guilt – SIMCHA FISHER

Don’t listen to thoughts you have when you’re tired

I am a life-long insomniac, and please believe me when I say I have tried everything. I do all the right things, and avoid all the wrong things, to encourage good sleep, but it just seems to be my fate that sometimes I lose the knack, and long periods go by when sleep eludes me, night after night. I just forget how to do it, and the only thing to do is wait until I get the hang of it again. Staying asleep is like trying to stay underwater while clutching a giant beach ball: You can go under for a bit, but pretty soon you’re bobbing around on the surface again, blinking and frustrated, high and dry.

But nighttime is still different from daytime. The thoughts you have when you’re awake, and shouldn’t be, are very different from the thoughts you have when it’s just regular daytime. Nighttime thoughts can take on a certain urgency, even a certain spiritual compulsion.

Not long ago, Catholics on social media were talking about liminality: of “threshold” experiences when we are passing, or trying to pass, from one state or stage to another. We feel a sensation of peculiar and unsettling ambiguity, when we are neither this nor that, here nor there, but maybe we paradoxically feel a sharpened awareness of our in-betweenness.

There are some places on the planet that tend to make people feel this way – mountaintops, caves, very open spaces, heavy fog — and also some experiences: sitting with the dying, having sex, giving birth.

Sometimes insomnia puts us in this state. Eyes wide open in the darkness, body looking for all the world like it’s fully at rest when it’s actually tense and alert. The harder you try to push through from consciousness to unconsciousness, the more stuck you become in this liminal state.

Many people say that, if they can’t sleep, they pray. They say that, if they’re going to be awake anyway, they might as well be sure they’re passing the time well. Someone even told me once that God wouldn’t let her sleep until she said a whole Rosary for me (and I was very grateful when I found out, because I had been in labor, and struggling). And some people freely admit that they just keep on saying Hail Marys until they drop off to sleep. Call it boredom, call it tapping into some kind of mind/body magic, or call it faithfully letting your guardian angel finish the set, but it works for some people.

What I find, more often, is a different kind of spiritual experience…..Read the rest of my latest for Our Sunday Visitor.

“Insomnia” photo by Alyssa L. Miller via Flickr (Creative Commons)

How to clean a child’s room when you can’t see the floor

This is an actual advice essay, not a joke. I write joke articles about cleaning pretty often, but that is because I would rather do anything than clean, even write; and I would definitely rather tell jokes than write.

But not today! Today, I cleaned the middle upstairs bedroom, where three children sleep, including two of the rattiest packrats known to mankind. I’m a bad housekeeper, and I do a bad job making my kids clean. So their room was horrible. That’s just a fact.

However, I have a room rescue system that offers quick gratification; and, if you stick with it, you will eventually be able to see the whole floor. This essay is not about how to organize, how to decorate, how to make your children be tidy, how to optimize space, or anything of the kind. It’s just about how to get from “Oh Lord of mercies, please smite me now” to “Welp, now we have a floor again.” It’s fairly common sense, but I’m offering it in case you find yourself in this situation and need a clear plan and some moral support.

YOU WILL NEED:

Several garbage bags
A trash barrel (or upright laundry basket)
About three smaller collection containers
Broom and dustpan
Vacuum cleaner
Optional: A fan, because you will get angry and hot; a cool drink; music or podcast that’s going to encourage and energize you (not the news or anything challenging or upsetting). If the room is dusty, maybe take allergy medication at the beginning of the project.

OPTIONAL PREP:
NUCLEAR WINTER

If you want to really go hard, sweep everything onto the floor, including what’s on the beds and under the beds, what’s in the closets, what’s on and in the drawers and shelves, etc. It all goes womp on the floor. Only do this if you have a ton of time and energy and mental fortitude, and your kids have already been given an opportunity to take care of it themselves. Save the nuclear option for rare, dire situations. I recommend just sweeping clean the bed and under the bed.

