Category Archives: life

April 18, 2009 · 4:19 pm

Hold the Cheese:Burglar

A cheese... burglar.

This is how very bizarre my life has become:

My house – as you might expect, since I run a web site for kids, have kids of my own, and perform music for kids – has become what I can only describe as an “Open House” for the neighborhood.

Open, as in all the parents in the neighborhood must have had a secret meeting and decided: that girl is in her basement all day. What a perfect babysitter!

Two days ago, a kid that no one in our house even knows kept ringing the doorbell – which I ignored, since I was working, and thus, as my uppity grandmother would have said, was not “at home,” a phrase the ancient upper crust used to conveniently use to describe politely: “well, yes, I’m actually here, but get the hell off my property, because I want to be left alone.”

Getting no answer, he started to try to jimmy the lock.

Now I was, well, let’s see: I could say intrigued, or I could say pissed. Either way, I marched up the stairs, calling Tucker, my big black dog – scary, but a secret sissy. I’m not scary, but people don’t know that they ought to be. Kinda ironic, the pair of us.

I threw the door open wide, and put on my best scary Mom face, and apparently I don’t have a very good one, because the kid begged to use the bathroom. “Fine,” I relented. He was in there for an absurdly long time.

It’s no use. It’s Spring Break, and they keep coming and coming in droves. Tomorrow I think I may just throw an impromptu concert, just for the heck of it. Maybe they’ll all run away.

Our beloved.

One little girl is straight from Pakistan – or Passkan, as she calls it. She melted my heart today, though – couldn’t turn her away. I’d given her Baba some fabric I’d had, and she’d turned it into the loveliest, rich red sari you could ever imagine.

Okay, so she stays.

Another kid who came today had a great story. “Guess what, Elizabeth? Somebody broke into our house and only stole cheese but he got caught because my dad beat him up.”

I raised an eyebrow.

But there it was, in black and white, in our local newspaper: M’Town homeowner subdues suspect in cheese theft.

Made it right onto page five, color photo of the eye-blackened cheeseburglar and everything. The man was arrested with five different kinds of cheese in his pockets.

I don’t think I have five different kinds of cheese in my house.

But I do think I have at least five different kinds of kids. And they all have the greatest stories.

Some of them are even true.

Want to read the newspaper story about the cheese thief? You can read it right here.

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Tagged as absurdly long, arrested, at home, babysitter, basement, best scary Mom face, big black dog, coming in droves, eye-blackened cheeseburglar, eyebrow raised, impromptu concert, intrigued, ironic, jimmy the lock, music for kids, my bizarre life, neighborhood, off my property, pair, Pakistan, parents, pissed, politely, sari, scary, secret meeting, sissy, Spring Break, stole cheese, want to be left alone, work at home

March 7, 2009 · 2:38 pm

I am SO funny.

retro_mom My older daughter, on the cusp of thirteen, possesses a rapier wit that I brag about the way some other mothers brag about their offsprings’ report cards. (An A? What’s an A compared to a keen-edged sword of sarcasm? I mean, really? Which will get you further in life? An A might land you a great job, so you can buy all the Starbucks coffee you want, but being funny will make people buy coffee FOR you. And, for the record, the kid’s running straight As ALSO, nice bonus.)

But she was pissed at me tonight and hurled the worst insult at me she possibly could:

“You know, Mom, you’re not really that funny.”

I was shocked – shocked, I tell you, shocked. Just like that Captain Renault in Casablanca, only really.

“Whaddya mean, I’m not funny? I’m PLENTY funny!” Probably the lamest comeback ever, proving her point. She nailed said point home with a look over the top of her glasses: glasses, I might add, she chose because they LOOKED JUST LIKE MINE!

I think.

“My BLOG is funny.”

I recalled the other night, her lanky, thin frame curled up on the futon four feet from my computer. “Mom?” she said, in a little girl voice, “Instead of a bedtime story, could you read me some of your cynical thoughts on everything that’s good in life?”

Hilarious, I thought, but I DID read to her from the blog. AND SHE LAUGHED!

