Friday, December 18, 2015

Secret Santa

My cat, Moshe, is really getting in the holiday spirit. Today he left me a present on the floor of my laundry room.

He apparently had a little trouble with constipation or a clinger-on, if you will, so he decided to drag his asshole all over the floor until the turd was finally dislodged. Nothing makes you happier to have a pet than finding a shit smear across the floor, ending in a piece of crap, like a period on the most disgusting sentence ever written.

In his defense, he can’t really wipe. No thumbs. The struggle is real. He did the only thing he knew to do, the poop scoot, and the worst part is, I knew something was up when I heard him getting out of the litter box. I was downstairs, sitting on the couch for ten minutes of alleged “me” time, while upstairs there was a great ruckus going on, with the sound of the kitty litter door flap opening and closing and then some crazed running around the house, cat claw toenails scrambling against the hardwoods.

I didn’t discover the scene of the crime until a few hours later when I went up to the laundry room to transfer the clothes from the washer to the dryer. I cleaned up the mess and then disinfected the floor and the bamboo slat rug which he defiled, wondering where else he may have rested his cat ass after his largely unsuccessful bowel movement. So far it seems an isolated incident.

I am not surprised if he is feeling a bit sluggish and irregular this holiday season. He has been feasting regularly on Christmas ornaments from the day we put up the tree.

We have one of those fake that we decided looks real trees, pre-strung with white lights.  My husband adds a modern version of old-fashioned bubble lights, and then we all decorate with our eclectic assortment of ornaments while trying not to kill each other. We get new ornaments in our stockings every year, snails for me, robots and dentists for my husband, ballet related ornaments for the younger dancy teen, and owls and sharks for the older and more difficult teen. A large number of our ornaments are glass, and we make a point of hanging them up higher on the tree, ensuring each one is secure on its artificial branch. Towards the bottom of the tree are the unbreakable and handmade ornaments, since they are not as delicate. I am sentimental to a point, but some of those handmade ornaments weren’t all that swell when they first came home some ten years ago. If the cat wants to eat those, have at it.

Every year, Moshe dines on whatever he can reach. When he was a kitten, he would climb in the tree, which was really cute until it fell over. Now, at a robust 15 pounds, he realizes that flimsy tree can’t support his excess weight. He still tries, which I know because of the odd way the lower branches are mashed down, kind of like a fat cat tried to sit on them. We will lose an occasional glass ornament to those climb attempts, but only the ones we really love. After he gives up on reaching the higher branches, he concentrates his effort into snacking on whatever is close at paw.

Mostly, he likes to eat the metallic loops used to hang the ornaments on the branches. Pompoms and ribbons also make a delightful midnight treat. He enjoys chewing through cords and felt. Every morning before breakfast I do a quick check of the tree skirt for his nighttime victims. If you look at our tree, it looks like we have a toddler. All the ornaments are a good two feet from the bottom.

Two days ago, he tried to eat one of my husband’s metal robot ornaments. It was a cute ornament too, with arms and legs attached with curly springs like those inside a clickable ballpoint pen. Moshe removed the robot from the tree and chewed the spring off the top and also one of the arms. I couldn’t find the arm anywhere and immediately had a panic attack that he had actually swallowed it. I had this unshakable mental image of me taking him to the vet, where they would find the arm on X-ray, and then he would get really sick because he couldn’t shit a robot arm.

I found the arm a day before I found his feces debacle, so at least I know things are moving and he isn’t obstructed, which is a Christmas present in itself.

Not to be outdone, as I write this, Yoko decided to throw up a hair ball in one of the empty shirt boxes I have out for gift wrapping. A Merry Christmas indeed.

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Service Interruptus

Here we are, a few days into Chanukah, and I have a great Jewish story to share. It doesn’t have anything to do with the holiday, but who cares, really? A good story is a good story.

Let’s start with a little background for context. I have been on the board of my temple for what feels like centuries. One of the duties, nay, privileges, of being a board member is that we have the honor to sit on the bimah during Shabbat and other special services.  The bimah is like the stage of the sanctuary where all the religious stuff takes place, where the rabbi does his rabbiing and the torah ark is kept and a few chairs have been placed for board members or other recognized congregants. Even though it’s an honor and a privilege, few board members willingly sign up to take a turn. To be honest, it’s not my favorite part of being on the board, but once I am there, I am usually over my dread and rather enjoy myself.

Part of the reason why is our rabbi. I don’t know if other board members have this problem, but whenever I have bimah duty, something happens that makes the two of us crack up and spend the rest of the service trying not to laugh. Many a time he has caught me laughing at something I shouldn’t, maybe a person coughing, his voice cracking, him choking on water, that sort of thing. Who doesn’t want a rabbi with a sense of humor?

Last week, I was doubly honored to have bimah duty because I was the attending board member for a bat mitzvah. My family is friendly with the bat mitzvah family, and I was genuinely happy to be a part of their daughter’s special day. They decided to have a Havdalah service, an afternoon service that is sort of like the closing ceremonies for Shabbat. It’s a lovely tradition, especially in early winter, when the sunset occurs right at the end of services.

Bear with me. I am getting to the great story, I promise.

At our temple, the chairs for the board members are stage left on the bimah, and the far right wall of the sanctuary is glass with a lovely view of the setting sun. Less lovely is the view of the neighboring church. I always call it the Church of the Nazarene, which may or may not be its name, but close enough.  I don’t use churches as landmarks because to me, they are pretty much all the same. Some are more conservative (or crazy) than others, but in my southern town, we have churches on every corner like real cities have Starbucks.

This particular church is in full Christmas mode right now. They do a live nativity drive-through production, complete with animals and back drops and costumes and hastily constructed mangers and whatever else is involved in a crèche. Every year, they use the parking area on the right side of our building to store the animal trailer. It doesn’t interfere with our temple much, and we are happy to do it in the spirit of Christian neighborliness.

So here we go.

While the bat mitzvah girl stood at the podium to lead the congregation in prayer, the rabbi sat next to me as we watched her. I could see what was going on just outside the windows from my board member chair, and since I am easily distracted, I paid a bit more attention to that than the Hebrew prayers. I watched as a man dressed in ancient Bedouin attire led a horse down the hill to the parking lot.

I whispered to the rabbi, “Is that a horse?” He replied, “Just wait. There’s going to be a camel next.”

As the service continued, more people in period clothing walked back and forth behind the neighboring church. I couldn’t look away. I wanted to see the camel.

Eventually, we reached the Torah portion of the service. During a bar or bat mitzvah,  three generations of family stand in a line in front of the congregation and pass the Torah from grandparent to parent to child, symbolizing the sharing of Jewish teaching and values throughout the generations from ancient times to today. It’s always a precarious situation; Torah scrolls are pretty heavy, and grandparents and children are not the physically strongest of the Jewish people.

As the congregation stood and watched the ceremony, the dromedary camel made its appearance. Two people in traditional desert garb were wrangling it, but the camel didn’t give a fuck about the live nativity in which it was to participate. It struggled against its lead, flailing its head back and forth. In a show of defiance and anger, the camel reared up on its back legs, wildly thrashing its front legs in an attempt to make a run for freedom.  It finally gave up, defeated, and was led away to participate in the live nativity. I wondered if an unfortunate wise man volunteer was going to have to ride it. An angry camel doesn’t seem like a safe mode of transport, even for a biblical reenactment.

