Posts filed under 'See Mommy laugh. (Favorites)'
We are cleaning up the kitchen on Easter night. David is behaving strangely, muttering under his breath and slamming pots and pans.
“Look at it,” says my husband. He shoves the roasting pan under my nose, disgusted. “Look at it! It’s pig jelly!”
“Yes, honey,” I say. “We had ham.”
“I know we had ham.” He gestures to the table, where there is a lot of leftover ham. “I mean, look at all that ham. What are we supposed to do with all that ham?”
“We didn’t know how many people were coming, so my mom bought extra. It’s fine.”
“I feel sorry for Ali and Blair,” he says. “I know they don’t eat much ham.”
“They knew we were having ham,” I say. “There was a little something for everybody. We had vegetables. And pierogies with cabbage. That’s a vegetable.”
“I mean, next time, we shouldn’t serve that much ham.”
“You’re very disturbed by all this ham,” I say. This is what a therapist who specializes in ham phobias and other pork-related phobias would say.
“Well, look at it! There’s enough ham to feed 20 people!” He is shaking his head and looking like he might cry.
“We could have had 20 people. Anyway, we had a lot of people, and a lot of them ate ham. You had the ham, I don’t know why you’re getting all worked up.”
“Uh, I didn’t eat the ham,” he whines.
“So you ate the kielbasa.”
“Yes. What’s in the kielbasa?”
“Ham.”
He is stricken. “Are you sure?”
Now I am laughing and he is not happy. He is even less happy than he was when we started this conversation.
“I just—” I throw up my hands. I cannot complete my sentence.
“No, no,” he says chivalrously, “you shouldn’t feel bad.”
“I really don’t,” I say, “because you didn’t tell me about your ham issues, so there was nothing I could have done about it. This is self-inflicted Jewish guilt.”
“What’s wrong with me wanting to have more of a connection to my grandparents?” he demands.
“It’s not my fault that you tried to make bitter herbs out of minestrone soup and pack Passover into the one night I was away. You are feeling understandably frustrated because your children are both under six years of age and it didn’t go so well.”
“I don’t know what else to do!” he yells. He is in despair, surrounded by Gentile pork products and a wife who does not understand his terrible remorse.
“Is this why you’ve been carbo-loading with matzoh crackers? I found a buttered matzoh cracker stuck to your wall behind your desk,” I say.
He stalks out of the kitchen.
When I enter the den that is not a den, he is sitting at his computer, intently studying a website with the header: HOW DIFFICULT IS IT TO KEEP KOSHER?
“Whoa,” I say, breaking into a cold, hammy sweat. “Whoa there, Jew Boy.”
He swivels in his chair to face me. “The hardest part is to keep the dishes separate.”
“Is it? Is that the hardest part?” I say. “Because I can think of lots of hardest parts.”
David swivels back to Kosher.com.
He is rapt. This is the Hebrew version of the Rapture. Any moment now, there will be lightning and flashing Stars of David and my husband will be swept up and given the best table at the Kosher restaurant in the sky, leaving behind his clothes, and his sinful shiksa wife, who will have to scrape the pig jelly out of the bottom of the roasting pan all by her little doomed self.
I read over his shoulder. “It says rock badger is not kosher. If we can’t send the kids to school with rock badger sandwiches, then you tell me what we are going to do in the mornings.”
He ignores me. This is getting very unnerving.
I am whining now. “We CAN’T EVEN MAKE IT TO ONE HAND-IN-HAND AT THE SYNAGOGUE,” I say. Hand-in-Hand is the Jewish education program for kids.
“The Jewish faith starts in the home, honey,” he says.
“I just think you should talk to the rabbi, the one who never sees us at his nice interfaith synagogue because we can’t get to his nice interfaith synagogue on time, ever. I just think maybe, just maybe, YOU SHOULD GET BAR MITZVAHED BEFORE WE DISCUSS A KOSHER KITCHEN.”
“I guess actually finding kosher cheese is going to be hard, because of the rennet factor,” he says.
“The rennet factor, yes.” Surely he is pulling my Gentile leg.
“Because rennet is an enzyme used to harden cheese,” he says. “That’s all right, we’ll look into it.”
“What is that website?” I demand to know. If I am going to get a divorce over a kosher kitchen, I want to know who is to blame.
“JewFAQ.org. Definitely a good site,” says David, the suddenly-born-again Jew. “It just puts it in straightforward language.”
“Straightforward.”
“Kosher slaughtering is the most humane way to slaughter an animal.”
“See,” I plead, “I understand that. I buy kosher hot dogs when I can.”
He glances over his shoulder at me. “Make sure you put that in your blog.”
I am really having trouble managing my panic. My knees are weak so I sit down. I cannot swallow.
He is still reading. “We might need another dishwasher too, because we can’t wash the dairy and the nondairy dishes in the same dishwasher. But maybe we can get around that.”
“I feel like this would be a good time for me to stick my fingers in my ears and do that la la la thing. I can’t hear you I can’t hear you except I can and you are really freaking me out. Do you hear me? You are really. Freaking. Me. Out.”
“What’s wrong with trying to honor my grandparents? What exactly is wrong with that?”
“My grandparents were Catholic, and you don’t see me trying to hang a crucifix in every room of the house! You don’t see me stenciling Jesus fish on the cabinets! Who are you?”
He sighs. “There just a purity to a kosher kitchen. It’s very appealing to me. There’s a mindfulness.”
“I am mindful of the fact that you are not the man I married. The man I married did not say anything about wanting a kosher kitchen. This is as bad as suddenly wanting an open marriage.”
He points at the screen. “Okay, here’s the dishwasher.”
“There’s a kosher dishwasher? At Best Buy?
“It really wouldn’t be all that hard.”
“Yes. Yes, it would be that hard. If you ever want me to learn how to cook, having a kosher kitchen is not going to help that.”
He is very disappointed in his wife. “I just can’t believe how negative you’re being about this.”
I am apoplectic and my hands are all over the place, jabbing and twitching. I am having a Seizure of Resistance. “I love the idea of honoring your grandparents. Great! Terrific! Let’s hang mezuzzahs on the doorways. Let’s teach the kids the Hebrew alphabet! Let’s read right to left! We could host Shabbat dinners every week and talk about Jewishness and how great it is to be Jewish and get chocolate that looks like money. Shabbat! Every week! When is that? Fridays? Saturdays?”
He tries to look confident. “I think…Fridays.”
I look past him, at a new site he’s found. I read out loud: “WHO IS A JEW? WOULD YOU LIKE TO KNOW IF YOUR FAVORITE TV STAR IS A JEW? WOULD YOU LIKE A LIST OF FAMOUS SCIENTISTS WHO ARE JEWISH? Oh my God, is that URL actually Jewhoo.com? Is that what I am seeing?”
“This isn’t a very helpful site,” he mutters.
“Would you like to know if your favorite TV star is a flaming Catholic? Would you like a list of FAMOUS SCIENTISTS WHO ARE RIGHT-WING CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS? You personally.”
I am cackling in nervous disbelief. I cannot stop.
“Shut up!” he says. He buries his head in his hands.
“I’m going to bed because this is just beyond me,” I say.
He returns to JewFAQ.org to find out more about recommended kosher dishwasher options.
The next morning, I awake to David leaning over me, gazing soulfully into my eyes.
“Don’t freak out or anything,” he whispers, “but I separated some cutlery.”
I stare in openmouthed horror at the stranger in my bed. He starts laughing.
I whack him. I whack him again.
He heads off to have a shower, with dreams of kosher frankfurters dancing in his head.
April 25th, 2006
I wake up cranky and thwarted. “Damn it! I can’t even cheat on you in my DREAM. This stinks.”
“Mmmph,” says my husband. He would like to be more asleep than he is, but morning has landed hard on his chest. His wife is not even out of bed yet and already she is making very little sense.
“Do you cheat on me in your dreams?” I have a right to know. I keep an apartment in his head and if I’m going to bump into anybody in the lobby, I want to be prepared.
He opens his eyes. Some squinting. “Do I cheat on you? In my dreams?”
“Yes.”
He thinks. He thinks some more. “I really don’t.”
“It’s okay. You’re allowed to, you know. We’re supposed to be allowed to do that.”
“I know. But I really don’t.”
I believe him. Damn his noble mind. Damn my thwarted, less noble mind. It’s all very aggravating.
A few weeks later, the same damn thing. I wake up devastated and schlump around all day, knowing I have let the opportunity of a dreamtime slip right through my fat wedding-ring-laden fingers.
I bring it up with my husband that night, when he gets home from rehearsal. I am kind of mad at him. It might be his fault. His sweet Canadian-Jedi Mind Control. These aren’t the dreams you’re looking for, eh.
“I still can’t cheat on you in my dreams,” I say. I am being a little whiny. “Do you remember that conversation we had? Do you want to change your story?”
“I really don’t dream very much.” He pauses. “But I don’t think I ever cheat on you in my dreams. No, I never do.”
He is such a nice man; I can tell he is racking his brain for evidence of dream-cheating. He told me when he went to see The Dukes of Hazzard in Illinois during his business trip. He is that honest. He would tell me if he had dream-cheated; he would be happy to tell me. He has a hunch I am getting disgusted with the two of us and our unnecessarily loyal subconsciouses.
I make my little disgusted noise to confirm that I am getting disgusted. I like to confirm his hunches about me. I think it strengthens a marriage. “Errgh.”
He smiles fondly at me and takes a bite of the homemade meatloaf that Mama Stop ‘N Shop made for our home. I see now that my husband is pleased that we are not cheating on each other when we are lying side by side in bed at night.
My cheating heart is not pleased. “Last night? I met my celebrity boyfriend from The Office, and he thought I was great. He really liked me and I let him hold my hand for five seconds…AND THEN I TOLD HIM I WAS MARRIED.”
“Wow.” My husband is impressed.
“And then my celebrity boyfriend said, ‘Why did you have to move to the Berkshires?’ As in, he lived in the Berkshires too, and now he would have to be heartbroken and tortured with longing knowing that he and I lived in the same place and might run into each other. I am such an idiot.”
My husband chews his meatloaf thoughtfully, sympathetically. He doesn’t cheat in his dreams either, but all similarities between his brain and my brain stop after that.
I am very very very mad at my subconscious! I do not understand why It Hath Giveth and It Hath Taketh Away my celebrity boyfriend! It is so mean, my subconscious! I have been suffering from this dream-loyalty affliction for a very long time now. Before sleep, I beg my subconscious to let me pretend to be someone who looks like me except hotter and very not married. I tell my subconscious that I will make it a Mexican tin altar or a bathtub shrine with a picture of Freud pasted over the head of the Virgin Mary, if it will only let me be an oversexed adulteress in my head once every few weeks.
Now I’m indignant, all sizzly and jumpy like the stir-fry vegetables at that famous Japanese restaurant where you sit around and politely watch the chef be a chef but all you really want to do is hold a gun to his head and point at your plate because you’re tired of working so hard at looking revved up about him and his jazzy Ginsu knife.
That was supposed to be an analogy about the stir-fry vegetables, but somewhere along the way, it turned into something else. Let’s move on. We were talking about not cheating when you could be cheating with your celebrity boyfriend from The Office.
“I just think it’s all a HUGE STUPID WASTE,” I say. “A waste of PERFECTLY GOOD DREAMSPACE. We are wasting opportunities for GOOD GUILT-FREE EXTRAMARITAL ACTION.”
“Hmm,” says my husband. He is through with his meatloaf, and has now moved on to his carrots. In his case, a carrot is really just a carrot. I love him for it, but I still want my celebrity boyfriend. Come back, celebrity boyfriend. Please come back to me. Dangle your carrot that is not just a carrot.
