How to Get Expelled From Hogwarts

[Puke Disclaimer: The following blog contains a barf story. More than one barf story. You have been warned. This means you, LM.]

Have you ever been somewhere where you know someone threw up right before you arrived? It’s the worst, isn’t it, to walk into a room and that tell-tale smell hits you like the wave of nausea that hit the person that got sick.  It’s bad enough in a college dorm stairwell on the weekend or at your kid’s school, but at an amusement park, well, it's hardly amusing.

To this day, I cannot ride on the Carousel of Progress at the Magic Kingdom at Disney World because once, at least two decades ago, I sat in an area where puke had happened. If you’ve never been on that ride, it is an exhibit from the 1964’s World’s Fair that features the changes in our lives through electricity over the past one hundred years. It is a traveling theater that shows six different vignettes, and the ride lasts a good 20 minutes. That’s twenty minutes of being trapped in a theater with vomit stench, which still haunts me to this day.

I’m not a big fan of puke, which begs the question, is anyone?  I will do pretty much anything to not throw up. Shallow breathing, fresh cold air, small sips of water. I don’t like to get sick at home, but the idea of puking in public is just beyond comprehension. Not that I haven’t before. When I was about nine, I went to Great America in Illinois with my grandfather, my sisters, and some other people that I cannot recall at this point in my life. I was enjoying the hell out of myself, munching on cheese puffs and downing coke after coke, when someone suggested we ride the Ferris wheel. It wasn’t a traditional Ferris wheel, more a three armed ride with little baskets that held a group of people. One arm would be on the ground loading, one midway in the air, and one all the way up.

 We were in one of the baskets with another couple, some unfortunate strangers who made the mistake of saying they were a party of two and had to join us, like when you have to share a table with strangers at a hibachi restaurant. Things were going well until we got all the way in the air, and then the combination of the movement, the height, and the cheese puffs proved too much for my system. I attempted puking in my hands, but to no avail. My orange puke went through my fingers, all over me, my white shorts, and the basket. I wonder if those people remember that day as vividly as I.

I try to limit myself from things that might potentially make me sick, such as certain rides at amusement parks and too many cheese puffs. I don’t ride roller coasters that go upside down. I don’t ride carousels or tea cups or flying elephants or free falls or anything that goes in a circle. I avoid 3-D motion simulators, and if I find myself in such a situation, I close my eyes so that the effects of the 3-D part are not nauseating. Even with all my careful planning, though, I can still manage to get sick.

As a special holiday treat, my family went to Orlando right before Christmas this year. We are all big Disney fans and go about once every two years or so.  My daughters are getting older now, and we decided to try Universal Studios instead of sticking only to Walt Disney World like we usually do. I knew there would be a number of rides we probably would avoid, but we all wanted to see the Wacky World of Harry Potter, or whatever it’s called, so we made an exception for this trip.

We arrived just as the park opened and hurried toward the rear where the Harry Potter part is hidden. I have heard from many friends about horrendous waits to see it and ride the rides, people who have waited in line for four hours for what amounts to five minutes of Harry Potter magic. We thought we might be able to beat the rush, even though gobs of people in garnet and gold striped scarves and long black robes literally ran past us to get in line first. We approached the line and asked the attendant to tell us about the ride, knowing full well that I might feel a little queasy since  motion sickness warnings were posted by the entrance. The attendant, who I’m pretty sure had never grown a pubic hair nor touched a woman’s breast, told us it was a fabulous ride and not as bad as the roller coasters, so we got in the line.

We moved through the waiting areas pretty quickly, although they were really cool for even the most casual of Harry Potter fans and almost worth the wait. The worst part was the locker room, where they require you stow your bags and belongings before entering the ride. It was a mass of people fighting to stick their fingers on a screen, which was the only way to get a small locker assigned to you. I survived the pushing and shoving to lock up my backpack before joining my family back in the line. We walked all through Hogwarts quickly, too quickly to even notice all the details, before we were ready to board the ride.We got in our seats awkwardly, the shoulder bar harness was lowered unto us, and we were whisked away into the wizarding world of Harry Potter.

Here’s where things get a little sketchy. I could tell right away that this was going to be one of those flight simulator things, where you feel like you are riding a broom on your way to a quidditch match or to some mystery or whatever; I wasn’t really paying attention. What I was doing was keeping my eyes shut tight so that I couldn’t let my brain get fooled into thinking I was flying.  Then I felt heat, so I opened my eyes to find an animatronic dragon breathing fake fire at me. That I did not find nauseating, but unfortunately it didn’t last long before the seats were off in another direction that caused me to again close my eyes. There might have been some spiders too, but it was hard to tell through my eyelashes.

The movement of that ride wasn’t any movement I’ve experience in my natural life. We weren’t going side to side or up and down or back and forth. We were undulating, like a witch stirring a cauldron counterclockwise. With each tilt and roll of the ride, the granola parfait I ate for breakfast also tilted and rolled, inching up my esophagus. I tried the usual tricks, shallow breathing, closed eyes, relaxing my muscles.

It came without the usual warnings. No hot flashes or sudden sweats. No flood of saliva in my mouth. No serious stomach churning. The next thing I knew I was heaving, the total body hunching heaves, not the delicate upchuck kind. I heaved once, then twice. The third time, I threw up in my mouth.

This is what I was thinking: Keep your mouth closed. You don’t have a change of clothes. Keep your mouth closed. Swallow. You can do this. It’s 9:30 in the morning. Keep your mouth closed. They are going to have to close the ride because of you. The ride that people wait in line for hours to see. The only reason half the people are even in this park.  Do you want to be the person who shuts down fucking Harry Potter because you didn’t believe the motion sickness warnings posted on every fucking wall? Keep. Your. Mouth. Closed.

And then, as quickly as it began, the ride ended. We got off the ride, me breathing hard through my nostrils. We forced our way back to the locker room through the obligatory gift shop. I had to get a stranger to help me open my locker because I couldn’t get the system to read my sweaty fingertip.

I found my family milling around outside.

My oldest daughter said,” I didn’t like that.”

My youngest daughter said, “I didn’t either.”

My husband said, “That is the coolest ride in the world! How could you not like it?”

I said, “I just threw up in my mouth."

“Do you wanna ride it again,” my husband said.

“I need to sit down. I don’t feel very good.” I answered.

“No!” my daughters shouted in unison. “Let’s get a butterbeer.”

A butterbeer is one of those weird Harry Potter foods from the book. It’s kind of like a cream soda with a hint of cookie and a splash of butterscotch. It doesn’t go well with nausea.  I would recommend water and a saltine instead, which they don’t sell in the world of Harry Potter. For the record, I kept that down too.

I found out afterward that a number of rides at most amusement parks have a stationary seat for pussies like me who like to throw up on the the coolest ride in the world. Hm, that would have been nice to know before I decided to be a good sport and go with the flow.

Deck the Whitewalls

Is anybody else a little tired of seeing cars adorned for the holidays? I mean, seriously, the peer pressure we face from our neighbors is bad enough, but now we have to decorate our cars too? What happened to automobiles being used for transportation? I appreciate the need for a bumper sticker, but this whole one-up-manship holiday competition has to stop.

