If I’m being honest, periodically, in the past five months, I have wanted nothing more than a long and peaceful slumber, some break from the tortured meanderings of my mind. Some way out of all this effort we must expend trying to repair and remain. The idea of real ‘forward’ exhausts me, requires sooo much hard work, soooo much conviction and I can’t seem to find the certainty that real ‘forward’ requires. And so, sometimes, I confuse permanent avoidance with the concept of progress. At least it’s a solution of sorts rather than the absence of one.

Of course, each time it flits through my mind, I am profoundly startled and ashamed by this desperate though fleeting thought. I’m a mother of two, an intelligent attractive woman who should just exude self-esteem and yet I must admit to having considered, momentarily, checking out. How profoundly selfish and sad and altogether beside the point. There are women the world over suffering the loss of their children, their spouse, struggling with illness, poverty, addiction, natural disasters, and here I am feeling like everything I have is too much and not enough. It doesn’t make any sense at all.

And while our couples’ therapy continues, My Better Half and I persist in occupying the therapeutic frame in just the same way we started – each of us sunk into our own end of the long leather couch, facing a man who is supposed to save us, a stranger to whom we direct our most naked and dangerous thoughts about the other. My Better Half and I occupy that space without making eye contact; side by side, separated by throw pillows and years of resentment.

We are two people repeating ourselves week after week, framing the same problems, circling the same cracks in the foundation, defending the space that is not ‘forward’ or ‘better’ but stubbornly remains the same. We have contentious car rides full of shouting and accusation on the way to this bi-monthly meeting. This is a time when we feel safe unsheathing our claws. We know we will soon be sitting on the long leather couch of our collective unhappiness, spending 50 minutes licking the wounds we just inflicted.

We have mopey, quiet car rides home, forty minute journeys back to the reality of our lives – lived together under the same roof and, somehow, worlds apart, where we skirt conversations of import, dodging emotional landmines, saying little, sharing nothing, waiting until we are back in the therapeutic frame some ten, sometimes twenty days later, where we can, again, be candid and direct.

The hushed quiet of the private therapy room, free of the canned sounds of reception, is breathless and cool. Though it is dark, it is not dreary and there is some comfort in the fact that there is a Kleenex box and asian art work and a bowl of hard candies, butterscotch or peppermint, sickly sweet confections in a bowl, an oral diversion meant to ease the complexity of discussions about “relationship hygene” and the purpose of sexual encounters “to engage feelings of vulnerability and aggression which we have come to think of as taboo emotions and regularly suppress such frailties in most non-sexual human interactions.”

One can tell that much thought has been given to the arrangement of furniture in these therapy spaces. My personal therapist likes to sit in a straight backed chair pulled up to her desk while inviting me to take the seat that is directly adjacent to that desk. She can swivel to face me and put her feet up on the file cabinet. There is a window behind her and the filtered light illuminates the wisps of her short hair, glowing gold in the darkness of the room. Her visage is cast in shadow, completing the effect of deliberate anonymity. She is faceless, haloed even, playing the angel of benevolence whose expression I cannot read for the corona that surrounds her.

And our marriage therapist has his own contrived arrangement. He prefers a deep arm chair that faces a wide leather couch. There are two other arm chairs beside this couch. To sit one of these chairs would be to face the wall rather than the professionally dressed man who has greeted us gently, quiet but stern, paternally ushering us through the door. So we both sink into opposite corners of the long couch. We prefer to meet his gaze than that of one another, having shared a chilly car ride, a week of reserved hostility and patient withholding.

I get the feeling that he is making note of our seat selection. That our choice to sit together on the couch, however far apart, my habit of holding the throw pillow in my lap, hugging it to my chest as if for protection, tells him something about us as a couple, about the state of the connubial union. I only wish I could see the note he’s made next to “seat selection” – hopeless, helpless, hopeful, fucked. He must play a little game with himself. Upon first meeting a troubled couple, he must try to predict the outcome ahead of time, tagging the duo with some sort of premature prediction. He is, perhaps, keeping score of his ability to predetermine a couple’s destiny based solely on the place they choose to sit when first entering the inner sanctum.