March 30th, 2006
I go to bed on Wednesday night feeling a little ehhh. Nothing specific, just ehhh. By morning, I am feeling a little more ehhh. I get the girls where they need to go, and the ehhh factor ramps up a notch. On my way to meet a friend at the coffee shop, I have the unpleasant realization that the ehhh is coming from my chest.
My chest is heavy. Not to be confused with my heavy bosoms, which are a very different breed of heavy. This ehhh is a bad, bad heavy. Very uncomfortable heavy. There is a bit of pain and when I try to figure out which way it’s going, I realize it’s going down my left arm.
But I don’t want to be rude, even if I am having a heart attack. My nice friend will be waiting for me at the coffee shop. So I make a pit stop at the pharmacy, where I seize a box of St. Joseph’s chewable 81mg aspirin tablets ($4.99) and an even larger box of E-Mer-Gen-C Heart Health black-cherry–flavored dissolving fizzy powder packets ($17.99) full of lycopene and other things I have never heard of. I am hoping my Fizzy Lifting Drink will end this episode of When Hearts Attack so I can enjoy a nice latte with my friend. I have a lot of work to do this week, and a heart attack would be terribly inconvenient.
I bolt from the pharmacy, sit on some steps, and tear into the aspirin, crunching down four. Then I hurry over to the coffee shop, trying to ignore the worsening ehhh and left arm pain.
“Are you getting something?” my friend wants to know.
I decide that if I am going to die, I should go down looking health-conscious. “I’ll have an herbal tea,” I say.
My friend looks at me strangely. I don’t want to alarm her, so I tell her I am just feeling dehydrated. Maybe I am dehydrated. I have seen dehydrated apple rings, and they are not all that far off from what my eye sockets and surrounding skin look like in the a.m.
I put my herbal tea on our table. Now I am positive I am dying, because I am having palpitations and it feels like an ape is sitting on my chest and my left arm is doing a very bad thing, its own version of the ehhh.
I ask my friend if she thinks I could be having a heart attack. She looks confused. All I have done is order an herbal tea instead of a latte, and it didn’t look all that taxing.
I show her the contents of my pharmacy bag and explain the ehhh to her. I have just spent nearly $25 on heart-attack prevention products. My friend is trying not to laugh. She is a very nice friend. I can tell that she wants to tell me that I am not having a heart attack, to cheer me up, but she is on the fence about the whole thing.
I get some water and dump two packets of Fizzy Heart Health into it and guzzle it down. “But enough about me,” I say.
Now we are both convinced I am having a heart attack, so she sends me to the doctor.
I do not like going to the doctor. But I do not want to be like my father, who really really really doesn’t like the doctor and avoided going to the doctor for twenty years, so I try to be brave even though I feel very stupid.
The receptionist says what receptionists say, which is, “Yes?” I want to say, “No,” and turn around and leave with my bad chest and bad arm and go die in the parking lot where people will not notice me until I have checked out completely and can’t see them pointing and staring at my bosoms, which I always imagine will fall out of my shirt at the exact moment of my death.
But instead I say, “Um, I know this is going to sound really dumb, but I’m having some strange chest discomfort, um, and my left arm hurts—”
She is on it. If you are in a bank, you say, Give me all your money in a bag. If you are in a doctor’s office, you say, Strange chest discomfort, left arm hurts and you will get pretty much the same effect.
She is tapping her keyboard frantically to see who can see me. I am hoping for one of the anonymous urgent-care doctors, who take anxious anonymous walk-ins.
“Your primary-care physician is in, and he can see you right now,” she says.
“Really?” I say. “Because I’m not picky.”
I have already seen my new primary-care physician three times in the past three and a half weeks, and we are not off to great start. This is all my fault, as at our first visit I was stammering and making too many stupid jokes and then forgot to tell him about some medication I was on and then remembered to tell him but by then I was blushing furiously and was sure I was coming across as dodgy and evasive and disturbed and so then tried a whole new round of stupid jokes. Throughout the whole debacle, my doctor leaned against the sink and studied me as if I were a rare and diseased Galapagos seal that someone found on a Berkshire ski slope.
A fourth visit in three and a half weeks with this man will not do wonders for my self-esteem or credibility. I consider slipping out the blood lab emergency exit but that would involve walking past phlebotomists and their evil blue rubber tourniquets, the sight of which brings me to my knees. So I sit still in the waiting room and will my heart to stop ehhhing. No go.
The nurse comes and whisks me to the exam room. She takes my blood pressure. Normal. She takes my pulse. I try not to pass out. I do not like people fondling my pulse. But it is normal. Then she tells me to take my shirt and bra off and put one of those slinky cotton-sheet robes on. She leaves. I put on the robe. Now I know I am going to die, because my bosoms are falling out. I shift gears and will my heart to give out quickly so I can get the hell out of Dodge before I can see the doctor and the nurse staring at my bazoombas.
Again, no go.
The nurse comes back and I have not died, so she is polite and tries not to look at my breasts as she sticks bits of poster-putty all over them and presses EKG wires into the little globs. The whole time she does this, I say things like Isn’t that interesting and I feel really stupid, would you feel stupid? and I can’t be the only person who came in here for something like this. She is kind and nods at whatever I say, a little too emphatically, as if I really am a rare and diseased Galapagos seal, but one who speaks English and is about to die a horrible painful death, and she wants to keep me as calm as possible.
The actual EKG takes all of three seconds, and she tells me I can put my clothes back on. She looks at the EKG printout, frowns, then says, I don’t read these, you know, but the doctor will talk to you about it and pushes the EKG machine from the room as if she is serving dim sum.
I am very very twitchy when my doctor arrives. I try not to make stupid jokes, and he makes this possible by cutting me off at the pass. “So what’s going on?” is what he says sternly as he’s walking in the room. I am grateful that he has left me no time for my special brand of small and insipid talk.
I tell him what is going on, about the ehhh in my chest and in my left arm.
He picks up the EKG readout and studies it. “This all looks fine. Except—” He squints at the printout. “—except the computer is telling me that you had a previous infarction.”
“The computer is telling you I had a heart attack? At one point? A heart attack that I missed?” This is novel, if disturbing, information.
He puts the paper down. “I don’t buy it. I think the computer is wrong on this one.”
“Really? Are we allowed to think that way?” I ask.
He ignores this and checks me out with his doctor kit. He asks some good questions about family members dropping dead at age 40, then tells me that, though he tends to be conservative about these things, he just doesn’t think I’ve got enough risk factors or symptoms to send me to the hospital.
I like this finding, because I like hospitals even less than I like doctors’ offices, but then he says, “Just go home and take a hot bath.”
When your doctor tells you to go home and take a hot bath, you know you are a raging hypochondriac. And the only thing to do as a raging hypochondriac in this situation is to deny being a raging hypochondriac. Which I do. Vehemently. “You know, I swear I’m not a hypochondriac. I’m normally very healthy. I don’t even like doctors. I mean, visiting doctors. I mean, I like you, but I don’t like, you know. What goes on here. I’m not a hypochondriac.”
He smiles cautiously. “Of course you’re not,” he says, then hurries from the room, leaving me with my heaving hypochondriac bosoms.
I slink past the receptionist, who looks a little disappointed that I did not die, and go to my car. I still feel very ehhh, and I am still convinced that death is imminent. In fact, now I want to die, just to prove to my doctor that I am not a hypochondriac. So I go to the food co-op because people there will notice if I drop dead, and I don’t even care about them seeing my bosoms, because they wear Birkenstocks and have magnetic peace signs on their cars, and I feel safe with them.
But I keep on living, so I wind up buying $105 of organic bok choy in case I continue to keep on living when I get home and need to feel like I’ve made a lifestyle change.
I am afraid to die at home, because it will scare the dogs and the children, so I stall by taking my bok choy to the paint store. I peruse yellows and rub my left arm. Periodically, I slap my sternum, sort of a Junior Varsity CPR move to keep things ticking in there.
As I buy some Benjamin Moore paint samples, I wonder if I should position myself to pass out forward, onto the counter, or backwards, more dramatically, into the paint roller display. I aim for the counter, less mess for everyone.
But we seal the deal at the cash register with no death on my part.
When I get home, I am still alive. I am going to have to switch primary-care doctors.
When David gets home later, I am up on the stepladder, swabbing Weston Flax and Windham Cream on the wall above the blue cabinets and holding on to the ladder with my aching left arm. My heart likes the Weston Flax better, but my arm is telling me to go for the Windham Cream.
“What did the doctor say?” David wants to know.
“He told me to take a bath,” I say.
But today I’m pretty sure I have glaucoma.
March 3rd, 2006
God Bless Ye, Failed Googlers. Your failure is our triumph yet again (witness October’s shrine to the Scary Seekers, weep weep nude girls).
Behold the actual search strings that have led hundreds of very confused souls to breed ‘em and weep. All who wander online are indeed lost until proven otherwise.
I ask that you hold your applause until all the Lost Googlers have been named and properly categorized for all eternity.
IN THE BALLPARK
paint the storm door cranberry
dogs licking floor
middle age boobs
hattie nickname
grandfather was a carpenter
liev schreiber
KIND OF IN THE BALLPARK
challah bread covers
yiddish shizzle
open denim jacket busty
what is valium made of
funny in-laws from Canada
USED TO BE IN THE BALLPARK
aqua net mall hair
girl puking all over herself
HANG OUT IN MY BALLPARK AND FEED ME PRETTY GRAPES
funny witty responses
jennifer mattern magic spell
ONLY MY THERAPIST KNOWS ABOUT THIS BALLPARK AND SHE’S NOT TALKING
disassociative identity disorder
NOT EVEN CLOSE TO THE BALLPARK
antidaycare
weekend cruise
cheerleader panties
empty nest support groups
gender disappointment and coping
KICK HIM IN HIS BALLPARK
post your wife naked
breed a blonde woman
how to breed your wife
GIVE THE NICE SLUT HER ACCESSORIES BACK AND COME OUT OF THE CLOSET ALREADY
slut clothes
slut in sandals
earrings for sluts
THAT’S WHAT YOU GET FOR NOT GIVING HER EARRINGS BACK
she puts me in her panties and girdle then spanks me
DUDE YOU SAID IT NOT ME
dressing room crossdresser
SANDRA AND RUTH DEFEND YOUR FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND THIS IS THE THANKS THEY GET
sluts on the bench
THERE’S A VERY GOOD REASON THE TALIBAN HATE CURLING UNIFORMS
Canadian sluts
A COMMA AND I’M STRANGELY CHARMED, A HYPHEN AND I SUDDENLY LIKE YOU A WHOLE LOT LESS
come happy sluts
AS LONG AS YOU DON’T ROLL OVER
is it okay for dog to sleep with us in bedroom
AS LONG AS IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH YOUR FIRST QUESTION
how do you know your dog is giving birth
GETTING REALLY WORRIED ABOUT THAT DOG
sharpie dog ear infection
SERVES YOU RIGHT
smell shoe dog crap
WITH THAT LIFESTYLE, PROBABLY A BETTER CHOICE
play doh dog
GET HER A SUBSCRIPTION TO BLACK INCHES ALREADY
wife wants black penis
wife wants to try a black monster
GET YOURSELF A SUBSCRIPTION TO BLACK INCHES ALREADY
how long does a black man’s penis get
YOU SHOULD HAVE JUST GOTTEN THE SUBSCRIPTION
bred my wife to a black man
MOST PERSONALLY DISTURBING
in laws massage horseshoe
BEST ABSURDIST JOKE SETUP
porn movie walking a dog
BEST ABSURDIST JOKE PUNCHLINE
dennis quaid muu muu
BUT YOU’RE WEARING A MUU MUU DENNIS
doh eat my shorts
LET ME KNOW IF YOU FIGURE OUT ANOTHER WAY
bathtime nude
OH GIVE IT A REST ALREADY
nude ballerina
nude daughter-in-law
my nude cousins
THIS FUNHOUSE IS RATED I FOR INCONSISTENT
funniest masks in the world
funny girl moans
scary boobs
NOTHING SEXIER THAN A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS
malformed boobs
DYSLEXIC AND HIS BEER TASTES LIKE CRAP
lager penis
SORRY I DIDN’T HEAR YOU I WAS WATCHING SESAME STREEP
meryl street nude
SHE’S ALLERGIC TO MERYL STREET
meryl streep blowing her nose
YES, BECAUSE THAT’S ALL WE TALK ABOUT, YOU MEATY STUDS
blogs women on penis
GIVE THE GUY A CHANCE
husband small penis not erect
GIVE YOURSELF A CHANCE
why will my penis not grow
GIVE YOURSELF A HEMATOMA
penis bind
THREE GREAT THINGS THAT GO GREAT TOGETHER
benadryl and vodka
uncontrolled muscle movements
IF YOU NEED A CHASER
prepaid therapy
ASK YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT THE FLAT SHINY THINGS THEY KEEP ON THEIR WALLS
what i look like naked
I KNOW SOMEBODY WHO COULD REALLY USE THAT MIRROR
large t-shirts make me look even shorter
MUST BE NICE TO HAVE ALL THAT TIME ON YOUR HANDS
borrow sugar from the neighbor
pink cakes
ice cream between waffles
dollhouse popsicles
gravysicles
mary poppins mops
IN BETWEEN CRAFT PROJECTS AND BAKE SALES SHE MAKES FLASHCARDS FOR MORK
picture of a cup of sugar
picture of a waffle cone
ASK MISS GRAVYSICLES WHY DONCHA
do it yourself penis extender
make your own penis extender
PRETTY SURE IT DOESN’T COME WITH A WARRANTY, CHIEF
penis protection extender
PUT DOWN THE EXTENDER BEFORE YOU LOSE YOUR TWIG COMPLETELY
extra inches extender how big
YOU CAN’T TELL ME YOU WERE SURPRISED BY YOUR WIFE’S REACTION
laughing mary mother of god
THIS IS THE LAST THING I’LL SAY ON THE SUBJECT
oh now you weep
THAT’S ONE WAY TO DEAL WITH IT
share husband’s small penis
SETTLE DOWN BEFORE YOU LOSE YOUR SEASON TICKETS
lick ballet
TALK DIRTY TO ME YOU BAD BAD BAD CANADIAN CHAP
lick bum
NO YOU LICK MINE
lick my blog
LOSING STEAM AREN’T YOU
lick
WHO DOESN’T
love it when you call me big pooper scooper in my head
I THINK THIS IS A SCOTTISH PICKUP LINE BUT I CAN’T BE SURE
go on the fucking good thing, ye!!!!!
