It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

It's finally winter here in southern Alabama, and my dad has icicles forming on his eyelashes because Phyllis thinks it's "too expensive" to turn on the heater. He just called, with frozen tears on his blue cheeks, to tell me that she told him to "just keep his coat on." I fear he will soon begin to burn Christmas decorations to survive.

Which would be okay, because over the years, my mother has amassed an extensive collection of handmade and/or hideous Christmas ornaments and knick-knacks. Every year, my brother hauls up several enormous Rubbermaids full of Yuletide crap and the family forms a grim parade, trudging up to a beaming Phyllis as she proudly hands out glitter-covered pinecones and construction paper Santas and then depositing these treasures throughout the house. A lot of families keep their kids' ornaments, and now that I have a child I understand how precious these little objets d'art are to a mother. Some of this other junk, though, just kind of blows our minds. I had to take pictures to prove that some of it exists. Let's start with an old favorite...

CHRISTMAS PLANK

My little brother made Phyllis this plank in 1999. It is a piece of plywood sawed into a roughly square shape with a heartfelt message ("Merry Christmas Mom Christmas '99") printed on computer paper and glued to the front. I helped Adam braid some scraps of fabric (attractively secured, by the way, with a purple hair tie and some scavenged fabric holly berries) and then Adam used a full roll of Scotch tape to attach the braid to the plank. This beauty has had pride of place on our tree for 12 years now, even though Lucy the Labrador gnawed on one side. We feel this only adds to the ambience. When I first showed my husband Christmas Plank, he almost spewed egg nog out of his nose.

LIFESAVER MAN

Mom made Lifesaver Man in Campfire Girls back in about 1832. One of her brothers ate the Lifesavers out of him at some point. Mom still harbors deep resentment.

TINY CAROLER



Here is a tiny caroler. If you ever need a tiny carol sung, she is your tiny woman. Seriously, she's about an inch high. Mom doesn't even remember where she came from, but when she pulls her out of the ancient, crumbling shoebox and unwraps the decade-old newspaper from around her, she gasps and cries, "Tiny Caroler!" in a rapturous tone, as if she is greeting a long-lost loved one. (To be fair, she does this with every single ornament she unwraps. It's like really  bizarre Tourette's: "Soccer Ball Santa! Bunco Dice! Paper Plate With Glitter On It! Cinnamon Stick Santa!")

HIPPO IN A BIKINI

Nothing says, "Unto you is born this day a savior who is Christ the Lord" like a hippopotamus wearing a bikini.

BASSET HOUND IN HALF AN EGG

PHYLLIS: Sam, you should have this ornament since you have a Basset Hound now!

ME: No.

PHYLLIS: Why not?

ME: Because it is fug.

PHYLLIS: Hey!

SNOWMAN WITH HAIR





We voted. This is the scariest ornament on the tree.

VARIOUS HANDMADE PIECES OF CRAP

There just isn't room for all of our priceless handmade ornaments and decorations, but you can see that tissue paper, contrary to popular belief, does not improve with age. 

I suppose I should give credit where credit is due. When my brother and I got married, Mom distributed several pounds of ornaments to our new families. She has gotten her ornament stash (just the ornaments for the tree, mind you) down to one Rubbermaid, prompting Dad to congratulate her on being "Old Phyllis One-Bucket." So it was really a banner year for Phyllis. To top it off, my little boy is old enough to be semi-aware of what's going on. You can see the joy on his chubby little face at being able to participate in the Ornament March:

Maybe, in his two-year-old mind, a snowman with hair makes sense.

There are dozens more treasures I could list, but this is the cream of the crop. I wish I had time to tell you about the Happy Meal ornaments, and the Dead Dog Glazed Milkbones to commemorate the passing of our various pets, and the year Phyllis made my brother and I paint plastic to look like stained glass. She sits on the piano bench every year and reminisces while we gaze at the holiday splendor that is our Christmas tree. I do poke fun, but it's honestly impossible not to feel the spirit of Christmas when you're presented with beauty such as this:

That's right. Two twisted pipe cleaners and a red pom pom ball.

Hallelujah, Christ has come.

Camper, Oh Camper...

