Well, I'll be darned...Ken and I got married last month. October 30, to be exact...how's that for a spooky anniversary date? I'm waiting to feel different. So far, I don't, though he says he does. He can no longer realistically entertain fantasies of kicking us all out of "his" house...isn't that romantic?

It's been so long since I've added a blog entry that the website no longer recognized me. So I spent a frantic 10 minutes trying to retrieve or remember my password in order to log in...luckily, I've never been one to vary or change passwords (though I've always heard it's a good idea) so after typing variations of the three passwords I use for everything, I finally got in. I suppose I'm an easy target for identity thieves, but honestly, if they really want my identity, they're welcome to it...it's a little worn around the edges, but it's interesting enough...

Anyway, life has changed since my last entry. The Saturn thing didn't work out as well as I'd hoped. I wasn't a bad sales consultant, and I sold my required amount of cars every month, but I wasn't prepared for the down time. I'm all about down time when I'm at home---in fact, I'm pretty darned lazy. But work is supposed to be...well...work, and I like to feel like I've accomplished something every day. Sitting in a chair, watching a car lot with no customers on it for 10 hours a day...well, Puss could have accomplished that, and I'd like to think I have a few more job skills than a cranky, half-bald 16-year old cat...

But, as Ken always says, the right things tend to come along at the right time. Saturn was a great rebound job, and I learned a lot working there, but an opportunity has come up that seems genuinely exciting, challenging, promising, and fun. I've been offered a position as manager of Cincinnati's first Archiver's store. Archivers calls itself a "photo memory" store, but it's also a paper arts store---for anyone who does scrapbooks, geneology, rubber stamping, greeting card making, collage art, or journal making, it is Mecca. I am not a scrapbooker, nor even a crafty person---I don't sew, I don't knit, and I don't make things out of bleach bottles. But I appreciate people who can, and I respect creativity in almost any form. And some of the stuff at Archivers is really beautiful---so many colors and types of decorative paper, stickers, rubber stamps...and the people who do this scrapbooking thing for a hobby are so passionate about it...it seems sort of addictive, but I guess it's better than cigarettes or heroin. So there's that...a big career change. And there's the passing of Miss Dinah Might, which I'll talk about another day. Dinah deserves a blog entry all to herself, but it will take a lot out of me to write it, so I'll save it for later. I miss her terribly. The really big excitement of the summer up here in the Queen City isn't my new job, or the loss of our poor Miss D. Those things are important to us here at Oak House , but this is what's got the city buzzing---the cicadas, Brood X, 5 billion strong in the Cincinnati area, has emerged from the ground, after 17 years of sucking root sap and dreaming about flight and sex. Cicadas are everywhere. I tried so hard to get the garden weeded and shaped up before they arrived, but the new job has taken me to Minneapolis and Chicago in the past few weeks, so I didn't get finished. Which means I've been gardening with hundreds of little red-eyed buddies staring at me from every hosta leaf, the ground littered with their cast-off exoskeletons...it's fascinating. It's creepy. It's surreal.

And the noise! If you've never heard 5 billion cicadas singing at once, then you're missing out on something extraordinary. Ken compares it to the sound that UFO's always made in those 50's sci fi movies, except a thousand times louder. And it rises and falls---all the cicadas sing in a common rhythm, like there's some big cicada maestro raising and lowering a baton every 4 beats. It's beautiful, maddening, hypnotic, and annoying. Thank goodness they stop at night.

I bought my Saturn in 1998. It was the first new car I'd ever owned, and for a Saturn, it was bordering on luxurious. It's an SW2 (compact station wagon) with leather seats, cruise control, CD player, anti-lock brakes, power everything...a small, cheap car that didn't feel cheap (though it is feeling small, as the girls keep growing).

After buying my first new car, I proceeded to beat the heck out of it. A 25-mile commute to work, a 240-mile commute to Cincinnati, three kids and all the Happy Meals they could eat, a constantly shedding Labrador Retriever, and a total disinterest in automobile maintenance, have all taken their toll on my little SW2. Yet it still runs faithfully. It's never left me stranded on the side of the road, which happened on a regular basis with the used cars I'd driven in the past, and underneath the crumbs and animal fur and coffee stains, it still looks pretty darned good.

Like a true friend or a good dog, my Saturn is reliable, low maintenance, and fun to be around.

And so, I became one of those people you see on TV---a member of "The Saturn Family." I will never own anything but a Saturn. Not only because it's an incredibly easy car to drive and maintain, but because the people who work for Saturn are a pleasure to deal with. They give you free coffee and soda when you take your car in for service. When you pick your car up, it's cleaned inside and out, with a bag of candy on the dashboard and a thank-you note on the seat. My Saturn sales consultant (not salesman, mind you---CONSULTANT) sent me a Christmas card every year until I finally moved out of town---after the divorce, it was one of about 6 Christmas cards I received, and I was grateful to get it.

