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* What does it say about me that I’m currently packing more shoes than underwear for this weekend? Yeah, I know you’re going to need numbers to give me an accurate answer, but maybe I don’t want to know. Maybe I’m just talking because I’m nervous.
* What does “dressy casual” mean, really? I’m planning to wear a dress because I am feeling hippy this week and think I will look better that way. It’s my favorite dress because it not only looks good on me, but I can totally wad it up in my carry-on and it will still look awesome when I take it back out. It is that stern a polyester fiber. (It’s probably going to give me cancer later on in life. Or maybe it’s what’s causing my hormone dysfunction. It’s My Outfit, Stupid! But I don’t care.) If you can wad it up in your carry-on (which I won’t do, I’m just saying I could and there would be no repercussions), that’s casual, right? On the other hand, if I’m wearing nylons, am I no longer casual? Is that trying too hard? I wasn’t planning on wearing nylons because it’s Southern California and it’s only the first week of October, so I figured it would be way too warm, but I just checked the weather and Saturday is supposed to have a high of 77 F and a low of 54 F. THAT IS FAR TOO AMBIGUOUS FOR ME TO BASE A DECISION ON. 81 F and 58 F, there would be no problem, but 77 F and 54 F? I just don’t know.
*And yes, if I don’t wear nylons, I will have to wear different shoes!
* I put “breakfast” on my to-do list and I still haven’t checked it off. Why the freak I am blogging now???
Writing the blog has been like pulling teeth lately, but I insist on doing it. It’s like I have to prove something to myself.
I had a mammogram today. It was my first, so I am to be congratulated. Last night I was anticipating the mammogram, and even though I was not nervous or dreading it or anything like that, I still felt melancholy. Granted, I feel melancholy most of the time, but this seemed to be mammogram-informed melancholy because my brain was fixated on the fact that I would be getting a mammogram the next day. It bothered me because a) I prefer my melancholy a little less specific and b) I couldn’t figure out what it was about a scheduled mammogram that would make me melancholy.
I should have been happy that I was finally getting a mammogram because I was supposed to get my baseline at 35, and I’m now 38. That’s three years overdue, for those of you who didn’t major in library science. I wasn’t putting it off on purpose. First I was pregnant, then I was breastfeeding. By the time I had weaned Girlfriend, I was 37, and I totally meant to get one right then, but I kept forgetting to make the phone call. And no, I don’t mean I “forgot” to make the phone call. I “forget” a lot of things, and I will own the scare quotes when they are warranted, but I honestly did not “forget.” I actually forgot. Because the phone number for the imaging place was on a business card, which was in my purse, and every time I thought to call, my purse was nowhere near me. Or I was driving. Or it was the middle of the night. This happens to me a lot. So often, in fact, that if you knew how often it happened, you would swear that I really was fake-forgetting. But I wasn’t fake-forgetting; I was just failing to remember at a convenient time. For a year. Is that so hard to believe?
I’ll tell you why I believe myself, and it isn’t just because I’m biased. It’s because I have never had a problem with the idea of getting a mammogram. I mean, a mammogram is a lot less invasive than a Pap smear or a colonoscopy. When it comes time for me to get a colonoscopy, you can bet your sweet bippy that I will be “forgetting” to schedule it. It’s a lot harder to “forget” a Pap smear because I have to go to my doctor periodically to get my thyroid checked, if I want to keep getting prescriptions for my thyroid medication, and while I’m there the doctor will say, “When was your last pelvic? Well, let’s just take care of that right now, shall we?” And I don’t even mind pelvic exams that much anymore. After giving birth four times, there’s not much point in playing hard-to-get, you know? [Uncomfortable silence] But they’re still invasive, and the thought of enduring another one is still worth an “ugh.”
I have had no such anxiety about getting mammogram. I have always heard that if they’re done properly, they don’t really hurt, but I thought that even if they did hurt, it’s not like it would hurt like childbirth or last even a fraction of the time that childbirth takes, so I really wasn’t afraid of it. I suppose I could have been creeped out by the idea of having my breasts flattened like a pancake–like some people are creeped out by needles–but I wasn’t. Again, it’s not like a pelvic exam. A speculum, now that’s creepy. A breast-flattening machine just can’t compete.
Of course, some women are creeped out by the idea of standing around naked from the waist up while some stranger handles their breasts, but after nursing four children for a combined total of 85 months, not much fazes me in that department either.
Totally irrelevant aside: A friend of mine once said that between her husband and her kids, she’s been manhandled so much that if some random person on the street walked up and grabbed her boob, she’d probably just say, “Yeah? Whaddaya want?” I kind of feel the same way, only I’m not convinced I’d even notice something untoward was happening. End totally irrelevant aside.
Here is where the blog could become a commentary on how much women’s bodies are not our own, how frequently we’re subjected to having our personal spaces invaded and how easy it is to get used to it and just accept it–but I’m not gonna go there. For one thing, I think it’s been done by better people than me, and for another thing, I’m still trying to figure out what was upsetting me so much about the mammogram in the first place.
I think an armchair psychologist might posit that I’m worried about getting cancer, or perhaps I’m just sad because my mother died of cancer. Well, I am sad about my mother dying of cancer, but I pretty much get sad about that whenever I think about it and not just when I’m anticipating having my breast flattened by a machine, so I don’t think that was it.
