Last weekend we joined my friend V and her family at one of those domed structures that houses several pools and slides, not to mention contraptions which spill giant bucketfuls of water on your head every fifteen minutes. It was extremely crowded there, but the children had a blast while I scurried from one end of the waterpark to the other saying, “I swear I just saw him in that treehouse two minutes ago.”

Afterwards everyone was ravenous, but there would be no greasy waterpark pizza dinner for us! We were headed to a nearby winery with an excellent seafood buffet where children are always welcome and reservations are not necessary.

When we arrived, there were so many cars in the parking lot that my friend V and I selflessly volunteered to be dropped off by the front door to scope out a table while the menfolk went in search of a parking spot. For some reason, the restaurant was packed to the eaves with diners conversing in low voices with heads bent together over plates of steamed mussels and bud vases containing a single white rose.

“What is going on here?” I wondered while my friend V fought her way up to the hostess station and requested a table for eight, lickety-split.

The next one would be available on Sunday, July 15th.*

“We’ll be dead by then” I sobbed inwardly while gnawing on a knuckle. I didn’t want my friend V to think I was some kind of a nutritionally-driven wuss.

A strange thing was happening at that restaurant. It was almost as though the entire state of Ohio had decided to eat at the same place on the same night! Did they know something we didn’t?

One thing about my friend V is she never gives up. While our children ping-ponged around the holding area, she continued to stand in front of the hostess until a table miraculously opened up. “I can’t believe you swung that!” I told her as we stepped into the elevator leading up to the attic storage room**, where we were going to eat.

The crab legs, prime rib, coconut shrimp and heart shaped risotto balls were delicious, even if we had to ride up and down a couple of floors every time we wanted to re-fill our plates. We still couldn’t figure out why the restaurant was so darn crowded, but then again northwest Ohio wine country is a pretty up and coming vacation spot.

“This is is just plain crazy,” I said to the P-Dawg as we elbowed our way up to the chocolate fountain with dessert plates of strawberries in hand. “You should leave some room for the Double Chocolate Love Bomb of Love. I hear it’s pretty good.”

Happy Valentine’s Day, everybody! I hear it’s sometime this week.

* Where “Sunday, July 15th means “in a few hours.”

** It was a really nice attic.

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Legend has it in my famiglia that a great-great-great grandmother on my father’s side married a deserter of Napoleon’s army when it marched across the fatherland. I have always blamed this soldier personally for my short stature and the fact that I don’t possess your typical Lithuanian blond-haired, blue-eyed looks.

But the French ancestor has also served me well, especially as a conversation starter at parties.

“Hello, are you enjoying the party?”

“Yes. I am directly descended from Napoleon.”

I always chalked up the ease with which I picked up French to this particular family member, and felt pretty confident that with my beret, baguette, and striped boatneck shirt, I easily passed for a native during the time I spent living in France.

Whenever someone would comment on my impeccable accent, I would say,

“Thank you. It’s because I’m part French.”

But all of that changed last weekend.

I’d been hounding my father to write down his childhood memories of Lithuania for years, and every time I asked him how it was going, the conversation would go like this:

“Hey, Tėveli! Kaip tau sekasi prisiminimus rašyti?” (Hey, Dad! How’s it going with your memoirs?”)

And my dad would always tell me that he’s making good progress.

“Kiek tu jau puslapių parasiai?” (How many pages are you up to?”), I’d press him.

And he would say:

“Two paragraphs.”

But last week my Dad presented me with three single-spaced pages of his completed memoirs. He packed a lot in those pages – everything from how his family was separated while fleeing, to how he used to amuse himself in the refugee camps by picking apart detonated bombs.  I’m thrilled with it (and very grateful – ačių Tėveli!).

As a bonus, he included a family tree, which begins with the infamous French ancestor.

Whose last name was, “Felice.” Or maybe, “Feliz.”

I did a little bit of research about this surname and about the history around Napoleon’s path through Lithuania.

It turns out the name is Italian or Spanish. What’s more, Wikipedia told me that thousands of Spaniard and Portuguese conscripts deserted Napoleon’s army in Lithuania during the summer of 1812 and went on to loot, pillage, and terrorize the locals.

I took it pretty hard. It’s not that I’m not thrilled to be one-thirty-second Spanish or  Portuguese or Italian, only that for these past thirty-nine-years, I have believed myself to be one-thirty-second French. Also, my great-great-great grandfather might have been a marauder.

There would be no easy way to break it to my dad, so I went over there this afternoon and told it to him straight:

“I hate to tell you this, but we are Spanish, not French.”

He was clearly devastated.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” he said.

