Chagrin and bear it

I Pee on You, Because I love you.

2012-01-18T09:07:00.005-05:00

I am a cranky fucker.

I mean it. You're reading this, my beloveds, and you're thinking, no, that's so not true, she's a delight. And, sorry, but you're wrong. I am a holy terror. Irritation is my new default position.

I'm so highly strung these days, I will yell at a peanut butter sandwich. Peanut butter can go straight to hell.

My boots don't zip up easily and I'm likely to just freak out. I might toss them out the door into the snow and pee on them.

Every time I look at my answering machine I visualize smashing it to pieces with a giant sledge hammer. It wont let me delete messages until I've played them back. What kind of bullshit it this? I've already listened to the fuckity-fucks when they called in and I allowed the piece-of-shit machine to get it. Why do I have to play back the messages?

My disposal stops working if I put a soggy Cheerio in it. What the shit, fuck, cunting, asshole, mother-fucking douche-bag hell is up with that?!

I declared the other day that everyone in this house is old enough to do their own goddamn laundry. These people treat the laundry basket like it's the magic hole into which they can throw just about anything and VOILA! it appears folded in their drawer. Well, fuck all of you.

Vild, in wild agreement with my laundry rebellion, took all his shitty clothes from his closet floor and heaped them in front of the washing machine. This, to better 'do' his own laundry. I ended up washing an unopened package of socks, a belt, a bathing suit and a baseball cap in addition to a year's worth of too-small sweaters and torn boxers. This is NOT what I meant. Fuck him. I might pee on him too.

My poor kids. Those little assholes. I've bought them seven hats apiece this season and there are no hats in this house. Not a hat. Not a single fucking hat. And they don't like having cold heads when they wait for the bus. Makes them cry. I know what might warm them up - if I pee on their heads.

And ok, with the toilet already. Are they just waving their shlongs in the direction of the bowl? Its like they think, I know the toilet is in that corner of the room, so I'll just wave it over there while I brush my teeth and hope some of it splatters in there. She'll never know. Are they dropping their wet craps into the vessel from a hot air balloon? Are their turds stunt ponies jumping into a bucket from the high dive? Because forensic splatter tells the tale.

My van is just another room in the house for foul overspill. Don't leave a dry Starbucks cup in the drink holder of Vild's car, unless you want a courtesy attitude adjustment. But feel free to scrape the chicken feces off your boots on the van rug. Go right ahead. It's not like I use it for my fine upholstery business. Definitely throw your Go-Gurt tube anywhere you want. I'll explain to Mrs. Yiffniff about why her wing-back chair smells like an old vagina.

Definitely ask me what's for dinner. Because, you know what's for dinner? Whatever the fuck you're cooking for me. That's what. Because I've been told my grocery shopping is "too high on the pyramid" another way of saying too expensive. So now I go to the grocery store in a sprint, on my way to meeting the bus, and I am paralyzed. Tacos? Are taco shells too high on the pyramid? I may leap from this pyramid to my own exasperated death. You can all eat cereal for the rest of your life.

I am a very, very angry person. I weep. I rail. I swear. I am a shotgun of human emotion, spraying everyone I love with the buckshot of my rage. Then I fall asleep. Because peeing on everything is exhausting.

And before you all say it - I've had my hormones counted. All present and accounted for, thank you very much. I take my Zoloft, eat stool softeners, drink water, give to charity. I drink medicinally. No help. I get enough rest. I have meaningful work. I still want to break everything within reach.

I've had a hankering for puppy satay. Kitten mittens, made from actual kittens.

I'll punch a nun, I'll do it. If I see a kid's balloon fly from his wrist I'll just point and laugh, I will. I'm not holding the door for any more old people. They can fuck themselves too, with their wrinkles and frailty. I'm not laughing at any more knock-knock jokes, either. Just shut up.

That grill, rusting under the snow? You suck. I hate you.
Those rental properties? I've got a gas can and a match. Don't make me come over there.

Tonight I'm going to buy a rotisserie chicken and eat it in front of the chicken coop.

Woman on the Run

2012-01-15T15:51:00.011-05:00

Here's something that's a lot less effective when you live in the country: dramatically storming out.

In the city, after you've slammed the door, you step into the dark unknown where the metropolis swallows you whole. It's possible, in these circumstances, to make the person with whom you're at odds sweat a little, for whatever pernicious act they've inflicted on your poor tormented soul.

It doesn't work nearly so well if you have to put on your hat, scarf and boots, walk to the car, scrape the snow and ice off the windshield, warm it a little and back carefully out the driveway. It's less impactful, from a cinematic standpoint, if the person who's pushed you well beyond your limit, sees you get your side mirror tangled in the bushes on the way out.

The other weekend I felt the need to leave the house with statement. This WILL NOT STAND!

I managed to get out and down the driveway with some vigor, but the moment my tires hit pavement I was no longer a woman scorned, but rather a sad sack on a country lane with the defrost fan running high, trying to make out the road ahead through a tiny portal of defogged window glass. Nowhere to go.

If you storm out in the big city you can walk the darkened streets listening to the soundtrack of your personal noir film, titled, "You Did This to Me", starring you as the under-appreciated heroine. In the country you can only fume in a Giant Eagle parking lot listening to an NPR fund drive.

I try not to be overly dramatic too often, but now and again I like to remind my people that they are free to go fuck themselves.

Living out here it's hard for your walk-out to differentiate itself from the five-year-old-boy version. Vild, at that tender age, ran away from home into the family backyard, where thirty minutes later his parents found him "living" in a leaf pile. I definitely did not want my rebel yell to be muffled by lawn clippings. My statement needed to be bigger than the compost heap.

The most drama I could muster was a timely showing of Mission Impossible-the sequel. That, and a large popcorn. I wasn't exactly turning to prostitution to support my habit, but this act of defiance would take me from the house and away from those terrible people I call my family. It would prove, irrefutably, that I am a woman with mystery wrapped around me like a chiffon scarf in a Hitchcock movie. I can pull on my protective snow gear, go to a mediocre movie at a convenient showtime - and I might NOT pick up milk for breakfast on my way home! If only a Ford Freestar could peel out without tossing the booster seat against the door.

At the theater, I continued to blow the cool air of intrigue - buying a single ticket, standing in the stupidly inefficient line, anticipating the consumption of a giant snack.

The three 'visor' employees, whose job it is to ply me with over sized vats and vessels wearing open hats and aprons, do so with astonishing sloth. There is no fervor to match my inner tempest. The menu of nine expensive things takes them seven to ten minutes per customer to serve. Surely another sequel to the film I'm trying to see will be made by the time I get my bucket and trough. Never mind that they are pulling the wind from my melodramatic sails with the dead calm of their incompetence.

Keeping this low-productivity machine grinding along, is that other employee. Suit-man.
He's that guy who comes from the back to fill cups when the line begins to groan audibly with inefficiency. He's the older young guy, who has, as part of his boss-man paraphernalia, an earpiece. His Associates Degree in Hotel Management has earned him this badge and you will not take it away from him. Like the secret service, this middle-manager needs to be in constant radio contact with his subordinates, the Visor employees, even as he stands next to them scooping kernels into pails, within speaking range. He might, without notice, have to guide in the butter chopper, as it lands in the parking lot next to the dollar store. There is time sensitive data he needs to relay to the girl with the sweeper in theater 8 of this, Hell's Octiplex.

Back in the day, when I needed space, I'd smoke half a pack of cigs on a foggy beach in San Francisco. I damned the heedless souls who'd befouled me with my devil-may-care promise of early-onset lung cancer and heart disease. Or once, drunk and foul in Cabo San Lucas, I staggered the streets muttering, then wrote illegible letters on cocktail napkins in a bar owned by Sammy Hagar. Later that day, as I lay with my face on the cool tile of the bathroom floor, my un-boyfriend wouldn't even bring me a coke from the vending machine when I begged him. My performance as a woman unfettered was electrifying.

I ask suit-man to hold the butter while I willfully ignore the message from my kid who wants to know if I'm still going to make dinner and if not, can he have three cookies. I ignore the next one as well, the one inquiring if I might, on my way home, be able to stop and get some colored folders.

It's as if they don't know that I've quit them. That I am an island. That I am no man's servant.

As Tom Cruise climbs the outside glass of a skyscraper I text them in the dark: Yes, I'll bring the folders.

The older I am, the Older I Get

2011-12-30T18:39:00.001-05:00

I think everyone, even those who love the sound of their own voice - musicians, politicians, radio hosts - have had the terrifying experience of hearing their recorded voice played back to them unexpectedly. It's other-worldly and mostly awful. The disembodied howl you hear on that cassette from 1980, those phone messages, that video of your trip to cancun - that's all you baby, that's what you sound like to others. Imagine all the years you've subjected the universe, including the people you actually love, to the screeching torment of your vocal range. Yes, that squealing bellows of sound is your human voice and it's what you give off. We're not really meant to hear our own voices in that way. That realm of sounds should be outgoing only.

Seeing your own photo is like that too. There you are, living a moment so beautiful, glowing in conversation and laughter, when everything makes sense, feels right. You are funny, you are in charge of yourself and you are actively enjoying your time on earth. Your connection with souls, sunset, music and food is positively vibrating with silent harmony. Perfection.

The next day you are shown a photo of that merry moment and what you see staring back at you is something else entirely. You are a malformed, hunched succubus of fat and wrinkle, roll and flake. Your hair looks like you molded it from corn husks and balanced it atop your tiny, tiny cranium, itself a shrunken apple on stooped shoulders. The circles under your eyes are slices of plum, floating in the porridge of your skin, sprinkled with chicken lips.

You stare at that writhing, rippled, loose-skinned, chinless, belly blob, with its gelatinous tits sliding into its corpulent armpits and you think, my god, who is that person and why wont they get a better bra?

The Iphone has that reverse photo feature, so the user can hold it up and shoot their own photo rather than the person out front. Sometimes that little icon gets pressed by my giant ham thumb, when I am, say, crouched over, trying to take a photo of a chair, and suddenly there I am, by accident, all of a sudden, at the worst possible angle, in ruthless light, and I will literally gasp at my own image.

This all sounds like false modesty. There is some serious, sad, ugly out there - people in crowds and lines that documentary films could feature. I gratefully acknowledge that I'm not in that neighborhood. Ugliness-wise I'm not even ringing that doorbell and running. What I'm talking about here is the grotesque discord between the person you feel yourself to be and the person your iPhone reflects you to be. Or the cassette, for that matter, portrays you to be.

These things don't matter, of course. Our physical beauty? Feh! We are but fleshy vessels for the love we feel for others. We are vehicles in which to transport our passion, our vision our silly walks and our lungs, like duffel bags to be filled with laughter.

But, from time to time I am allowed to forget, to indulge in vanity - I'm looking fine today, I think. Look at me go, all fresh and foxy. Then the universe sends me a cosmic jpeg, and, cue balloon-fart noise - there I am again.

Age, too, is funny in this way. Our perfect sense of self is expertly bubble wrapped for all eternity, vacuum sealed in a brine of self-recognition. You feel the same at five, as you do at forty-five. But the box your identity comes in gets quite damaged in life's shipping process. What you do, or don't do, over the years leaves its crumpled marks. The scars from poor hammer aim, or hasty interaction with the toaster over, leave your hands looking like oven mitts for the grim reaper. That zit you picked in 1990, isn't looking much better in 2011.

How is it we can become so loose, while also becoming so brittle? Once, while laying on my side in bed I had to ask my little boy, to "Please, move over honey, you're kneeling on my nipple." That same day I realized I couldn't even touch my kneecaps, let alone toes.

I know everyone has their personal doubts, their individual barcode for shame and self-loathing. I'm not sure it's comforting or just plain sad. It would be nice to have evolved more gracefully, and more completely, into light, fluffy clouds of self-actualization, instead of being perpetually earthbound by the corporeal full-nelson that grabs you, gives you nuggies and stuffs you in the locker of your own disgrace.

Only a few months after I'd had Lily, when I was pretty newly patched from her c-section, when I had a deep, red, raised gash torn across my belly and while my breasts were hot, hard and prone to activate like pre-dawn sprinklers on a Bel-Air lawn. I decided I'd pose for the photographer Spencer Tunick, whose images involve hundreds, and in this case, thousands, of naked bodies, posed in public spaces. I like to do things I think I can't possibly do.

Being naked alone is the worst. Nude with three thousand people is sublime, and here's why: Everyone is beautiful, all are hideous. In that random sampling I saw exactly one youngish woman with a magazine-worthy body that was lovely in both directions. I wasn't there to judge, but I was there to observe. And what I observed was this: Great boobs, terrible ass. Gorgeous face, coarse back hair. Picturesque bottom, zit-peppered face. Soy latte skin, pattern baldness. Giant belly roll, shapely legs. Bra roll, flat stomach. Toned arms, stump legs. Scars, birth defects, tattoos, dye jobs gone Mr Hyde. Crossed eyes, gnarled toes, alarming asymmetry, limps. Mocha, Vanilla, Chocolate, Shitake mushroom, prune. The family album of humanity depicts a comforting sameness in its vast variety - we are desperately flawed and perfectly resplendent. We are malformed and mutant, statues of David, all.

So, when I become too focused on my outsides, I like to give myself a little pep talk. It goes something like this: Shut the fuck up.

And I do, mostly, sometimes.

Dear Colon

2011-12-26T19:24:00.006-05:00

Dear Colon,

I'm writing to you to say how sorry I am. There's no excuse for my bad behavior, and every reason to apologize. You've mostly been good to me, and I've been a bad friend.

I think we got off on the wrong foot ten years ago, back when I was newly married, that time when you just freaked out on me for no reason. One minute I'm at the mall doing a little shopping and the next, I'm at home, on the bathroom floor unable to move. You were having some kind of trouble receiving oxygen and by golly, you had a shit fit.

Interesting aside: As I lay on the floor, figuring out the best way to crawl to the phone, I wondered if anyone might get mad at me for calling an ambulance. Like, what if it turned out I just needed a fart and a beer? Was I saving my ambulance call for a time when I might be MORE incapacitated than face down on the floor, bleeding from my ass?

Anyway, colon, this isn't about what you've done, its about me, and what I've done to you. This is, after all, an apology.

People do weird things to their colons. Sometimes they put heroin in tiny balloons and store them in there for the journey. That's nothing. Me, I take about two-and-a-half pounds of roast beef , a half pound of ham, wrap it in sticky buns and casserole, roll it in about a quarter pound of butter, and some cheese, then powder it all with confectioners sugar and coffee grounds and I tamp it down into you like you're a child's Christmas stocking. I imagine you bursting with artichoke dip and yorkshire pudding in the same way those knit stockings are pointed with dollar store toys and Pez dispensers. Again, I'm sorry.

After that whole blood clot thing you did, we've never been right with each other. You've proved yourself to be a bit of a moody prick, I don't mind telling you, and as such, I've treated you like one. Take THAT! I say with a second helping of tenderloin. Nuts? Did you say you wanted nuts? By all means, have a dish of nuts over two days. I think you'll enjoy crushing those up.

You don't fight fair either. You just storm out of the room. No discussion. You decide that I will not have use of any part of my digestive system from now until...you feel like it, or I've repented with a monks diet of twigs and water. What kind of system is that? Who does that benefit? I mean, ultimately, you know I'll just have my doctor shove a camera up there on five feet of tubing and see what you're up to. So really, what's the point of the stalemate?

I want us to be friends, Colon, I really do. There's a lot of you to love and you have some fine qualities. I've seen pictures of you happy, and pictures of you sad, and I like seeing the happy ones with you all pink, looking like an upside down smiley face. The ones of you looking like a twisted piece of old shoe leather make me feel pity and shame.

So anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I am going to try to do better by you. I'm not going to be as reckless with your feelings. I'm going to remember you in my actions. A little warm water at night. Some fiber cereal in the morning - I know what you like. Some probiotics as a special treat. Don't worry, I've got your back. I promise I will not hold you open and choke you like a goose with its liver on the way to becoming a fine pate.

But in return, I'd appreciate a little consideration from you. No more of this stranglehold. No more turning over on yourself and storming off like a spoiled kid. There are going to be times when you are just going to have to take it like a man. I'm not giving up sushi, so you'll just have to take one for the team, far as that goes. And there will be overindulgences from time to time. You know me, you know what I'm capable of, what makes me happy. Don't deny me these pleasures outright.

I'm looking forward to improved relations in the new year.

All the best,

Jess

Torn Asunder

2011-10-08T19:02:00.008-04:00

The front room window, circa last week. Now occupied by millionaires.

During my parent's sadistic mid 70's divorce, there was a strange transient period where my dad lived in small apartments around New York. My mom stayed in the too big, un-renovated brownstone with too little money, and us kids. She "took in" a college girl, turning what was once my sister's and my domain into a slender little third floor apartment with a mini-kitchen. The woman walked through our house to come and go. We didn't care. My sister and I just shifted our act downstairs into what was once the master and second bedroom, while my mom moved into the vast downstairs "front room" that had a giant window that looked out onto 95th street. The room had formerly been my Dad's office.

In that room our dad had lectured my sister and me about the use of the calculator. We were not to use it, without express permission and supervision, because it cost a hundred dollars and it added numbers together, you see. But we loved the clicking chunk of those buttons and the (were they digital?) red numbers it displayed.

Later, Mom slept on a single bed in the corner next to built-in bookshelves, sort of tucked in the back corner of this huge, bright, cold room. I now think living small in a large space is one of the most depressing things a person can do. All one can do is hide in plain site. If it had been me, I'd have erected a tent in that room, and slept in that.

Anyway, my Dad was out of the house.

Under the deafening screech of my parent's split, there was this short-lived, quiet and transient reality my dad and I tenderly occupied in short spurts - times when I spent weekend nights at his various divorced-guy apartments. This was an unhappy time, writ large.

But buried in there, between the lurid and humiliating rages he launched against sales-girls in the Bloomingdale's junior department, and shit-fits turned against camp councilors and difficult packaging, I got to watch, with tender awe, as he worked a can opener around a can of tuna and accompanying Tomato soup for our lunch, a Tab for each of us.

I'd never seen him cook a single thing, ever, in my entire childhood. So I think he may have been digging into some college sense-memory, trolling the canned goods isle of Gristedes.

His apartments were always tidy, with a manly minimalist style. He was a bit of a metro-sexual, by today's standards, with his Mason Pearson bristle hairbrush and his shaving cake in a wooden bowl that he swirled across his face with a stubby, soft, round paintbrush.

He had bookshelves bought from Conrans, medal frames with glass shelves, on which he kept some select doodads I always found amusing. Wind-up toys and paperweights, small boxes and maybe an ashtray, or five. He had coffee table books, couches, and nifty cork-wrapped bedside lights, on articulated arms.

For fun we did things around the city, things I now imagine he had to think hard to come up with - ways that I might be amused by his bachelorhood, rather than terrified by it. He had many movie posters, and a couple of times we went to one of those now extinct u-frame it places, and picked out colored, beveled woods, which he paid for by the linear inch. We'd nail them together on the carpeted table tops with the tools they provided, laying the glass in on top of diamond shaped metal bits we'd carefully hammered into the wood. I always got to Windex the glass with newspaper, which felt important and a little dangerous actually, holding the big piece of glass with his help, wiping it clean.

Because he's the film guy, reviewing and making documentaries his entire career, there was almost always an old film in some director's oeuvre that we had to screen together.
This was pre-Beta Max even. So he borrowed or rented a film projector on a rolling cart. I'd pull the telescopic screen with tripod legs from the front closet. I'd tilt the green cylinder horizontally and pull the white scrim from inside it, hooking it to a metal loop at the top.

Together we'd watch old movies; Sullivan's Travels, The Third Man, The Philadelphia Story. He taught me how to thread that machine, a thing I loved, looping the film before snapping the lens shut, sliding it through all the slots and over sprockets in correct and precise order before winding it over the back reel and giving it a little spin to gather the header. He might even have some Jiffy Pop, and we'd shake it over the electric burner until the silver dome helixed out from its center, filling with hot buttery air first and then popcorn. More Tab.

He'd pull out the couch in the living room (in that apartment) and we'd together put the sheets on, sliding a pillow into a special single case he pulled from his closet. After tucking me in he'd go back to his room, reading and smoking into the late hours, long after I'd fallen asleep. I might have to pee, and I have a strong memory of him sitting up in his pajamas, half-glasses on, smoke curling up from his bedside ashtray.

A couple of times we went to the bubbled indoor tennis dome - a sort of Jiffy Pop container for tennis enthusiasts. We'd whack a ball around with wooden rackets, dad always torturing my nine year old back hand, with his lefty forehand. Then we'd go eat somewhere. Often as not, dad would take the opportunity to mine for and curse the events of my mother's life. He berated her horribly, and made me feel nauseous under the weight of my loyalties and betrayals, which were of course exclusively theirs. These were dark and mysterious times.

Soon enough my mom hooked up in a serious way with a man I grew to love very much, and after putting my sister in boarding school, the three of us, Mom, David and I, moved to Santa Fe New Mexico, which I know devastated my father and ultimately us, until we moved again, this time to Los Angeles, another doomed year for me, until the following one, when I too went to boarding school and thrived.

It would be twenty years before I would live in the same city as my dad again. By then so many years had shot through the goose-ass of life, so much wreckage and hurt, so many wrong moves and bad choices by everyone around me, that I'd become independent of the grown-ups in my life. I was an adult by the age of thirteen, and an old soul by my twenties. Dad became more stooped and internalized, and I was no longer a child he could amuse easily on a rainy Saturday.

I think back on those days, wading frightened in the dark waters of my parent's adult humiliation and defeat, through their bitterness and regret, and I find kernels of memory that taste sweet on the tongue. Something in there seems rare and momentary, a suspended dream of a time where buoyed by sadness, my dad and I bobbed along on a raft of tissue paper that too quickly dissolved under us.

Going to the Dogs, by Way of Pets

2011-09-23T08:10:00.012-04:00

The pressure to get a dog is exquisite. There are a lot of people in this house who want a dog, while team 'no dog' has only one member.

It's me, the giant asshole. The huge, soul-snuffing, puppy-eating, cat-strangling, hamster-drowning, goldfish-slaughtering, poop-stain on the cosmic undies of the universe animal hater. This is how I'm portrayed in the family album.

People pile on.
"How can you NOT have a dog, living on five acres?"( You fuckwad.)
"Your kids are the perfect age for a dog" (Don't you love them?)
"It'll teach them to be compassionate and responsible" (Because they're not.)
"Dog's are so great." (You are Hitler)

We had one hamster who threw herself to a rigid death behind the dresser. I plucked her corpse, gingerly, from behind the drawers with salad tongs and told a loving story of how she had escaped to a better life in the fields.

Our second hamster lived in giant fish tank, pimped to look like the Playboy mansion, with grotto, exercise equipment, and a rotating heart-shaped bed made of pine shavings. Every week or so I would heft the glass enclosure downstairs, remove the divine Miss Bitter to a salad bowl, lift out her urine soaked furnishings and commence the room service and bed turn down that she so richly deserved. I bleached and rinsed her igloo domicile. I emptied and refreshed her on-demand drinking bottle. I tipped the twenty-five pounds of glass into our kitchen sink and scrubbed the sides with a scratchy sponge. I towel dried the insides to limit its humectant properties. I sprinkled a fluffy layer of fresh shavings and re-decorated her habitat to stimulate and amuse her. I bought her a car - a sphere of clear plastic that she could ram into walls and park in corners. When she was forgotten, I would take her out and let her run around in my shirt sleeves. I once told my therapist that I worried late at night that I wasn't providing our rodent a rich enough life.

We have two fish left, from the eight we've bought over the years. The two beta's, who share a divided tank on Lily's dresser, are hanging in. They were asked for and delivered within the hour, by the children's father, who shall remain nameless.

Fish, when crammed into an inadequate living space and overfed, are fetid, rancid creatures. I learned this again recently when I thought our daughter's vagina was rotting, but discovered it was only the cloudy fish tank wafting out an other-worldly odor of putrification and death.

Using a soup ladle, as I have many times before, I scooped puke-fish one into a coffee cup and covered her with fresh water. Gag-fish two got his own measuring cup. Holding my breath, I poured the feculent, malodorous, swamp mung down the garbage disposal. The miasma filled the kitchen and discharged into the living room. I have sniffed some pretty terrible things in my day - food stuffs, forgotten wet things, flood damage, sewage, homeless people, wounds - but this is the worst of them. No hyperbole. The worst smell I've known. It's like I imagine other smelly times in history - plague-rotted corpse piles, the underclothes of dueling knights after weeks afield, the signing of The Declaration of Independence; all those hairy men in summer-weight woolens, trapped in an airless room in the July Philadelphia heat. This is why I don't want a dog. Because of the Declaration of Independence.

When I went to a friend's house for the weekend, I came home to six fluffy chicks, pooping in a box under a heat lamp in our guest room. Tiny, sweet things with little peeps, small as a child's balled up sock. A joy. Until, like human babies, their poops turn to shit. Smelly, stinky shit. And they started kicking their sawdust all over my work space. A fine mist of sawdust filled the air, and landed like talc on everything in the room. Before long they outgrew the smelly box that once held my winter clothes, now a pile on the basement floor, and we moved them to the garage, where they continued to grow and crap while walking in an enormous old furnace box made of steel. Every few days I would climb into the clanging box and rake out their space, shoveling their crumbled, dry feces that once leaked wet from their chicken anuses, into a wagon and roll it into the woods. I'd lay down more sawdust, change their water, refill the crumbles, talk to them in dulcet tones.

Soon enough we converted the children's play structure into a coop by removing the slide and swings and flattening the clubhouse into a roost. Vildy and I moved the thing with muscle power only, by walking it, this end, that end, over to a shady spot so as to not prematurely fry the chicken.

They are amusing little pets, chickens. They lay eggs, for one thing, so they are like living slot machines - you pump in about five-hundred dollars in quarters and you get the thrill of a two-dollar jackpot every couple of days. Plus, they are genuinely sweet and curious creatures who act out enjoyable little chicken behaviors, fluffing, pecking, flapping, clucking, while digging forever in the straw and comically kicking it up onto each other's head. But they are profluent shitters, caking their hen house with a mortar of turd that needs to be scraped off with a hoe. Enter me, a hoe, in pajamas and wellies.

I climb into their disgusting little abode, sometimes with the willing help of my girl, often not, armed with my scraper, rake, snow shovel and steely resolve. I chisel their grime off the floorboards. I hose off the broom handle perch. I disassemble the feeder and waterer so I can replenish. I drag the cubic meter of straw or wood chips from the man-barn so I can bed them in clean fodder. I even hooked up a fan, with a long extension cord from the house, to better air out and dry their penthouse apartment. Once upon a time I had only to buy a carton of eggs.

Our cat, Ella, is sleeping next to me as I write this. She is my only friend. She understands my need for personal space, but also my desperate longing for affection. She provides both. She has the courtesy to poop outside, in the woods somewhere, and bury it in the pine needles. She is immaculate in a way I only wish my children would be, cleaning behind her ears with a paw and licking her own butt clean. She requires of me only the occasional lap, and my dexterous ability to pull back the tab on her dinner once a day. She too does not want a dog. We've talked about it.

My husband says a dog will keep the raccoons away. A compelling prospect, considering that I am the ONLY person who wakes up when the raccoons sneak into the kitchen through the cat door to throw our garbage all over the room. I am the only person who goes downstairs in her undies to hiss the raccoon out of the house and then clean the giant steaming man-sized raccoon shit pile off the counter. I am the one who tapes the cutting board over the cat door with duct tape at four in the morning and redeposits the coffee grounds and egg shells into the trash.

In closing, I will relay this impossible story: an OCD friend of a friend, who doesn't like people to disrupt the neat lines in the carpet made by the vacuum cleaner, got a dog. She dries the dog's paws with a towel every time he enters the house and also, I'm not making this up, wipes his asshole with Windex.

Who's the animal lover here? The one who promises never to squeegee a pet's ass with window cleaner, or the person who gets a dog?

Pig Pen

2011-08-25T21:32:00.002-04:00

Was it Oprah who said, "Depression is rage turned inward." Or was she just the person who slapped a trademark on the expression and made 40 billion dollars in twenty minutes? I don't remember, but its a good description. I'm pissed at everything right now.

I'll start big.

It makes me crazy that all this apocalyptic weather is taking place all over the planet and its all our fault, and we can't stop ourselves. Even if we’re Ed Begley, Jr., we're still fucking it up just by being here. As humans, we are the Pig Pen character from Charley Brown. Only instead of, or rather in addition to, stink waves wafting from our comb overs, we also have a fog of noxious nerve gas curling merrily from our footsteps. We're are, individually, pollution cannons, and collectively, the death star.

It seems all the oceans are now made primarily of discarded plastic, which we then eat.

Sickened by the effects of swimming in and digesting of, a used bottle of Nair, we consume unprecedented numbers of pharmaceuticals in the form of anti-depressants, birth control pills, and cholesterol medication, which we then urinate back into the ocean, so we can better eat it in the form of expensive mollusks who no longer have erectile dysfunction, or zits.

I hate it that pretty soon there is going to be one psychotic polar bear sitting on an ice cube in the middle of Bermuda, probably in my own lifetime.

I hate it that we are totally wasting another good president. Poor fucking Obama. Is that the worst job ever? I'm sorry, man. That's our fault too. We were so not ready for your kind of presidency. We handed you this teetering house of Schlitz cans, built so skillfully over decades of hard, hard drinking and we just knocked you into it and said, "Go", say some nice things and make us feel better about the clear surplus of douche-baggery and the deficit of resources for humanity. And you showed up, all sparkly, with that poetry and verve and we just wanted it so badly, the eloquence, the clear reasoning. It was like a salve to our poor brush cut souls, feet blistered by cowboy boots, our faces shot into by friends. It was awful back then. I feel terrible about how we've fucked Obama. I'm so, so, sorry buddy.

I hate it that from a birds-eye view it seems like four old guys went in and hacked all the zeros off our bank accounts and had them direct-deposited into their own. How did that happen? I've had economics explained to me so eloquently by NPR, but even after Planet Money enlightenment I'm still asking, Yeah, but how did that happen?

And then the earthquakes buried in a hundred feet of water, followed by shooting and looting and unmanned drones.

It's like the Earth is a giant Etch-a-sketch, and its just trying to shake enough to wipe itself clean. A massive fire here, a huge wave maybe, a little famine, a corpse in the well-water, some radiation, the deaths of millions. Wave good-bye to the nice people, she smiles.

So I've been feeling a little depressed lately. Somewhat doomed. Though mostly I've been having a jolly time of it. I surround myself with nice people and good food, and noise canceling headphones, which I can't say enough kind words about. I try to breath through the brutal things like they are contractions; a temporary agony through which something marvelous will be born. Sometimes I just sweat while crying into my window fan.

I'm not negative; I'm just completely overwhelmed. I took my kids to the zoo where some of the coolest animals I'll never see again, were represented geographically by a tiny red dot, the size of a hypodermic prick, on a far away continent. I look into their weird nocturnal eyes. I see you, little fella, I see you there. I wave good-bye.

