--- My deal has officially

--- My deal has officially been queered for the day. And it’s not
even ten o’clock. The husband just got an email from his mother
detailing a dream she had last night…about me.

Now, I haven’t the foggiest clue as to why the mother-in-law would be dreaming about me.
Personally, I think she tries to forget about me as much as she
possibly can. I know she doesn’t hate me, as some mother-in-laws hate
the women who marry their sons. I just don’t think she likes me all
that much. The reasons for this dislike are many, but I think it mainly
boils down to the fact I am not the woman she envisioned her baby boy
marrying. That’s fine. I don’t think he envisioned marrying
a woman like me, either. We’re not close and to sum up our
relationship quickly, I’ll just say that we’ve never really gotten
beyond discussing the weather whenever we do chat, and then two seconds
later she asks if the husband is available to chat. For whatever
reason, this odd form of détente works most of the time. She stays in
her court; I stay in mine, and we’re polite enough to let the line
judges make their calls. And it works. Don’t ask me why, but it does.
The husband doesn’t seem to mind, either. So, it makes absolutely no
frigging sense to me as to why I inhabited her mind as she slept last
night. Seems I was pregnant in this dream, but no one knew about it
until after I’d given birth because I didn’t show. And the baby could walk when they were one day old.

The Freudians whom I’m sure make up a huge portion of my audience are now nodding their heads and saying Hmmmm. Seems to me Grandma wants some more grandkids.
I personally think it means she doesn’t know me all that well. I will
undoubtedly swell up to the size of the blue ribbon winning hog when I
become pregnant and it will be obvious to the whole world. And second,
dear God, what high expectations she seems to have! The baby will be
walking in a week? Yeah, right. Dream on…
Erm. I suppose that was the point, though. She was dreaming.
I’m baffled. --- And as far as the parents are concerned, I got over
the panic sometime on Saturday afternoon. I still don’t know how I
feel about it, but I suppose that’s irrelevant now: it was only a
matter of time before they found it. Suffice it to say, I know they
won’t agree with everything I put down here, and that’s fine. I
will probably alter the content some now that I know they’re part of
my audience, but nothing will change drastically. It can’t: I am who
I am. The only concern I have is that I now have to watch my language,
which, I will admit, is somewhat of a trial. I like swearing. It’s
not ladylike, I know, but I don’t really care all that much. I take
exception with those who think swearing is a sign of a filthy mind.
Pffft. Quite frankly, I think it’s a sign of an unimaginative one,
and we all know I’m just skating through here. I’m not an
exceptional writer, although I do aspire to be one, but I also have a
tendency to call it like I see it. And sometime certain types of
situations just beg
for a curse word to be used as a descriptor as it drives the point home
quicker and more concisely than other, flowerier, adjectives. So, to
the Cake Eater Mother and Father: Welcome. I hope you enjoy the
content. I will try to clean up the language as much as possible so as
to honor that all important Fourth Commandment. --- It snowed here over
the weekend. Copiously. There’s five or six inches of the white crap
on the ground this morning. And the sun has come out, so it hurts the
eyes to look outside right now. And it’s cold. We have apparently hit
that time of year when it only warms up to snow. The rest of the time,
it’s easy to remember that, indeed, Minnesota is the northernmost
state in the contiguous forty-eight because it’s frigging cold.
When it stops snowing, we get that frigid Canadian air, which generally
has the result of me hating all things associated with the country of
maple leaves. Keep your damn Arctic air to yourselves. Isn’t bad
enough I have to deal with all of your bogus coinage
that---somehow---makes it into my wallet? Why should I have to deal
with the frigid air that comes from your country? Huh? Keep it on your
side of the border and I promise I’ll never come to your country to
watch the northern lights in the summer. I promise. You do your part
and I’ll do mine. Quid pro quo. It could work. Let’s give it a
whirl.
But it’s currently twelve degrees right now, which is colder than
when I got up this morning. It was fifteen degrees then. Now that the
sun has come out, of course, it’s gotten colder because the ground
cannot accept the warmth of the sun with its white blanket. The
sunlight reflects back up into the atmosphere and will until March.
This arrangement, as best as I can tell, is only good for the ground.
Oh sure, it’s all nice and toasty, but am I? Noooooooo. I’m pulling
long underwear out of the bottom of my niceties drawer. This is what
has comprised the unpleasant reality of my morning. In an unusual move
for me, I awoke at five this morning to drive Mr. H. to el aeroporto.
So, not only was it chilly, but it was dark, too. Pitch black, in fact.
But the snow plows were out, for once, doing their couplehood thing:
one snow plow, scraping determinedly, followed immediately by another
snow plow, scraping the stuff that the first one missed, and leaving a
trail of salt to melt all the ice neither of them could get. This seems
to get most of it and enables traffic to break down the rest of the
muck. The few hours between ice slicked pavement and dry streets are
dangerous, mind you, but it’s only a few hours, and if you’re
careful and stay the heck away from ignorant SUV drivers (ok, why do
SUV drivers seem to think that 4WD will keep them from slipping on the
ice? You may have two axels, kids, and drive power going to four wheels
and, yes, I will admit, this will help you in the snow, but when
there’s ice involved, that’s just TWO MORE WHEELS WITH POWER GOING
TO THEM. It’s not an instant guarantee of more traction, like most of
you seem to think. It’s more power that you don’t have control
of---figure it out---for the good of mankind.) you should be ok. I was
pleased to see the snow plows go up the street in front of the Cake
Eater apartment, and then back down again as I sat and had my pre-dawn
cup of coffee: it made me feel like my taxes were doing some good.
Anarchy prevented, all is well with the free world and all that jazz.
Then I wondered if it would be the same in March and April. And I was
instantly disheartened. For those of you who don’t live in the frozen
tundra, you should know that when it snows here, we have many issues
with the removal of said white stuff. The main one being that cities
never seem to have enough money to accomplish the task over the long
winters we live with. It’s a hodgepodge of snow removal services, as
best as I can tell. The DOT takes care of the highways and the cities
take care of the streets, and neither party ever has enough money to
ensure that the prompt, efficient service we receive in November is the
same prompt, efficient service we should
receive in March, but only rarely happens. I’m sure as I’m writing
this, some accountant is fiddling with their estimates based on what
they think this large pre-Thanksgiving snowfall portends for the rest
of the winter and they’re sure they don’t have enough money
to cover the rest of the snow season. A few years ago, the DOT actually
ran out of salt. In January. Then they’ll run up to the
legislature---and this is both the cities and the DOT---and will beg
for emergency money because they just hadn’t counted on their funds
being depleted this quickly. It happens all the time. Even, supposedly,
during the “light” winters we’ve had the past few years.
We’ll see how they do this year. It would be refreshing, for once, if
they could estimate properly. And it would also be highly refreshing if they could get all the snow out of my alleyway so I don’t slide my way down to the street all winter long.