So, when I left retail in search of a life, I applied at the local Saturn dealership. They hired me during my interview. I spent two weeks driving every model we sell, and learning everything there is to know about Saturn vehicles. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the people who work for Saturn (at least, the Western Hills Saturn dealership) are as nice to their employees as they are to their customers.

And last Saturday, they turned me loose in the showroom and told me to go sell cars. So I did. Two, to be exact. On my very first day out of training. To a mother and a daughter. The next day, I sold another one. And the next day, I sold two more. I sold five cars my first week----our quota is 8 in a month.

I have no idea why anyone would buy a car from me. I know nothing about cars (though I'm learning). I have to give the credit to the cars themselves. They're cute, they're inexpensive, they're easy to drive, they require minimal maintenance---so far, every car I've sold has been to a woman, which makes sense. These cars are made for women. Even the SUV is a chick car---it has a grocery rack built into the storage area, and two compartments on either side that are exactly the size of a gallon of milk. I think that's brilliant design, personally.

And that's the kind of thing that makes me want to sell Saturns. The president of the company is a woman, by the way---I have a feeling the milk compartments were her idea...

There are other benefits to working for Saturn of Western Hills. It's right across the street from Julie's school and the local Kroger's. It's less than two miles from our house. It's closed on Sunday, and I'm off on Monday, so I get an almost real weekend every week. I don't have to wear a uniform. I'm always home by 9 during the week, and by 6 on Friday and Saturday. I get a discount on maintenance, as well as the GM employee price on any General Motors car I might decide to buy (maybe someday Ken will get his Humvee...) And of course, all the standard stuff like health insurance, vacation, etc...

Three weeks does not a successful career make, and it will be a while before I'm sure I made the right decision. But for now, life is good. And one thing is for sure---it really is different in a Saturn.

It's getting pretty spooky here at Oak House, thanks to the creative pumpkin-carving efforts of Ken and the kids. Not only does the Leafman have a new head (his first head, which was a pumpkin that the girls grew in their dad's backyard, met an early demise at the hands of wandering street urchins), but he also has a few companions. We take all of them inside at night, having learned our lesson...but from 6:00 till bedtime, Oak House is a very scary place. Booooooooo.....

Luckily, the front porch is the only scary part about life at OH these days. The girls are doing very well, as they adapt to all the changes that city living has brought. Julie is discovering that beloved teen-aged pastime, "Hanging Out." She and her friends hang out at the library, they hang out at Media Play, they hang out at Graeter's...basically, they're hanging out all over the place. As long as none of this hanging involves boys, drugs, or alcohol, I'm all for it---anything that keeps a 14-year old girl out of her bedroom is fine with me.

Chloe and Livvie seem to be cheering up quite a bit, as well. Chloe ran for student council this month, and not only did she get elected, but she was named Secretary. So she now has afterschool meetings every Friday, and she's realizing that it's a good thing to be within walking distance of the school, since her working mother no longer has time to chauffeur her back and forth. Liv was Student of the Month for October, and though I don't think she'll ever be a social butterfly like her sisters, she's smiling a lot more than she did last month.

Speaking of working mothers, the transition to full-time employment has been smooth so far. It helps a lot that the Saturn dealership is less than two miles from the house, and right across the street from Julie's school. With an hour for lunch, I have time to give Julie a lift home (if she's not busy hanging out), empty and refill the dishwasher, throw in a load of laundry, eat lunch, and still get back to my desk a few minutes early. I may never sell enough cars to equal my Target salary, but what I've gained in quality of life more than makes up for any loss in income.

However, I don't have time to finish this entry today. So I'll post a Halloween photo album, and be done with it. Stay tuned for the exciting upcoming chapter---"Mary Sells Two Cars At Once!"

Autumn, technically, is an ending season. The end of life without boots and sweaters, the end of summer vacation, the end of seemingly endless daylight, the end of green trees and green grass. But I've always thought of autumn as the beginning. It's when kids go back to school. It's when all the good holidays get started. It's when the cuddly clothes come out of the closet, when Christmas plans are made, when the thought of puttering in the kitchen over a batch of cookies or a pot of stew sounds appealing, rather than a sure-fire way to induce heat prostration. To me, life really starts getting good after September.

Choosing a favorite season, to me, is like choosing a favorite child. I love all the seasons equally. They all have special qualities that make them unique and loveable. But as any parent knows, even though you love them all equally, you don't love them all the same. One of them is usually easier to love, because he or she suits your temperment, shares your interests, and just "fits" better. No parent worth their salt will tell you which child this is. And most of the time, I'm worth my salt. So that secret remains mine to keep. But as far as the seasons go, fall is the special one.

