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good life choices, i am serious and don't call me shirley!

In which I officially endorse Guilty Squid for Honorary Coroner of the Internet.

Press Release Source: Meredith’s Hot Inc. On Tuesday, October 26, 2010, 11:00 pm EDT

ATLANTA, GA, Oct. 26 / MerNewsNetwork / – In an announcement that surprised her vast fan base, internet celebrity Meredith Blumoff this afternoon endorsed leading internet superstar Guilty Squid in the worldwide election for internet coroner.

Ms. Squid, a charismatic internet personality, has charmed millions with her tales of Texan homestyle living, information-technology foibles and relationships with childhood safety icons.

reiki master, indeed.

Reiki master, indeed.

As previously reported, after a spiritual weekend with her Reiki master, the Texan superstar decided to realign her fame and outreach in an effort to improve the world around her, namely the interwebs.

Along that vein, Ms. Squid reportedly meditated on the subject, rather than research and weigh options, and in an epiphany, realized her life’s ambition would be to serve as coroner of the internet.

“Today, my friends, I am announcing my candidacy for the position of Honorary Coroner of The Internet. Friends, this is not a decision I took seriously,” said the superstar during a televised junket earlier this week. “Rather, I just jumped right in without even thinking about it. I don’t have any illusions about the hard work it will take to win, in fact – it was pretty hard work to even GET here. So, there’s that.”

Ms. Blumoff, of course, known for her pithy statements and profound blog posts, has never before entered into the political arena in any way, preferring to spend her mental and emotional energy on much more serious issues facing mankind, not least of which include her hair and footwear choices.

However, encouraged by her mother Jane, the young idol stated this afternoon that she felt it her duty to speak up about the importance of the role of internet coroner and encourage others to vote.

“My friends, it is a new day in my world, as I dip my perfectly pedicured toes into the political waters speaking to you today,” Ms. Blumoff said in a strong, quiet voice. “While I have avoided the nasty world of politics before now, I feel I must speak to you about an important crisis facing our nation. And other nations, too. All of them.”

Ms. Blumoff continued talking about the importance of the position and of the race, as it faces a new population in a new era, even relaying internet forensic pathology statistics in her speech.

Squid & Blumoff together in the Hamptons, 2010.

Squid & Blumoff together in the Hamptons, 2010.

She then continued brightly, “And that is why I am taking this moment out of my very busy day to lend my support to the very best candidate for the job, my friend Guilty Squid!”

The announcement, of course, was greeted with the enthusiastically positive response to which Ms. Blumoff is accustomed.

While the young celebrity’s friendship with Ms. Squid has been well documented, it does come as quite the shocker that Ms. Blumoff would involve herself in any way in a political race. Indeed, this intrepid reporter finds herself none too astonished the young beauty understands the impact her backing will have on the election, or the vast importance the election itself holds.

Nevertheless, all citizens of the internet are encouraged to exercise their right to vote in this election for whichever candidate they feel will do the best job.

Cough, cough, Guilty Squid.

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The Book Of Jane, weighty world issues

the book of jane: “the stories my children wish i wouldn’t tell.”

the coffee bean

Once upon a time, when Meredith was about nine years old, she was at the grocery store with her father. Wondering what it would smell like, she picked up a whole coffee bean and sniffed, very hard. The bean went up her nostril. When she tried to pull it out, it went up farther and got very, very stuck. Her dad tried to get it out, her sister tried to get it out. The harder they tried, the stucker it got. They ended up in the emergency room. The doctor had to use very, very long tweezers to get out the coffee bean. Meredith really, REALLY hates this story to this very day, and I am in a lot of trouble for telling it.

can't you just tell how bright & charming my little brother is?

can't you just tell how bright & charming my little brother is?

spaghetti

Once upon a time, when Zachary Jacob was about five years old, we were having a spaghetti dinner. Jacob Zachary was not known for chewing his food very well at that time. He was taking a drink of milk when Kate said something that tickled his funny bone. He laughed so hard, trying not to spit out his milk, that a piece of spaghetti about five inches long came out his nose. We all stared at it, lying there on the plate, and then broke up laughing. I’m surprised there weren’t more pieces of spaghetti produced! For some reason, this continues to be a very funny story for us – we laugh hysterically at just the memory. Oh well, we are easily amused.

kate the crooner

When she was two years old, Kate decided that she would not take naps anymore. This was not a good decision from her parents’ perspective — arsenic hour was born. So her mother instituted “rest hour” – she had to stay in her bed “resting” for one hour. In the beginning, her mother spent a lot of time putting her back into bed, and finally, holding the bedroom door shut. Once Kate realized this was not going to end, she began entertaining herself by singing. Very loudly and with great verve (think Ethel Merman crossed with Edith Piaf). She would croon her favorites: I’ve Been Working on the Railroad and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Only problem was, she had no Rs, so it was “I’ve Been Wookin’ on the WailWoad” and “Wudolf the Wed-Nosed Reindeewuh.” Very, very hard to ignore; she became indignant if anyone laughed.

