So when she walked calmly in the back door today – despite knowing full well that the Lego set she had spent the past six months saving up for was waiting for her on the kitchen table, and today had been an Early Release Day (an evil that is somewhat unique to Massachusetts schools, in which they release the children several hours early once a month, all school year long), giving her extra time to build her new creation – I had an immediate suspicion that something had gone wrong.

When she walked, still calmly, into the kitchen, where her brother had been building his Lego thing for an hour already, and barely glanced at his toy, I knew something had gone wrong. Now the question was only, what? Something new with the Almighty Principal? An argument with a friend? In the world of an almost-12-year-old, the spectrum of Things That Could Be Terribly Wrong is a broad thing, indeed.

“Mom,” she said, far too quietly to really be my Emily, “something happened on the walk home today, and it was kind of upsetting.”

And thus began one of those small, one-day adventures that make life just so fun and interesting; one of those times when I was kind of grateful Willem had been called in to work today, because as much as I might have preferred not to deal with this, I’m certain he would have preferred not to even more.

Apparently she was most of the way done with her half-mile walk home, daydreaming and lugging her trumpet case, when she became aware of a car driving just a little closer to the sidewalk than the rest. This is noteworthy because the street that she was on – the only other one she has to travel before reaching ours – is Salem’s busiest, two lanes in each direction. Lots of vehicles pass, and by this point she has probably walked that path a hundred times or so, give or take. She’s used to the flow of traffic, by now, and usually can sustain a solid daydream from the school doors to the kitchen table, uninterrupted. (I know this because I’ve driven past her, and nothing short of stopping the car and shouting her name can grab her attention, some days.)

So, this car – a dark green four-door Ford sedan, she noticed – came a little closer than typical, so she looked up. Just in time to notice its darkly tinted windows and four inhabitants, with the back rear window rolled down and that passenger leaning out. He reached for her, though never made contact, shouted out some inappropriate comments – of the sort that, bless her heart, she is too young yet to realize just why they were inappropriate, hence her ability to repeat them to herself long enough to get home and report to me, but then to immediately lose the words, because what does it mean when a boy shouts to a girl, “Hey, baby, how much?” anyway? – and then the car continued up the hill.

A small thing, right? No big deal. And if all they had done was shout, I’d have soothed her down, agreed that that would have been upsetting, set her loose on her Legos and let the day continue. But one of them reached for her, could have hurt her, certainly scared her, and thus the line was crossed. I’m confident – as are the police – that this was a car full of high school kids, also on Early Release, who were just indulging in the stupidity of the moment. I’m confident that she was never in a moment of actual danger, and that our decision to tell the police won’t do much more than give them one more item to pay attention to for the rest of their shift – which I’ve already been so kind as to do before, myself.

But with all that confidence, I’m still glad that we bothered to have the talks with Emily, before this. The ones about what to do if a car ever pulled up and the person told you to get in, or what to do if a driver was simply making you nervous (run away from the road, shout and fight if necessary, go to the nearest business or house and pound on the door until they let you in). The ones about what to say if a stranger ever approached you, asking for help finding his puppy (say, “I have to go ask my mom,” and if that’s not enough to send them elsewhere, walk to the nearest mom-looking person and ask for help) or what to do if you’re really, really lost in a store (stand still and scream). The ones about what to do whenever something weird happens and you’re not really sure what to do with it (stay calm, remember as much as you can, and come home and tell Mom).

And if this is the worst-case scenario that we ever have to deal with – the last time we ever have to deal with the police – then I will consider myself fabulously, brainlessly fortunate.

And so, she is to be congratulated, for finally getting it: we didn’t receive an inappropriate packet of holiday cards. Either she got the message, or the post office lost it. Either way, it was one less thing to stress about. (Edit: Yeah… never mind. They just got lost in the mail; they arrived on January 12th. Nice to avoid during the holidays, but obnoxious nonetheless. And still.)

I mentioned my mother-in-law, briefly, in my last post, after quite a stretch of radio silence on the topic of Herself. I thought she deserved a bit of extra airtime (facetime? pixels? whatever), because all strong characters in a play should be able to experience the occasional follow-up. If VH1 could manage to make Flava Flav a relatively recognizable personality umpteen years after his rightful descent into inappropriate-timepiece-wearing obscurity, then it seems only fair that I bring the topic of me, myself and my mother-in-law up-to-date here.

It’s my blog(gy?) and I’ll write if I want to… but, as it turns out, I actually have a few relevant reasons for mentioning her now. One, I continue to get a significant amount of blog traffic from searches along the lines of “passive-aggressive mother-in-law” and “my mother in law hates me,” so while my relationship with her no longer plays a significant role in my life – my blog’s first title was Post-Traumatic Grandma Disorder, if that gives any indication of how intensely her hatred impacted me – I do feel some level of responsibility toward my readers. You bothered to click over here, so I’ll offer the occasional update, even when it’s just, “Two years and counting, no change, no contact.” She was very briefly in contact when I was sick, because my mother simply couldn’t imagine that she would maintain her grudge in the face of my near-death illness. My mother was certain that C. would throw herself in the car and rush out to support Willem and the kids, regardless of her feelings toward me – maybe she would disappear once I was discharged from the hospital, but surely she would want to come help them get through the worst of it at home, in my absence, right? Right?

No. Wrong. She sent me flowers in the hospital, which didn’t reach me for a few days because I wasn’t allowed any flowers in the ICU. So then she called me with a guilt trip: “Did you get the flowers I sent?” Which is just begging for a thank-you, because there are other ways to confirm a delivery, and yes, I received them, and they’re lovely, and thank you, truly. Really. But send some to Willem, because he really needs his mom right now. (I didn’t actually say the last bit, because I didn’t want to get further involved than that from a hospital bed. She ended up on the phone to Willem, sobbing and telling him just how sick I was, just how much danger I was in, and so on, to the point that he had to ask her to stop calling; her calls had become another source of stress for him, not support. And that’s the last time either of us spoke with her.

A few months later, there was a brief email exchange. It wasn’t pretty. And there has been nothing but silence since. So there you have it, Dear Readers: an update of nothing.

Two, I continue to get the occasional lecture from readers aghast at my willingness to air my dirty laundry, tell my side of an ugly story, disrespect my husband’s mother in public. “Why on earth would you write about things so publicly? How would you feel if she wrote a blog about you?” To which I can only, and in full honesty, reply: because when I just write in a journal I’m only venting, without any remote possibility of connecting with other humans – in either positive or negative ways – and the validation I receive from others in similar situations, as well as the challenges (and occasional insults) emanating from those not in favor of my words, are both important, thought-provoking, helpful things.

