We’re behind on our development schedule for this project, but considering the lack of design freeze and the fact that they’ve tried to cram three months worth of work into the last month, this has come as no surprise to me. The problem is that even though we’ve tried to gently indicate the delays, the higher-ups weren’t listening and now all of a sudden it’s smacking them in the face, and as I started a conference call this afternoon (I volunteered to participate in a consulting forum that meets monthly via phone), I suddenly was handed a paper by one of the admins who looked uncharacteristically sober and was told that there was a mandatory meeting I was to attend, no excuses.

The meeting was, as I expected, called to figure out just why we were behind. The thing is, of everything else we’ve done, this is less than 5% of total development, but that didn’t matter. All they cared was why weren’t we done, and when would we be completed. The development manager and I sat on our end of the phone and stared at each other and tried to explain the situation, and through it all I started to question my handling of this. Did I not communicate the delays well enough? Did I gloss over them too much? I’d been responsible for sending out the status reports the last few weeks – had I made them too cheerful? So after the meeting ended, and we were both sitting there a bit shell-shocked and trying to recover, the manager turned to me and said the last thing I expected. Instead of a reprimand for somehow failing in the reporting, he apologized to me for my having to deal with that meeting. And then he shook my hand and told me in a firm voice that I was doing a great job – almost as if he was trying to make sure that I didn’t take that phone call personally. It was a little reminder that despite everything, it’s all going to work out in the end.

Tonight we had a team dinner for all the consultants from my particular company (there’s probably over a hundred consultants on this project, all from different groups, and my company’s got about 25 people here on site). The testing manager planned it all – he’s in the unique position of actually being a recognized project manager within our company, whereas I’m merely project manager of this particular project by default because the customer is the one who put me there (although it’s been made fairly clear that nearly everyone else on the project wouldn’t want to touch my job with a ten-foot pole). So he’s the one who organized the whole shindig, and he’s the one who stood up and did a little speech after we were pleasantly sated from dinner, thanking all of us for our hard work, and giving special note to some of us. He started with me, since I suppose that in the big scheme of things I’ve got the most high-profile position on the team. And what he said took me back a bit too. He noted that of all the people on the project, I’m the one who is completely irreplaceable.

He’s not the first to tell me that, and if I look at it logically I know I have to agree. It’s not that I’ve tried to put myself into this sort of position, but it’s simply ended up that way. I’m in a very unique place on this project, straddling the line between business and development, fingers in both sides of the pie, running from planning meetings to technical design discussions to prioritizing bug fixes. I’m the sole input into our side of development – if it doesn’t get past me, it doesn’t get done, although I’m not exactly thrilled to be the one with that kind of power, because it often means that even on days like today when I’m fighting a head cold, I still had to be at work, to deal with status meetings and testing issues and all the other normal little crisises that pop up each day on this project.

But it has made me think. Recently I put my resume online, and I’ve gotten a fair number of calls – enough to let me realize that, despite my worries and insecurity, I’m definitely marketable. But it is time to take that resume down. This is not a good time to leave – I may not like it, but the fact is, this project would suffer if I left and I’m entrenched too deeply to want to go anyway.

I’m not giving up on my dream of leaving consulting, and I’m starting to put out feelers for any opportunities I can to improve my chances the next time one of these management positions open up. But that’s a goal for the future. I know how to deal with these people. I know what reports the business needs, sometimes before they even ask for them. I know what to monitor and who to prod and push in order to get things done when I need them done. I know how to wheedle the technical analysts into doing their job, even when they don’t want to. I know how to handle the business folks and how to smooth over the rough spots. It may be crazy and hectic with the usual ‘what’s the plan today?’ type of situation, but at least it’s an insanity I’ve grown used to. And for now, it’s exactly where I belong.

Two years ago I got a Christmas tree. I went with a friend, who’d never done the whole ‘chop down a tree’ thing and found it quite fascinating, and the two of us put it up and decorated it, with music in the background and cats assisting in every possible way. And then she left and I was all alone in my house and that entire Christmas season I turned on the lights exactly once, and I wondered why the heck I had even bothered? Decorating the house just didn’t seem all that worth it if it was only me to see it and to appreciate it. Turning off all the lights to watch the tree sparkle is kinda dull when you do it yourself. I wasn’t lonely – it’s just that Christmas, to me, has always been something to share. I’ve shared the spirit with roommates and friends and family for so many years that having no one to share it with beyond the initial set up of the tree was more of a let down.

