Nine Ladies Dancing: Merry Cowmas

Do you find it depressing to go see holiday lights after the holidays? I can see why. All the presents are opened and either lovingly adored or discarded and despised. Underneath the tree is barren, unless yours is a live one, in which case the pine needles are piled up like snow drifts. The leftovers linger uneaten in the fridge, waiting to be thrown away, and the decorations that made your home look festive just days ago are now cluttered and busy. We had every intention of driving to look at lights before Christmas but it rained every day the week before. Who wants to look at lights through a rain streaked car window? That’s like trying to look at someone’s naked body through a fogged up shower door. You can kind of make out a nipple, but then again, it might just be a big mole.

The night after Christmas night, my husband and I ordered our two daughters into the back seat of my car and we drove to a nearby shithole town to see the lights display at a privately owned zoo. I have taken my girls to this “zoo” before, but never to see their holiday lights. Let me see if I can accurately describe this animal park. It’s large and has a much bigger variety of animals than our local American Zoological Association accredited zoo, but there is always a feeling that something less than ethical is taking place, even if there is no evidence of it. It’s privately owned by people who proudly profess their love of God and country. I always get the feeling that the animal park is a cover for a religious sect.

In addition to the animal pens and cages, they have a large open "safari" area where animals such as emu, cows, deer, and zebras roam free. When you go during their operating season, you have to opportunity to ride a decommissioned school bus with no seats or windows into the safari area and feed stale bread to the animals who are so addicted to carbs that they try to storm the bus and fight each other over an old cinnamon raisin bagel. Whenever I go there, I feel guilty, like I shouldn’t be supporting the park by giving them money, but then I figure I don’t want the animals to starve, so I spend extra to be able to give a baby goat some formula out of a bottle. I bet they feed those baby goats to the tigers and lions when they get too big.

That animal park, located in the middle of nowhere, where city and country laws concerning the owning and maintaining of wild exotic animals don’t reach, is also home to one of the largest  holidays lights displays in the upstate of South Carolina, and we had never seen it. This was to be our year. We arrived at the dinner hour, but under the blanket of darkness, it felt like the dead of night. We followed a line of cars down the curvy road until we got to our destination, which given the location, the confusion, and the number of rednecks in pickup trucks, could just as easily have been a Klan rally. After trying to figure out where to get in line and pay, we finally started driving around the park, looking at the lights that were draped haphazardly over the sparsely planted trees. I expected there to be more lights or better displays, but again, after Christmas, any lights would look a little sad.

We twisted around, following the cars in line in front of us, until finally we got to the safari area. We stopped by a table to purchase food for the animals. $3 would get you a sleeve of water crackers, $6 a grocery sack of old bread, and for $10, you got the mother lode of both crackers and bread. After spending $6 a head just for admission, we opted for one pack of crackers, then drove slowly in line until we were inside the fenced in area.

That was where the driving in line ended. It was like Jurassic Park during the power outage. Herds of deer ran by the perimeter of the fence, looking for stray crackers and refuge. Cows meandered between cars as if on a cattle drive, and in the middle of a cluster of cars were a few zebras and some never before seen hybrid of zebra and donkey. As for the cars, well, there was no more line. There was, instead, a free for all. Cars were everywhere free -wheeling over hills and dips in the land, jockeying to get close enough to a zebra or Holstein to coax it closer while kids waved crackers out the window. It was like a demolition derby, but with cows. Minivans had their side doors open, children  unbuckled and leaning out to feed the animals. Babies sat in front seats, unstrapped and unprotected. Pick-up trucks were making donuts, their flat beds filled with teens who hung on with one hand while throwing slices of bread with the other. It was a Christmas redneck rodeo.

I was overwhelmed at first by the chaos of the whole thing, but after a moment to orient myself, I got right into the mix. I tore around the field and even cutoff a late model Dodge Neon before I got close enough to a little cluster of cows, which, despite having eaten their own weight in dinner rolls, were happy to come over to my car and have a little snack. They stuck their heads right in the windows, looking at us with their sad dumb eyes before swiping crackers out of our hands with fat wet tongues. One cow stuck its head all the way in the back seat, causing my younger daughter to shriek and jump in her sister’s lap. My husband, who normally does not participate in what might be called shenanigans, was almost as excited to feed the cows as the rest of us.

After a while, a couple of cows moseyed over to another jam of cars, and I tried to work our car closer to the zebras. We were almost intercepted by the biggest Holsteins I have ever seen. I haven’t seen many Holsteins, but these black and white behemoths dwarfed the compact cars that surrounded them. If they were a little more intelligent, organized, and carnivorous, they could have definitely overturned a car or two and eaten its contents. Never before have I been more terrified and exhilarated to be in a cattle herd. Never before had I been in a cattle herd.

After sitting still for a good ten minutes, we decided that our need to get out of the fray was greater than our need to feed a stale cracker to a zebra. My husband and I were so turned around we couldn’t even remember where the exit signs were, but I finally maneuvered the car out of that junkyard pile and toward the other fun that makes up the holiday lights display: the bonfire. Here again we got trapped in a line of cars all working their way to a makeshift parking lot where people could get out and buy marshmallows for roasting and cups of instant cocoa and stand around a bonfire that for all I know was made up of banned library books instead of logs. The whole family agreed that we were too frightened to get out of the car, and instead bypassed that parking area and headed towards the exit.

That;s where the holiday lights stopped being just about decoration, and instead turned to the history of Christianity. There was a series of signs with scripture quotes and illustrations from the Old Testament, followed by another series of signs and paintings depicting the New Testament, which my older daughter likened to a Harry Potter sequel. The entire religious history lesson ended with a big Nativity display, making sure each and every person who came to feed the animals got a good dose of that old time religion before they began their long drive home.  Nothing sobers you up like seeing the birth of Jesus after the part where He died for your sins.

My family all agreed that the safari lights experience was just as enjoyable after Christmas as it would have been before the holiday. We also agreed that we didn’t understand why we had never been before, but we will definitely make it an annual tradition. Next time we hope to borrow a monster truck so that the Volvo SUV doesn’t stand out so obviously. That way, I won't have to worry about getting cow spit all over my vehicle.

Eight Maids a'Milking: Stop it!

An Open Letter to the Makers of Bop It!

Dear Sirs:

I want to congratulate you on creating and selling the most torturous device on the market today. My daughter received this alleged toy as a Christmas gift, and since that time, both her father and I have been on the verge of a mental breakdown. If I had secrets to tell any enemies of the state, surely I would have broken by now.

I address you as sirs because rarely do women mastermind such malice. Only a man would design a device which appears simplistic yet in practice is pure evil. If any woman had anything to do with this apparatus, surely she would be one who had never known love, and thus unleashed her anger and loneliness upon unsuspecting families in the form of a child’s plaything.

Upon first glance, the Bop It! Interactive game looks and acts like a regular child’s toy. The premise is uncomplicated. The player must follow one of four commands of the toy, either to Bop it!, which means to hit the wide button in the middle, to Twist it!, which is to quickly turn a funnel shaped knob, to Pull it!, which is to yank roughly on the blue knob on the other end, or to Shout it!, which features a microphone into which a player must yell. These commands are spoken with a recorded voice with no discernible accent, yet so vaguely familiar that you find yourself unable to ignore it. To keep the player unsuspecting, the commands are issued to a perky beat, one that will stay in your mind for hours after the device has been disarmed and stored for another time.

On what is supposed to be one of the most wholesome days of the year, Christmas, my family waged a full out war on each other over Bop It!. With the first few notes of its rhythm, the first command to “Bop It” could be heard in every room in the house. There was no escape. People stopped what they were doing and followed the hypnotic melody until they located the device, each in turn demanding a chance to hold it and do its bidding. Luckily, you sirs knew that would happen and thus developed different modes of play, so that it could be manipulated alone or in a mob.

The sound settings that you crafted also highlight your evil genius. Loud, louder, or brain controlling volume levels ensure no refuge whenever the game is in play. Have you ever heard a new mother complain of phantom cries when her newborn is asleep? That same phenomenon occurs with Bop It! In fact, I can hear it right now, and it is not even inside my home, as my daughter had the urge to take it with her in the car. I hope my husband doesn’t drive into a ravine in an effort to make it stop.