My husband prefers an understated elegance when it comes to bedecking our house. A nice wreath, maybe some garland around the door with small white lights. Occasionally he might add a strand or two of colored lights around the banisters leading to the front door, but other than that, we don’t go all out. Not like the neighbors across the street. They have no less than five holiday inflatables bobbing around their massive front lawn, which tend to overshadow the life-sized nativity scene near their garage. This year they have a two story Santa and a two story snowman, which face plant in the lawn every morning like they went on a bender the night before. Oh, I forgot to mention the icicle lights, the ones that they have a rented cherry picker truck put up the day after Thanksgiving. Compared to them, it’s like we aren’t even trying. I'm waiting for the year they fly in people from Bethlehem to enact a living nativity for the whole month of December. I wouldn't put it past them.

In my sister’s old neighborhood, their neighbors also employed a cherry picker to put the lights all over their house, and I do mean all over their house. When we would visit them over the holidays, none of us could go to sleep. The amount of light coming off that house mimicked high noon. I don’t know how they slept inside their own house, unless they used eye masks or black out curtains. We get it, you love Christmas. And exorbitant power bills. Now use a fucking dimmer switch. We need sunglasses to eat dinner inside.

Some people really go all out with their houses, but it just isn’t enough for them. They have to decorate their vehicles too. Again, like home decorations, it started simply. A stylish wreath adorning a grill, or perhaps a bright red bow. That morphed into the Rudolph the red nosed reindeer car decoration. I will describe this to you in case you live under a rock. It involves a big red pompom for the grill and two antlers which attach to the front windows. Bingo! Instant car reindeer. That gave way to the elf decoration, which had a peppermint candy for the grill and elf ears for the windows. The variation of that is a wrapped candy for the grill and candy canes for the windows. Next came actual lights wrapped around luggage racks, or even garland and lights to embellish the top of the soccer mom SUV.

The more religious folks fought back against the car decoration commercialism, creating car magnets that reminded all the other drivers that “Jesus is the reason for the season” and to “Keep the Christ in Christmas.” I have yet to see a baby Jesus stuck to the grill of a Ford F150, but I’m sure the mobile manger automobile set is just a year or two away.

Enough already. When does it stop? I get road rage now when I see these vehicles in all their holiday splendor. I take joy in seeing the stray antler lying in the road, or a car driving around with just one elf ear. One day, I am going to snap and steal all the antlers and red noses I can find, and then put them all on my car. You’ll see me rolling with twenty antlers on my windows and a cluster of red pompoms on the grill like freaking war trophies.

Or maybe, instead, I’ll create car decorations for some of the other holidays. How about a red heart and little Cupid’s wings for Valentine’s Day? Or a rainbow that stretches over the top of the car, and the back of a leprechaun splatted on the grill? Easter could be bunny ears and buck teeth. Arbor Day could have a giant acorn for the grill and branches for the windows. With every holiday, I could market another ridiculous car ornament. A purple heart for Veteran’s Day. A turkey waddle for Thanksgiving. A stovepipe hat and a beard for President’s Day.  I just might be onto something here.

Until I get that operation up and running, you better guard your antlers and red noses, because I have a dream, and that dream involves hunting your minivan deer down and poaching it for its parts. Or better yet, stop decorating everything. Stick to your houses and your sweaters and your light up necklaces and stop littering the road with oversized fake candy and car antlers. Let’s leave our roadways to cigarette butts and empty beer bottles the way it was meant to be.

Oh, Christmas Tree

Do you have your Christmas tree up yet? I don’t know about you, but I hate putting up the Christmas tree. There is always a fight over it. That’s not the right corner. You’re not helping enough.  Don’t put the ornaments on like that, do it like this. Goddammit, the cat won’t stop eating the decorations. Seriously, it’s always something.

But no matter how much I hate putting up the tree, Christmas wouldn’t feel like Christmas without it. Fuck that elf on the shelf; a Christmas tree is what makes the holidays special. Hell, in my house we don’t even have a real tree. We have a better than real tree, with lead coated fake needles that shed just like the real thing to lend an air of authenticity. It’s over nine feet tall and pre-lit, which doesn’t stop my husband from stringing his favorite reproduction bubble lights. They are pretty cool, I have to admit.

I usually find an excuse to avoid decorating the tree. I offer to run errands, to make dinner, to fold the laundry, to massage the cats, anything it takes to get out of tree duty. That’s because when I was a kid, I was traumatized by Christmas trees, or maybe by my mother.

I should explain that my mother was never a big fan of Christmas. Possibly it reminded her that she didn’t have the money to buy everything we wanted. Maybe it was because she was supposed to give, not receive, which meant she couldn’t buy things for herself, things she also didn’t have enough money for.  Or it could have been that we were Jewish and shouldn’t have really been celebrating Christmas anyway. Whatever the reason, she was always more than a bit cray cray between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, and my sisters and I have had to find a way to make peace with the holiday season.

The symbol of my mother’s yearly holiday mental breakdown was the Christmas tree. We never managed to buy one until at most three days before Christmas, when all the good trees were gone. We had a choice of a crappy Douglas fir with a giant bald spot in the front or a Charlie Brown tree, never the nicer trees that were fresher and cost too much money. One year we actually stole a tree from an unattended tree lot, reasoning that by Christmas Eve, they should be giving trees away.  It never occurred to my mother that stealing might not have been the best way to celebrate the holiday season.

We would bring our sad tree home and my oldest sister, who operated as the family handyman, would have the daunting task of securing the tree in the stand. I would fill the basin with water, which I would forget to do the rest of the time it stood as a harbinger for the holiday. Then the fighting would begin, over colored vs. white lights, who got to put the angel on top, whether to break out the tinsel, fake snow, or pine scented air spray, who put the ugly ornaments in front, until the only thing left was lots of crying followed by the gift of silence. The tree would stand neglected for a week or two past the holiday until almost all the needles had fallen off, at which point someone, also not my mother, would put the decorations away and haul the fire hazard to the curb.

One particular year, my sisters and I decided to take control of the tree situation, sort of as a gift to my mother. Before she came home from work, we got the tree in the stand positioned in the corner of the front room. We took out all of the ornaments and lights and decorated the whole thing. My mother walked in as we were cleaning up, the boxes scattered around the room, vacuum standing guard to suck away the many stray needles. The room was perfectly silent; my sisters and I ceased the incessant bickering as we awaited my mother’s reaction.  She looked at us, and the tree, and said, “It’s in the wrong corner.” Then she turned around and walked back out the front door, and didn’t return for a few hours. She was wrong, though, it was in the right corner. She just forgot which corner we had it in the year before. She also forgot we were children, and that holidays were supposed to be for fun memories, not the other kind.

So now I let my family take charge of the tree. I tend to set up the Hanukah stuff, since we have a vast assortment of menorahs, none of which will hold a standard Hanukah candle. I will also carry boxes to and from the attic, hang the stockings, and even remove ornaments from their bubble wrap or tissue paper, but getting the ornaments on the tree is going too far from me. It’s like I’m waiting for my mother to come in and find fault with how I hung something, to complain I am not doing it right, to let me know that yet again I am the cause of her unhappiness.

 Once the tree is up, I sit back and admire it with my family. I love the Christmas tree. I love the fact that we have the oddest assortment of ornaments. I love the fact that my cat tries to eat his favorite ones year after year. I love that I give my daughters ornaments every year so that when they are ready for trees of their own, they will have a set to take with them into adulthood. I’m especially grateful that even if we all fight every time the tree goes up, they still look forward to the tree every Christmas, with its collection of owls, robots, ballerinas, and even snails. It is chock a block with things that each of us loves, and all together, it is a festive version of our family.