Last year we had Christmas up in Seattle with my little sister, so that was as good an excuse as any to not have a tree. But I didn’t plan to get one anyway. The year prior, one of the cats managed (despite my purchasing the most sturdy, stable-looking tree stand I could find) to pull the tree over, and I just didn’t want to go through the hassle for something that really ended up being a waste of time. (Oh, and helpful hint – when you’ve got cats who think that the sparkly things on cords on the tree look edible and must be taken away into hiding, it’s best to drape the lights back and forth instead of wrapping them around. This way, when the afore-mentioned cat grabs the string of lights and runs, the lights come off and the tree does *not* come with them).

I hadn’t intended to get a tree this year either. I figured I’d do the annual tree hunt with my parents and then we’d sit around poking holes in fresh-baked gingerbread men, stringing popcorn, and pulling out all the family ornaments to decorate their house. And then I’d go home, drag out my fake poinsetta (because when the cats sit on this one, it can be brought back to life) and put on some holiday music and all would be well.

Of course, that was before Richard moved in with me and suddenly I found myself with someone who – among all the other reasons we’re so compatible – loves Christmas as much as I do.

We got our tree today. We treked out to the nearest tree farm and chopped down a little incense cedar. I know it’s impractical to have a real tree, but there’s nothing like the scent of pine in the air to herald the coming holidays. This was the first time he’d ever gotten to ‘hunt’ his own tree, so it was fun for both of us.

We brought it home and, after distracting the cats with new toys, put it up and decorated. We decided that next year, Jennifer will listen to Richard when he suggests checking the string of lights *before* we hang them, and we hung all the non-breakable ornaments near the bottom of the tree because they’re the ones that have the greatest tendency to leap off the branches and scurry off to other rooms – all without any assistance from the furry residents. Mm hmm.

But when we were done, we turned off all the lights in the house, turned on the lights on the tree, and sat down and just drank in the setting. The fresh smell of pine in the air; Christmas music playing softly in the background; lights on the tree, and he and I snuggled together on the couch. And for just a little while we could forget about all the stress of our respective jobs and everything else that seems to be looming over us and just *be*.

I have seen bad movies before. There is no lack of them in the world, and despite my best intentions, I’ve seen quite a few. Sometimes you go to the theater with the knowledge that this movie will probably be bad, but you’re willing to see it for some other redeeming factor. Sometimes you get lucky. Last night, we did not.

We went to see Dungeons and Dragons tonight. Before you start snickering, we all assumed that this would probably not be very good. But as it was a crowd of gamers, we figured we had to at least go, just to see what Hollywood thought of our little subculture.

Hollywood apparently thinks that people who role-play have IQ’s that put them in par with your average kumquat, and aren’t capable of understanding the difference between acting and not acting.

I don’t know quite what happened. I don’t know if the director was in the middle of a vendetta against the writer, or if the person who wrote the lines refused to give any other insight except “Stand here and be…um…dramatic”, but it was bad. So bad that it was amusing, despite how seriously it tried to take itself.

The acting reminded me a great deal of that which was seen in Star Wars: Episode I (a statement that, I’m sure, will anger you hard-care Star Wars fans, but tell me honestly that you thought that that movie was well-acted and I will ask you what drugs you were taking at the time). However, Star Wars at least had a few people who redeemed themselves, despite the director’s best intentions. Not so with Dungeons and Dragons. Not remotely so. Jeremy Irons’ character was a one-dimensional bad guy – complete with wild gestures, grimaces that were supposed to make him look more evil (but often made him look as if he was pondering revisiting his dinner), and dramatic statements of his evil intent. It would have simply been easier (and a good deal less painful to watch) if they’d merely painted “I’m the bad guy” on his chest and had been done with it. His sidekick was just as bad, and what’s even worse is that I’ve seen this guy in other films and he really *can* act. Perhaps the fact that he was forced to wear badly applied silver-blue lipstick throughout the film inhibited him, who knows. The empress’s long drawn out speeches to the mages’ council were painful, and serious moments became laughable because of how woodenly the lines were delivered.