“It’s just as I always suspected,” added Mama.

“That explains the moustache*,” my friend V said when I broke it to her.

And indeed, now that I’ve had a few days to take it in, I am very excited about my Spanish or Portuguese or Eye-talian blood. Of course, there are many things I will have to adjust accordingly (note: buy some pirate shirts and leather pants), but it does explain my fondness for paella and Spanish wine.

The only drawback so far is that the P-Dawg has started calling me, “Gomez.”

That’s the jealousy talking, right there.

* I don’t really have a moustache.

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I grew up hearing my grandparents’ stories of the idyllic Lithuania they remembered from before the War. They fled the country in young adulthood, so their memories are soft and diffuse, like the scalloped-edged photographs in our family albums.

I borrowed one of those albums from my parents today and scanned in some of those old photos. This one, of my maternal grandfather with his father, brothers and sisters on their estate makes me want to jump inside of it. It was taken sometime in the early to mid 1930s, when they couldn’t have known that less than ten years later, they would be separated and their lives forever changed.

Seriously, I want to lie down in that patch of sun-dappled grass right next to that dog and just hang with all of them. I want to eat a plum still warm from their orchard and feel the same breeze that swept through their fields. I may even want to milk a cow.

I know it wasn’t paradise. But it sure looks close, doesn’t it?

This one is of my maternal grandmother’s side of the family on the occasion of my great-great-grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. I don’t know why more people don’t pose for photos up on the roof.

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When I heard that stupid groundhog forecast six more weeks of winter (not that it’s been a bad one), I knew I had to repost this article I wrote for The Smartly last year.

PUNXSUTAWNEY, PA – Punxsutawney Phil passed away this morning from a massive heart attack upon emerging from his hole for the 125th year in a row.

According to his agent, Phil had been pushing for a rain check on the Groundhog Day festivities because of the impending blizzard, the brunt of which was due to hit Punxsutawney early February 2nd.

“Look,” said Phil’s agent about his late client, “Phil was older than dirt, and he and Phyllis had been living in a climate controlled tank at the Punxsutawney Public Library for the past twenty years.  Only way he’d come out on February second anymore was if we agreed to set him up in a heated burrow underneath a fake tree stump.”

Phil, who suffered from diabetes and high blood pressure, had been under an incredible amount of strain this year to forecast an early spring.

“He had access to newspapers and free Internet over at the library,” said his agent, “So he knew it was going to be bad out there pretty early on. I think the stress and cold just did him in.”

Witnesses report mass confusion on the scene in Punxsutawney Wednesday when Phil collapsed. “Evrathing seemed normal at first,” noted Chuck Wagner of Scranton. “He crawled on out and looked around. And I sez to my wife Dottie, I sez ‘Dottie, I bet he done seen his shadow.’”

But shortly thereafter with microphones and cameras from all the major new outlets trained on him, Punxsutawney Phil keeled over and didn’t get up again. “At first we thought it was just another publicity stunt,” Wagner noted. “Some folks started booing and I heard a fella behind me yell for him to “man up.”

Phil was rushed by ambulance to Punxsutawney Area Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Punxsutawney Phil is survived by his wife, Phyllis, and one nephew – Pittsburgh Pete, who has no plans to take over his late great uncle’s responsibilities upon graduation from meteorology school this spring. “I have interviews lined up with CNN and the Weather Channel,” Pittsburgh Pete stated. “No way am I going to spend my career doing hit and miss forecasting from a g-damned hole.”

A public memorial service is planned next Saturday at Gobbler’s Knob. In lieu of flowers, mourners are asked to give donations to the WWF (World Wildlife Fund.)

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I’m pretty sure that both my children love me, they just have different ways of showing it.

The V-meister has always been affectionate, showering me with kisses and smothering me with hugs every opportunity she gets. When I tell the V-meister that I love her, I’m guaranteed a heartfelt, “I love you too, Mama!” right back.

When I tell my little son I love him, he sticks his tongue out or makes a face. He shows his affection by hanging off my back like a monkey or plowing headlong into my abdomen after a nice, long running start. He won’t sit still long enough for a proper hug, and I have to put him in a headlock if I want to peck him on the cheek.

The only exception is bedtime, which he milks for all it’s worth. When I lean in for a goodnight kiss, he grabs my entire arm like a life-preserver and reels me in as close as I can get. I tell him I’ll stay for a minute and I can hear him counting the seconds under his breath.

Last night I stayed a little longer  to bestow extra kisses on his freshly showered head. And after a little while he said in mangled Lithuanian, “Mama, aš myliu tu” (“I love you, Mama”).

It was like being asked to the Homecoming dance.