Piss Off

I bet you think your dog is so smart but you’re wrong. Oh, sure, your dog looks and acts like it has more than a Twinkie sized brain, but the majority of that space is taken up with cues to sniff other dogs' asses and humans' genitals. Dogs are cute and friendly and good company, but at the end of the day, they are animals who just might be willing to eat the indiscriminate piece of shit found on the daily walk. Remember that the next time you let your dog give you some open mouth kisses.

Sure, you can train your dog to do tricks. Sit, stay, play dead, roll over. Fascinating stuff really. Throw a Frisbee and your dog might leap in the air and catch it. Same with a stick, although some dogs will forget to bring it back to you, opting instead to gnaw it to splinters. You can also take your dog to obedience school, so it can learn to obey you. But really, you are just working on controlling its animal urges. Don’t chase squirrels. Don’t eat the furniture when I go to work. Don’t run into oncoming traffic. Don't crap in my bed.

I don’t disagree that some dogs are irresistibly cute, or that the companionship of a loyal and loving dog rivals the company of most humans. But cats, they are not.

Cats might not have the same number of tricks, but that’s because they aren’t just sitting around thinking of ways to make you happy. They have better things to do. Cute backyard animals need to be stalked. Naps need to be taken. Shoelaces need to be eaten.  Fetch the paper? Ain’t nobody got time for that!

I’m not saying all cats are smarter than all dogs, although in some ways, they might be. When you get a kitten, you bring it home and show it where the food bowl is, then sit it in the kitty litter. If it steps out of the litter, you pick it up and set it back in the litter box. After doing that three or four times, Bam! Your cat is litter trained. Compare that to a puppy, with its puppy pads and newspapers on the floor and nose rubbing in piles of excrement and so on and so forth.

I suppose the argument can be made that you also are litter trained since you are the one who has to clean out the box. But how is that any different than walking around the neighborhood with a little grocery bag of feces that you picked up in said bag moments after it left your dog’s intestines? When I scoop the litter, it’s all nice and buried and litter covered like an Almond Roca. When you pick up your dog’s crap, you can feel the heat and the texture of the bowel movement through the plastic bag on your hand.

Some cats can even be trained to use the toilet. They sell toilet training kits at pet stores and online, and through a series of steps, your cat can learn to perch atop a toilet seat and do its business in an efficient and tidy manner. Isn’t that a better trick than catching a tennis ball?

My cat has taken her ability to learn valuable life skills even further than the average cat, which exhibits more intelligence than the average dog. Nay, I would put my cat up against your potty training toddler. Not only is my cat toilet trained, but she TRAINED HERSELF. She has observed her human owners using a proper western toilet for years, and she decided one day that she could do that too. Since then, she hasn’t looked back, turning her nose up at relieving herself on clay pellets to opt for the clean experience of peeing in the porcelain god.

I was folding laundry early in the morning the first time I witnessed my cat’s amazing skill. There I was, bent over the dryer searching for socks, when she stepped into the laundry room, hopped up onto the toilet seat, and urinated. I woke up my husband and told him, “It’s a miracle! The cat just peed in the toilet!” He didn’t believe me and rolled over to go back to sleep. A few weeks later, my younger daughter and I were again in the laundry room when the cat peed in the toilet in front of us. “I told you so!” I shouted indignantly, since no one in the family believed me.

Since then, we have all witnessed the cat in the act of number one. In fact, if you are sitting downstairs, you can hear her peeing in the upstairs laundry room john, which we now refer to as the cat’s toilet. No, she does not wipe, nor can she flush it herself. She has not decided to test out her shitting abilities either, opting instead for the burial method in the litter box. I’m not complaining. She can pee in the toilet, and she learned purely from observing humans. That’s some good shit right there.

I’m sure you don’t believe me, so here you go. Video evidence. Watch it, watch it again, and then go tell your dog I said to suck it.

 

 

 

Careful With the Balls, Girls

I can’t believe I am saying this, but I don’t mind talking to my children about sex. I am very direct and matter of fact about it. I use the real words like penis and vagina, and I even explain why they too should use them (who wants to be the person who tells her doctor that her hoo-ha itches?). I’m glad I am so open and honest with them because I know they will bring their questions to me. I’m also glad because the public school system in our state covers abstinence thoroughly and sexuality marginally. They tell you about the parts and then tell you not to use them. They should call it asexual education.

My teen got in the car on Monday morning, and as usual, she was running late.

“Did you get your lunch and your gym uniform?” I asked her, as I do every Monday morning.

“Yes to the lunch, but I don’t need my gym uniform this week. We’re doing sex education so we don’t need them,” she said.

“What, you just take off your clothes? Wear your birthday suits? They just jump right in, don’t they?” I said.

“Jeez, Mom, gross. No, we just sit in the gym and get lectured. We don’t have to change clothes and we don’t sit around naked. Only they separate us for sex ed, so it’s not like our usual groups.”

“Separate you? How? Do they pair you up? ‘You go with you. You go with you. You with you.  You and you. And you’re left, so you’ll be with me.” I mimicked a gym teacher pairing up kids, pointing my finger at imaginary students.

It took the teen a minute to understand what I meant, and then she laughed. It’s so cool she gets all the jokes now.

“You’re so weird, Mom.” She doesn't know the half of it.

“I didn’t know what you meant,” I said. “First you don’t need clothes, and now they are separating you into pairs. I thought maybe you had, like, partners or something. The buddy system. What’s the test like? Is your grade based on your performance?”

“No, Mom, stop it.” She made her squeamish face. “They don’t teach us how to do it. They only tell us not to do it. And we’re not in pairs. They separate boys from girls.”

That afternoon, I asked her what they covered.

“Oh, you know, the most important thing to remember is to not have sex until you are married and that way you won’t get any diseases.”

“That’s not true,” I said. “You can still get some STD’s through oral contact.”

“Well, they don’t talk about oral contact, Mom. Gross. They just spend a lot of time on AIDS and herpes and how you can have it for the rest of your life.”

“Did they talk about the shots you got for HPV virus?” I asked her.

“No, besides, that’s not as bad as the other ones. And if everybody has the shots, what’s the big deal?”

“Not everyone has the shots, honey. And probably fifty percent of our population has it. And it causes cervical cancer, so you can die from it. It’s a big deal too. And what about chlamydia and gonorrhea? They are becoming resistant to antibiotics. Did they talk about that?”

“Of course not.”

“What do they talk about?”

“Really just the anatomy of the guy’s organs. And the baby and stuff. It’s not much different than last year.”

I quizzed her a bit more, and what I found out is that the public school will tell girls all about penises and testicles, even about the sensitivity of the glans, but girls still aren’t supposed to know they have a clitoris. Orgasms are not mentioned, nor are condoms. Sex is either for procreation or for ruining your life or both.

I almost wish I had a son, or at least a friend with one in the seventh grade, because I am really curious what the boys learn. Are they learning about how fabulous their penises too, or are they covering the mysterious clitoris? If girls are learning to not kick boys in the balls, are the boys learning that against her will is against the law? Is abstinence covered for both genders, or is virginity  just stressed with the girls?

I suppose I could read the syllabus, but that kind of takes the fun out of asking my teen on a daily basis: And what did you learn today? Did your coaches demonstrate it? Did they ask for any volunteers? How do you get an A? Can you earn extra credit?

