Five Tiny Spoons

Dionne Quintuplet Spoons

A funny bit of serendipity occurred while I was in Iowa last month. Mom was showing me her new dining room hutch and the drawer she had for storing Grandma's silver and some other old things like curling irons she heated up on the wood stove and a set of five old spoons. Mom said, "I used to choose one of these spoons every morning to eat my breakfast with. See, each one is a different one of....oh, what were they called? There were five babies that were born..."

"The Dionne quintuplets?" I asked.

"Yes, that's who they were! The Dionne quintuplets," she said. "They were very famous back then."

A year ago I'd never even heard of the Dionne quintuplets. They were famous in the 1930's for being the first quintuplets to survive after birth, but that was long before my time. They were, or are (two are still alive), older than my mom.

The Dionne Quintuplets

I knew about the Dionne quintuplets because I talked about them a lot this past winter when I played Lil, "the zany sister who plays the piano and breaks into song," in a community theatre production of The Octette Bridge Club. The play is about eight Irish Catholic sisters who meet for a weekly bridge game. The action takes place in 1934--the year the quintuplets were born--and 1944. Lil was particularly enamored with "those tiny, tiny babies" who were "so small one could fit in the palm of your hand. In the palm of your hand!"

You'd think doing a play with seven other women, all playing sisters, might be fraught with drama--the real life kind--but it wasn't. The eight of us became remarkably close over the weeks of rehearsals and productions--almost like real sisters only we didn't fight. But we did help each other put together costumes, nursed each other through colds, got together early to run lines or work on music. And we even supported each other through some pretty tough times.

One sister's grandmother died in hospice the week of production. She couldn't come to the dress rehearsal because she had to be at the funeral home. But she was back for opening night, holding it together by a thread. The play ends when, after an especially emotional revelation, Lil suggests they all gather around the piano and sing "You Are My Sunshine." My "sister" Nora said to me before the performance, "I don't think I can get through that song tonight." She was facing the audience and the back of the piano. I was playing the piano with my back to the audience, facing her. I said, "You just look at me and we'll get through it."

So we played the last scenes, and luckily we were all supposed to be crying anyway....then I led the sisters to the piano to sing us out of the show. Nora took her place in front of me as I hit the intro notes. I looked right into her eyes and gave her the biggest smile I had, trying not to cry myself as I saw her struggle. But she bravely smiled back and we sang, and she looked for all the world like she was having a great time singing with her sisters. The lights came down, we hurried off stage, and then had to come right back out in pairs for our curtain calls. As we faced each other from opposite wings waiting to go out together, I could see Nora was still struggling. So I kept smiling at her as we met in the middle and walked back across that stage together and took our bows...The show must go on, right? Falling apart was for later in the dressing room.

Nora wasn't the only one who needed her sisters during those weeks. A couple of weeks before production, I had to have my standard poodle, Pippi, euthanized. My daughter and I took her into the vet's office and held her while she died. And then I went to school and taught, and I went to Octette rehearsal. As soon as I got there, my oldest "sister," Martha took me in her arms and let me cry a while. She'd been through it before. And my other sisters took their turns hugging me and commiserating. But the show goes on even when it's a practice run. We took our places on stage and started running the show.

Everything was fine. I played zany Lil and talked about how I wished I could see those tiny babies, and how we were going to be even more famous than them because our picture was going to be in the rotogravure. Everything was fine....until we got to the end of the first act. I didn't even see it coming. The sisters were sharing a moment of remembrance of their late parents, crossing themselves and saying, "God rest their souls." And Lil, after a theatrical beat to let the audience see how much we missed them, starts to sing one of their Daddy's favorite songs. And it goes like this:

Old dog Tray ever faithful
Grief shall not drive him away.
He is gentle, he is kind,
No better friend you'll find,
No better friend than old dog Tray.

I got about three words into it before it hit me what I was singing and I started crying. My seven sisters realized it when they saw the tears roll down my cheeks and they started singing louder to get me through it. Martha took one hand and Alice reached across the bridge table for the other. By the end of the song, all eight of us were crying. The director, assistant director and producer stared at us from their seats in the house for a few long seconds as we sniffed and dabbed. And then the director jumped up and said, "You aren't supposed to cry there. It's way too early to start crying." Then we all laughed, and Martha told him I'd just had to put my dog to sleep that morning. So he gave me a big hug too and we took a break.

