Doormats Unite!

I had to edit a friend's 10-minute play today. She was having it read tonight, so I had to hurry. So I slashed away, sick as a dog, coughing desperately, with Benny on my lap humming the tune to "Jakers!"

I don't want you thinking I go around running down people's work, because I don't, but this is a really bad play. This gal writes the dullest dialogue on the planet and still manages to get stage readings and become a Force in the local playwriting world. I just don't get it.

This particular opus, her latest, is called "Roadside Shrine" (actually a good title). It's about two men who died in a car crash and their ghosts appear at the roadside memorial.

It's a decent premise, and I couldn't say no to reviewing the script, because so many people have helped and supported me. But this means I read 13 pages of:

TERESA
If only I’d been there ... I could’ve stopped you from
drinking so much ... like I always did.

STEVE
Tell her the damn truth!

GARY
No.

STEVE
Tell her about our girl.

GARY
Shut up! She wasn’t YOUR girl.

TERESA
What’s he talking about, Gary?

STEVE
Why don’t you tell her about Susan, Gare?

TERESA
Gary. what’s he talking about?

GARY
Nothing.


As I said, an interesting premise, but with flat stereotypes as characters. Men are lusty beasts and women are either doormats or whores. Which would STILL be okay ("Doormats unite and rise up against your oppressors!"), if the dialogue was better.

SIgh. Time for Benny and I to take our medicine and go to sleep

##

The Grinch column that won't get Ron fired

[This entry appeared as a column in the Business Review newspapers. It's a takeoff on a newspaper memo I found when Ron was cleaning out his files at home. I am indebted to EO-Chicago, an entrepreneur's organization, for the new material. This crowd used to be WEO and YEO (don't ask) and now calls itself just plain EO. It's a branding move that they explore vividly on their web site yeochicago.org. The branding FAQ is especially good for laughs. And yes, one of their core values used to be "sexy-hot."]

To: All Employees, Mr. Grinch Inc.
From: Cindy Lou Who, President

Grinchy Greetings!

As company president and chair of the Grinch Branding Task Force (Special Operations Unit), I am proud to announce an exciting new initiative to replace last year’s “Let’s All Be Green and Weird” campaign.

Remember, we cannot hope to convince customers of Mr. Grinch’s change of heart (yes, it really did grow three sizes that day!) if our own people continue to shriek in horror whenever he visits our corporate offices. Thus, we have created a new way to present our brand message in a sparkling, spellbinding fashion (see figure 34XY9 and spreadsheet RM450).

We will begin with 27 meetings with 4.5 employees each during the course of a week. At these meetings I will provide a brief slide presentation (see “spellbinding,” above and offer each employee a happy Grinch mask and fuzzy green vest.

The new brand message, or “vision” if you will, is particularly powerful because it has both an internal and an external purpose. Internally, it deepens our influence and impact on each other. Externally, this vision will empower us to expand our influence on the world. We can now channel our collective focus, energy and resources on building one powerful external brand. Next step: world domination!

Vital to developing any branding initiative is an intuitive grasp of Mr. Grinch’s core values. Such values inspire the instant sense of kinship and trust you feel when you meet another member of this organization. (Needless to say, hiding in broom closets should no longer be necessary.)

OUR 2006 CORE VALUES

Boldly Go!

Roast Beast

Cool

The more insightful among you will see the pivotal changes made to the 2005 Core Values. We shortened “Sexy-Cool” to “Cool” and changed “Free Sleigh Rides!” to “Boldly Go!”

All these changes were made after copious feedback requiring thousands of man hours. However, lively dialogue with employees on branding issues remains our most precious resource. We now offer a quick example of appropriate and inappropriate dialogue:

APPROPRIATE DIALOGUE

Thoughtful Employee:
How can we be sure that the branding initiative will not diffuse or confuse who we are as an organization?

Empathetic Manager:
We all love and value this organization. Our goal is not to change who we are, but rather, to more accurately express who we are today and provide a platform to increase our reach, influence and value to members moving forward.

TE: I worry that this initiative will threaten our core promise and the brand recognition/value that we have already established. Seriously, it keeps me up at night.

EM: This evolution in no way changes our core member promise to not keep Christmas from coming. This brand simply opens up a new dimension in which Whoville and the Grinch can pursue other avenues to revenue enhancement.

TE: Thank heavens for this meeting. I feel more serene and confident regarding my part in the company’s future.

INAPPROPRIATE DIALOGUE

Apathetic Employee:
Why do you keep making us come to stupid meetings when we have work to do?

Testy Manager:
You think you’re suffering? I have to brainstorm kicky initiatives while the special ops group rappels down walls with bumper stickers in their teeth.

AE: When are we gonna talk about my raise? I gotta houseful of Whos to feed.

TM: Sit down and shut up.

IN CONCLUSION,

Please don’t hesitate to contact me with questions. Remember, if you display any curiosity about any aspect of the branding initiative and don’t immediately ask a question, a member of the special ops unit will land on your head.

Happy Holidays!

##

The Long Slog

Well, I’m back, after a two-month hiatus. October was one of those long slogs with a new worry around every corner. My writing, my house, even my military reading list fell by the wayside.

My birthday, sadly, was one of the lowest points. The whole damn month just skittered out of control, with Benny’s surgery on the first Wednesday. The next day, he came down with a horrific cold. Sunday came and clobbered me with the same cold. Benny’s recovery from both surgery and sickness was slow, but he was just well enough to have cabin fever, since he couldn’t go to daycare.

A week later, just to make a party of it, Benny got an ear infection and I caught something that made me cough uncontrollably for two days. The doctor gave me a Magic Elixir with a heavy narcotic which beat down my cough, but gave the world a slightly glazed aspect. Still with Benny now in daycare three days a week and me thoroughly drugged, life calmed down, and we all slid out of October in a calmer state of mind.

In fact, we’d all recovered enough so I could tackle National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. This crazy program challenges people to write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days. I’d actually “won” NaNo in 2002 by writing a science fiction novel called “The Secret Soldiers.” Back then, of course, I had no kid and no job (we’d just moved to Michigan from California), so I had time to write detailed outlines and dream up zany subplots. It was very lovingly written, actually, requiring index cards and labeled file folders.

This year was quite different. After a heady burst of enthusiasm in the first week, I wrote my novel “Escaping Olympus” through an effort of sheer will. No outlines, character sheets or maps – just a pile of reference books and a rough list of plot points. Half the time I was exhausted; the rest of the time, I would rather do anything else. Without the support of Ron, Cindy and my friend Jessica in California, I never would have finished it. I grew to loathe Max and Daphne, my main characters, and all the crazy folks they had to deal with. Now the finished draft is buried in my hard drive and I’m afraid to look at it.

December is looking much better, thankfully, and I have high hopes for 2006. Happy Holidays!

##

The Rise and Fall of a Really Long Book

Well, I just closed up Book No. 2, written by military history writer Paul “I wish I was Gibbon” Kennedy. Paul Kennedy wrote “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” and “The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery”, among others. (1)

Described as “a work of almost Toynbeean sweep,” the Great Powers book purports to describe economic change and military conflict from 1500 to 2000. Well, jolly. Apparently just reading a military history book isn’t tough enough, Let’s throw in some economics for fun. (2)

Kennedy is definitely an economist -- never met a list he didn’t like. When discussing 15th-century China, a lesser historian would refer to “the formidable Ming navy.” Not Kennedy – he’ll list how many combat vessels, how many floating fortresses, how many cruisers, how many private ships, etc., along with a list of the countries the private ships traded with. Bleah. Remember Clause’s “dreary pedantry?”

Kennedy lists the world’s most “broad and fertile river zones,” to no real purpose (his point was that Europe didn’t have any), just to show off. He lists North America’s biggest exports, Europe’s busiest ports and types of missile-throwing instruments. (What the hell is a trebuchet? Who cares?) (3)

Then he goes on to the Hapsburgs and turns slightly less boring, happily listing the reasons the empire failed. (sounded a little smug, too; after all, the empire survived in some form for 400 years. The U.S. should be so lucky.)

I liked some of the economic backdrop, how sheep grazing willy-nilly all over 16th-century Spain hurt that country’s ability to fight in the Netherlands. (4) He made a nice point that Wellington’s army in 1815 wasn’t much different than Lord Marlborough’s a century before. Nelson’s fleet wasn’t much more advanced technologically than Louis XIV’s. It was the military organization that changed.

But Kennedy would constantly undermine his own writing. He wanted to be both Good Cop and Bad Cop whenever he analyzed a country. Which is fine, you want to know both the positives and negatives.

However, it’s pretty discouraging to sit through tiny-type pages filled with long lists, praising the Power to the skies (such wonderful diplomacy, arms production, railroads, military development!), only to read that actually, the country has no money and a crazy leader and won’t amount to anything.

This isn’t Good Cop/Bad Cop, it’s Good Cop/Bad Sargeant, where a cop lists 43 reasons why you aren’t really in trouble and then Sarge strides in and barks, “Lock ‘im up!”

After a while, you conclude that nobody’s any good, everyone’s riddled with tragic weaknesses, and we should all go back to pounding rocks with sticks. Kennedy turned much more confident and readable with World War II, but after that I kind of gave up and watched “Hot Properties” on ABC.


________________________

FOOTNOTES

1) Gibbon wrote “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.” I know, it was a cheap history joke. Sue me.

2) And no, I don’t know who Toynbee was. The line’s funnier if you don’t know. I see great possibilities for intellectual references. “How was that parenting article on the dangers of stickers?” a playgroup mother might ask me. “Ah,” I’ll say in awed tones, “It was a work of almost Toynbeean sweep.”

