Girassol

Officially the last remaining single member of my family

My younger brother recently got engaged, and asked me to help them with the wording on their wedding invitations.  In celebration of this, and because I have now spent 30 spinsterly years scrutinizing OTHER PEOPLE'S ANNOUNCEMENTS and developing many a pet peeve regarding their presentation, I now share with you my Top 10 List of Do's and Don'ts for wedding invitations and announcements:

1.  Don't list where you are registered, and don't even include those stupid cards in the envelope. It is tacky and rude, and smacks of gift-grubbing.  If people want to know where you are registered, they will ask you or your family, or they will assume Target and Bed/Bath/Beyond since everyone registers there anyway, and will look up your registry online if they are smart people.  (Way around this:  Set up a wedding website with The Knot or someplace, and at the bottom of the invitation say something like, "visit the website of the happy couple at www.blahblahblah."  Those websites always have links to the couple's registry.  Plus you can post 10,000 cute pictures, a story of how you met, and whatever else you want.)

2.  Don't say "Bo-Bob and Gertrude Smith, and Jim and Ann Jones announce the marriage of their children."  It sounds like the bride and groom are cousins. People don't like to buy presents for inbreds.

3.  Be consistent.  If you name her parents as Dr. and Mrs. Beauregard Robert Smith, then say Mr. and Mrs. James Cletus Jones.  If you go with Bo-Bob and Gertrude Smith, go with Jim and Ann Jones.

4.  Don't put your picture in an oval, and don't use that misty filter on Photoshop around the edges of the picture.  It makes it look like a funeral remembrance card.

5.  Don't wear matching shirts in the photo, especially if they have a stripe across the chest.  It makes you look like the two-headed monster from Sesame Street, albeit slightly better dressed.

6.  Don't pose while sitting on opposite tracks of a railroad, while not touching one another at all, or even looking at each other.  This is your wedding announcement.  People EXPECT it to look like you are fairly fond of one another.

7.  On the flipside, don't do that hokey "girl's left hand on the guy's chest to highlight sparkling diamond" pose.  Obviously you're engaged, which is why we're receiving the picture in the first place.  Nobody cares about the size of the ring.  That pose is just tacky and cheesy.  Who stands like that in real life?

8.  Don't make retarded inside jokes in the invitation or say things that sound juvenile.  I once read an invitation that said, "Frank and Alice Parents are thrilled to FINALLY announce the marriage of their daughter..."  As if the daughter doesn't feel crappy enough already at being a commitment-phobic disappointment with shriveled-up ovaries.  Another one said, in the directions to the reception, "Keep driving down a yucky dirt road until you see a lot of deer and trees and stuff."  Seriously?  I don't think I even need to comment on that one.

9.  If you're going to use a vellum overlay, for heaven's sake, tie it with something classier than YARN!!!  Did you REALLY just decide this morning, "Oh gosh, better get those announcements out.  Now what can I tie them with?  Good thing I'm knitting this scarf -- crisis averted!"

10.  Don't include double envelopes, PLUS multiple paper inserts including separate invitations to the ceremony, directions, and registry information, PLUS a response card with separate envelope.  This is just a massive paper cut waiting to happen.  Figure out a simpler, less tree-killing way to get the information out.

11.  Spell, capitalize, and punctuate everything correctly.  (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for example.  I know that's a tough one.  I mean, there are hardly any places where you can check the correct spelling of that.  It's not like it's on your Sunday School manual, or mission nametags, or on the Church website.  That is really so unfortunate.  Somebody up at Church headquarters really needs to get on that.)


So it's actually my Top 11 list, but suffice it to say that after all the roommates, mission companions, friends, neighbors, and work colleagues I have known who have gotten married in the last decade or so, I have amassed quite a collection of announcements.  Some of these are now my "steal their good ideas" pile, and some are in my mockery pile.  When my time comes, it will likely take me all of five seconds to draft something up.  And trust me, it will look and sound AWESOME.

Mad Scientist

This is my little brother, the geological research assistant:

While he was home for a visit last month, we had an interesting conversation about dating, and about how there are certain deal-breaking things that a person might do that will immediately exclude them from your "dating gene pool."  Mine was if a guy has a tattoo of a cartoon character, or wears cartoon character t-shirts, or worse, cartoon character ties.  (Just today, I saw a guy with a tattoo of a Tasmanian devil in a footbal helmet on his bicep.  There are WAY TOO MANY of these people.)  Little bro, it turns out, has an aversion to those teeny-tiny shrug sweaters. 

You know what happens when you start talking fashion with a scientist?  You get new and improved garment-related terminology, perfect for the runway AND the lab!

Behold, the "exoskeleton bra sweater"!