The plot was typical of an AD&D game – one run by a novice Dungeon Master, that is. There were gaping holes, but gaming usually requires the players to suspend belief in reality and in feasibility quite often, so it was, ironically, true to form. The characters acted the way I would expect first level characters to act, played by people who’d just picked up the books and were reading along, and even the incredibly bad acting was somehow reminiscent of first-time players I’ve seen (I was probably just as bad when I began gaming so many years ago too, sad to say). However, while quite appropriate to a group of new gamers, these little quirks only proved the incompetency of the either the writer, director, actors, or perhaps some dismal combination of all three.

We discussed various reasons for why it was so bad, after we had escaped the theater and managed to stop our hysterical laughter. Perhaps, one person offered, this was to show that gamers are really not evil Satan worshipers, as the religious right-wing likes to claim. “See – how evil could they be if they’re truly *this* stupid?” they would exclaim and go home to worry about the nasty influences of Harry Potter and leave the gaming community alone for a while. The more practical reason, however, is most likely that the company that markets the AD&D books and materials has started to realize that their average gamer these days is over 30, and if they’re going to make any money, they really need to hit a younger crowd. And what better way to get younger people all fired up about the game than to make a movie out of it!

If this is truly what Hollywood thinks of the gaming community, there’s a lot of us who should be more than a bit insulted. And it seems we have more insult to come – the film ended with an obvious lead-in to a sequel. The only way I’d be willing to watch that thing again would be if we rented from the bargain shelf and watched at a party where we could yell and laugh and poke fun at the sheer badness of it, and we had a remote control to forward through the truly painful parts.

Dungeons & Dragons was struck by a Curse of Bad Everything. And unluckily for those of us who were watching, haste spells don’t work in real life, and there *was* no saving throw.

We’ve not done much visiting of the house site lately because in the evenings it’s just too dark and foggy to see much, and even if we do sort of angle the car so it’s up on the curb with the headlights shining, there’s enough ditches and other things on the lot that we could fall into or on that we really haven’t done much more than drive by, peer at the interesting piles of dirt, and vow to come back someday when the sun is shining.

So Saturday before we headed down to spend the weekend with his family, Richard and I drove by the lot, armed with digital camera, to record the existence of our very own subfloor.

It’s not even remotely what I expected. I heard ‘subfloor’ and pictured some sort of flat thing, balancing on those obscure little cement posts that were scattered all over the ground inside the ring of foundation where our house is to be. But no, this thing looks sort of like a cubicle maze for really short, skinny people, with curious pipes and hoses popping up here and there.

I tossed together a quick page with the pictures we’ve taken so far. If you want to have the endless thrill of following along on my little house-building adventure, check out the progress so far. You, too, can thrill to the view of trenches at dusk. Peer into the cube maze and try to figure out which pipes go to which bathroom. Share our excitement at having our very own fuse box. Hey. It is exciting. Trust me. Quit snickering.

Our general contractor came by tonight with a few catalogs of front doors because – well, I bet you can’t guess what our next big decision has to be, hmm? Front doors are far more expensive than you might imagine. I’m not talking about the boring old metal doors you find on college rentals, or the hollow doors inside between rooms. I’m talking about solid wooden doors with gorgeously detailed windows and frames, with prices that were much better left hidden. He took me by surprise way back when we first sat down and came up with a budget, for how much he’d set aside for the front door. I can see now that he really wasn’t kidding. Eek.

Richard and I sat down and looked at the selection, then picked one out. True to form, we both managed to pick exactly the same door. It’s that shared brain cell thing, see.

When he came by to drop off the door catalogs, our contractor mentioned a few tidbits of information. The best one was when he said that he thinks they’ll be all done building by March. That’s only four more months. Woo! He also told us, however, that our neighbors-to-be are asking about us, and are curious. This does not surprise me that they’re curious – although over the past five months we’ve been out there tromping around on the lot we have yet to meet one of them. However, it has started to make me think of all sorts of evil little things we could do, just to make the new neighbors wonder. Perhaps start moving some of the gargoyles in early. Borrow a drum set from someone with a surly teenage boy and have him move it into the garage. Drive up and park a van painted with flames and ‘Free Love’ on the side.