And yes, I really did read an article last week warning parents about stickers. We are a nation at risk, surely.

3) It’s some sort of medieval catapult. You can buy a desktop model at trebuchet.com for 30 bucks. Yawn. God, footnotes are boring.

4) Don’t ask me how. Read it yourself. I’m not going back in there.


#

On War: The Thrill of Victory

Barney Brodie, author of the reading guide to Clausewitz’s “On War,” said it best: “With Book Eight we are back in the realm of pure gold.”

“Book Seven was not exactly wandering in the wilderness,” he continued, “but ... Clausewitz himself seemed to be eager to hurry through it.”

I agree, except I thought all three middle chapters were wandering in the wilderness, and I nearly didn’t make it.

Clause pounds home a familiar maxim: “Destruction of the enemy is what always matters most.” If he repeats this, it’s because war leaders get distracted so much. They want to strut around, or scare the enemy or capture some sexy fortress – none of which destroys the enemy.

With “War Plans,” Clause says, we will put all the influential factors in war in a nice tidy, order. (Insert maniac Prussian cackle here.)

But Clause knows we’re scared, so he says: “When we contemplate all this, we are overcome by the fear that we shall be irresistibly dragged down to a state of dreary pendantry, and grub around the underworld of ponderous concepts.” (Exactly, Clause, where the hell was this fear in Book Six?)

In the end, he says, theory isn’t a bunch of formulas for solving problems, “nor can it mark a narrow path on which the sole solution is supposed to lie by planting a hedge of principles on either side.”

And so we begin the last sprint to the finish line. Clause talks about the gap between “absolute war” where people go to war for sound, logical reasons and conduct the war in a focused, efficient manner; and “real war” where everything goes weird and incoherent and nobody knows what’s going on.

He tries to explain why this happens, generally because people love to take the easy way out when they can. He crabs sniffily about the wimpy wars before Napoleon, where nobody went and laid waste to the enemy’s land.

War back then was instead conducted by separate, clearly defined forces and nobody was hurt too much, least of all the people in the countries engaged. It was easy to figure out what the enemy had, so a general knew exactly how many guys to send to tussle over a useless supply depot.

But once Europe became a happy land of plunder and carnage, generals could identify the enemy’s center of gravity (the army, or the capitol, or both) and destroy it.

And don’t divide your main force, for god’s sake. Clause just won’t let that go. When a “trained” general staff scatter their forces like chess pieces, when the leaders use “self-styled” expertise to get all devious for no reason, when armies separate to show “consummate skill” by reuniting two weeks later at utmost risk, well, Clause says, that’s just “idiocy.”

Clause wraps things up with one of his favorite examples, Napoleon’s doomed advance into Russia in 1812. Napoleon entered Russia with half a million men and returned to France with about 50,000. Most people think he just advanced too quickly and too far, that he took Moscow and found himself over his head. Clause doesn’t think so. He thinks Napoleon basically did things well (although he definitely could have started sooner and saved more men). Napolean thought taking Moscow would topple Russia, but he miscalculated. Czar Alexander and his people were tougher than that. So it was the PLAN that was wrong, not the execution.

And on that happy note, I closed “On War,” the first book on my terrifying military history reading list, adopted simply to get me through an awful TV season. I finished it (more or less), but it still scares me. The benefits remain to be seen.

So what’s up for book two? Nothing less than the “Rise and Fall of the Great Powers” by Paul Kennedy, which I borrowed from Andy. I really have no choice, you know. Anything’s better than Kelly Ripa in “Hope & Faith.”

##

On War: Rationing the Horse Fodder

I just wasn’t prepared.

The author of the “On War” reading guide, Bernard Brodie, was a cheery companion for the first three sections. But even Barney couldn’t drum up much enthusiasm for Book Four. He called various chapters “rather less consequential” or “not particularly memorable.” I can think of some stronger language, like “fairly gruesome,” “droolingly dull” and “coma-inducing.”

I did like one chapter on the use of the battle, where Clause gets all indignant about silly folks who don’t like to fight. They get nervous when it’s time to roll the dice. “The human spirit recoils from the decision brought about by a single blow,” he says.

So governments and commanders sought out other means of avoiding a decisive battle, finding other ways to meet their goal or abandoning it altogether. All this, Clause says, turned a battle into a kind of evil, something that a properly managed war could avoid.

“Recent history has scattered such nonsense to the winds,” Clause snaps. Warriors must not fall into the same stupid thinking again.

“We are not interested in generals who win victories without bloodshed,” he goes on. “The fact that slaughter is a horrifying spectacle must make us take war more seriously, but not provide an excuse for gradually blunting our swords in the name of humanity. Sooner or later someone will come along with a sharp sword and hack off our arms.”

Ah, good old bloodthirsty Clause.

He makes another important point: that now victory is effective without pursuit. Troops on both sides are exhausted and disorganized after a battle. But this isn’t the time for the victor to pause. Any time lost after the battle is in the loser’s favor. He’ll get a nice rest and maybe some gruel or something. Then the victor has to go beat him all over again.

Clause constantly repeats this point throughout the book, but it’s worth hounding us about. Apparently he didn’t go far enough anyway, since I remember some Civil War generals who’d beat the enemy, then sit around and let him go.

So okay, not bad. But then I hit Book Five (“Military Forces”). Barney called the early chapters “somewhat dated.” I call them “thoroughly useless.”

Modern armies are huge, Clause writes breathlessly. Why Napolean had 200,000 men! And then he tells us in detail how to go into winter quarters.

But I’d rather read about marches, billets and horse fodder all day then deal with Book Six (“Defense”) again. Defense is the stronger form of waging war, Clause tells us, an idea that World War I generals took a little too much to heart.

Clause tells us how to defend fortresses, set up fortified positions and establish entrenched camps. We defend ourselves in the mountains, by the rivers, in the swamps, in the forests and along a cordon. Even Barney admits tiredly that in the last chapter, “Clausewitz is not at his inspired best.”

I myself skimmed much of Book Six, eager to get on to the more interesting problem of attack. Oh God, what a mistake that was. What I got is how to ATTACK a force on the river, attack an entrenched camp, attack a mountainous area, attack the enemy in swamps, forests and cordons. Barney was bored too: “This book is but the obverse of the preceding book,” he grumbled.

I liked the part about the “culminating point of victory,” which says the attacker can overshoot the point at which, if he stopped and assumed the defensive, he might still succeed. The trick is, of course, knowing when to quit.

I nearly quit myself halfway through Book Six, and again early in Book Seven. I was very discouraged, given to snapping at slow ATM machines and griping about long traffic lights. Perhaps this was a stupid idea. I’m a 21st-century housewife with a toddler to raise, not a Napoleanic general with cavalry forces to manage. Maybe I should acknowledge my culminating point and go watch “So You Think You Can Dance?”

But I slogged on, and was rewarded by Book Eight: “War Plans.”

##



 

On War: Don't Skip Lunch at A&W

There’s a reason why people read Clausewitz in the abridged version. Anybody tempted to read the middle sections of his book “On War” should lie down until the feeling goes away.

I felt rather smug as I marched steadily through Book One, nodding sagely at Clause’s big concept, “Friction in War.” “Everything in war is very simple,” Clause said, “but the simplest thing is difficult.”

Nice work, Clause. You’re a regular Oscar Wilde. (1)

But I did like that basic idea, how difficulties accumulate in war until they make victory nearly impossible. Let’s say you’re driving to Kalamazoo on Interstate 94 and decide not to stop for lunch at the Albion A&W, although you love A&Ws. You’ll be in Kazoo in an hour, you’ve got a Snickers bar under the passenger seat, you’ll make it. Easy.

But then you hit some road construction, and then traffic slows down for an accident, and then you’re stuck behind two halves of a modular home that blocks both lanes. A funny light starts blinking on your dashboard, and you instinctively slow some more. Finally, after two hours and many difficulties, you arrive in Kalamazoo and scarf down two scary hot dogs at a 7-Eleven. Austria’s defeat at Austerlitz couldn’t be more tragic.

Or, to illustrate this idea more poetically (Clause is the genius after all, not me):

“Each war is an uncharted sea, full of reefs. The commander may suspect the reefs’ existence without ever having seen them; now he has to steer past them in the dark.”

Nice. Then I strode confidently into Book Two (“The Theory of War”), full of dishy stuff about tactics and strategies and sniggering comments about geniuses. (2)

Book Three (“Strategy in General”), while not a rollicking good time, had neat stuff about boldness, perseverance, surprise, cunning and the science-fiction-sounding “Unification of Forces in Time.”

In his chapter on the strategic reserve, Clause talked about a reserve’s two purposes: to prolong and renew the action and to counter unforeseen threats. What he didn’t like was maintaining a strategic reserve for the hell of it. He mentions the Prussian loss at Jena in 1806, where the Prussians had 20,000-man reserve just over the river, but couldn’t get it to the battle in time. Meanwhile, another 25,000 men were in east and south Prussia, just sitting around, acting as another reserve. Stuff like that makes Clause crazy.

All good stuff. But then I turned to Book Four (“The Engagement”) and began an unhappy relationship that sapped my confidence and broke my heart.

_________________________________________


(1) That’s no compliment really, since I dislike the playwright Oscar Wilde. His stuff sounds witty on the surface:

“Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.”

“Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. “

“I can resist anything but temptation.”

But Oscar’s a big phony; anybody can write like that. Just take an idea and turn it upside down. Here’s two from me:

“My faults are my only virtues.”