STEP ONE:
ESTABLISH CATEGORIES

Look at that mess on the floor! Decide what the mess is basically made out of. For a child’s room, it’s usually: Clean clothes, dirty clothes (including anything that needs to be laundered), costumes, books, toys, sorty things, art supplies (including papers they want to save), trash, little bitty things, and Hey That’s Not Yours.

STEP TWO:
ESTABLISH FLINGING ZONES

You are going to pick up every last thing on the floor, decide what category it belongs to, and fling it into a zone. The zone will not be its final resting place; it will just be a good spot for a pile. Try to help yourself, and make the dirty laundry zone be near the door, the book zone near a book shelf, etc.

STEP THREE:
SIT YOUR ASS DOWN ON THE FLOOR AND START FLINGING.

Just like it sounds. Make yourself comfortable, pick up the first thing you can reach, brush it off if it’s gross, and fling it into its zone. Do this over and over and over again until you can see the floor in front of you. Then shift slightly and do the same thing in the spot next to the clear spot. Continue until you can’t reach anything from where you’re sitting. Then move and do it again. And again. And again.

I know. It’s stupid and squalid, but I have found this to be the most efficient way to get through a knee-deep mess. It’s much easier on your back than plodding around the room with a bag, trying to pick out all the books, and all the socks, and all the toys, etc. It also gives quicker gratification, and is therefore more encouraging, then sweeping or raking the entire floor contents into a Towering Pile of Everything and sorting through it. This top-down,-one-spot-at-a-time method rewards you with a glimpse of the floor pretty quickly, and if you haven’t seen the floor in a while, it’s surprising how encouraging that can be. It’s very satisfying to watch the patch of clear floor grow and grow as you work your way around the room.

It is very helpful to have a trash barrel (or a bag inside a tall laundry basket) that stands up and stays open, rather than a trash bag, so you can toss things in from where you sit, rather than having to pull open a slithery trash bag ten thousand times. This is going to be a very frustrating job, so you want to save frustration wherever you can.

STEP FOUR:
SORT AND PUT AWAY YOUR PILES.

Once every last thing that’s on the floor has been picked up, judged, and flung into a pile, and the room is all sorted, haul out all the trash and dirty laundry. This will clear out the room tremendously, which is encouraging. Then you just have to put away the already-sorted piles of stuff.

A few need explaining:

Little Bitty Things are items you pick out of the dirt pile before you sweep it up because you’re tender-hearted — things like like money, jewelry, tiny ceramic kittens, important Lego heads, and so on, that you don’t feel like finding homes for yourself, but which you don’t want to get lost. If the kids care, they can sort through it, but at least you rescued them.

Sorty Things are pieces of sets and kits that have been strewn all over the place. The kids will enjoy these things so much more if they’re all together again, so you don’t want to just throw them away. But you don’t know if you’re driving yourself crazy saving out pieces of a set that the kid only owns half of anymore. If you just put All Sorty Things into one box and then sort it all (or better yet, present it to the kids to sort) afterwards, you have already done the hard part. Way easier than roaming around a chaotic mess stopping and making a million decisions about whether or not to save something, and what set it belongs to.

Hey That’s Not Yours is obviously dishes and utensils, my missing cardigan, 46 pairs of scissors, etc. Feels a little like Christmas, in a profoundly pathetic way, to exit the room clutching your little treasure trove of reclaimed goods to restore to their rightful places in the house until someone immediately comes and steals them again.

STEP FIVE
SWEEP AND VACCUUM

If the room was so bad that you can’t see the floor, it will be necessary to sweep said newly-exposed floor before vacuuming. Then vacuum. (This kind of content is why people pay me the big bucks to write.)

And then the room is . . . cleaner. It is a good stopping place, and if you want to continue organizing and sorting, you can do that the next day. At least you can see the floor.