Ah, the possibilities…

After I heard about the job on Wednesday, I actually surprised myself with how disappointed I really was. I’d been telling myself all along that I wasn’t going to get the job, but I guess I had started to make plans about how nice it would be when I would be able to work so much closer to home, with more regular hours. I think the loss of that dream hurt worse than the loss of the actual position. There’ll be more, and I have a really good chance, I think, if I jump through the hoops I’m sure they’ll give me to prove my worth.

But not getting the job has made me think about what I really want to do, and I find that I really don’t know. I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. I used to think that being a computer nerd was the end of the road – that that was exactly where I should be, and at the time, it was true. But now I’ve had a taste of something more with this project, and I’m starting to lean more towards a career that is, perhaps, a bit heavier in the management, and a bit lighter in the coding. And then I question myself if this leaning is merely a flimsy excuse for that constant nagging voice in the back of my head that has, since the day I started this career, told me that I’m never going to be quite as good as I should be because of the training that I lack. It’s frustrating, in an almost comical way, that I am over thirty years old and am reduced to dithering about my career. I told Richard that I thought I should just buy a Starbucks franchise and spend my days whipping up lattes in a cute little coffee shop, with a store cat (I can imagine how many health laws this would violate. Let me dream, okay?). The nice thing is that I know that he’d support me in whatever I chose to do.

In the meantime though, while I’m dithering about which direction to take, and sulking childishly about not getting the management job, I decided to do something that is both slightly productive, and good for the ego. Last night I dragged out that resume I’d worked so hard to create for this job I didn’t get, and tossed it out onto one job search site, just to see what sort of response I’d get. I’m not doing the all-out job search yet, so I figured that one site would be enough to start – just to get my feet wet and find out if I was even remotely marketable. And because I feel more than a little awkward about having recruiters call me on my business phone, I put in my cell phone number for my contact info.

Finally, an acceptable use for the darn thing. It’s both a phone *and* a piece of exercise equipment! See, because the phone’s reception isn’t so great anyway, and it’s even worse in the building in which I work, every time it rings I have to grab the phone and dash madly outside before it stops ringing, answering as I bolt out the door in the hopes that they’ll be able to hear me well enough through the static so that they won’t hang up. After the first few calls, I finally caught a clue and now my scramble to get outside with the phone also includes grabbing a pen and some paper.

It has been quite the ego boost so far, getting these calls, although I think I’ve disappointed lots of eager young recruiters who sound so crestfallen when I tell them that my main goal is to get *out* of consulting, not simply take another job of the same ilk. On the plus side though, they usually rally back after a quick pause and tell me they’ll see what they can find.

So far there have been a few phone calls to peak my interest, and it’s been rather refreshing to realize that I have the luxury of time for this job hunt. Yes, I want out of consulting, but I am in no hurry to just jump into the first thing that comes my way. I intend to take my time and find the perfect job – or something approximating that, at any rate. This project I’m on is in no danger of ending any time soon, nor am I in any danger of being transferred. If it takes me a few months, well so be it. In the meantime, I’ll get lots of exercise doing the ‘ohmygodthephoneisringing’ sprint three or four times a day.

I am sooo tired of bland food. If I never eat yogurt or applesauce or cottage cheese again, I’d be a happy, happy woman. I tried eating regular food, but my stomach rebelled (hoo boy did it rebel). I’m crossing my fingers that this stupid bug goes away *soon* because I’m starting to dream about cheese. And milk products are just not a good idea right now (sob).

I heard back about the job. As I expected, my lack of previous management experience hurt me. I was expecting to be told no, so it wasn’t a surprise. I’m trying to pretend right now that I’m not more disappointed than I am.

Things are running around at a fever pitch at work – or should I say, they were yesterday when I was there. The relapse forced me to stay home today, close to the bathroom (ugh). This is our last week of development (yeah, right) and of course people are suddenly finding things that *have* to be done now. Ha. Nasty old Jennifer made them escalate it to their own bosses. If they’re going to force us to delay our finish date, I want to make darn sure that their own people know about it. This has the effect of having people write snippy little emails about how Jennifer insisted that they escalate, and wouldn’t even start the work until she heard back. You can bet your sweet patooty I did. After nearly a year of this project I am sick and tired of not having a finished design. And being sick always makes me grumpy. Heh. Poor people. I feel for them. Really I do. Uh huh.