I don’t know what else to do but ask quietly, and with respect:
Be more gentle, friends, be small. Contain thy tempest.

Fizz for Thought

2011-08-14T15:52:00.007-04:00

Louis wakes up every morning and the first thing he asks is, "Can I watch a movie on your IPhone?" To which I might reply, "and good morning to you, sweet Lou." Then he'll remember that there are other good things on earth, like BREAKFAST! and we're off to the races.

Lou loves to play almost anything, and if you entice him, he'll go anywhere or do anything with you, but if he's not entertained, either by his sister or his parents, or anyone else who'll have him, he'll revert back to screens, which is what we first world mothers call them now.

Combine this passion with his absolute loyalty to sweet foods, and we have the potential for some serious mushroom growing. We, as his parents, do our ever lovin' best to keep the boy moving both physically and neurologically, but it's a negotiation - sometimes we end up with the entire western territory for five dollars, and sometimes we get a vacation condo with a moldy shower stall and bed bugs - you just never know with boys.

So today, after shutting him down from watching a third movie or Avatar episode or whatever, he turns to me and asks if he can have a ginger ale. He already knows he can't have a ginger ale. He can have soda at grown up parties, but that's about it, maybe a couple sips of mine if he's being a sweetheart. But he's asking me for ginger ale after shape-shifting into the form of the sofa for more that two hours. So, instead of again saying, "No Lou, no soda." I take his hands in mine and sit next to him on our bench.

Looking him the eyes I say, "Here's my worry about you, Lou. I worry that you are watching too much TV and eating a bunch of crap and that you'll turn into a lazy fat person if you do that for too long. You're thin and energetic now, but these habits will turn on you without warning, and then suddenly you're a sad, lethargic, dull person."

He's looking me right in the eyes and I can feel his attention, he's hearing me, I'm really doing great. I ride the wave and continue, "You need to find things that are of interest to you when you're on your own, other than screens. There's drawing and reading, listening to music, dancing, fort building, coloring, toys..."

I've still got him. He's considering these things. I am the greatest parent on earth! My feet are not touching the ground, so buyant is my ego. "And furthermore Lou, we all love hanging out with you, so join in, be with us." He's nodding "Ok, mama, I will." He feels so loved, I'm feeling so open and radiant.

Then he pauses and says, "Mom, I do have one question."

"Ask it, babes."

"One word, yes or no, can I have a ginger ale?"

I'll Swear On A Stack of Holy Bibles

2011-07-17T16:25:00.014-04:00

I swear like a whore being thrown from an airplane.

It's always come naturally to me. My Dad always cursed around us. I don't remember a time, ever, when language was curtailed to protect our young ears.

With my Dad, many sentences begin with "God damn it..." and end with "...this fucking thing!" For example, "God Damn it, these gardeners with their leaf blowers, I'd like to strangle the people who make these FUCKING things!" This same sentence construction can be altered for the holidays, "God damn fucking Christmas tree lights, always tangled, always have to buy them new, these fucking things." Merry Christmas.

Or, for a younger audience, upon assembling the birthday toy, "These directions are bullshit, honey, I mean it, just bullshit. It's all just CHICKEN SHIT." I'd wander away to play with something already assembled, something slightly less chicken-shitty.

I remember going to sleep away camp when I was eight, where I shared a bunk with a whiny, bossy, know-it-all, tattle-tale named Diane. She was a whistle blower of the worst kind. You'd be passing out equal portions of smuggled contraband, like Trident, or M&M's and she'd rat you out with her mouth still full. So I called her a fucking-idiot-tattle-tale-shithead. Later that night I was so homesick I wet my bed.

I've always found swearing to be delightful and descriptive and vaguely soothing. Maybe because the chances were good, considering there were changing tables to be assembled and curtain rods to be hung, my dad was swearing to me in the womb. I'm sure indelicate language was daily counterpoint to my mother's own life-giving heartbeat as I prepared to beat my path into the light and noise.

I was recently talking to one of my husband's oldest friends. From everything I've witnessed this man is a flawless dad. Vild admits, he's really ruining it for the rest of us because this sweet man cooks and cleans and says nice things to his wife. He's genuine and helpful and what's worse, he clearly enjoys being a father. I've never once seen him run away to hide from his kids or shirk a parental duty. I mention him because he and I were talking abstractly about swearing and he said he never swears in front of his kids, to which I exclaimed, "You're shitting me!" Kids everywhere.

He comforted me by saying, "Yes, but you don't drop the F-bomb." And I stared at my feet and mumbled, "Naaaahh, I don't do that." But of course I do. I have done. I will do. This may seem like splitting a cunt hair, but I would never say it directed at my children. I would never ever say, "Look you little fuckers, clean up your rooms!" But if I stub my ankle bone on that pointed metal bed frame again, I will always scream, "God Fucking DAMN it, mother-fucking fuck fuck!!!" and I don't feel too bad about it. I feel its the least my ankle deserves under the circumstances.

This past year I made a resolution to curb the profanity. I did so only because my kids were rolling their eyes and turning my name into a six beat word. Maaaaahhhhhm! So I decided to make a swear jar. Many have been called. The fee was a quarter for the S-word and fifty cents for the F-bomb. My kids LOVED the idea because I told them they'd get half the money and the other half we'd give to charity. I figured it would take about ten bucks to kick the habit. It started out slowly, I was really considering my words. Something would slip and I'd ashamedly get out my purse. It was good. The system was making me more aware.

Pretty soon there was close to fifteen thousand dollars in the jar. I'd wake up in the morning and if I'd had a bad sleep, or I just felt a bad day looming, I'd throw a fiver in before I'd even had coffee.

My plan backfired.

My kiddos often come to me to ask about the profanity of certain words. "Mom, is crap a bad word?" And to my ear, crap is a really good word. I can think of no better word to describe, for example, the contents of Bed, Bath and Beyond. Also, it sounds kind of mild and all right to me. Crap. Aw crap. That thing that broke right out of the package is craptastic. "Mom, is Jesus a bad word?" My answer: You can't say Jesus, because I don't understand the rules surrounding Jesus.

Here's where it gets really complicated. "Mom, can I say Friggin'?"

Ok, so 'friggin' and frickin' and freakin' are words invented by a team of fakers trying not to get busted for saying 'fucking', am I right? So its a place holder. They say, friggin' terrorists, blah blah blah (because they're church goers and their ass-grabbing priest might object). But we all know what they're not saying, don't we? These kinds of things get all metaphysical on my ass. What IS language? If you substitute cho-chi for vagina, are we not all still imagining your fur wallet? Honestly, If I say friggin' in front of the kindergarten class, is that ok? Nice to freakin' meetchya Mr. President? Am I still good? Can my kids say frickin' in front of other people's kids? Because they really wont be fooling anyone when they proclaim that putting on their friggin' shoes is a total pain in the tushie. So aren't all these rules arbitrary and dynamic?

I don't hold back on language of any kind. I don't dumb down my vocabulary for them. If I mean languid, I don't say pooped. If I want them to be exemplary, I don't ask them to be good doobies. No, they don't always know what I'm talking about. Sometimes I have to break it down. Flaccid, honey, means lacking firmness.

I don't want to hear my kids say fuck. I really don't. And so far they haven't. I think mostly because I've worn the sheen off the poor word. The other reason I don't want them to say it, though, is because I don't feel like they've yet learned the true grace and heft of language. Their vocabulary is still relatively small, their reading skills are yet developing. They don't really get it about how deftly words can be used to hurt, to humble or to exalt. I think when they do, when they can impress me with the use of words not found in the slang dictionary, then I wont really mind if they toss a few thousand fucks my way.

A Pat On The Back

2011-07-01T23:44:00.007-04:00

I've been thinking a lot about my old friend, Pat. He's that person, the one I've known the longest on this planet. We were zygotes together. Our mothers stood belly to belly in a gated park on the Upper East Side, while their daughters, my sister, and Patrick's sister, played. I imagine us as two tiny cartoon fetuses waving to each other through transparent belly domes. I liked him even before he was born.

Later, and he doesn't like me to mention this, a fact he'll deny, we took baths together as tiny kids. Sorry buddy.

Let me say this before anything else, Pat is now Patrick. He's maybe 6'3". He's got perfect teeth. He's a handsome, successful Ivy league graduate and owner of his own film company - that and whatever else he is, good and bad. But when I knew him, he was a chubby kid with buck teeth called Pat. Both our Dads worked for magazines. His for People, mine for Time. We were wrought from the same general genetic material. Both our moms were redheads. We had older sisters the same age. We both went to Dalton. We were both largely unsupervised by adults who, when they were around, were in their studies, or off somewhere having "grown-up hour", a euphemism for martinis. Pat and I were together and on the prowl.

Our primary prey, the focus of our plotting and sneak attacks, were our older sisters who, enough of the time, were in the next room. They "babysat" for us, by which I mean they spent the afternoon screeching, "GET OUT OF MY ROOM!!!!" We were uniformly hated by them. As proof of this, I once read my 10 year old sister's secret journal which had a chart of the important people in her life. Gillian was represented by a drawing of a rose, Gus, Pat's sister, was a daisy, and I was a line drawing of a garbage can, out of which green stink waves curled.

Pat and I were undaunted by their loathing. In fact, unrelenting- we taunted them, spied on them, eavesdropped, threw things and sabotaged them until we got bored. Then we set off into the rich unknown of the city for giant salted pretzels, Italian ices, and pizza.

We spent approximately four million hours playing at each others house. We walked the ten blocks or so to school together, carrying violin cases, or clarinet cases or school projects, then back again at the end of the day with heavy book bags. At recess, because the school had no outside space, they put up police barricades at either end of the block to stop traffic and we played between the parked cars. At dismissal time, we stopped at the Sabrett cart that parked outside our school (to get some of that upper east side allowance action - at that time mine was calculated by the cost of a daily pretzel, which was .25 cents or an Italian ice, which was .50).

We shucked and jived to and from school. The sidewalks swelled with our absurd and joyous repertoire of silly walks and slapstick. Pat was a person who would gladly do absolutely anything to make me laugh. He would walk into walls. He tripped over stuff, and let things hang from his face. He stuck things to his forehead. He could hide, sneak, pester and do voices. Not surprisingly, these are now the exact qualities I seek in my adult friendships.

We lived around the corner from one another which made the flow from his house to mine seamless. We had keys and divorced parents. We came and went, often together. We cavorted to Gimbel's department store- their 70's floor plan included a top floor devoted to pet supplies - for hamster bedding. To Azuma for whoopee cushions or posters or Chinese finger traps. We had school-issue public bus passes which enabled transport, free of charge, to movies, farther reaching friend's houses, and deeper city adventures.

Years later, he went to a fancy boarding school of one kind, I went to a fancy boarding school of another. His had blazers and tradition. Mine had moccasins, roach clip earrings and capes. But that distance didn't stop us from together attending his prom, on acid, I in a fringed flapper dress, he in a suit. We had a mind bendingly fun afternoon and evening, again prowling around, this time illicitly, but no less hilariously. We were too enlightened to attend the dinner, so we just walked around campus looking like what we were, old friends, while everyone else, with their imported dates, stood awkwardly holding elbows, dancing like white people.

I like to tell my daughter stories about Pat. She loves the idea of a best-friend boy. Her two best friends are boys, brothers, but they moved away and this has diminished her friend selection to an array of females. There's not a lot of cross-gender pollination in her group and its a bummer for her.

She's got what I had, a desire for loony play based on cockamamerie, so she likes to hear how Patrick would hit all the elevator buttons and pretend he hadn't as we stopped at every floor as if this was just how elevators worked. She likes the stories of how we walked around Manhattan, kicking at each others heels to knock the others feet out from under them. She likes hearing about Halloween, when we'd go to one apartment building, start at the top and hit every apartment on the way down in a helix of sugar-seeking, digging our hands into crystal bowls of pennies for UNICEF. She likes that we were both slightly below in station, compared to the celebrity children and heirs. She likes that we were free to move about in the world, with bus passes and allowance. It's a world she can only fantasize about, as I drive her to her friend's house strapped into our grimy van, the day formulated by adults, schedules, availability and supervision. She asked me recently if she could collect the mail and I had to think hard about the risks of her crossing our road to collect it. What the hell has happened to me?

I'm waiting for her to have that one best bud that fills her night sky with the constellation of possibilities. The one who loves her beyond all others, who will walk into a door to hear the tinkling of her laughter. The one who will squeeze mushed food between their fingers for her, armpit fart the national anthem and coat their teeth in chocolate sauce to better speak of serious matters.

I haven't talked to Pat in a few years now, but I know when I do, it will be because he calls me pretending to be a charity promoting better drinking water for parakeets.

Big Mac Attack

2011-05-14T20:15:00.007-04:00

Hello, I'm a Mac.

Oh sure, I bought into the hype. PC was John Hodgman. Mac was that, Drew Barrymore's boyfriend, guy. But, as it turns out, I am deeply in love with John Hodgman, and this whole Mac relationship is not working out for me.

White machine, I thought I loved you. When you lit right up and sent me skipping along holding hands with your garage band and your nifty little icons, we were a charming couple. You drew me to you like a cute pair of t-strapped mary-janes, while I was the aged hag who thought she could look good in you. Never mind that I will wear heels perhaps twice more in my life. I have, maybe, one more wedding to attend (I'm talking to you, Zack) and maybe one sexy party somewhere, hosted by people I have not yet met. Other than that, I'm wearing Bjorn, or something with arch support.

So PC, you're the man for me. For one thing, I like it that I know where you've put my files, neatly placed in folders, like slippers, that I understand and that are right there for me, under the bed. You don't hide them down some one-way hall of mirrors in which every reflection of me is fat and unwieldy. No, I like the way you give it to me straight PC, just the way I like it, missionary style.

I enjoyed you, Photo Booth, but really, how many pictures can you take of yourself, sitting in front of your computer? Good hair days, bad hair days, its still just you, looking back at you, while you look back...at you.

I was glamored by all the graphic-y, flier, printed media possibilities, but I've never used any of it, not really. If I were nine, I'd make myself some menus and pass them out to my family. Ditto for garage band; I'd make myself a garage band and record it on garage band.

The cocksuckery of Itunes I can get on my PC. So, Mac, I'm getting a PC to go down on me.

Mac, you've been a good lay. I enjoyed our drunken, groping times together, me trying to get you to love me, while really you just had your eye on that slut, the IPAD. You took my $1499 and we had a few high nights together, but then you OD'd and I had to say goodbye to all my memory. You just left me that note with the sad little hard drive face on it. Nothing more.

Like all relationships we got back together one more time. I nursed you, and suppressing my anger and disillusionment, I gave you a new hard drive. We limped once more around the sun.

Sadly, your habits are ones I can't live with. You talk fast, but you walk slow. You eat too much and then you purge. You don't play nicely with my other electronics.

We have to say good-bye. PC has made me a cheaper, more boring offer I can't refuse, and its a long term commitment. Don't worry, I'll still be wearing my Mary-Janes for you, my little Iphone minx, but I know John Hodgman wont mind.

Pine Tree Man

2011-04-14T19:33:00.004-04:00

Do you know about Pine Tree Man?

A Russian man had chest pain and trouble breathing. Initial x-rays indicated a massive tumor. They went in, socialist medicine style, with a hammer and sickle, to find that the giant cancer was in fact a small pine tree growing inside him. He had, in the course of being Russian, inhaled a pine cone spore, and it had taken root in the pink, moist, soft, tissue of his chest.

You go ahead and throw up. I'll wait for you here.

This story has taken root in my consciousness in a way that I can only describe as a non-deciduous manner.

No one likes to hear a story that involves details about things growing inside the human flesh. But dammit if we don't all like to tell them. Insects and their egg sacks planted in your calf muscle. You're welcome.

Oh, and Alien. Best growing-inside-your-body sick-out ever.

But there is something about Pine Tree Man that nails me in the lung butter like no other. Maybe because the first picture I saw of his coniferous invader, it was a full-color image with the sprouted spurs of the pine bud laying like a Tiffany tennis bracelet on the glistening mucus of his pink, meaty insides. He was the human jewel box for an errant seed pod. Oh, barf-nugget of my soul, how you captivate me. How you hold me prisoner.

How petri-dish perfect is the human body that it can actually replicate the deep dark earth of the forest floor? Your lung lining standing in for the dark hummus of things dying. Precious gack-ball of death, just hold me.

Meanwhile, outside, Russian man is thinking, I've swallowed a tree. I am no longer a human, I am an environment. I felt that way when I was pregnant. Like I was a giant oxygen tent for a cluster of cells I would later identify as my family. It doesn't get more Alien than that. But at least, for me, it ended in good-smelling baby skin and soft footie pajamas. This guy, sadly wouldn't produce anything but bloody sputum and a tiny, mutant Christmas tree, suitable, and to scale, for lab rats. Nostrovia.

Yet, the joy. The joy of not thinking, but knowing, you are going to die from this hideous disease, and instead you find that you are the opposite of death, you are life itself. A few antibiotics and some cough syrup later and he's back in the glory of his Russian-ness. Laying low around the spores, I imagine, and thanking his lucky vodka drinks, that he will now die only of ennui and early onset liver-disease.

I Don't Know What to Believe

2011-03-31T19:03:00.009-04:00

I've been to church three times in my life. As a ring bearer in my parent's friend's wedding when I was five. Palm Sunday with Patrick Ewald when I was, maybe, 9? Once for an Armenian wedding, sometime in 1998.

We are not religious folk. Solipsism runs big in my family, for one thing, so I think the idea of any one member seeing the world as having a force more interesting than their own belly lint is highly unlikely. Also, they are bourgeois lefties. So, organized religion is out of the question from an intellectual standpoint.

Ohio, though, is God-ish. I have delightful friends who are churchy. Some because they were raised that way, and it's a habit, and others who believe, I presume, in the presence of God. Bully for all of them. Truly.

Somewhere between those two extremes is a whole lot of fudgey goo. I live in there somewhere.
I don't believe in God, but I think atheists can be kind of a downer. I believe there are powerful forces at work that I don't understand and I am highly tuned to miraculous moments. But I'm likely to assign those miracles scientific benefit-of-the-doubt.

The universe, of course, has these stunning, transcendent moments too. Like when you are sitting on lawn chairs, discussing the finer truths with your best friend, and a massive flock of small-winged, migrating birds flies overhead - a flock so large that it casts a shadow across the grass and causes a small current of air to blow down on your hair. The moment is the finest amalgam of science and nature, but let's face it, it's also fucking Godly. So who am I to say?

Sometimes its awkward. Especially raising kids. What to say to kids about any of this? To say you don't believe in God is like denying there is a Santa Claus. It's like you are discounting the existence of magic. I do believe in magic. Magic and puppets.

The universe, you see, is magic. Like when you hear your friend's writing about grief, written and spoken with that most accessible and nimble kind of language, the kind that cuts you down the center like a laser, so clean, that you hardly know you're bleeding out and being cauterized all at once. The universe serves up these beautifully plated moments.

When I read about Anne Lamott's God, I am a believer. Her God seems like someone I'd want to hang out with. A guy who totally gets it all, has that omnipotent humor -is in fact the funniest person in the universe -and who loves you no matter how big a fuck up you are or think you are. I could believe in that guy.

Also, and this is a minor point, Love is God. Not the other way around. That's why I'm doubty and skeptical.

Also, I believe in manners. Doing a kindness. I think being truly open and kind is its own religion and can change the world.

I believe laughter cures by shining warm light into your dark places. Laughing airs you out and removes fungus.

I believe in loyalty. You, all of these people, I'm with them. These are the people on my life raft. You're all coming with me.

What happens when you die? You live in all the good memories people have of you while your body becomes dark soil in which other, smaller things, grow. I'm totally good with that. I think its perfect and beautiful. Who am I to complain?

As for God, I wish them well.

Hot Waddle

2011-03-07T18:30:00.006-05:00

With all the worker's rights stuff going on, and the bashing of teachers - what with their "part time" work - I would like to relay this story of a morning I spent in the classroom.

I volunteered, around Thanksgiving a few years ago, for Kindergarten "specials" day; a day when the room was divided into "stations" ,with three parent hosts managing a table for three disciplines. There were word things at one table, number things at another and art.

"I'll take Art!" I elbow in, knocking the other parents to the carpet. Because its in my nature to avoid anything too hard, and because the art table seems the most laid back - it always has been, and I've been choosing it my entire life - and the place where the kids would be most relaxed, the one I thought would be the most like play.

We were to make paper-bag turkey centerpieces. Yes! I love those damn turkeys; sweet things.

The kids had to rotate through all three stations during the hour long session, a little word sorting over here, some math facts over there, and sack fowl. No problem.

So we're off, and my first group sits down at the table. I figure this premier group really are my people, because, like me, they chose the art table first.

"ok, so, first take your bag, a sheet of xeroxed feathers, a beak, feet and a waddle."

Boy number one goes nuts over the word, waddle. I don't blame him. What's not to love? But then he gets a little hysterical over the word, falling out of his chair, laughing really much too loud. Two girls begin coloring their four turkey feathers right away, crayoning with an unsettling precision and intensity. Another child looks sort of dazed and unsure and another just gripped her bag with white knuckles.

"Ok guys, so now you need to crumple up some newspaper, like this, and stuff your bag." Four sets of hands start grabbing newspaper off the pile and crumpling. Immediately one bag rips from the force and velocity of the stuffing. I hand out a new bag. Waddle boy is just now pulling his shit together and noticing the project in front of him. The sisters Gauguin have already stapled their bags and are gluing feathers to the bag's ass. One other boy has the bag on his head.

This is taking quite a bit of time. Some of these kids can barely hold a scissors, let alone master the symmetry and hand strength required to pile staples through a tri-fold of lunch bag. Time is slipping away. Math group one is finishing at their table and they are getting restless. Waddle boy has colored one feather.

My voice gets a little pinched as I try to keep the kids on task. "Marni, your turkey looks great, take it into the hall to dry. Larry, don't put the feathers in your mouth. Glue, Derek, you need to start gluing! Esther, the waddle goes on the front - color, people, COLOR!

Is it warm in here? Really is it like incredibly, oppressively hot in here? Seriously, can someone open a window?

Only three of the first six turkeys leave looking like anything other than a 12-pack of chicken parts. Mutant, discount fowl line the hallway.

Group two comes to the table as I'm gathering construction paper scraps off the floor from group one. I have a new strategy. We're all going to do this together, one step at a time.

"Shake open your bag. Good. Now take the first sheet of newspaper and crumple it into a ball like this. Excellent Connor, but don't grab Elizabeth's bag. THIS is your bag, Connor. Ok, now crumple another sheet. That's ok, Grace, the ink will come off your hands. No, you don't need to wash them now. No, you can't wash them...Grace, please sit back down, you can wash them after... Lauren, that's great work. Don't lean back in your chair Martin, MARTIN?! That looked like it hurt, Martin, you ok? Ok, guys, lets get those feathers on the right end of these birds. I want to see those waddlers under the beak, kids, not between the legs. Grace, you're back. Please glue that beak on and get moving on the legs. You can't color the entire bag, Liz, sorry right, Elizabeth, we don't have time for that. Martin, really, you're holding the scissors under your chin like that? Does that seem like a good plan? Lauren, you're awesome girl, that is a centerpiece - now take it to the hall."

Paper is flying, glue is spreading out, misshapen gobble waddles, forgotten, have been left behind to be swept into the recycling box. Two more tables to go. And they all get snack in this period as well. What the hell is happening here?? I've lost my ability to control the group. Its bird-part anarchy. Sweat is coming out of my hairline its so fucking hot in this room.

"Mrs. Vild, could you please have the children get their lunchboxes after they've finished their project?" asks teacher.

Are you out of your mind, lady, don't you see what's going on here?!

"Sure, Mrs. Hammer, will do.

"Kids, you need to get these centerpieces done and put away. Clean up by your feet, eat your snack and get your lunchboxes out of the hamper."

I've got my hair jabbed up with a Dixon Ticonderoga, trying to catch anything remotely resembling air on my neck. Sitting on one of the miniature kid's chairs, my arse spilling off the sides and my knees tucked uncomfortably up under my own turkey waddle, all I want is for one of these souls to share their Shrek gummies with me so I don't have some kind of low blood sugar episode.

I'm hot, and not a little bit stymied by the chaos of artistic pursuit.

I need something stiff to drink and its 11:17am.

The women, and occasional men, who do this work, deserve more than collective bargaining rights, they need something big, like a yacht. I think yachts would be a good place to start.

That anyone would think that $60, 000 a year, the salary for a well-seasoned teacher, one who hasn't run for the hills, is exorbitant, hasn't tried stuffing 24 turkeys with liberal media in time for snack on a Tuesday. I can't even imagine what it takes to actually teach them something.

Mental Properties: The hits keep coming.

2011-03-02T18:18:00.011-05:00

I have a tenant who hates me. She hates me because I am The Man. I don't pretend I'm not.

I am The Man because I made her pay her rent after three months of not paying it and because I get to have this day:

7:45 PM Monday: I receive the following text from my tenant, for who I am, said Man:
"The basement is full of water."

7:48 PM respond: What?! How much water?

8:09PM: "Can't walk down the stairs."

I respond by taking a sleeping pill and shedding one single tear onto my pillow.

6:05 AM Tuesday: Alarm goes off.

6:30-7:30 AM: Get the kids out of bed, make their lunches, wait for the bus, send them off. This process takes one hour of standard-issue hysteria and chaos.

7:45AM: I arrive at The Upholstery Shop. I call the flood disaster clean up team. It takes them the entire day and four phone calls to get to the property to give me an price.

8-3:30: I spend the day at the shop working on a chair whose owners have insisted on covering in crepey thin silk . If you fart on a silk chair, it will leave a stain. I work this cheap-feeling, taffetta-esque, snag-magnet onto the seat. The material moves across the underlayment like Saran Wrap floating on the surface of a puddle. It will not hold a shape, it wants to suck the sweat from my fingers and leave water marks so badly I feel like I need finger- tip coasters. It takes me a full day to decide that what I'm doing will not work. Not ever. I need to rip off the day's work and start over.

3:45 PM: Flood disaster relief guy calls to give me his estimate of $2500.
3:46 PM: Thanks anyway.

5:25PM: Call from nice tenant who informs me the basement is full of water.

5:30PM Make dinner. Drink two big glasses of wine.
6:00PM: Do homework with kids as they cry.
8:00PM:Read chapters with kids as they fall asleep.
9:00PM: Battlestar Gallactica
9:07PM: Wake up to the sounds of Battlestar Gallactica ringing tinnily in my headphones, which are now around my neck.

6:05 AM Wednesday: wake to alarm.
6:30-7:30AM: snack complaints, silly walks, singing operatically in the kitchen about homework folders and pick-up notes, onto medley of show tunes about boots, library books and recorder sung to the melodies of Sweeney Todd, Oklahoma, A little Night Music. Kids laughing in eye-rolling, patient sort of way.

7:37: Play messages from machine from previous day : THIS IS NOT A SALES CALL.
7:37.5: Delete all messages.

7:57: Open shop. Work for two hours. Customer comes in and asks me, seriously, if I, and my 34 year old colleague, are a "mother-daughter operation." I play the part of the mother in this scenario.

10-1PM: Drive to/Call every rental agency in greater metropolitan area looking for basement drying fans. They're all out drying the mold out of other thaw victims' basements. Say fuck it, and try to buy a bunch of regular house fans. There are no house fans in all of creation, only clearance shelves of heaters. Curse on demand retail philosophy. Curse retail louder, because I don't feel like I've been heard. Leave 5th depressing establishment, sans fans.

1:00PM Drive 35 minutes to soggy rental property to assess.
1:35: On the way, receive call from fan rental place that they've been availed of three industrial strength fans.
1:36: Turn car around and drive to west side of what-the-hell-is-this-place to pick up fans.
2:15: Pay $250 for rental of said fans.
3:00 return to soggy rental property. Water has receded. Install cyclone of fans. Bleach entire basement. Call hauling service. Pay $300 for hauling service so I don't have to touch anyone's wet cardboard.
4:00 race back to get to MD appointment so I can have a finger shoved up my ass, literally, because the metaphorical ass-rape of the day wasn't nearly enough.
5:00 - get home so I can relieve in-laws who have met the bus (so that I might have the pointer finger inserted in my rectum).
6PM - make dinner rejected by kids, more homework, more chapters.
7:30PM- Declare that mommy is now closed for the evening.

8PM: text from hating tenant who informs me that the pilot lights are out and they have no hot water.

9PM: Discover that Vild has delayed return to this country by another four days.

I am the man.

Nope, no thank you.

2011-01-27T18:16:00.012-05:00

Are you one of those people who thinks about owning rental properties?

If you are, then the next thing you should ask yourself is would you knowingly tear a portal in into your life so that every ounce of negativity that exists outside of your person, could come pouring through the portal - like if you were to shoot a hole into your karmic fuselage and all the luggage and first class seats got sucked through it, some with bodies still sitting in them - it's like that, except in reverse. The suction comes the opposite direction and it deposits bodies, luggage, beverage carts and blue toilet water on top of your family.

There is so little good that can be said about being sucked from an airplane at great altitude. Maybe you get a moment of flight? Maybe you get a couple of milliseconds of something transformative as the atmospheric changes cause you to black out.

You don't get that with rental properties. There's nothing transformative about it. Nothing even anesthetizing like the thin air at 17,000 feet. Its a constant test of trying to trust and like people , to do right by them, so that in return you can stand ankle deep in wet toilet paper and bounced checks. I hate the regret of misguided trust. I want to believe in second chances. I want to believe and hope. But instead I get to scrape and paint a cobwebbed basement where the brick is soft.

I can feel so good and high, in my creative zone, firing like a high performance engine, just hugging the turns....and in time it takes to read one text I am eating cat food off a piece of torn linoleum as I stare into the balloon-knot anus of the universe.

And the relationship is ongoing. Its not as if you can just shake hands and move on. No. You. Can't. Because they're not going to like something. Like how a light bulb is out. No one can get their ass up on a chair and change a light bulb. But they sure know how to text. They can text while having root canal, on a wire high above the city, but bulbs require professional help.

And then there's the get-over, the change of paint colors, painted only as high as they could reach. Something in lime green. And the crap they leave behind, boxes of text books, and old exercise bikes, and plastic tubs of shit you wouldn't want if they were air-lifted into your flooded village. You'd pass and go back to your tarp. Because there's some crap that would make even a wet tarp hut look bad. So you haul all that shit out onto the curb over the weekend, taking time away from relaxation and your family, only to have someone complain to the city about early trash removal and then you get a little fine as a thank you. Poverty in $50 increments.

So if you're thinking about rental properties as a line of income. Think instead about selling your organs on the black market. Because you'll live longer, and you'll make more money.

Going Public

2011-01-25T15:39:00.010-05:00

I only went to public school for one year, eighth grade, and it was in Pacific Palisades, California, one of the richest suburbs of Los Angeles. It was and is the very public school that O.J Simpson was filmed standing in front of, waiting for Sydney I guess, in one of the clips they showed over and over again, all the while he was getting away with murder. But there are other reasons I hated that school, well before O.J. killed his wife.

