Lisa Kern's Open Salon Blog

Pumpkin Carving for Procrastinators

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:10:11 -0400

If you’re like me, the annual Pumpkin Carving ritual is a chore that you tend to put off until the last minute. It’s not that I don’t want to spend two hours of my life carving a perfectly good vegetable with a godawful sharp knife so that it can be turned into a potential fire hazard. I mean, you’d have to be crazy to want to miss out on that kind of fun. Actually, the truth is, I’m just plain lazy. The longer I postpone pumpkin carving, the more ~~time I’ll have to waste on the internet~~ likely it is that my husband will do it.

Today, of course, being Halloween, I’ve succeeded in stalling the pumpkin carving until the last possible day and my husband isn’t home to save me this time. Below are my tips for successful pumpkin carving when you’re unable to get out of having to do it yourself:

Get a pumpkin. This might seem obvious, but one year I foolishly skipped this step. If you have kids at home who are counting on a carved jack-o-lantern, I don’t recommend forgetting to buy a pumpkin. Kids may be small, but their torture methods have no limit.

Check your health insurance. Since you’ll be working with sharp knives, what better time to make sure that your health insurance policy hasn’t lapsed? If you find out that it’s been cancelled, you never had coverage to begin with, or you learn that Pumpkin Carving is one of the gazillion and nine exclusions on your policy, you can stop right here and tell the kids it’s all Obama’s fault for not effectively improving healthcare.

Cover your work surface with newspaper. Or not, if you’re one of those weirdoes who enjoys cleaning.

Wipe the pumpkin clean and set it on the newspaper. The flat side down works best unless you’re an adrenaline junkie who likes to take risks with sharp knives and wobbly pumpkins.

Find a template from the internet of a design you’d like to carve. If this is your first attempt at carving, this is not the time to try complicated patterns such as all of the characters on Mad Men. The pumpkin will either rot or be eaten by squirrels within a week, so why overexert yourself by making an intricate design?

Gather your carving equipment. You’re going to need a large bowl for the pumpkin guts and seeds, tape to attach your template to the pumpkin, a large metal spoon or other sturdy item for scraping the inside of the pumpkin, a small paring knife, a steak knife, a permanent marker, and lots of paper towels.

Carve the lid and discover what a pain in the ass it is to cut through an inch-and-a-half thick vegetable. This is the part of the project where you mentally list your activities for the rest of the day and decide that you’d better cancel half of them. Yes, folks, pumpkin carving takes much longer than you’d expect. Make a mental note to buy pre-carved pumpkins next year.

Make sure to carve a notch or tooth on the back of the lid. This will save you from spending hours spinning the lid around and around as you try to fit it on perfectly.

Scoop out the pumpkin guts from the inside. Dissuade teenage son from wanting to keep the seeds and pumpkin goop for God-knows-what reason. Make mental note to have teenage son professionally evaluated.

Tape design template onto the front of the pumpkin. Bitch and swear when you discover that the tape won’t stick to the slippery pumpkin. Wipe the pumpkin with a paper towel and try again. And again. And again.

Crumple up template in a fit of exasperation and decide to draw a free-hand design instead. A typical jack-o-lantern face with two triangle eyes, a triangle nose, and a single-toothed mouth is about as easy as you can get. If you’re a masochist like me, however, decide to draw the template design you originally picked. Even if you fail, you’ll have one helluva guilt card to play on the kids later.

Send the kids to their rooms when they tell you that your design doesn’t look like the picture from the internet. Then you’ll have time to contemplate why you gave birth to those little ingrates in the first place.

Begin cutting. Swear and jump around like a maniac when the knife slips and you take a slice off of your finger tip. Vow again to buy a pre-carved pumpkin next year as you hunt for the first aid kit.

Push out all cut-out pieces from the inside. When you discover that this is easier said than done, recut all pieces about eighty more times in an effort to finally get them to release and pop out. Neaten up carved areas with a small, flexible knife.

Ground teenage son for making fun of your creation. Say a silent prayer of gratitude for hubby’s vasectomy.

