LifePundit

Aren't There Any Grown Ups Left? (Shut Up, Mark Sanford!)

This could be a long and thoughtful post about love, soul-mates and the precious shortness of life. But it's not going to be.I'm too busy gagging.

I got a text alert on my cell phone that Governor Sanford told the AP that his Argentinian mistress is his soul-mate and that he's going to try to fall back in love with his wife.

Isn't that just the sweetest thing?

Now, if I were his wife, if I had any love left for him, that little statement would certainly make it evaporate. Let their boys watch Sponge Bob or find some other role model for them who is at least a grown up. Their father sounds like he's 14. 

Here's a link but I'm not reading the story. I have had enough.

I hope his wife has put his things on the curb. Then, somebody neeeds to put duct tape over his mouth and leave him sitting in the governor's chair. He can just sit there quietly until it's time to elect somebody else. I'm still not ready for Andre Bauer.

Why Sanford Shouldn't Resign

Ordinarily, I would call for the resignation of a governor who let the state go to voicemail and snuck off to Argentina to dally with his mistress. But at least he's more of an adult than our lt. governor, Andre Bauer.

On the other hand, if Sanford resigned, maybe the media would lose interest in him and focus on Cap and Tax, Iran, North Korea and the debt that's going to make us a third-world country.

Now I'm Afraid to Go Outside

I used to be afraid that there were alligators under my bed. Turns out I was not such a foolish child after all.

The alligators have gotten too big for their breeches. I guess that's what happens when you over-protect a species that doesn't appear to need much protecting.

I'm happy to say that it's legal to hunt them in S.C. now, though I don't know when, how or where to do it.

Unfortunately, for the "where" part, it seems you don't have to look very far. A couple of weeks ago, at Betty's Diner on this end of town, or rather, since I'm not in town and Betty's not either, I guess you'd say sort of in this neck of the woods, had a10-12 foot alligator relishing the aroma of cooking hamburgers, fried chicken and tasty customers from just off Betty's property line. Since the marauder wasn't technically on her property and was a good tipper, the authorities wouldn't do anything about it.

Betty said:

“I check under my car when I go out,” said Betty Mack, 59, the diner’s chief cook and restaurant’s namesake who says her specialty is her fast-selling, secret-recipe, nonalcoholic green fruit drink she calls “Jesus.”

The gator hung out all day Friday.

And then, about 35 minutes from here in another town where alligators do not belong, a family heard a noise on the porch at 3:00 a.m. and thought it was a burglar. I think I would have preferred a burglar.

It was a nine-foot alligator. On their porch! And what's with the rug (picture above)? Remind anybody other than me of Little Red Riding Hood? This is serious, folks?

What the heck was a nine-foot alligator -- impersonating an alligator wearing a rung -- doing making a ruckus on their porch? Alligators do not belong next to restaurant parking lots. They don't belong on people's porches.

I'm beginning to believe that they belong in the purse-and-shoe shops. A few alligators is a natural wonder. Alligators leaving their natural habitats (and I'm not talking about how we encroached on them -- they do not belong this far away from their snaky rivers and golf courses near the coast) is how you lose an arm.

I had a friend who used to be in public relations for Jekyll Island. Every now and then she'd have to handle a situation where a tourist would have Poopsie the beribboned poodle on a leash, and an alligator would snatch Poopsie and gobble her down in one bite, just leaving the leash and the horror-stricken tourist. And my friend with a PR problem. (Poodles are apparently alligator chocolate.)

Anyway. I don't know where I'm going with this, but one thing's for sure: I'm not going outside.

Airline Makes Big Guy Buy Two Seats

This is a true story and not one that you've heard about. A friend of a friend has a rather large son (though not 555 lbs.) who is all muscle and plays football at some college. He's a monstrous guy with biceps like my thighs, only muscular and without cellulite, and weighs in at over 300 and something. So, when booking a flight, the airline made him buy two seats. This really made him and his mother mad because he's just your average college football player sort. Only in jumbo size.

Now, I have mixed feelings about this airline big-people, two-seat rule. I have flown before in the middle seat between passengers on each side who spilled over quite abundantly into my seat. The two large folks almost met in the middle, which, unfortunately, I was attempting to occupy. The thought did occur to me at the time that I was not getting full use of the seat I was paying for, and in fact, thought about charging rent. Though since they were bigger than me, and I couldn't be seen or cry for help behind the double-wall of flesh, I just endured.

So I can understand why if a person occupies more than one seat, perhaps the person in the seat who is experiencing the uninvited double occupancy of his neighbor's seat overflow really should either get a discount or a break. Yet, there is something unfair about this selling of two seats to one person. Heavy people and Southerners are the only people it's okay to make fun of.

But back to the true story of this son of a friend of a friend. He begrudgingly paid for his two seats, and showed up on time for his flight...

...only to find that the two seats weren't anywhere near each other!