WHO IS THIS WOMAN AND HAS SHE GOTTEN A RESTRAINING ORDER YET
emily naked
emily nude
IF YOU HAVE TO ASK, ASK EMILY
what is a heavy breather
EITHER PLANNING A CRAFT PROJECT OR A “BUSINESS” TRIP TO THAILAND
rice paddy babies
rice paddy dolls
February 21st, 2006
A dingy pink dump of a bar. SNOW WHITE polishes glassware behind the bar counter. CINDERELLA enters on crutches and sits down at the bar. A WOMAN WITH A CREWCUT, wearing an ugly burlap shirt and pants, sits at the other end of the bar, swigging a beer. SLEEPING BEAUTY is slumped over the bar. Asleep.
Snow White: (to Cinderella) Hey, C.
Cinderella: Hello, Snow!
Snow White: What’s your pleasure?
Cinderella: I’d love a Fairy Godmother? I haven’t had a Fairy Godmother in ages.
Snow White: I’m out of fairy dust. I could use oregano—
Cinderella: No, no, don’t bother. I’ll have a Cosmopolitan.
Snow White: What happened to the foot?
Cinderella: Oh, you know. Clumsy, clumsy. How were your holidays?
Snow White: My better half was out of town again, so it was just me and the little guys.
Cinderella: Must be nice to let your hair down once in a while like that.
WOMAN WITH CREWCUT looks up briefly.
Snow White: Ah, it was the same old interspecies interfaith holiday crap. The forest animals skipped around singing ‘Deck the Halls’ while Doc and I made a menorah out of twigs and orange rinds and old cheese curds. Grumpy’s kugel was out of this world.
Cinderella: (taken aback) You’re Jewish? I thought that was against the by-laws.
Snow White: The little guys. Me, I’m an agnostic. But I like the whole mitzvah concept. I’m down with Jews, definitely. You should drop by next year and spin the dreidel.
Cinderella: Prince Charming never seems to go out of town. Well, he’s got his annual trip to the Slipper This! convention. I have no idea what that’s all about, but he seems to really enjoy it. To each his own.
Snow White hands Cinderella her drink and a cocktail napkin.
Snow White: Where’s Prince Charming tonight?
Cinderella: Superbowl party.
Snow White: You need to get out more, if you ask me.
Cinderella: Oh, but there’s always so much to do! A Disney Princess’s work is never done!
Snow White: Yeah, I know the drill. How was your Christmas?
Cinderella: Let’s just say I’m glad the holidays are over. (pause, in horror) Did I say I’m glad the holidays are over? That’s not what I meant. I love the holidays! It’s such a magical, magical time! A magical time to feel magical things in your heart!
Snow White: Yeah, yeah, it’s bibbitybobbitybootylicious. Got it. (pause) You hear about Belle?
Cinderella: Oh, let me guess. He’s a beast again. My, how surprising.
Snow White: She rode that retarded pony of hers into the Black Forest in a blizzard, looking for a Christmas tree that her idiot husband didn’t even want. You know how he gets around the holidays. So there’s Belle, trying to drag a fir tree across the half-frozen river—
Cinderella: Oh, no.
Snow White: —when the magic fife spooks the horse, on purpose, mind you, and the stupid horse topples the sleigh and takes off into the woods. Belle winds up dropping that damn talking cup through a crack in the ice—
Cinderella: I have told that girl over and over, there is a time and a place for talking cups and saucers, and the Black Forest is not the place for talking cups and saucers!
Snow White: So of course Belle falls through the ice herself, trying to rescue her precious teacup. The Beast comes along, fishes Belle out of the water, hauls her home and get this—get this—dumps her limp, hypothermic body in the dungeon.
Cinderella: She’s hypothermic and he throws her in the dungeon? I can’t believe what I’m hearing.
Sleeping Beauty raises her head.
Sleeping Beauty: (talks in sleep) So pretty! Round and round it goes! Pretty pretty!
She slumps over the bar again. They ignore her.
Snow White: The best part is that hours later he finds some cutesy Christmas book she’s left for him—
Cinderella: Of course she has. That is so Belle—
Snow White: —and he starts feeling all guilty like he always does, so he goes down the dungeon—
Cinderella: No, no, don’t say it, I can’t take it—
Snow White: —and there’s Belle, sitting there blue and shivering and SINGING CHRISTMAS CAROLS with the clock and the teacup’s mother and that perverted French candlestick. Who knows where that thing has been, but that’s another story.
Cinderella: That is so wrong. On so many levels.
Snow White: And of course he’s like, oh, Belle baby, can you ever forgive me for LEAVING YOU FOR DEAD in the dungeon? And she’s like, oh, Beast baby, of course I can. Again. I don’t know what the hell it’s going to take. That girl needs some serious help. You need another beer down there?
Crewcut woman nods. Snow White grabs a Heineken and slides it down the bar to her.
Cinderella: Sometimes—and I know this is going to sound horrible—sometimes I really think she would have been better off with Gaston.
Snow White: Did you know Gaston was in rehab a few months ago? Sex addiction. But apparently he beat it.
Cinderella: What about the steroids?
Snow White: I hear he kicked those too. One of the busty blonde French serving wenches was in here the other day. She said he’s doing great—yoga, macrobiotic diet, a lot of charity work for Disney Characters Without Mothers. He’s a new man.
Cinderella: I admire that. I really do. (pause) Do you think they’re online? That organization you mentioned—
Woman with crewcut: How long did he stay a prince, anyway?
Snow White and Cinderella turn to stare at her.
Snow White: The Beast? The jackass barely made it a month before the same enchantress came around dressed in the SAME OLD HAG OUTFIT she was wearing the first time. I mean, come on! Even dopey-ass Dopey would have figured that one out.
Cinderella: Unbelievable.
Snow White: Dumb as a post, that one. This time around he threw an iron birdcage at her head. The enchantress zapped him right back into a beast faster than you can say BEAST DOOKIE.
Woman with crewcut: I heard she took a testicle.
Cinderella: My goodness. A testicle.
Snow White: (impressed) Damn! That is one twisted bee-yotch! I hope that enchanted bee-yotch gets her enchanted ass in here so I can buy her a drink!
Cinderella: I just worry for Belle. Disney Princess or not, that’s a lot to handle.
Snow White: She eats it up, that’s what I think. Belle trots around acting all sweet, and she’s got that sexy librarian thing going on, but I bet she likes it beasty.
Cinderella: That’s crude, Snow. I wouldn’t talk if I were you.
Snow White: What’s that supposed to mean?
Cinderella: You think people don’t talk about you and your little boy toys? I’m just saying.
Sleeping Beauty: (raises head, talks in sleep) Can’t we keep the spinning wheel in the garage? Does it have to be in my closet? Daddy?
Sleeping Beauty slumps over again. Woman with crewcut motions to Sleeping Beauty.
Woman with crewcut: What’s with her?
Snow White: (still irritated with Cinderella) Her prince keeps her that way. That’s how she was when he met her, that’s how he likes her. Asleep.
Woman with crewcut: Tylenol PM?
Cinderella: Roofies. The Tylenol PM wears off too fast. (pause) I read it in Vanity Fair.
Woman with crewcut: Whoa. I can’t imagine putting up with that kind of crap.
Snow White huffs off to the other end of the bar, wiping furiously.
Enter MULAN (now MU-MAN), wearing natty menswear, and JASMINE, in her usual gauzy getup and exposed midriff.
Cinderella: Mulan! What a surprise!
Mu-Man: (in a deep voice) I am now Mu-Man.
Cinderella: And Jasmine, too! My, my! Salaam, Jasmine!
Jasmine: Don’t give me that crap. You Queens of Caucasia wouldn’t know a salaam if it bit you in the—
Mu-Man: (sneezes) AAACHOOO.
Jasmine: Hey, Snow. Can we get a couple of rum-and-diet-cokes down here?
Mu-Man: No. For me, a scotch on the jagged water rocks.
Jasmine: Before I forget, Ariel said to tell you hi. She said she’s sorry she hasn’t been in lately, but she doesn’t have legs this month. Not to mention Melody came down with fish flu. Scary.
Cinderella: Give her our very best! Fish flu and no legs, what a month she’s had! (to Jasmine) So, Jasmine! I haven’t seen you and Mulan in ages.
Jasmine: Mu-MAN. You don’t hear anybody getting your name wrong, do you?
Cinderella: Mu-Man, you look just, wow. Wow. Are you doing something different with your hair?
Mu-Man: The process is long and arduous. Every morning I look in the mirror and ask myself, Who is this girl I see?
Woman with crewcut: Now, are we talking magic mirror, or regular mirror?
Cinderella: Good question! Apples and oranges.
Snow White glares at Cinderella, then resumes pouring drinks. Mu-Man pulls a hand mirror out of his/her vest pocket and surveys him/herself, murmuring unintelligible things to him/herself.
Jasmine: He’s looking at Mu-Man in the mirror. He’s asking her to change her ways. (makes the universal “yo, that’s crazy” gesture with index finger beside ear)
Mu-Man: I liked being a man. I want to be a man.
