shh, don't wake the DRUNKEN HOUSEWIFE

playing ping pong with Iris and Lola

2013-06-11T10:35:00.001-07:00

We spent last week on our annual trip to Camp Mather, the rustic cabins in the Sierras owned by SF Rec and Parks. No internet access, no cellphone coverage, no televisions, no cats -- just hours and hours of fresh air and sunlight with the family.

At one point the Sober Husband agreed to indulge me in a game of badminton, and the badminton-loathing children decided to play ping pong instead. There are several ping pong tables, scattered throughout the trees near the mess hall, out of sight from the badminton court, which is in a sort of valley behind the general store. We played badminton for a long time, getting a good workout, eventually joined by our offspring, who said nothing about their ping pong match.

The next day Lola reported to me what happened. "So we were playing ping pong, and I got tired of picking up the balls. So the next time one went out, I didn't pick it up. And Iris said, 'Lucy, get the ball,' and I said I was tired of it. So she looked at me like this [commanding gaze], and I looked at her like this [one eyebrow lifted]. And we waited. Then Iris had to go to the bathroom, and she said she expected when she returned to see the ping pong ball had been picked up, and I looked around and found another one. So when she got back, she said, 'I see you picked up the ball', and I showed her that ball was still on the ground. Then we played until that ball went on the ground, and then neither of us would pick it up. So we were staring at each other. Then Phil (a family friend) walked by, and he gave us a ball. So we played until THAT ball went on the ground. And then we decided to go watch you play badminton."

We saw Phil and his family later, and I told Lola to tell the full story to them. Afterward, Phil said reflectively, "In my version of that, I was much more active. I was like a hero."

"Instead, you were a pawn in the Iris-Lola conflict," I said.

the bartender has cut me off

2013-05-14T21:47:00.004-07:00

Today I took some foster kittens in to get booster shots.

"I want to keep this one," I artlessly confided to the head of my rescue.

"Well, I'm sure you can't," she said dismissively.

the exciting prospect

2013-05-12T20:42:00.001-07:00

I have a milestone birthday looming in a year and a half, and I mentioned it today as we were all walking to the car together. "What should we do for it?"

"Have a big party," said Iris.

"No, go on a trip. Go to Greece!" said the Sober Husband.

Lola interrupted. "I have just one question for you. What do you want done with your body?"

"Oh, Lola. Do you have to ask that in such a cheery voice?" So nice to know that Lola is cheered by thoughts of disposal of my corpse.

hair

2013-05-09T21:38:00.001-07:00

Before taking little Lola to school, I said, "Brush your hair!"

"Hair doesn't need to be brushed," said Lola defiantly. She explained that in olden times, people did not brush your hair. "It is not necessary." After brushing aside some objections from her mother, Lola continued. Hair is happier unbrushed, she feels.

The next day the topic was revived. Lola was undeterred. "Hair will live on if it isn't brushed! Well, actually, it's dead." She intends to write an article about how unnecessary it is to brush hair for the next issue of the children's newspaper for which she toils. (That will follow her current opus, on the state of cancer research, and prior articles intended to introduce hipsters to new music and convince her father to let her start farming chickens).

how he remembers

2013-05-07T14:19:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I went for a walk with the Sober Husband, to get some exercise and also have a chance to talk to him without distractions. Among other things, I reminded him, "You do know that Mother's Day is this weekend, right?"

"There was an ad for it on Reddit, so I do know," he said, proud of himself.

"See, online advertising does work!"

"No! I didn't see the ad. It was blocked. A bunch of guys were posting about it, thanking Reddit for reminding them. I saw that."

Thank God for Reddit!

the glamorous life

2013-03-27T11:38:00.004-07:00

Over the next few months, thirteen year-old Iris will be flying to New York for a conference, backpacking in the Yosemite back country, and attending the prestigious Shakespeare festival in Ashland, Oregon. Next year she'll be traveling to Japan for two weeks.

Meanwhile her mother's plans are to sit around the house surfing the internet, accompanied by a rotating selection of feral cats.

