Three hours to go in my birthday and I’m crouching warily, awaiting the usual karma collapse.

The terror, of course, is that I’m typing too soon. So far I’ve collected a glass of sparkling wine, several cards, a handful of Facebook hellos, and a serenade from my godchild (his version of “Happy Birthday” ended one line too early, but his pitch was smack-on, which is more than I can say for many and many people currently making a living from such a thing.)

I do not understand why Christ, with all of eternity at His disposal, decided to join human history as a Capricorn. I mean, at least He made off with some swag, but the Magi totally did the birthday-Christmas present combo, and I wouldn’t have been too thrilled if I were Him, gold or no.

Part of the frustration is that Capricorn weather greatly reduces celebration options. Josh The Pilot and Jeremiah The Brother-In-Law mark their birthday in June. You know what we did? We cashed in time share presentation tickets for a trip to Busch Gardens. You know what I did today? Loaded the dishwasher and taught my night class.

This afternoon I was carded (POINTS ON!) but the waitress, upon glancing at the date of birth, failed to wish me many happy returns (POINTS OFF.) But since in recent years I’ve also garnered a speeding ticket, various viruses, and a boyfriend dumpation, I’ll take it.

I’ll also take this,this or this, but Friendboy Andy, who perhaps knows that I call my mother every year on January 15 to say “Thank you for pushing!”, prefers this:

the students sang too, but totally didn’t know what to say after the “dear” part, and it was awesome at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

tip the bartender

Birthday Karma UPDATE: Past midnight and all’s well, with nothing more than a higher than usual incidence of hitting red lights to show for it. Taking this, too, and running.

I teach a night class, which my writing schedule doesn’t really allow, and so beginning next week, I will teach two night classes.  How to remedy the time crunch?

Why, add a full-time job, of course.  A government one!  Inside the Beltway, involving a commute which will consume half of my waking hours!  That’ll solve everything!

You’d think I’d stop writing about jobs which I haven’t actually been paid for yet, much less approved for, but I feel compelled to anyway, because a part of me, a very big part, the part which hhhhhhhaaaaaaaaates normal-people adult-style office work, is screaming, and is kind of hoping that the hiring agency, like Mattel, also has access to Google.

But the rest of me uses electricity, and also enjoys eating on occasion.  Because when media companies lose advertising revenue due to major sponsor cutbacks in the face of  horrific tax increases and stock drops?  Suddenly, for some reason, editorial boards aren’t as interested in paying top dollar for eight hundred word essays on what people name their cars.  And so:  Back in the box.

When I ride the Metro, I sometimes look around at the people who aren’t armed and muse on who they are, where they’re going.  On Monday, I wondered if my train contained anybody else bound on an interview for a job he didn’t really want.

I’ve been applying for federal employment off and on, mostly with the Air Force and National Park Service, since 2002– as it’s incredibly difficult to fire the incompetent, government work was made for me.  I’ve never hit the interview stage.  I’ve never even hit the “We deem to acknowledge your existence” stage.  Now here I sit in Round Four of the hiring process for a position with four openings and a pay band which, by DC standards, is cardboard box-level poverty.  My chances are frighteningly good.

The application went in weeks ago, and for a time I weighed economic survival against, you know, not hating life.  I feared I’d take a new day job too soon, in the process missing out on a potentially career-changing writing opportunity.  So as a staunch believer in signal graces, I punted:  If I get the job, I’ll take it, and drastically cut back on teaching for the moment.  If not, I’ll keep plugging along at five cents a word and glaring angrily at comma splices.  Oh, there’s going to be a day job; it’s just a matter of which one, and, although I’m grateful for the opportunity to choose, this effectively puts a potential day job whiff entirely in the hands of God.

That doesn’t mean I can’t slippery up the field a little bit in order to nudge along the whiffing.

When I taught tech writing at the University of Airplanes, I included a section on business writing,  job search, and interview skeelz, which means that I have actually taught other people how to properly conduct themselves during the hiring process.  Which also means that if I want to screw it up…. I can really screw it up.