For some reason, my family really likes to camp. "Yes," we frequently say to each other, "let's drive several hours away to enjoy primitive plumbing and uncomfortable sleeping arrangements." Our camping hobby began with a tent, which my little brother attempted to set on fire by cramming his pillow into the space heater that was struggling futilely to keep us from developing frostbite. Those were the good old days, stuffed into a nylon hell that smelled persistently of Dad's socks, experiencing Togetherness and Love whether we wanted to or not. I can still smell the s'mores singeing and feel the sharp rocks digging into my spine.

Later, we moved up in the world. My parents purchased a pop-up. For those of you who are not campers, first of all, I commend you on your choice, and secondly, a pop-up is the result of a tent mating with a trailer. You wind a handle and the top of the pop-up expands upwards, extending nylon sides. This way, you get  to feel slightly superior to the "Tent People," as Phyllis calls them with a disapproving sniff, while still having the joy of walking in the dark to the communal campground bathroom, which is usually carpeted with angry frogs.

The pop-up inspired my dad to write his classic hit, "Pop-Up, Oh, Pop-Up." The lyrics are quite moving. I have reproduced them here in entirety:

Pop-up, oh, pop-up, a twelve-foot pop-up
Queen size bed on one end
Pop-up, oh, pop-up, a twelve-foot pop-up
Won't you go camping, my friend?
[Repeat endlessly]

Eventually, our population of dogs outgrew the pop-up. We decided to make the leap to a real camper, with a real roof and a bathroom. Dad had to rework his song for this step up:

Camper, oh, camper, twenty-eight-foot camper
King-size bed on one end...

The first camper my mom and dad picked out was a real beauty, decorated in shades of teal and featuring a bathroom so small you had to shave your legs by standing in the shower and extending one leg into the sink, teetering precariously over the miniscule toilet and desperately attempting not to topple through the flimsy door and into the dog-packed living area.  This camper also featured bunkbeds that were nearly completely enclosed. You clambered into them through a two foot-wide opening, covered with a pleated curtain, and then spent the night imagining the coffin-like walls closing in on you. There was, to be fair, a six-inch wide window, through which you could watch the parade of Tent People march to the bathroom for more water to extinguish their space heater fires.

Luckily, a couple years ago, Mom and Dad got into the big leagues and bought a new camper with a slide-out section in the living room which expands the area marvellously, from a cramped space into a slightly less cramped, awkwardly shaped space. This camper has a larger bathroom, featuring a shower that my brother can almost stand upright in, and a dining table that converts into a bed. It is almost, but not quite, one tenth as comfortable as just staying at home.

Phyllis loves camping. Her thriftiness extends into the rustic wild; for example, Dad grilled steak one night, and Phyl discovered that she had no Tupperware or Ziplocs in which to preserve the last cubic inch of steak that we didn't eat. She couldn't bear to part with this prize, and so she carefully wrapped the scrap of meat in a plastic salad bag and squirreled it away for the next day. I'm sure she felt an immense glow of pride when she ate that half-bite of beef for breakfast.

But the ultimate best display of thrift has to be the Camping Pillows. Mom has a special set of houseware for camping - plates, cutlery, linens, etc. The Camping Pillows are pillows that were so flat and pitiful that nobody would sleep on them in our actual house. Dad wanted to throw them away. But don't worry! Mom saved the day. She cut up some foam egg-crate material and stuffed the pieces into the pillows. Dad was so impressed he had to take a picture.

Another successful money-saving venture. Let's all go camping!

The Garage Sale from Hell

Andy and I are buying our first house. It's been an awful experience and I've hated almost every second of it, but we're getting a beautiful older home with amazing renovations in a really neat neighborhood, so I know it will be worth it. To prepare for the move, we decided to hold a garage sale, since our self esteem wasn't already low enough. It's a little ridiculous how bad it makes you feel when someone drives by, looks at your old junk, and drives off. I was very hurt by their lack of desire to paw through my old t-shirts. Luckily, I had Phyllis to cheer me up.

We decided to hold the garage sale in Mom and Dad's front yard, since Andy and I currently rent an apartment in a tenement building surrounded by meth labs (I exaggerate only slightly). Mom decided that she should go through her house and sell some old stuff, too. And then the fun really began!

