I finished reading Here’s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice by Maureen McCormick (Amazon has the hardcover marked down to a “bargain-priced” $8-something from $25-something, and doesn’t that seem like that would be the kind of thing you wouldn’t want to know if you were the author, even if you knew it happened to ALL hardcovers?), and I liked it.

Celebrity autobiographies must be very, very difficult to write, because of reader expectations. When I’m reading one, I want to be DISHED some DIRT. I want to hear about other celebrities. I want some behind-the-scenes stuff, and I want to hear some of the personal-life stuff the celebrity didn’t talk about at the time it was happening. I want photos I haven’t already seen in a magazine.

But! Too much dirt and I start feeling uncomfortable, or like the celebrity is so attention-hungry they’ll say anything. Or I start thinking the other celebrities should have had an opportunity to respond to the startling accusations, and that no one should be revealing SOMEONE ELSE’S drug use, affairs, spending habits, etc., especially to enhance their OWN life story. And if I hear too much personal-life stuff, I start rolling my eyes and thinking, “Do you really think we CARE about that, just because we like your acting work?” And sometimes I come away from the whole thing feeling like I’ve gotten to know the celebrity better but wishing I hadn’t.

I don’t think I’d risk that impossible tightrope if I were them, and so I try to be merciful when reading. I think, “Remember, I ASKED for this” and “Well, at least there are TWO photo sections!” (There MUST be at least one photo section. If there are no photos, the book is crap. The end.) and “This is a CELEBRITY AUTOBIOGRAPHY.”

There is a part about halfway through the book where she Finds God (it’s right around the time she gets interested in a Hot Religious Guy), and at first it seems as if the rest of the book will be like that. But it fizzles out, except for the occasional “blessed” or “humbled” or reference to how God gets the credit for keeping her slap-face marriage to Hot Religious Guy from falling apart (he felt he couldn’t divorce her, seems to be the gist of it).

There are many long sections about the crazy feud she’s having with her brother and father, and it made me feel a little uncomfortable because it seems kind of unfair that she gets to publish her side in a book. Not that I’d be all eager to give them their own chapter for rebuttal, if I were her, and it’s hard to imagine a “their side” that would change anyone’s sympathies.

Keeping all those things in mind, the Maureen McCormick autobiography falls into the Meets or Exceeds Expectations category. There were times when I thought, “I DID want to hear about this, but…perhaps not so many times?” (example: how hot she was for almost every guy she worked with, including the ones much older than her), or when I thought, “Being temporarily famous really does a number on people,” or “Listen, I’m not sure that other celebrity’s highly complimentary quote about you was, um, sincere“—but overall, I was pleased with the dirt/personal level, and I finished the book feeling more fond of Maureen McCormick than when I started reading.

Also, if I ever meet her, I will NOT say “Marcia Marcia Marcia!” to her. Not that I would have anyway. I would have been the sort who would have accidentally drawn embarrassing attention to our age difference by talking about how much I loved her when I was a little, little girl, and then would have made things worse by blurting how sad it was that I hadn’t seen her in anything SINCE then, and then would have completed the triptych by saying sympathetically, “That show must be really embarrassing NOW, right? I mean, the plots! the acting! the singing! the hair-brushing! your PANTS! …But it was the ’70s, I guess. I was really too young to remember it.”

I totally ruined a plain magenta t-shirt by getting a splash of bleach on it right in the belly-button area. Since it was trash-bound anyway, I got adventurous in an attempt to save it.

I used Q-tips dipped in bleach. I was originally going for flowers, but it ended up being fireworks. I wore the shirt yesterday and thought it looked cute.

Here’s my latest library stack. I estimate I’ll read one book all the way through, start and reject three books, and never get around to the others.

In case the titles aren’t clear, they are:

• The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, by Tiffany Baker
• Bitch Creek, by William G. Tapply
• The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters
• The Believers, by Zoë Heller
• Here’s the Story: Surviving Macia Brady and Finding My True Voice, by Maureen McCormick
• I’ll Scream Later, by Marlee Matlin
• The Other Queen, by Philippa Gregory
• The Necklace: Thirteen Women and the Experiment that Transformed Their Lives, by Cheryl Jarvis

A long time ago, when William was a toddler, my mom was watching him in a bookstore play area and suddenly he was gone. She ran to the front of the store and asked a clerk to prevent any blond toddler boys from leaving, and then ran back to look for him—and found him almost immediately, since he had just stepped briefly behind a large storybook cutout.

It was so different than the way I suspected I’d have handled it myself. I thought she was very brave to immediately seal the exits. I wondered if I would do the same—if my worry would override my usual embarrassed, don’t-make-a-fuss tendencies.

