The Apex of Degradation

I have become enamoured, maybe you'd say, with this phrase today. It's nearly as good, though not quite, since it wasn't aimed directly at me, as "nefarious agendas," which I promise to say more about someday.

There's something fundamentally wrong to me about the phrase "The apex of price degradation," which I read today in the WSJ with regard to PC prices this coming holiday season. I could *so* write for them; I just eat up this verbal fancifulness. I suggested "nadir" as the appropriate term, Kerry prefers "trough" as the economist's choice ("We economists don't use dem dare fancy big words."). Whichever term you prefer, Kerry is experiencing some jealousy of my now highly developed relationship with the Macbook, and he is already developing plans for dispensing with a theoretical surplus resulting from overtime hours when the December lows come. And can you believe that we are in fact a mere two weeks or so away from Thanksgiving? And thus barely more than that away for us from a Christmas tree? To say this is off my radar at the moment would be to state the obvious. I typically do not embrace the winter season since having children--it's nothing but an endless string of sickness, house arrest, and lack of essential daylight hours--and I'm not anticipating the impending one any more than I have the past few years.

Meanwhile, as I'm typing here on this PC, accessing my accounts through a very slow and clunky webmail, fighting for equal time on the machine with numerous family members (I was just informed I had lost all media privileges because I brought cereal into the playroom and was shoving it in my mouth while using the computer), I'm contemplating my own return from the Dark Side soon. Now that I'm finishing up full day #4 of not having the Macbook and having no idea when it will return, I'm becoming increasingly frustrated by the unreliability of this system and wishing for something less sleek but more, well...here with me. Joel, who bought his Mac at the same time we did, has already forced Apple to take his back after his third major failure with it. Both Joel and Kerry secretly confided to one another that despite multiple MCP professional designations, they longed for the cross-generational compatibility, the more stable OS of the Other Team. What a joke! My PCs have always had problems, don't get me wrong, but they've always been problems that we just adapt to and muddle through until we can take no more (usually 2 or 3 years later). When the Mac goes down, it goes down hard.

Speaking of the WSJ, and speaking of yesterday's Volvo moment (despite the fact that I'm talking about it again, I'm really over it, really!), the XC-90 did not get good dependability ratings (the Siena did, the Odyssey was unrated), and sales are not where they should be overall for Volvo. I have to say, I wasn't wholly impressed. Maybe if we go back to the 'two kids and a Volvo' world, things might seem sunnier, but it would still need to be two kids with a very compactly folding double stroller and a mother who never bought anything in a large box. Oh, and there was also an article that, roughly paraphrased by me, said that if we drink more than 300 glasses of red wine a day, we just might live 20% longer despite eating fatty food and saying Super Size Me. Is that a fact? And here I was thinking it was all about diet and exercise.

And speaking of diet, I got into a conversation today about the dreaded Feingold Stage One, an episode from our past that I had totally repressed. Now that I recall it, we embarked on that particular journey in the height of berry season, and we staunchly stuck by our pineapples and quinces and whatever other two fruits were permitted. We shunned all tomato sauce. We single-handedly raised the stock prices of Frito-Lay by our Fritos consumption alone. I am ashamed to admit that it is hard for me to choose between dealing with hyperactive children and dealing with the resistance to never being able to eat anything that--this one's for you, Hilary--NORMAL people eat. It was so much easier when they were three is all I can say.

I hate to get all whiny again about missing my computer, but I MISS MY COMPUTER. I had said a while back that I was exploring other blog clients, and the new beta of blogger is not in the running. It is making me miserable. I am seeing some benefits for myself (can't speak for others) in such features in .mac as composing on a template that appears exactly like the final product. I like my template, however limiting it might be. I like composing on a background. I like never seeing HTML code. It doesn't take much to make me happy. I like composing without going online. I like that my blog address is very mysterious and impossible to remember. I miss feeling like anyone is reading this (and I miss the automatic spell-check--I was going to exclaim, "The narcissism!" but I don't know how to spell it and I don't want to embarrass myself.). Most of all, I miss the aimless web surfing, my bookmarked sites, how everyone's address automatically pops up by the time I type the second letter of their name, and, well...sleeping with the machine. I'm starting to think that Kerry may well have a point about being replaced....

For some reason, today I thought I was going to fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon at this party. Maybe it was the 299th glass of red wine (see, I'm feeling healthier already! At least 6 months added to my life!). Just kidding. But I thought I might tip over and take a nap right on Jessica's dining room floor. Obviously the night with Mr. Rutledge was not so restful. Even Rebecca's embarrassing recollections to way too many people! of the many hilarious conversation topics last night was not enough to keep me functioning. A few minutes out in the blustery, brisk storm outside, though, was enough to knock some consciousness into me. I came to my senses enough so that I now am the proud owner of a brand new non-disgusting, white plastic round Kohler toilet seat. And tile adhesive. And grout. Overall, a productive day.