S. C. Authorities Search for Mother and 555-lb. 14-year-old Son

I wish this news was really a movie because then it would be funny. A South Carolina mother didn't show up for a custody hearing and so the authorities are looking for her and her 555-lb. 14-year-old son. The reason she is in trouble with the law is that his size critically threatens his health.

You can read the breaking news story here.

Somebody suggested they look for them in all-you-can-eat restaurants. But I didn't just type that, did I?

How can you hide a 555-lb kid? How can you fit him in the car?

And I know from personal experience that 14-year-olds can be a bit frustrating. Obstreperous. Difficult. And that's without messing with their food.

I'll resist all the things I want to say, like maybe he ate her.

The Piano Recital

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To whom much is given, much is expected. 

It's easy to pick on Lily, because she deserves it. She is gifted musically. A few years ago she began to compose her own music. It was good enough to get her some invitations to perform, including in church and as part of a Women Composers Program sponsored by the local piano teachers guild. I don't know how this could be my child but there she is. And she's won scholarships for piano lessons the last two years.

She plays violin in the school orchestra because the alternative is to take gym. When she first started she was a second violin and when one of the first violinists (who took private lessons) would choke and stop playing, Lily would switch parts and play the first violin part to help carry the music. She's not a star -- the first chairs are filled with dedicated violin students (mostly Asians) but she doesn't work at it either.

She has long wanted to quit music. We told her what my parents told me. You can quit music anytime. And that same day you quit riding. 

At the piano recital last night there was a little boy who wanted to take piano so badly that he's doing yard work for the teacher in exchange for lessons. Another teenaged girl has decided she wants to be a piano teacher and had three beginner students playing in the recital. Music is a gift to us all.

Lily's piano teacher is a very stern but sweet elderly woman whose back hurts so much she can hardly sit in the chair while she gives lessons. But she has a job to do, and she's going to teach these children music. No fudging, either. It has to be right. She's an old-fashioned kind of piano teacher. Everybody needs one of those. Lily says Mrs. S is the nicest person in the world until you get on the piano bench. We're all afraid of her. 

When I need to tell her something I know she won't like, I call and leave a message on Tuesdays when she's teaching in another county. I will never feel like a grown up with this woman. I turn into a seven-year-old who didn't practice my music. "Yes m'am" is all I know how to say.

At the end of the piano recital, the teacher gave out awards for the most improved, best student, etc. At the end she had a special award. She described a student who didn't practice and in fact, practiced the least. She said that this student was gifted. Lily immediately knew it was her. The teacher went on to say that she hoped this award, the Most Creative, would encourage this student to use her gifts. 

I hope so, too.

In the car on the way home I tried to talk with Lily about it. (Paul is absent this weekend -- he's part of a Kairos Prison Ministry weekend in Broad River Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison.) 

How do you get a person (a teenaged person) to recognize her gifts and to want to use them? I could use force (take away her cell phone until she practiced) and might end up doing that. But there's something more fundamental here: the squandering of gifts.

She says she doesn't care about piano, though she likes to compose and play her own pieces (yet she's quit doing that). I asked her why when she has been told repeatedly that she's gifted that she doesn't use her gifts. "Because I'm lazy," is her honest and heartbreaking answer.

We will talk about this further. This talk should be called "The Day I Beat My Head Against the Wall Again." 

To whom much is given, much is expected. How about we drop the "much" and say "a little"?

I am out of ideas. 

Her piano teacher says that she has been told a million times by adults that they wished their parents had never let them drop music. And she says that she has never been told by adults that they were sorry their parents made them continue to play.

Choices: punishment, bribery, logic, cajoling. Something creative, like an hour of practice for every hour of riding. Except then I think she'd just not ride, since that passion is wavering with her growing awareness of boys. (Wonder if the boys are aware of her? They're all 14.)

To whom much is given, much is expected. It was given to her, not to me. But she was given to me. 

Need to figure out something. 

The Drama Mama

"You'll probably be getting a call from Carla's mother," Lily said on the way to school yesterday.

Carla is her best friend. They're both 14 and don't date. They do text. I think that's how a crush works these days. You text. Then when you're with the boy in person, you don't know how to talk to your crush. Carla liked a boy, then told him she didn't like him. It (the like), was over. So Lily asked Carla if it was all right if Lily liked him, and Carla said yes because Carla was finished liking him. So Lily likes this boy. And now Carla has changed her mind, I suspect with some help from her mother. Carla likes him. And doesn't want Lily to like him anymore.

Is this like a dog chasing a car or what? What would these girls do with these boys if they had them? Never mind, don't tell me. I'm enjoying my innocence.

Carla's mother has told Carla that Lily violated "Girl's Rules," which include but are not limited to that you never like your friend's ex- what would he be? Ex-crush? Ex-like? I was not aware of it, but something called "Girl's Rules" were handed down at Mt. Sinai. My mother apparently didn't know them either, as she didn't teach them to me. I wonder what other Girl's Rules are out there to be violated.

Carla's mother has called the boy's mother. And now Carla's mother has called me.