Today the kids and I were leaving swimming lessons, walking down the lonnnnnng path that goes through a playground. William saw one of his friends, so we paused to talk to her. We said goodbye and turned back to the path—and Edward wasn’t with us.

Because I am the kind of anxious person who thinks of Cujo every time I get into a car and vampires every time I see a dark window, and because I’m a PARENT, I’m accustomed to flashes of thinking my child isn’t with me when he or she is right behind me (or, um, when I’ve counted wrong). So I turned all the way around, and I recounted, but he still wasn’t with us.

Well, he could have wandered a little farther away from me than I’d expect. It’s a grassy park area. I turned around again, widening the search. No Edward.

Okay. Okay. It’s a playground. It would be out of character for him to go play on it independently, but it could happen. I turned again, looking at each piece of equipment. No Edward.

Well. So already I had discovered I was not someone who first sealed the exits and then hunted. But next I found out what I do when the hunt is fruitless: I continued turning around and around, looking and looking, feeling stunned, not knowing what to do next. I tried to remember what shirt he was wearing, and I couldn’t remember. I reassured myself that he MUST be there, he MUST, and therefore he WAS. I kept looking. He wasn’t. I looked at each child in the playground, and each one I looked at was not Edward, even though I kept loosening my standards for “what could be Edward.”

I should have been in a total panic. I should AT LEAST have been yelling “EDWARD! EDWARD! EDWARD!” But I felt dazed. I felt like one of those little toy robots that, if it bumps into a wall, will just keep bumping into the wall again and again until someone turns it around.

Here was my brain: “Should I ask another parent for help? But what could they do? They don’t know what he looks like, and I can’t even say what he’s wearing. There’s a camp leader over there—I could ask him. But what could he do? He’s in charge of other kids and can’t leave them, and I don’t know what my kid is wearing. Could he seriously, really, actually been TAKEN? Should I go back to the pool and ask for help? What could they do? And then what if Edward IS here, and he looks for us and we’re not here? Oh my god, I really don’t see him. I really don’t see him. I’m looking and looking and I don’t see him. I guess I should…call the police? But… And I don’t have my cell phone. I’d have to go back to the pool to use their phone, and then what if Edward IS here and we’re not? And it’s a long walk back to the pool. Think think think: what shirt did I put on him this morning? Was it red? blue? What if someone DID take him? Statistically unlikely overall, but for a single incidence it’s either 0% or it’s 100%. Should I…chase after? See if a car is leaving? What about the other kids? And then I’d be in the parking lot, and I should be here, looking for him. I think it’s getting to be time to panic. At some point I need to do something. He’s NOT HERE. He’s NOT HERE. I need to do SOMETHING.”

About halfway through that paragraph, I thought to send Rob to walk as far as our parked car, looking for Edward the whole way, and then come back when he didn’t find him. I didn’t think he’d find him, because Edward always Always ALWAYS waits at the gate next to the parking lot, even if he’s been given permission to run ahead. He’s never gone into the parking lot, never even tried.

I continued turning around, looking, thinking. A woman with a stroller approached, heading for the pool, and I realized I was directly in her way on the path, so I stepped back and kept looking. She said, “Is he wearing a striped green shirt?”—and my memory flooded back and YES, YES HE IS WEARING A STRIPED GREEN SHIRT, and she said, “I wondered who he belonged to, but I couldn’t see anyone around. He’s over by the fence.” She pointed to the fence ALL THE WAY ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE BACK PARKING LOT.

The NATURAL next step would be: sprinting to him. MY next step was: standing there saying to the woman that I’d been panicked! because I couldn’t find him! and we’d just stopped to talk to a friend for a minute! and he was gone! and he NEVER went into the PARKING LOT! and my older son was headed there right now, so he’d probably find him! and I just couldn’t believe he’d gone into the parking lot! and I’d been looking and couldn’t see him! and I hadn’t known what to do! and I’d been thinking I would have to call the police!

She stood there looking at me, probably wondering why I wasn’t sprinting. Over her shoulder I could see ROB sprinting, and then I saw the green-striped-shirted Edward tiny in the distance standing next to the car next to ours, and I saw Rob grab him, and then my legs started working and I still didn’t sprint but I walked fast, telling the other children “Hurry! Hurry!”

It’s true that it would be almost impossibly out of character for Edward to go ahead of us to the car. What I hadn’t taken into account was whether it would be in character for him to FOLLOW us to the car: HE thought we’d gotten ahead of him, so he’d been trying to catch up. Through two parking lots, crossing one of them to get to the other one. With cars backing out all over the place as everyone else left the swimming lesson. He’s four years old and three feet tall. When I’m backing my minivan out, I can’t see children if they’re behind my car.