But I have to believe we are learning things beyond where to place our fannies. Conversely, I fear that the learning, the progress, is supposed to be more efficient in its development, neatly packaged within the 50 minute therapy window, reaching its weekly conclusion by the end of each billable hour, when, in fact, we’ve both just managed to open a vein and are in the midst of a full soulful bleed on the oriental carpet when our fifty minutes have elapsed.

Almost as if there is an audible chime, a programmed alarm bell, we are ejected into the harsh glare of day, into the parking lot of our lives without the benefit of soft sounds and cushioned chairs and hard candies. We bleed and ooze a collective flow of unhappiness upon the pavement. And all the way home we wish for the mediator, the third party to help us frame and present our individual view points in a more palatable and digestible manner. I have thought to ask him how much it would cost to take him home with us for the week where he might spend some real time dissecting our likenesses, our differences, where he might really get a feel for the state of the union and can say, after seven short days, hopeless, helpless, hopeful, fucked with some measure of authority. That would be easier somehow than this slow burn that is perhaps progress and perhaps not and only time and countless seating arrangements will tell.

And the responses, the comments, the e-mails and the willingness of those who I’ve known in this space for a few years now to offer me their personal time, to offer a phone call, an objective ear and the symbolic shoulder of quiet support, has been an overwhelming boost to me. I know that like minded people gravitate toward one another, like kindred souls who end up in the same book stores, who frequent the same restaurants because they both adore the french onion soup, the blogosphere acts as a much more infectious and effective facilitator. We end up at each others’ blogs nodding our heads in sympathetic recognition, laughing, sharing, weeping through the complexities of this collective life.

It’s a humbling experience to be able to emote in this forum and to have that emotional outlay met with infinite understanding and little bits of wisdom. It’s as if a dear friend hears your call, your plea, even your quiet little whimpers and comes rushing over with a pint of ice cream and The English Patient on DVD and you sit side by side watching one of the greatest love stories of all time while eating Chunky Monkey from carton and wiping your noses on your shirt sleeves – that’s what this blogging thing is for me – comfort and acceptance and the knowledge that others, others with wisdom and intellect and darn good stories to tell, have also endured all manner of shit and lived to tell about it (unless of course your the husband in the English Patient who decided to fly his plane into a sand dune instead of doing the hard work which is required to achieve “lived to tell about it” status).

And while no one can say a damn thing that makes it all better, there is something very powerful in your verbal acuity, your willingness to recognize and acknowledge my situation as familiar or acceptable and to even share your personal anecdotes about your own marital difficulties. I am forever grateful for your cyber-companionship. I see people on a daily basis who do not know me anywhere near as well as you all know me because they do not know my mind.

This blogging thing makes for odd and unorthodox friendships but they are real and important connections that deserve to be acknowledged.

And so I leave you with some wise words I found in my in-box earlier this week as an example of the very thing that gets me through the day,

CCE, Your situation has been brewing for some time and has had a million tiny moments and choices to get you here. It is going to take time to deconstruct the myriad rudders to find which one, or which combination, will turn things again. I still maintain that you’ll inevitably find yourself doing the slow work of constructing a narrative for your life that’s going to put everything else in perspective. I don’t know what that is but I know it’s bigger than you and more than now. And I still say that faith that things will work out may well be the thing that, in the end, makes things work out.

Tiny moments, choices, slow construction, perspective, faith, bigger than you, more than now…all good things to ponder at this juncture. Thank you.

And, as an aside, I told you the peonies were primed to bloom. The picture included here is just a sample of what’s exploding in my garden this week. For that and for all of you, I am thankful.

So there is the state of things…one big hassled frenzy, a breath taking whirlwind before the pause and linger of summer which should be spent poolside, sipping lemonade and reading mindless fiction but somehow, these next few months don’t seem to hold the promise of that quiet languor.