Cinderella: Oh. Mu-MAN. Yes, I see. I get it now. Very symbolic, yes. Jasmine, how’s your dear Aladdin?
Jasmine: Do you really want to know? Or are you just being polite? Because I hate polite. I’ve had it up to here with polite.
Cinderella: Of course I want to know. He is your one great love! Your true soulmate! Your provider and master and spanker! Did I say spanker? My goodness! I’m sure I didn’t!
Jasmine: Aladdin won’t give up his monkey. He’s always playing with his monkey. Every time I look, he’s playing with his monkey. I’m sick of it. I thought men were supposed to outgrow that sort of thing.
Snow White: Once a street urchin, always a street urchin. That’s what my fairy godmother always used to say.
Cinderella: You didn’t have a fairy godmother. Only I had a fairy godmother.
Snow White: Shows how much you know.
Woman with crewcut: (to Jasmine) Have you tried to talk to him about it? Told him to lay off the monkey?
Jasmine: Yo, do you think I’m an idiot? Of course I try. I keep saying, hey, Chief, hey, Lampman, let me play with your monkey. I’m great with monkeys.
Cinderella: And?
Jasmine: And the jerk kisses me on the cheek and locks himself in the bedroom with his monkey. So I go off and play with my tiger.
Cinderella: So what do you to keep busy? Besides petting your tiger.
Jasmine: I’ve got a career. Unlike some people around here.
Snow White: (snorts) Career. That’s one way of putting it.
Sleeping Beauty: (shouts in sleep) I REALLY DON’T THINK MY CLOSET IS THE BEST PLACE FOR THAT, MOMMY—
Jasmine: I’m not ashamed of what I do.
Snow White: Of course not. Pole-dancing is nothing to be ashamed of.
Cinderella: You’re a stripper?
Jasmine: I already had the outfits. Don’t look at me like that. It’s good money.
Woman with crewcut: Yeah, but do you…you know? Open sesame? (winks)
Jasmine: A Disney Princess has got to do what a Disney Princess has got to do. I’m not up for rerelease for at least another eight years.
Snow White: Ah, leave her alone. At least she’s not sitting in her penthouse all day like that Rapunzel chick, getting hair extensions.
Woman with crewcut: You Disney Princesses are so slow. I’m Rapunzel.
They are not buying it.
Snow White: Right.
Jasmine: Sure.
Rapunzel shrugs and finishes off her beer.
Snow White: Seriously?
Mu-Man: You are heat. Whoever you are. You are ripe with heat and hotness and woman-musk.
Cinderella: But…your lovely, lovely hair? I’ve heard such lovely things!
Rapunzel: It’s a wig. I hook it over the tower flagpole and rappel down whenever I feel like it.
Cinderella: No one’s ever caught you?
Rapunzel: Without the wig, they think I’m the gardener. It’s like taking candy from a dwarf.
Snow White glares at Rapunzel.
Rapunzel: What? It’s a figure of speech. So sue me.
Jasmine: I never got what the prince was supposed to do for you exactly. So he climbs up your hair. So what? Aside from ripping out your extensions—
Snow White/Cinderella/Mu-Man: Wig.
Jasmine: Whatever. Aside from that, he gets in the tower with you, and then what? Then you’re both stuck in the damn tower. Stupid premise, if you ask me.
Rapunzel: Don’t I know it. I’ve got least forty princes up there in the tower. And a few visiting dignitaries. I call them my Hairem. Get it? Hair-em.
Jasmine: I find that very offensive, culturally speaking.
Snow White: Culturally speaking, where are you culturally speaking from, exactly?
Jasmine: You are so ignorant.
Cinderella: I know that you come from beautiful, magical people who walk upon beautiful, magical carpets and polish beautiful, magical lamps with great diligence. I have the utmost respect for your beautiful, magical, lamp-polishing people.
Jasmine: Talk to the hand, Cindy. Has anyone seen Pocahontas lately?
Mu-Man: No.
Rapunzel: No.
Snow White: I don’t think anyone’s seen Pocahontas. Ever.
REGAL AFRICAN PRINCESS enters, takes a seat beside Rapunzel.
Jasmine: Do I know you? You look really familiar.
African Princess: I don’t think so.
Snow White: What’ll you have?
African Princess: How about a movie deal?
Snow White: Sorry, no can do.
Jasmine: Trust me, sista, the last thing you want is a movie deal.
Rapunzel: (to African Princess) Everybody’s always telling me the same thing. I don’t buy it either. There have to be perks.
Jasmine: Hold out, I’m telling you. There’s a lot more to life than having your face on the front of a Pull-Up. I had to learn it the hard way, sista.
African Princess: Please stop calling me sista.
Mu-Man: Your face? On a Pull-Up? My face appears on no Pull-Up.
Snow White: I wouldn’t mind having my face on a Pull-Up. Is her face on a Pull-Up? (gestures to Sleeping Beauty)
Cinderella: Not that I’m aware of.
Snow White: But you’re on a Pull-Up.
Cinderella: I’m not saying if I am or if I’m not.
Jasmine: She is. With me and Belle. What’s so funny?
Snow White: I guess you’ve got to either kiss ass or shake ass to be on a Pull-Up.
Rapunzel, Snow White and African Princess hoot and give each other high-fives. Mu-Man stares at Cinderella’s foot.
Mu-Man: (to Cinderella) Your foot is bleeding. Your heavenly and pleasingly petite bandaged foot.
Cinderella: Oh. Oh my. Oh dear. What a mess I’m making, how terribly rude—
Snow White: Here, wrap it with the dishrag—
Jasmine: What the hell happened to you, C?
Mu-Man: I weep inside for your heavenly and pleasingly petite foot.
Cinderella: I really must be going.
Rapunzel: Are you okay? Here, have some of my burlap disguise. It’s cleaner than that rag.
Cinderella: No thank you, no, no. What time is it? No, don’t tell me.
Cinderella scurries out the door, leaving behind a crutch.
African Princess: She seems very high-maintenance, but maybe that’s just me.
Snow White: Occupational hazard. She puts on a good front, but she’s a wreck.
Jasmine: Totally. Her prince has a glass shoe fetish. Nasty old Prince Charming.
Mu-Man stands up and takes the crutch.
Mu-Man: I must go to her. I must find her. She is my destiny.
Jasmine: Mu-Shu, I’d rethink that if I were you.
Mu-Man exits with the crutch.
Snow White: Last call.
Jasmine: I’m good.
Rapunzel: I’ve got to get back to the Tower. They get real nervous if I’m gone too long. You got any chips back there I could bring them?
Snow White tosses a few bags of chips at Rapunzel. Rapunzel exits.
Jasmine: Ciao, Snow Diddy. Keep it fair.
Snow White: You know it.
Jasmine: (to African Princess) Remember what I told you, sista. You’ll thank me someday.
Jasmine exits.
African Princess: I should probably get going.
Snow White: I’ve got a pool table in the back. The dwarves like to stand on top and whack the balls with golf clubs, so it’s a little beat.
African Princess: I used to play pool all the time at Harvard. You’re on.
Snow White: Do you know Simba?
Snow White and African Princess exit, turning out the bar lights.
Sleeping Beauty: OUCH! WHAT? NO! STOP LYING TO ME, MERIWETHER! DADDY SAID IT WAS A STATIONARY BIKE! MOMMY? EVERYTHING IS GETTING VERY DARK MOMMY AND I HAVEN’T OPENED THE BOX WITH THE PONY IN IT YET—
Sleeping Beauty slumps over again and begins snoring.
CURTAIN
February 5th, 2006
For Christmas, my in-laws give me a gift certificate to a spa near Banff. I am in an everybody-just-keep-your-mitts-off-of-me frame of mind, so I opt for the deluxe superduper organic mud seaweed ankle wrap paraffin soak fab buff and polish pedicure. Aside from reiki, which I tend to think of as the Emperor’s New Spa Service, I figure a pedicure is my best bet for minimizing human touch.
I have never had a professional pedicure. My at-home pedicures consist of me hunched on the floor of our dim dungeon of a bathroom, globbing red polish on the sides of toes, getting high on fumes, praying no one will interrupt me mid-schleppicure and force me to run down the hall through thickets of dog fur and tiny Polly Pockets accessories, all of which will adhere to my wet toenails.
When my sister-in-law Jill (David’s brother’s wife, who has also been gifted with a spa certificate) and I arrive at the spa, the woman behind the desk informs me that they have double-booked the pedicure folks. My pedicure is now completely out of the question. I sheepishly hang my head, knowing I have somehow caused this to happen. I have very strong irrational guilt reflexes, finely tuned, very responsive, virtuoso! Fortunately, irrational guilt is always in! So Catholic school! So retro!
But Jill the Defender pounces on the poor woman, demanding with Staten Island flair to know what the spa is willing to offer me in place of a pedicure. The woman runs for cover and consultation in the back.
I hide behind my clipboard and medical form (Have you been previously diagnosed as likely to die of sheer mortification if anyone besides your spouse touches your unclothed body? Yes. Will you be offended if your massage therapist is unable to repress his/her revulsion? Yes. Do you have any pet names for your cellulite and/or varicose veins that you would like your massage therapist to use during your treatment? No. Would you like to be spanked by your massage therapist or provided with any additional humiliation services? No preference.)
The verdict comes back: Any facial I want. Or any aromatherapy treatment. Sniffing oil sounds hands-off enough for me.
“Are you kidding me? A facial? Aromatherapy? That’s the best you can offer?” Jill is a customer-service pitbull.
I spend more time with my nose pressed to my clipboard as the verdict is overturned. A new verdict comes back: Any treatment I want. A full-body wrap with any dead sea creature on hand, a hearty whipping with a birch log, a hot stone massage. No extra charge, anything at all, at the price of the Lost Pedicure.
“Ooh, the hot stone massage is amazing, eh?” one woman in the waiting area offers. “You should go for that.”
I consider this. I like the concept of inanimate objects working as a buffer zone between me and the massage therapist. Hot steamy little bodyguards! Step away from the cellulite. No pictures, please. Back away from the love handles. No fondling the talent.
“I’m in,” I say.
I am introduced to my masseuse, a tall, quirky brunette. It takes a medium-sized, quirky brunette to know a tall, quirky brunette. Let’s call her Mika. “You can put your clothes on that chair,” says Mika, in a tone. It is a tone. I am not sure what variety of tone, but it is definitely a tone, not simply “You can put your clothes on that chair,” but “You can put your clothes on that chair” or “You can put your clothes on that chair.”
When people talk to me, I hear formatting.
“You can leave your panties on,” she says. I blush. I always blush when I hear the word panties. I am going to make myself a T-shirt that says PLEASE DON’T TALK TO ME ABOUT PANTIES.
Mika leaves and I strip fast to prevent mooning her upon her reentry. No one needs that sort of thing just before supper. I assume the face-down position with my head in the padded horseshoe and struggle to haul the sheet up and over my tush, nearly dislocating my elbows.
Mika returns. I am not double-jointed and thus have not managed to cover my rump with the sheet. “Cute panties,” she says. I have had a few massages in my life, and I scan my brain for any recollection of underpants compliments. File not found.
“Uh, thanks,” I say.
Suddenly, Mika snaps the elastic waistband of my underpants. Hard. My chin falls through the horseshoe and onto the floor. I am in an alternate universe, a lewd place where masseuses finger your underpants and snap them.
Mika goes about her stoning prep as if nothing out of the ordinary has just occurred. Perhaps she is mildly epileptic? Perhaps the button of her hemp tunic has caught on the elastic of my underpants? Many, many explanations, surely.
Obscene squishy puckery oil sounds off to my right. “These are no ordinary stones,” says Mika. “They’re organic stones.”
I retrieve my chin and press my face harder against the fluffy horseshoe to prevent a fit of nervous giggling.
“Organic rocks?” I mumble into the terrycloth.
