Feeling Off-Base On Base

Our potential surrogate mother and her husband, Debbie and Brian, walked through the Dairy Queen doors. They recognized us at once—two men sitting together in a booth with a young girl across from them. We stood up and greeted them, both parties smiling awkwardly and shyly, but hopeful.

As soon as we got into their van for the short ride into the military base, I felt those hopes begin to dwindle. The van was filthy, inside and out. Not just dirty like it needed to be washed; the interior was grimy, even greasy feeling, there was so much junk all over the floors that we scarcely had room for our feet, and my seat was wet. It reeked of stale cigarette smoke, and I stared in horror at the overflowing ash tray in the dash of the van, cigarette butts and ashes crammed in and falling to the floor leaving a layer of gray and white sprinkled around it.

Debbie turned around from the front seat of the van and, glancing at the ash tray, she smiled, “I’m trying to quit, but Brian here just don’t want to.” She was missing one of her front upper teeth. The dwindling feeling turned into a sinking feeling.

After a short ride we arrived at their family housing. It was basic, and pretty much what I figured military housing would look like. The interior of the house wasn’t in bad shape like the van. It seemed fine, a healthy enough environment.

We sat down and chatted for a few minutes, small talk. Debbie and Brian were nice, but things didn’t seem to click. The subject of surrogacy scarcely came up. It was if we all sensed that this wasn’t going to work out. Amelia had gone into the back bedrooms to play with their kids, and distracting thumps and shrieks came down the hallway. Debbie got up to see what was going on, and she called for all of us to follow. So we hesitatingly followed them back to their bedroom. It turned out the kids were playing on the questionable sheets of Debbie’s and Brian’s unmade bed. We all stood around it watching them play. Awkward.

Explaining that we had a long drive ahead of us, we dropped the hint that we were ready to be taken back off the base to our car. They silently took us back, and we bade them goodbye with forced pleasantries, saying we’d call them.

We never called them. And they never called us. It just didn’t feel right for us. And it probably didn’t feel right for them.

Driving quietly back through the desert, we got a call from somebody else that we had been talking to about helping us have a baby, somebody who actually was our first choice, somebody we really trusted. She hadn’t up until that point quite decided if she would be able to logistically commit to such a big undertaking, but she was calling now to let us know that she had made up her mind. She wanted to use her own eggs, and she wanted to carry our baby.

Her name was Claire. Claire, my former wife. Claire, the mother of our other children.

In Search of the Perfect Surrogate

The comedy Baby Mama is about a woman who is unable to conceive, so she hires a surrogate mother to carry her baby. Last weekend, Giancarlo and I went to see it, and it was fun and cute and after all, how could we go wrong with Tina Fey and Ami Poehler?

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We have our own surrogacy story of sorts in our family.

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In 2002, Giancarlo and I decided we would like to have another child. He had always wanted the experience of nurturing an infant into toddlerhood and beyond. There had been no babies in his immediate family, in fact, his father's blood line would end with Giancarlo if neither he nor his brother had a child. Therefore, we agreed that Giancarlo should be the biological father.

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Well, we tried and tried but I just couldn't conceive. I even tried standing on my head afterward a few times. Nothing. The doctors said there was nothing we could do, I just "wasn't built for having babies." Hmmmmph.

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So we began to entertain the idea of surrogacy. We spoke to many different doctors, agencies, and attorneys about the process and we started having phone conversations with potential surrogate mothers. This is not a slow heartbeat, dry-palmed experience. Every time we spoke to someone new, my brain would constrict and I'd get tunnel vision, especially when we talked to somebody who seemed like a possible match. Talking to the doozies wasn't nearly as nerve-wracking. And boy were there were some doozies. Many of them just seemed desperate for cash while giving the pretense that providing an oven for somebody else's baby was their first priority.

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Finally, after a few weeks of phone calls we had narrowed it down to a woman named Debbie who lived at an airforce base with her husband and three kids out in the middle of the desert. Through our conversations we felt quite assured that Debbie would be the one; the time had come for us to meet. So we threw third grade Amelia into the back of the car and took a road trip.

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Since Debbie lived on a military base, we had to meet them just outside the base at a Dairy Queen. As we sat at the sticky table, our wide eyes glued to the door, we watched every person entering and wondered if she was Debbie, or if he was Debbie's husband. This was worse than waiting for the worst blind date ever.

Today's Special Guest on The Jason Show

I love this woman. She and I are celebrating our celebrating our 18th anniversary. You may recognize her face. Or you may not.

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This woman is brilliant. This woman is talented. This woman is witty. This woman is beautiful. This woman is determined. This woman is imaginative. This woman is a free thinker. This woman has a highly developed sense of the profound. This woman is light-hearted. This woman is bizarre. This woman speaks to me.

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This woman is Tori Amos.

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

It’s that glorious time of year again. Children and teens all over the nation are eagerly preparing for and taking high-stakes standardized tests. All the hours, days, and weeks of learning come to fruition as they show bureaucrats across districts and the entire country the knowledge they have gleaned from their studies at the feet of their illustrious teachers.