And I’m not worried about getting cancer. I don’t worry about stuff like that. It’s probably a character flaw. I don’t worry about big, horrible things happening. Which is not to say that I don’t believe they will happen, just that I don’t spend time worrying about them. I kind of take for granted that they will happen, but it’s too depressing to plan for, so I pretty much just plan on winging it when the time comes. For example, when I was growing up, I fully expected that the world would come to an end before I was thirty. (It was a combination of the Cold War, Mormon indoctrination and being a little bit twisted to begin with.) But I never thought about the world coming to an end. I just figured it would, and I’d have to cross that bridge when I came to it. It’s not about enjoying life while you can–I don’t really enjoy life–but it’s about procrastination. I used to think I procrastinated without meaning to, but now I think of it as a sickness I don’t want to be cured of. I’ll have to blog about that another time. The point is, I don’t worry about getting cancer. I think I probably will get cancer, eventually, but I don’t worry about it.
Slightly-irrelevant aside: You know what thought I had this morning? That cancer is a horrible way to die, and maybe there’s not much worse way of dying, but there are definitely scarier ways to die. Scarier to me, anyway. You know what I say every time someone gets pushed out the air-lock on Battlestar Galactica? “I would hate to die that way.” (It’s true, you can ask my husband. I’m sure he’s sick of me saying it, but it’s so true–the thought of floating out into space all alone–destined to suffocate, powerless to stop it–just terrifies me. Which is why, even if we have the technology in our lifetime, I will probably not take advantage of civilian space travel.) End slightly-irrelevant aside.
So if I’m not scared of cancer, and I’m not sad about my mother (particularly), why would the thought of getting a mammogram be bumming me out? I can only think of one thing: it means I’m old. I shouldn’t be bothered by being old, as I have always felt older than I really am, but now that I really am getting old, it’s bothering me. Because how much more old can I feel? Am I going to reach a point where I am so actually old that I will have no choice but to start feeling young? What does that even mean?
I am no closer to unraveling this mystery than I was when I started. But I’ve written more than 1,000 words of nothing, and I have to make dinner now. Ciao, babies.
* My husband offered to make me a grape soda float the other day. I thought he wasn’t serious. He claimed he was. I still didn’t believe him. (Experience has taught me not to believe most of what he says, especially when he claims to be telling the truth.) Then he made himself a grape soda float. He made one for Elvis, too. Some of it splashed on my hand and I licked it off. It tasted like vanilla ice cream topped with Children’s Tylenol. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS??? WHY???
* If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, wonder no longer. Where I’m going is nowhere, fast.
* I can’t seem to let go of this fantasy I have about everyone I know leaving me the hell alone for a week.
* My three-year-old hasn’t had a proper bowel movement in at least three weeks. That was when I started keeping track. I’m afraid the real figure is something more like six weeks. Time flies, etc. We’ve given her laxatives and suppositories. It’s an ongoing problem, so before you tell me to take her to the doctor, let me assure you that she’s been taken, many times. She even had an x-ray once to inform us that she was indeed chock full o’ crap, just as we suspected, and we ought to give her more laxatives. Her pediatrician said, “I know. I consulted the G/E people, and that’s what they said. Just keep stepping up the laxatives until something gives. [shrugs]“ This is modern science, kids. But what we have here is not merely a failure to poop; it is actually a refusal to poop. It’s a triumph of the will. Don’t worry. I’m all done talking about it. For now.
* Three things that shouldn’t last three hours but often do:
1) Movies
2) Church services
3) Children’s birthday parties
* I’ve already been informed that I need a vacation. I’m just going to step up the laxatives until something gives.
* I have a ton of dirty clothes to wash. (By “ton,” I actually mean more like 700 pounds. Not an actual ton.) I haven’t been able to wash the dirty clothes because I’ve had more pressing laundry issues, like the ton of dirty towels that keep piling up on a seemingly-hourly basis. (In this case “ton” is an actual ton because of the water weight that dirty towels have.) Is it wrong that I should make wet, dirty towels a priority over (relatively) dry, dirty clothes? It will be when the underwear runs out. Which is why I have to go do laundry now. I actually should have been doing it all morning, but I was too busy making breakfast and mixing impotent laxative cocktails.
* Someday I’ll write a real blog again, but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
Have you ever seen that episode of Scrubs where Turk asks Carla what’s bothering her, and she peels back her scalp and there is a gushing forth of all her neurotic thoughts and obsessions? That’s what this blog is going to be like.
I am doubled over with guilt for the following reasons, in no particular order:
1. Last month I called Princess Zurg’s best friend’s stepmother to see if PZ’s best friend could come to PZ’s birthday party and found out that PZ’s best friend broke her leg in a really bad way over Spring Break and was totally bed/couch-ridden for the next couple weeks and still needed to have another surgery and was going to have limited mobility because of the whole crutches thing for however long it takes to recuperate from a broken leg that’s been broken that badly. So that’s why PZ didn’t have a birthday party this year, because if the best friend can’t come, what’s the point? And the reason I didn’t know about PZ’s best friend’s broken leg before this was because PZ’s best friend lives on the other side of town and her family doesn’t have a car, and so we don’t see her very often at all, especially not since PZ has been going to a different school for the last year. I can count on one hand–probably half of one hand–the number of times PZ has seen her best friend over the last year. That is the state of PZ’s social life. That I felt guilty enough about already, and I didn’t think it was possible to feel much guiltier, but I didn’t foresee the broken leg. When I heard about the broken leg, I felt just awful for PZ’s best friend, and I said I would certainly bring PZ over for a visit, soon. In fact, I penciled it into my calendar for that week. But it didn’t actually work out for that week, and I told myself I would have to pencil it in for some other day the following week, but you know what? I never picked up another pencil, and I never took PZ to see her best friend with the broken leg. It’s been a month. I could still take her–I still want to take her, or think I want to take her, or think I mean to take her, but I’m beginning to suspect that maybe I really don’t mean or want to take her and never actually did because if I really did, I would have done it by now, wouldn’t I have? The truth is that a best friend on the other side of town is much like a starving child in Africa to me, only without a convenient little intermediary organization like UNICEF that I can write a check to and thereby assuage my guilt. No, I have to actually block out some time in my schedule to actually visit the best friend on the other side of town myself, but that is too much work, and that is why I’m a terrible human being. Moving on!