Ken, who has no children of his own, has no qualms about claiming fall as his favorite season. It just is. And since it's my "special" season, it's no surprise that Oak House is an autumn sort of place. The house is in its glory this time of year. Leaves in the yard don't cry out to be raked, because they look like they're supposed to be there. The perennial garden is winding down for the year, and it's mostly brown and yellow and starting to die. But it has an old-fashioned, forgotten look that fits perfectly with the look of the house. I know I should be out there cutting things back, dividing the sedum, burying the more delicate plants in mulch, cleaning out the leaves...but I don't have the heart to say goodbye to my plants just yet. There is beauty in the browns and yellows, and I want to enjoy it as long as I can.

For the kids, Halloween is what makes fall in Cincinnati tolerable. They're adapting well to their new schools, but they don't especially like them, except for Julie, who seems to be thriving in a world without rich, suburban kids. The other two, however, are still experiencing culture shock. The thought of walking to school in the SNOW is a looming spectre of child abuse in their minds, and fall just means we're closer to snow.

But Halloween has got everyone excited. In suburban Jackson Twp, paranoia and convenience had defeated tradition once again. That meant that trick-or-treating happened on a weekend afternoon, in broad daylight. The fact that walking around in a costume at 2 o'clock in the afternoon on Oct. 28 sort of defeated the whole purpose of Halloween was lost on the powers that be who plan these sorts of things. In paranoid suburbia, safety is always more important than fun.

But here in the city, where we actually have something to be paranoid about, kids trick-or-treat on Halloween night. In the dark. Julie has vague memories of doing this when we lived in Akron, but neither Chloe nor Livvie can remember walking the dark neighborhood streets, surrounded by the "big kids" in their gory costumes, leaves (and frequently snow, since it was Akron) crunching between their feet and the sidewalk. They were babies then. So this will be their first "real" Halloween.

In celebration of the season, Ken and the girls made a dummy for the front porch. Since the dummy is wearing Ken's old clothes, and he's well-stuffed with leaves, he looks a bit like Ken, sitting on my grandmother's old rocker by the front door. All he needs is a cigar and a glass of wine...oh, and a head...Since he's stuffed with leaves, I've named him theleafman

There are plans to animate the leafman for the big night, with invisible fishing line tied to his scissor-wielding arm. An unseen person inside the house will pull the string when trick-or-treaters approach, causing the leafman to wave the scissors in a menacing fashion. Personally, I think we might want to replace the scissors with a rubber knife, unless there's some irrational fear of haircuts plaguing the neighborhood children.

The leafman will be joined by a few jack-o-lanterns sometime this week, after we track down a "sincere" pumpkin patch. Kroger's has a deal on pumpkins right now, but I don't think they carry much weight in the sincerity department. So we'll head out to the country in search of our pumpkins. There's a place in Kentucky that's especially sincere because it requires a trip across the Ohio River on the Anderson Ferry. Can't get much more sincere than that, in my book...

Since I think of fall as a time of beginnings, it's interesting that two important times of my life are ending this month. My "stay at home mom" days are numbered, since I start a new job (a new career, actually) on Monday, as a sales consultant with Saturn. And our first year as the owners of Oak House will officially end on Halloween night. But you can usually turn endings around, so I'll close today's blog entry with a toast---here's to the beginning of Year Two. If it's half as challenging, half as interesting, and half as fun as Year One, it ought to be a pretty good year.

I grew up with country music. I didn't have much choice. There were no Walkmans, boom boxes, or personal cd players (or any cd players) in the early 70's. We had a color TV in the living room, and an old black and white portable in the basement that didn't get much of a picture. We had one record player in the house and an AM radio in the car. Not a lot of choices for kids back in the 70's. So I watched and listened to what my parents watched and listened to. By default, I grew up with country music.

Before I was old enough to know better, I was fine with it. I watched HeeHaw and Porter Waggoner with my dad every week. I wanted to be Dolly Parton when I grew up, because she was the prettiest lady I'd ever seen. She looked like a wedding cake. When I wanted to know what my mother was making for dinner, I'd walk into the kitchen and yell "Hey Grandpa, what's for supper?" When I was in a bad mood, I'd sing "Gloom, despair and agony on me..." Yes, television does have an effect on children, and I guess I should be grateful my father didn't watch professional wrestling.

And my favorite country singer was Johnny Cash. My babysitter, Janie Smith, had a console stereo in her living room, and a handful of Johnny Cash records. I think they must have belonged to her son, Jimmy, who was sort of famous in our small town, because he could sing and play the guitar. His signature song was "Your Cheatin' Heart" but he could play some Johnny Cash songs, too. Jimmy was my idol when I was four, and I'd sneak into his room and twang the strings on his electric guitar.