My gym teacher was a very tiny, plump Asian woman who was so heard-hearted and cruel, even mocking, that the thought of her gave me epic nausea every day before school. Stuff was stolen from me constantly. Kids shoved and tormented. It was harsh, mean, classist and full of every kind of bad value. Its biggest flaw, though, was that it was crashingly unmemorable but for those memories I am trying to forget.

The rest of my education was spent in fruity private schools. For those of you who don't know me personally, I will say by way of explanation, that I (and my sister) had a very privileged life, educationally, paid for by my dad, who was a working writer, a film critic at Time magazine. If Time had a heyday, it was in the 70's when I was a kid in New York. He was by no means rich, instead he worked incredibly hard, constantly in fact, at his profession, and somehow he afforded to send me to Dalton, and then boarding school. It would have been a comfort for me to discover that he had maintained a double life in which he was drug king pin, or I that I am the secret heir to title and substantial fortune, but the reality is he worked his ass off and chain smoked - no doubt due to the pressures of affording my education -my entire childhood. That, and things were a lot less expensive and exclusive then. There was still a middle class and it was still allowable, even honorable, for them to be included in upper class activities. I don't think that's true anymore. We were the last of the middle class Mohicans.

I say "fruity" private schools with love in my heart. I know that I had it real good, and didn't appreciate it enough. But I now say with pride, I am fruity! My people are fruity. I come from the fruit, and I have born the fruit. When I describe some of the educational techniques from my private schools, to my republican husband, educated himself through the very system our own kids now enjoy, I can see in his eyes, as they roll entirely back into his skull, just how frilly-poo-poo I am, and I am embarrassed for me.

When I tell him that in high school we acted out tableaus of our family life, placing other students in the "picture", posing them to represent our family dynamic, I have to hand Vild a barf bag. While conversely, he tells me how the principal used corporeal punishment on him and his 6-year old pals, I want to paint signs and picket all the way back to 1973.

They don't do corporeal punishment anymore. Instead, they do No Child Left Behind. Frankly, I'd rather have my ass paddled. Bush's hand cranked grinder for education, is mashing out the sausage meat of mediocrity, in state mandated bullet points. Weeee!

So, needless to say, I'm a very conflicted parent. My kids go to a really superior public school, and they are very lucky. But something about the "criss-cross applesauce" taming of large groups, and the handout rich environment make me edgy. I know I take my life in my hands, criticizing my kid's school, or over-generalizing about public school. But...

Why? my mother correctly asks, in the whole discussion about education, are the only subjects mentioned, Science and Math? Because, answers Bill Gates, we must prepare an entire generation for high tech jobs.

Super.

But I read everywhere that education doesn't lead to jobs anymore, so is it too much to ask that at least the years of education be fun and interesting while it happens? If math and science are your thing, go forth, my friends and prosper. But reading and drama and music and civics and creative writing, and family tableau enrich civil public discourse, not, I would argue, algorithms (though I'm well aware there can be poetry there too). Furthermore, I, and most of the fruits I know, would die in high-tech jobs. We would shrivel and our limbs would fall off right onto the motherboard.

I write this with the painful knowledge that my boy hates school. He sucks at it, for the most part. It plays to none of his strengths. Sitting still. Following the group. Being told what to do. He hates that. And it makes me long for an environment for him where he might clap out numbers by twos and fives rather than reading them off a xerox. Or I yearn for him to learn to write in an environment where creative juice is squeezed a little more fruitily, as much, let's say, as stickers are given out, not to him, for good penmanship.

My husband argues that it's good the kids are exposed to the "real" world, not some coddled one in which one's individuality is formed on the paper doily of indulgence. I just can't abide that. My individuality, which was so honored in my education, is the force that gives my life form and dimension. Certainly not my job. Not even what I learned, but the way I learned it, showed me that there were a million ways to do any one thing and that I might avail myself of any of those avenues to solve problems, to make friends, to meet the world, that global world we're so hot for, head on.

Who knows what the job market will look like in twenty years? We don't know what it will look like next year. It seems to me we need to make kids more flexible and adaptable, more creative in their thinking, not less so. Sure, more kids over the hurdles, I get that. But is our goal really to perpetuate a paradigm of ho-hummery? I can say this, I did NOT hate school. Sometimes it hated me. Mostly though I felt some fun things might happen there and while I was at it, I might learn a couple of things.

My Commute is Hell

2010-12-08T22:40:00.006-05:00

(See, this is the kind of thing I'm dealing with.)

First I have to back out of my driveway. Its straight, but at a weird angle, so its not totally easy, not everyone gets it right. Then I have to stop at my mailbox and get out of the car and reach in and you just never know what might be in there. Mail sometimes, and not cute mail with stickers on the envelopes, but the bad kind, from people who want things.

Then, back in the car, which isn't warm yet, and that's uncomfortable. Down my road. Why is that barn just in a heap like that? I mean, a gas can and a match, someone? Anyone? Then that stop sign. There might be a car coming and I have to wait for it to pass, sometimes its a truck, a big truck, and they're loud and scary. A left turn down the hill. I pick up speed and sometimes there's wind in my hair, but mostly not, because I have to quickly make a right turn, which kills the momentum.

Then over the highway on that bridgy overpass thing, which is kind of gross and urban seeming. By the park. What is with the kids and sports? All the time playing, playing, playing. And the parents, on folding chairs, cheering them on endlessly, forever.

A dip in the road past that house that someone built in the boom, but has been dark with the Pella stickers on the windows ever since. Oy, with the consumption!

Then a right. Almost immediately that road kill, which by God, hasn't changed with even the most intentional pulverizing by other cars. Why don't they build planes out of that stuff? That dead thing will survive anything.

And down the hill I go, past the wet lands. If I'm not waiting for a flock of turkeys to amble across with their gang-like attitude, just begging for me to toot my horn at them, then its deer, with that look they give you. You know the one I mean.

I saw a possum once with seven babies on her back and I was like, man, that's too many kids, take it easy on the overpopulation already.

Then up the hill. There is always someone jogging in one of those florescent vests and those really hurt my eyes, and yet I can't look away.

Then down the hill again, Christ its hilly. Past the cemetery with those really old headstones and the trees and all that grass and it almost always makes me think of death, and who wants to start their day that way? Its across the street from the retirement community that they built like the Death Star right across the street, I guess so the folks wouldn't have that far to go, and that place really makes me think of death, because its so vast and so many old people live there in nicely appointed apartments.

In that sneaky second driveway of the cemetery there's nearly always a speed trap, a cop just waiting for you to be driving faster than 30 mph, and really can a car go that slowly? Especially with the driver speeding away from death like that?

Just like that its all residential Chagrin with those little century homes with creative plantings, or now, the Christmas decorations, like that's going to cheer anyone up. Then I have to slow way down because my turn is coming up, and it looks like a lot of other little possible turns, so I have to be on my best game.

Its a sharp right, and I have to watch out for kids, in their little hats, walking to school. Come ON already. Then a random stop sign, which honestly is a waste of tax payer dollars. No one drives down this street except the people who live on it, or work on it, like me. So that's government waste right there, and really, do we need any more reminders?

Then I'm there, at the shop, and its been six minutes, which is not enough time to have finished my coffee.

You think this is bad, you should try it on a bike.

Bat Shit

2010-10-21T08:38:00.014-04:00

We arrive at the subdivision as we've done so many times before, in various other subdivisions, and head for the cul de sac address on the invitation. The street address is inevitably, 'trail-something' - Woodacre Trail, Meadow Trail, Riverside Trail - usually in memoriam of the actual green space they've paved over to build these homes.

We park in front of a mailbox with balloons tied to it, their gay ribbons stretched tight across our windshield in the strong wind. The trappings of a kid-party are peeking out from behind the attached two-car garage, some kind of tiki-safari thing. Jungle Terry, the entertainer who brings alligators and de-scented skunks into your backyard, has parked his zebra-striped Jeep prominently out front. But our invitation is a die-cut Batman shape, so somethings not adding up.

When a child we've never laid eyes on before tries to grab the gift from our hands, we realize it's not this house, its the mirror-image of this house, five homes down. We're not so lame and lazy as to get back in the car and drive, so we walk, which is an event in my kid's lives, trapped as they are in our mini-van with its fixed rear windows. There is of course no sidewalk because planned communities rarely plan for actual community. So we end up step-hopping along the curb, one foot on the neighbor's Chem-Lawn, one foot in the street, skirting parked cars and other traffic moving through the cul-de-sac to the two parties.

We take off our shoes in the foyer while my kid's excited voices ricochet off the twelve-inch ceramic tiles of the foyer, until their decibels are deposited on four thousand square feet of carpeting in the the Great Room. The greatness of this room includes a soaring wall of tempered glass, Orca ready. The looming view onto the backyard extends past the capacity of my peripheral vision and reveals several terraced patios, giant circles of paving bricks, two connected by a handcrafted Amish bridge, one with a fire pit. I've spent so much time at the Home Depot fixing up our own house that I am able to calculate the cost of the bill of materials from memory, before I have time to stop my bourgeois impulse. Their play-structure-swing-set thing is better than most inner-city playgrounds, but has the forlorn look of something hardly used and sits only fifty yards from their neighbor's unused swing-set thing. A dog barks anxiously, locked in the hidden laundry room, no doubt restless next to the GE Profile pedestal washer and dryer, with steam dryer and wrinkle free settings.

A spread of delivered food is generously offered; there are tinfoil trays of iceberg salad and ziti. I whisper to the buffet, "I'll be back to eat too much of you, later."

Pointed in the direction of the finished basement, where the shoeless party will be corralled on a thousand additional stain resistant square feet, we descend as we have to so many finished suburban basements before. In this model there are rows of theater seating on carpeted risers, facing a 152" flat screen TV. Cartoon Batman beats the shit out of a villain with life sized punches, the surround sound using my solar plexus like a beat box.

Two fellow party guests, who are actually smaller than the cartoon figures, have already checked into their juice bags, and out of the party, in the giant Laz-y-boys that threaten to swallow them whole in their leather folds - their tiny bodies hardly big enough to keep the seating mechanisms reclined.

Granite Island, in the sea of Stainmaster, has four stools moored to its shores. Beyond this configuration are two more granite counters that fortress a wet bar, only slightly larger than my kitchen, and with finer appliances.

"Nice basement", I say innocently, to my plump, dark-haired hostess with gigantic breasts. "You guys must live down here."

"Not as much as you might think." My hostess blithely admits.

I'd met her at a kid class where we chatted amiably on the benches while our kids climbed a plastic tube thing and whacked at foam structures with puffy pillow bats. She'd invited us to the party on the spot in a act of hospitality that struck me as generous and onerous at the same time. We accepted.

In the basement Versailles, I drink white wine, why do they all drink white?, while my kids suck down two juices apiece and nibble the corners of their sheet-pizza squares. Grapes roll on their plates like marbles on their journey from vine to landfill.

The other party guests arrive all at once, a battalion of on-time attendance. Suddenly the basement is filled with kids and commotion. They notice the Batman pinata, the head and shoulders of the caped crusader knowing full well its stuffed to the neck with fun-sized candies. The moms have to distract them with pleadings toward fruit and bottled water.

Word filters down to the basement: Batman is here! Batman is HERE!
And sure enough, Batman joins us in the basement.

The costume is good; a heavy rubber mask, chest and codpiece with big Paul Stanley-esque, Kiss platform boots and wings that open up large. Its definitely Dark Knight era Batman. No tights.
A child runs terrified to his mother's arms, while the rest of the kids go completely bat shit around him.

It only takes a minute to realize that this Batman is all costume, no act. He talks in a low raspy voice, but he's no entertainer. He's phoning it in, but not on a flashing red phone with a single button at its center. He talks about himself in the third person while he performs his party trick, twisting balloons into the single shape in his repertoire, a balloon sword, which delights the children to immediate violence. The hollow thud of their latex swashbuckling fills the room.

"Batman is making the green sword you asked for." "Batman doesn't like to be hit in the face with a balloon." "Batman needs to take a quick break." At which point he unfurls one of those sproingy fabric tunnels, and lets the kids climb through the "Bat-tunnel". Kids fill the tube like so much Bat-Sausage and the caped one leans over and asks me the time. His utility belt apparently not equipped with a watch or any way to punch out.

"I could make good use of that codpiece and those boots, given a free night and some babysitting coverage." I say out loud. Mild laughter. I think I've made that joke before, in someone else's builder basement that, too, was off-gassing its newness, depleting oxygen. I'm in a suburban house of mirrors.

Batman eventually and rather unceremoniously, departs the way he came, but sends word from the foyer to Party Dad that he needs to be paid his $180 for two hours of caped crusading.

***

For my kids this party, this house, is Disneyland. The hugeness of it all - the amount of stuff, the number of toys and gadgets - the cleanliness- they are in heaven here.

"I'm going to ask Santa for one these!" my daughter declares as I dismount her forcibly from the back of a ride-on plush horse, whose life like head swings back and forth with admonishing 'No's'. Kind of like my neck. No, you'll never have a $400 plush horse.

I want to evacuate my children from this environment as quickly as possible. The canopy bed, the monogrammed buckets of organized toys, the walk-in closets in every room, the rows of clothes. I don't know how to combat their innocent desire to have all of this. Their eyes are huge with it. They have plush-toy Meth eyes. And what's worse, they are turning on me. Pissed.

They're pissed because they're coming down and they don't know where that next fix is coming from. They're pissed because its time to go, because I've said "We'll see" a dozen times and because they can't have more of anything. I'm mad at them too, for liking this disproportionate madness, for not appreciating how hard we work, for not seeing how lucky they are.

And I'm mad at me too, for feeling so disheartened and jealous, for comparing my insides to my host's outsides, for feeling ashamed of what, by any decent measure, is our extreme bounty.

I leave with a swirling, self-devouring sense of disgust and envy, shame and longing. I cannot help but compare myself to this aesthetic and feel like a complete loser. I want to cry and thrash the way my kids cry and thrash as I strong arm them to the car. My patience canteen is dry and we're all thirsty.

At home, in our overused upstairs bathroom, I brush my kid's teeth with sadistic precision and put them to bed. I go outside and lie down in the un-mown grass of our beautiful meadow and stare up at the night sky through a haze of flying insects. Bats swoop and flop through the night air, filling their bellies on the bounty of our bug population before heading off to the bat cave.

Blowing Smoke Up Mervyn's Ass

2010-09-29T17:23:00.020-04:00

I am a terrible liar. Really, super awful. Especially if I feel guilty about something, or I've done something wrong, then I'm the dog who has peed on your carpet; I get low to the floor with my eyebrows up in a little inverted V of shame and swipe the floor with hopeful, ambivalent wags of my tail.

Sometimes I try to lie. Like, Vild will say, "Did you scrape the mailbox with your car?" and I'll say, "NO!", but of course I did scrape the mailbox with my car because I'm too lazy to walk to it, and so I drive up really close on the wrong side of the road, with my hazards blinking, and reach in, Fat-American-style. So I say, "NO!" indignantly, and then maybe four seconds later I say, "Yes, OK, I did a little bit scrape the car." The full arc of my lies take about 3-5 seconds. My guilt mechanism is that finely tuned.

Sadly, it wasn't always so. I used to be younger and way more stupider. Particularly this one time, when I was a newly minted garment industry professional, armed with my very prestigious Associates Degree in Manufacturing - a two year degree I earned in fashion school in Los Angeles - and I applied for my first big corporate job at Mervyn's.

Mervyn's was, R.I.P, what people like me, with manufacturing degrees, call a mid-market retailer. You mortals would call it a crap department store. It catered to California women with mid-western tastes and slotted wallets filled with department store credit cards. Mervyn's made clothes for those women who posses giant key rings with laminated photos of their kids jangling noisily from them.

In fact, Mervs had many departments, from kid's to housewares, men's, women's, teens and so forth, and they needed something called a Color Analyst. I had no idea why colors needed analysis, but if they wanted to talk, I was ready to listen. It was an entry-level position in a grim suburb of San Francisco, the city that called to me with its gay magnificence in the early '90's.

I had applied for the job through the school's placement office, and soon thereafter I was called for an interview and landed the job. It was just that easy. I was qualified and, as it turns out, I have a keen eye for color. What this meant was that I was uniquely qualified to match socks with undies, pots with pans, cardigans with camisoles, pant suit components and luggage sets from different manufacturers to a color swatch in a cubicle in Hayward, an hour south of San Francisco.

Just like that, I had my very own low-paying, dead-end job with a long commute. Victory was mine! So I started staring at color swatches in a light box about a month later, after filling out a sheaf of papers for the HR department. One of those papers was an application for the job, which I found odd, seeing as I already had the job, and they had my resume. But I confirmed, and signed the information from my resume, which as a very minor incidental bullet point, mentioned that I had a Bachelors Degree from U-Mass.

I went to U-Mass for what seemed a very long time, more than three years. I made two of my best friends there, but I didn't actually, technically, graduate from there. I attended U-Mass. Then I left U-Mass in a huff, a few credits shy of a degree. But what the hell, I was close enough, right? Remember that this was a evolutionary flicker of time before email and Internet hit like a tsunami, a few years before your bra size could be found in a Google search of your name. People from HR actually had to call references and schools to learn the particularity of your deception.

Imagine my surprise when I was called to Human Resources a few weeks later. My boss, the kindest, sunniest, most personable woman ever to walk the halls of a corporate office building, told me I was being summoned, with the most genuine look of sadness and doom, like she'd been told in confidence that I had a rare genetic disorder, with only sickness and death ahead of me.

And here, my friends, is when the lying really began. Some might say it started when I wrote the lie on my resume, but I contend, from my own soul's-redemption standpoint, lies are the ones you tell to people's faces. It started small, as lies so often do. My boss said, "They cannot confirm that you have degree from U-Mass?" And the start of my lie came out as a shrug, and a sort of nondescript "hungh" sound, followed by, "That's odd."

Somewhere on the dead-man-walking route to the HR hive of cubes, I started creating the smoker that I hoped would lull the worker bees into a state of pacified ignorance and confusion. Another facet of the well told lie is that they start with the pollen of truth. Mine certainly did.

I left U-Mass is a mass of confusion. I had grades of "incomplete" in classes where I had only to turn in a paper to receive credit, an independent study that required the signature of completion from a professor who never returned from sabbatical, and maybe two more tiny semesters of class to get my degree.

By the time I got to the office, I'd created an Oh-jeez-here-we-go-again-with-this-college-degree confusion-again persona that I felt created the right alchemy of nonchalance and irritation that might ward off my being kicked to the corporate curb.

I spouted a geyser of bullshit and misdirection to the human resources director about how they'd said they'd corrected these issues, this is so totally typical, can you believe the inconvenience, I couldn't be more sorry for the trouble...

All the while, my dear, kind-hearted boss was nodding next to me in complete support. She was facing the firing squad with me, and as my lie got more complex and incomprehensible she was becoming truly hopeful. Maybe I hadn't lied on my resume. Maybe this was all just a big mistake. Her faith in me was being restored with every twist and turn in my labyrinth of lies. Deceiving this woman, who had shown me nothing but kindness, made something in me putrefy.

I had no idea what I was up against when I wrote the line on my resume. There were people whose whole job was about fact checking these kinds of things. I was scared. I wanted to keep the first real job in my chosen profession. I liked the people I worked with, I was able to pay my rent. I don't think it even crossed my mind that this misdeed could have effects beyond just my next paycheck. I shutter to think that I could have effected my boss' career (I don't think I could have), or the serious blow to my own career path it could have had. A career that lasted through three more jobs and ten years.

In the end, it was not that they were convinced I hadn't lied on my application, but from a legal standpoint they could not prove that I had. I spent weeks getting documentation of my incompletes, actually corrected and got credit for them with the university (go figure) and blew up enough dust to obscure the reality that I had said I had graduated, when I hadn't. They couldn't prove that I'd intentionally misrepresented on my application, so they couldn't fire me. It was all about the legality. I'd signed my name to the lie, which was the crime, and they couldn't prove that I'd knowingly lied which was my pass.

In the three weeks I held this sodden lump of untruth in the wet tissue of my conscience, before they decided to drop the issue with notes in the margins of my file, I was so terrified, so disgusted with my ability to pull it off, so humiliated at my own stupidity, I was changed forever.
My super-hero like power of deception was temporary.

Now you're likely to get from me a little more truth than you (or even I), are comfortable with at thanksgiving dinner, with mixed company, in the presence of minors, but its all me, Associates Degree in Manufacturing and all.

And if I do lie, you'll smell the pee and hear the thumping of my tail and you'll know.

Shedding

2010-07-29T07:00:00.000-04:00

(this sweet little sketch came from somewhere on the web. Claim it, so I can thank you for it)

Vildy wanted a shed. We call it a "Man-Barn"; a place to house the ugly, the smelly, the broken and the filthy. Our garage, already full-up with the boxed, the moldy, the half used and the I'll-get-to-its, made it only sensible to build a giant outbuilding. I think V wanted the structure for the practical reasons, but also because he'd impulsively bought a giant framing nailer at a yard sale. The gnarly thing fires long nails into wood with a shuttering, cannon-like report. I think the purchase of this tool and subsequent project was a little like buying impractical shoes and then throwing yourself a party so you can wear them. So Vild went to Home Depot and bought a bunch of 2x4's and about three dozen clips of ammo for his big, loud, nail gun, then threw a party for himself and his giant tool.

He built the shed in a weekend, complete with shingled roof, never asking me for help, except to hold a wall vertical while he nailed it in place. He painted it barn-red, yes, and it was perfectly excellent, sitting there at the top of our driveway. We filled it with all sorts of crappy stuff, and the man-barn kept it all warm and dry.

Then we got a letter from the township.

The Man-Barn was sitting too close to the property line. This is stupid for two reasons. One, we live between a cow flop and a soy bean. A drunk guy fires guns next door from his barcalounger for heaven's sake. No one would notice or care if I rode my lawn mower naked, streaming flypaper, while belting out the Ride of the Valkyries. The other reason its stupid is because we own the adjacent lot, a big wooded hill that would be ridiculous to build on, ever. So they were siting us on a technicality. He'd built something too close to a property line that he shares, with himself. Ah, bureaucracy, you never disappoint.

But sometimes you must genuflect to the Man in all his stubborn, paper-pushing, poorly attended, micro-power, minutes taken, triplicate-filing, fees paid wisdom. Vild attended the zoning board meeting.

Fifteen minutes later he stormed out of the zoning board meeting.

He had to move the Man-Barn twenty feet.

The following video explains so much about why I love Vild, and why you can live in a place if you have someone like this living with you.

Hey Zoning Board, guess which finger I'm holding up.

Cleveland, Always the Bridesmaid, never the Bride

2010-07-08T21:48:00.004-04:00

Here's how I imagine the Cleveland pitch to Lebron went:

Cleveland

But, you grew up here. All your friends are here.

Lebron
I'm rich, so I can move all my friends to South Beach and buy them condos and jet ski's.

Cleveland

But, we're building a wind farm on lake Erie!

Lebron

Besides, I like big Latin bootie in tight skirts.

Cleveland

Have you been to Slavic Village? Wallto wall bootie in Lycra. No iron, stretch waist.

Lebron

I really like Cuban food.

Cleveland

Have you tried our Pirogies? We serve them as a dessert too!

Lebron

I'm really young and I'm excited for Miami night life.

Cleveland

Next year the Rock Hall might be in the running to host the inductee party. That will be at night.

Lebron

Winter is really very hard on my joints.

Cleveland

My brother has a plow service. He could give you a deal on your mom's driveway.

Lebron

I just signed my mom to a $750, 000 contract to fold my laundry and make that salad dressing I really like with the ginger.

Cleveland

I'd fold your laundry.

Lebron

Listen, you guys have been great. I'll always think of you when I eat a giant bratwurst.

Cleveland

We'll give you Akron outright. Seriously, take Akron.

Lebron

I like the name 'Heat'.

Cleveland
I like it when my furnace works.

Lebron
Listen, any time you're in Miami...

Cleveland
Will you still say hi to me if I wave to you?

Lebron
No. But I'll let you carry my book bag.

Cleveland
Deal.

She Flies Through the Air with the Greatest of Ease

2010-06-22T06:37:00.008-04:00

(Image from NY Times)

The other day, as I endeavored to buy myself a new t-shirt from Old Navy - a courtesy I felt the friends at my high school reunion would appreciate - my toe caught the slope of the handicapped dip in the curb. The first indication that I was airborne came as the cup of coffee I held in my hand sailed past my head in slow-motion. The second indicator was the realization that my body was parallel to the ground. For a split-second, Superman-style, my arms were outstretched and my entire corpse was in the air. The pavement came at me fast but there was plenty of time to think, oh-God-this-is-going-to-hurt.

My boobs hit the ground first, and this saved my teeth from catching the full impact of my fall from grace. Acting like boat bumpers at the dock where humiliation and gratitude come bouncingly together, they kept my lip, cheek and upper row of teeth from raking against the cement with the forward thrust of my landing. Had my D's not absorbed the G's, I'd have shown up to my reunion looking like, well, someone who had fallen face first in front the vestibule of an Old Navy.

I sat on the ground for a minute taking inventory. A rivulet of coffee streamed under my knee, which was only slightly scraped and bloodied. The meaty part of my palms were pink, but otherwise I was completely whole. A miracle. From across the nearly empty parking lot I heard a woman cry out, "OH MY GOD!!! ARE YOU ALRIGHT? THAT WAS A TERRIBLE FALL!!" I assured her I was totally fine, which she seemed reluctant to believe.

Falling is one of the times in pedestrian life when you completely lose control of your physical composure and your body is subject to its destiny in the most immediate sense. Now, I know there are those who seek this feeling, stuffing a backpack with laundry and jumping out of an airplane, say, or throwing themselves off a bridge attached to a slingshot. But those people are foolish and possibly drunk, and I'm not one of them. I like it when my head is up and my feet are down.

However, and I'm not proud admitting this, I love watching other people fall. I don't like seeing injuries, not at all in fact, but I do adore watching people lose their shit for a moment, watching them scramble for composure, seeing them try to shake it off, or blame the inanimate object that's summoned their embarrassment with an over-the-shoulder glance that says, "Where the hell did that sidewalk come from?"

When I went to U-Mass, there was a a vast set of concrete steps that descended from upper parts of the campus to a lower reflecting pool type setting. The steps were w i d e, and there were many of them, and so they were a place people congregated. One of those many steps had heaved in the temperature fluctuations of Massachusetts weather, making it just slightly out of kilter with the rest. During breaks from class, it was my great pleasure to watch students come clip-cloppity down the stairs, catching the rythym of downward gallop, the confident descent and near flying extasy of a romping drop in altitude and then hit that weird step and see all the confidence drain from their faces as they disintigrated into gravity's embrace. Some would wobble and recover, looking around to make sure they'd not been seen, and swagger on. Others would sort of crumble at the knees and pop back up like marionettes. All of them gave that step the same backward glance that said, "What the fuck?!" It was slapstick at its purest and most fine.

I know my mother is reading this, having just had her own fall, considerably less funny the older you get. But, as she was unhurt, I will give you the image of my mom laying in a pool of freshly slopped epoxy in a New York pharmacy, struggling like a fly on flypaper, her clothing ruined, her dignity cracked open like a walnut. Ok, not that funny, but a certain terrible humor lurks there too, I think she'd agree. If she doesn't, I'm in big trouble.

Its that moment of complete relenting that makes me so happy. The rest of my life is a constant pursuit of control. Control of schedules, business, body, children, finances, cleanliness, diet, time, even rest for me is something I have to grab hold of and try to pin down as its opportunity sails past me. Of course I actually control nothing, but it isn't until I see someone fly through the air, or am airborne myself, that I realize how completely powerless I am, and I enjoy being reminded of how totally futile an attempt to be in charge of anything can be.

For today I am just going to try to keep the pavement down there, the sky up there, and me right in between the two.

Stumped

2010-04-11T21:59:00.003-04:00

When we were shown this house, it was such a piece of shit, I burst into tears on the tour, because I knew right then that I was going to have to live here.

I've posted about it before and I wont bore you with the details again. Suffice it to say, it was mediocre house that had been picked up by its ears and dipped in a vat of bad interior decorating and plopped in a beautiful setting. Everything about the house was coated in a thick layer of smoked glass, hollow core doors, brass, weeds and frogs. My future appeared, mirage-like, in the wavering image of a split-level in the middle of nowhere. Lily, who was then still a toddler, bloodied her head by standing up too quickly in a knee-level pass-through (A what? Yes, a knee-level pass-through. You're right to ask, but I can't help you) from the dining room to the lower-level fire place room. From the lower level's vantage, you could literally look up a guest's skirt while watching ESPN. I held a paper towel to the nick on her head and knew that my powers were useless.

After living here a very short time, I was called to a certain spot on the property. Always a front yard/front porch kind of girl, I placed two Adirondack chairs in front of the house between two curly willows, planted some thirty years ago. I've sat in those two chairs with every house guest I've ever had, every member of my family, in every combination. Those two chairs have provided an anchor to those trees and that yard for all five years we've lived here. When the house was unbearable, either due to construction or bad temper, and also in fair humor, when everyone is playing and relaxed, those chairs have brought forth. Tears have been shed in those chairs, moments passed between people, truths discovered, pot smoked.

One night the wind blew fiercely and it knocked our forward-standing curly willow right out of its rooted slippers and blew her on her side, where I found her in the morning, leaning against a stand of pines, in her death swoon, the skirts lifted on her elaborate root system, leaving a giant hole in the ground in which I could have laid down with my whole family outstretched.

I put my hand to my heart when I saw that tree on its side like that; big beautiful creature.

But time passes and the tree posed some obvious hazard. We had to cut that sucker down. And this is where Vild comes into the picture; where the four corners off cheapness and power tools, rope and ladder meet, that's where you'll find Vildy. But for once this is not a story about him.

He cut her down from the pines that had become a harness for her gravity, suspending her in mid air. I was nervous, but he did it well, as he always does, though any moment runs the potential to turn into a You Tube video.

The roots and stump righted itself, filling back up the hole, but maybe four inches off, so the thing turned into a mound of dirt with a big stump on top. Sad. But the kids kind of loved it. Kids love any kind of yard or house drama. And it was a good vantage point, a thing to jump from, sit on, hit with sticks.

Then one day the stump turned savage, sending out these long brown shoots, with thorns like parrot talons curling out from them. Thorns that don't just snag your sweater, but threaten to extract your liver as you walk by.

No one played on or near the stump anymore. The Adirondack chairs moved back, under the more rearward of the two willows, where its still nice, but not quite as nice.

Suddenly our place looked like a hick shanty to me. Brush was piled up everywhere and crap of every conceivable shape and size had accumulated. An old satellite dish in pieces over here, a chicken wire fence from a overly ambitious and completely failed vegetable garden over there. An overturned bathtub, pieces of drywall in the garage, rusted metal parts. A perfect hillbilly paradise.

