Whistleblower

A long holiday break is the perfect time to go to the movies. Normally, we are too busy on the weekends throughout the year with activities and impromptu trips and birthday parties to go see movies on any kind of regular basis. When we do find time, we can’t seem to find anything worth seeing, as the good movies are released only in summer or over the holidays. The movie industry is fully aware that no one goes to the movies the rest of the year, so it saves the good stuff for those four months, emptying our pockets at the exact time when any extra dough has already been earmarked for travel or gifts.

A few days after Christmas, my sister, LM, was in town for a quick holiday visit.  We decided to see “Saving Mr. Banks,” a movie about Walt Disney acquiring the rights to the story of “Mary Poppins” from the story’s creator, Mrs. P. Travers, a woman who was apparently a bit of a bitch. We took my younger daughter, S, along with us, as she too appreciates a darkened theater and a bucket of popcorn. We all three wanted to see the movie even though none of us particularly likes “Mary Poppins,” what with all the singing and the odd British references and the hour too long part. We do like Tom Hanks, though, and Walt Disney and period pieces, and LM had dumped a box of Raisinets on top of the popcorn, so things were already looking to be swell.

Now, spoiler alert: this is not an action movie. S didn’t really get most of what was going on, as she tends to be a concrete, literal thinker, but LM and I were having a splendid time, followed by some tears, us, not S, followed by the need for a wad of tissues and digging in the bucket for the last chocolate covered raisin. In addition to some fairly emotional moments, the movie was also chock full of musical tidbits, the kinds of scenes that leave you humming on your way out of the theater. We enjoyed ourselves tremendously.

After the over two hour movie ended, S made a beeline for the restroom while LM and I continued to gingerly dab at our eyes. We decided to drown our sorrows in a quick romp to the after Christmas insanity that is Target. I do believe Target is more crowded after Christmas than it is before. I understand the joy that comes with seventy percent off wrapping paper, but seriously, folks, is it worth fighting for a parking space? We had an actual purpose for going there, seeing as S has blown her nose in every Kleenex in my house and has worked her way through the entire box of Mucinex. Also, I needed more gift tags for next year.

When we finally got inside, LM and I both realized that we also needed to use the restroom. She got the last empty stall, so I waited patiently for my turn. I could hear my sister humming in the bathroom stall. It didn’t sound like any of the “Mary Poppins” songs, but what did I know? It didn’t make any sense to me that my sister would be humming a nursery rhyme, but there she was, humming away as she peed, and it sure as shit sounded like something straight from Mother Goose.

After she left the stall, I entered and then had a twenty second debate with myself: to paper or not to paper? Normally, in public, the answer is always “yes, to paper,” but my sister just used this particular toilet, and I knew she would have put down paper before me. So was it necessary? There would still be the germs present from the thousands of restroom goers before her, so yes, paper it was. I am not one of those inconsiderate squatters who think they are all that, you know, the ones who end up pissing all over the seat for us paperers to discover. That forces you to mop up someone else’s pee with a giant wad of toilet paper, then flush it, leaving those in line waiting on you to think you are doing the courtesy pre flush before you blow it up in there, when in actuality, you are cleaning up a perfect stranger’s piss so you can start the papering process all over again.

Anyway, I peed, I flushed, I washed my hands, and I left the bathroom. My sister and daughter waited right outside the door, and when they saw me, they burst into song. The song was “Knick, Knack, Paddy Whack,” the nursery rhyme my sister was just humming in the bathroom. Also, they didn’t burst into song; just my sister did. My daughter looked at the floor waiting for the hole to appear, the one she was praying for to swallow her up.

“So that’s what you were whistling!” I said to her. “I couldn’t recognize that song from the movie we just saw, but it did sound familiar.”

“I wasn’t whistling,” she said. “It was that other lady in there.”

“That wasn’t you just whistling in the bathroom? Seriously? That wasn’t you? I totally thought that was you!” I laughed.

“Hell no!  What, do you think I’m crazy? That was some other weirdo whistling ‘Knick Knack Paddy Whack.’”

“She’s just the weirdo singing it,” S said under her breath.

“Yeah, I tried to get this one to join me,” my sister pointed in my daughter’s direction, “but she wouldn’t do it.”

“I don’t know why you wanted me to sing in public outside of the bathroom, that’s why,” S said to her.

“I wanted you to do it because it was going to be funny,” she said.

“Trust me, it was,” I told them both.

