Everybody calm down.  It's true that I didn't blog yesterday, but it's not because my mom shut the thing down after I used foul language on Wednesday.  It's because cosmic forces conspired and removed the quotation marks that I depend on from some of my roles, like "Office Manager," "Doting Mother," and "A Friend Who's Always There For You." Everyone who needed me yesterday deemed my fake deadline for the blog not important, except for me, who felt strongly that it was "not important."*

*Sentence may contain a me/I grammar error, but that can happen sometimes with us/we "Writers."

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The other day, I heard someone at the airport yell in utter frustration, "Fuck me twice!!!" And when I hear something like that when Margot and Greta are around, I like to bring perspective to the situation and maybe even find a moral in the story.  So I said, "Girls, remember. Fuck me once, shame on you. Fuck me twice, shame on me." 

The other day we had lunch with Margot, and after we finished eating, I noticed that she looked really sad.  I asked her what was wrong.  She said, "I miss my sandwich."  I totally related to this feeling, but had never heard it expressed in such a clear and impassioned manner, that is to say, out loud. But she's right. On a regular basis, sandwiches manage to end a few bites too early. Birthday cake slices also tend to pack it in before I'm ready. Then I'm left, looking around the room and asking myself, but not out loud, "Where do I go from here?"  

Anyway, it's cool that Margot is unaffected enough to say something like, "I miss my sandwich" in public.  And who wouldn't miss a kid like that when she goes back to college? Especially after a vacation when I watched two of her wildest dreams come true. First, Margot has always loved raccoons but had never come close to touching one.  As you can see here, she let some guy's raccoon, named Celeste, crawl all over her at the beach. I was so happy for her. Also, it was truly horrifying.

Later that same day, in a second burst of great luck, a waiter referred to her as "m'lady." I had no idea that this would be such a big deal for her, but I'm also not in love with Ron Burgundy.

Nothing says WELCOME HOME! from vacation better than coming up your driveway and laying eyes on your very own traffic cone. My friends Kit and Bill gave me one for Christmas, engraved no less!  If you're lucky enough to own one of these things, each time you come upon it, BOOM!, you are automatically the most important person in your group. 

There are lots of off-road applications for personalized traffic cones, like saving the best place on the couch for an after-dinner viewing of Flight of the Conchords.  Or setting up a surprise "shot gun" maneuver for an early morning road trip, because sometimes you are always the last one out the door.

One thing: be prepared for jealous reactions to the use of your custom-made cone because no one likes it when someone flaunts a personalized item. Think, for example, of when you were little, and when you were exiting through the gift shop, and everyone found magnets and bracelets embossed with their names, except for Constance.  

Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but cone-fashioned items really do command a lot attention -- that's why party hats, megaphones and bras are all shaped like that.  

I was having trouble coming up with something to blog about this morning.  It's the first time this has happened to me and I chalked it up to sadness about our vacation ending. So I went looking for Margot and Greta because I always find lots of inspiration from those two. I was out of luck, though, because they were still sleeping. This lack of input from my kids made me start to get squirmy, and then really sad about next fall, when Margot goes back to college and Greta starts art school.  Then I thought, wait a minute, I've heard about this phenomenon. It happens to all moms who try to be funny in their blogs. Apparently, even when you write your most hilarious material, it means nothing to you because your kids have moved out.  It's called "empty jesting" people, and it's definitely a thing. 

Last night, we were talking with the girls about women taking their husbands' last names and how, on the face of it, that's pretty weird business.  Just to mix things up, I shared with them that my friend, Lizanne, though she's super progressive, made the switch when she got married, figuring that the family name she was giving up was that of her dad -- another guy.  So what the hell?  

We all agreed that the streamlining benefit of sharing a last name is a handy feature, not to be taken lightly, if only at the Immigration counter at an international airport. So, what about going back to the old world method of naming a family by describing its singularly distinguishing characteristic, as in "Brewer," "Potter," or "Weaver." In the case of Bo's family, after much genealogical research, it became known that the name "Wilsterman" actually means, "Man from Wilster."   

To put a modern spin on this old-fangled approach, and to solve the whole problem, Greta had the idea that a newlywed couple should be encouraged to develop a family name based on their common interests. She used the last name, "Flanksteak," as an example, and that won us all over.

I dragged my family way down the beach to the one place I really wanted to hit while we are on vacation.  It's a bar on a pier where they actually lower down a bucket of icy cold beers while you lounge around down below in inner tubes.   This is better than a "swim up" bar, because you get all the beer without needing to do all the swimming. So it's more of a "reach up" bar.