Anyway, my brother and I went to Janie's every weekday while my parents worked. And one of our favorite things to do was play records on the stereo. And our favorite song, hands down, was A Boy Named Sue. We'd play it over and over again, singing along. We knew all the words. I was four, he was five, and I can only imagine how we sounded when we got to the part about the mud and the blood and the beer.

Then, sometime in the 70's, I discovered Kasey Kasem and his weekly top 40, which rarely contained any country songs (until Kenny Rogers came on the scene. It was ok to like Kenny---go figger). My friends and I listened to Shaun Cassidy, Barry Manilow, and Elton John. My brothers listened to Aerosmith and Kiss. None of us did country. God forbid a 12-year old girl should even know who Johnny Cash was, let alone like him. Secretly, though, I still did, but I wouldn't have admitted it for all the Shaun Cassidy records in the world.

It's not entirely my fault that I turned my back on country music. It got really bad in the late 70's and 80's. Kenny Rogers? Garth Brooks? Please. Even my dad got discouraged with it, though Willie and Waylon helped hold his interest.

But after high school and pop music, and college and alternative music, and a brief and pretentious experimentation with classical music (what good is it if you can't sing along in the car?), I drifted into folk. Folk music sounded real when nothing else did. Folks singers don't even have to have good voices, as long as they can carry a tune and say interesting things. Boy, that was right up my alley.

And who was there waiting in that alley but Johnny Cash himself. Dressing in black, growling out songs about the disenfranchised and downtrodden, hanging with Bob Dylan...why, Johnny'd been a folk singer all along, and I just didn't realize it. And the best part? I already knew all the words---I'd known them since I was four.

It was June Carter Cash who led me back to Johnny. Three years ago, a folky friend lent me one of her cd's, and I loved it. And it got me thinking about Johnny, and how, when I was little, I'd come from wherever I was in the house to watch him when I heard his voice on the television.

And then I met Ken, with his eclectic, wide-ranging collection of music. Of course, he had some Johnny Cash. And I was getting to that age when childhood memories become more precious than painful. And Johnny brought back those memories, of shouting out the end of "Boy Named Sue" at the top of my lungs, and playing air guitar with my brother to "Rock Island Line" when we were four and five.

A few days ago, I checked out a 3-cd collection of Johnny Cash songs at the local library, and downloaded the whole thing onto Itunes. I'd planned on editing them down into the ultimate Johnny Cash cd. And this morning, I woke up to the radio telling me that Johnny was gone. I wasn't surprised. I figured he'd be following June before the year was out, and I'm glad they're together again.

So this morning, I made my cd. 29 songs about trains and cowboys and love gone wrong. And darn it all if I didn't forget to include "Boy Named Sue." But I guess it's ok, since I already know all the words.

September 11, 2003. Two years ago today, the Towers came down...and our generation was given a cultural touchstone that none of us wanted. My parents can tell you exactly what they were doing when they heard the news about President Kennedy, and I can tell you exactly what I was doing when the Towers came down. I was checking email, after working all night at Target, running the crew that was putting together the Halloween department. I didn't sleep that day, even though I'd just put in a 10 hour overnight shift. Instead, I sat at my computer, in my tiny home office, with the radio tuned to NPR, listening and reading and chainsmoking as the reports came in.

And now 9/11 is an anniversary, an "infamous day in history", rather than just one of the thirty days that hath September.

Today, on the 2nd anniversary of 9/11, life goes on, and it feels pretty normal. My brother is back from Iraq, and nothing bad happened to him there. There is an open house at the kids' school tonight, which I'm looking forward to attending. Planes are flying overhead, which I used to take for granted, but I don't anymore. My old house was a few miles from the Akron/Canton airport, and we'd grown used to low planes buzzing over the house. When they stopped, the silence was eerie. It made the tragedy of 9/11 more real to me than all the headlines and news footage combined. It was a full week afterwards before we saw an airplane in the sky. I cried when I saw it, though I'm not sure why.

Because today is an anniversary, we'll always remember the day we found Oak House. Sept. 11, 2002---we came, we saw, we made an offer, all in one day, a year after the end of the world.

Actually, all of the critical dates for the acquisition of Oak House are morbidly memorable. We had the home inspection on October 13. It was a Friday. And we closed and took possession on Halloween. The mortgage payment, without taxes and insurance, came to $666. I'm not making any of this up. Luckily, Ken and I aren't superstitious.