I could hardly believe how far he’d gotten. I could hardly believe he’d remembered where our car was, considering we park in a different place each day and usually park in the front lot and had only parked in the back lot because the front lot was full. I could hardly believe any of it had happened, and that it had taken so long.

I loaded the car up as usual, except that no one was talking or being silly or tattling and I wasn’t saying “Come ON, let’s get in the CAR, stop ARGUING, it doesn’t MATTER who gets in first.” Because I get frantic and snappish and flingy if I can’t find my book or my lip balm, I’d have thought I’d be angry and upset and/or weepy, but I was dazed and sleepy and it was hard to put sentences together.

After a silence William said, “I think who would have been saddest would have been Elizabeth, because when she grew up she would have known she DID had a twin, but didn’t anymore.” That’s not an easy comment to respond to. I said, “…Yeah.”

On the way home we talked about it a little. I reminded the whole group that when they’re lost they’re supposed to STAY PUT. I asked Edward in a dazed voice if he’d been scared or worried, and he said no. I asked if anyone had asked him where his mommy was, and he said no. I asked about the parking lot: had any cars…moved? He said yes, one was behind him but then he moved over and it went past. He said we had NOT stopped to talk to a friend, he hadn’t seen ANY friend. He was a little crabby with me for disappearing.

Here’s what happened with the two-week mother-in-law visit situation. I said to Paul that he needed to help me with this: that I needed him either to tell me the right words to say, since she’s not my mother and I don’t know how to talk to her, and he does know how to talk to her, and whenever I try to do it I screw it up, so he needed to tell me what to say; OR ELSE, he needed to tell me that it was pointless and hopeless and there was nothing to say and we just needed to let her come as long as she wanted to, and I assured him that this too would be immensely helpful because then I could stop agitating about it.

I also told him I needed an answer that evening. This was at about 4:00 in the afternoon. He made no reply. Hours passed.

At about 8:00 in the evening, he blind-cc’d me on an email to his mom, in which he said 2 weeks seemed kind of long because he wouldn’t be able to take many days off of work and K [that’s me] was 100% occupied during the day keeping Henry from flinging himself down the stairs into the power tools, but that if she (MIL) instead came for a week that went over a weekend, he could take almost her whole visit off, and they could go to Fun Place She Loves #1 and Fun Place She Loves #2 and also take the twins to Fun Place They Love.

It was masterful. It came across as affectionate and enthusiastic and full of plans for increasing the fun of her visit. He even made it sound as if I’d mentioned the dates to him with enthusiasm, and ONLY HE thought it was too long.

We awaited her reply. It was not long in coming. She was pissed and agitated. She didn’t use any contractions: it was all “I do not” and “it will not” and “I am not”. She had three main points:

1. Thirteen days was NOT two weeks, because ONE of those days she would be leaving EARLY IN THE MORNING.

2. She is an easy houseguest and did not expect any entertaining and would just blend into our usual routine.

3. She GUESSES that with HERCULEAN EFFORT she could remove 1.5 days from her visit, but it will throw everything else into chaos and will be very difficult and inconvenient for everyone else she has already arranged to grace with her presence on this trip. And will we please let her know RIGHT NOW if these revised dates are acceptable to us, because otherwise she will have to start ALL OVER with EVERYONE and it will be a HUGE MESS and everyone will be VERY INCONVENIENCED.

I was so so glad I hadn’t dealt with her. Imagine how much worse it would have been if she’d been talking to ME instead of to her son who is the most perfect creature ever created.

Paul said to me, “So…do we accept the counteroffer?” and I said, “Yes. And I think now we know for sure that there is no sense trying to make her shorten her visits. We will switch from Altering Reality Mode to Coping Mode.” And Paul said, “Yes.”

I have also gone into Incredulity Mode in re her email. Yes, it is PERFECTLY EASY to blend in someone who won’t eat salt or pepper or spicy things but is very critical of women (only women) who cook bland, boring food. It is PERFECTLY EASY to blend in someone who says she needs to eat “plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables” but then eats ALMOST NONE of the vegetables provided and makes “jokes” about how I spend more on produce than anyone she’s ever known, EVEN AFTER being reminded that PAUL does the grocery shopping. It is PERFECTLY EASY to blend in someone who doesn’t like any kind of child behavior that isn’t sitting straight upright in a chair chatting politely with Grandma. It is PERFECTLY EASY to continue my usual routine while being FOLLOWED and OBSERVED and TALKED AT and CORRECTED. It is PERFECTLY EASY to blend in someone who doesn’t want to do anything we suggest we do, even if we have already arranged it. It is PERFECTLY EASY to blend in someone who tells many, many stories about times when the hospitality she was offered was not up to par.