I continued to watch through the window, but alas, no other livestock appeared. After the Torah was read, the bat mitzvah girl gave her speech.

The rabbi again sat next to me and whispered,” I would like you to recognize my professionalism for not losing it with that camel.” I smiled and whispered back,” Very impressive. I doubt many people could maintain their composure.” “I’m worried about my car. I parked it in that lot,” he said. “Why did I park over there? I hope it didn’t take a crap out there.”

Now, I can’t be certain if that was what the rabbi whispered to me, as we were trying to be quiet. He may not have said that on the bimah, in front of G-d and everybody, but that’s what I wanted to hear.

The rest of the service continued without any animal distraction on the other side of the window. The bat mitzvah girl finished her sermon, kept it together during her parents’ speech, and beamed with pride when she was through. She was amazing.

The rabbi mentioned the camel’s appearance as he offered some final thoughts. He made a joke to the congregation that if they wanted to witness a reenactment of the birth of a Jewish baby boy 2,015 years ago, they could go next door after the service. From the pews, with the windows to the side, the congregation couldn’t really see what was going on outside. Not too many people saw the camel episode, so they didn’t have the distraction that the rabbi and I did from our vantage point.

Never before had I ever seen a distraught camel at a bat mitzvah, but I have to admit, it just added to the whole experience. To sit inside a modern building, listening to a child read from an ancient religious text, while on the other side of the wall, people dressed up in clothing that we assume was like that worn thousands of years ago, reenacting an historical event where people spoke the language she was reading, well, that’s some powerful irony right there. It also made for a one-of-a-kind rite of passage, and I was honored to be a part of it.

Monday, November 30, 2015

No Thank You

Thanksgiving has come and gone, and I am still trying to make sense of this holiday. In the past few years, people used Facebook as a platform to show their gratitude for all the good things they appreciate. It was almost annoying, all those #blessed people humble-bragging, not because I was jealous, but more because they seemed so trite. This year, I kind of missed all the thanking. I am still wondering where all the thankfulness has gone, and why. I have come to a conclusion that makes me sad.

This year, we have replaced gratitude with fear.

The world has had its share of tragedy over the past month. Terrorist attacks in Paris and Beirut. Boko Haram wreaking havoc in African nations. Distrust of the police on one side and protesters on the other. And shootings. All the shootings.

It’s difficult to know if it is as bad as it sounds or if the media is just putting a negative spin on the state of the world. We used to live with hope. We used to try to see the glass half-full. We used to believe we could make our world a better place. Honestly, I worry for my children and the future, not for their personal safety, but because this gloom and doom view that is so pervasive leaves everyone feeling depressed.

Frankly, we are afraid of the wrong things. What is the chance you are going to be the victim of a terror attack? Are you really concerned about being shot by the police? Do you think that Syrian refugees are on their way to destroy the American dream?
 
 When you live in fear, you become the victim you were afraid of being. The level of fear we live under is killing more than joy. It clouds our judgment. It jaundices our world view. It ramps up everyone’s anxiety, but also their anger.

When we get over being scared, we switch to anger. We don’t want to feel this way. We want someone to blame. The cops. The terrorists. The refugees. The politicians. The media. And each other.

I have to work at optimism. It doesn't happen organically. I realize my life is pretty damn good, and I sweat the small stuff regularly. I am fighting the blues that all this bad news brings. I try to make do with cat videos and weird news stories, to find something to make me smile on a grey and hopeless day.

Here’s a thought I’ve been stuck with: I kind of wish everyone was a reform Jew. Working on being the best person you can be. Treating others with kindness and tolerance. Taking care of the world around us. There’s a whole lot of good going on there, and not so much of the condemnation that’s prevalent in other beliefs and religions.

I look at my husband, who thinks organized religion is the cause of most of the world’s problems, and I think he’s onto something. The terrorists kill because they want the destruction of Israel and western Judeo-Christian values. People don’t want refugees because they are Muslims and therefore potential terrorists. Americans forget what American values are, and Christians lose sight of Jesus’ message of love. That doesn’t even take into consideration the eastern religions, but even the Buddhists are attacking Hindus.

How do you stay positive?  I try to focus on my daughters with their lives ahead of them. My children, all children, are the future. We are giving them a world where active shooter drills go along with fire drills and tornado drills. We are giving them a world where they are scared of the police, not because they don’t want to get in trouble, but because they don’t want to die. We are giving them a world where a peach doesn’t taste like summer anymore and delicate flaky flounder is rarely on the menu. We are giving them a world where they need to decide their careers before they even hit puberty and must compete against each other for a college degree they can’t afford.

I don’t have any answers, just observations. I’d like to see our politicians care about more than elections. I’d like to see food, medicine, and insurance be less about profit and more about people. It’d be great if we can stop expanding and consuming and exploiting. We could all do with a little less voicing our opinions and a little more self-reflecting. How about we do a little less hating and a little more loving. It’s worth a try, because what we are doing now sure isn’t working for us.

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Stay Inside the Lines

Look, I get it. We are all under tremendous stress. Balancing work and family. Taking care of homes and cars. Paying bills. It’s all we can do to make it through a day, let alone plan for self-care. We should all be meditating and sleeping at least eight hours and doing yoga and just being present, in the moment, but ain’t nobody got time for that.

Well, I made time for that a few weeks ago. My friend MH posted a thing on Facebook about an adult coloring workshop. For $10, you could go to an art studio and have some snacks and maybe a glass of wine and just color, not like Paw Patrol or Barbie pictures, but real designs with lots of little spaces for color to go. I looked at her post and thought, hmmm, that might be fun, especially with MH. I asked her if she was going to go, and she said she wasn’t sure, and she asked me if I was going to go. It turned into one of those I’ll go if you’ll go scenarios. We had a date.

I told my sister about our upcoming plans, just in casual conversation, and she was like, you need a workshop to color? She had a point. I pretty much mastered coloring about forty-one years ago. I even worked on my technique a bit when my girls were little. I pointed out it was at an art studio for a fee, so they had to call it something. Workshop was just as good a name as any.

The night arrived, and MH and I rode together downtown and grabbed a quick bite to eat. I had stashed a bottle of wine in my car, since coloring when you are an adult means you get to drink. We drove around trying to find the art studio, which was in an old house in a sketchy part of town. I overthought the part where I hoped my car wouldn’t be stolen or burglarized, and then I thought about how much I needed to color. Like an adult. We decided to leave the wine in the car. The whole thing sort of begged for sobriety.

I don’t know if you follow the news much, but there have been a few studies recently about the benefits of coloring. According to some researchers, you get the same effects from coloring as you would from meditating. It’s all the rage now. You can find a whole variety of intricately patterned coloring books at Barnes and Noble or online from Amazon. Hell, I even saw a weird little Reader’s Digest version of an adult coloring book in the grocery store checkout line today, which is how you know it’s time to stop.

