Christmas ADHD

It was a rough Christmas. To be honest, the entire holiday season has been a whirlwind of furious activity. When September arrived, I finally started feeling better. After one week shy of a year from the time my heart went haywire, I was finally starting to feel like my old self.

My old self took a look around and discovered my home was a mess. I spent several weeks scrubbing, cleaning, spackling, painting and barking orders at the rest of the household. New furniture was ordered and the place reorganized just in time to feed the multitudes for Thanksgiving. It took a week to prepare the food that would be devoured in less than two hours.

The next day I rested. Then it was time to prepare for Christmas. The days flew; the husband injured his shoulder at work. He needed care. He needed meds. He needed a doctor but convincing him of such is like trying to pull teeth on a tyrannosaur. We argued. I threw up my arms in surrender and tried to carry on.

The project this year was bath stuff—you know, soaps, oils, gels, salts, powders—all the stuff needed to enjoy a decadent bath, complete with chocolate truffles. What’s a luxurious bath without amazing chocolates? All of it had to be formulated, made by a caring hand for the women in the family. I turned my dining room into a laboratory.

Men don’t really care about luxuriating in a hot bath with fragrant salts and oils. For them it would be baked goods. The kitchen was turned into a bakery. I had to spend hours creating goodies and slapping the husband’s good hand every time he tried to sneak a treat.

Treats are a favorite of most men. They wander through life looking for some tasty confection to shove into their mouths. Grandma always said, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” I think some women should aim their culinary weapon more carefully. Some of them tend to cook for the wrong men and end up with broken hearts and fatherless children.

Oh, yeah—the child. In the midst of flurry and mayhem, the princess fell ill. She came back from the annual cookie baking at Grandma’s with a stuffed head and a slight fever. On Monday, I left work early to take her to the doctor. The poor kid had a sinus infection—or so they thought.

Missing time at work, behind on the gift projects and still trying to find time to do the shopping, Christmas was just a week away. The work week ended, the child was not improving. I was in the final push when she began crying in the night. Fortunately, I was still up furiously working away at getting things finished. At this point, I was no longer looking at the calendar, but at the clock.

The husband was pressed into taking her to urgent care. They sat there for three hours while the smoke hissed from my furious hands. The oven fired non-stop, with the aromas of various cookies mixing with the scents of lilacs, lavender, jasmine, oranges and cloves.

The salts spilled all over the floor.

I love my floor, durable hardwood that shines as highly polished wood should. I believe I wrote about the odyssey of having it installed. Home repairs always come with their own special problems. No matter how well you plan, how organized you are, something always goes wrong.

I have yet to paint the kitchen and dining room. Kitchens need fresh paint regularly, at least in homes where kitchens are used. I cook. I cook a lot. My walls are a mess. I really must get them done. Maybe I should paint them green. Green is a nice color for kitchens.

Where was I? The phone rang and the husband informed me the princess had strep. She was indeed very ill. That’s just fabulous. As I contemplated this new development, I set my bare foot in the spilled bath salts. Oh, yeah. Clean up the salts.

The timer went off and I couldn’t remember why I’d set it. Was there something in the oven? Butter cookies.

My husband loves butter cookies. He’d eat his weight in them every day, if I could bake that much. I would have to hide them if I wanted any left for Christmas presents. I had yet to wrap things and the daughter would be home soon.

So, I wrapped. Still working furiously, I had paper and ribbons strung across the living room floor. When she got home, she found a pile of packages covered in pretty paper. I told her she could decorate them with all the ribbons and trinkets from the wrapping box and turned her loose.

The husband returned to town to fetch meds and toilet paper. Antibiotics have an adverse effect on the digestive tract. I also asked him to get yogurt. It’s essential while taking antibiotics.

The day ended, the child tucked in and the next day was a mess. Not a surface in the main part of the house was clear. There were still cookies to bake, soaps to make, gifts to finish and a kid who was up in the night with an ear ache.

Ear pain is the worst. The poor kid has dealt with this since she was three months old. There is nothing more crazed in the world than a mother with a sick kid. When she’s in pain, I’d kill to have her healthy again.

Another dose of meds and a glance at the abandoned vacuum cleaner and I tried to remember what I was doing. The husband complained of throat pain. I demanded he see a doctor immediately. He told me to . . . Never mind.

Focus. Christmas gifts. Cookies? Tinsel is shiny.

The day sped by. It was a day when I cursed the Mayans. If the end of their calendar had meant the end of the world at midnight on the 21st, I wouldn’t be struggling to finish crap up. The Mayans were an interesting people. So much technology, so much violence. I wonder what they would think of our modern Christmas rituals.

The cookies are burning. I don’t even remember putting then in the oven.

There was a loud crash at the back of the house. I didn’t bother to find out what it was. It didn’t matter. I still had to clean up bath salts.

Cookie sheets loaded with balls of raw dough were shoved in the oven. Melted soap had to be poured into molds.

The kid was screaming again. The pain was unbearable. Her regular doctor could get her in right away. Get dressed. Now!

The strep was drug resistant. They put her on something stronger and recommended complete bed rest. Well, duh. It was Christmas Eve and Christmas with the family was just canceled. While driving to the pharmacy, I made all the calls needed to inform family, blew up at my sister who didn’t want to help get the gifts to my mother’s—after all the hard work—and got the kid home. The concern now was her infected eardrum rupturing. It did, later that night. It’s the first time it’s ever happened.