My home is at once a rural dreamscape, filled with natural splendor, freedom and privacy and then just as quickly a prison of isolation, loneliness and enormous chores that require the community personnel of a large Amish family. Not just me, swatting at the landscape crankily with a broken rake and a garbage bag.

But this week we rented a really big dumpster, and I rode around the property loading up our belching, squealing rider mower that is more like riding a gas can with wheels, than any kind of lawn cutter. I filled up its wretched wagon eight times with all the waste from our lives and the lives of divorced people before us, and hurled it clanging into the metal belly of the dumpster.

The piles of brush I dragged over to the now evil stump, making a pyre of fallen wood. Vild lit the pile with one match and I watched the fire burn. All day I added more and more dead wood from around the place. At times the flames burned ten feet tall, at others it smoldered. But I tended that fire for nearly four hours, burning burning burning it all down.

Rain started to fall after I'd shoveled the perimeter and I sat in my Adirondack chair watching the last of the snarled, prickly wood burn away as passing drizzle sizzled on my skin.

But the stump remained.

After half a day of burn, that stump is only slightly charred from heat. Vild even went at it with an axe, both of us expecting it to crumble apart. But his blade hit that thing with such a resistant thud, it was as if he'd struck rock.

The willow will not go.

You can sit below it, you can turn up its roots, lay it down, chop her into firewood then light her up, but at the core, that girl is solid as a rock, and she's not going anywhere.

Skin Deep: The Facial Part II

2010-02-22T13:08:00.002-05:00

When we last left off, our heroine was stalled at the grim intersection of facial and paralegal services.

***

The outer office lady directed me to sit down in the big dentist chair in the vividly illuminated office. The chair did not swivel, it did not recline. She handed me a hair band. It wasn't torn from a package or lifted with tongs from a steaming vat, and that made me a little uneasy; my dread of acquiring head lice, a condition our messy house and cold-water-only washing machine are ill-equipped to handle, is reaching phobic proportions.

The receptionist cum aesthetician turned from a row of apothecary jars and came toward me with cotton balls soaked in vinegar. She rubbed their astringent dampness on my cheeks until I puckered. Then she loaded up with cream a fist full of tongue depressors, applying it adroitly to my nervous mug with the grace of Edward Scissorhands, clicking away at my epidermis with wooden digits.
Maybe I could have, in more compassionate new-age lighting, accepted comfortably her rapid and well-meaning chopsticking of my neck and chin, but in full-spectrum inquisition lighting, it was difficult. I felt like my skin had been sent to the principal and she had some strange ideas about correction.

Still, my skin is a neglected organ. I might as well admit this now; I don't wash my face. At least not the way the marketing department at Estee Lauder might like me too. In the shower I might blast my grimaced expression under the stream for a few minutes, or even use my leftover shampoo hands to give it a quick hidee-hoo, but I do not own a proper cleanser, nor do I follow up with toner. What I do do is moisturize. I'm crazy in love with moisturizing. First on my list of things I'd take to a deserted island is some kind of lotion. I can't go a day without it. Really even an hour. I grease up like I'm going to swim the channel at every opportunity and if I don't, I really get quite manic. I am as dry as archival documents in the Library if Congress. If I don't self-correct I will fly apart in a cloud of crumbled ash. I have lotion in every location I visit regularly. By the kitchen sink, in the bathroom, by my bedside, in the door pockets of the car, at the shop. When I get out of the shower I apply baby oil to everything from the neck down until I resemble a sea bird rescued from the slick of the Exxon Valdez. This is what I do to take care of my skin and I know its not enough. Any cosseting of my hide is welcome. Even if its manifestation is clicking like a swarm of cicadas around my delicate eye-tissue.

There is ruckus in the outer office and I can hear that Sara has returned. She's blowing hard from the hurrying. There's a man's voice out there too, and she is barking out orders in a way that gets the two of them, cotton balls and man-voice, moving. Sara appears, her mouth announcing itself from the doorway with an orange lipstick so insistent I want to change lanes. Sara, incidentally, is huge. Really, excruciatingly fat.

Sara's husband is wearing a zippered fleece garment, the back of which is covered with strands of hair that have come loose from his scalp and been drawn by the Polartec's static properties to land and cluster like migratory seals at the spring mating ground of his shoulders and collar. He is dashing around filling basins and mixing tonics. He is marching to Sara's drummer.

Sara wheels up to me on her desk chair and begins inspecting my face at very close range. I feel self-conscious about my breath at this range, but more so about the fact that in order to get this close to me, to close the distance between my skin and her eyeballs, she has to push her belly against me and lean in, folding my knees into her corpulance.

There is a particular area of fat on a woman that I believe the ladies magazines call, "Muffin Top". Its the area between the pubis and belly-button. My sister's old boyfriend always called this pussy-belly, and thus, so have we, my sister and I. Sara is pushing her pussy-belly against my legs so deeply that I am left with only two choices. I can either jump up and run away like a terrified Woody Allen, or just sort of relax into it and accept its maternal comforts like the flabby wings of a beloved grandmother wrapped around me. That's what I do. I try to think of it as a replacement for the warmed blankets they give you at the Aveda salon.

Sara is talking fast, fast. She's assessing my skin and asking me about my habits, my products, the way I feel in a wool sweater, if I still get my period, where I'm from. Its all happening so quickly, and I'm shackled by her belly roll, so I answer the questions as completely and honestly as I can, omitting nothing of my skin's neglect, or the many times I've moved, or my political affiliations. If she'd wanted names, I'd have given you all up.

Meanwhile, she clucks and shakes her head over the dryness of my poor face. Her hands reach for and dig into various tubs and viles and from them she applies layer upon layer of cream, lotions, gels, serums - all of them from a line she developed when she was a chemical engineer. That's right, my facialist attorney-at-law has an engineering degree from CASE.

The more I reveal to Sara and the more she aggressively cares for me, the more connected I feel to her, not only because my knees and the lower part of my thighs have been assimilated into her abdomen, but because I see that we are sort of alike. She's a door-knocking Democrat, transplanted into white Ohio from the Middle East. She's had about fifteen careers. She lives in a development not seven minutes from me, and she thinks everyone in her neighborhood has the intellectual curiosity of a mollusk. She detests organized religion, and cringed every time 'W' appeared on television. Sara and I are making each other laugh. I tell her about how I joined a play-reading group when I first came to town and the director gave all the best parts to a child commercial actress whose talent had been recently validated by her appearance in a local ad for a chain of Raised and Glazed, and who, at twelve, was the most experienced thespian in the room. My potential cast mates went silent when I auditioned with a monologue I'd written that included a line about blow-jobs and smoke rings being two of the "additional skills" on my resume...crickets...cough...
I told her how I had ridden my bike home from the group at astonishing speed, tears flowing horizontally off my cheeks in the wind.

More layers of moisture are applied. She gives me some enjoyable dish about a now dead politicial figure she went to CASE with back in the day. A black woman who disliked white women. There was shoving involved. My pores soaked it in.

Sara's husband is smiling as he does exactly what she tells him to do. "Wring out the washcloth. Hand me the cucumber balm. Get out the vitamin C gel. " But his is not an obedient idiot smile, but one so full of love for this demanding, opinionated, rhino of a woman that I see how deeply he cares for her just by his mild expression. I get it. Sara's unapologetic self-confidence is infectious and has healing properties. As she scolds you, and you succumb to her vaguely grotesque being, you are absorbed by her, and you begin to soften. Your pores take her in with the cream and you feel more flexible, more confident yourself, more full of love. Its not easy to like her, but suddenly you feel sure you could love her too.

When she's done, its like I've had drinks with a good friend. I feel loopy and loose, rolfed and purged. And my skin! My skin shone like a rubber plant after a misting. I was as taut and plump as a school girl, every cell of my dermis having been penetrated by Sara's miracle potions, her good humor and intelligent wit.

My facial made me feel more connected to my community than I've felt in months. And the age defying effects were noticeable. Vildy, who wouldn't notice if I shaved my head, actually commented, "Wow, your skin really does look good."

I'm telling you, you all need to be bossed around by Sara for an hour. Your skin will never look better.

Seeing the World Through Cuke-Colored Glasses: A Facial Story in Two Acts

2010-01-16T22:39:00.003-05:00

Act One:
Pampering.

This word conjures for me only the most delightful memories of dusting my son's itty-bitty balls with powder and wrapping them in smothering plastic materials that will never, ever, biodegrade. To others it means having different, more northerly parts, wrapped and massaged (although, thinking of it now, I've heard some wonderful things about Asian ladies with special skills in Los Angeles). I like a hand job as much as the next guy, but I'm skeptical about pampering.

I was once given, as a gift, a "day of beauty", which strikes me as not nearly enough time. A single day of beauty? Downer. Conversely, a whole day of being touched by a stranger, far too much. After my manicure and pedicure I was ready to slough right out of there and be neglected for a few hours, never mind the facial and massage yet to be administered. There is something about mandatory enjoyment that I find daunting and vaguely sinister. You will delight in this, on Tuesday at 10 a.m.

But life can be tiring, and ever since I turned forty, its like the gong of my youth was hit with the big puffy mallet of destiny. Suddenly I'm going blind and my skin is turning to parchment. On the ashen scroll of my face are written the words, so long sucker, in crepey strokes.

When my mother-in-law offered me her winnings from a raffle, in the form of a facial from a local skin care consultant, it was with greedy pores that I accepted. What has my face to lose? Other than its last molecules of moisture which are wrung from its cells daily by the cruel hands of time and singeing winter winds. Also, though I may be a doubter about pampering, one thing I unabashedly adore is freebies. She didn't want the coupon, declaring, "I've given up on my skin." This, from a woman dewy as a summer peach, youthful as a doe. She drew the good genes, and thus can fold on her facial.

For those of you (men) out there who have never experienced a facial, it goes a little something like this: Dim lights, white room, fluffy robe. Dentist-style recline. Fragrant candles, good-smelling woman in lab coat. Steam steam steam. Giant eyeball in illuminated swing arm magnifier. Squeeze, poke, squeeze. Strokes ever upwards from neck to brow with firm, greasy fingers. Cold mask of cucumber-y goo. Rinse, repeat. More stroking and massaging of face with unguents, emollients and salves. Plinky music recordings, played on instruments with only two strings, plucked by the purest souls. More tonics, more steam, more goo, some applied with Popsicle sticks, others left to cook under hot towels. Its basically a rolfing of your pores to music in a reassuringly sterile environment. It ain't half bad.

Because I am disorganized as well as papery, I nearly let the skin voucher expire, and then, in a panic, scheduled my rejuvenation. The consultant has a good address, sandwiched between the fine grocery and the chic boutique in the nice bedroom community. I was deeply optimistic.

I took the stairs two at a time, then slowed to read the shingles on the closed office doors. Weigand Distributors. Slanzic Tax Prep. Phone Systems, Inc. Dimitreus Export --weird company for a salon. I find the right number on an oval placard, but am instantly confused by mixed messages. Sara Skin Care, Sara Basha attorney at law.

Would you eat salami yogurt? Nuts and gum?

My enthusiasm wavered as the complexities of para-legal skin care loomed.

I walked into a grim outer office, with stacking chairs in a tight horseshoe arrangement puntuated by an open door. Nobody home.

   "Hellooo?" I implore.
   "You're early." A disembodied voice from the inner office, followed by a head, then shoulders, then body.
     "Well, three minutes early."
     "I thought you were coming at 2:30. I'll get your started, Sara will be here asap."
     "How do you know I'm here for skin care and not legal advice?"
     "You look really dry."

*************************

Stay tuned for Act 2, coming in next post.

A Charming Little Post About Pets

2010-01-10T07:15:00.000-05:00

I had many pets growing up. Three cats, two dogs, two other cats, a beloved hamster, Beatrix, who is buried in a matchbox by the Governor's mansion in NY, with the East River rippling by. I love all God's critters. He knows I do. He also knows that owning a pet at this stage of my life was something I wanted like a paper cut on my taint. Sometimes God is funny. Not hilarious, but cute funny. Mildy entertaining, like a co-worker performing at an open mic.

My kids, one and two, were desperate for a furred object. Preferably Dog in nature, something giant, and wet and slobbery, something optimally that would eat its own poo; something they could boss around on a leash. I could not possibly...

That's when Louis started asking for a kitten. Much in the way you might ask for a bike, when what you really want is a Cabriolet. Thing is, kittens, while adorable, are banana-cakes, loony, spastic, wind-up springing dander-balls, that are un-catch-able, impossible to cuddle. To prove this point I took the boy to Rescue Village, and let him play with three kittens...at once. Little did young Louis know, kittens can easily and without provocation launch themselves vertically from all four paws at once, like each pad has a Jetsons style propulsion unit embedded in it. Just straight up in the air, from a stand still, like they'd been burned by the very linoleum on which they'd just piddled. Also, they have claws, a rude awakening for the kid, because they used them to climb Lou's sweater, right up to his neck. This for him was a little like a kitten version of the scene from Alien; If they'd climbed out if his intestines, he could not have been more horrified. He wanted to hold them, pet them, love them. All they wanted to do was hang from the lampshades by their toenails.

I felt like I might be in the clear, pet-wise.

Not having a pet is a little like being a married couple without children. People look immediately for your damages. What fundamental flaw in character has led you to become trapped on the soul's ice floe, where love and compassion for the small cannot survive? I assure you I've got a warm lap and some adept scratching fingers for many a floppy and pointed ear. I freaking LOVE dogs, you just have to believe me on this.

We've already owned two hamsters in this house. Sunny, who went on walkabout and fell behind the dresser where she met her maker. I removed her with salad tongs and buried her in a shallow grave. I had no love for Sunny. And then there was Bitter, who was adored, living long and well under my care until she died of old age. She too is buried in a matchbox, under the swing in the yard. Her box is lined in purple satin, and decorated with little rhinestones, like a matchbox stolen from a Graceland guest room. Bitter was a good girl who could bite the shit out of you in a hurts-so-good kind of way with her needle-like teeth. Lily and I wept, well, Bitterly, well into the night, remembering the good times we'd had with our dwarf-rodent.

So, like I said, God is funny. He sent Vild away for a long time in a far away land and then he sent our neighbors over for a meet and greet with a very special stray. She'd shown up in the neighborhood, which is to say on our road, and the nice neighbors took her door to door to find her people. Her people were not to be found.

Immediately this cat showed herself to be a lady, well-mannered and affable. She tolerated the kid's overbearing attentions as they showed her around the house by her armpits. She endured while they snuggled her upside down, on her back, like a baby. She did not drag my sweaters out and screw them, like a male cat we once had, who would select his lovers from your shelves and leave them duly fucked around the house. She has no front claws, which, whatever your feelings about de-clawing, is a stroke of luck for us, and for Lou's sweaters and courage. I said I would foster her until the Rescue Village could take her. I wasn't going to get a pet, see.

You all know how this story ends. Its not a surprise ending. I fell for her when I was home one day from work and she came and tended me like a kitten of her own, kneading my chest into dough, purring loudly at even the smallest attention. She loved me without needing me too much. Delighted in my games of fetch and string. Pooped in her cat box. What could I do? And then there was this:

My ice floe melts, an inconvenient truth.

And then there was this:

And what the hell is a girl supposed to do?

Especially with this:

You hear that laughing, don't you? I hear it too. Meet Ella. She's our cat. You may now feel free to cough up a hair ball and drive into a ditch.

Blog Slog

2010-01-08T09:01:00.000-05:00

Some bloggers I regularly enjoy reading are getting away with some terribly phoned-in boloney. They are squirting out some very tiny posts. Like, they throw up one paragraph with a photo and this is supposed to count as work. Some little dingle berry about how beautiful their new baby is, or a link to someone else's brilliance in their blog. This, while I am in the vortex of existential malaise about the future of Chagrin and Bear It - can I continue, should I, does it really matter, does anyone care about my complaints, my observations, the silliness that is me - I am but a speck on the digital horizon.

I'm feeling bitter because I've been so stuck and miserable about writing lately. I'm whiney, and crapped out, itchy and dry. I'm busy with things that seem as dull as an NPR fund drive. I'm not cute or funny, I have no perspective on the little things in life that will crack you up or make you think. I'm an asshole on wheels. My heart is hurty with the effort. I've sat down half a dozen times to try to reach out to you, my beloveds, and its all been terrible, and empty and so full of obvious effort you can see the seams straining in every word.

Sure, I could write a paragraph a day about how cute my kids are, and you'd all cough up a hair ball and drive into a ditch. I'm not saying the posts about my bathroom are that much better, but let's all agree, they're longer. There's a quantity there that I think is meaningful. If you can't provide quality, then I think length is vital. Unless your blog is a photo-journalism thing, well then, actually its not a blog is it? Its a website, and that's a whole other matter. A picture with a caption is poo. Unless your blog can be found at apictureandawittycaption.blogspot.com, I think you need to be typing some shit into the computer. This is harder than it looks. If it were easy everyone would be doing it. Oh fuck, everyone is doing it. This is definitely part of the problem.

Its far too easy to compare yourself to others. Many people do it with things like thigh tautness or skin dewiness, tooth whiteness or hair silkiness. I don't care about those things. Or I do, but I realize my fright wig is beyond the reach of conditioner, my belly flab is two c-sections deep; its hopeless and so I help myself to another baguette. But I care deeply about reading and writing and its impossible for me not to, occasionally, slip on the banana peel of my own flawed ego, and compare myself to far better writers, writers who can write plot, say, or lengthy descriptions of flora, knowing all the botanical names for the things in their yard. Good writing fills me so far up, that everything else drains out of me. Not all the time, but sometimes, great writing makes me feel like a big fountain pen has been poked into my flimsy cartoon bubble writing. It makes me feel like a phony.

Of course I'm an addict too, so there's really no hope for me. I can't stop reading, and I can't stop loving all those brilliant writers who make me feel both so hopeful and so completely inadequate. I'm talking to you Lorrie Moore, Jim Harrison, Elizabeth Strout. Damn you Richard Russo, Tim O'Brien, Anne Lamott. Pat Conroy, you lovely bastard, how could you? Don't get me started Alice Monroe, I might have to kick your ass.

And yet, where would I be without you? All of you driving around with me in my dirty van. Collecting socks from under the couch with the help of Roddy Doyle. Dropping off movies with Cormack McArthy. Eating my sack lunch with Ruth Reichl. I love you, I hate you, I need your help.

Come to me friends, lovers, enemies. Do not poke me with your pens, but rather prod me, guide me, bring me home.

A-C0MMODE-A-DATING

2009-12-11T22:38:00.002-05:00

CLASSIC STARBUCKS

As many of you know, and maybe two of you don't, my husband, Vild, has been spending a lot of time in China. Suffice it to say, he built a thing, the thing broke, he fixed the thing, the thing became many things and then all those things needed tweaking. Apparently he is the only engineer on the planet who can make the thing work and the Chinese people stop talking to their lawyers at the same time. So there have been many trips, all of them dusted in a nice powdery coating of Chinese anger and doodie-sprinkles, because apparently they don't use toilet paper over there. In fact, he tells me, via one line text messages in the middle of the night, the executive bathroom is distinguished from the general populous' by virtue of the fact that its a single hole, and not a trench. The Execs get a trickle of dirty water to rinse with too, but no soap, no paper. These same people wear masks at the market to prevent swine flu and take your temperature upon entering the country.

***

Today the pipes froze at The Upholstery shop. The building was originally a carriage repair shop, circa 1880, so the plumbing is sort of an add-on, and hangs stupidly below, and in some places outside, the building. We treat these pipes like the legs of a fine stallion, wrapping them in warm towels, bandaging them and leaving a heater on in the stall - but even so, I had to go to Starbucks to use their trench, which is, in every way, nicer than my bathroom at home. Theirs are always clean and lovely, and replete with papers of every weight and dimension. For nose, bum and hands. With low light and a clean sink, I often stay a little longer than is considerate, admiring their choice of vinyl moldings and textured paints.

We at home, have two bathrooms. One for the four human members of the family and one for the cat box. I am the only creature under this roof who goes with the door closed. And Kitty, at least, will toss some sand over her doot. The rest of these people have no shame, and borderline flushing skills. Its only because I love and respect you so much that I have not made posts to the Daily Ick (R.I.P.) illustrating their inferior flushing skills.

The only reason I'm not more jealous of my cat, and her private pissoir, is because that downstairs bathroom dwells in the land that time forgot. Its both hideous and there's not enough of it. Its about 4x5 feet, which is workable, if a reality show came and waxed my throne, turning it into something wee but with a waterfall. But mine is the ultimate 'before' bathroom. It will never get asked to the prom without being humiliated under a vat of pig's blood.

It has a drop ceiling that is missing a whole tile, revealing a lot of plumbing and weird cold air returns. Sometimes the condensation on those pipes is so severe that it makes a small puddle on the floor. The floor, which is the most egregious kind of bulk ceramic tile, in a very off terra cotta color, a color I call, Tanning Booth Brown. It's so cold underfoot, that it even makes my balls shrink. The tiny shower stall, fiberglass, is the smallest they make and is comparable in size to the bathroom on a Boeing 737. You can shampoo your hair, but with only one elbow flexed at a time. The other arm is mercilessly pinned to your side.

There is a cabinet in there that holds only smell. And not just one smell. Smells of years gone by. Tonics and acne cleansers, cat litter and lotions and cleaning products. You could keep a few seniors from the community college busy for an afternoon doing a forensics work up on that cabinet.

The sink is pedastal, with a wide, too shallow basin. The tiny, plasticy medicine cabinet is pure 80's bachelor. It is flanked by inverted petal sconces with corrugated glass domes.

Sometimes late at night I go in there a blow a tiny, pathetic hit of pot into the outtake vent. With cat litter grains crunching under foot, I really know how to get down.

When guests come to use our crappy office as a guest room, I can turn that crumpled can of a bathroom into something vaguely accommodating, using fresh towels, candles and ample use of bath rugs. I put little soaps and shampoos in there to trick my guests into feeling that its not the most hideous place on earth. But lets face it. If I forced my guests into a naked pyramid and snapped a few photos, they might stand a chance at better accommodations. But they indulge me, my beloved enemy combatants, because I make a nice stew, and will toast marshmallows with them around a campfire on a summer night. On those balmy nights they can pee outside, or, I know a really nice bathroom in town they can use.

Not Drowning, Just Waving

2009-12-03T21:41:00.000-05:00

If there are any of you out there reading this, after this long absense, well, thanks for being there. I've been up to my ass in alligators.

Louis went deaf there for a minute, my vagina exploded, the kid and I both had surgery, my shop has gone nova with new business, Vildy has been sold into slavery in China, and we topped the whole thing off with turkey in California, a visit to Disneyland and a return home to well-water that smelled like an egg fertilized by the rancid seed of a satanic rooster and left to warm on a freeway overpass above the Jersey Turnpike. Oh, and I overzealously ate a slice of pizza along the way and tore my lower gum doing it. So, that hurts.

A note to say that, as it turns out, the scariest ride at Disney is losing your child in the crowd for five minutes. I finally got up the sack to ride the smallest and most old-fashioned coaster in the USA and when its done, and I'm radiant with pride, my phone rings and its my sister asking me if Lou is with me. Adrenal flop sweats and a squirt of urine in my undies later, sprinting with my niece's hand in mine, my sister repeating into my cell phone, "Schickel, don't freak out. Don't freak out", Louis runs up behind us, literally chasing us as we are running away to find him. He came to where he last saw me. Smart, and very, very unauthorized. Now that's a ride.

I think there's a whole theme park concept in there somewhere. Sort of like those vile Halloween spook houses sponsored by Christian youth groups where the horrors of sin are acted out by teens who pray to one day have the opportunity to commit one.

Nightmare parenting scenarios- in Omni-Max! Ride in a police chopper over Los Angeles as you desperately search back alleys for your missing child. Splash down into your own damp unders. Wait in impossible lines that double back on themselves into infinity to attend the kindergarten Christmas show. Pay nine dollars for a churro, only to discover that you've bought Donkey's breaded cock. Toy Story- the recall! Where gift shop bits of Woody fall off and become choking hazzards and Mr. Potato Head's trap door can sever a small finger. Look out Mouse, I'm coming with my snap-trap! Maybe a visit with a bullying Mini Mouse who derides your children mercilously for sexting a pervy Captain Hook, who himself remains publicly taintless because he cannot hit the send button with his metal deformity. Fast pass indeed.

Oh readers, ride again with me. Ride!

Taking the Jungle out of the Gym.

2009-11-08T21:27:00.002-05:00

When I was a kid, I played in Central Park, at one of the several playgrounds on the east side of the park. One in particular, that I remember well, had a brick and mortar pyramid, that you could scale the outside of, and also a tunnel that ran through it. On a hot day, the sand around the playground would be Sahara hot, but that little crawl space was cool and shady. Often some terrible kid would shove you while you were in there, it being out of site of parents, or more often nanny; they'd take a swipe at you while you were enjoying the cool damp of the passage. There was a tire swing, mounted horizontally, so twenty-seven kids could get on there like it was the last American chopper out of Saigon, and swing that thing around at terrifying velocity. If you lost your grip, well, have a nice trip, see ya next fall.

Other playground equipment (a term that didn't even exist in the lexicon) were things like 4x4 posts buried on end at different heights, that you could leap-step from one to the next. One wrong move and you'd catch your chin on the next higher post, or you could slip and land straddle. In either case, you'd have to wipe the sand off your tongue with your grimy hands, feel the grit in your molars and the throb in your groin. The metal slides were second-degree-burn hot, the swings high and close, the see-saws without buffer. The safety measure that existed with see-saws was ingrained in its riders - you picked a person who wouldn't jump off when you were at the highest point, sending you rectum-first to the ground. There were no sanitizing wipes, no juice boxes at the ready, no intervening adults with sock monkey cold packs to sooth, scold and separate. You just took your blows, shook it off and moved on to other things. Maybe at the end of the day your mom would buy you a hot dog from a cart, or an Italian ice before you got on the cross town bus. It was perfect.

Today playgrounds are a whole different game. In many ways they are better, more plentiful, more modern, less burn-inducing. There are climbing things in the shape of castles with turrets and peep holes. There are slides that tunnel and curl, and benches for the parents. Nothing to complain about, really. But there's also something missing in these injection molded fun-houses.

There is a lesser-known playground, not far from our house, that I've taken my kids to for some years now. I particularly like this little spot for some very specific reasons. For one, the whole adventure takes place on grass. Grass in a playground is a real treat and a novelty. Mostly today you find the equipment knee deep in wood chips. Its a safety thing. There's a certain head-height to smack-down ratio that dictates the depth of the chips. But wood chips are sharp and pokey, they get stuck in your sandals, and all the little wrappers and gum and crapoola that falls from kid's pockets gets mixed in with the shards, turning it into a splintery composite of flooring and rubbish. At other places, chips have be replaced with a bouncy rubber matting that is novel, but utterly unnatural. But at our little "castle playground", its grass, with little islands of pea gravel, that is both attractive and round to the toes. With grass, a mother finding a warm sunny spot, could actually lay her body down on the organic substrate and rest her weary bones. An attractive feature.

But perhaps the best part, in addition to the two modern, molded plastic monsters of fun, with bridges and perches, slides and corkscrews, are the jungle gyms. Yup, good old fashioned metal domes that you can climb dangerously high upon. In fact, you climb to a certain point, it becomes necessary to actually invert and change the position of your body at its greatest height. Its death-defying, takes some skill, and is not for pussies. There is also a freestanding set of high monkey bars, that necessitate a leap of faith to mount, and a goodly drop for dismount. It also has a set of big swings and a see-saw. See-saws have gone the way of the belted maxi-pad, being far too dangerous in their trust-equation for the modern world. Someone might actually have fun on one of those things.

This little park also has something that few others do, shade trees. In the middle of summer, when the sun is high, and your kids are slathered in an armor of eclipsing sun screen, running from thing to thing, its nice to find yourself sitting under the canopy of nature's original sun block - leaves. Also nice to spread a blanket on the grass, under the tree and eat your PB&J. This too is a rare treat. Trees have been replaced by pavilions, concrete slabs with rows of picnic tables under a roof. This is not the same thing. Eating your sack of McDonalds at a picnic table is not like laying on a blanket with your smashed sandwich and banana.

This park also has a porta-potty. Not a big deal, and not exactly a privilege to use, but in an emergency, much nicer to have one than not to. Cutting short the fun to find the facilities is everyone's buzz kill.

Today the sun was warm and bright, an Indian summer day, the most delicious of all warm weather days. We headed out for our castle park. The kids chattered amiably in the back of the van and we were full of anticipation for fun.

When we got to the park we found it painfully de-clawed. The jungle gym and monkey bars had been removed, the swings and teeter-totters yanked. In their places, bald patches of memory. My heart made the sound of an accordion when you let one side drop. The plastic structures are still there, but the stuff that made it different, a little saucy, a little risky, was gone. The disappointment made my kids have to pee. And, as you might imagine, the porta-john was gone too.

Why did they take that stuff out after twenty years of play? Because someone might find it hard, or fall off it. Someone might get rust on their jeans. Someone might sue.

So sad were we that we'd been fucked with in this way, and so full their bladders, I did what I could think to do, I encouraged my kids to pee on the spot where the monkey bars once stood, the empty sound of their urine splashing on the spot where laughter once pealed.

Falling Back

2009-11-01T18:42:00.002-05:00

Every year its the same. Its Halloween, followed by the aggressive ouch that is the setting back of the clocks. I don't feel happy about the extra hour; I feel hurt and confused. You don't know where that hour has been. You don't just pick up an extra sixty minutes and dig in like its an eclair. You have to approach carefully, with suspicion.

It starts in the morning, when 7a.m. is suddenly 6 a.m, a deeply unkind weekend hour. Am I supposed to feel grateful and go milk a cow? No one's circadian rhythms are deceived by manually ticking back the clock on the coffee maker the night before. Least of all my little boy, up in the dark, who whisper-talks directly into my ear like its a walkie-talkie, "Mama is it wake-up time?" Tch tch, is this thing on? "Get in here." I indicate with a throwing back of blankets, revealing the envelope in which he is to mail himself back to sleep. This works for a time, sometimes he sleeps, or sometimes he traces the alphabet on my face with his tiny, tickly fingers. But ultimately his wakeful package is returned to sender, and we have to have Rice Krispies in the gloaming.

Its a weird day for me. Always has been. More than birthdays or Christmas, this day marks a passing of time, and the fucked up way its marked only makes it more potent and absurd, with everyone stumbling around like blind moles, late and wonky and hungry at the wrong time.

Historically I've been stricken with depression, but today was different. Today I wandered around lobotomized, looking for a start to something. I felt a certain emotional riptide pulling me away from the shores of cheer and into the darker, colder waters where the big ugly fish of desperation and loneliness swim and feed. But I felt somewhat more Jacques Cousteau about the experience.