We had important decisions to make today at home. Our builder stopped by with plans and we had to discuss placement of water spigots outside, and heating vents inside. There’s codes about how far from a door the furnace has to be so the water heater is moving out to the garage. I’m eying the open space that is now directly behind my pantry and pondering expansion there. We also discussed windows. Apparently there’s some code that says that a fireman has to be able to get through with a full pack on. Hence, windows must be larger. Okay. I was still weak from being sick and Richard hadn’t been feeling too good the last few days anyway so we nodded dumbly when he talked about dimensions and queried us on vent placement. I’ll bet you never pondered the placement of your heating vents. Trust me. It’s a question that makes you think. The further we get into this, the more I wish it was just over and someone else was making the decisions, and the more I realize just how many decisions are yet to be made. Someone once told me that the pattern of building a house is that you hate it during the process, then love it after.

The process is going to be going on for the next 5 months.

Sob.

The whole family gathered at my older sister’s house for Thanksgiving this year. It’s the first time we’ve had Thanksgiving when it’s not been at my parents’ place, but considering that little sis had Christmas at her place in Washington last year, I guess older sis wanted to play too. I’m going to have to wait a year or two til I get my turn (gotta have a dining room big enough to hold everyone, see), but that’s okay. It’s a really good excuse to go out and buy new furniture. Or at least that appears to be what my older sister thought.

She got a new dining room table. They bought new living room furniture and new futon covers. She dithered about how the soon-to-be-baby’s room wouldn’t be ready and how our niece would have to see it incomplete. Considering that the niece in question is only 10 months old, the rest of us in the family didn’t see as how this was so big an issue, but then, we’re talking about my older sister. She worries about these sort of things.

The funniest thing she bought, however, was new dishes. See, back when we were in college, she and I managed (without planning at all) to pick out the same style of dishes. So when she called to say that she didn’t have enough place servings for Thanksgiving, I expected her to ask me to bring some of mine.

Nope. Seems she decided this meant it was a good time to get all new dishes. Um. Okay. Well, I suppose it was as good an excuse as any.

Well at least now *I* have place settings for 16. Although I did ask Richard if this means that if we ever host a dinner for more than that, I got to get new dishes too. He gave me that look of tolerant amusement I’m beginning to recognize…

Anyway, despite Thanksgiving being held at a non-traditional place this year, we managed to uphold as many traditions as we could.

The drink of honor was grape Kool-aid, served in the battered old tupperware green pitcher that my mom threatens to toss every year. Don’t ask me how when that got to be a tradition. Probably the same year we decided that the traditional Christmas dinner should be meatloaf, but that’s a different story entirely.

We had the traditional discussion over how to cook the yams, and whether my dad makes his special family cream pies for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and when the green bean casserole was supposed to go into the oven.

I made the traditional chocolate souffle…um, okay, so the souffle itself isn’t necessarily tradition. However, me making a non-pumpkin pie dessert is, since I can’t stand the stuff, and after finally determining that my older sister really *did* own a souffle dish (she thought it was a casserole. Silly her), I made my very first souffle. Which rose just like it should, and then promptly fell all flat and squishy. My little sister reassured me that it was supposed to do that. Considering she’s the gourmet cook in the family, I took her word for it. Flat and squishy nonetheless, it was quite yummy, especially with caramel sauce.

We took the traditional photo of the newest family baby about to be stuffed into the oven while sitting in a roasting pan filled with carrots and onions and potatoes. Yes, my family is weird. Yes, the children will probably need therapy when they’re older.

We collected the traditional ammunition for years of later teasing. My niece (the 10-month old) has earned herself the nickname of ‘Tiny Tank’ because she tends to see what she wants and then makes a beeline for it, regardless of what might happen to be in her path. Cats, toys, small pieces of furniture are all no match for her crawling streak and woe be unto what is her intended goal. In this case, the goal was my nearly three-year old nephew, who she headed for with single-minded purpose, then promptly pulled herself up and proceeded to poke him in the eye. He retreated to the fireplace and spent the rest of the weekend eyeing her warily and saying “No pinching!” every time she came within five feet of him. We figure this’ll be great fun to drag out when he’s older and trying to impress a girlfriend. “Say, did we ever tell you about the time you were terrorized by your cute little niece who’s so much younger than you?” If nephew is a big strapping hulk and neice is a dainty little thing, it’ll be even better.

