Last night Kate was invited to a birthday party. She specifically asked us not to attend with her, and since we were invited to another party, and had similar thoughts about shlepping her along with us, we honored her wish. We are bad parents.

The party was at a large American Legion hall, with several entrances. Only one seemed to be lit up, the one at the bar. “Of course it must be somewhere else in the building,” we said as we walked in. “Of course they wouldn’t allow a child’s birthday party to be held in a bar. Not in Indiana. Not even in a private club.” (Locals know the state’s laws on this subject to be utterly batsh*t, with children thought to be so delicate that they must not be exposed to the corrupting sight of a bar filled with its choir of bottles, each one holding a different formula of the devil’s potion.)

Of course we were wrong. The birthday girl’s relatives were pushing the tables together in the back. We passed through a room full of Legion drinkers, including a solitary man with a 40-ounce beer in front of him, a full ashtray and a deep concentration on the basketball game. We made the gift exchange, gave Kate the standard behave-yourself orders and took off. A couple hours later, we made our exit from our own party: “Well, gotta shove off. Need to go pick up our kid at the bar.”

Back at the Legion, karaoke night was in full swing, the usual warblers alternating with the birthday-party kids, who sang “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” as their final number before being kicked out at 9 p.m. (Legion rules — no kids after 9).

Please note I had no problem with this. In south St. Louis, where everyone else in my family grew up, this was pretty much the way it was. Kids went to bars with their parents and were served vanilla Cokes and hot dogs. Big hairy deal.

But it was just so strange, going in to kiss my sweet daughter goodnight for the last time, burying my nose in her hair to get one last whiff of her (only mothers understand how much we need to smell our kids) and thinking: This kid stinks like an ashtray.

In my high school health class — which, I must add, was an excellent health class taught by one of the world’s great straight talkers — we had units in, let me think: quack medicine, sex and reproduction, birth control, STDs, drugs and alcohol and basic self-preservation. Probably some more stuff too, but those were the biggies.

I’m sure AIDS has been added to the curriculum by now, as well as homosexuality. What else? Take your pick. Hep B? The perils of piercing? Our health seems to be in such peril.

It was a one-semester class. I have a suggestion: Make health a full-year deal and devote at least a month to studying, discussing and drilling on mental illness. Make sure every kid who makes it through the tenth grade understands depression, bipolar illness, obsessive compulsion and schizophrenia. Among other perils of the chemically unbalanced.

Why? Oh, just reading the accounts of the carnage in my hometown earlier this week, the guy who climbed onstage at a crummy rock club and killed four people. Immediately afterward, I thought what probably most of the nation thought: What a loser. Then I read the third-day stories, and the facts became all too familiar. The Dispatch won’t let you in without paid registration, so let me quote a few passages:

Initially, Gale was friendly and well-liked within their circle of friends, Johnson said. … “But after a while something happened,” he said. “He just kind of snapped. He went from being a cool guy to being a guy you didn�t want to be around.” … He and friend Jeramie Brey said they distanced themselves from Gale six years ago because his behavior drastically changed and he began to scare them. … Once, Gale showed up at Brey�s house and said he wanted to share some songs he had written. The pages of lyrics he wanted to sing, Brey recalled, were copied from Pantera. Gale argued that they were his. “He was off his rocker,” Brey said. “He said they were his songs, that Pantera stole them from him and that he was going to sue them.”

The shooter, Nathan Gale, was 25, which means his abrupt behavior change came at 19, the bullseye age for the onset of psychotic mental illness. Let’s check off the symptoms — social dysfunction, obsession, paranoia, all apparently left untreated for several years. This is just Nance here, diagnosing from the comfort of her armchair on the basis of a few newspaper articles, but I’d be willing to bet Nathan was at least a borderline paranoid schizophrenic, or may have been what they call schizotypal, more or less the same thing.

We had a case not too different here a few years ago. Guy walks into his sister’s living room and opens fire, killing all four people in the room. Why? “I thought they were talking about me.” In this case, in the Gale case, in a million other cases, I thought the same thing: Didn’t anyone figure out this guy needed to see a psychiatrist? The guy in Fort Wayne installed an electronic lock on his bedroom door and changed the combination daily, so paranoid was he about his room being entered. No one thought this was anything more alarming than an eccentricity.