I know that there are things I could change to make this time of year better for me. Maybe if I liked winter sports? Or if I could once again harness the anticipation of Christmas. Perhaps if my winter wardrobe weren't so unforgivably utilitarian and used up. Maybe if it weren't such a feat of will to heat my house. Maybe if I lived in a community where the inhabitants didn't burrow so deeply underground. Maybe if the leaves in front on my bathroom window didn't fall away to reveal my chubby nakedness to the chopped down soy plants and the cars that will never slow down enough to notice the nude, weeping lady, framed by the vinyl replacement window. Maybe then things would feel different.

But instead we're all hungry for dinner at 4 o'clock and I've forgotten how to cook. The kids are drawn to the TV like the fruit flies to my rotting bananas. My husband travels, and the darkness falls, close and itchy, like a sweater of the wrong blend.

So today it wasn't depression I felt, for a change, thank you upholstery shoppers and my lovely blog readers, all of you have taught me how to lay back and swim parallel to shore. Pulling me delicately, gracefully out of the scary, futile tide. But though I am not drowning, I am mighty tired and needing a clam roll and a beer.

Its still the day that isn't. And there's an extra hour of it.

Love in the Heartland

2009-10-22T09:18:00.004-04:00

When I moved to Cleveland I'd only ever had one Wal-mart experience. As I was growing up Wal-mart wasn't yet in the cultural vocabulary. Plus, you know, New Yorkers - it would be a long time before they'd have big box stores (if you didn't include Macy's), and maybe forever before they'd like them.

My Wal-mart experience came as a result of trips I took with my sister, Erika, and my Dad to visit my grandma in Portage, Wisconsin.

My Gramma's husband, Ed, a sourpuss, died when I was maybe eight, and Helen lived most of my life as a widow. She lived to be 94, that entire time healthy, and only for the last year or two under the supervision of a group home, when it just didn't make sense for her to be on her own.

For the second act of her life, she worked as a docent for a historical site in Portage, called The Surgeon's Quarters. The site, the location of a tiny log cabin, had been home to the surgeon for the soldiers of Fort Winnebego, which was occupied until 1845. The fort no longer stands, but the log house of the surgeon remains, along with a one-room school house, also part of the tour.

Grandma herself lived in a small apartment above the gift shop that was provided for her, along with a small salary, by the historical society that owned the property, for touring groups of Boy scouts and out-of-owners through the premises which were impeccable, and for kids, contained many wonderful and gruesome artifacts. For instance, the 'operating theater' such as it was, was a table in the middle of the cabin's living room, that had been handmade by soldiers at the fort. The table's main engineering feature was a hole the size of a golf ball, through which the patients blood would fall, collected by a bucket below. In the adult bedroom (all the children slept in a loft above the kitchen) there was a trap door that led to a cold storage, dug beneath the cabin for keeping hides, and probably root vegetables. Grandma took great relish in describing how the surgeon's family had once had to hide from the Indians down there. She'd throw open the trap door to the nasty crawl space and a damp, distant animal smell would curl out and you'd have to think of the grim little children quivering in terror at the onslaught of the "savages", wide-eyed down there with the smelly hides. It was good stuff.

But after she'd given us the tour, and we'd gone to Denny's for lunch with like fifteen of her closest friends - after that Erika, Dad and I would head back to our motel in the rental car, my dad chain smoking out the widow, while my sister, in the back seat gently wiped cigarette ashes off her newborn daughter's head, to kill a couple hours before meeting back up later for the three-meat-buffet.

You may think that Cleveland is the Mid-west. Some days I'm convinced. But there's some debate. While its a source of comfort for me personally that we partake of East Standard Time, we are not really considerd mid-westerners. Cleveland has a wee identity problem. Portage, Wisconsin suffers no such crisis of self-identification.

My grandma's town was a main street with a few stores that sold work shoes and Dickies in one aisle and pleather covered canteens for tourists in another. A coffee shop. A post office. It was a practical, no frills city plan. The gifts that came from this little town, for birthdays and Christmas, were the weirdest, creepiest little doo-dads - - tiny hand crocheted dolls that were sort of rain-poncho shaped, with hard plastic faces sutured into the weave. Or miniature playing cards with badly rendered faces of the presidents on them, and a few national landmarks to fill what remained of the deck -- all these things wrapped in layer upon layer of bubble wrap and newspaper, as if they were treasures or in any way breakable.

I loved Helen with the full depth of my young heart. She was as exotic and loving a creature as I had ever known. She adored turquoise rings of a huge, and most garish kind and she'd lovingly pummel you with the brass knuckles of her affection and bad taste. She was generous and convivial and blindly proud of my dad and his accomplishments, cutting out his reviews and recording his shows, bragging about him to her friends. I'd never seen anything like her, with her hair up in a super high tight bun, and a hairpiece on top of that, a tower of hairdo that she had tuck-pointed weekly at the shop, coming at me with those heavy rings...

By the time I was of college age, Wal-mart had landed on a hundred acres of farm land like the Death Star, and was successfully sucking Portage into its gravity with the pull of cheap electronics and ten-packs of undershirts. We, as visitors, were no exception. Across the parking lot from our motel, separated by ten-thousand parking spaces, rose this giant, alluring temptress, promising, if nothing more, a way to kill an hour in the farthest regions of farm country. My Dad, in particular was fired up for a stroll through the aisles, fondling the merchandise. I can only imagine his take, born and raised in Wisconsin, but a New Yorker by choice, on both the promise and demise that Wal-mart foretold for his childhood way of life. But it didn't stop him from buying his daughters some temporary crap for distraction.

I thought the mid-west was the coolest place ever. For the kid raised in Woody Allen's New York, with all the assumptions of priveledge and the amenities of urban breeding, coupled with the complexities of putrid divorce and unsavory parental maneuverings, the dacron sweaters of Wisconsin, the endless rows of shoddy Wal-mart merchadise, and the simple adoration of my Grandma all combined in a perfectly balanced equation, the sum of which was love.

Smell Something Funny? Your Local Government May Be Off-Gassing.

2009-10-16T19:55:00.000-04:00

Our little township, Bainbridge, which is both a part of, and separate from Chagrin Falls, doesn't have a government, per se. It has a group of Trustees. These three elected officials oversee everything the township does. More precisely, they manage the township money. This body arbitrates what gets fixed, or taken down, which contractor gets to mow the grass at the freeway on-ramp and how the explosive natural gas in the neighbor's well-water is being contained.

The, SAY WHAT?? That's right, they peek in for a little howdy-do on how things are moving along with the well fix, since that house down the street was blown off its foundation by a natural gas explosion, which subsequently polluted their groundwater.

I showed up to the township Trustee meeting not because I am a dedicated activist. On the contrary, I am a sedentary anecdotist. But I caught wind of some doings that I wanted to look into, namely that they were planning to tear down a school building that Lily and Lou had gone to preschool in, and that had seemed to me at the time a pretty nice building. It was nothing special architecturally, but it did have a big old gym, two floors of classrooms and a playing field out back and after all, there it was, built. Generally I'm opposed to tearing things down and throwing them away. Everything made today is total crap and even older, mediocre shit, strikes me as worth saving.

Also, I'd read in the paper in an unrelated article that the school district was going to try to pass a levy to pay for a new school building in the next five years. My inner-Republican stopped brush clearing and perked its ears.

I attended the trustee meeting with every hope I'd have the chance to go all Norma Rae on their action, but discovered instead the existence of an alternate universe, the slow-moving, groundbreaking world of local government. The meeting was packed because of the school building issue, the only sentimental item on the agenda. And by all reports it was the most well attended meeting on record. In fact, more often then not, there are only about ten people in the room. But that night, all hundred or so seats had spreading, dimpled asses in them. Everyone from landscapers wanting to bid contracts to the three dedicated activists who attend every...single... meeting, along with the local reporter who records the doings, to people like me who were clearly born yesterday, were present and fanning themselves with agendas.

So, the meeting starts and its, blah blah blah about the road re-surfacing on Pettibone and when can the detour signs be taken down, a few notes on the price for winter road sand, mailbox reimbursement - an "aye'' here and a "seconded" there, and a few hours (!) pass, filled with motions to file later motions (if that's even what they're called) and out of nowhere a woman stands up and asks the two-pronged question, like a serpents tongue, "When will they be transporting the plasma bomb down 306 to blow the clogged drainage dam, and when will the people with the poisoned water be getting access to the city water line, now that they've been drinking bottled water for over a year?" Shazam! I immediately perk up.
"I'm sorry, did she just say 'transport the plasma bomb'?" And a guy in a t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, so I can see his armpit hair, sort of laughs nervously and says, "I think she did."

I have no idea what a plasma bomb is, but apparently they have to move it on a truck, and I'm imagining something very Doctor Strangelove, maybe a semi with a missile on it, rumbling down the road. They need a special permit for that, don't they?

I take another look at the woman asking the question, and immediately I get it; she's the person in our quaint hamlet who has made it her business to look out for the environmental interests of our community. She's wearing the requisite lady-poetess outfit, signifying her earlier hippie status, and her grey-streaked hair is held back with combs. In this woman's hands rests the future of our neighbor's drinking water and the potential for a bomb to be transported down main street. She's not even an elected official, but the trustees know her by name and they clearly respect her commitment to town policy.

I am showing my naivete by simplifying the proceedings to this degree. Of course this woman is not alone. The trustees themselves are diligent, dedicated public servants, but I don't kid myself, they are also so deeply awash in a shit tide of bureaucracy, they're lucky to find a floating Buick and grab on.

Many things were decided that night, though each item was heavily coated in procedural molasses. Budget overages were reconciled, bomb safety was assured (there is in fact no such thing as a plasma bomb, except maybe in science fiction, but there would be a big stick of dynamite shoved in the ass of the clogged dam), well-water sampling results were to be disclosed in the local paper and business, by golly, was done. Three hours into what would be a five hour meeting, the school tear down item floats to the surface, by which point I am so whip-lashed by the proceedings that all I can do is whimper out a request for the air conditioning to be turned on. So much for laying in the path of the bulldozers.

I did learn a few things by attending that meeting. For one, local government is terribly, terribly boring. But also, that the things that directly affect our personages, the water we drink, the roads we drive, the playing fields on which our kids chuck the ball - the real things that we can see and taste, and go to school in - the fate of those things rest in the hands of our town's minor-league officials and the people who show up to keep them in check.

Its great to get excited by Obama, or feel like knocking Glen Beck's teeth in, but if you want to change the world, show up to your town's chamber meetings, in whatever form they take. It'll blow you off your foundation.

The Demon Seed

2009-10-01T20:51:00.001-04:00

Nothing says death like a pot of Hardy Mums.

I know the season of darkness is upon me when these rigid blooms appear in every flower box, every median planter, at every super market loading zone and every nursery from here to Toledo. With their clumped stiffness they look to me like flowers that were maybe once beautiful, before they underwent some very aggressive form of plastic surgery. They're taut and happy in a way that says, I'm very very sad, but I can no longer express emotion with any of my botanical muscles.

The way growers have engineered these blooms, packing them with ferocious density into their plastic vessels, they look strangled by good cheer, and it makes me feel the way I often do, that there must be something wrong with me. I cannot experience joy when surrounded by this kind of blind optimism. These dreadful pots of glee make me look over my shoulder, make me wonder what harm will overtake me.

That harm, I know, is winter. And its coming for me, for all of us.

So desperate are we cold climate dwellers to hang on to color, before it is washed away by the greyscale of inclemency, that the market is glutted with these flowers of doom. The once gay marketplace of uniflorous blossoms, strong in their singularity, embraced by the sultry breezes of summer, give way to these shivering clusters, huddled together for warmth against the autumn chill. They stand erect and without perfume, elbow to elbow with their clone-like siblings, their fuel injected colors groveling, "I wont die, its not cold, the sun is shining, that's not frost" but they don't convince me. I see Mums and I want to shout back.

Its their can-do spirit I resent. Fuck you, little cheerleaders of death, I know what you're hiding. Your congested glee is but a ruse, distracting us from the inevitable - long months inside, no sun to guide us, fighting with the chores of the cold, the endless battle of the thermostat, fire stoking and stoking and stoking, the winter gear, the muddy entry, the dripping boots, the shoveling and sanding, the painful bus stop intervals, the illness, the dry skin.

I know you winter, and I see what you're up to with these dreadful little flowers. I see your omen, and I'm planting bulbs, the equal and opposite show of faith, by way of revenge.

Love Means Always Having to Say You're Sorry

2009-09-25T22:10:00.004-04:00

Few people really know how to apologize. They think they do, but they don't. The only really acceptable form of apology is one where you lay down on the floor, throw your tail between your legs, and pee all over yourself. There are no qualifications, no rebuttals, no "yes, but..."s. To get any sort of credit for a good apology, you simply have to make a sandwich of your own shite and smile while you eat it.

My people, historically, are bad apologizers. Schickel's are German. We make the turd pie, offer others a slice, and smile while they eat it. Historically speaking, I'm saying.

I am, by nature, a bad apologizer. I can only say this now, because lately I've gotten much, much better at it. And you know who's been teaching me? Vildy.

Vild gives an excellent apology. It may come as no surprise to you that's he's had considerable practice, been at it longer than I, and as we should all know by now, it is only the fool who fails to learn from the Master.

Giving a good apology is not the same as always admitting you're wrong. I think people get this confused, I know I have. Nothing is more annoying than people who apologize too much, for things that aren't their fault. Or people who just feel so guilty about stuff that they are forever lobbing apologies over the fence, making you pick them up like tennis balls at the country club. Fuck that, those are worthless, dime-a-dozen-I'm sorries. That's not what I'm talking about.

Saying you're sorry is not a defensive stance, its a submission. I understand why its hard for people to do. It's easy to feel that if you apologize, you've lost turf. That you're bending over, rather than giving over. But I've learned, through some really retard attempts, that giving a simple, honest apology is one of the most freeing things in the world. Its a euphoria all its own. Vild, as it happens, is high as a kite.

When you say you're sorry, and mean it, and the other person accepts it, its like the whole blackboard universe gets swiped clean by the eraser of God. And I don't think I'm overstating it. Something happens to your soul. It expands, increasing its volume ten-fold. And big as it gets, its still tiny, fitting comfortably in the palm of your hand.

I've lain in bed decrepit some nights, after a fight with Vild say, where I've felt so bound and gagged by my own ego, so tightly packed and shrink-wrapped in my own selfishness and rage that I feel I might implode, a sucking sound my only remains. And every once in a while, when its clear to me how wrong I've been, how completely I've been taken over by my mutant, Thalidomide self, I will turn to Vild and give myself over fully in apology. When I do this simple act, the hair shirt of self-loathing falls to the floor and I am once again smooth and comfortable in my skin, made silken by forgiveness.

I think people should really experience this more often. And in return, we should all learn to behave less victoriously when receiving an apology. In its perfect form, the reaction should not be a fist pump. A victory lap, run around the contrite, is an amateur, asshole move. The experienced guru will see the delicate egg shell crack and put out cupped hands for the downy chick.

I have a long way to go. I still defend, I still gloat. But I've had a few successes and with each one I get closer to something true. If I fuck up along the way to that truth, all I can say is, well, I'm sorry.

Turns Out, Its Rich People I Fear. More on that Later.

2009-09-18T22:38:00.004-04:00

No boloney, I didn't meet a Republican until I was in college. There I became aware that there was 'one' on campus and only then because he self-identified as Republican and I was honestly, like, "Wow, there goes that Republican guy. " As I recall he was a big blowhard windbag, and so all the unknowns were affirmed for me. "There's one of those republicans, and look, he's an opinionated ass." Case closed.

I grew up in a community of hot headed liberal New yorkers; people who believed, in true liberal fashion, that they're owed something. Those are my peoples. The entitled- egoist -upper middle class- east coast elitist- scrabble playing- prep school-arty set? My peeps. The fact that I am not Jewish is still somewhat of a mystery to me.

So anyway, I'd heard about these republicans for a long time. And as I got older and more embedded with my tribe of abortion seeking, pot-smoking, Christ-forsaking, bag recycling, pacifist brethren, the easier it was to villify the opposing team. But again, I'd never met 'one' personally. All I knew was that they wanted to steal my money and kill poor people. And also that if I let them, they'd drive my uterus like a big school bus, into the parking lot of poverty and despair because they like the 7 cells of my one night stand more than me.

Then I fell in love. With one of my oldest and best friends. Crazy in love. Talk on the phone from midnight to six a.m. every night, in love. Lingerie photos love. See the future, feel all your heart's blood squeeze throught the tiny portal of what is possible, LOVE love.

But there were a couple of problems.

One, he lived in Ohio and no self-respecting bagel-eater would ever live in Ohio. And then there was that other little problem...

I only discovered his condition very slowly. Its how I imagine being poisoned with grains of uranium might be - from pink and healthy to coughing an eyeball out your nostrill in about six months. My sweet lovin' man was that most dreaded of all beasts, and, what's more, he owned a gun. He hid these truths from me for a long time, knowing I think that he was in enemy territory, he camoflaged by playing up his funny, disarming, self-depreciating, love-stricken characteristics, and downplaying his paranoid, tax-break loving, capitalist, isolationist bomb-shelter tendencies.

I am not kidding when I say that I think my family might rather I have dated a pedophile. At least then there would have been help for him, some kind of rehabilitative program or protocol. He would have shown as a big red dot on the neighborhood map, but this, this was way more complex. He might actually co-mingle with my people, might even cross-breed! Or worse, occupy my body and operate my voting finger - work me like a sock puppet, his giant fist up my lily white, tube sock ass.

No one was more suspicious than I. When I found out he owned a gun, the conversation went something like this:

"I hate you so much right now, I think I might have to kill you with your own gun." The perfect argument for why I don't think people should have guns in the first place.

And then he brought me to the breeding ground of his people, the fertile, alien petrie dish where republicans coat the intellectual water's surface like trout eggs waiting to be fertilized by the giant semen hose of racism and xenophobia. And what did those psychos do? They invited me in and offered me love. Unconditional, whole-hearted, good-to-the-last-drop, L-o-v-e.

Me, with my foul mouth and naughty past. I was squeezed into the big table, with my inconsistent manners and sloppy values, my unfiltered opinions and emotional arguments, I was offered a seat at the table. Suddenly I was the novelty act. "So Jess, tell us what you think we should do about terrorism." Fifteen faces, ages 4-74, staring down the table over a steaming turkey, three pies and fourteen kinds of cookies, to see what I might come up with.

"Be quiet old man, or I'll have to ask Vildy to shoot you with his gun. Now pass the gravy."

Humilation, Served With Milk

2009-09-13T11:13:00.002-04:00

This is our front "porch" on an average day,

by way of illustration.

Lou had a friend over to play last year. It was the first play date he'd had in a while. We'd been struggling for some time to lure a friend or two to our house, which is off the beaten trail, from a new construction/ development/cul de sac point of view. So when his classmate took the bait, I went a little crazy. I put housewife pedal to metal. I cleaned all morning. I baked muffins. I vacuumed out cobwebby corners. I swabbed the toilets, fluffed the pillows. I was feeling very Maria Shriver, superior in my parenting and housekeeping, and yet sort of funky and cool, like Anne Lamott. And five minutes after this boy arrives, he looks up at me and says, very matter-of-factly, "Your house is messy." And I want to tell you, he really leaned on the word messy, hissing out those S's so that my chakras quivered.

By way of response I could have said, "Yes, honey, would you like a fresh-baked muffin?" or "That's not a nice a thing to say." But instead I immediately internalized the hell out of his casual observation, and I sat this four year old boy down and asked him to spell it out for me. "What do you mean? What exactly looks messy to you?" and he said, "Well the floor is curvy and I don't know, its just all yucky."

His comment was like an arrow, shot true from his bow, straight through my Achilles heel. I'd long suspected that my milieu was "yucky" and now this tiny arbiter had confirmed it. I sent him away to play with some broken toys while I limped from the couch.

I went about my duties as best I could while bleeding from the liver. I puttered in circles, muttering to myself what I wanted to say to him, all the explanations and rationalizations. I wanted to call him back and over a muffin and glass of milk tell him that lately I've really been struggling with housekeeping. I wanted to prove to him that I used to be tidy.

When I lived alone and it was just me and my cereal bowl moving back and forth from the table to the drying rack, I was a very organized and clean person. I bathed every day before work. I made my bed. I exercised and had good clothes. I was a very good girl when I wasn't fucking the neighborhood Frenchman and snorting cocaine. I had all my toiletries in little baskets. I vacuumed under the bed.

Don't you see, my little pre-school friend, life moves so quickly. One day you're single and looking for love and the next a couple of toddlers drop from your loins and very quickly its hard to keep up with it all. Things went crusty without notice. I owned a house, then two rental properties, two cars, a "creative" husband, two kids, four tons of laundry and a dying creative life and my attitude went limp with the potted plants. I simply could not keep up.

I imagined he'd nod his understanding from under a milk mustache. You see, we bought this house cheap, so we could get our kids into the nice public school system, and you know, you should have seen it when we bought it. I peeled wallpaper off every room in this house. Lily at the age of 3, helped, spraying it wet with a squirter while I scored and scraped. We replaced every door, painted every wall, put in those skylights that are right now illuminating your disgusted countenance. We sanded the floors, painted the cabinets, tiled the kitchen, built that wall right there. We installed that cabinetry, put up all that drywall, put in those can lights. I built those cubbies, that are right now housing your blinking sneakers, and stained the wood myself in the garage. I reupholstered that very chair on which you sit. We did that ourselves, and yes the floor is a little off -- more milk?--but we didn't know that the tile adhesive we used wasn't the right kind. We just didn't know.

That swimming pool out there was filled with black water and about 5 billion tadpoles when we moved in. I scooped the carcasses out myself after committing frog-icide on a massive scale. And you know what, my little pal in Superman briefs, we've never hired anyone to do any of it. We've done all these things with kids, and jobs, through depression and illness, while close to broke, in good times and bad. We've spent our weekends retrieving appliances from craigslist hicks in distant zip codes. I think when you view our home through that lens, my little visitor with mitten clips, you'll see we've made something quite beautiful here, though its a bit rough, I'll grant you, and the details may yet require a little finesse.

Furthermore --and you might want to put Nemo down for this bit -- people expect too much of themselves. Happiness, cleanliness, right-angles - its all a bit much. Its a lot to ask of human beings, who I believe, secretly want to hurl their feces at their glass enclosure like the rest of their primate brethren. I'm not saying we don't enjoy order, we do. Its just that people strive for it with such manic intent, I think they're missing the big picture. I mean, what's more important here, that my house is clean for our twice annual play date or that its filled with love the rest of the year?

A few hours pass and its time for me to take my tiny critic home to his super clean four bedroom, two-and-a-half bath, center hall colonial, built last year with walk-in closets for everyone. So the three of us pile into the van that I'd vacuumed at the car wash the day before.

We're backing down the driveway and the kid pipes up from the back seat, "This car is junky, why don't you get a new one?"

Customer Service

2009-09-11T13:05:00.000-04:00

Here's my Customer Service model: I'll do anything for anyone.

I got a call a few days ago from a man who is interested in having a sofa recovered in leather. Recovering a sofa is a big job, as you might imagine, and working in leather is a specialty act. But I fear nothing, and frankly, I was feeling a little greedy. $ure, I'd ab$olutely love to reuphol$ter your $ofa! So I arrange to go meet this guy at his storage locker in Mayfield Heights, a particularly delightful part of town where they keep the tile shops, Meineke, Big and Tall, and strip mall gyms that my sister and I refer to collectively as, Butts in the Window.

I arrive at the designated shanty town that is Storage Plus, so named because its Storage plus a very dirty feeling you can't wash off. I drive around to a row of lockers 100-110 to meet my mark. He is a hard man to miss weighing in at nearly 400 pounds. His sister is with him. She's just regular fat. He tells me that his locker is upstairs.

Immediately I see a couple of problems. One, how is this man going to get up a flight of stairs? Two, how are the two of us going to get his sofa down those stairs? Undaunted, I follow him up.

I'll pause here to give you my public service announcement: People, eat your vegetables!

It took roughly 35 seconds per step for this man to haul himself up to the next level. 35 seconds times, oh, 20 steps, that's what, about 7 minutes? I'll let you soak that in for a minute.

I felt like I should hand him a rope or something, or push from behind. I'm not saying that to be cruel. I honestly wanted to help him. I offered about five times to have him describe it for me, and I'd just run up and snap a couple of pictures. But he insisted. He was sweetly funny about the whole thing. Laughing about how he'd lose twenty pounds performing this one heroic act of kinesis. Bless.

So we get up there to his locker which is HUGE and filled with perfectly ordered piles of the most depressing crap you could ever imagine. The kind of furniture that Minsk housewives would cringe at - brass based tables with smoked glass tops. An entertainment center that covered eighteen feet of wall space. Toilet brushes in with the suitcases. Shoes on top of dishes. Chairs covered in white vinyl, marbled mirrors, too many vacuum cleaners. An orgy of bad taste and the inability to let go. Somewhere in there was my next job.

But Steve (I'll call him Steve) had to sit for a few moments to collect the necessary oxygen to continue. He did so on a chair so tiny I feared for his safety. We chatted about the price of leather, and his pending move, a downsizing from a big house to a small apartment, how he was going to get all this stuff in there. About his medical problems and pending surgeries. Diabetes and cats. Cats! When he thinks of them he asks if I could just take a quick look around for his cat carrier. Should be right over there, next to the Indians blow up chair. Go Tribe!

I find his cat carrier and hand him a roll of garbage bags he'd been looking for -- for some time, it seems apparent. Then he describes the sofa in greater detail and I go looking for that too. Its black, he says, should be right over there. I see a few sofas, and quite a few chairs, but no black couch. Are you sure? I'm pretty sure. Shoot, it must be in the moving truck. The truck? There's MORE?

So we make our way back down the stairs, me with the cat carrier and roll of garbage bags, him with a firm grip on his cane and the railing. When we get outside, I see the moving truck about 25 yards away. Steve says he'll meet me over there. He gets himself into his car and drives over. It was like a Monty Python skit. He gets in, turns on the car, drives a few feet, turns off the car, and gets out of the car. I've never felt so young and svelt.

I climb up on the bumper and throw open the rattling gate of the u-haul, which is filled, floor to ceiling, with more furnishings from the home of Edith Bunker. A wall of them, fitted in like Tetris blocks, this way and that, so that there were no crevices, no unused space at all. To get anything out of that truck would mean disassembling a tight cube of despair meant only for its owner.

Steve apologizes profusely. He really thought it was up there. He feels terrible to have troubled me. He will call me when he can find his couch. Really, he's so sorry.

So, as part of my new list of upholstery services, I am also offering getting shit down from high places, Garbage bag retrieval and pet carrier assistance. Free of charge!

Free to be Me and You

2009-09-06T23:42:00.000-04:00

My youngest child just started Kindergarten.

Its like the ankle bracelet is off and I can now leave the compound without violating the conditions of my parole. Simultaneously, the clouds parted, the sun came out and the sky shone, aqua marine with puffy white clouds. There was music playing somewhere and a birdie alighted upon my outstretched finger, my middle finger, which I had extended in triumph over housewifery.

There is a lot to love about early childhood, and I've loved the shit out of what I could. But holy mother of need, its like I've been pecked by chickens for the past seven years. Amusing at times, look how they flock to my outstretched hand to take the grains of love from my palm, painful after a bit, get these fucking filthy chickens off of me! Nourishing. Ah, chicken soup. Terrifying. All these chickens are mine? I can't possibly eat that many eggs! And beautiful, of course, so beautiful.

But the day they both got on that bus, with their stuffed book bags and packed lunches, after I had stopped sobbing and had glass of champagne at 8:30 in the morning, after all that, the most amazing thing happened. I had a complete, uninterrupted thought. I can't tell you what that thought was, because I'm new at this, and my shot memory has yet to be rehabilitated, but I can tell you that it was a whole thought, beginning, middle and end. I think I made a plan. It probably went something like this: First, I'm going to finish my coffee, then I'm going to take a poop without my kids charging in to ask me if the sky reaches all the way to the ground, or chasing each other through as a shortcut to the hallway, and then I'm going to look up the definition of succor, because I've read it a couple of times and never really known what it meant, then I'm going to stretch, and I mean really, really stretch, and when I do, Lou isn't going to try to leap onto my belly and ride me like a gasping bronco. I'm not saying it was an elaborate thought process, or anything that will better the world for humanity, but man, it was mine, all mine.

You never think the day will come when you will have a few hours in a row to be you, not an extension of your children, or an amendment to your husband, or a the mistress of the grocery list, but the day does come, very very slowly and from a great distance.

As this day approached I began doing involuntary soft shoe in my kitchen, while also ruing the very real possibility that I was going to have to re-enter the job market. My job skills are as crusty as a case of pink eye, with as much appeal. Writing, shit, with every major newspaper now the size of an STD pamphlet at your gynecologist's office, that's no money-maker, except for a very lucky few.

An office job? If there was one that'd have me...Dear GOD Vildy, DO NOT MAKE ME GO BACK THERE! I cling to his pant leg, begging and pleading. "Don't worry babe, you'll never have to go back there. Something will happen." What then? Starbucks, Target? Sweet sister of self-esteem, NO!

Then, one day, Vildy heads out on his bike for a little post psychosis stress relieving bike ride and finds himself standing in The Chair Shop, where Larry Nelson has been caning chairs and repairing furniture for 30 years. Turns out, Larry shared the space with an upholsterer for 18 years, and has spent the past year looking for someone who might want to upholster from that space. Not two months later, I've just spent my first week at my new shop, which I've cleverly named, brace yourself, The Upholstery Shop. The day my kids went to school, that was opening day of my new business. There was a job waiting for me when I got there.

I'm not in my basement. My kids aren't stepping on the fabric as I cut it into the various shapes of a wing back chair. I'm not listening to the endless centrifuge of the washing machine, or kneeling on Lego as I hammer tacks into a seat back.

Now I have this little place where I go, where the sun shines in, and the music plays, where I work at a table built by my best friend, where this nice man works in his shop, next to mine, and I just do this thing I love to do. Its artistic, its occupationally therapuetic, its ever changing and I'm more a part of the world then I have been in years.

What's more, I don't have to go to work for McWal-Fuck.

I love Kindergarten.

Recidivist Movie Watching

2009-08-22T21:46:00.011-04:00

I do so enjoy a nice prison movie. And I ask you, what's not to love?

Bad heroes who have to shiv it out in grotesque cafeterias after their heterosexuality is violated by ugly men in close quarters - j'adore! Paying the ultimate price for contraband, the sanctity of the butt hole or the last delicious cockroach, all this and an amoral center - yes please! Making weapons out of chair legs, pillow cases full of soda pop cans and shop tools sharpened into picks - Don't mind if I do! I don't care how outrageous it gets, I'm absolutely up for it. Misunderstood criminals who heal urinary tract infections with magic houseflies that swarm from the throat of a giant black man? I'm all in, as long as its set to the backdrop of solitary confinement, clanking keys, squeaky shoes, dangerous showers and abuse of power.