We did the traditional female shopping trip, which involves getting up at some ungodly hour of the morning when all sane people (that would be the men in the family, who usually give us a sleepy wave and a whimper for us to be kind to the credit cards – ah the things Richard gets to look forward to when he and I are married…) are still lounging in their warm cozy beds, and then going to fight crowds of other crazed women who are, like us, coming down from a cranberry sauce-and-stuffing induced high and have a suddenly insane urge to get *that outfit* before anyone else! And of course, then we had the traditional hour of standing in line to pay for all our bargains while we asked ourselves why it was that we did this every year, anyway?

And finally, we passed around the traditional Holiday Bug. This year it was some form of stomach flu wherein some of us got to experience the full joy of one’s intestines deciding to empty themselves as quickly as possible through any orifice necessary. Near as we can figure, my nephew apparently picked it up from his day care and brought it home to his mother, who passed it to her husband, who then proceeded to pass it to the rest of us. At least my mom and I were home while we were sick. Poor Bil-2, who had the worst of it,- he had to do it while trying to fly back to Washington Sunday night. Ugh.

Stomach flu and spiffy trip to the emergency room aside (wherein Richard was an incredible sweetie and took wonderful care of me and hooray for the joys of modern chemistry that finally made those nasty little elves in my stomach stop twisting it into knots), it was a traditional holiday. We ate too much, we stayed up late, we laughed, we hugged, we caught up.

And now it’s back to work, where, since I missed Monday (because of the aforementioned stomach flu), I had oodles of emails and voicemails to look forward to when I came in today, all marked, of course, urgent.

Today was – well, my coworker put it best.

“Too many people. Must not shoot them.”

Mm hmm. And that’s tradition too.

The entire family gathered again this morning – this time for a family portrait. It’s something my mom’s been wanting to do for quite some time now, and even though there’ll be two new people joining the family next year, she figured she might as well take advantage of having all of us in the same state for a change.

After we left the photographer, we headed for the outlet stores, specifically the children’s clothing stores. I wasn’t too thrilled, but figured it was to be expected, since both my sisters have little ones who wear that sort of stuff. It wasn’t too long before I was itching to get out of there, surrounded by racks of teeny tiny cutesy outfits, screaming babies, rampaging toddlers. I finally escaped outside and found an empty bench. It wasn’t much longer after that that my dad, and both brothers in law joined me. We sat there, shivering in the cold, giving half-smiles of understanding, and I suddenly realized that I was on a different side of the shopping fence. My mom and sisters were inside, fingering the merchandise, and here I was, sitting with the Weary Husbands – those tired men who slouch in chairs outside dressing rooms, usually clutching a package or too, with expressions that say all too clearly that they’d rather be anywhere but there, that even a root canal might be preferable to what they’re currently doing.

And there I was, sitting among them, same expression, thinking similar thoughts. It was more than a little depressing to realize that I was joining those ranks, and I won’t be able to escape them for probably years. I am the odd man out in my family now. It’s not so unusual – I’ve been the lone single one for years – but this time it’s worse. This time, I’m the sole childless one, and as that’s not a situation I have any intention of changing, this means that I’m going to be even more of an outsider as time passes.

For a moment, I felt nearly like crying. There was a heavy feeling behind my eyes and I could feel the tears welling up, as I did my best to hold them back. I know that the emotions aren’t just from this revelation – the past few months have been insane with work and everything else, and I’ve probably been in need of a good cry for a while now. But still, to have it come up at this time, sitting outside in the cold, huddled on a bench between my dad and my brothers in law, well, it wasn’t a very welcome thought.

My sisters have become Mothers, and I’m never going to be able to cross that impenetrable wall. Their lives are, quite understandably, completely wrapped up in their children. My younger sister, even though she’s a stay-at-home mom to a 10-month old, seems to be able to talk about other things, but my older sister’s whole life revolves around her son. As we all headed for lunch, something must have showed on my face, because my younger sister came over. I told her how, but then felt immediately guilty. It’s not that I want them to ignore their kids. It’s just that I miss my sisters, and sitting on that bench, I felt as if they were slipping away from me into a world I won’t be able to reach.

Later on, the children down for naps at my parents’ house, my sisters and I slipped away to go chat around ice cream sundaes and coffee. We stole a few precious hours to just talk. Children rarely entered the conversation, but men did, as is often the case when we would get together in times past. We laughed and teased, asked about friends and jobs and houses. And just for a short time, it was as if we were all still the same as before children and marriages ever entered the picture.