When I was at the grocery store today, I heard a baby crying when I walked by the dairy aisle. That baby continued to cry for the entire time I shopped for groceries, even while I was waiting in line to check out. It stopped briefly, but then started again while I swiped my credit card. All I could think was never shake a baby, but I’m telling you, I wanted to make that baby stop crying in the worst way. All the people waiting in line to check out behind me commented on the baby too. Poor thing, it doesn’t feel like shopping today.  It must be tired. I'm glad that's not my baby.

If the public schools want to focus on abstinence, they should teach sex education with the soundtrack of a crying baby in the background. I’m telling you, those kids would be so frazzled, they’d never even touch their own parts, let alone someone else’s. That’s what abstinence education needs, a lot of crying babies. But why stop there, why not some crying babies with herpes and syphilis and shit? If you want to put the fear of God in them, then make it something worth fearing.

One Woman Ranting

I knew when I didn’t wake up early to pee today that something wasn’t quite right. My sister usually chalks up days like these to Mercury being in retrograde, but I don’t know what that means, nor would I believe in it if I did. I do believe in Murphy’s Law and bad luck and when it rains it pours. Except sometimes it doesn’t pour, it just gets misty and starts and stops and is generally irritating. That’s how today was.

My massage I had scheduled for today was cancelled. I know, I know, first world problems. But still, it was my massage. The italics are to let you know to read that sentence as a whine. My massage therapist had some bullshit reason like a scheduling issue, and cancelled my appointment with about two hours’ notice. Can you imagine calling off your massage with two hours’ notice? I’m sure you’d have to pay for it anyway, just like you would at the doctor’s office. If Starbucks fucks up your coffee order, they will occasionally give you a card for a free drink. I should get an extra fifteen minutes tacked onto my rescheduled appointment.

Since I had a block of free time, I decided to make a coffee cake from scratch to take to the gym in the morning. One of the fitness instructors has been out for a long time following one of those freak accidents that you hear about on the news: Woman injured as SUV rolls out of driveway is expected to make a full recovery. Well, tomorrow’s her first day back to torturing us at the gym after her ribs knit themselves back together, and what better way to commemorate it than a coffee cake?

So I baked a beautiful cake from scratch with a ribbon of cinnamon, brown sugar, and walnuts through the middle. I set it on the counter to cool for ten minutes before taking it out of the cake pan. I placed the wire rack on top of the cake pan and flipped it. Instead of setting the cake down on top of the rack, I dumped the whole thing on the counter. The cake cracked open like a delicate piñata, spilling its cinnamon walnut layer all over the counter. I picked up the salvageable pieces and put them back in the pan, then swept the rest into a giant crumb pile which then went in the garbage. Then I said some bad words and went upstairs to shower.

 

 

 

During my shower, the doorbell rang. It was UPS! I had five packages waiting on my doorstep, the bounty of my Cyber Monday activities. I opened four of the packages without incident, but the fifth one was a doozy. It was one of those thick plastic bags that doesn’t have any perforation, so you just have to hack at it with scissors hoping to force an opening somewhere. I hacked all right, right through one of the shirts. Merry Christmas, kid! Don’t look at the back of your shirt where I cut an extra hole. What makes it even worse is that I spent literally two hours on that website, the most user unfriendly website on all of Al Gore’s invention, trying to buy a goddamn t-shirt. A one of kind t-shirt, as in cannot be reordered or replaced. I sat down immediately to email the company to complain about their packaging. After I sent it, I checked over the rest of the shirts and realized I ordered the wrong size on a different one, which is for the same person as the shirt that I nicked.  

The best part of the day, stolen from me. My cake, nay, my talent for baking, lay in so many hunks on the counter. My carefully planned and chosen gifts a tattered and missized reminder to check my order before placing it. Is the universe trying to tell me something?

Perhaps it was all coincidence. Perhaps it’s time for me to slow down and take my time. Perhaps I am getting old and less careful. Perhaps I am losing my touch. Or maybe, perhaps today just sucked, and it has nothing to do with me.

Son of the Twelve Blogs of Christmas

It’s that time of year again, when I treat myself to an extra helping of stress. Some of you are busy fretting over planning the perfect Christmas, or at least a passable Hanukah.  Some of you are just now recovering from your Thanksgiving overindulgence, and some of you are still working your way through Halloween candy.  A few of you might even care about making New Year’s Eve plans. That’s four or five holidays all packed together in just a matter of a few short months. What were those pagans and early Judeo-Christian types thinking??  In my house, we like to sandwich the holidays with birthdays in November and January, just to add to the nonstop party rock in the house. Whee!

I’m no Martha Stewart; in fact, I’ve never built an empire on doing everything better than you and then going to prison. But I do like to outdo myself in some arenas. I take pride in baking. I excel at gift giving. I make my daughters’ birthdays a holiday to celebrate their births, much like Christmas is for Jesus. And I will challenge you to a snowflake cut a thon any day of the week.

I might make it look easy, but truth be told, it’s a lot of work. I have been known to wake up at five in the morning to think about the best place to find junior pajama bottoms in tall sizes. I have a mental list on loop in my head that includes chocolate chips and shirt boxes.  I organize my present receipts by date and cross reference them by recipient. There’s not a lot of rest and relaxation going on.

In addition to trying to do everything, which we all know is impossible yet can’t stop ourselves from trying, I want to write too. Normally, I find time on a monthly basis to knock out about four essays. The holiday season is all about excess, though, so why not aim high?

Thus, I present to you, the reader, the Third Annual Twelve Blogs of Christmas.  Between sometime near the beginning of December and the arbitrary date of Epiphany, like that means anything to me, I will attempt to find twelve blog worthy topics and write about them. Will they all be fascinating? No. Will they all make you laugh? Not necessarily. I can’t promise you entertainment, joy, poignancy, or insight. I’m only promising twelve.

 It’s my gift to you, because I care. And it's free.

Another Day in Paradise

All I wanted was to get my car washed. It wasn’t like I was looking for a thorough detailing, just a small attempt at removing the bug carcasses from my windshield and the brake dust on my front tires. Apparently, I was still asking too much, on a day that seemed destined for badness from when I awoke. We all have those kinds of days, when the culmination of little bad things results in a catastrophically horrible day. Each incident on its own might be a minor annoyance, but when they all gang up together against you, they are enough to make you go crying for Mommy, or, if your mama ain’t the nurturing type,  then  just crying and shaking like a chihuahua. I refer to those types of days as “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” days.

I hated that movie. The combination of Steve Martin and John Candy in a series of funny mishaps while trying to get home in time for Thanksgiving should have been hysterical; instead, it reminded me of why I hate to travel. I didn’t even care if it had a happy ending, I just wanted it to end.  I needed a Xanax to undo the anxiety that movie created.

Every once in a while, a day will come along that is just like that movie. Last Saturday was one of those days for me. We had just returned home from a quick Thanksgiving trip the day before, and I knew I had a butt load of laundry awaiting me, as well as a bored teenager and needy tween to look after. My husband was going to his big college rivalry game, which began in the evening and thus warranted his leaving at ten in the morning for a full day of tailgating.

Being the loving wife I am, I decided to bake cookies for him to take to the game, so I was up and in the kitchen by eight. I decided on a batch of mint chocolate chocolate chip cookies from scratch. I mixed them up, noticed the odd consistency, and scooped them on the pans and into the ovens. About halfway through baking them, I remembered I forgot to add baking soda. I fucked up the whole batch of cookies.  I was furious with myself, so I decided to make a second batch, this time chocolate chip cookies with little bits of Andes mints in them.This time I remembered the baking soda, but not the baking powder. Batch two also was a disaster. He graciously thanked me and took all the cookies with him to the game so I didn’t have to look at my failures anymore.