First there is the fact that, with nowhere left to go but up, My Better Half and I are attempting to make some changes. I wish I could call this team work but it feels more like each of us embarking on an individual and private effort to find some stable ground. It’s been shifting and tilting away from us for awhile and this is the moment, the crucial point at which we find ourselves searching for a way back to center.

While I’d like to think that people change, people who really, really want to change can find it in themselves to fight complacency, can recognize the tiny but significant ways they have failed each other and make the minute adjustments necessary for recovery and the sustained health of the marriage, I can’t quite shake the emphatic claim that MBH has made throughout the eleven years of our marriage. Until very, very recently he has been determined and resolute in his opinion that people don’t change, can’t change, won’t change. It was take it or leave it for so long and now, somehow, when leave it became a distinct possibility, he is no longer quite so certain that change is an impossibility.

And while no one sets out to find themselves here, staring at one another over a cup of coffee at a the Heartbreak Cafe, deciding whether or not to split the bill, share the tip and take separate ways at the fork in the road, I think it’s sadly common, almost banal. We aren’t the first people sipping at this bitter brew and we won’t be the last.

There is one jaded but clever waitress here, with her netted hair and her faded work uniform, who tells tales of the few who have decided to endure, who held hands awkwardly while on the way out to the parking lot, who climbed back into the very same beat-up, work horse of a marriage they arrived in and rode off together in some inexplicable state of stubborn devotion.

She says she never hears from these folks again. She tells it like it’s a good thing, this silence. She claims that only the lonely and the sorry send her postcards. The others, the few, that made it out together have each other. And that makes her glad.

But quick update…we did win the tennis finals. Wednesday afternoon was spent working off an abundance of champagne. Last night was the Cake Walk and all went well despite the fact that the play list I had so carefully developed was on the lap top that was not working for lack of a power cord. So it’s a big sigh of relief and on to the next slough of spring time commitments. One step at a time.

Happy Mother’s Day to everyone who can claim the title. I’ll be back when I’ve got the lap top up and running.

And now that school is back in session and I managed to not kill myself or my children or any of the small furry animals that reside here, it is time for me to fully panic about the damn Cake Walk which I volunteered to organize and run, again, for the third time. I’m not complaining (yet). I’m sure the PTO president in her infinite wisdom saw no issue with scheduling the school’s 50th Anniversary Party and Fundraising Bash for the week following Spring Break because apparently she’s never been away on vacation and can’t imagine why all the usual volunteers and involved mothers – just back from Florida – would be more consumed by the need to pick up the dog from the kennel and complete fifteen loads of beach towel laundry and catch up on 72 hours of e-mails than bake, frost and decorate a cake in the likeness of a pair of sandals or a dragon or a Barbie castle to donate to this year’s Cake Walk. So far I have ten responses to my Cake Walk flier. Last year we had 70 cakes donated and still ran out of cakey prizes a full half-hour before the close of the event.

Perhaps I should have chosen a color other than acid yellow for my flier paper. But Staples was having a sale. I thought the vibrant, ghastly hue of stomach bile would at the very least garner some attention and would save me four whole dollars over the calmer melon sherbet option. “A penny wise, a pound foolish,” as Ben Franklin might say when faced with making copy paper decisions for the local elementary school fundraiser.

So we’ll have ten cakes and three hours of event time which means we can allow approximately three winners per hour. That’s a winner every twenty minutes which amounts to a lot of walking around in circles to the up-tempo strains of Billboard Top Forty while waiting for me to draw the winning number from a hat. I have searched the MP3 archives for a worthy play list and was feeling good about my selections: Sexy Back by Justin, Touch My Body by Mariah, I Wanna Have Your Babies by Natasha Bedingfield and, of course, Beautiful by Snoop Dogg that is until MBH pointed out that I wasn’t MC-ing White Party on South Beach but rather a grade school version of musical chairs with cake. He thought some of the lyrics a bit inappropriate for the intended audience, taking special issue with the following chorus from Beautiful:

When I see my baby boo, shit, I get foolish
Smack a nigga that tries to pursue it (Oh-hooo!)
Homeboy, she taken, just move it
I asked you nicely, don’t make the Dogg lose it
We just blow ‘dro and keep the flow movin’
In a ‘64, me and baby boo cruisin’ (Oh-hooo!)
Body rag interior blue, and
Have them hydralics squeakin’ when we screwin’
Now she’s yellin’, hollerin’ out Snoop, and
Hootin’, hollerin’; hollerin’, hootin’ (Oh-hooo!)
Black and beautiful, you the one I’m choosin’
Hair long and black and curly like you’re Cuban
Keep groovin’, that’s what we doin’
And we gon’ be together until your moms move in… (Oh-hooo!)

I stand by my original selections and continue to insist that we can’t coddle our children forever. But in order to be accommodating and pleasantly suburban I have agreed to tame it up, and add some filler tunes like Queen’s We Will Rock You and Bust a Move.

That should make it acceptably white cake (with low fat cream cheese icing) for all those grade-school-parent-haters, don’t ya think?

All day long the pets, the kids, MBH are in and out, in and out. Leaving a wake of dirt and hair and discarded shoes throughout the first floor. If everyone could just pick one pair of shoes to wear today instead of first trying a pair of crocs and then the sneakers and then the garden boots and then the flip flops and then second string sneakers only to end up, at some point, out on the sparse lawn in previously new, white socks, if the pets could agree to stop blowing their winter coats on every piece of furniture and beneath the piano and on the bathroom rugs, if O and G could notice the filth on their hands each time they dash out and bounce the basketball a few times and dash back in to get a glass of water or use the bathroom or go pilfering in the refrigerator, leaving dirty finger trails on walls and door jambs and window panes, and if the f-ing beech trees that line the driveway could just once and for all release the dead brittle leaves of Winter and stop sort of dribbling them out on the lawn and in the garden beds that I spent four hours last Sunday raking and cleaning and preparing for spring only to find it needed raking and cleaning and preparing for spring all over again after one stiff breeze, then I might feel like embracing this early summer. But right now, it’s just feeling like gleeful freedom for most but tedious servitude for me. Have I mentioned that seasonal changes induce to-do list panic and high-level anxiety for task oriented people like myself? You may have allergies but I have mental illness. So there.

And I feel like this unseasonably warm weather has caught me with my pants down so to speak. It’s bare feet and tank top warm and I haven’t had a pedicure since last August and my summer clothes are still at the back of the cedar closet. Every morning I climb the stairs to the attic to retrieve a pair of shorts for O to wear. You’d think I’d just drag the whole box of shorts down to the second floor and arrange them in his bureau drawer but I’m afraid such a bold gesture will incite the wrath of Mother Nature. She can be so spiteful and mean, ushering in late April snow storms just to mess with over-efficient mothers who have prematurely mothballed the winter hats and mittens. So as a precaution, I take each short sleeved shirt, each flouncy spring skirt from it’s winter storage, one item at a time, until it’s safe to assume that Winter is but a distant memory. And I’m kind of missing it, the blank, boring nothingness of a winter afternoon spent sipping tea and dreaming of sunshine. Remind me of this longing next February when I bitch about the intolerable last stretch of cold. Remind me that the grass is always greener and greener grass means lime and fertilizer and mowing and leaf blowers and incredible amounts of yard maintenance.

Apparently Mark and his wife have found some sort of connubial equilibrium by,

“each keeping a notebook in which we record all the things the other does that are wrong. They plan to compare notebooks on their deathbeds to determine who was the better person.

But in the meantime, they’ve realized that they haven’t had an effective way of handing out both praise and criticism. That is, until now. From here on out, they’ve decided to issue annual spousal performance reviews.”

