That boy shoulda been a Laaaaaayer!

(great mousepad - get it here:  http://www.zazzle.com/liar_liar_pants_on_fire_mousepad-144824612005737975)

ONE OF B's favorite sayings is that there are only two things he can't stand:  a liar, and a thief.  And in actuality, you can boil that down to one, since a liar is really just a thief of trust.

The girl, who recently turned 18, after several years of heartache and hassle, has finally turned the corner and begun to blossom.  She is currently enjoying the fruits of some hard earned trust, having had to prove herself over the course of the last two years.  She has been permitted to make most of her own decisions recently, within the parameters of the house rules, of course.  So far, so good.  This trust comes with a price:  we expect her to tell us where and when she will be in and out of the house, and stick to her word. 

This has been a big step for the girl.  She has not always been honest with me, particularly when she knows I'm not going to approve of what she wants to do.  I think since B's been here she's made lots of progress.  I will say with fair certainty that, while I know that she does not tell me *everything* about her world, she tells me most of the things that matter.  I know, for instance, that she smokes.  I know she sees a boy off and on that I don't like.  I know that she's sexually active here and there.  I know these things because she comes to me and we talk about them.  I trusted her enough for her to tell me when she thought she needed to get on birth control, and she trusted me enough to say so.  Between us, we've been able to make sure that, while I don't think she should be out having sex, she's protected enough not to get caught with unintentional consequences.  She understands why we need to keep the lines of communication open and honest, and we agree to disagree on some things.

This hasn't come about overnight.

The boy just turned 16, and we are beginning to have labor pains.  Now that they're older, I see that the real pains come not when they're born, or during that 'terrible two' period, but here, as they stand on the line between childhood and adulthood.  Nowhere else has it been this difficult to be a parent.  At this age, they do not accept things blindly, nor do they suffer a fool.  It's very easy to put a foot wrong and be in the swamp before you know it.  The plus side is that as they grow older, I see a maturing in their thought process; the development of an ability to see things from multiple sides, rather than blindly in black and white.  The boy is almost there, but not quite.

To his credit, he's been dormant for fifteen years.  He's the kid who you never heard a peep out of, who lived in his sister's longer and brighter shadow.  Docile and mild mannered, he was the 'easy one'.  He is now a six foot monster with facial hair and a voice built for movie trailers.  He's still the same goodhearted kid, but now he wants all the priveleges of adulthood, all at once.  Some he's ready for, some will take a while.

We thought he was making some progress at about the same rate as his sister, but this past weekend he shot himself in the foot.  Friday night two of his friends showed up at nine o'clock at night, wanting him to go over to their house for a little while and play video games and hang out.  Since it's a kid we know, we said he could. 

B looked at me a little curiously after they left.  It was strange, them coming so late.  We puttered around the house for another hour, winding down before bed.  The whole thing tickled at the back of my mind.  Before we went to bed, I texted the boy to see what was going on and what time he'd be home.  No answer.  Hmmmmm....   I texted him again.   No answer.   Finally I picked up the phone and called.  He answered it nearly on the first ring.  "OhhiMomhowsitgoingwhatareyoudoingareyouhavingfun?"  Hmmmm squared.  This is not like my kid.  His usual communication on the phone is limited to "Yeah". 

"When are you coming home?  We are going to bed soon."

"I wanttostayat Friendshouse. We're playing games and having fun."

"You're still at Friend's house, and you're staying there for the night?"

"Yeah."

"Okay..." 

"I love you Mom.  You guys just enjoy the peace and quiet with us gone."  Effusive.

"..............................................I love you too, honey.  I'll see you in the morning."  

Hmmmmmm CUBED. 

"He's staying at Friend's house tonight."  I told B.  He just looked at me.  "My momdar is going off all over the place."  I confessed.  "He's not staying at Friend's house.  He's at least not telling me SOMETHING.  I just hope he doesn't get in any trouble."

"What are you going to do?" B asked.

"I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what happens."  I said.  "He's got to learn to start making some of his own choices sometime.  Give him some rope and we'll see what he does with it."

Flash forward to Saturday.  B went to his class, I went to mine.  My group ran really long and the boy came home shortly afterward.  But - lo and behold - he did not come home with Friend.  He came home with his girlfriend.  Hmmmm....  And 2 + 2 equals what again?

We didn't say much that weekend.  But it came up several times over the course of the week.  B and I sat down and had a long talk about freedoms and trust, etc.  We felt like we'd been hoodwinked by both kids over the course of the week; the boy on this incident and the girl on a smaller one.  

