What You've All Been Waiting For. Not.

The good news is I'm finally going to fill you in on my vacation. The bad news is, a certain dog-walker has not returned her questionnaire so you won't be reading my analysis of the leaving-the-farm experiment.

Shortly before our day of departure, Kayti discovered that the weekend we'd be in Missouri was the annual Webkinz Extravaganza. (Webkinz are stuffed animals that are coded so you can register and play with them online. Kayti has about 20 of them.) The Extravaganza consists of a bunch of games and contests offered at half-hour intervals at stores that sell Webkinz.

Kayti searched online and concluded that the store she wanted to go to was in Little Rock, Ark. That's a mere six-hour drive, one-way, from where we planned to be that weekend. If I made the slightest noise suggesting I was about to question the wisdom of predicating our entire weekend on where to find the Wheel of Wow (i.e., "Kayti, don't you think ...") the girl would start gnashing her teeth, rending her garments and keening like a professional mourner.

It just wasn't worth the attempt at discussion, so I shut up and let it ride. Who's got the power here, anyway? Can Kayti drive? No. Can she whine and complain? Yes. So, the jury is still out.

The first leg of our flight was smooth and quiet. The second was extremely bumpy, plus I was sitting beside a man who stared straight ahead for almost the entire 2.5-hour flight. He was giving me the willies. Maybe he was praying, or maybe he was waiting for the bomb in his luggage to go off. At one point he raised his hand and scratched very, very slowly above one ear with one finger. I thought maybe that was how he detonated the explosive.

This was happening as we descended toward Kansas City, and soon I forgot about potential bomb blasts as the plane's wings tipped wildly from side to side and our pilot executed a bone-jarring one-point landing.

We stayed that night in a very nice extended-stay motel that I'd gotten for a song on Priceline. I wasn't sure when we arrived at midnight that it was the greatest place, because waiting with me for a clerk to open the office was a young man with a nasty gash on his forehead and blood streaming down his face.

"Whew, what happened to YOU?" I asked, all tact as usual. He didn't answer me, and he didn't answer the clerk when she exclaimed over it, either. She gave him a shrewd look and said, "Don't wanna talk about it, huh."

The next day we drove to Joplin. The first thing I noticed was that many roads are simply named for a letter. We took T over to J and crossed O, etc., etc. You get the picture.

The next four days were a mad whirl of swimming in the hotel pool, wrestling Kayti for the TV remote, not being able to watch Red Sox games (which was just as well, since they were on a losing streak), stuffing ourselves at the Great Wall Chinese buffet, and driving to and from a Hallmark Gift shop about 5 miles away that, thank heaven, was offering all the Webkinz activities for which Kayti yearned.

While K hung out at the gift shop Friday evening and all day Saturday, I amused myself by measuring how many times around the parking lot makes a mile (3), practicing pennywhistle on the sidewalk, and getting my eyebrows and lips waxed at the salon next-door to the Hallmark store.

I did steal some time away from my demanding daughter to jam with Rex's conference confederates. Friday night I played pennywhistle and a borrowed fiddle. Saturday night, I grabbed a guitar and did a couple songs. The guys were all surprised that I could play guitar, and said so. I said, "Well, I don't really play guitar, just a few chords." They all looked at each other, and, pretending to be insulted, said things like, "What's your point?" It was really funny, because basically that's all they do on guitar -- play a few chords.

Saturday night, pre-jam session, Kayti, Rex & I went out to dinner with a friend of Rex's named Jim Scott. He took us to a place called Under the Cliff, which is a restaurant built (duh) under a cliff. I actually had a beer (my annual) and some good laughs, especially while playing foosball. I felt like I was in college again.

I did worry some about the farm. Sunday morning, the first words out of my mouth were, "Rex, maybe our house burned down and no one has your cell phone number so they can't call us."

Rex said, "We left my cell phone number on the kitchen table."

"Yeah," I said. "But if the house burned down, so would your cell phone number."

Sometimes I wonder about that guy. He fails to make the simplest connections!

Once the conference was over, we wandered off to see a little of Oklahoma. We found a buffalo ranch, a coal-burning plant (I looked at the smoke and said, "Just think, we'll be breathing that in Maine in a few days") and not much else except little, nearly dead towns.

We crossed back into Missouri at the town of Noel, and few miles south of that we discovered the something-Bluff Caverns. We stopped there long enough to spend some money and for Rex to lose his camera, but not to see the cave, because it was too late in the day.