Well. It turns out that Little Miss Still-Hasn’t-Got-Her-Period-Yet-This-Is-The-Longest-Case-Of-PMS-On-Record has “Issues On Her Mind” THAT HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU, MOM! THEY ARE NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS AND I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT THEM, ohKAY?

oo…kay….

No. NOT okay. Would I take this from an adult? No, I would not.

“You know,” I said, putting my foot down. On the brake. (We were in the car.) “I’m not just ‘The Mom.’ I’m an actual person, with actual feelings, here.”

This worked about as well as: “You know: I’m not your Mom. I’m really a vampire with a soul, sent here by Warner Brothers Television to film a Reality TV show to observe how you deal with it.”

I could see the idea of her own mother being a real, live, flesh-and-blood human being pinballing around in her head, banging and pinging and making those cartoon noises, till finally she went “TILT.”

No, really, she really tilted her head in denial of the concept.

astromom I remembered. Mothers can’t be human beings. It’s just not possible, not allowed; it would turn the whole universe into a huge, sucking black hole – worse than middle school already is. Mothers can’t be cool, they can’t be funny, they can’t be – oh, ew, gross – sexy, and they sure as hell can’t have any feelings.

Because who the hell else are you going to tear the ass off of when one of your friends rips the heart out of you? Who else is going to take all your bullshit and love you anyway, despite the worst bitchfest you might ever throw?

Mom is.

And now tell me: how the hell is someone supposed to do all that if she’s HUMAN? Get real. Have some common sense, people.

At least until they grow up. Then they find a good therapist. Now THERE’S a bunch that’s not allowed to be human. But don’t get me started on that.

My old shrink was hilarious.

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March 2, 2009 · 10:38 pm

Brainbone: Am I the monkey at the monolith?

I have a definite love-hate relationship with Facebook’s Brainbone. You know, the kind of love-hate relationship you have with someone who doesn’t even know you exist, like a random celebrity, a robot, or one of the bitchy popular girls from middle school.

You really WANT them to like you, for them to think you’re cool and smart, but on the other hand, you sort of want to swagger by and act like you don’t care, too.

Still, you can’t manage it. You attempt a swagger, but you end up stumbling over your bookbag as it falls off your shoulder when you try to fling your hair back, casually but ungracefully, incurring the laughter of the entire seventh grade class.

So that’s where love-hate gets you. Absolutely nowhere but your knee socks tangled in your bookbag straps, and your hair in your beet-red face.

Why doesn’t someone tell you out of the gate that you only get cool when you stop caring about being cool?

Oh. Wait. They do. Only it’s your stupid, retarded, dorky parents, so what the heck do THEY know? Especially when they put it this way:

If everyone else jumped off the Empire State Building, would you do it, too?

Which of course, in middle school, you absolutely would. No questions asked. If it were that, or being hideously embarrassed? Off the ledge you would sail, like a ground-bound dart.

That’s how Brainbone makes me feel.

It doesn’t help that growing up, my sisters and I each had labels plastered on us. Actual labels, practically, with “Hi, my name is” strips on them, only mine was: “The Smart One Who Plays Guitar Really Well.”

I have two sisters. Theirs read: “The Pretty One Who Sings Really Well” and “The Quiet Skinny One.”

This kept life fairly uncomplicated for my parents. Nice for them, but confusing for us, since all of us were fairly skinny, all of us were actually pretty, and the quiet one only SEEMED quiet because she was, for the most part, virtually ignored.

As far as musical talent “assignments” went, turns out the One Who Played Guitar could Also Sing Pretty Damn Well, Too, and the One Who Sang Rocked on Keyboards – and the Quiet One, to whom no one paid any Damn Attention To At All signed her own damn self up for piano lessons when she grew up and ALSO Rocked The House on the Good Old Piano, inspiring the mother with the label-maker to trade in said label maker for her OWN piano, with lessons to go with.

Ah, how much more comfortable life is without all that sticky label adhesive.

Yet another reason I get a frisson of horror whenever Facebook’s Brainbone application asks me if I want to show my Brainbone stats on Twitter, or my web site, or anywhere public at all.

Show my Brainbone stats? Are you kidding? Why not also show my weight? And record me Confessing my sins to my local parish priest, while I’m at it, as a global podcast?