MH and I went inside and were pleasantly surprised to see it was a real art studio with real art on the walls and the smell of paint heavy in the air. We found our way downstairs to a room with folding chairs and tables on which boxes of markers, crayons, and colored pencils were arranged. On another table against the wall were stacks of coloring sheets like you would see in a preschool class, only instead of sheep and apples and shit, they had skull designs on them. Seventies music played softly in the background. At one of the tables, two women were coloring intently while carrying on a very loud conversation. One of the women had brought her own coloring set, a very professional assortment of crayons and pencils and pastels. She took her coloring very seriously.

We signed in and were greeted by the hostess/artist in residence. She looked artsy, with her skull t-shirt and messy grey bun and very friendly smile. We settled in at the other end of the table away from the loud talkers. We felt awkward, unsure if we should sit near them but not really wanting to but then feeling bad like they would think we didn’t want to sit near them. We didn’t verbalize this, but rather communicated it through a series of facial expressions and eye contact.

We got down to coloring business. A few more women showed up and filled in the empty seats around the table. I noted that there were no men present. Men would never attend a coloring workshop, at least not any of the men I know, and if they did, they certainly wouldn’t admit it. Hey men, you should, because the whole place is crawling with the ladies. Except they were all pretty much bat shit crazy.

How do I know this? Well, as the wine poured and the crayons scribbled, the other women began to play an elaborate game of top that. You know how someone will tell you about a bad day and then someone else tells how their day was worse? That’s how the game is played.   It’s not an official game, it’s more of a subtle dance of human nature tweaked with a smattering of ego, or, if you are the winner, grandiose narcissism.

These women took the game very seriously. One of them told how she had just traveled to China, so another one had to explain she lived in Nepal and lived off yak milk or something. That one also turned out to be a nude model, which was another detail we didn’t need to know. Another one commented on her failed marriage, which prompted someone else to tell us about her brother’s suicide. MH and I began to color faster.

More wine was sipped, and then the woman with the professional coloring kit looked at me and realized she knew me. We are both members of the Chosen people, so apparently, we really do all know each other. She started asking me all these questions about my temple, screaming them at me from across the room. It went on long enough for the rest of the tragedy parade to stop and observe this tangent. MH kept her head down and colored furiously, wearing down all the points on the new crayons.

“This isn’t very relaxing,” I said to her. “I think this might be harder than meditating.”
“I know,” she said. “I have to get this right. This is really triggering my OCD.”

I stopped trying to make it look good and just started filling in all the white space. The hostess walked in the room carrying a bowl of snack mix.

“Here, eat up, ladies. I would but I’m gluten free,” she said to the room.
“Of course you are,” I whispered to MH.
“I had a waffle two months ago and I still have a rash,” she overshared, and then she pulled up her shirt so we could all stare at the angry boils on her trunk.

I finished my skull, sat back, and quietly said to MH, who was still hard at work,” Done. Should I start another one?”
 

MH normally has a sweet little southern voice that is reminiscent of hummingbirds sipping at fragrant honeysuckle. She answered, “NO!” with Satan’s own larynx.

The rashy gluten-free hostess drew names from a bowl for some door prizes. I won a skull ornament. I was hoping to win the jar of little clay teeth that sat on a shelf, but that was actually for sale. MH decided she would finish hers at home. She gathered up her jacket and purse, announced she needed to get home to her children for bedtime and whatnot, and we skedaddled out of there.

On the car ride home, we sat quietly for about five minutes. Then MH said,” What the fuck was that?”

“Oh good, I thought it was just me,” I laughed. “Next time you feel like coloring, just bring your coloring book over to my house for a play date. I’ll have some gluten-free snacks for you.”

“There won’t be a next time,” she said. “Coloring is too much pressure. All those lines and spaces that need to be filled up. Too much pressure. That wasn’t relaxing and peaceful at all.”

“At least we weren’t the crazy ones,” I pointed out.

 I don’t know what MH did with her skull page, but I hung mine on the fridge because that’s where all art should go. That way, every time I opened the fridge, I could remember how adult coloring isn’t like meditation, but being with friends is.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Go Along for the Ride

A few weekends ago, my husband and I took our darling children to Savannah for a night over their fall break. We are not big Savannah fans. Way back before we had kids, we lived in Charleston, South Carolina, a port city also rich in history but with current industry as well.  Even though they are both popular destinations on the eastern coast, Savannah is more of a tourist attraction, a sleepier, dirtier version of the Holy City. People tend to prefer one over the other. We are Charleston people.

That being said, it isn’t fair for my children not to be able to at least once experience Savannah, if nothing else, to say they’ve been. Plus, it’s not a horrible drive from where we live, and we are running out of places to visit within a three hundred mile radius of home. I looked online and found a cool hotel, one that was in the historic district but tricked out with a hip, modern vibe. I didn’t really see anything we had to do during our stay. We didn’t need to tour the historic Mercer house because “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” isn’t really relevant to their generation. I didn’t want to wait in line for two hours to eat southern food with a table of strangers at Mrs. Wilkes, and I have a serious Paula Deen aversion because she looks too much like my mother. I decided we could just stroll around, do a little shopping, and take a ghost tour at night.

I could be wrong, but does every town have a ghost tour? Spooky walking tours. Haunted trolley drives. Sinister horse and carriage rides. Ghost buses. In my town, we have a haunted Segway night tour, which sounds like an accident waiting to happen. Every year, they could take stupid patrons around on their douchey Segways and tell them about the idiots who died the previous year on the tour. I’ll never know because I am not coordinated enough to use a Segway, which is why I am qualified to judge others who do.

The ghost tour I chose was a Haunted Hearse tour. It’s not unique to Savannah, as other historic or funky cities with a plethora of old hearses have it; Austin, St. Augustine, you get the idea. Anyway, here’s how it works. The company has a whole fleet of hearses that have been decommissioned and repurposed with a bunch of rickety seats for people to sit. Your feet rest on the rollers that were used to move the coffins, and your shoes can be seen through the little curtains on the side windows. The top of the hearse is raised up with a sort of open viewing area. You enter through the rear of the hearse by walking up a step ladder, take your seat, and wait for the drive to begin.  It looks like this:

 

Lucky for us, the tour picked us up right outside our hotel. Our tour guide had one of those ghost tour guide names. Let’s call him Ghoulish Gary; that wasn’t his name, but close enough. He looked like the kind of guy, and I mean this with the utmost respect, who spent his formative years masturbating to “Faces of Death” in his parents’ basement. He wore all black, a little pork pie hat, and he did this thing with his eyes where you couldn’t tell exactly at whom he was staring. I couldn’t tell if it was congenital or just like a special effect.

He proclaimed himself an expert in the local paranormal community and promised to tell us things that would keep us up at night. I had no reason to doubt him, but I also didn’t have much reason to believe him.  I only hoped he meant that he had lots of good Savannah ghost stories and not a litany of sad personal tales. We settled into our hearse seats and he drove to another hotel to pick up the rest of the tour, a foursome of elderly people that I admired for being so nonchalant about being in a hearse.

Ghoulish Gary drove us around the historic squares of Savannah, stopping every now and again in front of an old home to tell us about how someone died there or some similar sort of tragedy. Other hearses drove past us, a continuous loop of hearse traffic that took over Savannah’s streets after nightfall. He also spent a lot of time in front of a cemetery talking about how many people were buried on top of other people.