Our night in Arkansas deserves mention, if only because it was so bad. I allowed Rex to make some decisions, and we thus ended up having really bad food at a Cracker Barrel and paying way too much for a hotel whose pool was out of commission. In addition, Kayti was badgering us to find a place with a foosball table and, ideally, Jim Scott, too.

As I paid for our meal at the Cracker Barrel, the cashier said, "How was it?" I said, "Okay."

"Just okay?" she said. "What was wrong?"

I said, "Well, the biscuits were too salty."

"Is that it?" she said.

"And the soup was too thick. And it wasn't hot enough."

"Anything else?" she said.

"My husband says his barbecued-pork sandwich tasted like it was barbecued about two weeks ago."

"Is that it?" she asked.

"Oh, and the waiter didn't bring us any corn bread." I added quickly, "But don't blame the waiter. He was really cute and very polite."

Poor Rex got barely any sleep that night, thanks to his aged sandwich. I slept pretty well, but only because I forced myself not to think how much we were paying for a place with no pool.

The next day, I explored Noel, Missouri, on foot while Rex and Kayti visited the caverns, this time for a full-blown tour.

It was a gorgeous day, and as is my wont in new places, I immediately got directions for and headed to the town library. Dogs were running loose all over the place and the houses were just tiny little things. It was about a half-mile to the library, but the library was closed, so I walked back to the main street.

It now became my new mission to find a place with a bathroom. I remembered that coming into town, I'd seen an "H" sign and remarked that the hospital must be up that road. That's where I headed now.

A couple miles later, waddling along with a full bladder, I was fuming to myself, "Where is that damn hospital, anyway?"

People didn't seem terribly friendly. I stopped at one yard to admire a pack of shih tzus, and a fat woman and a fat girl appeared behind the screen door and frowned at me. They probably thought I was going to steal their stupid little yappy dogs.

Eventually, I concluded that the hospital was the figment of someone's imagination. I doubled back on a dirt road named Easy Street on the other side of the railroad tracks, where I found enough privacy to pee. Then I climbed onto the tracks and followed them back into town, passing only a couple of stinking piles of roadkill.

It was only after Rex and Kayti picked me up at the designated park bench and we'd headed out of town that I realized the "H" did not stand for hospital. It was the name of the road.

We did meet up with Jim Scott again, but we couldn't play foosball because Under the Cliff was closed on Tuesday. Instead we went to an arcade, where I racked up a lot of points playing Skeeball.

And that's pretty much the vacation, except I left out the visit to the museum and the hour of hot, steamy sex with a complete stranger I picked up in the hotel lounge.

Incidentally, I'm preparing a PowerPoint presentation about this year's visit for next year's conference in Joplin. Everyone else had a PowerPoint presentation, and I want one too! From what I could see, it didn't matter if the subject was boring.

Must Write Fast

I have 14 minutes left on this library machine. I wasted most of an hour playing ... well, you know what I was playing.

Scrabble has become kind of a curse word in my family. I'm afraid to say it.

Anyway, we are in Joplin, Mo., where Rex is a presenter at a conference. Kayti and I came out with him because I wanted to check out the area as a possible relocation spot.

So far, I am uninspired. In a gift shop today, where Kayti dragged me for some Webkinz event, I felt like I was speaking a foreign language when I tried to communicate with the clerks.

I'd love to recreate the whole conversation here, but now I have only 12 minutes left.

Suffice it to say, they don't have many people like me out here. This is white-bread country. It's the Midwest. People shine their sinks and clip their hedges and raise good, wholesome citizens. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Maybe I just haven't run into any pockets of kooks. Where I can feel at home.

OK, down to 10 minutes now.

I had the same problem at the Denny's last evening, where Kayti dragged us for supper. (I stuck with just coffee. The greasy smell alone was an entire buffet to my stomach.) Usually, we get along very well with waitstaff. But at this place, even Rex -- dear, sweet, inoffensive Rex -- put them off.

So, in the 7 minutes I have remaining, let me affirm that this is indeed the Show Me state, as in "Show me the door."

I'm outta here!


xxxoo, Debbi (never Kayti)

8 seconds

The average time visitors spend at my blog is 8 seconds.

I guess I should be grateful for even that much. It could be worse, right? It's like if I ran for office. Any votes over 1 would give me a very warm, fuzzy feeling. Somebody likes me!

It's interesting to see who is being googled and directed to my blog. One person on my People I Have Knewn list was googled twice this month. And the second time, the search was for a photograph of him.

His name is Jay, he was in my high school class, and the last time I saw him was at our 25th class reunion. And I don't and would never have a photograph of him. Moreover, I can't imagine who would want one!

