I'm enchanted by the idea of writing a Six Word Memoir similar to those featured in the book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs by Famous Writers and Obscure. There is a legend, evidently, that Ernest Hemingway was challenged to do this (back when, obviously), and his read, "Baby Shoes for Sale: Never Worn."

Other examples include:
- I still make coffee for two.
- Most successful accomplishments based on spite.

So now I'm casting about trying to figure out what mine would be. I've got a few ideas, but haven't settled on just the thing.

Sunny exterior; sometimes shadows leak out.
Existed, gave birth, learned to live.
I lack a self-edit function.

It's tough to capture everything in so short a space. So tell me what yours would be--it doesn't have to be your absolute best shot at it. I think it is something you could hack away at the rest of your life and maybe get one really good, "AHA!" out of it at some point. But share your rough drafts here.

Dear Baby Girl:

You continue to get more kid-like every day. You're so much less a baby than you were just months ago. We have conversations now. We talk about what we will see at the farm that we go to every Saturday, we talk about your clothes, we talk about the silly things the dog does. I am pretty sure it is rare-ish to be having conversations with someone who is only two and a quarter years old, but you're a rare-ish kind of a kid.

You are positively addicted to wearing dresses and skirts. Your dad is usually the one to get you dressed on mornings you go to school, and he said this morning that he doesn't even need to open your dresser anymore--he just opens the closet door and gets down whatever dress you point out to him.

You continue to love singing. You sing songs you learn at school like Skinnymarinkadink, and Where is Thumbkin?, but you also sing songs your mother teaches you...like Morning Train. In fact, you sat in my lap in the front yard last night and made me sing about 20 choruses of that song. I am sure the neighbors were delighted. (Sheena Easton hits some notes that no human ought to be able to. I don't even get close.)

You're not potty trained yet, and we're just kind of sitting back and letting you lead us on that one. I usually have you sit on your training potty right before your bath and we sing a song together, in the hopes that the spirit will move you during a rousing rendition of Bill Grogan's Goat. No luck yet, but we keep trying.

You're also addicted to juice boxes lately. The first thing you want in the morning is a juice box, we send one with you to school, and that's what you want when you get home. Anything that is single-serving-sized seems to be right up your alley, whether it is string cheese, yogurt, juice, goldfish crackers...whatever. The full size versions don't have any affect on you at all. You've also really slowed down in your eating, so you must be out of the growth spurt you had been in.

Anyway, you truly amaze me. You're funny, you're incredibly smart, and you are the sunshine of my life (that's another song I should teach you). I love you with all my soul.

Mama

Here's Freya's latest YouTube favorite:

Do you suppose it is coincidence that her favorite song is being backed up by none other than...THE SOLID GOLD DANCERS?!? I mean, when I was seven years old, I was totally going to be A SOLID GOLD DANCER, and now my toddler loves this particular video.

Hello, this is Kismet calling! Can I speak to Freya please?

She's totally going to be A SOLID GOLD DANCER someday. (I can't even type the name without using all caps. That's just how totally cool it is to be A SOLID GOLD DANCER. I might have to go do some Google searching for that phrase and see if any former members have blogged about their experiences. How cool would that be?)

I think my back wants to go out. Nay, I know my back wants to go out. What does that mean? It means I have this muscle just to the inside of my left hip bone that is spasming, preparatory to paralyzing me entirely if it decides to slip out of place. Or something like that.

This hasn't happened to me in many, many years. My dad has chronic back issues, and the first time my back went out, I was only 19 years old. I know it has happened once or twice since then, but I can't recall the circumstances.

I'm a little worried, because Matt is going out tonight to serve a citation and help send a guy to jail, and Freya and I will be alone during bath time. I really have no idea how I am going to get her out of the tub. I can just see me crawling to the telephone and having the neighbor come over to get my daughter out of the cooled-off water because I cannot lift her up. This could totally suck.

Let's hope it doesn't happen and I wake up and everything is fine tomorrow.

(I'm tickled to post this in the "Random Crap" category, by the way.) Also, this is not a critique of how anyone reading actually uses an outhouse--seriously, you pretty much have to work in The Industry to know this stuff.

Ulalani, who just delurked (yay!) wrote a post about a hike she recently took, and she was...well...disappointed in the outhouse at the trailhead. You see, it had been billed as a high-tech unit, and due to the odor (and maybe some other stuff) she felt it was misrepresented.

I may have mentioned before, I know a thing or two about outhouses. I spent four years of my career managing recreation sites for the Forest Service, and cleaned between six and ten outhouses a week during that time. Yeah, come rain, snow, freezing rain and snow, sleet, zillion degree temperatures, dust storms, you name it, I cleaned the Vertical Government Shitbox. It was interesting.

