You Can Hire Me, Bring Me Back After a Session

During this – our time of financial recalibration – we’ve found it necessary to cut back and cut back some more. This has offered us a chance to revisit our priorities and to better understand ourselves as consumers of the vast array of options modern American have vying for their dollars.

Put another way – we see who we really are by what we continue to spend our money on versus what we’re willing to do without.

For example:  I’m not willing to give up my nightly glass of wine or occasional beer. Make of that what you will. On the flipside, I am willing to stick my hand into the full vacuum bag, pulling out clumps of cat hair, bits of random things, dirt, dust, and the occasional dried Tootsie Roll of cat poo festooned with litter and feathers.  I can never figure out where the feathers come from.  They’re indoor cats.

I figure, why keep buying vacuum cleaner bags when all I’m going to do is throw them away?  Recycle, reuse, repurpose. That’s my motto and I’m sticking to it.

I admit knowing that in a week or two, I’ll be pulling my shirt up over my face to protect my lungs from the dust particles and rummaging inside the bag to dislodge its contents has made me a bit careless when I wield my magic sucking wand.  Oh, shoot!  I only meant to get the hairs out of that drawer, I didn’t mean to suck up that cloth headband.  Oh, well, I’ll retrieve it when I clean out the bag.  I can wash it and it’ll be good as new.

So yesterday, the vacuum was behaving rather sluggishly while we did our dance around the living room.  I cut the power and hefted it off the floor.  Yeah, it was getting pretty full.  I dragged it to the ceremonial emptying garbage can and tugged my shirt up over my nose in preparation for the job.

Out came the usual suspects.  Cat hair in massive, gray clumps, horrifying dust, part of a pencil, a Q-tip, bingo! my headband, more hair and dust.  And hello!  What’s this?

Nathan just happened to walk by as I held up the little surprise that waited, buried deep within the bowels of my beloved vacuum.

“What’s this?”  My shock was real.

He looked at the object, then back at me and laughed nervously.  “Don’t you know?”

“Whose condom is this?”  I held it, flattened and dusty, between my thumb and forefinger.  It flapped like a yellowish, ribbed-for-her-pleasure flag in the breeze from the ceiling fan.

“Not mine!”

“Whose condom am I holding in my hand?”

Crickets and the batting of his long eyelashes and finally.  “I said it’s not mine!”

“And how did it get into the vacuum cleaner?”

“Does it really matter?”

In the grand scheme of things, I suppose he’s right.

Happy weekend, lovers.  Careful where you put your condoms.

The Mournful Bleatings of a Former Middle Class Dreg

“Jesus, if I have to see one more person writing their vacation to do lists or bitching about how hard it is to come back from a vacation, I’m going to fucking cancel my Facebook account and never turn on the computer again.  Shit.  When was the last time we took a vacation?  Not work, not visits to family, but a real vacation?  2006?”

“Was that the year we went to D.C. before we went to Indiana and Illinois to visit family?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, lighten up, Lucy.  Your whole life is a vacation.  Just ask your dad.  Now how about getting out and applying for that job at McDonands he keeps talking about.”

Some days the thing that really makes this marriage work is the ability to put the other person swiftly and precisely into their place.  When we are kind, it’s done with humor.  When we’re ready to take out the long knives, not so much.  The truth is, MathMan knows how to get at that deep, dark, ugly place inside me, make me look at it, poke it with a stick, and then bury it back where it belongs until next time.  It’s when we deny that that ugly nugget exists that we get into our horrible scrapes.

He neither indulges nor discourages me when I’m being petulant and whiny.  He shoves, lures, cajoles me beyond it so that I can be less self-pitying and like myself just a bit.  Sometimes to his peril.  He’s good for me.  The bastard.

If ever I’m standing on the ledge, please get MathMan.  He, to his credit and his everlasting regret, I suspect, knows what makes me tick.  And he knows my preferred chocolate (cheap), wine (Malbec) and ice cream flavor (chocolate marshmallow).

So it’s true.  I’ve been a bit resentful of the social media exposure I’ve had to other people’s fabulous lives and disposable income.  It’s made me chew the inside of my cheek and push back from the keyboard on more than one occasion when I want to lash out. 