“VOLCANIC STONES. I said VOLCANIC.”
I can feel an attack of inappropriateness coming on. I try to chew the horseshoe and think of a field of broken toys strewn with dead kittens.
“I harvested them myself, from the ocean,” says Mika. “These are not stones from the Internet. These are stones with soul, with spirit. These stones have stories.”
“What ocean?” It is important to differentiate.
“The Pacific.” She is very annoyed with me.
“Harvested from the Pacific. A nature harvest. Very natural.”
“Yes,” says Mika.
I try to share. I have never harvested stones, but I have seen some nature recently. “I saw a bighorn sheep today. And a snowshoe hare. How about that. Now what do you—ahHHAAAH!”
Mika has finished lubing up the hot stones and has gotten down to business. She presses the little volcanic wonders into my flesh, skidding them all the way up the back of my thighs. The dead kittens make room for images of lit trails of gasoline and Evel Knievel stunts. They flood my overtaxed brain.
“Ahh-HAAAH!” I say. “It’s very…ahhhh…OH…oh my—”
“Isn’t it something?”
It is something. I manage to keep breathing as the flames engulf me, a la Joan of Arc. “It’s not every day that you get to experience a completely new sensation,” I say. I can smell my scorched flesh, my legs transforming into strips of human bacon.
“A new sensation! Exactly! Aren’t you clever,” says Mika, jamming the stones into my gluteus magna cum laude. “Be sure to tell me if the pressure is too much.”
“Well, now that you mention it—”
Mika ignores my whimpering and seems to be doing a handstand on my rear end. “Some of my clients say that I like to pretend that the muscles are men and I’m taking it out on them! Isn’t that funny! Taking it out on them! Because they know I hate men! Ha!”
“You hate men? All men?”
More stones burrow into my flesh, becoming one with my femur. “Of course not!” said Mika. “Only most of them! No, totally kidding! When’s your birthday?”
“June 22nd.”
“Really? That was the day of my first wedding!”
“You renewed your vows?”
Now she is searing my upper back. “Different men! Ha! Ha ha! Now I’m dating a guy that people say is Daffy Duck on crack! Ha! You can flip over now!”
I meekly obey. “Well, he must have some redeeming qualities,” I say. She is making me very nervous.
“Daffy Duck’s got broad shoulders. Daffy Duck’s got a real tight ass and knows how to dance. Hot. But tonight I’m going dancing with four cowboys while he’s out of town. I can’t wait.”
“Cowboys dance?” I say. Mika ignores me. She is sautéing the stones again. “Are you going to put them on my face?” I ask.
“Yes. When I DROP THEM ON YOUR FACE,” she says. She squishes more oil onto her hands. “Totally kidding! Ha!”
My passive-aggressive masseuse begins placing stones on my forehead, on the hollow of my throat, on my sternum, on my belly. The one on the hollow of my throat is disturbing me. I am growing agitated. I cannot swallow. I do not want a paperweight on my throat.
“Um, the one on my throat feels kind of unpleasant. Do you think we can maybe—“
“Of COURSE IT DOES,” she coos. “That’s your throat chakra. Obviously, you have a lot to say, and you’re not expressing it.”
I have been with my in-laws for three weeks, on my best behavior, so this is a distinct possibility.
“Interesting,” I say. I am trying to gargle with my own spit to dislodge the stone.
She plucks the stone from my chakra and fires up my shoulders. “You need to go stand in a field and scream. That’s what you need. Let it all out.”
I think Mika needs to stand in a field and scream for a very long time. I try to picture myself standing in a field and screaming and punching trees as my Canadian in-laws watch nervously from the car. I start laughing. I cannot stop.
I am irritating Mika. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know why that’s so funny.”
I manage to get myself under control. Then Mika starts jamming hot rocks in between my toes. It is obscene.
I crack up again. Hysterical psych-ward laughing.
“My, aren’t you just a giggler. Adorable.” She does not sound pleased.
“It’s just, well, it seems a little intimate. The toe thing.” I am struggling to control myself, but my toes are being violated. She has just deflowered my toes. My toes are no longer virgins and they have no one to talk to except my ankles, who will never understand what they have been through.
Mika abandons my toes and shoves a stone into my kneecap. “Are you getting enough action?”
I open my eyes to stare at her. “Did you just ask me if I’m getting enough action?”
“Are you? Oh, there you go again. Aren’t you something. Just adorable.” She wedges a flaming stone into my armpit.
I am convulsing. I am going rigid. Steaming stones pop from my body and onto the floor. My hysterical laughter is bouncing off the flimsy walls and bleeding through the cracks into other people’s spa treatments. I am not the ideal client.
I try to calm my wheezing. “I’ve just…never…had a massage therapist…ask me…if I’m getting any.”
“Well?” she demands.
“I think I’m doing okay in that department.”
“Let me just say that your sex chakra seems a little blocked.”
“I’ll tell my husband.”
“Your heart chakra seems open, though.” She is wrapping up. She has not touched my arms. I am afraid to ask her to touch my arms. They feel very cold in comparison to the rest of my body, virtually hypothermic.
“How can you tell? About my heart chakra.” I have regained control. I have brought back the dead kittens, and they are helping.
“I’m a reiki master. And I do voice-overs,” she says.
That’s it. Game over. The dead kittens in my brain morph into Daffy Duck the crack addict and all hope of recovery disappears. There is no going back. Howls and snorts. Gulping and shrieking. Stones rain down on the floor.
“My goodness! Our time is up already! I just hate to leave you!” says Mika. She snaps on the lights and hurries from the room.
I am out of control. Wave after wave. I am Having A Fit. When I make my way out to the booking area, I snort loudly. Everyone glares at me.
“That was you, wasn’t it?” asks my sister-in-law. “I could hear you the whole time. Everyone could hear you.”
“She told me that my chakras say I need to go scream in a field. Then she violated my toes and asked me if I’m getting laid.” I am howling again. I am weeping. I am warm jiggling Jell-O.
Jill stares at me, then bundles me off to the car. “I can’t believe you let her talk to you like that.”
I wipe my eyes. I try to take deep breaths. No go. We pass a good-sized field. I make a mental note.
That night over dinner, my in-laws ask me about my massage. Jill and I look down at our plates.
“It was fine,” I say. “Just fine.”
January 23rd, 2006
We’ve had a peculiar stretch of spring-y weather lately, and I have decided that it is a good day for yard work. The only problem is that I don’t really understand the concept of “yard work.” I am not sure what to do with myself. So I amble about aimlessly, checking out the muddy scene, with my beloved almost-fifteen-year-old dog trailing behind me.
I figure tackling the dog poo is a good start. My dog agrees, and follows me as I go and fetch the pooper-scooper. He has had a rough few days, another relapse. His hind legs are very weak and keep crumpling underneath him. The day before, when he got past the baby gate and managed to climb the stairs, he got stuck on the way down. Since he’s too big to lift, I had to brace my hands against his chest and coax him to hop his way downstairs with his front legs only, one step at a time, while his hind legs thumped uselessly behind the rest of him.
“Trust me,” I told him, over and over on the way down. We did our best to ignore the indignity of the situation. We go way back, he and I. I want us to go way forward. But Mother Nature has other plans, and she is beginning to make them known.
As I fetch the pooper-scooper from the shed, my old boy hobbles around the perimeter with his head held high, determined to keep an eye on things. He knows better than to leave me to my own devices.
I make my way gingerly around the backyard, picking up mushy globs of poo and hurling them into the woods behind the shed. I do my best to clear the area, knowing that the sensation in my dog’s back paws is not good and he frequently steps in his own mess on the way back into the house. He is a proud guy, and I want to spare him the humilation of having his feet scrubbed with paper towels and dishwashing liquid, if I can.
When the poop’s been cleared, my boy and I survey the scene. I have seen people rake things. I don’t know why people rake things, but it looks simple enough. So I get the rake and scratch and claw the ground with it. I push around clumps of wet leaves and pine needles. I rearrange them, move them from one side of the yard to the other. I tell myself that I am “aerating the soil.” I tell myself that this raking is more useful than raking one of those little desktop Zen gardens. I must be doing something useful.
My dog watches me. He seems amused by my sudden fit of pointless raking and looks like he might say something, then thinks better of it.
He makes his way up his ramp into the house, then turns around and wanders right back outside. I greet him again and put down the rake.
We walk around to the side of the house. There are terrible, terrible things growing at the base of the stone foundation. Malevolent-looking red vines, tangled through the skeletons of, what? Shrubs? Do we have shrubs? Why can’t I remember if we have shrubs? Shouldn’t I know if we have shrubs?
I reach for one of the reddish vines and win a handful of thorns. “Yow,” I say. “Damn plant.” My constant companion glances at me, then walks stiffly and slowly to the front of the house to see if there’s more interesting action on the street.
I do not like Mother Nature and her plans. I do not like these nasty red vines. I am carrying around a pair of red-handled scissors from earlier, from snipping something inconsequential, and I decide to avenge. I start hacking at the thorny weed. I want to make it bleed. But it is making me bleed.
My favorite fellow returns. Nothing good to watch on the street, and his crazy person is trying to snip a vine to death. If only we had Pay-Per-View is what I imagine he is thinking. He plods into the backyard and squats with difficulty, trying to go. I remember when he was just two or three months old, his gangly puppy self peeing like this, before he mastered the macho canine way, one proud leg lifted skyward. His trembling hind legs just won’t cooperate. I look away quickly, before he can catch me looking. He doesn’t need me to see that.
The vine is winning. But I refuse to give in. I head back to the shed and root around until I find the gardening gloves that I bought last summer in a particularly idealistic frame of mind. I attempted a gardening session once that summer, but wound up recoiling in terror when I unearthed a gigantic Darth-Vader–headed beetle, who rose up on its back legs (four back legs? six?) and jabbed at my airspace with its sinister front bits in retaliation.
At that instant, I abandoned all dreams of a recklessly lovely perennial garden (what, that old thing? I barely touched it, just lucky I guess!). “There are terrible THINGS! You don’t know what’s out there! You don’t know what I’ve seen!” is what I believe I was overheard yelping.
I decide I will show them all. I will show the beetle. I will show Mother Nature. I will take out this noxious vine, I will brandish it over my head and yell TAKE THAT at whoever happens to be listening.
Mister Whoever is already listening, or doing his very best to listen. He is beside me again, smiling and panting and monitoring my crazy levels. I am not sure what he hears now, but I talk to him anyway. I smile supersized smiles for him—I throw in some supersized panting, too—as I am not sure what he can see now and want to make myself perfectly clear. If he can see my face, I have made it perfectly clear that I am still his goofier half.
He never asked to live out his golden years in a house full of shrieking toddlers. The last few years, he’s accepted his move to a supporting role graciously—he and his saucy, foxy-faced red-headed counterpart—but from time to time, I catch the melancholy in his eyes. I said this would never happen if kids came along, but of course it happened. We are not so original around here. I’ve shoved him out of the way. I’ve snapped at him, even though he’s never snapped at me, even though he’s never so much as curled his lip in my direction. I’ve scolded him too much for his nervous licking—a habit he’s developed with age, a habit that makes me more nuts than usual. I’ve lost his brush, I’ve lost his medical records, I’ve lost the chance to be just what he needed, just when he needed it. I did right by him, sure, but not all the time. We had a strong enough start, but nearing the finish line now, my heart hurts. I’m not sure I have enough time left to make up all the ground I’ve lost.
I take it out on the vine, sawing with the kitchen scissors. I dismantle it, I yank it from the ground, I cheer when I pull up roots. I stuff the vine carcass in our garbage can. “Ha!” I say. “Ha.”
My dog surveys the carnage. He seems surprisingly relaxed, considering his discomfort. The wind is picking up, and he raises his gray muzzle to catch a good whiff. I smile at him, and he smiles back. We’re having a pretty good time out here, doing our yard work together.