Christmas Eve. I’m in a panic. There are things to finish. My brother-in-law generously offered to pick up the gifts for my mother’s party. I suspect it was because I blew up at my sister, then called my mother to tell her I would bring the things myself , then my mother probably called my sister to tell her to cooperate and now the entire family is angry at me. I don’t care at this point. I’m still walking in spilled bath salts. I grabbed a broom.

The broom lay forgotten on the floor while I boxed, bagged, wrapped and tagged. It was all done when the man arrived. He didn’t look very happy. I’m sorry for that. Truly I am, but I shoved the thought to the side while tending the child’s pain. I put a pot of soup on, tripped over the broom and skinned a toe on the bath salts.

The husband announced he was hungry. The kid wanted to unwrap gifts. The sausage we were supposed to share with the in-laws for Christmas Eve dinner needed to be cooked. Forgetting completely about the soup, I started a loaf of bread to go with the spaghetti I was now planning.

The lights on the tree are pretty. It would be nice if I could enjoy it. I sat down to gaze at it. The kid announced she was hungry. I had to feed her because she was losing weight from lack of appetite. I just put a tray in her lap when the husband returned with some of her favorite soup from her favorite restaurant. Excellent timing.

I was done. Finally. After stubbing my toe on the broom in a pile of bath salts, I cursed and began packing all my supplies. The husband complained about the mess on the floor, but didn’t bother to help clean it up. Instead, he made a bee line for the piles of cookies I’d failed to hide.

The sun was shining on the melting ice outside the window. Shiny. The cat ran through the room and skidded on the salts. I finally remembered to clean them up, finished packing the supplies, put the centerpiece in place and headed for the living room.

“Can we unwrap presents yet?”

The child was finished with her lunch, patiently holding the tray with its uneaten remnants of food. Dropping a handful of tissue paper, I took the tray and tried to find a clear surface in the kitchen to set it on. It was a mess. The cat found something to bat across the floor and right underfoot. The dog chased after the cat. I tripped and knocked over a jar of bath salts.

To occupy the kid, I let her open a gift. It was a sketch kit, complete with everything a sickly child needed to occupy her hands. She was overjoyed.

I stepped in bath salts while carrying empty tea things to the kitchen and went in search of the broom. I found something that needed to be wrapped and went back to the piles of crap in the living room. Ribbons and bows and tape and paper—all over the floor. Decorating gifts is a creative talent of mine. I enjoy it. I don’t use those cheap ribbons available only at holiday time. I go to fabric stores and buy the good stuff. I use lace and ornaments and candy canes.

The husband growled about gritty salt under his feet.

I abandoned the living room mess and went in search of the broom. The kid wanted water.

The sausage was burning.

The dog was chasing the cat.

The stockings were hung with great care.

The last batch of cookies were disappearing down my husband’s gullet.

I forgot what I was going to write about. Christmas rituals? Insanity. Ooo, that golden ornament is shiny. Nice.

Alfred Hitchcock Can Bite My Tail Feathers

April 4, 2012

Have you ever felt like you were trapped in a bad episode of The Twilight Zone, or perhaps Alfred Hitchcock’s ghost was playing a practical joke?  Today was such a day for yours truly.

It all started when our ten-year-old princess ran to my room early this morning.  “A female cardinal is knocking on the front door!”  She walked away giggling and continued to get ready for school. 

After she ran to meet the bus, I started getting ready for work.  As I toweled my hair, I heard a strange noise.  I remembered what my daughter said about the cardinal and went to investigate.  Sure enough, a rust-colored cardinal was attempting suicide on the glass of my front door.  It was a strange moment for me.  The animal saw me, but continued to crash into the window.  I shooed it away and finished getting ready for work.

As I drove to town, minding my own business, I saw a hawk.  It was a magnificent creature, patrolling the field to my right.  Or so I thought.  The bird suddenly changed course and headed straight for my vehicle.  It came in close, but then circled away.  It was another strange moment, but just when I thought I was safe, the blasted thing veered right and swooped down over the front of my Saturn POS.  I screamed, swerved, and narrowly missed another suicidal bird intent on crashing my windshield.

Shaken, but still able to laugh it off, I made it to work in once piece.  Dismissing the two incidents, I worked until my first break.  The day was beautiful, so why not go outside?  As I stepped through the door, the warm spring air welcomed me.  Clouds gathered overhead, shutting out the sun as I walked across the parking lot. 

I was halfway to my car when I heard a clatter overhead.  Three squabbling robins fell from the sky.  One landed in my hair while another hit my face.  I dashed for my car, glancing around to see if anyone else saw me making a fool of myself while I did the icky-bird-in-my-hair dance. (Picture Ace Venture swamped by a flock of bats.) Thankfully, I was alone. 

It was another strange moment.

In my car, driving away from the scene of the last bird attack, I wondered if old Alfred was hanging around with a camera crew.  Was he doing candid films of women dodging homicidal birds?

I parked on the side of a street not far from the office while contemplating this last attack.  I started to recognize how Tippi Hedren must have felt when she was running for her life from a flock of maniacal pecker-heads.  Soon it was time to return to the office, so I put my car in gear and pulled away from the curb.  I nearly put myself through the windshield when I hit the brakes.  It was a blackbird this time, slamming itself into a stupor against my closed door window. 

What the hell?