AND THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF IT ALL

You don’t really need this essay, right? It’s a stupid essay. The truth is, cleaning is easy. All you have to to is pick up the things and put them back where they go, and everybody already knows this. But it’s the emotional side of it that makes it so daunting. When you’re facing an overwhelmingly, wretchedly chaotic mess, it helps to have a clear plan about how to tackle it, and to make things as encouraging for yourself as possible. It’s okay to encourage yourself.

The other thing that makes cleaning hard is the guilt and other emotional baggage that goes along with it. You’re not just sorting through Barbie shoes and Halloween candy wrappers, but also feelings of guilt that you let it get to this state and you never taught the kids better, feelings of rage that they made this mess, feelings of shame that you spent money on toys and never made them take better care of them and now they’re not enjoying them and you’re filling the world with plastic and what about the poor dolphins, and then maybe the ghost of your mother or grandmother is haunting the closet making hissing sounds about all the socks on the floor.

All I can tell you is that, if you are feeling not just aggravation but crushing, paralyzing guilt over a messy room, it’s almost certainly inappropriate guilt. You can feel bad about a mess, but you shouldn’t feel like you murdered someone.

Unless the mess is actually dangerous — like there is mold, or vermin, or your children wear the same outfit every day because they have no clean clothes — then whatever failings have led up to this point are probably not as bad as you’re telling yourself. Really. It’s just a mess. I say this as someone who just cleaned a real stinkhole of a room, and who (thanks to several years of therapy) just shocked myself by feeling nothing more than moderate irritation because, oh, that’s where my tape measure went. It was a big mess, but it was just a mess. I should have cleaned it sooner, but oh well, I’m cleaning it now. This is something I’ve been struggling with my whole life, and I think this is just as good as it’s going to get. I’m good at other things. The end. Got my tape measure back.

Good luck! Good luck with it all.

T-shirts and other heavy burdens

Let me tell you a story about old t-shirts, and I promise I have a point.

Several weeks ago, I had a spurt of energy and decided to tackle the laundry room. When there’s some article of clothing nobody wants to think about, they stuff it in the laundry room, and have done so for years. So I girded my mental loins, took a decongestant for the dust, and dived in.

I’ve been something of a hoarder in the past, partly because I’m sentimental, partly because anxiety makes it hard to make decisions, and partly because we were so poor for so long, it really was reasonable to hold onto iffy stuff in case we needed it someday, somehow.

But on this day, I was ruthless. I got rid of stained tablecloths; I tossed out bedsheets with sub-par elastic. I said goodbye to stacks of once-adorable onesies that several of my little ones had worn, and had thoroughly, irredeemably worn out. I called people over to give me a definitive answer about whether or not they would ever wear all these overalls and cardigans and leotards, and I filled several bags and marked them “give away.” And I turned up dozens of t-shirts with corporate logos on them, and these I threw away.

Even though there was so much more I could have done with them, I just threw them away! Nobody in my house wants these shirts. We have clothes we like, and don’t need to wear t-shirts advertising an insurance agency that sponsored a long-ago softball team, or commemorating a marathon we didn’t actually run in. We already have plenty of comfy pajamas, and I already have plenty of rags. There is no chance in hell I will recycle them into some shabby chic rag rug or boho wall hanging. I want them out of my tiny, overstuffed house, and I want to get on with my life.

When you want to get rid of stuff, you have choices, of course. I could put them in a local clothing collection bin, whence they will be collected, shredded, and sold by the pound, and the proceeds will go to an organization that helps the poor in third world countries by pressuring them into getting sterilized.

I could put them in the back of my car and drive around with them for months until I remember to put them in the one bin three towns away that doesn’t have ethical problems, but by the time I get around to it, my children will have stepped on them so many times, they will be literal garbage. Or I could donate them to a local thrift shop, which, because it’s already so well-stocked, would entail making an appointment with someone, who would sort through everything and accept some but not all of them, and would add them to the already vast assortment of cast-off t-shirts with corporate logos on them, which the poor can buy for a dollar or even take for free.