Mack Grandaddy

My grandad was widowed last fall, and is wasting no time in getting back out into the dating game.  He is seeing a "nice Christian lady" named Lucille, and they have gone out on "six or seven dates."  This afternoon he was over for lunch and was telling us about how Lucille is a good woman, a good cook, a good pianist, a good this, a good that, and a good the other.  I asked him, "So, is she a good kisser?"

His reply: "Oh, I wouldn't know about that.  We don't go any farther than sex just yet."

The REAL Reason All Those Pioneers Had So Many Children

My 75-year-old grandfather has a lot on his mind lately:

"I often think of those women going across the plains... you know, menstruating, and the like.  I mean, in the first place they must have been uncomfortable, and in the second place they were a mess.  Nothing to use but grasses!  No wonder they were pregnant all the time!"

Two Job Interviews And A Funeral: Or, What I've Been Doing For The Last Week

So, the job interview.  Thank you for the good vibes -- I think they worked.

The interview involved me and a legal pad on one end of the phone and the superintendent, principal, assistant principal, curriculum director, and French teacher on the other end of the phone.  They asked me a LOT of questions, most of which I was able to more or less jot down while they were asking, which really helped me keep my focus and answer coherently.  Most of their questions were about my teaching philosophies and practices, along the lines of, "What are the elements of a good lesson plan?" and "What are some classroom management issues you have faced and how did you deal with them?" 

They also asked me at the end to look out my window and tell them in Spanish what I saw, and then to pretend I was seeing a little sailboat on the lake and describe how it reacted to the wind.  So I said a bunch of stuff about the boat rising and falling with the waves and the captain having to use the sun and shoreline to guide himself back to the coast.  Then the superintendent goes, "So how do you say 'sails' in Spanish?"  It struck me as an odd question because I realized I hadn't actually said the word sails in all of that, and I didn't think that anybody there spoke Spanish well enough to know that.  I wondered if they were just testing my vocabulary breadth or my ability to recall random words on the spot, or if he thought I was trying to avoid the word since I didn't know it.  So I go, "Velas, I believe."  And that was the end of the interview.

Well, sails ARE velas, and I wanted to kick myself for adding the "I believe" on there.   But apparently the interview went well enough overall, because they got in touch with me later that afternoon to let me know that they really wanted to see me teach a mini-lesson before they made up their minds about anything.  And this is where it gets interesting.

See, last Saturday (June 18th), my great-grandmother passed away.  I found out about her death and about the job interview on the same night, so I immediately started preparing a sample lesson plan to e-mail the interviewers and also started looking for an affordable plane ticket to get back to Pennsylvania on a moment's notice.  Plus, I had to work and get lesson plans together for my subs, and also the summer term started last Monday and I have to take a class.  It was a stressful week.  But when they asked me if I could get there and teach a mini-lesson, it couldn't have happened at a better time -- I would be right there in Pennsylvania and could easily get down to the school to do it.  It's just sort of cosmic the way this all happened at the same time, and so in a way I feel like Granny was stepping in as my guardian angel and orchestrating all of this somehow.

Granny was born March 25th, 1912.  She was 93 years old when she died.  She saw amazing changes in the world in those 93 years -- from a brother fighting in World War I to getting electricity and running water at home to seeing man walk on the moon to the invention of our friend, the Internet. 

Granny learned to drive when she was 60 years old.  She bought us our first Nintendo (except she misunderstood and kept calling it an Innuendo).  She went on her first roller coaster ride in her late 70's.  Around that same time she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to have a mastectomy.  When asked how she was feeling after the surgery, she replied, "Well, one less thing to wash."

Granny wore a tie-dyed blouse and culotte set to my high school graduation because she just knew I would think it was cool (and she was right).  She was so proud of me that day, because she was never able to go past eighth grade and she just thought it was the greatest thing that I had made it all the way through high school.  On my graduation day, she gave me a sterling silver spoon ring that she had been saving to give me on that occasion.  I've been wearing it every day for years.

Granny fed a house full of relatives on Sunday afternoons for as long as any of us can remember.  She was an amazing cook (was a personal chef for more than 30 years), and because of her prowess in the kitchen I never met a pickled beet, chicken liver, or split-pea soup I didn't like, and have been spoiled to death through homemade pie crusts, REAL whipped cream, the creamiest mashed potatoes known to man, and fried chicken that is to die for.  I've spent many a late night down at her house with all the womenfolk in my family playing cards -- group Solitaire, mostly.  And as old and slow as Granny eventually got, she was still tough to beat.

This is a woman who was the fourteenth of fifteen children and whose mother died giving birth to the last.  Because she grew up with no mother, she made darn sure everyone in her family would be treated beautifully.  She mothered all of us in some way or another.

Over the last ten years or so, Granny's health had gone downhill slowly, but in the last year and a half she had another cancer surgery, a stroke, and fell several times.  She was living in a Catholic nursing center since the stroke.  It was strange to go visit her and see her eating food that she hated because it doesn't taste as good as what she would have made.  It was strange to look in her little closet and see not her usual classy slacks and blouses, but just a couple of pairs of polyester pants and a couple of shirts, all labeled, "Margaret Benchoff" in black marker.  It was strange that sometimes she didn't recognize us when we showed up to visit.  It was strange to know that that woman was no longer the same woman we all knew.