And, if she were to write a blog about me, I would be terrifically amused, deeply interested, and incredibly hopeful: I have never, ever understood her venom, her thoughts, her views of any of the hundreds of incidents that have coalesced into a painful, gnarly mess of a relationship between us. This blog is the only way I was ever able to even get her to acknowledge my personality and existence apart from “My Son’s Wife,” and after a decade of abject failure when either Willem or I attempted to engage her in any level of honest communication, I would welcome any level of insight into her world. (Not to mention, it would be hilarious.)

Three, the cable network A&E has been in contact with me four times now, asking if I would consider appearing in their new series, Monster In-Laws. The first two times were sort of form letters that appeared in my in-box or as comments here; I don’t remember the details but I do remember thinking it was a joke. The second two times have been direct, personalized emails, sent to me and explaining some of what the show is about. I have steadfastly refused to even consider such a thing, because I cannot think of a single less genuine way to repair a broken relationship – and trust me, I’ve given it a lot of thought; paying C. to spend time with me would feel less false than taking a decade’s worth of hurt and confusion (on both sides; nobody is pretending here that I was a model daughter-in-law – it’s just that my style has always been up-front and as honest as I knew how to be, which she seemed to find to be overly aggressive) and trying to cram it into 42 minutes of screen time.

But the concept amuses and delights me, just thinking that I have a story vivid enough to catch the attention of someone at A&E. It may not be a part of my daily existence, now, but all of my family relationships have played roles in helping to create the person I am now. Even – or maybe especially – those relationships that have faded to black.

We’re hosting both Christmas and New Year’s Eve here, after three years of accepting the hospitality of my mother for the former and our children’s godparents for the latter (not to mention the week of home invasion we inflicted upon my mother in between the two). In 2008, it was simply her turn to host, because from the earliest days of our marriage, Willem and I decided we wanted to try and shift things around, not to form carved-in-stone traditions that made the sudden change in, say, Christmas dinner, from Chinese delivery to a roast turkey, feel somehow discordant and wrong. Our tradition was that we spent the holidays with family and we smiled and hugged a lot; the rest of the details came and went, rather painlessly.

This avoidance of ritual was slightly due to my mother-in-law’s approach to family traditions – more on her tomorrow. [yes, tomorrow: I've already written the post! Three posts in one week, can you believe it? I haven't written out the post explaining all the posting, yet, but I will. Soon. I think.] But the bigger impetus comes from my own family. Growing up, my parents and sisters and I didn’t spend every Christmas with my father’s parents, but I would guess we were with them at least 75% of the time. My father is one of four siblings, all of whom are married with children, and so the house was just bursting with family and food and alcohol and laughter, and it truly was magical. I was enchanted by it, as a child, and I still smile when I think of the thrill of trying to fall asleep underneath the dining room table, because it was the only free space in the house, listening to the adults tell stories late into the night.

Then my parents split up, and my mother instantly became persona non grata – not just in person, which is to be expected, but in spirit. She wasn’t mentioned in any of the stories, and if I made the mistake of saying her name, there was an immediate hush and chill. And slowly, I became more and more aware that the thing about magic is that it’s impermanent and not quite real. They were able to maintain these masks of geniality and affection for a few days around the holidays, but then months, full years even, would pass without a single phone call or letter – even if I tried contacting them. I suddenly noticed the broken promises, the blatant disinterest in any sentence I started with the word “I,” the emphasis on physical beauty rather than emotional stability, the promotion of financial concerns and favoritism over family ties… these weren’t just imperfect people, they were people with whom I could not communicate in a genuine way. Even before my great-grandmother, the true matriarch of the family, died in 2005, I simply gave up. I asked them to remove our names from their annual Christmas name-draw, and those connections, for the most part faded.

Those first few Christmases, after opting out of the B Family Gathering, were fun and festive, with an underlying loss that was acutely painful. We had Emily, of course, and then Jacob came along, and children have this obnoxious way of spreading cheer and enthusiasm no matter what the room-and-board plans are. My sisters and mother – and sometimes my dad – joined us, and we formed new traditions as well as pulling in a few old ones. And, all in all, things rolled along quite nicely.

In 2008, it was my mother’s turn to host Christmas, and we had a lovely time in upstate New York. By late 2009, my mother-in-law had made it clear that she would not be hosting any get-togethers anytime soon, and I was enormously pregnant and our apartment woefully inadequate for any sort of overnight event, so we took the path of least resistance and returned to my mother’s house. Last year, well, we all know about 2010, right? My last hospitalization ended on December 2nd, 2010, and then I spent the next two weeks developing a psychotic reaction to a new medication, so I took a certain degree of teeth-gritting, half-smiling, defeated pride in simply surviving the year. There were days when I wasn’t even certain I wanted to survive – or, to be precise, days when I knew full well I didn’t want to survive, but I would continue to do so because the alternative would have destroyed my husband and children.

So here we are, 2011. We’re in a new house, big enough to hold a few overnight guests and more daytime visitors. There’s space for a Christmas tree in the corner, and as of a few hours ago, it is properly inhabited by a lovely hemlock. My mother and sisters are planning to drive here tomorrow, and we’re expecting my father and stepmother on Christmas Day, with more friends and family to visit in the following days.

Let’s forget, just for a minute, the intensity of the physical and mental health crisis that I survived in 2010. Let’s ignore the fact that as recently as last November, I had a visiting nurse coming to my house several days a week, because I wasn’t sick enough to be in a hospital room but I was considered too sick to be able to drive myself to my mind-bogglingly frequent appointments. Because overcoming those things was intense enough, with new challenges every single day, and I failed nearly as many of those challenges as I succeeded. Being able to organize a meal for more than my immediate, nuclear family is something that went from second nature to a Herculean event, but that’s not exactly a shock. I got very, very sick, which means I had to do a lot of recovering to be able to approximate “better” again.

What has really been worrying me, then, is a series of disasters, minute and enormous, that continue to make me doubt my ability to handle the last ten days of the year. Notice I didn’t qualify that verb: I don’t want to handle it gracefully, or effectively, or even just modestly. I just want to get through it, at all, without major embarrassment or new psychic injuries. I’ve had other attempts at comparably large endeavors – such as the semi-disastrous Cape Cod vacation in July – and these have rendered me all manner of anxious and terrified about how many different ways I would screw things up this time around. But the other choice – just not trying at all – is even scarier, somehow.

According to my calender, yesterday was the official start of the year-end madness: from 12/21 to 1/3, there is at least one significant event per day to deal with, almost all of which I am responsible for in some way. So I put a lot of superstition and worry into Wednesday’s activity, deciding that if it went well, then the rest of the holiday stuff would be OK. I convinced myself that if we could get through that first task, then we could handle the rest of them, because I was approaching the first day as a series of steps, breaking everything down until it was small enough for me to handle without hyperventilating.

