War Wounds

I know I’ll pay for this, but I can’t hold it in anymore.
I’m proud of the blister on my palm.
I’ve been babying it for days in public.
I hold up my hands – “Look what I did!” I’m waiting for them to cast their eyes away in sympathy, to ask, “Ouch, what’d you do?”
Finally, I can tell my story.
“I’ve been digging dandelions,” I answer with such glee that the look of sympathy changes to one of confusion.
“That’s it?” they ask.
“That’s it?” I’m annoyed now. “That’s it? Do you know what it’s like to yank those things out of the ground?”
I tugged. I pulled. I muttered my swear words so Jillian wouldn’t hear them from her sandbox.
I wanted those nasty green leaves and their long taproots to taste a little bit of the bitterness that climbs up my throat every time I try to walk across my brown lawn in bare feet. Those evil little things have stolen my luscious green lawn. Their yellow flowers dance in the breeze mocking me, all sunshine and light.
It’s my fault. The summer that Jillian was born, I threw up my hands. With an aching back and nighttime feedings, I had neither time nor patience for gardening.
My black thumbs took a year off, and the flowers did a jig. The weeds just kept on growing.
When I resumed my novice version of lawn maintenance the following year, I was already too late. If I pulled at something suspicious and it came loose, I quickly learned it was a flower I’d just removed from the soil. If a tussle with the leaves got me nowhere, no doubt it was a weed.
I spent last summer in denial. I put down weed and feed. I put down grass seed. I watered. I raked.
This year my back lawn grew in plush and green. The front lawn is as brown as my hound dog.
As I wheeled the garbage can out to the curb in my bare feet last week, the dust swirling around my ankles, I made a decision.
I can’t hurt the good stuff – there’s no good stuff left. So I got to work. I set Jillian up with her 100 pounds of play sand and a few buckets, and I settled in on the ground with a shovel and bowl.
I didn’t just get mad. I got even.
I spent hours hunched over my little trowel rooting around in the bone-dry earth.
Each weed extricated was a little victory, each bowlful dumped in the garbage a triumph.
I will never be done, but I’m winning the war.
Don’t believe me? I’ll show you.
I’m wearing my badge of honor on my hand.

Call it in – dinner’s been spoiled

It had all the makings of a perfect night.
Jonathan and I were facing 24 kid-free hours! Better still, we were dining al fresco at our favorite restaurant – the delectable Yiasou in Liberty – without Jillian bugging the poor waitress and downing ketchup by the spoonful.
I would have done my happy dance and whiled away the last few hours of sunlight in pure bliss.
But there was a voice droning on at the next table.
Loudly.
Apparently outside dining has been taken over by the cell phone.
And whether it’s lack of signal or just the limited acoustics of the Lilliputian mobiles on the market these days, it’s customary to yell while on the cell.
So – for your dining pleasure – you’re treated not just to food but a play-by-play of the goings-on at a stranger’s job, her taste in shoes and her weekend plans. Appropriate pauses are made for ordering the wait staff around, with a running commentary on their actions for the sake of the person attending dinner in voice rather than body.
It makes for a bit of dinner theatre, I suppose, the soundtrack provided by the rumble of car engines as they pass by the restaurant.
But if you wanted theatre, wouldn’t you go to the movies?
What the heck, if you wanted to have a private conversation, wouldn’t you go somewhere private?
Coupled with my nosy reporter’s instincts, the high-pitched chatter just a few feet from my plate of spinach pie was messing with my vision of a night of relaxation and romance.
I kept glancing up toward the table, my eyes on the back of the poor woman stuck dining with Chatty Cathy and her telephone.
I felt bad for her. I felt even worse for me.
She could leave her tasteless tablemate in a second.
I was still only midway through my plate of spinach and phyllo dough.
You could say I had no business at the next table, and you’d be right – oh, how I wish you were right. But the non-stop prattling was at a volume that was making it the business of an entire patio of people.
Cell phones do have their place – mine works best as my watch now that even the pricier bands make my wrist break out in a rash. I’ve even been known to talk on it once in awhile.
I’ll whip it out to call Jonathan from the mall to check for additions to his list or update him on my itinerary. I’ll make a stop on the road to give him the run-down on Jillian’s pediatrician’s appointment.
Now offer me a spring evening with my child safe at her grandparents’ house and a promise of good eats or an unlimited cell plan to talk to anyone, anywhere, and I know what I’m picking.
I guess I’ll be opting for an inside seat from now on, maybe one near a window?

