On the subject of decorating

My eyes are going crossed because I spent a significant amount of time the last couple of days looking at comforter and sheet sets in the theme of "lady bug." I don't know a lot about children's bedroom decor, but I can tell you one thing: There are more versions of lady bug themes than you could dare to dream. Red. Pink. Purple. Large print. Small print. Girly and ruffly. Stark and modern. It's enough to make your head spin.

Remember picking out your theme for your bedroom? My first one was clowns but that was when I was a baby and it wasn't my choice, obviously. I mean...OBVIOUSLY. Who picks CLOWNS? Clowns are terrifying. Sorry, Mom, but my enduring fear of clowns is totally your fault. My clandestine viewings of Stephen King's "It" and "Killer Klowns From Outer Space" had absolutely nothing to do with it.

The first one I remember picking out was unicorns. Oh, my childhood love of the mythical horned creature of wonder and wishes and magic. I recall praying that God would make unicorns real and bring me one. (I'm still waiting on that one.)

I am fairly sure there was another one in there after the unicorns like Rainbow Bright or something. But the next one I vividly remember was this one:

While I delighted in this particular theme at age 12, I endured the shame of eventually realizing it was completely uncool at the age of 14 to press my face gently into the image of Joey McIntyre every night - you know, since most of my friends were pressing their faces not so gently against the faces of actual people at that point, I think I went for a tame, lame plaid pattern. My criteria was simply: what was least likely to get me made fun of?

The college years, I think that plaid mess followed me from dorm to dorm to apartment. I think I lugged a sage green down blanket around with me for a few pre-marriage years and then gleefully registered for a grown-up feather bed/comforter set in a unisex gold/beige pattern. Ladies, I have to tell you, I feel it is the only decent thing to do, to avoid floral patterns when it comes to the marriage bed. I mean, what dude wants to climb in bed surrounded by daisies or orchids? It's weird. Be nice to your husbands. I mean, if you insist on having florals in the bedroom, then you had better be willing to make a tradeoff like having french fries and Pepsi for dinner every night or a football team-themed lamp in your dining room. Ew.

Since we're moving, we need a ton of new stuff, but a new comforter is pretty far down the list. While I won't be picking out anything new anytime soon, I can tell you this: it will not feature flowers, lady bugs or pop stars of any kind.

On the subject of rescuing

My tendency is to get involved as opposed to keeping my distance. I enter a room and sense tension and instead of ignoring it, I ask everyone what's going on. I see someone being unfairly scolded and I step in to advocate. I stop my car to help if there's been an accident. (Unless I have my toddler with me or I'm SUPER hungry.) I call 911 if I see a crime being committed. I ask apparently lost children if they need help. I take stray dogs to the animal shelter. I tell strangers there is toilet paper stuck to their shoe.

Basically, I just can't mind my own buisiness. Some of my favorite people often advise "just stay out of it" or "just ignore it" or "shhh, don't say anything!" But it's just not in my nature. Sometimes it can definitely be a good thing. I mean, if your 90 year old, blind mother suffering from dementia, wanders from the nursing home in a night gown in the middle of the night in the dead of winter, you want someone like me around. (Why I would be out in the middle of the night in the winter near a nursing home, we aren't going to discuss...but you get my meaning.) However, sometimes my hawk-like swooping in to rescue someone is unwarrented. Because said person is a fully grown adult who can, perhaps, handle themself just fine. Or I don't have the whole story.

For example, it's like when your kid tells you that someone on the playground hit them and you freak out and then come to find out that your kid actually hit the other kid first. (There is no greater wrath inflicted upon children the world over, than that which emerges from the discovery that said child has not been forthcoming, leading to misdirected mama-bear anger.) Standing up for someone you love is scary but feels empowering and good and right. Except when you didn't have all of the information. Then you just feel like an jackass.