Or I could throw them away.

Maybe this wouldn’t feel like a radical act to you, but that’s how it felt to me. Americans have been trained to believe that, because our world is drowning in garbage, we should always search for some other solution besides throwing things away, and if we do throw things away, we should at least offer up a pinch of the incense of guilt. But there’s more to the story than that… Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

Must be nice!

I’m reprinting this old article today because, even with all the stress and anxiety that come with the pandemic, I’m enjoying myself. My kids are all home, spring is on its way, I don’t have to spend hours every day driving, we’re drawing and reading together daily, and the family is spending more time in prayer. I’m getting a chance to teach again, and we get to set the alarm a full two hours later than normal. A lot of things are pleasant for me right now. And I feel bad about it!

This morning went poorly. I was afraid I’d sleep through the alarm, so I kept waking up; but then when the alarm did go off, I went right back to sleep, and so we were running late.

The kids’ hair was unbrushed, I forgot to pay the aftercare check again, my stomach was being weird, and the world was just generally grim, gritty, and disappointing. The last thing I wanted to do was head to my therapy appointment after the school commute, but it was on the schedule, so I dragged myself in.

It turned out to be a really good, fruitful session, and I left smiling. I checked in at home, then took myself over to the adoration chapel and made a short visit; and that was lovely, too.

The radiators hissed, the kneelers creaked, and Jesus sat quietly and watched me watching Him. I thought, a few times, that I ought to be praying better and using my time more wisely, but then I wisely just sat quietly and watched Him.

Feeling better and better, I remembered that I had set aside some extra cash to replace my torn and stained winter jacket, so I headed over to my favorite thrift stores, where I scored not only a new jacket, but a stained glass window (well, glass with a giant sticker stuck to it) of the Madonna and Child, which is possibly on the tacky side, but it’s also guaranteed to thrill my seven-year-old to the core. AND, I got a sweater, and a shirt! And a pair of earrings! And, um, some silicone cupcake holders with feet! Which we definitely need!

The cashier gave me my receipt and wished me a good day, which I was ALREADY HAVING! I felt almost guilty as I swung my loaded shopping bags into the car and headed for home, where, to my amazement, one of my teenage kids was giving the toddler a bath and patiently unsnarling her curly hair, and another was moving forward with her plans to make enchiladas for supper. Better and better and better.

Even the mail was great: A check and a wonderful book I forgot I had ordered for the kids. I couldn’t wait to read it to them when they got home.

It wasn’t until I was halfway through my lunch, which was an absolutely heavenly dish of black beans, fresh lime juice, salt, and chili powder, that I felt a shadow of unease that didn’t flit away. “Well, well, look who’s having such a nice, nice day,” said a little voice. And so I began to chide myself for how much I was enjoying this randomly wonderful Thursday.

Who was I to be sitting there in a shaft of sunlight, eating one of my favorite meals, basking in the good will of my family, not producing anything, and just reaping the fruits of all this care and attention that are showered on me?

Why did I deserve to be so happy, when other, much more virtuous and deserving people in the world are cold and unloved and running headlong into one bit of bad luck after the other?

Must be nice!” the voice sneered. “Must be nice to have such a great life, but what makes you think you deserve it? And how long do you think it’s going to last? Beans, wow. A used shirt, gosh. You really know how to live. And you know very well that as soon as the kids come home and the bickering and rushing begins, it will all fall apart, like it always does. But sure, have another forkful of happiness. Must be nice.”

I looked down at my plate. It was just beans. It was just a shirt. Just a jacket. Just a cheap sticker on a piece of glass from the thrift store. Just a . . .