2. Lest ye think the best friend with the broken leg is some kind of aberration in my ordinarily-chock-full-o’-thoughtfulness life, I also have an aunt who lives on the other side of Portland, whom I see about once a year. No, once a year is too generous. I see her about once every year and a half, usually when some other member of my family comes through Portland and says, “I should really see B. while I’m here,” and I say, “Oh yeah, that’d be good, I’ll go with you.” My aunt is getting on in years and is now in a nursing home. I don’t know exactly how long she’s been in the home because I didn’t realize she’d gone there until my older sister mentioned it to me one day. I know she’s only been in there sometime since last July because last July I went to see her in her house (not “the home”), but still, I haven’t been to see her in “the home” and don’t even know which home it is because I haven’t called any of my cousins to find out or get an address to send a frakking Christmas card, should I be so humanitarily inclined this year. I’ve lived a half-hour away from her for the last five years, and I just haven’t gone to see her because I haven’t wanted to think about what to do with the children or when would be a good time to go or calling on the phone and having a conversation–it’s all just been too much, darling, too much, because I’m a terrible human being. But wait! There’s more.
3. After the turbulent elementary school years with Princess Zurg, I have been so relieved and happy that Mister Bubby has done well in school and has never been a problem for anyone and always does his homework and has just generally let me send him off to school and not worry about him for six-and-a-half hours, five days a week. Then a few weeks ago I got a call from his best friend’s mother, who wanted to know if I was also concerned about the fact that our sons have learned exactly nothing new in school this year, that they are still doing the same crap they did in first grade, only with slightly different worksheets. That was the first time I ever really stopped to think about it and realized that actually, yes, now that you mention it, Mister Bubby has been complaining that school is boring and he already knows everything they’re teaching him and why can’t he just go to third grade, and yes, they do have an awful lot of worksheets, don’t they? What the hell is up with the worksheets? I don’t remember doing so many worksheets when I was in school. I guess they can’t afford books and slates anymore because they have to buy computers so our children can be competitive in the twenty-first century. And what are they using the computers for? Hell if I know. The last time I was involved in a child’s education, it was primarily for the purpose of figuring out how I could get myself less involved on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis. All I’ve ever really wanted was to send my kid off to school for six-and-a-half hours a day, five days a week, and not have to worry about anything beyond that. I don’t remember my parents being that involved in my education until I was in high school and the math got harder. I’m feeling a lot of resentment over the fact that I’m devoting all of May 29–paying a babysitter for six-and-a-half hours–to volunteering at the school for “Australia Day,” the annual second grade extravaganza. It’s not like I ever volunteer at the school if I can possibly help it, and usually I can help it quite a bit because our neighborhood school is overrun with parents who volunteer for everything. It’s a very competitive game–who will be the lucky soul who gets to chaperone the field trip to the rock museum???–and I’ve been quite content not to play it. They used to make me volunteer to chaperone field trips because PZ was supposedly so volatile that even being attended by her own freaking aide was not enough, no, she had to have parental supervision if they were going to take her off of school property, and so, yes, I was pleased as punch not to be doing that anymore–but now it’s freaking Australia Day and they need all the helping hands they can get and MB wants me there anyway because I never volunteer and possibly he’s afraid the other kids assume that his mom must be some kind of crack mom because she’s never seen on school property during school hours. And that’s how I got roped into being a group leader in the morning and running the flipping didgeridoo in afternoon, whatever the hell any of that means, I haven’t even looked at my job description(s) yet because I’ve been so preoccupied with the fact that I pay all this money in property taxes and my neighbors spend so much of their time helping out in the school, and my son is still doing first-grade worksheets in flipping May and what the hell does he need a flipping didgeridoo for anyway? I’m so angry about it and yet I feel I have no one but myself to blame because I was the one who wanted a worry-free education for my son–rather, an education for my son that was worry-free for me–and this is just what you get for not worrying: fill-in-the-blank worksheets and mother-frakking didgeridoos. Nice work, Mother. I hope you ate a lot of bon bons this year while your son’s brain was atrophying!
4. We were thinking of sending Elvis to summer camp this year. Rather, Sugar Daddy thought it would be a good idea to send Elvis to this summer camp for children with disabilities, and I had no argument against it because hey, who doesn’t need to get rid of Elvis for a couple hours a day during the summer? So we sent away for an application for this camp, and we got the paperwork in the mail a couple weeks ago, and I started to fill it out because I’m pretty good at filling out paperwork. I did all right with the name and address and emergency contacts and doctors and insurance information, and then I got to the section where I had to describe in detail the extent of my child’s disability and his specific challenges, and I thought, “I can’t do this right now, I’m going to do it later,” because after all this time I still have trouble confronting these facts about my son. I have a visceral response to requests for quantification about his disability. I just can’t handle it. I don’t understand why, but I just can’t, and by “can’t,” I really mean I just don’t want to, and I don’t know why, but I just don’t. But I have to, or he’s not going to go to camp, and I will be sorry later, sometime this summer, when he’s driving me crazy and eating all the popsicles and replacing all the batteries in all of the small appliances and can’t find the right screwdriver and wants me to push him 89 times on the swing but he really means 99 times and he gets frustrated and starts yelling, “aaahhhAAAHHHHaaahhhhAAAAHHHHHaaaahhhhAAAHHHHHaaahhhhAAAAHHHHH” with the full force of his diaphragm behind it for the forty-seventh time that day, and I will probably start screaming myself and want to pop him one and possibly I will actually pop him one because I can’t stand it anymore, and I will only have myself to blame because I was too lazy to fill out the paperwork on time so he could go to camp and make me a little bit less crazy. And I wonder how I can love my son so much while simultaneously not wanting him around very much. Maybe I don’t love him as much as I think I do, unless he’s asleep. That’s just not right. Which reminds me, I need to find that frakking paperwork and fill it out, and now I’m afraid I won’t be able to find it.