Bop it! Bop it! Twist it! Bop it! Shout it! Twist it! Pull it! Pull it! Bop it! Shout it! And on and on. And on.

In the course of twenty-four hours, our peaceful household has become a new circle of hell.  I, along with the rest of my family, am compelled to narrate every action I take in mimicry of the toy. Pour it! I say when I make a beverage. Fix it! My husband said while repairing a broken door handle. Wipe it! I heard from behind the closed bathroom door. Feed it! I instructed my daughter when one of the family pets followed us around.

While I believe in the interest of public safety that these device should be recalled from the market, taken to a deserted field in which a large pit had been dug, fired upon at close range, then set on fire before being buried, at the same time I would like to offer a couple of alternate market suggestions for similar products. To be blunt, this item should not be in the hands of children, but would make an excellent adult toy. Why not develop a similar design, but with waterproof silicone attachments and different vibration settings? A list of commands could make the product a lively addition to any consenting couple’s love play. Suck it! Pinch it! Lick it! Poke it! Stuff it! The command options could be greater than the four Bop It! currently allows, and could still allow for solo or group play.

For a more hard core audience, may I suggest an S and M themed version, Slap it! This game could have more physical commands, including Smack it! Punch it! Gag it! Kick it! and Beat it! You could create different variations of that model as well, including but not limited to the dysfunctional home version, the prison version, and even the underground bunker version.

Please contact me at your earliest convenience to either offer a refund for the Bop it! to which we currently are enslaved, along with the necessary funds for follow-up treatment, or alternately to discuss the concepts which I have briefly pitched here in this letter. I eagerly await the courtesy of your response, and I thank you for your time.

 

Seven Swans a'Swimming: Let 'Er Rip

How much do you think babies can remember when they grow up? My nephew was six weeks old when he tagged along with me and my sister to a tattoo parlor. We found it hilarious at the time, in a white trash sort of way. He slept peacefully in his carrier while I lowered my jeans and had a dolphin inked on my right lower back just above my hip. I joked at the time with my sister about how we needed to get a little heart tattooed on his baby arm, the word Mother in script across it. It’s not like we planned to take a baby to a tattoo parlor; it just sort of happened spontaneously, which is of course the way most tattoos happen, except we weren’t drunk. We had gone to the dim sum restaurant next door and feasted, then walked over to dip our toes in the pool of body modification. I found a design I liked, they had  the time, and how could they not, since it’s the smallest little tat you’ve ever seen. The next thing you know, bingo! A baby at the tattoo parlor. So, does he remember it? I sure hope not, because I would hate to have scarred MJ’s baby for life based on where we took him last week.

MJ and I recently had a Brazilian bikini wax dare that I made good on but she left me hanging. Since that time, I decided that there were some definite advantages to my new, um, look, and have since gone back for a touch-up, which you chickenshits should know did not hurt nearly as bad as the first time. MJ came in town for a visit and decided that she would go through with it after all. She asked me to make an appointment for her, and we negotiated the terms. Yes, I was permitted to come in the room. No, I could not record it. Yes, I could provide running commentary. No, I can’t rip off the first patch of wax. Yes, the baby would come with us. Wait, what?

Yes, that’s right, I convinced MJ to get all her pubes ripped out. That’s what friends are for. We arrived at the spa fashionably late for her appointment, after spilling half of the baby’s bottle all over the car and the diaper bag. I was on baby duty, and MJ was hyperventilating as we walked back to the room. Gertie, her waxing technician, did her best to put MJ at ease as she instructed her to disrobe from the waist down and position herself on the table. I stood behind MJ, holding the baby, who did not care for the small room and began fussing. I had convinced MJ to wear a skirt, and she took that off along with her boots and panties, then arranged her gangly legs on the table. She was so nervous she had flop sweat coming from every pour, and asked Gertie if that would affect the results.

Gertie was a professional. A little damp hair was not going to deter her. She slathered MJ’s nether regions with hot wax, talking her through the entire process. MJ asked a lot of questions, which probably had more to do with her nerves than her keen interest in the ABC’s of bikini waxing. Luckily, Gertie had a good sense of humor. She had to; she prunes people’s bushes all day. She told us about what a perfectionist she was, and how some technicians shy away from manscaping, but that she just grabs hold of the member with a towel and yanks it out of the way.

My job was to keep the baby calm, which wasn’t working. He fussed and whined as if he knew his first view of this big wide world was being redecorated, and he was not pleased. Gertie assured us that no one was in the spa room next door, so we didn’t have to worry about his crying affecting anyone else’s spa experience. I paced the dimensions of that cell, pausing now and again to sit him down on the edge of the table near MJ’s head, where she could try to soothe him while ignoring the fact that her short hairs were getting ripped out. She was a champion. She practiced some deep breathing. She might have even shed a tear or two.

Gertie finished the hard part and went into obsessive compulsive detail mode, which meant close inspection with tweezers. MJ asked if it disturbed her to get her face right in her girl. Gertie assured her it did not, that she had seen much worse. She said all this while tweezing stray hairs off of MJ’s now bald mound. There was a spot or two of blood. The baby cried some more. MJ asked me to give him a bottle, but the bottle was in the cup holder of the car, where we had left it when we discovered it had been leaking everywhere. MJ sweat through the paper liner on the table. I had sweat dripping down my back. I took the baby’s legs out of his outfit, thinking he too must be hot. Gertie said it was hot because normally the room holds only two people, not a family of four.

I decided to tell a joke, to lighten the mood. I didn’t make it up, in case you were wondering. A man was going down on his girlfriend, just eating her out, when he found, to his surprise, a corn niblet. Thinking it odd, he paused, but decided to continue eating her puss. He worked his tongue around her some more before he found something else that didn’t belong there, a little piece of ham. He stopped, sat up, and asked his girlfriend, “Honey, is something wrong?” “No, why?” she replied. “Are you sick or something?” he tried again. “No, but the guy last night was,” she said. Everyone laughed except the baby.

Gertie instructed MJ to hold her knees to her chest. MJ got all freaked out again. I assured her that this meant it was almost over; the asshole part was the end of the procedure because it’s more sanitary to work from front to back. By this point the baby was really pissed off and bypassed fussing, heading straight for angry wailing. Gertie tidied up MJ’s asshole and told her to get dressed. I grabbed the baby, whose legs were still dangling out of his outfit, and made a beeline for the lobby. He immediately stopped crying. MJ stumbled out carrying the car seat and her diaper bag. I am pretty sure she was just as traumatized as her infant. She left a big fat tip for Gertie and walked to the car bowlegged like she had been bull riding instead of bikini waxing.

A day or two later, after she had returned home to her baby daddy, she too was pleased with the results and declared, “Why didn’t all my friends tell me how wonderful this hair free lifestyle was?”
I answered with “Amen.”
She followed up with “I am never going to have another pube again as long as I live.”She evened up the score on dares. Because that’s what friends are for.
“Next time,” I said to her, “get a babysitter.”

Six Geese a'Laying: Wheel in the Sky Keeps on Turnin'

When I write, I try to take an anecdote and make it into a story. Sometimes I have random ideas or fleeting thoughts that, try as I might, I am unable to turn into a complete narrative. Those thoughts just float around in my skull, trying to take shape, but generally get forgotten when a bigger, better incident occurs that just begs to be shared. Instead of obsessing over how to make a brief episode into a 1,000 word essay, I will list a few. We all have odd thoughts, right? But how many of us are willing to share them?

• Today I saw a rather portly woman in the Whole Foods parking lot. She was dressed in a red and black buffalo check tunic shirt, tight jeans, and a matching fleece lined red and black buffalo check hunting cap with ear flaps. I don’t as a rule make fun of people with weight problems since I too have had a life-long battle with the scale. I do, however, make fun of poor fashion sense. If you want to draw attention to your size, I recommend an oversized red and black buffalo check tunic shirt. And if you want to accent your crazy, add a matching black and red buffalo check hat with ear flaps. No doubt I saw that one coming before I started backing out of my parking space.

• You know what smells bad? Fourth graders. Whew. Their stench is a combination of dirty sneakers, cheese puffs, greasy hair, and onions. Individually, a fourth grader might not smell bad, but if you fill a charter bus full of fourth graders, you can’t miss it. I make it a habit of getting my nose in my daughter’s armpits once a week and seeing if she has come of age, like a good Camembert. So far, it’s not her, but the rest of her class needs a hot shower and some Speed Stick. It’s not quite the mature stink of the inside of a cable car in San Francisco or Epcot on a hot day in July, but trust me, that’s the direction it is heading.

