Adding Insult to Injury

Did your post-holiday blues kick in yet? You know that feeling. All the presents have been opened, leaving only the mess of empty boxes and the realization that you have to find a home for all your new stuff. The cookies and cheesecake and pies and candy are mostly gone, but the sugar cravings continue, as does the bloated waistline and weight gain. The lights on the houses are just a reminder that you need to put your own decorations away. Without the holidays to anticipate, all that is left is the bleakness of winter, the unrelenting cold, the itchy dry skin, and the emptiness as you realize that for the time being, you have nothing to look forward to and a long way to go until your next break from work. So if those blues haven’t started yet, they should be by now, huh?

Two days after Christmas, my post holiday blues began. My family drove home from Atlanta, where we visited my sisters for the holidays. We went out for dim sum before we left, one of my favorite holiday traditions, but following days of overeating, a few thousand pounds of dumplings can make for some pretty serious heartburn. I said my goodbyes, hoping no one would squeeze me too tightly, and burped my way to the car.

After a few days in a row of eating too much and sleeping poorly, I was in desperate need of a nap. The best nap in the world is the car nap, unless you are the driver. The droning of the DVD blaring behind me along with my husband talking and the bags in the car rattling in the back was all it took to lull me to sleep. I must have conked out with my head on sideways, because when I woke up, my neck was killing me.

My neck tends to bother me most of the time, in the way that all people over forty have a body part that doesn’t like being part of the total package anymore. Some people constantly complain about shoulder pain or low back pain or tennis elbow, even if that arm has never held a racket. For me, that body part used to be my left knee, which has been studied by doctors before who discounted the pain as pre-degenerative arthritis and told me to deal with it. But lately, my neck has been making a push as the most irritated body part. It just hurts, man. It’s a pain in my ass, that pain in my neck.

We got home and I had to help unload the car like a freaking hunchback because my neck hurt so badly. My husband carried the duffle bags upstairs and I unloaded them, carrying the first load of laundry to the washing machine. When I bent over to put the clothes in the machine, I threw up in my own mouth. Nice, huh? It might all be the same going down, but coming up, it is just puke, which in my case I re-swallowed.

I decided to skip dinner and sit on the couch with a heating pad on my neck. The longer I sat there, the more I thought a new pillow would be a wise move, so I got ready to drive to the store to buy one. Before I left, I petted my long-haired cat. At some point between that action and arriving at the store, I rubbed my eye and transferred some cat hair directly into my orbital socket, where unbeknownst to me, it wrapped itself tightly around my eye like a barbed wire tourniquet. My eye started tearing, then progressed to a full blown allergic reaction, complete with pus, swelling, and bright redness. Did you ever see that scene in “Papillion” where the character played by Dustin Hoffman rubs ground glass in his eyes? I was living it. I took my contact out a couple of times to suck on it, the most sanitary way to clean a contact I know, but surprisingly, it didn’t help at all. When I checked out with my pillow, the salesclerk looked slightly above my head, avoiding direct eye contact. I can’t say I blame her.

When I got home, I went back upstairs to put the clothes in the dryer, puking a little in my mouth again, and then went to the bathroom to take out my contacts and wash my face. I put my contacts in the case and looked closely in the mirror. Luckily, the cat hair was completely covered in a big string of mucus that I pulled out of my eye like rope. I scrubbed my face with cleanser, and when I filled my palms with water to rinse, I jammed my finger so hard up my left nostril that I ripped it open. The skin on the inside rim of my nose flapped loosely, and the space where it had been was rapidly filling up with blood. There really was nothing else to do but sit on the floor and cry, so that is what I did.

Then I dried off my face, shoved a wad of tissue in my bloody nose, and put on my glasses. If raping my own nostril isn’t a good reason for the blues, I don’t know what is.

Back Alley Plumber

I fixed my own sink last week. That might not be impressive to you, but for me, it’s a miracle. My husband is a master fixer of things, so I don’t usually have the need to fix things, other than dinner. He can Macgyver almost anything together, which is one of his many positive assets, and honestly, one of the reasons I married him. One of the benefits of marriage, in my mind, is never having to call a repairman. Or reach things off of high shelves. Or take my car to get it fixed. Not that I expect him to fix it, just that I don't ever want to have to speak to another mechanic if I can avoid it.

But back to my sink, which had been clogged on and off for over a month. I have that kind of woman hair that can block up a drain, wrap itself around your toe, and sneak its way into your pasta dinner. I have a lot of hair too. I shed like an old cat, frequently and indiscriminately. I also have a bad habit of rinsing the hair gel and the hair that gets stuck in it off my hands, which means that every day a wad of hair and hair glue gets washed down the sink, only to end up lining the pipe, where it collects over time until eventually the water can no longer find passage and pools in the sink. At that point, my husband pours half a bottle of Drain-o into the mess, chemically burning the hair wad just enough to let the water drain in a small whirlpool, but not fast enough to actually suck soap bubbles or gobs of toothpaste. My sink tends to look like a Civil War battlefield.

After burning the hair wad twice, it was clear that more effort was required to unclog the clog. My husband said he would take the drain apart and remove the clump, but he didn’t take action in a timely way. I am not really allowed to write about my husband, so that he will remain, in fact, my husband, but I must explain here that he and I have differing opinions about how time works. In my mind, if I ask him to do something, like fix my sink, he should do it as soon as is convenient, or within three days, whichever comes first. He doesn’t agree. He thinks the perfect time to do a chore is when he actually does it. You could ask him to do something and if he gets around to it a year later, there you go. Mission accomplished.

I asked him to unclog the drain, but he didn’t meet that three day criteria I explained a moment ago. Plus, it’s a sink; I use it pretty much a gazillion times a day. I have the kind of drain with the little lever that you pull up to close it, rather than the kind with the grate in the base of the sink. The thingy-do that closes the drain does not come out of the sink; it is attached somehow, using some sort of algorithm that is beyond my comprehension, so it isn’t like I could just pull it out of the sink and start digging around. I did attempt to use my lesser pair of tweezers to extract a clump of something, but it wasn't not long enough to find the blockage.

I got one of those cheap dry cleaner hangers, the metal ones with the tube of cardboard where the pants hang or sweaters are folded. I removed the cardboard tube, straightened out the hanger arm, stuck the hooked end into the sink, and jimmied it up and down. I pulled the hanger out, and nothing happened. I tried again, on the other side of the drain-blocking thing, ramming the hanger in as far as it could go and moving it around. This time when I pulled it out, a huge clod of hair and slime and mold came out on the hooked end. Encouraged, I stuck it in a third time, twisting it a little, and dislodged another small clot.

My husband walked into the bathroom and asked me what I was doing.

“I just gave the sink an abortion!” I said proudly, pointing to the clog that I had flung on the side of the porcelain basin.

“That’s nasty,” he said.

I turned the water on, watching it flow freely through the drain.

“I did it,” I said proudly. “I fixed my own sink!”

“Cool,” he answered nonchalantly. “Now I don’t have to take that drain apart.”

I wiped the clump out of my sink with a wad of paper towels and turned the water on higher, delighted that the sink did not fill up with water.

It turns out that wire hangers have a purpose after all, other than playing Joan Crawford. It also turns out that I don’t have to rely on my husband to fix everything around the house, but for the love of God, don’t tell him that. Everyone needs to be needed, and I am pretty sure there is something wrong with the toilet in the laundry room.

Do You Like Your Princess Like You Like Your Coffee?

Can you name all the Disney princesses? They are easy to remember if you separate them by old school and new school. Did I say separate? I meant to say segregate.

Let’s go old school for a minute. There’s Snow White, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty, all of whom had a pretty tough upbringing for a bunch of pretty white women. Think about it: Snow White had a price on her head, Cinderella lived like a slave, and Sleeping Beauty was cursed from birth. They all lived sad lives, pinning their hopes on being saved by a man, although usually some old fairy or dwarf stepped in and changed their fate before the prince rode in and got the credit for it.

The 1990’s brought a new group of princesses whose lives had less to do with the men that saved them and more to do with creating their own destinies. Ariel, who was really just a spoiled teenage brat, had the hots for some man, and disobeyed her father so she could get laid, or was it legs? “Beauty and the Beast” came out next, with the first princess who didn’t start out as royalty. Belle at least was respectful of her father, so respectful that she was willing to risk her life for his, trading places with him to be the Beast’s captive while Daddy walked away a free man. Again, like the old school princesses, Ariel and Belle each found love with a prince and lived happily ever after.

Then Disney felt the pressure of affirmative action. Jasmine, the Arabic love interest of Aladdin, was a princess with a good head on her shoulders, yet she still fell in love with a pauper who conned his way into her heart. Pocahontas, the Native American daughter of a tribal chief, got about as much attention as actual Native Americans, even though she had a skimpy little outfit with her boobies jutting out and, oh, some good songs. And don’t forget Mulan. She had it all. She was an Asian cross dresser who saved China, a nation that would have preferred to leave her on a rock to die from exposure or put her up for adoption by a childless American couple in their forties. Every time I watch that movie I want to eat an egg roll.

Now, Disney is smart enough to know that in today’s anti-immigration climate, it doesn’t make sense to introduce a Hispanic princess. They decided black was more politically correct than Latino, considering we have a black president and all. So they rolled out the latest princess, Tiana, who sounds more like a Russian princess than a New Orleans gal, if you ask me. She didn’t even want to be a princess, and now that I think about it, I don’t really remember how she got sucked into the whole frog transformation thing. I remember there was some gospel sounding music, and some voodoo, but other than that, her story was a big $10 nap. The point is that America was ready for a black princess, so Disney gave us one, and added another skin tone to the marketing color wheel.

