Tankle

Today is my baby brother's birthday. I clearly remember the day he was born, was I ever pissed. I had been firmly entrenched in my status as spoiled only child for almost seven years and did not like this threat to my balance of power one little bit. I distinctly remember pressing my parents about how this new baby business was going to impact me - specifically, the size of my allowance and my future stock options.

Twenty-seven years later - the little brat has grown on me. Although, to be clear - I still do not like having to share my stuff AND I still hold a grudge that my parents bought him a car in high school and I had to hitch rides until I could afford my own. But overall, he is a good brother, all things considered. Little bro lives in Florida now. He likes to share stories about things people do in Florida - like, make moonshine and wrassle gators and host weddings to which the guests wear jean overalls and drink the moonshine and then wrassle gators (his stories - not my stereotypes). He also likes to imitate the speech of his new buddies in an exaggerated Southern twang, which is devastatingly funny.

While at a party over the holidays, my brother gets up from his seat to head for the restroom and loudly announces, "I gotta take me a TANKLE." I could not stop saying this: For the rest of the night, I would walk toward the ladies room solely so I could say "TANKLE" out loud and then laugh for ten minutes (I know - I seriously need a hobby, right?). But it was gosh-durn funny. I DARE you to say it the next time you enter a restroom and see if YOU don't, at least, snicker a bit.

A few days later, Jeff, Ethan and I are having dinner with my in-laws. Some background on the in-law relationship: They are nice people and while they do not actively dislike me, per se - I do think they are somewhat confused by my existence. They are conservative, quiet, and subdued. I ... well ... am not those things. During the first few years of my relationship with my husband, I found all this quietness unsettling. Especially during dinner, when I was used to loud stories and elbows on the table and all sorts of general insanity. It is a running joke in my family that we put the "fun in dysfunction", as we toast ourselves with margaritas and listen to Jimmy Buffett music. That is, until someone starts yelling and throwing the Waterford. Much less fun, then.

To compensate for the calm, I tried extra-hard to be funny and talkative and tell stories to fill in the quiet -- not unlike a spazzy golden retriever puppy that will do anything to get you to throw its bone and scratch behind its ear. My eagerness to be *on* resulted in many cringe-inducing awkward exchanges. My husband is still amused by some of my greatest hits, such as the time I told a story about one of my friends. My close female friend was in a serious relationship with a woman and had been reluctant to tell me for fear it would impact our friendship. This was crazy, I told the in-laws - I LOVE my friend, nothing would change that. And women. Women are the best. In fact, if I were not marrying their son maybe I would date a woman. But probably not. But maybe. If other people date women - or men! - that is GREAT - I love women that love women or men that love men! There should be more love in the world! Don't you agree?!

Over the years I have deduced by process of humiliation that my best strategy during in-law visits is to sit there and shut up. Speak when spoken to. Avoid stories, avoid politics, avoid controversy, avoid jokes. I can usually do this for, oh, 4-5 hours, at which point all this restraint becomes almost physically painful for me and it is all I can do to keep the "freak" in me bottled up.

At our most recent get-together, I was rapidly approaching the 5-hour mark and getting a little panicked. We had just had a successfully non-controversial dinner in a restaurant and were about to head home. Jeff takes Ethan to the restroom and I am left in the lobby, ALONE AND UNSUPERVISED, with the in-laws. Instead of something normal and benign, what do I say?

"You know what is funny - my brother was saying 'I gotta take me a tankle' when he goes to the restroom. Now Ethan is saying it! Isn't that funny? TANKLE! Get it - like 'tinkle' but Southern?! Like his friends in Florida - SO funny!"

My mother-in-law practically gags and replies in absolute horror, "Do people in Florida REALLY say THAT?"

So, thank you little bro, for expanding my cultural horizons. I LOVE that you say *tankle.* Happy b-day - I hope it is full of gators and moonshine.

My New Year's Threesome

Today marks the end of my self-imposed exile from both the home office (where my personal computer lives) and the gym. There was a mouse sighting in my office, which prompted my head to almost explode. I literally could not go down there for a week for fear of a mouse running across my bare feet. I just imagined the mouse having a mouse party with all its little mouse friends on my desk in the middle of the night. I was wondering where all the good wine from our wine rack had been pilfered off to. I had been blaming the babysitter, but now, I know better -- it was actually the rodent infestation drinking my 1992 Pinot. Ick.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no mice at the gym, but there are a lot of skinny people and sweating; both things I try my best to avoid during the month of December. I mean, why make yourself feel bad, on purpose? I went back today, totally overdid it and will probably be sore for at least two full weeks. On my way out, I saw an ambulance pull up, sirens blaring. Three stern paramedics bustled their way in and raced toward the cardio room, holding a stretcher. Apparently, I am not the only one who took a month off in lieu of eating nothing but potatoes and then decided to run fifteen miles on the treadmill, on setting nine. Mmm - potatoes. Mashed, buttered, fried, baked - I am the female equal of the Forrest Gump shrimper guy when it comes to the number of ways I *heart* potatoes. Alright, seriously for a second - I hope the person in need of medical attention is fine and it was just a pulled hamstring or something relatively benign like that. Heart failure is an unpleasant way to ring in the New Year.

Aside from going to the gym, my New Year got off to one wild and crazy start. We went to a fabulous, but low-key party, at our friends' home - thank you, W family! Basically, the parents drank in the kitchen and the preschoolers ran around in the basement, possibly huffing from aerosol cans, eating lead paint chips and sampling peach Schnapps from the wet bar. Whatever - they had fun!

Ethan was allowed to stay up until midnight, which thrilled him. When asked the best part of New Years, he replied enthusiastically, "Banging on the pots and pans outside!" Truth be told, that is a nightly practice at our house. At the stroke of midnight, we all run outside and bang with metal spoons on our cookware, just to make the sure the neighbors are not sleeping.

I awoke on New Year's Day sporting the customary and proper champagne headache, a plastic bead necklace, and smeared mascara from my attempted "smoky eye" look the night before (Note to self: Moms, as a general rule, should not attempt smoky eyes - it screams "trying too hard.") More notably, I awoke with not one - but TWO - guys in my bed. Alright, so one is more a guy-in-training and is related by blood. The other is legally bound to sleep next to me every night until we are parted by the cold, clammy hand of death or by arbitration and court-ordered dissolution, whichever comes first (KIDDING, J!).

Virtually, the one thing Jeff and I agreed on re: this whole parenting shebang was that we would not have our kid sleep in our bed. Period. No kid in bed. This means that, according to Murphy's Law of Parenting, Ethan has spent the better part of a month tucked soundly where - that's correct, studio audience! - right in the middle of our bed.

This process happens by default. He waits until we are snoring at 2 am before launching a full-scale bed assault - sprinting down the hall (it is important to be fast so as to outrun all the nighttime monsters), tattered blue blanket and Woofie the dog underarm, he then flings himself smack into the middle of our bed, somehow stealing MY pillow as he goes.

At this point, Jeff and I are too sleepy/groggy/lazy to march him back into his room, so he is rewarded by being allowed to sleep with us for the rest of the night. This is extra fun for me because: 1) as aforementioned, he steals my pillow and, usually, my part of the comforter and 2) Ethan enjoys sleeping with some angley, pokey body part wedged securely into the tender part of my lower spine. I only got a "B" in anatomy, but I would wager a bet that the bone-in-question is latin for "Triceratops horn."

As a result, I am now averaging approximately fourteen cups of coffee a day. Out of respect for my environmental footprint, I may just start snorting the dry coffee grounds and stop wasting all that water during the brewing process.