Don’t honk if you love geese

I should have known.
I’d just rounded the corner near Eggler Automatic in White Sulphur Springs, and watched oncoming traffic grind to a halt.
As I got closer I heard it.
“Hoooooonk!”
No, not one of those obnoxious tailgaters. A white speck, which as I wheeled closer had a bright orange bill and flat feet.
She was waddling across Route 52 like she owned the place, and a van was at the front of the stopped traffic letting little Gossie wiggle her feathery hind end across the way.
I tapped my brakes and came to a halt, leaving ample time for the webbed feet to slap across my lane and off into the waiting water.
Like any good journalist, I had my camera in the back seat. And I would have whipped it out for a photo op if it wasn’t for the nasty driver who pulled up behind me to slam on the horn.
Yes, I was stopped in the middle of a busy thoroughfare, but one giant “hoooonk!!!” from him, and the entire family of geese took flight across the pond.
They should, I suppose be used to the noises by now. Since I was a little girl, I’ve been watching the geese and swans on the pond in White Sulphur Springs.
They were a landmark on a trip to the eye doctor or on the rare occasion that the family had time to fulfill my Book It medal at Pizza Hut – earned, surprise, surprise, for reading a pile of books in a month’s time.
Sitting in the backseat, my nose stuck securely in the latest “Babysitter’s Club” or “Anne of Green Gables,” I’d lift my head as we rounded the corner near Eggler’s just in time to count the birds and yell out the number.
I begged time and time again to get out to feed the birds, always to no avail. My mother protected my passion for the creatures by keeping me inside the car and away from the crankier of the species!
My soft spot for waterfowl reared its ugly head shortly after Jonathan and I got married, when I discovered a duck shower curtain – and later a clear toilet seat dotted with rubber ducks.
Our ongoing bathroom renovation has since cured me, but I’ve indulged my fascination with repeated readings of an old favorite of mine, “Make Way for Ducklings,” to Jillian. She’s added to the fun with her own favorites, “Ollie, and “Gossie,” the former about a procrastinating little gosling and the latter about a goose with bright red rubber boots.
And on our rides through White Sulphur, my eagle-eyed daughter has begun to yell, “Geeeeeese, Mommy! And swans!!!”
She gets her taste like I did – through the glass. And if the creatures want to waddle our way, we’ll wave gaily and stop the car because we make way for ducklings . . . and goslings . . .

Inside Out's a Winner!!!

I did it again - and I don't mind bragging!!

Inside Out was once again a First Place winner for Best Column at the New York Press Association convention last weekend. And since I'm bragging (and its my blog), I'll share the judges comments: "The reader gets a great sense of Jeanne Sager's easy-going personality in her columns. Whether she's discussing a tragic event, poking fun at herself or recalling her fond memories along the river bank as a child, Sager's style is both interesting and enjoyable."

I took home a statewide second place as WRITER OF THE YEAR, a Third Place for Sports Feature in our division plus the First Place for Best Column.

For the Writer of the Year award, the judges said "Wow! It is clear that this writer has spent time cultivating sources. She is a thorough reporter with an easy conversational style – a comfortable voice on a variety of topics. Great stuff!"

For Sports Feature (http://www.sc-democrat.com/sports/12December/28/sports.htm), they said: "When a story explains, in an entertaining manner, what makes a person tick, we call it a good read. This is a good read."

Thanks to all of you who keep me writing!!

And check out my links to some of my other writing on the 'net - Bad Parent: Screen Queen is a good laugh. Especially the people who take things so seriously in the comments!!

Got a (fat) bone to pick with Brit journalist

I’ve always had a thing for the Brits and their no holds barred style of journalism.
What passes for ordinary chatter across the pond often lands my colleagues here in the states on the wrong side of the “political correctness” spectrum.
So much for free speech.
But even the Brits draw the line somewhere.
And it’s got to be somewhere this side of the Daily Mail and its expert dietician, Monica Greenfell.
Greenfell’s London newspaper column has kept bloggers in business this past week for her shocking comments on 17-year-old Chloe Marshall, the first size 16 beauty queen to make it to the Miss England competition.
Photos of the 5-foot-10 brunette are enough to make any woman with a bit of sense mad with jealousy. She’s tall, curvy with a bright smile and cute upturned nose.
In a word, she’s gorgeous.
But Ms. Greenfell announced late last week Chloe Marshall “is fat and she got that way by over-eating.”
What’s more, she opined that Marshall claiming the Miss England crown would be tantamount to sending “an appalling – and very dangerous – message to other young women that it's OK to be fat.”
Stop the presses!
Apparently there are fat girls out there. Really? I hadn’t noticed.
Because walking down the street clutching my 2-year-old daughter’s hand, I’ve been watching all the girls with the barely-there jeans hanging off their bony hips and wondering, “who let them go out like that?”
It’s true that childhood obesity in America is skyrocketing, and there are plenty of fat kids out there who need some help before Type 2 diabetes sets in, followed by high cholesterol and a heart problem.
But I was a teenage girl once – not that long ago.
My daughter will be a teenage girl – not too far in the future.
And I won’t be letting “experts” like Ms. Greenfell anywhere near her.
Because what’s most upsetting about her comments isn’t her misplaced notion that curvy equals fat. In general, I remind people to lay the faults of an article at the feet of the newspaper, not the reporter. Because we write what we are assigned – except in the case of an opinion column (like this one!).
So I point my finger – albeit a fat one - at the Daily Mail, which hired a so-called “expert” to peddle a misguided opinion, presenting it as “fact” from a dietician.
Want to know why the media is so often blamed for the high numbers of anorexia and bulimia, numbers that fail to reflect the thousands of girls who keep the diseases hidden from their loved ones?
Read last week’s Daily Mail – it’s still available online – and you’ll see why.
Because a plus-sized beauty with a healthy self-esteem and a positive outlook on both eating and exercising can’t escape the time-honored tradition of picking on the fat kid.