Dormancy

When I began The Gospel According to Winifred in 2007, I hoped to create a space on the Internet where my mother could share her opinions. (She asked that she remained anonymous.) I had planned that if I started writing, she would eventually follow in my footsteps and post herself.

I provided written instructions for signing in to Blogger and posting content. I also offered to transcribe posts for her or copy and paste from e-mails she sent. (This seems logical, since many posts are taken from family e-mails she sent. When the screws were turned, she decided to call e-mails she wrote “blogs” instead.)

Winifred has Facebook—and her own Twitter account—now. I am very busy explaining the difference between status updates, Tweets, and wall posts. I am also explaining what a wall post is, what a news feed is, and encouraging Winifred not to back out on a status update, as she sometimes thinks all 11 of her friends constitute as too many people to know her opinion. (This is unfortunate, as most of my friend have rallied, requesting her friendship via social networking.)

I am currently busy job hunting and managing my own blogs. I am hoping to launch a cooking blog soon, and am busy writing educational and informative articles regarding technology and pop culture for adults. (I also hoped that blog would encourage Winifred to post.) Because I live at home, I am privy to my mother's funny, insightful, and revolutionary ideas (ask her about New Moon). Unfortunately, I do not receive her family e-mails (not blogs), and am unable to lazily use them for blog posts.

I hope Winifred will join the blogosphere one day. Until then, I hope you enjoy the archives.

Signed,
Your Captain

Winifred joined Twitter (@WinifredQ) and today she hilariously wrote:

It is FULL OUT WAR!about 3 hours ago from web

A mole desperately wants to take up residence in my flower bed. I have gently suggested a variety of relocations to him to no avail, so ...about 3 hours ago from web

Hopefully she will keep up with Twitter. Since she never found regular blogging interesting...

Emily is in town this week, and she helped Mom pack my lunch for work last night. (Yes, I know, I am old enough, but when someone says, “I took last week’s leftovers, put it into a Gladware container, and it’s in a brown bag in the fridge,” a person DOES NOT SAY NO.) And she wrote me a note!

 

Dude!

Enjoy your lunch, don’t work too hard.

 

It’s my first note since elementary school.

Yes, I tacked it to my cubicle wall.

 

She'll get her vitamins elsewhere, haters!

Winifred sent this a few weeks ago. This is a new story to me, and has brought to light that my grandmother would boycott anyone, proving that my ability to drop anything (Domino's, Nike, The Frito Lay Company/Pepsi/PepsiCo...it goes on and on) may be genetic. Of course, this incident is far more important, and helped bring down Anita Bryant.

Hello Girls,

As it happens, Aunt [Ina], Dad, and I watched Milk last night. Aunt [Ina] and I were discussing it today. She casually dropped this comment into the conversation: "Do you remember when Mom was so angry with Anita Bryant, her railing was not enough--she boycotted the orange juice?" Well, NO, I do not remember this, as I was not living in the home at the time. Of course, Ina was not living there either. I KNEW you would want to know this bit of info about Grandma.

Love, MOM

That's My Mom!

I'm not allowed to talk about controvery after 8:00 p.m. EST but I took a chance and held a pop quiz at 9:01 p.m. EST and asked my mom the following: Would you go on TV and ask why lesbians why they don't date women who look like men?

My mother was so astounded by the stupidity that her head began to tilt under the weight of sheer stupidity. I forced her to high five me, gave her an A+ and a gold star and yelled, "THAT'S MY MOM! YOU'RE WAY SMARTER THAN OPRAH!"

As I scampered into the distance Mom said she'd always hoped to surpass Oprah.

Fun fact! Mom doesn't subscribe to O, and sometimes she brings it home for the library for recipes or the special feature (when it's about books).

Related articles:
Oprah Asks: If Lesbians Like Women, Why Do They Date Women Who Don't Look Like Women?, Jezabel (You can watch the video but have a drink handy)
O Magazine Discovers New Trend: Lesbians!, Jezabel
Why Women Are Leaving Men for Other Women, O (this is only safe for weekend drinking)

Christmas Letters, Maybe I'll Write One

To my knowledge, my mother (and father) has never sent a Christmas letter.

They could, if they wanted. It would look something like this:

Captain graduated from X University in the May. Emily visited from Pacific Northwest for the festivities and took all of us winetasting in Virginia before she left.

Charlotte and Emily are happily married to their husbands.

Okay, it would look nothing like that. I can’t even finish the mock letter because it so quickly has descended into “These are the accomplishments of my children! Graduating and married life!” As if Winifred would write, “Now I am waiting anxiously for my daughters to bear me a brood of grandchildren.” BLECH.

Plied with enough wine I could do better, if anyone wants my services. I’ll stray from domestic events and focus on the events in your career and community. I’ll include how patriotic you were when you didn’t vote for John McCain.

Winifred doesn’t write Christmas letters because she doesn’t need for her children to compete against the morons Winifred knows. (Which is my way of saying, we really enjoy the letters we receive from our family, which does not contain a single moron. I especially enjoy Aunt Ina’s letters.)

And because we do not write letters, we only receive the good letters, sparing the face-to-palm action caused by the parents of morons. Morons like Michelle Bachmann, Republican Representative of Minnesota.

