Baywatch

Last weekend, I did the unthinkable: I went to the beach with a dear friend, just the two of us. It’s known as a girls’ weekend, and while I have been lucky enough to experience it once or twice in the past, I have to admit, it’s been a very long time since I have done anything that only required packing my own bag, let alone leave my family to fend for themselves. But the opportunity to have an overdue and uninterrupted conversation with a long distance friend was too good to not make it happen. 

When we first talked about going out of town together, my friend KC, who lives out West, and I tried to think of a good place to meet, sort of a middle ground . But halfway between Colorado and South Carolina involves a lot of flat land, frequent tornado warnings, strong conservative values, and not a whole lot of exciting touristy stuff. She suggested a Texas beach, but I nixed that because no one ever said, hey, the beaches in Texas are fantastic, let’s drive from the East Coast to see it! We both decided that Chicago wasn’t necessary. New York was breezed over, and Florida was too far. Which left us sort of quiet and embarrassed. Neither one of us gets to travel much outside of visiting family, so we couldn’t come up with any good location. 

We decided she would fly into my town and we would drive to the beach here in South Carolina, which has yet to experience an oil spill and is therefore still pretty lovely if you overlook the rebel flags and rural poverty on your way to the coast. Driving in my state was claustrophobic for KC, who has grown accustomed to the wide open spaces and broad horizons of the West. She is used to mountains in the distance, not an overgrowth of scrub and pine trees. We talked and interrupted each other and talked some more, and no one asked for a snack or a juice box or a new DVD to watch or a grocery sack for puking. It was a great drive.

We got to the beach condo, unloaded all of our stuff, and headed out for a walk on the beach. I am fortunate that I go to the beach about four or five times a year. KC has not gone to the beach since she moved to Colorado seven years ago. She was as happy as a little girl to be romping on the beach. Lucky for us, it was low tide, the best time to look for all the critters and shells. KC carried a bucket with her to hold whatever treasures she might find. 

She started by collecting the most ordinary shells you’ve ever seen. You know the ones I mean, the orange and cream colored bivalves, some average clam shell, too boring to even have a name. She found beauty in them all, and kept stopping to pick up shells that had been passed over by most beach goers. Then we happened upon a large olive shell, half buried in the sand. KC picked it up, and glory be, the snail was still alive in it! Have you ever seen an olive snail? It’s a freaky little animal. It has a slimy mantle that sort of separates and covers the outside of the shell opening. Let’s not beat around the bush; it looks like fairly pronounced labia. 

KC: I have to take this shell home to my son!

Me: It’s going to stink. More than it already does. You can't put that in your suitcase.

KC: Are you sure? It's beautiful.

Me: I don’t want to look at that anymore.

She added it to her bucket. While we walked along, she found many other rocks and shells with pretty colors and markings, until we stumbled across a living whelk. I don’t mind whelks as much. They don’t look like vaginas. She dropped it in her bucket.

As we walked along, KC was disturbed by the number of jellyfish that washed up on shore. I commented to her that all the overfishing has led to real problems with the ecosystem balance, leading to an overabundance of jellyfish. Jellyfish used to have a season, but now, no matter what time of year you go to the beach, the shoreline is littered with their dead bodies. The idea of jellyfish beaching themselves and dying out of water distressed KC to such a degree that she began tossing them back out to sea if they still showed any signs of life, which we referred to as “blooping.” “Blooping” is that thing when the jellyfish still moves a little even when a wave doesn’t initiate the movement. If we saw one that still looked round and firm and shiny and full of life, such as it is, KC would stop and bend over and chuck it back into the water.

KC: I am the jellyfish whisperer.

Me: They don’t even have a brain. It’s just a brainless ball of snot. And I am pretty sure they are going to wash back up on the beach when you walk away, just to spite you.

KC: I'm saving their lives. I can't just let them die.

Me: Sure, you can. Watch me walk away.

When we returned to the condo, KC still had her living creatures in her bucket. We Googled the best way to get them out of their shells. It turns out that experienced shell collectors recommend boiling.  KC got out the Caphalon pot and filled it with water, then put her still living shell dwellers in the pot over high heat, with the lid on, because guess what stinks really bad if you cook it? 

Me: Don’t you find it ironic that you are killing those beautiful shell makers yet saved the worthless life of every still twitching jellyfish you saw?

KC: But these shells are for my son! He is so jealous he isn’t here with me.

Me: Snail killer.

After hard boiling the snails and whelks, we let the pot cool on the stove and went out for dinner. When we came back, the condo smelled like we had been cooking fishy road kill. We took the pot, its contents, and a grocery sack out to the parking lot, where KC coaxed the cooked crustaceans out of their homes with a fork. The smell was ungodly, but the shells were perfection.

Before our weekend was over, KC managed to single handedly save the lives of at least twenty jellyfish. She also managed to slaughter another whelk and some hermit crabs, which for the record do not slide easily out of the homes. It was a real circle of life kind of moment. I concentrated my efforts on looking for shark’s teeth when we walked and trying not to complain about the smell when we relaxed in the condo. 

