Welcome to the Funny Farm

by Karen Scalf Linamen

  And she should know. She’d already gnawed her way through half the pie.

  The thing that makes holiday recipes so special is the fact that we only make them once or twice a year.

  That’s also what makes them so scary.

  I have a hard time remembering things I do every day, like picking up my kids from school or taking my Prozac. Remembering how to do something I only attempt once or twice a year is out of the question. Every time I have to renew my car registration, defrost a turkey, or dust off a beloved holiday recipe, I feel like I’m having to feel my way through the process for the very first time.

  This is why my favorite holiday recipe goes like this: “Go to the freezer section. Open the door. Select the box with the best-looking photograph. Return home and slide the frozen pie into your own pie dish. Bake. Serve. Hide the box.”

  Homemade rice pudding with seeds? My family should be so lucky. The last time I made homemade rice pudding, I was dishing it up when my spoon hit something bigger than a seed but smaller than a breadbox.

  At least I’d found the pot holder.

  What I’m saying is that, at least for me, executing once-a-year recipes is a challenge. The other challenge I face is trying to find the festive items I only need during the holidays. This year, my list of AWOL holiday props includes turkey-shaped Jell-O molds, the box of Christmas decorations, and the animated reindeer head that sings, “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas, just like the ones I used to know . . .”

  Sometimes I think there should be a dry run. Maybe in August or September. Then we could practice all our Thanksgiving recipes and hire Magnum P.I. to locate all the Christmas decorations. That way we’d be practiced up when the real holidays came around.

  In fact, maybe we could send practice Christmas cards during summer vacation, just to make sure our mailing list was up to date. And we could serve July 4th barbecue on our very best china just so our dishes wouldn’t feel too unfamiliar come Thanksgiving. And that cornucopia centerpiece? Wouldn’t it look great holding Easter eggs or a nest of chocolate bunnies?

  And when it comes to holiday attitudes like gratitude or worship, what would happen if we dusted those off as well and used them during the other ten months of the year? What if, at the end of this month, gratitude didn’t get packed away with the pilgrim-shaped salt shakers or the pinecone turkeys your kids crafted at school? What if worship of God and goodwill toward men didn’t get stored in the attic with the nativity set and the reindeer lawn art?

  The bottom line is that some things are just meant to be enjoyed year ’round.

  My husband says pudding with seeds probably isn’t one of them.

  42

  How to Survive Cold and Flu Season

  I HAB A CODE.

  I took some cold medicine, but it’s taking a while to kick in, and until it does I’m sounding a little like Elmer Fudd on Xanax.

  Of course, even then, my medicine will only help my symptoms. It won’t really cure me. This is because they say there’s no cure for the common cold.

  My friend Beth discovered this the hard way. For the past year, Beth has been saving pennies for a cruise. A big deal, this cruise—everyone in her family was going, including grandparents, cousins, and kids. Two weeks before she was supposed to sail into the best vacation of her life, Beth showed up on my doorstep waving two bags from the pharmacy down the street.

  Seems she had visited her family doctor and obtained prescriptions for every ailment known to womankind. She had pills for bladder infections. Patches for motion sickness. Birth control pills to postpone her period. These were mostly preventative measures. Beth wanted to board the boat prepared for every conceivable malady. She was adamant that nothing—no virus, bug, or menses—would interfere with this vacation of a lifetime.

  Two days before her trip, Beth came down with the grandmother of all colds. Her postnasal drip was so bad, she didn’t need an antihistamine, she needed a plumber. If you didn’t get any presents delivered to your house this Christmas, it’s because Rudolph took one look at Beth’s nose and filed for unemployment.

  Nothing in Beth’s bag of pharmaceutical tricks could help. Rest and time proved the only remedy. Beth went on her cruise anyway. It didn’t help that when the ship sailed into some fog, the captain said the horn was on the blink and asked Beth to blow her nose instead.

  This was a month ago. Now Beth is sick with something else. I think the doctor said whooping cough. The funny thing is that Beth’s a nurse. I told her she needs to quit bringing her work home with her.