color coordination

Once upon a time, when Meredith was about three years old, her mother was in the bathtub, trying to take a long, relaxing bath. Her father was in his study, working on an article. Meredith decided she wanted to get dressed all by herself. She picked out a pink and green striped tee shirt with yellow and red polka-dot shorts. She struggled and struggled, but got them on right side out and with all body parts through the correct holes. She came into the bathroom to show off to her mother, who said, “Sweetie, you need either the top or the bottom to be solid; otherwise you won’t match.” Meredith sighed and marched back to her room. Next, she tried a navy blue and green plaid shirt and purple and green striped shorts. When she showed her father, he said, “Mimi, you need to have either the top or the bottom to be solid, or you won’t match.” Meredith sighed even harder and went back to her closet. This time, she got a red and white checked shirt and a pair of orange paisley shorts. Back in the bathroom, her mother repeated her earlier comment, “Sweetie, I’m very proud of you, but you still need either the top or the bottom to be solid to match.” At the end of her rope, Meredith bellowed pitifully, “What color is solid??????”

kate's always been good at concealing her thoughts about our antics.

poor, enormous-headed kate. kisses!

climbing

Kate went to a very progressive preschool, staffed mainly by PhD students in early childhood education and child psychology, where the clinical terms for behavior and learning assessment were the norm. Thus, the gymnasium was called the “Gross Motor Room,” etc. Kate’s arms and legs between ages two and three were disproportionately short for her torso (not to mention her enormously large head). This meant that her weakest area of performance was in Gross Motor Skills, otherwise known as climbing and riding a tricycle. When she climbed the stairs, she went up on her hands and knees, afraid that she would lose her balance if she walked. She insisted that her mother follow her up the stairs, saying “Mama, Mama, hind me be! Hind me be!”

starving

Kate’s other weak area at preschool was table manners — she couldn’t grasp the reason for a fork, when her hand was right there, ready to dive in. She would complain to her mother that the preschool staff was starving her, not allowing her to have seconds. In fact, they drew the line at fourths.


measuring development

Jacob Zachary’s Kindergarten teacher was a lovely veteran of 22 years of five-year-olds. She had a great sense of humor, and she appreciated the same in others. The “Draw a Man” test is (was) a common tool for measuring intellectual development in small children. The child is asked to draw a man with as much detail as possible. The more body parts (e.g., neck, fingers, round body rather than a stick figure) that are included, the higher the level of development is measured. When his teacher was reviewing Jacob Zachary’s test with him, she noted that it was a very nice drawing, but that the man had all his fingers and toes, but no ears. Jacob Zachary, without missing a beat, said, “I know, isn’t it sad? He was born that way.”

thanks, mom, for picking a photograph we ALL find unflattering. pfft.

thanks, mom, for picking a photograph we ALL find unflattering. pfft.

Meredith’s note: For the record, the coffee bean story is the ONLY childhood story that still mortifies me and the only story I forbade my mother from telling. In the spirit of not censoring her, I’ve left it in, but she’s in very big trouble. Also? My brother’s wit and table manners remain the same, and while my sister’s head is still ginormous, her table manners have gotten much, much better.

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The Book Of Jane

the book of jane: “notoriety.”

“One ‘Jane’ of much notoriety,” she writes.

I’ve never been notorious. Whoa.

I’ve always been the little brown mouse in the corner. I had friends who were the “stars” – when they entered the room at a party, everyone noticed. Me, on the other hand, not so much. I was in the corner, watching.

I was a theater major, techie, not actor. I built the sets, designed the costumes, the makeup, the masks. I was the prop master, the stage manager. I gave people lines. Dressed all in black, silent and unnoticed when successful. Didn’t mind it; enjoyed it. Played poker with the other stagehands; won more than my share.

I was the second child of two in my family. My older brother was intelligent, over-achieving and, most importantly in pre-feminist America, male. I was good, dutiful and not allowed to color outside the lines or be too proud of myself. And then I married a man who saw me the same way.

I was the sidekick of the luscious, beautiful girl. Straight man. Rhoda to Mary Tyler Moore. Notorious? Not me.

And then, I birthed her, that Meredith. I’m still playing straight man, only also guardian, protector from herself, disciplinarian, chauffeur, maid-servant and keeper.

It remains entertaining. And educational.

I do have two other “blood” children and two more “steps.”  All wonderful and alternately the best one. They are all getting t-shirts for Chanukkah that say “I’m Mama’s favorite.” And they all deserve that appellation, at one time or another.

And then I have canine children. I had one of those before I had human children. The person who felt most like a sister to me as a child was my dog Babo.  Then my husband and I acquired Boo soon after we married, but we waited six years for our first child of the human sort.  I’ve liked my four-legged children more consistently than I have the two-legged ones.  You’ve seen photos of my Biko and my Kiba on Meredith’s blog. You must admit they are extremely fine-looking children. And then there’s Sam, who is fine looking but not very well-behaved.