Now, I look at the outhouse Ulalani pictures and I think, "That's a pretty nice unit, there. Looks like a two-room Sweet Smelling Toilet (SST) with a nice concrete paneling made to look like wood, but a whole lot more fireproof. Probably made by RomTec out of Oregon. Yeah, that's a pretty nice shitter." But it was stinky. Well you know, it didn't have to be stinky. You can put a whole lot of dookie in one of those (I believe somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 gallons) and it won't stink. Unless! Unless! The very specific shitbox technology is defeated...by the user. Yes, it is the user of the outhouse who makes it a stinker, and not with what they do inside the hole.

You see, the outhouses these days are designed to vent the stink out through the big black pipe on the outside. Did you know it is black for a reason? Why yes, yes it is. It is black because it will heat up, the heat then draws the air from inside the concrete poo vault up and out, high enough off the ground that it shouldn't waft down to the smeller. (Of course, sometimes prevailing weather conditions like wind and inversions can defeat you.) Also, the unit should be oriented so that the black pipe faces south and/or east, so that it receives as much radiant heat throughout the day.

Next, (and this is the very most critical part) the air must be kept from wafting up into the room through the toilet riser. That means the lid must always be closed when the throne is not being used for its primary purpose. And the door must also be closed. Not only does this keep the stink down, it keeps the flies from getting in the room, and from getting in the poo. And boy howdy, you don't want flies in the poo. Not only do they fly up and tickle your butt when you're seated...but they draw in spiders. Yes, nothing like opening the lid of the toity and seeing big cobwebs strung around. Clenches me right up.

So, to recap:
1) Toilet lid closed
2) Door closed

Finally, based on my professional experience, just walk up the trail a tick and potty in the woods. Don't dookie--that's not savory for anyone, but piddles are totally okay. Frankly, I'd walk a long way into the woods to piddle, rather than hoisting my lady bits over some open hole. Outhouses...brrr. But if you gotta, you gotta.

There's your lesson. Don't say I never taught you anything. And have I mentioned how grateful I am to not have to clean outhouses nowadays?

I don't know why I am, but I am tired. My activity today consisted of cooking French toast for breakfast (freedom toast in some parts of the world, I guess), showering, and then hanging out with my dad, who came over for his weekly visit with Freya. We had a concrete contractor come over and confirm his bid, and we hired him to expand our patio next week. Then Freya napped and I made chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, and Matt got to work site prepping the patio extension area. He really did a lot of manual labor today--I just feel like I did.

We got the neighbor to come over and help move sprinkler heads around, and I took care of Freya and their four year old son while the work was ongoing. And I made barbequed ribs, roasted potatoes and asparagus for dinner. And then we went and got groceries.

I should not feel utterly rendered, but I do.

When I was growing up as a Jehovah's Witness, we lived about an hour away from the nearest Kingdom Hall, which is what JWs call their churches. We drove there every Sunday for the 2 hour public talk and Watchtower magazine study, and then again on Thursdays for the 2 hour ministry school. We also had a 1 hour book study, where we'd go over whatever JW publication was up for review--that was on Tuesdays, but it was in the town we lived in. So I spent approximately nine hours a week in church, counting the drive time.

I found out this week that the "Governing Body" (that purports to translate God's will to the worshipful JWs) has given out some new direction that the book study was going to be cancelled because of rising gas prices, and because, once again, it is so close to The Time of the End. That's JW-speak for Armageddon. Speculation has it that declining attendance at all the JW worship is the reason for the book study cancellation--they're doing whatever they can to make the religion a little less...time consuming. (Don't get me started about mandatory door-knocking.)

Anyway, some online discussions I participated in got me thinking about all the times I was told while growing up that Armageddon was imminent. I spent most of my formative years worrying myself sick about Armageddon, actually. The JW publications had some really lurid pictures of what that time was going to be like; my vision of the Time of the End included walking through a fire-blasted landscape, walking past the dead bodies of mothers and babies, and recognizing the faces of people I knew--even family members--on the dead. Vultures and carrion eaters abounded because of the human food. As the faithful ones, we'd be pursued by government police who would be trying to catch us and put us in concentration camps. This would go on for "a short time" (assume a year or so) before Jehovah and Jesus would finally decree that it was all done, and would immediately throw all the nonbelievers into a lake of fire (everlasting destruction), and the rest of us would get our reprieve in a new paradise right here on earth.

Yeah. I spent my childhood worrying about trying to live through a holocaust, and was convinced that I'd be seeing dead mothers and babies rotting on the ground. I was encouraged to believe those things. Can you imagine? Can you imagine filling a child's head with that kind of thing, and then expecting them to grow up mentally healthy? Much less believing in a benevolent god...