Only what happened to me is that my daughters were way up at the main part of the bar, next to the bartender who was doing the lowering. Once he left, and before I could grab a bottle, they pulled my bucket up and took some for themselves (the drinking age here is 18 so they felt they had every right). Then they started re-lowering the bucket full of ice and the remaining beers.

At the same time, and in an effort to keep me closer to the beer once it got back down to me, Bo kept pushing me directly under it.  So when I looked up, all I could see was the round, white bottom of the heavy container, and above that, my kids -- Margot with the camera and Greta lowering the anvil bucket. I kept yelling for him to move me out of its path but he was laughing really hard and with all the loud music I couldn't really communicate with him.  So, in the photo below, though it looks like I am being affectionate with Bo, I'm actually crying and trying to strangle him.

Today is Greta's 18th birthday and I'm proud of her and love her for lots of reasons, but mostly because she can hold her liquor.

Let's face it parents, our kids want no part of rubbing sunscreen onto us, even if we're in relatively good shape and we think we're keeping it classy. I'll bet even Heidi Klum's children cringe and try to bolt when she walks into the room wearing a bikini and holding a tube of Bain de Soleil.

Over-thinking this sounds like a good idea, but you can always drop out if you're bored, and now I'm scared that this is just me.  But if I put myself in my kids' place, I get it.  I remember telling my dad, who was and is a great looking guy, "I'd really like to help you out here, but I sure don't want you to catch my cold." Bolt.  But we had five kids and he could just move down the line and ask someone else, like my sister Barb, who is the sweetest person in the world and will touch anything.

I'm thinking that most of us parents are on our own with sun screening until we can't go any further. So it's always our backs that we need a hand with. Then we look around the room, and if it's just our kids there; I don't know, maybe it is a lot to ask of them.  I mean, as far as our bodies go, if we can't see it and we can't reach it, why would someone else want to rub something into it?  

On the other hand, I've spent a lot of time helping my kids out with sun block over the years (This is an aside, and I'm pretty sure I made this up, but the best way to get sunscreen onto a kid's face is to ask him, "Do you want a butterfly, a horsie, or a dragon?"  Because little kids are just crazy enough to transport themselves into a face-painting scenario).  So I'm thinking that they owe me on the sunscreen thing now. 

I'm big into grossing my kids into reconsidering things. So, if you find yourself alone with your kids and an untreated back, my best advice is to say, "It would be great if someone put sunscreen on my back now, so no one has to do it while it's peeling."

My sister Julie and her partner, Chrissy, have lots of pet peeves. But one of the funniest is that they can't tolerate men stretching. Yesterday, I got lucky when we came upon a guy on the beach doing just that. My family begged me, in hushed tones, not to snap a photo. But the guy leaned into this pose for so long -- I felt like he was asking for it:

Plus, I consider it my job to send Julie and Chris examples of men stretching whenever I come across it.  Too bad for me though, because, on The Men Stretching Scale of 1 to 10, my guy is somewhere around a 3, as he's in junk-hiding shorts and positioning.  The guys below would get a higher ranking:  

I still have time on our vacation to come across something more along these lines.  And that would really be something to write home about.

When we go on vacation, we like to assign an American Indian, "Dances With Wolves" kind of name to each family member.  It becomes almost like souvenir for you to remember something you did, or that happened to you on the trip.  I'll give you an example.  So far, every time we go for a walk on the beach with Margot, stray mutts start to follow us, like a Munchkin welcome.  But when we go without her, there are no dogs.  This may be because Margot is an empathy oozing Bio major.  Or maybe she keeps ground lamb in her pockets.  Anyway, it's too early to tell, but her Indian name for this trip might very well be "Hounded By Mongrels" Wilsterman.

Here's another possibility.  Last night we went to a hole in the wall jerk pit for dinner, where I was challenged to order something from the menu that was out of my comfort zone.  Lots of drama ensued.  So, for this vacation, "Choked Down Goat" will probably be how I am remembered.

This business got started on a trip about ten years ago, when Bo got pink eye, ostensibly from diving into a busy harbor that was loaded with moored sailboats.  He kept saying, do you I think I got pink eye because I swam through poop?"  And I said, "I don't know, but that sure sounds like your new Indian name."