Teachers are eager as well. They feel the truth and accuracy behind standardized tests resonating within their bosoms. As they sign their required security affidavits promising to not cheat or Xerox test booklets and sell them on E-bay or the Swap Meet, they are mindful of their efforts with their students, and certain they will pay off, anticipating the happy day that they will all receive their scores. The confidence that they feel in the testing system is in itself contagious. Understanding the pertinence and complete legitimacy of these assessments keeps them well motivated.

There are numerous organizations in existence to assist teachers in properly administering these assessments. In preparation for testing proceedings, these organizations have set forth protocol and standards to which teachers must strictly adhere. In fact, teachers are given standardized tests of their own to make sure that they understand the proper procedures in the standardized testing environment. The following are some of the released test questions that have appeared on these standardized tests for teachers:

1. According to the California Association of School Testing Regimes Organization (CASTRO) what should you do if a student vomits on his test booklet?

a- Wipe it off the best you can.
b- Wrap it in a Ziploc Bag and send it to the Governator.
c- Throw the booklet away and request another one, filling in the sections your class had already finished yourself.
d- Play it cool, ignoring chunks and curds, and encourage the child to finish the test.
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2. According to the California Resource Association for Zealous Yuppies (CRAZY) what should you do if a child finishes their (quite extensive) reading comprehension section of the test in five minutes or less?

a- Just be glad they finished
b- Congratulate the student for being first to finish, because after all, it really IS a race, and their value as a human being depends on this test.
c- Angrily tell them to keep working because YOU, a college graduate, couldn’t even finish the test that quickly.
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3. According to the California Institution of Assessment, (CIA)
what will replace the signed security affidavit during next year’s round of testing?

a- a portable retinal scan kit
b- a breathalyzer test
c- a DNA sample
d- facial features recognition technology at every site
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3. According to the California Organization for New Teaching Resolutions on Learning (CONTROL), what may happen if you accidentally say a word that is not printed in your testing script?

a- An undercover agent disguised as a student in your class will report you immediately using a satellite phone.
b- You will be instantly struck by lightning.
c- All of your year’s teaching efforts will be neutralized.
d- You’ll get a very bad feeling in your heart.
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4. According to the Grant for Reevaluating Instructional Evaluation Factors (GRIEF), to heighten testing security, each school will be provided with which of the following?

a- a vault on a time-delay system
b- the services of a local security company of your choice
c- tazer guns
d- sodium penathol (truth serum) for all testers, proctors, and test handlers.

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Teachers must answer all such questions on this test in order to qualify to administer student tests.

Bunnichiladas

Bunny rabbits. Don't you just love them?

When my dad told us we'd be adding rabbits to our animal collection, I was thrilled. These cute little guys are so cuddly, so lovable, so peaceful. I have fond memories of peering into our (once again) home made rabbit hutches and seeing that a rabbit had given birth to as many as fifteen little bunnies. They were so adorable! My sister, Katrine, had one white bunny to begin with that she had a hard time naming. After quickly choosing "Luv-Luv" and discarding it almost as quickly (after my mocking) she settled on the name, "Cynthia." I let this one slide, mostly because I was too excited about my rabbit that I immediately named, "Dr. Pepper."
Well, these bunnies multiplied like rabbits. We were building hutch after hutch, but still there wasn't enough room to contain them all. In hindsight, separating the males from the females probably would have been the most effective way of taming our bunny population, but instead, my dad took to butchering them.

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One morning I was taking out the trash (this must have been after we stopped burning our garbage) and I opened the lid to the trash can and there, staring back up at me was the bodyless head of one of our biggest rabbits. It could very well have been Dr. Pepper; my infatuation with the rabbits waned as quickly as the warren grew. I immediately slammed the lid down and let out a horrified "Ohmyheck!" It was then that my mother had to start thinking of creative ways to prepare or preserve this newfound source of food that, really, tasted like chicken.
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It wasn't that rare of a sight to have several butchered rabbits sitting in the kitchen sink patiently waiting for my mom to do something with them. Friends that came to visit were particularly fascinated by this. One of my friends, Doug, was musing over them when one of the freshly dead carcasses began to twitch.
"Aaaaaaaaa! YUCK!" he belted. Then we fell down on the floor in horrified laughter.

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Mom made rabbit casserole, pressure-cooked rabbit, boiled rabbit, rabbit gravy, roast rabbit, rabbit stew, rabbit nuggets, rabbit delight, rabbit sandwiches, rabbit a la king, rabbit salad, baked rabbit, rabbit caciatore, crock-pot rabbit, rabbit fried rice, rabbit tacos, rabbit lasagna, rabbit noodle soup, even rabbit helper.
But this only put a dent in our overpopulation. As every proud Mormon woman of pioneer stock, it dawned on Mom that the best way to deal with too much food at one time was, of course, canning, or "putting them up." Thus began the boiling and cramming of rabbit meat and bones into big jars and sealing them with the special canning lids that go "pop" when they seal. After doing this for a few months, she grew weary of the process and, much to the dismay of my pioneer ancestors watching down from the Celestial Kingdom, she gave up and bought a bunch of heavy duty gallon sized freezer bags and dropped them all in the deep freezer in the basement, never to be seen again.