Heal Thyself

My daughter is on her third cold of her winter break. I tend to think the frequency of her upper respiratory infections is a byproduct of her weakened immune system due to her pretty significant allergies and asthma, although chances are just as good she needs to be doing a better job in the hand washing department.  She does wash her hands, though, and she isn’t a big nose picker, at least not that I can tell, and honestly, even with her hacking all over the rest of us, she is still the only one with the constant cold, so weakened immune system, damn you. Eighteen months of breast feeding for nothing.

I broke down and took her to the doctor’s office. Now that she is almost twelve, she doesn’t need to go to the pediatrician as often as she did when she was young.  It’s not that she gets sick less often, but rather we as a family know how to handle her various illnesses better. Still, after a new cold every week for a month, it seemed time to at least get a read on those ears and sinuses. I was pretty sure we would be leaving the office at the least with a prescription for antibiotics but more likely with one for steroids as well, so I was dreading this little visit more than she was.

Every parent says that different ages of childhood bring different challenges, that one age is no better than another, but that is not true when it comes to going to the doctor. When you take a baby or a toddler to the doctor, you can expect a fight. There will be tears, and not just yours. You might have to hold a small body still against its will, one that suddenly has the strength of ten grown men. Not so much for a young adult. My daughter is the one who asked to go to the doctor, since she is at that age where Mom doesn’t know best, in fact, Mom is a fucking idiot and she would trust a perfect stranger’s judgment over hers even though she has kept me alive for over twelve years.

Anyway, the good part is there was no drama or fight. She got dressed. She got in the car. She got out of the car and walks into the office. There was no battle of wills or fight to the death. She sat and waited until her name was called, and she was just as leery of the germ laden waiting room toys as I.

The bad part, because isn’t there always a bad part, is that she was taller than the office staff. She was even taller than the doctor. She dreaded being weighed as much as I do. Having her blood pressure taken made her nervous enough to elevate it. She looked as out of place at the pediatrician’s office as she does ordering off the children’s menu. She isn’t an adult, but she isn’t a child. What an awkward place to be.

The nurse who helped us was no mental giant, and she irritated both of us. First, she wanted to know why we were there to see the doctor, while my daughter who towered over her coughed all over the place and blew her nose twice. Then she wanted to know if she had any allergies. I realize it’s a standard question, but how’s about you look at her chart before you waste everyone’s time. My kid is allergic to every tree, tree fruit, tree nut, things that grow on trees, under trees, near trees, and mold. If I took her to a forest, it would be to leave her for dead.  I just looked at her and said, “Where would you like me to begin?”

Also, the nurse’s name, I kid you not, was L’Oreal, complete with the apostrophe. I wonder if she has a sister named Maybelline and a brother named Revlon.

After a tussle over which sized gown my child could fit in, the doctor examined her and declared her sinuses and ears to be beautiful. Also, that she has a cold, and it’s probably the nasty ten to twelve day variety that’s making the rounds this holiday season.

I’m still glad I took her, if for no other reason than to validate what I already knew, she has a cold and she just has to wait it out. I also don’t mind a professional opinion on the sore throat and sinus pressure, since I can’t exactly prescribe medicine, although I sometimes think I should be able to. Plus, no antibiotics or steroids were needed. It’s much easier to live with a tween who isn’t on steroids.

And it’s not every day you meet a woman named after a makeup line, although I think it should be.

When to Prune

Hey men, what is it with the beards?  

I agree, shaving is a pain in the ass, but when did you as a gender decide to go au naturale? Maybe the full Monty beard is an answer to the more tidy and douchier goatee, which seems to have seen its popularity wane over the past few years, or maybe it’s just yet another sign that people are too lazy to groom themselves. And by people, I mean men. Sure, it’s winter, and having a little extra warmth around the chin and cheeks might be a welcome thing. They sell this thing called a balaclava, and you take it off when you get inside.

I went out to lunch the other day with my sister and my younger daughter. We went to one of those small but worth it local establishments, with a clever name and a truly awesome pimento cheese, bacon, and fried green tomato po’ boy.  The odd part about lunch there is that every man in the restaurant had a beard. They were either full natural beard or on their way to becoming face afros. The younger ones, still light on testosterone, were scraggly and sparse and a little sad, a lawn in need of reseeding in spots. I sat there while we waited for food and counted. Of the twenty or so patrons there, about fourteen of them were men, and every single one of them had a beard. Not just a mustache, not a goatee, not a soul patch, a full beard.  Even our waiter had one, more of the scraggly kind wanting to be a full lush one, but nicely balanced with the largest clunky black eyeglass frames sold this side of 1955. I wonder if the health department ever gets complaints about beard hairs in food. Should food service workers start wearing facial hair nets?

