The Blair Warner Project

OK, I found out you can go to Halloween Express on Friday night and see the same people you can see at the Fair -- for free! Yeah, we went in to see about getting Super Giant Killer a costyoom (she's thinking Cleopatra). Even though the stuff in the store is sold at horrifying prices, I wanted to stick around and witness the scary people that come in there. You think I'm talking about Goth kids or something, but I'm not. I'm pretty sure they drove over after they ran out of money on the Midway.

There was one woman in there looking intently at a row of costumes in the adult section (and I don't mean size-wise) who looked to be over 50 and about 5'2" and wore spandex pants in a blue the color of the old Crayola cornflower crayon and shoes kind of like this. The shirt was unremarkable, but she had on a really, really bad black wig that increased her mass by about 68%. And people, I got the distinct impression that this was not a temporary status, that she was not just trying on a costume and had stepped out of the dressing room for another size. When she moved on I went over to see what she had been perusing and they were these slutty French maid, stewardess, and Catholic school girl costumes. Then I see this lanky guy slathered in average-looking tattoos saunter up and spank her cornflower butt and off they go. Awwwww...

Then there was this bra-busting mother-of-at-least-two squawking at her kids about some $3.00 plastic swords while she was trying to find an M&M costume in her size - to no avail. Another treat was the entrance to the dressing room - and I wouldn't ponder that image too long - the sentinel placed there looked to be passed out. I'm not sure if it was due to exhaustion or long-term exposure to latex. I gave her the benefit of the doubt and concocted a story in my mind that she was probably a single mom who was working three jobs and by Friday night it had simply caught up to her. See, I really am compassionate and empathic.

Here's what we did when we got home:



SGK decided we would make our own almanac by writing down everything we know - but it had to be 'natural'. Unfortunately, bedtime arrived before the tome was complete. The aspen trees phrase was supposed to be included on line 2. Line 3 says 'to a CR a person is 2 inches tall'; a CR is California Redwood. Line 6 is 'Nuuk, Greenland has a subpolar climate' - I have no idea where she got that one.

I want to know why none of the female bloggers I link to has submitted a report on the Lisa Whelchel Womens' Conference which took place last weekend at a First Baptist church in a nearby bedroom community. I know it wasn't because none of you went. We're talking Lisa Whelchel, y'all. You know, Blair from Facts of Life? There could be no more inspiring conferee than she. She scrapbooks; she homeschools; she does conferences for women; she smiles alot; there can be no better guidepost for you gals. In fact, I think she was on the cover of Guideposts back in the early 90s. Oh well, I guess you'll have to catch her next week at the MomTime Get-A-Way in Monroe, Michigan. Or if God has blessed you with the riches you deserve (or healthy residuals from Nick at Nite), you could hire her as a Personal Mom Coach or you could go on the Premier Christian Cruises Music Boat with her. In the meantime the aforementioned church will be hosting Team Impact (and yes, you do have to watch the video). After that, be sure you go see Jesus Camp!! See you there.

Remember Me To One Who Lives There

We went to the Fair Tuesday evening, we four, and I went with the full intention of gathering fodder for this post. Not that full attention was not given to the family, but, y'know, I was keeping one eye open for blogmatter. I don't know if it was some sort of middle-aged ennui or what but it was definitely a case of plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Let me say first, I will always go to the Fair. It doesn't matter what it costs, it is just something you have to do as a citizen. Voting and Fair attendance. Queen, you will always be a Texan because you don't go.