But then, I thought no.  We’re here because of the mistakes we’ve made, the bad decisions, the drama I have introduced into the fold.  Suck it up, sister.  Deal. And then I read Betsy Lerner’s take on vacations and am reminded that I’m a lot like her.  The idea of a vacation is one thing.  The execution of that idea is something else entirely.  No matter where I go, the compulsion to have things just so, the annoying sighs, the short fuse, they all get packed right along with my smelly sandals and that pretty shawl I never take out and wear because I’ve never worn a shawl in my life.  They don’t go well with the cargo shorts, do they?  Even I know that.

So what if you can’t actually take a vacation?  That’s what books are for!  They transport you.  Well, at least they used to.  Why not stop feeling sorry for yourself and give it a whirl?

Turns out the still do transport.  I picked up Ayelet Waldman’s Red Hook Road at the library last week.  I’ve never been to Maine, but I’d like to go there.  Why not visit through this novel?  If you can overlook the main premise of the story (death of newlyweds, a real downer), it’s got those elements that do take me out of my own dreary housewifery and transports me to the salty air and sandy beaches of coastal Maine where I can sail and listen to the seagulls and eat fresh lobster while wearing a swimsuit without the slightest hint of self-consciousness. 

Anyway, I’ll be writing a review of it as soon as I’m finished reading it.  It’s time to cut the ties binding my to the computer and read.

Before I go, I thought I’d share with you another of life’s tiny ironies.  I decided to follow Ayelet Waldman on Twitter.  She tweets almost daily.  And, of course, this week, just when I decide to follow her, she and her husband Michael Chabon and their children are…….on vacation.

Do you take mental vacations?  What are you reading to escape?  When you close your eyes, where do you “vacation?”  And go on – tell me about your favorite vacation, if you’d like.  I can take it.

The Detritus of Life So Far

I don’t even remember why I started it, but there I was pulling things from the floor of the closet and asking myself rhetorical questions like “Why is she keeping all these shoeboxes?”

More boxes. Nifty metal rectangular ones from Ikea.  Boxes bursting with photos that will never be put into albums.  The boxes are dented from back in the days when they were pulled off the shelves of the built-in hutch and incorporated into some elaborate scheme involving Tonka trucks, Hotwheels, dinosaurs and those dark green molded plastic soldiers.

“Watch this, Mom!  See this guy, he’s going to….”

That was two houses ago.

Stacks of cds, borrowed from the family’s collection and never returned to the proper cabinet.  Books by Philip Roth, David McCullough and John Dean.  The entire set of Harry Potter novels in hardback plus some of the audio books.  Old cassettes of Jack Benny radio shows, a full set of David Sedaris books on cd.  Anthony Kiedis’s autobiography Scar Tissue.  I wondered where that was.

Some Calculus books.  Did MathMan say he was going to be teaching Calculus next semester?

A Rubbermaid box of things belonging to MathMam.  Baseball memorabilia,  some concert programs from a 1989 Paul McCartney show we attended at the Rosemont Horizon when it was still the Horizon.  That was the same year we went to see Les Miserables at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago.  The same year we moved to Chicago after we graduated from I.U and it snowed on May 5th.  My dad was helping us move in with MathMan’s mom.  He looked up at the sky showering us with fluffy snow, then back at me and asked if I was sure I wanted to live in Chicago.

I was sure.

A little box of jewelry, mostly broken, that had once cluttered the top of my dresser circa 1978.  I picked through it and saved the old spoon ring and two buttons:  I’m Like Freakin Out! and J’aime le Francais.  Stuck them right through some poster board so they can grace my “new” office space.  Tossed the rest.

Oh, right.  That’s what started all this – I was going to shift Nate’s clothes upstairs since we moved him back up to the small room that had been my office.  He was ready to have his own room again, was tired of sleeping in the wide open space of the basement family room with no door that locked.  He’s a fourteen year old boy.  I’m not stupid.  I’m not going to be picking up discarded socks from his floor though.

With an assist from MathMan, the record albums in their milk crates were moved out of the closet and given a place, accessible, but out of the way in the corner of what was now my new office/weight room.

He also took down the mystery box from the top shelf.  So that’s where they were – the few photo albums we owned, full of pictures form the early days of our life together.  Back when I had the time and inclination to sit down and enjoy the tedium of inserting photos into plastic sleeves.  Back when I had photos developed and the archivist in me had to sit down and write on the back of each one – the people, places and dates.  It was important.  Back before three kids and jobs and distractions.  Before I used the internet to do more than occasionally search for photos of houseplans people could order from Sears and other mail-order companies.  When I would have laughed at the idea of spending large amounts of time in front of the computer during my non-work hours.

