the neat freak in me

i have always been extremely neat. as a child, i can remember going to the neighbor's houses to play and taking great delight in pulling everything out of their child's messy closet, and putting it all back in neatly.

my mother is an immaculate house keeper. meaning, she moves the furniture to vacuum. baseboards are part of her repertoire. she came by it honestly. her mother used to follow us grandkids around with a wet rag and an eagle eye. i am not clean, not like that. but my mother was not clutter free. and i am.

i don't judge others for being sloppy. not unless i live with them. i remember one time, visiting a favorite aunt, our dog went under her dresser and came out with a bar of soap in her mouth. this was hilarious and unimaginable to me. i loved it.

and i've had my share of not-so-neat roommates. one girl never unpacked the whole four or five months i lived with her. she didn't have a closet, so all her clothes stayed in huge moving boxes and she would just rummage around for something to wear.

another was an excellent cook, but would leave every dirty pot right where it cooked. for hours. overnight. until myself or the other roommate couldn't stand it anymore and would clean it. she boasted to me one time that growing up her mother never made her clean her room. i made a mental note of this. and now, 17 years later, a clean room is a requirement to live in this home.

if you are meticulously neat, you can't help it. it's just the way you were drawn. my husband's grandmother is the same way. she will tell me that she couldn't possibly go to bed if there was one dirty dish in her kitchen sink. i tell her that, well, i could. and frequently do. but, most everything else is in its place. a place for everything, and everything in its place.

one of my obsessions is homes that are beautifully done. i love them. i drink them in. i want to look at every single thing.

there is a woman, a friend of friends, who lives in my neighborhood. i had never met her but i had heard from several others that her home was amazing. to die for. this was pure torture for me, a thing of beauty so near, yet so far away.

somehow, i think our sons were on a baseball team together, i finally met her. and i made it my personal goal to find a way into her home. much like you do when you are in someone's home, and you say you need to use the restroom, so you can check that out, too. believe me, i know all the tricks.

well. she had a garage sale and told us - her new friends - that we could come by beforehand to check out the loot. because this woman's trash is everyone's treasure. this was jackpot for me. let me just tell you, she had me at the garage. it was painted green. the cabinets had fancy handles. the floor was spotless. i was like a burglar with a key and the passcode. i made it into the house.

it was all that. two staircases. the kitchen had a piano. not a detail overlooked. homey yet traditional. huge yet cozy. i picked out the room i would want to live in if she invited me to stay forever.

but, there were days - weeks even - that i would have also wanted to stay forever at my aunt's house, the one who loses bars of soap. why? because love lived there. and you could feel it.

when my husband and i were first married, we lived near rice university, and across the way from a very fancy neighborhood. we would go walking there at night, at twilight, when people's blinds were still open but they were beginning to close their homes up for night. not all of the homes were huge, and some of the smaller ones were way more charming. i'd see potted geraniums on a porch, or a cat in a window and i'd say, "look. love lives there." he'd laugh at me, but he knew what i meant.

and love appears in different forms. it's more of a feeling or a vibe that is transmitted. and for me, love is tidy. it is order.

so i won't judge you for being a slob. just don't judge me for following you around with a wet rag.

why i watched obama with my kids

when my kids got home from school today, my mother and i watched obama's speech to schoolchildren with them.

i felt two strong emotions while watching it. extreme pride to be an american. to live in a country that could elect a black president, who rose above all odds to win the presidency. and deep shame, that for veiled reasons and beliefs, so many schools here in texas - including ours - chose not to show it.

it was a wonderful speech. and i kept thinking, how sad that some of these young boys (and girls) in my sons' school, who do not have a good role model or father to look up to have missed out on this most simple and important of messages: stay in school. work hard. study.

i read some remarks written by "christians" online, suspicious of his intents. citing propaganda. quoting the bible. making comparisons to hitler. i wish i was kidding. one said, "when i heard it (the speech) i laughed since it's obvious that he doesn't believe a word of it!" in response i could only write one word. WOW. and not wow in a good way.

the simple truth is that it freaks a lot of people out that he is black. they hide it behind other words like "muslim" or "socialist," because you can not very well say, "i don't like having a black president."

but the truth is, more people than not voted for him. my mother, for the first time in maybe her whole adult life, voted democrat. and as i have become fond of saying, you can't hand obama the ingredients for shit soup and expect filet mignon.

the fear-mongerers will continue to scream and yell. the extreme right wing will keep trying to discredit this president, no matter what he does.

one of my facebook friends posted this, and i wholeheartedly agree: "it is a dark day for democracy when schools charged with instilling patriotism in our children tell them that they can decide to turn a deaf ear to a message of hope from our president. to every administrator who allowed an opt out: take down the flags in front of your schools and burn them, you have disgraced their meaning. hang your heads in shame."

we are all american. but it sure doesn't feel like it today.

the night in which there was a fire

today someone made me chocolate chip cookies. bought my son and me a shrimp ring. took my other son to his baseball practice. waited on my children so i could just sit and read. that person was my mother. we have invaded her house like a tribe of demanding gypsies and she could not be happier.

we have been here now for three days. and three nights. our stuff is strewn all about her house. she has given up her own bed so that her grandson, who sleeps like a starfish, can have the whole thing. we arrived here at 2 a.m. sunday morning and she didn't complain. she was just happy we were alive.

this is because our garage caught on fire saturday night. and it is finally a good thing that we are vampires and stay up half the night.

i had just fallen asleep when i heard the electricity click off. that is not a happy sound to anyone who lived through hurricane ike. because you immediately recall having prep time to hunker down. and the insanity that ensues from days upon days with no electricity. and you remember the destruction. but i digress.

my husband went out front to see if the neighborhood was blacked out. but no, other people had lights. then, as he was walking back up the driveway, he saw a blue flame through the garage window. on the breaker box. in a closed garage that held a car and gas cans. at 1:30 in the morning.

this story might have a very different ending if we had been sound asleep. take a look at our neighbor's garage:



they had thrown warm coals into a garbage can. the details of what happened next are fuzzy and varied, but a few minutes later their garage pretty much exploded. and it took much of their house with it.

as fires go, ours was very small. it melted some buttons and blew out our electricity. turns out we had faulty wiring. we got it fixed today. we are going home tomorrow.



the same night, my husband's young cousin was driving home from denton. it was late, it was dark, she was alone with her cat. she saw the car in front of her brake hard, and a deer come flying towards her windshield. her car flipped and she had to be cut out of it.

she is fine. her cat is fine. we are all fine.

but isn't life always just a hair away from not being fine? if we had been asleep. if she had been driving on an overpass. if this. and if that. most of the time it doesn't happen to you. but sometimes we all get a jolt.

it's one of those things that quickly puts everything into perspective. like a fatal diagnosis. so to summarize, let me just recap for you what is not important: it is not important that my husband's cousin totaled her car. it is not important how much money it costs to fix wiring and replace a fuse box.

what is important. safety. health. staying alive. go hug someone you love today.