But you can only marvel at white trash for so long. A 250-pound woman in a miniskirt and high heels with a jumbo beer and a Marlboro in one hand and a six foot tall chartreuse coyote tucked under the other is remarkable at Penn Square Mall. At the Fair, in her natural habitat, it's not even a head-turner. When I was in college (in apparent marked contrast to Queen's and Gouldie's time there), my friends and I made sport of overtly ogling some gal, begging her beau to offer up the Holy Grail of smart-ass-response-invoking questions, "Whudderyoulookinat?!" Or the equally enticing, "Yougottaproblem?!" (That was only if it looked like he wasn't armed or had any friends in proximity) At first I thought, "I pretty well see that everyday at work, so it's no longer a treat." But then I realized, no, this is different -- they're wearing their dress-up clothes to the Fair, not their all-day-chatting-on-the-internet clothes. Even so, while I saw many slutty outfits, I'm not compelled to go on about it because it's been done. I myself wrote a piece every year on the Fair for the college newspaper. And whichever alternative-to-the-alternative newspaper is still in print on any given September is likely to have a white-trash-at-the-Fair piece. But...I...really...want...to... I noticed several gals had these potbellies and insisted on wearing bare-midriff shirts about two sizes too small. No. I'm not going to do this. But... I'm stopping now.

We had fun, though. We were there for four hours and we didn't even get to see everything. Our first stop was under the bigtop where we saw De'Anna, The Hypno-Chick. Her delivery was so loud and obnoxious I was pretty sure no one could possibly fall under hypnosis; a fact which was confirmed as the show progessed because most of her 'subjects' did not do a good enough acting job to sell this rube. But she was very attractive with her flouncy skirt and six inch heels... OK, I'm stopping. So we left. Of course, later on YHWH saw De'Anna leaning on a fence after the girls rode the Okie Zip and she had to go up and chat with her. That's why I married her, folks. She's everything I'm not. YHWH, I mean, not De'Anna. I mean De'Anna may also be everything I'm not, but I'm not married to her is what I mean. YHWH will usually extract the contact's origin story and academic credentials, so there's no end to the fascinating details she reports (because I had to stand off to the side). Of course the first thing she said was, "She doesn't look nearly as good up close. You can tell she's older than she looks on stage." Ah, women. Always looking out for each other. I'm always amazed at how even blue-state gals do this. No matter how refined, liberated or enlightened, they still put so much stock on appearance. But the Hypno-Chick was very friendly and very nice and she offered to shake the Killer's hand, but since the Killer had earlier seen her grab someone's hand and make them fall asleep, she was not wont to take it.

We also visited the various international peddlers and everyone purchased a small trinket. I'm still bummed that I didn't go back and buy some incense from the Tibetan booth. I waited because I wanted to see what the Indian booth had and then I forgot to go back. Killer was trying to be big time and did all of her own negotiations and purchases. The next morning she held up this little cloisonne box she got from one of the Andean booths and said, "Two dollahhh..." If that's not an educational payoff, what is?

Don't Do What Your Big Sister Does

If it had been about 40 degrees cooler yesterday I could've used my favorite word in the English language: blustery. I don't know exactly why I love that word so much. Probably because it describes my favorite atmospheric condition. It more than describes it; you can just feel it by saying it. As it was we had a scirocco.

I'm not positive when I first fell in love with that word, but I'm sure my first encounter of it was in something related to Winnie the Pooh. I looked a few things up and the movie called The Blustery Day came out in 1968, so I'm sure I didn't see that in the theaters (pre-VHS days), so there was probably a book or some attendant marketing to the movie I was handed-down. One thing I do remember is listening to a Disney lp of Now We Are Six. It was a 33.3rpm vinyl with a booklet inside and it may have had the Blustery Day in it. It's weird -- I suddenly recall that being my earliest memory of melancholia. I remember the line goes something like "Now I am six and clever as ever; I think I shall remain six forever". I guess I figured out I was going to have to grow up someday. Maybe it was the songs. Who knows. I'm a sensitive guy, y'know.

If you felt the Earth quaking a little today it was not the bullsh*t refereeing at the OU-Oregon game. It was a visit from the Saint's sister. It was the first time I'd seen her since November and the first time she'd been in my home since 2002. She came to see her grandson, but I did wheedle a visit out of her on the grounds that the gaze of her visage had not fallen upon our domicile. We had a very nice visit and I learned my grandnephew's new home is proximate ours, so at least I will have some family nearby, even though it will likely be a net-loss in effort. And by the way, I myself am not that old. I have a grandnephew because my sister married waaaay too young and her eldest child likewise followed suit, resulting in the benefit to her of people saying in awe that she simply looks waaay too young to be a grandmother and the proportionate nuisance to me of people saying, "You have a grandnephew? How old are you?"
I loved seeing my sister. I really miss her.