We didn’t even bother to unpack those photo albums when we moved into this house.

Time to refold those old baseball jerseys and put them into some kind of box for Nate.  And do we still have this iHome charger/player thing?  Here are the instructions.  Did I see that in Chloe’s room?

Two Composition books with only a few pages used.  Those might be nice to have this coming school year. MathMan’s bassoon repair kit, still housed in the 1970s orange Tupperware it’s been in since I’ve know him.

Sit down and look through that basket of photos that never even made it into the IKEA boxes?

And when did I put this box of Little Tikes building blocks in here?  Those can go in the garage with the rest of the abandoned toys.  Maybe it’s time to donate these things.  I don’t see us moving them every time we change rentals just because we might have grandchildren some day.  Better to let some kid have them now to enjoy. 

The stack of board games teeters precariously next to my Conn trumpet case, completely ignored on the top shelf.  Dang, I thought that silver trumpet was hot and I was hot shit playing it.  Until I decided that I’d rather march as a flag twirler in a skimpy halter dress instead of those hideous band uniforms with those fuzzy white tall hats.  The joke was on us, though.  The band kids stayed toasty warm in their wool uniforms and we froze our nipples off when the parades took place on early autumn mornings that plunged down into the forties.  With fog.

Do I really need to keep this old cheerleading patch with my name on it?  It’s yellowed.  Might be fun to put it on my desk though.  Just for kicks.

That ceramic tic-tac-toe set that Sophie made two years ago in Art Club should be put in something safe before it’s crushed to dust.

What’s this?  A Samsung phone box from which Hanukkah?  Must have been 2007 or 2008?  We were still in the John Kay Road house.  It was the used phone we bought for Chloe from her friend who’d upgraded to the first iPhone.  Or was it a Blackberry? It was the phone that she dropped in the Target parking lot then accidentally stepped on while wearing those brown suede boots we used to “share.”  The ones with the heel that scraped the side of her newish used phone.  I unkindly teased her about not being so graceful for a dancer.

I finished matching up the pairs of shoes I’d fished from the bottom of the closet and stepped back to consider how they now had feet bigger than mine.

What kind of trouble are you getting into this Wednesday?

My Too Late Submission for Project Mom Casting

They wanted a picture of me, so here it is.

This is my late submission for the Project Mom Casting. The idea is that the producers of a reality TV show will be in New York City at the Blogher Conference auditioning potential cast members.

I missed the deadline because I thought all day yesterday was July 25th.  FAIL is my signature color.

And I won’t be at the NYC event because I am, as usual, broke.  This being laid off and having no disposable income has really worn thin.  And that killjoy MathMan is not amused by my offer to turn tricks for some fun money.  Or airfare. 

I realize most of you aren’t even aware of my blogher aspirations.  I started as a political blogger who shifted to relationship and bad parenting blogging.  I never identified as a “mom” blogger or a female blogger.  Sure I did blog as a decidedly female writer with the lacy black bra avatar, but that was just a way to lure mostly male readers back to PoliTits.  Ah, the good old days.

But here you are, still visiting and for that I am grateful.  So grateful that I keep my clothes on now.

But what if I didn’t miss the deadline?  How would I sell myself?  I could say that I have three well-adjusted, bright, funny children who are important to me, but not the center of my life.  I believe you can be a mom without letting that aspect of who you are overshadow everything else. I’d say that I’ve been married forever to MathMan who is my best friend and totally hot.  I’d lie and say that I’m well-adjusted, too, except for the delusions about becoming a famous novelist, the Gaslighting of my children, the collection of cats, the mild OCD that kicks in after I clean, my lifelong addiction to sugar and ongoing battle with my weight, my murky past as a high school cheerleader, and my desire to be British.

To demonstrate my onscreen persona, I’d show them my facelift video from my aborted attempt to become a beauty consultant and the series of Commute Chats we made with the camera wedged between the dashboard and the windshield. (Note: I don’t have a lisp, but if you need someone with a lisp for the show, I can do that! I’m a great mimic!)

And, of course, I’d mention that what I’m in the middle of is writing my first novel and attempting to find a literary agent so that it can be published and won’t they hate it if this all turns out uncharacteristically awesome and they made the mistake of passing me up when they had the chance?

Except it’s not their fault that I can’t read a calendar, is it?

So what do you think?  Shouldn’t they make an exception for me?  Don’t you guys want to see me, MathMan and those wickedly photogenic children of ours on TV? Careful with your answers, I’m emotionally “delicate” at the moment.  Which also means sober. 