Which brings us back to Walt Disney World. No matter what theme park you attend, you have the opportunity to meet and greet some of your favorite Disney characters. At Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom, most of those characters are either old favorites like Mickey, Minnie, Donald, and Goofy or gender neutral popular ones, like the cast from Playhouse Disney or Toy Story. If you go to the Magic Kingdom or Epcot, however, you can score a little princess action. They have princess dining experiences at both parks where you can meet your favorite white princesses or even a half fish/half white princess. But try finding a princess of color at either place, and you will waste all the time you saved getting fast passes.

As you may recall, my family just went to Walt Disney World over the Thanksgiving holiday. My daughter S loved “The Princess and the Frog” and very much wanted to see Tiana. We are not one of those families who will wait in line to meet characters and get autographs unless the lines are short. My daughters even make their own autograph books and bring a free hotel pen with them, because they know their dad and I don’t want to waste our time and money getting signatures from unknown women who best fit in the costumes. But every time we found some princesses, they were all white as, well, snow.

S asked about Tiana every time we passed one of those yellow shirted Disney character escorts, but no one knew where she was. She tried looking in the windows at the Ashkerhaus at Norway in Epcot. She even waited for a second round of princesses at Cinderella’s castle, but alas, it was the same story there. No Tiana. And then, in our last hour at the Magic Kingdom, in between Main Street USA and Adventureland, in a little out of the way gazebo on the wrong side of the tracks, we found her. Princess Tiana, the second class princess, was standing in the cold, with a short line of black children waiting patiently to meet her.

“See?” I told S, “there she is! I knew they would have her somewhere. I just didn’t think we would have to search for four days to find her.”

“Can I meet her?” S asked.

“No. Are you crazy? We aren’t waiting in that line.” And that was the end of that.

My prediction for the next one? Indian. As in India Indian. I am sure there is a rich fairy tale or two that can be told from that rich cultural history, and the costumes they can sell will be amazing. Plus, it will be less controversial than a Jewish American Princess, don’t you think?

Hang 'Em High

You never know what you are going to get with a play date. You throw a couple of kids together, their little cogs spinning, that unbridled imagination, and usually something you never would have expected happens.

Once, when my eleven year old daughter E was about three and a half, she was playing at a friend’s house. The other mom and I had poured generous glasses of wine for ourselves and sat downstairs to talk. While we were busy with that, the girls played alone upstairs, which looking back was probably a major lapse in judgment. By the time that play date was over, my friend’s daughter wore a diaper, expertly put on by my daughter, who unbeknownst to us had taken a big dump in the potty chair, you know, the kind that sit on the floor with no water or flushing mechanism? She didn’t mention it to anyone, and my friend didn’t discover it until about four hours later, when the entire upstairs of her house reeked of old turd.

Nowadays, what with my daughters being older and all, I don’t have to worry much about unannounced bowel movements and amateur diapering. Instead, play dates seem to involve a lot of skits, songs, and plays, all of which I remind me of why these kids need a good strong education and a career path. Still, every once in a while, I get treated to a little burst of inspiration that makes me wonder what the hell were those kids thinking.

“Hey, Mom, look at this!” my daughter, S, yelled at me from the second floor. She and her friend, KB, had been playing quietly up there, perhaps too quietly.

We have a balcony that overlooks the downstairs family room. I glanced up, and hanging over the railing, from what looked like poorly tied nooses, were two of S’s Build-A-Bear stuffed animals. One was a monkey wearing a dress, and the other was Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer. The monkey was swinging in the breeze, while Rudolph looked like his neck snapped from the weight of his body hanging. His nose was still glowing. I have heard that when a man dies sometimes he will get an erection at the moment of death, but I didn’t realize it applied to Rudolph’s nose as well.

“What did they do wrong?” I asked her.

“What do you mean?” S said. She is a child of the 21st century, and therefore doesn’t know a lynching reference when she sees one.

“What was their crime? Why were they sentenced to hang to the death?” I tried again.

“They aren’t dead, Miss B,” S’s friend told me.

“They aren’t? Have you checked Rudolph’s pulse? He looks pretty dead to me."

“Mom, stop it,” S said. “They aren’t dead. They are flying.”

“Just Rudolph,” KB said. “Cause reindeers fly.”

“Of course he is. But what about the monkey? Unless she one of those flying monkeys from “The Wizard of Oz. Those are the only monkeys I know that can fly.”

“No, she isn’t flying. She is swinging from a tree. On a vine,” S added.

They didn’t look like they were flying and swinging to me, but maybe that was what was going through their minds when they saw the bright light. Isn’t that all that matters? That they died happy?

I’m not complaining, mind you. They didn’t go through my stuff looking for my giant bras and vibrators. They didn’t play with my make-up and break my lipstick. They didn’t dress up in my high heels. They didn’t spray what was left of my discontinued favorite perfume on each other and waste it. All they did was dangle a couple of Build-A-Bears from some homemade gallows. They didn’t dismember them or drag them ten miles down the road, so it’s all good, right? And the best part? They are old enough to remember to flush a toilet.

Turn the Other Cheek

My friend MJ is pregnant, and I couldn’t be happier for her and her baby daddy. MJ is one of those rare human specimens, built like two percent of the population. At almost six feet tall and hovering somewhere between a size two and a size four, MJ has a model’s body, very different from my own troll physique. Secretly, I am thrilled she is preggers because I can’t wait to see what a bowling ball is going to look like on her frame. MJ is not as thrilled about that part. She called me the other morning in a snit.

“What do you want, ho?” I greeted her warmly on the phone.

“I have a stretch mark on my ass!” she whined in my ear.

MJ’s ass is, or was, a thing of perfection. Never before was an ass made to wear a thong, if anything at all, and display it for all the world to see. Understanding how rare a perfect ass is, MJ was never one to keep it to herself. I encouraged her exhibitionistic ways by giving her fabulous panties as gifts, panties that were meant to be flashed. I could see how a stretch mark on her booty would upset her.

“I hate to break it to you, but you already had a stretch mark on your ass,” I replied.

It’s true; she did, as most women above age fifteen do. Our bodies grew faster than the skin could accommodate. Granted, you have to look for her stretch marks with a magnifying glass and a bright light, as opposed to my cellulite, which, much like a crater on the moon, can be seen with the naked eye from about 238,000 miles away.

“Yeah, but this is a new one, and it’s red, and you can see it. What should I do about it?” she said.

“Why are you asking your fat friend what to do about a stretch mark?” I asked. “Google it!”

The last thing I know how to fix is a stretch mark. Want to know how to bake a cake? I’m your girl. Need me to pick up your kids from school and feed them? No problem. Want me to organize your class party with a budget of $14.73 in loose change and an old paper clip? Done and done. But keeping a perfect ass perfect? You are on your own.

“You’re no help!” she sounded desperate.

“No, I’m not,” I agreed. “Good luck with that.”

Maybe I should have been more helpful. Would I let Mt. Rushmore erode? Would I fill in the Grand Canyon? Would I dam up Niagara Falls? A thing of beauty should be preserved for future generations. Except I am not envious of those natural wonders.

So long, perfect ass.

10 Items or Less

I stopped at Publix the other day to pick up a loaf of bread to take to a friend’s house for dinner. I got in line behind an older woman who had a single bottle of white wine. I say older, meaning older than me, maybe in her sixties. I realize that a woman twenty years my junior could very well say the same thing about me (I got in line behind an older woman with a single loaf of challah).

Anyway, I was in line with my single item, and the woman was being chatted up by the older (there’s that word again) male cashier. He had a lovely Irish accent, very melodious and pleasant to hear. After the woman finished paying for her wine, he told her to enjoy her wine, and she got her back and left.

“Of course she is going to enjoy it. It’s wine. How could she not?” I joked with the cashier.

“You have a point,” he said, scanning my bread. “Maybe she is an alcoholic though. Maybe she has to drink it just to get through the day. Maybe she doesn’t like it at all; she just has to have it. That’s $3.17 for the bread.”

“That may be true,” I agreed. “Except she only had one bottle, and it looked pretty good. Not like Mad Dog or anything.” I dug through my wallet and found exact change, which I handed to the cashier. “Which goes back to her enjoying the wine, since she has good taste and is not drinking in excess.”

“Another good point, but what if she is taking to a friend’s house because she is getting divorced? Or because someone died?” He handed me my receipt.

“God forbid,” I said. “She looked too happy for that. I am going with she will enjoy it. I know I would.”

“Here you go,” he said to me, holding up my loaf of bread. “Enjoy your bread.”

“Oh, this? It’s not for me. I don‘t eat bread,” I said.

It's The Thought That Counts, and the Count is Up to Seventeen

I don’t remember giving my teachers gifts for the holidays when I was in school. I might have made a card or drew a picture for one that I particularly liked, but it never occurred to me that gifts were to be given to teachers. My mother certainly never made an effort to show any appreciation to my teachers for such a tough job. They chose to become teachers, knowing that the pay sucked and that most of the students cared barely more than their apathetic parents.

Teaching is a thankless job, like garbage collecting and water treatment. My kids don’t understand why we don’t pay people more to do the things we don’t want to do ourselves. I have tried explaining that it has to do with levels of skill and education, but I see their point. I don’t want to scoop used condoms and dead fish out of my drinking water, in the same way that I don’t want to make sure my daughters know how to do long division or memorize the periodic elements. Maybe we should pay people more to do the truly horrible stuff. We could get some of that income from, say, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, two people who seem to be compensated way more than their skill set deserves.

Since my daughters have been in school, I have learned that presents for teachers are not just a nice gesture; they are an expected little bonus, like the now twenty percent tip that servers to compensate for their shitty wages. I am happy to do it, really, because at the end of the day, these men and women have an impact on my children. They teach them so much more than grammar and multiplication tables, and they deserve a bit of thanks. I make an effort to get more than an apple coffee mug or some note cards with rulers and chalkboards on them. I get them things they might want, like gift cards for coffee and restaurants or candy that people actually want to eat. I pay attention to the things they like or want, and when the holidays roll around, I make an effort to please them, because it’s the thought that counts, or so I hear. If I was really going to be thoughtful, I should give them each a can of mace and a taser.