Before I continue, now seems like a great time to urge, beg, plead, and bargain with Minnesotans to vote her out of office. I know that Minnesota is full of bright, friendly, charming, and intelligent people. I expect those people to eradicate her career. Now.

Bachmann’s letter from 2003 has surfaced. She doesn’t drone on about anti-Americans. Instead she extols the feminine virtues of her daughters and makes it her mission to find her son a subservient woman. (Lady would change her mind if she saw Audition, don’t you think?)*

In short, Winifred would never do the following:

• Refer to her teenager as an “fantasy treasure” for the opposite gender


• Refer to any of her children as “Utter Perfection”


• Disclose the size of our bodies or clothes (unsurprisingly, Bachmann applies this only to her daughter)


• Refer to her kid as a “magnet” or “magnate” (this is listed as [sic] but I suspect Bachmann knows what she’s doing—wouldn’t it be fabulous if her son owned women? Her daughters are property, collectible like Monopoly tiles, I wouldn’t put it past her) for the opposite gender


• Patronize any of us as “organized,” a desireable attribute for the woman who will run day run her husband’s life, those silly men can’t organize their way out of a paper bag! To be fair, Emily is the only one with the life skills for organization. Charlotte and I don’t stand a change against her refined and mature skills. Apparently his hasn’t devastated Charlotte’s aptitude for marriage, though it did set back my family one goat.


• Announce our inadequacies in landing a man. If Winifred did, it would be a long letter this year, detailing the failings of her last remaining unwed single daughter.


• Relate her children to the participant of a harem. Nay a Boleyn here!
  

Future wives of Bachmann’s children, beware! You will clean up behind the slob, be expected to dance, often and well, have dinner on the table when he comes home, financially support him through medical school, and support him emotionally. Snap, this is where Daniel Abraham got it from! Fox News and Michelle Bachmann! Future husbands, you know what your ladies are being groomed for.

And, because I wasn’t born to Bachmann’s family, we’d never be able to announce that The King had opened some Christian-themed loony center, and Winifred would never brag about her cleaning habits. Of course, not only will Winifred never do any of this out of principle (we’re private people, except you know, the one on the Internet), but she’s too busy reading a book. Bachmann could benefit from a reading list, no?

*Charlotte, that was kind of for you.

I've turned into my mother

Winifred likes to remind people—as frequently as possible—that the killer’s in Fargo WERE. NOT. FROM. NORTH. DAKOTA.

Then, to goad her, I remind her of that one time, how that old cranky man was in somebody’s yard causing a scene, and someone hit him with a shovel!

The shovel incident happened more than thirty years ago. Maybe more than fifty years ago, and she likes to add, “He had it coming. That old man was cranky!” This would seem harsh unless you know my grandfather, who never raises his voice or freaks out about anything. (By comparison it takes only a sound bite of John McCain or Sarah Palin to get me worked up and freaked out.) You could say that Grandpa’s age is a factor, but to Winifred’s recollection, he’s only been mad twice. And she wasn’t even living at home the second time because she was in the Army! (She just got to hear about it, as older sisters often do.)

But I digress. Among Winifred’s other claims that life is peaceful and non-violent in North Dakota: No one has ever been deliberately poisoned in the last fifty years (so far no evidence holds up), there are no pedophiles (as compared to the “fictional” town in Downtown Owl), and the firefighters exist to get cats out of trees. Gas is always eighty-nine cents a gallon. Everyone is voting for Obama to make up for how insane South Dakota is, etc.

 

This predilection has driven me crazy because it ruins the idea that The Grass is Greener on the Other Side. Yeah, the grass is green, but I bet the meatloaf in that kitchen sucks, and I bet the cable reception is lousy. I’ll eat the cooking here, watch my television under the comfort of my own blankets, and bask in the imperfections of my life here. And if you allege that somewhere, anywhere, things are perfect, it makes my imperfect little life look… well, kind of crappy. And I like my life! I like my quirky cast of characters, the way Metro is always slow, and how even the rampant problems of Baltimore have a gleam of charm.

 

But without meaning to I’ve set out to defend Baltimore, guns-a-blazin’. My friend IMmed me an article and included his comment: “THIS IS WHY I HATE BALTIMORE.” That’s not the right way to start a conversation. I didn’t even read the article before I set out in ALL CAPS to let him know that this isn’t even Baltimore County! This is Calvert County! “SAME THING,” he said.

It was all downhill from there as I had to set him straight. My Baltimore, which yes, had murdered a former council man last week (to my infinite grief), was NOT the same as Calvert County. God, had I even been to Calvert County?! (Not really, only to travel through it.) Moreover, the clearly disturbed woman had never even lived in Baltimore! City or County! She’s from Godforsaken Rockville! Rockville is where dreams to go die in a hell of suburbia! We have our own problems that we’re fixing (crime has dropped compared to rates last year, there are plans to bring truants back to school, etc.) don’t add any more!

 

Oh. Wow, did I get a little out of control, there? Maybe a little too defensive? May I have implied that My Baltimore is sunshine and lollipops? Because it is, you know.