I've watched Paul Newman eat those hard boiled eggs a dozen times. I'll never get sick of him shakin' the bush, digging the holes, or confusing the bloodhounds. Clint Eastwood climbing behind the walls of Alcataz? Nifty! Shawshank, Papillion, Bad Boys, Brubaker, Midnight Express, Last Castle, Dead Man Walking, Great Escape - you film it, I'm your prisoner.

Even when prison looks like club med for all the boys I loved in High School, I don't mind. As long as the main character has to eat off of a compartmented metal tray, I'll believe and follow. I like 'em preachy, far-fetched or documentary style - I even like a comedy in striped pajamas -Stir Crazy, Out of Sight, The longest Yard. All deliciously incarcerated.

I don't know why. Maybe its the prison within me that yearns for the prison without. Maybe its some unexpressed desire to be shackled. I'll let my therapist figure that shit out. All I know is, when they pass out the strip searches and initiation rites behind bars, I'm passing out the popcorn and cokes in my living room.

Breakfast in Bed: An Anniversary Tale

2009-08-20T14:03:00.008-04:00

As of yesterday I've been married to Vild for nine years.

By way of surprise, our kids made us breakfast in bed. I knew they were up to something because Lou's elbows were not embedded in my rib cage as they usually are at 7 a.m. on a given day. There was a distinct absence of cereal requests or harassment for cartoons immediately upon opening my gritty, crossed eyes.

Suddenly our bedroom door sucked open, pulling the window shades away from the glass, and there were our kids beaming in the doorway, wobbling a tray between them, approaching the bed with something that looked like two coffee cups and a banana.

Upon closer inspection,there was indeed a banana, but also two cups of wet coffee grounds, some of which had slopped over the side so that it looked very much like a trail of ants crawling up the side of the cup, which it very well could have been, our house being what it is.

Coincidentally, I've had a headache for three days. I mention this because coffee looks real purdy to a girl whose had a headache for three days. But a cup of black, gritty mash like liquid sandpaper looks slightly less good. Clearly steps were missed in the brewing process.

There's a tender balance to be struck between the woman with the bad head and desperate need for coffee and the glowing children with the bright intentions and wretched brewing skills. I wanted to be a good parent but I also very much wanted a coffee do-over.

I once presented my own mother with a ten egg omelet, scorched on the outside, running raw on the inside, its edges extending over the edge of the plate like it had fainted there. She was tender enough as she scraped it into the trash, telling me she loved me for the effort. I was mortified and angry, hurt and confused. It was an omelet, I'd made it for her, and I couldn't see what the problem could possibly be, why wouldn't she just eat it?

I went down to the kitchen with the kids. Lily mentioned, as I neared the scene, that I should prepare myself for some possible spillage that may have occurred. The coffee pot, it was explained to me, had done something wrong.

With as much tenderness and love as I could muster, six minutes after waking, I told her she'd done a beautiful thing, whatever I might find, and that I'd walk her through the coffee making steps to see what error the pot had made.

Turns out the pot had forgotten to put a paper filter in, and the plastic basket had been filled to the top with about forty dollars worth of grounds. After the 'go' button had been pressed, the scorching dribbles of well-water had nowhere to go and had run off the packed mesa of granules, both spurting from the sides under the lid and flowing back into the water reservoir, then down the sides of the machine, across the counter top, drooling down the cabinet front - a river of hot grains running to the center of the kitchen. In the process, Lily had managed to get the cups into the flow, and filled them with some of the molten run-off from the counter top Vesuvius.

I unplugged the coffee machine which hissed gratefully as I carried it over to the sink like a fallen lover. I had to dump the thing in one deft motion, to avoid burns or worse, permanent damage to the hero maker. But deftness, it turned out, was not on the breakfast menu.

The tidal wave of caffeinated slop that sloshed into the sink, did a half-pipe maneuver, washing up the side of the basin in a hot arc that not only dumped a half gallon of liquid over this other counter, but sprayed coffee grounds in a fan across the window screen above the sink, which grabbed like Velcro each individual ground and held each one perfectly, one grain per grid of screen. It was an epic display. Lily watched in disbelief. This, she informed me, was not how coffee was made. She knows how to make coffee, and if I'd just let her do it, she'd show me how. Besides, she said, I was ruining the surprise.

A mop, half a roll of paper towels and two dishtowels later the kitchen was only slightly more tidy than when I entered it. Turns out, wet coffee grounds are stubborn little fuckers. They don't go quietly.

We re-brewed with the insufficient half cup of grounds that remained dry. I talked them through the process, highlighting the benefits of the filter - enlightened "oooohhhhh"s - and we all walked the tray up to Vild who slept peacefully.

He woke on our anniversary to his weak coffee and banana and with real pride Lily told him, "Me and Lou did it all by ourself!"

Happy Anniversary Vildy.

Crying Indian...still crying, and now frankly, getting a little dangerous.

2009-08-10T08:01:00.008-04:00

Chagrin Falls.

There are in fact falls that pour through the center of our quaint little town, the torrent made from the tears of a million unfulfilled housewives.

Be that as it may, its lovely, the Chagrin River, flowing with grace through several counties, until in dumps finally into lake Erie. In downtown Chagrin it makes a dramatic descent, crashing down between The Popcorn Shop and Starbucks to the delight of residents and tourists alike who congregate on warm summer evenings to gawk and stroll, talk and eat ice cream by its sonorous cascade.

We were those gawkers last night. My family and I got our requisite ice cream cones and went to watch the river do its thing. By the banks of this town's most beloved feature, you will find a thoughtfully constructed set of wooden stairs, with several well-positioned landings and built-in benches, that descend from street level to the base of the falls, so that one might pleasantly dawdle and enjoy the scenery. The stairs are steep, the view dramatic, and there's no way not to love it.

Last night it was crowded, it being the first truly hot evening of the entire summer. Couples, families, and many, many sweet-natured dogs were out in force. My kids stroked with sticky fingers, every single dog on the way down, so a 45 second trip became a 35 minute reconnaissance - all part of the pleasure.

Most of the way down, at perhaps the best vantage point, I see a gormless teen hurl his unfinished ice cream cone, with wrapper, into the ivy. It was a flash, and I wasn't sure, maybe it was just a glob of unruly ice-cream and though gross, impermanent in its assault on nature. His mother was facing him and said nothing. No sooner had this action registered, but the dickhead teen turns around a chucks his overlarge wad of napkins onto the manicured hedgerow. Its difficult to explain without boring you, how the wad was perfectly below eye-level, like it had been laid on a platter, a perfect, plated fuck you, so that no one viewing the falls would be able not to see it. But there it was, a bleached white ball on a stage of green, and his mother said nothing.

It really got my Indian braids in a twist. So I grab the wad from the shrubs and from behind and below, shove it back into his hand. I startle him, and at first he thinks I'm handing him some napkins as a gesture of friendship, but quickly realizes its a crazy woman handing him his own nasty gob of sticky paper.

He says, "Thanks...er...HEY! I just threw that there" and he points to the hedge like I should recognize that he'd already disposed of his crap, couldn't I see that? To which I reply, "Yes, I watched you do it. That's yours and there's a trash can right there...RIGHT THERE!"

There are moments when I can actually feel my pupils dilate and its possible something might have flown from my body, spittle or something toxic, or some kind of threatening aroma, because let me tell you something, that little fucktard marched that wad the three fucking steps to the trash can in quite a hurry. His mother watched without expression or frankly comprehension.

In closing I will say, I'm starting to get it. I'm beginning to regretfully understand how broken people do this. They see something nice, something naturally beautiful, or made with love, and their brokenness compels them to leave their mark of anger and hurt on it. It cannot be left alone, because to do so would be to admit and succumb to, beauty itself. I am starting to see the formula of the damaged soul that lashes out at the resplendent.

The Crying Indian of Fields Road

2009-07-29T17:18:00.021-04:00

I live on a beautiful country road, surrounded on either side by farms. At one end, Farmer Bob, with eyeglass lenses thick as hockey pucks, sparse teeth, and pants belted around his armpits, rotates his soybean crop with corn. This year its seventy-five acres of edamame, curling and leafy, low to the ground. Last year it was corn, into whose arching rows my children walked with fingers outstretched, finding feathers, and the antler of a buck.

Where our street T's off into another, belted cows, black with a white stripe in the middle like bovine ice cream sandwiches, low at the crossing. This road, Geauga Lake (Gee-aw-guh), curls its elbow around another beautiful farm, just past the river, that grows cutting flowers and veg, and is tended through an outreach program by kids in trouble and grown-ups who want to help them by pressing their open hands into the dark earth and showing them that they can make magic by pinching back flowers and planting seeds. Neither of these roads has painted stripes or shoulders, its just gritty black top without speed limit signs, that slopes down on either side, forming a ditch into which rainwater channels its way to the river and beyond. Much of the land by the river has been donated by private citizens, like toothless Bob, to the Aurora Branch of the Cuyahoga River Conservancy, preserving it for all eternity for wildlife and humanity.

If you follow Geauga Lake Road, it passes some very hick homes with slanted porches and giant woodpiles, and then a couple of ramshackle horse properties. If you follow it far enough, about three miles, and fail to use your breaks, you will smash your car through the wall of the health and beauty section of Wal-mart and roll to a stop in automotive. This parking lot is shared by McDonalds, Target, Kohls, Marshalls, and The Home Depot.

The point being, this preserve of the natural that we lovingly call home, shares a zip code with every single clam-shell pacakged, shrink-wrapped, palletted piece of shit you'd ever want to throw onto the landfill. All the scuzz pots can be found boiling over just a short drive from the mother goose who nervously tends her nest on the pilings of the bridge that crosses over our little branch of river.

Many people familiar with the area love this street, and travel its curving splendor to get to parts southerly, enjoying the surge of oxygen through their open windows.

Still other people travel this road without loving it at all, to get to the festering retail carbunkle without the hinderance of posted traffic rules or painted lines. Their mania for bar coding is so lustful and blinding that they tear through this solemn route at lunatic speeds, daring children at driveways end and elderly checking mailboxes to step out without looking. "DO IT!" the cars dopler past them, sucking up hems in their wake, tossing their innocent hair. At the hairpin that crests the hill, where there is nothing but trees, no houses, no spies, they roll down their windows, and seeing the beauty of those ancient trees, the mossy ground - they hurl their forty ounce plastic cups, and the cubic foot of crumpled waste that is a Happy Meal, or #1 with Coke, onto the fragrant beds of composting leaf hummus. I've seen a Marshalls bag billowing desperately on the lower branches of this shady passage, and cigarette butts still smoldering in the ditch.

What urge propels these passers-by when seeing such quiet splendor to fuck it up with their grotesque detritus? Is it anger at the cows for their voluptous languor? Or ire at the trees for ascending so effortlessly toward heaven? What makes a person hurl their permanent crap onto the carpet of the divine?

Littering seems so outdated. Something I felt sure, as a culture, we'd outgrown, like Thalidamide, Quaaludes and the typewriter. Don't we recall the PSA of the Native American, nee Indian, with the tear running down his cheek having had trash thrown from a speeding car onto his mocassins? I do. And I feel his pain.

"People start pollution. People can stop it."

Or shoot out the tires of the people who continue to soil my moccasins.

Safety Town

2009-07-18T11:50:00.017-04:00

As Kindergarten approaches for my little boy, and all the five year olds of the land, here in sub-rural-burbia, the time for Safety Town begins. This is a sweet program sponsored by the township and its various men-in-uniform, fire and police, who fill the school gym with squirrely pre-school graduates in order to teach them how to better behave in the face of certain hazards. They set up a wee town, made of waist-high wooden buildings, with a real traffic signal at its center and the kids ride little pedal cars around and try not to make mince meat of basic traffic rules.

The volunteer cops with their real guns teach the kids about gun safety, about how not to touch them if they come across one leaning on their drunken neighbor's La-Z-boy after he's fallen asleep with a fifth on the fourth. Out here, this scenario is not all that unlikely. We have our very own anti-social neighbor who likes to spray the hillside with .22 fire in honor of our nation's heave-ho of British colonialism once a year. So a little precautionary fire arm talk feels relevant and good.

There's a lot of good information handed down through Safety Town. Don't cross the street between cars, stop-drop-and-roll, buckle up, 9-1-1, how to avoid lurky pervs, how to get on the school bus in an orderly fashion and memorize your home phone number. I loves me some Safety Town!

When I grew up in New York City we had Safety Town too. It looked a little different, but its lessons were similar. It went a little something like this:

Here's Dad's credit card. If it isn't over limit or cut off due to divorce maneuverings, go down to Gimbels on 86th street and buy some hamster supplies with it. You can take the bus if you want, or just walk. That bum who hangs out on the subway grate on Lexington, don't talk to him, he's probably a crazy person who likes to hurt children. If you get hungry for lunch you can stop at Papaya King and get a hot dog. If you want to go over to Patrick's house, go ahead. His mom's not home, so you wont be any trouble over there. Don't be a nuisance. Don't ring the elevator buttons too much. You can see a movie, but if its R-rated you'll have to ask an adult to buy your ticket. If you're running late, hop in a cab and be home by 5. 6PM is "grown-up hour" which means you're not allowed to bother the adults with your childish presence or demands for food. Dinner will be ready when its ready, and you'll eat it, or you'll have to wait for breakfast and three bowls of unsupervised Cap-'N-Crunch. Now go, and don't forget your key, we may be out when you get home.

I like our little wooden town with its dangers and hand signals, its coloring pages and graduation t-shirts. I like that I recognize the fire chief and the cop who taught my daughter about stranger danger. I don't kid myself that we're in fact any safer here than I was in latch-key 70's New York City, but I like it that we try.

If things get really out of control, I can always borrow some ammo from my neighbor and shoot the pervs myself.

A Day In Single Syllables

2009-07-09T07:51:00.004-04:00

We sat on the chairs. Watched them splash and dive for stuff. Float toys wrap their waists like bows. Two piece suits hiked all up. Tops tugged here and there. "Watch ME!"they shout as they think of a trick. They want us to look and we do. Lounge chairs stick to our butts. We sip cokes, tell our tales. Our lives we share in facts. The girls splash and ask for ice cream. "Most moms wont let their three year old jump off the board in the deep end." She says. "But she loves it. She has no fear. I gave her that." And so she did. No one could say she did not.

This friend is bold. Brave. When folks give her stuff she says, "Thank You" and never "No thanks." She will take the gifts. All of them. No qualms for help. She takes it.

"Live here." she says. "There is worth here that is more than the cost. You get more than what you pay for, even though you pay a lot." "Think of what you want and write it down. You will get it. Write it down as it should be, in pure form. That way the force can give it to you and not have to think about it. The force wont think. It will move down the list. Skip you." I am sure she is right.

The girls ask, "How soon will we go? Is it time?" Their hair flat and wet. They are prunes and spent. We have had sun and talk. We are spent too. We all pile in the van. The small one sleeps like a bird, with her beak tucked in her wing. Her neck all hung down.

Their suits are all dirt from the wet tree climb. Oh those girls. The one who says, "When I grow up I want to be wild." Oh jeez, her mom's eyes roll. "What am I in for?"

But it all looks good to me.

I've Moved A Lot

2009-07-05T08:58:00.009-04:00

1. 19 East 88th street, NY - Learned to ride without training wheels in front of the Guggenheim museum.

2. 126 E. 95th, NY - Lived in a browstone, sold hastily during my parents divorce. Mentioning this place, still pisses off my dad.

3. 444 E. 82nd, NY- On the 25th floor with my mom and step-dad, my hamster died here.

4. Garcia St. Santa Fe, NM - Rode roller skates the entire year I lived here.

5. Fiske St, Pacific Palisades, CA - Was repeatedly molested by my guitar teacher the whole year I lived here.

6. Five different dorm rooms, The Cambridge School of Weston - All good.

7. Huron Ave., Cambridge, MA - Mom and David lived here. Fell in love with Casey here.

8. Hillary and Trudy's house, Huron Ave. Cambridge, MA - Mom left David, friends took us in.

9. Elliot St., Cambridge Ma.- one bedroom with Mom, senior year.

10. Greg Cushna's House, Newton Highlands, MA - mom moves to california. No where to go, move in with boyfriend's family.

11. Orchard Hill, Umass, Amherst - heinous dorm experience, roommate tries to beat me up. Meet friends for life.

12. Puffton Village, Amherst MA - first off-campus housing. Smelly, but fun.

13. Columbus Avenue, Boston - with Sioux, lost summer. Very fun.

14. Weird little Summer apartment, Amherst Ma - First time living solo. Great summer. Photo school.

15. Main Street, Northampton, MA with Deb Polansky - so fun.

16. Massasoit St., Nothampton, MA with Megan Jasper and Sheila and the guy who died in the fire. - Constantly running out of heating oil, filling with $50 a time. Lean. Strange. Often fun. Dated Cross dresser.

17. 22 Graves Ave. Northampton MA, with Rob Skelton, Henry, etc. - Rock house. Pancakes always offered to company in the after hours. Fell in love with Jason here.

18. 3(?)Main Street, Northampton, MA with Jason Loewenstien, Henry Bruner, Dan Goodin - Met Vild for the 1st time here.

19. 30 Main Street, Northampton, MA, with only Jason - first love nest.

20 676 Geary, tenderloin, SF, CA - On my own again in the loin. Sexually harassed at first fashion-industry job.

21. National Blvd. Los Angeles, CA - Tiny little birdhouse. 100 square feet? Slugs crawled into shower. Like living in a boat.

22. Culver Blvd. Los Angeles, CA - one bedroom. Broken into. Big Earthquake.

23. 18th/Sanchez, SF, CA - Commuted to Hayward. one-hour each way. Five years.

24. Shenandoah, Los Angeles, CA - biked to work in hollywood. Lived near my sister. Good year.

25. 3145 Meadowbrook, Cleveland Heights, Oh - Moved to ohio to be with Vild.

26. 2585 Idlewood, Cleveland Heights, OH - Had my babies here.

27. 7444 Fields Road, Chagrin Falls, OH - living la vida loca.

And What Do You Do?

2009-06-24T17:55:00.024-04:00

Its a fair question and a good opener. It's natural for people you've just met to want to know how you fill your days. Frankly, I'd like to answer them. Instead I'm awash in dread and self-loathing. This well-meaning question, asked with sincerity, reaches my cochlea as, "What do you have to say for yourself?" I'm in trouble, but I'm not sure why. It's the same feeling I get when police lights flash behind me. Busted.

My inability to answer this question will surely reveal that I am but a sack of meaningless cells, oozing across the intellectual horizon, falling formless through the sewer grate of the unambitious into the Dead Sea of mediocrity.

Its not that I do nothing; I do many things. I even do two of them well. But I don't go to a job and a job is how we answer this question without grappling, over the chips and hot dip, with existential questions of self and identity.

I used to have a job. I was a production manager for a company that made wee jeans for tiny Hollywood starlets with impossibly erect nipples and toddler waists. And though the stress of that job made clumps of hair stay behind on my synthetic office chair long after I'd stood up, I had no problem identifying myself to the world. That's what I did, that was me.

Then I fell in love and moved to Cleveland where I discovered they don't keep fashion. I'd stepped off the reassuring, orderly pavers of a career path and into the drainage ditch of freelance employment. Then came kids and freelance became no-lance as the demands of motherhood overtook the demand for sporadic and meager income. At the fatal intersection of motherhood and isolation, a gruesome casualty was made of my creative and employable selves.

The void created a suction into which every shitty household responsibility flowed. Not only the obvious and immediate demands for snacks and entertainment, laundry and groceries but all the other tedious chores like waiting for service people, arguing with creditors, finding tenants, mowing rental property lawns, sorting through soggy papers, smog checking the cars, getting the trash to the curb, creatively paying bills for which there was no money, making appointments for my family's many orifices and keeping the house from physically sinking into the morass. My toddlers became children while I was on hold with the health insurance company.

So, when people ask politely what I do, such a rush of hostile embarrassment floods my temples I actually go blank. What the hell do I do? Certainly not nothing, but rather, nothing you casual-stranger-I-may-never-see-again wants to hear about. No one balancing a paper plate on their knee wants to hear a lengthy and angsty account of the many ways I've served my family, or the myriad ways I've made other people's lives possible and pleasurable.

So I started coming up with pat answers as a diversion. I say things like, "I'm an angry pleasure portal for my husband" or "I enjoy sex with animals" or "I'm a geisha girl for my children." Sometimes I'd call myself a writer. Sometimes I'd say Fabric Arts. Sometimes Property Manager. Though all of these were accurate, none of them felt true, and none of them expressed the yearning I felt for a definitive answer that would make me feel like my life wasn't slipping away on the banana peel of housewifery.

All of this can sound like sour grapes. Poor me, living a life of freedom and privilege, well fed and loved, enjoying the luxury of being able to raise a family without going to a job. And to anyone who feels that I'm grousing without basis, I say, with love, take a drink of my ass. The work of being a parent is hard, really hard, but losing your identity is painful and disfiguring. We need only to look to Michael Jackson for proof of how deadly this condition can be.

This fall my kids head off to school together on a bright yellow school bus, creating a new kind of sucking void. But into this space I already sense not the rush of a million thankless chores, but a stream of new ideas about myself. My saggy identity is being reshaped in the dryer of opportunity.

I'm already practicing some new answers to the age old question, and I'm pleased to say, they sound just like me.

Who's the Luckiest Girl in the World?

2009-06-18T19:56:00.008-04:00

I don't mean to brag, but my husband, Vild, is extremely talented and I don't want another day to go by without him getting the recognition he deserves.

He can balance a wet filter filled with coffee grounds on an overfull can of trash like the last in a house of cards, so delicately perched in perfect equilibrium that really there's no need to empty it, it can just stay that way indefinitely.

He can use one knife in both the peanut butter and the jelly so adroitly that by the time you make your fifth sandwich from the new jar of Jiff you may not even need to bother with the jelly, its already mixed in.

He can use five towels a day, he's that concerned with freshness.

He can fit fifteen shirts on a single hook in his closet.

He can make the pool go from green to gray and back to green using only $200 worth of chemicals.

He's really good at telling me ways not to spend money on groceries. His suggestions are always excellent, and I love his help.

He can poop with the door open.

He can cut wire using only my fabric scissors.

He can be on the roof with the kids without being the least bit nervous.

He can balance his laptop on his chest, just under his chin and type with little elfin flipper hands protruding from his neck, in the dark.

He can come up with a new and exciting way of putting the dishes away, every single time, so that I'm never bored by finding the can opener.

He's considerate about venting the zip-lock bags so that the cheese can breath in the fridge.

He always reminds me to put the vacuum away in a way that I can hear it, even if I'm in the other room, which I appreciate.

Whenever I forget that he's a Republican he can think of new and more subtle ways of reminding me, so that I never forget, and that's a comfort.

He's more than willing to share my toothbrush with me.

I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

Class Act

2009-06-15T18:48:00.015-04:00

High School reunions are supposed to be a horror. Is anyone really comfortable with name tags? I don't know where to put them, above the boobs or below? Besides, large groups make my feet hurt. I don't remember anyone's name, even before they're horribly disfigured by the cruel glacier of life traveling across the continent of their face. All that, and its just a little too Then vs. Now for my taste. I'm typically better with incremental change.

You can get worked up before a reunion over things like Spanx. Do you run out and buy a girdle? Or just let the good times roll over the top of your pants? But even greater than concerns born of vanity, is the scary potential for some person, having gone completely off the rails in their own life, to come hurtling toward you, gasoline soaked and sparking, looking for some recognition of their former selves, as reflected in your terrified eyes.

For these and other reasons, my high school has never had particularly well-attended reunions. As students of a liberal arts boarding school whose academic focus was, almost pathologically so, the cultivating of the individual, we are not, as a result, joiners. This quality makes it hard to get a group of us free-thinkers to gather under our laminated badges when called to do so. We have a fuck-that-shit kind of attitude, in the nicest possible way.

But something happened this year, 25 years after, with the explosion of Facebook, and maybe just a little well-honed nostalgia, and dare I say it, a meaningful handful of us showed up to make it happen.

It took about an hour for all of us to gather our courage in the form of cold brews and snacks, to find ourselves collected in an ever more hilarious tangle of memories and one-liners. It was delightfully casual doings. Burgers, beers and suprises pulled from rental cars in the form of smokey treats, photo albums and The Cure. At one point, as two of our friends accidentally turned an adironack bench into a pile of kindling using only the weight of happy times, our friend, nervous about getting in trouble asked, "Where are the grown-ups?" and it was with genuine surprise and not a little concern that she received the news, "Jules, we are the grown-ups."

It was then that the official golf cart silently arrived, and sure that we would all be called before the Judicial Board, we stiffened. That is until we realized that it was our host, arriving with a quiet cart full of additional wine and beer...and give-away hats!

For ten hours I laughed so hard that my cheeks cramped and my voice dropped an octave. There is something about that kind of laughter - when you realize you are with people who are not only like you, but are actually formed from the same stuff. Its not the same as finding someone of similar tastes and humor, its better. The realization that you are beating the drum with your tribe - that these people became the people they are, at the same time you became the person you are - its a simple but sweet revelation.

We're each different now. Fatter, balder, more scarred, more emboldened, or mellowed. Some of us are found, some only more lost - all of us happily embedded with an entirely different cast of characters. But none of that changes the fundamental fact that we grew wings in cocoons of the same fiber. What we are now, we became then, in each other's company, groping, stumbling, flinging our way outward from that delicately dangling pod, until this weekend, when we all came fluttering toward the porch light and hurled ourselves indelicately into its warm glow.

We burned that adirondack bench in a roaring fire bowl and many of us spent the night on bunkbeds in the dorm, cackling into the wee hours, gasping for breath and creaking on our rubberized mattresses. We laughed, reminded so vividly, from so many angles, about how silly it is to be us, how wonderful and bizarre and unique. If only name tags could convey all that, we'd have burned them too.

Preparing for My High School Reunion - Fifteen Things That Could never happen today, but happened then.

2009-06-11T20:58:00.000-04:00

1. Driving to Cape Cod in the middle of the night to save our friend from her family, only to find her sleeping peacefully in her childhood bed.

2. Riding around with the maintenance guy in the plow truck, 5 am, coming down off an acid trip.

3. Telling-off the interim Principal at a town hall meeting. Him calling me a "spoiled little bitch" later, when no one else could hear.

4. Charging $400 in cab fares to my dad, so we could get pizza and cigarettes.

5. Making an imprint of my boobs in the fresh cement in the lower parking lot. My nipples bled from the lye, and I'm lucky they're still attached correctly.

6. Running top speed through the woods, no moon, feeling like I was flying, feet never touching ground, face never hitting bark.

7. Believing my friends had eloped, because they said so, when in fact they just really liked each other.

8. Sitting through an entire lecture from actress, Patricia Neal and never once bothering to know who she was so I could ask a smart question, or even a stupid one.

9. Losing my virginity on a classroom floor after dark, before curfew.

10. Smoking as many cigarettes as I could possibly bum, in the condoned smoking areas.

11. Watching my friends induce vomiting in the bathroom and thinking only that it was dumb.

12. Having a religious experience. Ok, on hallucinogens then too, but hey, none the less real.

13. Unsafe sex and lots of it.

14. Buying beer from the senile pharmacist by showing a glorified bus pass as I.D.

15. Wearing fish net stockings and moccasins in the same outfit.

The Death of Mischief

2009-06-06T17:50:00.007-04:00

I just got through watching Man on Wire, the documentary about Philippe Petit, the French high wire artist, who, in 1974 strung a line and walked between the Twin Towers. The feat itself was of course extraordinary, but more remarkable to me was the reaction of the people of New York after he'd completed his forty-five minute walk in thin air.

One cop, who waited at the end of the wire to arrest him, was so clearly moved by what he'd seen, he said to a reporter, in his thick N.Y. accent, "I'd cawl him a tightrope dancuh, more than a waalkah, cuz he was really more dancin' up dere." and then later, "I was watchin' sumthin' once in a lifetime." This officer was not a guy you'd think would be comfortable with a Frenchman, in tights, or even with saying the word dancing, but he didn't take the act as an affront to his authority, or position or ego. He just scratched his head and watched something beautiful unfold, something once in a lifetime.

They took Petit away in cuffs, as you'd expect, but his sentence from the judge was appropriately lenient - to perform for the kids of N.Y. in central park. The whole episode was regarded as a most beautiful act of mischief, which is exactly what it was. Never mind that Petit and his accomplices had forged documents, trespassed, hidden out in plain sight of the night watchmen, and generally made fools of the security of the building, the law and gravity.

The irony that this event took place at the World Trade Center, can't be lost on anyone. The collapse of the towers marked the beginning of a new, more serious era and subsequently the definitive end of mischief as we knew it. Can we never again take things lightly, or see the forging of documents by a foreigner as anything less than a water-boarding offense? It is my sincere hope that one day we might.

***

When I went to boarding school there was a cook named Art. He was a strange, very tall, man who spoke in what I can only describe as a Marty Feldman, Igor voice ..."Abby Nooormal". Very nasal and wispy and sort of pervy-sounding. This was his natural register. He was weird and wonderful in ways that I hope to post about later, but suffice it to say, he was an original and I really loved him.

Art cooked for the whole school, some 350 students, from scratch. Every pancake, every cookie, every piece of baked chicken was made by him, from actual ingredients, with the help of a small staff and a rotating crew of students on kitchen duty. The food there was incredible and I hope there were a few people who new how good we had it.

In particular, Art made these pouffy dinner rolls that came hot out of the oven, twenty-five or so at a time, that were flawless. Perfect buttery baseballs of love. Everyone loved those fucking buns. How could you not? So, when a student snuck up onto the dining hall roof in the middle of the night, and with a four inch brush painted across the shingles, "WE LOVE ART'S BUNS" I don't think there was soul there that felt it was anything less than proper homage. It was great; a perfect act of mischief. How do I know that if this same thing happened today, the kid(s) responsible would be kicked out and their parents sued for the repair of the roof.

Our old friend, Henry, told us that his nephew, Sam, a stunningly bright kid, with all the wit and promise in the world, was recently kicked out of his blue-blazer private school for writing his name, the first day of school, on the passed around roster, as follows:

Hugh G. Rection

After the humorless teacher read it aloud - just as you would hope she would, sounding out every syllable before realizing what she'd said -she felt humiliated, and Sam was summarily expelled.

My own nephew has been called to the office of his prep school, and his mother, too, called in, for loosening the tops on the salt shakers, making objectionable art(!) , and, I think, texting in class. These are serious offenses apparently, and garner serious consequences.

I worry about a society that takes itself so seriously. It shows a rigidity of character that I find unpleasant in the extreme. I've never trusted or enjoyed people who didn't laugh first at themselves and then at everyone and every single thing, next.

Self-seriousness is the buzz kill of a thriving culture. Might not some gentile breaking and entering do well to be forgiven if the intent can be discerned to be playful and not damaging to anything other than ego? Can we not find our way back to a time when kids could screw the caps off the shakers without a call home? It seems to me a school is not educating if it cannot find suitable, equitable punishment for such a child. How about making my nephew fill those shakers for the rest of the school year? Or have Sam come up with thirty-five more such monikers by tomorrow and recite them in verse?