While I am happy to honor the teachers in my children’s life, at some point, I need to draw the line. Why is that, you might ask? Well, it’s simple, really. My children don’t just have one teacher each, you see. They have many teachers, and many activities, and many people who we need to thank and recognize. I sat down and made a list of just how many, and it came to seventeen.

Seventeen. There’s the fifth grade teacher (1), the challenge/gifted teacher (2), the art teacher who does the after school program that E auditioned for (3), the third grade teacher (4), the third grade teacher’s assistant (5), the computer teacher(6), the French teacher (7), the third grade art teacher (8), the administrator of the small private school where S is a student (9), the administrator’s assistant (10), the piano teacher (11), the guitar teacher (12), the tennis coach (13), and the ballet and jazz teachers (14), (15), and (16).

I made a master list, including each teacher by name, and E reminded me of her bus driver (17) since that too is a thankless job.

“Don’t forget Miss Diane,” she said. Every adult in the South has a Miss, Mrs. or Mr. in front of his or her first name, as a sign of respect. It’s confusing when it comes to your friends, but it keeps you from sounding like your mother in law.

“Who’s Miss Diane?” I asked, as I had never before heard that name.

“She’s my bus driver,” E said.

“I have her down already,” I said, showing her the list. “See? Bus driver.”

“Well, she has a name, and it’s Miss Diane,” E answered back.

“Not if it isn’t on the list,” I said.

I want to write “To Bus Driver” on her gift, just because she wound up as number seventeen on the list of too many people to thank, which seems like fifteen too many. Maybe next year we’ll kick it old school. I’ll buy a big bag of apples and the girls will shine them on their pinafores and present them to their teachers. Here you go for a job well done, a pay freeze and a dirty piece of fruit.

So if your gift is late or not up to your standards, don’t blame me. Blame those seventeen (17) teachers. Or the wise men. They are the ones who started this whole gift thing anyway. How wise was that?

Under the Boardwalk

Does this count as the first or the second blog of the twelve blogs of Christmas? Math, including counting, was never one of my special skills. So who wants a little story from Disney? Okay, kids, gather round.

Disney World has often been thought of as a magical place, unlike anywhere else in the real world, and for the most part, I agree. My family and I love to go to Disney, and we have a relatively new tradition to go there for Thanksgiving. Every year, we yank our children out of school and take off the whole week to spend in sunny Orlando, where dreams come true. It started as an excuse to not spend the holiday with my crazy mother, who liked to up the nutbag ante every year, to the point where none of my extended family chooses to spend Thanksgiving together, just so we don’t have to spend it with her. When, at six or seven, my daughter E told me she hated Thanksgiving, I knew I had to come up with some way to make it fun instead of dysfunctional. What’s more fun than going to Disney World, I ask you?

You may not feel the same, but I love Disney. I love the hotels, piss poor values that they may be. I love each of the theme parks in their own way. I love to go to the different restaurants, ride the rides, look in all the stores, and especially people watch. If you took any one aspect of Disney, though, and looked at it individually, no doubt you would want your hundreds of dollars back. What we tolerate in that magical world we would never settle for in the real one.

Let’s start with the hotels, which are far from perfect. The rooms are relatively small, Internet access is not included, the towels and water pressure are shitty, and every other television channel is an infomercial for Disney. I’m already at your property, so stop selling it to me. Every year that we go down to Disney, we like to stay at a different hotel. We mostly stick to the deluxe ones, since my husband is 6’2” and takes up most of a double bed on his own. The deluxe hotels are the only ones with queen sized beds, and at Disney prices, we can’t really spring for two rooms, so we cram ourselves all in one room and then fight over who has to sleep with whom.

Unfortunately, I am very popular as a bed partner in my family. Everyone wants to sleep with me. I usually don’t snore, I don’t require an entourage of stuffed animals, and there is little risk of a Dutch oven on my side of the bed. Quite frankly, I don’t care which family member chooses to sleep with me, as long as I don’t get kicked too much or have mouth breathing right in my face. The constant bickering over it, however, is more than a little annoying.

The hotel themes are the essence of Disney magic though, and that’s where the added value comes in. This year we stayed at the Boardwalk Inn, which is like a beach resort in the Northeast, circa 1920’s. The lobby had the right amount of old fashioned beachy details, down to the replica of the wooden roller coaster and the knickers worn by the bellmen. You almost expected to see men with handlebar mustaches escort women in long woolen bathing suits down to the shore.

I loved it. The rooms themselves were nothing special, and since we didn’t feel like paying extra each night for a good view, ours was of a service road behind the hotel. We had plenty of pillows and even a towel sculpture of a Mickey head, because if it’s good enough for Carnival Cruise Lines, then it’s good enough for Disney. Outside the hotel was a boardwalk complete with restaurants, bars, shops, and even a surrey bike rental. More on that another day and another blog. The best part of the property, without question, was the swimming pool.

Each hotel has a quiet pool for old people and an over the top killer pool for the rest of us. At Coronado Springs, it looks like a Mayan temple. At the Polynesian Hotel, it has a volcano. At the Boardwalk, the pool had sculptures of elephants and the carousel bar, only without horses you could ride, although that would have been a nice touch. The best part was the water slide that looked like an old fashioned wooden roller coaster. At the bottom, where you land in the water, you first passed through a Bozo the clown type face, complete with creepy eyes, curly red hair, and a big pink tongue. The morning we decided to go swimming was the day we flew home, and the air was a chilly seventy degrees. All the Disney pools are heated, which make them bearable for Yankees but still too cold for normal Southerners.

It wasn’t too cold for children, unfortunately, which meant that my husband and I shivered in the water at the bottom of the slide while our girls took turns slipping down that creepy clown’s tongue. My husband commented that it looked like they were being born, and we joked that I should have had a makeover down there for childbirth, just for giggles.

If any of you readers are knocked up, maybe you might want to try it. Dye those pubes bright orange, get them nice and curly, and draw on some clown eyes, maybe add a red nose and some exaggerated clown lips on your, well, you know. Imagine your delivering doctor’s surprise to see you push a baby right out of a clown face. Just maybe, if your doctor is a big Disney fan, he or she might say, “Hey, your snatch reminds me of that slide at the Boardwalk Inn!”

Making memories. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

The 12 Blogs of Christmas

Well, as you probably have noticed, my ability to produce amusing stories for you has been severely limited as of late. Now, I know it would seem that if I put down the television remote and the fancy box of chocolates, I would have all the time in the world to regale you with bon mots. Not so. I am in fact busy as hell, and while I frequently have "post to blog" on the to-do list, it is the one thing that consistently is sacrificed to the rest of the banal chores and errands. Top it all off with last week's family escape to Walt Disney World for Thanksgiving, and even you can admit that I might have had a thing or two more pressing than typing up 1,000 words to delight you.

But hey, it's the holiday season. Who doesn't want a little treat or two or twelve? So, my plan is to share a few vignettes from Thanksgiving, the week of S's Nutcracker practice, or whatever else happens between now and the anniversary of the birth of Your Savior. That's right; I will attempt to have something coherent and hopefully funny to say twelve times in the next twenty-five days. On no particular subject, and in no particular order, but what do you want, exactly? It's free, and if you have an iPad, you are probably reading it on the toilet anyway (yes, MJ, I do mean you).

Let's start with the twelve days of Christmas, shall we? If I gave a shit, and I don't, I would Google why twelve days, and what's with all the birds and servants? Sounds like a medieval feast to me, which might explain the almost fortnight part of the song. And you know those folks were drinking their fair share of mead, ale, and grog. Maybe "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is really a drinking song. It's the "100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" of the holiday season, both because of its length and because no sober person wants to sing it the whole way through.

This morning, in between brushing teeth and tying shoelaces, my daughter S and I, who both enjoy singing to our crazy cats, created our new version of "The Twelve Days." I have no doubt that at one time or another, every household in America has come up with its own lyrics to this holiday classic that delight them and perhaps even make singing that God-awful song more bearable. Today's version involved replacing certain words with the word "cat."

It went something like this:

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a cat stuck in a pear tree.
On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, two turtle cats...
On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, three French cats....
On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, four calling cats...
On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, five golden cats...
On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, six cats a'laying...
On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...

Actually, we didn't go any further with it. I couldn't remember how many cats were leaping and milking and laying and a'swimming, and it was time to go to school, and we weren't drinking, so we kind of fizzled out. Even the cats grew tired of the song and walked out of the bathroom, where all good singing takes place, as you know.

Sometimes, when we sing to the cats and we can't remember the words, we just meow instead of humming. We do it often enough that I find myself meowing along while grocery shopping or at the Home Depot. Cats aren't even allowed in those stores, unless they are seeing eye cats, which are very difficult to train.

It gives new meaning to crazy cat lady, huh?

Hitler in Pull Ups

I spend a lot of time with my friend JR and lil JR, her now two and a half year old. JR has achieved a level of patience with her young daughter that most people only dream of, meaning that she has yet to slap her silly or leave her in the wild for wolves to raise. Not that I am advocating either of these things, just that most of us, when faced with our own offspring, have contemplated one or two drastic measures. The truth is, for the most part, lil JR is not your typical two-year-old. She is fun to play with, and she goes to sleep early, and she doesn’t cry much, so what’s not to like? Last week, however, on her day home, she channeled her inner Linda Blair.

I had an eye appointment in the morning, and JR offered to tote my ass around since my pupils were dilated, leaving me with a level of blindness that way surpasses my late night stumbles to the bathroom in the dark. I am not just a little blind, I am as a bat, white cane and seeing-eye dog blind without my contacts. And for those of you familiar with the joys of eye dilation, contact wearing isn’t really an option on dinner plate pupils. I had to resort to wearing my five year old glasses, which is barely a step up from nothing. JR met me at the doctor’s office, where I was feeling my way towards the exit. We looked at eyeglass frames for a little while lil JR entertained herself with a calculator. JR asked her if she needed to go potty before we left, and lil JR answered, “No, I already went in my dress.” Indeed she had, in her dress, tights and all. JR hustled her quietly out of the office while I checked out, and we rendezvoused in the parking lot. After lil JR was re-panted, we ran a few errands.

