours of negotiations on that seemingly, long, Saturday afternoon, they finally discovered the weakness of my five-year-old-heart. Seven, large marshmallows later, the fall nuptials were finally allowed to proceed. You may be thinking that seven, large marshmallows is hardly a comparable sum for a young lady's heart, but at the time, I remember feeling positive that I got the better end of the deal. I also remember watching "Ghostbusters" as a young child and wishing desperately that I could have been a resident of NYC during the demise of the Stay-Puffed Marshmallow man. Oh to have been a kid on the streets during that cornucopia of goodness!

Since those younger years, my mania has only increased. The advent of the PEEP was a heralded moment in my life. Not only were these lovely creatures MADE of marshmallow, additionally, the had been completely encrusted with bright, colored sugar! To the young, sweet-obsessed mind, there could be nothing greater! To this day, I still get giddy when I walk into any store front and see a new flat of rainbow-colored confections brought out at the beginning of each holiday.

Now a word about Peeps and marshmallows in general. To partake of a fresh marshmallow is something wonderful. However, to partake of a marshmallow or Peep, or even a jar of marshmallow creme that has been carefully and thoughtfully aged is an experience bordering on Nirvana. Like any great wine, a great marshmallow must pass through the rigors of a carefully crafted aging process. The packaging of all peeps should be pierced and left to age for 3-7 days (depending on your climate). A bag of marshmallows may take double or triple that time, but an opened bag of marshmallows, left to oxidize to create that chewy, delicious shell is the ticket good times, anytime. However, I must insert a word of caution! Over-aging of any marshmallow product will result in a product that will just turn to ash-or more appropriately--rock, in your mouth. For further aging advice, write in.

Now, lets talk about the divinity that comes when marshmallow is paired with another ingredient. Marshmallows and chocolate. Need I say more? One of the greatest marriages of two culinary ingredients has to be that of chocolate and marshmallow. Any holiday, outing or experience can only be enhanced by a chocolate covered marshmallow. Want to know what to get your sweetheart for Christmas? Chocolate covered marshmallow Santas. What to buy for Valentines day? Chocolate covered marshmallow hearts. Halloween? Chocolate covered marshmallow pumpkins. You get my point. Any protestation of love can only be enhanced with the gift of chocolate-covered-marshmallow anything. It is the gift that keeps on giving.

And speaking of gifts, here's one for all of you who are reading this and salivating at this very moment. If you ever find yourself in Europe and within a 20 mile radius of any Pierre Marcolini chocolatier, you must go! As you approach this throne of decadent, chocolate idolatry, you will only need this one, key word to gain access to the veritable Olympus of marshmallowy, chocolate goodness. And this is my gift. "Guimauve". The french word for marshmallow. This two-syllable utterance will unlock the succulent gates of cocoa laced, marshmallowy paradise that you have only been able to conjure up in your dreams. Guard it well. This knowledge you now posses is no mere trinket!

For all of us who are well away from Paris or Brussels for now, (and I shed a tear for all of us!) I invite you to pop open a bag--be they Campfire, Kraft of what have you--and celebrate with me. On cocoa, covered with chocolate, or aged to perfection, let us all raise a glass, or a handful and pay tribute to this sweet alchemy of perfection: the marshmallow.

The Lovers, the Dreamers and Me

Okay, so maybe I'm a day or two past his birthday, but I couldn't let the opportunity pass to pay my respects to one of the most influential people in my life--Jim Henson.  As I grow older, I come to better understand the quiet, unique and wonderful influence this man and his Muppets had and continue to have on my life.

I didn't know it at the time, but Miss Piggy was the first feminist I ever met.  I was in 2nd Grade and how I loved the way she owned her swinehood!  She didn't take flack from anyone--especially from the sexist pig captain of "Swine Trek" or the overrated doctor from "Vetrinary Hospital" who had "gone to the dogs."  Beautiful became synonymous with big and bold.  And who can forget the karate chops? "HI-YAH!"  In the end, there was NO problem that a well placed, sequined heel in a karate chop couldn't solve.  These are my feminist roots.  Perhaps the "male tools" were born from the hours I spent watching Miss Piggy keep the men around her in line.  (And if you don't know what the "male tools" are, be glad.  Be very, VERY glad.)

