Tag Archives: family

Replacing Furniture… At Last

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Today I laid out a considerable amount of money in order to replace a very old piece of furniture.

While there are various chairs and sofas out there taking the name of various French kings named Louis, my bed seemed like the oldest actual piece of furniture still in use by actual human beings.

At 28 years old, that bed is older than some of my coworkers. It’s only about three years younger than I am.

When my wonderful, wonderful coworkers helped me move, they teased me a little bit about my early-80s-styled bed, its hideous brownish flower motif (why was everything brown in the early 1980s?) and its horrible, horrible habit of squeaking every time someone sits on it, lies down on it or looks at it funny.

And we’re not talking a delicate little cute mouse squeak. We’re talking about the cryptkeeper’s door squeak, the kind of squealing squeak that usually only occurs in scary movies when you think the monster is coming for the heroine, but it’s actually the best friend and the real monster is right behind her.

Last time my mom visited she even commented on it. It’s extremely squeaky.

But lest it be said that I’m susceptible to peer pressure, mostly I just wanted a new bed because I’m afraid I’m waking up people in the other apartments near me by turning over in my sleep. I’m a restless sleeper. I once tried to escape my house in my sleep, I saw the Northern Lights in my sleep and I’ve had whole conversations in my sleep without any participation whatsoever from my conscious mind.

And with my old preschool bed, I’m pretty sure I also squeak in my sleep, every time I turn over or kick or have a dream boxing-match with a flying cow who has Morgan Freeman’s voice and Spock’s face. If I reach for the alarm clock in the morning? EEEEEERREEEEIII. If I check the heating blanket settings? EEEEEERRRRRRREEEEEEIIIIIE. If I move? EEEEEEEEEEEAAAAIIIIEEEE.

The only way to avoid the squeak is to hold very still and try not to breathe too emphatically.

So! Out with the old and in with the new; this week I’ll be getting a new bed, thanks in part to birthday funds from my parents, and all of my wonderful grandparents.

I wonder if I’ll miss the squeak.

Lutefisk and Other Questionable Food-Like Substances

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I wrote a story about a great local lutefisk supper in a mostly serious way, but I also wrote some extremely silly fake headlines for it that we obviously didn’t use.*

Here’s the real headline:

Lots of lutefisk: Church readies 375 pounds of Scandinavian delicacy

Here are the fakes, with at least one addition from others in the newsroom:

Lutefisk: Probably a crime against humanity

Lutefisk: Run while you still can.

Lutefisk: Banned by the Geneva Convention.

Lutefisk: Wait, you want me to eat what?

Lutefisk: Because trials of fish soaked in arsenic didn’t go so well.

Lutefisk: Scandinavians’ attempt to see what they can get other people to eat

Lutefisk: Making haggis sound yummy

Lutefisk: Try it, you won’t die (probably)

375 pounds of lutefisk: Scandinavian WMDs

Lutefisk: A true tale of Scandinavian passive-aggression

Lutefisk: Why?

Lutefisk: No, seriously, people eat it

Lutefisk: 1 out of 10 people prefer it to tree bark

Have any suggestions for more? Hit the comments!

I think everyone should get the chance to at least smell lutefisk, and, if they have the fortitude, try a taste. Lutefisk is meant to be served hot, and generally with melted butter. My family likes to mash it in with potatoes and stuff it into a piece of lefse to make a sort of potato-fish burrito.

Do not use silver plated silverware with lutefisk.

Do not overcook lutefisk.

Do not taunt lutefisk.

* I am half Norwegian, and my grandfather makes lutefisk for Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. So yes, I do respect lutefisk, but after extensive exposure, I feel entitled to make fun of it a bit. I have never eaten it, but believe it is a fine old tradition best practiced by people who are not me. My brother has eaten lutefisk and I am happy to say he has suffered no ill effects. Some day his tastebuds may grow back.

I Got Engaged Last Night

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I got engaged last night, but only in my dreams. Literally in my dreams.

I dreamed I was preparing for my wedding, and for some reason my aunt was in charge of the big event. (This actually makes a little bit of sense; all three of her children have gotten married and she knows how to do a slam-bang event.)

I was busily deciding what type of decorative flower should go on my wedding cake when it occurred to me to wonder who I was marrying.