The Columbus sniper of a few months back? Another lost soul, a paranoid schizophrenic who stumbled through the gaping holes in the mental-health safety net: Jen Frisby said she dated Mc-Coy for several years. The relationship ended more than two years ago because of his erratic behavior, she said, including his stated fear of the FBI.

I’m reminded of something a health ethicist told me once: “If a kid falls into a well, we’ll spare no expense or effort to get him out. But buy him glasses so he can see the well and not fall in? Forget it.” That’s the way it is with crazy people, the worst impulses of civil libertarians and conservatives dovetailing to turn them back out into the world untreated or badly treated or refusing treatment, until one climbs onstage at a rock club and kills four people because his favorite metal band broke up. Also, they were stealing his lyrics. I ask you.

Of course, even the people who know better don’t help. The prosecutor in Columbus wants to give the sniper the hot shot. The public demands it, I’m sure. It’s so much better to make a problem go away than deal with it.

A big story earlier this week was about old people lining up at our local coliseum for a one-time flu-shot clinic. The state got 190K doses, and they’re being distributed to the at-risk populations; it’s probably the same where you are. I read this story, complete with photos of these geezers creaking along on their walkers and quotes about why they need the vaccine (“my chemotherapy wipes out my immune system,” etc.). Then I turned the page and read about the AMA debate on whether to investigate the issue of drug reimportation, as more Americans wonder why we have to prop up the drug companies’ profit ambitions, and Canada gets a discount.

And then I sit back and smack both cheeks, remembering how, early in the year, I predicted health care would be the big domestic issue in the presidential election.

This is why I’m the smashing success I am — always with my finger on the pulse, you know.

(Long pause while I try to figure out why I thought that important.)

OK, let’s try again: Moving! Realtors! What’s up with that?

Maybe one more time: One of the first things we did after we listed our house was go to Sears and buy a new vacuum cleaner. The old one was only two years old, but in that time it managed to queer both of us on the so-called miracle of the bagless vacuum. Oh, sure, you get seduced at first, taking a few swipes across the wall-to-wall and then marveling at the wad of swirling dog hair in the cup: Wow! Cool! If you’ve ever used one of those pore strips, it’s like that — inspecting blackheads from the other direction.

After that, things went downhill. The HEPA filter was perpetually clogged, the cup leaked dust everywhere, it smelled awful and it was as loud as a 747 screaming in for a landing six inches above your head. If I was going to vacuum daily — and when your house is for sale, that’s what you do — I would need fresh equipment.

So we went old-school — bag — with improvements — HEPA. It’s red, a Kenmore. Today, when I came home from work, Alan was frantically pushing it around the kitchen. “Showing between 2 and 3,” he panted.

Regular readers know Alan has a knack for the domestic that is still revealing itself. Sometimes I tell him he has a recessive gay gene. Sometimes I call him the world’s hairiest metrosexual. But I retain the bafflement that dawned the week after we moved in together, when Alan transformed himself, in one week, from a man who owned a naugahyde rocker with a spring that poked you in the ass to a guy who haunted antique auctions, with an eye for mission oak.

This house-selling business has only brought out a different facet. He’s like a drill sergeant whose mission is to plump couch pillows. “Everyone take their shoes off! OUTSIDE!” he snarls at the kids when they come in. Of course, since he did most of the work in cleaning the place down to its tiniest crack, he has a lot at stake. Even the guppies got their tank and plastic plants spiffed up yesterday. Yesterday — this is the truth — I caught him watching Martha Stewart.

And what does he get for it? A couple who passes because we don’t have a bathroom on the main floor! The nerve.

I better get to the blogging before it’s too late:

Tom Friedman is so smart we should have elected him president. Or at least put him on the Iraq planning team.

From the WashPost, the downside of being a stoner legend. Three real-life inspirations for characters in “Dazed and Confused” fight back, with lawyers.

Lance has an amusing story about December’s favorite act of mischief — stealing the baby Jesus from Nativity scenes.

