I am beginning to wonder if I would not benefit from taking an anti-depressant.

Today I found what I guessed to be a smeared booger on the wall in the living room. My immediate reaction was to fall to the ground, curl up in fetal position and sing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” in a falsetto voice. However, I discovered that it was completely unfulfilling to carry on in such a way with no audience present.

Instead, to numb the pain of the booger atrocity as quickly as possible, I went to the kitchen and used my hand to collect the chocolate chip cookies crumbs remaining under the cooling racks from the night before. I was exceedingly thankful that whoever had wiped off the countertop this morning was too lazy to move the empty rack in order to clean beneath it.

With utmost care, I dumped the crumbs onto my white plastic cutting board and chopped them into a fine powder with my sharpest Wolfgang Puck knife. I gathered the crumb powder into a line with the sharp blade, rolled up my electric bill and snorted a couple grams of cookie.

It was not my proudest moment.

Just a word to the wise:

When your teenage son asks you to purchase “Works” toilet bowl cleaner, chances are that he’s not going to use it for its intended purpose.

Did you know that if you put a small amount of this toilet bowl cleaner into a plastic soda bottle along with a balled up piece of tinfoil, within minutes the chemical reaction creates a small explosion?

And who is ever satisfied with a small explosion?

This after I tell the child that he needs to stop watching so much television and get outside in the fresh air.

I was sitting in the car waiting for Darren to come out of the gas station when a teenage girl drove up along side me. She was driving a rather beat up car and was dressed in jeans and a grungy looking coat but she had this fresh shiny face and long blonde hair which made her beautiful.

I watched as she picked up the air hose which was laying on the ground and bent down to fill her tire. She pulled a pressure gauge from her pocket and made sure the tire was filled properly.

I thought to myself “Wow. How many girls wouldn’t even know how to fill a tire and here she is doing it like a pro.”

It was cold outside and she wasn’t wearing gloves but that didn’t stop her from carefully rolling up the airhose and placing it on the holder where it belonged. She left it in better condition than she found it.

She glanced in my direction and caught me smiling at her. She smiled back. I was tempted to jump out of the car and tell her that I was proud of her for taking the extra time to roll up the hose, but appearing foolish prevented me from action.

Still, as she drove away I thought “This girl’s parents have raised her right.”

Integrity is all about what we do when we think no one’s looking. In a world where vandalism and apathy is so apparent, I got to witness integrity and it made my whole day.

I miss the old Michael Jackson.

Today I was thinking about the whole “We Are the World” thing, trying to understand from Quincy Jones’s perspective why on Earth he would allow Kim Carnes and Sheila E to perform in that song, when suddenly the grief hit me like a smack in the face:

The Michael Jackson that I used to love is dead.

Like most of you, I also purchased a pair of white cotton gloves and a spool of iridescent sequins. Do you remember the patience and devotion it took to replicate the moniker of the Gloved One, sewing one sequin at a time? Can you recall how totally awesome it felt to slip it on your hand and moonwalk in front of the mirror?

I remember it like it was 20 years ago.

Just like every other teenaged girl, I saved all my babysitting money to buy the Thriller album (along with spare needles for the record player) and played it until I could recite from memory the words to “Wanna Be Startin’ Something”- including the brilliant refrain of “Mama-se, mama-sa, ma-ma-coo-sa”.

That was six minutes and three seconds of pure genius.

And don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.

Do you remember the photo from the album jacket- how Michael’s tendons protruded from his wrist as he laid on his side? Oh man!

But here’s something you might not know- the song Michael sang with Paul McCartney “The Girl Is Mine” was written for me.

It’s true. I was the “doggone girl”.

And for the record, I had every intention of making good on my promise to visit Michael in the nursing home when he was old and everyone else had forgotten him.

I would have rocked with him if only he hadn’t gone Off the Wall.

She was the first one off the bus and I watched as she ran the entire length of our long driveway, obviously eager to share something with me.

“Mom, I cried in reading class today.” said Elly the moment she walked in the door after school.

“Oh my gosh Elly, why did you cry?” I helped pull her arms out of the sleeve of her coat.

“Because Dylan G wrote an alliteration about Ethan and me.”

My hand involuntarily released the coat and it fell to the floor in a heap as my jaw dropped open.

“HE DID WHAT??”

“Yeah, Mom, Dylan G wrote an alliteration about me and Ethan and everyone laughed when he read it.”

Alliteration. Alliteration.

Immediately the internal conversation in my head began:

There once was a man from Nantucket… No, you retard, that’s a limerick! Alliteration? I wonder if that’s when they compare similar things. Or is that a simile? If that’s true, what is a synonym? Oh my gosh. What is an alliteration? And why does my seven year old know the meaning when I can’t ever remember learning it. I’ll bet anything that this is like a $300 question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or something and I’d get it wrong and have to walk away from the hot seat with nothing and the audience would clap for me but they’d really be thinking how stupid I was and then Elly would realize, looking back on this day, that I had no idea what she was talking about.

It doesn’t help that my internal voice sounds exactly like Rosie Perez.

“Elly, I’m so sorry that Dylan G. hurt your feelings. Do you want me to come to school and beat him up because I so will?”

“Nooo, Mom. It was only an alliteration after all. HEY! An Alliteration After All! I just made a new alliteration!”

Thank you Jesus.

I finally understood what Google later confirmed:

Alliteration- The repetition of the same sound, usually of a consonant, at the beginning of two or more words immediately succeeding each other or at short intervals. Example: The repetition of f and g in fields ever fresh, groves ever green.

Today my darling daughter Elly turns eight years old. Don’t think I’m not amazingly afraid since she has already summarily surpassed my average abilities.

Happy Birthday Miss Elly Joy.

You absolutely astound me.