I hope her collection survived the baggage claim at the Denver airport. It would be a shame if all those critters died in vain.

Sweating the Small Stuff

I’m a little worried about our hamster.

 Maximus, the dwarf hamster, has lived with us for about a year now. He has adapted well to life in our home, despite being constantly stared at by the cats and ignored for days at a time. He has gone on vacation to the beach a few times, survived a close call with the stairs, and generally enjoys a nice quality of life with plenty of sunflower seeds and corn kernels. Sure, he gets dropped occasionally or batted around in his hamster ball, but that certainly can’t be any more dangerous than, say, living in the wild.

 As you may recall, we got the hamster after much pleading from both my friend BD, who had an extra hamster who needed a home, and my baby girl, S, who does not believe in such a thing as cute overload. BD convinced me that having a small pet was a great way to teach S about both responsibility and death, claiming that small pets have a shelf life just slightly longer than the average kid’s attention span. After explaining the details of cage cleaning and feeding and handling to S, I finally broke down and allowed the hamster to move in with us.

Don’t tell my kids, but I like the hamster too. I visit with him every night after they go to bed. I even talk to him in the same annoying voice I use on the cats. I pick him up out of his cage, I hold him, and I feed him seeds and treats. Which means that when S is spending lots of time with Maximus, he gets double treats and love and snuggling. I don’t know if he enjoys all that human contact, but he is a butterball. I wonder if obesity is as unhealthy for a rodent as it is for a person.

Over Easter, my sister’s family came to visit. My two nephews are a few years older than my daughters and have reached an age where playing isn’t really their thing. S has a hard time relating to her 13 and 16 year old cousins, who in turn share few common interests with their 10 year old girl cousin. Lucky for S, she has Maximus the hamster. My nephew SM will keep S company as long as they can play with the hamster, which might be cute, but is still a rodent and therefore maintains a slight cool factor.

After my sister’s family left, S seemed a little blue. I assumed it was because Easter was over, or perhaps because she was crashing from all the candy she had consumed before breakfast. But she moped around all afternoon, so I asked her what was bothering her.

“I don’t like Maximus anymore,” she told me.

Okay, this is the same kid who can look at a picture of kittens and cry. How could she no longer like the hamster that eleven months ago she was begging for?

“Why not? Did he bite you?” I asked her. Maximus is partial to children's fingers.

“You know that red thing on his belly?” she said.

I do know that red thing on his belly. I always assumed it was an umbilical hernia, but I didn’t want to say anything out loud, mostly because I didn't want to have to explain what an umbilical hernia is. “What about it?” I asked her.

“Well, SM said it is Maxi’s penis.” She got all disgusted, like just saying the word left a bad taste in her mouth.

 “That’s crazy. That’s not his penis.”

 “Well, SM said it was.”

“What is he, a hamster anatomy specialist? He is wrong, sweetie. I think that’s his belly button.”

“If it’s his belly button, then why does it stick out?” she asked me.

An excellent question, really. One that required an Internet search. How did parents do it before the Internet? It turns out that what SM thought was a penis and I thought was a hernia is actually a scent gland, locating inconveniently in the center of the hamster’s belly. And based on the photos and research I saw, Maximus’s was infected.

I kept a watch on Maximus’s gland over the next few days, and sure enough, it got redder and angrier on a daily basis. He still slept all day and ran on his wheel all night and ate his seeds, so I didn’t give it much thought, until I had to clean his cage. Normally his cage is kind of gross from all his food hoarding and bathroom activities, but clearly something else was going on with the little guy. Something that involved infection, and drainage of said infection.

It was time to bring the situation to my husband’s attention. I tend to overreact, whereas he likes to minimize. Together, we form a normal perception. Plus, he is a dentist, so while he has no formal rodent training, he can at least offer a slight medical perspective, even if he works in human mouths only.

“I think the hamster might be sick. Do you think you can take him to the vet tomorrow?”

 “The vet?” My husband said. “Who takes a hamster to the vet?”

 “But his scent gland looks infected.”

“What’s a scent gland, and how can you tell?” he asked.

“It’s that thing that SM thought was his penis, and you don’t want to know.”

 “I wouldn’t even know where to take him.”

I anticipated this response and was ready for it. “I found two small animal vets nearby, and they both have weekend hours. Maybe you could take him tomorrow.”

“I don’t want to do that. I’ll look into how to treat hamster infections online.”

 It suddenly occurred to me that maybe he was right, maybe taking a hamster to the vet wasn’t the best idea I ever had. Maybe this was what BD meant when she said that hamsters were a great way to teach children about death. It’s a lot easier to get over the loss of that pet you never played with than it is to lose your grandmother.

 “Well, I’ll do it then. How much do you think it will cost?” I wasn't playing the martyr so much as I was genuinely worried about that little guy.

 “Probably more than four new hamsters.”

Faced with that financial reality, I decided to go the home remedy route. I soaked a Q tip in hydrogen peroxide and cleaned the hamster’s gland. I cleaned out his cage. I put less bedding in the bottom of it so his belly wouldn’t get too irritated. So far, he is holding on, but for how much longer? The gland seems to change on a daily basis, and yet, I can’t bring myself to haul him down to the vet for a round of tiny antibiotics because his treatment costs more than his replacement. Don’t judge me.