The first stop was Babies R US, where JR and I needed to get a baby gift for a shower. Lil JR wandered off every five seconds, which meant we couldn't really look at anything because we were searching for the toddler the whole time. It was kind of like losing my husband at IKEA, only more frustrating since my husband is quite tall and lil JR is built like a garden gnome. JR coerced her daughter into sitting in the cart to look at a toy she wasn't going to get, and then tried to lead me around to find gifts. I couldn’t see the merchandise and I couldn’t read the baby registry, so I thought at least I could be helpful by pushing the cart. Only any time I got near lil JR, she would shout "NO!" at me and push me away. Normally, lil JR is a big fan of mine, and honestly, the feeling is mutual. But with JR trying to help me, lil JR turned against us both in a bid for power. We hastily made a few selections off the registry and got the hell out of there.

After fighting over who could open the car door for lil JR, who could assist her into her car seat, and who could hand her a much needed sandwich, we decided to head back to JR’s house to eat. Frankly, I didn’t want to risk a public lunch. I figured if lil JR was going to be a lil shit, she could do it in her own home. JR drove while I sat quietly next to her like Stevie Wonder in the passenger seat. Lil JR whined in the back seat because she was starving, even though it was only 11:30 and she had already eaten an egg, toast, cereal, part of a turkey sandwich, a fruit leather, and some other things she found in her lunch box. She really wanted an orange, which she told us by screaming, “Orange! Orange!” at us over and over. JR calmly informed her that we had no oranges. It wasn’t that lil JR didn’t understand that JR had no oranges, it was that she didn’t care.

After fighting over who could sit where at the table, the rest of the turkey sandwich, and whether I was allowed to use their restroom, which I was not, lil JR mellowed out for a while and relaxed into her usual pleasant self. We played an extremely entertaining game where lil JR beams a plastic ball at our heads, then jumps up and down on a mattress on the floor before falling on her belly, at which point JR or I would beam the ball back at her, whereupon she would stand up, work her way to the edge of the mattress, and then practice jumping four inches from the mattress to the floor using both feet at the same time. After a morning full of her tyranny, I was happy throwing a ball at her ass.

Alas, all good things must come to an end, and the jumping ball game was no exception. JR and I decided to kill one last half an hour at the park before I had to get my car from the eye doctor’s and drive home to deal with my own children. My pupils were attempting to return to normal, no longer fully dilated but now just lopsided like I suffered a concussion, which meant I could see to drive and check homework but maybe not make big decisions like buy a house.

Anyway, we hustled lil JR back in her car seat with the promise of using her scooter at the park and drove in that general direction. We talked and laughed in the front seat, but lil JR wanted to be the center of attention, and soon the scolding began again. “You no talk! I talk! I serious! You no laugh. My turn. We take turns. My turn talk! Not you!” She did the best she could communicating her desire to control the conversation without using proper grammar or complete sentences. I felt like I was getting chewed out by my nail technician, minus the Vietnamese accent. JR and I stopped talking so that lil JR could speak her piece, which honestly, I don’t remember. Two year olds are not the best conversationalists.

We got to the park and put lil JR in her knee pads and helmet so she could tool around on her scooter. She has mad scooter skills. She can even lift her foot up in the back and coast down a hill, even though it scares the dunkel out of her. I thought I was watching the Pre-X games. JR and I walked behind her like proud lesbian parents, a day at the park with my two moms. Lil JR didn’t much care for the hills, or the idea of leaving her helmet on while she walked up them, allowing one of us to carry the scooter for her while she whined about her helmet. We walked over to the playground and stood around while lil JR climbed to the top to slide down over and over. JR gave her the countdown which was ignored, until finally JR had to carry her screaming and crying out of the park. We had barely turned out of the parking lot before lil JR was snoring away in her car seat. Nothing is more exhausting than making a couple of grownups submit to your will.

All in all, being blind and at the mercy of a two year old is a pretty surreal way to spend a day. For JR, it was validating because she got to help me in my time of need and also because she had company for her day alone with her daughter, the longest day of the week. For lil JR, it was like every other day, a reason to challenge and push and resist. For me, well, luckily my eyes are only dilated every other year.

Miss Cue

Some people prefer to do their own work outs at the gym, but others, like me, enjoy the camaraderie of group fitness. An exercise class has an element of built in motivation, a slight sense of competition, and the added bonus of not having to think. You show up and follow an instructor who leads you through choreographed moves or intervals or positions, depending on the class, and if you are mildly coordinated and know your left from your right, you can get a pretty good workout. Of course, if you are a frequent gym class attendee, you start to know what to expect and can concentrate on other things, like what the instructors actually say to you. It keeps your mind from wandering away to your to-do list and the fight you had with your husband over breakfast. I like to pay attention because sometimes, like children, those cute little gym instructors say the darndest things.

Some classes just naturally lend themselves to better wording from the instructors than others. Take spin, for example. Cues in spin class (a stationary biking class for those of you who live under a rock) sounds dirty without trying. You’re up, you’re down, you are in the saddle, you are in different positions, you are climbing and sprinting and running and yes, by all, means, sit down and have some water, you've earned it. Sometimes you isolate, take out the bounce, and have your ass brush against the seat. Sometimes you have your arms out but your body is pulled back, with all the weight in your gluts. Your chest is up, your ass is out, and your genitals are barely making contact with the saddle, the music is loud, the room is dark. It’s like a rave in there, only without the Ecstasy.

One of my favorite instructors used to cue his class in ways that would make me giggle to myself. Instead of telling us to pull back, he would say pull out. He also would like to yell at the class, “Harder, faster! Push it hard!” and then he would grunt and moan in ways that didn’t sound like he was exercising or taking a shit. When my friend MJ and I would go to spin class together, we would snicker to each other the whole time about the things that flew out of the instructor’s mouth. Finally, one day after class, he asked us what was so funny. MJ told him that I thought everything he said in class could just as easily be said in bed. Which was pretty much the last time I ever heard him say anything remotely suggestive on the spin bike.

Pilates class is by far the best place to hear things that can be misconstrued as dirty talk. Pilates is mostly about lengthening your muscles, but it’s also about using and strengthening your core. By core, they mean your lower abdominal muscles, the ones that lost their tone about the time you took off your wedding attire. Sometimes the instructors use food cues to help you remember to contract your muscles. Pretend you are moving your arms through thick brownie batter. Pretend you are balancing a hot cup of coffee on your pubic bone. Pretend someone is dripping hot wax on your nipples. I never heard them say that last one, but it’s only a matter of time.

We used to have a Pilates instructor who referred to the perineum as the perrenium,pronounced like perennials, as if we were all planting flowers in our crotches. She was also fond of having us open our legs wide while balancing on our ass cheeks, and then she would say, "Ta da!" Last week, our instructor had us on our sides, opening and closing our thighs, and told us to “Clam it.” I ask you, how do you not laugh at that? We have another instructor who likes to use props, you know, to keep the magic alive. She brings balls with her, which we have to squeeze between our knees, or grip with our ankles, or firmly grasp in our hands. I love a class with balls. I never grow tired of laughing at the word “ball,” even in front of a group of strangers. Ball days are the best.

One instructor takes her class (and herself) very seriously, talking throughout the hour with an endless tirade on our form and weaknesses. My friend SZ and I once tried to count how many times she said "butt cheeks" over the sixty minutes. We lost count. The same teacher just came back from a Pilates conference with the best cue ever, really the final word on cues. She told us to “close our holes.” Do it right now. See? You know exactly what that means, and it’s even funnier than balls.

And if you close your holes, it makes you wonder what exactly you are trying to strengthen. I’m going with the bladder, because there is nothing more embarrassing at the gym than laughing so hard that you piss yourself.

Word Up

What is the point of word problems? I sucked at them when I was in school, and I still suck at them now while I try to help my children, who also suck at them. My husband is no help either, because he too sucks at word problems. The teachers must also suck at them or else they would do a better job of explaining them to my daughters. Maybe the problems are designed to make both the kids who are good at reading and the kids who are good at math suck at the same time? You know, to bring them down to the level of the kids who can’t read or add?

My older daughter E is in fifth grade at public school, and my younger daughter S is in third grade at private school, so they are pretty much on the same level of math, and consequently, word problems. They both come home with worksheets that should have a little travel pack of Kleenex attached, since all word problems are accompanied by crying. But beyond that, how these problems are written is very different.

S’s word problems tend to revolve around money. She brings home these sheets of problems about ordering off some restaurant menu. If Luka orders a Hawaiian hot dog and a tropical shake, but Mia wants some hurricane nachos, how much will it cost them to get the family meal if their mother gave them $30 to get lost for an hour or two while she talks to the cabana boy. Whenever I help her, I imagine we are at the Sawgrass beach club in Florida, ordering a little nosh while we wait for adult swim to end. To me, the answer to every one of these problems should be “just put it on my account.” Daddy can pay the bill when it comes, and we don’t really need to worry about how much all that food cost, because Mommy found lipstick on his boxers. Instead of figuring out if we have enough money, maybe we should be more concerned with whether Mia and Luka should be eating that junk. Perhaps Mia should lay off the nachos and get an organic fruit smoothie before she can’t fit in her bikini.

S’s problems seem trivial compared to E’s, which sound a bit more like government census work. If 8 boys are Hispanic and 2 girls are Native Americans, how many federal dollars can be awarded to the school when they excel at their standardized tests? Mario has five blue pencils. If he stabs Thad in the neck with one of them for calling him a bean eater, how many years will he get in juvie? If Tammy sleeps with 15 boys from her high school and 10 boys from another high school, what are the chances that her uncle is the father of her baby?