When I think about where this comes from, for me, it's that I do not care for being subjected to watching people I care for experience unpleasantries. (And I can care about someone after standing next to them in line at Starbucks for 3 minutes.) If I can stop the pain, embarrassment, unfairness, I will. I don't think about the cost - my time, the risk, being wrong, etc. But none of those are as damaging as the hidden cost, which is this: have you ever learned something the hard way? I certainly have. Don't trust a guy who says "trust me." Don't tell a secret that you don't want plastered all over your world for all to see. He's just not that into you. Three is a bad number when it comes to girls/young women hanging out. (It's better when you're older, but still, not ideal.) Save as you go. Try on jeans before you buy them. Don't keep a balance on your credit card. Pay the meter. Pay the ticket you got when you failed to pay the meter.

I think, unfortunately, I've learned the lessons the best when the path has been the hardest. I look back and think "I hated going through that, but I sure needed to." So what are we doing when we swoop in? Unless it's life or death - and it hardly ever is - we are delaying an important life lesson for someone we love. It takes strength to stand up and save someone. But it takes strength, patience, wisdom, tough love, a strong stomach and probably some wine to step back, get out of the way, and let life happen to people. Especially when you know you're the one they are going to whine to about it afterwards.

On the subject of Downton Abbey

So, I've been watching Downton Abbey. Now, I'm only four episodes in so don't tell me anything. (Yes, I'm one of those super annoying people who, at the mention of whatever show I'm 3 seasons behind on, I stick my fingers in my ears and run from the room screaming "Lalalalalala!!!!")

Nine minutes into the first episode, Kevin looked at me and said "I can't understand a word they're saying." And 14 minutes in, he looked and me and said "I'm bored," and went off to find the best dessert option in the kitchen. So, this will be a show I watch by myself. Which is fine. I have Downton Abbey. Kevin has Walking Dead. This kind of explains our relationship. I'm early 19th century England. He's post-apocalyptic zombie world. It's a match made in heaven, truly.

Downton Abbey is a great show, so far. I love the characters already, but I especially am fascinated by how it took an army of people who dedicated their lives to running a household. There were people to cook, clean, tend the fireplaces, drive the cars, serve the tea and even dress the family, who, for the most part, lived a life of leisure - horseback riding, strolling in the garden and arranging marriages. The maids, butlers, footmen, cooks and valets would run around like mad, anticipating each and every need, rushing off to answer whatever request bell might ring at any hour. It was someone's job to pull the corsets tight and fasten the gentlemen's cuff links. So fancy just to have dinner at home with the immediate family! I can't imagine agreeing to wear a corset period, let alone just to hang out with my parents.

I was thinking about all of this today as I cooked dinner, packed tomorrow's lunches, gathered the 11 pairs of shoes that were somehow in my kitchen and fed the cats - all after putting in a day at the office. And I thought to myself...if I had even one person to, like, braid my daughter's hair while she whines about it, get me a clean pair of socks and change the cat litter...it would certainly be helpful. But - what would I do instead? I'd love to sit down and, say, watch a zillion episodes of Downton Abbey or read this week's Entertainment Weekly (all the latest on movies, music and TV without the trashy gossip!) But I would totally feel guilty sitting around while someone was doing "my" work. I would feel like I needed to alternately apologize to them and thank them repeatedly. I certainly wouldn't be able to relax.

I don't need someone to help me with the things I do to keep our family moving. I don't mind hair braiding, taco-making or even the litter box duties. I just need more time to do these things. However, if someone wants to be responsible for emptying the dishwasher (because I really, really hate doing that) come on over. I'll make you tacos.

On the subject of infomercials

So who is it that invented the infomercial? Because they were smart. And mean.

Apparently the first product to be "infomercialed" was a Vitamix Blender in the 1950s. That was probably hilarious and weird. Some guy in a suit, holding the blender up and emphatically saying "VITAMIX!" over and over in a very serious tone.