Though I can't help thinking today about the infamous 9/11 of 2001, there is very little I can say about it that hasn't already been said. It changed everything. But everything that happens changes something, whether or not it's newsworthy or tragic. Today, I'd rather take other, happier memories out of the box. Today, I'll mourn a national tragedy with the rest of the country, but I'll also celebrate the private anniversary that officially began one of the most difficult and happiest years of my life.

These are the things that happened during the year after we bought Oak House: I worked myself to the point of a nervous breakdown, then quit my job in a rare, lucid moment. I learned what it was like be chronically ill, thanks to a 9-month battle with a herniated disc. Then I learned what it was like to recover from a chronic illness, and I appreciate mobility now every time I walk up a flight of stairs, or lift a bag of groceries, or vacuum the floor, in a way that I couldn't before.

In the year after buying this house, the five of us celebrated our first holiday together as a family, eating Thanksgiving dinner around the tiny breakfast nook table in an empty room, because the real dining room furniture hadn't been moved yet.

One of my favorite memories of the year is the Christmas tree. After one of my sleepless, nervous breakdown nights, Ken took me shopping at Home Depot for our first Christmas tree. It was less than a week before Christmas, so there wasn't much left. We searched through the scraggly leftovers until we found the least ugly tree there. As is typical with ugly Christmas trees, it was beautiful once we got the decorations on. My sanity was temporarily restored.

Today, I'll remember our first spring here at Oak House, when we could finally get acquainted with the backyard. Flowers, long neglected but lovingly planted when the former owners were still spry enough to garden, came up everywhere---bleeding heart and jack-in-the-pulpit on the honeysuckle-choked hillside, peonies, wild phlox, and lillies of the valley in the big, overgrown bed behind the house, and hostas pretty much everywhere. And now the fall crocuses are up, the same ones that surprised Ken when we first looked at the house, because he'd never seen crocuses in September. The crocuses are back, and we've come full circle. Happy anniversary, Oak House.

We don't have central air conditioning here at Oak House. We don't have window units, either. Correction---we have one window unit, but it's sitting in the basement, exiled due to ugliness and historical inaccuracy. Ken won't have it in any of the windows, because it would mar the face of our house like John-Boy Walton's mole. RichardThomas Since I always found the mole unsettling, I guess I can understand Ken's aversion to window units.

Anyway, we have fans. Ceiling fans, vintage fans, Walmart fans---there is a fan in every room in the house, except the dining room, which we don't use much. And the biggest fan of our fans is Miss Dinah Might, our 5-year old chocolate lab. Dinah At any given time during the hottest part of the day, you can find Dinah sprawled in front of the vintage fan in the living room, or stretched out on the bedroom floor, directly under the ceiling fan's gentle breeze (or stormy gale, when Ken's not around to make sure we don't go past "medium." He's sure "high" will launch the fan right out of the ceiling like an airplane propellor, but the kids' fan is on "high" when Ken's not home. Ssshhhhh...that's a secret.)

There are two things that will lure Dinah away from her beloved fan. One is food. Not dog food, which frequently goes uneaten on these steamy, late summer days. If Dinah is going to forego her gentle breeze, it won't be for anything hard and monotonous and common, like dog food. But she'll leave the fan for any kind of people food, or even the hope of people food. We have an old, out-dated wall oven in the kitchen, that heats the room up like a dry sauna every time I make dinner, rendering it as uninhabitable as the surface of Venus. It's no place for kids and dogs. Unless you're a kid standing in front of an open refrigerator, or a dog who thinks that, any day now, the kid in front of the open refrigerator will accidentally drop a sirloin steak or a turkey carcass right onto the floor. In Dinah's mind, this could happen at any time, so she reacts to the sound of an opening refrigerator like...well, like Pavlov's dog, who I'm sure was an incorrigible begger. No matter how high the setting, Dinah can always hear the opening fridge over the fan.

The other thing that will lure Dinah away from fan-worshipping isn't really a thing. It's a person. Not the person who raised her from a puppy, teaching her good manners and stupid pet tricks, not the person who foots the vet bill and the dog food bill (like she'd be grateful for that, anyway), not the person who picked her out of a teaming mass of black and brown puppies when she was but 5 days old, then marked time off on the calendar until the magic six week birthday. Nope. I can't entice Dinah away from the fan, unless I'm armed with people food or the walking leash (and even that doesn't excite her when it's really hot.)

The person Dinah loves more than air itself is Ken. She's been besotted with Ken since the first time she laid her big, brown doggy eyes on him. Which surprised me, since Ken was pretty much ambivalent towards dogs back then, and I've always heard that dogs could sense that sort of thing. But if Dinah sensed it, she sensed something else in Ken that went deeper than dog ambivalence, something that even he wasn't aware of. Because she adored him from day one.