I don’t remember word problems being quite like that when I was in elementary school. We did get those lovely mimeograph copies, which smeared purple ink on your hand and were most excellent for sniffing. The problems all had to do with transportation, if I could remember anything past huffing my copy. Trains. Ah, yes, trains leaving from one town to another, at varying rates of speed, and something about the estimated time of arrival. No wonder they had to change the problems. Who rides a train anymore? The only time we hear about trains these days is if they derail or if one hits a pick-up truck that stalled on the tracks. But passenger trains? They went the way of 8 track players, leaded gas, and key parties. Plus, when I was in school, they tried to pull that new math crap on us, getting us all confused with the “metric” system, and we all know how good that turned out. Sure, they can skimp on the 2-liter of soda, but real Americans want their gallons of milk and gasoline.

The thing that really sucks about word problems is that since they are so complicated and time consuming, teachers will only put about five or six of them on a quiz. Inevitably, all the kids except the Asian one will miss at least one of the questions, leaving little Tomiko or Sanjay with the only passing grade in the class. And the rest of the kids? Well, the cash register at McDonald’s does the math for you, as long as you press the buttons that match what the food looks like.

On second thought, we better take another crack at that page of homework. McDonald’s sucks even worse than word problems.

The Dark Side of the Moon

So many people are confused by Jewish holidays because they change every year. It’s not like Thanksgiving, which was conveniently moved to November by FDR for economic reasons, much to the chagrin of turkeys everywhere. You always know that come the third week of November, you better get your cranberries in that shopping cart. Instead, Jewish holidays revolve around the lunar calendar, which doesn’t always have the same set number of months in a year. Even when Jewish holidays begin is confusing. Why sundown instead of the next day? That too is because of the moon. According to something I should know but don't, God created night then day, so Jews believe that a full day actually begins at night. We get the party started right, instead of calling it the eve.

Do you know what else follows a lunar month? That’s right, ladies, your periods. Most women’s cycles are 28 days, which is pretty much the length of a lunar month. Just like some months have a blue moon, an extra full moon, sometimes we lady folk get the curse twice a month, and aren’t we lucky? If you think about it, fertility has been linked to the phases of the moon forever, which means that maybe women aren’t from Venus after all, John Gray.

My body is more in tune with the moon than your average Jewish female. My cycle likes to start on Jewish Holidays, even Shabbat. If the opportunity to be embarrassed arises, my uterus is all over it. I am a member of the board of my temple, and one of the duties of that position is to represent the board during Shabbat. During weekly services, one of us has to sit on the bimah, the little stage in the front of the sanctuary, behind the rabbi and help him do his rabbi stuff, like opening the ark doors that house the Torah and reminding everyone to turn off their cell phones and their crying babies. Sitting up there is supposed to be an opportunity to show our support and availability to the congregation, which is defeated by the being above the masses aspect of sitting in a throne-like chair on the elevated platform. At our temple, most of those chairs are upholstered in lovely cream fabric and are about as comfortable as resting on the edge of a trampoline, complete with that feeling of springs up your ass.

The first time I had bimah duty, as we on the board like to call it, I started my period at sunset, or more accurately, at moon rise. I don’t want to get all graphic on you, but I am not a teenager. I am a grown woman who has birthed two children. I am what my gynecologist likes to call a super soaker. I armed myself with protection, the ultra thin womanly version of body armor, only in my crotchal regions. I took my place behind the rabbi, acutely aware that my chair was free of any stains and glaringly beige.

I grew nervous, both because my nether regions might resemble a crime scene and because I was behind the rabbi, a holy man several years my junior. Was the room warm, or was it me? Was anybody else sweating? I even screwed up my few jobs. I opened the ark when I was supposed to gather the papers with the names of the ill for whom we would say a prayer. I stood awkwardly behind him while he read from the Torah when I should have remained near my throne. I felt my face flush, and as I sat down again, I felt moisture where no menstruating woman wants to, convinced that all my protection had failed me, that there was a breach at the reservoir.

What could I do? It wasn’t like I could stand up again, in front of God and everyone, and check for blood on the bimah chair. No wonder the orthodox men don’t want to sit on a chair tainted by a woman who was menstruating. Maybe they had a point after all. It turned out that I did not ruin the throne of the chosen people. When the services were over, I stood as discreetly as possible and gave that seat cover a good once over. It looked as good as it did before I sat down. Being nervous, I got all sweaty, yes, down there, which explained my misperception.

Now I am teaching Sunday school, which means I am at the temple all the time, especially for all those holidays. I made it through Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with no flying colors. The next holiday up was Simchat Torah. I know we Jews have a lot of holidays that don’t make sense, and this is definitely one of them. Simchat Torah celebrates the Torah, our religious text, which is handwritten by scribes on a scroll of animal skin, er, parchment. We commemorate the day by unrolling the Torah the rest of the way, reading the last few lines of it, going back to the beginning and reading the first few lines, and then rerolling it to begin a new year. If that doesn’t sound like a party, I don’t know what does.

To make it more festive, our temple celebrates Simchat Torah at religious school, allowing all the children of the congregation to hold the scroll as it is unraveled around the room and rerolled. These children’s hands, normally used for such things as butt scratching and nose picking, were now holding the Holiest of Holies between their dirty fingers, with us grownups interspersed between them so that the scroll wouldn’t hit the ground and become tainted. While I carefully held the parchment between my pinched thumbs and forefingers, I felt that familiar dampness. Yes indeed, my womb decided to pick that very moment to shed its unfertilized lining. I was an impure woman with my hands actually on the Torah scroll. I couldn’t exactly share my predicament with my eight year old students, or anyone else for that matter, but the irony wasn’t lost on me.

I don’t blame being unprepared. I blame the moon. Perhaps in the future I should limit my contact with holy doctrines and white seat covers when celebrating the Jewish holidays. Or better yet, I could dress up as a giant tampon for Purim, a holiday I like to refer to as the Jewish Halloween. That way I have all my bases covered, thank you Jesus.

Who Could Ask for Anything More?

My ten year old, E, is a few weeks away from her eleventh birthday, and she is very busy preparing for the big day. She has created a whole series of lists which she has conveniently left in the middle of the kitchen counter because God forbid she put anything away. The guest list for her birthday party. The list for the theme and party favors. The menu for the picnic. The games she wants to play. Never mind that she isn’t supposed to have big birthday parties anymore. When she turned ten, the big party extravaganzas were to give way to a more subdued and mature celebration of either a few friends going out for dinner and a movie, or maybe one or two girls for a sleepover. I guess I was so distracted by her wish list that I forgot to remind her that the next big birthday party won’t be until her bat mitzvah, and until then, birthdays are meant to be understated affair.

Back to that birthday gift list. When she first started making her list, mere days after her tenth birthday, her wish list was reasonable. She wanted a Timex sports watch, a Razor scooter, and some clothes. I had no problem with the list, except for the fact that she had to wait over three hundred days to get any of it.

Since then, she has morphed into a tween, so her needs and wants have changed. The new number one must have item became a cell phone. I used to tell her, “Who are you gonna call? Me?” but apparently the entire fifth grade, except for E, has one. I am standing by my no. She doesn’t need to text “LOL” to the girl next to her; she can just actually laugh out loud. At least a laugh can’t be taken away by her teacher.

So she changed her list again. This time she wanted a bike. Now, this one I am almost okay with. She got a bike for sixth birthday, and she has kind of outgrown it over the past five years. Of course, she didn’t learn to ride it until about a month ago at ten and a half. Her knees hit her throat with every rotation of the pedals, which made it challenging for her to really ride effectively. My husband was the one who balked at the bike. He doesn’t want to sink the money into something she won’t use, since we have already done that. She won’t get any better at riding, though, with a too small bike. That only works well for Shriners with fezzes. And I insist my kids wear helmets, without tassels.

Next she decided on cash. “For what?” I asked. “For things I need,” she told me. “This isn’t college,” I pointed out. “I buy you the things you need. I am not giving you money to blow on crap.” That didn’t go over well with E. She hates it when we sat her things are crap. But seriously, I am her mom, not her grandmother. I am not cutting her a check for a couple of hundred bucks so she can buy stuff I normally wouldn’t let her. The same goes for gift cards to her favorite stores. I am not giving in that easily.

She moved on to wanting her bedroom redecorated. She went through the Pottery Barn Kids catalog and selected a loft style bed nicer than anyone could make in a college dorm and a matching desk. The loft cost almost two thousand dollars, also more than anyone would spend on a loft for their dorm. I told her that it just wasn’t happening. We moved in our house three years ago, and redecorated her room then, from the cute ladybugs she adored in her old room to the horses she was too scared to ride but loved. My sister even came and painted a horse mural on one wall to match the overpriced bedding and accessories I got her, since she loved horses. Now, three years later, she could care less about horses. She wants a loft bed, and a sitting area, and nothing to do with horses.

I told her, emphatically, that we are not redecorating her room this year, and even if we were, we would not be buying all new furniture. Period. No discussion. If she wants to sit in a sitting area, she has a choice between the bonus room, the living room, or the den. If she wants to sit in her room, I recommend the bed or the floor. And seriously, she is scared of heights. I don’t see her climbing up a ladder every night to go to sleep. I see her, instead, curled up in the fetal position on the floor under her loft, wishing her bed wasn’t so far from the floor.

Now that the big day is drawing closer, however, she has dropped all of that because she has finally decided on what she wants more than anything in all the world. The one thing that she absolutely, positively can’t live without is a dog. She doesn’t want just any dog; she wants a pug, one of those flat faced, curly-tailed, asthmatic, bug-eyed creatures that is kind of like the platypus of the canine world. I do like pugs from the front, with their so ugly they’re cute good looks, but from the back, they have the butthole of a much larger breed, made visible because that curly piggy tail doesn’t cover it. I don’t like to look at an anus and have it look back at me.

