I hate driving.  If my town had any reasonable kind of reliable mass transit, I would give it up in a heartbeat.  When I take my bi-monthly trips to Washington DC, I do not rent a car and I happily take the Metro and buses everywhere.

This does not mean, however, that I can’t drive.  In fact, it is a skill that I consider myself, with a certain level of self-conceit, to be pretty damned good at.  My father, who occasionally reads this blog, may consider this to be hereditary, but I think it has more to do with not being able to date a boy that I share a town with.  I have logged a lot of hours in a car, under a lot of inclement conditions.  I have (with the exception of Baton Rouge, my cartographical Achilles heel), an excellent sense of direction.  I rarely get lost, and I never lose control.

It was a good skill to have this past weekend.   Arkansas was subjected to one of its occasional freak ice storms, and lacking any extensive road-clearing infrastructure, I was forced to travel over icy roads the twenty miles to my office to meet a promised deadline.  It was slick, but at a reasonable, steady pace, it was hardly insurmountable.

The key to driving on ice is to avoid acceleration, keeping in mind that acceleration is a change in velocity over time.  And velocity has both a speed and a direction component.   In practical driving terms, this means, just don’t change your speed or direction very quickly;  keep it all slow and steady.  Stay in your comfort zone.  Don’t overestimate your safe speed.

In application, however, the laws of physics runs smack up against the law of diminishing returns.

Translating,  if your individual speed of comfort on the ice is FIVE MILES AN HOUR, it is better for your personal safety (and for that of the rest of driving humanity) to please, please, please, JUST STAY HOME.

Five miles an hour does not provide enough momentum to navigate any kind of incline whatsoever.  Which requires acceleration.  Which violates the best practice of avoiding changes in speed or direction.  The net result of which is having your vehicle simultaneously spinning it’s wheels and sliding backward with ME (who is behind you, driving a prudent speed sufficient to take me up the less than 5 degree incline) frantically making maneuvers to avoid hitting YOU, while simultaneously trying to avoid quick changes in either speed or direction.

Do you see the inherent conflicting mandates here?

I completely appreciate that you are not overestimating your own ability to control a car at imprudent speeds.  I applaud you for that.  But, when I can get out of my vehicle and walk around in front of your moving car and reach a stop sign two blocks away before you do, I truly question the necessity of using a vehicle at all.  Walking would be faster, and have the added side benefit of removing a one-ton, sliding, careening, road hazard for those of us with a higher margin of safety and experience.  Just think of it as another law;  the law of common sense.

Isn’t it nice when so many laws come together at one point so logically?

And really?  Who wouldn’t just rather be at home on a cold day?

If she is like me, she is still at work, and Daddy is tucking you in.

I love my job. Mostly.

But right now? I am feeling a bit tested.

While I am being peevish, I have another useful announcement. This for the people in the children’s clothing industry. So, here I go, up on the soap box:

<tap, tap, tap> Is this thing on?

Good.  Okay.

To the makers of little boys’ jeans:

Little boys need pockets.

While I would have thought that this would be self-evident to anyone that had more than two hours contact with little boys, I can tell you with absolute assurance that the idea of fake pockets on jeans is a complete non-starter.

Without pockets, it is impossible to follow the maternal directive to keep your hands in your pockets in public restrooms and other “less than clean places”.

Without pockets, where can a boy put his treasures for safe keeping? Where do the pennies, smooth rocks, flowers for mommy, and the occasional lost toad, take up residence?

Where do you put your hands on cold days when you have inevitably misplaced your mittens while climbing the monkey bars?

Where do you put your gum for safekeeping during lunch hour?

In case you are in doubt about this point – Little boys do NOT carry purses.

Considering the myriad of crucial reasons to which little boys are indebted to their pockets, sewing fake pockets onto boys jeans is just…plain…mean.

Little boys may not have the monetary clout of wads of cash in those little pockets.

But Mommies do.

And they don’t like fake pockets either.

To the husbands and children of the universe:

I apologize in advance if I shatter some long-cherished myths along the lines of the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, but I have an announcement to make:

Ahem.

No.  It is not fairies who pick up your dirty socks and underwear up off of the floor at night and deposit them in the dirty clothes hamper or that put the cleaned and folded laundry back into your dresser drawers and closets.  If you wish to know the identity of the being who performs these services, take the members of your household and subtract all the children, pets, husbands and/or daddies and look at the remainder. You do the math.

However, if you choose to cling to this personal fantasy, be aware that it is traditional to leave payment for house fairies in the form of shiny trinkets.

Preferably of the solid gold variety.

Thank you. That is all.

I came from a “clean your plate” family.  In my mother’s defense, I do not ever explicitly remember hearing her say “There are children in Africa who would be grateful for your food…”, but I know with utmost certainty that my grandmother did.  In any case the message “Thou shalt not waste food” came through loud and clear.  It pains me to throw food away.  I feel a deep pang of guilt upon coming upon leftovers or produce that have gone past the point of no return in my refrigerator.  My Tupperware gets a workout.  Waste is a sin.