But because of these changes, we accepted a long time ago that Granny wouldn't be around much longer, and we've been grieving slowly since long before she was actually gone.  When I heard the news that she was gone (and I think the same could be said for the rest of my family), I actually felt relieved instead of sad.  No more morphine drip.  No more Depends.  No more thickener in all the food.  No more confusion and frustration and loss of control.  Just liberation from an aged, malfunctioning body and reunion with her mother and father, her fourteen brothers and sisters, and her husband, who've been waiting for her to join them for a very long time.  How could I NOT be relieved and happy for her?

So last Thursday I flew back to PA and spent the evening preparing my mini-lesson portion of the job interview.  Friday morning I went and gave the lesson and I thought it went really well (although it doesn't matter much what I think, does it?).  Friday afternoon I had a meeting with a professor at a PA school where I'll be taking my last few classes toward teaching certification starting this fall.

Friday night was Granny's viewing.  Saturday was the actual funeral, with all six of us great-grandchildren serving as the pallbearers.  The WHOLE family was there, which was wonderful.  We put together some framed posters with pictures of her life to display at the funeral home.  There was a Christian Wake service given by her priest, and once all the other people had left, the family members had a chance to say goodbye to her.  Before they closed the casket, we put a deck of cards in with her, slipping into her hands an Ace, because of how much she loved Solitaire, and the Queen of Hearts, because, well, it just felt like her card.

What You Should NOT Do At A Funeral

If you are the priest:

• Show up 15 minutes late to the wake.
• Say several times during the funeral mass, "Mawgaret's life has not ended.  It has just transfowmed!," making you sound just like that priest in The Princess Bride.
• Bust out of the intersection behind the church in your Jeep Cherokee and jump right in front of the hearse, causing everyone in the funeral procession to honk their horn at you.

If you are the funeral director:

• Misprint the birthdate of the deceased on the funeral cards.
• Admit that you don't know enough about computers to fix the date.
• Embalm the deceased in such a way that, although she was a mastectomy patient in life, she appears to be sporting a new pair of torpedo boobs in death.
• Halfway through the wake service, reach out from behind a partition wall like some specter or heavenly messenger or something out of a Monty Python sketch, and hand the holy water to the priest IN A DIXIE CUP.

If you are a family member:

• Wear Tevas and black socks with your suit.
• Fart.
• Giggle when you hear a fart.
• Turn around and ask why everyone is giggling, and when they tell you that someone farted, join in the giggling.
• Keep talking after everyone else has finished reciting the Lord's prayer.
• Snort when you hear your cousin go, "For thine is the kingdom and the... oh."
• Have a fight with your mother about the abominably redneck-like length of your hair.  Preferably right in front of your deceased great-grandmother's casket.
• Kneel in front of your deceased great-grandmother's casket for, like, ten minutes and poke her, like, a hundred times and then ask, "So what'd they do to get Granny's hands all hard like this?"
• Respond, "Um, it's called rigor mortis."

Reason #597 Why My Mom Makes Me Laugh

From a phone conversation earlier tonight:

ME:  "She's my landlady, only she's my age so I guess she's more like a landsistah or a landpeer or something."

MOM:  "Hey, what if the landlady's not a lady?  You don't call him a landman."

ME:  "Um, you call him a landlord."

MOM:  "Oh, yeah, I always forget about that!"

Home, Sweet Home

On Wednesday night, I arrived in Pennsylvania for a visit to the house I grew up in.  From the moment the plane landed at BWI, I have breathed easier, been calmer, and felt happier.

I have also been more patient.  Case in point: Yesterday morning, after sleeping for TWELVE LONG AND GLORIOUS HOURS, I opened up my bedroom door and stepped squarely into a pile of what I can only assume was cat vomit, as it was full of spittle and gooey things and I know I certainly didn't leave it there.  I cleaned it up and headed downstairs to the kitchen for some breakfast, which was delayed because I had to take care of the little present my parents' cocker spaniels left for me -- a veritable Lake Superior of pee and a charming little trail of turds leading to the back door.

Thankfully the rest of the visit has been just lovely.  When we got home from the airport, my dad fixed me a bowl of tomato soup and a grilled-cheese sandwich made with Gruyere, henceforth known as The Best Grilled-Cheese Sandwich I Have Ever Eaten In My Whole Life, Ever.  Then when I went upstairs to bed, I saw that my mom had left me a vase of fresh daffodils on my nightstand, with a little note that said, "We're SO glad you're home!"

So am I.  The lack of sphincter control in my parents' menagerie notwithstanding, there really is no place like home.