• I own two cats. I don’t like that way that sounds, let me try again. Two cats live in my house. The idea of animals living in your house sounds nice until you really think about it. One of them throws up on a weekly basis. They take turns so that I can’t get too angry with either of them, but they are always eating something they shouldn’t, like a stray piece of pumpkin muffin, white cheddar popcorn dust, the leaves of any living houseplant, or a spider. And no matter how much time I spend at home, I never catch them in the act. I am constantly cleaning up cat puke. The other thing about them is that they love to smell things and then kind of taste it, which my brother in law refers to as smasting. Their favorite thing to smaste is each other’s assholes. Even when I know they are going in for a little sniff and lick, I still can’t look away.

• I have bad dreams about my mother all the time. I’m not dreaming about her because I am worried about her. I am dreaming about her because she even haunts my sleep. Last night’s dream involved her showing up at my house unannounced and uninvited for Christmas and giving everyone but me a box of donuts for a gift. I guess she showed me, huh?

• Why is it that some people are so good at organizing their homes and some people, like me, are not? My house always looks like we might have to flee in the middle of the night. If I straighten up, which I have to do every two weeks before the cleaning lady comes, I can’t tell the house was even cleaned maybe forty-five minutes after she leaves. Also, what is it about my family that makes everyone but me incapable of picking up anything lying on the floor? I could walk over the same scrap of envelope on the floor for three days before I finally pick it up. What about the other three people that live in this house? Or am I the only one who looks at the floor when she walks?

• Why are farts so funny? Burping isn’t funny, well, not usually anyway. Is it because the potential to vomit with a burp lessens the humor, but the idea of someone crapping their pants is delightful? No, it’s more gotta be more than that. One of my friends gave my daughters a remote controlled fart machine. So far this holiday break, I've continuously heard a string of gas emissions emanating from somewhere in the house. It never gets old. In a similar act of paying it forward, I give my friend MJ’s daughter a whoopee cushion for Christmas every year. She needs a new one every year because she plays with it until it pops. It never gets old. When we go to visit my in-laws, who are both in poor health, my mother in law will occasionally cut the cheese in front of us, as her medical condition and poor dietary habits cause her to be flatulent. When she toots accidentally in front of us, no one says a word, but we all give each other that look. When we get in the car, that’s when the laughter starts. Because it never gets old.

That’s just a small collection of thoughts flitting about, trying to take root. Tomorrow will offer up a whole new array of inappropriate ideas that I will share aloud, squelch, or save for another day. I am amazed I can pay attention to anything at all, what with all these observations cluttering up my gray matter. If I get real quiet when you are talking to me, chances are pretty good I’ve checked out and gone up to my attic to play with my toys. It sure beats being an adult out here with the rest of you.

Five Golden Rings: Throwdown at the Ballet

My mother is very fond of saying “no good deed goes unpunished,” as if she had ever committed a good deed in her life. Normally, she offers up this pearl of wisdom to my sister or me, in response to some frustration we had experienced after trying to do something nice for someone else. Doing nice things for other people fills a need, though, for both my sister and me, even if occasionally it backfires on us.

I spend most of my volunteering time supporting my children and their activities. If I am going to take them to school every day, I might as well occasionally stop inside and see if they need some help. If I have to take them to Hebrew school, why not see what I can do to be of assistance during that time? I am still trying to figure out if I volunteer to feel good while helping someone else or if I do it just because things need to get done. It’s kind of like scrubbing a toilet. You don’t want to be the one with your face down in the bowl scrubbing someone else’s shit off the porcelain but somebody’s got to do it, and when you’re finished, you know someone is going to come along and crap all over your hard work.

Here’s a perfect example. I volunteered to be an usher for a matinee performance of the Nutcracker a few weekends ago. My younger daughter, S, spent the better part of this past autumn practicing every weekend for her part in the local production of the holiday classic ballet. This was her third year dancing in it, and every year my husband and I secretly hope that it will be the last. She enjoys the opportunity year after year, even if she isn’t crazy about her part or her fellow dancers or her costume, but as long as she wants to participate, we support her. My husband shows his support by grumbling about the damn Nutcracker and driving her to the occasional practice. I throw myself into it a little bit more.

A lot of parent time goes into a large production such as this one. Parents need to get their children to and from practices every weekend. The week of the shows, practice and dress rehearsal time becomes a daily and sometimes nightly commitment. Parents need to help with set production, aid as helpers backstage, and also as ushers during the actual performance. There is a need for parents to sell Nutcracker themed crap in the lobby and even to mend costumes and help dress the children. For every minute of the seventy-five minute show, at least twenty-two parents need to stand by to assist in some way.

I have helped backstage before, so I knew I didn’t want to do that again. I decided I would volunteer to usher for one of the shows. I figured since S had to be there for all four shows and I only planned to buy thirty five dollar tickets a head for one of them, it might be nice to usher and see her again for free while helping out the dance school. I dropped her off backstage and scooted over to where the ushers held their pre-show pep rally. The volunteers included me and a couple of other moms, one in an obnoxious Christmas sweater and one who looked like she rolled out of a stranger’s bed, threw her dress on inside out, and rushed up to the theater with her hair mussed and her makeup smeared.

In addition to the paltry showing of three volunteers was a small army of paid ushers, comprised entirely of AARP retirees dressed in all black with matching sensible shoes. They all took this ushering business very seriously, and they were armed with small flashlights, stacks of programs, and an overinflated sense of authority. Each and every one of those seniors could have been your meanest teacher or a librarian in their former lives. I was paired up with Pat, an attractive old lady with a smart little haircut that showed off her silver hair perfectly. We were assigned to the J through N area, which is probably why I forgot her name was Pat and instead called her Jan.

As we walked to our area, I told her I had to leave after intermission to retrieve my daughter, since she was only dancing in the first act. Jan Pat did not find this news acceptable.

Jan Pat: You can’t leave your post until the show is over.
Me: But I have to get my daughter. I can’t just leave her in the lobby.
Jan Pat: Well, who is she with now?
Me: A back stage mom.
Jan Pat: I’m sure that mother will be happy to watch her until the end of the performance.
Me: The moms can’t just babysit. We are supposed to get our kids when they are finished with their dance portion. It’s not a big deal for me to go get her and then park her in an empty seat until the end of the show if I can’t leave after half-time.

By this point, I had forgotten both her name and the fact that half-times are for sporting events, but intermissions are for cultural events.

Jan Pat: We do not allow people to just park their children in empty seats.
Me: It’s not like I was going to leave her here and get a cup of coffee. I would be watching her while attending to my ushering duties.
Jan Pat: We’ll just have to see about that. We can ask CM if that’s allowed.

CM is the house manager of the theater, and he is a friend of a friend. I don’t think he really gave two shits what I did with my daughter as long as someone was standing by the J-N doors. Then Jan Pat shot out some fighting words.

Jan Pat: You know, you shouldn’t volunteer if you can meet your commitments. You should remember that for next time. Don’t volunteer if you can’t commit the whole time.

I stopped walking with her. She turned around and looked at me.

Me: How about I go ahead and leave now before I waste any more of your time?
Jan Pat: What do you mean? Then no one will be here to cover J-N.
Me: Well, according to you, I shouldn’t volunteer if I can’t meet my commitment. So I’ll just leave now and that way I won’t inconvenience you or anyone else. Since I have to, you know, take care of my child.
Jan Pat: Don’t go. I didn’t say that. Who’s going to cover J-N?

Jan Pat was a very conscientious usher.

Me: That is exactly what you just said to me, Jan.
Jan Pat: My name is Pat.
Me: Whatever.
Jan Pat: You’ll just have to ask CM if that’s okay. But I need you to stay here.
Me: Sounds good. Let’s bring CM over here and figure this out.
Jan Pat: He is opening the house; he can’t just come over here. I don’t understand why the dance school couldn’t have told you more information about what your volunteer duties were.
Me: Because all the moms in charge of ushers are also volunteers.
Jan Pat: They only use volunteers because they are too cheap to pay for ushers.
Me: I’m not going to be in a position to defend my daughter’s dance school. You are the one who said we needed to  have CM solve this problem. Get him over here so we can stop arguing and I can either stay and help or leave.
Jan Pat: We aren’t arguing.
Me: This is the very definition of an argument. Two people yelling at each other.
Jan Pat: I just need you to cover J-N. We can find CM later.

