Kumbaya

I have a hard time settling down, being still, doing nothing. I am sure most mothers have the same issue, that constant to-do list that never seems to go away, probably because we live where we work. It isn't easy to relax when there is always another toilet to scrub or lunch to pack or load of laundry to fold, and no matter how hard I try, I can't ever say that I'm finished doing everything that needs to be done. To say I am busy is like saying Michael Jackson liked kids or had trouble sleeping. But lately, I am finding that even I am scared of my over-busyness, that as much as I frighten my family with my bee-swarm-like level of frenetic activity, I too am afraid of myself. I am turning into the Tasmanian Devil, all spin and weird noises and foaming at the mouth, and for some reason, I no longer think that is a good thing. The funny part is that even as I type this, I have pumpkin squares, matzoh ball soup, two apple cakes and a noodle kugel cooling in the kitchen, along with a load of laundry spinning, a clean and unloaded dishwasher, and a sink devoid of any dishes needing washing. As you can see, it’s a constant struggle for me.

I decided that I needed to do something drastic to take care of myself; I decided  that I needed to learn how to do nothing, to meditate. Calling meditation nothing would offend even Siddhartha, but to me, it is nothing.  It is the calming of the mind, the stopping of thought, the halting of the doing and thinking, and just being. Meditation is not for the faint of heart, but I need to learn to slow down before I implode, and I sure can’t figure out how to do it by myself.  

Meditation for me is more than just a little outside of my comfort zone. I am married to a dentist, and our home is deeply rooted in Western medicine beliefs.  I do enjoy the body-mind connection I feel after yoga, but that is about as far out of the box as we go. To my family, chiropractic is voodoo, so the idea that breathing and chanting and burning incense can bring one inner peace is a hard pill to swallow. And we like to swallow pills, big horse tranquilizer sized pills. I realized this alleged relaxation technique was going to require a whole lot of suspension of disbelief, but I need to do something to stop doing so many somethings. So I signed up for a meditation workshop that was held at my therapist’s office.

Meditation workshops are not all that hard to find, but I imagine a big difference exists between one held at a yoga studio or at Whole Foods versus one held at a therapist’s office. Meditation already has a New Age-y, granola-y sort of connotation, but when you throw together a group of people who found out about the workshop from their therapist, well, let’s just say it wasn’t exactly the general population.

Two people seemed to know each other, almost as if it were a date. The woman was Indian and quite lovely, and the man was neither. They seemed intimate enough to share a water bottle but not the love seat, so I was very confused. Next to them was a thin man with dark hair and dark circles under his eyes. He looked like he could have been an engineer, a computer person, or a manifesto writer. Another man sat beside him, a large man who seemed used to running meetings and company softball games rather than meditating. The last to arrive was an older lady with grown children. She looked like meditation was another thing to fill her time, along with delivering for Meals on Wheels, knitting, and trying to stay out of the liquor cabinet. The woman running the workshop reminded us that this was a judgment free area. Too late for that.

Six of us attended, each trying to not out-crazy the other ones, which lucky for us wasn’t hard to do with the teacher. She looked normal, whatever that means, but once she started talking, it was apparent that she probably had a few squirrels storing nuts up in her attic. On the floor in the small room where we met she had arranged a collection of objects that could have been a diorama at the hippie museum. A smudge stick, a collection of seashells, prayer beads, finger cymbals, and a candle holder in rainbow colors, providing both light and a tolerance for the gays, were all atop a sheer scarf. She informed us that we didn’t need to have props in order to meditate, but she encouraged us to try it if we thought it would help us create a space. Ha, creating a space. I can barely create a space on the toilet for myself without the whole family stopping by for conversation, let alone carve out a physical spot for my Tibetan singing bowl, my vibraslap, and a scented candle so I can slip into an altered state of being. This whole meditation thing was going to prove more challenging than I thought.

We each introduced ourselves, taking turns explaining why we came to the workshop and then lighting a candle on the gay candle holder.  After we each tried not to set her alter on fire, we sat while she tried to explain what meditation is without using normal words and phrases, which meant none of us had a better understanding of what we were trying to do.