I knew we needed to sit down as parents and hash out how we were going to handle it between us, and I'd been dreading it.  The potential for conflict made me sick to my stomach, and as we talked, my hands shook.  I confessed that I struggled with it all the time - the desire to avoid conflict and the temptation to let the kids get away with things I knew they shouldn't just to keep from having to confront them.  I hope by the end of the evening he understood what I meant.  For B, the conflict and craziness lasted twenty years, but he can remember a time when things weren't like that.  For me, it's been all my life.  It's harder to get past that automatic avoidance response.  So all this time I've been enabling the lies the kids tell, and now it's time to pay the piper.

The only way around it was to unite as a parental front.  And lo and behold - who should come home in the middle of the discussion but the girl.  We sat her down and hashed some of it out with her, and came out of it satisfied that we were all on the same page.  The boy was gone, so we didn't get to do it with him.

But last night, he asked to go again (since we had some no-school days at the end of this week).  AHA.

To make a long story short, I seized the day and sat him down to chat with him.  B was in the other room, able to hear and make comment, but not up front and imposing.  We actually got pretty far with the boy.  Yep, he lied.  He confessed that he'd gone to spend the night at his girlfriend's house.  And he confessed that he had been smoking off and on (which, I found out, B already knew).  I still don't feel like I handled it very well.  I wasn't very imposing, and I felt weak and waffly.  But I did get some surprising truths out of the boy, and a promise to always be truthful, even if he knew I wouldn't like it.  Whether we get that always is doubtful, but I hope between us we are building a place where it's safe to tell hard truths, knowing that even though you might not be approved of, you are still loved.  And that there are parameters that are flexible, and those that are hard and fast, and that's just the way life is. 

After an hour of hard talking, I came away from it with one knowledge.  He is still a little boy who needs his parents' approval, despite how 'mature' he thinks he is or how big he's gotten.  He knows right from wrong, and is going to have to learn about making choices and the consequences.  And that there is a large part of him that is really stressed about keeping secrets.  He likes things on the table where we can see them and dissect them.  In that he is his mother's son. 

Nothing is too big to handle but the lie. 

Homeostasis

HOMEOSTASIS:  noun
1. the tendency of a system, esp. the physiological system of higher animals, to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus tending to disturb its normal condition or function.


2. Psychology. a state of psychological equilibrium obtained when tension or a drive has been reduced or eliminated. _________________________________________________________

I NEVER noticed when I passed that mark in my new life, the one that separated the craziness that came before from the new balance that we now share.  All I knew was that the pain, fear and insanity had gradually begun to fade into the past; the more distance that time put beween us and the past the more it faded. 

What I did notice was that I began, slowly but surely, to feel better.  Not stressed all the time.  No fear when I was away from home that something bad might be happening while I was gone.  No wondering what new calamity awaited when I walked in the door at night.  No screaming.  Ah, God...all the screaming, all the time.

In that new environment I watched my children settle, and begin to grow.  I didn't notice that I was growing too. 

For a long time I spent every waking moment buried in B; living and breathing him.  I felt like I couldn't exist if he wasn't inside me.  I don't mean that in a sexual way (although there were a great many nights spent absolutely intertwined, as if neither one of our hearts could beat if they got too far from the other.)  In the beginning we had to spend a great deal of time in absolute physical contact.  We are each others' touchstones, and we had a burning need to touch frequently, like an antidote to the outside world.  I always felt like B would disappear if I left him for long.  I remember in the beginning the PD weighed heavily on my heart.  I was frantic all the time, cramming as much into a short time as I could, afraid that it woud all be taken away.  I have never been so aware of my own mortality as I was when B and I joined our lives together. 

Now that things have settled down, and we are sure of each other's permanence (or as much permanence as we are granted by the grace of God), we've been able to do our own growing.  We did a lot of changing in a short period of time. I don't remember ever growing this much, in all my life.  It sounds funny to say, but it's true.  I think I've shed a hundred skins in the last two years.  I feel like an onion.  The further down I peel, the closer to the heart I come.  The old and tattered falls away, leaving clean and new.  It's ironic - like the onion, the more layers come off the smaller I am left.  Eventually I will be left with nothing but the center - just the soul I came into the world with, with no tangibility or care to weigh me down anymore. 