And she walked away, carrying her flashlight and stack of programs. I stood in my designated usher zone, assisted people with locating their seats and programs, and tried to stay awake in the dark.

At intermission, I told patrons where to find restrooms and water fountains. And after the second act started, I left and found my daughter. I took her back to my section and we sat together on the ledge under the box seats. She sat still for about five minutes before asking me why we couldn’t sit in real seats, so we snuck back out and ran into the elusive CM.

Me: Hey, CM, is it alright if I sneak out with my daughter here? I’d love to get her home and fed before tonight’s show.
CM: Sure, no problem.
Me: Could you let Jan Pat know for me? Thanks!

With that, S and I left the theater. I drove her home, still pissed off about the Jan Pat incident. All I wanted to do was help a little. Instead a big thank you, I got a big fuck you. No wonder nobody wants to volunteer anymore.

Four Calling Birds: The Shoe's on the Other Foot

How do you stop children from growing up so fast? I am not talking about not believing in Santa Claus or understanding sarcasm or even the subtle humor of a particularly randy episode of “Modern Family.” I mean actual physical growth. Slow it down, kids. What is the big hurry?

My baby daughter, S, who will only be nine for another month, announced to me this afternoon on the way to her dance class that she needs new jazz shoes. Jazz shoes. These are not the kind of shoes you can get at BOGO sale at the Payless. Not only does one pair cost as much her entire shoe wardrobe when she was five, but we can only purchase them at a dance supply store, which is the dancy equivalent of Home Depot. I don’t want spend my money or my time in either business, and I have no idea what to do with anything from either one once I get it home.

Shoe shopping with S is worse than going to a funeral home. My kid has a thing about shoes, but the opposite thing from me, which is to say, she hates them. She doesn’t like picking them out, trying them on, bringing them home, or wearing them. She doesn’t want to leave the store in her new pair of kicks or show them off to her friends. She wants her old shoes to fit forever; she is the Peter Pan of footwear.

Mostly, she doesn’t want to accept that as her feet grow larger, she has to deal with things like laces instead of Velcro, or that shoes for bigger feet no longer glow in the dark or light up or make noises or do any of the other things that little kid shoes do. To top it off, she has my husband’s feet, poor thing. Narrow at the heel and wide across the toe, not unlike duck feet, only with no webbing between the toes. Shoes don’t fit well on duck feet. Have you seen Daisy Duck’s pumps? Talk about gaping.

S told me she needed new jazz shoes, and followed that by saying her Crocs don’t fit anymore either. Crocs are another shoe that should be for children’s feet only. They are made of an old trash can, they come in Crayola box colors, they have holes in which you can stick a bunch of overpriced crappy doodads, and they make everyone who wears them look like they need occupational therapy for a brain injury. Kids can at least get away with wearing Crocs since they fall under the convenient slip-on category of footwear. Adults just look like dumbasses. I don’t want to buy Crocs for my child in an adult size. They should not even be available in adult sizes.

The truth is, she and I now wear the same size shoe. My nine year old and I have the same size foot. That’s just wrong. By the time her feet stop growing, she is going to have to shop in the drag queen shoe department. And while we wear the same size, we do not share the same taste, so it’s not like I can buy shoes for both of us to wear. Especially since I don’t need any Crocs or jazz shoes.

Here’s the breakdown. I wear a seven. S now wears a seven. And E, my twelve year old daughter, is almost in an eight. Do you have any idea how much it costs to keep three women in shoes? At this rate, one of those kids isn’t going to have a college fund. Maybe we can make our shoes out of duct tape and cardboard, or one of us can strap the cats on our feet. They would make a great pair of homemade Uggs.

I have to stunt this growth somehow. Tomorrow, it’s black coffee and cigarettes for breakfast.

Three French Hens: I Had Too Much to Dream

Last night I went out to dinner with good friends for some sushi. My family arrived five minutes late, as we normally do, and when we sat at the table, a bottle of chilled unfiltered sake and a couple of mismatched shot glasses were there at the ready. After another pair of shot glasses came and the sake went, something else was ordered. I didn’t listen closely, but a couple of glass beer mugs arrived containing a clear liquid, with two lemons cut in half on a plate and a little porcelain juicer. The object was to juice the lemons freshly ourselves and add the juice to whatever the clear liquid was, resulting in a very strong unsweetened lemonade. After adding some stevia to the glass, the result was a pleasant lemonade that was too easy to drink.

We added way too much tempura and not enough sushi to the beverages, as well as korokke, Japan’s answer to a deep fried potato croquette, and my favorite thing, a giant hunk of deep fried eggplant coated in miso paste. To recap, that was a lot of sake, followed by table prepared mystery alcoholic lemonade, followed by a whole mess of fried things. Here is the dream I had last night:

It was my first night as a waitress in a small casual Greek restaurant, and I was one of two on the wait staff. I arrived and was handed an apron to wear but no other instructions. The layout of the restaurant made it look like it was counter service, but it was really all table service. The kitchen was in the back, with a window ledge for placing finished orders. In front of that was a glass case on which rested the cash register. To the right was the swinging door to the kitchen and to the right of that was an entire wall devoted to the many renditions of menus the restaurant had over the years. Instead of changing the menus and getting rid of the old ones, they all just accumulated on what looked like a library magazine rack.

All the tables were of the white plastic porch variety, with matching white  plastic chairs. My job was the regular job of a waitress, to give out menus, take orders, serve food…nothing out of the ordinary. Only I had no training, no pad on which to write down orders, and no idea what was on the menu. Also, the patrons seated themselves so there was no assigned section for me or the other waiter, who only spoke Greek.

Here’s where I don’t remember all the details of the dream, but more the general feeling of it. I don’t recall taking any orders yet, but I had to take food out to the one large party, one of which was a mom from my daughter’s dance class, who incidentally was wearing a giant fur hat the other day, and I mean giant, like a Russian czarina dead animal puff perched on top of her head. So there she was, in my dream, with her ginormous fur hat at a table full of ladies, waiting on their Greek sandwiches. It turned out that most of the food was some version of sliced leg of lamb, only with different sauces, all served on flat, unattractive white hamburger buns. When I lifted a bun, it had a slip of paper on top of each pile of meat and sauce, like a little sandwich label.

All of the food was served on plastic Solo dinner plates, the kind you get at the grocery store, in bright red or blue. My father in law buys them for my mother in law, who is in very poor health, eats all her meals in a reclining chair, and is no longer able to balance a regular dinner plate on her lap. To make her feel she has company with her medical condition, we all now eat our meals on Solo dinner plates at their house. I tried to balance the plates on my arms so I could carry four at a time to the table, since in addition to no order pads, this restaurant also did not have service trays. I held one plate on top of each forearm, one on each hand, with my fingers holding onto the waxy paper cups, bending the rims. I am pretty sure I had one finger in each cup, which is fine when it’s your home and your kids, but disgusting to think about in public.

The owner did not like the way the food all looked like it would slide of my arms and therefore I had to carry one plate at a time to the table. I served the first few sandwiches, and every time I walked out of the kitchen, another table would be full. By the time I served the second to last sandwich, I realized that a pair of ladies at the table had taken the wrong sandwich and began eating it, and that the other end of the table had never ordered. I went to get menus but had to first go back in the kitchen for the right sandwich, only to be sent to the store to get some ingredient the cook needed. I stopped at the new tables on my way to the door, assuring them I would bring them menus and take their orders shortly.

I returned and people were standing everywhere, waiting for tables. I could hear seated patrons complaining about not having ordered yet, and the other waiter was nowhere to be found, and I had no idea who was waiting on food and who was waiting on menus. And at every table, at least one member of the party was someone I knew casually, a school mom or a dance mom, or a man from guitar practice or someone from my temple. I went in the kitchen, and the cooks were all standing around, waiting for something to do. And then I woke up because I had to pee.