5. Girlfriend is almost 42 months old and still needs to be toilet-trained. Sugar Daddy did the heavy lifting with toilet training Elvis, although that was mostly because he finally got the idea that I wasn’t going to do it, and so now he deserves a medal and I need to get on the stick and finally toilet-train our non-disabled child, who has absolutely no desire to use the toilet. In point of fact, she has the opposite of desire. I think sometimes that I was born in the wrong era. As much as I enjoy the conveniences of modern life, I often wish that I could have parented back in the day when adults weren’t supposed to care about scarring their children for life, and if they didn’t do what Ma or Pa said, Ma or Pa could just beat them with a stick and voila, instant compliance–and they didn’t grow up to be serial killers or anything, just average, reasonably-productive citizens who also beat their children with sticks. Not that I want to beat my child with a stick–no, I am far too modern and enlightened to have such feelings, but I admit that I am just plain old weary of trying to figure out how to get my children to do stuff without beating them with a stick. How did toileting get to be so complicated? How did human beings evolve to the point where sitting in their own filth is a preferred state? I have seen each of my children reach the stage where they were interested in the toilet, only to immediately recoil upon being offered a toileting opportunity–and not only recoil, but turn and run in the opposite direction, screaming bloody murder, huddling in a corner every time the word “potty” is uttered–leaving me feeling very much like a guy who’s misinterpreted a pretty girl’s attentions and ends up not only offending her with my romantic advances but turning her into a lesbian besides. What on earth have I done?
6. I am seriously considering giving up my housekeepers because it is so depressing to me to walk around my house and realize that I’ve just been engaging in a bi-monthly exercise of shoving stuff in closets and drawers so someone else can come vacuum and mop, and once the vacuuming and mopping is done, all the crap that we own just comes SPROING!ing out of aforementioned closets and drawers and deposits itself all over the floors and countertops, along with the neverending stream of new crap that finds its way into our house on a daily basis. I am just ready to surrender to entropy already. I caught up on the laundry, sort of–the clothes part, I was mostly caught up on, and then I had this backlog of towels I had to wash, so I’ve washed nothing but towels for the last two days, which is not to say I’ve been continuously washing towels for 48 hours, but towels is all I’ve washed, and now I have an unbelievable backlog of actual clothes that need to be washed again because you just can’t go 48 hours without washing clothes, not when you have six people in your family, all of whom wear clothes. What do I do all day long? Seriously, what do I do? You know how OBL can’t go grocery shopping until she’s organized her pantry? I look in my pantry, which is an unqualified disaster, and I just think, “I would sooner never eat again than try to figure out what the hell is in here,” and then I cram another cereal box in there, close the door real quick-like, and jam a chair in front of it so it doesn’t SPROING! open again. I’m like the anti-OBL. It’s not like I do nothing. Obviously, I am filling up my days with something other than blogging and Facebooking because people still have clean clothes and they have food to eat and there is toilet paper in the house, but on the other hand, there’s all this entropy and long-neglected best friends with broken legs and aunts in failing health and summer camp paperwork unfilled-out and three-year-olds in diapers, and I have to tell you, people, it’s not because I don’t have enough hours in the day. It’s probably because my parents didn’t beat me with a stick more when I was little.
Okay, it was good to get that off my chest. I’m not going to visit anyone’s best friend today, but I think I will do the dishes and start on the laundry and pick up the 47,368 pieces of paper that are lying all over my living room floor. I might even sweep the kitchen floor. I should go to the Target, but I don’t remember why. Somebody’s prescription. Also, I’m pretty sure that since I’ve said the word “frak” about 67 times before 10 a.m. today, it probably means that I should pick up some tampons, too. Incidentally, I feel like “frak” is so much more satisfying than saying the actual F-word, it’s got to be more vulgar somehow. In any case, I should probably stop saying it around my kids. I’ll put that on my list of stuff I “mean” or “want” to do. Damn, I’m gonna eat some chocolate cake now.
So yesterday was Princess Zurg’s “second consideration” interview with the arts and communication magnet school. She said it went fine, which is what I’d expect her to say because I don’t think she’s worldly enough to know when an interview has gone poorly–not that I suspect her interview went poorly or might have gone poorly, just that I wouldn’t expect her to catch on even if it had. I really only asked to make conversation.
PZ’s teacher and therapists (including her art therapist) at school had written letters of recommendation for her, which she was supposed to turn over during the interview, but I realized too late that while I had given her the letters (in their original plain manila envelope) along with her artwork samples (in another plain manila envelope), I had never really explained what exactly they were or what she was supposed to do with them, so she never did turn them over (though she did show the interviewers her artwork samples). So I went back to the school this morning to turn in her letters of recommendation, since these fine, caring professionals had gone to all the trouble of writing them and they just might have a teensy bit of influence over the school’s final decision, which we’re supposed to get on or around the seventeenth of this month.