Lola

2013-03-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

THIS IS LOLA

The play I recently went to, The Great Big Also, was very good. Before it started, though, I had low expectations. The last play I went to at that place had been quite boring. The actors read their lines sitting in chairs and straight off the script.

I read the program, and it seemed pretty good, so I still thought it would be read in chairs off scripts but with a good subject. But yes, I still thought it wouldn't be very good.

I went in, and they asked me if I would leave everything behind for a new life. I said no. I couldn't leave Zorro (my cat) behind. And I like my life.

They split us off into different rooms. I went into one at a corner. The thing is, the rooms were separated with paper. The walls were just paper, with some doors cut out.

It was very good. I can't really explain it, that's the thing, but I really liked it.

Then I left and it was over.

Before I left, at one point they came in groups of one or two, explaining different things they did. The first one that came to my group talked about NASA space blankets and how they can be used ("Prevent hypothermia! Help to start fires! They can even make a lean-to!"). The next people that came talked about some sort of "Remember When" charades. It's just charades, but to remember good stuff about the past. And the last group I got was two people talking about "If something is missing from the room, you can say it and everyone will get that feeling." One family member said that they wanted to say intelligence was missing from the room but they didn't. The first example was loyalty. Then, eventually, one of the two tried to say cooperation but in the middle started to cough. That repeated while the first one was flushed and trying to keep the thing going.

That caused almost everyone to start to cough and do weird stuff.

My favorite part was at the beginning, when everyone was getting to their rooms, and people were just talking with whatever crazy people was in their rooms. It was nice.

The end.

Lola experiences perfection

2013-03-19T21:20:00.000-07:00

At Iris's school, the end of the seventh grade is largely about the theatre. The students study and stage Shakespeare, and they spend much of their time learning about drama. Actors have been brought in to work with them (Iris reported, in tones of great disgust, that before the actors arrived, the students were cautioned to be kind and polite to them, as actors are very sensitive).

The students are encouraged to attend as many plays as possible, with academic credit given, and we've been attempting to rise to this occasion. So far we've taken Iris to five plays, with another one coming up in a few days.

Over the weekend we went to an experimental theatre piece, "The Great Big Also", by a company called Mugwumpin. I knew it would be interactive, but none of us were quite prepared for how it unfolded. (If you are in San Francisco and enjoy experimental theatre and trust Lola's judgment, stop reading to avoid spoilers and just go buy your tickets). The lobby had been subtly staged. Most of the audience members didn't really interact with the things in the lobby, but we did. It appeared to be the living quarters of the group called "the New Settlers", and I suspected some of the performance would take place out there.

The performers came through the lobby occasionally, doing different things, and they would take small groups of people back into the theatre occasionally. Finally a cast member came to us and asked us if we were ready. She took the four of us and an unknown man back, checking if we were ready to spend 80 minutes with her, and asked us if we would be willing to leave our civilization for a new one. I said maybe, the stranger said yes, and the Sober Husband and children said firmly no. She appeared to be taking us on a tour of the facilities, but the first thing she did was to get rid of me: she turned to me and asked me to stay in a small cubicle, where I could take a stool from a pile. "Don't worry, it won't always be like this," she said, leaving with my family and the stranger. The Sober Husband asked me if I was okay being left, and I, who like to go with the flow in these circumstances, said yes.

I looked around. The others in my little cubicle (we were in a corner of a structure made of Tyvek) had also been separated from their friends. We talked. Things began to happen. I thought the actor would come back to get me, but she never did. I regretted parting from my family. We waited on our little stools, occasionally chatting, and sometimes cast members would pass through or walk past us or speak to the people in neighboring cubicles. Eventually we realized that this was the show and that it had already begun.

For me the performance was largely overcast by my feeling of anxiety about Lola. She was the only child at the show (teenaged Iris being the only other minor), and I worried that something would scare her. I couldn't see her. I peered into the other three cubicles bordering mine, but none of my family members could be seen. I imagined they were all together, and this made me feel sorry for myself. I'd been in a funk that day beforehand, and being isolated from my family made it worse. I did talk to some fun young women in my zone, but we were joined by an unfriendly man who wouldn't make eye contact. There was also a dating couple in our tiny zone who were not interacting with anyone else but constantly touching each other, and that made me feel more isolated.