The biggest challenge, for me, revolves around a certain little four-letter word: help.

How to recognize when I need help.

How to ask for help.

How to accept help.

It has never been an easy concept for me, the overachieving, ultracompetent band geek who went on to get a psychology degree at an engineering school and then form a marriage out of a strangely fractured courtship. I got through life by figuring out what I wanted and finding ways to get it, accepting help only if it was absolutely necessary but mostly doing things on my own terms, under my own steam. All of that broke, last year, probably right from that first, stunning realization, as I swam upward out of the darkest blackness I had ever experienced, of my own helplessness. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t sit up, couldn’t breathe under my own volition.

But yesterday, we had an appointment to get our annual family portraits taken. And between Willem and the kids and myself, we were able to create some acceptably beautiful moments and capture them on film. There were stumbling blocks and small challenges in the process, but getting around those only made the ultimate success of it all feel that much more genuine.

And so, as odd as it feels, I’m going to insist upon calling Wednesday a success. And, therefore, as long as I continue breaking it down into solvable problems and uttering that strange little word, “help,” the rest of 2011 will go OK.

I insist.

The first happened way back in October, at Salem’s Halloween parade… which, of course, was scheduled for October 6th. (Why? Because we’re Salem. We hanged a bunch of innocent people several hundred years ago and now we can’t escape our own legacy, plus we kind of enjoy having things like tourism and income, so we are inundated in a mini-Mardi-Gras kind of way from early October until the 31st.) We’d never attended Salem’s parade before, because the elementary schools ask families to get costumes along a specific theme, which just torques me: you’re already asking for me to get a costume together almost a month before Halloween, and then you want to try and dictate what kind of costume I inflict upon my children? How about…. no.

But being a big bad middle schooler, Emily had the opportunity to march in her first-ever marching band, and since her mother is a former band geek with full and complete understanding that the old American Pie humor a la, “This one time, at band camp…” is not in the least bit fictional, the poor kid didn’t stand a chance. “Yes, that’s great, I hear you, you’re nervous at the idea of trying to walk and play at the same time. Uh huh. Stay late for the practice, I’ll see you later!” Jacob came down with bronchitis that very afternoon, and Willem was working late, so I ended up going to the parade by myself, and thus was the only one in my family to actually lay eyes upon Principal M’s chosen costume. Now, before I upload this photo, let me point out that the theme, for non-band members, was supposed to be “helping professions.” When I first saw her wearing scrubs and pushing I wheelchair, I thought, “OK, fair enough.”

Then I was able to make out that which was actually in the wheelchair:

Note: I deliberately chose a less-identifying photo, which makes the sign on the skeleton difficult to read. It read, in part, “Dr. M——-, Cause of Death, Too Many Detentions.

I’m trying, truly I am, to figure out the problem here. Why, exactly, might it be a problem that the principal of the middle school is supposed to be dressed up as a helping professional but is pushing around a long-dead corpse, thereby casting aspersions on her own capacity to actually help… or be professional? Nah, clearly she’s just hilarious and I’m oversensitive. Glad we got that sorted out.

Fast-forward two months, to early December’s parent-teacher conferences. We were asked to go in and meet Emily’s teachers, and thus we were granted the delightful opportunity to find out just how obnoxious she is attempting to make her mother sound to her science teacher. (“My mom said that no one has ever seen a black hole, so how can we really be sure they exist.” …forgetting to mention that her mom attended an engineering school in college, and is therefore more likely to be yanking the 11-year-old’s chain than actually expressing doubt at the existence of said black holes. Awesome.)

Mid-way through the first conference, with Emily’s history/English teacher, things were going pretty well. The teacher is a young guy and it’s his first year in Salem, so he was obviously a bit uptight and a smidge anxious, but it was going well. Suddenly, unceremoniously, the door opened and in plodded Principal Mannish. She didn’t bother to introduce herself, and in fact didn’t even look at us until after she had seated herself right down at the table with us… and then her normally-ruddy complexion (no, I did not imply that her reddened cheeks and nose hint at alcoholism, thankyouverymuch) suddenly paled at the realization of precisely whose conference she had just crashed. My husband waited several long, painful, awkward seconds, and then, once it became clear that she hadn’t thought this through and now felt stuck in place despite sending off painfully loud signals that she wanted nothing more than to escape the room, he introduced himself. She avoided eye contact with us both, and never even acknowledged my presence… unless you count her tangible discomfort. After our first meeting, I’d spent some time on the phone with her direct supervisor, as well as with the assistant principal who is actually supposed to be interacting with parents, and so I was quite aware that she had overstepped her boundaries and had been specifically ordered to stay far, far away from both me and Emily.

Her discomfiture was so great that I almost felt bad for her.

Almost.

But not quite.

Getting up and simply walking out of the room after the interview, after shaking the teacher’s hand and thanking him and then blindly – and blithely – ignoring Herself, probably brought me more pleasure than is socially correct to admit. Ah, well. You’ll all still love me even though I knowingly shrugged her off, right? …That’s what I thought.

Then, the third time when Ms. Mannish and I shared a few errant air molecules happened late this morning. Emily’s class had spent the past mmmth-ity weeks preparing skits and handouts and speeches, all encouraging the audience to attend their non-Earth Milky Way location’s resort vacation. They had been working on these projects for weeks, so Isaac and I headed down – despite the fact that Willem took the car today. It’s a half-mile there, so that meant I only put in perhaps a mile and a half to get there, halfway home, turn back to rescue the baby’s dropped bear, and finally home again.

Was it worth the trip? On the basis of projects, alone… no. I’d been aware of what Emily was working on already, so there were no surprises there. On the basis of Emily’s happiness at our presence… yes. Maybe. Mostly, anyway; we show up to pretty much anything we’re asked to attend, so I know we could’ve stayed home and survived the guilt. But Isaac had a blast and I’m going to be tired and sore by the end of the day anyway: might as well be tired and sore because I walked to my kid’s school and made her smile, rather than because I spent yet another day sedentary and meh.

And then there was the extra, added bonus: On the basis of Principal Mannish’s behavior… yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Worth every step.

Isaac and I were on our way out, after the science presentations, and I was beginning to cope with the possibility that I might make it all the way through a visit to the school without a sighting of Her Principalness. No reason to fear: as we left the classroom, we were greeted with a very loud noise in the hallway; it turns out that the upper grades’ band classes were doing a sort of traveling Christmas show for the other students in the school today, and they were parked outside the main office, playing what I eventually discerned to be In Excelsis Deo, or thereabouts. What they lacked for in tonality and musicality, they more than made up for in volume. (But then, show me a public school band in which this is not the case… especially when the concert is impromptu and performed while standing in a hallway. They did just fine, if I was able to figure out the song at all.)