Insert a tealight candle in a pyrex dish and put it inside the pumpkin. Light the candle and watch the pumpkin glow.

Receive hug from nine-year-old. Enjoy the fact that you’re now a hero to your youngest child, which makes it all worth it.

Happy Halloween!

Let's go to the flea market!

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:10:07 -0400

A beautiful fall day is perfect for a country flea market. One thing is certain: even if you can’t find any bargains, there’s always plenty of absurdity to go around. Throw on a pair of your rattiest jeans, a flannel shirt, and a John Deere cap and come along with me to the flea market. You can leave your comb, deodorant, and refined vocabulary at home. You won’t need them where we’re going.

You never know who you’ll run into at the flea market. Even some of Freaky Troll’s extended family were there.

I’m not sure who this guy is (Santa’s killer handyman elf? Horror movie extra?) but I don’t think I’d let him in my house. His apron might say “Screws” and “Bolts” but the maniacal look in his eye suggests that he might have a few loose ones.

The flea market vendors want to stay ahead of the Christmas rush by bringing out their Christmas merchandise before Halloween. How can anyone resist this Hiding Santa? He’s perfect. If he can’t see you, he can’t put you on his Naughty List.

The woman in this painting is butt-ass naked, but apparently the small orange sticky notes over each nipple disguise that fact.

Just a few spots down from the ammo and XXX-rated VHS tapes, welcome to Redneckistan. Here, you can purchase a different fashion statement for every day of the week.

This ought to teach those damn kids to stop throwing their ball into my yard.

It’s all here, even the kitchen sink.

A lot of the vendors are patriotic and want everyone to know it. This vendor shows us how even a pool ladder is enhanced with the addition of an American flag.

Here’s one-stop shopping for the perfect redneck wedding: an Eagles shirt for the groom, a wedding dress for the bride, and a game of Twister for the reception.

Of course, you don’t want to drink too much at the reception or you’ll end up like this poor dog:

Apparently the natives made a wood carving of Gene Simmons.

The astute flea marketer knows that complementary objects arranged together yield successful sales. Notice how the red anvil and the deer antlers enhance the patina of the white elephant table. Can’t you just picture all of them in your living room?

Any idea what this is? Me neither but it doesn’t appear to be G-rated.

Now THAT’S a cauldron! You can easily cook three neighborhood children at one time.

Test tubes? Rocket fuel belt? Your guess is as good as mine.

Doesn’t this little guy just say take me home? Or maybe he says hide the lawn and garden tools.

And he's brought friends. These ones suggest that someone has too much time on his hands.

Oh look! Supplies for incontinence issues at any age:

The pig farmer is a regular at the flea market. Hauling pigs by day...

...and your flea market treasures on the weekend.

No need to remove the pig shit first; just load ‘er up.

This chest promises a Gay Time (or Alternative Lifestyle Time for those politically correct folks.)

Need a tire? How about fifty of them?

Once again, we see the value of purposeful merchandising in action: an antique fire extinguisher for when your antique gas fireplace catches on fire.

File this one under Why Don’t You Just Throw It the Hell Out?

Don’t have a pot to piss in because of the economy? Here’s TWO of them for you.

The old ball and chain, after the divorce:

Admit it. You want one of these, don’t you?

Everyone needs a wooden zebra with a come-hither look in its eye.

In spite of all of the odd offerings, I did manage to find something that I couldn’t live without:

A bad day at the flea market beats a good day working every time.

**be sure to mouse over the photos for even more fun.

No matter what you say, Mom, my fish will still be dead

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:09:47 -0400

_{(Betta fish image courtesy of bettafishcenter.com)}

It was a rare peaceful evening and I was the only one downstairs. I was relishing the quiet and appreciating the uncommon opportunity to read more than a sentence in my book before being interrupted by someone needing something.

In a home with three children, my peaceful moment was not meant to last. Suddenly, I could hear my youngest son Evan bounding down the stairs. He ran into the living room, threw himself down on the sofa next to me, and buried his face into the cushion. I could hear his muffled sobs.