Well. Anyway. As Paul said, removing a day and a half increases everyone’s life expectancy at least slightly, and he has also approved any plan I come up with to “suddenly need to visit a friend in crisis” or “lick someone with a disease that would lead to my short-term hospitalization.”

I’ll also be investing in a very nice brandy, which I hate the taste of but it makes me feel jovial and lovey instead of tipsy and dizzy, and also I like the way it’s used medicinally (frostbite, shock, malnutrition, injury, surgery) in old novels. I feel like I’m “taking my medicine” rather than “taking another step on the road to potential lushitude.” And Kelly, SPILL on the topic of herbs that lessen the effects of two weeks (minus 1.5 days AND 1 day of Leaving Early) of steady drinking.

It is a little tricky to write the next post after a Dead Cat Post. Nothing looks right touching borders with it. And also, it’s difficult to think of something else to talk about when the Dead Cat is a lot of what’s on my mind. Like, I buried him, and I keep thinking about him being cold and wet AND SO ON LET’S CHANGE THE SUBJECT.

I’d thought I’d be relieved when he died, or at least a large part relieved. I knew I’d be sad too, but I thought I’d feel relieved not to be tensing up every time he had a breathing fit, relieved not to be wondering each day if I’d find him dead—and, if I may be utterly frank, relieved not to be buying/changing the elevated levels of cat litter a cat with kidney disease goes through.

Instead, I find I’m thinking a lot about the details of him dying, and especially about the details of burying him. I have never felt something as floppy and soft as that cat, after he died. It was as if his bones had vanished. And after I dug a hole in the back yard and put him in it, putting in the first shovelful of dirt felt wrong. Twisted and wrong. Packing the dirt down nice and firm felt almost as bad. It feels WEIRD and WRONG and CRAZY to put something that used to be alive into a hole in the dirt, and then put the dirt back in and leave it there.

It doesn’t surprise me that EVERY culture of ALL time has come up with stories to help us cope after we pack the dirt down. Part of the reason it doesn’t surprise me is that I just made that up—I have no idea if every/all have done it. Seems like it, though, doesn’t it? I can’t think of any cultures that don’t have at least one story, and I have a vast cultural knowledge that includes SEVERAL DIFFERENT TOWNS in the United States.

Oh, actually I DO have a subject that isn’t too jarring with thoughts of mortality: my mother-in-law is coming for a visit, and she emailed me last night to say she was coming October second through fourteenth, and could I let her know right away if that wouldn’t work so she could rearrange the whole trip, which has already been arranged.

Well, that’s just under two weeks. Two weeks is too long for houseguests, and that much alcohol won’t be good for my liver. And why is she asking ME and not her SON? She didn’t even cc him on it, so if he gets involved it’s obvious I involved him. No: I have to tell her myself that two weeks is too long, and I have to counteroffer one week.

Actually, there is another possibility, and that is that I will GIVE THE HELL UP. We have SEVERAL TIMES worked up the nerve to say “howaboutoneweekinstead?” and she has NEVERTHELESS COME FOR TWO WEEKS, each time making such a lame non-excuse there is no answering it (example: “I could only get the airline deal if I flew on Tuesdays or Wednesdays”—as if that somehow eliminated the possibility of arriving on Tuesday/Wednesday and departing the following Tuesday/Wednesday, instead of what she DID do which was to arrive on a Tuesday and leave THREE WEDNESDAYS LATER). My point being that then we get the worst of both worlds: we have to work up the courage to tell her, and then she comes for two weeks anyway, so maybe it is time to either have a Big Confrontation (zero chance of occurring) or else stop trying to prevent her from doing whatever she wants since she’s going to do it anyway.

[Edit: Also, she asked ahead of time if we had any plans for October. And we said no, because she’d said that if we DID, she would find a time when we DIDN’T.]

Okay, so here is my question: How should I reply to her email? And if you think of an awesome reply, test it out in your head first: is it something a polite person could seriously say to another person, without causing a rift in the fabric of time and space? I need REALISTIC DIALOGUE here.

My kitty Georgie died this afternoon. I don’t want to make a huge deal about it, because I realize he was a housepet and that he was elderly, but I’m in the mood to talk about him a little and so I will.

I got Georgie from a shelter in 1994 when I was married to my first husband, which means Georgie predates my current husband and all five of my children.