(Presuming I ever actually WENT to Confession… “Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It’s been… er…. it’s been… well, Padre, I think it’s been since second grade – you know – when they MAKE you go, in order to get your First Holy Communion? I think THAT was the last time I made my Confession. Wait – wait – <<insert sound of me sailing like a cannon out of the booth>>)

Yeah, I’m about as likely to show my Brainbone stats as I am to show off my untidy living room to unexpected company. (Wait: I do that.) Okay – as I am to show off my untidy living room to my mother, unexpectedly.

Because here’s the thing: I never realized how deeply I internalized that whole “I’m the smart one” thing. Every time I get a Brainbone question wrong, I feel deeply rattled, as if I should know this, somehow. Why I think I should know which country the city of Timbuktu is in, I don’t know, but somehow, I do.

Why I feel smug when I guess right is another mystery. I know I only guessed randomly, but when Brainbone rewards me with an exuberant “That’s correct!” I still feel like: “Boo-yeah!” As if I really earned it, instead of throwing dice.

Because I’m stupid enough to still feel like “the Smart One.”

Even though according to my percentages (SEE, Brainbone? I’m GOOD at math!) I’m technically FAILING Brainbone.

And because of this, I relentlessly answer the “Day’s Question,” for the sole purpose of upping my percentage to AT LEAST a passing grade.

THEN – and ONLY THEN – would I dare display my stats.

Because then EVERYONE could see, that of course…

I’m the smart one.

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February 28, 2009 · 3:35 pm

I’m going to start randomly singing and dancing.

needle_thread I don’t even like musicals.

They make me laugh, to be quite honest: the idea of people walking around, minding their own affairs, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, bursting into song – complete with invisible orchestra – well, it sort of makes me want to do that in real life.

You know, get some speakers for my iPod. At the bank, when the teller asks me how much I want to deposit, burst into a little ditty instead of simply mumbling, like everyone else does:

(To the tune of “Pop Goes the Weasel”)

I’m giving you the last of my cash,
To pay the MasterCard bill
They told me if I don’t pay them soon
I won’t be able to use it till….

I pay them…

(okay, that last part we can drag out emotionally.)

What I wonder then is if the rest of the bank’s customers would join me in a perfectly synchronized dance?

That’s life in a musical.

So why, you might wonder, am I now Costume Coordinator (they couldn’t even call me “costume director?”) for my 12-year-old’s middle school production of “Oliver?” (Please sir, can I have some.. more?)

Because my 12-year-old has the misfortune of being cast as “The Widow Corney,” and thus was terrified of being stuck with an “old lady fat costume.”

“PLEEEZ make my costume, Mom,” she begged.

Having made – oh, lemme count – sixteen zillion Halloween costumes from scratch, including one stupid summer the YMCA camp decided to have Halloween in July, whereupon both my kids fully expected brand-new, lightweight costumes (I make the Halloween costumes WARM, having experienced too many of my own wearing a coat covering my fairy wings) – I said, ignorantly, “OK,” only to learn that meant I had to make all the costumes for 45 kids.

Last night was opening night.

I still have my sewing machine set up in the “green room.”

One kid split his pants – I was sewing in between acts. I still haven’t even seen my own kid perform, although the other kids say she’s great.

I’m hoping all the kinks will be worked out by the last show.

On the other hand, it’s been great getting to know all the kids. It’s been tough to get all these well-mannered kids to call me “Elizabeth” instead of “Ms. Bushey,” so a lot of them have taken to simply calling me “the Dutchess.”

In the meantime, I feel sort of like an Irish immigrant who really needs some labor organizer to come around and sign me up.

But when I saw them take their bows last night on the monitor, I burst into tears.

It was worth every stitch.

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Tagged as bank, bill, costumes, dutchess, Halloween, invisible orchestra, iPod, Irish immigrant, labor organizer, MasterCard, middle school, musicals, Oliver!, opening night, Pop Goes the Weasel, random singing and dancing, sewing machine, split pants, stage bows, stitches, tears, teller, The Widow Corney, theater production, worth every stitch

February 18, 2009 · 10:18 am

Tweets to the Tweet: Tank You, Twitterers, for the Twittergasm.