All that to say, I knew nothing about the Dionne quintuplets until last winter, and yet if you mentioned them to any of my seven sisters from Octette, I think they would all experience the same rush of memories I did*. And here was my mom showing me a full set of spoons, handles molded into the little girls' likenesses and engraved with their names.

I wish I could say my mom gave me those spoons to bring home with me, but she didn't. I have to admit I covet them. It's mostly because they belonged to my grandma and my mom used them as a child. But I also wish so much I could show them to my Octette sisters. We talked about the poor Dionne quintuplets and how tragic their lives were....but I probably won't end up with the spoons. It's better not to expect things like that to happen.

I'll just enjoy the moment of serendipity. And be glad for my sisters--both the ones I share blood with and the ones I shared Octette with.

* I'm just starting rehearsals on a new play; one of my sisters and the director, our honorary sister, will be in it with me. Nora beat me out for a part in a play that goes into production this week, and it's being directed by Octette's assistant director. We see each other several times a week at the theater (different theater). I'm also stage managing a play there so our rehearsals overlap. Most of us are friends on Facebook, so we've kept in touch. We may not be as close as the Dionne quintuplets, but we forged an amazing connection in those weeks we played sisters. After a while, we weren't even acting any more.

Where'd You Get that Unusual Dildo?

Dildos. I don’t know why I have to keep writing about them. How interesting can something that's little more than a shape be. It's just phallic, nothing else, right? Maybe I feel compelled to give those curious people who are looking for good, solid information a place to land as they’re doing their research--people who find my blog by googling “dildo riding blogspots” or “dildo mit pats” or “dildo porn kilts.”*

And yet I feel a little guilty because, although I found my friend’s dildo, Squildo, to be quite the adorable little guy….ish, lately some dildos have come across my radar that….well, let’s just say I question whether their actual application to the vagina would result in the kind of giddiness a girl expects from a phallic substitute.

http://laughingsquid.com/steampunk-vibrator-by-ani-niow/

For example there’s this metal, steam-powered, steampunk vibrating dildo. At first I thought, Ouch. That metal looks terribly cold and unforgiving, but then I read on. It’s powered by steam from a pressure cooker. OK, let’s break this down. These are adjectives describing nouns that should not be put into a vagina: 1) steam-powered (Hot! Pressure cookers are meant to kill botulism, not vaginas), 2) metal (cold, hot, and Mama Bear says this is too hard), and 3) steampunk. Huh? What’s steampunk about this thing? Stay on your own side of the playground, hipster.

The funniest thing about this Robodildo is the name of the website where I found it: laughingsquid.com. It’s a sign. Wherever Squildo is, he must be laughing at the irony.

And then there’s this homemade dildo DIY video**. Homemade from ice, that is, using condoms and toilet paper tubes right in your own kitchen. In various sizes. He doesn’t mention flavors, but why not? If you’re into that sort of thing ... but please tell me you’re not. Who would let this guy stick an ice penis into her coochie? And why would he want to make an ice dildo in the first place?

 

The guy tries to explain it. He’s obviously heard some criticism of his craftiness, maybe even been called gay before. He says “If you’re so closed-minded you don’t know how to please your girl with more than your dick, then … ah … she’s prolly gonna try to find a guy like me after a while after she gets tired of you just … I guess … screwin’ her for five minutes…” Ummm, yeah. I’ll take the five minutes of dick any day over however long he can go with his weinersicle.

To his credit, he does give one safety tip, really the first thing I thought of. He says to wet it first or you’ll end up like that kid on A Christmas Story. And then the fun will be over, Frosty.

And finally, Halloween is drawing near and even dildos like to dress up and go out to all the parties. I think Squildo might be inspired by this Mythos dildo. Hand-made and sold on etsy. (I'd just recommend hiding this one from the male members of your family. They probably won't play with it in the way it's intended to be played with.)

http://www.etsy.com/listing/76421661/mythos-art-dildo-serene-green-with

Oh, I could go on and on, and I’m not even an expert on dildos. They just seem to fall into my lap—cyberly speaking, of course—and I have to share—cyberly speaking, of course, because you can't buy these things at Walmart or Amazon.com. So what about you. Seen any cool dildos yourself lately?