Basically, all of Savannah is a giant mass grave. Also, according to Ghoulish Gary, it was an ancient Indian burial mound before it was Savannah, so all of the spirits are angry and malevolent just like in “Poltergeist.” A couple of times he referenced some bullshit about how paranormal experts had taken soil samples here and there throughout the city, and they all came back at least 17% human remains. I thought if you tested soil samples everywhere from around the world, it would be around the same amount of dead human. People have been living and dying for thousands of years.

Ghoulish Gary ended every story with a long, drawn-out Yyyeeeaaasssssssssss for emphasis. Occasionally he would cough and choke on his cigarette. One of our stops was at a bar, where he encouraged us to go inside and order him a soda. We waited in the hearse, although I had a feeling the tour would have been better with an open container violation.

We drove around a little bit more and then pulled into an empty lot. Three other hearses were already parked there as their tour guides, Scary Sam and Creepy Carl or whoever the fuck else, told identical stories that just didn’t sound all that… believable isn’t quite the word. Hmm. Interesting, maybe? Our very own Ghoulish Gary left our hearse to go over to the other ones to give them the wall eye stare and make them as uncomfortable as he made us. I had this feeling he didn’t think we were all that great of an audience and needed to have a little more attention from a fresh group of hearse captives.

He finally ambled back over to us and took out his cell phone to show us images that would prove the very existence of spirits. One was a flying orb that looked suspiciously like a flash reflection on a window. Others were just blurry images.  I’m pretty sure one was his thumb. None of them spoke to Savannah specifically or any of the familiar legends you might expect. Then he stared at some of us, possibly, because I couldn’t tell for sure, before loading himself back in the driver’s seat.

We circled around a few more times to see if an apparition might appear. It wasn’t our lucky night, so he dropped off the party of retirees at their hotel before taking us back to our own. On the way, Ghoulish Gary told us about the history of the building where we were staying. Apparently, it used to be a stable, until one night when it burned down, killing all of the horses inside. He took a few pictures with us and then left us in front of the building and tootled on down the road and away into the dark night. As we walked the halls inside, we noticed that the walls were decorated with murals of horses. We just thought it was odd when we checked in, but after the tour, it made sense to us.

Later, as we got ready for bed in our room, the lights over our bathroom mirror blinked on and off. It wasn’t a flicker or a power surge. It was as if someone turned the lights on and off with a switch, slowly, and the four of us watched it from the comfort and safety of the hotel beds. None of the other lights went on and off, just the ones over the mirror. It only happened one time, for about ten or fifteen seconds, but for real, it did.  We didn’t hear any hooves down the hall, no whinnying, no neighing, nothing like that.

Savannah was kind of fun. We’re glad we went. You should give it a try. It’s no Charleston, but it’s good for a night. Yeeeaaaaassssssssss.

Monday, October 19, 2015

Don't Get Me Wrong

Do wrong numbers irritate you?  They drive me insane. It’s not that I mind the part where people make mistakes because we all do that. It’s really the intrusion of the phone call that gets me. I am a phone-a-phobe. I detest, abhor, loathe answering my phone. If you need me, text me.  I am not afraid of typing words. Typing words is my favorite.

It probably stems from my years of working for state government, where most public contact was through phone conversation. No phone call was pleasant for years. At home, the only person who called me on a ridiculously regular basis was my mother. Her phone calls were on par with my work ones, so for years I dreaded answering the phone anywhere. I would have nightmares of the phone ringing, ringing, ringing. All the ringing.

Now I don’t talk to my mom nor do I work for the state, but my dislike of telephone contact persists. Between my cell phone and caller ID on my landline, I generally know who’s calling. Sometimes I answer. Most of the time I call back. I have to set my intention before I can do either.

It’s just a thing I don’t do. Don’t take it personally.

Lately, despite my registering with the do not call registry, I have been getting more sales calls than I used to. Which means I answer my phone even less. If it’s important, someone will leave me a message. If it’s one of my usual contacts, the name pops up as a missed call even when there’s no message. I know you called me. Chances are good I texted you back a response.

Every once in a while, it’s none of those, a local number that I don’t recognize, a wrong number. And sometimes, that stranger will leave a message not intended for me.

That happened to me the other day. A local number I didn’t know called me, and left a message. It was from some gruff sounding man who said he was contacting someone who wasn’t me about a concealed weapons course he was teaching. Apparently someone else wanted to take that course, and he was calling to discuss the class. Not only was it not for me, it would never be for me. I hate guns even more than I hate answering the phone.

Since it wasn’t me, I didn’t call back to let him know he had the wrong number. It’s the kind of thing I figured would sort itself out without my involvement. And since it’s 2015, etiquette doesn’t dictate that I return messages to wrong numbers. I chose to do nothing.

The next day while I was eating breakfast, I got a Facetime call from the same damn number. Odd, I thought. Does he normally Facetime people to sign them up for concealed weapons classes? I again didn’t answer it because now I was a tad afraid.

This guy couldn’t take a hint. An hour later, he texted me.  It went like this:

Him: I am contacting you in reference to my October 31 concealed weapon class. If I am interested, call back.
Me: Wrong number.
Him: Please excuse.
Me: It’s fine.

Should have been the end of it, right? But no; fifteen minutes later, I got another text.

Him: Are you interested? Call me back and I will get you prepared for the October 31 class.

He impressed me with his persistence. Here is a man who has a pretty creative marketing strategy. He could just call random numbers all the time, “accidentally”, and maybe every so often he would get a bite.

Me: No thanks.
Him: If you change your mind, call or text me back.

When a little old lady calls me by accident, I call back. I let her know she has the wrong number. She might have written it down wrong. Maybe she can’t read the numbers on the paper. Maybe it’s really urgent, like she’s fallen and can’t get up. She might think she’s calling Life Alert, but it’s just me avoiding my phone. You never know.

Concealed weapons course instructors are not little old ladies. They don’t need my help. What they do need is to just move on. If someone doesn’t call you back, they’re just not that into you, especially when it’s a wrong number.

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Olive's Fair in Love and War

I have two teenage daughters.

I don’t need to say anything else for you to know how life is in my house. Ups and downs do not adequately describe it. Roller coasters are not a fair comparison. Jumping out of a plane with no parachute, free falling onto an extra strength trampoline that catapults me across the sky only I’m still attached to a bungee cord that brings me right back so I am dangling precariously until I get whacked like a giant tether ball around a pole, never ending twisting and untwisting and twisting and untwisted…still not quite what it’s like.

Take a moment to appreciate your sons. When you aren’t driving them to sports or band practice, chances are good they are holed up in their rooms playing video games and pausing briefly for some feverishly furtive masturbation before they come to the kitchen and eat all the food in the pantry. You might have some moodiness, some acne, perhaps some other hygiene issues. Sneakers and armpits stink.  The sleeping makes up for it.

Daughters, well, my daughters, are just raw nerve endings with twenty pounds of makeup to dress up those synapses. There are a lot of moods. Trashcans overflow with tear filled Kleenexes and used feminine hygiene products. Sometimes the two of them are witty and smart and impressive. Other times one is a bitch, the other an asshole.