The odd events, dances, speeches, and bits of performance that made up this odd and engaging piece about settlers (cultists?) awaiting an apocalypse went on, and I kept fretting for Lola (I was sure the preternaturally poised Iris was fine). After nearly an hour, the Tyvek partitions were raised in the air, removing some of the barriers and creating larger pens with more people in them, but I still couldn't see any of the family. Finally I sneaked out of my zone (I was the only person I saw doing this) and surreptitiously made my way around the barriers until I reached Lola.

Lola was fine. She was sitting enrapt on a stool, watching everything she could see. The Sober Husband was not far from her (I found out later that their rooms were merged when the partitions were raised partway). I didn't find Iris until the show was nearly over, and she was skeptically gazing from the sidelines.

At the end, I confessed the experience had largely been ruined for me by worrying about Lola and by feeling bereft, that I was the one singled out to be cut off from the group. I'd have felt less left out if I'd known everyone had been separated and parked in different zones and how happy Lola was. "It was like a party in my room!" said Lola merrily. Evidently all the hipsters in her cubicle were charmed by the idea of a ten year-old attending this experimental theatre. "They all wanted to know why I was there, and I said, 'My sister is doing a report on the theatre,'" said Lola. "I told them all my name. We talked and talked." When anything happened, Lola intently absorbed it.

For the next couple of days, we spent a lot of time discussing the performance. Parts of it were visible to each of us, and we didn't all see the same things. Lola found everything enchanting about it. I suggested she might find it inspirational for her own writing, and she strongly demurred. "It was like perfection, and now I have it in my body," she said dreamily. If she tried to base something upon it, it wouldn't measure up to the sublime experience she'd had.

I could relate. When I was much younger, I ate at Fleur de Lys for the first time, experiencing perhaps the world's finest and most expensive vegetarian cooking. I left feeling I had experienced food at a level I had never imagined, and I stopped cooking for some time. "I can't make food like that," I said, "so I don't want to try." My ex-husband complained bitterly that if he'd known what would happen, he'd have never taken me there, but I didn't care. I had experienced perfection. And now so has Lola.

too personal

2013-03-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

Iris is in the process of applying for a scholarship, which would enable her to go to the private high school of her choice, most expenses paid. It's a lot of work, this scholarship, and it's been stressful for her. She's in the last stretch, writing the essays, and I wanted to be helpful. I remembered that I had been invited to apply for a sort of genius camp as a teen, for the 99.9th percentile of young geniuses, and I didn't have anyone to help me with my essays. In retrospect I am sure what I turned in was embarrassingly pathetic compared to what the other applicants must have written, applicants from academic families or from private schools where someone would have assisted them with the essays, and I got turned down flat.

Later in life I went on to get a degree in journalism summa cum laude and learn to write essays good enough to get me into graduate programs at Stanford and elsewhere, as well as how to write fabulous legal briefs and motions. So I offered to Iris that I would be happy to work with her, to read her drafts, and to be a supportive and uncritical reader.

Her response? "I think I'll get [Teacher] to read them. " A pause. "They're kind of personal."

life cycles continue

2013-03-07T19:09:00.002-08:00

Today I'm mourning a fellow crazy cat lady and former Modern Primitive who died yesterday at far too young an age, and also some unexpected news arrived about a birth.

The Sober Husband's brother sent him an email announcing that he is now a father of a baby girl. The email gave the name, weight, and length of the baby.... with no mention whatsoever of the nameless mother. There was an attachment.... of a photo of a bakery. (The brother currently lives in Siberia, where he sells banana bread and teaches English).

The Sober Husband was actually excited and happy about this. His brother is the last person who should become a father, I pointed out. He's unstable, and selfish. And what is up with no mention of the mother? Not to mention that this baby was never mentioned before she was born.