I drove home in the fog with a sense of resigned relief. I may not relish spending the next decade or two as an odd female member of the Weary Husbands club, but at least I don’t have that need to weep about what I’ve lost. It’s still there, buried under diapers and discussions of weaning and toilet training, and will still be there once the children grow. I just have to be patient, accepting that while things will never be the same as they were, it’s not going to be so bad.

When my older sister was first married she used to complain about how when she and her husband went to family gatherings at his parents’ place, she was only ever allowed to bring things like tossed green salad, or the bread, or perhaps sodas. She would volunteer to bring the vegetable, or the dessert, but that was already taken care of. She got stuck with the easy stuff. And it’s not that they didn’t trust her, or didn’t think she was capable of cooking something else. It probably just didn’t occur to them to ask – and I imagine that the other siblings had already gone through something similar and had already figured out what they bring each year to holiday meals and weren’t exactly willing to give that up to the newcomer.

It takes a lot to escape the notion that you’re still just one of the kids. For my older sis, part of the problem was that she ended up marrying the youngest in the family – and he is a *lot* younger than his siblings. So naturally they think of him as still the little kid…and of course, therefore, his wife would fall into the same category.

It’s been a few years since then, and I believe she’s graduated from green salad. Sometimes it just takes a while to prove your worth – or perhaps it was the fact that now that she’s a mom, she’s automatically moved into the world of adults.

I was talking to a friend the other day on Instant Messenger and she was complaining of the same problem. She was going to head up to her boyfriend’s family’s place for Thanksgiving, but she’s only allowed to bring the simple stuff. Over 30 years old and they don’t trust her to bring anything else.

It’s not about trust though. It’s about perception of age. I haven’t had to deal with that, having always spent all my holidays with my own family. One year at Thanksgiving, my mom was pretty sick, so my sisters and I took over. Mom still did the turkey and we were more than happy to let her, but we divied up all the other dishes – baking the bread, making the jello salad, mixing up the green bean casserole and even making pies – and it turned out just fine. Since then, there’s never been a question as to whether we could bring stuff. We just start divying it up a week or so before, and so even though the person hosting has to deal with the turkey itself, most of the rest of the meal is handled by the guests. It works out well, and we all volunteer what to bring, so there’s no hard feelings. For example, I don’t like pumpkin pie. I can handle about one bite, but well, it’s pretty nasty stuff. So to compensate, I always volunteer to bring a non-pumpkin dessert. Those of us who have to travel volunteer to bring cans of stuff to mix up later – or bake the bread and stick it carefully in a suitcase when flying home.

The thing is, it’s easy to do it when it’s your own family. It’s not so easy to do when it’s someone else’s. It all works out at my mom and dad’s house – but then we all know the traditional foods. We know what’s expected and how to prepare them and how to work with each other in the kitchen in a fairly choreographed fashion; one sister stirring cream of mushroom soup into green beans, another one making gravy, another one relegated to setting the table with the best china while my mom squishes stuffing together with bare hands and mutters at the turkey. It’s familiar, comfortable. We all know where everything is so we can help.

This is the last year I’ll do that. No, I shouldn’t say it quite like that. I’ll be back to my parents’ place for Thanksgiving every other year. But next year I’ll be going down to Richard’s family for Thanksgiving. I won’t be able to just automatically assume that I’ll bring the cranberry sauce, or bargain with the siblings about who got to do the pies last year. It’ll be a very different set of traditions and dishes and people at the table. It’s going to be very strange – new and exciting and I am looking forward to it, but still very strange.

We went to see The Grinch Friday night. Because we decided rather late that we’d go see it, we went online to find out where it was showing, and discovered that the next showing was at a theater in town. Neither of us had been there in quite a long time. Shortly after we arrived, we remembered why. The seats were small and cramped. We bought tickets from an older man who stood just inside the door – the theater didn’t have a ticket window. As we waited to go into the theater, we noted the people surrounding us. The teenage girls in their Tammie Fae Baker makeup and painted on jeans. The pregnant unwed girls with their crew-cut sporting, tattooed boyfriends. The family with children the size of small water mammals, sucking down jumbo boxes of popcorn. Yes indeedy, we were smack dab in the middle of the ritzy part of town, mmm hmm.