I realized then that I had absolutely no idea who I was getting married to. Literally no idea. Now if this happened in real life, I’d freak out, but in the dream, I very calmly looked it up online, and found out I was engaged to someone who had in fact died in an accident. And if that had happened in real life I’m sure I’d be very upset, but in the dream I just wondered how my aunt was going to react when I told her the wedding was off.

I also wondered if we could still do the cakes.

After all, I’ve got my priorities straight.

I’m pretty sure the dream was a remix of some of the episodes of Poirot I’ve been watching lately. In one, a woman says “But then you never really know what someone’s like until after you’ve married them,” or something of that nature. In another one a pilot disappears and is presumed dead, and who precisely was engaged to him becomes a vital plot element.

So I think my brain squashed all these things together, fished up the memories of my cousins’ weddings and my own brother’s, and did a sort of bizarre mashup.

I suppose I was just lucky I hadn’t actually murdered my fiance in the dream. That really puts a damper on wedding fun.

Things I Learned from the Family Reunion

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I learned all kinds of crazy things about my family from my family reunion. Somebody made a disc of pictures from my great-grandmother, and that was pretty instructive too.

1. My ancestors on my mother’s side came from Norway, where they probably farmed rocks. Or maybe they herded rocks. Every single picture taken in Norway features rocks. Sometimes there are also people, but they are always outnumbered by rocks. (By the way, Norway is famous for having many beautiful fjords, a term which means “big rocks.”)

2. My mother is a clone. Seriously! As anyone can see from the family pictures, she looks exactly like her aunt Christine, a magnificent lady who taught me how to crochet. I wasn’t very good at it, though, and so all I ever managed was a string of single loops. My mom, on the other hand, may have been the one to teach me how to tie my shoes. Coincidence? I think not.

3. Three of my grandfather’s sisters died young.

Esther Marie

Esther Marie

All three of the girls who died were beautiful, of course, but Esther Marie (left), was most often shown in pictures with a big mischievous grin, mouth wide open as if she were just about to say something hilarious. I really wish I’d gotten to hear what she was going to say.

4. The boys (and some of the girls) in my family generally spend part of their lives as stringbeans. Seriously, you could thread a needle with these kids between the time they can walk and the time they go to college, and sometimes even after that.

5. I don’t look much like anybody from that side of the family. I have never been a stringbean. My brother, however, shares a nose with several people and freckles with a lot of other people, and seems to be spending a prolonged period in the stringbean stage. We’re a very thrifty family–we recycle faces over the generations. Nothing goes to waste! (Waist, maybe, but not waste.)

6. A lot of us don’t hear too well anymore. Quite a few of my conversations consisted of “What?” “What?!” “Pardon?” “Hmm?” “What?” Do they have group rates for hearing aids? What if you buy them 30 or 40 at a time?

7. Some old people are young, and some young people are old.

Temperatures at the reunion climbed way up into the mid-90s and it was hotter than heck out there, or maybe even the other place that starts with H. I pretty much sat still and tried to think cold thoughts, wilting as my brain melted into mush. My dad gave up, too, and retreated into the hotel and its air-conditioning.

Meanwhile, my great-aunt Clara, who has reached the exalted age of 97, was tromping around and talking to everyone as if there were no such thing as heat advisories.

I don’t wish that I will have that much energy when I am 97. I wish I had that much energy now.

Skeptical Buffalo: A Dieting Book for Six-Year-Olds?

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Skeptical Buffalo Says: Wut.

Skeptical Buffalo Sez: Wut.

A dieting book geared toward kids ages 6-12 is provoking controversy online. The author apparently wanted to help kids address their problems. Unfortunately, what he actually did was illustrate a story in which:

1. Getting made fun of on a regular basis prompts a child to make a positive lifestyle change. There are no consequences for the bullies, though that may certainly be argued to be an accurate depiction of real life.

2. Losing weight magically makes you popular and athletic.

To be fair,  the character in the story, Maggie, loses weight through eating better and exercising more, not by starving herself or purging. And obesity is a quickly-growing epidemic among youth.

But still, despite the good intentions and the real problems this book was written to address, it’s a little bit hinky to be telling six-year-olds that weight loss is the magical solution to unpopularity and sadness, or even a solution to bad body image. Weight loss doesn’t always give you the figure you want anyway, and dieters may lose pounds and ultimately, still be highly dissatisfied with their bodies.