It's had a calming effect on all of us.  I did not know how much I had changed until I picked up the phone today.  It was my ex, looking for some advice on a paper he was writing.  I spent thirty minutes on the phone with him, during which time we made absolutely normal chitchat, and when I got off, I was amazed at how stressed I was. 

I realized something that I had not realized before:  my ex yells EVERYTHING.  His normal speaking voice is very loud, insistent, and intense.  My blood pressure skyrocketed after just a few minutes, not because he was being rude or confrontational, but simply because of the way he interacts.  I could hardly wait to get off the phone with him. After I hung up, it dawned on me that I had lived that way for twelve years.  My teeth were gritted, my hands sweaty, and my concentration totally shot; with one little phone call I was lost in PTSD. 

"What was that all about?"  B asked, passing by my office. 

"I feel like I've been raped in the ear for half an hour."  I said, astounded.  "I didn't know how bad it was until I had something to compare it to!"  And it's true - for twelve years I thought that was normal.  The arguing, the fighting, the sarcasm, the put-downs, the barely controlled hostility that ran like a poisoned river beneath all of the communication, even when he was happy. 

B just smiled, and just that smile put things to rights again (that and a few laps around the office complex to stretch my legs and reset my brain).  I never realized how quiet life had become until I heard loud again.  I can look back now and see that line that we crossed into sanity.  We never realized we were crossing it at the time, carrying the remnants of all of our baggage with us to peel off on the way when we finally figured out we didn't need it anymore.  We are naked and clean, like the onion, and with every layer we peel the clarity gets better.

Life has finally found a balance.  It took a while, as things always do, but we have found equilibrium.  We have been able to back slowly away from the center of the teeter-totter where we were clinging, slowly edging out to the ends, in tandem.  He takes a step, then I, and we may move up and down a little but the balance stays put. 

Recently we have been expanding our circles to include other things.  It took excising all of the things that weren't working to find room for the things that did (including not taking phone calls that might be unproductive).  B is taking a tai chi class on the weekends that he is enjoying, and I have not only been taking a dance class that I'm having a blast in, but have taken up writing again, and have hooked up with a local writer's group.  It has given me back dreams that I thought were dead.  I always wanted to be a writer, but never had the faith to pursue it.  With B's encouragement, I'm beginning to fly.

I look down and realize that maybe it's time to draw another line beneath my feet:  the line between the old thought and the new.  I can do this.  Watch me fly.

Things unspoken

THERE ARE, in any relationship, several categories of disclosure. There are the things you talk about when you get together, as you are getting to know each other. Those are the surface things – what you look like on the outside and who you are. There are the things that you learn about the other person as you interact and face challenges, either together or separately. That’s when you find out how they deal with things and what kind of person they are. And then there are the things that go unspoken – the things that came before, the things that contributed to making you who you are today. Those are the whys.

It’s been my experience that you get them in approximately that order. The whos you get right off the bat. You are X years old, you have two brothers and one sister, you work at Y corporation, you have two kids. You have brown hair, blue eyes, and love baseball, beer and dogs. The whos are the initial attractants, and the sorters. We use the whos to decide whether or not this person is compatible enough to get to the next category.

The hows come a little later in the relationship. Does this person have a long or short fuse? Are they respectful? Are they the kind of person who chews out the pizza delivery guy when he comes two minutes late? Does she kick the dog when she’s had a bad day at work? If I were at the airport needing a ride home at 3 a.m., could I call him? The hows are the trustbuilding questions. The hows build a foundation upon which the relationship is built. When we know the hows about our partner, we can establish a predictability. Maslow calls this stage “safety and security” in his hierarchy of needs. These needs have to do with people's yearning for a predictable, orderly world in which injustice and inconsistency are under control, the familiar frequent and the unfamiliar rare.

The whys are unpredictable. Sometimes we get them in the beginning: the disclosure that a partner has an ex-spouse with whom they had an abusive relationship. The parents that died before their time. The confession of an incurable disease. For the most part, whys can be deal-breakers. They are the big disclosures, more weighty and fraught with emotion than the simple facts of age/appearance/disposition. Whys are the skeletons in our closets. We bring them out when we finally feel safe, and we generally haul them out one by one, instinctively comprehending the devastating power of a sudden and all-inclusive dump.

It’s been my experience that the whys trickle in throughout a relationship, usually triggered by some precipitating similar event. It might be a family secret, exposed by an unexpected outside contact. It might be a wild oat, come home to roost. Or it may be as simple as another drop of truth seeping out from underneath the finger held on the hole in the dam.