I could understand if this was just a hipster restaurant, but when we finished eating and meandered around Main Street, all we saw were beards, beards, and more beards. Beards on fat, old guys, like Santa.  Scant beards on skinny, pimply, young guys, like meth heads. Beards at the army navy story and at the fro yo shop. Everywhere I turned, beards.

They bother me more than they should, but I understand why, which I am pretty sure is half the battle. What gets me the most, well, kind of pissed about beards is the double standard. Men don’t even have to shave anymore.

Remember when men made a little effort with their appearance? They would shave and comb their hair, maybe even smooth it down with a little brylcreem. They might don a suit or at least a smoking jacket and some slippers. Dinner was an occasion that called for dressing, as was travel and going out in public for most reasons. Nowadays, men don’t bother shaving or dressing. They slip on their crocs and sweatpants, and chances are good they didn’t bother with underwear. Smelling nice isn’t as important as smelling strong, hence a full line of Axe body sprays guaranteed to make you develop hives. We all know that dousing yourself in that flammable bug repellent is not hiding the fact that you haven’t showered in three days. And by the way, there’s a Fruity Pebble in your chin fur.

Women, on the other hand, are held to a different standard. For the most part, we shave, regularly and year round. Legs. Armpits. And over the past few decades, the bikini area as well. Women are now expected to look like little girls down there, thanks to a culture that even discriminates against an aging crotch. Name one straight man who has succumbed to pressure to get a Brazilian bikini wax.

For the most part, women dress appropriately for the occasion, and majority feel the pressure to wear makeup in public. You will rarely see a woman in crocs unless it’s Walmart or Disney World, both of which follow a different set of rules. Even trampy looking women are trying to maintain a certain level of sexiness or physical attractiveness. They might not be successful, but they definitely put some effort into their look, however distasteful it may be.

It’s just not fair.

The main reason I am so bothered by beards is worse than the unfair double standard. It ‘s that I want to touch them. You know when you see a cute puppy in the park and you rush over to find a way to pet it that’s not creepy? That’s how I feel about beards. I want to touch them. I want to see if they are soft or coarse. I want to scratch under chins and examine for graying and tug to see if they are indeed real. If there is a handlebar mustache hovering somewhere above it, forget it. I am fondling that face before you can say Bob’s your uncle.

I don’t even think I like beards and mustaches, but I am definitely drawn to them, and not in a sexual way. They don’t turn me on, but they do challenge my ability to control my impulses, as well as my sensory issues.

When do we stop taking things too far? What started out as the occasional pierced ear and goatee has turned into ear gauges and Grizzly Adams. I hope you will draw the line at growing out your ear hair. While it’s cute on a koala, you, men, are no koalas. Also, get some shampoo and conditioner on that face bush of yours. And a comb. And maybe invest in a trimmer, and then try using it.

If you don’t want to be mistaken for a pussy, stop looking like one.

From Scratch

My daughters and I started a new holiday tradition: baking cookies in our underwear.   Why, you might be wondering? The short answer to your question is that I don’t have three aprons. Let’s go for the long answer, though, because it’s more fun that way.

All week, my daughters wanted to make sugar cookies, the kind you roll out and decorate. As far as I am concerned, decorated holiday sugar cookies are the Walmart of the cookie world. They don’t taste good, and if you aren’t Martha Stewart, they don’t look all that good either. They are really more for kids, who are not yet in possession of a sophisticated palette and are naturally drawn to bright colors and fun shapes. They are my least favorite cookie to make or to eat. We only make them once a year if that, so for a few hours, I can suck it up and make my babies happy.

After spending a good fifty bucks on cookie cutters and decorating stuff and rolls of cookie dough, we got down to business. I decided to buy dough instead of making it because sugar cookies suck and I don’t care and it’s easier. I also had to buy some new cookie cutters because I got mad at my old ones taking up too much room in my drawer and tossed them in a fit of rage. And all the toppings, well, who knows how old those are. Does colored sugar go bad? I didn't want to find out. Back home, I got out the cookie trays, the parchment paper, the flour and the rolling pin. I preheated the ovens, and called the girls over to get started.