Taking the moral high ground, the Sober Husband stated that a baby is always a miracle and always a thing of wonder, and that he for one looked forward to providing as much assistance as he possibly could at a distance. I bit my tongue. We took a huge pay cut this year, so that the Sober Husband could take a job at a fledgling start-up which would be more personally rewarding but hugely, hugely less lucrative. I am always worried about money and fretting over our budget these days. Any money sent to Siberia comes straight out of my hide.

Birth, death, what does tomorrow hold? All I know is I'm not coping well with how the cycle of life is unfolding these days.

RIP Betsy

2013-03-06T21:58:00.000-08:00

Back in the late eighties, I was an early member of what we called back then the Modern Primitive scene. Nowadays piercing and tattooing are banal, but back then, it was difficult to pursue these things. I got pierced in a leather shop's basement by a visiting pioneer of the scene, for example, whereas now the young people just go to the mall, and Haight St. is littered with piercing salons.

In those days one of the most strange and amazing things I ran across was an article in one of the earliest issues of PFIQ, which showed the most famous Modern Primitive, Fakir Musafar, before Re/SEARCH made him famous, doing something very bizarre. The Fakir and a friend of his were chatting at the friend's tattoo parlor when another tattoo artist's wife had a brainwave: these two men had stretched out their piercings so far that a neon tube would fit through. She was a neon artist, and she decided to create neon which these men would wear. The results were photographed at the Fakir's request, and he wrote an article about the experience. The pictures were striking and weird, and I never forgot them. (Incidentally about thirty years later, the Fakir's friend, the other man who sported the custom neon tubes, Ed Hardy, became extremely famous).

Later through a series of oddnesses the neon artist's husband became my tattoo artist. By then he had divorced her and had a new wife, so I never met the woman behind that strange art during the years I acquired tattoos from him.

Fifteen years or so later I was at my cat rescue's annual kickoff, and a woman with striking brown eyes and a lot of tattoo art was there. She was new to our rescue but not new to working with animals, and she was introduced as Betsy Berberian. Feeling a bit like a stalker, I cornered her while she was enjoying a glass of wine and asked if she were the Betsy Berberian who had done the weird neon art I'd never forgotten, and she was. We reminisced about the Modern Primitive days of the late eighties and early nineties; we talked about her ex-husband (I'd represented him as an attorney as well as being a client of his).

Betsy became a vital figure in our rescue, running the website and photographing our kittens. I ran into her from time to time and always enjoyed talking to her. She was making jewelry, and I bought the earrings right off her ears once at a rescue meeting. Every time I talked to her, I thought I should try to spend more time with her, go out drinking with her, but our relationship remained at the Facebook friends and chatting when we ran into each other level. I heard a month or so ago that Betsy was ill, but I didn't grasp the seriousness of it. After all, Betsy was not old, she was energetic, she was full of life.

Today Betsy died. It's a loss to the animals here in San Francisco and to the people who work to save them, and more than that, it's a loss to the world. Someone so unusual and sprightly, so creative and passionate and odd, is no longer with us. I'm so sorry I didn't buy more of your jewelry, Betsy; I'm so sorry I didn't pester you to come out with me. I'm very glad I wasn't afraid to be thought a stalker and brought up your Modern Primitive escapades. RIP, Betsy Berberian.

crazy cat lady tricks

2013-03-03T12:15:00.001-08:00

I am a crazy cat lady who can attract the envy and wonder of strangers and neighbors alike.

How can that be? Sadly I don't have a cat who'll walk on a leash or who will perform tricks. But I do have a cat, a tabby with a large, fluffy tail, who recognizes the sound of my car or my footsteps and who meets me on the sidewalk to welcome me home. As I open my car door, I exclaim, "Henry! Henry!" and Henry cries, and I scratch her back. We walk up the sidewalk and up the front steps, stopping for petting along the way, and anyone who witnesses this is always taken by surprise and often awe. "Look at that cat; it's like a dog!" they say.

Henry's apparent devotion also extends to our leaving the home; Henry becomes distressed if we set out on foot, and follows, howling miserably, until we give up, capture her, lock her in the house, and then set out again.