After that, she threw us right into our first attempt at group meditation, which is nothing like an orgy, except for the heavy breathing. Because that was all it was, heavy breathing. We were instructed to breathe in and out of our noses without pausing or hyperventilating. We all closed our eyes and began breathing rhythmically. I concentrated on my breathing, in and out, in and out, until my head began to bob and sway.

When it became clear to me that falling asleep was not in fact meditating, I decided to stop concentrating on my breathing and begin concentrating on everyone else’s.  I was convinced someone else had actually fallen asleep. The only way to be sure was to open my eyes and break the spell, so I snuck a peek at everyone else. They were all doing what they were supposed to do, so I closed my eyes again before anyone noticed me gawking. We kept breathing and breathing and my mind went from mildly distracted to wild racing thoughts. No amount of breathing was going to quiet my head unless it included a can of spray paint or Reddy-Whip.  After forever passed, the teacher’s phone alarm went off, a soothing bell ding, and we all opened our eyes and pretended we were calmer. She asked how we felt, and the businessman said he had to redirect himself from wandering thoughts. The Indian lady said she felt calmer. I said I wanted to bolt from the room.

After all that breathing, we needed a snack break, so we wandered into the waiting room for some trail mix and Lance cracker packs, quietly munching while avoiding eye contact. I had to use the restroom and peed forever, thanks to a nervous bladder and a 20 ounce bottle of Deer Park. Then we resettled ourselves for another round of meditation.

This time the teacher passed out a laminated card with twelve uplifting affirmations we could memorize and say to ourselves at home. For the workshop, she read each affirmation twice for us, allowing us to think and reflect on the words while we cleared our minds of distracting thoughts and feelings. They were positive statements, concerning living in the moment, feeling connected to your physical body, accepting people as they are, that sort of thing. When we hit the fifth one, the weirdest thing happened to me. I started to cry. Not the loud sobbing and choking kind of cry, or the muffled sniffling while lying in bed kind of cry. It was more like a waterfall. I sat there listening to her words, and the next thing I knew, tears spilled down my cheeks, all over my décolletage. It didn’t even register to me that I was crying, and I didn’t feel the need to wipe my eyes. I just was.

After that, I began to feel like I was growing very small, that the loveseat on which I sat was growing larger and larger. It was very Alice in Wonderland. The only way I ever feel like that is when I have a fever. I could hear what the teacher said, so I didn’t feel like I was out of the room, I just felt tiny, surrounded by big cushiony softness.

When she brought us back, she again asked for feedback. The Indian woman said she felt very empowered. She talked about that feeling for a while, which involved the word powerful and power quite a bit. No one else commented, so I shared about my tears and my tiny feeling. The teacher found that very interesting, and thus I established myself as the crazy person in a room full of crazy people.

The teacher talked some more about other meditation techniques, including eating as meditation, which wouldn’t work for us overeaters, and even walking meditation. We had about five minutes left, so she decided to lead us in a nice deep resonating round of Ohm, which is really a combination of three sounds—ah-oh-um, repeated slowly and with purpose. Ohming was nice in a group setting, as we were harmonizing like the Whiffenpoofs. I didn’t feel any closer to peace, but I enjoyed bringing up the alto section of the room.

And with that, we were given some handouts, encouraged to take more snacks, and dismissed. I have to admit, I did feel calmer than when I got there. Of course, I had to drive in rush hour traffic to the other side of town by 5:30, then sat in a dark room, breathed myself into a nap, had a deep cleansing cry, a handful of dried apricots, and sang a little tune. It was like the perfect day in preschool. How could I not be calmer? Trying it at home, however, that will be another story altogether, another story for another day.

Namaste.

Purging

If ever there were a better metaphor than a collection of half empty freezer burned ice cream containers, then I can’t think of it. I am fully aware that I said half empty, which for ice cream is more optimistic than it sounds. A glass half full is supposed to sound all optimistic, but if whatever was in it is good, wouldn’t it be better if it were half empty? Ditto for the ice cream containers. Ice cream is yummy, so if the containers are half empty, that is a good thing, right?