When I was little, I too loved to make sugar cookies. My mother never made a cookie in her life, but my grandmother would bake them with my sisters and me. She had an assortment of cookie cutters, a diamond, a heart, a bell, and for some strange reason, a camel. We would use colored sugar and red hots and silver nonpareil balls which looking back probably used mercury to give them their silver hue and shouldn’t have been eaten. We covered the dough in all sorts of nasty color combinations, and she smiled sweetly and let us do what we wanted. I don’t remember her ever really eating any of the cookies we thought were so special, even though the germs no doubt baked out of the finished product.

Sugar cookies were never high on my priority list as an adult, again because they suck, but also because they make such a colossal mess. Also, they remind me of play-doh, one of my most hated children’s toys. Play-doh smells funny and leaves tiny little pills of colored dough all over any surface in which it comes in contact. I spent many a day about ten years ago picking up tiny colored balls and vowing to throw away all of that non-toxic mess, only to give in the next time the girls asked  on a rainy day if they could play with the play-doh.

While it’s easy clean up sugar cookie dough, it isn’t all that easy to clean up rainbow sprinkles and colored sugar and chocolate jimmies, which resemble hamster turds to the untrained eye. For years, I have made sure we had plenty of other cookies around the holidays so that no one noticed that we forgot to make decorated sugar cookies. It didn’t work this year.

Now that my girls are older, baking sugar cookies was more fun because they added their own quirky touches. One of them meticulously decorated a snowflake cookie with individual sprinkles, while the other one insisted we used cat shaped cookie cutters so we could make kitties, which she then embellished with candy assholes. Let me tell you,  Santa wants nothing more than a crisp cat shaped cookie with a balloon knot.

Also, one of the girls found my husband’s Star Wars cookie cutters, which meant in addition to beautiful snowflakes and cat asses, we also had an assortment of Yodas and Boba Fetts and Darth Vaders, all tricked out in red and green. Yum yum!

The other big hit was the gingerbread boy, which my daughters fought to use. each time they cut one out, it was disfigured in some way, missing a limb here or there, whether to shark attack or birth defect, no one knew. My teen found it enormously amusing to line the torn edges where a cookie limb should be in red frosting, as if fresh from the battle field or zombie apocalypse.

So why the no shirts? Well, we had just come back from their piano recital and we didn’t want to get our clothes dirty. The kitchen is downstairs, the changes of clothing upstairs, and in between was a whole lot of laziness. It does get a little toasty near the double ovens, and when you are making asterisks on your cat cookies, any sense of decorum has already been lost. Where to go from there but shirtless?

Just a mom and her two girls, all in bras, licking fingertips and eating scraps of dough, fighting over who has to sweep the floor, and making memories. 

Wrong Number

The other night, I asked my daughter, S, to answer the phone while I was cooking dinner. I had my hands busy with washing grapes and lettuce, and she was right next to the phone, so it wasn't an unreasonable request.

I hate answering the phone. It stems from my former work for the state as both a disability examiner and an eligibility worker for social services. Phone calls were a pain in the ass, and no one wanted to talk to you unless it involved yelling and threatening. After almost ten years of that, I am scared to answer a phone. How often is it someone you want it to be?

Now that three of the four of us in the house have cell phones, no one wants to answer the archaic land line. Except S, the only one without a cell phone. The land line is for her and 911 and annoying sales calls. And that’s why I asked her to answer it, because chances were good it wasn’t for me.

She said hello, and what, and then what again, and then she sighed and hung up.

“Who was that?” I asked her while I stirred the pasta sauce.

“I have no idea. Some freak,” she said, popping a grape in her mouth.

Immediately, the phone rang again. We all just stared at it.

“Well, don’t look at me,” S said. “I answered it last time.”

I picked up the phone and said,” Hello?”

Why do we answer the phone with a question, anyway? Is it because we aren’t sure that we want to greet the caller? We don’t want to commit to pleasantries yet?

“Your daughter just hung up on me.” Oh God, it was my mother.

I wouldn’t say that I am estranged from my mother, but I would say that is what I strive for. To say she is crazy is an insult to people with mental illness. Whatever her many untreated mental conditions may be, they are significant enough to warrant some serious boundaries on my part. I haven’t seen her since we met for a cup of coffee last December, and we have no plans to visit anytime soon.

I do talk to her about once a month or so, but not because I want to, more because I feel I should. She doesn’t call us or even speak to her granddaughters on any kind of a regular basis. Had anyone known she was the original caller, we would have let her go straight to voice mail. S didn’t recognize her number, and why would she, so that’s why she answered it in the first place.

“Hi, Mom,” I said. “S didn’t hang up on you intentionally. I don’t think she knew it was you. What did you say?”

