bahHMMblog's Open Salon Blog

the camps (or where we stayed & why & how)

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:09:35 -0400

(chapter one of the never ending saga may be read here.)

2. The Camps (or where we stayed & why & how)

The bridges of Cincinnati behind us, we pressed on down the length of the country. The wonderboy proved to be a good traveler; then again, I had provided him with three new games split between his leapster and my old game boy.

He reads well, so I turned him into my navigator, telling him when we were coming to a major highway intersection, and once he figured out the green highway signs overhead, he proceeded to read each and every one to me, asking if we needed to take the exit. I handed him my extra Google maps print out and he proved to be a better map reader than many of the adults with whom I’ve road tripped.

Now, a short digression on my road trip style: I’ll stop for a sign proclaiming the world’s best milkshake, biscuits or coffee. I’ll stop for certain scenic overlooks if picturesque enough mountains are involved. I’m a total sucker for the world’s largest anything, be it frying pans or balls of string or rubber bands. But this was process, highly goal-oriented driving to beat the moving truck down and so I love nothing better than the steady singing sound of good tires on a highway, eating up the miles between me and my goal. Better yet if its night and the windows are down and the music is playing as the child sleeps.

But this one wasn’t sleeping. This one – and understandably so, since he’d just spent three weeks watching his house disappear into a series of cardboard boxes which left on a truck he’d never seen before that morning – this child was consumed with where we were going to spend the night. I’d explained over and over again that we’d most likely be staying in a hotel – while secretly hoping he’d crash out early and I could drive through the night – this child wanted to know the specifics.

Where are the hotels? He asked, yet again.

Once more I point out the hotels as we pass them, bright yellow and blue and green lighted signs standing in clumps like sentries at the exits. Those are the hotels, I say. When we’ve driven enough for one day, we’ll pull in and choose one.

Yes, but which one?

I don’t know yet, it depends on which hotels are at the exit where we stop.

Mom?

Yes?

I’ve been watching the commercials for a while now, he tells me. You should let me pick.

What do you mean, I ask – which commercials have you watched?

The hotels, ever since you said we’d be staying at an hotel, I’ve been watching and now I know.

You know?

I know what hotels are the good ones. I’ll know where we should stay. You should let me pick.

Ok, wonderboy, you get to pick the hotel.

We’re coming into Nashville when my mother calls my cell.

It’s getting late, she says.

I know, I tell her, loading took forever and we didn’t get away til after two.

You should pull over, I’ve been watching the weather channel and it’s going to rain, soon.

It’s raining now. It isn’t bad at all. Wet enough that people are driving pretty sanely, not too heavy to have a problem seeing anything

You should pull over.

I was hoping to get below Memphis. I don’t think that’s going to happen now, but I at least want to get as far as I can below Nashville.

You should pull over.

(I remember my promise to myself that I will not revert to teenage behaviour if I move next to my parents for the first time since 1984 – don’t know how long I’ll be successful with this, but decide to give it a try).

I can hear that you’re really concerned, I tell her – You should remember that I’m a really good driver and I would never push it to the point where it’s dangerous for us or other people on the highway. Besides, I remind her. I’m still on Eastern Time here, so it’s an hour later for you then me.

OK, but you should really pull over.

I know, and I’ll pull over soon and call you when I do – ok?

Ok, but you should really pull over soon.

The rain lets up, and I am driving through the man-cut narrow valley in the hills of Tennessee in the dark. I’m pretty content, and think that the wonderboy will crash out soon.

No.

Mom?

Yes?

We should stop soon, or I’ll be asleep and I won’t be able to tell you which hotel to pick. It’s very important that I tell you which hotel to pick. I’ve never been in an hotel (yes, I am very particular about speech, and if he’s not using his hip preschool vernacular, he sounds like a miniature Anglophile accountant). I need to see the hotel before I’m asleep.

It’s not as far as I wanted to get, but it’s far enough, I decide.

Ok, I tell the wonderboy, next hotel exit, we’ll stop.

We pull off the exit into the garishly sign-lit access road. Burgers, tacos and something called e-cigarettes beckon us with their showy wares, but he’s an almost five year old on a mission and is having none of it.

Where are the hotels? I need to choose –

They’re down here a bit.

My heart sinks as I survey the three offerings. The Wonderboy doesn't have much from which to choose: something local and non-chain, a seedy looking Holiday Inn and a Best Western.