I could have weighed six ounces as a 12-year-old and I still would have been tremendously unpopular. And there were plenty of thin and beautiful unpopular kids in my class.

And the image on the book’s cover is an exact inversion of what anorexic people see in the mirror: The chubby Maggie looks in a mirror and sees a thin version of herself.

In real life, a pathetically thin anorexic girl looks in the mirror and sees a chubby version of herself–I’ve seen that image used to illustrate anorexia and bulimia more than once in many places, because it describes so perfectly what people with those eating disorders see. When they look in the mirror, they do not see an emaciated person; they see a fat person. It’s every bit as much of a fantasy as Maggie’s thin-alternate-self in the mirror.

Needless to say, children shouldn’t diet unless there’s some sort of really good reason, and they should be supervised by adults if they must diet.

And there are many girls who, at age 6-12, are sort of… solid. When girls go through puberty their body weight redistributes itself significantly, and I know plenty of girls who were chubby before that happened and normal or even thin afterward.

Will kids reading this book get the impression that they need to slim down, long before their bodies change everything anyway? The author says these books are meant to be read by parents and children together, I believe, but is that really going to happen every time?

Is the book damaging, or a needed antidote to the obesity epidemic among young people?

Two Weddings and a Blessing

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My cousin got married two weeks ago, and I was lucky enough to be a bridesmaid for one of his weddings (that’s me on the far left, there). Yes, one of the weddings–there were two.

Both weddings were pretty traditional and both of them were lots of fun.

Now before you get any crazy ideas about do-overs or my cousin sneaking around like some kind of a bigamy ninja, let me tell you about the two weddings.

The first one was a traditional Laotian wedding ceremony, which had as its centerpiece … an actual centerpiece ceremony. Said centerpiece was this big object decorated with flowers and shiny paper, with strings hanging out all over it. After some chanting (and I’m afraid I don’t speak Laotian at all, so I can’t relate to you what the officiator said), you took a piece of string, tied it around somebody’s wrist and gave them a blessing.

As is fitting for any wedding, the bride and groom got blessed the most, but there was plenty of string and blessings for everybody, and we all went around tying strings on each other. It was fun! Common blessings for the happy couple: lots of children, happiness, prosperity, lots of children, wealth, fidelity and also lots of children.

My cousin was grinning like crazy and his wife was absolutely radiant.

I blessed my cousin by hoping he’d have a geeky baby, him being a fellow geek. (My aunt says that now she knows who to blame!)

Frankly I just want an excuse to go toy shopping again.

Then we all ate lunch, which included a spicy curry-chicken soup and also a cold-cut platter. The foods came from two different cultures, but everybody ate everything and everybody talked to each other.

Then we started getting ready for pictures and the second wedding–a traditional Lutheran ceremony. These I’d seen plenty of times before, but I’d never been actually in one before. The ceremony was awesome–my uncle officiated, gave a beautiful sermon, led us in Children of the Heavenly Father and then we went off to the reception and dance.

Everybody danced together. I danced with the wedding party. I danced with my mom. I danced with the other bridesmaid. Then I danced with my grandfather, who is well up into his 80s and outdanced not just me, but me, my mom and both my aunts. He’s like the Energizer Bunny-grandpa or something, I have no idea where he gets the energy. Grandparents these days, I tell ya.

The weddings were awesome, and though it’s been more than a week, I still have a little blessing-string tied around my wrist, reminding me of two fun families, two fun cultures, two fun weddings and two fun people who, according to everybody’s custom, are now one.

And how much of a blessing is that?

Kids and Safety

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I am not a parent.

To some people, this would automatically exclude me from having any sort of a valid opinion about children, so just keep it in mind when you click on the following links. Which I do not necessarily endorse, except as food for thought.

Can a playground be too safe? wonders the New York Times.

Quite a few of the playgrounds I remember from when I was a kid would probably be considered deathtraps today, but they were fun, and I obviously managed to escape relatively unscathed. I remember a friend who had old playground equipment on her farm that was probably made of rust, tetanus and powdered asbestos. It was awesome, though.