Hopefully Mark won’t mind that I’ve put the Madmarriage through the same corporate stress test and come up with the following performance review for myself and My Better Half:

CCE’s 2008 Spousal Performance Review

DOMESTIC SKILLS
Rating: Over Achiever.
Comments: CCE has been known to spend whole evenings organizing shoes in the mudroom and vacuuming the dog. There is no question that she sets exacting and impossible standards, unafraid to work overtime in the pursuit of cleanliness and the perfect pie crust. She must, however, continue to try and manage her own frustration that other team members often fail to reach projected cleanliness goals and will continue to incite her wrath over black finger print smudges on the door jambs and dirty socks on the bedroom floors. CCE needs to work on delegation skills, leaving at least a few household chores for Her Better Half seeing as there are only twenty four hours in a day, eight of which should be spent sleeping. She needs to trust that he can, indeed, manage to do a load of laundry without causing second floor flooding or an incremental bleed of red towels on white t-shirts.

BEDROOM ACUMEN
Rating: Meets standards.
Comments: CCE is a fit and attractive 30-ish female who strives to meet deadlines, milestones and objectives in the bedroom when she’s not too exhausted, drunk or impossibly irritated with her BH. She has recognizable trouble switching between housekeeper, mother and sex goddess roles and often fails to apply her imagination in thinking outside the 11-years-of-monogamy-box. This being said, we think that CCE’s bedroom acumen could be improved by her BH’s attentive fawning to include fresh cut flowers and the simple purchase of a some edible chocolate body paint, a swing and a healthy dose of Xanax. CCE has great potential in this department. We hate to see her fall short of her obvious ability to reign supreme and excellent in all things bedroom.

PARENTING
Rating: Achieves standards.
Comments: CCE successfully straddles the line between knowing when to be supportive and encouraging (when youngest child is streaking towards the goal in last week’s soccer game) or downright neglectful (when American Idol or tournament tennis is on television). She is not afraid to administer punishments for failure to replace the cap on the toothpaste and is not above eliciting peak performance from her children by withholding dessert for minor offenses. While subordinates complain that she can be a real “ball-buster”, we think CCE epitomizes perfection in the parental management department and has even been known to show her soft side every now and again by planning impromptu trips to the playground or the bowling alley.

PUNCTUALITY
Rating: Over Achiever.
Comments: While CCE is never ever late for anything, there is such a thing as pathologically punctual. We appreciate the inner and exacting clock by which CCE operates but would caution her that it is really not necessary to proceed scheduled play date times by twenty minutes. And we reiterate our belief that no matter how anxious she is to make a good impression, no dinner party hostess really wants her invited guests to arrive “right on time”. A fifteen minute lag is expected and appreciated and often means the difference between said hostess finishing her shower and blow drying her hair. Because the attention to detail in the punctuality department borders on excessive perhaps CCE could go and hang out for a week with her mother-in-law who has never been on-time for anything and the two could sort of rub up against each other and moderate the other’s tendencies into something more decent and acceptable.

OVERALL RATING/GOALS
Rating: Achieves or exceeds standards.
Comments: CCE continues to lead by example in all household matters (even making beds while occupants are still dozing and frequently considering driving the cats to the nearest quarry for possible abandonment if that’s what is necessary to cut down on excessive pet hair on the couch). In the coming year, she should consider cloning herself in order to save her sanity. Overall, CCE is a good wife when not being a complete “ball buster”.

CCE’s Better Half 2008 Spousal Performance Review

DOMESTIC SKILLS
Rating: Needs improvement.
Comments: CCE’s Better Half, here on in referred to as BH is still learning how to be an asset rather than a detriment to the household management program. While his instincts in this arena are good, (who doesn’t love a guy who likes to play video games and board games and allow children to play in the mud on the way to the bus stop), BH needs to commit more time to the more banal aspects of the job (i.e., dog walking, cat litter changing, planning for business trips rather than panicking the night before heading out to Cincinnati when he realizes that all his dress shirts are still in a wad at the bottom of the suitcase in the spare bedroom since his last trip to Grand Rapids0. BH could also use a week’s worth of continuing education classes on topics such as preparing healthy family meals outside of his current comfort zone which includes fried pizza and the drive-thru at BK, how to romance one’s business partner with simple gestures like spontaneous phone calls, appreciative notes and the ability to discuss financial matters without exploding into a rage.