Follow me on Twitter.

Tweety Bird Tweeting Twitter

For those yet new to Twitter, let me start by introducing a word that I desperately hope makes it into the Oxford English Dictionary as soon as possible: “twittergasm.” Coined by a woman I’ve paged through but can no longer find, thanks to the proliferation of “tweets” on my Twitter page, I find the term charming and titillating – and perfect to describe the feeling you get when something you read on Twitter really works for you.

If you haven’t heard of Twitter, then stop reading this right now and turn instead to the page of this blog titled: “Elizabeth Williams Bushey is making fun of you.”

Maybe you’ve heard of Twitter, though, and you just pretend at parties and other gatherings that you know what it’s all about – you know, the same way that you pretend that you know what “CPU” and “RAM” means when people who DO know what it means talk to you about it. You get that faux-confident head bobble, like “yeah, man, I know…”

Maybe you even have a MySpace, but your only friend is Tom. (If you don’t get that, see above: “Elizabeth Bushey is making fun of you.”)

Then again, maybe in reaction to your ignorance, you’ve taken a pretend stand against all this “dang” technology, and protested that all this “social media” really “keeps us apart.”

Maybe you lumber up on top of a soapbox and proselytize for the days of old, when people had to proselytize from real soapboxes, on real streets, hassling flesh-and-blood passers-by, getting arrested by flesh-and-blood police officers.

You poor thing. If you haven’t gotten the hang of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype, etc., you’re missing out on some cool opportunities to expand your network of some very cool people you’d otherwise never in a million years meet.

For instance, I just did a “virtual” school visit with a sixth-grade class in Alabama. I’m in New York, but I was able to answer all their questions, see their sweet faces, and play my guitar and sing for them – all from my studio at home. We used Skype, and it cost us nothing. And it was easy – for the teacher, and for me. (I pretty much just sat there, worked in between classes, and waited for the “calls.”)

Via Facebook, I’ve connected with some old college buddies that I haven’t talked to in years.

Via Gmail’s new video conferencing, I can see and speak with people – just like Judy Jetson – instead of devouring minutes on my cell phone.

Coolest of all: I’ve been struggling my ass off to build two sites using an open source technology called Joomla. Everyone in the known universe, every page I’ve Googled, says how easy it is. Somehow, though, despite changing web hosts, even, I haven’t been able to get it to work. Which is weird – since although I can’t do everything really well, the one thing I DO do pretty well is build web sites, and work with software. No matter how many times I installed and reinstalled it, at least one major thing went wrong.

As in, REALLY wrong. Like: the registration page would fail. Something particularly catastrophic like that.

So I called an old friend of mine up – she’s the web diva at a college, and I used to be, which is how we met – only now I’m an artist, and she’s now a SUPER diva. She listened compassionately to my problem, and went straight to Twitter. She has something like seventeen bazillion fans following her on Twitter.

Within the hour, I had at least four or five experts offering me help. People who didn’t even know her personally – let alone ME. I hooked up with this TERRIFICALLY fun guy – who has a charming gift for cussing, which totally works for me. Never would have met him without Twitter.

Talk about Twittergasm.

Talk about social media.

If you haven’t gotten on board yet – you’re gonna miss the train. Wave, though, from the platform. We’ll miss you!

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December 29, 2008 · 1:22 pm

What’s My Item?

The Escape Hammer

My mother – who has been mentioned before in this blog, affectionately, if weirdly – has been affectionate and weird again, just in time for the holidays.

This has become a holiday tradition – considering that my birthday is exactly one week before Christmas – if Christmas is on a Thursday, then so is my birthday – I usually get a double-dose of wackiness in December.

My mom, much like myself, is unconventional. Only imagine how unconventional SHE is, if, when I open a present from her, I never fail to be perplexed and amused.

None of the regular Mom-type gifts from Betsy. Forget sweaters, shirts, scarves, or earrings. I got a cool frying pan once, that I still use – it’s amazingly easy to clean, which is to be expected from my fanatically tidy Mom – no matter what you char inside of it, it just wipes off, and it’s not even non-stick. I have no idea where she found it, or what she paid for it, but every time I caramelize onions, I think of her gratefully.