This is my first memory of him:

To my horror, I had just moved to Dover-Foxcroft. My freshman homeroom at Foxcroft Academy was in the school's cellar, right next to the cafeteria, which stunk to high heaven every day with the worst possible imaginable smells, like pea wiggle gone bad. It probably WAS pea wiggle gone bad. Or Welsh rarebit (is there any schoolchild on Earth who doesn't wonder where the rabbit meat was hidden under the melted cheese on Saltine crackers?).

My homeroom teacher, Mr. Arnold, was a scary, crotchety man who clearly loathed homeroom duties and made us carry giant wooden passes if we needed to go to the bathroom. He had also clearly given up caring what students did during study hall, at lunchtime, or during that murky end-of-day time waiting for the final klaxon to ring, as long as we didn't give him a headache.

So one day -- mind you, I was the very new girl -- I'm sitting at my desk, probably reading, and at the desk in front of me is Jay, an extremely tall, extremely unattractive boy, crude even by Dover-Foxcroft standards. Despite these handicaps, Jay gets a number of other boys to circle their desks around his, and they all proceed to play cards.

Suddenly, as if by some silent alarm only boys can hear, all the boys scoot their desks back and away from the center of their game, like planets spinning out of orbit, laughing and hooting and being totally stupid.

I keep reading, trying to ignore them, and while I'm fairly successful at that, I am not successful at missing the big reason they all scooted away. I'm left there at my desk, inhaling the biggest, smelliest fart I have ever encountered in a group situation.

What am I gonna do? I'm new, I'm a girl (and girls -- at least in that era -- did not act raucously in the face of a fart) and all these ugly hicks are chortling all around me, probably just waiting for me to wrinkle up my pert little nose and back away from what was presumably Jay's emission.

I couldn't give them the satisfaction, so I had to soldier on through the fumes, pretending I noticed nothing, while inside I was just dying from hatred of being in such a gross, rude place with such gross, rude people.

Naturally, Mr. Arnold took absolutely no notice of anything that was going on. He was undoubtedly too busy looking at porn magazines disguised as educational materials catalogs.

At our 25th high school reunion, Jay seemed to have forgotten that incident. I daresay that's because he cut so many huge, crony-pleasing farts in his high school career that he couldn't possibly remember them all. At the reunion he was quite pleasant, actually, although his looks hadn't improved.

I can't tell you why, in one month, two people have come looking for Jay at my blog, or anywhere, for that matter.

But there you go, people. I've given Jay a lot more of my time and thought than I ever thought I would. And next time you're here, if you're looking for Jay, you have a reason to stay longer than 8 seconds.

Clicking with the Spirits

I am consumed with guilt every time I go to Scrabulous.com. I think, if instead of going to Scrabulous.com, I wrote a few pages on a novel, I'd be selling the movie rights by now. If instead of going to Scrabulous.com, I got on the treadmill, I'd be wearing a size 6 by now. My daughter heaps on more guilt by telling me that I love Scrabble more than I love her.

Yes, I really love playing Scrabble online! It's literally a religion. Here's why I think so:

Once upon a time, I became interested in the Swedenborgians. The original Swedenborg -- I forget his first name -- was unbelievably learned. He was not only a scientist who made major contributions to human knowledge, but also a man of literary accomplishments. Apparently, he was not known by his immediate community as a nutcase.

He claimed to be in contact with spirits who told him what the "other side" was like. And he wrote it all down verbatim, in great detail.

His sources said that in the afterlife, spirits are grouped by a kind of attraction system. If you were a spirit, you'd have constant access to communication with like spirits -- people whom on Earth you'd think of as boon companions, or soul mates, or best friends forever. It's a meeting of passion, I gather; a merger of a deeper commonality.

But these spirits are not locked into our kind of space and time; they are free to travel, bodiless, and maybe even faceless.

As in most of my studies, I soon grew tired of facts (read: something somebody else wrote) and let my mind range free over the possibilities (read: daydreaming). So what I took away from Swedenborg's theories is basically what you just read in the preceding paragraphs.

But doesn't that much sound exactly like the Internet? Bodiless, faceless interaction with spirits with shared passions? Not moving from our desks, yet ranging all over the world, through many time zones (if not yet time periods, like the Mesozoic Era or the Stone Age). Finding souls with whom you literally click?

That's why I find myself ceaselessly gravitating to Scrabulous.com. Not everyone I play is a kindred spirit, but the chances of finding one there are better than, say, in a meeting of the Limerick Historical Society. (Believe me, I know -- I went to a singalong they sponsored, and they weren't singing protest songs.)