Lunchtime came and went without incident, as did the afternoon break.  I thought I was safe.  Leaving for the day, glad to see the backside of another work day, I stepped into the gloomy afternoon wind and heard the sound of the speaker on the corner of the roof.  It’s an apparatus installed to deter the unflappable Canada geese that had taken over the area in the past two years.  We hadn’t seen a single goose on the grounds since they’d put it in.

As I stepped around the back of my car, I saw four geese.  They were big suckers with foul (no pun intended) tempers and no desire to give ground.  They came at me, heads lowered, wings spread, spoiling for a fight.  They stood between me and my route of escape.

Most who know me know that I have little tolerance and even less patience.  The ornithological world was testing me and I’d had enough.

Throwing my lunch bucket at the birds, I lashed out with my purse (it’s actually more like a piece of luggage—if I’d connected with their pea brains, they would have dropped).  It must have been quite a spectacle:  birds lunging with a screaming, belligerent woman swinging her purse, intent upon bird murder.   The geese finally gave ground.  I chased them to the street and returned to my car the victor. 

Alfred can bite my disgruntled tail feathers.  If he decides to play it this way again tomorrow, I’m going to carry my shotgun with me and put bird on the menu for supper.

That Vicious Mood

January 27, 2010

The mood comes upon us and we don’t even realize it.  We rise in the morning, look at the scary freak in the mirror, scratch our butts and start the day.  Then, while listening to Snap, Crackle and Pop over the din of morning news reports, barking puppies and screaming kids, it hits.  The Mood…

Oh, come on.  Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.  We’ve all been there.

The cereal tastes like crap.  The kid is on a tear, screaming because she doesn’t have a thing to wear in all the clothes you spent a king’s ransom on.  The dog just chewed through your best summer pumps, which she dug out of the back of the closet after depositing a fresh, fragrant gift next to your bed.  The sweet little trinket/bimbo on the tube is smiling brightly and giggling while she tells you—with great enthusiasm—that you better get out your long handles and snow boots because there’s going to be yet another blizzard in a long succession of sunless days.

Suddenly you’re envisioning that adorable puppy roasting on a spit over a blazing fire and watching the weather-twerp’s dyed hair dissipate, leaving her bald and screeching her humiliation in front of the camera.

Yep, that’s right.  It’s The Mood.

Beware, dear people.  This is not something to be taken lightly.  It affects Northerners far more frequently than Southerners—especially in the winter months—but no one is immune to its influence.

Your morning commute becomes a nightmare of knuckle-dragging idiots without enough glyco cells between them to make a decent primate.  (For you brainiacs out there, I know that’s not the correct usage of the terminology, but I’m being facetious.) 

The guy in the white Cadillac Escalade is back, taking up your lane as well as his while he juggles his morning coffee, his cell phone and the briefcase he keeps fishing crap out of.  What the hell?  Is it on auto pilot?

Oh, let’s not forget your favorite soccer mom, shuttling her kids, the neighbor’s kids and some vagrant who sneaked into her soccer-mom-prerequisite minivan.  She’s not paying attention either.  She’s singing along to the radio and studying her daily agenda while Junior and his buddies toss the ball around until it flies out the window and crashes into your windshield.  WTF?  Why do they have the window down?  Hellooo…It’s winter!

Then you get to work and your coworkers are doing that pretend-to-be-cheerful-so-they-think-you’re-a-stellar-employee dance with their big fake smiles and their jovial greetings.  You want to tell them all to stick it up their butts, but you smile and do your best to join the dance, or the supervisor gives you that look that says she knows you’re in The Mood. 

That’s where I found myself today—deep in the clutches of this nasty frame of mind.  I was too PO’ed to even fake the dance as I went about my daily grind at the lovely cube farm. 

My first call of the day was from an egotistical dork who took great pleasure in reminding me that I was there to serve him.  I’d like to serve him, all right, with a nice Chianti and some farva beans.  Slurp.

But I did my job, saying in a voice oozing saccharine, “That’s what I’m here for, sir.  I’ll be happy to take care of whatever issues you have.  Now, what may I do for you?” 

With a Star Wars Universal Translator the caller would have heard, “Yeah, let me take care of the problems you caused because you’re too dim-witted to figure out how to fill out the same paperwork you’ve been filling out in the twenty-two years you’ve been doing your job, you mindless sack of cow pies.  I’ll fix it with some arsenic.  You want that straight up, or on the rocks?”

It didn’t get much better as the day progressed.  Everyone, it seemed, was in the same humor.  They were ticked off at the world, and me in particular because I was foolish enough to take their calls.  By the time I was finished for the day, I was ready to (in the words of Arlo Guthrie in his famous Alice’s Restaurant—the long version) Kill!  Kill!  Kill!

Not having taken enough punishment for the day, I decided to stay after and call up member services to deal with a few of my own benefit issues before heading out into what was starting to look like a wicked winter storm.  There’s an employee program that reimburses us for money spent to get in shape, have well care visits with doctors and anything else we do for our own good health, but I can't get into the system.  I haven’t been able to since I signed up over three years ago.  I have to get the paperwork before I sign up at the gym in order to get the discount.  I’ve been trying to join a local gym for several weeks now and this is the only thing holding me up. 

So, I stayed late, on my own time, to talk to the people at the help desk, but because I'm an employee, they can't access my account and fix it.  I have to talk to someone in employee services.  Those people are only there during the same hours I'm on the phone and I have to have a computer in front of me when I talk to them on the phone, so I can't call them on my lunch hour because I'm not supposed to use my company computer or the company phone for personal business during regular business hours.  ARGH!