I have seen my share of infomercials. The Shamwow, the Bowflex, the Food Dehydrator. I also enjoy a moment or two in the "As Seen on TV" aisle of my local Rite Aid. I know they are basically useless items that are poorly made and absolutely do not do what they claim to as well as they claim to. And yet...there is an allure to them. I have woken up at 3am, having left the TV on, when my ear catches a blip about a hair removal device, a bra-esque contraption or a nutritional supplement that, within about 3 minutes, I am convinced I not only MUST have, but that I must have been crazy to try and live without up until that moment in time. Fortunately, I do not cave to these impulses. Well, honestly? I parent a three year old and sleep is a hot commodity in this house. So exhaustion always wins out before I can dive over my snoring husband for the phone and my credit card. In the morning, I wake up and laugh at myself, at how totally sold I was, in my sleep-deprived mind, on some scam that promised to change my life. Skinny! More productive! Better skin! No panty lines!

The morning often brings clarity, does it not? Perhaps you've made some bad decisions in the dark of night that, at sunrise, seem outrageously foolish. Public, solo dancing. Taking off one's cardigan to reveal a sequined tank top and a lot of sallow, January-colored skin. A 1am run to the nearest Krispy Kreme location.

But back to the infomercials. I once actually bought something from an infomercial. It was a hammer that kept nails in a little compartment and when you pressed a button, it flipped a nail up and onto the head of the hammer where it was held magnetically. One handed hammering! Amazing! Imagine all you could be doing with your other hand when you no longer had to hold that pesky nail. I was especially enamored with the added benefit of not having to risk smashing your fingers when you held the nail in place. There were at least 30 shots of someone smashing their fingers and the announcer guy going "Ouch!" on their behalf. I was totally sucked in. "What fools we've been!" I said to no one, because I was the only moron up in the middle of the night watching this nonsense. So I called the 1-800 number and I bought one. It wasn't until after it arrived that I realized a few things:

1. At that time in life, I had approximately zero reasons to use a hammer. I was in college and I traveled light - not so much as a calendar to hang on the wall.

2. You had to hit the hammer, with the attached nail, against the wall or whatever really hard, otherwise the nail went flying across the room, lost forever under the refrigerator. So...what I failed to realize (until well after the $14.99 plus shipping and handling was firmly attached to my credit card) was that there was no way to put the nail in any precise location. A general 5 inch radius, sure. But the exact spot where you wanted it so your picture frame could be level - nope. Impossible.

3. Did I mention I had no reason at all to use a hammer?

So, I learned my lesson and never bought another infomercial product again. Except for the one lapse in memory I had when I was deeply impressed with the before and after photos and testimonials of Hydroxycut diet pills. You know, because of the "science" behind it and all. I bought them, took them faithfully for a month with no results except some unsettling jittery feelings and a weird metallic aftertaste. But seriously, it's been a solid 8 years since I've been a sucker. Well, at least insofar as it pertains to infomercials. While I've got a lot of years of clean time under my belt, I must ask you...if you see me get a faraway dreamy look in my eyes due to a P90X infomercial, please, just whisper the word "Hydroxycut" in my ear and gently point me in the direction of my running shoes.

On the subject of road rage

Sometimes I have a teeny tiny bit of road rage. It's usually when I'm late and I feel like where I am going is absolutely more important than where anyone else is going. I have wrestled with this frequently, because it doesn't align with what I believe or how I think I should react to adversity when I lay on my horn and call people names in my car.

This is also one reason (there are others) that I would not put a sticker on my car that announces my faith. I mean...I have a long way to go before a time that whenever my car goes by, people would say "There goes another polite, generous Christian." Well, because, for one thing, people aren't usually saying that about Christians because that isn't the reputation we've carved out for ourselves, and for another, I still struggle with my road rage too much to represent anything of great importance to me.

A factor in life that has helped me to focus on this is having a kiddo. One that has been pretty verbal since, well, birth? This kid is totally going to tell on me one day. But more importantly, what am I teaching her? That where we are going is more important than everyone else's destination? That WE are more important than everyone else? That when someone else makes a mistake, you call them names and gesture inappropriately at them? That we are somehow entitled to pass up everyone in the line to get off at the exit and just sneak in at the end? That we're...what? Too good to wait like everyone else? It sounds so crazy when you think of it that way, doesn't it?