I mouthed to S “It’s your grandmother,” and she rolled her eyes.

“I said hello, and when she asked who it was, I told her it was someone who loved her,” my mom said. “When she still didn’t know it was me, I told her I loved jewelry too. And that’s when she hung up on me.”

“Ma, she didn’t do it on purpose. She probably didn’t hear you. Or understand. She tends to be a very concrete person. It’s best to just be direct with her and not be all cutesy,” I said. I was going to add something about how she doesn’t have any use for game playing, but I was trying to be nice. “Would you like to talk to her now?” I offered.

“No thanks, I give up after twice.” You could hear the sneer over the phone.

“Well, technically, this is the second call,” I told her. “So here she is.”

“It’s your grandmother,” I said  loudly and sweetly to S and handed her the phone. She glared at me and grabbed it.

“Hi, Grandma. I didn’t know it was you.” S put on her innocent voice. They talked for maybe ninety seconds, and S handed the phone back to me.

She was only calling to thank me for the plant I sent her for Christmas, but as usual, she managed to turn it into a small scene complete with hurt feelings and misunderstanding. Go big or go home.

After we hung up the phone, I asked S,” So what did she say to you?”

“I don’t know. Something about being a person who loved me and jewelry. How am I supposed to know who that is? I thought it was a crazy person."

Oh, it was, honey. It was. If it’s wrong to be delighted that my child hung up on my mother, I don’t want to be right.

Red Solo Cup

My fourteen year old daughter asked for a hysterectomy for Christmas.

I don’t really blame her. I had to pick her up from school last week because she was so miserable. It was day one of her ragtime, and she was so nauseated and crampy she couldn’t sit in a desk. In fact, her teacher made her go to the nurse’s office because she was dry heaving in class and then almost fainted. The nurse insisted that she go home, as the school has a policy that if a student faints in class, EMS must be called to transport that child to the hospital, and she preferred not to have the headache of the paperwork that goes along with that scenario. Not to mention the part where children shouldn’t be fainting from their periods.

I took the teen home and pumped her full of ibuprofen and hot tea and settled her on an arrangement of heating pads. She remained there until it was time for her harder classes, and I drove her back to school with one of those adhesive heating pads stuck to her belly. Have you ever seen one of those? They look just like a sanitary pad filled with rocks, only without wings. I wonder how many women have stuck them in the crotch of their panties, waiting for cramp relief that doesn’t come.

I don’t know how long it takes to get used to having your period, but I am pretty sure it is until menopause.

The teen definitely hasn’t adjusted, even after a few years of being a woman now. She still won’t use tampons, not because the school convinced her and many of her female peers that she will lose her virginity by shoving a plastic tube filled with a wad of cotton in her cooch, but because the idea of sticking anything in her cooch disturbs her, to which I say, thank you Jesus! She sticks to pads and panty liners, unless faced with the possibility of being at the beach, in which case she closes her eyes and blindly aims for the right hole with something more covertly absorbent.

Knowing her feelings about things happening below the belly button made the conversation we had the other day even odder. She brought up a third option of feminine hygiene, the menstrual cup. A menstrual cup is a little cup that you stick inside your vagina to collect your menstrual flow. Although menstrual cups have been around since the 1930’s, I had not heard of them until Whole Foods came to town. They have a feminine hygiene section just for the granola vegan crowd, complete with what I think are washable and reusable pads and menstrual cups, sold under the brand name Diva Cup. Anyway, I guess a couple of other teens and my teen were talking about Diva cups after having seen them while shopping for overpriced organic snack food with their mamas.

Here’s how it went down:

The teen: Mom, have you ever heard of a Diva cup?

Me: Yes, why have you?

The teen: Some girls were talking about them at school.

Me: Really? Seems an obscure topic of conversation, but whatever.

The teen: Well, have you ever tried one?

Me: No. I am quite comfortable with regular old cardboard tube Tampax. I don’t really see the need to make changes now, after over thirty years. Why?

The teen: I’m curious about them.

Me: Seriously?? You won’t even use a tampon, not even with the plastic applicator, the kind that ruins the planet for the next generation of bleeders. But you’re curious about putting a small cup in your vagina? Please.

The teen, laughing: I know, right? I just can’t imagine putting a cup in there.

Me: Me neither. How long does it stay in there, anyway? Does it start to smell? What if your cup overflows? And then what do you do with it? Run it through the dishwasher? Or is it disposable? I don’t understand how that is any better for the environment. Can you use a Dixie cup in a pinch, because I still have a whole box of those under the bathroom sink if you want to try them out.