And it's faster to get to Scrabulous.com -- and to park there -- than to visit Harvard Square, where I also think kindred spirits are likely to abound.

I'm not a big believer in an afterlife. In fact, I deliberately try not to believe in one, because I think believing in an afterlife gives us license to rationalize treating people badly in this life.

So this meeting of the minds via Internet excites me. I don't have to wait till I die to cavort with all these other people!

So, I cavort on, fulfilling my spiritual needs on Scrabulous.com. It's just another aspect of my life, like music, or animals, or my family. Why shouldn't Scrabble get some time, too?

Well, whether it should or not, it does, and that is that. Guess where I'm going now?

Lies, Lies, Lies

Having been an advocate for truth for most of my life, I amazed myself this morning by lying to an online Scrabble opponent. And, truth be told, wickedly enjoying it.

He asked me how old I am, and I said, "82." But wait -- that wasn't the good lie. He said, "Really?" and I said, "No. But I feel 82 sometimes." That wasn't the lie, either. In fact, that isn't a lie at all.

Eventually I told him I am 32.

That was the good lie.

Ah, 32. What an interesting age.

When I was 21, working in N.J., I had a brief fling with a man who was 35. I thought he was ANCIENT. He was very funny, and fairly smart, but he had a bit of a belly and lacked that kind of taut, golden body to which I was accustomed in men. At least, the men I slept with.

Of course, now 35 looks pretty young, and 32 is positively infanthood. Everything else that I told my Scrabble partner was true -- that I felt 82 due to too many horseback-riding accidents; that I'm married; that I have a daughter.

So far, so good. Then my friend told me he's 34, married, finds marriage & impending fatherhood "tough." He described himself as a "wild person" who craves freedom. When I commented, "Like Gaugin? You want to run off to Tahiti?" he responded, "Can't do it, so why talk about it?"

I almost shot back that I'd felt the same way at 34; in fact, that I had tried hard through therapy to accept my life as it was, and that I'd finally run off, maybe not to Tahiti, but to plenty of other places and adventures. However, if I was only 32, as I'd lied, he might have questioned how I'd done that at 34. So I zipped my lip in the nick of time, and let him believe that I'm a contented housewife and mother at the ripe old age of 32.

In our ensuing conversation, though, I was conscious of really missing my real life. To think of being married with child at age 32, and to imagine myself following that path, well, to be frank, it gives me the willies. It definitely would not have been me. I would have sublimated my whole self, and probably right about now, I'd be getting a divorce and going in the Peace Corps. Just like Mom!

As it is, I'm SO happy I've led the life, or more precisely, followed the path I have. If I couldn't be mature, secure and fulfilled at 32, I would have been very discontent pretending to be mature, secure and fulfilled at 32. Not, you understand, that I'm mature, secure, etc. at my current age, but it's a better time to be married and a parent -- better for me, for my husband, for my kid.

To me, Tahiti doesn't seem remotely enticing, except that it is warm year-round. Had I been able to offer that guy the wisdom of my experience, I would have said: Do everyone a favor. Go to Tahiti. Be who you are. Jump. Things will work out.

Speaking of jumping, guess what? I was given a choice at the newspaper of going full-time or being laid off. What do you think I chose?

Guidance

There's a guidance counselor at my daughter KaTTy's school and the classroom teachers drum up business for her by telling the kids that if there's anything they feel the need to talk about, they can sign up to talk to her.

Naturally, my daughter signed up. I say naturally, but it was a big surprise to me. I don't think of my daughter as "troubled." I think of her as "spoiled." (I was about to say that I, as much as anyone, know that one doesn't have to be "troubled" to see a counselor, but then I thought, "Hell, I was ALWAYS troubled.")

So KaTTy comes home and says, "I went to see Mrs. Dube today."

What did you talk about? I asked.

She told me one item that I thought was a pretty valid subject, regarding hers and my relationship. Then she said she talked about how "our house is messy" and "it's noisy and she can't find anyplace to read" and "my parents never take me shopping or anything."

Upon hearing this, my eyebrows shot into outer space and have not returned since. I know Rex and I view things from the perspective of aging but loving adults, and that KaTTy views things from the perspective of a 9-year-old, but I hadn't realized our points of view were on the first and last pages, respectively, at opposite ends of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Our house is messy? Yeah, because there are 8 million toys stuffed into every conceivable nook and cranny, onto every available surface (including my snare drum and piano) and piled approximately three feet deep onto every floor. It's noisy? Yes, when the four dogs (two of whom KaTTy begged for) are barking at the three cats (one of whom KaTTy begged for) or the three horses (two of whom KaTTy begged for).