B told me when we first got together that his parents were both gone. It was something that affected him profoundly. I never really had a clear picture of what his relationship with his father was. He talked a lot about his mother and how they were close, but all he really talked about his father was the fact that he had a bad heart and died from it, a condition that he passed down to B’s older brother.

A little later on, as we got to know each other more intimately, we talked about the years that had come before we met. B talked about his young adulthood, and how he’d spent a few years down south taking care of his uncle, who was elderly and very ill. And if my memory serves me right, that’s how he put it – ‘very ill’. He talked a lot about the good it did for him, and how much he got out of spending time with his uncle, who taught B a lot of things about being a man.

We had been trying out the new sushi restaurant the night he talked about his uncle, and it was my first time having sushi. I asked him where he’d had it before, and he talked about the time he’d spent with his uncle, and how he’d introduced him to a nicer lifestyle than he’d known before. I remember him telling me all about the places they went and things they’d done, and that finally he had died. 

After that B came back up to home where his father had also taken ill. He told me that he’d taken care of the business for his father when he was unable to, and had cared for his father as well, but didn’t go into a whole lot of detail. I knew that his father had died of heart problems, and had had several surgeries, so I assumed that was what B was referring to.

We have danced around the subject of Parkinson’s since the very beginning. I knew, of course. B ‘came out’ at work shortly after he was diagnosed, and it’s just been a fact about him, like his blue eyes or his wavy hair. I did not understand all of the ins and outs of PD when we were just friends, but you can believe that when we became romantically involved, I took the crash course. I know now just about everything there is out there except what it really feels like to live in his body, which I can only know secondhand.

We talked about Parkinson’s in the context that he did not initially want me to fall in love with him, because he was afraid of hurting me. He told me I would be a young widow. He fought me in every way that it is possible for a man to fight the love of a woman, but I persevered, because I love him as much as I love myself and I knew that we would both suffer a great loss if we were to pass this thing by. I knew we could not let fear take control.

B is one of the bravest people I know. A large part of his bravery, I suspect, is on the outside. We both fight our fear with some parts denial. As long as he feels pretty good and the meds are working, we can pretend this elephant is not in the room with us, and indeed, we avoid talking about it like the plague. We have to talk about medication, and we have to talk about doctor’s appointments, and he knows I notice when he has a bad day. We talk about it for the most part as if it were any other thing – as if it were just a headache or a sore neck. I see it, I acknowledge it, he confirms it, I commiserate, we move on. He prefers it that way. I think that’s his own survival mechanism; if he does not wallow in the disease, it has no additional power over him. He keeps on going precisely because he keeps on going. And I celebrate that.

But occasionally, I get another drop or two that seeps out from beneath his finger on that dyke. It seemed like an innocent drop, the one that trickled out the other day, but it took me by surprise.

He posts occasionally on the caregivers’ bulletin board that I frequent. Mostly he does it in support, because sometimes they like to take a chunk out of my posterior, whereupon he sails in with white hat and charger ready to do battle for my honor. Lately, his posts when he makes them have been aimed at the caregivers’ disgust and frustration with their PWP. He has made several posts about how it feels from the other side of the fence. The caregivers shoved back, telling the patients on the board (there are a handful) that they should not be there, because they could not understand what the caregivers points of view were and that the board did not apply to them.

And my beloved B posted back. What he posted was a why – one that we had not even shared between us, as intimate and close as we are. I had thought that I knew everything about him after these two years, but I’m coming to understand that there is far more water behind that finger than I thought.

B’s father and uncle both had Parkinson’s too.

That was why he was caring for them.

That was the end that he saw.

I thought it was denial, but now the blinders have been slipped from my eyes.

It’s not denial.  He knows. And that’s what makes it so hard. He knows, firsthand.

Does it change anything for us?

Only in that my heart has cracked open a little wider for this man, my brave man. I know that there are more drops and trickles and whys to come, and all of them paint a picture of a person that I not only love most dearly, but greatly admire.

There will always be secrets, I know.  But these, our skeletons, once they come out from the darkness can only set us free.  Painful as they are, they are still valuable pieces that connect the dots between who we are, who we were, and who we will be.  We will make our way through them all, in time.  And I know that once our fingers are removed and we have all of the whys on the table, we can finally, finally, be free.