Wait. I had heard that phrase before, “must be nice.” My friend Leticia Adams, who has had ten times her share of troubles in life, said this on social media the other day:

“Today a co-worker said it must be nice to be able to take a week off work for Christmas break and instead of doing the usual thing where I act like it sucked somehow or I apologize, instead I said “yep, it is nice.” And walked away. I don’t owe anyone an explanation or an apology for my life. Welcome to 2019!”

And there it is. It is nice. My life, as of that moment, was nice, lovely, happy, joyful, full. My happiness doesn’t detract from anyone else’s. The fact that it would pass didn’t make the moment any less real.

There’s not some finite bin of pleasure in the world, and there’s no reason to feel guilty for enjoying whatever measure of it comes our way for as long as it lasts. On the contrary, when I’m happy, I’m much more apt to be generous and patient; and one cheerful person can lift the mood of an entire household. And even if my happiness didn’t do anyone else any good: I matter, too! It’s a good thing to be happy. Why wouldn’t it be?

What an insidious thought it is — a true temptation to sin — to believe that we should tamp down, moderate, or even reject our enjoyment of gifts that come into our lives. That it’s somehow holier, more mature, more responsible to try and keep a lid on joy. It isn’t. Happiness comes from God, period.

Like any other good thing, happiness can be misused. We shouldn’t cling to transient enjoyments, and we shouldn’t give ourselves permission to act badly once they’ve passed us by (as they eventually will).

We shouldn’t let our good cheer blind us to the suffering and struggles of other people; and we absolutely shouldn’t smugly believe we’re feeling good because God loves us more than He loves people who are feeling bad. All of that is dangerous nonsense.

But when things are going well for us, that is a gift from God. When God gives you something good, it would be rude to talk yourself out of receiving it with happiness, and that’s the case whether it’s a plate of beans or a quiet 20 minutes with the Lord. It IS nice. So smile, thank Him, and enjoy.

This article was originally published at The Catholic Weekly in 2019. Reprinted with permission.

Is Christmas alive in your heart today?

If you think of the liturgical year as a lifetime, the Christmas season is a very brief babyhood, just a bright little sliver on the pie chart, and the dark wedge of Lent hits right around the teen or early adult years.

Doesn’t that explain a thing or two?

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

When we’re mad at God because we’ve sinned

The other night, I was having a mild panic attack in the middle of the night, and I dealt with it this way: I breathed in while thinking, “I don’t know what’s going to happen next,” and then breathed out while thinking, “But I place my trust in Jesus.” I accepted my ignorance and my uncertainty, and I reclaimed my knowledge of the one true thing that will always be true, which is Jesus Himself.

It got me through that one bad night. But there has not been a single second in my life when that was not an appropriate prayer.

Read the rest of my latest from The Catholic Weekly.

Image via Max Pixel (Public Domain)

Tend to your monsters

There have only been two blameless people in the whole, entire history of people, and neither one of them turned up in Charlottesville last month. The rest of us need to do exactly and only what my friend suggested: Look to ourselves. Prod our own weak spots. Shore up our own faltering foundations. It’s true in politics, it’s true in culture wars, and it’s true within individual souls.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

Image: by Last Hero via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Your recourse if you have been raped

My friend R. was raped many years ago. It was not a story with any gray areas. She was walking home from work when a large man grabbed her, beat and choked her, tied her up with duct tape, locked her up, and raped her dozens of times over the course of days. She eventually escaped and reported what happened as soon as she was able. The man was caught, convicted, and sent to prison.

She kept it a secret when it happened. She didn’t say anything until the day her story came up much later in the news, and she heard some women discussing . . . her.

Not the rapist. Not the rape. They were discussing her — what she had been wearing, what her sexual history was, what she had been wearing, why she had been in that neighborhood, what she had been wearing, whether she had fought hard enough to get away, and why she hadn’t gone to the police sooner. Why had it happened in the first place? What should she have done differently? What had she been wearing?

And how do we know she’s even telling the truth?

