Take It down a Notch

My kitchen is a mess and it's distracting me a little bit. I usually can't get anything done in the morning before it's clean, but I'm trying to get my bearings again here after a week of being more or less housebound "thanks" to the blizzard (seems a little silly to me to call what we had here a blizzard, but who am I to argue with meteorology?) and a sick five-year-old who's been housebound with me. He's back at school today, as are two of my other three kids. The oldest is upstairs with a stomach ache. Ah, germs... How I resent you.

Where was I? Distraction. 'Kay. So I can't stop thinking about last night's episode of "Glee." (It's better to think about that than the Super Bowl; I'll just say so I can get it said that the Packers earned the win. They did. They played a better game with a better quarterback and a better offense. My black and gold is put away, salt-free, no tears shed.)

"Glee." It means happy. Joyful. And, I realized after however many weeks of not watching it (I only watch reruns of "The Office," "Buffy," "Angel," and "Firefly"), it means yelling. Lots and lots of yelling.

I've worked really hard the last year or so at subduing the yeller in me. She isn't very attractive, and she sounds like a crazed banshee (as opposed to the sane ones). That's no one you want to introduce your children to. I don't like her very much, and she's completely ineffective. So we had a chat, and I told her she wasn't welcome around here anymore. She still tries to sneak her way in, but I'm a good fighter.

And with all of my kids in school all day now (except when germs sneak in through those same cracks the banshee tries to squeeze through, perhaps), I'm used to quiet days. I don't listen to a lot of music when I'm home alone because (1) I can't concentrate on my editing when I'm humming along with Jim Croce and (2) I'm prone to feeling really lonely when I listen to music, regardless of the song style. So I live a quiet little existence here from 8 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Then chaos erupts when the kids pour in through the front door. And it's a nice little chaos. It's good to have them home, hear their happy voices, see their happy little faces.

For a few hours.

Come dinner time, I'm holding my head, my elbows propped on the table, begging them to please, just, shhhh, don't yell, I'm right here, yes, you can have more milk, here, just, shhhh, please keep your voice down, stop yelling, holy cow.

So it struck me pretty hard last night how LOUD everyone on "Glee" is. Sue's yelling (and I love Sue!). The football team is yelling. Rachel is yelling. Coach Beast, Will, Fin. They're loud and scowling and grumpy and . . . I didn't like it. It made me uncomfortable. Maybe 9:30 p.m. is just too late to watch the show. Maybe it was WAY past my noise-tolerance time.

But, darn, we're a yelling society aren't we? When did this start? Is each generation, as my husband suggested, used to raising its voices to be heard over the previous generation's voices? Is the debate culture getting to us? The need to interrupt each other in Bill O'Reilly fashion? With common politeness comes reasonable decibel levels. Throw out politeness and we all end up, sooner or later, with ruptured eardrums.

Go ahead. Pay attention to the TV shows you watch this week, whether it's reality TV or news programs or sitcoms or dramas. And then tell me people aren't yelling way way WAY more than they did in the good old days of "Three Is Company" and "Fantasy Island" and "The Love Boat."

Now I can clean my kitchen. In silence.

From Caveman to Vampire

I was watching CBS while getting ready this morning, and the show had a panel of experts on male behavior discussing the best way to communicate with a husband/boyfriend. The man talked about (of course) evolutionary behavior--how men traditionally only looked each other in the eye during confrontations and how women were used to looking someone in the eye when communicating with them, because their role was to raise the children and you have to look babies and children in the eye all the time. So, the expert went on to say, if you want to ask a man to do the dishes, you can't look him in the eye or he'll feel threatened.

Okay, I'm still laughing. True or not, it's ridiculous, isn't it? And I'm also feeling that maybe it's time to start getting past all of our cave-dwelling issues.

Another expert said we women need to talk in sound bites because men can't focus for the length of a "real" conversation. Sound bites, ladies. But I just can't . . . I can't give in to this piece of advice. It's time to move out of the cave no matter how comfy it's been all these millennia.

My talented friend Brigid Kemmerer posted this video yesterday. I'd seen it before, but I still laugh every time I watch it.

That's not my husband. My husband just made breakfast for me this morning, in fact, and didn't burn it. And, okay, so he may only listen in sound bites, but I can look him in the eye when we talk without worrying about him grabbing a club and challenging me to a duel when he gets back from hunting the stegosaurus that's been trampling our grass. Still, the video is hilarious because it's depiction, not truth.

Anyone who knows me knows I love Joss Whedon. I'm not a fanatic that's reached the join-his-cult stage quite yet. But I do enjoy the heck out of his shows (except for "Dollhouse," of course). I love "Buffy" (even if I'm not a Sarah Michelle Gellar fan) and love "Angel" even more because . . . well, because of Angel. I'm disappointed, of course, that David Boreanaz cheated on his wife, but not nearly as disappointed as she was. I imagine she was hoping for a little more Angel and a little less Throg the Philanderer.

I'm thinking that our fascination with vampires as leading men has a lot to do with the fact (disclaimer: I know vampires aren't real; I'm talking literary fact) that vampires can be hundreds of years old and therefore have had the chance to evolve individually much more than the average Joe. Once you know he's a vampire, nothing else is going to come as a surprise. He'll still bring you flowers. He'll still put the lid down on the toilet. He'll still put his bowl in the dishwasher. He'll still listen to your entire conversation and not just the one- and two-syllable words. And he'll smolder through it all.