There is a jolliness missing in public discourse, and an over-seriousness that I think may ultimately be the demise of our empire. What cannot bend will be broken, and I for one see mischief as the yoga of of the soul - it keeps us supple and lubricated. Mischief reminds us that walking the line is not an act of freedom, unless its done 1000 feet up, by a laughing man in tights.

Motherhood, Brought to You by Wes Craven

2009-06-02T08:55:00.018-04:00

(Edward Gorey, Gashlycrumb Tinies)

The world is a dangerous place. There are so many ways we can fall prey to the hazards of being alive. The spectrum is glorious; A plane can, for dramatic example, crash into your brokerage office, or in a more subtle turn, one could simply die from the anemia of loneliness over a long, long time. Anyone with a vivid imagination, or kids, has run through the myriad anxieties, the scenarios of potential harm that can befall the ones we love. Some of us might, from time to time, require a sedative to prevent these anxieties from ruling the day.

I, for one, can see ordinary events through, to their very most horrific and unlikely conclusion, in nanoseconds. I see my son, Lou, running joyfully across the yard with a stick in his hand and for a flash, I daydream that he trips, ramming that stick through his soft palette.

Lily hangs upside down from the monkey bars and I cinematically imagine her neck hitting the ground first, a muffled thud, when she falls. My kids wrestle constantly and my consistent, begging plea is, "Watch the neck, watch the NECK!!" Because I see every summersault as a plausible brain injury and every leap off the couch as potential C1 fracture.

Vild has none of this, as I suspect is true for most men. Vild will do the very most stupid, dangerous, life-threatening thing, and never, for a moment, worry.

My worry has little bearing on my mothering style. I am not an uptight parent, nor an overly cautious one. In fact, I'm kind of lazy and stubborn. I give my kids a lot of rope. Vildy lets both the kids drive the tractor mower in lazy circles around the yard. Lily can cut her own fruit. For fun, in summer, they don helmets and ride a sled down the grassy hill, between the trees. I let them jump from impossibly high places. Our house came with a pool, the greatest safety leap of all time.

But somehow, since I became a mother, I became the director of horror films, shown only in the midnight screening room of my own mind. Concurrently, I also became incapacitated by squeamishness.

There was a time when I'd crane my head for a better look at someone's gash, or held my hand to a gushing wound without so much as a wince. I used to enjoy a nice surgery show, delighted by a colorful look at someone's diseased spleen. But no more.

Now, I get the swoons. Im thinking about carrying smelling salts in a vile around my neck until my kids grow up and Vild becomes a totally different person genetically.

Last summer I came home to a scene in which Lou had caught his finger in a folding lawn chair. The rusty joint had removed his fingernail in one piece, Syriana style, leaving it attached only by a stubborn piece of cuticle. He screamed like a wild animal in the bathroom while Vild, thankfully home for this devastating slice of repulsion, triaged and administered first aid. Lily was running around in our tiny hallway, flapping her arms and giggling in grossed-out shock and certain delight that it wasn't happening to her.

I walked in, and walked right back out. The blood in my temples did too. I stood in the hallway for about forty seconds deep breathing, hands on my knees. Lou needed me, was calling for me, and I knew I had to keep my Chinese chicken salad in repose and face my boy's agony. But it was a horror of its own to realize I might not be able to help him.

It has always been a source of prideful vanity for me that I am good in a crisis. That I can keep my head, be counted on to pull people through, and remain unflinching in a disaster is nearly a resume item for me. But I've been demoted. Steadfastness-in-the-face-of-gore has been handed a pink slip. I am no longer the Sigourney Weaver of my emotional Alien, but the bikini clad coed in a b-film who screams with a round mouth and lidless eyes, while the whole community is devoured by zombies.

One night, I awoke to the sound of Lou falling through the air from his loft bed. This seems impossible, I know. It must have been the thud that woke me, or his cries, but I swear to you, it was the change in air pressure, the wispy sound of his decent that roused me. I was outside his door when I heard him hit the floor and then scream. There was blood all over his face, sliding into the terrified ditch of his mouth. The night-light illuminated only a dreadful dark oozing without detail. I grabbed a wash cloth as he bled into my t-shirt and together we went for ice. All the while I said, "Ok, ok. It's ok. You're ok." Over and over, like a mantra or a summoning. Bring forth the OK. Surround him in the OK. Buffer the darkness, absorb the blood, with the desperate power of OK.

He'd hit his nose on the ladder going down, and had bloodied it, nothing worse.

"I want to be in Mama's bed," he said, his voice muffled by my neck. Mama's bed, that pillowy place away from hurt, from dark, from loneliness. "Ok. Ok." I whisper and carry him toward Mama's bed. Mine.

His nostrils caked with dried blood, he falls instantly back to sleep. His Dad, also in Mama's bed, sleeps soundly, none of the preceding drama having disturbed his rest in the slightest.

Where the film of my psyche is one directed by John Carpenter, his is directed by Ron Howard, and he rests in the tender cotton of a less offensive Parenthood.

When I stand up, to go pee, my blood pressure catches up with the plot points of the evening, and suddenly I'm blacking out. "Ok, Ok" I say to myself now, as I crawl retching on hands and knees toward the toilet.

I call Vild's name three times, four. Then he's up, confused, irritated, assessing. With Lou in bed sleeping, and me retching over the bowl, he sees me as the patient, and perhaps now I am. I don't actually barf, but instead rest my head on yesterdays pajamas and a damp towel thrown in a heap on the floor. I hear Vild carry Lou back to his own bed. And then I hear the familiar strain of springs as Vild climbs back into ours.

"That's it?" I ask.

"Was there something else?" He wants to know.

"I guess not." I say, as my equilibrium returns and I crawl back under the blankets.

Battered and Fried, Cat Eats Woman Whole, Still Bitter.

2009-05-26T20:33:00.020-04:00

In December of 1999, when the world was preparing for the promised attack of 0's and 1's, Y2K style, our friend, Henry, suggested we all head to the Bahamas to drink rum on the beach while the rest of civilization went Skynet*.

I'd only ever been to the Bahamas one time, in high school, with my mom and sister, all of us broke, on a lark. We spent a few days on Paradise Island, thus named because it is such a steaming shit hole. The beaches are indeed beautiful, but inland was, at that time (1983), a third-world version of Las Vegas, without shows, free buffets or happy hours and with a terrifying racial divide.

Because Paradise is an island, everything has to be shipped or flown over and thus a box of Triskets costs $12. Room service was out of the question.

We managed to have a good time though, in large part because we decided to only sleep in our overpriced cubicle and spend the rest of the time mooching off a friend who was staying at the Club Med up the road. Aside from the date rape my sister narrowly avoided at the assailing hand of an overzealous "G.O." (Gracious Organizer, I kid you not), Club Med was a much better bet. We discovered slammers early in the trip - a shot with some carbonate that you whacked on the bar and slammed down your own gullet, preferably in rapid succession - and things improved.

So, when Henry suggested Cat Island, one of the more remote islands in the Bahamian chain, I was enthusiastic. I envisioned something like one of the more remote Hawaiian Islands, maybe Kauai, where fine hotels dot pristine beaches and men in crisp whites bring you cocktails with little grass skirts, like panties, on the glass. I imagined it would be possible to slip away for a pedicure and new flip flops on a quiet afternoon, or maybe rent a bike to cruise the outer reaches on a leisurely pedal.

Our Cat Island hotel was more like a cat box - six concrete bunkers on a patch of sandy scrub. Meals were included as an option. You'd inform the Bahamian proprietress in the morning if you'd be taking meals and if so, $35 per, was added to your bill. Beer was $5 a bottle, and we started a collective tab with our drinky friends. Meals were made from local ingredients, which, on a prickly island in the middle of the ocean, is fish and corn meal. Delicious for the first-through-third meals, gag inducing for the balance.

The rain started right away. A light and constant drizzle, not enough to warrant an umbrella, even if we'd had one, but enough to make me wish I'd packed a hoodie. Enough to moisten me uncomfortably.

The TV in each room was hooked to a satellite that was controlled by the bartender in the main building, where the Heineken and powdered eggs were served. It was his whim, be it a soccer match or spanish language soap opera, that determined what all the cabins would be tuned to. Your programming options ran the gamut from 'on' to 'off'.

The road that ran the length of the island was so high with overgrowth on either side, that it was impossible to see anything other than pavement and mirages of other, better vacations. We walked this road for many miles, unable to see the ocean that we could smell and taste. There was no commerce, very few people, and a terribly infirm donkey with sores on its head that hung unnaturally low. Even the jackass was depressed by Island life.

Hungry, we came upon a shed with a sign that indicated it was a store. Anxious for a retail experience of any kind, and food other than a spam omelette, we trundled in. The shelves were barren but for some outdated Little Debbie cakes and a fridge keeping cool a huge log of bologna. We bought a pound of the meat, sliced by hand into 1/4 inch slabs and a pack of Strawberry Shortcake Rolls.

Now, before the Interweb gets all puffed up and sends me irate email about the natural beauty of Cat Island, bear in mind that these people are not my friends. More importantly, they were likely staying at the wildly expensive resorts at either end of the Island, where exorbitant prices allowed for brush removal and chaise-lounges. The only thing spectacular about my Cat Island, other than its being the birthplace of Sidney Poitier, was what went on under water.

The men in our group, all experienced sailors and snorkelers, hit the tides early and long, exploring the shallows and depths in the warm current, ignoring the cold rain that soured our bologna above ground.

Its not that I didn't want to snorkel, its just that I wanted to do it in the sunshine, not shivering in the gloom. But I decided, finally, to don a mask and flippers and have a look at these fishies before they were dusted with cornmeal.

Flap-slapping in fins over the beach made entirely of boulders, I slid my body into the current, mask on, ready to see the splendor of the sea. I paddled out with Vild but he swam away, fast and far, show-off snorkeling, leaving me quickly alone to nervously explore the underworld. Immediately my mask filled with salt water. I'd stop and tread, fumble with the dry, cracked rubber straps, spit into the lens, lather, rinse, repeat. But my pin head could not make suction with that old husk of a mask, and with the current slapping me against the coral, my skin was beginning to nick and bleed with every swell. I was miserable and becoming desperate. Some buddy system I thought, at the very moment that the first stranger I'd seen on the island paddled up to me in the surf and with great excitement asked me if I'd been lucky enough to see the shark.

I know intellectually that fear of sharks is largely irrational. There are compelling statistics to back this up. But bleeding from the knees in stormy waters, abandoned by my future husband, unable to see under water, cut to ribbons by an unfamiliar reef - this is not the moment I review statistics. This is the moment I shit my pants.

My husband will tell you that he was never more than twenty yards from me, that I was but arms length from shore, that the blood on my knees was nothing more than a pin prick, that I was never in any danger, that the shark was never anywhere near me. And because he says these things, I can get mad at him all over again, every time I think of it.

I tried to swim to shore in a dead panic, but the coral, which upon review was the real danger to my safety - imagine swimming over the tops of submerged pine trees with needles made of glass - I could not see it. I was clumsily, blindly, swimming across broken bottles.

In my estimation I am alive today only because that shark had already eaten breakfast, and the bloody cloud that wafted fragrantly out from my body was no enticement.

In Vild's estimation, I am alive today only because of therapy and a rigorous protocol of anti-depressants.

I think we may both be right.

* In The Terminator Series, Skynet is an artificially intelligent system which became self aware and revolted against its creators.

Birth-Daze

2009-05-18T08:12:00.008-04:00

(This photo is from the film Taxi Driver and is the only one I could find of Playland and 1970's Times Square)

In an act of brilliant masochism I had my babies two years and one week apart. Lily was first, on May 21, and Lou, two years later, on May 14th. What this means is that until they are old enough to make their own fun, vis a vis, throwing up on their classmates in the back of their friend's parent's car, their poor mother will be doomed to indecision and conflict regarding the celebration of their birth. Two parties or one?

The very thought of two separate days blowing up balloons, after spending my own youth blowing out my lungs, is a little like asking me if I might staple my lips to a frogs ass and blow it into a handbag.

The options seem to be: spend $300 for three hours at some inflatable house of staphylococcus or attempt to host the thing at your own house, wheezing out your windbag, serving your flabby cupcakes and watching the kids throw all your couch cushions on the floor. In my case, twice in one week.

When I was a kid in New York, my parents would take me, and maybe a friend, to an Italian restaurant I loved because it served spaghetti with meat sauce. The waiters would flirt charmingly with me and offer me spumoni, with candle, for dessert. My folks would let me drink fourteen Cokes with dinner and then we'd go over to Playland on 42nd street, a wonderfully seedy arcade in 1970's Times Square. This was long before Giuliani had all the hookers dyed to match and the heroin addicts shuttled over to Queens. The homeless were still called bums and what is now known as the Theater District featured another kind of theater altogether, the naked-blow-smoke-rings-out-your-twat kind. In other words, this was before Pussy was replaced by Cats

My dad would hand me a roll of quarters and I'd play Astroids and air hockey until my eyes were spinning around in my head and my hands were shaking. The bathrooms at Playland were not for young ladies, even ones desperately hopped up on caramel fizz. So one time, for my birthday, I peed through my wool maxi skirt in front of the ski ball lanes. Good times.

Damp with urine and smelling of my dad's cigarettes, the balmy tinge of divorce in the air, we taxi'd home. My mom mopped off my legs with a warm washcloth and I climbed into bed hugging a plastic car connected to its remote by a long insulated wire. Bliss.

There were no goodie bags, no entertainers, no party hats. Only gifts that might kill you, either from the anticipation of receiving them, or faulty wiring, food that was your favorite, and family.

Its not that I never had a birthday party. Certainly I did. But what I remember now is the twinkling danger of Broadway, the weight of quarters in my hand, and the smell of wet wool.

I'm sorry my darlings, it is but tootsie-rolls falling from Batman's pinata ass for you. Peeing on yourself will have to come later.

A No-Drainer

2009-05-13T20:56:00.002-04:00

This image is of an invention intended for use in a high rise fire emergency. The theory being that you could suck sewer air instead of smoke and survive. But to me, its a perfect illustration of how I can often feel day-to-day. Certainly on this day.)

Shit happens. In our house it happens in a big tubular way. Usually around 7:25 a.m. when my husband shoots one off like a cannon and heads to work. Normally this would be great, enviable even, but one day about a week ago it became passive aggressive and possibly actionable.

For the second time in as many months, I heard water running somewhere in the house. I was upstairs and assumed the sound I was hearing was the slosh slosh of our dishwasher, which seems to be constantly employed. So I ignored it. You'd think, at this stage of my suburban pioneering, I'd have learned never to ignore anything in this house. If it makes a sound, something is flooding.

I played stuffed animal-super hero-school-train track-peril-rescue with Lou for another hour before I decided I should probably start one of the six loads of laundry accumulating on the basement floor.

As soon as I was on the stairs to the lower level of our split-level, I saw the shimmering current spreading out across the family room floor, with little life rafts of Vild's doodie paddling to the shores. It was 10 a.m. Water had been flowing out of the bowl for two and a half hours.

Our family room is, sadly in this case, home to the woodstove and thus a ton of woodchips, sawdust, and ash. Blended together with flooded turd water, this combination makes a potent formula I like to call, Human Tears.

My little boy, who was with me two months ago when this exact same thing happened, said, "Oh Mama, I'm so sorry this happened to you." Touched by his empathy and compassion, I hugged him tightly. He waited a few seconds, then said, "Can you make me a PB&J?"

I got my wellies from the garage and waded over to the bowl to turn the water off at the source and assess the damage. A half inch of water had flowed out from the bathroom, turned left and headed into the office, where it was heartily sucked up by the thick carpeting that my husband and I took from the old house and installed ourselves. When we bought this carpet we got the extra thick pad, because his parents paid for it. Its absorbent indeed and wicked the moisture all the way to the bookcase and edge of our guest bed.

The water, not content with ruining our office also turned right out of the bathroom and streamed down into the basement, where our friend, Craig, had just spent a week installing new drywall. A dark circle of moisture extended from the base of the stairs in a sodden arc that seeped under the barf-board closets that hold all the dress-ups and every linen we own. The towels within were humid while the dress-ups managed to absorb only the odor of Vild's doodie water. Every piece of laundry was soaked with toilet water. Tons and tons of laundry. Almost every piece of clothing in our possession.

It just so happened that Vild was fully engaged at work that day. He had two dog-and-pony shows for potential clients, and then a glad-handing dinner with them in the evening. So he couldn't come home and bail, and I couldn't really yell at him on the phone the way I like to when his fucking stupid house attacks me.

These situations do not bring out the best in me.

Vild just sort of proceeds, he's all, these things happen, we'll handle it, no big deal, one foot after the next. But me, I sop up the waste in my pink rubber boots while a shadow crosses over the sun. I feel the weight of every bad choice I've ever made, every isolating decision, every injustice ever done to me. Spleen conquers heart. I feel completely alone; I am a scream unheard. I think of all the friends I have in other, better parts of the world. I think of my sister, how she'd be there with me, margarita in one hand, mop bucket in the other, if she weren't living what seems a much better life in a sunnier clime. I think of all my local friends, and their builder homes with powder rooms instead of below ground shit holes like the one I'm plunging and I feel sickening, soul-crushing envy. This isn't reality, its bile, and I take medication for the condition. But none the less...

I wish I could isolate one emotion, one plumbing emergency, and freeze it in amber like a prehistoric sample, to be analyzed calmly later by academics in khaki pants and pith helmets, after the water recedes. But instead I'm ankle deep in the morass of self-pity, choler and toilet tissue. And I find there are no pills for this.

Why Vild didn't fix the toilet after the first time I spent the day wringing out the couches, I can't say. Why I didn't follow up with some harping and grousing, also a mystery. But two is a charm, as they said on the arc, and I bought some new tank guts later that day. Vildy's sticky poo cannot be helped, nor can my ire, but we go forward, the torrent of the giant gym fan blowing away the sadness of the day, while Fabreeze makes everything seem fresh and new again.

Not Exactly Burning Up the Road

2009-04-30T08:00:00.023-04:00

3:00 p.m. in my little hamlet is a heavy traffic time. School lets out and the landscapers call it a day, so the mini-vans and trucks with trailers pile into a long row of idling gas gourmands. One traffic light in particular, where the McDonalds drive-thru, two gas stations, a freeway exit and a super K-mart dump into the stream, presents a lengthy process of light changes and traffic folding in on itself. Our commute is about fourteen minutes, so we accept this snarl with relative good humor.

A disturbing social study presents itself in this little cluster-fuck. Not a quarter mile away are the fire and police stations. So, added to the drowsy chaos of this intersection is the occasional emergency call. Yesterday, over the dulcet tones of NPR's top-of-the-hour news, I hear sirens coming my way. Even though we're bumper to bumper, I begin my squirm to the side of the road. This is what my Driver's Ed teacher taught me to do some twenty-five years ago, and its an act I've performed out of instinct ever since. I have some trouble completing the procedure, though, because neither the car in front, nor the car behind, is giving an inch. My gaze lengthens and I see that no one, not a single other car in either direction, is moving from their spot in traffic. All the body-less heads behind the wheels are craning around in an elaborate show of Gosh, huh? Oh, is that coming my way? Goodness, I wish I could move my car out of the way but I...Maybe I'm hearing things. Who goes there? ooh, I seem to be stuck here because no one is moving...

The ambulance and fire truck are visible and blaring not only sirens but those horns that sound like a full bladder, unmistakably urgent and pleading, downright demanding - GET OUT OF THE WAY, TURD-LICKERS!! - But still, the ignorant heads waggle in rearview mirrors. What me? Surely you don't mean me? Oh dear, I hope no one is dying...if only my hands could operate this steering wheel...

The fire engine, fifty feet of cumbersome steel, is performing acrobatic maneuvers of agility and haste, as it attempts to advance through the clot of apathy and sloth. I've gone from mild asperity to detonation. My kids love it when I lose my shit and its not directed at them, so they're completely aroused in the back seat. "What is it mom? What are they doing wrong? Are they bad drivers Mommy? Are they going to jail? Are people dying?" They are delighted and hopeful about all of it. I've rolled down my window and I'm yelling at the cars, "MOVE IT OVER DOUCHE-NOZZLE!"

"Mama, what's a doosh-noggle?"

The ambulance has moved into the intersection and plunges into the oncoming lane, where traffic too should be stopped, but instead cars have used the tiny break provided by the emergency vehicle to advance their own position. More blaring of horns and weaseling.

This conduct represents a fundamental break in the social contract. Is it not incumbent upon us all to move our fat cans over, because some day it could be one of us hanging upside down by our seat belt in a drainage ditch? Is this not a most basic act of human compassion?

How I wish this was an anomaly of my little intersection, or this day, or that emergency call. But I've seen this exact scene play out dozens of times. Its always the same, the drivers stuck in the tractor beam of their own selfishness.

Who can be bothered for the hypothetical guy bleeding out into his stomach, or the grandma whose had a stroke in her bathroom, because, well, fuck them; there are roots to be dyed and those videos aren't going to return themselves.

You'd think the post 9-11 doctrine would provide for a basic understanding of emergency etiquette. We're all in awe of the plane that lands on the river and over pumped on hero worship, city's finest and all that whoopdie-shit, but when it comes to scooting over to the right, well that's a little inconvenient and may not benefit me, so its out. God bless America.

As the fire truck at last moves past me, I notice the most amazing thing. The guy driving the truck is not the least bit miffed. He's not banging the wheel or rolling his eyes. He's not flipping the bird or bouncing up and down in his seat. Nope. He's calm as a librarian in there, moving through what is just another day at the office for him. I feel my hero worship swell.

He's doesn't want to kill these people, he wants to save them. The selfish, the ignorant, the indifferent, they will all be saved.

Either that or he's all too glad to let them burn.

15 Things I'll Never Understand No Matter How Many Times They're Explained to Me

2009-04-29T08:15:00.012-04:00

1. Greyhounds. The breed, not the motor coach. Its been made clear to me that these are a bright, loyal, gentle variety, but the idea of stroking a shivering bone rack by the fireplace just gives me jim- jams.

2. Spinning. Great exercise for people who enjoy behaving like tormented hamsters, peddling furiously toward a destiny they will never achieve while being shouted down by fit people. Its painful. Its stupid. I wont have it.

3. Homework. After 7 hours in the classroom and a commute, does a 6 year old really need to come home and do word problems? Mine nearly strokes out with the effort. Trying to help her process, with a 4 year old climbing on my head and dinner boiling over is a word problem in itself. Usually the word is Fuck. Its a "bad" word and there is no solution for it.

4. The removable bench seat. Brought to you by the geniuses at Ford. It weighs 225 lbs. There is no stowing it. No lifting it out without help. McDonalds toys and Chex Mix permanently lodge in its footers making it impossible to get back in. Cheap is one thing. Idiotic is another.

5. Advertising. Really? Does this work? I don't believe it. I've never bought anything because someone interrupted my programming or interfered with my web surfing. Make it go away.

6. Will Smith.

7. Liquor added to baked goods. Liquor is fantastic. Baked goods are lovely. I'll drink with you after I've eaten my cake.

8. Wanting to be around celebrities. In my experience celebrity robs the room of oxygen. Do you want to see people you respect throw up on themselves? No? Me either.

9. What to do at a four way stop. I know the rules. How come they don't apply?

10. Eggplant. Very very baked in a crisp breading, ok. Otherwise, gross.

11. Homophobia. With so many things that need hating,we're putting love on the list? Don't bother me with poppycock; I have much less important things to worry about.

12. The love of old-timey dolls. Freaky. Ugly. Not a toy. Not for grown-ups. What the fuck?

13. People who don't own a cast iron skillet. There are more important things to consider than something not sticking. Sear baby, then de-glaze. Non stick pans are for scrambled eggs and cream sauces... and people who eat their young.

14. Grits. Or for that matter, any hot cereal. Hot mucus from a lactating heifer anyone?

15. Sex in the City. Many smart people I adore loved this show. For me there were no more perfect examples of everything that is appalling in women. Shawping for things you can't afford. Cunty behavior to nice men. Disproportionate concern for image bordering on the psychotic. Man-obsessed, prolonged-youth-seeking, vein, douche-bags all.

I know you're all going to tell me how wrong I am. It doesn't matter how you try to explain, I'll never understand.

Husbandry

2009-04-20T15:38:00.008-04:00

I have a friend who once described her husband to me as the kind of man who, when taking a piss, will reach down and wipe the toilet rim with a piece of tissue, just to get the pubes off.

I can so clearly imagine a man pissing, the relaxed posture, hips forward, butt cheeks clenched. Also the way he will stare into his own stream. What I cannot imagine is any man also taking the time to better things for everyone by wiping off any offending hairs.

My husband, Vild, is a big-picture guy. He wouldn’t notice there were pubes on the toilet unless they’d all banded together and verbally offered to make him a sweater.

Vildy is an industrious fellow. He can frame an entire room with 2x4's and a nail gun in a single weekend, without help. But when it comes to finish work, he’ll affix the trim with 3-inch dry wall screws and call it a day. He has big ideas that involve a lot of mess and varying degrees of hazard. He is both brilliant and dastardly in this way. If he decides he wants to save some money, look out, that cheap bastard will attach a bicycle to a car engine and by golly, you’ll have air conditioning. But you’ll never have a car again, or a bike. And you may not have air-conditioning for very long either.

I love that his mind is so unfettered with minutia that it can strike out boldly into the world. And when it does, I play the part of straight man, the loyal Mr. Watson to his Alexander Bell. We live on five acres, three of them wooded. We heat our home by wood that he cuts and splits from our property. He calls me “Sacaga-whiner” in homage to my pioneering spirit and my East Coast Elitist roots, both of which are in play during these rituals. I’ll haul a cord of wood, but I’ll bitch about it the entire time. It’s a deal we’ve struck that we’re both comfortable with. I like to complain, but I also like being out there with him in the woods, the snow crunching out the sounds of our manual labor. Its nice work for the soul, giggling out there with my man, while he teases and cajoles and I kvetch and haul, puffing out white clouds of talk.

There is nothing in my hoighty-toighty private school upbringing that would prepare me for these moments, this life. I never would have thought, growing up in high-falutin’ New York City in the 70’s, that I would one day become so intimate with loamy dirt. Here’s something my York City brethren might not be aware of; when you burn your own wood in a wood stove, dirt ends up everywhere. It trails through the house from the garage, through the kitchen, down the stairs, across the rug, to the firebox. Chips and bark, and chunky bits of flora can be found everywhere. I'll admit, its nice not paying a $300 heating bill, but sometimes I’d like a little more thermostat, a little less tinder.

I love my husband because he respects that I’ve come a long way from my New York high-rise upbringing, but also that I’m still going to burn some fossil fuels from time to time. His is in no way an environmental consideration. He’s not green and he doesn’t really care to be. He's a paranoid isolationist, in quite the jolliest way you can imagine. He’d go all the way off the grid, as long as he could be sure of Internet access. The man works his ideas through the web... and also, when he’s not completely industrious and goal oriented, he’s a lazy piece of shit, with his laptop resting on his big old man-belly, spraying popcorn across the living room as he watches exasperating right-wing TV. He’s a wanna-be homesteader. He wants to grow his own crops and forgo city utilities so he won’t have to pay for anything. Plus, the guy just really wants a bunker. He wants to cache weapons in there and have cots. He wants flints, and crank flashlights, deer jerky and first aid kits. It’s an extreme, rather literal, man-cave concept. The only difference is, he doesn’t want to go in there to get away from his family. On the contrary, he'd like for us all to go in there with him and hang out. Watch him surf the net in there. I have something a little more above ground in mind. But I admit, that’s my liberal ideology talking. We both know whose bunker door I’ll be knocking on when all my “feelings” have been worked through above ground. It’s in this spirit that I allow him to be a complete fucking slob at home.

This rural way of life has changed me, and I'm not sure for the better. This past summer, Vildy split his head open at work and came home with eight bright blue stitches in his scalp. He’s very casual about these things. He's in no way hysterical or dramatic. He might mention on the phone that he hit his head at work, but it isn't until I see the shaved spot and the surgical thread that I know he's actually been hurt and hospitalized.

The stitches stay in a week and then its time for them to come out. He's not a man who will go back to the doctor for such a task. If he thought he could have glued the thing shut on his own, he'd have done that. In that case, office policy prevailed. But the removal, that's on his terms. He goes into the bathroom with some delicate surgical tools: my cuticle nippers, the tweezers for threading my overlock sewing machine, and a hand mirror. Thing is, no matter how hard a guy tries, its hard to cut out your own stitches while holding a hand mirror. That's why there are hospitals, and trained professionals who work in them.

Instead, I get called in. I am an upholsterer by trade, so I know something about stitchery. This does not qualify me to be a doctor. This qualifies me to make slipcovers. But just as in the post-apocalypse world he so desires, my skills in this area are called upon, and I become resident doctor. Problem is, medical stuff makes me want to puke. Plus, I have a terrible bedside manner. It’s a trait I inherited from my mother, who, story goes, told my Dad to suck it up when he snapped his femur in the living room. Like her, I am very suspicious of anyone who claims to be sick, and I’m prone to believing that they are faking it to better take advantage of me and make me bring them things in bed. Its something I'm working on, so I follow him in squeamishly, to administer a tentative compassion.

I see immediately that there’s no way I’m not going to be pulling the stitches out of his head, and so I take a minute to give myself a little pep talk about not being such a pussy. I put on my $15 dollar drugstore reading glasses. Staring down at Vild’s closely cropped head, and with my whole body clamped tighter than a scorpion’s ass, I slip one edge of the cuticle nippers carefully, carefully under the first loop of blue fishing line fastened to his flesh. When I move the angled blade just slightly, it tugs at his skin from the pressure on the suture. I can feel how his whole fleshy scalp is just hovering over his bony skull. Oh, my fucking God! I feel all the blood in my body drain down to just above my flip-flops and pool there. I might actually faint. I’ve never experienced this sensation before. But I remain conscious long enough to give the nippers a decisive ‘snip’, before I have to run outside and hold my head under the garden hose.

I wish I could tell you that it was possible for me to complete this unpleasant work with some dignity and haste. But this is not the case. It took a shameful amount of shivering and gag suppression to clip and pluck the loose strands of filament out of his skin. On the up side, I can check suture removal off my list, and feel optimistic about never, ever, doing it again.

Married to Vild, I’ve come to see everything for its usefulness of purpose, its ability to get a job done, including myself. His forward trajectory is so resolute, so uncompromising, that he’ll use whatever is handy, in whatever way he deems necessary, without considering failure as a possibility. My sweet, soft-bristled broom was used to apply black top to the rental property driveway. He'll mop up a wine spill with the nice bathroom towels. To him, tool is tool. His take is, “But I saved us a thousand bucks.” While mine is: “Great, now go spend $30 of that on replacing my nice broom, so I can sweep up the sawdust from your last project, building a whole other messy stove that burns sawdust.” By the way, if anyone needs sawdust, we’ve got a 10’x 10’ barn, that he built in an afternoon, filled with it. Come on over and help yourself to a bucket-full. You don’t even need to call first.