After a morning of doing everything my kids asked me to do, I dropped one of them off at a friend’s house and took the other out to lunch and a Target run. My plan was to stop by one of those drive-through car washes afterwards before we came home, and lucky for me, there was one right across the street from Target. My car was filthy. It needed a bath. If you scraped the brake dust off my front wheels, you could mold it into a new brake. 

After our lunch and errands, my daughter and I crossed the street to go to the car wash, were a number of people were in the front taking advantage of the free vacuum. I needed to do that as well, but I just wanted to see my shiny wheels again. I drove around back to where the car wash entrance was, and found it blocked by orange road cones.

“F f f f…great,” I edited. “Why is it closed? It’s not like it’s thirty-two degrees out here.

“Let’s just go home,” E, my daughter, said.

“I’ll try that other car wash on the way home, at the gas station on the corner.”

We stopped at the gas station. I pulled around to the back where the car wash was, next to the machine where you put in the money. The coin and bill slots were taped over.

“ Godd…dang nab it! This one’s broken!” I have been trying to not swear in front of my child.

“Let’s just go home,” E said again.

“No, I want to wash my car. We’ll try one more place, by the other gas station.”

I drove past our neighborhood to the convenience store on another road, which has one of those self car washes next door. It has two of the automatic drive through kinds, and the rest are the kind where you actually get out of the car and hose it off yourself. I pulled up to one of the automatic bays which had a video screen to help you with the very difficult process of selecting a car wash type and inserting your money. I wanted the nine dollar wash, the one with the tire cleaner, but I only had seven crumpled one dollar bills. I dug in the bottom of my purse and found two dollars’ worth of quarters. Score!

I stuck in a dollar, then another. The third one the machine didn’t care for, but instead of spitting it back out at me, it just sat there making a whirring noise. I yanked on the edge of the bill and finally got it back out, then tried another bill. This one was faded and had sticky residue all over it. Where did I get these stripper singles, anyway? You never know who the last people are before you at the grocery store or what they've been doing with their money. I attempted a few more singles, but the machine only accepted a total of five dollars’ worth before I gave up.

“Frig, it won’t take my money.”

“Try that one again,” my daughter suggested.

In the act of shoving my money in the machine, I dropped a couple of ones next to my car.

“Crud. Will you run around the car and get that please?” I said to E.

She scampered around the car and picked them up.

“Here, Mom, you dropped them in a puddle.” She handed them to me through the window.

“Lovely, now the machine definitely won’t take them. I’ll try the quarters.” I stuffed the wet ones in the bottom of my purse, under the collection of receipts.

I stuck a quarter into the coin slot. It popped back out. I stuck it in again. It popped out. I tried four more times, with the same result. Why would I expect any different?

“Fine, I’ll just get the cheaper wash,” I said.

I pressed the button to go back to the car wash choices. The screen showed a message, “Please wait.”

We waited. Nothing happened. We waited for five minutes. Nothing happened.

“Goddamn it fucking pig fucker!” I screamed.

“Mom! “E yelled at me.

“All I wanted was a fucking car wash. Why is every fucking thing so goddamned difficult??”

I put the car in reverse and drove over to the convenience store, parked the car, and stormed inside. E trailed behind me, looking for a hole in the ground that might swallow her.

“Is that car wash next door belong to you?” I asked the eleven year old behind the counter.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well, it just ate all my money. Then it froze.” I said.

“How much?” he asked.

“I guess five dollars.”

“She dropped the other ones in a puddle,” E volunteered behind me.

“He doesn’t need to know that,” I said to her but at him.

“Here," he said, handing me a five dollar bill. “Here’s your money back. And here’s a code for a free nine dollar car wash.” He handed me a slip of paper.

“Really? Thanks,” I said, softening. “Now I don’t have to go home and cry.”

We got back in the car and drove back to the car wash. I picked the other automatic bay, entered the code, and got the car wash I had wanted so desperately all afternoon. It took longer to try to get my car washed than it took the machine to actually wash it, but it did make a lovely striped pattern on my windows with the soap.

Alas, my tires are still dirty. I didn’t go home to cry, but I did have to take a nap. That not cussing thing was exhausting.

 

 

 

How About a Thank You?

As I woke up this Thanksgiving morning, I thought about all the things I have to be thankful for. Like ending a sentence with a preposition. I’m thankful I can do that without it affecting my grade. And sentence fragments. I’m thankful for those too.  Obviously, I am thankful for all the things I should be thankful for: my beautiful family and loving husband, my rich and meaningful life, the love and support of friends and family, a roof over my head, a sustaining meal, blah blah blah. Everybody is thankful for all of that on Thanksgiving. But what about the little things we always take for granted?

While you are sticking your hand inside your bird to extract that little sack of innards, how about a big thanks to the grocery store industry? If I had to go out in the yard to select a bird to kill, then grab it and twist its neck with my bare hands, followed by eviscerating its lifeless carcass, well, let’s just say there wouldn’t be a whole lot of variety in my family’s diet. “Aww Mom, oatmeal again?” “Shut up and eat your groats.” The only reason my family gets to eat any flesh at all is because someone else already selected the plumpest, juiciest bird titties and shrink wrapped them for me. I will even bypass a package of chicken if it looks like there is too much juice in it. Juice? Try life fluids leaking out of that flesh.  No, I would have stuck to potatoes and cabbage, like so many European immigrants.  Anyone want more bubble and squeak?

Speaking of bubble and squeak, I am thankful that we fart. Did you ever get a gas bubble, that pocket of gas trapped somewhere deep inside your miles of intestines? Painful stuff, gas bubbles. What if it had nowhere to go? Those bacteria would keep producing gas, and the pressure of that gas would grow, and you would bloat until your distended torso would finally explode like an overfilled balloon. Farts are a good thing. Remember that today about an hour after you eat enough food for a small village in Africa. If your family complains about your gaseous emissions, explain to them how a body decomposes. Don’t leave out the part about the gases building up inside a rotting corpse. They will encourage you to fart some more, and then they will leave the room. Ahh, peace on earth.

Since I’m being thankful for bodily functions, how about a quick shout out to tampons? Remember that expression, on the rag? Yeah, well, before tampons were widely used, women were literally ON THE RAG. Rags were stuffed in their pantaloons to absorb their monthly flow. Rags that later would have to be washed and dried and pressed and stored for the next time of the month. You think an overnight pad feels like a diaper? Try an actual diaper. Rags didn’t come in slender regular or super plus; they came in rag. If it was the first or second day of your period, you just used more rags, which you would later have to wash, lucky you. No wonder women spent so much time being pregnant.

How about a shout out to washing machines? Your great great grandmother was beating her rags against a river rock, hoping it would attract some fish so her family had something different to eat other than potatoes and cabbage. Or she was boiling water and making her own lye soap to wash her monthly rags along with the one outfit for every family member, because who had time to make more clothes when they were washing their bloody rags stored up for a week every month? And I’m not just thankful for washing machines. I am thankful I own my own. While the Laundromat makes for some excellent people watching, it isn’t exactly a place I care to frequent again in my life time. I did my time in rusty public machines, thank you very much. I know the joy of moving someone else’s soggy unmentionables to steal a machine because I was tired of waiting for their owner to return and stop hogging all the fucking machines. I don’t have to lug a giant body bag of dirty socks and underwear, only to wash them and fold them and put them back in the same bag all clean so I can lug them back to my apartment. Thank you, Whirlpool! Your front loading machine might make my t shirts stink but at least you are in my house.