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A few years later, I got married. Claire's parents gave us some new living room chairs, and a nice amount of cash which we used to stock our little apartment kitchen. My parents gave us a box of jars of canned bunnies. The stab of disappointment wasn't a feeling that was new to me, but it was certainly new to my wife.

The Masturbating Monkey

Judging by the profiles of the readers of The Jason Show, it appears that most of you would be interested in reading about animals that masturbate. So, I've gone ahead and-----what? You're offended by that remark? You think I've misjudged you? You think I must be thinking about the readers of my other blog?

Well, if that's the case, then you see that little "X" in the upper right hand corner? Go ahead and click it. Sorry to be so presumptuous. Go on, go!

All right, is there anyone left besides Avitable and JLo? Oh! You? I wouldn't have pegged you for the sort of individual that would enjoy seeing images of self-pleasuring primates. Well, whaddya know? In that case, you might like to know that this masturbating monkey has robin egg blue testicles.

Click here if you're a perv.

Disclaimer: You can actually click in all confidence that I would never misguide you into something you may not like. My friend, Pumpkin Delight, went on a trip to Africa and she took some pictures of a monkey that was hanging around her cabin. It's really very cute. But he IS masturbating, and he DOES have blue balls.

Need a Good Book? (2008 Edition)

I've been appointed historian of my book club! This prestigious honor has prompted me to update the list of books that I posted last spring. So here it is....so go on....choose a book.....and happy reading! Oh, if you've read any of these, I'd love to hear your comments about them. And if you have any great recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

Looking for a good read? Your search has come to an end. For the past four years I’ve been in a book club, which is something that I had always wanted to do. We meet once a month for dinner to discuss the book of the month. It has been so much fun. I have enjoyed most of the books, some more than others. One of the best parts of the book club is that it guides me into reading things I would never choose on my own. In my pre-book club years, I was stuck in a rut, reading only a certain kind of book, which usually fell into the category of trashy supermarket novels. Now, my horizons have been expanded! I’ve rated these books on my own very exclusive 5-star scale:
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The Other Boleyn Girl*****
By Phillipa Gregory
Fascinating, entertaining, and historical! I avoided this book for a couple of years, but then it was chosen as a book club read, and I'm very glad.
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What the Dead Know****
by Laura Lippman
This book is a twisty, turny mystery that will keep you guessing til the end.
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No One Belongs Here More Than You***
by Miranda July
If you like quirky short stories, this book's for you. I do, and I liked it.
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Water for Elephants****
by Sara Gruen
I never imagined I would love a circus story so much. But this story had it all, mystery, intrigue, passion, and murder.
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The Tortilla Curtain***
by T.C. Boyle
This is the story of illegal Mexican immigrants living in a a dry river bed in Topanga Canyon, just a mile away from a prestigious upper scale community. This story is too close to the truth.
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Shattered Dreams****
by Irene Spencer
Ohhh, boy. Ready for an amazing true story written by a polygamist's wife?
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Notes from a Small Island*
By Bill Bryson
Okay, I have a confession. I ordered the wrong book for this particular month's book club, so didn't really read this one. I tried, kind of, but I couldn't get into it.
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The Glass Castle: A Memoir *****

By Jeanette WallsThis book is one of the best memoirs I have read. Loved it!

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The Barrytown Trilogy **

By Roddy Doyle
Very Irish, very funny, when you can understand it.

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Mirror, Mirror ***

By Gregory Macguire
This author also wrote Wicked. His style is very weird, yet enjoyable.

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A Long Way Down ****

By Nick Hornsby
A funny book about people who want to commit suicide.

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My Sister’s Keeper ****

By Jodi Picoult
Gut wrenchingly sad, but a great story.

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The Five People You Meet in Heaven ***

By Mitch Albom
A nice little story, but I was a bit bored.

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The Year of Magical Thinking**

By Joan Didion
Another memoir, about grieving , I didn't love it.

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The Memory Keeper’s Daughter ****

By Kim Edwards
Interesting story about a doctor who gives away his Down's Syndrome baby.

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In Cold Blood*

Truman Capote
The true story of multiple murders.

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The Davinci Code *****

By Dan Brown
Very famous book, and for good reason. If you haven't read it yet, get on board, it's exceptional.

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Naked *****

By David Sedaris
By far the funniest book I have ever, ever read. Also a memoir.

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The Birth of Venus *****

By Sarah Dunant
A captivating tale about reinaissance Florence and a woman who wants to be an artist, which was unheard of at the time.

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The Thirteenth Tale *****

By Diane Setterfield
Ohh so good! Suspenseful, interesting, "ghost" story.