I think about how if we interacted in person the way people interact on the road how insane and violent and angry a simple moment of confusion at the grocery store could get. We beep and gesture and yell from inside the confines of our steel-reinforced automobiles. In person, we might sneak in an eye roll or a sigh. But, truth be told, we aren't so committed to our sense of injustice that we'd risk getting punched in the nose over it. In either case, we do what we think we can get away with that expresses our displeasure but is unlikely to force a point of real conflict. Because, you know, we're afraid. And we don't really want to get into it or solve anything or hear where the other person is coming from - we just want to be mad.

We do that with lots of things, don't we? Just wanting to be mad. We get mad because someone criticized our fashion sense, insulted our intelligence or failed to empty the dishwasher and then we go and tell someone else who will encourage us in our indignation. (We don't go to the person who might point out our part in the mess or tell us where we might have gone wrong. Because that is scary and we're already hurt and raw. Honesty that is difficult to hear is often simply too much to bear.)

Is that who we want to be, though? People who shift from hurt to anger because hurt is too frightening a place to dwell? People who gossip about offending parties to co-conspirators in avoiding the truth? People who make the case against another's status as a categorically awful person, so we can avoid owning up to our part in it? People who go through all of that and then pretend nothing is wrong the next time we see that person because we are too scared to have a conversation about what went wrong?

I know I don't want to be like that. But sometimes it feels like the other option - the path of honesty, the benefit of the doubt, grace, humility and courage - is simply too hard. That I've had to take the high road too many times and it's someone else's turn for a change. That I've had enough. And because of that, I am so grateful for the people in my life who are brave enough to tell me (ever so kindly) to shush, to stop acting like a fool and remind me of what I know is the better way. There is no way to do this outside of community, outside of relationships. At least for me, there isn't. So, to the people who have put up with my clumsy fumbling along the way, thanks! I promise, I'm getting better (and yelling fewer swear words from my car.)

On the subject of TV

My relationship with TV has been an on again off again romance. As a child, I mostly eschewed cartoons in favor of playing outside. But around middle school when body parts are growing rapidly, hormones rear their ugly head and one makes poor choices in hair salons, I got pretty into TV. Everything from Divorce Court to Oprah to the comforting TGIF prime time lineup. In 88-89, basically on a Friday night, unless my ONE friend wanted to go roller skating, it was pretty much going to be me, Balki and Cousin Larry. It was helpful to have something that kind of felt like company before I was cool enough to have much. (I don't know if I ever actually hit "cool" but I somehow figured out that confidence was an acceptable substitute and have been going with that ever since to varying degrees of success.)

In college, TV was out. Way out. I had absolutely no idea who Dawson was and I could not pick any of the Party of Five cast out of a line up. Still! That whole mid 90s TV era is Greek to me. From the time I gave away my tiny television my Freshman year, until I got married in 2006, I did not own a television. I just didn't need one. I didn't use one at all until 2004, when my friends and I discovered the crack-level addiction that is 24. For weeks, I ate, breathed and dreamed Jack Bauer. How, for example, if I had a dog, I'd name it after him.

When I first got married, my husband and I religiously watched The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Lost. These were all such high-quality, engaging shows with great writing and acting. I found myself thinking about the characters from Six Feet Under, frequently. It felt like they lived right down the street and any one of them could wander into my kitchen at any moment. Sadly, that never happened. But I loved those shows and I miss them.

Motherhood does weird things to tv watching. On the one hand, we didn't want to expose Little Miss to too much tv, so we mostly kept it off. But when you are up with a fussy baby at 3am with no sleep in sight, you just stare lifelessly at whatever you can find that doesn't have sex and violence in it in the middle of the night. Let me tell you - slim pickin's. You're basically limited to the movie Mama Mia and infomercials. I almost called for a set of those knives once - what can I say? Sleep deprivation makes a crazy person out of anyone.