Love and thanks,

Lisa

Black Magpie Theory: Anyone? Anyone?

I hear you, Ben Stein.  And I’m taking steps.  Over here.

Remember, if you want me to stop kicking puppies and adjusting my boobs in public, you’d better read all those other fabulous posts, too.  There’s one a day and it’s all good.

See you back here tomorrow, gang.

The One Where That Who Do You Write Like Thing Says I Write Like Chuck Palahniuk and I Go All Fight Club Crazy

 A person can get stuck in a rut, you know?

Wake up, feed the cats, make coffee…………..write………nag my kids and any others who happen to be loitering about……..screw around……clean things…..feed the cats again……..read…..write………eat things I shouldn’t……..go to the gym…lift weights, run on the elliptical………watch British mysteries..fall asleep.

Like that.

Sometime last week, I’d finished my elliptical workout and Hans and Franz were hogging the weight benches.  I’ve told you about my impulse control issues so to avoid trouble, I strolled into the small classroom thinking I’d kill some time checking text messages.  As if overcome by instinct, I picked up the pink boxing gloves that lay there like pieces of already-chewed Bubble Yum, slipped them onto my hands where they felt as if they’d been made for me, and started punching away on the heavy bag.

Hey, this feels good!

Since then, I have used the heavy bag every time we’ve gone to the gym.  Sometimes I use the red dingly bag, too, but that little sucker is wily and needs to be lowered and I’m not climbing up on the folding chair again to do it.  I already had to climb up once and rehang the heavy bag after I knocked it loose.  (Thanks MathMan for doing the heavy lifting, literally!)

But holy cripes, who knew this punching thing was so addictive?

As my brother says, I come from a family where “the only emotion we embrace is anger.”  So, yeah.  This should come as no surprise. My pugilistic tendencies are deep-seated and probably genetic even as I strain to keep them smothered under a pile of self delusion and discarded dreams.

I come from a long line of hotheads stretching all the way back to Ireland and Scotland, I remind myself.  They weren’t the whiskey drinking, song singing fun Irish and Scots you see in movies and travel documentaries.  At least, they weren’t by the time they’d come to inhabit a bend of the Ohio River.  They didn’t temper their tempers with spirits.  They were mouthy and angry and there would have been a lot of brawling had alcohol been involved.  Maybe it was because they were Protestant instead of Catholic, but rather than enhancing their personalities with fermented drinks, they chose to overeat things covered with gravy and grind their teeth in silent rebuke of the world.

As for me – the only person I’ve ever actually fought with was my sister.  The last time we bare-knuckled, we pretty much beat the hell out of one another.  Oh, and there was that guy I grabbed by the ears and bashed his head against the car window frame, but that was just good timing on my part.  Had he not been disadvantaged by sitting in a car and being three sheets to the wind, that embarrassing episode would not have happened.

So now I want to learn how to box properly.  I don’t want to break my hands.  I like the adrenaline rush of pounding the daylights out of the bag, but I want to do it correctly.

There’s one problem.  The eventual opponent.  I shared my concern with MathMan.  “I want to box, but I don’t know if I can take the punches.”

MathMan reminded me that I’d had three babies with no pharmaceutical assistance.  “I think you can take pain.”

“Yeah, but they won’t be punching me in the uterus and vagina.  Much.”

“How will you know if you never try?”

I wonder if he might enjoy seeing me get the snot beat out of me as a small repayment for my past sins. Sure it’s wrong to be so suspicious, but I can’t say I’d blame him.

For now, it’s me and the heavy bag, those rockin’ pink gloves and the instructions I got off youtube.  But I’m serious.  I want to learn to fight.  The stress release benefits alone would make it worth it.  If I’m going to do it, I want to do it right.  Maybe like this….

http://www.youtube.com/v/r2PM0om2El8&hl=en_US&fs=1?color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&border=1

Video via theotherlisa Lisa Brackman author of Rock Paper Tiger. 

Okay, so maybe not exactly like that, but close enough. 

But What If I Could Land a Job As A Parenthetical?

Thanks to the passage of the unemployment benefits extension bill, there’s a chance we’ll be living large again on my weekly government hand out.  I can climb down off the ledge and focus on something other than this book titled “Robbing Banks for Dummies.”  I picked it up somewhere.  Maybe at the Department of Labor or some church-run food pantry.  I can’t remember now.  Anyway, we’re not out of the woods yet.  I’m still worried about how to keep the lights on and food on the table because this (if the checks resume at all) is simply a reprieve.