I honestly didn’t mean to be raking a hand through the back of my hair when the interviewer came to claim me from the lobby so that I first had to dislodge a tiny hairball from my fingers before shaking his hand.  That was pure blondeness.  But the part when he asked me why I was applying for a technical writing job when most of my publication history was in creative nonfiction and I said, “Because I need to pay the mortgage”?  That was all field-greasing.

The proper answer to that question, of course, was:  “Although my creative writing credits outweigh my technical work at the moment, I strongly believe that I’ve gathered enough experience for the position; for instance, my extensive work with (NAME OF HORRIBLE SEMINAR GIVING, CUBE-INFESTED COMPANY) included a great deal of (INCOME-GENERATING, INCREDIBLY BORING ACTION VERB WHICH ALSO FEATURES PROMINENTLY IN THE JOB ANNOUNCEMENT).  I look forward to emphasizing and expanding that aspect of my skill set here at the (OFFICE OF GOVERNMENT GOVERNMENTING), and contributing to the team environment in the process.”  But no.  I have never been so perfectly honest on a job interview, which means of course that I’ve blown it.

I’m not entirely sure, to tell you the truth, what I’ve blown.  Here be the full job description, right off USAJobs:  “Through formal and informal training or developmental assignments, the incumbent will acquire knowledge of the principles, techniques, processes, and procedures that form the basis of the work performed in the assigned Unit. This will help the trainee develop the skills needed to serve as a Technical Writer-Editor.”

Well, that answers that.  It’s just what I always wanted to be when I grew up– I can’t count how many times I dressed as an incumbent who performs duties within my assigned Unit for Halloween.

In some ways I actually left the interview wanting the job even less than I did when I first put hand to hair there in the waiting room:  The interviewer, a very nice man who reminded me in a kindly way of one of the Bobs from Office Space, had a very clean desk and told me that while the job title was “Technical Writer,” it does not, in fact, offer much in the way of, you know, writing.  What it seems to involve instead is… formatting.  Essential formatting.

“We don’t close when it snows,” Kindly Bob said.  “Or during budgetary crises.”

Well, that’s a relief.  You know who else is an essential government employee?  My air traffic controller husband.  So when the next blizzard immobilizes the Eastern seaboard, take comfort in the fact that Air Force One will stand with cleared corridors in the sky to any Earthly direction, and my vital margin setting will continue.  America shall live to see another day, thanks to me and my drag-and-dropping.

Otherwise, I really had to work at the greasing. Kindly Bob had a series of federally mandated questions to ask me.

“Do you,” he said, “know how to use a computer?”

“Yes,” I said gently.  “I believe that’s on my application.”  The one which was submitted online.

bracing at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

tip the bartender

Today was immersed in cookie dough and soapsuds covering my mother’s good china.  I also moved a glass vase stuffed with Champagne flutes from one side of the kitchen to the other.  Background music:  Janet Jackson, “Nasty Boys.”  Put on your aprons, ladies!

When you’re non-domestic 364 days out of the year, the day before Thanksgiving is a good one to cram it all in.  You can at least pretend.  I very carefully lined up the instant potatoes, boxed stuffing, and canned cranberry sauce on the counter, then checked the cooking time for the pre-bagged, pre-gravied turkey before hurling it back in the freezer.  The salt on the table, however, was prepared from scratch, poured by my own self from the container to the shaker.  I mean, do it right, people.

If you have a moment between bastings, please do head over to Catholic Online, where a piece which got its start on Blonde Champagne is currently running.  And so the Catholic Church begins its slide right out of Western Civilization.

over the river, indeed at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

tip the bartender

This is the first Thanksgiving I won’t be home to inhale on my Aunt Jeanne’s wicked awesome mashed potatoes.  Josh The Pilot is so low on the vacation totem pole that he’ll be home for Christmas sometime around 2020, and the even worse news is that this means he’ll be subjected to my own mashed potatoes, which, after a year of struggling to master the art and yielding only lumpy masses of potato and milk, are  powder-based bowls of capitulation.

It’s also a missed opportunity to further corrupt my nephews, and now is the time to start in on Will The Smaller Child Nephew, who, at the age of two, stands at the crux of babyhood and potty training.  His vocabulary is growing daily, a development I must oversee if he is to take over the world one spelling bee at a time.