Carla's mother is a really nice person. She's just overly involved in her daughter's life. And a bit of a Drama Mama.

"I just wanted to warn you that there may be a bit of drama when you pick up Lily from school today," she told me. I'm afraid I wasn't much fun. I said that this was the girls' problem and that I wasn't going to get involved.

I also said that I was sure their friendship was strong enough to survive this. "I'm not so sure," Carla's mother said, with great warning in her voice. That would be a shame as they are best friends and very compatible. They even have the same taste in boys.

Where is the boy in all this? And how far has his mother been sucked into the drama? Don't know. Don't these people have lives?

So I said again to Carla's mother, "I'm sorry, but they need to work this out themselves. I'm not going to get involved."

"Neither am I," said the Drama Mama. And I didn't say, "Then why are you calling me?"

The Concert Begins at 3:58 p.m.

Okay, Obama gives the British Prime Minister a set of DVDs that not only resembles the gift that you keep on hand in case somebody shows up with a present and you didn't have one for them, but also won't play on DVD players in another region. The PM can't watch the DVDs unless he gets a player made for the American market.

I won't go on, because I know that some of my readers and friends are Democrats. But there is more and bigger stuff that makes me feel like We Are Not in Good Hands.

And it's everywhere. I find out (by chance, but that's another story) that Lily has an orchestra concert on Friday that begins at 3:58 p.m.

Who schedules a concert for 3:58 p.m.? (And if they dawdle until 4:00 for it to begin I'm going to start pounding the floor.) I hope that the school administrator who scheduled this thing has an enormous sense of humor and thought we would find this funny. If not, our schools are truly being run by people with no sense.

Dense Fog Advisory

There's some kind of little weather-tracking thingy on my toolbar that frequently pops up with a red stop-signed shaped thing with an exclamation mark in the middle. It's supposed to be a dire warning about an urgent weather alert that's been issued.

In my opinion, urgent weather alerts should be the sorts of things that save your lives. Tell me it's urgent and prod me with your pop-up exclamation point if I need to know about a lightning storm that's going to zap everything in my house (it's happened before) so I can run unplug stuff. Tell me it's urgent and send up your little stop sign if I need to stop what I'm doing and get in a closet because a tornado is coming. Or a hurricane. That's urgent.

But for Pete's sake, if all you've got to worry about is dense fog, leave me out of it. In fact, I think I know where the real dense fog is -- between somebody's doomsday-hungry ears.

Not Everybody is as Nice as My Mother

When I say that not everybody is as nice as my mother, what I'm really saying is that my mother-in-law continued to be a trial throughout the Thanksgiving weekend.

Which doesn't mean that my mother isn't the nicest mother out there, which she is. My mother was accepting, welcoming and non-judgmental. She didn't whine, complain, or accuse Thanksgiving guests of stealing the cranberry sauce.

Yes, when I arrived home from my in-laws' on Thanksgiving night, the phone started ringing. It was my dear mother-in-law, accusing me of stealing the cranberry sauce. Little did she know how close I had been to throwing it at her, but no, I did not steal the cranberry sauce.

"So if you don't have it, who does?" she demanded.

"I don't know."

"No one else could have taken it. Are you sure you don't have the cranberry sauce?"

"I didn't take it," I said. I wondered if I should call a lawyer.

"Well, where can it be? It's not here. Are you sure you don't have it?" she said.

I explained to her in a kinder voice than she deserved that the only things I had brought from her house were the leftovers of the things I had taken there, and that in fact, I had left her a pie.

Still, where was the $&@*#$&@*$&! cranberry sauce?

As it turns out, my father-in-law had GIVEN it to my husband, who had stayed later than I had and was coming home in a different car. My father-in-law is not allowed to make such weighty decisions on his own, such as what to do with the leftovers that they usually discard, so my mother-in-law demanded that my husband bring the cranberry sauce back as she wanted it.

The next morning when we met them and the other relatives for a day at the zoo, the first words out of my MiL's mouth were, "Where is the cranberry sauce?"

Since it was going to be in the mid-60s and we were going to be gone all day, my husband said he didn't think it was a good idea for the cranberry sauce to be in the car in the heat. Just think. What if he had brought it, the cranberries had turned, and my MiL got sick? Oh, the tempation!

When we were at the zoo and my MiL was sitting alone in the back while the rest of us were watching the penguins being fed, my husband thought he would be nice and go keep her company. He found a seat by her and the only thing she said to him was, "I can't believe you took my cranberry sauce."

That night at dinner, after the cranberry sauce had been returned, she made a toast to the &*(@#&$*)@(# cranberry sauce.

There is much, much more on other unpleasant subjects and I had to leave Thanksgiving dinner to take a walk to get away. Everyone else is nice. Just not her and she spreads her venom and misery like a flood.

She came to our house on Saturday and said to me, "I don't think other women would put up with Paul." I think this was her best attempt at a compliment.

Not everyone is as nice as my mother. And no, I didn't take the cranberry sauce, but I very well may throw it next time.