An hour and several handfuls of hair later, I headed into the eye of the storm—and I’m not talking about the weather.  I was fed up to the gills with the day, with the job, with the people around me and the world in general. 

It took time, and a great deal of personal restraint with all the knuckle-draggers on the road, to make it to the interstate.  As I headed for the on-ramp, my one goal was to make it before the salt truck/snowplow two car-lengths ahead of me got there.  I was just about to make my move when a Mercedes cut me off.  A big glob of sticky slush hit my windshield and left me temporarily blinded.  By the time my wipers had done their job, there were two cars on the side of the road, the Mercedes was behind me again and the salt truck was on the ramp.  With a few choice words for Mr. Mercedes, I followed the truck—at a safe and slow distance.

For those of you who rarely or never see a salt truck, this big thing on the back of the truck wings salt chunks everywhere, making it impossible to pass without damage to your car, so I had to stay behind it.  It was spraying rock salt, some chunks as big as my fist and the mix of raw salt, slush from the truck tires and the snow coming down caused a nasty film on my windshield that was near impossible to wipe away. 

I got into the left lane and tried to pass him, but the salt sprayer covers both lanes, so bits and pieces were hitting my car.  I got behind him again and stayed there.

Finally, the others behind me decided to slide around him.  The first was Mr. Mercedes and I had a wicked moment of malicious glee when a huge chunk hit the car causing something to break off the front end.  I had to swerve to miss it when it came flying back.  Oh, the perverse joy!  Then came several others, one in a big SUV.  I got on his back bumper and followed him around, using him as a shield.  I got past the big truck, got up to my exit, took the next ramp to my turnoff and ended up behind another salter. 

I pulled off the road, screamed profanities and waited until I was sure he was far enough down the road before I continued. 

Let me tell you, dear readers, there isn’t enough chocolate ice cream in all of Christendom to make a day like this go away or cure The Mood once it sets in.  

Censorship in the Land of the Free

Constitution of the United States of America

BILL OF RIGHTS

AMENDMENT I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

It’s been a while since my last post.  I apologize for it.  I’ve been very remiss.  For those of you who visit here looking for something pithy, something that gives you a moment to relish someone else’s domestic miseries, I apologize again.  This is not that post.

Let’s be serious for a moment.  Allow me to discuss something horrifying that is happening more and more often of late in our beloved homeland: Censorship.

To be fair, I’m not talking so much about what the government does daily to silence people.  That may be a topic for another day.  The subject of this post is censorship imposed by corporate entities.  The latest attack has been imposed by such banking corporations as PayPal.

PayPal, as well as other on-line banking services have taken it upon themselves to tell publishers just what kind of stories they may sell to the poor, misguided public.  That’s right, my friends, they’ve decided to ban any seller of certain types of . . . dare I say it?  EROTICA!  ThereIsaidit.  Whew.

This is not a ban on all erotic stories, mind you . . . at least not yet.  It’s only certain types.  These semi-taboo and taboo subjects are not exactly my cup of tea, but to paraphrase the words of Evelyn Beatrice Hall who wrote under the pseudonym S.G. Tallentyre when she summed up the beliefs of Voltaire, I may not like what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it. 

The thing is I shouldn’t have to defend it to the death.  I live in the “Land of the Free”.  This freedom of speech is written in stone.  No, really.  There are plaques and monuments all over the country where these words are inscribed in stone.  And they should be in every country, every land, every culture.  The free exchange of ideas, creative expression and bawdy jokes is a freedom every single human being should enjoy, but many don’t.  Here in America, the line is being drawn.

It’s being drawn against one of our most sacred laws.

As I indicated earlier, the types of stories under attack aren’t really my kind, but I do write stories with erotic content.  Not all my work has sex, but some of my most popular titles do. 

Okay, let’s see a show of hands.  How many of you actually read my work?  I see a lot of women, but judging by my fan mail, there are just as many men.  Come on, guys, don’t be shy.  There’s nothing wrong with indulging in an action-packed romantic escapade where the girl gets the guy, and in the end they make lots of babies and live happily ever after.  (My favorite was the ex-Marine who expressed his anger at me for bringing him to tears—you know who you are.)

How would you feel if you couldn’t buy the new title waiting in the wings because two people in the story have the audacity to engage in intercourse—which we probably all agree is the natural progression of things when two people fall in love.

PayPal hasn’t gotten around to banning such titles yet, but it’s a real danger.  What’s next?  By their reckoning, the Bible should be banned, as well as many other religious and holy books, too.  It’s an interesting—albeit frightening—course in this life.

Let’s explore other writers.  Much fine literature is rampant with sexual content.  Consider, if you will, the following authors and their titles:

Thomas Keneally, Schindler’s Arc (from which comes the massively successful movie, Schindler’s List)

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (even in France when it was written, it was realized that the right to publish it far out-weighed the government’s authority to crush it.)

Radclyff Hall, The Well of Loneliness (Oh, wait.  That one was successfully censored by our own government in the 1928 U.S. obscenity trial, due to—heavens!—lesbian sex.  All copies of the novel were destroyed.  Of course, someone rather naughty saw to it that it was republished in recent decades.)

James Joyce, Ulysses (Holy &*^%, there’s masturbation in the story!)

Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson, And Tango Makes Three (It’s a children’s story, for crying out loud, but because it deals with two male penguins bonding together to care for an egg—you know, like in real life—people want it banned as having “gay” overtones.)