Beanie Babies with the plastic tag protectors still on. Souvenir cups from restaurants at the beach. An endless supply of can koozies. A plaster cast of Mom's teeth, found in the kitchen cupboard. The discoveries piled up on one another in a great creeping pile of absurdity. Mom started out with excellent intentions, but as the day progressed, she just kept finding things she desperately needed to keep, although she hadn't seen them in decades. "Oh, my wooden napkin rings! How I have missed them! I shall clasp them to my bosom and sob with relief and joy that you have unearthed them from under the two-foot high pile of old playing cards!" She got really emotional when we dug up her collection of melon ballers. Phyllis has never balled a melon in her whole life, but "they're Pampered Chef!" She had several sizes of melon ballers, in case she wanted to have melon balls in small, medium, and large, I suppose for if Goldilocks's bears came over for tea. We also discovered many egg separators ("I need those!") and an egg-shaped microwave egg boiler ("I might use that!") Mom and I had several epic tug-of-war battles, but we managed to clear out three large boxes of crap just from the kitchen.

I am intentionally avoiding dwelling on the canister of cornmeal that expired in 1999.

Once we dragged all of Phyl's treasures out onto the yard and added our mounds of crap, we had a pretty decent garage sale. The highlight was definitely the woman who exited her car, picked up an ice cream scoop, asked the price, and, when told that it would cost twenty-five cents, heaved a sigh, set the scoop down, and left. I apologize to you, Our Lady of Ice Cream Scoops, for breaking your budget.

Hello, My Name Is Town.

Weird nicknames run in my family. Some families have diabetes, some have red hair, we have nonsensical monikers. Phyl's mother, Elinor, was probably the one who started this. I don't think my mother and her two brothers even knew their real names until they started school. Mom was generally called "Gags" around the house. This is an awful-sounding word, but not nearly as bad as her other nickname, which seems to have just spurted out of my grandmother's mouth in a torrent of verbal diarrhea - "Pubus Regonia." Read that again. See if you can say it without either laughing or throwing up in your mouth. Can you imagine a childhood in which you are known by something as stupid as "Pubus Regonia," or, for short, "Regs?" I can. I was and still am generally known as "Town." Just "Town." Sometimes my family sings a medley of songs to me that involve the word "Town." I'll walk into a room and hear "When you've got worries go doooownToooown! O little Town of Bethlehem!" and et cetera. I would say it's the stupidest nickname I've ever heard, but for my poor brother, who has had so many ridiculous names that he now answers to almost anything shouted up the stairs. It doesn't even faze him. Some of my favorites have been Flumby, Line Pine, and Goobsie. Yes, my brother, the future lawyer. Goobsie.

I blame this on my mom and grandma, but so help me, I'm just as bad. I've called my father "Pim" for years. I have no idea why. And my husband, Andy, has been Hobs now for about three weeks. It just tumbles out of my mouth like a toaster in an avalanche. I have no control over it. Ask my son, Charlie, who has never been called anything except "Scoob" in the fifteen months of his strange little life.

To top it all of, my mom's name isn't even Phyllis. It's Gayle. This whole blog is based on a lie.

I need to lay down.

The First Day of School

I was not an attractive child. I was very overweight and for some reason Mom thought my hair looked good in a mullet. I was also the tallest kid in my class (although I stopped growing and am now a member of the Lollipop Guild). I tell you this to set the stage for the first day of sixth grade. We had just moved to Virginia and I had exactly one friend, who was not going to the same school as I was. Also I was very into wearing boys' clothing, such as plaid polo shirts and corduroys. So. There I was, the most awkward girl on the face of the earth. And I needed to buy school supplies.

Phyl is always on the lookout for a bargain or some creative way to use crap from around the house. She saved Cool Whip containers for years before I finally buried them in the backyard during the dark of night - she was certain she could repurpose them as, I don't know, tiny bedpans or something. Anyway, this particular school year, Mom had accidentally bought me folders that had no pockets in them. I pointed out her error and was taking my mullet-festooned self out to the car for a return trip to the store, when I heard, "Well, wait a minute..." And then I knew that this would not be a good first day of school.

Mom's brilliant idea was to cut up a brown paper bag and staple sections to the folder to create pockets. I don't know if you heard me, so let me reiterate: SHE MADE FOLDER POCKETS OUT OF A BROWN PAPER BAG. Do you know how much a clasp folder costs? Thirty cents. To save thirty cents, Phyllis was going to force me to go to school with folders MADE OUT OF PAPER BAGS. She might as well have dressed me in burlap and smeared chicken blood on my face.