Once inside the home, Henry doesn't appear to give a damn about me, but she puts up a hell of a show on every homecoming. In the life of a middle-aged crazy cat lady, this is priceless.

unlike you

2013-03-02T14:31:00.001-08:00

"Unlike you, I do not take pleasure in losing," said a child in a cutting voice to her father.

the jigsaw puzzle

2013-02-28T20:11:00.002-08:00

Recently I put a package of hand-me-downs together for a friend with a toddler. I wanted to include a puzzle, but I didn't feel right sending it without ensuring that it had every piece. I still remember the sturm und drang from the large floor puzzle of an enchanted castle which I bought for then-toddler Iris, which was missing a piece from the get-go, having instead a duplicate of another random piece (and the people from the Melissa & Doug toy company PROMISED to send the missing piece but never did).

I set myself down on the floor and began the 100 piece jigsaw of kittens, suitable for a preschooler. Lola's cat Zorro drew near. She batted at some pieces with a paw, and I shooed her away. Undeterred she pounced in a flash, seizing a piece in her mouth, and ran into Iris's room, carrying the piece under Iris's massive bunk bed. After some effort I reclaimed the piece, locked Zorro in Iris's room, finished the puzzle, disassembled it, and mailed it off along with some of our more presentable cast off clothes and a random assortment of picture books.

This gave me a whole new insight into why at Christmas time we were unable to complete a large monochromatic Escher jigsaw I'd thought would be a good holiday divertissement. I expect cats to bat pieces off the table with their paws; I don't expect them to carry them around the house in their mouths. We'd been able to do big, complicated puzzles in the past, picking up a few pieces from under the table from time to time... but we hadn't had Zorro then.

I told this story to the Sober Husband that evening.

"To make jigsaw puzzles harder, instead of getting ones with more pieces, you should have to do them with more cats," he opined.

the trials of Coconut

2013-02-25T22:06:00.000-08:00

I finally had Coconut, the partially tamed feral cat we appear to be keeping, neutered. I had put this off as Coconut was not tame enough to put up for adoption or be handled, but the time had come (or, according to the head of my rescue, was long overdue). It was presented to me, by a more senior crazy cat lady in the world of crazy cats, that Coconut should be processed through Feral Fix and given back to me.

"Feral Fix" is a program whereby feral cats are neutered for free and re-released. The tip of one ear is cut off, to signal that the cat has been neutered. We agreed that since Coconut was not easy to handle, it made sense to neuter him through Feral Fix, where it is assumed none of the cats can be picked up, rather than through the regular neutering program."I'll tell them to make a shallow tip," said the more senior crazy cat lady. "It won't bother you, will it, having his ear tipped? I'll tell them to just take a little."

I was dreading the day. Since no one can pick Coconut up, cramming him into a small box seemed highly problematic. "I need all hands on deck for this," I said gloomily. The last time I tried to pick him up, he sank all his fangs deeply into my arm, ran away, and wasn't seen for hours. Everyone stood at battle stations, ready to grab the cat, and I threw a large towel over him and then quickly wrapped him up in it before he could react. I then roughly crammed the towel-wrapped cat into a waiting carrier. "That was easier than I expected," I said wonderingly. Cries arose from within the towel.

I couldn't face taking Coconut in myself, as he is my greatest failure and I'm embarrassed around the other crazy cat ladies. I had negotiated with the Sober Husband to deliver him to Feral Fix, which he did on the condition that "I only have to drop the cat off, right? I don't have to do anything more? I just say, "Here is the cat' and walk away?"

A day later it was time to pick up Coconut. Lola and I drove over to the SPCA's clinic. It was reported to me that Coconut "had not done well." Evidently he had not gone gently into that anesthetized night. The clinic attendant who returned him to me said she was not surprised he was not tamer. "Once a meanie, always a meanie."

This offended Lola and me. "He's not a meanie," Lola said fiercely on the way home. "She called him a meanie!" We knew Coconut was frightened, not vicious.

At home we reviewed our instructions. We were supposed to "feed and care for animal in his trap for one day."

"In his trap!" We laughed. At home, Coconut had shot out of his carrier. We had intended for him to spend a day in Iris's room, resting away from the other cats, but he rocketed out of the door the moment it was opened and reestablished himself in the resident cat population.