While I continue to seek a position (anything! I’ll take anything!) in my old line of work (herding cats), the options are few.  There are positions advertised in Chicago, NYC and the D.C. area, but moving is not an option.  Meanwhile, I’m looking outside my field using my transferable skills or even jobs I did while in high school and college – restaurant server, retail sales associate, pushing grocery carts at Krogers.  So far the results have been the phone not ringing.

The Department of Labor suggests job retraining for those of us drifting in this altered employment universe.  While my long-term goal is to make a living off writing, I still must have plans B, C and D in place.  Things move pretty fast, you know.  And while nothing would please me more than to be able to write that post telling you that not only have I gotten a literary agent, but that also she or he has negotiated an awesome deal with a publishing house and also they see big things for this novel and want two more from me and also Nora Ephron or that chick who beat James Cameron out for the Oscar, I think it was his ex-wife, somehow heard about the manuscript and they want to talk screenplays……

Oh.  Sorry.  Whisper the words #amwriting at me and my brain starts spinning tales of wild! mad! crazy! success!!!! with red carpet walks and book signings that celebrities want to attend!!!!!

A few bills paid and a nice five day trip to France while the kids are tucked up somewhere getting reacquainted with Grandma and Grandpa would be okay, too.

So the writing is what it is – a labor of love that might some day pay a bit.  It’s what I want to do.  But I also have to be realistic, damn it.  I want to be Lisa.

So the job retraining thing seems legit.  I’ve been doing my research.  First I looked at The Hot Jobs for the Future.  Okay, so here’s some promising stuff.

Someone still needs to write the books, the screen plays, the TV shows, the music etc. Positions requiring a high level of creativity and originality should still be highly valued.
….Reality TV will have a minor impact on the demand for actors. Unique personalities and talented people will always catch our interests and will be in high demand, at least until we tire of them. 

Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!  There’s still a chance for me to finally be an actress! Wait – no. If you’ve seen the Commute Chat set of videos on YouTube, you know that’s not going to happen.

Nevertheless, I’m buoyed by the line up there about needing someone to write the books.  Pick me! Pick me!

But wait.  The silver hair and crows feet scream SEASONED!!!!  otherwise known as old.  Don’t most writers begin early to establish their careers?

Taking another bite of the reality cupcake (which tastes like defeat frosted with desperation), I narrowed my search a little and found The10 Best Jobs for Over-Forty Women. Gee, it kind of hurt my arthritis to type that. (I may look over-forty, but I’m eighteen on the inside!)

Some days I really wish I’d had the good sense to find a job with a solid company when I was twenty-three and to have just stayed in that job forever and ever and ever. Played it safe, you know?  No wait – if I’m rewinding – I wish I’d gone to that interview at the big insurance company instead of accepting the job offer from the low-paying not-for-profit!  No wait – if I rewind further – I wish I’d never switched my major from Secondary Education to French!  No wait – go back again – I wish I’d never changed my plans to go to nursing school in Cincinnati to become an R.N. so that I could go to Ball State to be a high school teacher, but party a lot first!  No wait!  one more rewind.  I wish someone had said to me HEY STUPID! YOU’RE A WRITER!  HOW ABOUT CONSIDERING WRITING AS A CAREER????

And there I am again.  (Looks at the list above)  Okay, let’s deal with the reality, shall we? I’ve made notes.  Notes mean I’m serious about this.  I even wrote using black ink instead of my favorite purple felt tip.

Community Service Coordinator/Manager – I could do this.  It’s very close to what I’ve done in the past.  Would probably have to go back to school for my Masters in Public Administration to stand out in the crowd and make new contacts.
Personal Financial Adviser – Only if you want me to teach people how to fail with style.
Environmental Scientist – Does knowing not to mix bleach with ammonia qualify me?  I’m thinking the biology and chemistry classes would be an obstacle I might not be able to overcome. 
Registered Nurse – You don’t really want me in charge of medications and needles, do you?
Computer and Information Systems Manager – I’m a user.  That would be like putting the person who takes the meth in charge of making the meth.  The end result is never pretty and things often blow up.
Education Administrator – More schooling.  A possibility. Although I know a few of these who’ve been laid off recently so…….
Strategic/Crisis Communication Professional – My strategy for Crisis Communication is shrieking Mathman’s real name and then shouting “Who in the fuck caused this mess?”
Accountant – Stop laughing.  Oh, okay, laugh. The very idea is hilarious.  I have to ask MathMan to do most of my math after I get past the counting of fingers and toes stage.
Human Resources Specialist – Another maybe.  Would require schooling, I think and, because I once made my living pushing professional credentials, would also require membership and courses toward certification through SHRM.
Small-Scale Niche Farmer – Well, I do have all that experience herding cats and I used to have a huge garden….