Even more endearing to me, was the sweet, soft spot Miss Piggy had for the altruistic, skinny legged frog named Kermit, who was born from Jim's mothers old coat and a ping pong ball.  Piggy simply wouldn't or couldn't be piggy without this funny, good-natured frog as her foil.  In spite of the differences of being a frog and a pig, theirs was a love that knew no bounds.  "Never Before" became the anthem love song of a new age that expressed that even perfect love, like that spontaneously witnessed at the Miss Bogen County Beauty Contest, had complications, misunderstandings and incompatibilities.  Nevertheless, they made each other happy.  That always was the bottom line.

Kermit was also my first love.  Who wouldn't love him?!   His valiant efforts to embrace the chaos of "The Muppet Show," were always heralded with complete failure and yet he persevered.  Gonzo continued to blast out of cannons into unfortunate places in the studio.   Animal could not be contained and ate through the chair cushions.  Fozzy couldn't tell a good joke to save his life.  Guests stars were harrassed and harangued.  And on top of all of this, he was constantly being heckled by two geriatric men, looming in the balcony above him.  His was the job of the impossible--trying to contain life.

But to me, that was the greatest message of "The Muppet Show."  It's that life always went on.  That the chaos was, at best, barely manageable.  And that anything, if met with good friends and a lot of humor, was do-able.  It may come out as some motley ruin of what you expected it to be, but it DID COME OUT.  Kermit still went out at the beginning of every show, yelling with enthusiasm, and came out at the end, yelling with relief that it was done.  Somehow, the show still went on.  And in midst of that swirling, maddening chaos, there were moments of complete magic.  The moments couldn't be captured or bottled.  But they sprang up spontaneously: beautiful, hysterical and unimaginably great.  What a great metaphor for life.

Sitting down each evening in front of the TV at 6:30 pm during the 70's when "it's time to put on makeup" or "light the lights" may seem like a small thing.  But to me, it's been everything.  Like being in Honeydews lab with Beaker, it was the crazy explosion that lit up my life.  It was the magic--or at least the beginning of understanding what the magic felt and looked like.  It was laughter.  It was love.  It was life.

I may never have the chance to thank you personally Jim, but there is honestly almost never a day that goes by that I don't think of you and smile.  The precious gift of yourself that you shared with so many of us WAS the Rainbow Connection.   And all I can say, from the bottom of my Muppet loving heart, is thank you! "Kissy-kissy," always.

12-Year-Old Female Hormones--"I Don't Think We're in Kansas Anymore!"

Preface: I know I'm prone to hyperbole. Just roll with it.

 I'll admit. We are beginners to this adolescence thing. We're just starting in fact. Our oldest child, a girl, turned 12 this April and I have to say I've really enjoyed it for the most part. There are a lot of GREAT things about having a 12 year old in the house. However, this post is not about those things. This post is about the ONE THING that has the ability to trump and destroy all of the great virtues of having a great, twelve-year-old girl in the house. I call it, "Twelve-year-old Hormonal Mayhem," (a.k.a. "TAKE COVER AND RUN!)"

Now don't get me wrong. I remember quite well how it felt to be a twelve-year-old girl. I remember feeling outrageously wronged by my parents, overly self-conscious and crying inexplicably--a lot. And I'm the first in line to give our daughter my greatest and grandest sympathy at having to pass through this fiery, physical gauntlet of adolescence to adulthood. The fact that ANY of us survive this is truly a modern miracle!