I'm on a scuba vacation with my family at an undisclosed location. The reason I can't tell you where I am is that yesterday at the airport, some people saw me typing away on my computer at Starbucks and within seconds there must have been a thousand people asking me to blog on their bodies, which is pretty foul business.  I don't want the same thing to happen to me here, while I'm trying to relax.  Even Justin Bieber, who seems super accommodating, is cracking under the stress of his fame.

I'm aware that it's really stupid to announce on the web that I'm out of town.  And if I were able to pick the kind of guys to rob my house at this time, I'd go with the dorks from Home Alone, rather than somebody like Tom Cruise, who continually needs to be lowered into situations when he's taking stuff.  I do have some skylights that would suit his M.O., but I'd rather envision people fumbling around, stepping on hoes and hurting themselves while my dog sitter sleeps through it all.

I was standing next to a clump of guys in a security line at Logan Airport this morning, when one of them said, "Dude, if money wasn't an option, we'd be on a charter jet right now."  That was a real head spinner, because obviously, money was no option for him, still, there was no charter jet option for him either.  That made us think that it must be Opposite Day, so when we passed the sign saying that we couldn't bring our snow globes on the plane, we disregarded it and kept ours tucked away with our toiletries.  

Which was a good decision, because when you spend time creating handmade snow globes for your trip, the last thing you want to do is hand them over to security. 

Yes I'm having fun uploading photos.

Ahead of me in line was a young man who belonged to a Christian organization, wearing a dark suit and a badge that said, "Elder Quackenbush."  I immediately felt a connection with him because my last name used to be "Heneberry," which also starts with poultry and segues into vegetation.  But since I was badge-free, I let the moment pass.

Am I excited that there is a new pope?  No!  Am I excited that he picked his new name, "Francis," because of St. Francis of Assisi?  YES! Why?  Because, I went to Catholic grade school and all little Catholic kids absolutely love this particular saint. This is not only because his last name allows you so say "ass" without getting into trouble. It's because he had a rich dad and a fancy lifestyle, and he gave it all up to help the poor.  He also had a fervent love of animals, as you can see here in this photo:

Since most children also love animals, St. Francis of Assisi is seen as a real cozy guy who is easy to approach. So kids would much rather pray to him than to a saint who focused on more depressing matters.  Also, "Assisi" has the word, "sissy" in it.  So it was great thing to call my little brother when I was chasing him around the neighborhood (sorry Dave).  Of course, when I did that, I was playing with fire.  Because at any moment, he could spin around and whisper one word that would break me down and leave me in a puddle on the sidewalk:  "fat."

Everybody knows that I'm bad at naming things (Blogpost 2/14).  I won't even attempt to draft a title for the subject line of an email.  This is because, well, who doesn't change course once your fingers hit the keys?  You start off with, Subject:  Girls! Who stole my cool earrings--I know it was one of you!.  Then, after you write the email, you need to go back and completely change it to, Subject:  Check out these cool earrings from the Sundance Catalog, Birthday Girl!  

That said, who wouldn't want to take a crack at naming the new pope? That's right!  There is so much to look forward to! Once the Cardinals -- who are meeting right now! -- single out the next man to lead the Church, he gets to think up a new name that is more spiritually-oriented and easier-on-the-ears, like "Simplicius" (468-483 A.D.), for example. It's like experiencing all the excitement of picking out a new dog at the kennel, and then layering on the anticipation of seeing what it names itself! 

Right now, everyone is thinking that it would be cool if they elect a pope who is from below the Tropic of Cancer. Apparently it would be a first. And one of the leading guys from the south is Brazilian Cardinal Scherer, who is the son of German immigrants.  So, he may be "from" Sao Paolo, but he's pretty much wearing lederhosen under his vestments. Because of that, if I got to pick this new pope's name, I'd definitely go with Pope Burgermeister Meisterburger (Zere will be no more marriage for ze gays!)

If this idea is rejected, there are lots of women's names that have yet to be used.  I'm thinking "Constance" sounds kind of pope-y. 

I like the way they do things at Downton Abbey, so I've decided to use that model to run my own house.  For one thing, at Downton, there's no landscaping out front, because shrubs can make a house look like it's trying too hard.  Plus, bushes are notoriously hard to care for, right? So why waste time on them when there are newspapers to iron! Anyway, I've had all of our shrubberies replaced with gravel, like the Granthams did, because nothing sounds more like rich people than an approaching-car-on-gravel sound effect.