The other possibility I’ve been considering is library science.  It combines the things I love – publications, words, research, information, technology, community. Plus it’s Oedipally ordained.  My mother-in-law was a librarian.  I have several friends who are librarians like Liberality and Suzy and Randal! How could I forget Randal?  and whomever else I might be forgetting and offending and I’m really sorry about that.

And yes, I’m also looking at programs here in Georgia for the Masters in Fine Arts with a focus on creative writing.  I guess if you pinned me down with your knees and dangled a loogey over my face, I’d say my dream job is writing novels and screenplays and corrupting young adult minds through a position in some mid-level academic scene in a college town with a great faux-English pub.  Unless, of course, I could land a spot in Oxford…..(Oh, Harold! there she goes again!)

See you later, lovers, I’ve got daydreaming to do.  And as three million and seven people say on Facebook each week Thank God It’s Friday.  What are your weekend plans?  Long-term goals?  Dream job?

And In the End He’ll Always Be A Numbers Guy

Reality gained another toehold here in our semi-safe haven of a home.  I think that makes six now.  Six toeholds, I mean.  I believe that you get handle reality any way you damn well please.  So in my imagination, reality is required to have all ten toes and its prehensile tail wrapped firmly around the branch of your life and be hanging upside like a sleeping possum before you have to accept it.

And I don’t care what Reality thinks. This isn’t Reality’s blog.

Yesterday, MathMan learned that, despite his best efforts to reduce and manage via diet and exercise, his cholesterol numbers have remained stubbornly high.  He is now a card-carrying member of the Zocor Club.

He is ever so pissed about it.

Last year, during his annual check up, his doctor used the dreaded phrase that begins with the words medically and technically and ends with –ese.  While the doctor meant well and, like lots of bad people of yore, was merely doing his job, this information and the specific use of that phrase cut MathMan deeply.

In response, he became an exercise machine.  He took up running and weight training.  He took on a greenish tinge from eating all those salads.  He’s consumed enough steel cut oats to cleanse the Gulf.  Lots of times, when I accuse of him of wasting time on Facebook, he’s actually poring over information on realage.com.

The overall results were spectacular.  He shed twenty pounds, ran a (something)K race and now has what is commonly-referred to around here as Lisa-like blood pressure.  See, I was like a vampire before being a vampire became cool.  I have the kind of numbers that spur confused doctors to retake my blood pressure themselves.  The midwife who delivered the kids used to hold a mirror under my nose to ensure I was breathing.  She didn’t care that she couldn’t see my reflection.  She just wanted to see that silvery glass fog!

So MathMan has some seriously positive items in the “win” column.  I’m incredibly proud of him.  He looks better, feels better and he’s staved off some of the worst aspects of heredity – high blood pressure and heart disease.  But genetically, he’s been unable to beat the high cholesterol bugaboo.

He hasn’t said much about the one thing I know he’s thinking even if he doesn’t say.  You don’t live with a person for 537 years without gaining a little insight. Or, if you do, shame on you.  Here’s a karate chop for being daft and self-involved.

The truth is, MathMan’s parents – both of them – passed away before the age of sixty.  His father died of a freak aneurysm while he was being hospitalized for something else having to do with a series of heart attacks he had starting in, I believe, his late thirties.  Born in the mid-twenties, he’d suffered damage to his heart during a childhood bout of Scarlet Fever.

We don’t know what killed MathMan’s mother because there was no autopsy performed, but she died in her sleep one night after feeling ill.  There are still bad feelings, I think, about the fact that he doesn’t know what ultimately killed her.  She was both an alcoholic and borderline diabetic.  Looking back at the photos taken between 1988 when we married and 1992 when she died, it’s clear that she was ill.  She lost of a lot of weight and her hair had lost its sheen.  Sadly, it was so gradual, she was so stubborn, already a widow and her whole family was pretty wrapped up in their own lives.  No one noticed until it was too late.