When the band was done, there was a moment, a split second, where the crowd paused before applauding (to make sure the song was really all the way over??). And in that split second, Principal Mannish turned to the woman standing next to her and said, clear as a bell, “Well, that sucked.” I was standing at least 50 feet away from her, and I’m hard of hearing, and I heard it with the kind of clarity that Bose engineers can only dream of… chances are, the band director – not to mention the band members, themselves – heard her, too, seeing as how they were mere inches away from her administrative face.

The entire brass section literally slumped down, en masse, as though choreographed… but I saw their faces, this was not a pre-planned droop.

If it hadn’t hurt the feelings of children who, by all appearances, had been completely in the moment and happy just milliseconds before, I’d have to laugh. You just can’t make this stuff up, you know? But because people got hurt, I have to settle for a pained grimace and a self-righteous head-shaking.

There are some principals worth compromising. Assuming the compromise includes an airtight box and a deep-ocean drop-off, anyway.

Emily just came home, just a little while ago. She was late, which is no surprise – both because it’s Emily and because she had an after-school band practice. But even with that in mind, she was late: nearing 4:00, and the regular school day gets out at 2:45. I wasn’t yet worried, because the previous two after-school band practices ran to about 3:15 but the parade for which they are after-school practicing is this Thursday, and I’ve been in a marching band. I know that every once in a while, the occasional band director can get a little, shall we say, intense and spastic, as the performance date looms.

So, not yet worried, but I had written “Worry about Emily” into my agenda beginning at 4:00. (It’s good to have a special planner just for Mommy Guilt and Worry About Children, because if you include it in your regular planner it can obscure other entries like “Get in Argument with Husband” and “Attend Own Funeral.”)

At about 3:55, she walked in the door. Well, more limped, really, accompanied by much moaning and drama. I was all set to poke at her a little, because I had carefully reminded her, this morning, to call me at the end of practice so that I could come pick her up, and ha ha, isn’t this a good reinforcement of why it’s good to listen to your mother, now what do you want for –

Wait, what? Rewind a few seconds, please. That last thing you just moaned, the part I was all set to ignore because I thought you were just complaining about your band teacher and how unreasonable it is to expect you to do something awful like practice. Say that again.

“Principal Mannish is so mean!”

Well, yes, I know. But what does that have to do with this?

According to Emily, everything. She says she went to the main office at the end of practice – bypassing a number of her cell-phone-infested friends (of which Emily recently was, until a new infraction at home resulted in a grounding away from all handheld media for a while) and Gawd knows how many other working phones en route – and had the following experience:

I walked into office at about 3:15, when band practice was all done. There were two women in there, a secretary and Mrs. Mannish. The secretary said, “Can I help you?” and then Mrs. Mannish said, “What do you need?” both at about the same time.

I said, “May I please use the phone to call my mom to come pick me up?” The secretary put her headset back on and went back to her other work, and Mrs. Mannish said, “What is your name?”

I told her what it was, and she typed something into a computer and looked at the screen, and then she said, “No, you can’t use the phone. See if you can find a friend whose phone you can use.”

Upon further interrogation by Mom – immediately after several new aneurysms simultaneously appeared inside my brain, but before I started bleeding profusely from both ears – Emily wasn’t able to say with 100% certainty that she really said that last sentence; she might have said something about the phones not working or whatever instead. When I explained why it mattered – “One of those things is an inconvenience. The other is a potential lawsuit.” – she thought about it and admitted she really didn’t remember, because as soon as she heard the word No she kind of tuned out and resigned herself to the walk home.

Then, the more I thought about it, I decided, well, it doesn’t really matter which sort of reason Mrs. Mannish offered, but I could certainly rule out the reality of the phones-not-working one. So I called the school’s main number and it was instantly answered: not just by a person, but by Mrs. Mannish, herself.

Rather than speak to her while I was trembling on the edge of incoherent rage, I decided to just mumble a “wrong number” sort of excuse and hang up. And given the time of day, I decided I wasn’t likely to be able to reach any of those in her line of supervision – whether I waited until I was no longer trembling with homicidality or I called right then and there, seeing as how school administrators are rarely in their offices after 3:00, and certainly not after 4:00, and this wasn’t likely to be a quick little chat.

Lots of deep breaths and oooohhhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmm on my schedule for the rest of the night, in hopes that it might just help restore a tiny bit of my current, situational sanity sometime in the next decade.

A little thing, one might think. Just a half-dozen syllables, tucked into the depths of an hour-long rampage. Blink – or wince – and you could miss it.

I didn’t blink.

It happened on the heels of a comment I made to to Principal Mannish (which is so, so close to her real name, which makes me unreasonably happy… kind of like the pitcher from the A’s, Outman: some names just determine your fate, no?). I didn’t have the opportunity to get many words in edgewise, and so I treasured the chance to point out that this whole thing could have been avoided had anyone from the school ever returned even one of the six calls I made, between May and August, trying to get a spare set of textbooks at home prior to the school year. I hadn’t even cluttered up her precious inbox time with all of those extra syllables; all I had said was, “I’m calling on behalf of my daughter, and I need to discuss her 504 plan before school starts.”

(Her response to that? “I never bother to return parent phone calls over the summer. These things always work themselves out without my help.” Oh, yes, clearly, this particular thing worked itself out just beautifully.)

Anyway, so, I explained, in short sentences containing small words, that, if someone had helped us when I had called, we wouldn’t be having this interaction now. And she replied, with apparently characteristic grace and empathy, “Listen. I already said, the fact that your actions made your daughter apologize on your behalf tells me all I need to know about you. And now you’re being overprotective and it’s time to back off. If she just tried harder, she could get herself more organized without your help.”

She went on from there, but I briefly burst into flame and missed a few of her finer points. Because, what was that? Say again? Rewind, just a little, please?

“If she just tried harder…”

Right, that’s the spot.

Ohhh, yes! She needs to try harder! Pardon me while I smack myself in the forehead: why didn’t we think of that ourselves? Try harder! Up to this point, we’ve been lazing around, waiting for the world to cater to our every wish, never much bothered to do anything to try and improve Emily’s life in any noticeable way.

Now, the light dawns: this has nothing to do with ADHD! That’s just a silly, made-up diagnosis, anyway; we’ll call it a disability because the federal government has this pesky ADA thing that forces us to pretend to respect people like doctors and therapists, but really, she knows better. Who better than a middle school principal to be able to tell just how fake and pathetic all of these labels are?