Thanks to all who wrote/left comments about the upcoming move. Frequently occasionally OK, sometimes asked questions:

Yep, the blog will continue. No, I don’t know exactly what I’ll do in Detroit just yet, other than continue freelancing and figure it out as I go. Someone sent me a quote from a book she recommended, “The Artist’s Way” — Think of yourself as an accident victim walking away from the crash. You old life has crashed and burned; your new life isn’t apparent yet. You may feel yourself to be temporarily without a vehicle. Just keep walking.

I plan to keep walking.

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Our neighbor and fellow blogger Amy gets our belated congratulations today, having delivered three weeks ago, at the advanced age of about 87, her 25th child. It is, as Luca Brasi would say, a masculine child, and quite the cutie. Lucky, lucky her. I’m singling her out today, as opposed to three weeks ago, because I liked her use of the Victorian phrase “my time of confinement” during the last weeks of her pregnancy, and I’m going to steal it.

Today we celebrate the end of our time of confinement. After months of bush-beating, my husband has a job, and a good one. In Detroit. Whither thou goest, etc. etc., so we are moving, one of these days. To Detroit. OK, the suburbs. But the metro area. We are leaving the mid-size city for the big one. We are embarking upon a midlife adventure. Maybe we’ll see Eminem at the supermarket. Maybe we’ll get punched in the stands at the Palace. But at least Zingerman’s will only be in the next county, instead of the next state.

We are insane, I thought last night, from approximately 12:34 a.m. to around 2 a.m. That shows you what middle-of-the-night thinking is worth — nothing. Because in the rational light of day, everything about this move makes sense, and everything about our current situation makes none. In the crazy time of the middle of the night, fear reigns. It’s scary to move when you’re middle-aged, to start over in a new place, but we gotta. We haveta. We wanna. Change is good — this is something I learned last year. It’s going to be good. Or at least better.

But before we close on a Michigan house that costs three times more than this one and commands taxes in the 10-times-The Fort range, we have to sell the one we own. Which is why we spent the weekend cleaning like maids on meth — we had our first showing today. I have no idea how it went yet, but I was absurdly pleased yesterday when our Realtor told us not to change a thing about the place, admired how well it “shows” and booked a photographer to take interior shots. Of our decorating! It was like getting an A+ on an exam. Alan spent the day doing a final cleaning and dressing the sets. For example: Last week I idly mentioned something a New York magazine editor told me about the fine art of writing cover lines — nothing spurs newsstand sales like the words “you” and “now.” As in: FIVE CHANGES YOU CAN MAKE NOW TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFE FOREVER — NOW.

In the kitchen, the cookbook holder now holds a book, cover out: “The Best Recipe.” He explained, “I want them to see the words ‘the best’ when they walk through the kitchen.”

It’s subliminal. I assume the heavy artillery — the banana bread-scented candles, “Kind of Blue” murmuring on the kitchen stereo and cut flowers — will come out later.

Alan starts his job up there after Christmas, but I’ll be here until the joint sells and/or we run out of money to sustain a two-household family. I gave notice yesterday, along with another 20-year vet who started the same autumn I did. Forty years of institutional memory will walk out the door hand-in-hand. He’s headed south, I, north. We’re both pretty excited.

Wish us luck or warn us away.

Cable TV — the “love stories” channel, no less — had “The War of the Roses” on the other night. What a strange and wonderful movie. I loved it when I first saw it and I loved it the other night, but I know a bit more about marriage and divorce than I did then. At the time it was first out, a friend was going through a split no less painful than the Roses’, only without the Staffordshire dogs. He saw it before me; I asked for the 10-second review. He thought a minute and said, “Very true.”

There are some wonderful moments in it. I especially liked Kathleen Turner’s expression when Oliver reads her the note he wrote her when he thought he was dying, a very nice bit of acting-with-eyes. Man, KT was a dish back then (and still is, I suppose). I love the way she filled out a dress in unexpected ways, with natural breasts and the teeniest bit of tummy, all drowned out by those fine gams. And Michael Douglas, a truly unlikeable actor with a real comic gift. Why did he make such overwrought crap like “Fatal Attraction” when he does so much better with lighter material?

Here’s something else: I didn’t understand fighting over a house and its contents then. I do now. Alan and I will stay together forever, bound by our child and our Audubon prints. And our looooove, of course. Can’t forget that.