Kitten Georgie drying in the sun after a bath, in 1994 in the apartment I lived in during my first marriage. That’s a sprouted avocado pit acting like a tree nearby. The avocado plant died in a later move, and I haven’t successfully sprouted another pit. When my first husband and I decided to divorce, I was worried he would fight me for the cats. I needn’t have been: he said, “YOU are taking the cats” and I said “Whew.”

In this photo it is 1996, and Paul and I are living together in our first apartment. Georgie is holding a banana bread recipe for me while I bake.

Still in our first apartment, and by now Paul and I are married. Georgie is investigating the stock pot, and evidently I am baking cookies.

Here it’s 1999, and Georgie is giving newborn Robert a careful sniffing the day we brought him home from the hospital.

It’s 2005 and we’ve been living in our house for over 4 years. We have 4 children. Tolerant, patient Georgie allows baby Edward to lean on him and examine his collar.

Here he is sleeping in his usual spot, in his favorite box on the desk next to my computer monitor. I buried him in it this afternoon, so my desk looks weird and empty.

This morning I woke from a dream in which I was tending to an old, fat owl named Charlie, and I must have worked REALLY HARD tending to Charlie because my eyes are crossing with exhaustion. I’m fantasizing about the number 1 combo at Dunkin’ Donuts (which doughnuts would I choose? would I get toasted almond coffee again or would I try another flavor?), but instead I made do with my coffee pot, some flavored creamer, and two muffins. Meh. I’m still cross-eyed.

Meanwhile the children are acting as if they have to keep talking at a certain speed or the bus will explode, and the laundry is smelling as if someone wiped up milk and didn’t rinse the washcloth, and I just spent $35 on THREE TEASPOONS of antibiotic for a cat who got bitten by another cat, and I think it’s the EXACT SAME ANTIBIOTIC the pharmacy sells for less than $10 for a whole bottle even without insurance. And I have a mosquito bite on the inside of my knee. Annnnnnnddddd….I think that’s all I can think of to complain about.

Feel free to add your own complaints and/or doughnut preferences.

Yesterday I took Rob and William to a craft store at their request. I also took Henry, because at home he’s as much work as the other four children combined, but in a store he can be seatbelted into a cart—so if I’m leaving Paul stuck at home, I try to take Henry with me.

I forgot it was Sunday: the craft store wasn’t open yet and wouldn’t be for another half hour. Well, pooh. Okay, fine, we will go to the Dollar Store…..which also doesn’t open for another half hour. Staples? Half-hour.

Rob suggested Dunkin’ Donuts, where I have taken them two or three times in their young lives, and he did it in the perfect tone of voice: hopeful but not expectant. Soooooooooooooo…kay.

And we had a great time. I fretted for awhile about maximizing the value of our order, and finally said screw it and went for convenience ordering: I got the number 1 combo, which is a coffee and two doughnuts, and then I had Rob and William each choose two doughnuts. And we got a super-considerate clerk who paused for an almost imperceptible moment and then without drawing attention to it changed our order to maximize the value, which saved us 60 cents. I suppose 60 cents is no big deal, but it is a very pleasing thing to me, and it also pleases me that it is a pleasing thing to the clerk.

Henry ate almost my entire chocolate butternut doughnut while I ate my Boston Cream, and the older boys ate their doughnuts with bravado, ignoring my suggestion that they might want to eat half of each and save the other halves for later. My coffee was delicious: I’d never ordered a flavor there before because I was too shy to ask if it cost extra money, but this time I thought of an easy way to ask and I was rewarded with toasted almond flavor along with my cream and sugar, and MMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmm.

We went to the craft store, and I’d brought with me some 8.5×11 things I’d thought I’d have to have custom-framed ($$$$$$) because of their size, but it turns out there is such a thing as 8.5×11 document frames ($) so I was all set and couldn’t believe I’d put this off for several YEARS.

I wish I could tell you that my children spent their allowances on enriching craft supplies (perhaps something for making an “I Love You” project for their mother?), but instead they both bought Fart Putty, which is like silly putty but also makes realistic gross sounds. On the way home they were both making such sounds, and Rob said cheerfully, “Welcome to Mom Hell!” It was fortunate I was fortified with coffee and doughnuts.

Henry wanted to wear Elizabeth’s shirt yesterday, and we allowed it for a couple of hours. It was surprisingly shocking to see him in it. Partly, I think, because Elizabeth was Late in the Hair Department, so he doesn’t look too different than she did at this age.

Henry in Elizabeth’s shirt

It reminded me of when we did an April Fool’s Day photo of the twins wearing each other’s clothing, and I sent it out to a bunch of friends and family, and pretty much nobody noticed the joke.