On goals

I HAD my annual birthday lunch with my mom the other day. We were both running late; with our busy schedules, It’s sometimes hard to find time to make connections unless it’s a holiday. She is in a similar position as I am – we both have recently bought new homes (hers is a new mobile home on her existing land) and we are both trying to figure out this new reality and how we are going to restructure our lives with changing circumstances and new obligations.

“I have some news.” She said over coffee. “I’ve made a decision. I’m going to retire in three more years.” I looked at her in surprise. She has been the primary breadwinner for as long as I can remember; Dad hurt his back a long time ago and has been on disability. They had their place free and clear until they finally had to get out of the decrepit and unsafe trailer that they had been living in. I knew that new mortgage bill had to be a big adjustment. We were adjusting, ourselves, to a mortgage quite a bit more than our rental had been.

“How are you going to do that?” I asked.

“I have been paying down all of our credit cards and bills.” She said. “I only have one left, plus your Dad’s Harley. I made up a plan and I think I can have them all paid off in three years . Then I’m quitting.” She said placidly. “I’m getting my chickens this year, and we’re retrofitting an area out back for some pigs. With that, my garden, and the cows, we should be good.”

I sipped my coffee and stared at her, thinking about that. “Wow.” I said. “That’s really great!”

“I want to go camping this year, too.” She said. “Before we can’t anymore.”

It was funny to hear that coming from her. Those are thoughts that have been circulating through my mind for the last year. We missed our vacation this year since we had an unexpected trip to Iowa for B’s daughter’s wedding. Not that it wasn’t fun…. But I’d promised my kids that we’d go to the beach or go camping at least once last year, since it had been some time since we’d taken a family vacation, and that hadn’t happened. Heavier on my conscience was the promise that I’d made to my daughter – that we would do it last summer since she wouldn’t be able to have another family vacation with us again, with college looming. With the new house, and M’s wedding, and hosting family on several occasions, there just hadn’t been time or money. We had to make choices, but how do you prioritize family members?

We too have talked about getting out and going on a vacation, somewhere with no attached doctor’s appointments, events, or obligations. Just an opportunity to relax. Underlying it all is the unspoken thought – we need to do this while we still can enjoy it. It’s odd to think that my parents and I are in the same place in life – trying to grab onto life’s experiences while we still can. It’s somewhat unsettling, but at least it gives us some common ground.

B and I sat down with our taxes last week, and we think we can pull ourselves out of most of our remaining debt from moving, the wedding, and what has been left of his divorce settlement. That alone would be a blessing. If that’s the case, then by my calculations, once the kids leave home and our daily expenses settle into just the two of us (no more last minute “I needs”!), we can actually live well and put some away in savings. But, as with anything, that’s all just on paper. And that’s provided B still is well enough to work.

That will change too, eventually.

I didn’t have the nerve to ask Mom how she’d planned for the eventuality that both of them will no longer be able to work the farm. I have a feeling that it’s something she hasn’t wanted to think about. But Dad is already having problems doing the daily chores, and has had to give up his side jobs to a helper. It’s an eventuality for all of us.

And that’s an eventuality that we have to plan for, but only have a hazy view of. For now, we think we have it licked. We think we’ve covered the bases. But life has a way of slipping one to you here and there. I hope we’ve done our homework, and can be in the same place Mom and Dad plan to be in three years. That’s my goal, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Flexibility

JUST WHEN you think things are going great, Life has a tendency to get squidgy.


Flexibility is a wonderful quality. I have it; my daughter does not. Not a condemnation, just a fact. If things don’t work exactly like she’s planned out, she’s absolutely blotto – dead in the water. She can’t make a coherent decision beyond that point, because she hasn’t thought out any of the alternate scenarios beyond the one she’s chosen.

Flexibility is a survival tool.

Like the reed vs. the oak tree in a hurricane, if we can’t bend, we gonna break.

This week B went to pick up his pills from the pharmacy. Because he’s on L&I and they pay for his medications, he has to fill them at precise intervals. If he happens to use more than what’s in the bottle in the interval between fills, he’s out of luck. This means both that the neuro prescribing the drugs has to be generous in the monthly estimate, and that we have to be vigilant in ensuring we fill as soon as we need to but not before.

The only challenge comes when the pharmacy can’t keep up.

This time when he went to pick up his script, the pharmacy was out of Requip and it was on a back-order. It’s not like an antibiotic or something that you can wait on a few days, of course – he had to have it NOW. The only alternative was to take the generic formulation, which they did have in stock. “It’s made in the same factory with the same drugs”, they told him. And so we tried it.

