Thursday, September 27, 2012

Taco Night


Remember when people had names you could recognize? Now they have names you can’t even pronounce. How many of these unusual names are a result of poor spelling instead of individualism and creativity? There might not be much creativity when it comes to naming your Catholic child, but at least you are familiar with William and John and Mary and Catherine.
While at the grocery store today, I noticed my cashier’s name tag as he scanned my groceries. “Hello, my name is Cornious,” it said. Cornious? What? Cornelius is an unusual name enough, but Cornious? Do you pronounce it the way you think you would? Is his nickname Corny? Instead of expressing my curiosity, I just concentrated on swiping my credit card and bagging my own groceries.

I got in my car and texted my friend MJ. “My cashier’s name at the grocery store is Cornious.”
She replied with what I was thinking, “Corn holeyooo!!” That’s why we’re friends.

Then she called me and said she had a horrible story from the other day. MJ is in the process of having a fence installed in the backyard of her new house. Like most things that involve home maintenance, this fence has been a pain in her ass. Her neighbors wouldn’t respond to their request to adjoin the new fence to their existing fence on one side of their property. The covenants and by-laws of their community are very rigid when it comes to things like fences, involving pages of paperwork and committee approval and the same bullshit that goes into anything that should be simple like a fucking fence. But they need one. Between the toddler and the two dogs, MJ’s life needs something with clearly defined parameters. She jumped through all the hoops and dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s and the stars had aligned just so, and it was fence go time.

At five o’clock in the afternoon, on this other day, the men came to install her new fence. The main guy was a small gentleman of Latino descent, of Hispanic heritage, possibly Mexican. He spoke English with a heavy Spanish accent, and his uniform had the name “Tacho” embroidered above the shirt pocket. When MJ asked him if he had all the approved paperwork for the fence, he either didn’t know what she was talking about or didn’t understand her. After a rudimentary exchange, which I am sure involved pantomime and speaking too loudly (as if talking louder makes English easier to understand), the man got started on the fence.
A short while later, there was a knock on MJ’s door. “Ma’am,” The man said when she opened the door, “do not panic.”

No good news ever began with that sentence.
“Do you have sprinkler?” he asked her.

“No, no sprinkler, we don’t have a sprinkler system,” she answered. Behind her the dogs barked and the baby cried.
“Sprinkler? Next door?” he tried again.

“No, none of us. No sprinkler system,” she replied.
“Lots of water,” he trailed off.

MJ rushed outside and indeed there was a lot of water, gushing out of a pipe that did not belong to a sprinkler system, but rather was the water to the neighbor’s house. The dogs ran after her.
“The big dog, I am not scared of, “the man said. “It is the little dog what I fear.”

MJ got the dogs back inside, along with the screaming baby, and tried again to survey the damage.

In his defense, how was the man to know that the water line to the neighboring house would be on MJ’s property? MJ was just as surprised as he was. In a panic, she called another neighbor over to ask what to do.
“I’m freaking out,” MJ said to her neighbor. “Taco just punched a hole through the neighbor’s water line and now my yard’s flooded.”

“MJ,” her neighbor said. “His name is pronounced Ta Cho.  Cha, like chugging or change.”

“Oh my God, I just called that man taco. I thought it was pronounced taco. I fucking thought his name was Taco?” MJ was mortified.
She was even more mortified that he was standing behind her when she said it.

He finished the job without any further incidents, despite being called a taco. And eventually the neighbors had their water line repaired, which really should not have been on MJ’s property to begin with. Hopefully everything will work out okay and MJ won’t have to have Tacho come back for any fence touch ups.
 Good fences might make for good neighbors, but it’s never a good idea to piss off your laborers.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Lassoing Babies at the Food Truck Rodeo


If you think it’s easy to feed a baby dinner in a parking lot, think again. Babies don’t understand how parking lots work. They don’t get the inherent danger in running free amongst two- to three-ton instruments of death. They don’t care much about table manners in general, so the idea of enforcing manners when there isn’t even a table is, well, you get the idea.
My friend MJ came to visit me a couple of weeks ago, and like a good mother should, she brought along her baby, KS, for the ride. KS is technically a toddler now. He is about thirty pounds of pure wide open boy, and neither MJ nor I have any idea how to control such a creature. She has another child, a twelve year old daughter, whose innate peace and femininity did nothing to prepare MJ for mothering the little cyclone she has swirling around her. No child proof door knobs can deter him. No baby gate can contain him. No stroller can subdue him. He has to explore everything he can see, reach, smell, or find, and he will find a way, no matter what obstacles the world puts in his way, damn it. He approaches life on tippy toes and upstretched arms.