In the early days of our relationship, Ken and I commuted back and forth between Canal Fulton and Cincinnati. It was a "fur piece" between our two houses, a good 4 hour drive, so our dates were usually about 48 hours long. When those 48-hour dates took place at my house, Dinah attached herself to Ken's side like a barnacle on a battleship. When he went to the bathroom, she waited faithfully outside the door for his reappearance. When we sat together on the couch, she would slowly inch her way between us, starting with a nose, then a paw, then another paw, until all 70 pounds of her shedding, wiggling lab body was sprawled across our laps. Ken always got the front end.

On the mornings of those weekend visits, we would be awakened by a half-scratch, half-knock on the bedroom door. Scratch-thump. Scratch-thump. Over and over again, until there was no hope of going back to sleep and nothing else to do but call Miss Dinah into the room, where she would leap onto the bed and do a dance of joy that left us black and blue and covered with dog hair.

By the way, she didn't do this when I was home alone. On weekdays and Ken-free weekends, she would slip silently into the bedroom uninvited, and wake me up with a long, silent stare that had nothing to do with joy and everything to do with wanting her breakfast.

Not even the most deep-rooted ambivalence could withstand the onslaught of affection that Dinah launched at Ken. She worshipped at his feet, clung to his side, and fetched anything he could throw. Eventually, her doggy wiles either won him over or wore him down, depending on how you look at it. By the time we moved into Ken's condo, he was resigned to living with a woman and a dog. By the time we bought Oak House, he was still resigned to living with the woman, but he downright enjoyed living with the dog.

So now the adoration is mutual. Dinah, though faithful and loving towards the whole family, is Ken's dog. And Ken has left ambivalence far behind. Dinah is now his Captain D, his delicate flower, and his boon companion. He feeds her left-overs from the table, breaking his own rule. He rubs her belly and scratches her ears and lets her kiss him right on the mouth, never calling for iodine. DogGerms He plays ball with her twice a day, before and after work. He might not be a dog person, but he's certainly a Dinah person.

And every day, at about 4 o'clock, Dinah gets up from whatever fan she is sleeping in front of, shakes herself awake, and heads to the kitchen. And there she sits, staring through the screen door, listening for the sound of Ken's Suzuki turning onto our street. She's waiting for her ball-thrower, her ear-scratcher, her snack-sneaker, her beloved Ken, who is now her biggest fan.

Today is first day of school. Today I reluctantly sent my children into the unknown and infamous wilderness known as Cincinnati Public Schools. CPS Naturally, I'm nervous about this. Any parent would be nervous, sending their children to a brand new school, with no friends and no knowledge of native rituals and customs. What if they wear the wrong sneakers? What if one of them foolishly mentions that she still sleeps with the tattered stuffed mouse that was a gift from her grandmother on the day she was born? One wrong word, one wrong move, could mark them for the rest of the year as an "undesirable." It's hard to be a kid, and it can be unbearable to be a kid that nobody likes. And absolute torture to be the parent of a kid that nobody likes. So we've all been nervous for the past two weeks. Oak House has been tense, to say the least.

But these are normal fears for any family who's moved to a new neighborhood. There are other fears at work here. My daughters are transferring to CPS from one of the most highly respected school districts in the state. A school district where every child is young, gifted, and white. And painfully suburban. A large, urban city school system is something they've read about and seen on TV, but it's not something they've experienced. Culture shock, here we come.

And yesterday didn't help. Yesterday, I was interviewed by a short but impeccabley dressed reporter from Channel 12 news, who wanted to know my reaction to the abysmal rating that Cincinnati Public Schools received that morning from the state of Ohio. Out of 22 standards set by the state, CPS met 4. One less than last year. Enquirer

We were approached by this reporter while shopping at Target for last-minute school supplies. Lunchboxes, white polo shirts, and new socks were on the list, as well as training bras (I'm not sure who or what exactly is being trained by these bras... young girls, who know nothing about women's underwear and still think that "clean and comfortable" are the only criteria for choosing foundation garments? Or the breasts themselves---perk up there, you two! No more slouching around under Hello Kitty undershirts---you're in TRAINING now!) The reporter, who was a man, didn't want to interview us in front of the wall of training bras, so we stepped out into the aisle (wide and clean, God bless Target). And on camera, he asked me my feelings about sending my children to one of the 5 worst schools in the state.

In that moment of truth, what was I supposed to say? That there would be no way in Hell that my daughters would ever set foot in a local public school if we could afford to do otherwise? That all summer I've entertained fantasies of Catholic conversion or a long-lost dead relative leaving me a small fortune in his will, earmarked soley for private school tuition? That I was terrified of the local schools, but was willing to sacrifice my children's education for hardwood floors and leaded glass windows, which are either non-existent or astronomically priced in good school districts? That I was too busy thanking God that we didn't live in Dayton (which met NO state standards, not even one, which is like turning in a test without answering any questions, and then forgetting to put your name on it) to be concerned about our own schools?

