Living Happily Ever After
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Proma Drama

Date: April 19, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

“I get letters from all over, all sorts. It’s really cool. I get a lot from inmates, which is kind of scary. But the best was the guy who wanted to send me a plane ticket to fly me to his prom.” (Laura Prepon)

Prom (at our house) is 10 days away and the drama continues. In fact, it has resulted in modifications to the English language: Proma Drama (say it like it rhymes with drama). Although my husband coined the term, if it were in any dictionary you could find it defined as, “anything having to do with the events leading up to the high school ritual known as Prom.” Or something like that.

Date to prom? Check.

As reported earlier, my daughter was asked to prom. A boy she works with and goes to school with asked her. (The invitation itself caused drama, as I’ve mentioned earlier, because the boy asked my daughter and another girl at the school walked around school for days crying in the halls and all of her classes and told everyone it was because the boy she wanted to go to prom with asked my daughter!)

We live in Utah, where “creative dating” is practiced by teens, so the boy didn’t just ask my daughter in person or text or call with his invitation, he did it in a creative way. Late one night our doorbell rang, I opened the door to find no one there, looked down and there sat three goldfish swimming in a container with the message: “If wishes were fishes and I had three, I’d use them to ask, ‘Will you go to prom with me?’” (Cute, huh? They even came with fish food!)

Due to my daughter’s busy school, work and spring track schedule she didn’t have time to answer for a few days. In the meantime, everyone enjoyed the fish. And fed them. Until sadly, I don’t believe any were actually alive by the time the reply was delivered. Oops!

Prom dress? Check.

Believe it or not, we found it online—a far different prom dress shopping experience than mine were in the 1980s. I never actually did find one that was “perfect,” which resulted in my mom designing and sewing me the perfect dress for prom my junior year (she was a fabulous seamstress, as good as any professional anywhere)—and then flying to another state the following year in quest of the perfect prom dress so she wouldn’t have to EVER sew another one!

Referencing prom throughout the days and weeks leading up to it? Check.

For example, my daughter’s birthday came a few weeks after the “fishy” prom invitation. Her birthday incorporated a bit of Proma Drama when her best friend sent her a beautiful bouquet of roses with two wishes: “Happy Birthday! I hope these flowers live longer than the fish did!” (For the record, the flowers are still thriving and looking beautiful.)

And then the moment came when my daughter’s date had to be told what color her dress is so their attire could be coordinated.

Stay tuned.

Oh. And speaking of dresses: “Some women hold up dresses that are so ugly and they always say the same thing: ‘This looks much better on.’ On what? On fire?” (Rita Rudner)

Hamsters Do It All The Time

Date: January 10, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

Q: “Is there any living species of animals that feed on their young?
A: A lot of them. Many invertebrates (like insects and spiders) will eat their young…most fish will eat the young as they do not distinguish their young from others. Some mammals will kill and eat the young if stressed.  Hamsters do it all the time. As a kid I raised mink and we had problems. In a thunderstorm the female may devour the young. Much of the cannibalism among mammals is caused by stress and not hunger.” (AllExperts.com)

I’m pretty sure there’s a Proverb about “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch.” And since I’ve never taken the time to thank that one bad apple, I thought I’d do it now.
I was snuggling with my youngest before bed recently, which led to an interesting conversation. His arms were wrapped tightly around my neck, squeezing almost to the point of choking me (anyone who has hugged a toddler/small child knows the kind of hug I’m talking about!) He had just finished whisper-singing a few songs in my ear and we lay face to face, chatting about anything and everything and soon, our talk turned to love.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too, Mommy.”
“I love you more.”
“How much?”
“I love you SO MUCH…I could eat you up!” And I kissed his cheek, his neck, the top of his head, and tickled him a little bit for good measure. (Ok, and I admit it, I may have pretended to gobble him up, but only a little bit.)
He stopped, released his hold on me, pulled back, looked me right in the eye with a bit of suspicion, trepidation and uncertainty and clarified, “But you wouldn’t ACTUALLY eat one of your children…would you, Mom?”
No, I would not. I promise I will not. In fact, I can guarantee it. But how remiss of me to never have thanked the spiders, insects and other creatures who apparently do and who have given the rest of us mothers a bad rap. Thank you. And despite the fact that apparently hamsters do it all the time, I promise I don’t. And won’t.
“I love running cross country…On a track, I feel like a hamster.” (Robin Williams)


Bachelor #19: The Barracuda

Date: July 27, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

“I think fish is nice, but then I think that rain is wet, so who am I to judge? (Douglas Adams)

The following is not going to sound like it’s coming from a woman in her 40s, college educated, who has seen her fair share of the world, but here it is:

If I was a baby guppy fish, Bachelor #19 was a barracuda!

Don’t get me wrong. Bachelor #19 was a law abiding citizen and a good person. I don’t want to give the mistaken impression that he was dangerous–not in the axe-murderer, serial killer sense of the word anyway. It’s just that he was handsome, several years older than me, and CLEARLY much more experienced and worldly-wise than I was.