* Yes, this is how my adoring fans find me. It makes my epeen so hard to read my sexy keyword searches.

** If you get all the way through this video, I'll send you an ice dildo made by my own hands in my own kitchen.

I'll Take Mine with Hair

I'm a loser. No, really, I am. I didn't win the way too expensive and probably doesn't work anyway piece of shit Silk'n SensEpil I wrote about last month. Seriously, it's probably an expensive piece of shit that costs $500 effective, painless hair-removal system that costs a lot less than professional laser treatments or decades of painful waxing. The Reticulated Daughter* thought my story was the best one on the blog where the Silk'n SensEpil giveaway was posted, but someone else won the super dooper hair zapper. Someone whose story, according to the Silk'n SensEpil people, was better than mine. Someone who is a product endorsement blog whore better storyteller than I am.

Reticulated Daughter checked the blog--another product endorsement whore's ummmm .... blog--daily to see if I'd won. She was only two years old the first time she stole my razor and shaved her legs. She wanted  that fucking Silk'n SensEpil. She wanted it bad. She planned to be hairless from her eyelashes down to her toenails within minutes of its arrival in my mail slot. So she checked compulsively to make sure I was ahead, and she reported back that nobody had even come close to telling a better story than mine. I tried to keep a Zen attitude. Whatever happened would happen. Duh. But I was excited every time she reported in. I wanted to be hairless from my eyelashes down to my toenails too.

But I didn't win. I tried not to become too invested, yet obviously I was. I became depressed. I stopped shaving. I didn't shave for at least 5 days weeks. I took solace when Sean, the crazy brother on The Big C, put it all into perspective. He said, "Women used to let their follicles grow wild like nature intended. I remember when going down on a woman was like snuggling, open-mouthed, with a baby lion. It was absolutely delightful. Now, it’s like licking a dolphin’s blow hole." And I thought, fuck yeah. I don't have to shave just because a bunch of porn stars are doing it. What's next? Labiaplasty? Fuck those Silk'n SensEpil people. I don't need a dolphin's blow hole between my legs. I'm better than that.

But today as I wedged myself into the Lycra bike shorts I swore I'd never wear, I looked down at my legs and realized pretty soon I was going to look like an orangutan on a bike. Not a pretty sight. Certainly nobody deserves to have to look at that. I'd rather be a dolphin's blow hole.

As I lathered up and shaved my legs, inspiration struck. I may not be a product endorsement blogger whore successful commercial blogger, but my readers were all patiently waiting to see if I won I do know how keywords work and I do know what happens when you use certain words over and over in a blog post. Words like really fucking expensive and probably a piece of shit but I'll never know because I can't afford to be hairless from my eyelashes down Silk'n SensEpil. I know because people find my blog by using keywords like "frosting vagina" and "gay nipple torture pasties."

Yeah, I didn't win. Someone else told a better story. If only I'd coined the phrase "Vietnamese blow job" I might have won .... because nobody has ever used that phrase before. I might even have started my new career as a blog whore. But instead ..... I'm just a writer. A writer who has to shave her legs ... and her blow hole. Sigh.

* I really need to think of a clever name for each of my children so as to protect their privacy and yet represent them in their truest light. Any ideas?

Wordless Wednesday: Your Choice

Sometimes You Go Home: The Wedding

The wedding ceremony was held at the lake/reservoir that supplies the town's drinking water, as well as a place to camp and party. My grandfather helped build the dam that blocked the river decades ago. Some people--not saying who--used to drink beer, smoke dope and make out sit in their cars and read the Bible up on Reefer Hill, which is to the right of the scene in this photo. To my knowledge, no weddings have ever been performed on Reefer Hill, although it's possible some actions taken there eventually resulted in weddings.