  I also showed up at her home with a little something to make her feel better.

  If I were Martha Stewart, it would have been homemade chicken noodle soup or a casserole. But I’m not, and so the thing I brought was a half-gallon tub of ice cream. Cold hands, warm sentiments. Beth understood.

  Colds are equal opportunity ailments. They don’t discriminate. Everybody falls prey, even the folks who are supposed to take care of the rest of us when we get sick. I know it’s disconcerting when it happens—I mean, I get a little worried when the doctors and nurses around me are sicker than I am—but there’s only one thing to do when it happens.

  Don’t gawk or point a finger. Instead, pitch in with some caregiving of your own.

  The truth is, whether we’re talking germ warfare, emotional valleys, or spiritual struggles, folks who minister aren’t immune. Sometimes they fall under attack. Sometimes they need an encouraging word, some wise instruction, a healing touch, and time to recoup just like the rest of us.

  Know someone under attack? Someone you thought was invincible? Don’t gawk. Instead, pray. Send an encouraging card or e-mail. Make a phone call. Lend an ear. Provide a shoulder. Offer a hand. Provide a Kleenex. Give a hug. Bake a casserole. Babysit her kids. Show up with a gift that shows you understand and that you care.

  A carton of Rocky Road and two spoons is a nice place to start.

  43

  Creepy Crawlers

  HARALD CALLED ME YESTERDAY WITH A STORY that will send any arachniphobics among my readership into therapy.

  Harald is my brother-in-law. He and my sister Renee live in Oak Harbor, Washington, with their three boys, six goldfish, and a tarantula.

  The tarantula is a new addition. One week ago, their family roster did not include a spider the size of carry-on luggage.

  It all started when my sister Renee decided to go away for the weekend. She was going to a women’s retreat. As she was heading out the door, her husband announced that he would be taking the boys to the pet store because seven-year-old Hunter wanted to buy a pet. Harald added, “He wants a tarantula.”

  “Absolutely no tarantulas,” Renee said. “If a spider like that ever got loose in the house, I’d have to move into a hotel. No Best Western, either. I’m talking Hilton.”

  The next day Harald and the boys were driving in the van, Hunter cradling a glass terrarium on his lap, when Harald said, “Oh yeah. Don’t let it get loose in the house or Mom’ll have to move to a motel or something.”

  They arrived home and carried their furry friend into the house. Less than an hour later, one of the boys was holding the terrarium when it fell to the floor and broke into tiny pieces. Harald spied the eight-legged wonder sitting dazed among the glass. He rushed to pick it up. The spider promptly bit Harald’s finger. Harald flung the spider to the ground, where it scurried under a kitchen cabinet.

  Harald looked at the clock.

  Renee was due home in two hours.

  Armed with a flashlight and broomstick, Harald probed the small hole into which the black spider had fled. No luck.

  Returning from the garage, Harald plugged in a 6.5 horsepower ShopVac capable of suctioning the dimples off Joe Namath. But it couldn’t lodge an arachnid from a cabinet.

  Undaunted, Harald headed back to the garage. When he returned a few minutes later, he was brandishing an electric saw.

  By now several neighborhood husbands had learned of the crisis and gather
ed ’round to offer hearty masculine support as piece by piece, Harald began sawing apart his cabinets. The cabinet floor beneath the sink went first. Then various toe-plates. Then bottoms of drawers.

  They finally found the tarantula in the last possible section of cabinet.

  The furry interloper was safely imprisoned in a borrowed terrarium when Renee walked in the front door.

  She immediately said, “What happened here?”

  Harald said, “Why do you ask?”

  “There’s a 75-pound Shop Vac sitting on the white carpet in the middle of the living room, that’s why. What’s going on?”

  The men in my sister’s life—all four of them, from the mid-lifer down to the preschooler—looked her in the eye and said, “Nothing. Nothing happened. Everything’s fine.”

  Around the corner in the kitchen, the cabinets lay in pieces, and sawdust was still settling around the flashlights, saws, and ShopVac attachments.