I'm lucky because we live in a deck house, which has an upside down layout, with the girls' bedrooms downstairs.  So too bad for them, because at Downton Abbey, the downstairs people do everything for the upstairs people.  My favorite thing so far is to look in the mirror and pout about stuff while Margot brushes and braids my hair before bed. Greta is doing that ruler thing to make sure our forks, forks, forks, spoons, spoons and knives are lined up correctly.  She is truly missing the useful work she did as a nurse's aid when we turned this place into a hospital during the Falmouth Road Race.

Too bad for us though, because, just like on Downton Abbey, all this splendor is coming to an end when the downstairs people go back to school after Spring Break.

The unsettling skedaddle of German Pope John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt has left us all scratching our heads.  This is because undead popes don't normally leave their posts.  But, when in Rome!  And beware, a person who used to be infallible can be really irritating, especially when he is the customer, who is also always right.  

I have Catholic roots, so I feel qualified to post lots of fun facts about the process of electing a pope. First of all, the meeting of the College of Cardinals, or Papal Conclave, where the voting happens, is super secret and clubby.  If you want to participate, you can't just phone it in.  You have to make plane reservations, leave your secret family in St. Petersburg, and show up there at the Vatican.

The next part is my favorite, because, next to quick sand and hot lava, nothing fascinates me more than smoke signals; and they use them to apprise the waiting world of the successful selection of a pope. Here's why they do that. There can be no notes or ballots left around willy nilly in the aftermath of a vote.  So they gather up all the paperwork and burn it in a special fireplace that vents out through a special chimney on a special roof.  To let us all know that they failed to get a supermajority of two-thirds on a ballot, the cardinals put special chemicals in with the fire to make the smoke black.  If they do agree on a candidate, the special chemicals are not included with the fire, and the smoke comes out white.  Remember, this is all reversed if they elect a black pope.

Don't expect your children to deliver on grandkids.  That was my take away from a conversation last night when both Margot and Greta told me that they couldn't imagine going down that road.  At first, I thought they were pulling my leg, which is a reasonable idea, because they're the kind of people who like to discuss the tattoos they're planning to get, knowing absolutely that I can overhear them ("... on my calf, coming out of my boot... roses growing out of a machine gun...").  

But this time, they weren't kidding, so I was left, as I so often am, with these words racing toward me from the 3-D movie screen of my brain: "YOUR MOVE."  "That's fine," I said, "I'll just have to have my own grandchildren." They laughed.  "Seriously though," I added, "with cooperation from you two, I think as a family, we can pull this off." My sister Julie, always supportive, weighed in, "The jump start required will not be covered by insurance and will end up costing us all a fortune." Bumper stickers and possible button treatments of "I'm Carrying My Own Grandchild," were mentioned. 

Granted, because of their ages, it's probably too early to talk about grandkids.  The point of all this is to remind you that you can pretty much gross your kids into reconsidering anything.  

We ordered some doors and windows for our house and I'm really excited because our builder, Nat, is installing them and making everything look great.  To be clear, our house already had doors and windows, but I think if you'd have seen them, you'd agree that everything needed to move a little to the left. 

It's crazy cold here, and every time Nat removes an old window, the temperature inside the house temporarily plummets.  That's okay for me, but not for Natasha, our turtle, who is thin-skinned about all aspects of her habitat. (For god's sake, Natasha -- would it kill you if the water temperature in your aquarium went down below 72 degrees?  It would? Okay, sorry). So I had to go down to the pet store and buy her an expensive, self-regulating water heater. I also had to put my hand in her turtle water, and I hear that with with these kinds of animals, salmonella poisoning is a real crap shoot. 

Natasha is a gifted turtle.  And by that I don't mean that she gets pulled out of her aquarium for extra reading.  I mean that she was presented to Margot as a joke gift, by our resourceful friend, Ben Cattley, who went all the way to Chinatown in Boston to purchase the illegal-to-sell species. And as I've said before, she's needy (requiring special lights and water filters), and like most reptiles, she is gratitude-resistant.  Natasha killed off a younger, cuter version of herself -- BORIS! We didn't know what was going on in there! And she'll live to be a thousand.  Anyway, Margot was worried about taking a turtle along to college because it could have become endangered, for instance, if a party broke out in her dorm room (For crying out loud, Natasha -- would it kill you if someone dumped a six-pack of Pabst into your aquarium?  It would? Okay, sorry).  So she stays here with us, and to be fair, she is active and splashy and interesting to watch. Okay I love her.

NATASHA

It doesn't occur too often, but every now and then, a person can slam her thumb in a drawer and the resulting bruise will look just like the campaign symbol for the guy she desperately wants to be re-elected as President of the United States.  Well, this very thing happened to me last summer, and even though it hurt like hell, I'd do it all over again because it's exhilarating to be part of a presidential campaign. 