We spent  the first part of our day shopping with an angry baby strapped in a stroller, trying to limit his access to fragile items on low shelves and high end garments on flimsy hangers. The second part we spent hoping he would nap while visiting a friend. KS was able to occupy himself by throwing fistfuls of dog food at our friend’s pooch, who was confused by the unusual method of feeding, but since he was not one to question such an opportunity,he went along with it. By the time dinner rolled around, we were too tired to think clearly. Babies take a lot of energy. I know young moms can handle it, but MJ and I are hardly that. I am now wondering how grandparents do it.
We were too tired to cook. We were too tired to go out. We didn’t feel like picking up. Then we remembered that neither of us had tried the new food truck in town, and immediately got excited. We looked online to find out where it was parked and to scan the menu. I quickly made a turkey and cheese sandwich for KS, grabbed him something to drink, and threw it all in a bag while MJ wrestled him into his shorts and shoes. Babies don’t like shoes and shorts. They like the barefoot bottomless look, which allows for freestyle bathroom habits and easy hose downs. We were trying for civilized, though, so KS lost the battle and howled his frustration from his POW car seat behind us as we drove in search of the food truck.
We found it parked conveniently in the lot of one of those local tap rooms, the kind where you bring your growler jugs back for refills, not exactly what you would call young child friendly.  MJ and I were excited to try the deep fried Brussels sprouts, the schnitzel sandwich, the banh mi, whatever had yet to sell out, so we left common sense in the car and got in line with KS, who immediately demanded to be put down so he could take off running across the parking lot. MJ ran after him and I ordered and paid for our food.
The modern day food truck craze is all about culinary creativity with low overhead; the food is great if you can overlook the ambiance of oil leak stains on parking spaces and car exhaust. Food trucks have been around forever (remember the Good Humor man?) but only recently have they come into their own as a source of really unique food.  If you are looking for a kid’s menu and some free packs of crackers to entertain your young progeny, however, you are probably better off at a national chain. We got our food and moseyed over to a patch of sidewalk, where we proceeded to dine out of our environmentally friendly takeout containers while keeping KS entertained with food so he wouldn’t run away again.
He had no interest in the sprouts. I guess he wasn’t a fan of the cider vinegar gastrique. He didn't care about the sandwiches. He did enjoy his sandwich and milk, and then he enjoyed open mouthing my water bottle and allowing his precious particles of food to float inside.
While MJ and I fought over the last Brussels sprout, KS took off to introduce himself to the puppy on the other side of the parking lot. And much to our surprise, a car came barreling out of nowhere to fly across the lot, right in the direction of the baby. Okay, that’s probably not how it went down, but it sure felt that way. Time stood still, but MJ demonstrated supermother reflexes and snatched him up before any harm could come to him, either from the canine or the car. She earned that last sprout.

The food was great. The baby wrangling was a bit of a downer. Next time, if there is indeed a next time, we will have to strongly consider eating in the car, like all the other hipster parents who had created a den atmosphere in the backs of their SUVs, movies playing on the built in DVD’s, organic cotton blankets on the floors. It was almost like a modern day drive in, only everyone was watching their own movie, and no one was dry humping.
Dinner in the parking lot was exhausting. Both MJ and her baby were out cold about a minute after we got home. Who can blame her, really? You try shoving food in your pie hole and corralling a toddler in a parking space at the same time.

Those Brussels sprouts were totally worth it.


 

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

The Land of Milk and Honey Boo Boo


I have a confession to make. I have become a regular viewer of TLC’s newest abomination, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” which unfortunately airs on Wednesday evenings following “Toddlers and Tiaras,” another show I am ashamed to admit I watch regularly. “Toddlers and Tiaras” is a reality show about the world of children’s pageants, and oh, what a world it is. Most of us first learned of that world following the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey in 1996, and rightly so, most of us were shocked that such a world existed. At the same time we were apathetically expressing our outrage, another smaller group of people thought, aww, look at them cute little girls all tarted up to look like women, let’s see if our little Jennifer/Tammy/Britney can do that too. 
One of those pageant girls is Alana, or “Honey Boo Boo Child,” as she is known to her family and now to the rest of us as well. She was on “Toddlers and Tiaras” a few times, and while she didn’t win a title, she did win America’s heart.  And TLC, which used to be The Learning Channel but somehow lost its way, has given her and her family their own show. They also have shows about primordial dwarfs and conjoined twins, so if you are a little off in some way, TLC might be contacting you soon.  Watching it is like visiting a carnival side show, only without the corn dog smell and crack smoking barkers.