If you don't read anything else on my list, read this one.

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The Family Tree ****

By Carole Cadwalladr
A story about a dynfunctional family and depression. Very insightful.

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Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books **

By Azar Nafisi
This book was written at a post-doctorate reading level. It was very high quality, great story, but I had a difficult time understanding it.

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The Kite Runner ****

By Kahled Hosseini
Sad historical fiction about Afghanistan. Great story.

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Other People’s Dirt: A Housecleaner’s Curious Adventures ***

By Louise Rafkin
The title says it all. Mildly interesting and funny, but nothing remarkable.

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Little Children *****

By Tom Perrotta
Fascinating! The movie was equally so.

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Love in the Time of Cholera *

By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Yawn. I did not join the book club to read classics. I'm sorry. Too hard to follow.

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Breathing Lessons *****

By Anne Tyler
My most treasured author, and one of her best books. She takes the every day and turns it into something amazing.

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The Great and Secret Show **

By Clive Barker
The most memorable book we've read, simply because of its truly bizarre nature. Science fiction.

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The Secret Life of Bees ****

By Sue Monk Kidd
Wonderful, meaningful story.

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The Life of Pi ***

By Yann Martel
Great story, fiction. One of my book club friends read the whole thing thinking it was true and was sooo bummed when she found out it wasn't.

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Middlesex ****

By Jeffrey Eugenides
A riveting story about a hermaphrodite.

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The Power of One: The Classic Novel of South Africa *

Bruce Courtenay
This was a nice story but bored me to tears.

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The Time Traveler’s Wife ***

By Audrey Niffenegger
Pretty good read, keep an open mind with this one.

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The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary **

By Simon Winchester
Interesting, but I wouldn't recommend it. The best part of this book was when we all had to form lists of our favorite words.

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The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time **

By Mark Haddon
Everyone loved this book, but I just couldn't get into it. Autism is the main theme.

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Mrs. Dalloway *

By Virginia Woolf
Bleck. Read The Hours instead. Reading Virginia Woolf is like trying to make sense out of insanity. Oh, wait. That's what it is. It did have some interesting insights about depression, though.

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Good Omens *

By Neil Gaiman and Terry Prachett
Quite humorous, but I couldn't get past its quirkiness and difficulty to understand in order to enjoy the humor.

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Wifey **

By Judy Blume
Betcha didn't know the author of Tales of a Fouth Grade Nothing and Superfudge also writes porn! Tra-aaaa-shy!

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These are outstanding non-book club books that you might consider:

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The God in Flight *****

By Laura Argiri
This was an amazing, beautifully crafted story that left me thinking about it for weeks to come.

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Running With Scissors *****

By Augusten Burroughs
Hysterical! Unbelievable! Loved it!

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Dry ****

By Augusten Burroughs
The sequel to Running With Scissors. Also very good.

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Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim ****

By David Sedaris
Same author as Naked, also quite funny.

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Angels and Demons *****

By Dan Brown
Same author as The Davinci Code. Outstanding.

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She’s Come Undone *****

By Wally Lamb
Very funny and touching.

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The Lovely Bones****

By Alice Sebold
Sad but meaningful story about a murdered girl who watches her family from heaven .

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Well, what are you waiting for? Go find some books!

Jason Plays the Victim

During my growing up years in predominantly Mormon Utah Valley, I was a victim. Starting at age three, every time I walked near the Prowse's house, a mob of them would storm out of the house and beat me up. It's as if they sat near the window all day waiting for me to walk outside so they could attack me. I'd hobble back home, wailing, bleeding, scraped, and missing clumps of hair.
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In elementary school, I was perpetually victimized, either verbally or physically. I recall one afternoon running all the way from school to primary (church), with kid named Norman in hot pursuit, eager to smash my face in. Another time a kid hit me in the face with a chair and broke my nose. And another time a bunch of kids a couple of years younger than me ganged up on me and scratched me til I bled, pushed me down on the ground, and kicked me until I scrambled to my feet and ran like the wind.
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On a daily basis I endured harsh taunting words like, "you faggot," or "pussy," or "homo," or "dick," or "fem." Some kids asked me why I let my mother dress me the way she did. Other kids laughed, whispered, and pointed.
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P.E. was a living nightmare. Don't even ask. That is a whole topic in and of itself.
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The worst things happened, ironically, at church. Yes, church. Getting slammed up against the wall with cruel thirteen year-old fingers around my neck. Showing up with a new green homemade suit one Sunday morning and having a fine young Mormon boy sneer, "I used to have a suit like that. . . but then my dad got a job." Being completely ignored and isolated by my fellow Aaronic priesthood holders. Feeling obligated to go to church in show of my devotion to God, but dreading it intensely.
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It was along about this time that I finally started to realize that there must have been something that I was doing to make myself a target. I wasn't certain what it was all about, but I had a vague idea. So I shut down my entire personality, speaking only when absolutely necessary, in a complete zombie-like tone.
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Then it finally subsided and eventually went away when people forgot what my personality was really like.
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And thinking back, do you wanna know what the real kicker is in all of this?
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I never said a word about it. To anyone.