The Slobbering Bitch

2009-04-18T20:12:00.008-04:00

Its that time. My kids want a dog. They see the squirming puppies with their sagging pantyhose skin at the park and the universal kid imperative sets in. "We'll feed it and walk it and you'll never have to do anything, we'll do everything!" they plead together, finishing each other's sentences.

I was a kid. I had a dog and I loved her. She was an English Setter named Nina. I was ten, my parents were divorced, I was separated from my only sister, living as an only child, lonely. Nina and I were like lovers. We shared a bed. I didn't care that her paws were muddy, or that she would lay across my legs like a tourniquet at night. It didn't matter that her giant lips lay gleaming stripes of drool across my pants leg, and pillow, and sofa cushions and even occasionally hanging from windowsills. I didn't mind the farting. I didn't notice that her snout, bred for birding into a graceful point, was narrow enough to actually lesson the capacity of her brain pan, causing acute and un-trainable dumbness. As a breed English Setters will track a bird for seventy-five miles before coming to and wondering where the hell everyone has gone. We could never let her off the leash like we could our Chocolate Lab, who would trot along devotedly at your side for as long as you'd have her.

I get it about dogs. And that's why I don't, with every ounce of god given energy I have left, want one. We all know that the kids wont do "everything". Realistically they'll do maybe a little something, for about six days, and then it will be me. I wouldn't mind throwing some kibble into a bowl, or pulling burrs out of its matted hair. I wouldn't mind wiping its paws with an old towel each and every time the thing catches the scent of squirrel outside, then realizes its fucking cold and wants immediately to come back in. I could tolerate the snoring and the farting. I could endure the hair deposits on my couch. But what I simply cannot suffer, is another living creature needing me.

With young children the maintenance list is long: The bathing, the ponytails, the laundry. The lunch packing, note signing, and bus passes. The vomit clean up, the itchy bum, the enflamed vagina. The lice checks, homework help and high cabinet reaching. The worry, the lessons, the guilt. The squabble management, mean girl counseling, moods and meal prep. The wanted things they cannot have, the stuff they need they do not want. The flying Lego, the falls from trees, the bent back fingernail, the running with sticks. The questions, the many questions. Nutritional hoaxing, fight provoking, one more book, a few more minutes, just one more thing. Can I sleep in your bed? He just hit me in the head. You promised, you said. The snacks, the endless snacks. Sewing on patches, matching up socks, bleaching out the stanky thermal lunch bag. Pumping up tires, vacuuming crumbs, scrubbing stains, rinsing out the conditioner. Chapstick lips, lotion hands, zipping coats, tying shoes. Haircuts, throat cultures, cavities. Running the lines, learning the songs, making the costumes. Play dates, birthdays, holidays, thank you cards. Can you staple this? Where's the tape? I don't have any socks. Reminding them to flush, to wipe, to floss, to toss the laundry in the bin, to clear the plate, to lead with love. Looking for the other glove, the other shoe, the library book, the tedious homework folder. Cutting fruit, pouring milk, remembering to buy the syrup. She likes ketchup, he does not. The mac and cheese that's shells, not tubes. Closing the window, turning out the light, turning up the heat, leaving the hall light on. A lap that's never empty, a heart that's always full, a fridge that's always sticky.

If a dog were following me room to room, with its desperate tail wagging out its need for companionship, pressing its snout into my crotch for love, placing its sweet face on my thigh leaving behind a shimmering rope of drool, I can tell you now, I'd have dog hide boots by autumn. I'm sorry Dog. I'm sorry kids. Your mother loves you. Now fuck off.

Not Your Mother's Goat Balls

2009-04-14T19:19:00.008-04:00

Dinner time shouldn't suck outright. We should all be gathered around the table with joyful bowls of colored vegetables passed with delight from hand to hand, steam fogging the lenses of my husband's glasses as we chat about the day in a state of civilized harmony. But instead of one meal, prepared in klonapin calm, dinner consists of two meals, sometimes even three, prepared in a vociferous clamor. I do a lot of sighing and clanging of dishes while my children beg and cajole and wrinkle their noses at the smells coming from my grown-up dishes.

My kids eat a tiny bit of something and a whole lot of nothing. Each has a very specific set of parameters and contingencies that have been established over years of my own desperation and fundamental bad values. I'm one of those parents, who has completely caved to the needs and desires of her children's appetites, and whose will has been crushed by the desire to see food enter their mouths at dinner time. In my house there are three food groups: Cereal, Pizza and Peanut Butter.

In my parent's house growing up, this kind of thing would never have been tolerated or even been considered possible. My own mother was a cooker of wonderful, healthy meals, who exposed us to all kinds of food, simply and elegantly prepared. I have memories of eating artichokes when I was seven, at first just sucking the melted butter off each leaf, but later accidentally scraping a molecular amount of the pulp with my teeth. Later still I hoarded the heart and circled back on piles of tooth-marked leaves, looking for one more scrape of matter, the fronds translucent from repeated bite marks. My kids watch me eat an artichoke now with stupefied looks of horror and disbelief. How could someone eat a medieval mace dipped in butter? And furthermore, when all those leaves are picked off, if there isn't a plastic Pixar prize in there, why bother?

Where did I go wrong? I love food. Let me say this again. I LOVE food. I'm an imaginative and dedicated cook. I enjoy the ritual, the preparation, the offering and the devouring of meals. There isn't a food I wont try. Sure, I don't want to eat goat balls, but if some guy in a head wrap offered me a goat ball in the desert, by God I'd try it.

I recently wept over a squid ink risotto in Paris. I'd never had squid ink, and was basically unschooled in risotto, Trader Joes brands notwithstanding. When I saw it on the menu, violins played in my cerebral cortex and I vowed that my delicate squid would not have inked in vein. When the first bite hit the front of my tongue, my eyes misted over, and my friend reached out and touched my hand.

I remember a peach I ate in front of a train station in 1985.

I really, really love food.

I've read all the material on getting your kids to eat well. Reintroducing foods dozens of times. Not preparing special meals. Not harping on them to eat. Presenting variety in their diet. And perhaps most importantly, leading by example. In all but the last I have failed every test. I know the advice is sound, but I think it is offered by assholes. The people who recommend you covertly mash squash into the pancake batter are not people who really understand what's good about pancakes. If you can't convince me that it tastes the same, then you certainly wont convince the tiny Sherlock and mid-sized Poirot sitting at my table that its the same. Those little bastards can sense something good for them from 50 yards. They're having none of it.

I also wonder about the people who can so devote themselves to the repetitive and soul-crushing tasks of preparation and rejection. My soul simply cannot endure seeing another beautiful bite of my life being scraped into the trash. Thus the 2o pounds I've gained in the past seven years. Yes yes, reintroduce. And watch those introductions steam in my cinch sack yet another night? I can't bear it. Will these dietary geniuses be there to pay for my therapy, or my groceries for that matter?

The only cure I can see for this disorder is age. Already things are shifting, and it gives me hope. Lily will eat a pile of broccoli. Louis will guzzle a liter of "green juice" (that costs more than a gallon of fuel oil). Their taste buds are mellowing, growing more curious. For this I am grateful. But I've also decided that in this area, if they want to squander their youth on bagel pizzas and mini-carrots, be my fucking guests. In the meantime, I'm going out to find me some goat balls.

Guided by the Dark Side

2009-04-11T09:44:00.004-04:00

I’m not a geneticist. But I’m pretty sure they’ve got a gene for everything. So, it’s hard for me not to feel somewhat pre-disposed to the 14% of my genetic material that makes up what I call my Pure Evil.

I’m 14% pure evil. Of that total, 3% is devoted to schadenfreude, the delight in other people’s misfortunes, 6% is devoted to my desire to seek personal pleasure, state by-laws be damned. 34% is devoted entirely to self-pity and its manifestations and the remaining 57% is a free-floating evil that can alight at any moment, coating my emotional terrain with a light dusting of negativity and general clumsiness of character. The rest of me, the other 86%, is happy and warm, but that tiny percentage can really get in the way.

Here are some evil thoughts I’ve had only today: That I’d like to take the Department of Motor Vehicles and insert it in some unsuspecting congressman’s rectum. I thought about taking all the dirty dishes out of the sink and smashing them on the driveway. It’s only 10 AM, so it’s early yet. I thought about throwing my cell phone under the wheels of my mini-van. I thought long and hard about buying a pack of cigarettes. I had bad thoughts about Christians, my tenants, Target and the PTA. Is there a rosary non-believers can recite to abolish their surliness? I’d finger it.

I think people should talk about their evil more, and I’m on a campaign to get people to do it. I have a friend who has a website devoted to finding out what’s “working” in people’s lives, their “beautiful things”. I think this is a terrific idea, and I contribute to the sight when my 86% is behind the wheel. But I think equally valuable would be a web site where people could really excavate their evil and give it voice.

I live in a community where secrets are kept. Where its inhabitants believe in putting their best face forward. They hide their drinking problems and depression behind a lot of flagrant consumerism and over-gifting. They suppress with cookie-exchanges what could be so handily purged with some foul language and a joint. I’m always searching to find the women who are crying in the parking lots of their life. The ones who yell a little too loud, swear too much and eat exotically. My world is filled with store bought dip and people too busy to read. I had to start a book club so I could collect, like rare orchids, the few people willing to read books and talk about them. I’ve had some bad thoughts about those non-readers, their holiday cards and their secrets.

My Evil, though small, takes many shapes. When I enter my son’s school gym for pick-up I am always, always, the least bathed person there. I don’t wear makeup. I don’t have good sweaters. I don’t want to bake anything for the school and I often resent being asked. I’m not a joiner, though I long for community. I do my part, but I bitch about it to myself in a muttering way as I shake colored sprinkles on the cookie tops. Statistically, there must be other bitter women shaking their colored jimmy jars like hostile maracas, but they don’t reveal themselves to me. I fear I’m completely alone here.

I have an evil past, and it pollutes my polite present. After I lost my virginity in high school, at a liberal boarding school where students were allowed to wear capes and top hats to class, I had sex with everyone. Dozens of guys and one woman. After I tried pot, I smoked it for the next twenty-five years, right up until, oh, say, yesterday. I tried a litany of drugs and not just the cute ones. Dangerous ones. Scary ones. It’s not that I’m proud of these events, but they are my facts, and I don’t regret them. Besides, no amount of polite conversation will negate them. I can’t wipe the slate clean with agitated passes of my credit card. I can’t replace my past with presents.

Sometimes when my husband asks a favor of me I blow a giant lip fart at him and tell him to go fuck himself. Sometimes when my kids leave their crap on the floor in a heap for the ten-thousandth time, I ball it all up and stuff it under their bed. That’s what I mean by free-floating evil. I don’t know where it comes from, but as a mediocre man once said, “whoops, there it is”. What do you want me to do about it? I’m through with therapy. Come out the other side of some terrible stuff. This is what I’m left with.

Sort Me, Stack Me, Make Me Behave

2009-04-07T20:10:00.013-04:00

I'm not a woman who has bought too heavily into the beauty myth. I'm really ok with the fact that there are 15 year old girls with better bodies than mine. I'm not lured by the shimmer and sway of advertising or tempted off the cliff of low self-esteem by scented magazine pages. I'm 41 years old. I've carried two 10 pound babies and had them cut from an impromptu sun roof in my uterus. I've suffered a few injuries, taken some self-inflicted blows and managed to stay on the heavier side of good looking for a long time. Where my self image is concerned, I'm cushioned by realism and bolstered by the long view.

But I never feel smaller, more ashamed, more flushed with envy, more resentful or yearning than when I turn the pages of a Container Store or Hold Everything catalogue. These taunting publications play on my deepest desire, the promise of a better life brought about through rigorous organization of my unsavory crap.

I am lured to this organizational porn like a teenaged boy to smut. I am nothing but a dirty little whore who wants the clutter to be spanked out of me by nesting baskets, my nipples pinched in the firm velcro clasp of a Filofax. Big bins make me hot. I'm am nothing more than a naughty minx, baited pink by the prospect of color coding, alphabetized spices and label-making. These are the forbidden fruit of a clutter-bound woman living in chaos, surrounded by slobs.

Every day is a fruitless attempt to sandbag against the levee breach of clutter that is raising a family in America. Public school is responsible for a tidal wave of useless paper. Crappy fundraising magazines offering twice-baked potatoes and frozen pot pies accumulate faster than I can curse them. Homework reminders, lunch calendars, coloring pages, book-ordering newspapers, volunteer requests, costuming instructions, permission slips and spelling words all arrive, an unruly rainbow of paper, pouring endlessly from bookbags and folders. Piles teeter on counters and flutter under the furniture. Is it any wonder that I stare, aroused, at a center fold of recycling bins, glistening on their smooth stow-away track systems?

Children grow at speeds that are, by their very nature, environmentally unkind. The clothes that fit them for nine minutes ball and collect in every drawer, behind every door, drip from hangers bent under the weight of their obsolescence. Closet systems that offer boot camp order bring out the bad girl in me, longing to be corrected.

Toys, videos, books, socks, garbage, bills and stuffed animals - all demand the firm hand of elfa mesh stacking systems, punctuate pencil cubes, airtight translucent totes and stockholm dividers separating them from unauthorized mingling and attempt at escape. If an ultra hold clamp system doesn't make my garden tools stand at attention, I don't know what will.

The promise of organization is so alluring, so deceiving. It makes me believe that the path to enlightenment is paved by homework centers with canvas in-boxes. My marriage will be made more lasting by hidden entertainment armoires and bill paying vestibules. Piles of laundry will clean themselves with sorting stations and soap dispensaries. I will be a better mother with a wall-mounted synchronicity folder holder. Toilet paper will never again run out, nor be out of reach - with tank-mounted side cars for extra rolls, even our anuses will be tidier.

But, like any decent fetish, the same lust that arouses me with its promise of release, brings shame and humiliation when the greedy page-turning reaches climax and I am left only with the damp upper lip of spent desire and the reality that I am nothing more than dirty woman, in an average house, with dust bunnies and clutter clamoring for attention. The lurid fantasy of the pristine is sullied by flaccid reality, and there is no system for filing it away.

Spring Shhpring

2009-04-05T23:00:00.004-04:00

Its nearly spring here. I can tell because two days ago I watched a Cardinal make sweet sweet love to himself in my van's side mirror. He hopped up there, as he had the day before, pecked and fawned over his own reflection, until he was sure the foxy bird staring back was picking up what he was laying down. It was quite a show, tail feathers lifted, bobbing and weaving. This was an

R-rated hoochie-coochie dance that was, frankly, starting to work on me. My side mirror he had at hello.

Last week, when I took Lily down the driveway to the bus, the grass was all crystalline with frost and the sun shone down on it making the whole yard look like the emerald city. Across our road, in the orchard, ten dear froze at the sounds of us, then shot off into the woods, tails flicking white as they ran. Its all very miraculous and Walt Disney , and if mushrooms could sing I'd really have something.

The downside of spring here in Ohio is that everything is laid bare in the melt. Seven months of McDonalds wrappers, beer cans, road kill and rot has been indelicately plowed under, and now that the snow has melted the scourings are revealed in muddy heaps on the side of the road. Everything is brown and flattened and soggy. Winter winds have blown our asses sideways and we have to begin the tentative process of rebuilding a fair season life.

This is not an easy process. Not when you live on five acres and not when you grew up in a high rise in New York City. Spring here is a lot of work. You don't just jump outside in your skort and prance around optimistically; that would be an amateur move.

You have to harden off, like a new green shoot. Start by taking off your scarf and hat, but don't go storing them away. It can snow in April, and it may well do that tonight, though is was 70 degrees here last week and 60 today. Don't plant anything, not outside and not until May shows up after about seven weeks of April. This, if you know what's good for you.

Get a good rake. Metal. That plastic thing is fine for your postage stamp in Glendale, but it ain't gonna cut it here in the hinterlands. There are about three inches of pine cones under that leaf hummus and those plastic tines don't take kindly to the bulbous nodes and small branches that have fallen under the weight of winter.

A power washer is not optional. You ever want to see those lawn chairs again, you're gonna have to blast about 2200 psi of hose water at them. Gasoline fueled. You need enough power to blast the bad attitude off your soul and electric is pure weenie; your soul is very very dirty and its going to take some fossil fuels to get it clean.

Prepare to shovel some gravel. The snow plow will have shoved that to either side of the driveway in long drifts of rock. You'll have to get that back on the two-track, or you'll be picking it out of your bent lawn mower blades before too long.

Spring is wet and your septic system is overtaxed, so hauling a few bales of hay in the van is a good idea if you want to stay on the top side of planet earth. You need to sprinkle that around to create a little terra firma from the yard to the front door.

Anything you built last spring out of wood, you'll need to rebuild this spring out of a complex polymer. Raised beds, stair treads, trellis - start thinking about materials that will withstand a nuclear winter, because that's next.

Your gutters, filled with pelts of flora that peel out like sod, will be hanging off in places. You'll need to get up on the roof with some big aluminum gutter nails - try not to slip off the shingles covered in the green slime of decomposed tree droppings - and bang those fuckers back into place.

Pick up a lot of windblown trash, move a mountain of leaves over there, throw away your "perennials", plant something else, straighten your mailbox, pull a few trillion weeds and maybe by July you'll be able to sit down and enjoy a glass of lemonade before you have to start cutting wood for next winter.

Ah spring.

I Love You Stink Bug

2009-04-03T07:59:00.013-04:00

Yesterday was Lily's first grade music program. Lily LOVES music class. She loves her teacher, her teacher loves her, and Lil just has a bad case of the jams. So music class really rocks her 6 year old world. Incidentally, this makes her liberal arts educated mom very very proud.

But school performances in the early grades can run the gamut from tedious to soporific, often punctuated by spontaneous student barfing. Louis' Christmas program was tainted by regurgitated sour milk and temperatures in the gym above 90 degrees. I couldn't take my eyes off his teacher, who conducted the balance of the program with a splash of undetected hurl on her pant leg.

My parents rarely attended my school performances, I had no local grandparents, and I vowed I would never let my kid stand on the risers, looking out into rows of parents without finding one of her tribe sweating with pride, suppressing their own gag reflex.

So yesterday I went to Lily's school and took my place among the whirling video cameras and shutter clicks, to watch the show, Bugz, which featured the entire 1st grade, girls as ladybugs, boys as army ants.

Bugz is the parable of a picnic to which all bugs are invited, except the Stink Bug, who is excluded because of his entomological body odor problem. Even the Maggot gets invited, because, though he's nasty, he's got no stank. Every time the Stink Bug walked on stage, the 1st grade held its collective nose. Haughty bumble bees made him feel bad about himself. Beetles ignored him. Cliquey caterpillars whispered behind his back.

Disturbing as it may have been to see dozens of 6-year old boys dressed in camouflage, marching in step and saluting as part of their ant choreography, they had it down, and looked impressive doing it. I especially liked the part where, despite the millions of tax payer dollars, the army couldn't find their way to the picnic without the help of the mild-mannered fireflies who, with gym lights dimmed, twinkled their flashlights to light the way.

But the real moment came when I realized that I had so identified with the Stink Bug that I was muttering things under my breath like, "Aw poor stink bug, I'll be your friend" and "You're a horrible, fat bee and I am going to swat you with my blog." and later, "Die horsefly, die!"

Then, when things were really desperate, when I was about to run on stage and embrace the stink bug with my totally overblown and inappropriate empathy, the cast breaks into the tender lyric, 'Rainbows do appear, but one thing's very clear, People Change. Things change..." as visual embodiment - a wee little 1st grader struggled dramatically under five yards of sweltering green felt. By the end of the song, the velcro scratched apart and out she came, a beautiful, sweaty butterfly.

The power of change having washed over all the lowly bugs, they decide each to carry a giant flower with strong perfume to override the redolent tang of the offending creature. Stink Bug attends the picnic!

It was emotionally exhausting. I'd laughed. I'd cried. I'd experienced redemption on the pedals of a lapel flower. I'd relived my entire childhood and much of last week.

They really must keep music programs in public schools alive.

I'm heading out to buy flowers.

A post about posting

2009-04-03T07:53:00.003-04:00

Dear Friends,

I've had a lot of email telling me that you can't figure out how to leave comments on the blog, which, by the way, are the light of my life. So here's a little lesson.

1. Scroll to the bottom of the post you'd like to comment on.

2. In tiny light blue lettering, it says comments, in a mere whisper.

3. Click on that inconsequential word.

4. Scroll to the bottom, again, where a blank square longingly awaits your thoughts.

5. HERE'S THE TRICK. Click preview first, then post.

This seems to work. And I'll love you for the effort.

Such an Unfortunate Creature

2009-04-01T20:35:00.006-04:00

Its been grey here since October. This is not hyperbole. Grey... since October. All my readers in Portland, and Finland, you know what I'm talking about. My California friends, you just have to accept what I'm telling you. There are a lot of things that can happen to a person who hasn't seen the sun in seven months.

Here are a few of them:

Your lips turn white. Its true, blood rushes to your extremities to keep them from falling off, and your lips can, and do, go to hell. The portal of love that was once my mouth is now just a jagged gash into which I shove the pie of despair.

When I stand in front of a bright light, you can see my internal organs.

My skin is so dry and flakey I leave a flesh trail behind me you could ski on.

My hair, also dry, grows long and wide, sort of triangular, starting darker and lank close to my head then flaring out at the bottom in a geometric tangle of dead ends and once optimistic highlighting.

My fingertips have spent months in the meat grinder of my mouth. My cuticles are sharp and dangerous. I cannot slip a synthetic top over my head without getting my hangnails and flesh hooks caught in its extruded fibers.

The bottoms of my feet actually abrade my sheets, causing shorter life span for my fine linens.

My Vitamin D levels are so inadequate I may go blind and develop rickets, if the depression doesn't kill me.

My zits, when they gather their strength and make a run for the surface, show like bas relief against the scrim that I call my complexion.

But the worst thing about no sun is the fact that there's no fucking sun. Its grey as a dead hamster around here and its hard not to take it personally. Wisconsin gets a little sun, even St. Louis, but somehow the earth's rotation is unkind to Cleveland, and the sun, when it shines, is swallowed whole by lake Erie.

I'm right now sitting on a grow bulb. And by its light, I can see I need to eat more vegetables.

The politics of playing

2009-03-30T21:22:00.003-04:00

" Can I pleeease go to Max's house today?"

Lou wants to know, as he does every morning, because he is sick to death of our house, our five broken toys and the horses they rode in on. Its been a long winter and he wants to go be someone else's boy for a while. I try to explain that we cannot invite ourselves over to Max's house, we don't have that kind of friendship. I can't just show up in a paint splattered sweatshirt, with no socks on under my boots, open their fridge and start eating their way better snacks.

"They have to invite us, honey. Or we can invite Max over here."

But he doesn't want Max to come here, because here would still be here and here sucks. Especially after seven months of winter lock down. I don't blame him, I'd like to be elsewhere too. Lou asks me every day if he can go over to "someone's house", and his tone lilts between "Drive this car to someone's house, bitch, or you will know the meaning of hell!" and "Can no one hear my cry for help?!"

What I can't understand is why we don't get more invitations. I would go pick out hammers at Kmart if someone asked me to tag along. What I've come to believe about our lack of social life is that its because I'm off-gassing liberalism. I think the parents in this republican bedroom community take one look at me with my frantic hair and no makeup and they just know I'm growing a pot seed in with the cilantro.

On my dark days I imagine that all these parents are having some giant party in their finished basements, all the kids in an orgy of enrichment games, while me and my kids hand plow our driveway with broken Walgreens shovels. I feel there must be some better kind of life happening behind my back. A secret life that those people don't want me to know about because I would sully it with my loose morals, foul language and dearth of hostess gifts.

This winter I volunteered in Lou's classroom for a party. One of the good moms brought those little upside down plastic champagne bottles filled with tiny explosives that shoot confetti out the end when you pull the string. The adults yanked the yarn on about four of them, to thrill the kids, and the whole room filled with blue smoke. I don't know what possessed me, but I actually said, out loud, "Nothing like the smell of gunpowder in the classroom."

Silence.

I don't know if I can't fit in or if I just don't want to.

But I do know if someone doesn't invite my kid over to play soon, this liberal may just start to enjoy the smell of gunpowder.

Tit for Tat

2009-03-28T12:29:00.000-04:00

I'm accused of being a tit-for-tatter. Well, if I'm a tit-for-tat kind of girl, then you're a lazy sot! See, there I go again. I'm not saying they're wrong, but the scales are forever tilted, and they need righting.

I hauled my weary ass out of bed this Saturday morning, to go meet a potential handyman at one of the rental properties. Vildy has some kind of sore throat and accompanying Giant Pussy disorder, so he got to be a head on a pillow, while I drove the 35 minutes, again, to the m-effing rental property du jour. Because of his terminal case of whineasitis, added to my sojourn was a visit to the Auto Zone on Scuzz Avenue, Cleveland Heights, so I could get his check engine light diagnosed.

After that it was a stop at Marc's, the poor people's grocery store, where I now shop for dented cans of corn to feed my budget fatigued family. The lines there are not short. Apparently we are not alone in our love of canned corn. At Marc's they have not yet discovered the scanner, the conveyer belt, the credit card swiper or whole grain bread. Which is why its cheap and why I shop there, writing my check and showing my driver's license for the first time in eight years.

At Marc's you can find boxes of Quisp Cereal, and King Vitamin, by the way for those of you who, like myself, are connoisseurs of the boxed breakfast jewels. I'm not sure if these are the same exact boxes from my youth, or if there is in fact a post 70's distributer of these off-brands, but no matter, they can be found at Marc's. Checking the date is your problem.

In line, listening to acrylic nails tap out the prices of my Suave shampoo and ground beef, I feel a sudden and urgent clamping down in my bowels. My sister and I call this SP, code name for Sphincter Poke, which, as you may imagine is an urgent call to arms. But this is Marc's. They cannot suspend a sale here without a sign off from the assistant manager who is selling baby formula from behind the locked pharmacy counter.

I am sweating with the effort and urgency of my predicament. Those two giant cans of Folgers coffee are still a manicure away and I don't know, I just don't know... Someone butts in to ask the price of some colored plastic easter eggs. For mercy! I hear my duodenum cry.

I am granted a stay of execution by some sympathetic force in my colon and make it to the car to load the groceries, and then to the nearby Sears for ultimate relief. Praise Allah.

At home I discover not unexpectedly that my four year old son has been staring at screens for the past three hours, my daughter is unsupervised in the yard, and Vild would very much like me to make him a sandwich.

When I shoo everyone away and ask what anyone's done for me lately, they all stare at me with wide hurt eyes, accuse me of being cranky, tell me not to be so mean. Now I have to go, someone needs soup and a widdle sammy, and while I'm up, could I watch the kids, he's feeling a little nappy.

I've given my tit, now where's my fucking Tat?

Spring Shhpring

2009-03-27T22:11:00.014-04:00

Its nearly spring here. I can tell because two days ago I watched a Cardinal make sweet love to himself in my car's side mirror. He hopped up there, as he had the day before, pecked and fawned over his own reflection, until he was sure the foxy bird staring back was picking up what he was laying down. It was quite a show, lifting his tail feathers, bobbing and weaving, doing an R-rated hoochie-coochie dance that was, frankly, starting to work on me. My side mirror he had at hello.

Last week, as I took Lily down the driveway to the bus, the grass was all crystalline with frost and the sun shone down on it and made it look like the Emerald City. Across our road, in the orchard, ten dear froze at the sounds of us, then shot off into the woods, tails flicking white as they ran. Its all very Walt Disney and miraculous, and if mushrooms could sing, I'd really have something.

But the downside of spring here in Ohio is that everything is laid bare in the melt. Seven months of McDonalds wrappers, beer cans, road kill and rot has been indelicately plowed under, and now that the snow has melted the scourings are revealed in muddy heaps on the side of the road. Everything is brown and flattened and soggy. Winter winds have blown our asses sideways, and we have to begin the tentative process of rebuilding a fair season life.

You have to harden off, like a new green shoot. Start by taking off your scarf and hat, but don't go putting them away. It can snow in April, and it may well do that tonight, though it was 70 degrees here last week, and 60 today. Don't plant anything, not outside and not until May shows up after about seven weeks of April. This, if you know what's good for you.

A power washer is not optional. You ever want to see those lawn chairs again, you're gonna have to blast about 2200 psi of hose water at them. Gasoline powered. You need enough power to blast the bad attitude off your soul and electric is all weenie; your soul is very very dirty, and its gonna take some fossil fuels to get it clean.

Prepare to shovel some gravel. The snow plow will have shoved that to either side of your driveway in long drifts of rock. You'll have to get that back on the two-track, or you'll be picking it out of your bent lawn mower blades before too long.

Spring is wet and your septic system is overtaxed, so hauling a few bales of hay in the mini-van is a good idea if you want to stay on the top side of planet earth. You need to sprinkle that around to create a little terra firma from the yard to your front door.

Anything you built last spring out of wood, you'll need to rebuild this spring out of a complex polymer. Raised beds, stair treads, trellis' - start thinking about materials that will withstand nuclear winter, because that's what we're dealing with.

Your gutters, filled with pelts of flora that peel out like sod, will be hanging off in places. You'll need to get up on the roof with some big aluminum gutter nails, try not to slip off the shingles covered in the green slime of decomposed tree droppings, and bang those fuckers back into place.

Pick up a lot of windblown trash, move a mountain of leaves over there, throw away your "perennials", plant something else, pull a few trillion weeds and maybe by July you'll be able to sit down and have a glass of lemonade.

Ah, spring!

Butt of the Joke

2009-03-27T08:45:00.001-04:00

Ta Da! I'm a blogger.

Just yesterday I was guiltlessly not doing laundry, paying bills, grocery shopping, cleaning tampons out of clogged rental property toilets or listening to hold music at my health insurance's 800 number, but instead watched Clear and Present Danger, with Harrison Ford. It's my two hours of free time and if I want to squander it watching tired Tom Clancy vehicles you can't stop me.

For about the thousandth time in recent memory, some secondary character in a film made reference to Cleveland in a condescending way. This time the comment was about ripping the stars from the lapels of some well-meaning officer and stowing the poor bastard behind a desk in Cleveland. Cleveland, spat from his mouth like he just discovered ass lint on his tongue. The assumption being that Cleveland is cosmic landfill, the junk heap for all the people, things and ideas that don't make it in real places like Los Angeles or New York, or in this case D.C.

Its ironic that this should bug me, considering how I so enjoy disparaging Cleveland myself. There's a lot wrong with this town, and I plan to bitch about each and every one of them in future posts. I fucking LIVE here, so I get to say whatever I want about it. But rich screenwriters living in the Hollywood Hills, who have never even stopped over in Cleveland on their way to New York, don't get to. People who enjoy ordering food in the middle of the night from really good Ethiopian restaurants, after attending art openings in cool re-purposed auto-body shops don't get to. Until you know, really know, how badly a place can suck, I don't think you should be able to casually include it in your knowing derision. Plus, Cleveland isn't Detroit. I've never been there but Detroit fucking blows.