--- No doubt, this will be frustrating for all of us.
Oh, buddy, you have no idea how much. For me, that is. Not for you. You
have lawyers to protect and defend you, not to mention that you live in
your own little world where you’re insulated from nasty little
things, like laws. You have absolutely no reason to be frustrated. You
can still play with your chimp or ride your roller coaster, but the
rest of us are stuck here in the real world and we are finding it
incredibly hard to get away from you. You have your freakish face
plastered across newspapers; the news channels are interviewing your
fifth cousins, twice removed, to fill the time. They actually showed
your SUV driving through Vegas the same day when there had been a major
bombing in Istanbul that killed over twenty people and wounded over
four hundred more: the media thought that you were the more important
story of the day. People died in the war against terrorism and those of
us who found ourselves wanting to know more about it were out of luck.
Why? Because the news agencies thought you were more important. For the
millions of us whose pleas for decent media coverage of the world
outside of America are ignored, I would just like to inform you, that
you, Michael Jackson, have a way of skewing perceptions. And this is
completely irregardless of whether you’re guilty or innocent of
pedophilia. I’ll let the courts decide that. And no, I’m not
talking about people’s perceptions of how good or bad a person you
are: goodness or badness is a moot point right now. No, what I’m
referring to is that you, for some unknown reason, have a way of making
everyone throw their priorities into the wastebasket just so they can
focus on you.

It’s not healthy, you know, all this attention seeking.

I’m going to do you a favor and let you in on the secret. You see MJ, you are
the joke. You seem to have puffed yourself up to Godlike status; you
seemingly believe your press. But in fact, the truth is that you are
nothing. A big ol’ nobody. You haven’t cured cancer. You haven’t
gone to the moon. You haven’t ended war, murder, famine, oppression,
torture, rape, or any of the innumerable nasties that go on in the
world today. You sing songs. You live on a ranch with a chimp and a
roller coaster. Oh, I know you like to think
you’re doing your part by bringing the world together with music, but
come on and get a grip, would you? Do you honestly think Robert Mugabe
listens to The Man in the Mirror and that your heartfelt lyrics
keep him from slaughtering and oppressing his citizens? I don’t think
so. You’re not important, MJ. And what’s more pertinent is that you
never have been.