dirt don't hurt

Sometimes I get the feeling that I’m going to be a feisty old woman; the kind of woman who covers the back of her car in stickers and tells the waiter just what I think of the food when it arrives without concern because feisty old women don’t care what others think.   They are so unfazed by the thoughts of others, these glorious gutsy women carry on with a strong head on proud shoulders.   This feeling hit me again when I found myself doing a little plumbing work at a local establishment. I would have never expected myself to be the kind of person to be standing in this restroom holding a plunger, but there I was, throwing caution to the wind and unclogging a public toilet.   I admit while standing there and staring at the nearly overflowing toilet, a few thoughts crossed my mind.    The first thought naturally was, “why am I standing here, watching a public toilet overflow?”   The second was, “I should probably do something about this.”   The thir...

This fall, my husband and I will celebrate our fifteenth anniversary.   We’ve been together through sickness and health, good times and bad, and even survived extended road trips with all three kids fighting in the backseat.   There is no one else I would rather spend my life with, and am thankful for every day he puts up with my weirdness. But just recently I think we’ve gotten more comfortable with each other because within the last month I have found out about a couple of my quirky habits of which I was completely unaware. “Do you realize you always eat ice cream that way?” he asked at a restaurant while I was downing my delight from the ice cream sundae bar.   Not sure what he was talking about, I offered up a questioning look and he and the children all demonstrated.   “You put the spoon in your mouth and then you turn it upside down.   Every single time.” “No I don’t!” I argued, but while enjoying seconds of ice cream I noticed he was exactly right....

I have always been fairly against trampolines.  The injuries, the liability, the thought of a massive fifteen-foot circular monstrosity clogging up the backyard; it was all just too much to handle.  There was no way one of those things were ever coming to my house. But then I realized the containment capability of a trampoline.   Now that they are required to have safety nets that extend way beyond any reasonable height a person could actually jump, they look a lot less like a trampoline and a lot more like a play pen suitable for grown children.   Our kids begged for one and during the whining I had a vision of myself sitting in a lawn chair relaxing while they jumped happily for hours on the trampoline and not on my couch, beds, or off the walls.   I caved under a dream sequence that involved my actually finishing a book and a cup of hot coffee, and the monstrosity arrived shortly after. Anyone who has set up a trampoline knows what is coming next. ...

There are still parts of this world that don’t offer cell coverage.   In these rare places, you can find your average human beings who are usually riddled with kindness angrily pushing buttons and holding their arms in the air while balancing on chairs on top of chairs on top of tables. Or you might find someone who happily hits the off button and goes on his or her merry way. This used to be me.   At a family cabin hangout, we used to have zero cell service.   In fact, my father once bet me $50 that I couldn’t complete a phone call and I walked away with a dropped jaw and a heavy pocket.   For the most part, we were isolated.   There were no emails, texts, phone calls.   The thought of Facebook crossed no one’s mind.   It was a place to escape the reality of the uber-connectedness of the modern world where you could eat a delicious plate of food and if you took an antiqued photograph of it, it would possibly be days before it hit the social media...

It didn’t help that my mother was a school aide and when we’d run outside to recess my “friend” would sprint up and tell her that once again, I didn’t eat the crust of my sandwich. I didn’t like the crust.   So like many kids, I’d nibble all the way to the edge and then toss out that dark brown and vile part. My mother did the only respectable thing a mother could do.   She told me a lie.   Two of them, actually. “Did you know that the crust of your bread makes your hair curly?   And the more bread you eat, the more you’ll float when you swim.   Ever throw bread in a pond?   It floats!” I, being the straight haired swimming sinker, bought into it for quite a while, stuffing myself with bread and gagging down the crusts, checking my hair in the mirror and laying on top of the water at the lake. Why would my mother lie to me, I wondered? And then I became a mother.   We lie out of desperation, out of exhaustion, and sometimes just for fun. ...