Anyway, back to Honey Boo Boo. She lives in a small house with her family near the train tracks in the middle of nowhere, Georgia. She has three sisters, none of which have the same father, a morbidly obese mother who is also an extreme couponing fanatic, and a father who is never without a ball cap and a wad of chewing tobacco. One of her sisters is pregnant. The other two also have weight problems. Her parents are not married. Her mother has an old toe injury that the whole family calls her “forklift foot.” How can I not get hooked on this?

The first time I watched the show, I felt really sad. The whole show was sad. They live in a tiny house, half of which is filled with discount toilet paper. They buy their groceries at a food salvage auction. The sheriff calls them when there is road kill so they can have the meat.  Their idea of fun is hopping on their four wheelers to rummage through the dumpsters at the town landfill, to which they refer as the department store. The show uses subtitles when they speak, and they are speaking English. Every bit of the show exploits this family’s poverty and ignorance, and by watching it, am I not engaging in a bit too much schadenfreude?

But then I thought, what would Honey Boo Boo do? Does she care that her mother farts all the time? Hell no! Is she embarrassed that her 17 year old sister is going to have a baby and the whole family discusses it coming out of her “biscuit” on national television? Of course not!  Does she want to hide her head in public because her parents’ idea of date night is eating at the local country buffet? I doubt it! Is she ashamed that it takes five of them to put together one pack n play, or that the pack n play isn’t for a human baby but rather a pig baby? Probably not!

Her family is getting paid for showing us how the other half lives, and while not they are certainly not making as much as they should, they are definitely making more than they would without all that attention. I read that they earn roughly $4,000 an episode, or per week, if you think about it that way. They sure as shit couldn’t get that working for P. T. Barnum. That’s a whole lotta pork rinds. Good for them. So what if they toilet paper their own house? They can afford two ply, can’t they?
As I have watched the show, I realize one very important thing about Honey Boo Boo and her family. They love each other, unconditionally. That mother might need to be referred to child protective services time and again, but at the end of the day, she isn’t trying to hurt her children. She loves them. She wants them happy. She provides them with food and shelter. She gives them experiences, maybe not the same kind you give your children, but she does the best with what she has, which isn’t a lot, folks. She accepts them for who they are. She encourages them. In her own bizarre way, she is a good mother. And her daughters, well, they love her too, or they appear to, based on the editing. The dad, Sugar Bear, doesn’t seem all that capable of expression, but he does tear up as often as John Boehner, so he feels something for his family as well. It’s gosh darned touching.

So while I would never mix a tub of butter substitute and a bottle of ketchup together, heat it, and use it as a sauce for my spaghetti noodles, I shouldn’t judge Honey Boo Boo for enjoying it along with her family. Her mother made that meal with love. We can’t all be eating organic kale chips and quinoa, can we?

 
 

 

Thursday, September 6, 2012

A River Runs Through It


Remember that Saturday Night Live skit, The Whiners? Now would be the time I would mention Joe Piscopo, and you would say who, and then you would realize you don’t remember that skit. Well, it’s about this couple who whines a lot and eats nothing but mac and cheese due to their digestive problems. My youngest daughter, S, could be their offspring. She too is an aficionado of macaroni and cheese, but good luck if you try dressing it up with, say, gruyere or smoked Gouda. And while most of the time she is sweet and funny and helpful and a joy to have around, every once in a while she can show her ass in a way that is suspiciously dramatic, as if she is peri-menopausal or possessed by demons. That was the version of S we had on a recent family outing in North Carolina.
We joined my friend JH and her family for a day of river tubing near Asheville on the French Broad River, which I refer to as the Old French Whore River, also an obscure SNL reference from a skit that wasn’t all that funny. We have never been river tubing before, but it was the end of summer and we wanted to try something new while enjoying some quality family time. If this all sounds like a recipe for disaster, well, you’re mostly wrong.