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (So darned sexual! It’s the third most challenged book.)

Many of you have read some of these exceptional titles.  Many of you have read classic and recent titles by great authors and found more than one titillating scene in them.  We read them to feel, to escape, to learn and to experience.  Should any of them be banned?

Our freedom of speech is a powerful tool—and a powerful weapon.  It was used as a weapon to free this country from oppression over two hundred years ago.  It’s still useful today.  The time is now, ladies and gentlemen.  It’s time to speak up before these revered works are no longer available. 

Let’s show these over-bearing corporations that we, the people, are not misguided, ignorant or in need of Big Brother to decide what we can read, what we experience and what we want to learn.  I, for one, will be making my stand against censorship and any other form of oppression that threatens my freedom.  

Buzzers, Bleeps and Blips

December 1, 2011

The city streets are very deserted at 3:00 AM.  You can go from point A to point B with few obstacles.  It’s quite peaceful, really.  There’s a certain amount of serenity in the darkness, the quiet and the lack of traffic.  One has a moment or two to reflect on life’s strange quirks. 

Life has many quirks.  Some are funny.  Some are not.  When one gets a call before 3:00 AM, it’s never good and it’s seldom funny.  My first thought was, I hope that’s my husband’s buddy drunk-dialing again.  It wasn’t.

So I found myself on the deserted city streets, viewing the seeming serenity of the quiet darkness, contemplating this sudden turn, hoping the quirk turned out to be funny.  It didn’t. 

Buzzers tell stories, as do bleeps and blips.  Hospitals are full of these sounds.  Each turn in the long corridors offers new levels of sound, new reminders of the frailty of life—and life is very frail.  As I passed every door along the way, I viewed quiet, dark rooms with traumatized bodies, staff who worked to make them healthy and machines with monitors and mysterious buzzers, bleeps and blips. 

Those in the know, those tireless members of the medical community, possess the knowledge of what each sound means.  They view the monitors with careful consideration, jump to attention with every minuscule change, take action when needed, or simply offer words of encouragement to scared, broken humans. 

Even the waiting room has these sounds.  Coffee machines bleep and blip.  Intercoms buzz.  At this time of day, though, there’s no one else around to hear it.  There is nothing but the waiting, the quiet contemplation and the sad knowledge of why one is there. 

Whole lifetimes can be spent in a single hour of waiting.  The hospital chaplain will stand in quiet support, family members arrive with looks of horror on their faces.  Life is frail.

The halls of the hospital are long, dark and quiet.  Moving through them is akin to being a mouse trapped in a maze.  Each footfall is a reminder of the waiting.  Pacing through the corridors is hard on the feet, but occupies the mind, keeping it distracted from the sounds in the rooms. 

Doctors in white coats confer with families and loved ones, nurses and orderlies rush about as they tend to their charges, housekeeping staff bring linens and sweep floors.  Worried faces of mothers, lovers, fathers, siblings, husbands, wives, children—all listening to the bleeps and blips and buzzes—all of them hope for a miracle and some get it.

The interminable hallways beckon as we move from one waiting room to another on the other side of the facility.  The air ambulance has landed, the procedure performed and the patient moved to recovery.  The frailty of life does battle with the indomitable human spirit and loses.  The day is won, but the waiting continues.  A smile, a confused look, a frown that asks what happened and all are relieved to see the will to live, to return to things left undone and the anger of being disrupted.  There are strong indicators in the buzzing, the bleeping and the blips.  It’s a steady rhythm, a chorus of powerful music, singing of life restored.  Rock on.

The Blessings of Life

7/3/10

It was a good week.  Hell, it was a grand week.  All things considered, it ended on a very high note.

At the end of last week, I thought things were pretty crappy.  I was facing a Saturday morning spent in overtime, followed by an afternoon of long-overdue washing in the musty, humid confines of our friendly neighborhood laundromat. 

My washer is dying.  My dryer isn’t in much better shape.  The house needs work—lots of work—and book sales ain’t what I wish they would be.  After spending $1200.00 to keep my lemon of a Saturn on the road, I’ve been running a bit short in the cash department. 

Summer expenses are the worst.  You shell out money for entertainment in the long summer days.  You pay for fancy summer schools to keep the kids’ minds engaged.  Then there’s air conditioning for those sweltering days and supplies to keep the sun from frying your skin and the bugs from eating you alive.  Vacations—even those spent at home—take a bite out of the pocket book.  And let’s not forget yard beautification!  It costs a pretty penny not to be the one house in the hood people cluck their tongues at.  Sigh.  Summer is expensive and the income remains the same as any other time of year. 

Ah, but I digress (like always).  It was Saturday and not starting out to be the weekend of my dreams.  So off to work I went, to spend some quality time trapped inside my stall at the cube farm.  Gratifying though it was to see I wasn’t alone in the world of financial crunch, I would happily have given anything to be anywhere else.  As I looked out over the sea of equally dismal faces, I wondered what these people would be doing if not stuck to an over-cooled office on such a fine, sunny day.  Would there have been pool parties, trips to parks with kids in need of parental attention, cookouts and picnics?  What price do we pay when we sacrifice our lives to the almighty dollar?

I stayed as long as I could stand—three and a half hours.  I promised to stay longer, but there comes a point when too much is enough.  I left.

The laundromat was fun.  I loaded two large carts with all the dirty clothes and bedding I had in the car and wheeled it all inside.  There was a lot of wash.  To say no one besides the driver would fit in my vehicle would be an understatement.  As it was, I had to shift with the load while I drove.