Check out Purple Bunny next time you see her. She has the glow....

We ate at the freakishly named Qdoba this evening because we had heard it was good. Ehhh...can't recommend it. For one thing, when we walked in we were disoriented and owing to the design of the menu and fixtures, we weren't entirely sure if we were in Qdoba or Pei Wei or P.F. Chang's. We made a promise to each other to trace the corporate heritage in an effort to delineate the three. Anyway, Qdoba admittedly had to work hard to impress us because we adore Moe's and go there every weekend. Qdoba is essentially a soulless version of Moe's (and no, I don't know which one came first). My skepticism quickly became assured as the server (you go cafeteria style like at Subway and 'build' your burrito) and I faced a Tex-Mexican standoff. I simply refuse to initiate any retail transaction and so there was a panful silence of 30-45 seeconds while I looked her in the eye and waited to be asked if I wanted pinto or black, hard or soft, etc. They do that at Moe's, y'know. And then at the end of the line, I learn that I am expected to pay 1.79 for chips and salsa. A cash register ring for C&S may as well be a death knell for my entertainment dollar in any establishment no matter how good the food. I do not pay for C&S. The food tasted OK, though. But you pay the same price as Moe's for a burrito and don't get any chips. So I pity the fool who eats there. Are you not psyched about Mr. T's new reality show, "I Pity the Fool"? It's s'posed to be a Dr. Phil-type advice show.

The Ol' College Try

Last night YHWH and I attended a work function of hers. It's one of the few large-scale gatherings of it's kind I have ever been able to suffer through. I've been going for about a decade now and even though I still don't feel a part of the group (mainly because I'm not), last night was the first time I realized it may be the closest thing I have to an extended family.

From my vantage at Table 7, I panned around and saw people I have known for 20 years now in various capacities. There was Mr. and Mrs. Tex at the power table (No. 5). At this table was a couple I'd traveled thousands of miles across the country with. At that table was a woman I'd gone to school with who is now a professor. Over there was one of my major profs who inexplicably will not speak to me (he's Canadian, tho) and next to him was the guy who taught Queen and me (maybe Gouldie, too) creative writing who also won't speak to me. My ex-wife's sister was there. A Jeopardy!-style game on stage featured Mr. Tex, Tex's friend, and a woman I had a date with once as contestants. And when I extended it out, I realized that pretty much everyone I associate with for better or worse can be traced back to someone in that room. I don't know what all that means. Maybe it'll turn in to another post sometime in future. All I can say for now is, "Choose your college wisely, kids!"

Just finished some legwarmers for SGK:














Have to get on that cable knit hat now...

A Map of the Human Heart

OK, well that lasted about a week. I admit it. I overreacted to local conditions. So now I have decided to act on the best advice I got during my embarrasing hiatus which came in the form of a comment on my last post from someone I don't even know - Barbarina. And Barbarina is apparently Canadian so, great, now I have to revise my list again. At any rate, thanks, Barbarina.

So what was that all about? The thing is, if I told you then I'd be doing the same thing that got me into trouble in the first place. It's a problem as old as blogs themselves - or as Gouldie may soon realize, as old as written communication. Misunderstanding.

I wasn't aware that my blog was secret. I was pretty sure everyone in my family knew about it even though I know they never actually read it. Until last weekend. Last weekend the Child Formerly Know As The Self (C. F. Kats) decided to gorge herself on six months of the Empty Room. She didn't like her nickname. She didn't like that I implied that she needed to go see the slums or that she needed to intern with Gouldie. And I didn't realize it, but as the single official representative of the millions of teens in the United States, she is insulted when I mention teens in any context. So, after a few hours of catharsis in the wee hours of the morning, we reached an agreement wherein I would stop using the name and use a name of her choosing. I didn't even point out the irony that someone could read 63 posts containing valuable insight into family and friends and a parent's quasi-inner life (I would kill to read a blog my dad wrote in the 70s) and zero in on four or five sentences as an indictment of the whole enterprise and then complain that their nickname was Self. I won't go into anymore details there, but the end result was that by Sunday, it became apparent that no M*A*S*H unit was going to heal these wounds so I just figured it would be better to stop. So over the course of the weekend despite denial of such, the lamentations increased and I finally just pulled the plug because it wasn't worth the discord.