I have never been a waitress, unless you count in my own home. I don’t know the first thing about leg of lamb and have never seen nor ordered a leg of lamb sandwich. I don’t speak Greek, and I don’t like chaos. I also don’t know what was in that glass with the lemon juice. But I do know this: stick to sushi and a glass of sake. A little less fried and Kampai and a little more moderation and common sense. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going back to bed.

Two Turtle Doves: This Ain't No Chapstick and Flip Flops

Why do you they always give the same kinds of freebies when you go to a trade show or expo? How many printed tote bags or stress balls do we need in one lifetime? For some reason, whenever I get this free crap, instead of putting in the Goodwill pile or throwing it away, I keep it, just in case. I have yet to experience a stress ball emergency, but I know that when that day comes, I will be ready with a squishy brain in one hand and pig selling insurance in the other. Not only will my stress be relieved, but I will have the most moisturized lips, thanks to my collection of logoed lip balms. I haven’t had to purchase lip balm in over eleven years.

My older daughter, E, found one of those lip balms in my office the other day. I got it at the Upstate Women’s show, and I don’t know why it was sitting out in my office because I don’t use it. I have at least two lip balms right now that I should toss but again, for some reason, won’t. One of them is from E’s orthodontist, and it smells like oranges. I don’t like things that smell like oranges, unless they are actually oranges, which I still would not smear all over my lips. The other one is was what E found, and the reason I won’t use it is because I don’t know what it smells like. It could be banana or pina colada or coconut or Hawaiian Tropic or Jerri Curl. Whatever it is, it doesn’t exist in nature, and therefore I don’t want to smell its odor directly under my nostrils.

The mystery lip balm was a freebie from an orthopedic group that specializes in neck issues. E picked it up and read the side out loud, “Upper Cervical?” and started to laugh. E is now twelve. She knows some stuff about sex because I taught her, but she appears to know more female anatomy than I realized.

“What’s funny about upper cervical?” I asked her.

“You know, Mom, your cervix, cervical, and this is lip balm, and you put it on your lips,” she giggled. And then she took her other hand and demonstrated where lips would be. On her jeans. And she was right.

“Dear God, how do you know that?” I asked.

 “Cause those are lips too, Mom. Gosh.” This bit of expert knowledge from the same girl who is still convinced a tampon will get sucked inside you, never to be seen again, as if a vagina were a black hole in deep space.

I still remember when my daughter was a little girl, and so naive. Why, it seems like just yesterday she was only eight and had yet to learn how certain body parts worked, let alone what they are called. I remember this one time when she was getting ready for her bath. She had taken off her clothes, wearing just her underwear, and she was prancing around in that way that children with no modesty do.

She called to me, “Look, Mom!” and pulled up her panties high in the front, creating not just wicked camel toe but an actual front wedgie, which my friend MJ would refer to as “pleavage,” a fancy word for pussy cleavage. I got an eyeful and then I looked away. “I’m wearing a thong!” she announced proudly.

“Well, you’ve got it on backwards,” I told her and stepped out of the bathroom.

I remember being surprised that she knew what a thong was. Hanes doesn’t exactly make Dora the Explorer thongs, nor can you purchase thongs with the Disney princesses’ faces all over them. She learned about them from somewhere, though, much in the same way she knows that lips aren’t just on your face. I thought she was learning about tapeworms in science, and tapeworms don’t have labia.

I am going to throw that lip balm away right now.
 

The Return of the Twelve Blogs of Christmas

Yes indeed, children, it is that time of year again: the holidays. Some people enjoy all the traditions and sentimentality of the holiday season, and some people hate their families and go on vacation, avoiding the entire experience. Some people have a little of both, usually the traditions part combined with the hating family part. Some people celebrate Christmas, some Hanukah, some both. When you add Thanksgiving at the beginning and New Year’s Day at the end, the last four weeks of the year can really be chockfull of friends and family and good times, but also expense and angst and aggravation. But, as the TV show song tells us, “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have…” Wait a minute, I now have “The Facts of Life” theme song stuck in my head, and I am writing about the holidays. It is worse than I thought.

So the point is, if I can indeed make a point, that this is a busy time of year for us all, with all the expectations and whatnot. I have it worse than the average overachieving anal-retentive obsessive-compulsive perfectionist because in addition to the Four Horsemen of the Holiday Apocalypse, I also have one daughter’s birthday at the beginning of November and the other daughter’s birthday two weeks after Christmas, providing the bread ends to a big juicy clusterfuck sandwich. So how do I handle the stress of two birthday celebrations, Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve? That’s right, by adding the unrealistic expectation of blogging twelve times before the end of the year.

Ladies and Gentlemen, in a ridiculous holiday tradition I began last year, I bring you…the Twelve Blogs of Christmas. My challenge to myself, if I choose to accept it, is to share twelve little charming anecdotes with you before its time to stop eating and shopping and start resolving. Surely twelve things will happen between now and the end of the year that are blog-worthy. Maybe not entirely well developed full essay length stories, but certainly enough of something to give us both pause and make us chuckle. What the hell, right? My challenge to you is to comment, and often. I need some positive reinforcement here.

And now, without further ado, I bring you the first story…Is That a Partridge in My Pear Tree?

On Sunday morning, I was up early, before the rest of my family stirred, and decided to bake some muffins for breakfast. After I cracked the eggs and tossed the shells into the sink, I looked out the window over the sink. At that very moment, a hawk landed in the tree outside the window. It wasn’t a tiny little chicken hawk; this was a big soaring bird of prey, just resting comfortably on a sturdy branch not far from the kitchen.

I was not the only one who saw the hawk. My cat, Yoko, also stared out the window and watched it. I have no idea what went through her little walnut brain when she observed what had to be the biggest bird she has ever seen. I also have no idea what the bird would think if it noticed Yoko, which I am not sure it did. But here is what I was thinking: I wonder if that hawk could snatch up Yoko and carry her off to make a tasty meal. Do hawks eat things as large as house cats? Do they occasionally eat stray kittens? If Yoko was carried off by a predator, could I get a new kitten? It’s not that I don’t like my cat, but she’s six and kind of weird and set in her ways and also she likes to suck on my neck and give me hives. I have a good ten to fifteen years more of that. Plus, kittens are cute.

And just like that, the hawk flew away, and I turned back to making my muffins, and Yoko was safe for another day.

You Say Potato

[In memory of Andy Rooney]

Is it just me, or are women getting the short end of the stick when it comes to names for their private parts? I am not talking about its proper name because neither men nor women lucked out in that department. Vagina might sound like a medical condition or a socially inept high school girl with tape on her glasses, but penis? Penis sounds limp, all shriveled up and embarrassed to be seen in the light of day, kind of like a slug. But the other words for lady parts, well, those are just plain horrible. They make me not even want to have one.

 Men already act like they are the cock of the walk, and that’s because they have a cock. Even the word cock makes one want to stand at attention. When I hear cock, I picture a strong, virile man, like the Brawny paper towel man, only without his plaid flannel shirt, standing tall, hands on hips, thighs spread wide so that all attention can be directed between his legs. He could use his erect member as a paper towel holder, perhaps. Hell, even the word member has a quiet strength. If you don’t have one of those, well, you just don’t belong. Dick is not quite as flattering, since it is best used to describe a real jerk rather than a sexual organ, yet its usage does lend a hint of nasty that isn’t entirely off-putting. 

Compare that to, say, the word pussy. It sounds about as nasty as dick, but minus the strong attitude. First of all, I just got my daughters to stop saying it to the cats. There’s nothing worse than listening to little girls call to their pussies. One time, after the kitty got into the dusty fireplace, my older daughter who was seven at the time said, “Who’s a dirty little pussy?”  Secondly, it is used to describe someone who is a wimp, too afraid to take action. Really? A pussy gets jabbed at, fingered, stuffed, and poked. It takes a licking and gets pounded. It can stand up to some real abuse.  And when all the fun is over, in less than a year’s time, it can open wide and actually squeeze out a human being.  What can a penis do that makes it more worthwhile than that? Thirdly, it just sounds funny and not really sexy at all. I guess if I had to screw a body part with a label, I would prefer to stick my cock in a pussy rather than insert my penis in a vagina, but still, there has to be a better alternative.