Every wedding I've performed had its own unique feel. I've done traditional Christian weddings, traditional secular, Buddhist/Pagan, Pagan, same sex, different sex. It doesn't matter to me. I work with the bride and groom to create a unique ceremony that reflects their personalities and beliefs. I've never performed the same ceremony twice, and even if I did, the people involved make each one distinct and special.*

One of the best things about performing weddings is never knowing what will happen: whether a torrential rain will stop before an outside wedding or whether a gathering storm will hold off until we're done; whether the bride will drink one too many Jack and cokes in the coat room; whether the groom will secretly change the recessional song to "Oops!...I Did It Again."  I tell couples not to worry about whether the wedding will be perfect, because the best stories come from the things that surprise us or go wrong. So I've done quite a few non-traditional weddings, but my sister Biker Babe's wedding was the first Harley Davidson wedding I've officiated at. Yep, my baby sister had a biker wedding.

I could write and write about BB's wedding and about the people who came. I hadn't seen some of them in decades. Some I never care to see again after that day. And some I probably won't see again unless I go home for a funeral. I could write a book, but don't worry. I won't. I'll just share some snapshots of the day....and maybe someday I will write that book and arrange to have it published posthumously.

Since I can't write the book here though, I'm going to make a list of....let's call them snapshots of that day. And then I will tell one story in a post of its own, because it has nothing to do with the wedding and everything to do with taking back my soul.

• My baby sister has never looked as beautiful as she did that day, in her white skirt and fitted shirt with Harley printed across the back in silver script. I hope she felt as gorgeous as she looked, and I hope she can keep that feeling with her now that she's back to real life again.
• I was the only one who didn't wear Harley clothes. I don't have any, but someday I will wear leathers when I'm riding behind Gary. I did wear a little black dress--first time I've officiated at a wedding in a black dress. People don't expect the minister to fit into the theme anyway.
• The groom's sister brought a cooler of PBR Busch Light to the before-the-ceremony photo session. Although BB had told her beloved he was not to drink before the wedding, he only had two and he's big enough to hold a couple of twelve-packs before he has to belch, so he wasn't in trouble. In fact, when I went to the van where she was waiting for the ceremony to start to have my usual pre-game talk, BB had one in her coozie too.**
• BB and her beloved wanted the ceremony to be funny, so they wrote funny bits about the Hawkeyes and shopping into their vows. When I said in the welcome that my friends back home did a double-take when I said I was going to Iowa to marry my sister .... ba da boom ... it took the celebrants a few beats to get it and laugh. It set them up for the big laugh when I accidentally said "blonde" instead of "bond" later and had to apologize to my sister, my blonde sister, for yet another blonde joke.
• The groom was afraid he would laugh during the ceremony. Most of them worry about that. They horse around during the rehearsal because they're afraid to be too serious in front of people, and then they end up with tears in their eyes during the actual ceremony. Tough guys. He didn't laugh.
• I saw relatives I hadn't seen in years. One of my aunts is suffering from dementia, but she knew me, both when they got there and when they left. She called me by my nickname, and in the parking lot as they were leaving she said, "Do you still have the quilt?" My grandma had started the quilt for me and then died before she could finish it. My aunt had  one of Grandma's friends finish it and then surprised me by sending it to me. I hugged her and said, "Yes, I still have the quilt. The yellow quilt." She smiled and said, "Yes, the yellow one." She smiled a lot that night and seemed happy to be there ... but even though she was right there with us, I missed her. And I'm so glad I got to see her.
• The bride and groom drove away from the wedding on his big orange Harley, kids running behind, and stopped at a bar for a drink on their way to the reception at the country club. We had the roast pork, brisket, potato and macaroni salad and rolls out, and everybody had staked out a place to sit at the long tables. The bikers, who weren't invited to the wedding, were congregated outside smoking. Finally I called BB and said, "Get your ass over here to your own wedding reception. We're all starving." (When you're both the oldest and the minister, people are supposed to do what you say.) She said they were already on their way, but you can't fake talking on a cell phone from the back of a Harley. She lied to the minister on her wedding day. That's all I'm saying.
• Since it was a Harley wedding, I designed the marriage certificate with the Harley logo in the background and printed it on orange paper instead of parchment. All of the guests got cute orange and hot pink coozies with the bride and groom's names on the Harley logo on them too. I brought home three because I didn't have any coozies. (You just don't put a glass of wine in a coozie. C'mon.)