So I don’t think any of this is far from his mind now that MathMan has been given the word – some things can’t be dealt with through diet and exercise.  As we get on, we are going to have to make little concessions to Big Pharma.

Damn it.

Last evening we made a foray into the grocery store.  It took us four and a half hours because MathMan was more like Rain Man.  He stopped and pulled random things off the shelves and read their nutritional content.  Oreos, potato chips, frozen Skyline Chili, Krispy Kreme Donuts, butter.

He was definitely reassuring himself that by forgoing most of those items, he’d been doing the right thing.  Yes indeed, they did have very high numbers.  Four hours in, I finally lost my patience.

“Honey, let’s go.  You don’t even eat Scrapple.”

“I know, but look at the cholesterol count.  Holy shit.”

Like that.  And then we forgot the stupid cat food on top it.

So now every decision I make about food prep is fraught with suspicion.  She’s serving cheeseburgers and french fries.  She’s trying to kill me!   She’s making meat loaf!  She’s trying to kill me!  She brought home some ice cream from the store.  She’s trying to kill me!

It’s more likely that I’m trying to kill me, but right now his perspective is a little skewed.

Those of you who know me on Facebook might have seen that I’m trying to convince him that we need to drink more red wine, not less.  He just rattles his long list of Things You Need to Know About This Medication at me and shakes his head.

“Besides.  I’m not going to enable your alcoholism like my father did with my mother’s.”

Oh.  I see how it is now. 

Time for me to go fry some bacon…..

If People Came In Commercial Packages, We’d All Be Hung or Wear 40DDDs

Please excuse me while I discuss a few matters with the products in my medicine cabinet.

Really, Acid Reflux Medication?  Do you think I’m not going to buy you to just because you’re in a small see-through container and I can see that I’m only getting 28 pills?  I can read, you know.  Making the opaque container twice as big as it needs to be isn’t fooling me.  I know I’m being taken.  But if it’s a choice between being taken or regretting my morning cup of coffee, well hell.  That’s easy.  Let’s be honest with each other, shall we?  You’re making a big profit off my suffering and I’m willing to pay.  The lies diminish us both.

And how about you “medicated powder?”  I held your golden body up to the light in the bathroom and saw that right out of the Target bag, you’re only halfway full.  And the sticker still discreetly covers your holes so I know it’s not likely that someone has been unscrewing the cap and stealing from you.  Powder is messy,  That’s not really an asset when you’re shoplifting, is it?

But again I ask, do you really think I would forgo you if I knew the truth?  Would I prefer that my undercarriage (that’s that place under my boobs, y’all) becomes a swamp while I work out?  Of course not.  I’m going to buy you and enjoy the refreshing zing! when I apply you because, goodness knows, there are few things worse than an under-the-boob rash.  It’s impossible to scratch in public without receiving the small mouth from some eagle-eyed prude or a invitation from some horny goombah.

“Let me take care of that, how ’bout it!”

At least if something in my panties itches, I can deal with it and claim I’m merely “adjusting myself.”  Works for guys, right?

But reach for your own boob and you’re disrupting traffic.

The fact is that we have a commercial relationship.  I have a need.  You fill that need.  You charge what you think is a reasonable fee and I pay it.  If it gets too out of hand, then I go in search of the generics which means I’ll be paying significantly less only to find the opaque container a quarter full instead of half full.

I don’t want to love you, but I do need you.  Okay?

The best thing about you is that you either prevent things or make them go away. Put another way – you’re the bouncer to the increasingly seedy nightclub that is my body.  Listen, at this stage of the game, I’ve got enough metaphorical guys wearing too much cologne and too much gold jewelry trying to invade this space.  I know that it won’t be long before I’m glad even for those guys because the new crop of losers is likely to be much, much worse.  I’ll probably look back fondly on a little boob sweat and acid reflux when the real horrors of aging hit me.  But until then, can we at least honor our relationship with a little honesty?

Thank you for indulging me today.  You know how these little things can build up over time.  So, what is it that you’d like to get off your chest?

Adventures in Real Parenting: Just Wait

Sometimes I’m reluctant to write about my kids and the things that go on here because I don’t want you to think ill of them or me.  I don’t want you to think that I’m a terrible mother, too.  I mean, we don’t have to share every opinion to remain friends, do we?