Back to the metaphor, which yes, is good, but only if you know what it means, which I don’t. I wasn’t waxing poetic about ice cream containers today. I was cleaning out my freezer. I took out all the half-used bags of frozen fruit (we like a good smoothie in this house), the errant ice cubes that jumped out of the ice maker bin onto the shelves below, the multiple open boxes of veggie burgers with one shriveled patty in them, and of course, the ice creams. I counted four unfinished cartons of vanilla—French vanilla, old fashioned vanilla, vanilla bean, plain vanilla. With those were the unpopular flavors, the Ben and Jerry’s Crème Brulee, the odd mango sorbet, the ancient container of lime sherbet from a few years ago when my husband was all into making cherry limeade floats. The sweetness of life, partially enjoyed, and then shoved deeper into the coldness, neglected, growing hard, stale, and flavorless, until today, when I melted them in the sink, crushed their cartons, and freed up space for new ice creams.

I next turned my attention to the refrigerator door, because if there is an equivalent to freezer burned ice cream, it is, without doubt, the condiments. These required more effort to purge because it takes effort to figure out how old is too old when it comes to salad dressings. Hunting for the printed expiration dates is tricky if any dressing dripped down the sides of the bottle, as the oily residue eats through ink on the label. And jellies, seedless blackberry and seedless raspberry and good old Concord grape and fancy fig orange marmalade that paired perfectly with goat cheese at a party back in 2010. How old is too old? Well, I don’t know, to be honest, but I do know that my daughter is in a peanut-free classroom this year and peanut butter isn’t pairing with anything this season. Gone too went the two bottles of capers, as if one unused bottle weren’t enough, the old black olives, the even older green olives, the bottle with one oil-soaked sundried tomato clinging to the very bottom. What to do with any of them, used once upon a time in this or that recipe, other than to toss them?

Don’t worry; I rinsed out all the bottles and jars and filled my recycling bin at the same time I filled my garbage disposal.  I watched the melted ice creams swirl down the drain, then poured the old Passover wine and Sprite from the last stomach virus on top of them, which left an unusual stain on the white porcelain sink, and an even worse smell wafting from the pipes. So I scrubbed the sink clean, put some orange peel in the garbage disposal, and removed all evidence of the mess that I made.

It’s so much brighter in the refrigerator, and the blast of cold from the freezer hits you unfettered now that all the detritus has been removed. Hmmm, maybe this is the part where the metaphor makes sense. There is something very liberating about being free, unburdened, from whatever you traps you and blocks out the light. Bad habits. Unfulfilling choices. Loss, sadness, hurt, anger, pain. I tend to sweat the small stuff, and if you think about it, what is more insignificant than an old jar of mustard? It is easy to part with, to feel no remorse. It leaves you with room to try something new, like the curry paste. You might end up throwing that one away too, next year, but then again, it might be your new favorite.

Would You Care for a Doggie Bag?

Don’t you hate when people don’t clean up after their dogs? Of course you do, and so does everyone else. Everybody hates to see someone’s else dog’s crap sitting in their grass, but sometimes people don’t seem quite as bothered about seeing their own dog’s crap in someone else’s grass, which is why unattended piles of dung are a constant wherever there is a lawn and the potential for a strolling dog. Truly, it is up to each individual dog owner to do the right thing and pack in, pack out, as the outdoorsy types like to say.

In my neighborhood, filled with nouveau riche dog owner types, the popular way around being courteous is to have an underground electric fence, which is probably just as good at keeping out hobos as it is keeping in purebreds. Sometimes, however, those well manicured lawns and pristinely blown sidewalks are too tempting to resist, and out come the dog walkers, leashes in one hand, grocery bags in the other, at least the considerate ones do. They walk around the neighborhood and publicly toilet their dogs, pick up the poop, then continue on their merry way, that bag filled with crap like it were a stash of gumballs. One morning as I drove home from the gym, I counted no less than five women walking their dogs, each with a little bag of crap in their hands. It’s the must-have accessory for those who must have.

Recently, I visited MJ, who against my will has moved to another state. She is the proud owner of one crazy but adorable Papillion and the step-mother of a yellow lab whose lipstick is always half-cocked despite neutering. Ew. And yes, I felt the need to share that detail. If I have to see it every time, then you should know about it too.