Which is, oddly, probably exactly what she had in mind when she gave it to me.

Last year she gave me homemade dishtowels, potholders and place mats – in assorted, non-matching colors. It took me a few days to figure out exactly what they were, but they were nice. The potholders don’t keep your hands safe from the heat, the place mats are a little too thick for the table, and the dish towels are kind of an odd size – plus the colors are pure Betsy: but my little one loves them, because they’re sort of rainbow, as in “I used up all my cotton yarn on you.”

Still, the thrill of opening a gift from Betsy is like nothing else. There is no way on earth one could possibly ever guess what’s inside, because there’s no way anyone else got you the same thing.

Wait – that’s not quite true. You CAN get a heads-up on what you got from Betsy – if you manage to get a hold of one of my sisters: because Betsy does things in triplicate. Whatever I get, my sisters also get. So whoever opens first, knows what the other two got.

This year is the quintessential Betsy gift. My mother, in addition to being Joan Crawfordesque in her quest for the most immaculate living space possible, is also Grizzly Bearesque in her quest to keep her “babies” – all of us adults, now, with cubs of our own – safe from any harm that might befall us.

Harm includes: rain, snow, sleet, ice, sunburn, disease, random cartoon safes falling from the sky, hangnails, paper cuts, broken bones, hurt feelings (commenters, beware), and a host of other ills that plague her soul daily.

Her coping strategy is usually “out of sight, out of mind,” which allows our thousand-mile distance – she lives in a southern state, I live in New York – to mitigate her anxiety somewhat. That, and a massive capability for denial, for example:

Me: “Mom, I took the kids to the city today to see the exhibits at the Met – we had a really good time.”

Mom: “By yourself?”

Me: slapping forehead, muttering “stupid self, stupid self…” “Oh, no, Mom – We just happened on a regiment of Marines here in town, and they offered to escort us down. Wasn’t that lucky?”

Mom: breathing a deep sigh of relief “How nice. What nice boys. Did they enjoy the Monet?”

So this year, although I live in a landlocked area, and work from home, and rarely drive more than a few miles to anywhere, I opened a small rectangular package containing a small, heavy, extremely sturdy double-pointed steel hammer.

Upon inspection – lots of inspection, which included a Google search – I learned that this was the “famous” Escape Hammer – proven by the Mythbusters Show as being able to shatter the windows of a submerged automobile, in the event of such a disaster.

“You screw it somewhere easy to reach in your car,” Betsy explained, excitedly. “And then, if your car is ever underwater, you can get out the window! I got one for everybody. And Mythbusters tried it and confirmed that it works, so you won’t have to die.”

Reassuring – and especially interesting, as I happen to be between cars at the moment, and I doubt that Enterprise would appreciate my screwing anything to the Dodge I’m currently renting.

But who wants to worry Mom?

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October 18, 2008 · 2:44 pm

The Dumbass News.

Herta Auslander was found dead in a freezer at her home in Cooks Falls. Police are now looking for her son, Roland "Jack" Auslander, who they believe was cashing her Social Security checks after her death. (Times Herald-Record/MICHELE HASKELL) Photo courtesy of the Times Herald-Record.

Once, when I was out drinking – okay, doing some SERIOUS drinking, but remember, I was a newspaperwoman at the time – I went to the ladies’ room and came out with my miniskirt tucked into my pantyhose.

Luckily, I was alerted to this dumbass move immediately, and was able to correct it before too much harm was done. Nevertheless, it remains an embarrassing memory, and a humbling one.

Because of this, though, it gives me great joy to know I am not alone in dumbass moves in life. Behold: some dumbass news from October 2008.

Reality, only funnier: comin’ up.

Need a sweater, Ma?

Adam Bosch reports for the Times Herald-Record in N.Y., Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008: Tellers at the community bank near the tiny, Twilight Zone-ish town of Cooks Falls, N.Y. hadn’t seen hide nor hair of 100-year-old Herta Auslander in some time.

They’d seen her social security checks hit her bank account, though, and they spotted some activity.

Quick-witted tellers: not.