I knew this woman. A gentle, generous, self-effacing human being, a lover of babies and kittens, honest to a fault. The women who wanted to talk about her skirt length didn’t know any this, because they didn’t know her. All they knew was that she had been raped.

And that in itself was a reason not to believe that she had been really raped. It must be her fault somehow. How do we know? Well, she says she was raped, and we know what kind of woman says a thing like that.

Bill Cosby’s attorney knows full well this is how people think, and he’s banking his entire defense argument on it.

Cosby is accused of drugging and sexually violating Andrea Constand. Constand is the only alleged victim in this case, but she is one of over sixty women who have publicly accused Cosby of sexual assault. As the accusations have filtered in over the course of decades, literally every circumstance surrounding the accusation is used against the alleged victim.

Last time Cosby was in the news in 2014, I compiled a list of arguments I heard over and over again — arguments that made me wonder if there was anything a raped woman could say, any way she could respond, any action she could take, that would make people believe her, or even give her the benefit of the doubt.

Here’s what I learned:

If you tell the police you’ve been raped, it’s because you’re looking for attention. You should file a civil suit, instead.
If you file a civil suit, it’s because you’re looking for money, and are not telling the truth.
If you don’t file a civil suit, that shows you don’t have a case, and are not telling the truth.
If you tell someone right away, that shows suspicious presence of mind, and proves that you engineered the whole thing to embarrass the alleged perpetrator.
If you don’t tell anyone right away, that shows a suspicious lack of urgency, and proves that you are making up the story for no reason other than to embarrass the alleged perpetrator.
If you don’t file a civil suit, it shows that you don’t need the money and are just doing it for attention, because people love the kind of fabulous attention they get when they accuse someone of rape, especially if that person is popular or powerful.
If you do file a civil suit, it shows that you want the money so badly that you don’t mind getting all the horrible attention that no victim in her right mind would want to get, especially if the alleged perpetrator is popular or powerful.
If you’re the only one who accuses someone of rape, it shows that your story is unbelievable.
If lots of other people make similar accusations, that is suspiciously orchestrated, and shows that your story is unbelieveable.
If you were in the same room with the person who raped you, that shows that you are just as guilty as he is, because you’re in the same room with a rapist, and who would do that?
If the person you’re accusing of rape is rich, famous, or powerful, then that shows that you’re just looking for attention, and it never happened.
If the person you’re accusing of rape is rich, famous, and powerful, that shows that you should have known he is a rapist, and you wanted it to happen.
If you tell someone right away, they will assume you’re lying.
If you don’t tell anyone right away, they will assume you’re lying, because you didn’t tell anyone right away.

If you tell, that’s a count against you. If you don’t tell, that’s a count against you. If you speak alone, that’s a count against you. If you speak as one of a crowd, that’s a count against you. If you sue, that’s a count against you. If you don’t sue, that’s a count against you.

If you tell someone that you’ve been raped, it probably didn’t actually happen the way you said, and even if it did, it was your fault in some way, and you should have realized that it would happen, and there is no particular reason anyone should believe you, and if you think the rape itself was painful and humiliating, just wait till you see what you’ve got coming next, when you try to tell someone.

So why didn’t you tell someone sooner?

Clearly, because it didn’t happen. There can be no other explanation.

What I’ve learned is that if you’ve been raped, your only real recourse is not to have been raped. Because anything and everything you do from that moment forward is evidence against you. The deck is stacked against you as a victim because you are a victim. They very moment you even breathe the word “rape,” that’s evidence in the minds of many that no such thing happened, and anyway it was your fault.

Your only real recourse is not to have been raped.

***

Photo by dilettant:nikki via Flickr (Creative Commons)

A portion of this post originally ran at the National Catholic Register in 2014.

Can we celebrate Christmas as Syria burns?