“Nothing is cleaner than a dirty mind.”

Go on. Try it.

(2) Here’s a real footnote with a nice Clause quote. He was sneering at his fellow military theorists. If something couldn’t be addressed by their fancy rules, his fellows said the issue was the stuff of genius and defied all rules. Here’s Clause’s response:

“Pity the soldier who is supposed to crawl among these scraps of rules, not good enough for genius, which genius can ignore or laugh at.”

Go get ‘em, Clause.

##

On War: Napoleon was God in Funny Pants

[Keep in mind, this post has footnotes on the bottom. Every military treatise has footnotes.]

Oooh, what a big book. Hefty. Almost as big as the latest Harry Potter novel. It’s the unabridged text of Carl von Clausewitz’s “On War.”

Damn thing scares me half to death. It’s been edited, translated and indexed, and includes a commentary, a preface, introductory essays and a reading guide.

Published in 1832, its lessons have guided Karl Marx, Otto von Bismark and French political theorist Raymond Aron. (I didn’t know who Aron was either; I had to look him up. His most popular picture shows him with a pipe and a big nose.)

I skipped the editor’s note (who reads those anyway) and headed straight to the first introductory essay. I plowed through Clause’s Prussian military career, yawning mightily. But then I hit a section about his contemporary theorists – generally, why Clause was right and they were idiots.

The biggest idiot, apparently, was a Swiss-French staff officer named Antoine Jomini. According to Tony Jomini, Napoleon was God in funny pants, and he set the standard for all future conflicts. Clause thought that was ridiculous.

The interesting thing was Jomini’s obsession with Napoleon, and his remark, “Methods change, but principles remain the same.” (1) Jomini was followed by both sides during the American civil war. I liked that. I liked that these military writings could influence events far into the future, although Jomini’s principles didn’t help the Civil War much.

So I turned to the first chapter, which asked “What is War?” That reminded me of my old geology textbooks: “The scientist must first consider, what is erosion?” I liked the chapter. It was filled with nice, simple paragraphs headed by titles in all caps.

Clause liked to talk about the element of chance: “Guesswork and luck play a great part in war.” He thought strict formulas were nutty because you never knew what was going to happen when you marched your little army over the ridge. Commanders rolled the dice on everything, including the weather, although Clause didn’t care much about weather. (2)

He also emphasized that war isn’t just a bunch of battles, but an instrument of policy. You can kill a bunch of guys, capture their hill and blow up their supply dump, but unless all this actually advanced the policy, or purpose of the war, it was all for nothing. Too bad that great military minds forgot this simple fact during the Civil War and World War I.

So basically, although this book still freaks me out, Clause is a guy I can do business with. He doesn’t read like a typical military historian – he actually sounds like a lawyer. He’s the kind of guy that if you asked him, “Is it raining outside?” He wouldn’t answer. He’d run to his pen (or quill, or whatever) and write this:

ON RAIN By Clause

Before we answer the query “Is it raining,” we must ask ourselves, “What is rain?” One might assert that rain is liquid precipitation from the clouds, but things are rarely so simple. The careless observer might spy water on the windowpane and thus answer the query. But such an action is little more than rank folly; it fails to take into account that someone may be dumping bathwater from the second story, or the moisture may stem from the wild and reckless use of a watering can, or finally, although unlikely, that an elephant may be standing in the daffodils and spraying from its tusk. Therefore …

Well, you see what I’m up against here. Perhaps I should just give up and watch “The Apprentice.”


________________

FOOTNOTES

(1) The snooty historian called this remark “endlessly quoted.” I agree. Why just the other day, when I was pushing Benny through Meijer, I heard a cashier refer to the phrase.

CASHIER: You gotta make sure they swipe the card right on the new machines. You remember what military historian Antoine Jomini always said.

TRAINEE: Oh yes. It’s endlessly quoted.

(2) Except fog, Clause had this weird obsession with fog. To hear him tell it, there’s a 19th century army still wandering around some foggy lowlands, wondering where Boney is.

##



 

Christine’s Military History Seminar

I’m reading Clausewitz these days and I’ll tell you whose fault it is: TV network execs.

I had high hopes for this year’s TV season. Disgusted by last year's tripe, I’ve been watching movie and TV discs from Netflix, emerging only for “West Wing” and the occasional “Supernanny”.

But it’s a real drag, all that DVD renting, just so I could relax after Benny went to bed. (This wasn’t an issue in Benny’s first year. I was too busy washing 300 bottles and folding 600 burp cloths every night to watch anything.)

This year’s season, I thought, had to be better.

It wasn’t.

The Fonz stages a comeback on CBS. Martha launches hers on NBC. William Shatner sports awful ties on ABC. “Law & Order” spawns more shows (“Law & Order: Petty Theft and Parking Meter Vandalism Unit” and “CSI: Vicksburg, Mich.”)

This unholy crew only edges me closer to 18th-century Prussian military officer Carl von Clausewitz (really).

I thought, maybe I could read at night instead. But two hours of reading a night – that’s two books a week. That’s 100 books necessary to get me through one TV season.

Obviously, I needed a reading list, preferably one packed with weighty tomes. What about military history? Nobody blathers in tiny, dense text like a military historian.

So I turned to some very nice folks at Ohio State University, which has a boffo military history department. They’ve posted online a terrifying list: 100 books on European and American military history. Caesar. Engels. Thucydides. McPherson. And at the top of the list, categorized under General Works: Carl von Clausewitz’s “On War.”

Hey, don’t blame me. Blame the TV execs.

##

A table by the highway, please

Whew! Well, I'm better now and can take good hard look at my life. Hmm, I think I'll go back to bed.

It's shocking when you realize that you're only one to-do list from total ruin. Make it three days and I might as well chuck it all and move to Miami. I could pitch a tent outside the home of Dr. Arthur Agatston, creator of the S.O.B. diet, until I lose 30 pounds or get eaten by a crocodile, whichever comes first. But I hate Florida and I can get Dave Barry's column online, so I guess I'll stay here.

At least I could drive today, to the hair salon, the car wash and finally, to Benny's daycare. I was a little late, and the minute the door chime rang at my entrance, I heard "Mama!" from the kitchen area.

I hustled back there and saw Benny, hat and shoes on, woefully staring out the window. Then he saw me and I swear, it was a moment worthy of a Celine Dion ballad. His lip stuck out and his eyes filled up. "He's been like this since the first parent came," said a teacher as I held my sniffling boy.

To make up for my tardiness, I took Benny to Applebee's, where the waiter cunningly gave us a table with a clear view of Ann Arbor-Saline Road. Benny's eyes goggled at all the rush-hour traffic.

He did eat some garlic toast and miniscule shred of chicken, but mostly he ignored me. At one point, I played "Snake II" on my cell phone while Benny looked out the window ("Car! Truck! Car! Truck! Wow!").

The guy at the next table ordered a Jack-and-Coke. The woman behind us droned on about her urine samples. Ron called to say he had that damn flu now and he'd been home for hours, and where the hell were we? Ah, those precious mother-son moments.

Meanwhile, dishes cover the kitchen, laundry covers the basement, and despair covers the land. But I'm not sad because I'm Well! Well! Well! Yay!

##

Danger: Mad Elephant

Well, I have unfairly maligned the S.O.B. diet. I thought it was the weird veggie dishes and lack of caffeine that made me sick. Instead, it was a monster flu.

I tried to stick to the diet on Tuesday, munching ham-and-egg dishes and watching "North and South" while Benny was at daycare. At 4 p.m., I surrendered my honor for chicken soup and Coke.

But I wasn't out of the woods yet. I started Wednesday at 6 a.m. tossing my cookies all over the kitchen. Then I held an encore performance in the bathroom. Then I nearly passed out.

Ron skipped work that day and put a baby gate across our bedroom door so I could watch them have fun without me. Every so often Benny would run to the gate and talk to me as I lay in my bed of pain. ("Truck! Bye-bye Car! Frog! Quack!") Then we'd sing songs. Really pathetic. I felt like Dumbo's mother locked in the "Mad Elephant" cage. Sometimes I lurched around the house like Quasimodo, but then I'd get dizzy and had to return to bed.

So that's three days lost to my life, and although I can't blame it on the S.O.B. diet, I'm not all that anxious to start it up again.

##

The S.O.B. Diet

Well, it's the first day of the South Beach diet, or as I fondly call it, the Son-of-a-Bitch diet. I walk around muttering "Gee, I'd like a coke -- son of a bitch!"

I try to follow the plan to the letter, but my blood sugar plunges at awkward times, making me spastic and generally tough to live with. A pounding headache from caffeine withdrawl isn't helping either.

The SOB diet is a lot like Dante's journey to Heaven (yes, we're back to that again). Phase one is Hell, where you purge your body. No fruit, no alcohol, no starches. You can't even eat carrots.

Phase Two is like purgatory, where you add back fruits and some other good stuff until you reach the weight you want. Then on to Phase Three Heaven, where you bask in your svelteness and eat in (gasp!) moderation.

So here I am, chopping mushrooms and grilling chicken all day. I basically eat chicken, veggies, eggs and mozzerella sticks.

They allow you to eat more than that, but I can't handle the recipes. There's just no way I'm getting up in the morning and whipping together a cheesy frittata.

I don't even know what a frittata is. Do I look like the kind of woman who'd chop bell peppers at 6:30 a.m.? Should half-starved people be forced to handle sharp knives six times a day?