No, I couldn't say any of these things to the dapper little reporter, not with the girls standing right there, listening intently to every word out of my mouth. The girls know that I've been glossing over my concerns about the local schools. They've known me all their lives, and they recognize glossing when they hear it. Plus they are internet-savvy. They've done their homework, and they know exactly where CPS rates in the great scheme of public schools. So they scrutinized every word, hoping I'd tell the Channel 12 viewers all the things that I haven't been able to tell my own daughters.

I'm afraid they were disappointed. Because my answers were as glossy as Target's shiny tile floor.

I stuck to the party line during my interview. No, I hadn't lost faith in the city's educators. Yes, I did have concerns about my children's education, but I felt that pulling them out of a troubled school system was the wrong answer to the problem. That the right answer was to get involved with parent organizations, to raise good citizens who did their homework and treated teachers and fellow students with respect, to support a city that was struggling with quality of life but still had much to offer the average American family.

I think I even threw something in there about mowing the grass on a regular basis. I was hoping the woman down the street was watching, and maybe she just didn't realize that routine lawn care was the mark of good citizenship. Maybe, when she heard my words on the 6 o'clock news, she would immediately fire up the Lawnboy and mow her way into the good citizen's club. She didn't, but you can't blame me for trying.

Evidently, the reporter is no more naive than my kids, when it comes to glossing over. He didn't air any of the liberal rigaramole I laid on him. He deemed only one comment to be newsworthy, and that was the one negative comment I made. In an attempt to improve (and integrate) the city's high schools, a gazillion "magnet" programs were developed a few years ago, so that parents could choose programs rather than schools. Only one of the programs was actually worthy of being chosen, though. The rest crashed and burned. When asked about these magnet schools, I said something about an abundance of choices all lacking in quality. A perfect quote for a sound-bite society. And that's what they aired.

So today, as I drove my daughters past the amber waves of grain that constitute my non-mowing neighbor's front yard, to their lesser-of-many evils, hand-picked public schools, the car was silent. If you've ever ridden in a car with four females, three of whom are under the age of 15, you'll know that silence is not typical. All of us were quietly worrying our own private worries. I wish I could believe that the girls' worries were made up of wrong sneakers, unfamiliar hallways, and cliquish young women who won't share a cafeteria table with "newbies," but I'm afraid they weren't. No matter how stoically positive I've tried to be, they know what they're getting into. They sat like little soldiers on a transport plane to Iraq.

And here I sit, the soldiers' mother. Hoping that when they return from their first day of school, I'll hear stories of camaraderie and funny teachers, rather than racism and career burn-out. That I'll hear mild complaints, laced with gallows humor, about rules and cafeteria food, instead of restrooms plagued with non-working plumbing and obscene grafitti. I hope that I'll hear at least one unfamiliar name of a child who might be a potential best friend, instead of a potential crack dealer. And I wonder if I'll be able to recognize gloss when I hear it.

Neither Ken nor I are native Cincinnatians. Ken grew up in Kentucky, not "fake" Kentucky, which is right across the river, indistinguishable from Cincinnati proper with its strip malls, housing developments, riverview condos, and trendy nightclubs. (well, trendy for Cincinnati, anyway---we're not a city that quite gets the meaning of trendy, but we do make an effort.)

No, Ken comes from "real" Kentucky. Real Kentucky is farther south. People have accents in real Kentucky. Ken's school cafeteria served pinto beans and greens, down in real Kentucky. That was his favorite school lunch. There is nothing trendy in real Kentucky, not even food.

And I come from the Rust Belt of northeastern Ohio. The bottom of the Rust Belt, where it overlaps with Appalachia. The cement lawn geese are very well-dressed where I come from. Lawngeese Some dress like Pete the Pittsburgh Pirate, and some dress like the Cleveland Indians' Chief Wahoo. The rivalry between the fans of these two baseball teams is fierce in the lower rust belt, and if the cement lawn geese weren't cement, the Pete geese and the Wahoo geese would rush from their respective lawns and peck the hell out of each other. Just like my cousins at family reunions.

Anyway, Ken and I are country people. And when country people decide they want to live in a city, they choose a city like Cincinnati. It's not too big, not too cosmopolitan, and far enough behind the rest of the world to make bumpkins like us feel positively sophisticated by comparison.

It's not just Cincinnati that we chose, but a neighborhood in Cincinnati called Westwood. SauerkrautCurtain Westwood is the largest neighborhood in Cincinnati, but no one from the east side, the north side, or the south side (which would be fake Kentucky) ever goes there. It's not easy to get to. Conversely, it's not easy to leave. That suits the residents of Westwood just fine.