David appears on the back porch, sipping coffee. I decide to impress him with my plant identification skills.
“What is that nasty weed on the side of the house, the one with all the thorns? Wild nettle? Brambles?” I am so smug. I am so smart. I know words like nettle and brambles.
“Guess again,” he says.
My old boy politely takes his leave of us and wanders over to the shed. He is a tactful dog.
“What?” I say. “What is it?”
“Wild raspberry.”
I don’t understand. “Wild raspberry?”
“Yup.”
“Why doesn’t anybody tell me these things? I trashed the wild raspberry bushes? Are you telling me that’s where Sophie got those berries from?”
David takes another sip of coffee. “It’s very hardy. And there wasn’t really enough of it to do anything with.”
“Except DELIGHT OUR CHILD.” This is bad. This is very bad. I have trashed my daughter’s favorite plant. There is no outsmarting Mother Nature.
“It’s okay,” says David.
“Is it?” I say.
He retreats into the house, leaving me alone with my botanical guilt, a garbage can full of ruined raspberry bush, and my dog.
“Huh,” I say to my boy. “Huh.”
He is a nonjudgmental sort of fellow. He watches me, waiting for a cue, a hint of what might happen next.
I watch him, waiting for the same cue. Stalemate.
So I touch his head. I ruffle his ears, I scratch his chin. This, I can do. This, I understand. When I stop, he looks to me for more of the same. His brown eyes are cloudier than they used to be, but just as keen. His body is failing him, but he is all there where it counts.
He’s all there. And he’s all here, for now.
I pat his back. “Let’s go,” I say.
We head for the house. We don’t look back at the scene of the crime. We know better.
January 22nd, 2006
Because I feel like it. Because I’d tell you, if you asked. Because she might ask, someday.
Because rice paddy or no rice paddy, anyone who pushes a wombat-sized creature out of her nether-regions is entitled to an annual public reminiscence.
Two years ago yesterday—November 15th, 2003—I started feeling a little weird around the middle.
I phoned my mother after lunch.
“Feeling a little crampy. Might be stomach flu,” I said.
“Might not be,” said my mother. “Keep me posted.”
By three in the afternoon, I was feeling weirder. Not stop-the-presses weirder. Just slightly weirder around the middle.
David and I had donated Sophie to some friends for the afternoon, so we could devote our full attention to monitoring the situation.
“Let’s take a nap,” I said.
David found this agreeable. He fell asleep. I did not. I lay on my side on our bed next to him, looking out the window I am so fond of. It was a lovely, sunny pre-winter day in New England, a perfectly good day for contemplating any weirdness around the middle.
If we got rid of the aluminum siding, we could paint our house like that nice house across the street, was one of the several lines of thought I was entertaining at the time. I am very fond of my bedside window because it looks out on the blue-green house across the street, which is one of the prettiest houses in town, in my opinion. I always feel sorry for the owner of that house, who must look at our home when he gets his mail. We got the better end of the deal.
The weirdness ramped up a wee bit.
“Interesting,” I said.
Our friends dropped off Sophie. I sat on a kitchen chair and watched her eat dinner, something noodle-ish, as the sun set cruelly on the day and on her peaceful, happy life as an only child.
“I think we should be timing,” said David, who was standing over by the stove. I keep him there and only let him out for naps and toileting.
“I don’t think it’s time for that,” I said.
“Still. Go.”
“I am going. You go.”
“Oh. Right.”
So he looked at his watch while I said things like now and that was one I think and no I mean it’s over now no stop timing no wait there it goes again. It was all so confusing. We have terrible timing.
He glanced up from his watch with an anxious expression.
“Every four or five minutes,” he said. “Should we be concerned?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Every four to five minutes?”
“I’m sure we timed it wrong.”
After Sophie was in bed, I phoned my brother, Joe, who, very conveniently for me, chose to grow up and become an amazing family physician who delivers a lot of babies. Joe still talks to me, even though I once convinced him to swap me his Luke Skywalker and Han Solo and Princess Leia Star Wars figures for my one lousy Jawa, who was missing his brown hoodie. Joe rocks.
“I know you’re my brother and all, but I’ve got some questions. You know. About what’s going on. Um. With my body.”
“I can handle it.”
“It’s a little embarrassing.”
“I can take it.”
“Well, I’m seeing some [too much information] and a bit of [far too much information]. And I’m feeling some crampy things.”
“Contractions?”
“Maybe.”
“How far apart?”
“David says four to five minutes, but I think we counted wrong. I’m sure we counted wrong.”
“Uh—” There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Have you called the midwife?”
“Of course not. She’s very busy. I don’t want to bother her.”
“Right.” Another pause. “So here’s what you do. Take a warm bath. If the contractions stop, it’s probably false labor. If they don’t, call the midwife.”
“Or you.”
“Or the midwife.”
“Right.”
I got in the bathtub sometime after midnight. Just like that, the contractions melted away. Gone. Zip. Nada.
“Damn! My brother is good! I would kill for a doctor like that! Why isn’t he my doctor? He should be my doctor!”
David was leaning against the bathroom sink, looking troubled. He was in between phone calls at this point, but he was still clutching the phone. “I don’t think he could be your doctor. I think there are laws. Ethics. Did they really stop?”
“Totally! Completely! I feel great! I’m going to add some more warm water.”
“I’m calling the midwife.”
“No! Don’t!”
He handed me the phone, which I tried very hard not to drop in the bathwater.
Pam the Midwife did not seem the least put out by the fact that I had called my brother first. She agreed with Joe’s strategy and told me to give her a call if anything changed. Everyone was so reasonable. Everything was so reasonable. It was a very reasonable day, and I was pleased with the world.
I hung up and called my brother.
“I’m in the tub.”
“Okay.”
“The contractions stopped! You were so right! False labor! Totally false!”
“Okaaay.”
“I’m in the tub!”
“You said that.”
“I feel great. But if anything changes, I’ll call you.”
“Or your midwife.”
“Right.”
My brother hung up. I handed the phone to David.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. Look at me. Calm seas.”
David left the bathroom. When he returned to the bathroom twenty minutes later, he found me squatting naked and dripping wet beside our washing machine, which I was embracing like a long-lost lover.
“It feels so cool and good against my cheek,” I said. “I can’t explain it.”
“Contractions?”
“Oof. Oof.”
“I’m calling the midwife.”
“No! Give me the phone!”
I called Joe.
“They’re back. I can’t let go of the washing machine.”
He chose his words with impressive restraint. “Although I appreciate your confidence in me and my abilities as a physician, Jenn, this is probably a good time to remind you that I live in Washington. The state.”
“I know that.”
“This would be a very good time to call the midwife. I would call the midwife. Call your midwife.”
“Right.”
“Tell David to take string and scissors in the car.”
“No string. Dental floss?”
“Fine.”
While I got dressed, David phoned our friend Blair, who’d been alerted earlier in the evening when David was not buying my calm seas bit. He arrived sleepy but willing to be Sophie’s guardian until the next day, when news of life’s latest development would squash the poor thing like a bug.
It was approaching 2AM at this point, and David, feeling grateful, was determined to make Blair feel right at home with a nice middle-of-the-night cuppa. Don’t ever underestimate the power of the Brit-Canuck connection.
“Can I make you a pot of tea, Blair?”
“I’m fine.”
“Well, let me show you where we keep the tea. We’ve got Darjeeling, English Breakfast, Orange Pekoe—”
I grunted meaningfully from the hallway. “Oof. Oof. Urgh.”
“—oh, I almost forgot, we’ve got quite a few varieties of herbal tea—”
Blair protested blearily. “Really, I’m fine—”
I tried hopping. “Getting worse over here. In case you were wondering. Oof.”
Polite Boy would not be stopped. “The blue teapot is on top of the—”
“OH MY GOD ARE YOU KIDDING ME? ARE YOU? WE HAVE TO GO WE HAVE TO GO GO GO GO GO I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO SURE OF ANYTHING IN MY LIFE! OOOOF! URRRGH! OOOF!”
We headed to the car.
“We forgot the floss and nail scissors,” I said. “My brother said to bring them.”
Dental floss and nail scissors, six bucks. Husband’s expression, priceless. Yeah, the joke’s getting old, but it wasn’t in November 2003, trust me. Hey, this is my wombat, I can tell it however I like.
For once, our ancient red Toyota station wagon cooperated with us, possibly sensing the gravity of the situation, and we hit the road, chugging up Route 7 into Vermont.
We live in Massachusetts, but all the groovy midwives seem to live in Vermont, so that’s where we were headed. At 2AM, there wasn’t much traffic, and it was a beautiful night. Brisk almost-winter air, tinged with my favorite smell in the universe— wood smoke and burnt leaves—and a sprinkling of stars overhead. Perfect. No, seriously. Perfect. I remember looking up at the sky and thinking, hey, this is my life, not bad, beats NYC up and down with a stick.
Sure, the weirdness around the middle had achieved Guinness Book Weirdness. Sure, I squirmed a lot and braced myself against the dashboard and made some peculiar, unladylike noises along the way. But it was fun. I can’t remember exactly what we talked about (unlike my usual flawless recall and verbatim recording of every conversation of my life! ha! ha ha!), but we were still smiling when we arrived on the maternity ward. This alone is worth remembering for the kid.
They handed me a rubber girdle. “For the fetal heart monitor,” they said. I tried to figure out a way to get it around my waist a la Houdini by sliding it up one leg and one leg only. Then an arm. No go. Worse than ten Lycra Tubes of Death and Spandex-and-Steel Butt Girdles. I fell over in the bathroom and started laughing hysterically.
I opened the door a crack and handed it back to them. Someone handed me another rubber girdle, this one presumably used to strap equine fetal monitors to the bellies of the mares they breed to make Budweiser Clydesdales.
This worked. I took a look at myself in the bathroom mirror and fell over laughing again.
Pam the Midwife and the labor nurse exchanged glances. “We’re probably going to send you home, but we’ll just check to see.”
If you don’t know what “checking to see” entails, this is for the best. Continue to keep your legs closed and aim them away from any latex-gloved index fingers.
They checked to see. I tried not to hit the ceiling too hard, lest I disturb the ICU on the floor above and set some poor Schmoe flatlining.
“Five centimeters.” They seemed very, very surprised.
“Five centimeters? Isn’t that good?” asked David.
“We just don’t see a lot of women laughing at five centimeters.”
I was bad-ass. Bad-ass! These hips are made for birthin’ and that’s just what they’ll do, one of these days these hips ARE GONNA BIRTH ALL OVER YOU.
I oofed a few extra times to make sure they wouldn’t send me home. “Can I get in the Jacuzzi now?”
“You sure can.” Pam the Midwife smiled and led me down the hall to a huge, dimly lit room with a massive shiny white tub. “Here you go.”
I fell madly in love with Pam the Midwife.
I pulled out my big sporty water bottle and took a deep breath. I did not have a chance to spout a birth plan with Sophie, and I was determined to be a Birth Planner, if just for five minutes before someone jammed a pair of forceps up my hoo-ha.
I showed Pam the Midwife my water bottle and began my rehearsed Nerd Girl speech. “See? An hour ago, the water level was here, and now it is here. I plan to continue hydrating, so that IV fluids will not be necessary. I am prepared to sign a waiver—”
“That’s fine. Here’s the tub.”
“Because I have a serious and debilitating IV phobia that colored my entire first childbirth experience in a very traumatic way—”
“Here’s how you work the jets.” Pam the Midwife fiddled with the controls. Water gushed into the tub.
I had read the books. I had seen the birthing tubs. I had seen the birthing tubs occupied by two types of women: embarrassed-looking women wearing wet T-shirts, and bad-ass naked women.