Once inside the stink of the place, feeling the sweat of other patrons hanging in the air and surrounded by the chemical stench of detergents and fabric softeners, and the aforementioned sweat, I wondered if the wash could wait another week.  As this thought was wending its way through my brain, one of the hampers tumbled off the cart and spilled forth on the floor.  No, it couldn’t wait.

I loaded up three four-load machines, two double-load machines and three single loaders.  After kissing goodbye to $25.00, I sat down to wait for the wash cycles to finish.  It was at this time I looked around at the other hapless patrons.  One thing I noticed was how shabbily everyone was dressed.  Yep, it was laundry day.  They were down to rags that were two sizes too small—a lamentable sight.  Apparently there is no dress code at the coin wash and I was over-dressed in my business casual. 

One woman kept yelling at her tweenies, while her husband/significant other rolled his eyes in frustration.  An older, tidy gentleman carefully guarded his two washers, stepping between them and anyone who dared wander too close.  A woman with the shape of a beach ball—with tiny head and short limbs—was intent upon telling me all about her horrendous health issues, going into vivid detail about the manner in which her many cysts were lanced.  A strange looking man was busily spraying every inch of every stitch of clothing he had with “Shout”.  Very odd.  My favorite, though, was the man with the braids in his long gray beard.  I’m just sure there’s a story there.

On the TV was some low-budget horror flick with bad acting and terrible animatronics.  The spectators were cheering for the monsters and laughing at the unbelievable panic of the nameless actors.  Ah, entertainment. 

When the washers finished, I began the arduous task of removing a couple hundred pounds of wet blankets, towels and clothing from my many washers.  The clientele of a laundromat is very territorial.  When I filled ten dryers along one long wall and staked out two tables for myself, I received quite a few nasty glances.  Tough ta-tas, ladies and gentlemen.  I got a lot to do and less time to do it in.

It’s been a long time since I’d been in a coin wash.  Did you know that you only get eleven minutes per quarter in a dryer these days?  I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve never been able to get anything dry in eleven minutes and I was running out of coins fast, so off to the change machine I went.

I passed by the guy guarding his washers and made the mistake of stepping too close.  He almost ran me down getting to them before I could steal his jockeys.  After waiting in line for the man ahead of me to scoop his change out, I slipped a twenty in the slot and heard that lovely clang of eighty quarters slamming into a metal tray.  “Jackpot!” I yelled and began snatching at the coins as if I’d hit it big in Vegas.  The manager was not amused.  I was by her expression though.

On my way back to the dryers, I noticed Shout-man was still hard at work spraying his trousers.  For a moment I thought of telling him about a new invention called laundry detergent, that you could just pour a measure in and, Voila! your clothes come out clean.  But then I thought maybe it was a kinky fetish of his.  One mustn’t interfere with another’s personal gratification.  I shrugged and went on.

Cyst-woman filled the last two dryers on the end of the row where I worked, taking the table next to mine.  Oh, goody.  A couple more hours of tales of gore and mayhem.  Joy. 

Another woman had come in with seven kids and several loads of wet laundry in tow.  She gave me a scathing look when she saw all the dryers I fed with coins.  The kids commenced to screaming and running the minute they came in until the biggest knocked me down.  Now, this boy was a huge kid, bigger than his rather large mother—but when she saw what happened, she laid into him until he squawked for mercy.  The shivering child found a chair in the corner where he sat quietly for the rest of my stay.  Cyst-woman began mumbling something about minorities who didn’t know how to control their children and I turned up the heat on the dryers.  Come on, clothes!  Cook up already.

I folded, put things on hangers and fed more coins into machines.  The older man, with his few items now neatly folded and tucked under his arm, made a point of approaching me.  He wished me a pleasant day before leaving and pointedly ignored everyone else.  How very peculiar.  Shout-man continued to spray his shirts.

Cyst-woman had finished the descriptions of her underarm cysts and boils and moved on to her copious amounts of stomach mucous.  I began making deals with the dryers.  “If you work a little faster, I’ll hook you up with that smart-looking washer over there.  You know she wants you.”  “Okay, look, just get the clothes dry fast and I’ll see you get a long vacation on the Island of Misfit Toys.  Help me out a little, will ya?”

Finally!  It seemed to take forever (four and a half hours actually), and I’d already made several trips to my car with loads of clean things, but it was all finished.  Big Mama smiled at me and apologized again for her clumsy son.  Cyst-woman seemed rather dejected that I was leaving.  Shout-man finally started his washers.  Braided-beard had a twinkle in his eye as he grinned and waved.  I still think there’s a story there.

Home again after a very long day, I carried the first basket of items in and set it down on the carpeting.  Something was different.  With a frown on my face, I looked carefully about the place.  Had hell frozen?  Was I losing my mind?  Was I hallucinating? 

The house was clean.  Not just tidied a bit, but really clean.  The furniture gleamed, the carpet had luster and the kitchen was spotless.  Even the kitchen floor sparkled from a fresh scrubbing.  Halleluiah!  I didn’t know what had happened, but I thanked the goddess of all celestial housekeeping for her kind intervention and went in search of my husband.  Every room I passed was tidy, beds made, things put away. 

When I found him, he said something to me that I’ll never forget:  “You worked hard today.  I don’t want you to do anything but relax.”

My response?   “Who are you messing around with and how did you get her to clean the house?”