So it interests me and yet saddens me at the same time that they're trotting out this Time of the End business again. In those discussions with other former JWs, the terror of Armageddon seems pretty universal--not because we were looking forward to the end of evil and eternal life in paradise, but because we were so, so frightened of all the horrible things we would see and that might befall us. And I know that there are other people and children out there right now, living through that same terror.

It is unconscionable.

Dammit, not a true palindrome...oh well, I continue to try. Maribeth conveniently had a meme up for offer, so I grabbed it, as I have no current uterine news, nor any particular peevishness to report. Here goes:

5 Things Found in Your Bag/Purse
Truth be told, I loathe carrying a purse. I usually just stuff my checkbook in my back pocket and carry my keys in my hand. But in my work bag, I have 1) my Franklin planner, 2) a pocket knife (serrated 4 inch blade), 3) Burt's Bees lip balm, 4) a miniature umbrella, and 5) a couple of thumb drives.

5 Favorite Things in Your Room
1) Freya, curled up next to me and snoozing, 2) Matt on the other side, making me feel safe, 3) the ivory and burgundy quilt I picked up on our spring break, 3) my grandmother's cedar chest, 4) a picture of my grandmother as an eight year-old with her mother, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother (so my great, great-great, and great-great-great grandmothers, in addition to Grandma T), 5) Family Night, the framed picture Matt gave me for Mother's Day the year Freya was born.

5 Things You Always Wanted to Do
1) Go to Italy! (Target Date, June 2012), 2) Get chin implants (it'll never happen--I want to, but I wouldn't), 3) Learn to roller dance, 4) Punch my arch-nemesis from junior high and high school...and get away with it, 5) Get a hug from George Clooney.

5 Things You are Currently Into
1) Exercising 3x a week, 2) Phillip Pullman's Sally Lockheart trilogy, 3) Relandscaping the back yard, 4) Organic gardening, 5) Finding 50s-era Disney cartoons on YouTube for Freya to watch.

5 People You Want to Tag
As Maribeth did, I won't tag anyone. But let me know if you decide to use the meme, will you?

You'll remember that earrings and the associated holes gross me out. Well, here's another thing that makes me queasy: acrylic toenails.

I should say that feet in general kind of gross me out. My feet are beautiful and usually perfect. In fact, I used to be known for "Flintstone Feet" back in the days when I gave myself pedicures, which was explained to mean that my toes looked so perfect that they were practically drawn on. So maybe it is my own pedal perfection (hee hee) that makes me look down my nose at other peoples' digits. I'm really just kidding--it's just a foot thing in general. You can have the purtiest toesies in the world, and I'll still think they're ookey.

So that's the main reason that I don't get the new craze to get fake toenails put on your feet. I mean, aren't your toenails there for not particularly decorative purposes in the first place? I won't begrudge you some polish, but a whole fake set of nails that you pay God-knows-what to get put on in the first place, and then have to consistently maintain at a salon as they grow out? What's wrong with people?

Not to mention the fact that you wind up looking like you could climb a tree without using your hands...

We're looking at extending our patio this spring, so I've been getting some estimates from concrete contractors. Well, I should say that I'm getting estimates from whatever fly-by-night might have an ad up on Craigslist. One guy came out and bid it yesterday for $750, which seemed pretty okay. But you know--buyer beware and all that, so I've called a few more folks today.

I just got off the phone with one guy, and it was...really weird. The first thing he said was, "Are you at home right now?" and I had a funny feeling so I said, "Yeah, but now isn't a good time because I have to run out, so can you just give me a ballpark over the phone?" I told him the dimensions of the extension, and he said, "I'll do it for $300." Thinking that was $250 lower than my lowest estimate, my radar really started going off. I said, "So how long do you guarantee your work?" and there was a pause and he said, "Uh, ten years."

BWAHA. Yeah, sure. I'm not sure anyone (that isn't a complete fraud) would guarantee their concrete work for that long. Call me pessimistic. So I told him I'd talk to my husband, who would call him back.

Very strange. I rarely get an alarm over the telephone like that, just from the first few things a person has said. I'm guessing that before he could come over to give us an estimate, he'd have to pull the lotion bottle back up in the basket so that the poor girl stuck down in the hole in his basement wouldn't over-moisturize. "IT PUTS THE LOTION ON ITS SKIN!"

Freak show...

"Give two women who have never met before about 15 minutes in a room without any men in it, and they'll be discussing their periods in no time."

I'm up to eleven comments so far on that last post, and that's a pretty high count for me.

By way of update, I'm getting a little crampy here and there, but nothing too bad. I was able to do my regular hour-long workout yesterday afternoon (though I did abstain from the ab work because I'm still a titch leery about compressing the area just yet), and there was no discomfort or anything. And actually, there's been no breakthrough bleeding since the day I got it in. (Knock wood.)