We were told (along with all other applicants and their parents) that letters of recommendation were optional, and I believed it. I believed it because I understand the culture we live in, which so values egalitarianism that it wouldn’t dream of privileging the hard-working and highly-motivated over the slothful and indifferent. However, it says right on my daughter’s application that her current school is a clinical day treatment program, and insofar as that might have a teensy bit of influence over the school’s final decision, I thought it prudent to let them know what kind of progress she’s made since she was initially placed there. Answer: tons and tons of progress. Practically a freaking miracle. In fact, the phrase “freaking miracle” may very well have surfaced in one of her recommendations. Probably her classroom teacher’s–I noticed she used multiple exclamation points, which I found charming. I know as a professional writer I’m supposed to abhor overuse of the exclamation point, but I just flat-out adore PZ’s teacher, and I adore her exclamation points. Anyway, I tend to overuse exclamation points in my own correspondence, as they are one of my few reliable methods of conveying enthusiasm. (I wish I had an exclamation-point prop I could pull out in face-to-face conversation. That is the extent of my facial handicap.)
I hadn’t realized how stressed out I was over this application business until I figured out I was going to have to make a special trip to the school to deliver these letters that should have already been delivered. I had really been looking forward to washing my hands of the whole affair. I don’t have to worry while I’m waiting for the decision because I’ve decided to just forget that we ever applied in the first place, now that there’s no longer anything I can do about it. That seems best. If she gets in, I’ll be pleasantly surprised: “Oh, that old thing? Very well, then. Excellent.” If she doesn’t get in, I’ll just say, “Dude, I am so over that. Whatever.”
I don’t think PZ will be devastated if she doesn’t make it. She might be disappointed, but she has too much general anxiety about starting a new school to invest much angst over which school it is. That’s my impression, anyway. I also keep telling myself that I will not be devastated if she doesn’t make it because our alternate choice will be perfectly adequate, I’m sure. And I just can’t be devastated because her chances of getting in through this “best-fit” selection process are about as good as her chances were of getting in through the lottery, i.e. not great. There are approximately 20 slots left to fill. There were easily 100+ students at the interview thingamajig yesterday, and that was just for visual arts and creative writing. They still have to hold interviews for students interested in music, theater and dance. That there might be 20 students in the pool who are just as talented and interested in the arts as my daughter does not stretch my imagination. I still don’t like to imagine it, so I’m just forgetting about it now, thank you.
I will not like to get that letter, though. I never like getting rejection letters, even though I know not to take them personally. I just can’t help it. I’m sensitive. Last year Mister Bubby was tested for the talented and gifted program. They conducted the testing over two days, and he was sick on the second day, so they weren’t able to assess him, and I got a letter telling me that he wasn’t eligible for the talented and gifted program. Even though I knew that the decision was based on an incomplete assessment (not to mention knowing that the talented and gifted program is much more an act of labeling than it is an actual enrichment program), I still didn’t like someone telling me that they didn’t find my son sufficiently talented and/or gifted. Even though I like to think I don’t harbor delusions about the extent to which my children are blessed with genius, that letter kind of ticked me off. Having your child assessed for giftedness is like asking, “Does this outfit make my butt look big?” You think you want to know, but on second thought…nah, you really don’t.
Actually, it’s worse than asking if this outfit makes you butt look big. It’s like asking, “Does this outfit make me look sexy?” If they tell you yes, it does indeed make you look sexy, you’ll say, “Wow, I knew it! All the world is rainbows and butterflies!” But if they tell you eh, not really, not so much–how do you react? You could say, “Liar! What the hell do YOU know, anyway?” You could, but I can’t. I just get sad and wonder what made me ask in the first place. It’s not so different from how I reacted to my children being diagnosed with autism. During the process I was stressed, but I went through it because I just had to know for sure–but when I found out for sure, I wept because deep down, I was hoping for a different answer.
But that’s neither here nor there.
Speaking of communication, expectations and whatnot, I had to get another babysitter for my kids yesterday because Gertrude was in the hospital. (She hurt her foot and it got infected, but she’s getting discharged today, so I think she’s okay.) My across-the-street neighbor has been out of work for several months and had mentioned she’d be willing to babysit for us sometimes, if Gertrude was unavailable or, I dunno, we had a hankering for variety? Anyway, I had to call on her last-minute, and she was able to do it, but we were not able to discuss the [sotto voce] financial aspect beforehand. And I came home to find that she’d not only watched my kids but cleaned my kitchen besides. I mean, did my dishes and made a valiant attempt to get the Kool-Aid stains out of my table. And I’m pretty sure she at least spot-mopped my floor. So of course I thanked her for all that and probably sounded embarrassed because, well, that’s to be expected, don’t you think? But truthfully, I wasn’t embarrassed, I was just confused about what I ought to pay her. Gertrude is wonderful with my kids, but she doesn’t clean anything, nor do I expect her to. And my neighbor, who is very nice and probably sensed my hesitation as I was making out a check for her, said, “And don’t worry about the other stuff (i.e. the cleaning)–that was just…” And I honestly don’t remember what she called it: “nothing”? “working off nervous energy”? “a big fat bonus for you, and by the way, that outfit makes your butt look big”? No, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t it. It was something totally neutral and ambiguous.
Anyway, I really didn’t know what to do with that. I like to take people at their word, you know, because that’s how I expect people to take me. If I say, “Don’t worry about x,” what I mean is “don’t worry about x.” I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t mean it. Believe me. Because you never know when someone’s going to take you at your word, it’s too risky to say it if you don’t mean it! As my last trip to Vegas indicated, I am not a risk-taker. But how do I know if someone else is such a risk-taker? I don’t even know if my neighbor has been to Vegas or not.
So I ended up just paying her what I pay Gertrude per hour, only rounded up a tad. I agonized quite a bit over it afterward, kept thinking about how one assesses the fair-market value of child-caretaking–let alone the value of child-caretaking plus house-cleaning. How do I decide what to pay someone who spent three hours watching over my babies and cleaning my kitchen, besides–in short, doing my job, only…better? Well, that really sent me into a tailspin of depression. The good news was that I stopped wringing my hands over what I should have paid her. The bad news is that I hate myself now.