We had different core beliefs, values and lifestyles. He had grandchildren, I had a four-year-old.

So I’m not sure what the attraction was for him. I never asked him. He just always said, “My gosh, you’re cute!” (But not in those exact words. I’ve edited his colorful way of expressing himself.) And he asked me out. A lot.

But he made me nervous.

He made me feel as if I was getting in way over my head. I think I was. But at least I was smart enough to sense that. So I took the cowardly approach and was “busy” every time he asked me out. I quit returning his calls.

“If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mr. Brave man, I guess I’m a coward.” (Jack Handy)

The thing I remember most about Bachelor #19, aside from his colorful language and the “something” about him that made me nervous, was how patient he was to me in my cowardice. He didn’t get mean, rude or hostile. He continued to be kind, patient, complimentary and understanding of my hesitation. Until one day, he finally gave up and quit asking me out.

“Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” (Dr. Seuss)

Goodbye, Bachelor #19.

This fish isn’t biting.

Of Corpses, Fish and Flowers

Date: July 20, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

“That corpse you planted last year in your garden, Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?” (T.S. Eliot)

I love “old-fashioned” flowers, like hollyhocks and peonies, but peonies are my favorite. Someone once told me peonies can live to be up to 90 years old. I don’t know if that is true, but it has made me love them even more.
I can’t imagine what they’ve seen and what they’ve survived to live that long.

Kind of like each of us as we live our unexpected lives.

My Colorado yard had LOTS of hollyhocks and peonies.

When I moved to Utah to begin a new chapter in my unexpected life, I left before my belongings. My former spouse, unemployed and waiting to be formally charged for the Ponzi scheme he perpetrated and the crimes he committed, moved my things to Utah for me after I was already working. Knowing how much I loved my peonies and that I had no money with which to buy new plants in Utah, the man I had divorced uprooted 2-3 peony plants from my Colorado yard and hauled them to Utah in buckets, hoping they could be transplanted in my new yard upon their arrival.

In the midst of working full time, tending my children in the evening, and trying to unpack and move in to our Utah home, one of the peony plants from Colorado died before I could plant them. I looked at it, dead, withered and lifeless in an orange Home Depot bucket, and realized I had a lot more in common with peonies than I’d thought. I felt like that plant looked and wondered if I was headed for the same fate. It felt like pieces of my heart were already there. But seeing the dead plant motivated me to plant the two remaining peony plants.

They looked dead, but I figured if that were the case, I couldn’t damage them further. I planted them in the middle of the July 2009 heat and went on living my life, not sure if they were alive enough to take root or if they’d survive the winter snow. I should have known better, though. I probably should have been more worried about whether or not they could survive my children!

Sometime during the winter, my four year old came to me one day, proudly holding an entire peony plant that he had uprooted. “Look Mom! Look what I found trying to grow in our yard! Look how strong I am! I ripped this whole bush out of the ground all by myself!”

My eyes were huge as I looked at the accomplishment dangling from his little hands–my peony plant, roots and all.

The loss of a plant, considering all I had lost, seemed like such a little thing. And it sounds petty, but in a year of disappointments I couldn’t help but add the peony plant to the list. But at the same time I acknowledged there were a lot bigger losses and issues in life, and in my world, than the loss of one pink peony plant. I had experienced too many to count in 2009 and as usual, knew I could choose to laugh or cry about things, so I shook my head at the absurdity of uprooting a plant from its home, hauling it several hundred miles in a bucket in the summer heat, transplanting it when it was mostly dead and with winter coming…and a small child finally doing it in.

I laughed.

It wasn’t THAT big a loss, but it’s still true: “Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.” (Bill Cosby)

It reminded me of our attempt at having a fish for a pet several years earlier. The fish was new to our family when we left on a vacation to Africa for one month. And wouldn’t you know it, I forgot to arrange for anyone to feed it while we were gone! I realized my mistake partway through the trip and prepared myself for a dead fish when we returned home. To my shock, the fish was alive and swimming in its bowl when we returned to Colorado! I fed it, changed its water, and secretly admired the little fish’s survival instinct. The next evening however, as I did the dinner dishes, I realized the fish was missing. Apparently, our cleaning lady had come, hadn’t realized anything was swimming in the fish bowl, dumped the contents down the drain and washed the bowl!

In the case of the peony plant, all I could do was compliment my son on his brute strength, give his “huge” arm muscles a squeeze of admiration, and help him heft the remnants of my peony plant into the big garbage can outside. Another peony dead. Sometimes the best laid plans die or don’t work out due to circumstances beyond our control.

One peony plant was left, but who knew if it was even alive, or if it could survive the rest of the winter?

I was walking in my yard recently and saw it. The peony plant was still in the ground, thankfully. It was finally green. And to my surprise, there were blossoms getting ready to bloom! Who ever would have thought? And after all of this time, one year since it was first uprooted, has passed?

“Where flowers bloom so does hope.” (Lady Bird Johnson)

It looks like I’m going to have peonies after all. With my hope. In my unexpected life.