Don’t forget to be thankful for closets. Have you been inside an old home? In addition to all detailed wainscoting and other old world craftsmanship, they have maybe one coat closet for the whole family to share. That’s why so many families had only one pot to piss in. They didn’t have storage for more than one pot. Where did our grandmothers keep their massive collection of rags?

Here’s another reason to be thankful for your house. Did you eat too much today? Just take off your pants. Isn’t that better? If you were homeless, you would be on the verge of an indecent exposure charge right now. You can overeat and then take off your pants all you want in the privacy of your home. Show some motherfucking appreciation.

Isn’t it about time we offered up some gratitude to time? My family has had massive conversations already about what time thanksgiving dinner will be served.  How about when I am done heating it up, bitches? Time is relative, but it gives us a frame of reference, does it not? Plus, for those of us with anxiety, where would we be without time? If I know I have to get that turkey in the oven before the parades end, I can obsess on how long I get to watch Al Roker make slightly off color comments to  a soap opera star with too much foundation before I have to get up and go to the kitchen. How did the pilgrims and the Native Americans know what time to sit down with their wild turkey and maize pudding? I’m pretty sure they were not a lot of pocket watches under deer skins back in the day.

I could go on and on about the little things we should appreciate, which aren’t so little when you think about them. Air conditioning. Western toilets. Automobile brakes. Spellcheck. Antihistamines. Cranberry sauce. The list goes on and on. Why not take the time today to think of a different thing to be thankful for? Spice up that toast tonight before you gorge yourself on mashed potatoes and just one more roll to sop up that gravy. We all know to be thankful for the big stuff. But really, it’s the little things that make the difference. And if you don’t believe me, take off that cotton cashmere sweater and undershirt and go put on a real wool sweater.  See, I’m right. Thanks for being big enough to admit it.

Who's Up for Another Round?

My friend MJS told me last week that she is ready for a chemo blog. And if MJS wants a blog about her chemo, who am I to say no? Truth is, MJS has always provided some pretty kick-ass blog fodder. Plus, she’s on chemo.

Yes, I know. MJS had a baby last year and just got married a little over a month ago. And now cancer? Well, she’s never been one to live life softly. She lives it large, and loud, to the fullest, balls to the wall. She’s all in. Full throttle. Take no prisoners.

Ok, maybe that’s an exaggeration. She really prefers a simple home cooked meal and a Real Housewives marathon on television, but somehow, life hasn’t gotten that message yet. So instead of getting married and having a baby and living happily ever after, she got Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Sucks, doesn’t it?

Everything happened pretty quickly too. One day she was having a wedding reception, and literally the next she was feeling a swollen lymph node and thinking, what the fuck? I should get that looked at. Unlike her usual “wait and see if it goes away” approach to her health, she  immediately got in with a physician’s assistant, who decided to do a "just in case" chest x-ray, who called the next day with some seriously unexpected news and an appointment with an oncologist. Before the week was over, she was in surgery getting that lymph node sliced out and getting even more serious and unexpected news.

The good news is that Hodgkin’s is highly treatable. The bad news is that it’s still…cancer. She has been scheduled for four rounds of chemo, followed by a few weeks of daily radiation. Hopefully after that she can go back to the balls to the wall part.

Chemo doesn’t happen  anymore like it did in Terms of Endearment, with Shirley MacLaine lying in a hospital bed in ICU with everybody tearing up around her. Now it’s a little more like giving blood, only they are putting stuff in you instead of draining it out. MJS goes to the cancer center for a full day, makes a stop at the lab, maybe pops in at the doctor’s office, then settles herself in her easy chair, partitioned by curtains from the other easy chairs, and waits for bag after bag of IV medication and fluid to fill her angry little arm.  Then she goes home and waits to see what’s going to happen.

That’s the fun part of chemo; anything could happen. Her tears and pee could be red. She could have chest pain or back pain or headaches. Her jaw could seize every time she opens for a bite of food, if the nausea doesn’t get to her first. She might have a superhuman round of energy and adrenalin or a foggy addle-mindedness known in the cancer biz as “chemo brain.” And she can flush the dream of a productive and invigorating bowel movement down the toilet. No amount of high fiber twig and berries cereal washed down with a shot of Colace is going to make those bowels move.

After MJS’s first round of chemo, her momma came to stay with her to help take care of the baby and cook and pick up the tumbleweeds of dog fur that blow around the hardwood floors. MJS decided one morning that a nice, hot shower sounded like the very thing. She got in the stall and let it get all warm and steamy, just enjoying the hot water raining down on her. Everything was great until one of her lungs decided to stop working. She crawled her way out of the shower, naked and wet, barely able to breathe, with what she thought was a collapsed lung. With whatever strength and breath she had left, she called to her mother, who came into the bedroom and found MJS dripping and freezing on the floor. Her mother cradled her in her arms, begging her to breathe while calling the doctor’s office. The oncologist shared the one bit of good news, that her bone marrow was cancer free, before telling her not to take any more long hot showers.

I went to visit MJS after her second round. Physically, she was doing much better. I don’t know if it was because her body had adjusted to the initial shock of poison or what, but the nausea and pain seemed a bit less. She spent the visit wrapping herself in an electric blanket like a burrito and lying on the couch, followed by running her hands through her hair to see how much she could gather in a handful, and then repeating the process. Frequently and obsessively. MJS used to have an OCD thing about the dog fur, but now she could take that energy and focus it instead on her own rapidly thinning hair.

Because, oh yeah, losing your hair is another fun part of chemo. The good news is that she won’t need a bikini wax soon. Also gone are razor bumps in the armpits and her favorite chin hair. Luckily, she looks fabulous in hats. She even looks fabulous with thinning hair. MJS can totally rock the cancer look, let me tell you. It could be a whole retro modeling thing, like when Kate Moss was big: Models with cancer; we still look better in clothes than you do.

“You won’t believe this,” MJS told me while looking through the American Cancer Society catalog, “But they sell bangs and sideburns to wear under your hat. So it looks like you still have hair instead of just a hat on a bald head.”

“Get the fuck out? They sell bangs? Do they attach to the hat?” I asked her.

“No, I think they stick on to your head.”

“Will you wear just a bang for me, and nothing else?” I asked her.

She burped at me. “Not gonna happen.”

“Do they have a ring of hair like the monk from Robin Hood? The one with the big bald spot, what’s his name, Friar Tuck?”

“I’m not looking for that.”

“What about pubic wigs? Do they have any of those? Just to change up your look a little? You know, spice things up a bit? My dad said those were called merkins. How did he know that anyway?”

She got up. “I’m going to try to poo again.”

“Not gonna happen,” I said back to her.

Tomorrow is round three of chemo, and the day after, Thanksgiving. She doesn’t have two white blood cells to her name. She will be toxic; her pee and sweat and tears and drool all have a level of poison that other humans shouldn’t touch. So while we are all stuffing our faces, she will be wrapped up in her hair-covered electric throw, hopefully watching “The Real Housewives” and making the occasional poo. And the whole time, she’ll still look fabulous, because she is.
 

Over the Rainbow

I have sixty rainbow colored personalized yarmulkes on my kitchen counter, and I have no idea what to do with them. In addition to those kippah, I also have a box full of rubber duckies shaped like unicorns, with rainbow manes. And about 45 brightly colored programs. These are all the extra items left over from my daughter’s bat mitzvah last weekend. Her theme was “rainbows and unicorns,” which in addition to being a teenage girl’s dream, is also the gayest party theme ever.