I don't remember how I responded to this; I think I was speechless. Mom was extremely proud of her paper bag pockets and showed them to Dad as soon as he got home from work. And then, thank God, my dad took a stand against Phyllis' thriftiness, and he took me to the store and not only bought me new folders but also Lisa Frank stickers with which to decorate them. I still had to contend with the hairstyle and the clothes and the excess adipose layer, but I did not have to go to school with supplies made out of garbage.

Mom still insists that those folders would have worked just fine. And they would have if I was going to school in the Third World.

I wonder what she was planning to do with the thirty cents? Probably buy more Cool Whip.

The Will of the Woe

Phyl is the worst song lyricist in the entire world. She has a really pretty singing voice, but she cannot for the life of her get a single lyric correct in the songs she sings. One of my favorite examples is the Rod Stewart song "On the Radio," which Phyl sings as "Under Any O. " Which makes sense. "Dancin' to the music / under any O."  Ahh, how we used to love to dance under any giant letter "O" we could find. Generally we would stop at a Waffle House and do the Twist directly underneath the "o" in "House." Good times.

Another classic is "I Believe in Miracles" by Hot Chocolate. Of course, in Mom's warm, sunny, M.C. Escher-esque mind, this is translated to "I Believe in Malacos." Malaco is a Swedish candy brand. It makes sense to believe in them.

 They are, after all, "Gott & blandat."

Sometimes Mom doesn't even bother trying to sing lyrics that are even close to the originals, or even real words at all. A favorite substitute for an actual word is "scooby," as in "You make me scooby like the sun." It's very moving to hear, belted out from the driver's seat, Mom's rendition of "Fun, Fun, Fun" by the Beach Boys; it goes something like this: "She'll have fun, fun, fun / 'Til her scooby takes her scooby away!" Vast improvement on the original, I think.

Another trick is to just mumble or hum when you come to an unfamiliar part of the song. Mom will often attempt to sing along to a song she's never even heard, so all you hear is a vague rumbling and some semi-formed words: "It's been one wuh hmmhmmhmmhmmhmm, hmm huh head hmmhmmhmmhmm angry" is how Mom sings the chorus to "One Week" by the Barenaked Ladies. We have pointed out that it might be more enjoyable to simply listen to the song instead of trying to sing along if you don't know any of the words, but she can't hear us over her passionate version of Garth Brooks' anthem, "I've Got Fruh Hmmhmmhmm Low Faces."

And here's our absolute favorite, which has passed into family parlance: "You're the One That I Want" by the cast of the movie Grease. Mom is convinced that they are singing "You're the Will of the Woe." Dad has tried again and again to explain that this makes zero sense and is one hundred percent wrong, but Mom's swift retort is always and forever, "Well, that's what they SAY." And she's right. Sandy is the will of Danny's woe, and vice versa. Andy is the will of my woe. Romeo was the will of Juliet's woe. And Mom is the will of everybody's woe, because she is constantly entertaining and amusing and we love her in spite of all the crazy.

Two Degrees of Separation

When we go out to dinner, we rarely spend any time with my dad. He is inevitably cornered by either an old man wearing a World War II cap and wanting to reminisce about the those damn Japanese, or some flight school friend he hasn't seen in thirty-seven years. We usually regain his company around the time dessert is served. The conversation then generally goes one of two ways:

OPTION ONE:

Mom: "Who was that?"
Dad: "I have no idea."

OPTION TWO:

Mom: "Who was that?"
Dad: "You remember Steve Flockman!"
Mom: *Stares blankly*
Dad: "From Ft. Campbell? He was the S3 of the First and Two-Thirteenth?"
Mom: *Eyes glaze over*

My husband Andy is just as bad. No matter where we go, he finds someone to talk to, and then I am forced to listen to the sinuous thread of acquaintance that brought the two together. Andy is from a miniscule town in northern Alabama, with a population of approximately twelve (not including livestock), and yet, somehow, he knows someone who knows someone who knows the person he just talked to. He calls it "Two Degrees of Separation." It's always something such as, "That was John Flitterbottom! He's married to a lady whose mother used to assist with my grandfather's prostate exams!" And then he beams happily, warm with the knowledge that his social web is now that much more complete, while I stare at him in disbelief over my empty plate.