I looked at the Feral Fix handout again. It instructed me that I could return my feral to his colony in a day or two, but "the ultimate decision is up to you."

"What is 'the ultimate decision'? It sounds like 'the Final Solution'," I said.

Coconut, meanwhile, basked on the back of the couch, unaware that he was meant to be convalescing "in his trap", subject to an "ultimate decision."

behind my back

2013-02-23T19:27:00.001-08:00

The children made some disparaging remarks the other day, and I said, "I'd hate to hear what you say about me when I'm not around."

Iris was noncommital, but Lola forged ahead. "We sometimes talk about your musical taste."

I drew her out more.

"Like about that stuff you play that isn't ABBA that sounds like ABBA. What is that? And that other song we don't like." Lola beamed winningly.

a memory

2013-02-22T18:31:00.000-08:00

"I remember when I was really little," reminisced Lola. "I was tired, and you decided I needed to be more hyper, so you gave me some coffee! And it was cinnamon coffee, and I think I would have liked it better if it wasn't cinnamon."

"When was this?" I was incredulous.

Lola explained that it was when she was just a toddler.

"And I said I wanted you to be 'more hyper?'"

not before coffee

2013-02-18T22:55:00.000-08:00

The Sober Husband tends to ask a lot of questions, and this morning was no exception. Lola woke me up while I was in the middle of an intense dream (evidently I had gone to war in the Middle East, but yet I was living in a luxury penthouse). I stumbled downstairs to get some life-giving coffee, only to be intercepted by the Sober Husband, who began peppering me with questions about my plans for the day.

"Don't interrogate me until I've had some coffee! No questions!" I snapped. I poured a cup and leaned against the counter while I took a sip.

Meanwhile the large feral cat I have adopted caught sight of me. He regards me as a can-opening mechanism, and he made eye contact with me and began crying noisily. The Sober Husband looked at the squawking animal. "Don't interrogate her until she's had some coffee!"

a bridge too far

2013-02-17T22:11:00.000-08:00

After a good night's sleep and time to reflect, thirteen year-old Iris appeared to have recovered from watching "Silence of the Lambs." She said to me, "Momdude, I want to watch 'Clockwork Orange.'"

I quailed. "That's too much for me. I can't watch that again." I saw the X-rated version of "Clockwork Orange" my freshman year of college, at one of the popular dollar movie nights at the giant Warren Towers dorm, and found it far too intense.

"Why? What happens?"

"Too violent!" I didn't even want to go into details.

"Can I read the book?"

"Yes. Go ahead."

scarred

2013-02-16T23:32:00.000-08:00

Tonight I watched "The Silence of the Lambs" with thirteen year-old Iris. Just before watching it, I quavered. "It's scary," I said.

"I'm pretty much inured to horror," said the jaded Iris.

The Sober Husband refused to be in the room for it. "This movie has something I can't stand: sadism."

"If you're scarred for life, will you forgive me?" I asked Iris.

"Probably."

We watched the movie. Afterward, I asked, "Are you scarred for life?"

"Yes."

Due to a cat vomiting during the film (which we had both silently decided to postpone cleaning up until after the movie), we went out in search of cleaning supplies. We met up with little Lola, who'd stayed safely away during the film. She took in her sister's somewhat shaken state.

"Let's stay together; it's safer," I suggested. I remembered how I'd felt when I was young and I saw "Blue Velvet"; I'd been so shaken that the trip home from the movie theatre was an ordeal, with me peering suspiciously at everyone and every car I walked past.

Lola flicked a switch, putting us in complete darkness. Iris and I emitted a squawk. Lola laughed hysterically before turning the light back on. "Lola, for someone so cute, you really can be evil," I remarked.

We moved as a squad down into the kitchen, obtaining the necessaries, and then back upstairs. "It's a good thing there are no moths around here," I observed.

called out

2013-02-15T19:56:00.001-08:00

"Momdude, you are a hipster snob," sniffed a judgmental child.

a timing issue

2013-02-13T11:45:00.004-08:00

This Friday is "Grandparents And Special Friends Day" at Lolz' school. It is also the day after Valentine's Day.