BEDROOM ACUMEN
Rating: Satisfactory.
Comments: While BH claims to consistently meets his own deadlines, milestones and objectives, he isn’t always a team player and consistently misses obvious ways to establish bedroom business relationships such as actually entering the bedroom when CCE is still awake, sometime before 1 a.m., which would require deliberately skipping a three-hour web surfing session which seems to occupy his evening hours on most occasions.

PARENTING
Rating: Achieves standards on occasion.
Comments: BH often meets his six year old’s expectations playing court jester to her queen. She favorably and affectionately refers to her father as “a big child” and therefore expects little but laughter and unconditional love. BH’s eight year old son is a little more demanding and suffers the internet obsession acutely, often commenting on BH’s inability to peel himself away from he lure of the computer during non-business hours. BH is often unavailable for discipline, hygiene, safety, scheduling, education and appropriate outerwear selection routines and prefers to delegate these responsibilities to partners and sub-ordinates. “BH is an exceedingly loving parent, when he remembers he is one.”

PUNCTUALITY
Rating: Questionable.
Comments: Yes, BH is always on time but only because CCE is a worthy task-master.

OVERALL RATING/GOALS
Rating: Achieves standards.
Comments: BH is part of the marriage. In the coming year, he should strive to replace rotting wood on the exterior of the house, remember to call his mother and father who live in Florida on occasion, like on their birthdays, and put away the growing stack of clean clothes CCE has efficiently washed and folded and placed smack in front of his bureau. If household budget allows, he also should take a course in how to endure television programming that he may find insanely boring, (i.e., Hell’s Kitchen and pre-recorded French Open matches) in order to better spend time with his wife and appreciate just being close to her and holding her hand.

Having grown up in these parts, Patriot’s Day has always just one of those holidays that is part of a long weekend, a long weekend in which my parents always did copious amounts of yard work and rototill-ed the garden and planted spring peas. But My Better Half, never having heard of Patriot’s Day before moving to Massachusetts a few years ago, insists there must be something more than gardening to the regional affair, something that has to do with Miles Standish and Paul Revere and the Red Coats, or, at the very least, Tom Brady’s being beautiful. I just nod my head and say, “Sure, honey. You must be right,” and return to raking out the garden bed at the base of the front stoop. It’s not that I’m too lazy to google the origins of the holiday, it’s just that there are a zillion yard-related things to get accomplished before the lilacs pop and the leaves flush out on the trees. I assure him that I can properly celebrate the heroes of The Boston Tea Party and the Patriot’s Offensive Line while working the leaf blower.

And while this regionally observed holiday may strike outsiders as odd or, at least, undefined, I suspect that every area of this country has its own unique celebration noted and observed by its endemic people. It’s what makes us so diverse, these different celebratory occasions. For example, while Massachusetts has spring peas and the Boston Marathon in mid-April, Kentucky has the Derby in early May. And, because I embrace differences and appreciate a good holiday as much as the next person, I’m planning a dinner party to coincide with this year’s Run For The Roses.

And even though I am, through and through, a Yankee, I plan to mark the occasion with some good Southern cuisine. My friend and neighbor, a Louisville native who will be attending the event, has loaned me her Kentucky Heritage Recipe Book for menu planning purposes. As it turns out, within its dog eared pages is some sort of secret code to the workings of the South.

All people embrace a holiday with good old over-eating. Each regional celebration has a menu so purposeful and explicit that outsiders can’t possibly understand or fully appreciate the significance of the cuisine to the inherent importance of the event. I know this with certainty after pouring over the pages (mouth open, eyes wide, stunned and amazed), of every recipe in the Kentucky cook book; all of which contain some iteration of bourbon, cheese sauce, pecans, mayonnaise, coconut and lard. Apparently it is the unique combination of these six ingredients by which a dish earns its revered status as truly Southern fare.