It gets worse when we visit Andy's hometown. After church on Sunday, or at any social function, we are bombarded with Andy's friends and relatives. I love meeting these people and really do enjoy putting faces to names and fleshing out the stories Andy's told me about his past, but invariably I am forced to listen to an introduction as long as "Moby Dick," i.e., "Honey, this is Mary Cogginhoofer! She's my mother's brother's second cousin's aunt! You know, Uncle Jack's sister!" And then my head explodes.

I like it when whomever I've just been introduced to departs, though. After gushing about how great it is to see him or her, Andy waves goodbye and then turns to me and, in a low whisper, tells me all the dirt. "Bye, Mary! Great to see you! *She's insane! When one of her dogs dies she makes soup out of the carcass!*" And then I laugh bemusedly, and it's on to the next old friend or distant relative.

All my family is across the country, so I feel pretty left out in the father's cousin's wife's brother area. I might have to start making things up when I introduce Andy to people just so I can feel better about myself.

ME: "Andy, this is June! She's married to my mom's aunt's husband's sister!"
JUNE: "No, I'm not. I'm just here to read your meter."
ME: "DAMMIT, June!"

Just Add Water!

You know when you've got about half a serving of Ranch dressing left, and damned if you didn't forget to pick up a new bottle last time you were at the store? Phyllis has a remedy - just add water!

Poor Dad was introduced to this the hard way one evening at dinner. He upended the bottle of what he thought was Ranch, and his salad was inundated with watery, beige-ish liquid. Immediately, he checked the expiration date, but, surprisingly, the bottle was still new. Mom saw his perplexed expression and cheerfully told him that she had extended the life of the dressing by as much as several weeks by adding tap water to the remaining dregs and shaking vigorously. Voila! Now we had half a bottle of dressing, thanks to Phyl's creativity!

Unfortunately, nobody else has found this to be a pleasing subsitute. We eventually had to start clearly marking the old bottle of Ranch ("Phyl's Dressing) so that we wouldn't end up with our plates swimming in heavily diluted, watery, tasteless dressing. In the year or so since Phyl first came up with this idea, she has put a spin on it by adding Tabasco to the concoction. She insists she prefers it to original Ranch and is constantly trying to get us to try her recipe. Mmm, leafy Romaine with off-white Tabasco-flavored water on top!

What I don't get is that Mom is a really, really good cook. She can make any recipe well and can usually improve upon the original. So why, when it comes to salad dressing, is she so bizarrely tasteless? I think I've figured it out:

My grandma smoked while pregnant.

Expiration Dates: "More Like Guidelines"

Everyone has that one person in their family who doesn't "believe" in expiration dates. (After all, milk that goes bad just turns into cottage cheese, right?) In our family, that person is Phyllis. I enjoy going through her and Dad's refrigerator and cupboards and culling the fossilized foods and medicines.

Here's a little background: Dad is retired military, meaning we moved every two or three years until I graduated high school.

Which means the jar of popcorn seasoning I unearthed that expired in 1991 moved with us at least three times. THREE TIMES. That small jar managed to travel across state lines, into and out of four houses, and come to rest in a cupboard hundreds of miles from its original home. And Mom still insisted that it was "still good."

This is a phrase I hear often when purging Phyl's house of food so old it has evolved language ability. I've never been able to determine whether by "still good" she means "good to eat" or "probably nonlethal," but I have nearly had to armwrestle green Cheddar cheese from her because it is "still good." (She has actually attempted to argue the point that cheese is just mold, so it's okay if it's covered with colonies of penicillin so advanced they have independently developed democracy.)

When I mentioned this post to my dad, he told me to be sure to remember The Visine Incident. Our story begins with Dad, eyes red and irritated from our famous Alabama pine pollen, rummaging through the cabinet for some eye drops. He found a half-full bottle and applied several drops to each eye. Disturbingly, both eyes began to burn unbearably immediately after application. Through his tears, Dad peered at the Visine bottle and discovered that the liquid inside had expired no less than ten years before. When confronted, Mom insisted that she had used the Visine recently and it hadn't bothered her. She ventured the theory that Dad's eyes were just too sensitive. Dad ventured the theory that eye drops that have been allowed to ferment into vinegar would have fried the cornea of even the manliest eyeball.