Anyway, we decided that a morning walk with her baby in the stroller and her mismatched dog pack was a splendid way to start the day. She has moved to an extremely liberal and community-conscious area in the South, and in her overly planned neighborhood, they have actual dog poop stations like it’s a city park or something. Forest green metal kiosks house both a bag dispenser and a small trashcan, as well as a sign with a friendly but pointed reminder that every pet owner is as responsible for their dog’s feces as if they themselves were the pipe layers.

With two dogs in tow, I stopped at the closest bag station and grabbed two bags, hoping that the dogs would not require more than one each. I promptly put one on my hand like a puppet and began to talk to MJ.

“MMMJJJJJJ,” my talking poopbag hand puppet said, “Ohhh, MMMMJJJJJ? Hola, MJ. Que pasa?”

For some reason, my poop bag spoke with a really bad Spanish accent.

“MJ, I am hungry, MJ. Feed me, por favor,” my hand said.

MJ stopped pushing the stroller to laugh, which post baby requires a pause and crossed legs.

“You are crazy, girl,” she laughed at me.

“Si, MJ, si. I am loco. Muy loco!”

I continued with my piss poor Spanish speaking poop bag hand puppet as we walked the neighborhood, past other dog walkers who knew better than to put a dog crap bag on their hands. I tried to be discreet, although I am pretty sure I waved at more than one car with that tell-tale green bag on my hand. Then, when we were alone again, I would start up, “Oh, MMMJJJJJ?”

You know what else MJ does when she laughs now that she is post-baby? Yep, she lactates. We made quite the pair on that morning walk, me with a bag on my hand, MJ doubled over, eyes and boobs dripping.

Secretly, I wished the dogs wouldn’t have to crap because then our main source of entertainment would be gone, at least until we passed another poop station. But crap they did. Well, one of them did, the big one whose asshole is the size of a human's. I took the bag off my hand and said, “Do I have to clean that up?”

“No, of course not,” MJ kindly said, taking the bag from me and bending over to pick up the crap. After she had neatly knotted the end, we strolled back towards her home.

“Oh MMMMJJJJ,” I said in my bad Spanish accent, “I can’t talk with my mouth full, MJ.”

She rolled her eyes at me.

“Anyone you hate? Shall we set that bag on fire and leave it on someone’s doorstep?”

“Plastic doesn’t burn,” she answered.

“Even better,” I replied. “Or leave it in a mailbox? That would be good too.”

MJ ignored me and put it in the trashcan at the next poop station kiosk. “This is why you have cats,” MJ said.

“Exactly. I know where their poop is going to be, in a box, neatly buried in the sand, which I then scoop up with a shovel. I don’t have to feel it hot and fresh through my plastic hand puppet. Blech.”

Senior Wences is turning over in his grave.

Thanks for the Favor

Having pets can bring pleasure to your life if you concentrate on the good parts. The unconditional love is great, but the cleaning up puke and rushing around to find prescription dog food without a prescription and the never-ending poop scooping tends to take away a little from that enhancement of the quality of your life. It’s almost like taking care of pets is a concrete example of what life is really all about: picking up someone else’s shit.

Sometimes you decide you need a break from it all, the routines and doldrums of everyday life, and so you plan a vacation. But oh crud, what about your pets? Who will care for them, nurture them, and make them feel loved while you enjoy a week on the beach of sidestepping someone else’s dog crap? Boarding is always an option, although not without its own drawbacks, especially the cost and inflexibility of hours. I have several friends who have called a trip a few days short just because the kennel closed early on the weekends. Plus, how stressful is a kennel for your pet, who is accustomed to licking food off your fingers and sharing your pillow? Suddenly, you desert them in a hostile environment with strange dogs barking at all hours. It could make even the bravest of pets have an upset stomach in the backseat of your car on the way home.

Cats are a whole other story. Boarding would really be a last resort kind of option for me, because it takes all my strength, and by that I mean actual physical strength, to force my cats inside the car for a five minute drive to the vet’s office. I cannot imagine the ordeal it would be for me to board them, let alone how they might feel about it. Hiring a pet sitter is the easiest way to keep them at home, but when you tack the expense for that on top of a vacation, even a cheap weekend getaway, it adds up.