Let’s reflect on some of those other synonyms for a moment, shall we? Va-jay-jay was a little more playful until Oprah ruined it. When I think of va-jay-jay, I think of her, and quite frankly, I don’t want to think about Oprah, nor her vagina. So va-jay-jay is out. Slit and gash are just violent, and cunt and twat are too insulting. From there, it really goes downhill. Coochie (which is one of those things you put your beer can in to keep it cold), hoo-ha, poontang, taco, bearded clam, meat curtains, pink wallet, boxed lunch. I wouldn’t want to put my cock near any of those, lest a round of antibiotics is readily available. 

As an aside, I called my mother a cunt once, when I was fourteen. She asked me if I was joking, and I said no, so I got in trouble. To this day, I wonder if anything would have happened if I had lied and said yes. Even my mother, who is a cunt, doesn’t want to be called a cunt.

What I want to know is, why all the bad names for something which men always seem to want? If you love it so much, why all the nasty name calling? What did a vagina ever do to you? Oh yeah, that’s right, it brought you into this world. It gave meaning to your otherwise miserable existence, and shaped pretty much every decision you ever made as an adult. So how about a little respect? If a hole in a bathroom stall used for anonymous sex gets a grand moniker like glory hole,can’t we come up with something a little more pleasant for what’s in my pants?

Blood Letting

What I needed in the morning was everything to go smoothly. I had fasting blood work scheduled right after I dropped off my daughter for school, and I just needed everybody to do what they were supposed to do so I could make my 8 o’clock appointment. Was it too much to ask for a little cooperation from my family?

Why, yes, it was. I am generally a morning person. I bound out of bed and get ready for the day on the first alarm. I dance around and sing a little while I make breakfast and brush my daughter’s hair. I take care of all those last minute details like ice packs for lunchboxes and water bottles and jackets and back packs and cat treats. And most days, I do it with a smile and without caffeine. Yes, that’s right; I am not even a coffee drinking morning person. I am a full-fledged up and at ‘em kind of gal. Without breakfast, though, I turn into Linda Blair in “The Exorcist” alarmingly quickly.

7:00: I got my kids up and while they got dressed, I rushed downstairs to make breakfast and do all those morning things, including packing a breakfast for me to take along with me so I could eat after I had my blood drawn. I put out an assortment of cereal, poured juice, dispensed vitamins, and even remembered spoons and napkins. My daughters, S and E, stumbled down the stairs about ten minutes later than usual and commenced pouring and eating cereal. I pointed out to them that I had an appointment and that I needed them to try to hurry or at least to cooperate. E was in her own world, having just received a cell phone as a birthday gift a few days before. Apparently texting begins prior to  eating breakfast in the tween world, and so she was deep in conversation involving letters and symbols but no substance. S decided  that she was still hungry and needed more cereal. I reminded her again that I had to be at the doctor’s office, poured her another half bowl of cereal, and rushed upstairs to make myself presentable.

7:20: I brushed my teeth and put on makeup and scrunched my hair, all while waiting for S to come upstairs and finish getting ready. She took her time selecting shoes and brushing her teeth, and then she had an emergency dump, which meant we now had two minutes to get out of the house in order for me to make my appointment. I was glad I was only going for blood work and not a blood pressure check, as I was pretty close to stroke level by that point. Finally, after she pooped and washed her hands and brushed her teeth and cleaned her face and put on lotion and washed her hands again, S met me downstairs with her back pack and lunch box.

7:37: We got in the car and I backed it out of the garage. The rain hit the top of the car, each ping of a raindrop another second ticking away. “Great,” I muttered. “Rain.” Rain wasn’t the problem; the problem was that rain made all the overprotective moms drive their kids that normally walk to school, creating a clusterfuck of epic proportions in the car drop off line. The traffic was backed up half the way to school, and as we poked along, I kept muttering under my breath like a crazy street person.

7:47: I could see the turn lane for the school from where I was stuck in traffic. All the cars had converged in front of the school and no one was moving. My appointment was in thirteen minutes, and the office was a good seven interstate miles away.

“Sorry, Mama,” my daughter S said from the back seat.

“I know it’s not a big deal, but if I am late they might not see me. Plus, I am hungry. Plus, I told you we absolutely positively had to leave on time. And we didn’t, and it’s raining, and look at this traffic.” I looked at her in the rear view mirror and saw her little brown eyes get all watery. “It’s okay, S. I’ll figure something out. Oh, look, they didn’t chain off the parking lot,” I said, swinging left and quickly finding a space.

Every morning, in an effort to discourage parents from parking and walking their children into the school building, they block off the parking lot with a big yellow chain. Except that morning. We hopped out of the car and hustled our way to the sidewalk that crosses the car drop off lane in front of the school. And right while we stood there, waiting for the safety patrol to signal us to walk, the coach ran across the street and hooked up the yellow chain. “Someone forgot to do their job,” he said in his gravelly voice.

It is not appropriate to scream “Motherfuck!” in the elementary school parking lot. I only thought it.

Sarah scurried across the driveway, turning her doe eyes to me one more time and mouthing the words “I’m sorry.” I backed out of my space, saw the line of cars waiting for the chain to be removed, and then did something I rarely do: I broke the rules. I drove my car the wrong way out of the parking lot, darted across oncoming traffic, and through the narrow lane that goes in a different direction so I could bypass the wait. I turned onto the main road quickly, and sped away towards the interstate.

8:15: I signed in at the doctor’s office. My appointment was at 8:00. I was fifteen minutes late for my blood work and a full hour after my normal breakfast time. The man working the front office, and yes, my doctor’s office does have a male front office worker, looked at me and then at the clock and then at his schedule. He didn’t say a word, and neither did I.

Later that afternoon when S got home from school, she asked if they still took my blood at the office. I told her yes because I pretended my appointment was fifteen minutes later than it actually was. She wanted to know how I got out of the parking lot at school. I told her I went the wrong way instead of waiting at the chain. And she looked at me like I had three heads.

I justified lying and breaking rules to my nine year old, two things she didn’t need to learn from me. I should have taught her to not sweat the small stuff, but I haven’t learned that myself yet.

Genghis Khan, Tyrant or Restaurateur?

For a brief moment in time, my town was home to a Doc Chey’s Asian Cuisine franchise. It was not fine dining, but it was cheap and fresh and they did amazing things to eggplant. They closed a few years ago, possibly failing in their competition with PF Chang’s across the street. They also make decent eggplant, but it’s not the same. To make matters worse, the Doc Chey’s location sat empty for months and months, mocking me every time I went to Whole Foods in the same strip mall. Until a few weeks ago, when a new franchise opened its doors, the Genghis Grill, a Mongolian Stir Fry experience.  My family braved this new dining establishment last week, mainly because the line for Chipotle was out the door, but I doubt we will be back anytime soon.

I don’t know if the Mongolians are actually known for their raw food salad bars and giant griddle cooking style, but I have had Mongolian barbecue in the past, and it wasn’t much better. Near my home in Jacksonville, where I grew up, we used to eat at a Chinese restaurant which offered a regular menu and Mongolian stir fry. One of my sisters would sit and wait for her barbecued spare ribs or pupu platter to arrive, while my mother, my other sister, and I would mosey up to the Mongolian BBQ area to prepare our plates. I remember how the sliced raw meat was lined up in thin curls, still slightly frozen, which made it easier to slice, all stuck together like ribbon candy . A tray of sliced beef, all red, next to a tray of sliced chicken, more peachy pink, then pork, a paler red, and all of it a little disturbing. After the meat were the chopped vegetables, cabbage and bean sprouts and onions and carrots and peppers. And then there were all the sauce ingredients, the oyster sauce and soy sauce and red chili paste and garlic and hoisin sauce and all those things you find on the two shelves of Asian food at the grocery store.

Behind the salad bar arrangements of all these ingredients was a sign with advice on how to combine those ingredients to make a sauce, how many spoonfuls of each for the perfect combination. We would take our time selecting our proteins, our veggies, and our condiments, then hand our bowls to the gentlemen who would stir fry our food on different parts of the round flat cook top, but not so carefully as to keep our food selections from accidentally touching. Keep in mind this was before the days of food allergies and mainstream veganism, when all of your food could touch. If you picked out chicken but ended up with a little beef, well, weren’t you lucky?