Unimaginably Tragic. But Funny.

Alzheimer's is an emotionally devastating and physically depleting disease for all involved, especially for the primary caregiver, which usually ends up being a spouse or a son or daughter. I can't fathom all of its implications.

But as in so many tragic situations, you have to find the funny in the midst of the horrific. Or you'll drive yourself mad.

My dad is currently experiencing this very thing. His wife is in the intermediate stages of Alzheimer's, and my ever-so-fabulous sister-in-law, Kira, recounts their recent visit to our father's house in rural Idaho over on her blog, Never Full Skeletons, Just Fragments. You'll be glad you did. And while you're there, at the beginning of the post you'll be treated with a photograph of all my brothers and their wives (on the left) and my little family of my own (on the right.)

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(Canned waiting music goes here.)

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Hmmm-mmmm-mmmmmm, la, la, la.

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Huh? Oh! Hi! You're back.

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My own grandparents suffered from Alzheimer's during their last few years. On one occasion, I took my wife and two little daughters to see them, unsure of how long they would be around. Of course, there were many repeated questions and identity confusions, like, "So, Jason, where's your wife? Katrine sure looks different."

The story that stuck with me came about as my grandpa asked me over and over,

"So Jason, what kind of sickness does your mom have?"

"She has cancer."

Two minutes later:

"Your mom's been sick, huh? Is she better yet?" he asked again, pulling a cookie out of his shirt pocket.

"No, she's not doing too well. She has cancer."

"Oh, oh, oh. That's too bad," munching on a cookie from his other shirt pocket.

Three minutes after that:

"What's wrong with your mom? Is she getting better?"

At this point, my exasperated grandmother, who reminded me of a milder version of George Costanza's mother, barked, "Ohhh, Rosssssssss, she has CANCER!!! Ya don't git better from CANCER!!!"

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See what I mean? The funny in the tragic.

The Basement

Warning: This episode of The Jason Show is especially long and should only be read when you have the chance to read at a leisurely pace. Furthermore, this may be my most disturbing post of all.

Not For the Feint at Heart
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This is dedicated to my brothers and their wives; my sister and her husband; and Giancarlo and our children, in hopes that they will better understand the main setting of our formative years, and how it may have influenced our psychological make-up and emotional responses to various situations. And for you, dear bloggy friends, well, I'm not sure exactly what you're supposed to get out of this.

During an unexpected trip to Utah last year, I was able to spend time with my younger brothers and their wives. Inevitably, when we get together the subject of The Basement comes up. When we discuss, reminisce, and marvel over what really was the center of our childhoods, our spouses make comments like, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe you turned out so normal," or "This is explaining a lot," or "Every time we get together I hear another story that is worse than all the rest."

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Growing up in The Basement, I knew it was all wrong. Nobody told me, but there was this inner voice shouting, "This is all wrong!" It may have been the still, small, voice trying to protect me from harm. I don't know.
So allow me to take you on a tour:

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The Stairs

Picture, if you will, a staircase leading from an unbelievable mess of a kitchen (that's a whole other blog) down to a dank, dark basement. Let's decend. Be careful! There aren't really actually stairs anymore since my little brothers recarpteded. Oh, it certainly needed to be done. However, for some reason, they didn't tear out the old carpet and padding. They just put the carpet right over the old, which turned it into kind of a cushy, bumpy carpet slide. Be aware as you walk. You have to kind of turn your feet so they fit in the three inch landing on each step. If you'd rather, you can just sit down and slide. It might be safer.
"Whew!" We made it to the bottom without falling to our deaths. "Watch out!" Oh, too late. You just stepped in dog crap. It is always at the bottom of the stairs. For some reason, that is the dog's preferred place. Sometimes it will sit there for days before somebody finally gets disgusted enough to at least halfheartedly clean it up.
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The "Family Room"
Moving on and turning to the room on the right, we are greeted by the family room. I see you're wondering what the smell is. Well, look around a bit and you'll see that there are dishes with moldy, crusted over, rotten food on them that have been sitting there for at least a month, maybe two. Don't mind all the trash and piles of miscellaneous stuff strewn about. Do you like all the couches? Everybody gets their own couch. We've been very fortunate that people know that we're a bit needy. Whenever the neighbors get a new couch, they give us their old one. Oh, except for that plaid one, it's from D.I. Don't sit on the one with the burnt orange slipcover that is half torn off, the springs have broken on one side, and you might sink in and get the poke of your life!
Would you like to watch some tv? Here's the remote. Well, it's actually a pair of pliers. Just get up and stick into the hole where the channel knob used to be, squeeze, and turn to the channel of your choice. Sorry; there are only three channels to choose from. Four, if you count KBYU.
If you ever come back and want to watch tv, just make sure the basement isn't flooded when you go to change the channel. My sister, Katrine, made that mistake and they got a shock to remember, that's for sure!
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Raw Sewage and Irrigation Water