Well, not really. Not completely. Just mostly. I could use a doughnut and some Effexor right now, so I’ll bid you adieu. Have yourselves a delightful weekend, gentle readers. (P.S. That outfit makes you look sexy!)
Just a little bit.
Occasionally I get friend requests from people I’m pretty sure I don’t know. By “occasionally” I mean that it’s happened at least two or three times. This is not like when some random person I went to high school with decides he wants to be friends with me because he’s going to be Facebook friends with every single freaking person he went to high school with, regardless of whether or not he had any interaction with him or her. I’m okay being friends with those cats because I know they’re just friend-collecting, and maybe they’ll find some other random high school person that I did interact with and might want to spy on catch up with. I have two Facebook “friends” like that. I remember who they were and that I definitely went to high school with them. (One of them I distinctly remember talking to in middle school. I feel especially close to him.) Anyway, I feel fairly confident that they’re a) not serial-killer identity thieves and b) completely uninterested in my stupid life anyway. So that’s cool.
It’s when some completely unrecognizable random name shows up, requesting my friendship, that I get a little confused. I look at what city they’re from (if that information is available) and their list of mateys (that’s Pirate-speak for “friends”!) and try to determine if there’s any possible way I actually do know them and just don’t remember that I know them. Usually, though, there’s nothing to go on there. We have no mateys in common, and they’re in some part of the country I’ve never been to, and sometimes they don’t even have a profile picture. How am I supposed to make an informed decision about some random person whose name I don’t recognize without a profile picture? (Not that a profile picture is always helpful, as some people use pictures of their pets or their kids–or someone else’s pets and kids, for all I know–or, like my husband, a picture of Smoking Obama. That is, it’s a picture of our president smoking a cigarette. We just like to refer to him affectionately as “Smoking Obama.”)
It would appear that this problem is easily solved: if you don’t recognize somebody, just ignore their friend request. Except that I’m hyper-paranoid about offending people. That doesn’t mean I don’t do it, just that I don’t like to, and therefore I engage in totally irrational behavior. It’s one of the ten stupid things women do to mess up their lives, I’m sure, but I didn’t invite you here to lecture me, so just can it. (No offense.) I think of how I would feel if I found someone I knew on the Facebook and was all excited to be friends with them, and they just…ignored me. Just assumed that because they didn’t recognize me right away that I must be some kind of kook–or, alternatively, that I just made a mistake…but the implication is that I’m a kook, admit it! On the other hand, if I were making a friend request of someone I hadn’t seen in a while or someone I wasn’t so close to, I would send a note with the request, like, “Hey, remember me from [blah blah blah]?” Or something like that. I finally found my best friend from the fifth grade–that is, we met in fifth grade and were best friends, and then I moved away, but we wrote letters to each other and occasionally visited one another for the next ten years–and I tell you, it took all of my will power when I made the friend request not to write, “Hey, remember me from Mr. Parrish’s fifth grade class? We were friends for ten years?” Because really, if you’re friends with someone for ten years, they shouldn’t need that many reminders of who you are. (We wrote letters! For ten years!) So I didn’t write that–I wrote something, but not that–though I was sorely tempted, just in case she didn’t remember me.
It’s possible that’s a self-esteem issue.
Anyway, when these completely random people request my Facebook friendship, there is never any note. So they hang around in my inbox for a few days, or weeks, as long as I can stand it, until I finally say, “Sorry, dude (or dudette), I just don’t know you,” and I officially “Ignore” them. Then Facebook sends me a notification, “You have ignored a friendship request from So-and-So,” making me feel all guilty. Thanks, Facebook, I appreciate that! Don’t they understand how hard it is for me to Ignore people? I don’t need them second-guessing my judgment in that passive-aggressive way they have.
It’s even harder to do things like Ignoring when you’re using the Pirate language, because you usually end up making them walk the plank or cutting out their tongue. Speaking in Pirate is fun most of the time, but occasionally it can be…harsh.
So yesterday I got a friendship request from another random person whose name I didn’t recognize. Ahmed Somebody. To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never known any Ahmeds, not even in high school. There was no profile picture (naturally). I checked Ahmed’s list of mateys. There weren’t many, twenty at the most, and nearly all of them were Arabic names of people who lived in places like Jordan and Egypt. Don’t know anyone who lives in Jordan or Egypt. There was one white girl in a bikini in Los Angeles. That seemed odd, but whatever. Perhaps Ahmed is just getting started on Facebook and he needs me to help him find other people he knows. Wait, I haven’t even accepted this friend request, and I’m already responding to Facebook’s pressure techniques–not a good sign. Anyway, I knew I didn’t know him and that he had just made a mistake. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of mistake that kooks sometimes make.
Why can’t I just ignore Ahmed? Well…it’s because there was a note. What did the note say? “May me be ur friend?”
Seriously, how am I supposed to make him walk the plank after that? He’s trying so hard! It really was a mystery. How did Ahmed Somebody happen to stumble upon my name and decide that he wanted to be my friend? Then I remembered that just that morning I had joined the Jewish Ethics Project and a Support Israel group. Maybe Ahmed was just a friendly Arab who wanted to befriend some Jews? I, of course, am not Jewish, but you wouldn’t guess that from my recent Facebook activity, now would you? Well, now I felt all pressured. I wouldn’t want the peace process (such as it is) in the Middle East to suffer just because I hurt Ahmed’s feelings. I mean, no one wants that! Then I thought, “Dude, what if he’s a Jew-hating terrorist?” Then I thought, “Dude, that’s racist!”