I had come this far. I was already slightly bad-ass for hitting five centimeters with no assistance except for the moral support of my washing machine. I was going all the way.
Nerd Girl had to announce to the room that she was going all the way. The room was only occupied by David and Pam the Midwife and the lovely blue-eyed labor nurse, but still. I Had a Proclamation of Bad-Assity to Make, and it went something like
Hear ye, hear ye, forsooth, I will hereby be removing my clothing, yea, verily
and then continued along the lines of
Here I go. I’m taking them all off. Right now. In several short moments I will be wearing nothing but this moonstone necklace that my mother gave me, which is reported to ease the pains of childbirth, and my Adidas flip-flops from the Y. I wear these at the Y. I did. When I used to swim. I am not planning on swimming at this time. I am stripping right now because I have seen the T-shirted women in the birthing tubs, and it looks very, very wrong. I will not be one of those women. I will be naked. Am I naked yet?
“No.”
“Now I am. You have seen this before. Have you seen this before? Of course you have seen this before. All of you. In your own way. With your own people. In your case, me—”
“You can get in the tub now.”
“Okay.”
Three in the morning? Three-thirty? Somewhere around this point, Father Time the deadbeat dad took a cigarette break and left us to fend for ourselves. The Jacuzzi helped. It definitely helped. In the way that a tourniquet would be a welcome approach to the bloody, spurting stump of your just-sawed-in-half leg. As in, it’s not a bad way to go, but it doesn’t really solve the problem.
Not so much fun at this point. But of course, you knew that. Even those of you who don’t know about checking to see knew that.
I forgot I was bad-ass. I wandered about on my knees in the Jacuzzi, mooing softly and wondering whose fault it would be if I pooed in the tub. It is possible that my husband touched me, as one might reach out a finger to stroke a sick pet hamster who’s clearly a goner. But it didn’t really stick.
Several times, I heaved myself out of the tub and padded my full-moon self to the private bathroom that was also part of the deal, so concerned was I that I would poo on the floor. Mooing and worrying about pooing. Much of this.
I heard Pam pop her head in. She had been leaving David and me alone, for the most part. I didn’t actually hear this conversation, but David told me about it afterwards, and I liked it so much, I decided to include it here. Again, my rice paddy, my wombat.
“She’s in the bathroom,” David said.
“I’m not worried. She’s doing great,” said Pam. “She’s really cruising along.”
At the time, I would have disagreed vehemently with her assessment of the situation, as I was hanging headfirst off the loo, quite certain that my body was not equipped to handle the stunning and profound UUURRRRRGHHness of it all.
David knocked tentatively on the door, fearing violating the single, inviolable tenet of our marriage: absolutely no pooing in each other’s presence.
“I think we’re way beyond that now,” I said.
He knelt by me. As bad as a mirror. I know I was gray in the face because he promptly turned gray in the face and began trembling.
“Very bad,” I said. “Verrrrrry. Not good. Dying.”
“You…want to get back in the tub?”
“I will poo in the tub. I will poo on their floor. I can’t go anywhere. Urrrgh. All very bad. Very bad. Urrrrrrghhh. Oooooh.”
David, at a complete loss, grabbed a hand towel and threw it around my neck. Think Rocky.
It was a sweet gesture, one of the sweetest I’d ever witnessed. I still knew that death was imminent, but I would go out looking like a prize fighter, and that was something.
“Urrrghh. Ooof. Scared. Very scared. OOOOOOF.”
The nice labor nurse stuck her head in the bathroom. “Is she pushing? Are you pushing on the toilet?”
“Don’t. Know. What. I’m. Doing. OOOOOF. URRRGH.”
“No, no, don’t push! Pam! She’s pushing on the toilet!”
Pam the Midwife rushed in. She and the labor nurse proceeded to drag me off the pot and over to the hospital bed, my hand towel still flapping about my neck.
“No, please, don’t, I’m going to poo on your floor, and I won’t be able to clean it up for a while—”
They checked to see. One flight above me, poor Mr. Schmoe kicked the bucket while his relatives shook their fists at the floor.
“Please don’t do that. I don’t want to have to poo on you or your things. Please. Please.”
“It’s not poo. That’s your baby. She’s here.”
The labor nurse grabbed my left hand. David grabbed my right. Pam set up shop in the only other sensible place. She kept calling for a doctor to come and oversee things, but everything was quiet in the hall.
“I’m scared,” is what I am sure I said to the labor nurse. This is as verbatim as it gets.
“I know. But you can do this.”
I whimpered. “It hurts.” Understatement is an elegant choice for any occasion.
“I know. But this is a good kind of hurt—useful pain, pain that you can really do something with.” Not verbatim, but as close as I can get. I got the drift. I fell madly in love with her, too.
Four pushes. Exploding [far, far too much information] that got a big laugh from the peanut gallery. And then, there she was.
How about that.
No meds, no IVs, no poo on the floor. Seven pounds, five ounces, but we didn’t find that out until later, as this was not a weights-and-measures sort of establishment. Happy Apgars, and then the still unnamed and very pink baby girl was on my chest, blinking. Time stubbed out his cigarette and snuck back in the room: the clock read 4:56. November 16th. A good day to have a baby girl.
A day later, on the way home from the hospital, I said to David, “I’m going to be talking about this for a long time, I’m just warning you. That was the least half-assed thing I’ve ever done in my entire life.”
I can’t tell you if she cried at four minutes to five in the morning. All I thought at the time was, Perfect. Just perfect.
Happy second birthday, my sparkling feisty crackling fiery howling rascally snuggling Hannah-Hattie Belle. You’re driving me crazy right now—I can’t lie, kid—but I would miss you something fierce if you’d never come along. And that’s a fact.
November 16th, 2005
There are many, many things you must not do right now. But here is what you must do: stay calm. Breathe as deeply as you can, which is not very deeply at all. Your ribs are crumpling from the pressure.
In case you lost consciousness for a moment, you are standing two feet away from Meryl Streep, under the suspended halves of a very large boulder belonging to her husband, Don Gummer.
Listen to her husband speak shyly into a microphone about this installation of his; learn that it is titled Primary Separation. Consider your own primary separation: you are less than a yard away from your favorite person that you have never met, and she will never know that you risked your life squirming into two foundation garments just to be here.
She is friendly, engaging, lovely. Did you already say lovely? Yes, you did. It bears repeating. The master of ceremonies takes a minute to state the obvious, perhaps hoping that any gawkers will get it over with, once and for all: Don’s wife, Meryl, is a unique artist in her own right.
She accepts this with low-key modesty, and the focus shifts back to her husband and his work, as it should. Feel guilty that your focus is less shiftable. Reel at the sound of that familiar laugh, right there, right there, no soundtrack! The luck! She is a proud, delighted wife, and it is charming to see. Watch as she and her daughter snap pictures of Don with their shiny cellphones.
Wonder how many of these events they have attended. Wonder what it is like to be lovely Meryl Streep’s lovely daughter and to own such fabulous motorcycle buckle boots at such a young age. Wonder what the Streep-Gummers keep in their refrigerator, and if their pets do unspeakable things to their rugs. One of the reasons you like Meryl so much is that you can so easily imagine her swearing under her breath as she scrapes dog poo out of a braided rug. You can picture her running out for ice cream at 10pm in a hopelessly unattractive parka, or in bed with the flu, blowing her nose and laughing hysterically in her oldest flannel pajamas as she reads an article her publicist has sent her, a piece that describes her as Hollywood royalty.
Rein yourself in. Repeat your mantra: Do not do the things you must not do. Do not do the things you must not do.
It’s not that it is hard for you not to do these things; it’s just that your brain likes to try to convince you that you have done these things. You know that your brain is lying to you, but you are humiliated nonetheless. In the short time that you have been standing here, your brain has already logged a series of very vivid images of you doing various Things You Must Not Do, like punning uncontrollably about rocks (I’m in between a rock and a heart place, because I HEART YOU MERYL STREEP I REALLY REALLY HEART YOU) and barging through a throng of people to grab her hand and tell her that you have the same birthday and that you have always interpreted this as a sign and that you also have a knack for the accents, particularly those of Eastern European flavor.
Put your foot down. Tell your brain if it doesn’t knock it off, you will dash your skull against the rock to beat your mind into submission and you won’t care who’s watching.
The official remarks have just ended, and the crowd heads across the street to the museum for a reception and a tour of some of Gummer’s early work. Follow the crowd. Meryl follows you. Your heels are tingling. A fine day! A marvelous day! So far, you have not attempted a single rock pun. You have not confessed to anyone present that you are wearing two foundation garments. There was the Perrier debacle, true, but overall, this is shaping up to be a most promising afternoon.
As promised, you are on the list. Slap a museum sticker on your muzzled bosom, which growls and tries to break free from the Tube of Death to bite you on your chin. Ignore your bosom and glide into the museum. Make a beeline for the wine.
Try hard to think about art. But it is difficult for a serf to think about art in a room full of vassals, especially when one is a serf who really should be slopping the pigs or sloshing human waste out of the window of her thatched hut. So far, the vassals have not noticed you, but you are sure they will if you make the mistake of opening your mouth. Clamp your mouth shut. Press your plastic cup against your lips and think of pigs.
Vassals, vassals everywhere, and so many drinks to drop. Don Gummer’s exhibition is in a narrow gallery space, and there are a lot of intelligent, tastefully dressed persons milling about sipping wine and saying intelligent, rational things to each other. These people are either being careful not to glance in Ms. Streep’s direction, or they are very good at compartmentalizing and doing the thing that they are here to do, which is, simply, pondering Don Gummer’s art.
Envy them. Stare despondently at a family of rocks resting contentedly upon a row of steel wires. You are not a good compartmentalizer. Everything is connected to everything else; you find signs and symbols and omens and links and parallels and echoes in everything that crosses your path. You feel too much, all the time, and you are hopelessly distracted by the shooting-star stimuli: Is her bag a Birkin? If so, surely a gift? She seems far too sensible to drop $5K on a white leather tote that will be impossible to keep clean.
She is constantly flanked by lovely people or important-looking people or lovely-and-important-looking people. Human buffers, they do not leave her side. Good friends. Your friends would do the same thing. As you reach for another steamed green bean, your mother appears in a little devil suit on your right shoulder. She grabs hold of your earlobe, stuffs her head in your ear, and whispers, You did a wonderful Polish accent in that Holocaust play in Portland. And don’t forget that time you played the nice Manchester granny.
Whisper, Shhhh. Offer your mother a steamed green bean to shut her up. She refuses the green bean and jabs you in the cheek with her pretend pitchfork. Go say hello. Introduce yourself. Shake your head vehemently. It would be terribly rude to barge into one of the inner circles, and besides, that is not what this day is about. This day is simply about the molecules. Meryl Molecules are enough. It is a binary equation: yesterday, you had never been in the same room with Meryl Molecules. Today, you have. This should be good enough for anyone.
Reach for a red grape, then realize that the hand that has just plucked a grape before yours belongs to her daughter, who is now tromping in her miraculous leather boots over to some friends. Realize that you would be disturbed if a stranger evidenced any excitement about eating a grape from the same cluster as one of your daughters. Look neutral. Back away from the grapes and Meryl Streep’s daughter.
Your mother yanks on a lock of your hair and sticks her head in your ear again. Go talk to her. Tell her you’re a screenwriter! An actress! A playwright! Tell her you write a blog! She’ll love the blog!
Shake your head vigorously like a horse plagued by flies. Hiss, Knock it off. She sighs and takes off the devil costume. I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed. Your mother then leaps from your shoulder and disappears under the buffet table.
You are running out of art to look at, and you have already said hi to the two people that you know. Decide that this is it; you have drunk your fill of her molecules, and after one more gallery sweep, you will head back to your life of serfdom, with no regrets. This day will still have been better than the last.