Our latest waste of time issue is fighting over clothes. The older one is on her fourth or fifth look since middle school. I’m running out of money and storage space to accommodate her ever evolving signature style. We’ve gone from funny t-shirts to a sort of rock edgy look to extreme suburban preppy to surfer girl. We are now settling on a sort of college co-ed hipster vibe. That’s a lot of transition if you ask me, but she isn’t on drugs or pregnant so I keep quiet.

The younger one is a lot easier to please for now. She favors a flowy bohemian kind of thing, but she’s really not too picky. She just appreciates something new. Don’t we all?  Now that they are the same height (well, the young one is a teeny bit taller), the hand-me-downs have ended. It’s all new to her these days, and she is pretty happy.

I was hoping they would be the kind of sisters that gave each other advice and shared each other’s secrets and swapped clothes back and forth. Instead, the older one is the kind who sneaks into the other one’s room and takes what she wants without asking, shoes, shirts, pads, you name it.

The younger one will ask to borrow something from the older one, who always says no thank you, because she thinks manners soften the no blow. Occasionally I intervene and tell the older one to share and also to appreciate the fact that the younger one is respectful enough to ask first. That subtle dig is always lost on her.

Currently, they have been at war over an olive green tank top. I found it at Old Navy, on a clearance table. It’s made of cotton and has thin straps and comes up high on the chest. It might be called a high choke neckline, but how the hell would I know? I’m not up on fashion terminology, but I know it’s cute. Also, it was on sale for $1.99. I bought it and brought it home for the older one. She likes to wear camis and tanks with a blanket or bathrobe type schmatta on top, so I thought it was perfect for her urban homeless chic.

She loved it. Unfortunately, so did the younger one. She asked the older one repeatedly if she could borrow it, and was always answered with the no thank you bit. The younger one complained to the older one about taking her things without asking permission and how unfair she was being, but the older one just looked at her phone and ignored her.

After a week or two of this, I went back to Old Navy and bought another olive green tank top. I brought it home and gave it to the younger one, and she was happy and began wearing it immediately.

A little while later, the older one came to me to complain about the younger one taking her things. I asked what things she had a concern about, and she said the olive green tank top. “Oh that? I bought her one too so you would stop fighting over it,” I told her.

She couldn’t believe I would do such a thing. I pointed out that for an extra $1.99, I eliminated one of the daily battles, which was worth the two bucks. Her response? “But it’s exactly like mine.”

“Won’t it be fun when you wear it on the same day accidentally?” I said.

That happened once with a side braid. They came downstairs for school sporting a side braid, only on opposite sides of their heads, because even their parts have to be different. I don’t think the older one has worn a side braid since that day.

Come to think of it, I don’t think she has worn her olive green tank top either, which is fine, because I’m only out $1.99.

 

 

 

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Say It Ain't So

Now that my girls are back in school and one of them is driving, I have found myself with more time on my hands. I am still doing all of the things, the cooking and errand running and laundry and appointments and so on, but my afternoon commute has been reduced on most days to a five minute drop off or pick up. On Mondays, I am the only one home until dinner time. I haven’t been alone in the afternoon in over fifteen years.

Rather than slip into a daytime television or vodka habit or allow myself to just sit and do nothing as if that were even an option, I decided to look into doing more freelance writing. I’ve been writing on a freelance basis for a long time, really, but most of the time the work found me. It’s very different when you are looking for the work.
I’ve spent a number of hours researching and applying on various websites, and I have to say, the prospects are pretty dismal. While fast food workers in more progressive cities are demanding and getting up to $15 an hour, a lot of freelance writers are looking at significantly less than that. The standards for these two lines of work are pretty different. I’m not saying that fast food workers shouldn’t make a living wage. I am just concerned when unskilled work is valued more than an education and years of experience in allegedly desirable communication skills.

But I digress. I polished up my resume a bit and attempted to put myself out there. Looking for work online is considerably less fun than watching porn or cat videos. It’s tedious; it’s time consuming; and it’s also disheartening. Even if you find a website that looks reputable, you can’t count on the job postings also being legitimate. The amount of legwork, er, sitting on my ass on my laptop work, well, it’s just like looking for any other job. Which means it sucks.
On one website, which requires you to bid for jobs against other desperately underpaid people who rather work on the couch in sweats, I received an invitation to apply for a one-time assignment. The pay was, seriously, $10, but there was a chance it would lead to more work. What the hell, I thought.

Here’s the funny part: it was for voice-over work. Some firm based out of Canada was looking for native North Americans/United States citizens to do voice work on a short-term project. I filled out the online proposal expressing my interest and skills and blah blah blah.

Honestly, I never considered doing voice work before. I had one of those pesky speech impediments when I was a kid, one that required school speech therapy for a brief and traumatic period of time. I still have a handful of words that I never seemed to master. I cannot distinguish between warm and worm. According to my children, I also pronounce doll and pants in a way that makes them pee a little because they laugh so hard. That is all in addition to the fact that I speak through my nose in a sort of nasally whiny way. But ten bucks is ten bucks, am I right?

Two days later, I received a message that I had been selected for the next stage of interview. I had another form to complete, and then I needed to submit a voice sample. I was pleasantly surprised because I figured they must have received thousands of bids from people who want to earn $10 for doing nothing.

The form was pretty standard, lines for my name, phone number, email, the usual questions. The next question had to do with the region of country where I either was born or had lived for a significant period of time. It listed specific states, Nebraska up to Minnesota, not more than seven or eight places I would never live. I was a bit concerned because I live in the Southeast, but I don’t have much of an accent. I thought maybe they too found Midwestern accents irritating and wanted to make sure no candidate was from that area.

The voice recording involved me stating my name, my continent of origin, and reciting a nursery rhyme. I practiced it a few times, trying to go slowly and enunciate clearly.  Peter. Piper. Picked. A. Peck. Of. Pickled. Peppers. I was concerned I would say pimpled peckers, which is generally how I say it in my head. Bravely, I recorded it on my laptop and submitted my interview form.
Secretly, I was a little excited.

Two days later, I got my rejection letter. It wasn’t anything personal. They just wanted people from those seven states with the bad Midwestern accents. They wanted only people who sounded like Frances McDormand in Fargo.

What I still don’t understand is why they didn’t make that part of the criteria? Why not emphasize on the initial job posting, hey, we are looking for people who for some ungodly reason reside in the middle of the country?

They didn’t, though, and now I’m mildly sad because rejection never feels good. Also, I’m mildly sad that I’m sad over a ten dollar job that over five hundred people also wanted. Who have I become?

Alas, this is what freelance really looks like. I don’t know who these people are who earn $25 to $50 an hour, but that average must include Stephen King’s hourly rate. The rest of us are duking it out over less than a venti pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks, which, incidentally, also pays more an hour.

Monday, September 28, 2015

Walkabout

Let’s travel, shall we, back to the beginning of the summer, for another installment of what I did for my summer vacation.

When we left off, my family and I had arrived and spent our first partial day in London. We managed to take in a good bit of the airport, a wee bit of the natural history museum, and a flaky bit of Harrods’ pastries.
Our first full day in London became a quest to fulfill my husband’s desire of recreating a walk from our Lonely Planet guide. It promised to be a meandering sightseeing stroll that would take us from one side of the Thames to the other. No one in my family is very skilled in the art of map reading, although only one of us is woman enough to admit it, so we weren’t entirely sure how long the walk would be, especially since there were many sights to see along the way.