And besides, seriously, folks: the child is eleven. Let’s cut the cord, already! It’s past time for her to be living on her own, by now. I really should have her in her own apartment, let her start dealing with her own finances, that sort of thing.

Phew. I’m sure glad we got that little conundrum cleared up before we wasted too much time on it. Now I know: I just need to stop coddling my kid – I might drop the word “advocate,” but the principal obviously sees right through that ploy – and let her figure things out on her own, because she’s just not trying hard enough.

Seriously, some things are just far enough over the border into Crazyland that I have trouble even pronouncing the words, much less wrapping my brain all the way around them. I guess while we’re at it, I should probably just start flagellating myself right now for this idiotic little spondylitis thing I’m pretending to have, and maybe if I just stretch a little more I’ll feel better, right? God knows what she might say if she knew I had a sister just lazing around all day, pretending to have some thing called muscular dystrophy. I bet the principal could set us to rights about that without even breaking into a red-faced, fist-clenching, name-calling sweat.

(Pardon me while I sit still and pant for a few seconds, just let me catch my breath. Spontaneous combustion takes a lot out of a girl, particularly when it’s fueled by rampant idiocy from someone whose job title alone suggests that she might – what a crazy idea! – know better. I don’t need, or even expect, a lot of empathy out of the people I deal with, but for some reason I kind of both need and expect it from the woman I entrust to oversee my daughter’s education. I’m just unreasonable that way, I know.)

I don’t know if I have the energy to take this any farther. I don’t know if I have the stamina to fight this the way it really deserves to be fought. I’m not sure I can put on my Cloak of Outrage and descend upon her with all of the righteous outrage stirred up by her words and actions. I know that I can, and should, take this farther, and a part of me really, really wants to. But another part of me is already so tired, so overwhelmed, so diminished from that which I once was; nowhere near the level of kick-ass competency I used to display.

Stay tuned…

Not at home; she had left her math workbook at school, on one of the very first days homework had been assigned. We live precisely 1/2 mile from one corner of the school property: walking distance, according to the administration, though the idea of my baby girl toddling down the busiest street in Salem leaves something to be desired. She’s been handling it pretty well, but I still try to play chauffeur at least a few days a week, especially when the weather is bad.

On this particular Wednesday, the weather was fine, but there had been some confusion about whether and where to pick her up, and Willem had called the school, so I drove down to get her. She made it about halfway home – all of two minutes – before suddenly remembering, with that special blend of angst that only a pre-teen can garner, “Oh, no! I left my math workbook at school! I need it! If I don’t have it, I’ll… I’ll… I’ll get in trouble!” Poor little girl: schools have become so sanitized and politically correct these days that she doesn’t really know what it means to get in trouble, but apparently someone has put the fear of God into her about the middle school.

Or maybe it’s the fear of Principal.

So I heaved a sigh and turned around, and we returned to the school. Students aren’t allowed in the building after that final bell rings unless they’re involved in some club or sport, so I had to sign in and walk her up to her locker. So far, so good, right? I even knew my way around, a little, because just a few days before I had finally, after six full months of trying, gotten in touch with her school counselor. I had wanted to meet with her prior to the school year, to touch base about Emily’s adventures in ADHD and what we’ve found helpful, and not, over the years, plus I’ve found it helpful to talk to both Em and Jacob’s teachers about some of what they went through with my hospitalization and recovery last year, blah blah. I’d called in the spring a few times, then several times over the summer, leaving messages with both the counselor and the principal. I was hoping to, if not have a full conversation, at least get someone to collect a secondary set of textbooks to keep at home, which is part of her 504 plan (think IEP, only the child “only” has a diagnosed disability, without it having impacted their grades…yet…). Finally, the second Friday of the school year, I’d gotten an actual phone call from the actual counselor at her actual school, and we set up an actual meeting for the following Monday. Which I had attended, and we spent an hour and a half talking about all manner of things, and I thought it went quite well, and if I was a bit disappointed in the timeliness of the communication, I was at least relieved that it was happening.

Two days later, Emily and I were crouching next to her locker, which already looked as though federal agents have tossed it for evidence, and the math workbook is nowhere to be found. Her math teacher came over to see what we were doing – not by introducing himself or anything ridiculous like that, but by actually taking me by the arm to stand me up and asking, “What are you doing here?” I believe he thought I was a student, because as soon as I stood up, a few inches taller than him, and presented him with a less-than-youthful face, he became instantly apologetic and just a tad obsequious. I explained what we were looking for, he wished us good luck, and instantly disappeared.

After five or ten minutes, it became clear that we were not going to find the math workbook in the locker. It also became clear that we were going to be bringing home almost the entire contents of said locker, so as to smooth out papers, put them in binders and folders, and generally impose order upon them.

The next step was to try to get into the math classroom, to see if the workbook was there. We weren’t able to use the main classroom door, which had been locked by the now-deserted math teacher, but there was a connecting door to the next classroom over, which was still inhabited by its teacher. I knocked on her door and asked if she could let us look for Emily’s workbook – never saying that Mr. Math Teacher had OK’ed it (if he had, then we’d have just gone in with him, no?). She scampered over and opened the door, no questions asked, so we looked around: no workbook for Emily. There were a few other workbooks with students’ names inscribed on the inside cover, and a few blank workbooks all in Spanish, but neither of those felt quite appropriate for us, somehow. Then, in a corner, I found a blank workbook, no name inside, in English, just sitting on a table, not grouped with other papers or anything. I decided, enough: we would take this blank workbook home and copy the pages so that Emily could do the homework, and she could bring it back to school with her the next day and they could work on the Mystery of the Missing Math Workbook.

Which is what happened.

So, the next afternoon, when my phone rang, I hadn’t the slightest feeling of apprehension or concern when I was asked to make an appointment to meet with the school principal. I hoped the meeting was going to cover some of the administrative aspects of Emily’s 504 plan, though I wasn’t able to get any information out of the secretary administrative assistant woman on the phone. So I walked in without any paperwork, and it turns out I probably should have brought along a tape recorder, if not a lawyer.

Friday morning, I walked in to the main office, and was greeted by an enormous, mannish woman whom I’d noticed when I was waiting to meet with the counselor on Monday. She was loud and just slightly inappropriate with her words, and I remember thinking that she might be working there under some sort of grant from the Department of Mental Retardation – which I know occurs, because once upon a time I worked at DMR and had to bring clients to jobs at various places. Well, this may still be the case here, but in my experience, we never placed clients in administrative positions like school principal… which is, it turns out, who this woman was.