Don’t judge me, but I briefly considered ignoring him. If he were my first child, I would have dropped my book, panicked like a teen girl in a horror movie, and driven him to the hospital, certain that he must be suffering from some dreadful illness.

Evan is not my first child, but my third, the one I scarcely remember to photograph. After nearly 20 years spent raising children, I'm burnt out. My Homeland Security Terror Alert barely makes it out of the green zone these days. Unless there’s visible blood, I prefer to take a wait-and-see approach. Besides, such dramatic displays from my third-born usually result from fights with his brother Matt. If I ignored him, there was a good chance he’d go back upstairs and resolve things on his own, leaving me happily unneeded.

I kept reading.

Out of the corner of my eye, though, I could see Evan lift his head from the sofa slightly and peek at me. He must have figured that I hadn’t noticed the commotion the first time, so he radically dropped his head back down and proceeded to wail even louder. It wasn’t going to be possible to ignore this one.

“What’s wrong, Evan?”

He sat up quickly and blurted loudly, "Omlet's DEAD!" Without missing a beat, he resumed his sobbing into the sofa cushions, albeit much louder and more sorrowful this time.

This was not good. Omlet was Evan's fish, a shimmery blue and red Betta that he'd kept as a pet for two years. Named after a breakfast food but spelled creatively according to 7-year-old pronunciation, Omlet lived in a bowl on a shelf at the head of Evan's bed. He was the first thing Evan saw in the morning and the last thing he saw at night.

“Maybe he’s just resting,” I offered, as gently as possible. “Let’s go upstairs and take a look.”

A peek into the fish bowl revealed that Omlet, indeed, was not merely resting. A tap on the glass, which ordinarily would entice him to swim toward the sound expecting a meal, was met with idleness.

“Oh sweetie, I am so sorry. Omlet was such a good little fish, and you’ve had him for such a long time.” I sat next to Evan on his bed and held him as he cried into my shirt.

“Why does every pet I love have to die? Why do we even have pets in the first place if all they're going to do is die?”

“Well, I suppose you’re right. You can choose to not have a pet because it hurts when they die, but think of all that you’d give up. You'd miss the pain of saying goodbye to a friend, but you'd never know the joy of taking care of a pet or playing with it or loving it. You wouldn’t want to miss all of those good times, would you?”

“But I hate it when they die!”

“I know, honey. It’s hard. But not all of your pets are dead. Bailey is still alive.” As if to prove this, Bailey nudged Evan and gave him a quick sloppy lick with her oversized dog tongue.

“I know Bailey’s alive, but Harry’s probably dead. What hermit crab molts for six months? It’s unfair. All of my pets die!”

Older brother Matt, in spite of having seen his fair share of deceased pets, was no help. He quoted something he'd read about all of us becoming worm food eventually. This was too much for Evan to handle.

“WORM FOOD!? Oh great! Omlet's dead, and probably so is Harry and now you tell me that I'm going to die too?” Evan buried his face in his pillow while I gave Matt a look suggesting that he might be more useful if he stayed in his room.

Having once been a kid myself, I should be used to the fact that pets die no matter how much we love them or how well we care for them. Having three kids of my own, I should also be used to the fact that they die at the most inopportune times. A quick glance at the clock confirmed that it was now well past Evan’s bedtime on a school night. I knew he’d be impossible to wake up in the morning. How would I ever manage to calm this child down enough to get him to sleep?

“Look, Evan, I know that it’s sad losing Omlet, but you have to remember that you had him for a very long time. Fish kept in bowls don’t usually live that long. You must have taken great care of him for him to have lived so long.”

Evan sat up and wiped his red and shining eyes with the back of his sleeve. I felt proud of myself, thinking that I must have said something that comforted him.

Evan looked at me squarely. “It doesn’t matter what you say, Mom. Omlet will still be dead.”

Ouch. So maybe I wasn’t as comforting as I’d thought.

While pondering what to say or do next, I simply drew him closer to me and hugged him. I could hear his sniffles as I felt his hot tears roll down my arm. Maybe this time, words weren’t necessary. Maybe it’s enough to simply hold him and let him know that I’m here.