No, actually, what I thought was, “Ha ha, what if he’s some Jew-hating terrorist?” Not because Jew-hating terrorists are funny, but that kind of paranoia, especially in me, is funny. I’m always rolling my eyes at my mother-in-law because she’s paranoid abouty everything from unattended luggage to bunk beds to mayonaisse. Now here I am even having the thought that poor Ahmed “may me be ur friend” Somebody is a freaking terrorist. They said Al Qaeda was going after our water supply, but actually they just want our Facebook pages! They hate us for our flair!
So I had a good chuckle over that and decided to play some Scramble instead. Yeah, Ahmed’s still in my inbox. Yeah, detained without charge, blah blah blah. Don’t pressure me, okay? I’ll deal with him as soon as Pres. Obama closes Gitmo.
I have seriously lost the will to blog. And I think I know why:
1. There is nothing interesting going on in my personal life.
2. In absence of an interesting personal life, all I can think about is politics. And I can’t blog about politics because I have rules about political blogging–a) it has to be trivial, and b) it has to involve stupid idiots. Both criteria must be met, and so far I’ve got all “b” and no “a.” That’s just a recipe for Angry White Lady blogging, and no one wants to see that.
3. In absence of an interesting personal life and trivial political issues, there’s just nothing left for me to write about.
Unless…
1. Writing tends to bring up psychological issues that I’m not prepared to deal with right now.
2. Politics is boring.
3. FACEBOOK, dammit!
In lieu of an entertaining item written by me, you can just follow these links to better reading:
1. This reminded me of my recent ozone-layer post, only it’s way more awesome.
2. I know President Obama has ushered in a new era of hope, but this is still kind of creepy, isn’t it? (And by “kind of,” I mean “super.”)
3. Do you care about hobos? Hobos figure prominently in this.
I had a blog post in my head last night, as I was going to sleep. I don’t remember it now, but trust me, it was going to be a good one.
No, wait, I can’t lie to you, dear readers. Obviously it would have been mediocre, or else I wouldn’t have forgotten it so easily. I guess you all dodged a bullet there. A bullet of boredom shot straight through the computer screen! Ka-pow!
I just can’t seem to get into anything lately. Every time I think I might feel strongly enough about something to write about it, I start writing and I think, “Nah, I just don’t care.” The election has really grown tiresome. I have election fatigue. Last night I was reading about Obama declining McCain’s invitation to suspend campaigning and postpone the debate and go back to the Senate to do senatorial stuff, and when I got to the line, “It is going to be part of the President’s job to deal with more than one thing at once,” I thought, “Yeah. Like fiddling while Rome burns!” And then I started cracking up because it was late and I realized that I just didn’t care about anything, and especially not whether McCain and/or Obama stay on the campaign trail or go back to Washington, or debate or don’t debate. I also thought that McCain ought to hire me to write his comeback lines.
It was late.
I’m losing my mind, also, because I took the younger kids to McDonald’s yesterday–no, wait for it, I’m not at the mind-losing part yet–and it got to be 2:20, and I thought, “Holy heck, I need to pick up Mister Bubby from school.” Which I did. Not remembering until it was too late that before one picks up Mister Bubby from school, one needs to meet Princess Zurg’s bus at home. Which I did not do. Fortunately, the transportation department was able to reach my emergency contact, who then came over to receive the daughter I had entirely forgotten about.
While at the McDonald’s, I was thinking that nearly everything in that place is inedible, except for the McNuggets, which I could eat about 400 of before guilt or indigestion set in. I’m not proud of it. I’m just saying.
I have been craving chocolate cake for almost two weeks now, and my efforts to get chocolate cake have been thwarted at every turn. First, I couldn’t bake because it was too hot. Then I was too lazy. Then I couldn’t go to the store because I would have had to take the kids with me and that prospect scared me. Then I was at the Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe, where they used to sell awesome chocolate cake, but now they only sell hoity-toity desserts like Tiramisu and lemon tarts and opera something-or-others, which I’m sure are tasty but they are not chocolate cake, which is what I want and what I wanted then. I have to say, as much as I heart the Moonstruck Chocolate Cafe, but if they’ve decided they’re too upscale to serve something as vulgar as chocolate cake, my affection must inevitably wane.
A couple days later I was out getting a movie from the Blockbuster and I went (alone) into the grocery store that’s next to the Blockbuster, but they didn’t have chocolate cake, or anything like thereunto. Then we took the kids to IKEA last Saturday, and they had a chocolate cake, but it was a chocolate mousse cake, and while it was reasonably tasty, it was not what I’d been craving. And then I was at the grocery store today, the one with the good bakery, and I totally forgot that I wanted chocolate cake. It’s cool enough now that I can bake, but then there’s still the lazy to contend with. I just don’t know what I can do.
And I forgot to take my fish oil this morning. Bah!
My sister bythelbs, who has always been the funniest person I know and also an overachiever, really outdid herself with her entry in my “Wacky Search Terms” Writer Challenge.
A few valiant souls entered the contest on my Xanga site, and I was so inspired by their creativity that I decided to make new badges for them:
or
Depending on how cynical one is.
And by shamelessly stealing Repairman Jack’s artistic reimagining of my Tijuana Snoopy painting and turning it into something vulgar and commercial, I made a special grand prize badge for bythelbs:
Congratulations!
Which means that my two youngest children have officially given up solid food for the season, and will be subsisting on frozen sugar water for the next six months. I’ll keep you posted on that.
Actually, I shouldn’t complain. They both ate lunch today. I think it might have something to do with the fact that all the good popsicles are gone. You know, I bought some of those new “Mini” popsicles, thinking they would be, I dunno, little popsicles, like maybe half the size of regular popsicles. No. They are teeny tiny popsicles. The kids must think I’m trying to starve them, and that’s why they ate their sandwiches.