We began our morning at the Tower of London. The Tower is where the crown jewels are housed, guarded by a few of the Queen’s own guards, with their festive red coats and tall furry hats. The rest of the staff are Yeoman Warders, but we know them as Beefeaters. They too wore fabulous uniforms, but my family disappointed me by refusing to pose with any of them.  I kept pointed out that we were tourists and therefore it was not only acceptable to do touristy things, it was expected of us, but they were having none of that.
The tour book recommended taking a tour led by a beefeater, which began just behind the main gate, in what at one time was probably some moat or reservoir of blood and disembodied heads. What they don’t tell you is you wait with three hundred of your closest strangers to begin the tour. All those people with their selfie sticks and annoying children kicked up my autism, so we skipped the informative portion of the tourist attraction and opted for the more confused and less organized system of going the wrong way and trying to avoid the crowds.

Spoiler alert: the Tower doesn’t have as much torture as you might hope for, unless you count that tour at the beginning.  It is perfectly fascinating in other ways. Medieval graffiti carved on the stone walls. A collection of body armor for both man and horse.  Ravens, which are big AF and not crows at all, so suck it, you dumb Yanks.  What the Tower doesn’t have is good feng shui, air conditioning, or gin.  Keep that in mind when you plan your visit.
After we had exhausted ourselves and grabbed a snack at the Tower café, we, along with a million other out of towners, crossed the Tower Bridge to get to the other side. The Bridge is an engineering marvel and really cool in a Disney sort of way. It’s also not that old, and also not that bridge. London Bridge is actually in Arizona, in case you forgot. The Tower Bridge is probably the one you thought was London Bridge, so that’s good news, I suppose.

When we crossed over the Thames, we started to sort of lose our way, because none of us can read a map, whether it’s in a book, on a giant piece of folded glossy paper, or Google maps on an iPhone. We worked our way up and down some streets, passing fish and chips shops which all boasted the best, but really, is that possible? Afternoon fatigue and jet lag settled down on us, a fishing net of bitch and moan.  
 
 
Finally, under a portion of a railway bridge, we found the perfect oasis: the Borough Market. If you like to eat food, look at food, smell food, shop for food, or just be anywhere near food, Borough Market is the place for you. It’s loosely divided into categories, the breads and pastries, meats and game and fish, dairy and cheeses, teas and flours and spices. We wandered, overwhelmed by the freshness and the plenty.  Everything, even the things we don’t like, looked amazing and fascinating. Paella pans bigger than my kitchen table. Indian street food that met food safety standards. Chocolates made by magical elven hands. I wanted to sing and dance with a large umbrella and pick up Scotch eggs and mushroom logs to show someone, anyone, and then I wanted to eat until I exploded.

If you go to London, you should check it out. It’s pretty cool.
We found a small spot in a church courtyard next door and ate the few snacks we purchased with the money we could figure out. Around us Londoners did the same, all the while smoking their fancy European cigarettes and kicking at their annoying pigeons like people do in any big city. We took a quick detour through the church, which turned out to be Southwark Cathedral, to see an ancient Greek artifact that had just been discovered during some renovation work. We also needed to use the bathroom. Thanks, Church of England!

The walk, much like this blog, wasn’t yet over. We strolled down garbage scented alleys and back up to the water’s edge, stopping to marvel at the patch of modern buildings, an interesting juxtaposition to the older and more iconic landmarks of the London skyline.  Our feet hurt. We paused to rest in front of the historic Globe theatre. Check! Seen it!
 
 
I secretly delighted that no one wanted to see any ‘Speare in its natural habitat.

Finally, we reached the end of the walk and my husband’s main goal for the day, the Tate Modern Gallery. Located in the South Bank area in what used to be a power station, the Tate appeals to his aesthetic. He’s really into old power stations and modern art. It was perfect for him.
If you want to experience a modern art gallery to its fullest, I recommend taking two teenage girls who have been walking all day.

It’s good to know that my daughters are not into neither power stations nor modern art. We made the best of it, which isn’t true. What we made is fun, fun of all of it. Of the hexagon paper cutouts taped to the wall, the weird ropey dreadlock thing hanging from the ceiling, of the endless nipples and penises and vaginas and different combinations thereof. Most artworks elicited one of two responses from my girls: “I made that in preschool” or “How many more naked people do we have to look at?” It was, in a word, delightful. 

My husband opted to appreciate the art on his own. My children found every available seat and took selfies of their pissy faces or pictures of detritus on the floor. Art, they said.
 
I want to thank the person who created that walk for the Lonely Planet guide. Anyone who thinks one day should be spent going from early English monarchy to awesome food under a bridge to modern art in a power house has a real spirit of adventure.

It was another perfect day in London.

Monday, September 21, 2015

It's a Magic Number

They say bad things always happen in threes. I don’t know who they are, but they were right this past week. My sister, LM, would chalk it up to Mercury being in retrograde. That sounds like a bunch of astrological hokum to some people, but the fact that it’s referenced in the Farmer’s Almanac offers it a hint of legitimacy. Also, the Almanac states that when mercury does go in retrograde, it lasts about three weeks, and it happens three times a year. All these threes.

1. Last week, I took my cat Yoko to the vet. It was time for her annual exam, but she also had a lump on her side, close to her abdomen, that worried me. She isn’t getting any younger, and she isn’t a fan of the vet, so the idea of regular medical supervision is off the table. I still wanted to know what the lump was, even if I doubted doing anything about it.
Yoko demonstrated why at the vet’s office. After attacking him and refusing to leave the relative safety of her carrier, she ripped two claws out fighting the exam. She didn’t just leave a couple of broken fingernails on the table; she also left smears of blood all over, even on the old towel they threw over her head. The towel is supposed to somehow make her feel more secure, but it just pisses her off. At least it provides some protection for the vet from her angry and sharp parts.

After fighting to get her on the scale and back on the table and then of course to figure out the source of all the blood, the vet had to examine her for that lump. PSA to all of you cat owners: Cats don’t get lumps. It’s not their thing. If your cat has a lump, you should get it checked out, if you are feeling brave enough.  He palpated her and she resisted. The towel fell off and had to be repositioned. The more he felt around her, the more agitated she became, and still, he couldn’t locate the lump.
So, long story short: Yoko’s lump turned out to be a blocked mammary gland. He was able to take care of it, but I won’t go into how. I referred to it as her nipple zit, and he requested that I not tell anyone that, nor should I let anyone know he is our vet.  This is the much abbreviated version of this story. You’re welcome.

Her twenty minute vet exam took over an hour and a half. I don’t think either of us has recovered yet.

2. My young driver, the teen, had her first fender bender. I shan’t go into too much detail about this one either, as it is a long way from resolution.
I knew how she felt.  I had a minor accident the first day I drove my car to school when I was seventeen. It is a rite of passage, unfortunately.