Trying to tamp down the guilt that rose like a cloud of evil dust, I mentally ran through my week, comparing it to the week that my brothers and sisters have endured in Aleppo. I shouldn’t have bought any presents, I thought. How could I even dare? How can we light our Advent candles and sing “O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel?” We are not captives. We are healthy, wealthy, safe, pampered. Our walls our intact. We are home. Our children are with us, safe and warm in bed. The Syrians, they are the ones who need rescuing, Lord. Lord, isn’t there something I can do?

Read the rest of my latest at The Catholic Weekly here.

***
Image: By Ahill34 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

A short history of awful pets

You know what’s no fun? Being a scapedog. This noble creature

has simple needs. He just wants a crate with a blankie and lots of wet coffee filters and styrofoam meat trays hidden under it. He wants people to tell him what to do, and he wants to smell their wonderful, wonderful feet. He wants to go outside and then come inside and then to outside and then come in and then maybe go outside for a bit. He wants to eat snow. And he wants to protect the HELL out of the baby, which is sweet.

However, pretty much all I do is yell at him, and the more I yell at him, the more devoted he becomes, trying to win my favor.

Boomer only pawn in game of life.

This is why we got a boy dog. I’m not saying that all men are like this, but I will say that this is why we got a boy dog.

I know he’s a good boy. So I’m trying to make myself feel better about him by reminiscing about all the other pets we’ve had, and how much more awful they were than this supremely irritating dog. For instance . . .

The cat who was our prisoner. I’ve written about this wretched animal before.

Never in my life have I been hated so passionately as I was hated by that cat. This is the animal who would sit on the couch, wait for me to walk in, make eye contact, pee profoundly, and then casually get up and walk out, making sure to brush past my ankles in a devastatingly ironic pantomime of feline affection, just to show us that she could if she wanted to. This is the cat who, in the time it took for me to get my shoes on to go to the vet, chewed her way out of the cat carrier and disappeared. This is the cat who actually burrowed into the wall and didn’t come out for several days, presumably plotting some horrible vengeance on the family who so barbarically gave her food and shelter.

One night, I had a moment of clarity and simply opened the front door. Propelled by a white hot loathing, she sped off into the darkness whence she came, and we never saw each other again.

The frog that died of ennui after costing us millions of dollars. If you factor in the emotional cost. My son found this frog in the sandbox, and we made some kind of bogus deal that I never thought he’d be able to fulfill — keeping his room clean or some pie-in-the-sky like that. So of course he did it, and he earned a frog.

Happier times

We quickly learned that, despite spending his days doing exactly nothing, a frog is a needy creature. He needs a tank that has water and gravel, sand and moss. Okay. But he also needs live crickets to eat, and, even though he is a yard frog, he can’t eat yard crickets. Nope, they have to be crickets that cost money. And those crickets have to be gut loaded with special stinky calcium powder or something, and you have to time the feeding so that the crickets’ bellies will still be full before the frog eats them.

not how I imagined my life

At one point in my research, I came across the phrase “economical cricket husbandry” and sobbed aloud.

Now, the crickets get dehydrated pretty easily; but they will also drown themselves if you give them water, such as the water you might find in a frog tank. So you have to buy a separate container just for the crickets, and in it, you must put special hydrating gel, which the crickets absorb through their horrible abdomens. Whatever you’re imagining, it’s more upsetting than that. Oh, and do not leave a bag of crickets on your dashboard when it’s hot out, or you will have to make a second trip to PetSmart. And all the PetSmart people will know what you have done.

Also, froggie needs sunlight, but not direct sunlight, because that will burn him, but not indirect sunlight, because then he won’t get the correct gamma rays or something, and he will develop some kind of crippling bone disease.

oh, the frogmanity

Froggie must have a special light fixture to prevent him from becoming Noodle Bone Frogzilla. But don’t worry, you have a PetSmart discount card! So the special bulb will cost a mere $38.

My question is, how the hell do frogs survive in sandboxes?

Anyway, our frog did not survive. He simply was miserable and made us miserable for many, many months, and then one morning, he looked even more dead that usual, and that was the end of that.