What's that? You're wondering about the basement being flooded? Ah, well, you kind of learn to get used to it, I guess. Except when it's raw sewage. That's a bit hard to overlook. You see, sometimes the flooding comes from the window wells, like when we have an irrigation turn and the water gets out of dad's control (there's really only so much one man can do with a shovel to combat a large ditch full of water rushing through property where the house is at the lowest level) and the water comes rushing into the window wells and then leaks into the rooms, putting at least six inches of water onto the floor. And the sewage flooding is when the septic tank gets too full and it backs up into the drains on the basement floor. That usually happens when the washing machine is draining and someone flushes the toilet at the same time. Don't worry, sometimes it gets cleaned up sort of.
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The Scary Room

Anywho! Moving across the hall, we have The Scary Room. Kindly step through the blanket (don't slam it) doorway into the darkness. Watch your step. More dog poop, broken canning jars mixed with sticky peaches, rancid tomatoes, or (God forbid) a rabbit carcass. Where is that lamp? Oh there. Well, that's at least a little bit of light. All this stuff is just junk that for some reason is being held onto. Boxes of who knows what, Dad's old art supplies, and the deep freeze. Let's look inside. Hmmmm. Just frozen rabbits, chickens, and maybe some ground goat meat. Oh, and down at the bottom are the old ice cream buckets full of trout frozen in ice. We caught those in Idaho maybe, oh, eight years ago?

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The Bedrooms

Let's get out of here. Moving down the hall we come to three bedrooms. Technically, two bedrooms, and one tiny unfinished bathroom that someone is temporarily claiming as their bedroom. The bed barely fits and that's all. Other than the furnace, water heater, and a big empty tank that was supposed to be part of a revolutionary heating system involving a wood burning stove that never really worked without spewing massive plumes of smoke into the house.
Each of the bedrooms has been appointed with a blanket doorway allowing privacy and insulation from the noisy family. Not much satisfaction comes from slamming the blanket in a fit of anger, I have to say! It does provide a sense of a barrier between me and the chaos on the other side. Ahh, here we are, my bedroom. My oasis. My escape. My haven, if you will. Yes, it does have salvaged orange and red shag carpet that needs to be raked rather than vacuumed. But it's mine and I prefer it over cement. Like two of my walls. While they're unfinished cement I have done a nice job decorating with odds and ends found throughout the house. Look at this decoration. Looks like modern art, right? Actually, it is a stainless cup and toothbrush holder that fastens into the wall, but I've turned it on its side, and voila! Modern art.
The hanging blanket next to mine is the entrance to a small bathroom. However, it was never finished, each of my brothers at one time or another, in an effort to have a bit of privacy, has staked it out as their bedroom. Literally, a room that has space for a small bed, that's it. Wall to wall bed.
Across the hall is a room that several of my brothers inhabited at one time or another. Whoever was living it it at the time had the most pranks played on him, due to its proximity to my room. Poor Ray, especially. He lived in it while I was in my most mischievous phase of life. Instead of getting into trouble at school or around the neighborhood, I wreaked havoc on these unsuspecting boys. I would go into Ray's room while he was sleeping and slowly drip water onto his face, or yell at him that he was late getting up and he was going to miss the bus. Once he actually fell for that one and got dressed and went upstairs and started eating a bowl of cereal at 1:30 in the morning. Other times I would pull panty hose over my face and hold a flashlight under my chin. I would then get very close to his face and make groaning noises. Ahh, the good old days!

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The Sewing Room/Laundry Room
Our last stop is our mom's sewing room/laundry room. When we moved into the house she had such great plans for this room. This was where she was going to run her designer jeans business. This is where she set up shelves so she could organize all of her fabric. She went to other great lengths to make this room a place of her own. What really happened was that it became (one of the many) catch-all places for stuff that people didn't want, or were just too lazy to put it anywhere else. The folding table, which was supposed to serve the dual purpose of folding clothes and cutting big pieces of material, turned into the great mound of wrinkled, graying (but clean!) clothes. I don't think any of us ever really got to the bottom of it; I'm sure Mom never did. What really brought this room to its lowest level was when the septic tank started backing up and sewage began gurgling up through the floor drain. This happened repeatedly over the span of probably a couple of years until Ray, the most resourceful one of us all, cut the bottom out of a 5 gallon bucket and caulked it right down to the floor with the drain in the middle. That way, whenever somebody was brushing their teeth and someone else was flushing the toilet, the vile refuse would fill the bucket up, coming alarmingly close the rim of the bucket, and then slowly drain back down until the next episode. If I happened to be in the room getting laundry and this would happen, I would gaze down into the bucket, whispering under my breath, "Pleasegodown, pleasegodown, pleasegodown."
Ray loves to tell the story about how, the day after he had installed the five gallon bucket sewage catcher, Dad wandered into the room, noticing that it was stuck to the floor. "Ohh, what the hell is this? Judas priest!" And he grunted until he had busted it off the floor. Needless to say, Ray was quite frustrated with this response, and he promptly caulked it right back down again after chastising Dad.