As for the shopping, or the "anything" that we never do for her, picture Rex and I scurrying about the house doing permanent backbends from trying to meet her demands. We've also worn out myriad hoops that we've been jumping through -- sometimes several at one leap -- since our daughter was born. In fact, her visit to the guidance counselor came hot on the heels of a rather large clothes-shopping excursion that involved driving two cars a total of 110 miles. I shan't go into details, but I assure you that that was the day my backbone calcified into permanent bendship.

Despite this horrendous track record, I am determined not to become a helicopter parent. I think when KaTTy goes to college, or to whatever life she chooses away from home, I'm going to apply for the witness protection program and get a new identity. I'm a witness. I witnessed my own fall from dignity.

This week I told KaTTy that she's on her own, that Rex and I are not going to help her one little bit. We won't take her to the library, we won't feed her puppy, we won't muck her pony's stall, we won't prepare a special, separate supper for her when she gags at what we've prepared. "What?" she yells, stomping around. "Aren't you going to FEED me?"

You see why I'm reading up on elder-abuse prevention; quick, before she turns 13. I am not joking. Mrs. Dube, take notice.

Little League

I'm not Kayti. My name is Debbi. Kayti's only/9 years old. (Sung to the tune of an old pop tune called "I'm not Lisa.")

It has come to my attention that the name at the end of each blog entry is my daughter's. That's because she has a blog, too, on the same account. But I can attest to the fact that it is I, Debbi, who is writing this stuff. Please direct comments to me.

Kayti -- who, incidentally, has once again changed the spelling of her name, this time to "KaTTy," because she likes to make two capital T's together -- attended a Little League pitching clinic yesterday. She was the only girl among 15 or so boys.

One might think that the reason for this is that girls are not interested in playing baseball, or maybe pitching hardball. After yesterday's experience, I have another theory.

As I signed her up, the man in charge said, "Baseball? Not softball?" I said, "Baseball, right Kayti?" And Kayti nodded.

"Cause not many girls are signing up for Little League," the guy said in a cautionary tone. "They're signing up for softball."

I let that pass without comment.

Then, in the gym, a conversation with another man who apparently was somehow involved with the organization went something like this:

Him: Is your daughter sure she wants baseball, not softball?

Me: Yes.

Him: Most of the girls go out for softball by this age.

Me: Neat.

Him: It's really competitive. You'd be surprised.

Me: Well, Kayti wants to be in Little League.

Him: Just be prepared, because by the time she gets into junior high, she probably won't make the team. (This was IN FRONT of my child!)

Me: Why do you say that?

Him: Oh, there's a big difference in strength at that age.

Me: Well, maybe by the time she gets to junior high, there'll be a girls baseball team.

Him: Maybe!

I have to tell you, I found myself stewing over this conversation the whole hour of the clinic. I discussed it with another mother as we waited in the cafeteria. She said she thought this might be the first year there's a softball organization and that maybe girls were being steered to it, to get it off the ground.

Well, you know, maybe that's true, and maybe it's all done with girls' best interests at heart, but I really think it's no one else's business if my daughter chooses to play hardball. And maybe I'm just paranoid, but I also suspect there may be an undercurrent of "baseball is for boys" in the thinking here.

Hello! We're in the 21st century. We could see a woman president elected this year. Women are winning Nobel prizes in chemistry. Men are having sex changes. Beagles are winning the Westminster dog show! Anything can happen. Gee, by the year 2012, a girl could make the junior high baseball team!

Anyway, I really don't think the probability of making the junior high team has much to do with my 9-year-old daughter wanting to play in Little League. We are not basing today's decisions on how buff Kayti is in seventh grade, any more than we are not preventing third-grade boys from studying math because they probably won't be as smart as girls in junior high.

When I told my husband about the exchange at the pitching clinic, he laughed and said he'd gotten the same spiel from another Little League organizer. "I knew exactly how you'd react," he said. "I said to myself, 'Uh, oh. Debbi's going to get her panties in a twist over THIS one!' "

He's wrong, of course, as he almost always is. My panties, for the record, are not in a twist. A bunch, maybe. But not a twist.

Because if they were in a twist, I wouldn't be able to catch for Kayti as she practices her pitching. And we're going to be doing a lot of practicing. We were both pleased with what she learned in the clinic yesterday, even if she doesn't make the team in 2012.