Sunday
March 28, 1999

It's only a little past noon, but I'm already retiring the Krups for the day.

Clearly the Organic Sierra Madre Blend isn't working its usual magic: two pots have barely put a dent in my creeping Sunday lethargy. I feel slow and thick and headachey, like I'm walking around underwater, and all I really want to do is take another Allerest and crawl back into bed with a library book and pretend to "read" for three minutes before promptly fall back to sleep for the rest of the afternoon. David is off watching buildings blow up today: he won't be home until dinnertime. So basically there is nothing stopping me from closing the curtains and hibernating under the comforter for the next three or four hours. But I won't. There is too much Sunday left ... and I don't want to waste any of it.

[Besides: I can always sleep when I get to work tomorrow.]

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I enjoyed one genuine moment of inspiration this weekend. (Well ... two moments, if we're counting the garlic green olive sandwich. Which we're not.) Saturday was my mother's birthday. I'd put a Hallmark into the mail for her a few days earlier, but the fact is that I have limited faith in the United States Postal Service ["We'll get it there when we get it there, OK?"]. Besides: a card is just a card. I wanted to do something special. So Friday night I racked my hayfever-addled little brain, trying to come up with a suitable and foolproof method of acknowledging her birthday:

1. electronically,

2. at the next-to-the-next-to-the-last minute, as usual

3. and from a distance of a thousand miles.

A phone call? An e-mail? One of those cutely-dorky electronic greeting cards? A big animated .gif and the requisite calliope-on-crack MIDI rendition of "Happy Birthday" splashed all over the front page of this website?

Six free months of AOL, America's #1 Online "Service" ... ? [snort] 

Nothing seemed "right."

What do you give the smart, well-read, plugged-in, cyberly-hip, "WOW" mother of the 90's? A woman who knows her "byte" from her "bite me" ... her URL from her Earl? A woman who has not only helped keep the counter numbers on this website spinning, the past ten months, but who is personally responsible for me keeping a journal in the first place? [ Flashback to 13 yr. old SecraTerri, snooping through Mom's desk drawers while she's at work.]   A woman who instilled her love of words-words-words in her daughter at a very early age ... and who shares that love to this day?

And that's when I had my Lightbulb Moment. You give her a groovy electronic gift certificate to one of those online bookstores! And then you write about it on your website, for all the world to read!  Granted - it's not as groovy as an afternoon together at Barnes & Noble. But for the moment -- until June and the next trip to TicTac, when I can sneeze on everyone in person -- this long-distance Happy Birthday stuff is gonna have to suffice.

I love you, Mom. Happy Birthday. And happy reading.

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And while we're in Family Acknowledgement Mode this afternoon, I would like to take a minute to publicly tell Debi how proud I am of her for reaching eleven years of sobriety this week ... and what an inspiration she is to me.

I love you, Baby Sister.  How does it feel to be the role model?

 
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OK ... that's it. That's all the oomph and warm fuzziness and keyboard clackety-clackety noises I can muster for one afternoon. Snot wins: creativity loses. I'm heading for the bed with an armload of New Woman magazines ["Suddenly Sex! 21 No-Fail Firestarters!"], a bottle of Langers Raspberry Cranberry 100 ("With Essential Antioxidants!"] and half a roll of Charmin ["Squeeze Me and Die!"].  I'll be back when the pollen count drops or another family birthday rolls around.

Whichever comes first.

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