The theme started out as one of my typically weird dreams. About a year ago, we started thinking about what kind of party E, my now 13 year old daughter, wanted for her bat mitzvah. I had a dream that her bat mitzvah was a rainbow carnival. We had rainbow colored things everywhere, and carnival games and snow cones and corn dogs and a cotton candy machine. We even had a tent with a freak show, the freaks all dressed in rainbow colored costumes. I told E all about my bizarre dream. She said, “I don’t know about the carnival, but I kind of like the rainbows.” And that’s how she picked her theme.

Parties don’t require themes, exactly, but it sure makes it easy to go over the top if you have one, which I did. I ordered monochromatic floral arrangements and table cloths. I ordered a balloon arrangement shaped like a big rainbow arch, with white cloud balloon clusters at the base; one side even had a giant Mylar unicorn head poking out of it. I ordered rainbow cupcakes that were decorated with rainbows, displayed on a rainbow arch. I ordered three cases of rainbow cookies. And if the cookies and cupcakes weren’t enough, I also had a huge glass bowl of Skittles, so if you were in the mood, you could also taste the rainbow.

Now, three days later, the only person tasting the rainbow is my husband, because in addition to the yarmulkes and the programs and the rubber ducks, we also have a gallon sized plastic bag filled with leftover Skittles. Every time he walks through the kitchen, he grabs a few, and then complains about how he can’t stop eating them. I’m just glad they aren’t M&M’s. For the record, I hate Skittles. They could sit on my counter until the apocalypse and I still wouldn’t eat one.

I did manage to send a half a case of rainbow cookies home with my sister’s family. The rest are going bad in my fridge, along with a few dozen pounds of mac and cheese, succotash, chicken fingers, and squash casserole. It all tasted so fabulous on Saturday. Now just looking at it makes my mouth flood with saliva, and not in the good way. We did donate a portion of food to the soup kitchen, but even the soup kitchen doesn’t know what to do with fifteen pounds of peach poppy cole slaw. You know what starts looking like a melted rainbow three days after a party? Fifteen pounds of peach poppy cole slaw.

We had a fabulous party, really we did. And everyone seemed to be enjoying the heck out of themselves, dancing and eating and chatting and laughing. Everything looked beautiful without being excessive. It wasn’t like we hired Elton John and flew everyone to Vegas. But still, there’s nothing that makes you feel like you wasted money like watching your balloon lady pop all of the balloons in the parking lot after the event. We got to see that while we loaded eighteen floral arrangements in the car. Eighteen. Even the cats can’t eat that many floral arrangements.

So what to do with my yarmulke collection? The standard response was “make them into a quilt;” a bunch of people jokingly said that to me as I carted them out of the temple. Is there anything less snuggly than a quilt made of cheap satin beanies? Plus, when I think of satin throws, I think of satin sheets, and when I think of satin sheets, I think of cheap sex. I don’t want to think of cheap sex on a quilt made out of my daughter’s bat mitzvah yarmulkes, in bright gay rainbow colors.

I can’t exactly donate them either. If Goodwill won’t take my old booster seats, it sure as hell won’t take gently used yarmulkes. Who is going to buy them anyway? They were used for maybe an hour and a half. Now what? Send them to an impoverished nation? I doubt a third world country has a use for them either. Plus, the idea of a bunch of men wearing a beanie with my daughter’s name on it is kind of weird, don’t you think?

Which begs the question: If I can’t find a use for my old yarmulkes, what happens to all of the leftover bar and bat mitzvah yarmulkes in big towns like New York City? There are probably more yarmulkes in NYC than there are Jews to wear them. And don’t tell me to Google what to do with them because all I found was a bra made out of yarmulkes, and it didn’t exactly look supportive.

If you can think of a use for them, for any of that stuff, then let me know. Otherwise, I’m going to start scratching out her name and writing in her sister’s. Hopefully, no one will notice when it’s her turn in a couple of years. Maybe her bat mitzvah theme can be recycling. In addition to hand me down clothes and shoes and underwear, only the gently worn ones, she can have a hand me down bat mitzvah too. I’m sure that will make her feel really special, don’t you?

Grace Period?

This school year has barely begun and already I'm worrying about where my ten year old daughter, S,  will be attending middle school. She is my baby, and in my mind, she just isn’t ready for the typical middle school experience, complete with mean girls and acne and periods and bullying, not to mention six different teachers and changing classes and lockers. My older daughter is in seventh grade at the closest middle school, and she comes home almost daily with a story of fist fights or make out sessions in the janitor’s closet or the weird girl getting doused with pig’s blood at the school dance. She has adjusted surprisingly well; she found her niche and is maintaining excellent grades. My younger daughter, however, doesn’t seem to handle change as easily. She still hasn’t made that many friends since she left her private school two years ago, and the one close friend she has made isn’t allowed to come over and play, either because we're white or because we aren’t Christian.

The alternatives to regular public middle school are limited in my town. There’s an excellent Catholic school, but she refuses to learn catechism at the same time she learns Hebrew, so that’s out. There’re also a few magnet schools, but honestly, we bought the house in which we live because the middle and high schools are allegedly so good. And then there’s the charter school.

The charter school is small, focused heavily on leadership, community, and academics, with small single gender classes. They insist on uniforms and eschew lockers. They don’t have arts or music or sports teams or electives or a fucking cafeteria, but they do have excellent test scores and creative teachers. Do I think it’s the perfect school for my daughter? No, but perfect doesn’t exist. It is, however, nice to have options.

I attempted to get my older daughter enrolled in the same charter school two years in a row, but no luck. It’s all based on a “lottery” because the state law provides for equal opportunity for admission to charter schools. That being said, the school still has other requirements for entry, including an application, attendance at a mandatory informational meeting, and after the lottery, a screening with the student, parents, and educators, all designed to make sure the school is a good fit for your child. I appreciate that, really. Why go through all the trouble to get your kid in some special school only to change your mind because you didn’t know about the uniforms and the 1:30 dismissal on Friday?

For E, my older daughter, I attended the meeting twice, sitting through the chairperson’s historical information about the school, the stern explanation of curriculum by the teachers, and the registrar’s specific instructions, an hour wasted on what could be easily read on their website from the comfort of my couch. I jumped through all the hoops, completed the application process, and waited for the lottery. The first year, she was 152 on a waiting list for sixty openings. The second year, she rose to 15 on the waiting list. I don’t even know if they had openings. Needless to say, she adjusted well to our zoned middle school and is doing swimmingly.

A friend of mine who has a daughter the same age as S reminded me it was time to attend the meeting for the charter school. I honestly didn’t give it any thought, since the idea of having to take my kids to two different public middle schools seems a bit on the indulgent side. But I would hate to be accused of not treating my daughters fairly, so I agreed to go with her to my third informational meeting in as many years. Why? Because parents are required to attend  the meeting any time they apply for a child, even if another child already attends that school or if they've attended in the past. Again, it has something to do with thinking about what is best for your child and not taking the cookie cutter approach to education, or some such bullshit.

My friend and I met at the W Road Christian Church, where the meeting was held. Nothing screams public school like meeting about it in a church, let alone one that refuses to specify a denomination. We walked into the sanctuary, clutching our completed applications, and found two seats together. The room was just five degrees shy of Hell, an attempt to make church goers reflect on what direction their lives of sin will take them. For us school meeting parents, well, we just drifted into that red-faced, near comatose place, the one where you move beyond “this room is hot” and head straight for bobbing and swaying in your chair.