I’ve been wanting out of this house for years, but always promised myself that the next move would be the last, and so I’ve waited. Like so many neighborhoods in this area, the houses are so close that you could probably lean out one window and shake the hands of your neighbor were they to do the same. And as a special bonus, this closeness has allowed me to hear all kinds of things that I didn’t really want to hear. For example, during the summers when the windows were open, my college roommate and I got to hear all about how the next door neighbor’s son got his girlfriend pregnant – for the second time – and how he was violating his parole – and that wasn’t for the first time either. We dealt with the teenage boy next door who would crank his radio up to top volume, put it next to the open window, and then go to the garage. I’ll give him credit for always turning it down when I would go storming over, but you would think he would have eventually gotten tired of that crabby lady next door pounding on the door and complaining about the noise. We had the oh-so-charming children of another neighbor ask if we dated men, or just women….because apparently, even though there happens to be a large and distinctive college about 15 minutes away, the presence of two women living together in the same house could only mean that we were lesbians. My housemate and I got quite a laugh out of that one. What was pathetic about it was the fact that the kids were obviously repeating a comment they’d overheard from their parents.

I moved to this town a number of years ago for exactly one reason. Rent is much cheaper here. Okay, so it also possesses a rather impressive selection of gorgeous old victorian houses, but that’s often overshadowed by the fact that we are in a primarily blue-collar town. There are probably more discount stores here in this town than in anywhere in the surrounding counties. I’m serious – if you’ve heard the ads for any sort of bargain basement, cheap and tacky store, it’s here. I sound like a snob. Maybe I am a snob. All I know is that I am looking forward to leaving this town more and more the closer our house gets to being completed. And when I leave, I’m not going to look back.

So while we’re on the subject of cheap and tasteless….

I have a hotmail account for email. I created it because of a character I was playing on a Mush, but have ended up using it primarily for business reasons (and have had more fun than I can possibly say trying to explain the name of the account because it has absolutely nothing to do with my name and people give me funny looks when I tell them, but I’m digressing). Since it’s an online account, I get spam. Lots and lots of spam.

It comes in different types. There are the ‘Make thousands per day just by following this easy-to-use Multi-Level-Marketing scam!’ letters. There are the letters that ask if I want to get an illegal degree, if I need to borrow money (Fast and Easy!), and offering me hot deals on all manner of items.

But the ones that make me laugh the most are the emails for sex sites. They’re usually easy to spot – it seems to be a prerequisite that if you’re going to send out a porn-related spam, you have to misspell at least one word in the subject line. And so I roll my eyes at the messages and simply delete them without even opening them, having learned that if you’re stupid enough to actually write back to get your name taken off the mailing list, you have therefore told them that your email is live, and you will be completely bombarded with this sort of drivel. Oh, occasionally someone sends out a subject line that makes me think it might be legitimate, and so I end up reading one or two a month that have some trite little comment about so-and-so and her friends having a slumber party with video cameras involved or something – and usually by the first line I’ve figured out what it is and have hit the delete key.

But I’ll have to admit that this one got me. This one actually had me giggling madly into my coffee this morning, so much so that I had to save it. This one was worth subjecting on *someone* (and I copied it straight, so the grammatical errors are just as they appeared first hand. But then, I think we’ve already learned that writing skills are not a prerequisite for advertising porn…). Don’t you feel lucky?
From: spammyaddressTo: unsuspectingperson@wherever.com

Subject: Fwd: Does the Prince have what it takes?

There was once a Princess who was searching for a Prince so she might fall deeply in love. She came upon a swamp where she saw a frog. She felt a strange attraction for this creature. She cradled the frog in her hand and then she kissed him. At once there was a huge flash of bright white light and the frog disappeared…. only to turn into a handsome Prince!

She loved him at first sight…. and he loved her back…Yum Yum Yum :) He thrusts forward sweeping her off her feet. They embrace passionately. Then pause. She suddenly pushes him back and grabs the center of her dress with both hands, tears it open, splitting it down the middle instantly revealing the most beautiful manifestation of female he had ever seen; luscious firm tasty mouth watering flesh!

He moves towards her, removes the remains of her dress and …………….

Click this to continue!

FORWARD TO YOUR FRIENDS

Okay. Seriously now. Tell me you’re not sniggering into your keyboard after reading that!