From July to November, 2012, my "Obama Bruise" became a victory-promising icon for me and my friends, (D-MAs).  And even when Obama's popularity dropped in the polls, his logo rose up the nail bed of my thumb, giving us all HOPE. 

Fast forward to yesterday. My friend, Nat Ross, showed me a nail bed bruise on his index finger.  And I felt sorry for him until he said these words, "Jeb Bush 2016."  Well, Nat, I'm sorry, it just doesn't work that way.  First of all, you can't start a campaign injury for someone who is "keeping his options open."  Second, your "Bush Bruise*" lacks the 2-color format and definition of shape that my tribute to Obama brought to the table. Also, I'm pretty sure that it goes in this order:  1) Campaign team designs candidate's logo, 2) People are free to hurt themselves and hope for a bruise/candidate match up.       

*The appearance of a Bush Bruise on Mr. Ross' finger does not signify his support for Jeb Bush in 2016.

I'd like to apologize for the confusion surrounding yesterday's blog. After I posted it, the censors pulled half of my paragraph on the difference between blacking out and fainting because a) it was crude, b) it was impossible to understand, and c) it was way too "nobody cares about this."  

I have to admit that I wasn't able to commit my normal level of care to what I published yesterday.  The pressures and time constraints of being a)a pretend office manager and b) a blogger with fake deadlines, are beginning to wear on me.  I also have duties as a mother, but apparently those are also of a pretend nature. The other day, one of my daughters was complaining that someone was trying to mother her.  The other one said, "Thank god we never had to deal with that at home."

Those of you who know me will not be surprised that I'm a softie when it comes to being a parent.  And I do have understated ways of rearing kids.  For instance, on communicating my expectations for the girls, I simply asked them if they had won any awards each day when I picked them up at school.  My follow up question, "Did you get any good ones off?," was my way of driving home the importance of being entertaining. On setting limits, for example, I'd serve them a modest portion of ice cream, and then ask, "is that too much?"  Also, I'm pretty sure I made that one up and you should totally try it to see those little faces scrunch up with confusion.  They can't find a good answer to that question. 

I hit a viewership milestone today, so I'd like to celebrate and give back to my followers by addressing some of your questions, comments and concerns.

First, Jerry Dathe, I'm sorry that you're feeling uneasy about my recurring black outs.  And I did speak about my condition to a medical professional, who told me to go eat a banana (see 2/18 blogpost), and then handed me a plastic gallon jug that contained about a half an inch of unused windshield wiper fluid (2/26).

A big thank you goes to Scott Mackey, a composter, who gave me the tip to stop throwing bones and gristle into my backyard.  The coyote who was peering into our sliding glass door like Audrey Hepburn at Tiffany's has moved on and I will definitely Google "composting" before I chuck anything out there again.

I'm not grateful to my sister, Julie, who pointed out that, at age 52, I am ten years older now than Ethel Mertz was when she first appeared on I Love Lucy.  This really got to me because when we were little, we all thought that if poor Ethel had been able to conceive, she would have been at least somebody's great grandmother.

For some reason, my gag reflex has dropped its beef with ear gauges.  It's probably a result of repeated exposure over time. The first one I found myself staring down the barrel of was in an Army Navy store in Mystic, CT, about seven years ago.  After a series of cartoon-worthy double takes, complete with boi-oi-oing sound effects, I must have blacked out for a second.  The next thing I knew, I was outside, sistered up to a cigar store Indian, who stood there stoically (as they are wont to do), while I tried not to hurl.  

Now I can look an ear gauge right in the eye and I'm not that grossed out (maybe a little scared) -- even one whose size is comparable to the opening of a pickle jar.  But with a hole that large, my guess is that after a while, many of those who went down this road ask, "Where do we go from here?"  

So, if you change your mind, can you grow them out like bangs?  People my age want to know this because we are scared of things that are permanent, like ear gauges, and death.  You can find out here, or you can read their bullet points below if you don't want the gory details:

1.  Take out your ear gauge and clean it, making sure there is no goo.

2.  Wait.

3.  Moisturize your ears after showering.

4.  Wear earrings of increasingly smaller sizes.

5.  Have surgery!




  

Occasionally, a friend will ask me to take pictures of one of her kids for a senior yearbook page or something like that.  I'm not a great photographer -- I'm just really good at shaming kids into doing things they clearly don't want to do.  So when my friend, Caryn Brake, asked me to take photos at her mother's wedding, I said no because the stakes were too high and there's no shaming people at their own weddings.