River tubing is what the lazy river at a water park aspires to be. Each person gets a fancy tube, what used to be an inner tube before tubing became a commercial enterprise, and floats downstream on the river from one location to another. If done right, river tubing can be relaxing and kind of fun. There is the possibility of a small rapid or two, and with a cooler and some beer, you can have yourself a pleasant little Saturday afternoon. This particular river is barely more than a backyard stream. At almost any point along the way, we were never more than knee deep in water, and never more than a mile away from a major road. I was more concerned about finding a bloated corpse than capsizing my tube.
JH and her husband had planned well for the day. A bag full of snacks, a cooler full of drinks, each family member in their waterproof Keens, and they were good to go. My less adventurous family donned dirty old sneakers and ill-fitting clothing over our bathing suits, garments that could easily be thrown away rather than cleaned if it came to that.  We paid our money and all boarded the van to the drop off point on the river, which was oddly in the middle of a tomato field which I am pretty sure was a cover for a meth lab. We were each given our inner tubes and our ill-fitting life jackets and a paddle, and lumbered down to the river. The trick was to squat and sort of fall into the tube, then adjust before using the paddle to help move along on the water, since there was no breeze and therefore no current. We had straps to link our tubes together, creating a massive family tube island, not unlike refugees fleeing Haiti.

Sounds like the potential for fun exists, huh? Well, back to S. My child was recovering from an elbow contusion from a fall over a month ago, and she wasn’t looking forward to new experiences, the logic being that one can’t reinjure an elbow if safely seated on a couch in front of the television. Plus she had never been river tubing. She has been tubing on a lake, when you get dragged behind a boat, and figured if it was anything like that, it would hurt her arm. My husband and I tried to explain to her, over and over, that it was more lazy river than speedboat, and that she liked lazy rivers, and they were called lazy for a reason. But never mind, once she was convinced that it was an avenue to pain, she was not going to cooperate.
She acted like she couldn’t climb in and out of the van. She pretended like she didn’t know how to use a life jacket. She refused to carry her own inner tube. Forget about the part where she had to drop her ass in it and push off from the bank. If I could have left her there I would have, but I couldn’t do that, nor than I could push her in. Instead, I had to try to remain positive and upbeat because if she is one of those moods and I lost my temper with her, she would bypass whining and go straight to tantrum of catastrophic proportions.  I suspect that would have been even more unpleasant.
The minute we all hooked up our rafts, S decided she was ready for a snack, which meant we had to rearrange ourselves to get her closer to some food. We took turns tossing goldfish crackers and tiny little cheesy rice cakes at each other, hoping she would see the fun of a food fight on the river. Instead, she chastised us for being wasteful and held onto any snack bag that made its way into her hands.

We continued our slow path down the water. First she was so cold she couldn’t put her feet in the water. Then the sun warmed her and she was burning up. JH and I split a beer while trying to encourage her to look for birds or study the trees. We hit our first rapid, which isn’t so rapid with 8 inner tubes connected together. One of the tubes got stuck on a rock and we just sat there trying to push ourselves off and back along the current.
When the beer ran out and the whining ramped up, JH and I unhooked our tubes, linked them back together, and took off with our paddles on our own. Neither of us could stand listening to the sighing and complaining. I didn’t want to get into it, and she was too polite to say anything, so we just sort of floated away.  By and by, the older kids joined us, hooking up their tubes, leaving the dads to deal with the aftermath, which worked out well, since they had more beer in them, plus everyone knows men don’t hear whining.

We enjoyed a brief respite in whining, which was replaced by thunder. Now, normally when you hear thunder, you seek shelter, you know, away from water. What do you do on a river in a tube? My tween, who had caught up with us by that point, says, “Start paddling. I hear banjos.”

“You can’t make that reference. You don’t even know what it means,” I said to her.
We paddled quickly, until we saw the American flag hanging over the river, the only sign of where the car was parked.  We had made it back alive, with all the members of our family, after two and a half hours of floating downstream.

As my husband was helping S out of her tube, she told him quite proudly that she had urinated in her tube several times because, and I quote, “The fish do it too so who cares?”
He pointed out to her that her tube had no hole in the bottom and thus no drainage. She finished her day knowing that she spent over two hours marinating in her own urine.

After we got home and ready for bed, S confessed to me that the reason she was so cranky was that she was scared of tubing, since she had never been before. I reminded her that I have invested quite a bit of time in keeping her alive and have yet to change my mind about that, unless she acts like that again on an outing, at which point I might reconsider. Then I gave her a kiss and a smile.

Sweet dreams, you whiner.