After they finished tossing the food all around to cook it, they would serve it up on fresh plates and hand it back to us. We would rejoin my sister, who by this time was gnawing on her ribs or reheating a teriyaki beef stick over the blue flame of sterno.  I recall sitting down, blowing on my first forkful, tasting it, and remembering why I hated Mongolian stir fry. It all tastes the same. It doesn’t matter what combination of sauce or meats or veggies you select, once they are all co-mingling on the griddle with everyone else’s food, it just tastes like bad stir fry.

But I forgot that part when we went to Genghis Grill. I was only thinking about how much I didn’t want to wait in line for a counter service meal, and how I have to cook every night for my family, and how nice it would be to try something different and be waited on for a change.

The restaurant space, when it used to be Doc Chey’s, had a nice feng shui about it, all cozy and sparsely decorated. Genghis Grill, on the other hand, is chopped up and arresting, much like Genghis Khan’s exploits. We wove through the restaurant to be seated in what had to be the middle of the restaurant’s main thoroughfare. Our server instructed us about how we go about ordering and then standing in line to make our food. I knew we were in trouble then. If you go to a restaurant where they feel the need to explain to you how to order, than somewhere their concept got away from them. Ordering food should not take explanation, especially if you are dining in your own country.

We each were handed a stainless steel bowl (yes, you should be thinking dog water bowl) and stood in line with a bunch of people who looked really disappointed that it was not in fact a buffet. My picky kid selected chicken. No vegetables, no sauce, no seasoning. Chicken. I coaxed her into adding a little salt and pepper to her bowl of raw chicken, the looks of which was nauseating her. The rest of us made our choices (I stuck with tofu) and then stood in line near the round flat cook top that was attended by about ten short Latino men and one tall American guy who kept shouting “Noodles!”, which would prompt all the Latinos to echo him “Noodles!” in response. I am pretty sure that is the only word they knew in English.

They tossed our food around with their little bamboo sticks, each in their own area of the griddle, stopping occasionally to squirt a empty section of it with oil in a fiery display reminiscent of a Japanese steakhouse.  We were handed fun red bowls with our cooked food and some rice, since we didn’t want noodles, and walked back to our table. My picky eater immediately found a bone fragment in her chicken, which she spit into her wadded napkin. She then proclaimed her meal bland and pecked at her rice for a while. The rest of us ate quietly, without gusto. And you know why? Because it all tasted the same.Like bad stir fry.

In our silence, we looked around the restaurant. The walls are adorned with battle flag replicas and a giant fictitious photographic mural of Genghis Khan and his troops on horseback. My husband said, “Do you think in a thousand years there will be a Hitler themed restaurant chain? Khan was a mass murderer a thousand years ago, and now we are eating stir fry in his name.”

“Probably,” I said. “It’s going to be like a giant sausage fest, with all the entrees named after concentration camps. ‘I’d like the Buchenwald please, and my wife here would like the Dachau.’”

He laughed. “And the drinks can be named for notorious Nazi leaders. ‘May I please have a Mengele with extra olives?’”

Our children stared at us like we were the horrible people we are.

“All done?” I asked them. “Let’s get out of here.”

So, anyway, I didn’t much care for the Genghis Grill, but I am not sure if it’s because the food reminded me of traumatic childhood Chinese restaurant experiences or because it just sucked. Feel free to throw down your $8.99 a bowl and form your own opinion. Did I mention how much I miss Doc Chey's?

Snatch You Bald-Headed

Did you used to play truth or dare when you were a kid? I recall chaperoning for one of E’s field trips last year and listening to the fifth grade girls playing. Truths in fifth grade are more boring than benign, involving lying to parents or stealing your sister’s candy from her Easter basket. And dares? Well, short of picking your friend’s nose or talking to a boy, how exciting can a dare be in the fifth grade? Those girls thought they were so bold, but really, they were as naïve as a bunch of ten year olds from the suburbs should be. As a friend of mine pointed out, truth or dare is a game wasted on the young.

Allow me to illustrate. My friend MJ and I recently indulged in a little grown up truth or dare. If you think about it, and come on, you know almost as much personal stuff about MJ as you do about me, you would think there would not be much territory left for us to discover about each other. And if you take that a step further, you would think there would be little left to dare one another that we haven’t already done. Well, it turns out we were wrong. And yes, that includes you.

MJ and I were having some down and dirty discussion about our lady parts (doesn’t everyone?) when it came to both of our attentions that neither of us had ever had a Brazilian bikini wax. Now, for those of you who might not know what a Brazilian wax involves, it is the painful removal of all pubic hair. All. No landing strip. No trim little Hitler’s mustache. No adorable little heart-shaped patch of thatch. It is a bald kitty, a sphinx, a Mexican hairless. And what happens to the front also happens to the back. When I say no hair, I mean none, even the outer planets of the solar system, namely Uranus. So there we were, having a conversation about our respective pubic hair styles when somehow the idea arose to dare each other to get Brazilian bikini waxes.

I have never been one to turn down a dare. I once ate a dog biscuit out of a bulk food bin at the grocery store, thanks to my sister. I have pretended that an odd-looking stranger was a long-lost friend of mine. But show my asshole to a perfect stranger? That was a new one even for me. After MJ pointed out that I show my vagina and its back door neighbor to more than one doctor during the course of a year, and that whoever does the waxing would be not an asshole fetishist but rather a professional , I couldn’t seem to find a good reason to turn her down. Well, there was always the pain factor, but who wants to look like a wimp? 

We hung up the phone to schedule our appointments, and then I called her back to let her know mine was in a couple of days. MJ was delighted, hoping that:  A. I would allow her to share in the fun via Facetime, and B. that I would scream “Kelly Clarkson” when my hair was ripped out. Think “The Forty Year Old Virgin,” only not with chest hair. I told her neither would be happening.

When the big day arrived, I went to the gym, came home, showered thoroughly, and selected a comfortable dress to wear along with the biggest pair of granny pants I could find in my underwear drawer. I was not interested in any chafing, or rubbing, and I had heard from my friend SF who heard from one of her friends, because yes, I discuss my pubic hair styles with lots of people, what’s it to you, that wearing jeans post Brazilian was, and I quote, “a really bad idea.”

I checked in at the spa and sat in the waiting area, with its soft lighting, overstuffed chairs, and New Age music clanging in the background, and I thought, I am going to have a heart attack. I was so damn nervous. You would think I was there for a mammogram or a colonoscopy, my heart was beating so fast. I thought about sneaking out before I was called back for my appointment, but I knew MJ was going through the same thing, and I couldn’t let her down. Finally, after the longest three minutes in history, the waxing specialist came in the waiting area. She led me back to her room, which was also very spa-like, but after she left to allow me one last moment of privacy and I got up on the table, sans granny pants, I noticed I was sitting on doctor’s office paper. The stirrups at the end of the table were strangely absent.

She knocked and came in, then turned on the overhead light, which I stared into like it was a solar eclipse in an effort to avoid any eye contact.  She instructed me to put the soles of my feet together on the end of the table and open sesame my knees. In yoga, this is known as cobbler’s pose. I will never do this pose again without cringing. She made small talk, asking me about my waxing experience (none), why I chose to do it now (dare), and how much I was going to love it (not likely). Then she smeared hot wax all around the main attraction, first on the left and then the right side. It was hot and similar in texture to peanut butter mixed with oatmeal and hot tar, only less lumpy. The heat was almost soothing, except that I knew what was coming next.

And then it was time for the big moment. Have you ever had your eyebrows waxed? You know how it kind of feels like your eyebrow is being ripped off your face, even though it’s really just a small little strip of hair? Well, this felt like I was being scalped. I had to hold my skin very taut as she tugged on the edge to loosen the wax, and then in a series of small painful tugs, she ripped the hairs, their follicles, and any extraneous skin off my body. It wasn’t like one big band-aid. It was like five or six big band-aids, all left on too long, so that your skin rips a little when you finally nut up and pull it off. It hurt, but not as bad at the right side. The right side of my pubic region was shaking, it was so scared. She went through the same process again, little tug, little tug, RRRIIIIPPPPPP.  I did not scream nor faint. I could have, but I chose not to.