After a few moments, he pulled away and sat up, wiping his eyes again.

“Will you please take Omlet’s stuff downstairs? I don’t want it to keep reminding me that he’s gone.”

“Sure, sweetie.” I gathered up Omlet’s food and water conditioning drops and put them in the hall. “Do you want to bury Omlet?”

Evan shook his head and scooted under his covers. He appeared to be ready for bed.

I picked up the fish bowl containing a very dead Omlet and placed it on the table in the hall next to the fish supplies. Noticing the depressingly empty space where the bowl had been, I chose a few interesting rocks and geodes that we’d purchased at a flea market days before and arranged them on Evan’s shelf. They would fill the bare space nicely and give Evan something new to look at.

I kissed my son on the top of his head and turned off the light, feeling as if I’d somehow failed at navigating this heartbreaking milestone for him. What should I have said? Would any of it have made a difference?

Perhaps we’re meant to experience certain things on our own, feeling their full pain, until finally mulling them over in our minds into some sort of sense.

That’s the tough thing about being a mom. No matter how hard you try, or how willing your heart, from dead pets to first loves, you never really know for sure if you’re doing it right.

I hope this way was right for you, Evan.

Can we axe the Axe...please?

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:09:14 -0400

My teenager is trying to kill me. Really.

It’s a slow, torturous murder that he’s attempting instead of the quick but unsuccessful ways he’s tried in the past (childbirth, sharing assorted childhood illnesses, learning to drive, dating awful girls, and that certain stroke-worthy report card in 11^th grade).

This time, his weapon of choice is an object of olfactory oblivion which is no doubt banned in 17 countries: against all that’s decent, he’s begun wearing Axe body spray.

The makers of Axe are accomplices in this evil deed, choosing attractive young girls to push samples of their product on unsuspecting guys at the mall. Notice that they don’t send the ugly girls for this job. Oh no. If complete and total obliteration of parents is the goal, you’re going to need the pretty girls for that. That’s how my son became hooked.

I knew I was in trouble when he came home from the mall one evening wearing a strange scent that smelled like a combination of too-much pepper and fermented cat urine. The smell entered the room way before he did and didn’t leave until long after he’d departed. It was beyond nasty; the kind of aggressive fragrance that gets into your throat and won’t leave, mercilessly irritating you until escaping for fresh air becomes your most important goal.

“Good Lord, Ryan, what on earth is that godawful smell?”

“It’s Axe body spray. They were giving out free samples at the mall. This girl ran up to Adam and me and sprayed it all over us.” He took a whiff of his shirt. “Do you like it?”

“Ugh! No! It’s way too strong. It smells like you peppered a cat and left it out in the sun too long.” I waved my hand in front of my face, trying desperately to fan some fresh air into my overwhelmed nose.

“I think it’s OK. It smells better than the other ones they have.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. This one smells better? What do they put in the other ones, liver and goat pee?”

“I don’t know. The other ones are pretty bad. This one is supposed to smell like leather and pepper. I kind of like it.”

“Leather and pepper? You want to smell like you’re cooking your couch?”

Ryan shot me a look that said he’d had enough of my insults and went upstairs to his room. I spent the rest of the evening wishing he’d taken his Sautéed Sofa smell with him instead of leaving it behind to keep me company.

Ryan began wearing the Axe every day. He’d spray it on as soon as he dried off from his shower. He’d re-spray it if he was going out with friends. He’d apply it before seeing his girlfriend. In every instance, he’d go out, leaving the rest of us inside the house to suffer.

My middle-son, Matt, began wearing his t-shirt over his nose to block out the Axe smell. Evan, my youngest, took every opportunity to protest his brother’s Axe usage by falling on the floor, dramatically covering his nose, and groaning as soon as the odor reached him.

This morning, I woke up to a sensation of being choked, as if someone had sprayed a noxious hazmat chemical in my bedroom. When I opened my door, the now familiar leather-and-pepper Axe smell assaulted my nose, but this time in a much higher concentration. Descending the stairs, it became clear that Ryan had sprayed himself with it once again after his shower and now the odor was throughout the entire house.