I only remember getting injured on a playground once, and it taught me a very valuable lesson: springy metal animals are not to be trusted and should be watched at all times, no matter what they claim.

I got a bloody nose that day. I can’t even remember how, specifically, but I do remember it hurt and it was scary. It can’t have been that traumatic, though, or I’d remember everything else as vividly as I do Who Framed Roger Rabbit? And I don’t remember the accident that well.

There is quite a bit of discussion about whether children are overprotected these days. Here’s quite a long post about science kits for kids, which have become rather watered down (sometimes even literally) and aren’t as cool as they used to be.

Then again having your kid irradiate himself with uranium is also not cool.

Celebrating Things that Go Bump in the Night

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From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
— Traditional proverb

I’ve always liked Halloween, even though it involved wearing approximately 10 layers of clothing and wandering around half-blind in the snow for hours on end, followed by watchful parents in a cozy van.

Maybe it’s because of all the free candy. Even as an adult, there’s just something about free candy. Despite the fact that as an adult, you can buy all the candy you like and eat it ‘til your teeth rot out of your head and the last time you remember coming down from the sugar high was 1991, Halloween candy still has its allure.

It could just be the variety — I can’t remember a time other than Halloween that I’ve possessed malted milk balls, caramels, chocolate bars, peanut butter cups, and Sugar Babies all at the same time, much less eaten them all within a few hours.

It’s definitely not because I like being scared. I hate being scared. And all the scares of Halloween really pale in comparison to gang wars in America, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, civil wars in Africa or even simply the magnitude of my student loans. Pretend things just aren’t as scary as the real world when you’re an adult.

The best part about Halloween is probably that it’s “come as you’re not” day. It’s a topsy-turvy day, when people won’t think it strange if you wear spider earrings (ew!) or a wig two feet tall to work. If you want to wear a black cape and fake fangs, you can, but you can just as easily dress like a fairy princess.

I dressed up as all kinds of things when I was a kid — a polka-dotted ghost, a beauty queen, She-Ra… I think one year I was even Charlie Brown. When my cousins were fairy princesses, I decided to one-up them, and told my mother very firmly that I wanted to be king that year.

Lately, though, I’ve just been dressing all in black, wearing black lipstick and a long black wig. The effect is surprisingly unsettling, and I’m not sure I like it when small children look at me worriedly.

This year, maybe I’ll be king instead.

Fun, Fun, Fun!

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I found myself acting like the most stereotypical teenager in a Beach Boys song last week, begging my dad for his car keys with big sad puppydog-eyes and angelically promising to drive very, very carefully. And I’m almost 30 years old.

In all fairness, though, my dad’s new car is totally worth every bit of begging I did.
It’s a 2008 Mustang convertible, painted a glorious sparkly deep red color, with a top that goes down and a stereo volume knob that goes up.

And my dad let me drive it.

Driving a Mustang convertible is like being a rock star, without the annoying paparazzi and drug addictions. On the way to the YMCA, a small boy I’d never seen before called out “Nice car!” and I waved and yelled “Thanks!”

Three people turned positively green with envy and asked me if I’d gotten a new car. I told them the car was my dad’s mid-life cri-sis car, even though he’s actually been talking about buying a Mustang convertible since he was a teenager, which was definitely not the middle of his life.

For some reason, at this point in all three conversations, the other person said, incredulously, “And he let you drive it?”

Yes, he did.

And yes, I did drive that Mustang, cranking the top down and the music up at every possible opportunity for a week. I played the Beach Boys and the Beatles, the Travelling Wilburys and the Go-Gos and generally pretended to be one of those cool people who drive cars like that.

I tended to arrive at my destination with a big stupid grin and my hair standing straight up, Einstein-style, but the car was so darn fun to drive that I didn’t care.

In fact, I had fun, fun, fun, ‘til my daddy took the Mustang away.

Drunk as a Monkey

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This guy was obviously drunk as a monkey at my brother’s wedding reception. (Photo by Deb Muir of Jackson.)

There’s actually a reason for the monkey’s presence at the wedding, and it was not brought by a child or by a family who had a child.

Anyone (who wasn’t at the wedding) care to guess why the monkey was there?

(And no, he hadn’t been drinking before he got there, either.)

Edit: Check the comments for the solution.