Near the back of the gallery, you realize there are two graphite drawings that you missed, one of a deceased pigeon, and another that is a series of tiny, wonderful sketches of a twisted gum eraser. Inch closer. You like these drawings. You like them very much. Back in the carefree days when you were an unimpressive but happy Studio Art major, sculpture was not your thing, but drawing was. You have always been amazed by what the eye can see in dirt on paper, and these drawings are right up your alley.
Enjoy the drawings for a few minutes. Then decide that it really is time to go. There is no more for you here. The pigs are oinking for their slop.
Reluctantly head for the door at the end of the narrow exhibit hall. Glance to your right: another piece, three stones half-sunk in metal boxes submerged in red earth. Look around for its title: Stay.
Someone jostles your arm suddenly, an expensive-looking man who has just walked away from a chat with Don Gummer, the same Don Gummer who is now standing right behind you. Don Gummer is a nice-looking fellow who looks like he would prefer to be wearing anything other than this tan tweed suit jacket. He is alone, no buffer in sight, and he looks as uncomfortable as you feel.
Carpe the moment. Realize to your surprise that you actually have a question. Smile at him before you lose your nerve. He smiles slightly, wary but willing. Hear yourself say something like, I’m sure you’re really tired of all the schmoozing but would it be all right if I asked you a question? It is far from verbal brilliance, but he has probably heard worse.
He is amenable to entertaining your question, which is probably perfectly capable of entertaining itself, in a pinch. Try hard to speak slowly and rationally. Ask him if his focus is sculpture now, or if he still works occasionally in graphite and charcoal. It sounds all right coming out of your mouth, you decide.
He opens his mouth to answer. He begins speaking, telling you that, yes, he does occasionally still work in—
A blonde woman is approaching on your left. She is talking on a cellphone: Yes, I know, I know. Hang on a minute, Daddy’s right here, let me put him on.
She smiles apologetically at you and mouths the word sorry! as she hands the phone to her husband. He smiles apologetically at you, too, and takes the phone from her.
He turns away, leaving you alone with Meryl Streep.
Excuse me for interrupting, she says. Didn’t mean to break in like that.
Carpe everything you can muster. In no time at all, she will again be surrounded by people, led back into the world of wine-swilling vassals.
Quickly offer your hand. She takes it—takes it in hers. You are shaking Meryl Streep’s hand. It reminds you of your mother’s hand (the full-size version of your mother), soft and quite gentle.
Do not say Hi. Hi or Hello would be far too normal, far too pragmatic. Say something in a breathless rush, something that really wastes time, something that sounds like Would it be all right if I said hi to you?, even though you are already holding her hand, and the two of you should presumably already be beyond this point.
She laughs. Graciously. This is graciousness, pure and simple.
Already, people are closing in on her. You must be quick about embarrassing yourself.
Realize what it is that you want to say. Realize you don’t want anything from her, don’t expect anything, don’t need anything. Realize that what you want to say is thanks, no matter how forgettable this will be to her, no matter how silly this will seem to you in the morning.
The words lurch forth. It’s okay. Let them go, let them fall where they may. You mean well, you know you do. Hopefully she will hear it in your voice, even if she can’t decipher the moist, muddled mess of your words.
Go for it. Tell her that she must hear this all the time, but that you just want to say thank you, because she has been a genuine joy and a delight and an inspiration to you for a very long time, for as long as you can remember.
She smiles politely, but she is distracted by the approaching persons, as are you.
Do not do all the things that you must not do. Do only one of these things.
Say, I know it’s ridiculous but you and I have the same birthday—
Her eyes widen and she leans in. Really? she asks, interested and…pleased? June 22nd?
Nod like a maniac. Don’t hold back; surrender to the Stupid Side. You only live once, and chances are sadly very, very good that you will never again be able to tell her this.
Say, I was born the morning of your 21st birthday I know it’s crazy but I always took it as a sign and it inspired me to become an actor—
Now her husband is handing back the phone to her, and someone else is suddenly talking to her, overriding your silly, serfy words. As she is being led away, she casts you another apologetic glance. The conversation is over. You understand. You are okay with this, surprisingly okay. There are pigs to slop, but you will slop them more cheerfully now.
Watch her leave. She says a few words into her cellphone, a word or two to her walking companion, then pauses. She turns around, back to you.
She smiles warmly. At you. Yes, you. This one is for you, and you alone.
She reaches for your left hand. Yes, yours.
Meryl Streep gives your hand a quick, friendly squeeze. She knows that your conversation ended abruptly. If she were anyone other than Meryl Streep, she might have chatted a moment or two longer with you before her life cut in and demanded that she dance again. She might have.
It is a lovely gesture.
And then, just like that, she is gone, whisked away, spun off into her world.
She will not think of you on her way home tonight. She will probably just take her shoes off in the car and ask her daughter when her school report is due and tease her husband about the shy, adorable way he held the microphone. Meanwhile, you will be cleaning up casserole dishes of vegetable chili and chicken-and-orzo salad after the Parents’ Night dinner at Sophie’s preschool.
But you will be smiling.
*****
Visuals! Quotes! Proof that this was no carb-induced hallucination! Local news coverage and photos of the event await you at the Berkshire Eagle and the North Adams Transcript:
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/entertainment/ci_3095691
http://www.thetranscript.com/localnews/ci_3096068
My mother found me in Picture #10 of the
Transcript’s article’s photo gallery. I’m the one with reddish-brown hair in brown pants and cream top, leaning against the farthest pole trying to steady myself, with Meryl and her daughter just feet away. Mom has already ordered an 8″ x 10″ of the photo.
October 11th, 2005
Drive by a bunch of men installing a public sculpture near your home. It is an impressive rock, sliced in half and suspended with steel cords between four metal poles. Squint at it as your husband says, “What the hell IS that?”
Pass the rock several times over the next few days as you run errands. It’s a nice rock, and you are growing fond of it. Sometimes you feel like that rock, split in two, pulled in opposing directions. But you are too busy to philosophize much more than this, for you Must Do Your Part to Keep Your Family Alive and Passably Hygienic.
Attend to your children; attempt to get them to eat more than a half ounce of food per day, attempt to get them to brush their teeth more than four times a week. Fail at these things. Vacuum listlessly. Wonder if it is too late for law school. Wonder why the student loan people are surprised that your MFA in Theatre has not garnered you the $58,000 you still need to pay them off.
Sift through a long-neglected pile of mail. Peruse a calendar of upcoming events at the local art museum, a place that has exhibits like exploding cars, taxidermied tigers run through with hundreds of scary arrows, and photography of forked-tongued women sitting in trees globbed with fake flesh. You like this place.
Stop breathing. You are looking at the name of the husband of your favorite actress in the universe. Her husband is an artist, and an exhibit of his work is opening at the museum. It is HIS rock.
Immediately email your friend who works at the museum. Say you noticed that this artist is having an art opening. Ask when that opening is. Wait. Your friend writes back. He knows what you are asking. The opening is tomorrow afternoon. She is expected, he writes. Would you like me to get you on the list?
You would like. You would like very much. You convey this to your friend via a stream of overly high-spirited punctuation.
Your friend replies at once. You are not surprised, as he is a kind, dependable man, a man who is frequently called upon to accommodate the rabid enthusiasms of others.
His email contains several sentences, but one word rockets off the page, right through your dilated pupils. The word zaps up your optic nerve like cartoon TNT, exploding into your brain: Done.
You are on the list.
At this time tomorrow, if you play your cards right, you will be inhaling the exhaled molecules of the finest actress of all time, the actress you have loved from afar since you were ten years old, old enough to see her films, old enough to be a regular reader of Ann Landers and the horoscopes and the Daily Celebrity Birthdays in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
There is no reason to wait. This is a blog post; you may certainly time-travel if you wish. Fast-forward to tomorrow afternoon, which finds you grappling with foundation garments at the top of your staircase—an exceedingly dangerous place for such grappling to occur.
You have never needed the BG more. You struggle as you have never struggled before, nearly toppling over the banister and plunging headfirst to the most humiliating demise of all time. Wonder if the mortician has dealt with this before, a bloated corpse trapped mid-thigh in a spandex butt girdle.
Hop away from the perilous staircase and into your room, where you lose your balance and slam your elbow against the dresser. Ignore the blinding pain; continue to fight the good fight. Wonder if you can buy one of those Jaws of Life contraptions on QVC, just to keep on hand for times like this. If you cannot get the butt girdle on, you cannot go. The people at the door will refuse to let you in, saying We’re very sorry, but we simply cannot accommodate the beluga whale you’re wearing around your waist.
Cry out in frustration. You are running out of time. Pray to the patron saint of butt girdles. You do not know who she is, but you would bet the farm that she is a she, and that she has a very unattractive name like Hedwig or Katrinka or Myrtle. Decide on Myrtle because you like the idea of a patron saint whose name rhymes with the thing she’s patronizing.
At this very moment, several size-2 heavenly angels in kitten heels are wheeling St. Myrtle into the operating room for a little liposuction. Nevertheless, Myrtle hears your plea. She doesn’t get a lot of calls these days, and she appreciates the business. Feel all tingly as St. Myrtle sprinkles some sparkly, religious butt girdle lubricant on your head and other pertinent body parts.
The BG slips magically into place. You know it is doing its job because your lower body now feels as though it is encased in concrete, or in that carbon-freezing chamber that Han Solo had to put up with for a few scenes.
Elation courses through your veins as you struggle to breathe. If you could gather enough air into your lungs, you would yell, You rock, St. Myrt of the Girt! Instead you emit a strangled guttural noise that sounds like ankooeezus.
I’m sorry. As much as I know you’d like to, you cannot time-travel, not right now. Forget what I said before. You have another foundation garment to struggle into, the flesh-colored upper-body one that will do its best to smash your obscene bosom into submission so that it does not dip into the artichoke dip at the reception before you do.
“What are you doing?” your husband calls from the bathroom at the end of the hall. He asks this because once again you are slamming into walls and furniture and moaning like a wounded antelope.
What are you doing? You are busy being a National Geographic special. You are going to be late to your one and only chance to occupy the same airspace as your hero because you are a chubby, squishy warthog who is being squeezed to death by a vicious Lycra python.
This is not good, not good at all. Abort! Abort!
When you dislocate your left shoulder in a failed attempt to extricate yourself from the Tube of Death, give in and squeal for help like the pathetic warthog you are. Your husband comes to your aid, but he does not know where to grab. Your brain has gone without oxygen for more than three minutes and you are now saying things like, Pull up pull down pull it off pull it in pull it god just pull it pull it pull it.
Your husband gives the Tube of Death one last, savage tug. Miraculously, he has managed to pop it into place. From your armpits to your knees, you are immobile, and it is good. In a short time, your extremities will begin swelling, rendering you blue and unrecognizable, so there is no time to lose.
Now you may time-travel again. Hurry. Opportunity is knocking, and soon you will be too brain-dead to figure out where the knock is coming from.
Mince your way to the big suspended rock across the street from the museum. Lots of people are milling about, but no one seems to be sweating as profusely as you.
Drink a free cup of Perrier. Scan the scene. No sign of her yet. Forget that you have not finished your Perrier when you motion with your cup for a refill. Your Perrier backwash flies from your cup onto the Perrier bartender and into all of the other cups of free Perrier.
Slink away from the Perrier bar and its frowning bartender. Hide behind one of the big metal poles that the big sawed-in-half rock is suspended from. Wonder what the rock means. Wonder if the rock minded. Wonder how many people the rock would kill if the cables snapped.
Take a few steps back. Scan the scene again.
And just like that, there she is. Crossing the street on her way to the rock, greeting friends, laughing. She is lovely. She is coming closer. Two foundation garments, one dislocated shoulder, the Perrier moment—it has all been worth it.
To be continued…
October 9th, 2005
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