E, though, seems okay with a pug butt, although she would prefer I not discuss it. She has even selected the name for this alleged dog, Nubs. Well, Nubs is its nickname. Its full name is Stubby Nubs. Since she dreamed up this vision of the perfect dog, and hence, the perfect birthday gift, Stubby Nubs is all she can think about. She has borrowed my friends’ dogs so she can practice dog care. She is scooping kitty litter to demonstrate her responsibility. She is also driving me bat-shit crazy about this dog, moaning its name at the breakfast table and in the car pool line. I hate Stubby Nubs, and I don’t even know him.

Hate is a strong emotion though, and really not necessary, because E is not getting a dog either. I have offered a Fur Real Friends dog, a Build-A-Bear dog, and a dog video game, but we are not getting a living, breathing, eating and shitting dog, no matter how bulgy its eyes, wheezy its breathing, or rank nasty its breath. It’s not because my other daughter is scared of dogs, and it’s not because of the two cats that no one but me feeds. It’s because I am not picking up one more piece of poop for one more creature. I am at my poop, vomit, and urine capacity. I don’t want to have land mines in the back yard. I don’t want to have little gifts waiting for me if I am too long with the running of the errands. At least the cats shit in a box; I don’t have to go searching for it by following the smell or discovering it on the bottom of my shoe. No matter how much she wants or begs for a dog, all it will take is one good turd on the floor of her bedroom to end that love affair. And then I will be the primary shit scooper for the next twelve years. No, thank you.

So, with a few weeks to go, E has exhausted all ideas for what she wants. She is now going with nothing, which she tells us in as dramatic a fashion as possible, since she is not allowed to have anything she really wants. All because I am so mean, not allowing her Nubs, a cell phone, or a brand new room. If she keeps this up, all she will be getting is the opportunity to live to see her eleventh birthday, which will be a truly generous gift. Happy birthday, E, be thankful I didn’t kill you. Here are some socks. Now eat your cake and stop crying.

Retail Therapy

I took my older daughter, E, shopping at the mall on Saturday night, against my better judgment. I wanted to go see a band which was playing for free downtown at a street festival. Bands that I like don’t usually come to my town, so I was pretty bummed to miss it because I had to go shopping, or that I didn’t have a babysitter to do the shopping part for me. But E was even more bummed. Her pre-pubescent hormones were on a rampage and none of the friends she called at the last minute were available to hang out. The only way I could console her, since the little squares of dark chocolate I normally use to calm her were not working, was a trip to Aeropostale for a new t-shirt that looks like all the other t-shirts she owns from Aeropostale. I wish someone could explain to me the power this store has over tween girls.


It doesn’t matter, though, because she was happy with a $15 Henley and a $5 headband from JCrew. It’s cheaper as an evening out than going to the movies, and as long as I kept my mouth shut, which meant no comments out loud about her selections, or the stores in general, or the other mall patrons being her boyfriend, or singing along with the background music, or anything else that could be classified as embarrassing, then she could consider the evening a success and I could still be viewed as appropriate company for her to keep.

I didn’t go shopping in malls with my mother when I was a kid. Being the youngest of three girls, I was subjected to more than my fair share of hand-me-downs. My only saving grace was my extra plumpness, as I could not fit into many of my string bean older sister’s discards. That was my ticket to new clothes. I could only squeeze myself into so many dresses that looked like sausage casing before my mother was forced to do something about it.

What I so desperately desired were those pricey Garanimals, which were sold at department stores. They had animal tags that you could use to determine what tops went with what bottoms, in case you were too inept, color blind, or stupid to figure it out on your own. I am pretty sure Garanimals are now yet another crappy line of clothing available at the local Wal-Mart, but back in their heyday, they were expensive, cute, and totally out of my league.

Instead, my mom would take me to Marshall’s and TJ Maxx, from which I wore a lot of odd colored items and socks that were sewn so poorly I couldn’t get them over my feet without cutting off the circulation. The bulk of the merchandise there was of the irregular or damaged variety, instead of the overruns or past season items that you can find nowadays. New clothes shopping was not a back to school adventure, but rather a desperate attempt to find something to fit, occasion by occasion, and I don’t remember ever getting anything just because I liked it. What I wouldn’t have given for a Target about twenty years ago.


My mom, on the other hand, treated herself like the queen she thought she was. She bought clothing at fancy mall boutiques to supplement her own discount store purchases. I remember her in all sorts of draped fabrics, odd hemlines, shoulder pads, metallic leather belts, and many other things that looked like they could have come from Stevie Nicks' or Grace Jones’ wardrobe. She favored neutrals to colors, and had a vast array of rags that looked remarkably like the other rags next to them, all of which cost more than they should have just because they had a Norma Kamali tag.

What she loved most of all were shoes. My mother could buy shoes the way other people bought eggs. She wore a size 5 ½ and at her petite height of barely five feet, she was partial to heels. She had heels in all styles to match any kind of outfit she might possibly throw together: wooden Candie’s slides, clogs, mules, boots, pumps, and spectators.Once she even bought a pair of size four Hippopotamus pumps in purple and white because they were a steal, even though she didn't own anything either purple or white, nor could she squeeze her trotters into them.

I could spend forever in the shoe department, trying on the ugliest, highest heels I could find, real stripper shoes. It was a quest every time to try to find the most nauseating footwear available and teeter around in them until my mom would yell at me. I delighted in my game, however, and always found the price of a public berating worth it.

While I did outgrow the hiding in the circular clothing racks until Mom would yank me out and yell at me, I never did outgrow my love for trying on shoes. I made E take a break from the Hollister and American Eagle Outfitters to join me in the Macy’s shoe department long enough to soothe my inner foot model. And that is where I found the perfect pair of shoes. It was halfway between a pump and a boot, with a bit of Mary Jane strappiness thrown in for good measure. It was a dark saddle brown, and while it had what looked like a bronze rivet or button on the side, it was purely for decoration. It did not require unfastening or untying, and only a true shoe person would understand how to wear it. I slid my foot into the sample size, and it fit like a glove designed for a foot, which is not the same as a sock at all.

I loved it. I loved the way it made my ankle look. I loved the fact that it wasn’t too high, and almost felt comfortable. I loved the way it would have looked just as good with jeans as it would with a dress. I loved that it felt like it was made for my foot alone.

I slipped it off and looked at it closely. Yes, I was a bit put off by the $199 price tag. But what disturbed me more was the way it smelled exactly like the shoes my mother would bring home for herself. It was the smell of good, rich leather. It was a smell I remember her saving for herself. It was not a smell I remembered ever enjoying personally, but rather, a smell I always associated with my mother and how she reserved the best things for herself while I grew up being the third person to wear some cheap store brand panties. I put the shoes down and took E to the next store she wanted to visit.

I can afford the occasional pair of fine leather shoes, if I can get past the memory that comes with it. But that Saturday night shopping trip wasn’t about me. It was about my daughter and making up for the fact that she is having a tough time starting out her teen years. If a new shirt can make her happy, for just a little while, and she understands it is not because she demands or thinks she deserves it, then yes, ask and ye shall receive. A just because shirt is enough to show her that what she wants does matter and what she needs can be provided. Maybe it wasn’t the purchase so much as my time that made the evening a success. When she was three, it was a kiss or a band aid that made all the difference. Now, it is the sacrifice of a Saturday night at the mall to show how much I care.

Return of Brace Face

Remember a few weeks ago when my older daughter, E, got her braces? She was both delighted and appalled at them, as was I, but for different reasons. Well, I thought an update on the condition of her mouth was in order.

Her first appointment to see how things were going was not what we expected. I figured we would stop by after school and the orthodontist would take a looky-loo, maybe crank her expander, and tell us to come back in a week. After all, a nice space was already developing between her front Chiclets, somewhere between Madonna’s and Anna Paquin’s in the gap size department. The doctor did give her a couple of good cranks, which is fun if it’s not your mouth. But then his assistant wanted to change her rubber bands.

Since I never had braces, I didn't know that the real torture comes from the rubber bands. They encircle the brackets glued to each tooth, and nowadays, they come in a rainbow of colors. I have decided the reason for the variety is to give these young victims some small sense of control over what is happening inside their very heads. If they can pick out the colors on their teeth, maybe they won’t mind the braces and the accompanying pain so much.

According to E, that is utter bullshit, although she thankfully didn’t say it like that. Changing the rubber bands is about the third circle of Hell. They have to remove each rubber band with something that looks like needle nose pliers, and then take new rubber bands, ones that have yet to soften in saliva and lose a bit of their elasticity, and stretch them around the brackets. One at a time. That’s a total of twenty times; well, eighteen for E, since her adult canines have yet to join the rest of the party.

The rubber bands themselves are about the size of a seed bead, for those of you who are familiar with Native American crafts. Bigger than a poppy seed, maybe sesame seed size. They don’t have a whole lot of give. Add to that the fact that each tooth is being pushed around and has loosened up a bit, and you can imagine how good a little pressure on each one might feel. I now know why the wire is there. It’s to keep all the teeth from falling out. It’s a tooth cage, a guard rail.

Well, when E sat patiently with her mouth open wide, and don’t forget, her piehole is like a baby bird’s, the assistant removed the rubber bands until she lost control of one and the tooth bracket shot across the room. Not good. That meant that the wire had to be removed, then the glue residue scraped off that tooth, then another bracket glued onto the tooth, which then had to dry, before she could be rewired, and finally, rubber banded. Our five minute mouth check turned into a forty-five minute session of pre-teen water boarding.

We couldn’t even send her to school the next day with Motrin for her pain, because the bottle of the popular over the counter medicine said for adults, twelve and older, which E is not. The school nurse takes those directions more seriously than we do. So she could have children's chewables, which would get stuck in her braces, or liquid, which would require her drinking the entire bottle to give her a therapeutic dosage. Did I mention how tough my kid is?