I’m sensitive to certain fragrance ingredients and Axe evidently contains one of the fragrances that bothers me. This whole ordeal reminds me of a previous family vacation when we took my mother along with us. She apparently decided that spraying herself with a fresh coat of perfume each day was preferable to taking a shower. As the days progressed, the scent of her dreadful perfume grew stronger and more intolerable. By the end of the week, she had on so many coats of perfume that getting within twenty feet of her was enough to make you gag. In fact, she smelled so bad that we had to drive nine hours home from the Outer Banks with the windows open in the car even though it was 40 degrees outside at the end of November. Our throats were sore and we suffered from heightened scent sensitivity for two weeks afterward. Certainly Ryan would remember how miserable the ride home with his grandmother was.

“Taking after your grandmother and using Axe instead of a shower today, Ryan?” my husband asked pointedly.

“I am NOT like Grandma!” Ryan responded indignantly as if he’d been waiting for someone to compare him to his grandmother.

“Well, you have to admit that it’s pretty strong stuff. This morning I think it crawled under my bedroom door and attacked me. The smell actually woke me up,” I added, making yet another attempt at showing Ryan how much it bothered me.

“It comes under my door and into my room, too,” Matt added. He knew we had to present a united front if we had any hopes of convincing Ryan to abandon the Axe.

“Yeah, mine too,” Evan chimed in. “My whole room stinks now.”

Ryan was still in denial about the lingering effects of his beloved Axe spray. “You guys are overreacting. I don’t use that much of it, and I only spray it in my room. No way is it getting into your rooms. I just don’t see how it’s as bad as you’re making it out to be.”

“It is that bad, Ryan. Yesterday I coughed for three hours after you left for school.” I know; I played the Motherly Guilt card, but I had no choice. I had to do it. Surely he wouldn’t want his own mother to cough for three hours, right?

Wrong.

“Well, if it’s so bad, why haven’t any of my friends complained about it? Everyone I know wears it and no one ever complains about the smell.”

“That’s because the pepper and cat pee has burned out their olfactory receptors.”

After Ryan had finished glaring at me and left for school, his Axe smell once again stayed behind. I became even more determined to get rid of the body spray for good. I work from home and there’s no way that I was willing to put up with smelling that nastiness for even one more day.

Since I wasn’t aware of any twelve-step programs for body spray addiction, getting my kid off the Axe was going to be up to me. In desperation, I went up to Ryan’s room, took both cans of Axe from his dresser and hid them in a cabinet in the hall where they could no longer harm anyone. I then went back to work, confident that our days of being terrorized by a can of body spray were over.

Ryan returned home later to shower before going out with some friends. I was in my office working when I heard him come down the stairs.

He peeked around the corner to where I was working on the computer. “Was it really that bad, Mom?” he asked in his best wounded-sounding voice.

It took me a minute before realizing that he was referring to the missing cans of Axe. I rolled my chair away from the computer so I could face him directly.

“Yes, Ryan. It really was that bad.”

“I don’t understand why it’s bothering you so much. I hardly use any. It’s just a quick little spray like this.” He demonstrated how he’d spray just a small amount of Axe on himself. This was more serious than I thought. Denial of this degree was going to require more than my usual motherly tact.

“I think I’m allergic to it,” I blurted out. “When you use it, my throat closes up and I have trouble breathing.” It was almost the truth; I do have a hard time breathing air that smells like pepper and cat urine. “You might not be using very much of it, but any amount would bother me. That’s why I think it’s any allergy. It’s also bothering me more each day that you wear it, as if its effects are cumulative. I’m sorry, but you just can’t continue to use it in the house.”

Ryan considered what I’d said for a moment before responding. “If it bothers you that much, I won’t wear it.”

Wait...what? Really? I won this? I could picture a giant scoreboard with “Mom – 1; Nasty-smelling body spray – 0” on it.