Speaking of popsicle weather, it is also garden-hose weather. Meaning that Elvis wants to water our driveway about three hours a day. (He was born in Oregon, he thinks water just falls from the sky, what can I tell you?) Today he actually wanted to play with the hose in the back yard, which I think meant that he wanted to water our deck for three hours, but I’ll never know for sure because there is a non-functional sprayer-nozzle stuck to the hose in the back yard, and Elvis couldn’t get it off. I couldn’t get it off either. It’s just going to stay there forever, I think. I may as well get used to it. Hello, non-functional sprayer-nozzle thing, how’s it going? Yeah, me too. I assume it’s non-functional because it doesn’t spray water, but if its function is to make me want to scream and punch somebody, it’s doing a fine job.
I really don’t have time for this blogging nonsense today. I have a lot of work to do, and I should do it before it gets too hot. My tap recital is this week, and the housekeepers are coming this week. I kind of let the house go right before we left for Austin, and so far it hasn’t come back to me. I spent about three hours on Saturday trying to get it back to a manageable state–or at least a state where I could invite housekeepers to come and clean it–but it still needs a lot of work. The housekeepers come every other Wednesday. Historically, that has meant that I spend every other Tuesday evening staying up late to make sure that they can find surfaces to clean the next morning. I can’t really do that this Tuesday evening because I have the dress rehearsal for the recital that night. So I really need to do it before then. And make sure nobody messes it up before Wednesday morning. You see why I always do it Tuesday night? Anyway, you don’t want to hear about my problems. I’m just typing so I don’t have to work.
I skipped church on Sunday because I had a mandatory tap rehearsal, followed by recital pictures. Yes, we’re grown-ups and we get recital pictures. We don’t ordinarily do them right after a major rehearsal, when we’re all sweaty and tired, but the planets were aligned against us this year, and that was the only time we could do it. So we had the rehearsal, and then we all tried very hard to get in full costume immediately and not sweat too much for photographs. I was a little dismayed because I would have preferred to do a dry run with my make-up before I committed it to posterity. I don’t usually wear make-up–in fact, the only times I really wear it is for my recital and for my recital pictures. I had to buy a whole new batch of make-up, though, because I lost my old make-up in the fire last year. Yeah, I know you’re supposed to replace your make-up every three months or something anyway, but whatever. I don’t do that. I save it for the annual Wearing of the Make-Up in the spring. I’m thrifty that way.
So every time I put on make-up, I’m reminded of why I don’t usually wear it. It really, really irritates my skin. Not like I’m allergic to it. No, I think it’s a form of claustrophobia. My skin wants to breathe. I’m not sure what the deal is with my eyeballs. Every time I wear any kind of eye make-up, within about ten or fifteen minutes, my eyes start hurting, like they’re tired. Like I’ve been prying them open with toothpicks for the last 48 hours. It’s very annoying. I’ve tried all kinds of hypoallergenic, “sensitive eyes” formulae, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just a psychological problem. The eyes want to breathe. They don’t want to be burdened with thick lashes or a “smoky look.” Unfortunately, knowing that it’s just psychological has not helped matters any. My eyes still hurt, they hurt for several hours after I remove the eye make-up, and yet I have to put it on again at least twice before the week is over.
I didn’t used to worry about the make-up problem when I was young, or rather, when my skin was young. Now that my skin is getting old, I’m starting to worry about the make-up problem. Because I don’t want to look old and haggard until I die. I’d like to try a few years of that “age-defying” cosmetic stuff before I start looking old and haggard until I die. One of the problems with not wearing make-up is that when I do put it on, it looks weird, even if I’ve done it right. And I don’t really do it right–that’s one of the other problems with not wearing make-up: I have only the most rudimentary knowledge of how to apply it. I know what not to do. (Sometimes I accidentally do that stuff anyway, but at least I’m self aware.) I’ve never learned how to achieve that “natural” look–probably because it takes too long, and I’m too lazy–and that’s fine when I only wear make-up for an occasion when I’m not aiming for “natural” anyway, but I’m just saying, I worry about the old-and-haggard years. Do you know I turned 37 on Saturday? I’ve tried to compensate for my make-up-less skin by coloring my hair and painting my nails and wearing women’s clothing. I just hope it’s enough when the old-and-haggard years hit full force.
I really have a lot of laundry to do, and that’s not half of what needs to get done in the next 48 hours. I have to take Elvis to a birthday party this afternoon and make sure he doesn’t blow out the candles on the cake before the birthday boy does.
Speaking of cake, for my birthday we got an ice cream pie from the Safeway. It was a “Mudd Pie.” I don’t know if it was named after Mudd clothing, or Harvey Mudd, or what, but it was good, probably because it had coffee in it. Princess Zurg was disturbed by the presence of the coffee–morally disturbed, but not so disturbed that she didn’t finish eating her piece. I ate my piece and the baby’s piece, and I would have eaten Elvis’s, too, except I thought that might make me a bad person.
Speaking of being a bad person, I used the carpool lane today when I wasn’t carpooling. It was an accident, really. I was in a hurry, and I forgot I didn’t have any kids with me. Ordinarily I think that people who misuse the carpool lane are probably going to hell. I hope that isn’t true. (It’s funny, though–today of all days, there were, like, three cops on the shoulder of the freeway on-ramp, right where the carpool lane was. I totally could have been busted! Fortunately, they were there about a car accident. Wait–did I just say that?) I think I paid for it because I totally missed my off-ramp. Again. The last time I went to this place I was going, I missed the off-ramp. Mind you, I’ve been to this place several times. I’ve taken that off-ramp dozens and dozens of times. I know where it is, and yet it’s like I can’t see it anymore. It’s very disconcerting.
As I was saying, though, I have a lot of laundry to do. I can’t keep boring you with the mundane details of my life. I have to get going. Gentle readers, happy Monday.
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