I remember distinctly rolling my eyes and thinking (if not being brave enough to actually say) the classic child’s response:  ”So, if the children in Africa WANT my lima beans, they can HAVE my lima beans.  Please just pack them up and send them.”  There is a lesson beyond “don’t waste” that was completely lost on me.  It is a message that has clicked only now that I have had “children in Africa” moments with my son.  It is only now that the well-worn words are coming out of my own mouth that I look back with a certain amount of shame on the lesson that I missed.

Accept providence with gratitude.  Be thankful for what you have.  Do not want when you are not wanting.

My son had a meltdown last evening over a coveted toy, a Batman sword with flashing lights and sound effects.  A very hard plastic sword whose safety in my son’s hands (to our household pets and possessions if not to himself) could not be guaranteed.  A sword that he emphatically Does. Not. Need.

When these sentiments were expressed to Harry, along with the request to put the toy back in its place on the store shelf, the desperate WANTING of youth overtook him.  Nothing but the possession of that sword was important, and when he couldn’t have it,  he was ready to trade in family and home with the need of it.  He screamed with defiance.

“I DON’T LOVE YOU ANYMORE!  I DON’T WANT YOU ANYMORE!  I WANT  A NEW MOMMY AND DADDY!  I WANT TO LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE!”

I stopped and turned to look at him.  Keeping my voice as level and calm as possible, I played the “children in Africa” card, and there was an internal wincing as I realized it.

“Harry.  Do you know what happened last week?”

That got his interest.  He paused.  “No.”

“Harry, last week, there was a big earthquake far away in a place called Haiti.  And lots of little boys and girls lost all their toys.  Not only did they lose all their toys, but many of them lost their homes, and their mommies and daddies.  Some of them even died.  Isn’t that very sad?”

“Yes.”

“Now when we get home, I want you to go straight to your room without any supper.  I want you to look around and think very hard and decide if you really want to lose all your toys and your room.  I want you to think very hard about whether you really want to lose your mommy and daddy and never see them again.  Because, Harry, sometimes that happens to little boys and girls.  And it isn’t very nice or respectful for you to behave this way when you have so much.”

I would love to say this ended the screaming instantly but it didn’t.  He did go straight to his room, where he continued to fuss for a time, before he declared he was done and wanted to make the appropriate apologies and have his dinner.

The sword has not been mentioned again.

I have no idea if he even has the beginning of an understanding of gratitude.  I don’t think it occurs to him for a moment how fortunate his life is, even among his peers.  But I do have an obligation to teach the lesson I missed, even at the expense of the “children in Haiti”.  If I gave away every possession I owned, I could not right all the unfairness in the world.    I can at least teach my privileged son to be thankful.   Generosity starts with gratitude and I hope the message leads him better than it did me.

When two women show up at a wedding wearing the same thing, it’s a crisis.

When two little boys show up at a wedding wearing the same thing – it’s adorable!

The news is heartbreaking.

I know this.  I know what this is like.  I know what it is to lose your home, to lose everything.  I know what it is to frantically try to reach friends and loved ones, to wonder if they are still okay, if they have been spared.

I have seen my entire community dismantled at the capricious hand of nature.

I also know the kindness of strangers and the open door in the night.  I have survived on it.  I was lucky enough to still be living in one of the most affluent countries on earth.

Please, help.   In whatever way you can, however small.

Believe me, it makes a difference.

I know this.

I have seen some really, really stupid warning labels in my life. I think my all time favorite is the hang-tag on a blow dryer that cautioned “Do not use in shower”. I no longer own a blow dryer. Any product whose manufacturer reasonably believes that their clientele would think it a fine idea to simultaneously wash and dry their hair does not include me in its target audience.

But what about the warning labels that are desperately needed that nobody ever thinks of?

Like the one that should be on Veggie Tales videos. The one that should say something like:

Warning – Viewing this video may result in a recreation of the Battle of Jericho around your bed in early morning hours.

Now that one? That one is a real warning.

Have you ever had one of those days when the realization hits you like a speeding train that your entire life is dictated by everyone else’s needs and yours have become completely and utterly irrelevant?

Yep. Going into the end of the first decade of the 21st century, that’s my life.

On top of all the other situations that have conspired to make this holiday a dismal failure, I have been working on an incredibly complicated report for work. We have a situation, without going into too many details, that is rather an unprecedented case, that required analyses that even the regulatory agency overseeing us has never had to deal with. As a consequence, the analysis took longer to finish than we expected. I cannot write a report without the analysis, and I had hoped to make up for the delay in the writing process.

So, despite having to put down two of my beloved pets, despite being so sick I cannot swallow my own spit, despite having my statistics handed to me a week late, I have been working 10 hour (or more) days for every single day this holiday, except Christmas day itself. I have deferred leave. I have propped myself up with massive amounts of pharmaceuticals (now, that’s irony for you), and when I finally had to just admit defeat and inform the client of a one week delay (which, considering the myriad of other factors in their submission package, will not delay  a thing in the ultimate view), they completely, totally, lose their minds.

Unfortunately, they don’t have the breadth of experience for me to try to explain precisely why what we are doing is non-standard, and precisely how the contribution of another contractor adds to the complexity of the issue, so pretty much I just have to suck it up.

With a fever pushing 102, a throat on fire, pain in every large muscle of my body, I have put in a 12-hour day today, and I am completely going to miss Christmas with my family this weekend.

2009 – You suck.

That is all.