And while I know that the British have Spotted Dick, which, as an adult I have come to realize has less to do with a sexually transmitted disease and everything to do with dried fruits and suet (which may be just as gross), I did not know that the South has Bishop’s Whipple which, surprisingly, is not a major surgical endeavor designed to circumnavigate a clergyman’s intestines but, rather, some sort of dessert with dates and pecans and, of course, bourbon flavored whip cream.

The Derby dessert course apparently must also include the requisite Bourbon Macaroon Mold with its layers and layers of coconut cookies doused in bourbon and served chilled with bourbon whip cream. And, just in case the guests are having trouble keeping their party on between the mint juleps and the sweets, there is the Beer Cheese spread which is made with two pounds of “rat” cheese and garlic “pods” and a forty of Pabst’s Blue Ribbon. While I think guests are encouraged to spread this Beer Cheese on crackers, the recipe leaves the exact purpose for the cheese open to interpretation. Perhaps Beer Cheese is used as sauce for the mysterious main course called Scrapple which is made by boiling an unidentified cut of pork down to a state of utter gelatinouity. The meat falls away from the bones, the fat is skimmed and cornmeal is added to the unidentified pork broth and allowed to thicken into a porridge like consistency and then is poured into a mold and allowed to congeal. Once solidified, the unidentified pork porridge is sliced and fried in lard and served hot to guests who are so freakin’ sideways with Bourbon and Beer Cheese that they fail to see this Scrapple as possibly the most disgusting culinary invention of all time.

And if the Scrapple fails to get their attention then the Scotch Eggs are sure to rock their inebriated worlds. I will let the recipe speak for itself, just as it is written on page 18 of The Kentucky Heritage Cookbook:

Boil desired number of eggs hard. Peel and cut into halves. Remove the yolks, mash and season lightly. Refill the whites and press halves together firmly. Cover tightly with country sausage meat. Roll in egg and crumbs and fry slowly in deep fat. Drain and place on rounds of toast and surround with cheese sauce. (I shit you not – deep fried sausage coated deviled eggs on toast with Beer Cheese sauce.)

And if, after all this culinary celebration, there are a few stout and hardy people still standing on two legs rather than squatting on piano benches and crawling to refill their high ball glasses, there will be a refreshing Reception Salad (involving cream cheese, pimentos, pineapple, jello, celery, pecans and, of course, bourbon whipped cream), that is sure to be the straw that broke the race horse’s drunken, lard-heavy back.

“Okay, are you satisfied NOW that you’ll never get paid to write? Because it’s good time to give up that pipe dream and go get yourself a real job that starts at 9 and ends at 2 and allows for teacher-work days and sick-kid days and whole weeks off while I travel to glamorous places like Cincinnati and Pittsburgh and gives you the summers free so we don’t have to pay for childcare and of course offers dental and benefits because, after all, such a job that pays more than $9 an hour must exist, you just haven’t looked hard enough, in fact you haven’t looked at all.”

From her defensive crouch, she shot back,

“Right, sorry, I must have been too busy preparing meals and supervising homework and completing Ben Franklin projects and schlepping our kids to piano and baseball and tennis and coaching soccer and making sure there’s food in the fridge and paying all the bills on time and shoveling the back porch and mowing the lawn and stripping wallpaper and painting the interior of the entire fucking house and posting five days a week on my blog and writing a novel and volunteering in the each child’s classroom and helping Gladys pay her rent to have properly looked for a job that could fit nicely into the 15 minutes of me-time I enjoy on the couch each night post-8 p.m. when the kids have been bathed and read to and tucked in multiple times and the cat has finished vomiting up a hairball on the carpet and the five loads of daily laundry are folded and put away because that’s exactly when I feel like kicking it into high gear and getting off my lazy ass to go out and earn myself a living because all this other stuff is just joy and sunshine, hardly a day at all.”

She can tell that today is going to require some serious house cleaning therapy. The Windex is out, the murky glass just asking for a good spring shining. Did she mention that all of her friends, neighbors and acquaintances pay $300 twice a year to have their windows cleaned? She’ll let that fact speak for itself.