So I prefer to have a friend come to my home and feed them when I go out of town. I like to ask a friend who also has pets so that we can help each other out by taking turns caring for our pets while each of us finds something better to do out of town. Plus, it’s free. But like all things in life, friends pet sitting for friends has a dark side.

My friend BD and I have exchanged pet sitting several times over the course of our friendship, but lately, it just doesn’t seem to be working out. She usually boards her dog, who on a good day, with her loving family at home, could still bring western civilization to its knees with her enthusiastic tail wagging and jumping and cushion chewing and shoe snacking and homework eating. When I go over to BD’s house, the dog is so excited to see me she bounds in front of the car and waits there excitedly where I can’t see her, so that I never know if that day is the one I ran over her dog.

The cat, however, stays home and does what he does best, which involves filling the downstairs toilet with unrolled toilet tissue and knocking things off the counter. I’m used to that part, but BD recently expanded her menagerie to include a turtle and a hamster, so they are part of the pet care package. BD gave me a crash course in turtle and rodent care before she left town, and I felt fairly confident I could handle the responsibility. Wrong, as usual.

The first day I went over there, I dropped the hamster’s water bottle behind the dresser on which his cage sits. I tried to move the dresser out from the wall to retrieve the bottle, but it was stuffed with ten tons of business cards and brochures for BD’s job, so it wasn’t budging. I next scooted the end table next to the dresser away from the wall and tried to shimmy myself between the two pieces of furniture, but since I am not two dimensional, it didn't work. I got down on the floor and tried to peer into the dark underneath the dresser so I could at least see where the water bottle went, with no luck. I had no choice but to summon Incredible Hulk strength and walk the dresser away from the wall just enough so I could contort my arm and squeeze it behind, blindly feeling for the water bottle. Which was leaking a little, and very full. Right when I thought my arm was going to rip out of its socket, I felt the bottle with my fingers, grabbed it, and squirted water all over the wall while trying to get my arm loose. I was able to get my arm free, and it took significantly less than 127 hours.

I fed the turtle his dried shrimp and pellets after I finished with the hamster. Turtle food, by the way, smells a lot like a store in Chinatown. The turtle's little plant had come loose from the gravel and was bobbing along in the water, but I had had enough of sticking my hands in places I didn’t want to for one afternoon.

I returned every day for more of the same, but a few days later, the filter on the turtle tank was making a horrible noise. Smoke wasn’t coming out of it, but I had this mental image that I would make the turtle into soup and then burn down the house. I texted BD, who was coming home the next day, and she said to just unplug it, which I did. The water level also seemed low to me, but I don’t know nothing about caring for no turtles, so I tossed him a couple of extra dried shrimp and got the hell out of there. BD came home the next evening. During those twenty-four hours, that damn turtle rearranged all of the props in his tank, stacking everything against one glass wall before making his great escape. Curiously enough, BD found him behind the dresser.

When BD sits my cats, she too gets to experience the same kind of fun. My kitties get quite distraught when I go out of town, and they soothe themselves by chewing up the houseplants and vomiting them all over the place, a little bit at a time. I can be gone for less than two nights and find at least three little puddles of puke. BD has told me that a visit to the cats always involves one such surprise.

One time this summer, the cats took it a step further than the usual chew and spew. I had left their large container of cat food on the counter near where their food bowl is in my laundry room. BD came one evening in a rush, only to discover that one of the cats had knocked the very full container off the counter, causing the lid to pop off and kibble to scatter all over the floor. It wasn’t just a pile of cat food; it was fifteen pounds of dry cat food from the far wall to the doorway, like a rug of food. In fact, you couldn’t even see the rug underneath because of all the cat food. BD spent the next thirty minutes sweeping up as much of the food as she could, from under the washing machine and near the littler box and by the attic and every other square inch of laundry room floor. Teeth marks were visible on the lid to the container.

Maybe it just seems like pet sitting for each other is a favor, but in reality, it is more work and a bigger pain in the ass than just a simple “come over and feed the cat” or “all you have to do is count out twelve turtle pellets.” Our pets, like us, are rife with quirkiness and a tendency for melodrama. Maybe next time BD or I go out of town we should dress up the cats and the hamsters and the turtle as dogs and try for a group rate at the kennel. I am sure they have a contingency plan for animals hiding and frequent hysterical vomiting. And they work for a fee, not a favor.