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My daughter the V-meister has a fantastic memory. She recalls a lot of very specific things that happened a long time ago and which I frankly sometimes wish she’d just as soon forget.

“Hey, Mama. Remember when I was two and you forgot to buckle me into my car seat?”

“No.”

“Or how about that time we got stopped by a police officer and you said, ‘CRAP ON A CRAP CRACKER’!”

She has always been a whiz at facts and figures, able to quickly summon very specific information as though retrieving it from some kind of file cabinet. (Her brain?) Verily, she sometimes even speaks of the “folders of her mind.”

One thing I know for a fact is that my mind has no folders. Maybe it did once, but now it’s more of a desk with towering piles of papers on top of it. Often I have a vague hunch that something I need is somewhere near the bottom of one of those piles, but damned if I have any idea how to go about retrieving it.

And this issue is not just limited to ancient memories. You put a child, a pet, and a husband in front of me, and I’ll go through each one of their names before scoring on the third try. I never understood this when my mom or grandmother did it, but now it’s perfectly clear that people should simply be numbered. Also, I’ll tell you the same story three, four or seven times with absolutely no recollection of ever uttering a word of it,  and just today I forgot where I was going on my way to pick the V-meister up from school.

(There are more things I wanted to say in this blog post, but I forgot)

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The Scene: My car.
The Characters: Me, my five-year old son, and his best girl friend

“Guess what, Mrs. Rama? What if da whole universe fell in da toilet?”

(*riotous laughter, high-pitched squealing*)

“Hey! I think I see da Eiffel tower! Are we in Pay-Wiss?”

“Nope. That’s a church spire, you guys. We’re still in Cleveland.”

“Are we going to Pay-Wiss?”

“Nope, Playhouse Square. To see a puppet show, remember?”

“Hey, I know! Let’s pretend this whole car is a hot dog and we’re eating it!”

(*chomping sounds*)

“Jonas, stop chewing on the door handle, please.”

“I’m not chewing on da door handle, Mama! I AM EATING A HOT DAWG. Hey, I know! Let’s pretend my mom’s head is a hot dog and we’re eating it.”

(*chomping sounds*)

“Don’t touch my hair, kids. I mean it.”

“Are we downtown yet?”

“Not quite. You’ll know when you see a tall building.”

“Rockabye baby, on da twee top, when da wind blows, I’ll skin you alive.”

“Indra! Where did you learn that?”

“My brother taught it to me. What does dis but-ton do?”

“That one’s the ‘EJECT’ button. I wouldn’t press it.”

“Nuh-uh! Does dis caw wee-wee have an ‘EJECT’ but-tin, Mrs. Rama?”

“Only on my son’s side.”

“Hey, I know! Let’s pretend this EJECT button is a hot dog and we’re eating it!”

(*chomping sounds*)

(*contemplative silence*)

Jonas, Indra: “Where are we going?”

*Scene*

(Alternate Post Title: “Let’s Pretend This Car is a Hot Dog and We’re Eating It“)

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This January has been a time of creativity and renewal here in the Rama household. After the holidays, I was seized with a deep and immediate desire to re-arrange furniture.

First I organized some bookshelves into a rainbow:

Then I pushed various items of furniture back and forth, back and forth across the family room and re-arranged objets d’art until I was blue in the face.

The family room overhaul necessitated an emergency trip to TJ Maxx for some accent pieces, plus a new KitchenAid ice cream scooper, a bar of oatmeal soap and a special microfiber towel that is supposed to dry your hair in five minutes flat.

It’s not something I’m proud of, but I have a weak spot for fake plants. I feel strongly that fake greenery lends a certain je ne sais quoi to a room’s atmosphere and never dies, but it’s been a sore spot in our marriage from day one. Over the past eleven years, I’ve managed to sneak a fake boxwood garland, several clumps of fake ivy, some fake poinsettias, hyacinths, dogwood, and one fake ficus into the house. But while at TJ Maxx the other day, I limited myself to only one fake item: a plastic yellow pear.

The P-Dawg has thus far tolerated the faux plants because they are so tasteful and unobtrusive, but I wondered if he would draw the line at fruit? I worried, too, for myself. One day it’s a plastic pear on the bookshelf, the next it’s a cornucopia straw hat with the price tag still dangling from the brim.

“Is that a plastic pear up there?” the P-Dawg asked me as we settled in to watch TV the other night.

“Do you like it?” I asked him. “I needed something yellow to offset the new lamp and the blue bird figurines.”

“What lamp?” the P-Dawg asked with a glance around the room. “What blue accent figurines?”

I didn’t let it offend me because I know that a good interior designer often makes nearly imperceptible changes which nevertheless enhance the entire feel of a space.