Recently, I have discovered a few shows that I really like via Netflix streaming. I watched all of Once Upon a Time Season 1 a month or so ago. Despite my skepticism that a grown up show about Fairy Tales could be all that interesting, I really got into it. I began to think about the characters when I was away from them a little bit - it felt nice to know that the odd decent narrative or two is still out there to enjoy. A couple of weeks ago, I started Season 1 of Revenge. I may have found my favorite character, ever, in the female protagonist, Emily Thorn. She does bad things for good reasons. So much to consider, in the realm of moral dilemma! I used to think fiction (books and movies) were kind of a waste of time. I favored theology, self-help and how-to type books in the name of attempting to become a "better" person, whatever that means. But what I've realized about good fiction - it makes me think a lot more than those books that told me what to do and what not to do ever did. Fascinating characters, impossible choices, redemption. There is wisdom to be found in a good story.

On the subject of trying new things

I had lunch with someone recently who I had not previously had lunch with. A coworker and I took up this acquaintance's offer to visit a local lunch spot with him. Though I don't know him well, I pegged him, quite correctly, for a non-adventurous, meat and potatoes kind of guy. This was based primarily on his out-of-this-world Yinzer accent, his total disregard for all forms of social media, his stone washed jeans and his penchant for Billy Joel music. So, for my own amusement as well as his own good (not to mention my belly's enjoyment) I suggested we eat Thai food. Though there was some level of protest at my suggestion that he interpreted to be that we should "go eat sticks or whatever they have there."

I enjoy taking people to new places, and I especially enjoy introducing someone to a whole new type of food. Imagine giving someone their first slice of pizza!! At some point in this life, I might leave the country and go to the most remote place you can imagine, find some people and bring them to Pittsburgh just so they can have Mineo's as their first pizza experience ever - and I get to watch! Usually new food experiences are pretty fantastic, but occasionally things go a bit awry. Like the time I made tofu for my husband.

We hit up the Cadillac version of local Thai establishments - Nicky's on Western Avenue on the North Shore. My meal was excellent, as always. Spicy garlic chicken with brown rice. Nom, nom, nom. During this excursion, which was, overall, a really fun outing, I learned a few things:

-Meat and potato eaters might not like spicy food. (I erred in believing that Buffalo wings are a staple of the standard bar-frequenting, Budweiser drinking, sweatshirt wearing American's diet and assumed that spicy = good.) In this case, a 3 on the standard 1-10 stars scale that is common in Thai establishments, was unacceptably hot. There was sweat. There were tears. There was mouth fanning.

-When someone isn't familiar with a particular ethnic food, they may assume anything the slightest bit out of the ordinary is a "custom" of this ethnicity. Example: "Don't Thai people like ice in their water?"

-Don't suggest the spring rolls. Way too many unusual textures for the unaccustomed palate. I mean, you've got those slimy, cold, gray, translucent wrapper things (I know, I am making them sound really awesome) tofu, shrimp, noodles and lettuce all wrapped together, that you clumsily dip in a brown sauce that has little chunkers floating in it - for some of us, it's an adorable mini snack representing most of the food groups. But I can see how it could be a bit terrifying.

-You can't go wrong with anything that resembles chicken noodle soup. See, chicken noodle soup is the Frank Sinatra of food. You don't come across too many people who are, like, obsessed with it, but you also don't run into too many haters. Chicken soup spans the generations. It heals the sick. And when those Thai people put some cilantro in there - boy, are you in for a treat. Unless you hate cilantro. In which case, you are a bad person and we're done here.

In the end, we had a nice meal, despite a few gruff, Pittsburghese-laden squawks inquiring about the nature of what we were about to eat, what we were currently eating and what we had eaten. Final words from our reluctant guest? "It was alright. But next time we're gettin' pizza."