We went back to the orthodontist last week for another check up. I had no idea that getting braces was going to be a new extracurricular activity. Had I known, we could have given up piano or guitar lessons to make time for it. Anyway, her expander had worked. She now has a space between her front teeth big enough for another tooth, which I am pretty sure was the point. She went back to the exam area, got the once over by the extremely friendly orthodontist, and then got wire on the top. The cranking of the expander was over, and while it will continue to sit in her mouth for six months, regular braces could commence. She was wired on her top teeth, and only one rubber band was added. A big one, hot pink, was stretched across that ravine between her incisors. It's a pretty obvious rubber band.

“Nice slingshot,” I told her. “You can shoot peas across the lunch room.” She gave me that look she is perfecting in response.

The best part, aside from the fact that I am not the one with the mouth hardware, is that we don’t have to go back for six weeks. So while she won’t be able to get black and orange rubber bands for Halloween, which bums me a little, she does get a break from stretching her mouth wide enough to rip the little corners. We are all chewing our gum secretly, in hiding, so as not to make her mad and fire some projectile out of her mouth arsenal. And yes, she still does sound a bit like John Merrick.

Next Year in...Myrtle Beach?

What is the deal with those crappy beach stores in Myrtle Beach? They all shout their names in bright neon, EAGLES or WINGS or WAVES. At least WAVES has something to do with the beach. They are huge square boxes, brightly lit, and filled with more crap than they have crappy looking people to buy it. Sometimes, when my family gets bored on a trip to the beach, we like to stop in one of those beach stores and look around. We never buy anything. We just stroll, making fun of everything, before we leave empty-handed. Last time we went to the beach, however, we found something that we never expected at a beach store in South Carolina.

We went out to eat dinner after a long day on the beach, and we had some time to kill before bedtime. We were too stuffed to go get ice cream or to go back to the condo and sit in front of the television, so I suggested we stop by one of our favorite crap beach stores. We like this particular one because the building has a gigantic cement shark in front of it, and by gigantic, I mean the entire length of the store. You have to walk through its jaws to enter the building, and the inside of its mouth is covered in graffiti. Even its beady shark eye is all lit up. Is there any wonder why it's one of our favorites?

We went inside and headed straight for the shark tank. Yes, you read that correctly. There was a concrete tank in the middle of the store that houses not one but two live sharks. Being nurse sharks, they are not the most active fish. They spent most of their time lounging on the bottom of the tank while the lonely remora swam in circles near the surface, hoping some idiot child would ignore the “caution, sharks will bite!” sign and plunge in a hand.

After five minutes of watching the sharks do nothing, we wandered up and down the cluttered rows of cotton-poly blend t-shirts and unflattering two piece bathing suits. I could see buying a t-shirt at a beach store, but really, don’t most people pack their swimsuits for a beach trip? They also had some vaguely Christian and beachy knick knacks, as if Jesus were on vacation and looking for a little something to take home to the dog sitter.

Near the front of the store was a baby turtle tank which was also fun to watch if you could get past the smell. The turtles were only cute because they are small, and they liked to climb atop one another, making a turtle tower straight out of Yertle the Turtle. One turtle got too cocky and tried to climb up using another turtle’s head as a step stool, and the whole lot fell into the water.
We watched them reconstruct their Jenga turtle tower before moving on to the hermit crabs.

They too reeked like dead fish trapped in a fat man’s armpits, but they were creepily fascinating to watch. They lived in shells that have been vandalized with paintings of soccer balls and SpongeBob Squarepants and fairies, which would be very humiliating if they ever caught sight of themselves in a mirror. The ones that disturbed me the most are those that have clawed their way up the wire mesh to the top of the tank. You know if you took that crab home, it would get loose inside your house like a giant beach bug, never to be seen alive again, until your grown children packed your things for your move to the assisted living home and found the empty shell, painted like a monkey, under your bookcase.

Right by the register was the display of cheap glass weed pipes and bongs that are a delight to explain to inquisitive children (vases and candle holders) who don’t understand why these glass items are more fragile than the ones out on the shelves for anyone to knock over. The next display case contained the “legal” pocket and button knives, my personal favorite of which featured on its handle a skeleton riding a motorcycle. Based on what these beach stores sell, it looked like some Jesus-loving couple in tiny Confederate flag bikinis and matching t-shirts were going to get high and chow down on some live seafood before capping off the evening with a good old-fashioned knife fight.

Even with all that splendor under one roof, we still found something shocking on the way out. On the side of the door frame, near the top, was a mezuzah, a good six inched announcement to all who entered that here was a Jewish place of business. My older daughter E noticed it first, and then we all had to block the entrance while we stood gawking at it. But seriously, this was South Carolina, not Miami Beach or Coney Island. American flag, yes. Jesus on the cross, you bet. Publicly and proudly admitting to be Jewish, at work? Not so much.

We were fascinated. I theorized that it was probably owned by an Israeli, although the woman behind the counter looked more like the pure blooded American shoppers rather than a foreign born owner. My husband added, “I bet all of these stores are owned by Israelis.” To test our theory, we had to look at another crap beach store.

We drove straight from the shark store to the killer whale store, which unfortunately does not have a whale tank in it. It did, however, have the same turtle and hermit crab tanks, but none of the bongs or knives, which made it seem more wholesome. We tried to act nonchalant because the swarthy man near the register was watching us, fully aware we had no intention of buying any of his schlock. And then bingo! Right in front of the cash register was a collection canister, a tzedakah box, if you will, sponsored by the Chabad of Myrtle Beach. We rushed back to the bay of doors and searched until we found the mezuzah. We laughed delightedly when we saw it, which confused poor Schlomo behind the counter.

You’re right, Mom,” E said when we left the store. “He definitely looked like an Israeli.”

“How can you tell?” S, my younger daughter, asked.

“You can tell,” E and I said knowingly, at the same time.

“Let’s check out another one!” I said as I drove out of the parking lot.

We went past one more crap beach store on the way home. Now that we knew what to look for, we didn’t have to get out of the car. We just slowly drove by the front door, and again spotted a mezuzah. We all screamed and careened out of the parking lot.

While the crap beach stores sell ashtrays and sun catchers and sea shells and snow globes, none of them sell mezuzahs. I guess they know their customers. It’s too bad, though, because I am pretty sure we would have bought one, if only to say we got it at a crap store in Myrtle Beach. Especially if it was camouflage and sporting a rebel flag.

Pancakes and Altered States

Last week, I went to North Carolina for breakfast. Maybe that doesn’t sound like a big deal to you, especially if you live in North Carolina. But I don’t. I live in South Carolina, which, contrary to popular belief, is actually a different state. Well, okay, we are talking about a fifty minute drive from home, but did I mention it was a school day? Or that I didn’t decide to go until an hour before I left? Who says I’m not spontaneous?

Me. I do. Not even a little spontaneous. Allow me to illustrate. A few weeks ago, my friend BD’s husband called to tell me he planned a surprise birthday trip to the Big Easy for his wife, and he thought I might want to go along, make it a girls’ weekend. He sent me the flight and hotel information and told me not to tell her, but that if I wanted to go, I should just show up at the airport and fly with her. He gave me two weeks’ notice. I gave it some thought for about a minute, but then I succeeded in coming up with a gazillion reasons why I couldn’t go and bowed out of the trip. Later, BD told me that when her husband mentioned to her that he had invited me along, she asked him if he was crazy. She told him how I hate to fly, how I plan my life out a year in advance, and how I have an irrational fear of New Orleans. She knew I was the last person to ask to scramble for an impromptu trip.

So, no, it’s not my imagination. I really am that inflexible. The other day, my friend JR asked me to drive up to Hendersonville, North Carolina, with her. Her artwork had been on display at a gallery there since the beginning of the summer, and she needed to go pick it up. She thought it would be fun for us to drive together and make a morning of it. The kids were back in school. The husbands were at work. It was a moment of uninterrupted grown-up time.

As usual, my first instinct was to say thanks, but no thanks. I wanted to go to the gym. I had a massage appointment scheduled for noon. I needed to buy bagels. I might have some laundry to do. The massage and the gym were my only real excuses. I decided to work that angle.

“I don’t know,” I told JR. “I really want to go to the gym.”

“Oh, come on, you can take a day off,” she said. “Two hours of child-free conversation. And we can stop for breakfast before the gallery opens.”

“Well,” I wavered,” I also have a massage appointment at noon.”

“I can have you back in plenty of time. I have to pick up lil JR by one anyway.” Lil JR is her two-year old.

I did the math in my head. An hour to drive up, an hour back. That left about fifteen minutes to get the art out of the gallery when it opened at ten. I wasn’t really sure how there was time for a meal too. I took a really long minute to breathe. JR waited patiently for me to answer.

“Okay, I’ll go,” I said. I tried to make it sound like I wanted to. Because it’s not that I didn’t want to go. I did. I just didn’t see room for a road trip and my daily routine.

Sensing my reluctance, JR offered to drive. That morning, we dropped our kids off at school, and up to the mountains we went. Even without the leaves changing colors, the mountains of North Carolina are a beautiful sight. The rolling hills turn into immense green mounds, and you can count the churches, BBQ joints, and rebel flags along the way. Truly, the drive has a little something for everyone.

We got to Hendersonville in less than an hour and found a parking spot right near Mean Mr. Mustard’s, a quaint eatery unlike any we have here in Greenville. I loved the restaurant at first sight. Small tables, mismatched chairs, Beatles paraphernalia on the walls and counters. It was not all bright and flashy, but simple, like you could show up in your pajamas with your hair sticking out all over and your morning breath, and they would happily pour you a cup of coffee. The other patrons were retired and elderly and also were enjoying the luxury of a mid week breakfast out, so we were in good company, if one were looking for some hot over-85 action. We ordered our food, scrambled eggs for me, a veggie omelet for JR, and we talked and laughed while we waited for our meals.