“Do you notice that the entire feel of this space is different?” I asked my husband.

“That pear is really yellow,” he said.

Later the P-Dawg decided to do some re-decorating of his own. He went ahead and got a bunch of his Japanese prints professionally framed and hung them up all willy-nilly around the house.

We don’t have a good marital track record when it comes to picture hanging, the P-Dawg and I. In fact, I’d say it ranks right up there with “having a baby” on the list of Top Ten Marital Stressors (see also, loading dishwasher, finding a parking space, rinsing out the bathroom sink).

I was standing on a credenza in the office, nudging one of my knickknacks over by a half a millimeter when he came in to inform me that he’d hung up some prints. He asked that instead of taking them down immediately, I should have an open mind.

“Just let them hang there for a couple of days before you make any decisions,” my husband suggested. Then he left the house.

This one is in our formal living room, right above the photos of the kids. I’m still warming up to it, but it sure beats the plastic pear from TJ Maxx.

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Disclaimer: Two books were harmed in the making of this post.

It’s probably some kind of a crime, but I made myself a Kindle case out of an old hardcover book. (Because it’s also a crime to pay forty bucks for one from a store.) Once I got over the initial guilt about destroying a book, I found the process to be quite enjoyable and now I can’t look at a hardback without wanting to hack it up and put my Kindle inside.

Isn’t that ironic, Alanis Morrisette?

Here is what you’ll need:

• A hardcover book (I recommend War and Peace or Ulysses)
• Mod Podge (but you could also use equal parts Elmer’s glue and water)
• A pencil
• A ruler
• A paintbrush
• An X-acto knife

Optional supplies: decorative paper, felt or ribbon, hot glue gun, adhesive magnets)

First, find an old hardcover book that you don’t mind destroying. Make sure the inside pages are at least an inch wider and longer than your Kindle.

Using Mod Podge or a combination of equal parts water and Elmer’s glue, paint around the outside pages of the book to seal them. You will need 2-3 coats (wait until each one dries completely before applying the next.)

Note: Don’t seal the first page because you’ll need it later. Just leave it flapping.

When the glue has dried, on the second page of the book, draw lines to mark where you will cut the pages out. Again, make sure you leave enough space for your Kindle to fit snugly inside, but not so snugly that you would have to pry it out with a crowbar.

With an X-acto knife, make an incision along the lines you drew and gently remove the first few pages. The book will not feel a thing.

Continue cutting the pages out until you’ve carved out a little Kindle cave. Unless the book you’re using is very thin, you probably don’t even need to cut through to the back cover. (You could also begin cutting towards the middle and leave a nice chunk of pages on the top so the Kindle cave is truly a secret compartment.)

The cutting process can be a bit tedious. It is normal to get a blister or develop carpal tunnel syndrome before you’re through.

When you’ve created a deep enough Kindle cave, seal the inside of it with Mod Podge or glue. Again, you may need more than one coat. Next, apply a thin layer of Mod Podge or glue on the top of the cave and press the first page (the one you didn’t cut) down upon it.  Or, you can glue a piece of decorative paper on the top of the cave, like so:

Close the front cover, weigh it down with a few heavy books, and wait for it to dry.

Using your X-acto knife, cut out the center of the top page. If you used a piece of decorative paper for the top page, you’ll also have to trim the outside edges so they are flush with the other pages in the book.

If, like me, you are unable to leave well enough alone, hot glue some felt or ribbon to the inside of the cave to further cushion your Kindle and to mask the hack job you did of cutting the pages out.

While wielding the glue gun, do mind your thumb)

You can also go nuts and add a bookplate (I got the graphic from The Background Fairy):

And decorate the cover with pieces of leftover scrapbook paper. (I used about three coats of Mod Podge to seal it and only took one or two deep sniffs.)

If you want the book to snap shut, place self adhesive magnet strips on the inside.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

And pretty snazzy, if I do say so myself.

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On New Year’s Eve I took a shower, then stepped inside my closet to take inventory of the endless outfit possibilities I could choose to usher in 2012. After trying on several different pairs of yoga pants in quick succession, I finally emerged wearing black leggings, bright red slipper socks, and a pair of leg warmers I made out of an old sweater.

I was ready to greet the new year in the comfort of my living room. The P-Dawg and I put out the good plates and dined on steak, asparagus, mashed potatoes and wine, while Jonas and Vija were served their favorite meal of organic nuggets de poulet with macaroni au fromage and sparkling cherry soda.