As I pointed out to the Sober Husband, this timing means that for everyone who has family living out of town, this means that their inlaws will be in town for Valentine's Day. He hadn't quite connected the dots between the date on the calendar and the note on the calendar to pick his mother up at the airport.

"We'll have some romance another night," he said optimistically. "On the bright side, my mother always puts out on Valentine's Day."

"I think you should rephrase that," I said.

It took him a few minutes to understand my objection. "I mean she comes through. She'll bring something for the children."

feeling French

2013-02-10T16:15:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we visited the U.S.S. Hornet, a decommissioned aircraft carrier. A friend of mine who volunteers there had offered to take people to areas not open to the public. The Sober Husband loved the engine room, while I found the little zone where the nuclear bombs had been kept to be the most fascinating (the warnings were still up declaring it a classified zone of the highest level, and there was a guard station by the door, and a small group of people lived down with the bombs).

As we walked up to the Hornet, one of the children felt uneasy. "It's scary! I'm looking at it, and I'm feeling scared. What am I, French?"

our dreams

2013-02-09T17:39:00.002-08:00

In the car, today I shared some dreams I remembered. "Last night I dreamed I had a dog. Oh, and I dreamed I went on tour with Metallica. They had some seats for superfans on their tour bus, and in the dream I was a superfan. And the Sober Husband was with me, we had terrible seats, and there was this guy across from us who was vomiting all the time and just awful, and the Sober Husband held the bag for him to vomit in. Then the Sober Husband had that bag of vomit, and I wanted to get rid of it. Oh, and there was a bean cake, and I didn't eat any because I didn't think it would be good, but it was gone right away and everyone was saying how great it was, it was some special cake they always had, and I was sorry I didn't have any. Then the guy who was vomiting turned out to be a wanted criminal, and I took him down! But the Sober Husband didn't help! He was just standing there!"

Little Lola chimed in. "THAT'S JUST LIKE WHEN I DREAMED ABOUT THE DOUGHNUT APOCALYPSE. He was just standing there!!"

We both turned and looked at the Sober Husband accusatorily.

scrabbling around

2013-02-05T19:49:00.000-08:00

Ever since our holidays blow-up, the Sober Husband and I have been prioritizing our relationship. In general we've been looking for Things We Can Do Together (Without Fighting). One of these things is playing Facebook Scrabble. I've been playing it for a long time and secretly revel in being the highest rated of all my friends.

Normally the Sober Husband destroys me in any game we play which is not a game of chance (and even at games of chance he will win more than he should, as his mathematical mind is better able than my whatever-you-want-to-call-it mind at figuring out odds and calculating what might happen). But at word-based games, like Scrabble or Boggle, he can't touch me.

Or at least he couldn't, until he wrote himself his own Scrabble-cheating program. Suddenly now he leads. Since he wrote his program to suit himself precisely, it's extremely helpful to him.

This irks me, as I am a pristine Scrabble player, and in this household I falsely suffer from a reputation of being a Scrabble cheater. This stems from the fact that years ago -- AT LEAST SIX YEARS AGO -- I used to pay to play Scrabble on a large website, where one was allowed to use assistance. After I discovered Warcraft, I let online Scrabble fade away, and I don't even know if that Scrabble-for-pay site still exists. Eventually I returned to online Scrabble via Facebook (but not "Words with Friends", which I despise as I do all Zynga products). In Facebook Scrabble, I am a queen of verity and ethics, but the children all call me a cheater, evidently on the basis that anyone who ever used a Scrabble help site is forever tarred as a Scrabble sleaze.

I exposed the Sober Husband's cheating ways to Lola, thinking she would denounce him. But she thought he was clever and made a ruling that he should be allowed to use his program. I guess she was thinking that if I were smarter, I could make myself a cheating program as well.

So thanks, Sober Husband! Now one of my zones of feeling intellectually superior has vanished. So far he hasn't driven my ratings down measurably, but that day will no doubt come... AND MY SCRABBLE ENEMIES WILL REJOICE.