On the numerous occasions when I let go of my fears and give in to the knowledge that these people with whom I share a home and life are my best material and I’m desperate to write a blog post, I go ahead and write, but that writing makes me fret.  I fret that I’m going to get one of those “Well, you just need to…” or “Well, when I was raising kids…” comments and it’s going to alternatively make me angry and ashamed.  And then I’ll grumble about it to MathMan and throw myself onto the bed in a fit and vow to never ever ever write about my kids again because some people can’t help being advice givers or sanctimonious and I hope their kids drive them over the cliff someday too.

And then MathMan follows me into the bedroom, puts his TI-84+ Silver Edition on the night table and stands next to the bed giving me that look.  “Come on now.  You need a thicker skin. Your readers have a relationship with you and they want to help.”

When he’s reasonable like that is when I want to refudiate him the most.  With pain.

I realize that this makes me sound a bit too much like politicians who trot their kids out during the campaign only to whine when the media goes after those same kids later. But there it is.  This exploiting your children for money or humor or a stupid blog post or elected office is a complicated thing.  It’s a field loaded with emotional landmines.

See it’s one of those conundrums of being a domestic artiste.  It’s too close to the bone, to the heart.  I’m allowed to poke fun at them.  And you’re allowed to laugh, but you are not allowed to join in the poking (much) nor offer parenting advice.  Trust me on this.  I’d bet anyone who writes about family feels the same way.  I’ve just laid bare more of my inadequacies so that you might laugh.  I’m not looking for someone to come in and tell me what I “need to do” or how they do it so much better than I do.  I have therapists for that.

It occurred to me to check with an expert on this, but so far I’ve only managed to get distracted reading her quotes and reminiscing about her books.

If you haven’t guessed already, I’ve been reading some of that Erma Bombeck book that’s been assigned as bathroom reading apparently because it’s been either relegated to or given the highest honor of being tossed into the big basket of bathroom reading material.

Now that I’m eating things like steel cut oats and vegetables, I’ve got more reading time than ever.  Since it’s been brought to my attention that reading on the toilet contributes to varicose veins, I’m careful not to spend more than one paragraph at a time on “business.”  While my leg veins that haven’t already popped are grateful, I’m pretty sure I’ll be dead before I manage to get through the Bombeck book and all those Prevention magazines that are supposed to prevent my death.  Choose your battles, Lisa.  Choose your battles.

But back to Erma, I wonder how she felt about reader feedback.  I so wish she were alive to blog today. And I’m pretty sure she didn’t make her career off the backs of her husband and children because kids in the sixties and seventies were any better at doing what they were told or by staying out of trouble.  Bombeck did not once write that she’d be strapping tennis rackets to her children’s feet like snowshoes to send them to school even if school was cancelled again because raising children is easy or delightful.  It wasn’t then, it isn’t now.  Don’t let those fetishizers of parenting fool you.

I was one of those kids giving my mother another reason to reach for her nerve pills when I first discovered Erma.  My mom had some of her books around, but I didn’t realize how amusing she must have found them because I didn’t grasp the misery loves company appeal of it then.  I just saw Mom reading and laughing and thought what an odd thing that was.  Rare really, more than odd.

Even then, I read Bombeck while locked in the bathroom.  There was Just Wait Til You Have Children of Your Own and The Grass Is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank .  I still remember a Bill Keane illustration of a mom ironing her daughter’s hair on the ironing board while speaking into the phone, “Oh, just ironing something for Debbie.”

Back when I was laughing at that, I had no idea of the kinds of things I’d one day find myself doing for my own kids.  Or the things I’d find myself saying.  When you’re fourteen and tan and can wear pink velour tube tops without the slightest hint of irony, you never imagine yourself telling someone to stop licking the curtains or wondering aloud who you should call to have Cinnamon Toast Crunch delivered via dumptruck load because you’re going broke buying it by the box.  No, you just give yourself another misting of Love’s Baby Soft, apply some Bonnie Bell Seven Up flavored Lipsmacker and miss the opportunity to be glad for who you are then and how it all stretches out before you.  The way we humans are wired shelters us at that age.  We aren’t able to peer into our futures for a reason, yo.

But now Bombeck is hilarious to me.  I’m that mom with my own Debbies and Steves.  It’s me fishing keys out of the toilet and shouting down the heating vent in search of a lost hamster and wiping spills that no one else sees and praying to the laundry room gods for the safe deliverance from oblivion of all those random socks and finding new uses for old pantyhose and referring to my husband as “that idiot” under my breath.

And saying to my own darlings “Just wait til you have children of your own.”