I spent the whole damn day today dicing ham and slicing cucumbers and fileting chicken breasts. 10 a.m. found me cutting up celerly stalks and filing them with some vile light cheese.

Benny had chicken fried rice for dinner tonight. I had chicken kebobs -- just chicken and mushrooms, minus the marinade or potatoes or anything else that makes kebobs good.

Let's return to the frittata. First they want you to slice onions, bell peppers and zucchini, then dice plum tomatoes, then chop some fresh basil. Then you get out a skillet and busily melt stuff, brown stuff, and stir stuff.Then preheat the broiler and whip up a six-ingredient egg mixture in the blender.

Pour the egg mixture over the veggies and cook it. Then broil it. Then sprinkle cheese on it and broil it some more. Serve it for lunch, since you've spent the entire morning on this frittata and your toddler is lying on the kitchen floor, throwing tupperware at the cat and screaming for attention.

Yeah, that's reasonable. And all the recipes are like this. The Chicken en Papillote looks nerve-wracking and the Cherry Snapper Ceviche (which you begin by soaking the fish in lime juice for three hours) looks just insane.

So I'm eating a lot of scrambled eggs and plain chicken breasts. I also drink a lot of ice water, to keep my spirits up. The diet allows more than this, of course, but I hate tomato juice and vegetable cocktails and nobody's catching me with a baggie of fake sugar.

What I wouldn't give for a coke.

##

Benny Goes to School

It must be tough to be a toddler. Everyone’s huge, you don’t speak the language, and just when you got a good set of truck-crashing going, someone wants to change your pants.

So I can imagine Benny’s surprise on the first day of childcare. Usually he hops out of bed and runs to the baby gate across his bedroom door. I stumble over, change him, then cart him into the living room for 20 minutes of truck racing while I chug a Snapple and set out Cheerios.

Then I fall into a chair opposite Benny while he eats. “Do you know what time it is?” I moan, “Do you have any idea what time it is? It’s 6:30 a.m., that’s what time it is. Do you know how early that is? Do you have any idea how …” And so it goes.

But this charming domestic ritual was shattered Thursday morning, when Benny was bundled into the car at 7 a.m. with a lunch box. “School!” I chirp as we drive out of town, “School!” We pull up to a brightly painted building and I unload labeled blanket, pillow, stuffed puppy, extra outfit, emergency generator, etc. Then I kiss Benny, wave goodbye and drive off.

Well. You really have to admire toddlers. I don’t know what I’d do if Ron woke me up and put me into a suit, then drove me to a building full of strangers and told me to write 20 inches on Detroit’s housing controversy. And then left. I’d probably wail.

Which is exactly what Benny did, but I’m told he recovered quickly. Until naptime, that is. He refused to lie down; instead he put on his hat and shoes and stood at the door, calling my name. He was ready to go.

The second day he did much better. He ate and napped, and when Ron and I picked him up at 5 p.m. he treated us like pushy guests at a cocktail party. (“Ah yes. Didn’t we meet at some hospital somewhere? Of course I remember you, and how’s Ed?”)

That day we also received a pamphlet called “Innovations: The Infant Curriculum” with tips about helping your toddler’s adjustment to school. I don’t want to seem unsympathetic, but some of these kids sound a little nuts. “In general,” the authors conclude, “most children are well on their way in about six weeks.”

Six weeks? If Benny has an adjustment problem now, what will he be doing in October? Wearing a fake mustache and trying to go home with other people?

##

A FranklinCovey Fairy Tale

[This entry appeared as a column in the Business Review newspapers.]

Ah, autumn. Time for that annual source of hilarity: The Fall FranklinCovey catalogue. This thin volume holds a fairy tale more magical than any sleeping beauty or enchanted frog.

Everyone dreams of a wonderful, rewarding, well-organized life. And if you lack the imagination to design your own, FranklinCovey will do it for you. Just flip through its pages and choose your perfect life.

After all, says the cover, “Right now belongs to you. Be proactive.”

Inside you read such gems as:

“Today is always present”

and

“You live right now.”

The catalogue begins with “Simplicity Girl” on page six. Simplicity heads to the gym at 5:30 a.m., where she tweaks her cardio routine and wonders “Do I need new shoes?” She researches Gore-Tex fabric and picks up birthday treats for the office. Hey, you cheapskates paying only $34.95 – this is your life.

For five more dollars you can be a “Seven Habits Guy” on page 8. He has 6:30 a.m. yoga class, an 8:30 zoning commission meeting and a 10 a.m. partner meeting. He doesn’t run out for grocery store cupcakes; he sets up birthday lunches at Bistro 31 – reservations for nine. After an afternoon of mentoring flunkies, he dines at Don Miguel’s at 7 p.m.

But perhaps you’re a woman with a family. Well, then, you need a kicky, spiral-bound planner that patronizes you on every page. Meet “Collages,” with its daily sketches of purses, shoes and wooden benches. The Collages Lady jogs in the park, schedules a manicure and reviews notes for cooking class. In her spare time, she plans her husband’s birthday dinner, Kira’s baby shower and the Collins’ anniversary party.

Other planners may quote Emerson: “The man of genius inspires us with boundless confidence in our own powers.” The Collages planner says, “A little of what you fancy does you good.” By the way, it comes with a free purse.

But hey, we’re wasting time here. Time to shake hands with “The Leader.” This mighty man swims at 7 a.m., builds parking structures until lunch and then runs his firm’s capital improvement board. Leader doesn't waste his time with birthdays or anniversaries. He’s gotta buy swim goggles.

His planner tells us that if you want to build a ship, don’t gather the men to actually build it. Instead, “Teach them the desire for the sea.”

So go, go and seek your planner self. And when you find it, write … write the detritus of your daily life, the stupid branding meeting, the shopping list (nose drops, corn pads, Swanson’s Frozen Chicken Delite) and the aerobics class you haven’t attended in months.

And remember, if you want to heat a frozen dinner, don’t ask your spouse to turn the oven on. Read him a fairy tale about the Prince and the Enchanted Chicken Wing.

##

Grandma

My earliest memory of Grandma was in her kitchen, of course. I was three years old, dogging her steps from stove to cupboard to cookie jar. It was during one of our frequent visits to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Sodus, blazing a path from Detroit through rain and snow for holidays and vacations.

Lunch was finished, the dishes washed and the leftovers stashed, but Grandma was still wiping counters and wrapping pies. I chased her around the small kitchen until she finally wiped her hands and sat in a wooden chair beside the phone. The second that happened, I climbed onto her lap and we’d sit quietly through the 20-minute twilight between the cleanup of one meal and the launch of the next. Grandma’s lap was an oasis of comfort, love and peace, capable of quieting even this most talkative of three-year-olds.

And through the years, as smaller children vied for Grandma’s lap, I still returned to her, nattering on about my classes, my travels, my wedding, my career. Heaven knows what she made of it all.

When I speak of my Grandpa, I love to list his many accomplishments, from fishing to winemaking. I often speak of what he did, but for Grandma, accomplished as she was in her own right, it is different. I speak of what she was, to me and to everyone: strong, loving, ever-patient.

Since the birth of my son last year, Grandma has become a role model for me as I grapple with the challenges of home and family. My sister calls Grandma a perfect example in this regard, and I agree. I could never meet Grandma’s standards, so I halve them, and halve them again, and still feel I’ve accomplished great things. And if someday some small child follows me around a kitchen, waiting for me to sit down, and climbs onto my lap in search of love and peace and hope, I will have met those standards.

##


 

Playgroup II: 'N' is for Nutty

The drama continues at Benny’s playgroup as we face the loss of a cherished member. The other mothers are fighting complex feelings: Elation at Padme’s husband Darth’s great career move to Minnesota, but also a deep sadness at losing little Luke from our group.

At least that’s what I gather from recent emails. I can’t say I’m equally devastated, mostly because I can’t quite remember who Padme and Luke are. Is Padme the frazzled mother who arrives early to every playdate, awestruck by the host mother’s accomplishments? (“My God, you have a toy box! I wish I’d thought of that! We just shove our kid’s stuff under the sofa!”)

Perhaps Luke is the little boy who bites toys. Let’s be grateful he doesn’t bite other children, but it’s still weird to see a small toddler gnawing on a doll’s leg like it’s corn on the cob.

Well, no matter, because every member is precious, even Anny, who loves to send emails but never shows up anywhere. So one mother proposed the following:

___________________________________________________

Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 10:24:30
From: Leia@everthoughtful.com
To: Soon-to-be-Bereaved Playgroup
Subject: Padme and Luke

We could each do a page in a small photo album like a mini scrapbook. I have scrapbooking supplies so I can bring them to an upcoming playdate...or maybe we can even organize an evening to meet and put together the album. I was also thinking about the book, "M is for Mitten". It's about Michigan and we could all write a message from the kids to Lukey.

Leia

___________________________________________________


This idea was pounced on with great enthusiasm exactly 11 minutes later.

___________________________________________________

Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 10:35:30
From: Mona@alsothoughtful.com
To: Grief-Stricken Playgroup
Subject: Re: Padme and Luke

Oh yes, but I am worried about how quickly that is coming up, so am wondering if maybe people want to start getting their pictures together and mail them to Leia to put in a album if we can't find a time to all meet?

We could also each write a little note that is the size of a picture on a nice piece of paper and that way it could either go into a mini-scrapbook if we can pull it off or be put right into the photo sleeve of an album.

Mona

___________________________________________________


And you know, of course, what the notes will be like. They’ll resemble the group birthday cards you get at the office, the big ones with all the little messages scribbled inside. Most workers don’t even need to sign their names anymore, because they always write the same thing to every recipient: “Way to go!” or “One more year ’til death!”