She is fine. The car is drivable. It wasn’t her fault. I don’t think either of us has recovered yet.
3. Sunday morning, I was fussing at my husband. He was lying in bed and asked when S, our younger daughter, needed to be picked up from a slumber party. I told him he was asking the question wrong. He needed to ask what time he needed to pick up S from her slumber party. Then I walked into the chaise lounge in my bedroom and smashed my toe with such force and speed I heard a loud pop.

I knew that sensation well. I have broken almost all of my toes over the past twenty something years, some of them more than once. This time it was my right pinky toe. It may be the third time I have broken the right pinky. It has all blended together by this point, a mashup of painful, swollen, bruised toes. When am I going to learn?

I threw myself face down on the carpet and cursed a blue streak. Blue streak is also an apt description of the current state of my right pinky toe.
 
My husband said “karma” to me from the bed. I got up and hobbled down the stairs to ice my foot.

You don’t realize the importance of the pinky toe until it is out of commission. It might not do much but cry Whee! Whee! Whee! all the way home, until you try fitting it into any shoe. It’s currently the size of the big toe on the other side of the foot. Shoes are not constructed to accommodate two big toes. Taping it to its neighbor is not yet manageable, due to the swelling. I won’t be fitting this toe into a spin shoe or balancing in any yoga poses for at least a few days. This toe is not up for a brisk walk in the neighborhood or the joy of my favorite dance class. Needless to say, I have not recovered yet.
If bad things happen in threes, then what exactly is the number of good things?

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Dress to Kill

School began two weeks ago, and I am already tired of fighting about clothes.

My 15 year old daughter, the older and least responsible of my two children, has been pushing my buttons over what to wear to school in the mornings. She refuses to pick out her clothing the night before, no matter how many times I ask her to or threaten to do it myself. Instead, she waits until the moment she should be getting in the car to decide on something questionable at best, making her late and causing an argument at the same time. We both start the day in a bad mood.
I wish I understood how this game is played.

Before school started, we did the whole back to school shopping thing. She has pretty high standards in attire, which I indulge due to a combination of Jewish guilt and a childhood of wearing hand me downs or just going without. There was no such thing as back to school shopping in my childhood experience, so I admit, I overcompensate for my girls. I prefer things be on sale, but I understand that some jeans cost a hundred bucks, and I rationalize buying two pairs if they last the whole school year.
Despite the trips to Anthropologie and Lucky Jeans, my daughter claims, falsely, to have nothing to wear. Honestly, when you look at a lot of her clothes, her Birkenstocks, her ripped jeans, her oversized beige cardigan sweater, she looks like a wealthy homeless person.

What she does have, in addition to her Big Lebowski chic, is an entire wardrobe of summer only clothing, things that don’t follow the rather specific school dress code. The code involves things like no spaghetti straps and no shorts more than three inches above the knee and no yoga pants or leggings and no jeans with tears or shreds or rips and absolutely no midriff showing ever because bare stomachs are like windows to your vagina.  I don’t know if you have gone shopping for teenage girl clothing lately, but the only things available are specifically what the school prohibits.
I would like to point out that the dress code issue is primarily one for girls. The boys don’t have to worry about spaghetti straps or yoga pants or short shorts. They might have an issue with inappropriate graphic t-shirts or wearing loose pants too low, but other than that, they don’t generally get sent home for being a distraction. Not that there’s a double standard or anything.

What would solve this problem, in theory, are uniforms. If we went in the khaki pants and polo shirt direction, we might have the issue of mine is nicer than yours, but we wouldn’t have the problem of how short is too short in a dress.
The other morning was particularly rough.  At 7:30, the exact moment my daughter is supposed to back out of the driveway, she stood upstairs at the balcony overlooking the family room and said, “Does this look good?”  She was wearing an old stained white cami top, an unbuttoned chambray shirt, and a pair of pants that she got from a friend who outgrew them. They are somewhere between a yoga pant, a sweat pant, and a pajama pant, none of which meet the dress code.  I refer to them as her clown pants.

“It looks okay, I guess,” I said.
“That’s exactly what Dad said,” she groaned.

“Well, I guess the consensus is it’s an okay outfit. Do you know what time it is?” I asked.

“I’m going to be late and I have nothing to wear and you don’t like this,” she complained. “I wear shirts like this all the time. It’s no big deal.”

“I don’t care about the shirt, it’s more the clown pants I don’t like’, I said.” But I am not the one wearing them.”

“I guess I have to change,” she yelled as she ran back to her bedroom.

Five minutes later, at 7:35, she stomped down the stairs. This time she was wearing a short black dress with the same chambray shirt open on top. The dress was not three inches above her knees; it was about two inches below her butt cheeks. “I’ll probably get sent home for this,” she said.
“Then why did you put it on?” I asked her.

“It’s really short. I know I’ll get in trouble for it.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. I am pretty sure she was waiting for me to say it was fine or not to worry, which I was not about to do.

“I’m late and this is all I have,” she said loudly, not quite a scream, but almost.

“Why did you take off the clown pants?” I said.
“You didn’t like them, but they fit dress code,” she snapped.

“Well, I didn’t tell you to change. But I am now. You can’t wear that to school, so you better go change again. Why don’t you wear one of those short sleeved shirts I bought you a couple of weeks ago?”

“I don’t want to wear one today,” she said.

I just stared at her. “Sure am glad I took you shopping for things you could pick out and then reject,” I muttered.
“I don’t have time for this!” She finally reached the yelling stage.

“Make time for it,” I said. “Now. Go change into something that isn’t going to get you in-school suspension. I am not about to bring you a change of clothing because you wore something you know you shouldn’t.”
She stomped back up the stairs and slammed the door. I continued to eat my breakfast.

Five minutes later, at 7:40, she came barreling down the stairs. She had on the original cami with the chambray shirt and a pair of jeans.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” I asked.

“Thanks a lot for ruining my morning and making me late,” she pouted as she grabbed her lunch box but left her water bottle on the counter.

“My morning isn’t exactly off to a good start either. Don’t forget your water bottle!” I said.

“I don’t have time to stop for it,” she said.
“But you have time to have a fight about it!” This time I yelled at her.

She slammed the door and left, leaving me to wonder how fast and careless she would drive. Did I mention she was fifteen? Fifteen year olds aren’t known for their ability to compartmentalize their emotions and focus on being safe or cautious.

When she was a little girl, she and I would spend time together every night before her bath and bedtime picking out an outfit for the next school day. She would lay it out, finding matching socks, maybe a hair ribbon, so she was all ready to learn bright and early the next day and look sharp while doing it. Now she is a few years away from a college freshman who sniffs the armpits of a t-shirt to see if it is clean enough.  

I blame the school dress code.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Care for a Sample?

I talk to my sister LM often, and when I do, I always seem to have what she calls “the story of the day.” She’s right about that; almost every day, some little thing happens that makes for good sharing with her but not really enough of an event to write in a blog post. She has been encouraging me to write more, but also to embrace the whole less is more thing. In other words, don’t wait until I have something momentous to share, just write.  Who knows, maybe I will post more often. Maybe I won’t. Maybe you will like it. Maybe I will too.