Herta had actually died a year ago, and was nestled snugly with, I don’t know, maybe some pork chops, in her son Jack’s freezer, while he dutifully handled her affairs. What he was purchasing, no one can say, since no one now has seen hide nor hair of Jack Auslander himself.

When police finally investigated, stumbling on the frozen corpse of the poor mother, they found little more than embers in a backyard fire pit and dozens of dogs – some of them vicious – from the so-called dog rescue Herta was supposed to be running.

Now Jack is running, and while the cops aren’t exactly gearing up their quads to race after the guy (apparently they have to defrost poor Herta before they can even tell whether she died the old-fashioned way, or had a little help, if you dig me) the police are looking askance at old Jack’s record.

Personally, I’m surprised he froze Mom. He seems more of the burying type, having buried three ounces of cocaine in his backyard before, according to Bosch’s story. (Jack really IS kind of a dumbass; anybody carrying that much weight in coke really ought to know more tricks how to hide it.)

::-::-::-::-::-::

What’s “PRNDL” for, and do I need to buy a vowel?

From the Reuters NewsWire: “Oddly Enough”

A Canadian woman, apparently feeling too tipsy when leaving some social function to drive her own car, enlisted her nine-year-old to take the wheel down a rural Ontario back road. Police, apparently doing a double-take at the itty-bitty driver straining to see above the steering wheel, pulled the couple over and gave the woman a sobriety test, which she fortunately passed.

Lucky for most of us, there are no parenting tests.

Comments abound on the Yahoo! News site – Egad, are people up in arms that a mother would DO such a thing.

I’m thinking the kid was probably psyched as all get out. Can you imagine if YOUR mom got loaded and handed YOU the keys? How incredibly freakin’ happy a moment in your life would that be?

You know, up until the part where the police arrested you?

::-::-::-::-::-::

QuickDraw McGraw: Blam! and Damn!

The Barre Montpelier Times Argus, VT – Oct. 15, 2008 – Gordon Monteith, one would think, at 61 years old, would be old enough to know better before he starting swinging around his .44 Magnum revolver inside his Pearl Street apartment. After all, he had two other guns, so the assumption would be that he knew a LITTLE something about firearms.

First of all, he really ought to have thought twice about playing with guns outside a firing range. Inside his apartment? Not outside, or anything, where one might be slightly less likely to perhaps hit a neighbor’s wall, the neighbor’s couch against the wall, and perhaps the neighbor’s head resting against the couch against the wall?

Not Gordon. He decided that fateful Tuesday that a little quickdraw practice would be a terrific way to while away the evening. I wonder if he put on some Western-style chaps and a tall Texas cowboy hat, too; I can just imagine him looking at himself in a full-length mirror, racing his best time, pulling the revolver out of its holster.

Gotta be ready to shoot fast, in case there’s a showdown in the middle of the street in Montpelier, I guess Gordon was thinking at the time.

At least, up until the time the revolver went off, and he shot himself in his own leg.

The bullet traveled through the knee, down his leg, and ended up in the bottom of his foot.

Sigh. Poor dumbass.

::-::-::-::-::-::

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October 16, 2008 · 10:17 pm

The Not-So-Gentle Gin and Tonic.

My fave.

My new favorite drink.

It used to be Pinot Grigio, since Chardonnay gives me kind of a headache. Pouilly-Fuissé is pouilly fabulous, but it puts too much of a hole in my wallet to be a regular thing – and hey, an artist likes a little nip now and then after a hard day’s, well, arting.

So now I have discovered – well, technically, REdiscovered, since it’s not like I never had a gin and tonic before in my life – the wonders of this clean, refreshing, and buzzy little drink.

Best of all? The little bottles of Tanqueray are VERY moderately priced, and there’s something about pouring your drink out of a flask-shaped container that makes you feel charmingly like a cross between a hobo and Dorothy Parker.

Especially if you drink enough of it.

Cheers.

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Tagged as alcohol, artist, charmingly, Dorothy Parker, drink, fabulous, flask, gin and tonic, hobo, humor, life, nip, Pinot Grigio, Pouilly Fuissé, wallet, wonders, work