The mark of a good breakfast joint in the South is the grits. Are they snow white, thin, and a little al dente? Because if so, don’t bring them to me. I can make those at home. I want coarse, stone-ground slow cooked grits, thick and creamy, the kind that need no extra butter, salt, or cheese. These grits were perfection, ambrosia, and only were rivaled by the float-like-a-cloud biscuits and homemade blackberry preserves. Company aside, those grits and biscuits were worth the drive.

After JR picked up the tab, which was part of her bribe for getting me to go with her, we walked over to the gallery. It was about ten, opening time, only the sign on the door said they opened at eleven, not ten. JR panicked and texted the owner, leaving her message after message, but it was clear by the lack of response that 11:00 was pretty firm.

I called the spa and luckily could push back my massage until 12:30. That allowed us to relax a bit, so we wandered up the street to check out the boutiques that thought ten was a reasonable time to get the business day going. We tried on a bunch of tops at one store, really cool funky stuff that looked great on the hangers and the 2% of the female population that are built like hangers. We decided we looked more like trolls than models and left empty handed, loathing our figure flaws.

With a few more minutes to kill, we went into a pet store, not the kind that sells food and de-worming products, but the kind that sells home baked dog treats and couture hand sewn dog dresses. They even had a selection of dog foot ware, from booties to jeweled sandals. I didn’t see any heels, so it wasn’t totally out of control. Still, $150 for a dog dress seemed a bit extreme, even for the over indulgent. How does a store like that make rent? Do they really sell enough raincoats and matching rubbers to cover their overhead? And no, we didn’t buy anything there either.

We met the gallery owner right at eleven, just as she unlocked the door. Within ten minutes, we were back in JR’s car, artwork packed in boxes, and headed for home. I made it to my massage appointment with one minute to spare.

JR was right, I did have enough time for a morning drive to the mountains, a fabulous car- filled breakfast, and a much needed break from routine. I recommend eating breakfast in a different state. It’s tasty and refreshing, and I don’t mean the grits. But seriously, they rocked.

Brace Yourself

I am happy to report that the orthodontist’s office has stopped playing Christian rock. It’s bad enough to spend a morning in the waiting room without bringing Jesus into the picture. I suppose some people would feel the need for faith and prayer while waiting for braces. Dear God, don’t make this hurt. Please, Lord, let my teeth look better. Sweet Jesus, how am I going to pay for this? Still, I will take an Air Supply song( "I'm all out of love, I'm so lost without you") over singing His praise any day, especially the day my older daughter, E, got braces.

Yesterday, as I sat sipping my complimentary peppermint tea, resting my feet on a zebra striped ottoman, E became a brace face, a metal mouth. Poor E inherited her father’s tiny bird mouth. She has already been through three expanders and has had her baby canines pulled. All that work was in anticipation of yesterday, the start of her awkward phase.

I am convinced that orthodontics as a practice originated during the Spanish Inquisition. Take the expander, for instance. It has a key which must be turned twice a day to stretch the upper jaw. Everybody knows bones don’t stretch. It’s like the rack, only attached inside the mouth, which means no gummy bears or Hubba Bubba while that metal thing is glued to your teeth. After a few days of cranking, you might actually hear a pop as the bones pull apart a little. That’s how you know it’s working, and if you’re lucky, your kid will tell you what really happened to your new lipstick last week.

Even the office layout is a little shady. At a regular dentist’s office, you have a modicum of privacy in those separate operators. But at the orthodontist’s office, all the kids are lined up within view of each other, not unlike Abu Graib. The theory is that the open floor plan allows the orthodontist to move easily from patient to patient, but I think it is a peer pressure thing. Most preteens don’t want to scream and cry in front of other preteens, let alone gag and puke. It’s imposed social control.

E doesn’t like me to go back with her at the office, which was why I was relaxing in the waiting area with my writing pad and Nook. I don’t know if I make her more nervous or if she doesn’t like me chatting with the doctor, who was a classmate of my husband’s. While she doesn’t want me to wait with her, she also doesn’t want me to leave. I was instructed to check on her progress every half hour like a Thanksgiving turkey. So much for running to the grocery store or Target during that two hour procedure.

Last time I checked on her, she had a giant red cheek expander, which looks like a pair of evil Bozo the clown lips, almost ripping her mouth open. In fact, the whole row of kids back there had their mouths stretched wide open like a herd of laughing horses. Her poor mouth was stretched wide enough to fit in a size thirteen Doc Marten and three tennis balls, and she had little metal brackets glued to each of her teeth. My poor baby. I wish they had a little mini-bar in the lobby to spike this peppermint tea.

She looked so exposed and vulnerable and slightly robotic. She looked like she would need to be wanded at the airport security checkpoint. She looked like any minute, Mr. Roger’s trolley would return from the Land of Make Believe, which must be located in the back of her mouth.

Yes, I took before and after pictures. I did not, however, take during pictures. I am sure, however, that there is a fetish website devoted to those very images. I also checked on her every half hour as she requested, from the attaching of the expander to the gluing of the brackets to the attaching of the wire to the selection and application of the rubber bands. Each time, I would squeeze her hand and look at her, and her eyes would look back at mine with pure misery.

She selected orange and green rubber bands. I don’t know the significance of her color scheme, but I did try to talk her out of the green. She doubted that it would look like spinach stuck in her brackets and disregarded my opinion, which is how I knew she was really okay. It's not a look I would have gone with, but then again, it's not my mouth, thank you Jesus.

We stopped by my husband’s office before I took E back to school so she could show off her several thousand dollar obstructed smile. She slurped her extra saliva and moaned softly to herself in the car ride there. I asked her to say “I am not an animal. I am a human being” to him when we saw him, which she did. She doesn’t know who the Elephant Man is anyway, so it’s not like she knows I was making fun of her. Except I too couldn’t stop slurping, and that got on her nerves.

I am pretty sure she is going to look great when all this is finished, whenever that is. In the meantime, I need to remember how to make my own baby food, since she isn’t eating anything with texture for a while. With those train tracks, the breakouts in the T zone, and the fact that she stands eye to eye, one thing is clear. My poor baby is no longer a baby.

Join the Party!

I wrote you a joke today. Wanna hear it? What do you call a room of 38 people who can’t dance? A Zumba Class!

I have now taken one and a half Zumba classes, as research for you, because that’s the kind of person I am. Zumba is to the middle aged woman of the 2000’s what Jazzercise was to the middle aged woman of the 1970’s, and by that, I mean it is a form of public humiliation akin to a vertical seizure that won’t actually make you any healthier or thinner. And by that, I mean younger.

Zumba is touted to be a fun fitness dance craze that combines a bunch of dance styles that you don’t know how to do, including some that you haven’t even heard of. An instructor with way more coordination that you leads the class, taking you through a sequence of exciting moves that you are genetically unable to mimic, all set to music that is a mélange of Latin, tropical, and African beats and rhythms, none of which you will be able to identify. It will remind you of Gloria Estefan, The Gypsy Kings, or Jose Feliciano, but you won’t recognize any of it. You won’t even recognize the lyrics, except for the word Zumba, which, I hate to break it to you, isn’t even a real word.

But who cares, because it’s fun, right? That kind of depends on your definition of fun. Are you a true one-of-a-kind individual? Do you like to dance to the beat of your own drummer? Do you like to surround yourself with other people who also are dancing to their own beat? What if some of those people are dancing off-beat? Do you like that?

If so, then come on in, there’s room for you in Zumba, right next to the one old white man who is wearing black socks and a knee brace. He’s been so lonely since his wife died, but look at him now! Look at how he swivels his hips, hips which have yet to see a fracture! He’s not afraid of looking stupid, no-sir-ee. He’s got the moves to help him meet the next Mrs. Right, that special someone to hold his hand and eventually wipe his mouth and ass. And what self-confidence, to be the only man in a sea of mostly post-menopausal women! Those are some big balls, my friend, even if they do dangle down to the bottom of his gym shorts.

Maybe you haven’t tried Zumba yet because you are intimidated by trying to learn a complicated dance routine. It’s so much to remember, and what fun is that? No worries, because there are no instructions! That’s right. Your so-called “instructor” doesn’t explain any of the moves to you, nor does she cue what is coming next. She just dances, and hopefully you will follow along. If you don’t, too bad, maybe you’ll get it the next time around. She is on a roll, and there ain’t no stopping her now. So you better hope you can see her from where you are standing. If you forgot your contacts or get trapped behind the tubby woman in the visor, you can forget it. You are lost, and you will remain so. Don’t get mad, though, Gilligan, just try to pick a person near you that looks like she knows what she is doing and imitate her. The only person who can really do any of the moves is the instructor, and she isn’t going to share her secrets. So it’s okay to fake it. This isn’t an orgasm or anything, it’s just Zumba!


Will you burn calories? Of course, how can you not? After all, you can burn calories while you sleep, and this is much more interactive than sleeping, unless you are an extraordinarily restless sleeper. Don’t you burn more calories eating celery than the celery actually contains? You might not burn off that Pop-tart you stuffed down in the car on the way to the gym, but you will certainly use up the pack of Splenda in your Venti soy latte. Good for you! With all those dramatic arm movements, hip thrusts, toe taps, and jump steps, you are getting leaner by the minute. You’ll be ready for Carnival in Rio in no time, or maybe your nephew’s bar mitzvah. What could make him prouder than his aunt doing the stanky leg with the rabbi?

What are you waiting for? Grab your wrist bands, put on your free t-shirt from the blood drive, and head to the nearest senior community center or church basement. Somewhere, when you least expect it, a Zumba class is about to begin. Don’t miss it. Just be sure to take a shot of something before you get there. Drinking water is encouraged, but alcohol, not so much. You would think that a few sips of a nice Chablis or tequila would get the crowd moving, maybe even make them more coordinated, but most places that are open for business in the morning frown upon alcohol before noon.

So be prepared, because that old man next to you might drop down on one knee, and not just because his heart gave out.