Cock of the Walk

Tell me, is there anything as peaceful or relaxing as a house on the lake? To look out the window and see the calm water? To sleep in without the interruption of texting or phone calls? To lie in the hammock on the deck and feel the cool breeze? To hear the crowing of the rooster in the forest?

My husband and his brother in law recently purchased an older lakefront house at an absurdly low price, without the blessing of either my sister-in-law or me. While that is certainly an issue for more than one session of marital counseling, the fact remains that we are now part owners of a lake house, which means that occasionally, when we have nothing better to do (and believe me, I always try to find something better to do), we tootle down the interstate and spend a day at the lake. Our house is rundown and dated compared to the rest of the houses on the street, which are occupied full time by their owners. For us, it’s an investment/recreational property, so we are only there on the weekends, if at all.

My husband and his brother in law have spent the better part of six months slowly, and I do mean slowly, renovating the house, mostly without the assistance of professional craftsman. They have installed the hardwood floors, tiled the bathroom shower stall, and even hung light fixtures and window treatments. It is coming together, and in an effort to be civil, I occasionally go out to the house to see what needs doing and provide lunch and make sure our children don’t drown.

The truth is, I don’t like lakes. I grew up a beach person, and I am still a beach person. I like sand and salty water and waves and sitting under an umbrella to read a book and finding shells and spotting dolphins breaching in the distance. I like seagulls begging for crackers and sea oats and long walks with my bare inner thighs rubbing together. When it comes to the beach, I even like the patently unlikable parts.

But the lake? Well, I don’t like any of that business. The way it goes from twelve feet deep to sixty feet deep. How the water smells and feels and if you get any up your nose or down your windpipe, chances are good a brain-eating bacterium has just entered your bloodstream. And don’t get me started on the fish. You can’t even tell them apart; they all look the same and none of them are going to be a shark or a jellyfish or anything even remotely interesting or edible. Everything is slimy, and you have to wear life jackets, and did I mention snakes? Plus it’s boring. Get in the boat, ride around, jump out, tread water, sit on a tube, repeat. You can’t even go crabbing, and I am allergic to crabs!

One thing, however, does make the lake house worthy of the occasional visit, and that is the potential for wildlife. I am always optimistic that I will see deer when there, although it has yet to happen for me. Last time my husband took our daughters, they saw a deer swimming across the lake. A deer, swimming! Who knew they even knew how to swim? It’s not like he was doing the breaststroke, but he was in fact deer paddling his way from one shore to the other. Instead, I have seen woodpeckers, which are ordinary birds with extraordinary names, and hawks, and more than a handful of frogs. And I have seen the rooster.

Our lake house neighbors have a rooster that patrols their yard. He was a gift from some friends of theirs who raise chickens, but a coop only needs so many roosters, and he was a surplus rooster, so the neighbors took him to the lake as a pet. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite as odd as walking down a path to the dock and having a rooster, feathered ass and coxcomb waving in the breeze, cross your path. He has taken it upon himself to patrol not only his owner’s property, but ours as well, so you never know where he will pop up until you hear the tell-tale crowing.

One time, when we took some of our daughters’ friends with us to the lake, the rooster decided to join us on the dock. Well, he did need a little coaxing. The girls were both delighted and terrified to see him strut down the path, and I foolishly enticed him to walk onto the dock by making a trail of pumpernickel pretzels on the ground. It turns out that roosters like pumpernickel pretzels as much as chicken feed and worms and bugs, and before we knew it, he was all the way on the floating dock, high stepping and turning his head sideways in that weird way that chickens do. I thought if we were lucky, we could get him all the way on the boat, then maybe abandon him on the shore of another part of the lake so we didn't have to worry anymore about him attacking anyone near the house.

My husband came down to join us and chastised us for encouraging the rooster to strut on the dock, but I mommed up and admitted I was the one who got him there by feeding him pretzels. Really, pumpernickel pretzels are tasty, so it was a shame when my husband picked up the stray ones and threw them in the water, where they instantly grew waterlogged and sank before the ugly boring fish could even nibble them.