  I imagine Renee was about to figure it out on her own.

  She didn’t have to. Hunter confessed. Then, to make up for all the commotion his pet had caused, he decided to do something extra special for his mom.

  He named the spider in her honor. He named it “Mama.”

  We can learn a lot from this story. We can learn to avoid women’s retreats, staying home instead to protect our homestead from well-meaning husbands and venomous spiders larger than most of our body parts.

  Renee says that, besides the women’s retreat thing, the experience is also teaching her to face her fears. She says, “I don’t want to steal Hunter’s joy over this pet. So I’m working on putting aside my fears. I make a conscious effort to go look at the tarantula at least once an hour, sometimes twice, just to desensitize myself. Not to mention to make sure he’s still in his cage.”

  Sort of like living with Hannibal Lecter.

  Life’s like that, isn’t it? Sometimes our worst fears come home to roost. Sometimes someone leaves, or someone dies, or the stock market crashes, or the doctor clears his throat ominously before delivering the news, and we think, like Job in the Old Testament, “Here it is. This is it. The thing I have feared has come upon me.”

  And then we get on with the business of coping, which includes, but isn’t limited to, activities like crying and whining, which eventually, if we’re lucky, begin to morph into other things, things like accepting and trusting and growing.

  I wish you and I could be protected from everything that goes bump in the night. Instead, we have a God who says, “Yes, they’ll go bump, but let me hold the flashlight, and we’ll face it together.”

  And who knows? When it’s all said and done, maybe we’ll come out ahead, in possession of things we couldn’t have gotten any other way, things like mettle and strength and spirit. Not to mention an eight-inch-long spider named “Mama.”

  44

  Clean Sweep

  I WENT THROUGH THE CAR WASH THE OTHER DAY.

  Of course, that wasn’t my intention.

  My intention was to send MY CAR through the car wash. It’s just that things don’t always work out like I’d planned.

  I had just picked up my daughters and a couple of their friends from school when I decided my car needed gas and a wash. I filled up the tank of my 4-Runner, paid for the gas and a car wash, and received a receipt with a code printed in red ink.

  I drove up to the car wash tunnel, punched in my code on a little keypad, got a green light, and drove forward.

  My front tires hit a bump. The light flashed RED. I was supposed to stop right there, right on that bump, and let the brushless magic begin. I sat. I waited, but the sprayers sat silent. I realized I had overshot the bump that triggers the sprayers.

  I popped the transmission into reverse, backed up an inch or two until I was exactly on the bump. Still nothing. I backed all the way out of the tunnel, back to the keypad, unrolled my window, and punched in my code again. The green light beckoned me forward, letting me know that all was forgiven and that my car wash could commence.

  Darned if I didn’t overshoot the bump again.

  I started to back up to the keypad again, but now there was a car waiting behind me. I was trapped.

  I opened my car door and ran back to the keypad and punched in the code.

  So now I’m standing at the keypad, and my car is sitting in the car wash tunnel, the driver’s door wide open and the front tires planted firmly on that malicious little bump, which is apparently exactly how the car wash imps wanted everything arranged, because at that moment the sprayers kicked into action and began dousing everything—me, my car, my driver’s side upholstery—with a generous layer of pink suds.

  I ran through the sudsy maelstrom and jumped into the front seat, slamming the door behind me. My hair was matted to my head with pink suds. I wiped my forehead clear of pink foam dribbling toward my eyes. The four girls in the car were laughing so hard I thought they’d need CPR. The woman sitting in the BMW behind me had a pinched look on her face, as though she were wondering if I might be dangerous as well as stupid.

  But at least my bumpers were spic and span. Come to think of it, my car didn’t look half bad either.

  There’s something about a clean car. I love it. Know what else I love? A clean house. I love it when the beds are made and the countertops are clean and the clutter is contained (let’s add fresh-baked bread in the oven and homegrown veggies in the sink and maybe even Ricky Martin sitting at my kitchen table. Why not? We’ve obviously crossed the line into La-La Land).