Today’s story of the day involves the dumber of my two cats, Moshe. Today, I called to schedule his annual exam because Moshe is a bit overdue in the rabies vaccine department. I am never too eager to take him to the vet. While I love my vet, Moshe hates him and puts up a fight that he saves especially for the annual exam. The rest of the year Moshe spends lounging and sleeping and overeating and purring loudly and even allowing us to carry his fifteen pounds around like a rag doll with never even an ounce of aggression. When he has to go to the vet, he turns into a vicious cat beast, hell bent on mayhem and destruction and physical harm, all so he can return to the overeating and sleeping part at home. We both hate the annual exam.

I spoke with the receptionist to schedule the visit. After we went through the calendar and found an agreeable date and time, she asked me to try to bring in a stool sample when we came for the appointment. For the cat, obviously. She said it wasn’t a big deal, but if he used a litter box, it would be easier to harvest one than if he goes outside to do his bizness. She actually used the word “harvest.”
Me: A stool sample? That’s a new one.
Her: You’ve never brought in a stool sample? We like to check for parasites.
Me:  No, I’ve never been asked to. He is an indoor cat, though, so wouldn’t his chances of having parasites be kind of small?
Her: You never know. It’s just easier to have a sample for cats by bringing it in. Dogs don’t mind so much if we obtain a sample during the exam.
Me: I can’t really blame him for that.

We shared a laugh, politely.
Me: Well, the problem is he shares the litter box with our other cat, so I don’t really know if I could be 100% sure it’s his.

This is not entirely true. He, like many boy cats, or boys in general, produces a stink unlike any other. He also likes to leave it unburied, so the smell can really permeate our air supply. 
Her: Oh, that would be fine even if it isn’t his. Chances would be good that if one of them has a parasite, they both would.
Me: Good to know. So here’s another question. I am new to the whole stool sample thing. How, um, fresh does it need to be?

I had an image of myself skulking around the entrance of one of our litter boxes, waiting with a Ziploc sandwich bag at the ready.
Her: Oh, it doesn’t need to be that fresh. It can even have litter stuck to it. You just don’t want it to be hard and dry.
Me: No, I suppose I don’t. Okay, well, I’ll do my best. We’ll see you next week with a small bag of crap.

I told my sister this story of my cat’s appointment and the stool sample discussion.  We went on to discuss further how ironic it is that cats love to show you their anuses, but you can forget about actually touching it in the name of veterinary medicine. I pointed out that they are kind of like strippers in that way. You can look all you want, but if you touch, you are going to need traction.
So that’s how the story of the day works. Because, when you think about it, isn’t every day full of shitty little stories?

Friday, August 21, 2015

Coexist Much?

Well, the kids have been back in school for less than a week, and already, religious intolerance is rearing its ugly head. Normally it takes a few weeks of getting to know each other before the teenagers let their true colors show, but when your true colors are patterned like a confederate flag, well, I guess you feel entitled to show them to everyone.

My family lives in the South, and like many southern communities, the majority of the residents in my town are church affiliated. Christianity here is bigger than college football, which is almost a religion of its own. And when I say Christianity, I really mean evangelicals, those lovely fundamentalists who feel the need to convert or condemn anyone who does not share their beliefs. They do an excellent job of indoctrinating their children with the righteousness and entitlement they feel that comes from their personal relationship with their lord and savior.
I’m not judging them. Everyone is free to believe and practice what feels right, as long as it doesn’t infringe on the next person’s set of beliefs. That’s where it gets a little hazy for some folks.

My younger daughter is in 8th grade. She has been no stranger to the horrible comments lots of Jewish kids hear. Nothing makes the momma bear in me come out faster than having another kid tell mine that she is going to burn in hell because she is Jewish, but no matter how big the stink I make, another kid will step up to take a turn.  Since 8th grade is her last year of middle school, most of the kids who know her already know she is a Jew and have shared their prophesy with her, leaving them free to aim it at someone else who isn’t white or Christian.
One of her good friends happens to be Muslim, and she began wearing a hijab this year. It was a very personal decision for her friend, who up til now had not covered her head even when her twin sister chose to a few years ago. These girls, who were born in the US and are therefore as American as the rednecks who harass them, have had to deal with terrorist jokes for their entire middle school experience. They have always risen above the comments and display a level of maturity and confidence that shows more about their religious beliefs then the so-called Christian students. One kid asked S’s friend why she started covering her head. She didn’t answer hi since it was none of his business, so he followed it up with asking if she was a Muslim. When she told him yes, he wanted to know if that meant she was from Islam. She looked at him with what I hope was as much judgment as he showed her and said, I was born right here in this city.

If it were me, I would have said yes. Yes, I am from Islam, you oblivious piece of crap. I happen to know for a fact that the seventh grade social studies classes were required to learn all the countries and maps of the world. I wonder where this future McDonald’s employee thinks Islam is located.
Meanwhile, over at the high school, my older daughter, E, was having her own religious experience. She has a much different approach to her Jewish identity than her sister. She doesn’t really give a shit what anyone thinks, and she is much less likely to be polite about it. Because she is less sensitive, she gets a lot more ribbing than her sister does, which she thinks is funny. Some of it comes from her friends but she gives it back as good as she gets it, so it’s all okay for the whole lot of them.

This week it wasn’t her one of her friends that was teasing her. Some dumb freshman, according to my sophomore child, was following her and another of her friends down the hall. They were having a conversation about the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur holidays next month, and the freshman behind her asked her if she ate Ramadan because she was Jewish. Let that sink in for a minute.
E gave him a look that should have made him throw himself off a rooftop, but instead, he continued to follow her down the hall shrieking “Ramadan” at her. Finally, she turned around and yelled, “Jesus Christ, would you cut it out?” The boy immediately stopped and was truly outraged. “You know,” he said, “that’s taking it too far. I was just messing with you, but you really shouldn’t say that. It’s offensive.”

She stared at him and then screamed,” Just shut the fuck up!” The hall erupted in great boisterous laughter because someone yelled the F word. He stopped following her, and that was the end of that.

Both my daughters still tell me stuff, and they each shared these stories with me. While they aren’t really the same at all, at the core they share the same level of ignorance. These aren’t little kids. These are kids who have had at least a small amount of book learning on world geography and different religions and what happens when we don’t accept and respect one another.  Do they pay absolutely no attention to what is presented to them in class? Do they watch no news at all, either on television or the internet? Is there no discussion of different cultures in their homes?

The answer to all of those is most likely no. Intolerance is easy when you surround yourself with your own kind. You go to school and church with white Christians. You wear your bracelet or your Forever 21 shirt with crosses all over it. You might have one black friend or know one smart Asian kid, but you don’t have them over to your house. If all you see is white and Christian, you expect the whole world to be just like you.  Well guess what, even in nineteen of the United States you are becoming a minority, never mind the rest of the world, so it might be time to rethink your position.
When I hear about people feeling their religious freedoms are being suppressed, it just infuriates me. There is no war on Christmas, but there is district testing on the high holy days. Nobody asks you if you are from Bethlehem because you are Christian, but my kids get asked all the time if they can say something in Jewish and if they come from Israel. There is no official religion in our country, yet our biggest holidays celebrate the birth and death of a guy who wasn’t even Christian!

Do me a favor and stop telling my daughters they are going to burn in hell, because guess what, we don’t believe in hell, so there.