We looked at houses on the trendy (and remember, trendy is a relative term here in the Queen City) east side, when we were still in our house-hunting phase. We cruised the tasteful, shady streets carefully, so as to avoid hitting the joggers who are thicker than cicadas on the east side, looking at tiny, preciously-decorated bungalows with huge, gaudy price tags. Unfortunately, the east side is rich in style and poor in taste. Even if the houses had been reasonably priced (which they weren't), they'd been Pottery Barned to death, with half-walls replacing the built-in buffets and bookcases, old wood cabinets destroyed to make room for sterile, white gourmet kitchens, hot tubs bubbling on new redwood decks that are larger than the houses to which they're attached, and fine oak floors stripped and bleached blonder than a Scandinavian ski-bunny.

I'll stop here and issue a blanket apology---to Pottery Barn, which actually has some very cool stuff---to East-siders, who at least have the guts to remain within the city limits, even if they are misguided in their attempts to suburbanize their vintage homes---and to Scandinavian blondes, who could probably ski the snowpants off the rest of us (especially me, who gets queasy at the thought of a ski lift, let alone actual skiing). Some of my best friends are Scandinavian ski-bunnies who live on the east side and work at Pottery Barn...well, not really, but I wouldn't rule friendship out if I met one.

Anyway, Westwood used to be a primarily German-Catholic neighborhood where people were born, grew up, bought houses next to their parents', had children who grew up to buy houses next to THEM, and died. Many Westwood natives never left the west side, other than for the yearly trip to Myrtle Beach or Hilton Head, where they would rent beach houses next to their parents...you get the picture.

But life is different now, and living next to your parents is no longer a given in any small town or neighborhood. Eventually, Westwood children grew up and moved to Columbus or Louisville, or even New York City, leaving the houses next to their parents empty and languishing on the real estate market. And the Cincinnati Public School system began to decay, driving even the most loyal west siders to the suburbs. And Westwood changed.

Westwood is now a neighborhood that real estate agents and tourist boards call "eclectic" and "diverse." In normal speak, that means it's a bit run down and black people live here. Many of the old-money mansions have been chopped up into multi-family housing. Some people let their yards grow shaggy and unkempt, which would have been unheard of 20 years ago. Young couples move in, attracted by the low-priced housing, and move to the burbs as soon as their children reach school age, making it difficult for neighborhood roots to establish themselves and grow.

We knew all this when we bought our house. And we bought it anyway. Because it was beautiful. And it had that famous tree. And the guy who was looking at it, at the same time we were, was wondering aloud where he could put his hot tub. And because I'm still naive enough to think that diversity is a good thing, not a reason to flee to The Stables at Coventrydale Glen.

So here we are, and here we've been since December of '02. And so far, "eclectic" is not bad. We have one set of neighbors who play their music too loud on a regular basis, which has become a real problem this summer. It sounds minor, but it isn't. When you're lying in bed at night, gasping for those last few molecules of oxygen that haven't yet bonded with hydrogen to form what we in tropical Cincinnati like to call "a moderate climate" (though most folks just call it humidity), you don't want to hear somebody's bass booster thumping so loudly that it's altering the rhythm of your heartbeat. And you can't shut the windows, because you would die. Not figuratively die, as in "be uncomfortabley hot" but literally die, as in "cease to live." It gets that hot in Cincinnati, and we don't have AC.

Our neighbors to the left call the police on the neighbors across the street when the music gets too loud. I understand their frustration, and I don't think less of them for it. But I don't follow suit. This is Cincinnati, and the police are busy. Plus we don't need the tension---we've already got plenty. Riots

So I walk across the street and ask the neighbors to turn their music down. They do, every time. I appreciate that, but I'd appreciate it more if they didn't turn it up in the first place. I'm sure they'd appreciate it if I didn't bug them about it on a regular basis. So I guess we're even.

And when I walk back across the street to my lovely house, in the now-quiet night, I think "This is it? This is what people are afraid of? This is why our house was so cheap? This is why people raise their eyebrows when we say we live in Westwood?" And I feel a little bit sad about the state of Westwood, of Cincinnati, of our country in general, where people are more comfortable calling the police than talking to their neighbors. And I feel a little bit worried that loud music will lead to loud parties, and drugs, and genuinely scary neighbors. It makes me uneasy to think these thoughts as I stand on the front walk and look up at our house, where the people I love are sleeping, safely today but maybe not tomorrow.

So I go inside, not knowing anything about the future except that I'll be making another trip across the street in a week or so, politely asking the neighbors to turn down their music. And they'll politely apologize and hit the "down" button on the volume control. And I think, at least that's something. At least there's some hope in that.

And at least we get along better than the lawn geese.