That being said, being on the other side of the coin, as a parent, is like realizing that I just took up residence in Tornado Alley! Sudden, dramatic shifts in temperature and wind velocity are as common as house flies. Seemingly quiet, blue prairie skies can instantly turn into crashing, raging thunderstorms. At least with the weather, there are SOME indicators of a change. Not here. An innocuous dinner conversation can suddenly turn into a violent hailstorm that rips heads off and leaves body parts dangling by only a few tendons. When the sudden storm leaves the table, those of us left there stare incredulously at each other surveying the carnage and the aftermath. As the dust clears, we blink and wonder, "WHAT IN THE WORLD INSPIRED SUCH AN OUTPOURING OF WRATH!?" And that's just one dinner conversation! The litany of tempests continues at a breakneck pace! A simple comment about the encroaching time to depart for the bus will be met with a blast of wind that knocks everyone to the ground. Any type of discussion about trying to understand the "weather" will usually result in a punishing hurricane of wind, waves and water. A LOT of water! I hate to say it, but the weather pattern we are now in, if measured by emotional intensity, could rival Hurricane Katrina.

The even crazier thing is that after each storm and the resulting ruin, the atmosphere quiets and the true girl returns. The warm and sunny disposition shines, the melodic singing and dancing returns and the easy laughter is back. One wonders how something so sweet and beautiful could have been the cause of so much devastation! Jekyll and Hyde hardly seems to even capture the scope of it. We are DEFINITELY out of Kansas, and perhaps even OZ for that matter.

 I KNOW it gets better; the weather pattern quiets after a few years and becomes a little more manageable. But manageable is the key, operative word in that sentence. Let's face it. We'll never go back. The long, stretching, summer days of sunshine are gone. We will be subject to all four seasons now, and not in any particular order. Being a woman myself, I know there are times when I am still taken over by weather patterns that I don't understand. I've personally never made it back to Kansas since I was 12 years old. I'm not sure I ever will. (At this point, aren't you so JEALOUS of the fortunate men who get to live in this house?!)

So in the meantime, we'll just have to hunker down, buy a bunch of umbrellas, down coats and steel-toed shoes (probably at flipping Costco!) and try to weather the storms as best we can.  It's that, or I'm going to be relegated to writing the second part to Laura Ingalls Wilder's "The Long Winter." Of course, the title of my book would have to be more like "The Very Long and Apocalyptically Cold and Devastating Winter." And for all our sakes, lets just pray it doesn't come to that.

"I Owe My Soul to the Company Store."

I can't help but replay this old Johnny Cash tune in my mind as I make my way to Costco for the third time in six days. My mental state is such that I can't go anywhere else to get goods, simply because my mind will berate me for making such a foolish choice when Costco is clearly the better consumer option. Selection, price and quality make it a hands-down favorite. What kills me is the quantity. I RARELY get out of Costco without dropping a hundred bucks. More often than not, its over double that.

Which leads me to my moral dilemma: as someone with religious conviction, I donate 10% of my income to charity; however, when I add up the total of all the money I spend at flipping Costco, the amount spent at Costco trumps my charitable contributions. Can a man, or a woman for that matter, serve God and mammon? The answer is no. So it begs the question, "who am I serving?" It seems that my need for massive amounts of Hebrew National Franks, muffins and no-pulp Tropicana Orange juice is trumping my need to administer to the needs of those around me. I don't hunger and thirst after righteousness nearly as much as I do for giant, ruby grapes, Greek yogurt or the huge box of single-serving Pringles.

What is a sinner like me to do? Perhaps Costco would be kind enough to set up a small shrine at the entrance of the warehouse for those of us who worship there to burn incense or cross ourselves at an icon. Perhaps prayer mats could be sold at the front of the warehouse. At the very least, we're allowed put our name on a shamrock denoting our good deeds for the Childrens' Miracle Network once a year and call it good. But somehow, I still don't feel good. It doesn't assuage my guilt. St. Peter still can't call on me. Because, in spite of my most concerted efforts, I continue to worship the Warehouse God of fresh strawberries, giant stacks of paper products and irresistible chocolate-dunked, almond-covered, ice cream bars. There is little hope for me. I am a lost soul. Or rather, I sold it...to the company store.