Yes, I’m sarcastic and rude, but give me a break.  This was completely out of character for him.  He’s not above helping me on house-keeping day, but he so rarely ever takes the initiative, I couldn’t help being a little suspicious. 

Then I decided it didn’t matter.  If he was screwing around, he was forgiven.  Gentlemen, let me clue you in on something about women.  When our homes are in order, all is right with the world.  We become very happy creatures.  I came home to a clean house.  That’s all that mattered.  And he got a big hug, a big smile and a very sloppy thank you kiss from a very grateful wife. 

After everything, the weekend was going to be all right.  And it had stopped raining.  The constant monsoon that was our Illinois spring had finally trickled to a halt. 

Sunday dawned sunny and hot.  The air was so thick you needed a machete to cut off a chunk to breathe, but I wasn’t about to let that stop me.  The yard needed a lot of attention.  All the rain had done wonders for the flower beds and tomatoes, but the weeds were taking over.  I had to use a digging fork to pull them all out.  Then my daughter helped me move the piles of refuse to the compost heap—a mound that doubled in size as we worked.  Together we planted the cannas my beloved Aunt Alice so loved and installed the water fountain my mother had given me for Christmas. 

My house was clean, my yard was in better order.  Things were looking up.  Still, one thing bothered me.  The skeleton of my ruined gazebo stood over the barren patio I’d built with my own hands.  It’s such a sad sight.  Knowing I wouldn’t be able to replace what Ma Nature tore asunder really irks me.  I loved writing out there.

Ah, but that’s why I was putting in the extra hours, right?  It was to pay for those extras we just can’t afford at present.  Times are hard all over and I should be grateful I have a job to put the time into.  Still, it would be many weeks of overtime before I could buy a new one.  It wasn’t going to happen this year.

But my house was clean.  When I woke Monday morning, it was still clean.  Oh, how I love a clean house, waking up and walking across the smooth carpeting, fixing breakfast in a neat, tidy kitchen.  I was in a good mood when I drove my child to school.  It was the same when I left work that evening.  Tuesday found me again in a good frame of mind even though I worked late and Wednesday morning when I got up, I found a few things out of place.  No problem.  In ten minutes I had the place neat as pin again.

Wednesday at work was a bit rough and very long.  It seemed everyone I talked to was in a foul temper and bent on taking it out on me.  Life at a call center is a pain in the ass sometimes.  But I was determined to keep everything positive.  I drove home slowly, taking time to unwind—after working extra hours—with the windows wide open and the wind in my hair. 

Pulling to a stop at the edge of the driveway, I got out of the car to get the mail.  There was an envelope from my father.  I thought, this can’t be good, and took a deep breath before opening it.  There were two small pieces of paper inside.  The first was a note.  “Spend this however you want.  With love, Dad.”  That’s all it said.

The second was a check—a very large check. 

My hand went to my mouth.  My butt went to the concrete.  The man who lived across the street came running.

He demanded to know if I was all right.  I said, “My dad is dying.”

“What?”

I handed him the note.  He looked more than a little perplexed as he helped me to my feet.  “My dad isn’t wealthy,” I told him, “and it’s not like him to do something like this.  He must be terribly ill.”

Once in the house, I started dialing the phone while handing the message to my husband.  The line rang as I handed him the check.  He dropped back into a chair and started grinning.  I got my dad’s machine and disconnected.  Once I got my mom on the phone, I asked her if she knew where Dad was and if he was all right.  She started laughing and asked if I’d got the check from him.

He had conferred with her before giving the gift.  It seems he felt his kids needed a little something to smile about and had written a check to each of us—just because.  By the time I finally got Dad on the phone, I was near tears.  I could buy a new washer, get the floor in my kitchen replaced, rebuild the deck, buy a new gazebo and still have enough to make reparations to my dwindling savings. 

My house was clean and no more OT!  Freedom! 

I called my sister and asked if she’d opened her mail.  She informed me she’d been too busy having fun with the neighbors.  “Open it,” I told her.  She launched into a tale of her evening’s fun and I interrupted.  “Open the *bleeping* mail!”

A moment later she was sobbing.  “He’s leaving us,” she said.  “Something’s wrong and he’s not telling us.”  All I could do was laugh.  It was the same reaction I’d had.  “He shouldn’t be doing this,” she insisted.  “We don’t need it.  He needs to keep his money.”

It must be nice, I thought.  No, I don’t really need it either.  The money crunch for us will be over by the end of this month, but it’s a very welcome gift.  Knowing how my father is with money makes it all the sweeter.  It’s not that he’s not generous.  If I really needed money, he’d write me a check in the bat of an eyelash with no questions asked, but he went without a lot as a kid and the lessons of childhood tend to stick for a lifetime.  He is a very frugal man.

Driving to work Thursday was a fun adventure.  With the princess in the back seat chattering away and feeding off my mood, and the radio playing a favorite tune, we made our way through town.  The stop-and-go traffic didn’t bother me.  Even my old nemesis in his pearl-white Cadillac Escalade couldn’t rile me.  I made a point of driving along side him.  As usual, he was juggling his coffee, his cell and his paperwork.  Today it even appeared he had his laptop open in the passenger seat, watching the screen instead of the road. 

With a wicked grin, I gave the horn a little toot.  His coffee hit the windshield and the cell phone hit the floorboard.  As he wrestled for control of the steering wheel and turned to give me a deadly glare, I smiled and waved—not the usual one-finger salute of most mornings, but a genuinely friendly wave.  I think he was a bit shocked because he took on that deer-in-the-headlights expression and offered a hesitant wave of his own. 