(please pick the best western, I beam in pleading thought rays)

There. That’s it.

????

The Best Western. They have excellent beds and offer breakfast. I saw the commercial, I know.

And you know what? They do.

Next Installment: The Battle for Ideals Begins – Wonderboy vs. Grandma Blue and me versus the evil, lying, hideous moving company.

in which the wonderboy and i trample out the grapes of wrath

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:09:29 -0400

part one of however long it may take:

If you want to read the backstory (eg, me endlessly whinging about being laid off) click here.

Foreword:

It all started when we got an apartment that should have been impossible to get in my hometown of Baton Rouge and the almost five year old wonderboy and I packed up the movables and hit the road in search of a better life and the actual possibility of employment, the dust of the Michigan recession fading through the back window of the Nissan.

But that's too easy a summary. Before we got to that point, I had spent almost four months fruitlessly clicking links online, networking while maintaining the facade of being fine while growing more and more scared as it sunk in that there were simply no jobs to be had and the unemployment and the nest egg continued to shrink.

I was thinking Portland would be a good option, if perhaps a bit crunchy for me. I've made huge moving jumps before, but never without a job, house or friend in wait - and the wonderboy made everything even more complicated - if i'd been by myself, I'd have been willing to do the classic two suitcase move to the local hostel until I'd nailed a job and a place to live, but with a child in tow, that just wasn't a possibility.

My parents are pretty well on their way towards their seventies and my mother had been urging me to move closer to home. The wonderboy had been intermittently badly ill all winter and spring - and remained undiagnosed, though they thought it might be the beginning stages of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. If I was going to move, it wasn't the worst idea to be near family backup in case he had to continue to miss huge chunks of school, as there was no guarantee that i'd again land a job that I could work from home if needed.

But I was stuck in the classic dillemma of needing either a job or a place to live before moving. I'd investigated the possibility of joining the service corp in louisiana - they were interested, but the stipend was impossible to live on with a child.

I was stuck.

Then the way seemed clear, from a chance comment from my mother - a two bedroom had opened up in her complex, smack dab in the center of Baton Rouge. Housing's been impossible in Baton Rouge since Katrina, when half of New Orleans moved in, hugely increasing the population overnight - there was very little chance that an unemployed single mother would be accepted as a renter - but I was.

So now I can throw in that tidy (if rambling) opening sentence in a more proper place: It all started when we got an apartment that should have been impossible to get in my hometown of Baton Rouge and the almost five year old wonderboy and I packed up the movables and hit the road in search of a better life and the actual possibility of employment, the dust of the Michigan recession fading through the back window of the Nissan.

Chapter 1: The Migration

Stuck in a hideous traffic jam on the bridges of Cincinnati, he devises a sing-song chant:

oHIIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr…

oHIIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr…..

oHIIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr……….

This is the youngest child out of four, the only one still at home, so I’m fairly immune to this sort of thing. Unfortunately for me, this is clashing with the interior viral song playing on an endless loop in my head:

Baby, if you’ve ever wondered, wondered whatever became of meeeee…..

(oHIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr)

....I'm living on the air in Cincinnati, Cincinnati, WKRP...

(oHIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrrr)

…Got kind of tired of packing and unpacking, town to town, up and down the dial….

(oHIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr)

…baby you and me were never meant to be, just maybe think of me, once in a while….

(oHIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr)

I’m at WKRP in Cincinnati…..

(oHIIIoooo takes forEVVVVerrrrr)

And did I mention that I drive a six-speed stick, fearless girl that I am? So not only are bad 70’s tv theme songs competing with child chants, I am endlessly clutching and unclutching to move forward three feet, then throwing it back into neutral so save my left leg, which is cramping from holding in the clutch.

To save what’s left of my sanity, and the possibility of the wonderboy actually reaching the age of five with intact vocal cords, I throw in the latest Green Day and crank his current favourite, ’21 guns’.

And so we traveled from the bleak economic environs of Michigan, towards our brighter (or at least, much warmer) future.

Next Installment: The Camps (or, where we lived and why and how)

clearing the undergrowth makes the tree look taller

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 11:09:56 -0400

this may be my favourite online thing in years...

How to Shave the Groin Area -- powered by eHow.com

that's bad form, Ted Haggard (repost)

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:08:30 -0400

originally posted december 2008. reposted 11 August 2009 in response to Gwen's request and because i finally caught the documentary this weekend on HBO on demand - and found (much to my chagrin) that i'm still angry with him - and his choices.