This is also the room where I spent two or three summers sewing barbie clothes for my sister's barbies. And people were surprised when I came out of the closet.

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Ahhhh
Such fond memories. There are so many more things that I could say about The Basement, so many other details I've left out and events that I have skipped, but alas, if you have actually read this whole post down to this point, you certainly are weary of it. Perhaps some day I will write a sequel. If you want.

It's Not WHAT You Know. . .

It's who you know.

Last Friday The Jason Show had 68 hits. This Friday (today) it's had 743 hits. Why? Because Bossy put The Jason Show on the clever guess and press feature of her blog, as well as linked me in today's post.

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But that's not really what I wanted to talk about today. Today I want to talk about how I just hate meeting new people and making small talk with them, especially knowing that I most likely will never see them again in my life. And it has nothing to do with them, it's me. You see, at my core, I'm painfully shy. I lack social grace. I don't schmooze very well. In a big group of strangers, I prefer to just shut down. A big cynical part me says, "Why bother? Why make the effort if I'll probably never cross paths with this person again, or at least not hardly ever?"

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That being said, I was pretty much terrified of going to The Sagebrush Cantina and meeting a big group of people I didn't know. Luckily, Pumpkin Delight graciously accompanied me, so I was much more at ease. However, once we sat down I soon realized that this particular group of people was different. They were very friendly, we all had things in common with our love of blogging being the main common thread. Once I realized this, my feelings of apprehension were dispelled. And as you may have gathered, Bossy (Georgia) and her persona helped a great deal with that. Besides that, I will cross paths with all of these people in the blogging world, and as virtual as it is, it is also very real.

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Bossy said some very insightful things that evening. The one that has stuck with me the most is that just because you haven't necesarily met someone in person doesn't mean that they aren't actual friends. What an amazing day and age we live in where we can become fast friends with somebody on the other side of the country or the other side of the world without even having met them. While blogging connections take place in the virtual scenario of the world wide web, they are real connections. And those real connections are what we humans crave.

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These are the fellow Bossy fans I met Wednesday night. I'm sure glad I did.

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Kelly: West Coast Grrlie Blather - www.grrl.wordpress.com
Barbra: www.Notjustbarbra.blogspot.com
Glennis: glennisw@verizon.net

Leah: www.leahpeah.com
Suebob: www.redstapler23.blogspot.com
Melanie (my neighbor, as it turns out!) : www.vintagethirty.blogspot.com
Jennifer: www.motherscribe.blogspot.com
Erin (also my neighbor!) : www.queenofspainblog.com
Mary: Fightin' Mad Mary: www.whereisgoodservice.blogspot.com
Glozell: www.glozell.com
Shayera: www.shayera.blogspot.com
Megan: www.undomesticdiva.com

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Check them out! They're all remarkable, and they all had nearly identical interpretations of our evening with Bossy.

Sigh. Gush. Sigh.

I Love to Travel

In theory.

It always sounds like so much fun and I have all of these amazing places I'd like to go. But when it comes right down to it, especially when traveling with young children, I don't love to travel. In actuality it makes me cranky.

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It all boils down to the fact that I'm a creature of habit and a creature who loves his creature comforts. I like my routine, and I like having all the things that conveniently fit into my routine at hand. Like my refrigerator's reverse osmosis water filter. . . an endless supply of cool, clean water always available. Sure, are places to buy water when one travels. But not unlimited and virtually free, and not out of a glass.

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Or my own shampoo and conditioner. Yes, one could bring his own. But packing those big bottles is just a hassle, especially if you're flying. Hotels provide shampoo and conditioner, but you never really know what your hair will look like when you use them. During this brief trip to San Diego, I used the hotel toiletries and my hair was flat and lifeless. Drab, if you will. I assumed it was the sea air. I assumed it was the quality of the products. Come to find out, it was actually because I didn't read the bottles closely enough and I had been conditioning my hair with body lotion the whole time! And so had Giancarlo.

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When I travel I inevitably feel an imminent case of scurvy coming on. Try as I might, I just can't seem to get enough fruits and vegetables. Sure, I could just pack some fruit to put in the hotel room, right? Well, that is one of those little things that seems to be to be just way to hard to think about amidst all the other details of packing.

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Then there's the heavy issue of coffee. Where will I get it? Will I get it on time? Will I like it? Will I still feel sleepy? What if I get a headache? Will I have to resort to popping a caffeine pill which will take away my headache and drowsiness but in turn give me the shakes? Okay, okay. I know. I have caffeine issues.

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And if you've ever traveled with young children, you know what that can be like. A circus. An exhausting feat. Crazy making. It can be your demise, your undoing, and as an anonymous, nameless, unremarkable blogger that I haven't thought twice about says, it's enough to make you drink gin straight from the cat bowl.