When I was in Cincinnati this summer, I arrived at the home of Julie The Nephews Mama before he awoke for the day, and we knew he was up the instant he we heard his first “What happened?” of the day over the baby monitor.  What happened, what happened, what happened has now progressed to the point where this week he climbed into his booster seat at the family table upon discovering that his high chair had mysteriously vanished, then turned to his big brother and announced, “James!  Big boy seat!”

For all this, he has yet, however, to refer to his mother by her proper title.

We were sitting in my mother’s living room last month when Will made his stiff-legged way towards Mommy.  “Julie,” he said in passing.

Everybody froze.  I held a toy car midair; Josh The Pilot stared at him, and even Jim The Small Child Nephew paused in his perpetual insistence that Lighting McQueen is, in fact, speed.

“Yes, you heard that,” his mother said wearily.  “Mommy’s purse, Mommy’s car, Mommy’s shoes… Julie.”

Well, at least it’s a step up from “Cow.”

aunt hefer at:  mbe@drinktothelasses.com

tip the bartender

It’s a different day, that’s all. It’s not that I’m old. Not old. I’m just… not young anymore, and there are good things that come with that, like ready ability to alcohol, and Frasier in the middle of the day.

On the other hand, this Monday I did something which is entirely new to my adult existence: I looked at a roller coaster, and I said “No, thank you.” I stayed right there on the ground. I could not imagine why anybody would want to subject themselves to this thing. It hung the people in the front row straight down, and then dropped them 205 feet at seventy miles an hour. I can do multiple inversions and power hills and hypercoasters, but this business of the straight down… in the words of one woman I walked past as she watched the coaster do its 90 degree thing, “Oh hell no.”

I turned to Carah The BFFE for confirmation on the matter, but she didn’t answer. You know why? She wasn’t there. She couldn’t come to Busch Gardens, because she couldn’t ride even any of the non-insane coasters, because she was four and a half months pregnant. Not old! New day.

Then I started noticing non-young-person reactions to other rides, like the Escape from Pompeii. I wouldn’t call myself an overly sensitive person, and maybe it’s the vestigial archivist in me who flinches when humanity is removed from history, but… I… really? A theme park attraction based on the deaths of 20,000 people from toxic volcanic ash? Sign me up! And then I want a ride on the Flaming Hindenburg!

you’ll shoot your eye out at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Ah. You found me amidst the wreckage.

I grasp your hand just before you slip beneath the freezing electronic waters, for you and I and Celine Dion and this cyber-slab of wall paneling shall sail towards a new, DiCaprio-free day!

Welcome to our new cellar, fellow refugees. We are all going to need some alcohol after the trauma of moving, but for the moment, I’m thrilled that you clicked over from the old site as it crumbled around us over the weekend. If you’re looking for the original BlondeChampagne, behold.

figuring out where to put the futon and the shot glasses at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

Q:  What is Lotus Birth exactly?

A:  The practice of neonatal umbilical intactness – nonseverance of the umbilical cord – and absence of any
potential portal of navel infection. The birth practice of the early American pioneers who produced some of the
hardiest children known in American history… and valued everything they had.  Also called “Umbilical
Nonseverance.”   The baby, cord, and placenta are treated as one unit, as they are all originate from the same
cellular source (egg and sperm).

This informed choice practice requests healthcare providers to follow the protocols of “Passive Management” of
Third Stage Labor, and also forego invasive cord clamping.  The baby is born and remains attached to its cord
while the placenta is birthed.  The baby’s placenta-cord is kept in-situ with the baby, gently wrapped in cloth
or kept in an uncovered bowl near the mother, and the cord is sometimes wrapped in silk ribbon up to the
baby’s belly.

The cord quickly dries and shrinks in diameter, similar to sinew,  and detaches often by the 3rd
Postpartum day (but up to a week in certain humid indoor air conditions) leaving a perfect, healed navel.
Interestingly, extended-delayed cord clamping & severing (just waiting more than an hour after the baby’s
birth),  results in quicker cord stump healing, with an average of only one week for detachment of the stump,
which makes a big difference for diaper changing!

Read more at Lotusfertility.com