Another Day in Paradise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Let’s just go home,” E said again.

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

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

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

“Frig, it won’t take my money.”

“Try that one again,” my daughter suggested.

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

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

She scampered around the car and picked them up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Goddamn it fucking pig fucker!” I screamed.

“Mom! “E yelled at me.

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

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

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

“Yeah,” he said.

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

“How much?” he asked.

“I guess five dollars.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

How About a Thank You?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who's Up for Another Round?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She burped at me. “Not gonna happen.”

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

“I’m not looking for that.”

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

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

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

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

Over the Rainbow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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