Big doin’s here at NN.C. More on that in a day or two. In the meantime, I had lunch with reader Mindy today, who presented me with a Barbie ornament for Kate’s Barbie Christmas tree, which went up recently. I have such wonderful readers; I believe her last gift was a hand-knit cotton washcloth, for NN.C’s cotton anniversary. Since we’re approaching birthday number four, I guess that makes Barbie ornaments the traditional tribute.

I plan to keep her around until 25. Silver, you know.

Our street is one-way, a fact that registers with approximately eight out of 10 drivers, the ones who can see the giant DO NOT ENTER/WRONG WAY sign at the beginning of our block. The other 20 percent drive on, oblivious. Alan has taken, in the last few years, to yelling at these drivers as they go past our house.

“One-way street!” he barks from the porch swing, after which I always scold him.

“You sound like the crazy old man with a plate in his head,” I say. “You are becoming a banal neighborhood cliche. Knock it off.” Like this works.

Today, push came to shove, or rather, moron came to his just desserts. A Jeep Cherokee went the wrong way up the street, blew through the unmarked intersection (because there’s no need to put a stop sign for drivers who aren’t supposed to be there to see) and got T-boned. It wasn’t a bad accident, but I knew it would bring Alan out of the basement, this event being the event he’s warned about for years now. The fruition of his dire prophecy! Of course he was the second person on the scene.

No one was hurt, but true to form, the driver was a moron. “I knew I was going the wrong way, but I couldn’t find a place to turn around,” he said. This didn’t stop him from bombing through the intersection without even slowing down, though.

I’m afraid that was the highlight of our day, other than the Thai food at dinner — a red curry of chicken thighs, peppers and onions, prepared by yours truly on the spur of the moment with some curry paste and coconut milk. Mmmm. The thighs are where the flava is, I always say, in unison with about every other serious cook in the world. We spent the rest of the Sabbath cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, throwing away and cleaning some more. How can a person like me, who considers herself the antithesis of a pack rat, own so much crap? But much of it isn’t crap, which is why it took so long. I’m particularly fond of old letters and amusing stuff sent through the mail, and I had a good chuckle over a bushel-basket full, but I tried to be merciless in pitching. I look forward to the paperless society, but I notice that the longer we’re around, the more we make.

I found a postcard from Deb, postmarked 9 Feb 1988. Text: I think I’m seriously nuts about this Mike person. It goes on, then concludes, I’m thinking of marrying this guy. Am I nuts? She was not, it turns out. She married this Mike person — we now just call him Mike — they had two kids and are still married.

I can’t throw this away. That’s good news for Rubbermaid and their stacking storage boxes, I always say.

Here’s something else I found — a 3-by-10 picture frame from Pottery Barn, still in the box, suitable only for those rare panoramic pictures I take once in a blue moon with a disposable camera. Ten minutes later, I found a panoramic photo of Alan, Lance and The Blonde, standing on a street corner in Stratford, Ont., on one of our once-annual theatuh trips. Now it’s in the frame on my bookcase.

Then I went to the Apple Music Store and considered downloading “Hand of Fate” because it seemed to pertain. Nabbed “Fingerprint File” instead, a great forgotten Stones song.

Have I bored you silly yet? No? Well, then, you deserve a reward. You know Dave Barry is weeks away from taking a one-year leave of absence that could well turn into early retirement, at least from the column business. Good thing we have Gene Weingarten to fill the gap.

Only a few days into the latest round of BALCO revelations, the response seems to fall into two categories — shame on you and don’t be so naive. I’m in the shame-on-you camp. You?

Sorry about skipping Friday. Stuff is happening at this end, i.e., a life, and I was living it — making a thousand phone calls, taking Kate to Brownies, reading “The Known World,” which I recommend to everyone who can do so.

That said, others are doing far better work these days, and you’re encouraged to seek out Lance Mannion and just keep scrolling. I was going to single out individual posts, but the first three I read — on mystery novelists, a walk through a cemetery and “The West Wing” — were so wonderful it’s hardly worth the trouble. Read ‘em all.