The rooster roaming on the dock and in the woods is the only good part of the rooster. The bad part is four in the morning, when the loud crowing starts. It’s one thing to hear a rooster crow on the Mattel See N Say, but it’s quite another when you are trying to relax at the lake. And this rooster seems to think he is more like a church bell or a grandfather clock; on the hour, every hour, he cock a doodle doos loudly and annoyingly. It’s quaint for one night, but if I lived there full time, that rooster would not.

My brother in law reported that the neighbors recently invested in some hens of their own to give that rooster something better to do than nose his way around the neighborhood, waking everyone up and snacking on pumpernickel pretzels. Maybe next time I go to the lake, I can get some fresh cage-free eggs to go with my four A.M. wake up call. If I’m going to be up that early, I might as well make an omelet.

A Doggone Lie

A few years ago, I wrote an essay about a woman at my gym and her helping dog who is always by her side while she exercises. I have seen that dog for years now, the same yellow Lab in his hunter green vest, alerting any friendly folk that he is working and not to pet him. He would stay close to her, resting on his belly while she used the treadmill or elliptical machine, which made me admire her for staying active and healthy in the face of some disease that required her to need the assistance of that sad eyed canine.

Well, last week, the lady was at the gym with a new dog, a beautiful but serious looking Golden Retriever. This new dog takes the job more seriously than the last one, staying very alert by her side, never making eye contact with humans, not even smiling a subtle dog smile. I didn’t think the other dog looked particularly old, but I suppose at some point even helping dogs need to retire.

I commented on the new dog while walking on the track with my friend DK, who like me, is both a regular at the gym and nosy enough to be aware of things like a new working dog.

I said something along the lines of “Hey, look, she got a new dog.” DK said she hadn’t noticed, so we took a moment to stare at the dog in all its splendor.

“What’s wrong with her, anyway? One of the instructors told me she’s blind, but she doesn’t act blind,” I said.

“There’s nothing wrong with her,” DK told me. “She is perfectly healthy.”

“Are you serious? What do you mean there’s nothing wrong with her?”

DK looked thrilled to be able to share a little gym gossip. “She has a disabled daughter. That dog is her daughter’s, not hers. There’s nothing wrong with her.”

“Pardon my language, but are you fucking kidding me?” I said to her.

“I kid you not,” she answered. “There is nothing wrong with her. Here, I’ll show you.”

Now, this part sounds like it’s going to lead to one of those moments like on The Brady Bunch, when Mrs. Brady was in court for a traffic accident. Remember that one? The guy who was against Mrs. Brady had a neck brace and was claiming whiplash, but he was really fine, and Mr. Brady tricked him into revealing his lie in court by throwing his briefcase loudly on the floor, which caused the man to turn his head to see what made that noise, thus showing a full range of motion in his neck and how could anyone try to set up Mrs. Brady anyway? Well, it was nothing like that. Except for the fraud part, to which Mrs. Brady could relate.

DK walked up to the old lady with the dog, bent down to stroke the dog’s head, and asked her what happened to the other dog. I don’t remember what the woman said since I was still in shock over the part where DK touched a service dog who was working, which on the scale of things you don’t do is somewhere between throwing your gum on the sidewalk and using the N word. The next part I remember well though and it went something like this:

“Oh, this is my daughter’s new dog. She’s on vacation right now, so I have him with me while she is out of town,” the old lady said.

“Well, he’s really beautiful,” DK said, “and so serious.”

“He takes his job very seriously,” she said.

"Enjoy your workout!" DK said cheerfully.

As DK and I walked away, continuing on the track, she turned to me and smugly said, “See?”

“I cannot believe that! I feel so violated.” I was outraged. “Who takes a service dog who isn’t even their service dog to a public place and passes him off as hers? What a fraud!”

“I told you,” DK said. “Nothing wrong with her.”

The next time I see that woman and her service dog who isn’t even servicing her, I am going to walk right up to him and scratch him behind the ears and maybe even give him a treat. Then I am going to follow her out to the parking lot when she leaves and see if she gets into a car in a disabled parking space, because if she does, I am going to report her to the police or something, because that is just wrong.