She escorted me into her office – an enormous, cluttered, loud sort of place – and said, “I don’t think we’ve met.” Which struck me as odd, because (a) it was only the third week of school and Emily doesn’t tend to rise to the level of troublemaker until mid-winter, at least, (b) I’d been calling for half a year now and had been trying to meet her, without success. She said, “You’re Emily’s mother?”

“Yes, I’m –”

“Sit down.”

I quite literally gaped at her, and stood motionless for a solid 30 seconds. I can’t remember the last time an adult had spoken to me so rudely, before I’d even gotten the chance to introduce myself. And I couldn’t sit, as commanded, because there wasn’t a single flat surface in the room uncovered by various papers and books. She realized that, stalked around the table – which is easily 20 feet long and four feet wide – scooped up the papers and glared at me as though I’d left them there myself.

She then launched into a tirade about how I had broken into Mr. Math Teacher’s classroom – how I had lied to the teacher next door and said we had permission to go in – how we had no right to ever have expected a spare workbook at home because it’s not a part of Emily’s 504 – how I “just ridiculously panicked” about a simple homework assignment – how I had stolen the workbook and then returned it without acknowledgment – how Emily had apologized to the teacher on my behalf and thus proven just how wrongly I had behaved – how my actions had put my child in a bad position and thus set a bad example for her.

And so on. After the first three or four minutes, I unfroze enough to take out a notebook and start jotting down what she was saying, which only served to infuriate her more; I’ve found that this exasperates and intimidates a lot of people, when they’re angry and want to go on a rant at or around me, and that’s never my intention. I just literally cannot retain more than about three bits of information, since the coma and all, and so as a compensation technique I take notes. This made her damn near apoplectic, and then when I managed to get a word in edgewise to explain and correct a few points of error – like, for instance, the fact that Emily’s existing 504 plan does, indeed, include an extra set of books at home, and that I had made several attempts at contacting various staff members at the school without luck, and that I had spoken with the counselor (who, by the way, was in the room for much of this, but was a completely different being from the intelligent, capable creature I’d met with on Monday; this woman was timid and apparently mute) only once, earlier that week – each time I had the gall to be right about something, she just got angrier and angrier, and finally she shouted, “Don’t you ever do that in my building again!” and stalked out.

I had managed to keep it together so far, but when she left, I turned to the counselor and asked, “Does this happen a lot?” She kind of shrugged and said, “Well, she seems to like to come across as hard-core at the start of the year, but she usually calms down after a while.” Usually?? And the enormity of it all finally hit me, and I burst into tears. Once I pulled myself back together, I asked for some tissues and some writing paper – since the notebook I carry is about 1″x3″, and I wanted to capture some of the words and chronology of it all immediately, because I knew how fast it would fade away. She provided me with both, and then announced that she had another meeting to be in, thus leaving me alone in the principal’s office.

Let me tell you: I made it to 34 years old before ever being yelled at by a school principal. Turns out? It’s less fun than you might imagine.

While I was writing, Ms. Mannish (which is close enough to her real name to be a little bit hilarious) stalked back in the room. She stood directly behind me and read over my shoulder for two or three minutes, and then ordered me to leave her office. I stood up, and was grateful for my height – I’m 5’8″ – because it allowed me to stand eye to eye with her, though she has at least 150 pounds on me. I stared her down and said, very quietly and politely, “This was not a meeting. It was an attack. You will not be allowed to be alone with me, or my child, again.” She started barking about how it was her school and she could see any student she wanted, at any time, to which I replied, “That may be so, and you’re welcome to meet with her… but not alone. She is small and easily intimidated, and you are large and have just spent 45 minutes bullying her mother. If you’re willing to treat me with this level of disrespect, I have no doubt that you would happily retaliate my perceived transgressions on her.” She started to yell at me again – and when I say yell, I do not exaggerate: her face was red, the veins in her neck stood out, and her words came out at full volume, loud enough to hush all the people in the outer office area – but I gathered up my purse and my notes and left.

I spent much of the rest of that Friday on the phone with various school administrators, higher up in the chain, until I found the correct Assistant Superintendent, who could listen to the whole story, apologize on her behalf, and promise to sort it all out. It turns out that Ms. Mannish should never have gotten involved in the first place: her job is to deal with whole-school and staff sorts of issues, and the assistant principals deal with individual students and parents. It turns out that I am well within my rights to insist that she not be alone with me or with my child at any point in time. It turns out he’s very, very sorry this ever happened, and he’ll talk to Ms. Mannish, and he’ll try to get it all straightened out… and that if there’s anything else he needs from me, or perhaps if it turns out that I’ve gotten some detail wrong and I actually owe an apology, myself, then he’ll be in touch.

So far, my phone has not rung. And very, very quietly, the following Tuesday, a spare math workbook found its way home with Emily.

But then, sometime in June, Willem ever-so-casually dropped some paperwork on top of my stack o’ stuff in the living room, which just happened to be information about the two new majors being created within the next year or so at this school: Psychology and Criminal Justice… both of which I, coincidentally, have master’s degrees in.

So I hemmed and hawed, ruminated and angsted, and ended up emailing him my résumé to pass along (being too conflicted about the whole thing to even submit my stuff directly). Just to see what happened. Willem has been in charge of hiring adjunct instructors for the math department this summer, so I knew there was a process: receive a pile of resumes, cull out the ridiculous ones, conduct phone interviews, request a face-to-face from those who give good phone, go back home and compare the candidates, and then call with offers (and rejections). I figured it was safe enough to submit a résumé, because I still had several steps where I could decide it was all too much.

Then, during that phone interview, I was offered a position. She had met me once at a casual post-staff-meeting reception, I had relevant pre-2010 teaching experience, and (most importantly, I think) she was excited to receive something from Willem’s wife because “we all know and love him, he’s a fantastic teacher, I trust his judgment”, so… *poof*, magically, there was an offer. Not just for one class, but for any or all of the three open courses.

I never had an in-person interview, never even submitted a cover letter. And instead of having several chances to get overwhelmed and back out, the process was abbreviated down to: submit a résumé, answer the phone, get a job. Apparently I decided it was a good idea, or at least not a terrible one, because, well, here I be.

The problem is that, since the dramas of last March, I’ve had ongoing memory and speech problems, and I can’t predict when or how they’ll manifest. And the germ which nearly killed me was simple little Strep A – the sore-throat type – but they didn’t know that for several days, so I was flooded with broad-spectrum antibiotics until they isolated the culprit. So between the fact that I’m apparently violently susceptible to a wildly common germ and the fact that I was told that those meds basically wiped my immune system clean and I would remain immuno-compromised for at least a year or so, I’ve developed a low-grade sort of agoraphobia… I can leave the house, but it’s really hard. Every time.