This is not to say that Dad is the most normal human being. He writes grocery lists on his iPad, for one thing. We also had to teach him how to put together an acceptable outfit when he retired and went from camouflage BDUs to civilian clothes - those first few weeks, he came downstairs in everything from navy chinos and white socks to a Hawaiian shirt and dress shoes. Bless his heart, it took him months to learn that a black belt and brown shoes just aren't okay.

But both my parents are wonderful. Really, really strange, but wonderful. And Dad's eyes are still a delicate shade of pink that matches the vile hue of the bleu cheese I had to throw out of Mom's refrigerator a few months ago.

It was "still good."

The Ugly Turquoise Bag and the Wedding Candle

Phyllis loves gift bags and tissue paper. It's kind of an unhealthy obsession, really; at the end of every gift-giving celebration, you can see her sitting off by herself, lovingly creasing and smoothing her new treasure trove.

I don't know why she keeps it all, though, because for family functions we always end up piling all our gifts into the Ugly Turquoise Bag. This gift bag has been a part of our family for about ten years now - somebody bought it and Mom decided it was worth saving for future generations. It's an eye-searingly gaudy shade of teal and its upper corner is covered in approximately sixteen layers of adhesive gift tags. I finally covered them all with a small silver bow. Across the front of the bag is scrawled "The Ugly Turquoise Bag: A Family Tradition." It is a hideously wonderful piece of memorabilia. I can't possibly convey how festive it is to have this treat of a gift bag plopped in front of you on your birthday, with all your presents stacked inside and one elderly piece of torn tissue paper laying half-heartedly on top. Phyl keeps the bag stored in the living room cabinet; it is probably the one possession she never loses track of. I fully expect to inherit the damn thing one day, and I will put Mom and Dad's ashes in it and keep it on the mantelpiece. Anyway, my birthday was this week, and it was my turn to be feted with the Bag.

After the grand gift opening (and honestly, my parents give awesome presents and are very generous and thoughtful people), it was time for cake and Phyl's other birthday tradition: The Wedding Candle. Mom never saw the point of buying "expensive" birthday candles for cakes. One year, someone in the family decided it was necessary to have a little bit of pyromania on their birthday and went on a treasure hunt. The only candle they could find was a large white taper, not burned since it was lit at Mom and Dad's wedding reception in the 1983. The Wedding Candle was elegantly jammed into the birthday cake, and thus began another long and noble tradition. When the birthday cake is an ice cream cake, we have to buttress The Wedding Candle with toothpicks since we can't jam it into the cake for support. Phyllis always has an angel food cake for her birthday, an airy cake lacking the mass to support The Wedding Candle, and so we are forced to simply set it down in the hollow made by the bundt pan, where it rests at an interesting angle. It looks like the only survivor from a shipwreck, adrift in a sugary life raft.

Anyway, I blew out The Wedding Candle and had a wonderful birthday. After the festivities were completed, Mom carefully folded The Ugly Turquoise Bag and its accompanying tissue paper and returned them to the cabinet, there to wait until the next birthday. My brother's fiancee's birthday will be coming up next. I wonder if she really knows what she's getting into, marrying into this family. And I wonder if her wedding cake needs a candle on top.

Meet Phyllis

I want to make one thing perfectly clear: My mother is the best woman in the entire world. She is smart and beautiful and funny and a wonderful wife and mom.

I want to make something else very clear: My mother is one of the strangest people I have ever met.

One day, I took it upon myself to clean out the hall closet in Mom's house. Amidst the ancient vacuum bags and old cassette tapes, I found a piece of brown wrapping paper, probably six inches by four. I started to throw it into the trash bag, and Mom swooped down on me, screaming like a banshee, "DON'T THROW THAT AWAY! I CAN USE IT!" I made the mistake of asking what, exactly, she could use a Kleenex-sized scrap of wrapping paper for, and she began listing off small things she could wrap with it, such as jewelry or a cookie. I helped out by supplying other small gift items: a toenail, an even smaller piece of brown wrapping paper, a pencil eraser, air molecules, maybe even a green bean. Althoug irritated by my lack of appreciation for the manifold uses of this tiny piece of paper, Mom began to laugh until she teared up, then had to sprint up the stairs to the bathroom before she wet her pants.

I love my mom. Someday I will splurge and buy her a whole roll of brown wrapping paper.