I’m a little behind on my usual obsessive news consumption. Being snowed in for three days with a toddler will do that to you. But this morning after spending a brisk half hour scraping ice and making sure my car still ran I made myself a cup of coffee in the self righteous afterglow of snow removal and turned on CNN.

And there it was - another story about Ted.

For everyone who isn’t either gay/lesbian, evangelical, or didn’t happen to grow up in my very weird corner of the deep south, Ted Haggard is making the news feeds again, this time with an HBO documentary on his rise and fall slated to be shown in late January, 2009.

Ted, can you please go away, already?

_______________________________________________________

Ted and I go way back, to about the late seventies, when he was working for WMFJ. I was about twelve when we met and he recruited my mother to work for WMFJ pretty shortly after that. That was the start of my real tumble down the rabbit hole of the emerging mega churches, my mother taking me along for the very weird ride.

Then he became my youth pastor.

Then he became the associate pastor.

Then he went off to start New Life when I was about sixteen, seventeen or so.

My mother was a single parent and I was a well behaved only child, so I went everywhere she did. Endless evenings of card games, dinners, holidays with the chosen circle of Oral Roberts University graduates emerging to shape the evangelical world. I have fairly good stories about all of them, but always and forever there was Ted. Especially after his father visited several times and he and I became close enough for him to declare me his ‘spiritual child’, therefore making Ted my big brother.

But everyone called him Uncle Ted, so that’s how I refer to him in my head.

Ted taught me to drive. My mother used him as my positive male role model, calling him in to deal with my teenage issues. I babysat for his two oldest children. I was paroled to his house after school (a later post will deal with the crazy compound on which I spent most of my adolescence, with church, school and housing all on church owned land) when it was determined that Satan was angling for my soul. Took his scripture memory class. At an early point, his office was twenty yards or less away from my bedroom.

So, I guess you could say we were close for a while.

_______________________________________________

Here’s where I was going to tell all the stories about Ted and the youth group days, but it seems gossipy, snarky, and beside the point.

And here’s where I was going to tell the entire story of the endless news coverage days in 2006 and my screaming down the house when they showed the envelope he sent to the escort, with the handwriting I’ve known most of my life spelling out ‘art’ in the corner. But again, not the point.

So, what is the point of this post?

____________________________________________

Dear Ted –

We’ve known each other for a long time, and at a very formative time of my life. I’m sorry for what you, Gayle, and the children and your family have gone through. Whatever you’ve done, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

(Though I admit I had a strong desire to punch you when you piled Gayle and the children in the truck and had Gayle roll down the window on her side so you could lie again to the media – did you even see the look on her face? Did it even register with you when you watched the footage later?).

Of all the sermons you preached and the conversations we’ve had, two things have stuck in my head over the years and I’d like to take the opportunity to repeat them to you:

1. No Lazy Lefts

Oh, the fun of my mother recruiting men to teach me to drive. Each of them had something different they stressed, so in retrospect, it wasn’t the worst plan. You were very clear on one point. No Lazy Lefts. You shouldn’t cross into another car’s lane space, but pull up, signaling and make a crisp 90 degree turn. No shoddy, lazy driving. Form was important. Proper form was everything.

Bad form, Ted. Your endless media whoring is bad, bad, bad, bad form. Never saying no to a media request; “the president calls me”; Email leaks of fund-raising letters with monies raised clearing through a registered sex offender; brave, self-sacrificing, ridiculously off to the wilderness ‘I’m going to live in a halfway house and take mail order courses’ statements; “I’m cured”; and let’s not even go to the ‘I was molested as a child’ announcement. And now a documentary. Stop whinging, already. I understand that you built your life and got your self esteem from assuming leadership roles and courting media attention but if there was ever a chance for you to get off your self-created rollercoaster and become a real boy - Ted, if you could work on being ok with being alone with yourself - this is it.

Proper form is everything, Ted.

2. Always Take the Harder Choice – it’s usually the right one

Oh, this one. This one has seriously messed with my life and is probably mainly responsible for the fact that despite two masters, I still labor in the non-profit ghetto, earning way below market value.

In my current life, people call me empathetic and intuitive. Back in evangelical land, I was said to have the gift of discernment. So, here’s the thing, Ted. You’re gay. I was saying it before 2006 and I’m of the same opinion now.