But, with a few notable exceptions, each time I do leave the house for something bigger than dropping the kids off at day camp or going to the grocery store, it has ended up being a positive thing. The actual experience is so much easier, more fun, just better than all of my worries and fears.  I don’t need to go back to work, but I kind of need to go back, you know? Because in the recesses of my brain, I understand that I somehow do still have something to offer the world – maybe even more so now, having lived through stuff I had read about but never experienced, or never read about, or never even heard about – and that, the longer I stay hidden within the safety of home, the harder it will be to put on grown-up clothes and walk in to any sort of professional setting in which someone else expects me to be the expert.

So I’ll do it. Mostly for me: because I know, kind of, maybe, sort of, that I can not just handle this, but possibly even do it well… and I just need to prove that to myself.  I’ll also do it, in large measure, for Willem, because I was hired based on his reputation and I want to do something positive for him after a year and a half of really big negatives.

And a little because, over the past six months, I have taken two enormous hits to my sense of self-worth: the first, from a self-proclaimed “friend” who decided to cut off a decade-long relationship based on a split-second error in observation and further decided that I wasn’t even worth an in-person break-up, and the second from my mother when she informed me, in no uncertain terms, that I’m not recovering nearly as quickly or thoroughly as I should be and I’m making everyone around me miserable. I need to do something to convince myself – and, yeah, OK, them – that I’m not worthless and pathetic.

Not completely, anyway.

(Look at that: another one of those bizarre little quirks in the Mind of Kate. Somehow, if I knew you were coming to visit, then I don’t devote a moment’s concern to the typical clutter and mayhem of a houseful of people… but an unexpected caller somehow makes me feel as though I’m failing a test of some sort. I can hear the announcer, whispering just off-camera to a rapt audience: “Ohh, too bad… her living room floor is in such disarray that she is unable to even pretend she was in the middle of cleaning it. And just look at that pile of half-finished projects in the corner! And do I spy one or two not-yet-started ones, as well? I hope she’s able to pull off an adequately disconcerted-but-potentially-competent attitude now, or she’ll lose her standing as…” …well, you get the idea. I hope.)

You’ve come from two very different directions, and I can’t answer both doors at once. So, if those of you from the allnurses.com message board would please just let yourselves in, peek around a little if you’d like, and hang on for a day or so, I would be happy to entertain you with the style of appreciation and respect that you so deeply deserve.

For now, instead, I’d like to offer a big wave and a wry smile to the people who have landed here looking for that suddenly-viral letter from a mother-in-law-to-be. It’s such a cliche, isn’t it, that whole hateful-mother-in-law routine? I mean, there are books about it, blogs and message boards devoted to it, even an upcoming series on a popular cable network – guess how I know! (…no, no, I’m not appearing on it, but I was actually contacted by producers. Twice.) It’s the kind of thing that people laugh about, sometimes out of a sense of relief that their mother-in-law isn’t quite so intense, and sometimes out of a snicker-or-weep sense of affinity. It really is a sad club to be a member of, those of us who are failed daughters-in-law, and I would happily trade in my membership card.  I just can’t seem to find a doorman willing to help me check out.

In my case, there has been an alteration in the trajectory of my relationship with my mother-in-law.  Long before the wedding, my mother-in-law began a decreasingly subtle campaign on a passive-aggressive anti-Kate platform.  There are stories, so very many stories… many of them already detailed herein.  From the iconic – the plane tickets story, her choice of clothing at my wedding and her husband’s memorial, the Splattered Brains comment – to the mundane, I’ve told a lot of tales here already.

Now, she would tell you – and I know this, because she has told me repeatedly – that these stories of mine are blatant lies, fiction, and slander (though, to be accurate, I think she actually meant libel, seeing as how the blog qualifies as printed material instead of the more transitory, spoken offense of slander). This invites an immediate regression into a she-said/she-said sort of tantrum, too boring and predictable by far.

Let me put it this way: my mother-in-law insists that not one of the stories I have ever told here, or at least none of the negative ones, hold the slightest bit of truth. She says she is deeply hurt by my words, because she insists that I have been lying about her for years. There’s an interesting distinction happening there, to my mind: she’s not claiming to be so upset that I opted to tell some potentially private, family stories to a theoretically infinite, fascinated audience of strangers (of course she has raised that point a time or three, but more in reference to specific posts). Instead, her angst stems from her belief that I have this tremendous ability to lie, consistently, for years, with callous disregard for anyone else’s feelings.

I can’t be certain, of course, but I tend to think that she probably didn’t intend for her finger-pointing to provide a certain amount of pride inside me. But, seriously, this suggestion that I made every single one of these stories up, just made out of whole cloth, without a glimmer of truth underneath: what a tremendous compliment. I do perceive of myself as a fairly creative person, but she has given me credit for a level of imagination far beyond anything I ever considered myself capable of. I simply love the lengths of passive-aggression inherent in the plane tickets story or her choice to wear black to my wedding, because that style of indirect hostility and wordless communication is not something I was familiar with, through my childhood and teenage years.

In short, just because I can recount an event with a certain amount of flair and interesting turns of phrase, just because I can knit a sock or a stuffed animal without a pattern, just because I have three separate closets full of crafting supplies in my home (all of which I use, I might add)… that doesn’t mean I also have the ability to invent entire scenarios and long-term relationships.

On the flip side, let me be clear about something: I truly do wish that my words here actually were lies. I wish these things hadn’t happened, because that would mean that I could have some level of relationship with my mother-in-law. Not so much for my own sake – the silent treatment we’ve been receiving for the past two years is probably less harsh of a punishment than she had hoped – but for the sake of my husband, my children, and even herself. Willem and the kids are so consistently beautiful and brilliant and amazing, and I simply cannot fathom her choice to cut off her son to spite her daughter-in-law. She’s missing out on so many potential good times and heart-warmingly sappy sorts of experiences, and the best I can do is hope that she has found satisfaction in her chosen separatist lifestyle.  I’m a psychologist by training and a humanist by nature; my communication skills are among my most treasured internal possessions… the fact that I put more than a decade of work into just trying to establish a simple, mutually respectful relationship, and failed utterly, is among my deepest regrets.  My choice to “go public” with my own angst and stress is a method for me to vent, and to desperately send a signal or two out into the world, to try and feel a little less alone and solely responsible for this failure; the number of other people who have experienced similar – and, sometimes, so very much worse – relationships with their own family members often depresses me far more than it comforts me.