I bet I could write up a fake card for Padme and Luke and nobody would know the difference:
“Good Luck!”
“We’ll all miss you!”
“Sorry about the grape juice Sammy poured on your cat!”

But anyway …

___________________________________________________


Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 22:02:36
From: Leia@.lotsotime.com
To: Grief-Stricken Playgroup
Subject: Scrapbook night for Padme

Ok...I have the scrapbook for Padme. The size of the pages is 8.5 x 8.5. So, if you'd like to put your own page(s) together just make sure it's not too big. Also, if you can't make it to my house next Tuesday you can give your pictures to someone at Playgroup or send them to me at 823 Duck Waddle Way.

___________________________________________________


Now it’s all over, thank goodness. The scrapbook was created and duly presented, prompting a lovely thank you email from Padme.

I feel a little guilty for ignoring the whole thing, but I doubt Padme cared. If my name ever came out, she probably thought, “Christine … hmmm … is she the woman with the hooded sweatshirts and the napkin fetish or the gal with the pink sunglasses and the nervous twitch? … and is Benny the one who's prone to creepy rashes or allergic to oxygen? …”

##

Crazy Uncle Assembles Toddler Bed

ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS

Thank you for purchasing Little Kid Inc.’s Z240 Race Car toddler bed. This product is designed for easy assembly using common household tools.

1. Before assembling Little Kid’s patented metal supports, the enclosed 2-pound iron bars must be manufactured into a steel mesh and frame. (Smelting pot not included.) See enclosed pamphlet for instructions, safety guidelines and anti-pollution regulations.

2. Using your household blow torch (not included), weld the steel mesh onto the frame. Always use a federally approved blast helmet (not included) during this step. Be sure to clear the bed’s cardboard box out of the work area before welding. Do not use near curtains.

3. The four plastic parts comprising the Race Car toddler bed’s outer frame should snap together easily along the molded grooves. In the rare instance that the parts do not snap together easily, located a 2-ton elephant. (Not included, but they often gather at watering holes near dusk.) Train the elephant to sit on a plastic part as you attach the adjoining part. (Make sure the welded steel mesh has cooled before bringing in the elephant.)

4. Next, secure the plastic parts using the D34659 and EF693 screws. The D34659 can be easily distinguished from the EF693 screw by the crosshatching beneath the screw head. Use your household electron microscope (not included) for easy identification.

5. Drill the holes for the screws using a 1/7.5-inch drill bit. Your local hardware store will say there’s no such bit, but they lie. Use a 1/8-inch drill bit at your own risk.

Congratulations! You have now completed basic assembly of your Z240 Race Car toddler bed. Now it only remains to customize your child’s bed with kicky decals.

Carefully peel each sticker from the backing, making sure the sticker back does not touch your fingers, stray tools or overly humid air. A zero-gravity generator (not included) has proved helpful during this step.


Some mechanically inept customers have suggested using the wheel-rim decals to fasten the plastic frame, since once adhered, the stickers cannot be removed by anything short of a C4 plastic explosive (not included). We feel that such comments cheapen the loving, memorable experience of assembling your child’s precious bed. Please report any such comments by calling 1-800-65-LOSER.

Congratulations again! Your child will surely adore his or her new bed for the recommended six months of use. After this, Little Kids recommends its Bright Wheels Dump Truck older toddler bed for a new low price of $339.99.

##

I Gotta Quit Reading the Classics

Well, Ron, Benny and I are living in Limbo right now. It’s not Dante’s Limbo in Hell, where ancient heroes and poets spend Eternity, but it’s almost as bad.

Actually, Dante’s Limbo seems preferable right now; I could chug wine with Homer and Hercules, listening to the conversation: “Hey, Virgil, how’s it hanging?” and “Odysseus, you old fox, how come you always get the best table?” and “Tell us about the hemlock again, Socrates, you know you love it.”

Obviously, I’ve been reading Dante too much. I’ve emerged from “Inferno” and plodded through “Purgatory” and now I have to face “Paradise.” I don’t know if I have the strength. I read this dumb translation of “Purgatory” where everything has to rhyme. It’s like reading the Bible as a series of limericks: “The Void was empty and bleak/Until God made the world in a week …”

I never knew much about Purgatory, although I was raised Catholic. I would describe it as a Hell With Hope, where the mediocre faithful suffer for hundreds of years before ascending to Heaven. Virgil, out on loan from Hell, leads Dante up the mountain, pointing out all those poor bastards and obsessively tracking the sun’s placement in the sky. At the end, Virgil vanishes, Dante bursts into tears, then is verbally pimp-slapped by the glorious St. Beatrice for all his sins. She represents Divine Love by the way. Shudder.

But back to our Limbo. We’re considering moving out of state, and a move of that magnitude affects everything. I can’t make routine pediatrician appointments or respond to wedding invitations. I can’t buy a CD without asking myself, “Is this one Nickelback song worth the extra three ounces on a U-Haul?”

Off topic: The biggest, fattest raccoon I’ve ever seen just walked onto our deck. It’s enormous. Our cat Callisto is crouched on her kitty condo, prepared to pounce if our glass door magically disappears. Frankly, I think Callisto should be very grateful for that door.

PORTRAIT UPDATE: Avid readers of this diary will remember the April 19 entry about Benny's second portrait sitting. (If you haven't read it, you should. There's lots of good stuff about soap bubbles and a coal mine.)

I'm happy to report that Benny's pictures turned out very cute. He's looking over his shoulder with a happy grin and no one would know he'd just spent 20 minutes screaming bloody murder. The studio tried to sell me some sheets of a second picture, with a red-faced Benny cackling in a strongly psychotic way.

##

10 Reasons Why I Hate Lists

OK, there really isn’t a list. Are you kidding?

Whenever I virtuously sit down to compile a tidy list of groceries, chores, summer clothes, Christmas presents, video game strategies or my five favorite spaghetti sauces, I can just feel the light and happiness leach out of my soul.

I once thought it was the content of the lists; nobody gets excited about a list that includes "pick lint off cat." Nah, I hate 'em all. I never read The Onion's funny lists, I yawn through David Letterman's Top 10 ... I can barely read my own resume, one of Life's Ultimate Lists.

But I was determined. I started searching online for The Perfect List and stumbled onto a frightening site called motivatedmoms.com. This amazing household planner listed everything from “sort shampoo bottles” to “clean toaster.”

The latter item included “and empty crumb tray.” I didn’t know there were people who cleaned their toasters’ crumb trays. I didn’t know toasters had crumb trays. I thought toasters just absorbed everything until they spontaneously exploded in a shower of bread crumbs.

And “sort shampoo bottles?” I have enough trouble keeping them upright. The last time I visited my sister, I kicked the shampoo bottle over and spilled the entire contents down the drain.

OK, Forget the Internet. Maybe I could spice up my lists, stop scribbling "diapers, window cleaner, whiskey bottle" on the back of ripped envelopes. After all, there's a cottage industry of cheery, decorated list pads. Pick your poison: teddy bears, kittens, hot-air balloons, baskets of fruit, ancient maps, leering snowmen -- yikes, that was a list!

No good. Broccoli is still broccoli, no matter how much cheese you pour on it, and a list is still a numbered Pit of Despair, even if it’s ringed with dancing bunnies.

##

Constant Vigilance!

[This entry appeared in Ron's newspaper and two others in Kalamazoo and Lansing this month.)

Hey, don’t bother me, can’t you see I’m busy? I’m busy building an invisible fort around my child, brick by brick.

Some parents treat their kids like fancy new cars with factory warranties and plastic covers on the seats. The babies arrive all pink and perfect, but they’re really doomed, you see, doomed to be scraped and scratched and corroded by that nasty world out there. This must be stopped at all costs. Constant vigilance is necessary – constant vigilance!

So the parents break out the disinfected pacifiers and the six-packs of antibacterial wipes and they drive their little cars on smooth, straight roads, bringing them back to cozy garages and wiping away any speck of dust or grime with a cloth diaper. They avoid the bumpy streets, the dark ravines, the rickety bridges, the dusty dirt paths. And they certainly don’t want anyone else driving the car; not unless they’re part of a select group. Why, someone might adjust the rearview mirror or take a turn too fast or drop Cheetos on the floor. You spend weeks vacuuming up the little orange crumbs under the seats and vow never to loan the car to Cheeto-lovers. It’s not worth the hassle.

And then the children get bigger, and the parents realize that sanitizing the toybox and screwing the dresser to the wall with a half-pound, 125mm heavy bolt just isn’t enough. Minds must be sanitized and bolted out of harm’s way, because if you don’t, then little specks of grit might get through and affect the machinery, and then that’s it, the warranty is invalidated, the child is corrupted and the next thing you know, you’re driving a rusty heap with a dented door and windshield wipers that won’t turn off.

Constant vigilance! So you shut the doors and close the windows and install parental controls on the DVD player and firewalls on the computer and buy specially sanitized versions of popular movies so your kid won’t see Private Ryan’s combat or Leonardo’s butt.

You strap your kids into your tidy home-on-wheels and drive them from supervised schools to supervised sports and supervised playgroups and supervised outings. And you can’t share driving with other moms because they’re on different schedules and anyway, Freddie’s mom drives too fast and Flossie’s family van doesn’t have a DVD.

To me, this seems a soulless (and exhausting) way to live, like eating chips on a brand-new sofa, breaking each one over the bowl and picking every tiny crumb off your pants.