Yesterday was pretty miserable, to put it concisely. Not only were the side effects a whole lot worse, but the variation in the drug formulation makes it incredibly hard to titrate a dose. I wondered why he had been so stressed and testy, but didn’t put two and two together. Last night the drug unexpectedly wore off. We were killing time before bed, me with my laptop and he with his puzzle books. I went out to find him when I got sleepy, and knew right away that something was amiss. You could tell by the way he was standing. When it’s bad, he collapses in on himself, in pain, all the strength and confidence gone.

I went over to give him a hug. He rested his chin on my shoulder. “I’m stuck, honey.” He whispered, sagging in my arms. “All the meds were just… gone.”

“I got you, love.” I whispered back. “Let’s go to bed.” We made our way back inside, took another pill and went to bed. Even then he was in a lot of pain. “What can I do?”

“Snuggle with me.” He said, and I curled up around him for as long as his muscles would let him lie that way. As he turned and moved, trying to get comfortable, he kept a hand on my skin, like a touchstone. I wished I could take it all away, the pain and the stiffness, but at that point there is nothing to be done but wait for the drugs to take hold. Finally, after a half hour of misery, he said “Get your laptop and post something on the bulletin board for me”. He dictated and I typed, a missive to caregivers about what it’s like on the other side of the fence, when the meds aren’t working and what it feels like to be trapped in your body, unable to escape.

After an hour and a half, he was able to get comfortable and sleep. But here we are, stuck with another months’ worth of generic pills and unable to trade them in even when the good ones come, and L&I won’t pay for them twice. So we have to endure.

Deep in the middle of the episode last night he said “What have I gotten you into?” My eloquent words always fail me at the time of crisis, and so I said something comforting and throwaway. What I should have said was this:

You have believed in me, you have cared for me, you have loved me, you have brought me the best moments of my life. Being with you, even in the hard times, makes me into the person I always wanted to be – the best version of myself. I would no sooner trade my time with you than I would take out my own heart and throw it away.

We are tested in the fire. The weak ones burn up and fade away. The best of us turn into diamonds. Will this road be difficult? Of course. Is it worth it? Over and over and over again, I would choose this life.

Today is a better day than yesterday was. He knows now that he has to play very closely to the rules with the generics, and can’t push them out as far. This means that we will have to be a little bit flexible. But then, what are we if we cannot bend for life? If we cannot bend for life, life will break us. And that would be a waste, indeed.

New uses for your Beautyrest

I FOUND this little gem a couple of days ago and forgot to post it.  Looking for something 'new' to do in bed?  Feel like you're wasting those eight hours?  Wake up hungry?

Why not kill two birds with one stone?

BED BREAD

Ingredients

2 packages active dry yeast
1 Tbsp. granulated sugar
1 c. warm water (100-115 degrees F)
1/3 c. butter, cut into small pieces
3/4 c. hot milk
2 tsp. salt
5 1/2 to 6 c. all-purpose flour
1 egg white, lightly beaten
Cornmeal

Directions

1. Stir the yeast, sugar and warm water together in a large mixing bowl.  Let sit until yeast dissolves and starts to proof.
2. In the meantime, melt the butter in the hot milk and let cool to lukewarm.  Add salt and combine with the yeast mixture.
3. Stirring vigorously with a wooden spoon, add the flour, one cup at a time, until the dough almost comes away from the sides of the bowl.  (Don't worry if it seems soft and sticky; it will stabilize in the next step.)
4. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface, add flour while folding the dough over several times until it's easy to handle.  Knead for two to four minutes.
5. Lightly grease the inside of a one-gallon plastic resealable storage bag (Ziploc).  Put the dough in the bag and get into your jammies.  Snuggle your dough until morning.
6. Next morning, dump your dough onto a floured surface.  Punch it down and knead for two minutes.  Divide dough in half and roll each half into a rectangle about 12" x 8".  Starting from the wide end, roll it up quite tightly, pinching the seams as you go.
7. Butter a baking sheet and sprinkle with cornmeal.  Place loaves on the sheet, cover with a clean dishcloth, and rest in a warm spot in your kitchen for about an hour.  Loaves should almost double in size.
8. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  After the dough has risen, brush the tops of the loaves with beaten egg white and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until they are a rich, golden brown and sound hollow when you tap them on the top.
9. Cool on a rack and eat while fresh.  Yum!

Me:           *rolls over in the morning*  ".....Ummm...... is that the dough rising?"

B:              *naughty grin*   "Why don't you find out?"