The worst mother fish ever. I’ve kept fish off and on for decade, and I’ve learned two things: One: when you have a really nice set-up, with plants and bottom feeders and Roman ruins, and you buy a new heater and it doesn’t seem to be heating up the water? So you keep turning it up, and it’s still not heating the water? So you turn it up some more, and then some more, and it’s still not heating the water up? You might want to make sure it’s plugged in. And, you might want to make sure you turn it down again before you plug it in. Unless you intended to make bouillabaisse with a side dish of ancient Roman ruins.

Again: not recommended.

The second thing I learned was: do not get too attached. One time we had a fish who turned out, in keeping with the general theme of the household, to be pregnant. It gave birth to approximately 93 teensy little adorable fishlings. Or, was it only about 70. Huh, looks like there’s only about 30 now. Or, wow, there can’t be more than– OH, THIS IS HORRIBLE. Quick, look up what to do when the mother fish is eating all the babies! Okay, run out and buy this expensive little mesh isolation nursery thing! Phew, now they will be safe, and shame on you, you unnatural mother! I know you’re just a fish, but–

OH, THIS IS HORRIBLE!

Yep, the mother fish was sucking her babies through the mesh and eating them anyway.

WORSE THAN THIS.

At this point, a responsible pet owner can only put a blanket over the tank and take the kids out for ice cream until they stop crying.

The three doomed parakeets. One escaped out the window when we cleaned its cage. One got a chill and keeled over suddenly. And one simply got more and more despondent until it started kind of falling apart, which is the worst thing I’ve ever seen a bird do. I wasn’t sure how to handle it, and so my husband asked grimly, “Do we have a paper bag?” His plan was to put the bird in a paper bag and run over it with the car.

This is actually not a terrible idea, and I’m not sure why it makes me want to laugh hysterically; but it was about 17 years ago, and I’m still giggling. (We ended up bringing it to the humane society, who charged us $15 to gas the poor s.o.b. And they didn’t even give us the cage back!)

The tadpole of futility. We have this wonderful town pond, which has one section full of tadpoles and salamanders. The kids love seeing how many they can catch.

Eeek!

One day, feeling expansive after basking in the sun for a few hours, I made a tactical error, and allowed them to bring a tadpole home. We installed it in a pickle jar and it became the centerpiece on the dining room table.

Mmm, appetizin’.

We named it “Bingo” and prepared to watch the miracle of life unfold before our eyes.

OH BOY!

Instead, it basically acted like a dead pickle with a mouth. It ate and ate and ate and ate, and got more and more bloated. And that’s it. One day, the kids started spazzing out, shrieking that the tadpole had pooped. It turned out to have sprouted a leg. Just one leg. And that’s it.

Was willst du von mein leben?

More weeks went by, and it never grew any more legs. It just continued to eat limp lettuce until I couldn’t stand looking at it anymore, and dumped it into the stream. Vaya con dios, pickle.

Adios.

The phantom hamster. Our most current terrible pet. We had some gerbils, and they were pretty good, but then one died. So, because I don’t argue about these things, we got a dwarf hamster, and he was pretty good.

IN FACT SO TYOOOOOT!

Until he got out. How he did this, I do not know. He certainly doesn’t appear strong or intelligent or even competent, but somehow he got out. This produced extreme sadness in the boy community of the household for a week or so, until — and again, I would like to note that boys are different from girls — the joyous news was spread that the hamster appears to be alive and well, only he is living inside the walls! Hooray, apparently!

So now we have what may be, according to your point of view, the perfect pet: he requires no food, at least not any intended for him; he requires no care; he requires no changes of bedding, for reasons that I care not to think about. But we know that he’s there. And he is ours.

And that brings us up to the dog. Well, he does love the baby. Boy, does he love the baby. And I know for a fact that he would not fit inside a paper bag.

It’ll have to be enough.

***

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