The teen: (more laughter)

Me: Do they come in different sizes, or are they a one size fits all kind of product? How do you put it in? And worse, how do you take it out? What if it tips over when you remove it?

She stopped laughing and redirected me, which was a good thing, because I could seriously have kept going for at least another five minutes or so.

About a week later, I kid you not, I met a woman who had actually used menstrual cups. Now, this was one of those situations where a casual acquaintance ends up telling you something extremely personal that you rather not know about them, ever.

A woman I barely know and I made small talk during a volunteer event. We were discussing our daughters, which is what women do who have very little else in common to discuss. She is an older mom with kids a little younger than mine, and we talked about how girls get hormonal and moody when puberty starts. Her daughter had not yet started her period, but since mine is a few years older, she asked me about how I taught her about menstruation. I told her about a class the hospital offers that does a great job making girls feel comfortable with their bodies and such. She thought that sounded great since she wasn’t really sure she knew how to teach them to use tampons.

Then she said, “It’s been years since I had my period, since I am past menopause, but I didn’t use tampons when I did have mine.”

“You didn’t?” I said. “Oh, I remember those giant pads, with the belt you had to pin them on. What a pain!”

“No,” she said, “Although I do remember those too. Like a diaper. No, I used those cups.”

Okay, finally I found someone who has tried the mysterious and lesser known menstrual cups, and it’s an almost complete stranger, but one that I will have to see and talk to again. I don’t want to have to think about her period, let alone her choice of feminine hygiene, but now, every time I see her, it will be the only thing I remember about her.

“I’ve never tried them,” I said, because really, what else could I say? I couldn’t tell her I threw up in my mouth a little. “I don’t know what to tell you about teaching your daughter about tampons. Mine is still uncomfortable with the idea of them.”

“Oh, then she would never like cups, because you have to stick your whole hand in there,” she told me.

No, no, no. I can never, ever, shake this woman’s hand again, and the idea of hugging her is even more off-putting. In fact, I don’t think I can make eye contact with her ever again unless I develop dementia and forget this little nugget about her. And no matter what, I will never join her for a glass of red wine.

Red Scare

Hey kids, remember last time when I was getting ready to have my kitchen torn apart? Well, it’s been torn a new one. If the kitchen is the heart of a home, mine is undergoing open heart surgery, and I am at a loss. That kitchen is my room. It’s where I show my love, what with all the baking and cooking and nurturing and happy smells and simmering and from scratch going on in there. But it’s been gutted, down to empty cabinets, no counters, studs on the wall, a skeleton. Eventually, the new pieces will be installed and it will again look like a kitchen, but until that happens, I have to admit, I don’t know what to do with myself or my creative energy.

The other afternoon, the granite guy came to do the templates for the counter tops and the island. We bought granite from a local place that seems legitimate since it has seven locations, but I can’t shake my gut feeling that something just isn’t right. The salesman looked like a standard Southern construction dude, complete with steel toed boots, a camouflage ball cap, wind burned skin, and rough hands. He offered us a great deal, with all sorts of things thrown in, including the kitchen sink, but when it came time to discuss price, suddenly he acted all offended we wanted an itemized quote. It turned out we were paying for everything, even for things we didn’t really want or like. After buying our own fabulous sinks and faucets, we went back to our sleaze ball and renegotiated a better price, and voila, we were ready to have our counters measured, which would be done by the men who actually work with the stone. All the stone men also happen to be Russian.

Now, I would like to say I have nothing against Russians, except they are the reason my great grandparents came to America, so maybe I do have a little something against them. I'm sure they are not all Jew-hating Cossacks, but you never know, do you? This particular group of Russian men could, and might, all be related to each other. They had the same thick eyebrows and necks with the same gold chains, the same heavy Slavic accents, and even the same clouds of cigarette smoke enveloping them. If they weren’t selling granite, they could have been selling ex-Soviet weaponry or a shitload of heroin. Or all of the above.

Last week, I had to go pick out the actual slabs of granite that were going in my kitchen, which meant I had to deal with the Russians. They all looked at me like they are undressing me with their eyes, only not in a good way. Really, they were probably sizing me up, figuring out what kind of a rube I am, and how best to con me before killing me and dumping my body. One of the Russians came to my house a few days later to measure all the counters for templates so they could cut the granite and deliver it, in theory. I watched him from my window as he finished his cigarette and entered the house, bringing his cloud of smoke with him.