When I was 10 or so, somebody gave me an abridged, illustrated copy of “Little Women.” Except I didn’t know it was abridged. I thought it was the whole story. I read it again a few times in the next five years, assuming that this little book about four cloyingly virtuous sisters was all there was.

Then when I was in high school, I saw the complete text in the library. It was a big book. There were whole chapters I never knew. Painful conversations had been cut in half, and difficult scenes deleted altogether. Meg’s fights with her husband and Amy’s victory over nasty gossips had been axed. I started looking up all my childhood books, wondering which ones had been tampered with. I didn’t find any others, but I tell you, I’m still bitter about that book. I felt deceived; like there was a hole in my life I didn’t know was there.

And I wonder, will this generation growing up have many such holes? Will they spend their adulthood saying to themselves, “ “Wow, I didn’t know ‘Psycho’ had a shower scene” and “Nobody told me that cheaters really DO win a lot” as they compare the real world with the prettily pruned reality they grew up in? Like animals exquisitely adapted to a rarified environment like an ocean floor or Arctic tundra, I wonder if such people have difficulty functioning anywhere else.

I predict that 15 years from now, we'll have this crowd of socially inept, painfully unprepared young adults who expect someone to yell "Good job!" every time they rinse a glass or seal an envelope. Who will have trouble with some of the most basic lessons of adulthood: that life isn’t fair and people often suffer without relief and you can’t be special all the time.

I know children need more protection in some ways. You can’t toss your eight-year-old out of the house and tell her to come back when the streetlights come on. Marketers so ruthlessly target children that moms are pulling SpongeBob-covered boxes out of screaming babies’ hands at supermarkets. Sometimes it feels like everything you see, hear and touch in this world is trying to sell you something.

All the more reason to explore those bumpy roads, those steep ravines, away from the smooth roads with the shiny billboards. A car often drives better with a little dust in the tires and wildflowers on the windshield.

##

Christine Vows Revenge

Well, I’m working on a revenge play these days. And the thing about writing a revenge play is that it puts you in a very touchy mood.

Generally I write comedies and walk around chuckling to myself, dissolving into giggles at the supermarket deli counter. Now I’m glaring at cell phone users and plotting exquisitely calibrated punishments for doofus drivers. Then I go home and eye my 15-month-old son, murmuring darkly, “I wouldn’t throw that block if I were you.”

To put myself in the proper frame of mind, I’m reading Dante’s “Inferno.” When I first read the Divine Comedy in college … well, actually I never read the whole thing, the whole Hell-Purgatory-Heaven trilogy. I’d read Milton’s Paradise Lost during a summer seminar, which kind of turned me off of hanging out in Heaven with genius poets.

So I never did read all of the Divine Comedy, but I did read the Inferno. In the book, a pilgrim is lost in a wood and Virgil the Roman poet leads him down to Hell, because only through Hell can the pilgrim reach Heaven. I don’t know why; they don’t mention a Dark Wood-Heaven express bus, so don’t ask. So the pilgrim travels through the nine circles of Hell, where all sinners receive their just punishments.

When I read this at age 21, the Inferno seemed like a simple adventure story – sort of a Wizard of Oz with more screaming. Now, reading it 15 years later, it takes on more ominous tones. I find myself wondering, in Dante’s universe, which circle I’d end up in. There’s no question I’d be there; Dante set the bar too high for an old sinner like me to enter Heaven. He puts people who eat too much down there, for crying out loud. (They lie buried in stinking mud.) From all the articles I’ve read on obesity in America, that would cover half the country and all the Midwest states.

All right, back to my play. It will have roughly the same theme as Dante’s, namely “The Bad Guys Get Theirs,” but it a little more complicated. I tried to explain the themes to Ron after he put Benny to bed, and gave us both a headache. This is the first time I’ve started a play with the theme. Usually I just make up weird characters and let it rip.

But this technique completely failed with my last play, “Wake Up Winslow,” which collapsed during the third scene and now refuses to budge. That play is a murder mystery/comedy about three siblings who run a talk show on cable access TV. One brother disappears and the remaining two are forced to continue the show. Then the show’s guests start dying off after appearing on it. Soon the only people who will appear on the show are a psychotic heavy metal guy and a fear management specialist.

Well, how can anybody lose with that, you ask? Death, sibling rivalry, fear management experts wearing masks, what else could one want? I tried to entice the play with plot outlines, character worksheets … nothing worked. So now I’ve abandoned it in disgust and I hope it’s happy.

But this new play, oh it’s going great guns. I’ve got a great theme that I half-understand. All I need are characters, setting and a plot. Now if you will excuse me, I must banish my son to a prison made of alphabet blocks.

##



 

Not So Picture-Perfect

Today was Benny’s second professional portrait sitting, his 1-year photo only three months late. I’d scheduled this appointment four times, canceling the first three because of illness, and Benny’s busted lip from a fall at the park.

But today I had the perfect kid in the perfect outfit and his wonderful toothy smile. I curled Benny’s wet hair around my fingers for that Hot Disco Cherub look. I packed his sippy cup, favorite toy and extra outfit. We were ready.

Benny smiled and giggled in the car, in the store, at the portrait reception area. He loved the world and the world loved him. Then I pulled him out of the stroller and placed him on the white-draped table before the camera.

THUNK.

Benny fell to his knees, limp, moaning. Then he just sat, hunched, defeated, like an abandoned puppet. He pushed his lower lip out and the tears started.

Baffled, I picked him up. He smiled. I put him down again. He slumped. I tried to stand him up. He cried. The photographer touched his hand and he just went bananas.

“Um, do you have any toys?” I asked, cradling a hiccupping Ben in my arms.

The photographer’s brow furrowed. Toys? In a family portrait studio? How odd.

“I think so,” she said doubtfully. Her assistant dug out a jar of soap bubbles, which elicited a few polite smiles from Benny.

“He LOVES them!” The photographer cried.

“Yuck, I’m getting bubble stuff on my shirt,” the assistant said.

“Yeah, those aren’t the good bubbles,” said the photographer. “Can you get him to look this way?”

“Ick, that bubble popped in my face! I’m covered in bubble goop!”

By now, Benny was sagging again, looking pitiful.

“Oh, what a sweet face!” cried the photographer.

“I can’t do those bubbles anymore,” the assistant announced. She pulled out a big fluffy thing on a stick, like those tools used to dust cobwebs off ceilings.

“Tickle tickle tickle!” she cackled, poking the end at Benny’s feet, then his face. Benny lunged for the door.

“Maybe he could sit on that bench,” I said. pointing.

The assistant sniffed. “That’s a stool.”

“But he could theoretically sit on it,” I said.

They allowed that might be possible.

Benny did like the stool, and even smiled a little when the assistant dropped the fluffy stick. Then he cried.

Defeated, we went back to the reception area to see the half-dozen shots produced in a 30-minute session. The gray blob on the monitor was either a baby or a bottle-nosed dolphin.

“Is there any way we could see this better?” I asked the photographer.

Her brow furrowed again. “What do you mean?”

“Is there a way to see the picture more clearly?”

“No, this is a really bad monitor,” she said, as if it was something to be proud of.

I sighed. “I’ll take a few 5x7s of that one.” I hoped the actual pictures looked better; on the display, Benny looked like he’d just crawled out of coal mine.

She rang up our order, while Benny screamed from his stroller and the studio manager told me about her Sunday: “… A beautiful day and SIX people cancelled sessions and I was SO BORED …”

“$68.70,” said the photographer.

“WHAT?” I cried.

She repeated the shocking number.

‘I can’t pay that!” I said before I could stop myself. Benny threw his sippy cup and screamed.

I apologized and ordered their cheapest package -- $32 for three sheets. Benny was now bent in half from the waist, trying to dive headfirst onto the floor. I paid quickly and we raced out of the mall for a restorative snack in the McDonald’s parking lot.

Wolfing a cheeseburger, I twisted around in my Jeep’s front seat to look at a now-beaming Benny, clad only in a diaper and shorts, munching a French fry.

“We’ll make Daddy pick up the pictures,” I said.


EPILOGUE

Talked to my mother tonight and we think we can account for Benny’s behavior. Perhaps the white-draped walls and table and shiny equipment reminded Benny of the doctor’s office, where he recently received some painful shots. The bubble-hating assistant was wearing white, too. Mom said my story reminded her of when Andy was the same age, getting new shoes after his surgery. The shoe saleslady wore a white uniform, and poor Andy just fell apart.

##

Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum

Trapped at the ophthalmologist’s today, taking every bizarre eye test known to man.

It’s only due to Charles Schulz that I know what an ophthalmologist does. I always think of Linus and his new glasses, saying “My ophthalmologist says this and my ophthalmologists thinks that,” and Sally in her eye patch, educating the other kids about “lazy eye.”

I did get to wear an eye patch, although I forgot to say “yo ho ho and a bottle of rum” because the test itself was so freaking weird. You stare into a big white bowl and click a button whenever a light flashes. Simple enough, but you must also stare at an orange dot without flinching and you can only blink while clicking the button.

So I stared and blinked and clicked at anything that looked remotely like a light flash for what seemed like two years. Then the sadist technician numbed my eyes and stuck long paper strips in them to measure tear production. Then she left. So I sat there alone, head tilted back, tears pouring out, wondering if eyes were all that important anyway.

The good news was that my eyes are fine, just a little dry. All I have to do is put my entire life on hold and sit around putting drops in my eyes all day. Fine, I thought, just get me out of here.