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Well, I've done it. In my own fresh way, I have gone and turned into my father. He never liked to travel, which is why we never went anywhere to speak of. But instead of coming up with a lame list of excuses and pretexts like I am doing, he just came up with one really big one:

The president of the Mormon church during my growing up years, Ezra Taft Benson, was the devil incarnate. He was hunting down my dad, and since he had control of the freeways, that would make Dad an easy target. So we had to stay home in order to keep him out of Evil's way.

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Well. At least I don't have to worry about that.

Kylie Minogue, Homeland Security, and Amoebas

Sunday morning I loaded up my car and began a little excellent roadtrip of my own. I drove from LA to San Diego to Tijuana to pick up Giancarlo and Diego from the airport. The freeways were clear, the sun was shining, my car was clean, and I was getting great gas mileage. To ice that cake, I listened my new favorite feel-good CD: Kylie Minogue -X. If you need a little musical lift, I highly recommend it. The music is catchy, upbeat, fun, and a little bit different from Kylie's previous stuff. This CD is a particular triumph to me because it is Kylie's first one since tackling breast cancer and surviving.

My mood changed once I crossed over the border and began maneuvering through the streets of Tijuana. Apparently, taxis don't have to follow traffic rules. After circling the airport a few times I found Giancarlo and Diego. Was it nice to see them after a week? Of course! And we had plenty of time to catch up while we waited for three hours in line to get back over the border. It took us longer to go one mile than it took me to go 150 miles earlier that morning. And by the time we got over I had to pee so badly that my kidneys ached. Throbbed. A lot. And it took them a few hours to stop. That's not good, is it?

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Oh, and I have singlehandedly figured out why illegal immigration and homeland security is such an issue in our country. Three hours of waiting and THE BORDER AGENTS DON'T CHECK THE TRUNKS OF THE CARS. I could have had a whole family in my trunk and nobody would have known the better!

About and hour later we were checked in to our hotel near Seaport Village. Beautiful. The view, the hotel, the area, just tremendous. But, the carpets are dirty and there was no complimentary internet access, which at the price we are paying per night, it should be included! And does anybody else have issues with the whole coffeemaker in the bathroom thing? Right next to the toilet?

We found a nice place for dinner and toward the end Diego began complaining about pain in his tummy, and it was getting continually worse. You see, while in Mazatlan, Diego picked up amoebas and had undergone treatment for them. However, it seemed that there was still a problem. So. . . what better way to start a vacation than a few hours in the emergency room in an unfamiliar city? Throw in some stool samples, and you've got a realy fun time!

Fortunately, the next day Diego felt much better and I took him to Legoland, which he loved.

The End

The BOSSY Countdown: 2 days

Well, folks, the day that you've all been ANXIOUSLY awaiting is nearly here. Tomorrow, I will meet BOSSY in all of her wittiness and gloriousness and beautifulness. I know that you'll all be eagerly logging on Thursday morning to see how it all went.

My dear sister and my dear friend Tami have been giving me a few little nuggets of thought to chew and on obsess over:

• What if Bossy is an axe murderer?
• What if her road trip is all a big hoax in order to get me to open my home to us so she can do all kinds of harm to my family?
• What if Bossy skins me alive and makes a body suit for herself out of my skin?
• What if Bossy is just mean and rude?
• What if she's just too tired from her treck across America to even speak to me?
• What if she doesn't want to sleep in my in-law's religious sanctuary?
• What if she's a thief and she steals all of the family jewels?
• What if she only likes people for the content of their blogs? Mine isn't the funniest or most clever or most interesting. Does that mean she will only see me as mediocre?

• WHAT IF BOSSY JUST DOESN'T LIKE ME?

Thanks a lot, Katrine and Tami! Just when I thought I had finally gotten over my adolecent insecurities about meeting people!

Myles of Style at Wanna Iguana

Today I was at a local Wanna Iguana for lunch. I had just finished filling my cup with Diet Pepsi when I turned around, and who was waiting in line to order her Fresh Mex? Kim Myles, of HGTV's Myles of Style, and winner of last season's Design Star! I was bold and not the least bit shy. I walked right over to her and said, "I just want to tell you that I love your show. And I voted for you." She flashed that cheerful and dazzling smile and thanked me. Not wanting to be stalkerish, I quickly retreated to the salsa bar.

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Some of you probably don't understand, but this is the equivalent for me of meeting last season's winner of Top Model, Top Chef, The Bachelor, or even, yes, American Idol would be for many of you. I texted my vote every day within the voting period for Kim to win. And, thanks to my votes, she did!

Heh, heh, heh. Another connection to fame.

DIEGO DEMANDS to know

"Is Amelia taking medication? What are her symptoms?"

The BOSSY Countdown: 7 days

BOSSY + Avitable = BIG TROUBLE

Bossy still hasn't posted about her time in Orlando, home of the infamous Adam Avitable. So today I'm sending you over to his place to check out the wild fun they had.