But you didn’t take the harder choice. Call it what you will, you played it both ways, elmer gantry-ing your mega to national attention, hanging out in gay bars to “minister”. I think what you were doing was dishonest, but I know how you were raised and the evangelical position on homosexuality. You may have honestly felt you had no choice; it would have cost you your family’s acceptance when young, got you kicked out of ORU and kept you from the only option you were really presented as a career and a chance to earn your father’s approval.

But come on, your actions were a textbook attempt to get caught. But then your most terrifying, secret wish came true and it was all out in the open. You had your chance, finally, to live honestly as an adult - even if it was playing out on CNN - and you blew it.

Push came to shove and what did you do? You weaseled. You prevaricated. You out and out lied (holding up Gayle and the children in a pathetic attempt at shielding yourself) until there wasn’t a way to lie anymore.

Did you take the harder choice, Ted? Did you seize your chance for your “I am a gay (Evangelical) American” moment? No. You were out (in more ways then one) and you pulled yourself back in. I winced when I saw evangelical leaders of my childhood making media statements. You had finally forced things to a breaking point, got terrified, and tried to crawl back into your evangelical closet.

It may have been a hard choice, but it wasn’t the hardest one. The hardest one would have been being honest. The hardest one would have been coming out.

I have always respected your hauling the ‘dominion over the earth and its’ resources’ evangelicals to the environmental movement. You brought awareness to people who thought that environmentalism was a crunchy, secular-humanist plot against god’s will.

Can you imagine what the effect would have been if you had been honest about being gay? Can you imagine the conversations that would have started? Can you imagine trying to live your life with dignity as a gay evangelical Christian?

Can you imagine it? Can you see the opportunity you’ve thrown away until now?

Always take the harder choice, Ted. It’s usually the right one.

And until then, could we ask that you practice good form?

the wonderboy's playlist

Thu, 2 Jul 2009 12:07:18 -0400

Yesterday wasn't the four year old wonderboy's best day. He was teary as I buckled him in the car, knowing he was in for another visit to the doctor.

I need to hear some Leonard Cohen, please. he told me, I want to hear something sad.

I flip through the CD's (yes, I am a total luddite who refuses to buy dark side of the moon in yet another format for the rest of my days.) I think I know what he wants, but ask anyway, how sad?

sad sisters.

He quiets down, singing along, "we weren't lovers like that, and besides, it would still be alright..."

He doesn't want to go into 'bird on a wire'. "I want something else, now. I'm wearing my billie joe shoes, could you please put on Green Day?"

sure you're up for that?

yes, he tells me, i need to play drums, but quiet drums. Can you play are we the stars?

so i do.

He's breaks off the air drums to ask me again:

are they doing blood work again? I don't want blood work again.

No, this is a regular visit. They are going to have to catch you up on your shots, we couldn't this winter, because you were so sick.

How many shots?

Four, I think.

He makes his inarticulate rage noise before asking:

where are the shots?

I'm not sure, maybe your arms, maybe your legs, maybe your bottom.

(inarticulate rage noise)

Not my butt! Anywhere but my butt! Tell them!

I will, I assure him, I'll make sure they know.

I'm really mad now, he tells me, really mad. I'm really tired. I don't want to be brave again.

It's hard to be brave, I agree. Is there a song that would help?

I need Morrison.

(I'm thrown for a second) Morrison?

Yes, I'm mad and I need to hear the sick song.

Ah, of course.

better?

a little. i'm still mad. Can I hear the dylan?

which version? johnny cash?

no, i want the turtles.

ok, dude, we're here. ready to get this over with?

no.

ok, tell you what. i have some blood work that I have to get done, so after this we can go do that, and you can hold my hand, ok?

will you be scared?

you bet, needles scare the bejezus out of me, so it would really help if you would hold my hand.

I can do that.

so he does.

after the endless shots and six tubes drawn, we're both ready to go home.

mom?

yes?

I think I would like today to be my junk food day this week.

seems fair.

And I think I would like it to be Burger King. They are selling the transformer toys and i want one.

again, seems doable.

really?

yes.

Pulling away from the drive through, he's happily snapping together some sort of plastic transformers thing.

mommy?

yes?

this was a not completely bad day - can i hear it please?

my pleasure, wonderboy.