We are still trying to figure out the logistics of the upcoming holidays. For whatever reason--don't ask me because I don't know--the ILs feel that the 1.45 hour trip to our house is just too burdensome to do twice in 30 days (because, you know, they've been up a grand total of one time this calendar year so far). So now they have dropped out of celebrating Christmas. Anyone who knows me well knows about our checkered past. Thanksgiving traditionally had been held in Lynchburg, and there are some notorious memories. The one where Kerry and I marched out before dinner was served because our dogs were outside in 20 degree weather and weren't allowed in, where we bought our own turkey on the way home and had a late and very alone holiday. There was the one where I was accidentally overheard calling his mother an unpleasant epithet while she was standing on the screen porch above me and nobody spoke to me through dinner. There were the years when we were intentionally uninvited to the family gathering. My personal favorite, though, was when the twins were not quite four months old and we were moving from Oakton to Roanoke. If I remember correctly, the new company paid little to no moving expenses, so I had done 100% of the box acquiring and packing by myself with no help, not a nanosecond of a babysitter, on about 30 cumulative minutes of sleep a day and with the tape gun out on the balcony so I would not wake any potentially sleeping babies with the ripping sound as I assembled boxes. All of our belongings were taken away on the afternoon before Thanksgiving, so we spent that night on the floor of our apartment. Because this was one of the disinvited years for Thanksgiving dinner, when it was made very clear that we and our irresponsible ways of making people into grandparents before their time were not welcome in Lynchburg, we had a charming Thanksgiving dinner at Boston Market, along with two homeless men and the unfortunate souls who picked the short straw and had to work the holiday, followed by a night in a hotel. This November was followed by the Nuclear Family Christmas, the first either of us had ever spent without any extended family at all, in our brand new house with our boxes barely unpacked and infants who had barely been seen yet by their grandparents. And of course, lest we forget my family, there was the year where my Dad appeared right before dinner, ate with us, then immediately hit the road for a second dinner with his significant other. Peppered in there are the more positive memories of Annie's amazing mac and cheese, her sweet potato casserole, Wanda's chess pies. But by and large, when I think of a Clendenon Thanksgiving, I think of being starved all morning and until late afternoon, to a point where my blood sugar is so low I'm not sure how I could not turn into a raging monster (while meanwhile Kerry and Tim manage to sneak out and go on the sly to 7-11 and get hotdogs to hold them over), and then feeling so ill by the time a meal finally is served that I can barely eat. Because, you know, you might not be able to overeat if you did something as foolish as have breakfast or lunch.... Since moving to Richmond, we have become the central location (fewer than 2 hours from any participant), and the past two years have been largely without incident. I truly should not complain. I realize many families have much worse situations than my own. But I cling desperately to this belief that one day, just once, it will snow on some major holiday, friends and loved ones will gather around a warm fire and treat each other with kindness and will then share a lovingly prepared meal. Believe it or not, I've actually met people that this has happened to at least once!

Not only have I not thought a bit about Thanksgiving, but I feel rather lazy lately. I was thinking today about this other topic that I refer to in my head as, "If it's not one thing, it's something else." What are the things that I'm dropping by the wayside or mentally shutting out in order to do the things that I am doing? It's a version of "You can have it all, but not all at once." What are the things I'm doing lately? Blogging, for one. Having my life sucked away by supervising a toddler. Surfing the web too much. Going to the park. Shuttling children to activities. Standing out in the street with my neighbors. Picking acorns in other people's yards. What am I blocking out completely? Television. Radio/NPR. Anything at all having to do with politics, current events, news. Keeping up with many other people that I should be (R. and I were discussing, it is possible to have so many friends/acquaintances that you just don't have time for any more? This was as I was talking her out of going to her neighborhood bunco night, which had been on the calendar for two months). And to a large extent, reading. April, I said I was going to mention you by name, so here you go: Thank you, April, for suggesting a book to me tonight. I've been reading this book _Best Friends_ for three weeks or so now. I'm about 300 pages in, which feels too far to drop it, but there's so much left to go. I can't figure out how I feel about it. Is the problem that I have no concentration, I'm too tired, I'm reading too late when I get started, or is it that I just don't like this book enough to give it my time? I'm finding it entertaining/interesting at some moments, but then others I think, I don't like this protagonist very much, her 'best friend' is so unbelievably stupid that I don't believe her character should even exist. And the men in this book are exaggeratedly awful. I had been a good place with books--if, as Flylady would say, they weren't blessing me, I'd toss them to the side and start another. And maybe I need to cut my losses right now, or stop writing here and go finish the damn thing. But now I have something next on my list, which maybe will be the fire I need to wrap this one up.

And while we're on reading, Ollie read an entire novel to himself. 102 pages of it yesterday afternoon alone. This is a breakthrough for him. And it wasn't Captain Underpants. And it had no pictures. Perhaps he will start reading for pleasure after all. So maybe my Dreaded Monday activity (please let my primary activity be going to Short Pump because I have received a call!) will be going to the library.