Mom passed the assessment I gave her at the hospital and so I brought her home. She is resting comfortably right now. Yay!

I and my family have shepherded my mom through two brain surgeries in as many Mondays. Last Monday's was the big whopper surgery; yesterday's was not so brain-related as between-the-skin-and-skull related. She does not tolerate anesthesia well and yesterday was all about advocating for the best place for her to be: namely, the hospital, even though “oh, nobody spends the night in the hospital after this second procedure.” After no sleep Sunday night (she and I shared a hotel room near the hospital; she was up every hour for one reason or another, and our alarm sounded at 5:00) I sat in her recovery room all day Monday (yesterday) and then drove the hour-and-a-half home through Darkest Vermont, where I was very happy to hug my kids (one of whom Mom couldn't name in a photo, even though she lives with them) and have bendy-like relations with my husband. It was hard to fall asleep last night so I finished loading the dishwasher and cleaned up the countertops. Lex's preschool doesn't empty for vacation until Thursday so that's a help. Not sure when I'll be going to get Mom but it'll probably be today. I asked three of the more established matrons in my church if they could please arrange for someone to bring us a meal last night but no meal came. To be fair, one of the women gave us a gift of two-dozen eggs laid by her “going crazy” chickens. We had egg-salad sandwiches for lunch after church, and Lex is eating two hard-boiled eggs for breakfast as I type.

I might get some Christmas cards in the mail today. We'll see.

Facebook is not for announcing your miscarriage, or the four-year anniversary of when your sister found your dad dead in his bed. It is not for announcing your diagnosis or updating the world with your family drama. It is for social networking, not personal-bummer spreading.

Really, I wish people would realize that these, and so many other, pieces of news ought solely to be spread the old-fashioned way: On your blog. In your Christmas letter.

Get it together, people

Love,

MMM (Motormouth Miss Manners)

I was thinking of this the other night… I'm so thankful to have so many people to care for in my life, because hell, some people don't have anyone. Right?

Merry Christmas, everyone. 2010 was a hell of a year.

The best news of the year was Monstro's graduation from his PhD program at UMass-Amherst. It was a very long and exhausting road and we are so proud of him. He looked resplendent in his doctoral robes and the tam we had to special-order to accommodate his head size. We were thrilled to share the day with our comrades in arms, Dr. Emily and her wife Nick. We were not so thrilled when they moved away at the end of the summer; it's hard to lose friends to a crappy economy.

After receiving no interviews all year, Monstro received one 11th-hour interview and was hired immediately as the Visiting Professor of Writing and American Studies at a kinda-local liberal-arts college. He loves his job but it's only for a year and even though they have an opening and EVERYBODY loves him, they will not offer him the job because they already have two “Americanists” on staff. We have yet to hear any calls for the 2011 job season, even though he's applied for at least 80 positions across the nation.

In the interest of shaving a bit of time off of his commute, the family moved to a home in a nearby agrarian community and it's so much better than Northampton, they wonder why they didn't move three years ago. Their backyard is now so big, Lex calls it “the meadow.” At night, instead of hearing Harley-Davidsons, they can listen to the house settle and the fridge kick on. The move also garnered them a new roommate (see below).

Motormouth's career had its ups and downs this year. She said goodbye to two long-term clients because, ultimately, they weren't willing to pay what her 15 years of marketing/pr experience and results are worth. In the early summer, she took a position as the campaign manager for a judge in southern California –the last request of her deceased buddy, Kyle– and it taught her that yes, Virginia, southern California is indeed a cesspool of censorship, dirty journalism, and cowardly editors. More happily, she recently picked up a new client in her new hometown and the press release she wrote for them resulted in a TV-news interview that they'll be shooting tomorrow, for the best-rated news broadcast in the Springfield area. She also continues to partner with the amazing Jay S. for public-relations work.

It's just as well that Motormouth hasn't been so busy, work-wise, because her mom moved in with the family in September and that has kept everyone pretty busy. Her MFM (My Favorite Mother) had the first of two parts of brain surgery this Monday and goes in again next Monday for part two. If everything goes according to plan, the surgeries will eradicate her tremors, which are the #1 symptom of MFM's Parkinson's Disease. We'll know more in January when they switch on the device.