Anyway, without any real involvement from her since the summer of 2009 (there were a few telephone calls while I was in the hospital, which form the basis for another sad/weird/crazy story, for another day), I can’t share any new stories just now. But if your search for a mother-in-law rant landed you here today, I hope you found an anecdote or two worth clicking on.

As background, Isaac is a night owl.  He stays awake until 10:00 or 11:00 most nights, and really is pretty happy most of that time.  I keep an eye on him, and when he starts whining a little, he gets his first bottle of the evening – just milk, now, and only at bedtime, but he doesn’t seem quite ready to wean just yet – then, an hour or so later, when he starts falling down more than usual, he gets Bottle #2, with bedtime immediately after that.  He typically sleeps for 12 hours at a stretch, so it all works out quite nicely for me, since I don’t mind staying up late and I can sleep in until 9:00 and still get up and start my day before he’s awake.

Every once in a while, though, he – being a toddler – throws us a curveball.  This time, it came in the form of, “No nigh-nigh,” with precisely the intensity and emphasis one would expect from an almost 15-month-old.  The second bottle had been successfully deployed, but the child Would Not Sleep.  Which would not have been all that big a deal, except he was obviously exhausted and cranky with it.  I had a houseful of two other children and a husband who were sound asleep and needed to be awake at 6:00 in the morning, so I couldn’t just let Isaac wander around, whining at high volume and falling down repeatedly, until he finally agreed with me that it was, indeed, time to crash.

So I unleashed the rarely-used Bottle #3 upon him, despite the fact that I knew his belly was full and this wasn’t the answer… I just couldn’t come up with any better answers.  We sat in my chair, he wouldn’t drink.  We stood and paced, he wouldn’t drink.  We opened the front door so he could look outside, he wouldn’t drink… but at least, then, he also stopped whining.  So, great, put down the bottle, and watch outside.

Up to this point, it’s just another mind-numbingly boring chapter in the life of a stay-home mother with word retrieval and memory issues – that is to say, I don’t do a whole lot worth blogging about, anyway, and when I do I have a really hard time finding the right words.  But along came a little dog, as though sent from a higher power just to remind me to occasionally question my own sanity…

As Isaac and I were standing there, inside the screen door, watching the night and appreciating the quietness of our neighborhood, this little dog goes trotting through my front yard.  It’s small enough that at first I thought it was a cat, but then I realized the gait was too bumpy to be feline, plus it had a very wide, doglike collar on its neck.  It was dark in color, gray or black, and was trotting along at that pace that seems to communicate, “Ha, ha,  I escaped!  Time to explore absolutely everything!”  It spent a few moments in our yard, and then started wandering back and forth across the street without the slightest pause for traffic – and our neighborhood is quiet, but it’s only a block away from one of the busiest streets in Salem, so there was a steady flow of cars, even at almost-midnight.

Our new-and-improved Laura was still awake and upstairs (did I mention that she has moved in here?), so I handed the baby over to her and started walking down the street after this dog.  I wasn’t entirely sure what I would do if and when I caught up with it – check the collar for a phone number, first, or maybe call Animal Control?  I hadn’t gotten that far.  It was an early spring night in New England, so I was dressed in pajama pants, a tank top and a short bathrobe, no shoes.  It was maybe 55 or 60 degrees – on the cool side, but not uncomfortably so, even for those of us with Reynaud’s disorder (and thus a heightened sensitivity to cold).

It didn’t take very long for me to decide I wasn’t going to be catching up with this creature anytime soon.  It was maintaining a consistent 3-4 house lead on me, and continued its random street-crossing, to the point where I could only see it when a car drove past and the headlights illuminated this dog.  By the third car – five minutes, tops? – I was able to watch it disappear into a little patch of trees on the other side of the road, and I decided I had done my duty as a citizen for the evening.  I had tried to solve the mystery of the dog, failed, and was now ready to go back home and solve the mystery of the awake baby.

Now, that third car?  The one whose headlights finally proved to me that I was on a wasted mission and should just turn around and go home?  It also turned around, right about at my driveway.  And it was then that I discovered, it wasn’t just any car: it was a police car.  It pulled up next to me, and I could hear a male voice, so I started to reply – but quickly realized that he was talking on his radio, window closed.  So I just waited.

Thirty seconds or so go by, and he gets out of his car.  He immediately starts talking to me in that slightly-too-slow, slightly-too-loud tone reserved for people that are mentally unstable or otherwise unpredictable.  “What are you doing out here this evening?”

“Oh, I saw a dog out in the neighborhood and wanted to see if I could catch up to it, to call its owners…”

“Did you know you’re not wearing shoes?”  He pointed at my feet, in case I wasn’t entirely certain where shoes should go in the first place.

“Yes, I know.  It’s May, so I thought I’d be OK for a short walk.”

“Yes, but… you’re not wearing shoes.  Are you OK?”

“I’m fine.  You’re wearing short sleeves, are you warm enough?”

“Yes, OK.  Hang on a second.”  He reaches into his car and grabs his phone, radio, whatever, and starts talking into it.  I only catch about every third word, but it was to the tune of, “Cancel that call, not a hospital patient, woman claims that she saw a dog loose in the area.”

Wait, what?  Not a hospital patient?  Well… OK, fair enough, I am barefoot, and my pajama pants are, in fact, hospital-issued from last year, and we are only about 1/2 a mile from the nearest hospital, which does happen to contain a psych ward… hah.  Time to act just as Sane as Sane Can Be, lest I have to wake Willem to explain why I’m being transported to the ER for an evaluation.

The cop puts his radio thing away and suddenly seems to focus on me for the first time, as though up to now I was a potential threat and now I was just a mere blip on his evening.  “You said you saw a dog?  Where?”  I pointed to the area where I had seen it last.  “OK.  I’m going to go see if I can find it, and then I’ll check in with you before I leave.  Where do you live?”  I pointed again.  He drove the half-block or so to look for the dog, and I walked back to the house, now featuring Laura and Isaac on the front steps.  I explained to her what was going on, and we both laughed a little – but not too much, because that would look, you know, crazy.

A few minutes later, the cop drove back, parked in front of the house, and got out to talk to me.  He hadn’t been able to find the dog – something about the dog not much wanting to be found, I suspect, but what do I know?  So now he just had to take down my name and address, because he had made an initial call in to the station about this “potential hospital patient,” so he was going to have to write a never-mind thing that included a bit about I-talked-to-her-and-she-said-she’s-fine.  I agreed, yep, I’m just as sane as… well.  I’m fine, anyway.

We waited until he drove off, and we were safely back in the house, before we allowed ourselves to fully appreciate the humor of the situation.  Late-night dogs, police cars, escaped hospital patients… this just doesn’t happen to other people, because other people are smart enough to stay home and mind their own business.