He introduced himself and shook my hand, looking deep into my eyes Svengali style. I didn’t know what that look meant, but whatever it made me do would definitely be against my will. He made little heavily accented comments about the things in my home, the kind of comments that workers should never make about your stuff, as if he were Christmas shopping in my living room or, more likely, what he would enjoy when he moved in after my death. Luckily he didn’t take too long before he oozed his way back to his car. His presence was less than reassuring.

The next day, it was back to the granite shop to make sure the measurements fit on the granite slabs, which is referred to as the layout stage, although it wasn’t like we actually put templates on the slabs and picked the best parts. Slabs of granite are kind of heavy and not easily tossed around like, say, a blueprint. The shop manager, another hairy, smoke-cloud enveloped Russian with a gold chain, creepily introduced himself and confirmed that the granite I selected was, in fact, the granite I selected. He made me sign my name on some painter’s tape on each granite slab, and then asked if I had any questions. My only question was when I could expect installation, and he replied with a shoulder shrug and a lopsided grin that let me know how little of a shit he gave.

For the next few days, all I could think of was how scared I was to be alone in the house with a group of hirsute Slavic men. It wasn’t just that I didn’t trust them enough to have them in my home, it was that I didn’t put it past them to do something to me and my home. I don’t mean rape and robbery; I mean dismembering and arson. I spent several sleepless hours imagining my husband being unable to use dental records to identify my body because both my teeth and my face had been removed. I could picture the Russian granite men lighting my faceless, toothless corpse on fire, only to douse the flames with a healthy stream of vodka-laced urine. My gut feeling bordered on the psychotic side of indigestion. I take worry to a whole new level.

I convinced my friend, SF, to stay with me the day my granite was to be installed. If nothing else, she can run faster than me and would be able to identify what I wore last. Her mother agreed it was the right thing to do, since she too felt I would not be safe home alone with a group of Russian granite men. I found that very validating, especially since my husband thought my fears were totally out of proportion to any actual danger in which I might have been.

I am pleased to report that my granite has been installed, and it looks beautiful, and also I am alive and well. The installation was done by Latino men. They even sang Feliz Navidad, among other songs,  while they worked. That was the only song I knew, but SF knew all the other songs, since she is a native Spanish speaker. She not only offered me protection, she also assured me they weren't talking about me. Paranoia and fear are the chicken and the egg of mental disorders.

And the best part was that my hair wasn’t braided and then used to hang my body before I was beheaded and then set on fire.

The Twelve Blogs of Christmas: Fourth Edition / Happy Anniversary

You know how some years, life falls into a nice, easy routine, low on excitement but high on predictability, and other years, it’s one crisis after another? Well, 2013 has been one of those crisis years. Maybe not the whole year, but the second half has been, well, one big clusterfuck.

When I am overly stressed, I do two things: I eat my feelings, and I put myself last on the priority list. I never claimed to be well balanced, just functional.  Dealing with one crisis after another has been a full time job, with little time for any self-care. So while I did find the time to gain weight this year, I haven’t done the same for writing, one of the few things I enjoy just for me. What used to be an every week habit has now become a rare event, even though almost daily, writing is on the to do list.

So here we are, in December, the tail end of Hanukkah waving at the start of Christmas, and I find myself wondering if I will be able to honor my annual tradition of writing twelve blog posts between now and the new year, or epiphany, or whenever I decide I have met my goal, because hey, it’s my goal, not yours. Go set your own ridiculously unattainable goal. Wait, this is attainable, because I’ve done it for the past three years. And I will do it again, starting now.

Presenting, the fourth annual twelve blogs of Christmas! (Cue the trumpets. Unfurl the banner.)

(I love the word unfurl.)

The rules are there are no rules, just like in life. I write about what I want. You read it. You are moved in some way, through laughter or tears or to do something else. Maybe you would like to leave a comment, something fabulously validating preferably. Sound good? Excellent.  Let’s begin.

Here’s today’s little anecdote:

After six years of deliberating and failing miserably to simmer anything, I am getting a new cooktop. My current range is a Jenn-Air 4 burner electric coil stove with indoor grill. When was the last time you cooked on electric coils? An apartment in 1992? Your parents’ house? Never? Well, I use mine every day. Every. Day. Lordy, it’s old. And filthy. It has two settings, high and off. And the grill? It makes an excellent trivet and crumb catcher. I don’t even know how to turn it on, and cleaning it never seemed a big priority because for six years I thought I would replace it.