Okay, I am not going to do any of that. But I am thinking about making a little vest with a badge on it for my cat and taking him with me to the grocery store. If anyone asks me, I will say it’s my daughter’s, because that makes everything okay.

Between the Sheets

I like my high thread count sheets, and I am not going to apologize for them. I began buying nice sheets about eight years ago, sheets that used to be well out of my price range, sheets that come in either white or ivory and had packaging with calligraphy on it. They feel better, softer and more sensual, and even if I don’t get eight hours of sleep, I would like to have the environment be ripe for a good six hours. High thread counts are almost the standard now, though, and those sheets of the lifestyles of the rich and famous are pretty much available on trailer budgets and in a rainbow of colors. So I branched out from the typical boring ivory, and now I have a small collection of European style and Egyptian cotton bedding sets, in hues like taupe and sage green and rich chocolate brown.

My children appreciate the finer bed linens as well, and when they have difficulty falling asleep in their own beds, they like to climb into mine. Something about that combination of the king sized bed, the familiar smells of their parents, and the luxury sheets lull them to sleep faster than a Benadryl. When I am ready to go to bed, my husband will move whichever child nodded off in our bed, carefully walking them back to their own rooms, so that I can get comfy and read before I too slumber. It’s not uncommon for one of my daughters to find her way back to my bed after I have gone to sleep. At least one night a week, I will wake up to pee, only to find one of my kids drooling away on my husband’s pillow. If they are feeling stressed, or if they have a babysitter, or they have any other change in their normal routines, they soothe themselves by resting in my room. In other words, my bed is not an adults-only domain. And sometimes, it really should be.

Recently, my husband and I went to a party, and my friend SF babysat the girls. SF knows our musical bed routine well, as most of the time when she comes over to watch my children, one of them will end up in my room before the night is over. We all accept that as the norm and don’t really do much to change it, because both girls are easy to move back to their own beds. When we get home, SF gives me a full report of how they behaved and ate and slept, including the usual difficulties in falling asleep.

On this particular night, my youngest daughter, S, had that feeling that sleep was going to be difficult to attain, so she thought it would be best to start out in my bed instead of her own. SF knows I am cool with it and got both the girls to go through the bedtime routine of showering and tooth brushing and picture book reading. When it was finally time to say good night, S removed the shams and decorative pillows and turned down the comforter and top sheet. She looked at the bed before she climbed in.

“What is all over these sheets?” she asked SF.

SF looked at the brown sheets, which had evidence of conjugal relations on them. Some hot freaky conjugal relations. Which meant that evidence was kind of all over the place. SF is a friend, and a woman, and familiar with what she saw. Wisely, she didn’t say a word, nor did she laugh.

E, my older daughter, also inspected the sheets. “It’s probably just drool stains. I have them all over my bed too.”

S most likely gave E a skeptical look, so E did what for some reason seemed logical to her. She got on the bed and sniffed the stains. According to SF, she didn’t just gingerly snuffle. She got her nose right up on the stains and inhaled deeply.

“I think it’s just drool, they’re fine,” E declared. SF stifled all remarks or outburst of laughter, and instead tucked my daughter into my filthy nasty semen covered sheets and wished her a good night.

When we got home from our evening out, SF asked to speak to me alone, while my husband was downstairs piddling about with his wallet and loose change and keys and whatever the hell else he digs out of his pockets, which could be rocks and frogs and baseball cards for all I know.

“I have to tell you what happened tonight,” SF said, “but I don’t want your husband to hear.” And she relayed that story to me as delicately as she knew how.

“For the record,” I said, “I just changed the sheets two days ago. They aren’t that dirty.”

Because, really, what else could I say.

My mother used to complain incessantly about how nothing was ever just hers. I thought she was selfish at the time, and in all honesty, she is selfish, but in some ways, I know what she means. I am not going to change my sheets every time I get my freak on to protect my children from a reality they will learn on their own in less than ten years, which disturbs me every time I think it. One day, E will have her own sex stained sheets, and she might sniff it, and that smell might trigger a memory back to one night when she was eleven and her sister could not identify what was all over their parents’ bed, and she will know. Five gray hairs just sprouted on my head typing that sentence.

And that’s why kids should sleep in their own beds. And sheets should only be ivory.