##

Danger, Danger Everywhere

I've just about had it with women's magazines. Women’s magazine editors believe their readerships want to do four things:

1. Buy stuff.
2. Lose weight.
3. Learn the little-known dangers of peanut butter or post-it notes.
4. Absorb kicky household and parenting tips to amaze family and friends.

Parenting magazines are the worst, especially about No. 3. Good Mothers always disinfect their babies’ pacifiers in special space-age modules (See No. 1) and conduct a 10-point inspection of a playground before use. (“Inspect concrete bases of swing structure, allowing for 20 pounds of pressure per cubic …”)

Actually, that stuff doesn’t bother me much. I just like to gripe. What really upsets me are The Horrific Disorders Lurking in Your Child features. Sometimes its just pinhead mothers writing to ask, “My 1-year-old has a round tummy. Could it be cystic fibrosis?” The rest sound like this:

MOTHER’S INSTINCT SAVES CHILD

Wykker Barnes seemed a perfectly healthy child until age
(INSERT YOUR CHILD’S AGE HERE)

But then Wykker’s mother noticed that her child
(INSERT A COMMON HABIT OF YOUR CHILD’S)

The pediatrician said it was
(INSERT MUNDANE REASON FOR THE HABIT)

But Wykker’s mother had a feeling. “I knew my child,” she said. So she took Wykker to a round of specialists who finally diagnosed the child with
(INSERT HORRIFYING DISORDER HERE)

Now Wykker must wear swimming goggles and a full body cast whenever the barometer reads 29 or above. “We pray every day that Wykker will be able to lead a normal life,” Mrs. Barnes says.

##

A Boy and his Baby

I bought Benny a doll last Friday – a little bald baby in a duck costume. His cousin Sophie, 2, has a cartload of baby dolls, and Benny just adores them. I thought Benny would benefit from nurturing a dolly when he wasn’t pushing toy trucks around in a manly manner, so off we went to Toys ‘R’ Us.

Scary place, that store. We go at least once a month. Last time I bought a small picnic table to place in the dining room, dreaming of a happy boy sitting at his table, stacking wooden blocks, munching little snacks, lining up small plastic farm animals.

Instead, if we aren’t constantly vigilant, he climbs on top of the table and dumps books off a nearby cabinet. Ron spent an hour last week yelling, “Sit!" Sit on your butt!” It was a battle of wills, a Clash of the Titans, but it worked well enough that when my sister Cindy said “Sit!” while we were visiting her house, Benny promptly dropped onto his bottom with a thump.

So Benny and I are rolling through the toy store, with Benny sucking on a stuffed Clifford he’d pulled off aisle four. (“DOG!”) I scan the lavish display of dolls – most were swathed in pink, looking like the bald villain from “The Princess Bride” (“INCONCEIVABLE!”).

I finally find a baby in a duck outfit, called a PlayPet. The baby had some colleagues dressed as puppies and kittens or mountain goats or something, but Benny didn’t care. He lunged for the doll, cart straps straining, yelling “Oooh! Oooh!” Then he grabbed it, box and all, his eyes rapturously asking, “Where have you been all my life?” Clifford fell to the floor as I tussled with Benny, trying to see the doll’s price tag. Then I gave up. Like it mattered now.

So now Benny has a doll, complete with a rattle and bottle. I only had to show Benny how to feed his baby once; then he spent the entire ride home pushing the bottle into the doll’s eyes, nose and mouth, humming a tuneless lullaby. At home, he loves to grab and hug it, then drool on its face. Sometimes he gives it kisses; other times he sits on its head. But he loves it. I’ll ask, “Where’s the baby? Where’s your baby?” and he’ll run get it, then climb into my lap – sort of a Mommy holding Baby holding Baby tableau.

Maybe this sounds like I’m making too much of this, but he seems more affectionate since he got the doll. He cuddles more and now tries to kiss Ron and me. He’s learned how to hug; he’ll climb into my lap and fling his arms around my neck in a chokehold. “I love you, Benny,” I wheeze, gasping for air.

##

Monster Flu Bug

Ron, Benny and I have been wretchedly ill for a week and a half. It started two Thursday nights ago, with Benny throwing up four times in two hours. He had the stomach flu, and a more horrific bug I've never seen. It's closing schools here in southeast Michigan. Vomiting, diarrhea, fever, sweats, everything.

I started throwing up Sunday night, and then Ron started on Wednesday night. I am not exaggerating when I say I've never been this sick. Then I caught a cold on top of it. Ron was out of work for three days, that's how bad it was.

Last Thursday and Friday were the worst because Ron and I were still very ill, but Benny was better. So we lay on the couch while poor Benny whimpered and pushed toys at us. We could barely feed and change the poor child. Nobody could help us, because we wouldn't wish this thing on our worst enemy.

Finally we felt better on Sunday. Ron spent the day making up work on his laptop and I cleaned the house, while poor Benny bounced between us like a ping-pong ball.

Today is our first normal day. Benny's babysitter Anna is here right now and I'm trying to put together my resume and clippings. I've got an offer for freelance travel work for Booth Newspapers, so they need to see my stuff.

##

Europa Society Movie

You may recall that I wrote a 15-minute screenplay, "The Europa Society," a few weeks after Benny was born. Ron would watch Benny for two hours after work while I napped, then I'd write until midnight. This happened a few times a week for a month.

We filmed the thing in June, using actors from the Performance Network theater in Ann Arbor. It was screened at the Michigan Theater on Feb. 8 along with other short films.

See www.apprenticefilms.com

THE EUROPA SOCIETY

In a small town in northern Michigan, there is a small group of people who meet every month to talk about populating a small moon orbiting Jupiter, Europa.

Lead by a really, really important former Apollo mission technician, The Europa Society is not one of those crackpot, crazy clubs of people just deluding themselves into believing they can do something that is impossible. Although that does describe their crosstown rivals, The Callisto Club.

With the beautiful orange glow from Jupiter and its vast ocean beneath the thick layer of ice, Europa is one of the few places in our solar system with all the resources to sustain life. And with a target mission date of 2050, there is a lot of time to prepare. I mean, you can't just up and go 400 million miles without preparation. Now that would be crazy.

Running Time: 14 minutes 40 seconds.

The audience responded well to the movie. Some of the biggest laughs came from things that weren't script related, like Sean in a boy scout uniform setting up his ledger, strongbox and colored pencils to a military drum tap. Alicia twirling two flashlights at the logo inspired another big laugh. There was a statue of ET and a space helmet on a table and people laughed at that too. This was definitely the Movie of Funny Props.

People thought the logo was hilarious. They laughed every time it came on the screen. Rad's line: "Nobody will get that. It looks like a poster for good nutrition" was very successful. The name of Edward's latest chapter "Snowflakes of Desire" was a hit.

"The Europa Society" also won third place in the Short Subject category at the Central Michigan Film Festival. So the movie gets another screening in Mount Pleasant in April.

Yay! I'm thinking of taking a screenwriting class if I'm going to continue this. I faked this script, but I'd like to write a full-length Europa Society movie and I'd prefer to know what I'm doing.

##

Playgroup Drama: Galadriel Gets Huffy

I love Benny’s playgroup, but sometimes the mothers get a little obsessive. A rebel faction proposed meeting on Tuesdays instead of Wednesdays. Now emails fly thick and fast, filled with scheduling parries and thrusts.

Here is a gallant attempt by “Brunhilda” to restore order. This is an actual email. (Names are changed to protect the innocent. The innocent is me. I’ve got enough problems.)

brunhilda@freakymother.com wrote:

Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 11:34:30 -0500
From: brunhilda@freakymother.com
To: Christine K. and half of Ann Arbor
Subject: play date schedule revisions?

Hello!

I want to update the play date schedule with all the changes I am hearing!

Please help me clarify what we want to do in March by voting for/ranking ALTERNATE, ADD, or SWITCH (read below)!

M. would like to host tomorrow 1/12. I didn't catch the time, but her address is already on the schedule for 2/2. I also have Christine K. down for a 2/16 playdate.

(That was true, God help me. I cleaned the house for three days -- CK.)

If this is correct Christine, please send me your address and a time for that date. Thanks!

Then starting in March, it sounds like Tuesdays may work as well as Wednesdays. Do we want to ALTERNATE Tuesday one week, Wednesday the next week? Do we want to ADD a Tuesday in-home play date on weeks when we will meet at the mall on Wednesday? Do we want to SWITCH from a Wednesday schedule to a Tuesday schedule?

Let me know what you prefer by emailing me directly with your vote for ALTERNATE, ADD, or SWITCH!

Or, better yet, you could send me those three options listed in order of decreasing preference!

I'll let you know how this turns out!

Hope to see you all tomorrow! Have a great week!

Brunhilda and Thor Jr.


__________________________________________________


We were all trying to wrap our brains around that one, when “Galadriel” decided to stir the pot. This again, is an actual email.

Date: Tuesday, 03 Feb. 2005 09:00
From: galadriel@busymother.com
To: Crazy playgroup
Subject: RE: play date schedule revisions?

I hadn't seen the baby massage picture before. How adorable!

Elrond, myself and Little Legolas are going to try to make it for a little while on Saturday. We are traveling to Kalamazoo that day (I've planned a surprise party for Elrond that night!). I'm beginning to think I've overscheduled us, but I really want to make the birthday party!

Also, I wanted to re-visit the day change for playgroup. It sounds like almost everyone could do Wednesdays or Tuesdays. Arwen and I discussed the fact that we both can't do Tuesdays and we're really bummed to miss out.

Could we try alternating Wednesdays and Tuesdays? What do you all think? That way Eowyn can still come on Tuesdays and Arwen and I can still come on Wednesdays.