The bottom says "Game Over."

• The country club has a 9-hole golf course and a clubhouse. In the clubhouse are a kitchen and two rooms, the big one with the dance floor that overlooks the downstairs patio and golf course and one smaller for whatever. The bar is downstairs. Drinks are $3 for well liquor and $4 for premium, served in a plastic cup. They'll stick a Tony's frozen pepperoni pizza in the microwave for you too. If you fall down the stairs to the bar, it's time to stop dancing and just stay downstairs at the bar. If you fall up, you're OK to dance until you fall down.
• Something happened that knocked my knees out from under me right before BB got there--something I'll write about in a separate post--so I escaped downstairs to the bar to get Suzy another vodka and tonic. I told the bartender to pour slow, because nobody else was down there and I needed a moment. Just as I paid him, a tall familiar guy came down the stairs. I screamed and ran to him and he picked me way up in his arms, about four feet off the ground. Finally I said, "Better put me down. I think my panties are showing." And he said, "It's nothing I haven't seen before....and I'm not even wearing any panties today." It was my very first best friend, and later my first crush, Steve. We walked to kindergarten together. His mom would walk him up the the block to our house, and then we'd take off together to walk the 3/4 mile or so to school. I can't imagine any moms letting two 5-year-olds walk that far out of their sight these days, but we made it to school and home every day in time for lunch. I hadn't seen Steve in years, but he was one those serendipitous gifts that shows up just at the moment you need somebody to lift you up in his arms and make you forget why you want to crawl in the van and leave spraying gravel. We got a chance to catch up a little bit, share photos of our grandbabies, and later to dance--even a slow dance--and show up the youngsters with a little disco. It was like high school, except that I danced with his wife too.
• I missed my dad. He died of a sudden heart attack at age 46, when I was 24 and BB was just 12. He's missed a lot over the years....
• After dinner I danced a lot and drank a little and caught up with a lot of people. The groom's biker friends--who were all very tall for some reason--flirted and bought drinks for me at the bar. They were sweet and edgy at the same time. A couple of them would be really hard to handle drunk and pissed off. They liked drinking with the red-headed minister though. Not everybody hates gingers.
• However it was neither the bikers nor any of the rednecks there who caused a big drunken scene that embarrassed the hell out of Suzy and me and shouldn't ever have taken place in front of my sister's kids (and new in-laws and friends). I'm not going to write that story, but it's the final event that made me want to pack my van and tear out of there that night instead of early the next morning. Several things happened that night that the kids shouldn't have witnessed, but they never need to see an adult lose his temper and yell obscenities at other people. I can forgive almost anything that happens to me, but I don't forgive when kids are involved. Especially that night.

Suzy, Mom, her husband, and I left while people were still partying. I'd pronounced the marriage and signed the marriage license, so my job was done. BB told me before I left--knowing she wouldn't see me again before I took off--that her wedding had been perfect, just what she dreamed it would be. So my memory of that night is divided between the joy of my baby sister's wedding and the other two events that had nothing to do with her or the wedding, but that hit me like an emotional wrecking ball. It's very easy to keep the two separate though. I have no regrets about driving home to perform BB's wedding. It was a privilege I wouldn't have missed. And there were some people there that night I've known all my life but may never see again. It's always that way when you live far from home though. Somebody's always gone the next time you go back. And somebody always reminds you, in one way or another, why you should be very very careful with the people you love.

* Although I will never get married again--ever--I love performing weddings. Love it. If I could make a living just officiating at weddings, I would do that for the rest of my life. Every one tells its own story, and I always feel privileged to be a part of each story, even as an outsider. It's even more amazing when it's someone I'm close to, like when I did my cousin and her wife's wedding a couple of years ago, and now my sister's. It's one of life's gifts.
** Everybody in my hometown uses a coozie on their beer can, even if they're sitting at the kitchen table drinking a beer after work. Oh, you thought I meant a....my readers have such dirty minds. That's coozie, not coochie. A coozie is a foam sleeve you slide onto a beverage can. You'd have to be pretty drunk to mistake one for a coochie.

Leaving the wedding Harley style!