While we ate, I urged the children to take stock of the year that was coming to a close and consider their hopes and dreams for 2012. What was their favorite experience of 2011? Perhaps it was our proud march in Parade the Circle? Maybe it was roughing it like pioneers in the RV? Or was it was pondering the circle of life while gazing upon that deer carcass we saw at Lithuanian camp?

The children had no recollection of 2011. When pressed, Jonas admitted that he had enjoyed Halloween and Christmas.

“Remember when Santa came to town?” my son wistfully intoned.

“You mean last Saturday?” I pointed out.

I asked Jonas and V-meister if there was anything in particular they wanted to accomplish in 2012. Any dreams or special goals they wanted to work on? I, for example, hoped to finish my manuscript, do more yoga, and be a better mother. The P-Dawg for his part was going to continue developing his culinary skills and go fishing as often as possible. He might also buy a canoe.

“Nope,” the children answered. Though after some introspection, the V-meister admitted that she’d like to unlock more Mario Cart characters.

After our repas, we adjourned to the living room where our Christmas tree twinkled quietly in the corner and a fire glowed brightly in the fireplace. Would we play a game of Scrabble? Lock arms and sway gently to the tune of Kumbaya?

No. We would gather in unity around the television set and turn on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve™.

Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve™ made me nervous from the very start. I wondered if it was okay to expose my young children to primetime TV circa 2011 and, as always, I worried mightily for Dick Clark. Any number of things could happen before that ball dropped. Dick could fall asleep. He could miss his prompt, let the countdown get away from him, or drop right out of his chair. With each passing year, Dick Clark makes New Year’s Eve more and more of an extreme sport for me.

The Rockin’ Eve programming assaulted my senses so that completely unbidden and against my own volition, I began channelling my dear late grandmother with observations like, “Fui-fui, tie du laižosi kaip šunys!” (“Feh! Feh! Look at those two licking each other like a couple of dogs”) and “Jėzau, Marija, jos apranga kaip iš klyno ištraukta!” (Jesus, Mary and Joseph, did she pull that getup straight out of her ass?”)

The artists performing inside the television set were unfamiliar and didn’t appear to have had musical training of any sort.

“I hope you kids know that what this Doberman Pinscher character is doing does not actually qualify as singing.”

“Mama!” the V-meister convulsed at my ignorance. “His name is Pitbull.”

“Doberman, Rottweiller, Pitbull, whatever. I don’t like his voice.”

After awhile, an old clip of Rick Springfield singing “Jesse’s Girl” came on. It was music to my ears. Even the P-Dawg started humming along with the TV set, though he probably wouldn’t admit it unless you put a gun to his head.

“See kids?” I gestured at the screen where Ricky crooned into the mic wearing a cotton candy pink suit and a skinny tie. “That right there is what’s called ‘music’. And look how snazzy his outfit is.”

Next up was Boy George with “Karma Chameleon.” Strangely enough, through my 2011 glasses, he looked almost conservative, like a character in a vampire movie or on Nickelodeon. And he’d seemed so gosh-darned edgy back in the day.

After that, it was back to 2011 with a performer by the name of Nicki Minag. She came on wearing a platinum blonge wig and a metallic blue Jetsons-style dress, something I would not be adverse to wearing myself. But when she started singing I was crestfallen.

“They call this entertainment? Psssht!” I declared, “Anybody could do that!”

“In fact,” I said, turning to my children, “The only difference between me and this Jetsons lady is that she’s on TV and I’m on the couch here in my pajamas and slipper socks. Seriously, kids. Don’t you think I could rock it out just like whaddayacallitNickiMinag?

The V-meister was the only one who dared answer.

“No, Mama,” she piped up.

“Really? Why not?”

“You’re too old,” my daughter said.

And with that, my entire self-image was crushed. I’d always thought of myself as a hot little mama, but it turns out my daughter thinks I already have one foot in the grave.

The children had the option of staying up until midnight, but by 10:30 one was breakdancing on the coffee table and the other was ping-ponging around the room like a caffeinated moth. They turned themselves in voluntarily after we promised that if they were still awake at midnight, they could come down to watch the ball drop.

I had to prop my own eyes open with toothpicks in order to stay awake, but with a glass of champagne in one hand and the P-Dawg by my side, I made it to 2012. Quite happy to see the new year in at home with my lovely little family instead of crammed up against the armpit of humanity for seven hours in Times Square wearing a Depends*.

I might have one foot in the grave, but at least it’s warmly ensconced in a custom-made leg-warmer and a cherry apple red slipper sock.

Happy New Year, everybody! (And thank you for reading and “liking” RimaRama!)

* Where do you think all those people in Times Square go to the bathroom? Just like astronauts, I bet they wear Depends.

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