To complicate things further I'd like to request which Wednesdays of the month we use if we decide to do it that way ... so I can still make my neighborhood playgroup on alternate dates.

Whew...that's a lot to ask, but Little Legolas has such a blast I don't want to lose out!

Also, we need another mom's night out soon. Any suggestions?

Gally


[MY SECRET SUGGESTION WAS TO JUST PICK ONE DAMN PLAYGROUP. ANYWAY, THE CONTROVERSY JUST WOULDN'T DIE AND BRUNHILDA, THE ORIGINAL PLANNER, STARTED GETTING HUFFY. SEE BELOW.]

From: brunhilda@freakymother.com

Everyone,

I will be glad to schedule whatever the group wants. Just so you all know... it was a purely democratic decision to move the play dates to Tuesdays. When I asked for your opinions/votes a month ago only 8 people responded ...

[EVERYONE ELSE WAS PROBABLY TOTALLY CONFUSED]

... and switching to Tuesdays was the most popular response. The second most popular response was to add Tuesday play dates so there would be a Tuesday and a Wednesday meeting every week. There were no votes for alternating Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

[DO YOU THINK SHE COULD PUT ALL THIS IN A PIE CHART?]

I got a few comments that people would find it difficult to schedule other stuff around alternating play days.

Should we reconsider the options and re-vote?

Brunhilda

_____________

SO ... I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE GROUP IS DOING NOW.

They’ve got some complicated schedule going where we meet on the first Tuesday of every month, unless the date is an odd number, and on the second and fourth Wednesdays, unless the moon enters Gemini, and the third week depends on the height of the Huron River. (It’s been low lately; there’s been concern.)

Anyway, I just depend on the weekly emails now and do my best to keep up.

##

Benny's First Birthday

Whoa, what an adventure! I spent nearly 10 days in Indianapolis with Mom, who, thank heavens, is much better. She is a very tough person. Benny ended up in Holland with Cindy since Ron couldn’t watch him and go to work.

I finally got back home with the Benster and started planning his first birthday party for the following Sunday. I was considering a 30-invitation birthday open house for Benny with a circus theme, but sanity prevailed. Now I was giving mostly family event. Just Ron's brother's family and his dad, my family, our next-door neighbors and Benny's daytime babysitter.

I hauled Benny all over Ann Arbor, buying groceries, presents and pirate decorations. (I just couldn’t resist that treasure map tablecloth.) It didn't match the invites ($3 a pack at Meijer), which had rocket ships. I'm a rebel.

Ethical dilemma: If I buy a Lego TIE fighter, put it together and hang it in Benny's room, does it count as a Benny gift? Or just a cheap attempt to win Mommy kudos while indulging my love of Legos?

Then I got the flu. Out of commission for three days. I perked up around midnight on Saturday – enough to bake cupcakes and try to wrap a 19-inch Spiderman ball.

Everything went beautifully, although Benny’s poor Aunt Maureen spent a half hour assembling the cardboard treasure chest. Benny loved all the company, Ron liked helping him open presents, and when I wasn’t being weirdly obsessive about munchies and drinks, I had a great time too.

##

Christine Drives to Indianapolis

My drive to Indianapolis made one thing clear: I don’t get out enough. I was driving through a dreary January day along dreary Highway 69 to spend the weekend nursing my sick mother, and I felt as bright and frisky as a puppy.

My new Jeep Liberty took on the rainy slush like a champ as I headed west, settling into a sedate driving style punctuated by occasional manic swerves. I kept accidentally bumping the turn signal post or pushing weird buttons on the steering wheel. I learned to change my music CDs by feel – sort of. Now my audio book CD is in the Backstreet Boys CD case and the Boys now live in the Mozart CD case. Mozart, meanwhile, is trapped in the case of some weird singer Ron likes.

I rediscovered my love for travel on that drive. For nearly a year, my world was a 1,500-square-foot house and the cow path between the kitchen and baby’s room. So I hummed along to the Backstreet Boys (the mental energy equivalent of refilling the paper towel holder) as I tailgated a gigantic mobile home on a trailer, finally emerging triumphantly in a spray of rainwater. I stared at the home as I passed: pale blue, ratty, rusty, bouncing dangerously on its trailer. Where was it going? Why would anybody want to move it?

After an hour of such excitement, I pulled into a rest area wrapped in orange construction fencing and circled it twice, looking for the entrance. Then I spent a disturbingly happy 20 minutes with the large wall map and adjacent vending machines, lost in delicious indecision between cheese-pretzel combos or a Snickers bar.

I pulled back onto the highway, once more narrowly missing the Giant Blue Mobile Home of Death, which had caught up with me again, and gratefully escaped I94 to I69 South to the border. Indiana is considered a Midwestern state, but has a definite southern accent. I saw billboards for Texas ribs and listened to crooning country songs at the Fort Wayne Burger King. The state’s sudden obsession with James Dean puzzled me until I zoomed past Fairmount, the ever-boyish actor’s hometown.

Motorists zoomed past me as I poked along the right lane, giving me disappointed looks, like they expected better from a Jeep driver. A tiny Mazda pickup truck nearly flattened me as it zipped by on jacked-up tires, which nearly brought its height up to my wheel rims.

A flirtatious Shell sign lured my thirsty Jeep off the highway, but then I took a wrong turn into some rundown little Indiana town, past the faded remains of painted drugstore signs on its largest downtown building. The whole place looked soggy and closed up, except for a craft store housed in a former Chicken Shack restaurant.

I have, and I’m sure I share this with others, a great dislike of turning left onto a road. I will drive for miles down a crummy road, passing street after street on the right side, until I can find a likely place on the left to turn around. So was the case with Daleville (for that was its name). I drove two miles out of town in the wet mud before I could turn around at RainTree Estates, a rare housing complex with a name that actually describes its surroundings.

The Shell sign still eluded me, rainbow-like, so I stopped at a Subway, where the lady assembled a veggie salad, complimenting me on my choices (“Oh, yes, honey, you definitely need carrots!” and “Feta cheese is so good on salads!”) When she wasn’t raising customers’ culinary self-esteem, she was on the phone with a truck driver. “You think you’re tired? You get to sit all day; try standing 16 hours on a concrete floor.”)

The unseasonably balmy breeze had grown colder, and I hurried through the dusk to my patient Jeep. As the sky darkened and the rain picked up, I amused myself by eyeing the gas gauge (now ominously tipped below a quarter-tank) and calculating how many miles remained to Mom’s apartment. Let’s see, 46 miles to Anderson, then perhaps 20 more to Indianapolis, with three exits 50 miles apart on the 495 bypass, divide by four, carry the two …

Math wasn’t my strong suit, but I was obviously cutting it close. The Christine of five years ago would have barreled ahead anyway, peering anxiously at the gauge, thrilled with the drama of it all. This Christine had enough drama in her life. I pulled off 10 miles later in pursuit of another Shell beacon, wasting 15 minutes circling a Mighty Mart until I realized that sometimes a sign is only a sign, and the actual Shell station was across the street and a quarter-mile down.

Refreshed and renewed by 15 gallons of unleaded and a can of Coke, the Jeep and I pounded through the blowing snow, headlights blazing. Author Bill Bryson chatted on the CD player about London cabbies and leafy walking paths and fetching Roman ruins. I figured out how to operate the rear windshield defroster with some frantic button-pushing and only one near-death swerve into a rail. The snow fell harder, obscuring the road. I merged onto the 465 bypass, leaping into a dark spot in the string of rush-hour headlights, only to brake hastily before hitting an unlit sports car.

I skidded onto the Meridian Street exit and came to a hasty stop, watching the flakes swirling in front of the traffic light turn pink. Panting, I clutched the steering wheel.

“Westin was surprisingly lovely in the morning sunshine,” Bill Bryson said.

I consulted my scribbled directions under the dome light and promptly turned the wrong way, onto a dark road lined with trees. Swearing, I found a place to turn around -- on the left, of course. The Jeep skidded again as I read off street signs – Emily, Emily, where was Emily? Where are all the damn street lights? Was I even on a road anymore?

“Out in the sparkling bay an island basked in the clear clean air,” Bill said, “and beyond it rose the green hills of Wales.”

I wound around Indianapolis’ snowy streets while Bill ambled through the Cottswalds. We both reached our destinations at the same time. I pulled into a parking space across from Mom’s front door, shining my headlights into her neighbors’ living room window.

“I emerged hot, sticky but triumphant,” said Bill, who had been running down steep hills, flailing his arms like a dancer from “West Side Story.”

I knew just how he felt.

##

Benny Can Walk, But Princess Leia Can't

It happened so fast that it's sort of spooky, He hardly crawls anymore just paces up and down the living room looking detrmined.

He kinda walks like Morticia from "The Adams Family," arms held out to the sides, chin up, butt wiggling.

Meanwhile, I'm working my way through my new Star Wars DVDs. I'm halfway through "The Empire Strikes Back." What the heck is going on with Princess Leia and her sudden loss of coordination? In the action scenes, she can't take two steps without Han pushing, shoving or tugging at her. In "Star Wars," she managed to run around the Death Star just fine without some guy's support. Now she struggles to stay upright.

Not that her character amounted to much anyway in "Empire." In "Star Wars," she was the one pursued, tortured and sentenced to death. Now Luke's the one pursued, and Han gets tortured and put in mortal danger. All the poor girl can do is hang out with C3PO and snap at Lando.

Boy, I can't wait for "Return of the Jedi," where she dons a string bikini and befriends teddy bears. How Freudian is that?

##