  The problem with getting a clean house is that I hate cleaning. Well, not ALL houses, just my house. Other people’s houses are another story. I mean, is it just me, or have you noticed that it’s a lot more fun cleaning someone else’s house rather than your own?

  I like puttering around in my friends’ kitchens. After a meal, I don’t mind at all whipping up some soapy water and starting with dishes, gravitating to pans, and wiping down all the countertops and appliances when I’m done.

  And clutter? While my own clutter stumps me daily, I’d know just what to do with that pile of sewing supplies sitting in one friend’s living room or the stack of newspapers, mail, and last month’s schoolwork sitting in the kitchen of another.

  Sometimes I even look at other messes in my friends’ lives, messes they’ve made or wandered into, and find myself thinking, “Why, that’s not such a mess at all. That’d be easy to clean up. I know EXACTLY how she should go about tidying that unruly marriage, or that child’s difficult attitude, or all those broken dreams and secrets she’s been sweeping under the rug for years.”

  Of course, MY messes continue to stump me, just like the clutter in my house. Sometimes, in fact, I get so used to MY messes and clutter that I wonder if I’m seeing them clearly or if my vision is being impaired by something in my eye, something sort of, well, kind of like, you know . . .

  A log.

  You probably know that Bible verse as well as I do, the one that says “How can you see to clear the speck out of your sister’s eye when you’ve got a log hanging out of your own?”

  The truth is, making a clean sweep of things isn’t always as easy as it seems, whether the tidying up needs to occur in my life or yours. Which is why I, for one, am going to stop applying the White Glove Test to the homes and lives of my friends. Instead, I’m going to love them best I can and try in the meantime to stay open to any housecleaning the Holy Spirit wants to do in my own life.

  In fact, I wouldn’t complain at all if he started with my hair.

  I had no idea those pink suds would be this hard to get out.

  45

  Crazy for Cocoa Puffs

  LAST WEEK A FRIEND OF MINE SAID, “You should meet Susan. She’s really disciplined about what she eats. She’s so disciplined she even puts padlocks on her fridge and pantry so she doesn’t eat anything fattening.”

  I hate to burst anyone’s bubble here, but Susan is NOT disciplined. A better word to describe Susan would be “creatively impai
red.” This is because any woman in the throes of a binge—any woman with an ounce of imagination, that is—would not be deterred for a heartbeat by the presence of a mere padlock on the freezer door. Nosiree.

  A lock means nothing. It’s kind of like wearing a T-shirt onto the floor of an Amway convention that says, “No. Please. Stop. Whatever you do, DON’T tell me how I can achieve financial freedom AND be my own boss without ever leaving the comfort of my living room.”

  I figure, when it comes to the mood to binge, where there’s a will there’s a way. For example, if MY fridge were padlocked, I’d head for my kids’ stash of Halloween candy. If all the good candy happened to be gone, I’d reach for my car keys. And if for some reason I wasn’t able to find the keys to my car, no problem.

  Ever see a woman rumbling into a Dairy Queen on a riding mower?

  Sometimes a woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do.

  Padlock on the fridge? C’mon. Give me a REAL hurdle. Something with teeth.

  I have other addictions, too. Junk food isn’t the only one. The other thing I’m addicted to is mail order catalogs. I get so many catalogs that two years ago my mailman canceled his gym membership, and his forearms still look like Popeye’s. There’s so much processed pulp around my house that my address is listed in the National Directory of Forests and Forestry.

  But that’s all. Just junk food and junk mail. Everything else in my life has some sort of redemptive value. Well, okay, almost everything, except for all those mindless TV shows I love. But that’s it, I promise. Just junk food, junk mail, and junk TV.

  Which is okay, right? I mean, it’s just entertainment, right? So my figure is about as curvaceous as a Twinkie. I’m starting to believe I deserve all those catalog offerings I covet, and I’ve practiced for so long that I can watch TV for hours now without even the slightest twinge of conscience.