When Caryn insisted, I agreed, as long as I could bring a mutual friend, Jan Ferraro.  Jan is really creative, but she also has the decorum, focus, and brand new camera that give a fake photographer the confidence she needs to capture the most important day of someone's life on film. 

Yesterday was the big event, and in the morning, Jan called me to suggest that we dress up like professional photographers.  So it was black boots, black pants, white button-down shirts and vintage skinny ties (plus, obviously good hair and make-up).  Our ensembles went over really well with Caryn and her family.  And, of course, Jan was right there shooting away when my camera died, but was resurrected, during the church ceremony.

At the reception, a guest walked up to Caryn and asked her, in all seriousness, where she had found the lesbian photographers.  And after blacking out from excessive glee, she ran over to make us aware of the comment.  At that moment, everything shifted.  Jan and I were not only fake photographers, but also fake lovers.  And with our new romantic energy, I believe the quality of our work may have improved.  But how would I know?  What do I look like, a lesbian photographer?

i SHD focus more b4 i hit send when i text BC i keep sending txts to wrong PP.  I actually don't text in shorthand, so I had to google how to abbreviate some of those words, like "people," but I thought that it would spice up my intro.

Here's an example of my problem with directing texts to the intended recipients.  Yesterday, Margot texted me that she was extremely nervous about trying out for an improv group at her school.  In response,  I texted the following message to my friend Gina, who was about to meet me for a walk on the beach: "Listen, just stay loose and be alert. Everyone there is going to be nervous today.  What a freak you'd be if you weren't!"

It wasn't until Gina texted me back, "I'm not going," that I realized what I'd done. And it was kind of ironic that I accidentally texted that particular message to Gina, because she likes to keep me on my toes by texting me, out of the blue, with this kind of provocation:  "Looking forward to your PowerPoint presentation this morning at the Coonamessett Inn.  Looks like there's a big crowd.  Where r u?"

So I'm going to slow down and look before I text.  Also, Margot called last night and told us that she got into the improv group.  It's going to be so fun to see what she does with that.  Also, it might give me some great blogging fodder.  You try to write one of these things every day.

As my mom always says, "marriage is work."  And now that I'm "managing" Bo's office, he and I are also experiencing "marriage at work."  So far, I really like it, and I've figured out that I'd been missing the camaraderie of a team setting.  His staff is amazing and Bo seems genuinely glad to see me when I "manage" to come in.

However, one issue is that, like many great doctors, Bo doesn't want to be bothered with business decisions. So at work, he stays in the clinic, eluding me and my irksome issues about our 401(k)and health insurance plans, payroll, HR, buying stuff, the checkbook, marketing, and building maintenance. Okay, until I laid that out, I had no clue that I do all that, and everyone should be very afraid.  

Anyway, it didn't take me long to figure out that he was a sitting duck for the likes of me when he got home.  So I was giving him a few moments to relax and to think he was going to have a good time before I hit him with my follow up questions about x-ray equipment vendors. That's when he always remembered that he needed to go out to the garage to tighten a few things up.

Recently we decided that we'll stay at work a little longer to talk about business stuff, so that we can get a break from it after hours. Also, I'm starting to make a lot of pressing decisions without him, so everyone should be very afraid. 

Nothing gets a rise out of a Midwesterner faster than insinuating that he or she may have slept in.  My mom is from Southern Illinois, and when she was a kid, the last one to show up for breakfast was called the "barn esel."  "Esel" is German for "donkey," which is another word for "ass," which is short for "dumb ass."

So maybe I get this from you, Mom, but I identify with people who are embarrassed by resting. And I'm really secretive about the occasional afternoon nap that I (a morning person, don't forget) take in order to stay awake through cocktail hour.  So if I do have a little mid-day snooze, I tell my kids, "If anyone calls, just tell whoever it is that I'm in the shower." To which my friends say, "Well, just have her call me when she wakes up." 

Anyway, I have a great friend from Columbus, Ohio, named Pat Smith, and honestly, it's fun to get under his skin.  So yesterday, when it was late in the morning, almost noon, I sent him a two-word facebook message that I knew would undo him. It went like this, "you up?"  And, boy, he really blasted me.  He told me how long he'd been working, and what he'd done all day, and he used the term, "for crying out loud." Thanks, Pat, for letting me write about this (he said I could as long as it was funny and made him look industrious and alert).