The meeting was the same meeting I sat through two other times. I learned nothing new, not that I expected to. After daydreaming about the choir section, which was really cool in a clam shell kind of way, I studied the other parents and their children, judging them and also my chances of getting my daughter in the school. Mostly, I was just waiting for my little slip of paper to prove that I had attended.

After the meeting adjourned, my friend and I had one of those brief conversations about whether or not to ask them to accept our applications. At no point in the past hour did they mention taking applications at the meeting, which I pointed out to my friend. She was convinced if she explained to them she had the application all ready to go, they would make an exception for her and happily take it.

We walked up to a couple of teachers who were standing behind a display of textbooks. I stood slightly behind my friend as she mustered up the nerve to ask them if they would accept her paperwork. The younger of the two teachers launched into a polite, indirect spiel about why they don’t take applications at the mandatory meeting, going on and on about how every child is different and to process the information you heard to make the best possible decision for your child’s education. And then he said, “It’s kind of like a waiting period.”

That’s when I opened my mouth.

“Oh, a waiting period? You mean, like if we wanted to have an abortion?”

That’s what came out.

The two teachers stared at me, slack jawed. My friend knit her eyebrows together and grabbed my forearm, leading me out of the building.

“Well, now you’ve done it,” she said. “You can kiss your daughter’s chance of getting in that school goodbye.”

“Nah-uh,” I replied, “because they don’t know who I am. They don’t have this, remember?” I waved my application in her face.

“Well, if there’s a way to kick you out before you even get in, I’m sure they’ll find it. Jesus, and in a church, no less. We’re lucky the whole building didn’t burst in flames.”

“At least I didn’t say anything about a waiting period for buying a gun,” I said.

“You think that’s worse?” she said, rolling her eyes at me.

Next time, if there is next time, my husband is going to that damn meeting. Better yet, my daughter can go to the same school as her sister. Those teachers hear stuff like that every day. Hell, they probably have kids giving each other abortions in the locker room.  

Maybe that’s why they aren’t allowed to take coat hangers to school.

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something...Red?

[THIS DISCLAIMER IS FOR MY SISTER. THERE IS PUKE IN THIS STORY, BUT NO PICTURES. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK]

 

My precious MJ is no more. She is now MJS; well, she is actually a Mrs. Yes, MJ got married. MJS freely admits she did it a little differently than some folks. She met a man. They fell in love. They made a love child. They decided to live together, and then she had their love child. He got a new job and moved out of state. She waited until her older daughter finished school, then they moved up there with him. They bought a house. And then, after all that other stuff, they got married.

MJS and her new husband, PS, aren’t naive. They have each been married before, and they decided that the best wedding for them, which isn’t necessarily the kind everyone else would plan, would be to have a small simple ceremony, just the two of them on the beach. They found a woman online who performed coastal weddings. Her name was something like Moonbeam Flowerpot or Petunia Shooting Star. I haven’t seen a picture of her, but I imagine she looks like something from a renaissance faire, with an odd colored full length dress and flowing white hair.

 MJS and her man left the kids with her parents and drove down to the beach. MJS wore white, so what? They stood in the sand, and Milky Way Snapdragon pulled an older couple off the beach to witness their union. The couple was having their photo taken on the occasion of their thirty fifth wedding anniversary, so what more can you ask for in a couple of witnesses, really. MJS and PS were happy, and they married and celebrated by eating too much dinner and then having an intimate moment or two. You know how newlyweds are. A few days later, they had a small wedding reception in the clubhouse of their neighborhood, and my family along with some of their close friends and family members joined them to celebrate their big day.

“What do you want for a gift?” I asked her before her actual big day.

“Don’t get me anything. You don’t get people anything when they are already living together and have a baby.”

“Are you sure?” I said.

She had not registered for gifts, and Emily Post didn’t have any great suggestions on what to get a couple that’s already done all the stuff people do after they get married. Hallmark doesn’t even make a card that says “You finally got married? Jesus, I mean Mazel tov!” She’s got dishes and sheets and baking pans and glasses and furniture. And a baby. But what could I do?

“You know what, I would love if you would bake the cake for my reception,” she said.

I love to bake, and I’m pretty good at it, but I am a home baker. My stuff looks like it came from your grandmother, not the Cake Boss.

“I’m happy to bake for you, but I can’t make it pretty.”

“I don’t care about that,” MJS said. “I just want your red velvet.”

"I can't make you a six layered cake. I only have one sized pan."

She decided I should make two separate cakes. We would put out the first, and when that one was finished, we would set out the next one, and hopefully have enough for all the guests.

The day before we went to the reception, I baked six layers of red velvet cake. As they cooled on the counter, I doubled a batch of cream cheese frosting in my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. I frosted and chilled and smoothed and frosted and chilled and smoothed until I had two separate three layer cakes. I evened out the icing and the cakes looked like they usually did, like someone baked them at home. They were a tad lopsided, with an edge of red poking out of the fluffy white. They were less like newlyweds and more like a tired old couple, the kind that gave up on sex and settled for companionship. I attempted dressing up the sides with white chocolate shavings, which had about the same effect as if I emptied my vacuum bag on top of them.

I loaded the cakes into a couple of coolers and  we drove up to North Carolina for the reception. That night, it didn’t matter what the cakes looked like. After a drink or two and a contented belly full of appetizers and lasagna, everyone just wanted something sweet. I sliced the first cake and served it and everyone was happy, especially the bride.

Red velvet cake is rich, and with thin slices, that first cake was enough to serve the small crowd. MJS packed up the second one along with the rest of the evening’s leftovers and took them home to enjoy for the next few days after all the company was gone. She had that cake, along with an apple cake her mother made, sitting against the back splash on the counter, ready for anyone to come along and help themselves to a slice when the mood struck.

Unfortunately, the mood struck PS’s yellow lab, Boone, before anyone else could get a hankering. While no one was looking, he stood next to the counter on his hind legs and used his front paws to scoot the cakes closer to the edge. Then he ate them. Over half a red velvet cake, and about the same amount of apple cake, choked down by one pig of a dog.

MJS was so upset. Gone was her cake for breakfast. Gone was a slice for afternoon snack for her daughter. Gone was the after dinner treat PS had so anticipated.

Over two cakes: that’s a lot for one dog to handle. Around bedtime that night, he got sick as, well, a dog. He threw up bright red dog puke all over the bedroom. He upchucked more red in the yard. He dry heaved in the bathroom for a few hours. Then he collapsed on his side, exhausted from all the throwing up, and slept the sleep of the innocent. MJS, being the caregiver in her home, was up all night, tending to the dog and the messes he made.

“The fucking dog ate all the cake,” she told me the next day.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” I said to her. Yes, we really do say 'fuck' that often.

“Fucking dog. I guess he’s mine now.”

“No, he’s a step dog. But I guess you have to love him like he was your own.”

“Fucker,” she said.

“At least he didn’t ruin your new  white rug,” I said helpfully.

“No, but he did puke in the yard, and every single one of us stepped in it.”

“Is that what’s meant by ‘for better or for worse’?”

“There is nothing about dog puke in wedding vows,” she said, “but maybe there should be.”

Congratulations, MJS and PS! And control your dog. I don’t make dog cakes, you know.