I suppose I continued my second-banana status intentionally, or because it felt familiar.  But now I have a husband to whom I am the center of the universe, however crazy, and my children see me as an essential element of their sense of themselves. So I find myself in late middle age finally developing a sense of myself unrelated to how the external world sees me.

And I’m having a damn fine time.

she's gonna be so mad i used this picture. kisses!

she's gonna be so mad i used this picture. kisses!


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The Book Of Jane

the book of jane: *not* about my daughter.

This one does not have one mention of you-know-who. Ha! Do I know how to get her goat or what?

So, let’s just see if I can come anywhere near as self-absorbed as that one.

Pondering my options, I look at the name of my part of this blog, my column, as it were.

Book.

Statistics say that the average American reads one book a year. According to my husband, I am the one who reads all the others. I do read on average two books a week. Most of them, however, cannot be considered “lit-tra-chur,” but rather entertainment. No heaving bosoms and throbbing members, but I do love chicklit, lots of Janet Evanovich and Marian Keyes.

So many books in my life.

I became a voracious reader early in life. Thanks to that and my father’s insistence on playing a daily dictionary game (in which he introduced a new word whose meaning and spelling we were expected to know by dinner that night), my vocabulary expanded quickly.

Which led to my first public nickname, The Walking Dictionary, and just so endeared me to my classmates. Right.

Which then led to the second nickname, The Professor. Also? Not terribly attractive.

Combine that with cat’s-eye glasses and an enormous forehead – what do you get? Few photographs exist to document the exquisite loveliness.

We’ll just skip the existential possibilities “of” might bring, and move right along to the second part of title: Jane.

Most of you are far too young to have Dick and Jane ring any bells, but for us Women Of A Certain Age (WOACAs), it was our introduction to the wonderful world of reading. My name was chosen for the series because it was considered one of the most common names possible. Debby, Cathy and Linda were in reality much more common: I have probably met twenty women named Jane in my entire life, while Debbys, Cathys, and Lindas number in the hundreds.  Now, of course, they are Courtneys, Brittneys, and Kaitlins. Do not get me started. Soon they will be Madisons, Dakotas, and Topekas. Topeka? That’s a GREAT name. How about Sioux Falls? Albany? Oh, the sweet font of ridiculousness geography gives us.

There are almost no good rhymes for Jane: pain, bane, plain, inane. Being a left-handed Jane means being insulted frequently: left-handed compliments, two left feet, Plain Jane dresses. It never really ends.

And then there was Tarzan. Johnny Weissmuller (who was an Olympic swimmer of great note before going to Hollywood) is the quintessential Tarzan. Despite wearing his loincloth up in his armpits, he was a pretty man and a damn good alligator wrestler to boot. We spent every Saturday afternoon glued to the television watching him, (who else but) Jane and Boy doing many cool things in the jungle.

A more innocent time, I hasten to add. We didn’t know from special effects; you had to rely on willing suspension of belief. Who cared if the lion alternated between being stuffed and being a man in a lion suit? Also a beyond embarrassing absence of political correctness. If you want a good example of the way “persons of color” were treated before 1965, try the Tarzan movies from the 1930s. But we were little Southern white children in the time just preceding the Civil Rights Movement.

But anyhow, almost everyone’s idea of a joke was to greet me with “Me, Tarzan. You, Jane?”

It got old extremely fast.

I spent fifth grade being called Cheetah after Tarzan’s chimpanzee sidekick, and sixth grade brought me a new appellation, Ungawa (pronounced Oon-GOW-wah), Tarzan’s shouted command to make the elephants stampede through the bad guys’ camp to save Jane from being boiled alive.

My sixth grade teacher had a wonderful sense of humor. I was a very cooperative child and rarely did anything to warrant being yelled at. There was a boy named James in my class that year who was constantly getting into trouble. The teacher’s loud, sharp reprimand of “JAMES!” caused me no end of frights. She agreed to change my name to Edward for the rest of the year, so I could relax. I did go back to Jane after that; James went on to reform school and probably prison.

Once I got past that, college brought Jane Curtin in Saturday Night Live and “Jane, you ignorant slut.” Which got old even faster than “Me Tarzan.”

Fortunately, SNL moved on to other jokes, and I no longer had to be a straight man for name jokes. But it did make me very conscious of potential name abuse when choosing what to call my children. Jewish custom is to name each child after a deceased relative. They are also given both a Hebrew and an English name, which are sometimes the same. My oldest was given the Hebrew name of Leah (pronounced LAY-uh); I anticipated the joke: “Wanna lay a Blumoff?” and decided to call her Kate for her English name.

My husband wanted to name our second daughter Mariah (MAH-ry-uh); I could only think of her being called “pariah” and managed to convince him that Meredith was a better choice. Maybe I should have let him choose her name – a little humiliation might have put a dent in the ego.  Just think if Lindsay Lohan were named Missoula.

my mother thinks she's funny. but i write the captions. SO THERE, MA!

my mother thinks she's funny. but i write the captions. SO THERE, MA!


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