After the pubic mound had been deforested, it was time to go on to more intimate locales. This involved the spreading of parts and more hot wax and more holding skin taut and more tugging and ripping. It still hurt. Then came the inspection. She got really close to my va-jay-jay and looked around, examining and searching. At one point, I expected her to scream “halloo in there!” to see if there was an echo, or maybe get out a flashlight and look for petroglyphs. Once she was satisfied with her handi-work, which yes, did involve touch up hot wax and subsequent snatching of hair, she was ready to move to the anal region.

“This won’t hurt as bad,” she informed me as she coated my ass with hot wax. Yeah, right, I thought but didn’t say, because, a little piece of advice, it’s not a good idea to piss off the person who is waxing your asshole. When the tugging and pulling and ripping began, I was pleasantly surprised. She was right, it really didn’t hurt as bad. On the scale of things that hurt, it was more than a splinter in your finger but less than having the hair ripped off the front of your pubic region. She treated me to a refreshing mist of witch hazel on my nether regions and stuck a couple of witch hazel soaked paper towels on what used to be my bush before excusing herself so I could change. I re-pantied, paid for my services, slammed back a plastic cup of water, and fled the scene.

At home, I inspected myself with a hand mirror. The first thing I noticed is that I lost a couple of chunks of flesh in the melee. Secondly, the paper towels stuck to my puss were covered in little dots of blood from my angry pores that did not want to give up their follicles. And thirdly, I was looking at my private parts with a mirror.

I called MJ to see how she faired. “Ooh, tell me all about it,” she squealed with delight. So I did, in graphic detail, because she hates to miss any of the good parts. I even told her about the little exfoliating pussy brush I bought, so I can prevent the dreaded ingrown hairs.  ‘Will you take a picture for me?” MJ, as you may recall, has moved to another state, so there would be no opportunity to show her in person, which may or may not have happened, depending on how much I had to drink.

“I am forty-two. Hairless or not, it is not camera ready,” I said. “But enough about me. How was yours?”

“Are you nuts?” she said. “I’m not doing that crazy shit. That shit hurts.”

I guess I won the dare. At least my husband thinks so.

Hell in Georgia

“All I wanted was a freakin’ pretzel!” my daughter E said. Who could blame her? We drove all the way to Helen, Georgia, for some sightseeing and a little October-festing, and not a pretzel to be found in the whole godforsaken town. How was I to know that Helen was going to be a total waste of time? I expected cheesy; it is, after all,  a Bavarian-themed alpine town in the north Georgia mountains. It should have been dripping in fondue, but sadly, it wasn’t. It wasn’t even drenched in beer or drowning in oompah music. Instead, it was much like that boulevard in every town where all the big box chain stores have moved on to newer shopping areas, leaving dilapidated strip malls that fill up instead with odd Asian restaurants, check cashing stores, and head shops. Played out comes to mind, as does used up, road hard and put up wet, and spent. Helen is an old whore.

I had this bright idea, you see. It was fall break from school, and the girls had off for two whole days . We had to be in Atlanta by Friday night for my nephew’s bar mitzvah, but I still wanted to fit in a mini-vacation before the family fun/obligation took over the rest of the weekend. I thought about places between our hometown in South Carolina and Atlanta that we could visit, somewhere that might normally be a day trip that we had yet to explore. Stone Mountain first came to mind, but I rejected it because E is solidly in her anti-nature phase. It’s not that she litters or hates animals. It’s more the idea of hiking and seeing bugs and snakes that makes a trip to a mountain more trouble than it’s worth.   Another possibility was Chateau Elan, a golf resort that isn’t exactly a hotbed of family friendliness since children are frowned upon at both a wine tasting and a day spa. I kept coming back to the idea of Helen. Fake Germany, Oktoberfest, pretzels, all in a redneck mountain too. I figured we could stay in a hotel and really get the local flavor. 

My husband quickly pooh-poohed the idea. “Helen’s boring,” he said. “It’s a day trip at best, but we can’t stay there. All the motels will be disgusting. If you really want to go, let’s just go for the day and stay at your sister’s house.” I didn’t want to do that, since my sister had enough on her plate with the bar mitzvah weekend. The last thing she needed was an extra night of house guests. I also didn’t want to come back home. What kind of a vacation is that? I can’t even sit down in my house unless I hear the washer or dryer running.  We compromised on a night in downtown Atlanta followed by a morning at the Georgia aquarium, in exchange for a full day at Helen.  I booked a hotel room there and got everyone packing for we could leave the next morning.

We all woke up late because the steady rain blocked out the morning rays of the sun. The day could not have been grayer and dingier if it were a movie set in Poland in 1939. Nobody seemed too keen on walking around outside, but I remained optimistic that the rain would pass and leave us with a beautiful day of sightseeing. I knew there were shops to visit, a few small museum type attractions, some gem mining, and even an old village with a grist mill to explore. I took the wheel so that I didn’t have to listen to my children complain about my husband’s driving, and off we went. We drove a good hour before any real whining started, and by that time we were off the interstate and on small Georgia back roads, tooling up the countryside.

Before I knew it, we were at Sautee Village, home an old general store, a winery, and a grist mill. It was also the first stop on the assisted living day trip circuit, which meant that all the bathrooms were occupied and the smell of moth balls hung heavy in the air as my family, the youngest people in the place, picked our way through the candy barrels and overpriced t-shirts. The building was interesting, but that is where it ended, really before it began. It poured rain while we were inside, but let up enough for us to run back to the car and continue into Helen town limits.

When we first turned on into town, we were all excited. Here was what we were looking for, gingerbread cutouts and Tudor facades, with even the fast food restaurants and banks getting in on the theme. I wanted it to look like an Epcot version of Germany, and I wasn’t disappointed as I drove past the edge of town. Then we hit was must have been Main Street. We passed an indoor bear exhibit, a Mexican restaurant, a Korean restaurant, and some candy shops. After a few blocks, we realized that we were the tourist part, which meant that we saw everything Helen had to offer in five minutes.

I turned around and went back to the alpine village area to look for a parking place. No free spots were on the main thoroughfare, and all the lots on the side streets were paid parking lots, which ticked off my husband. After skipping the five dollar lots and the four dollar lots, we found a three dollar lot, parked the car, and got out. We walked up to the main street and decided to head to a little German bakery and café for some lunch.

We were seated and immediately a large woman, a former shot put thrower who now donned a pinafore and a steely look in her eye, handed us menus and took our drink orders. Near us were several elderly tourists and one young unwed mother whose preschool aged child was busy licking the wrapper of a pat of butter. My husband ordered a Reuben, my daughter S ordered the knockwurst after I convinced her it was a hot dog, and my daughter E and I decided to split the German bread basket, the chicken spaetzle soup, and a side order of German potato salad.

When the food finally was served, the Reuben was a sad little sandwich, not even grilled so much as toasted. The skin on the knockwurst freaked out S that I had to peel it off, leaving a pile of thin foreskins on the side of her plate. The spaetzle soup was a thin salty broth with a few noodles floating in it, hardly enough for one of us, let alone to share. And the bread basket? Not a single hot pretzel. It overflowed with standard dinner rolls, some with sesame seeds, some without, none of which look particularly German in origin.  No wonder that kid was eating butter.

We left and began to stroll the town, thinking we could find some nice dessert somewhere, or at the very least, some tasty German chocolate. We stopped in a Dutch imports store after bypassing the frequent and obligatory t-shirt and shot glass stores. S contemplated the tarantula museum, but I said no, figuring it was probably a collection of snakes and spiders belonging to some unmarried 45 year old man with a skullet who still lives in his mother’s basement. We did go in the Hansel and Gretel candy kitchen, but we all lost our appetites inside because it didn’t smell like candy. E said it smelled like a combination of burned oil and a turd, and she was right.  We also skipped the lone fudge store due to the lack of air conditioning but plethora of flies. After spotting a Confederate flag bikini fading in a storefront window, I turned to my husband on the street corner where I stood and loudly declared, “You were right!  Let the record show, you were right!” Behind me, a speaker shaped like a rock crackled with the sound of tuba music. I think I might have shed a small tear.

We got back in the car, not even two hours after our arrival, counting lunch, and headed back down the mountain to return to civilization. I felt good knowing we gave it our all and could feel confident crossing Helen off our must-see list. And after reading this, I certainly hope you will do the same. Because seriously,  there was not one freakin' pretzel in the whole damn town, during October no less. Maybe we should have all had a beer instead.