The princess laughed.  It’s good to hear her laughter.  The poor kid has been feeling the strain of our tension over the past few weeks.  Today, she’s feeling much lighter and much happier.  Work was actually fun with a few troublesome members of the team gone a day early for the holiday.  My mood of joy continues, a feeling I tried to pass on to everyone I met.  The long weekend awaits and much happy work is ahead at home.

So, to that end, the new Fortress of Solitude is in a carton in my garage—ready to be assembled.  I’m in search of contractor to fix the water damage to my house.  Tomorrow we’ll be shopping for a new washer.  And soon I’ll have the husband swinging a hammer on the new deck.  Life is sweet.  It’s truly amazing what a couple of thoughtful gestures can do for a person’s outlook. 

Drama in the Subdivision

 9/25/11

When you live in the ‘burbs of the state capitol, drama comes in many forms.  When one has a ten-year-old girl in the house, it can be especially unpleasant.  Take homework, for instance.  Getting her to do it can be murder.  It comes with whining, protests, shouting, violent stabbing of the paper with an abused pencil, more shouting (this time from Mama) and a whole lot of wasted energy.

Calgon, take me away.

When I got home from work on Friday, the drama was in the air so thick I needed a chainsaw to cut through it.  The first alarm went off in my brain when I saw my child with two neighbor girls in the driveway.  I remember what it was like to be that age.  I remember the games girls play and three is not a good number.

For those readers who don’t have daughters, let me just say you’re missing out on something.  Boys can be mean, can bully, pull pranks on one another and make things lively at home, but they got nothing on girls. 

Girls are sneaky.  Girls are cruel.  An odd number of girls spells disaster.

So, there were three little girls in my drive.  They were playing, and on the outside, everything looked good, but I knew better.  Then they all headed off to one of their houses down the street.  My first inclination was to stop them, but a mother has to let her child learn about reality, even if she knows the outcome.

Less than ten minutes later, our little princess came back.  She was crying, told us she felt so bad.  One of the other girls told her she wanted to play with the other without our princess.  When princess objected she was told to “get the f*&% out of here”.  As a mother, I saw red.  I wanted to tear the potty-mouthed girl a new one.  I wanted to confront her mother and ask what kind of home she was running.

Instead, I put my arms around my shaking child in an effort to lend comfort.  The two children in question have done this sort of thing before.  My child is not the only victim.  And the two girls aren’t the only ones to do this sort of thing.  And, let’s face it, my child is no angel in this regard.  I’m sure she’s done the same thing.  It’s a girl thing—odd man (or girl) out.  I know this and do everything I can to make her feel better.

It didn’t help, of course.  She was heart-broken.  My husband was in a rage.  My wiggly heart began to do a dance in my chest.  There are many different kinds of stress, but at the base of each type is the same real cause:  The mind’s power to override the body’s urge to beat the living crap out of someone.  I was in full stress mode.

The girls came back to retrieve a bicycle left behind in the previous exodus.  My very Italian husband, in full vendetta mode, stomped through the door.  Oh, he was going to take care of this.

My heart flipped.  I reached out a hand to grab him but missed.  I yelled for him to come back.  Then that little monster in the back of my brain—that naughty little voice we all have—chuckled with evil glee.  It said to let him have the child.  I almost smiled before shaking myself and holding my daughter back.

I couldn’t hear what he said, but he opened a new can of worms.  He only yelled at one of the girls, the one who used such foul language on his darling daughter.  Said child went home in tears.  I knew it would only be a matter of minutes.

I was right.  It was twenty minutes and I got a message on-line from her mother.  I cringed when I saw her name.  I wanted to clobber the man of the house.  I might still do it on pure principle.

It seems her child wanted to move away, quit her current school and live with her father.  She was humiliated and hurt.

I wrote back that I had the same issue at home with a little girl in anguished tears over someone she thought was her friend using such bad language and chasing her away.  I apologized for my husband’s behavior.  I told her if I had been the one confronting the situation, I would have had the same conversation with the child’s mother and not the child.

There’s always the hope that such a statement would put an end to the discussion.  My daughter said she felt bad because she didn’t want to get anyone in trouble and that Daddy probably scared the girl.  I smiled and said she got off easy.  She’s lucky she didn’t have to face me. 

Princess’s eyes got huge.  “Yeah, Mom.  You’re way more scary.”

My point was made.

And I got another message from the angry mother down the street.  She was not mollified and she was not happy.  I pulled the heart condition card.

Yeah, that’s right.  I did it. 

I told her how I’d had a recent heart attack, how my doctor wanted me to avoid all stress, but that I was doing everything I could to resolve the situation.  My monitor had gone off twice, the monitoring company had called and my head was pounding, but I was there to help her get through this.  It was all true, but really not something I wanted to share with the neighborhood. 

And end to the matter was found.  She told me she was willing to help with anything I needed.  Kind of her, seeing as our children were at war and my husband was acting as a five-star general on the opposing side. 

I have one rule about kids.  I never get involved in their battles.  I’m there to patch the wounds, bake cookies and make Kool-Aid.  Beyond that, I don’t have any part in it.  Children have to learn about the social pecking order on their own, or they grow up miserable and unable to cope.  I think it’s harder on the parents than the children, but we have to let them learn on their own.