Lex loves his five-day-a-week preschool and we are delighted with it, too. He has proven himself the class star in anything pertaining to music, and he's also enjoying the children's art-and-music program at our church every Sunday. He loves playing with Mommy's musical instruments and his PaperJamz guitar. BK turned two this year, is attending a home-based daycare two-days/week, and is totally in love with everything about it. He recently learned how to count to 15 and he is the light of our world.

That's it. Merry Christmas and please pray for MFM's health, Monstro's job opportunities, and restful rest for us all.

Mom is doing OK. The doctors say her surgery went well. We go back for part two next Monday the 20th (or Sunday night if our call time is 6:30 a.m. as it was this week). We won't really know how it worked until January 4th, which is when they'll remove her sutures and switch on the device.

In the meanwhile, BK is sick, I am sick, we are all exhausted but what can we do? I went to sleep at 9:30 last night and dreamt dreams that you don't need to be a Freudian to figure out. Hell, you don't even have to know how to spell Freudian to figure them out.

We are the sandwich generation because our parents were the divorce generation.

My mom is having two-part brain surgery. The first part is being done this Monday, the second the Monday after that. I have a lot of feelings about it and her health in general, which don't really belong on the blog, but my family and I and her doctors could really use your prayers, so if you're the praying sort, or even if you're not —especially if you're not– could you spare a few thoughts for us this weekend and next week? My teeth are ground to the nub and I'm feeling very adrift. Thank you.

We have a houseguest in the form of half of our best friend. Nicki's up here from Pennsylvania. She's married to Emily, who didn't make the trip (hence the one-half aspect). We haven't seen her or Em since they moved to PA in late-July.

Nicki arrived yesterday in her little blue rocketcar. I was down in the driveway before Nicki could even open her door.

“I didn't realize how much I missed your smiling face until I saw it just now!” I said, pulling her into a hard, long hug.

It's awesome having a houseguest. First off, she brought us a case of Yuengling lager, something we'd never heard of until we met her. She's happy to sleep on our futon mattress on the floor, so we didn't have to move furniture. Moreover, it raises the grownup ratio in my household, so she's able to help me prep dinner or talk to my mom while I'm changing a diaper or help Mom find her wallet while I'm changing a diaper, etc.

Quite frankly, we might never let her leave. Sorry, Emily. You'll just have to move back to Western Mass. We'll clear a little bookshelf space for you and everything!

I've decided that a brief book review is a short review of an under 250-page novel. (For me, that's short.)

Today's selection is The Dwarf by Pär Lagerkvist.

You know how every so often the Swedes award a Nobel Prize to another Swede, just to keep it in the family? Lagerkvist won the 1951 Nobel Prize for Literature. I was thinking this was one of their throwaway prize years and greeted the book with a bit of skepticism.

“Erik liked that book,” Monstro said. Plus, my best girlfriend is in Sweden right now. So I decided to give it a go.

So glad I did! This character, who supplies the narrative voice, is compelling, and I recognized enough of myself in him to make me a little uncomfortable. The novel is funny except when it's not, horrifying despite the straightforwardness of description and motive, and the last sentence is seriously heartrending.

The Dwarf by Pär Lagerkvist reads quick and even features Da Vinci as a supporting player. I highly, highly, highly recommend this novel, and shall myself be searching out Lagerkvist's two collections of stories: The Eternal Smile and The Marriage Feast.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving. I hadn't intended on cooking the entire meal by myself but once I got started, I couldn't stop. Viola! We brined the turkey this year for the first time and it worked out really well: the meat was moist and yummy. Unfortunately, I found it made the gravy a little salty, and it also meant forgoing stuffing the turkey. Nevertheless, it was delicious.

I was concerned about how it would go because it was our first Thanksgiving without our friends Nick and Em — we've celebrated the last five turkey-days with them and I was afraid we'd be terribly lonely without them. The bright side was, the lack of Nick meant we could cover the turkey with bacon, because Nick's allergic to pork. It definitely was the silver lining.

(Incidentally, did you know that there's a word for “covering stuff with bacon”? It's called barding. Subconsciously, perhaps I knew this, and that's why my Dungeons and Dragon character is a bard. Barding. Look it up.)

We bought more ingredients than we cooked so I'm looking forward to a melange of leftovers and finger foods the next couple of days. Happy Thanksgiving weekend to you all!