(Lance and I go way back. I’m sure, if you ask him, he’ll find some really embarrassing picture of me to put up and end his traffic problems forever. I believe he was there the night I stuck Mr. Microphone down my pants [or was it a banana?] and did a show-stopping impersonation of one of our co-workers, but I don’t think he had his camera. BTW, I use “show-stopping” to mean “a hush of horror fell over the room.” Alcohol, source of a million regrets.)

I also liked Richard Cohen’s take on the Pacers-Pistons fight. Certainly it was better than the one I read yesterday in the WSJ, sorry no linkie, that suggested the college football fight the next day was in part inspired by the events of the night before.

Tom Boswell on Barry Bonds is worth a stop. And Sally Jenkins on the bigger picture.

Nice work by Pandagon on a Weekly Standard embarrassment.

That should hold you. Have a swell weekend.

Everyone is welcome. Well, just about. If you’re selling cures for That Guy Problem That Dick Butkus Gets Paid To Talk About, take it somewhere else. But honestly, I don’t mind a healthy debate, even a healthy swordfight, as long as it doesn’t get personally abusive. I’ve only banned one commenter on those grounds, and I felt so bad about it I unbanned her a few hours later.

I’ve been a columnist, and at least one of the conservatives who comments here was a loyal reader back in the day, so he’s welcome here. Most of the rest of you found your way here via a different path, and you’re all welcome, too. One of the things that most amuses me about this site is its multi-leveled anarchy. It’s all id. Sometimes it’s worth your time, sometimes it isn’t, sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn’t, and so on. I guess, if I made it About Something and beat the same drum every day I could get more traffic, but then it would bore me. I prefer to have NN.C stick close to its original idea: Let’s you and me have a cup of coffee. Here’s what happened here today. Here’s something interesting I read. How about you?

That said, here’s something I tried to post in the comments of the thread below, about federally funded abstinence programs. I got banned, and for the life of me I can’t figure out why. Huh. Anyway, y’all can take it away:

As the religious right settles in for its long reign of terror (yes, I’m being snarky), I’m really worried that we’re going to go backwards in some alarming ways.

It wouldn’t bother me a bit if more teenagers — if all teenagers — choose to abstain from sex, but I want them to do so for the right reasons, not because they’re convinced they can get HIV from kissing or pregnant from touching the opposite sex’s naughty bits. As the Faber College founder said, “Knowledge is good.” Ignorance is bad.

I read the other day that a majority of Americans now doesn’t believe in evolution. (“It’s just a theory!”) What does it mean when they get their mitts on school boards all over the country? What happens when an evangelical Christian world view starts to inform social studies on a national scale? We’re getting a taste with this stuff.

Well, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that federally funded abstinence programs frequently teach nonsense — touching a person’s genitals “can result in pregnancy” — but we can’t say we didn’t ask for it.

I made Mindy’s pie for dessert tonight. Rich? Sure, but as I always say, a girl’s reach should be just long enough to cut a piece of pie, or what’s a heaven for? Simple? Simplicity itself. Good? Ohhhh, yeah. She left the recipe in the comments a few days ago, but I think it deserves its own proud place out here, so:

Indiana Sugar Cream Pie

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (optional)
1 unbaked 9-inch pastry shell

Preheat oven to 350. In a bowl, mix the sugar, flour, salt, cream, and vanilla and let stand for 20 minutes. Mix again and pour into unbaked pie shell; sprinkle with ground cinnamon if desired. Bake 50-60 minutes or until filling is set.

I used a store-bought — or “boughten,” as we say in Indiana — graham-cracker crust, and don’t think it hurt it a bit.

Alan took a trip out of town today, and I took a day off. Good call — the sun returned from its long vacation, delighting the rosemary plants in the dining room but mostly me, who celebrated by taking the canine out on a long walk. I found another house I’d like to buy, the renovation of which I’ve been watching for a couple of years now. And here it is, for sale by owner. There’s a new detail in place today: Copper gutters, flashing and downspouts. Copper! A homeowner who will splurge on copper for the outside did not skimp on the inside, I suspect. I picked up a flyer — 2,300 square feet, nine rooms, updated everything. Price: $159,000.

Ooooh, expensive.