Because I always have to know the damnable why, I tried to explore the situation this week and figure out where the breakdown is. Starting with the obvious, no one likes to be humiliated and even though from my perspective I didn't write anything humiliating at all, it was to her and I acknowledge that and apologize for that. But as I pushed ahead and consulted Tex and Queen I realized the breakdown had to do with The Approval Syndrome. Apparently, and I was unaware of this, your children need your approval. I had no idea. The way it works is that you're supposed to say nice things to them and then it makes them feel good about themselves and then they build on that to become well-adjusted adults. But wait! There's more! Girls need lots and lots of this stuff and they need it from their dads! Constantly!

And therein lies the problem. I can't do that. If it even occurs to me to compliment someone, the words dissipate somewhere between the tip of my tongue and my lips. Like Johnny Depp's Willy Wonka trying to say "parents" or Rowan Atkinson's priest trying to say "St John" on Four Weddings and a Funeral. In my memory, I don't really remember needing a lot of approval as a kid. The way I figured it, if you behaved, you didn't get in trouble; if you did your school work, you got good grades. Not getting grounded and getting A's were sufficient approval for me. I didn't get a lot of praise. In fact when I became the first person in the recorded history of our clan to graduate from college, my folks were on the couch watching TV and I produced my diploma and said, "Well, I'm a college graduate. 3.98 GPA." Their reply was, "We knew you could do it."

So, not having learned to give approval and having a low threshold of need myself, I'm at a loss here. I see first hand how important it is because YHWH still talks about how 40 years ago she brought home a straight A report card and her dad said, "Couldn't you do any better than that?" I thought that was funny when I heard it, yet she has been scarred by this her whole life and it was a joke. So I have to figure this out obviously.

While struggling with why I can't give compliments, I was tempted to blameshift. Part of the problem, I reasoned, was that for awhile I rarely ever saw C. F. Kats and when I did it often involved her not completing a chore or just being generally difficult. I wasn't witnessing 'the good things'. So I couldn't be blamed for not approving that, right? But that situation has improved, so there goes that argument. Then, as if the omnious warning from the Ghost of YHWH's past or the Ghost of C.F. Kats' Present weren't enough, on Thursday night I got a visit from the Ghost of SGK's Future.

This kid has been approved of and praised from the beginning. In fact, she runs the risk of being a little egotistical. If that sounds contrary to what I've said above, it's only because she is much smaller and you can coo over babies without much difficulty. Well, anyway, Thursday night we were driving home from an event and she starts in insulting our new home. Never one to miss an opportunity for character development, I told her that she should be grateful for her home. She persisited in her comments and I said that I was going to make her sleep out in the backyard and that YHWH and I work really hard to provide our home and it hurts our feelings to hear her say those things. Before long she breaks into these deep sobs and says, "I'm afraid you're going to be happy when I'm dead." I know what you're thinking - it was manipulation, she was working me over - but no, this was pretty deeply felt. So years of approval can be undone with one stroke of disapproval.

So here's what I have learned: kids need approval; girls need mountains of approval; no amount of approval is enough.

So, until I can speak the words:
I'm am proud of C.F. Kats because:

She bravely strode into her new school without looking back.
She bravely wears any outfit she wants.
She bravely discloses alot to her parents.
She does the dishes without being told.
She watches her sister without being paid.
She watches her sister without complaining.
She is loyal to her friends.
She is willing to improve herself.
She is diligent about her school work.
She gets herself ready for school without being told.
She is willing to watch TV with an old fat guy in glasses.
She reads alot.
She cries alot.
She tries not to hurt other people's feelings.
She is active in her church.
She is a trooper.

I love her.

I'm Saint Fiacre and I approve of this message.