Jenn-Air used to be a quality product, but now it’s like so many other brands that seem to be slipping away. The real problem with it, however, is its size. The only thing the same size of a Jenn- Air range is another Jenn-Air range, which is why we haven’t replaced it.

Getting a different brand of range poses a different issue. If we get a new cooktop, we need to get new countertops. Our current counters are tile. Whoever made the decision to sink a Jenn-Air into a tile counter top clearly wasn’t planning on doing a lot of cooking, but I have made do for these past six years to the best of my ability.

New stove means new counters. If I am getting new counters, I might as well replace my kitchen sink. And if I replace a stove, sink, and counters, well, let’s do something about that backsplash. And while we are at it, let’s do it all between thanksgiving and Christmas, the week after one child is in the local production of the Nutcracker and the other one gets her wisdom teeth pulled (at fourteen! Who gets wisdom teeth pulled at fourteen??).

Go big or go home, or something like that.

You know what I am not? A contractor. Yet here I am, auditioning people to do things to my house that I will use every day for a long time to come. How’s that for a little pressure? I know, I know, it’s a good problem to have, but still, it isn’t easy. Don’t judge me.

So far, things are going pretty smoothly, and if everything goes according to plan, it will all be done in less than two weeks. Except we all know nothing goes according to plan.

My husband and I think we have everything about ready to go, starting with the teardown this Saturday. We have written checks and transferred money and proclaimed the kitchen our Christmas present, so it better fucking happen or else I want to see a box of Frye boots under my tree come December 25.

On the floor in my dining room are my new sink, faucet, and cooktop, which is gas, five burners, and fabulous. Also, it adds another task to my contracting position, which is to find a guy to run a gas line and connect the range after the counters are installed. Yesterday, the right man for the job came out to my house to have a little lookie-loo and give me an estimate. It was a last minute appointment, one I really didn’t have the time for but wanted to squeeze in before the mad rush to the carline at school.

I have talked to this very professional and pleasant individual a few times, but had never put a face with a voice. When he showed up, I was taken aback. He looked exactly like a sad clown, only without the makeup. Large belly, gray page boy hair, and the face of, well, a sad clown. He looked in the kitchen and then kneeled over the new gas cooktop, lying on the floor, and started to wobble.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I still have my sea legs.”

“Oh, did you take a cruise for Thanksgiving?” I asked politely. Yes, I am capable of polite when need be.

“Twenty-fifth wedding anniversary,” he said.

I made a little more small talk, trying to hurry him along, which was difficult because his phone rang incessantly and he felt the need to answer every single call. I tried not to picture a too-small hat with a droopy little flower on his head.

He went to the crawl space and came out and took more calls and finally I had to remind him that I needed to leave ten minutes ago to get my daughters from school and could he just leave me an estimate. He told me he would get it ready that minute in his truck.

I went inside and locked up, then went to the driveway to get the estimate and say goodbye. Only he didn’t have it ready for me.  “Look at this,” he said to me, pointing to his computer screen mounted in his work truck. “Have you seen anything so beautiful in your life?”

He had opened a file of pictures of his cruise, all one hundred and fifty of them. Pictures of nature. Landmarks. His wife. The two of them at dinner. The two of them on shore excursions. Plants. Animals.  

“Lovely. Wow. Amazing.” I interjected appropriate and hopefully enthusiastic reactions to this sad clown’s vacation slides, like I gave a shit that I, in fact, did not. “Looks like a really good time.”

I was now fifteen minutes late.

“Yeah, it was really rough,” he said. He started to explain how the winds were over 45 knots per hour and the swells and headwinds and how the boat went up a wave nose first and then crashed down into a crest and I couldn’t follow because the whole thing sounded like a verbal word problem. I didn’t want to do that math, I wanted to leave, but I was being held captive by the sad clown who could make or break my cooking experience for the lifetime of my Thermador cooktop. This was not a person to whom I could afford to be rude.

“Listen,” I finally said, “I am really enjoying hearing about your trip, but I kind of have to get my kids.” I don’t know if it sounded that bad when I said it to him, but I have a feeling it was worse.

“No problemo, “he told me, and took my email address so he could send me the invoice and set up a time to do the gas line work.

Then I had to wait for him to back out of my driveway and get the fuck out of my way so I could be late to pick up my kids from school.

Here’s a word problem: if the sad clown estimates three hours of labor to do the work, how much of that time will be spent showing me his vacation slides?