His sudden compassion for my predicament made me soften my zero-tolerance position a bit.

“Look, I didn’t throw the cans away. If you want, you can keep them in your car and spray yourself out there.”

“No. People will be complaining that my car smells bad when they get in it.”

I wanted to ask him why it was OK if the house smelled bad but resisted the temptation. I didn’t want to risk my hard-earned victory.

I retrieved the cans from their hiding place and gave them to him. “Are you sure you don’t want to just put these in your car, or spray it outside?”

“Nah, it’s OK. I’ll just throw them away. I don’t need to wear it.” His hands lingered on the cans for a moment before tossing them into the kitchen waste basket. I gave him a hug, because even though he’s taller than me and maddeningly stubborn, he’s still my kid; a kid who showed me that he knew it was important that I win this one. He left to go out with his friends, smelling better than he had in days.

Matt and Evan came downstairs, having heard the entire conversation.

“Did you really get Ryan to stop wearing Axe, Mom?” Matt asked tentatively, afraid to get his hopes up.

“Yes I did. Ryan threw his cans of Axe away and said he wouldn’t wear it any more.”

“Sweet!” shouted Evan as he jumped up to give me a high-five.

That’s right, kids. Today is the day that your mom single-handedly evicted the horrible, no good, very stinky Axe from our home. Who knows where this could lead? I promise to use my Mom Powers for good and not evil (unless it’s against messy rooms and dirty laundry that doesn’t quite make it into the laundry hamper.)

^{(mmm...chocolate...maybe I'd like this one better?)}

Say It Now: Honoring 9/11

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:09:52 -0400

Ask anyone over the age of 10 where they were eight years ago today and they will be able to tell you.

They’ll tell you about how beautifully blue the skies were that day. Not even a single cloud interrupted the bright sunshine. A perfect Indian summer day.

They’ll tell you about the news report they heard. There was an airplane, and it crashed into the World Trade Center. Of course they thought that it was an accident - until the second plane hit. Fears that we were under attack were confirmed when the third plane hit the Pentagon.

They’ll tell you how they watched in horror as both towers crumbled to ash and dust. At the same time, a brave flight crew and many passengers of a fourth plane fought to prevent more devastation, even as they knew that their own lives would soon be over.

Maybe they’ll tell you about the great cloud of black smoke that rose from the burning buildings, or about the horrible, wrenching scenes of people covered in jet fuel jumping to their deaths. It was so painful to watch that the TV stations stopped showing them soon after. You may see images of the towers on fire 1,000,000 times, but you won’t see those haunting images ever again. For me, it doesn’t matter. I’ll never be able to forget them. Seeing them once was too many times.

Maybe they'll remember the paper, falling from the sky like confetti. But this was no party.

Perhaps they’ll remember all the shoes abandoned in the streets as people ran to get away from the heavy, falling, choking ash full of buildings and papers and people.

These were people who woke up, just like any other day, and went to work. They probably had meetings to attend, dry cleaning to pick up, and back-to-school nights to visit. Many of them probably left their dishes in the sink that morning, their shoes in the hall, and rejected work clothes on the bed, intending to clean them up later. How many of them never got to see their wives / husbands / children / parents / lovers / pets ever again?

Gone in a day, gone in a heartbeat, gone in a single hate-fueled moment.

In honor of the people who never got a chance to say goodbye to the ones they loved, or steal a last sweet, sticky kiss from their child, let’s all commit to making certain that the people we love most always know it.

Forget about the milk your husband neglected to pick up after work. Tell him you’d marry him all over again.

Don’t worry about the disappointment that your child has caused you. Tell her you’re glad that you’re the one who was chosen to be her mom.

Let go of the hurt toward your parents. Tell them you’re proud to be their child.

If nothing else, 9/11 taught us that we never know what our lives will bring or how many days we have remaining. Our last day on earth might start out with a beautiful blue sky and yet not give us a single moment to say everything we want to say.

Say it now.

*a similar version of this essay was published previously by The Reporter.

Bruce Springsteen - "You're Missing" (from The Rising)