 I figure I have two approaches to take. I can either let nature take its course and allow Maximus to live out the rest of his days, however many that may be, in the comfort of his brightly colored cage, or I can scout out the pet stores for his doppelganger. I don’t really like either choice that much. Instead, I am bracing myself for the inevitable, which I think will begin with tears, move on to a shoe box funeral, and end up a trip to the pet store for a new hamster.

I hate to end on such a sad note, so instead how about a funny little Maximus story?

 My tween has a bad habit when it comes to laundry. She forgets to empty her pockets, and frequently I find candy wrappers and loose change in the bottom of the washing machine. Unfortunately, she also forgets about her feminine hygiene products as well. Those items she does not keep in her pockets, but nonetheless, they end up in the bottom of the washer as often as the candy wrappers.

 The other day, I washed a load of light clothes, like bras and t shirts and panties. I transferred the wet clothes to the dryer but something kept getting stuck on the agitator. I tugged and tugged but whatever it was wasn’t budging. I looked into the machine and realized that one of her panty liners, which she of course forgot to throw away, was stuck to the inside of the washing machine. Disgusting.

 I screamed at her, “E, you left your maxi pad in the washer!” at the top of my lungs because I was pissed and she was downstairs.I wanted her to be able to hear both words and tone.

At the same time E answered with a “huh?” my younger daughter S screamed hysterically, “Maxi? Who put Maxi in the washing machine?” Maxi, short for Maximus.

 “No, sweetie, Maxi is in his cage. I am talking to E.” I tried to calm her down.

“Gross, she put her pad in the washing machine?”

E came into the laundry room. “I don’t even use maxi pads, Mom.” “Whatever, it's called, you left it in the laundry again. Now your napkin is extra sanitary,” I told her.

We all had a good chuckle, kind of like at the end of a sitcom when everyone laughs together until they freeze the frame and the credits roll.


My husband insists that Maximus is fine, that if he were really sick, he would be lethargic and snippy and unpleasant. But how can you tell if a nocturnal rodent is lethargic? I’m not staying up that late to find out. He is eating and pooping and sleeping, so really, he looks about the same as normal. Except for his giant gland, which is not a penis.

Maybe They're Just Happy

I am known for my bizarre little stream of consciousness, but it turns out, I have passed that delicious trait onto my older daughter, E. At 12, E has demonstrated some pretty odd jumps in thought that rival my own twisted mind, and I have to admit, I am as proud as I am disturbed. Add to that her developing sense of humor and understanding of double entendres, and my tween is turning into one weird kid. I love who she is, even as she is shaping up for a lifetime of saying the wrong thing and thinking thoughts most people would never verbalize.

 About a month ago, we were enjoying a delicious Sunday breakfast at home. My friend MJ and her baby boy KS were staying with us, and I had prepared quite a spread. Homemade pancakes, veggie sausage patties, grits, fresh fruit, and pork sausage links. We don’t do eggs in our family usually because we all just rather eat the starches anyway, so who needs the extra calories?

 The pork sausage was a snafu on my part, in that I don’t eat pork or any other red meat. I don’t care if the Pork Council calls it the other white meat; it still starts off red and has a funky aftertaste and smells like a slaughterhouse when I cook it, so I have no interest in eating it. But the package looked exactly like the turkey sausage box, and MJ doesn’t have the same red meat aversion I do, so pork sausage links it was.

We all sat down to stuff ourselves on what looked like a hotel breakfast buffet, when E asked me if the sausage was pork or turkey. I confessed that I accidentally bought pork. She opted for a veggie sausage patty instead, and then she asked me, “Mom, can animals be gay?”

Now, the last thing I want to think about while eating animal products is their sexual orientation. Honestly, I don’t want to think about their lives at all. Was this nugget once a nice chicken? Did it look after its chicks lovingly? Did this steak once cheat on his wife or beat his children? Did my Chilean sea bass embezzle from the school? I don’t even want to remember my food had a face.

 “Are you asking me if your sausage is gay?” I said, causing MJ to choke a little.

 “She’s eating veggie sausage, Mom,” my other daughter S chimed in.

 “Can't we eat breakfast without having one of these conversations?” My husband asked.

 “Just drink your coffee,” E told him. “Well, Mom, can they?”

 “Sure, they can,” I said. “If you think about what percentage of the human population is gay, and if you believe homosexuality is biological and not a choice, well, why couldn’t animals be gay? I would guess it would be in about the same numbers as with people.”

 “The farm operates on prison rules.” My husband said. MJ and I cracked up.

“What does that mean?” S asked.

“Who wants more pancakes?” I smirked.

“Well, which animals are gay?” E continued.

“How am I supposed to know? Am I some expert on gay animals?”

When I was a kid, I had a dog that used to hump men and male cats, but I didn’t offer up that information. Besides, the dog was more into fragrances than partners. If it smelled good to him, he would hump it. I bet he would have humped a cheeseburger if it was drenched in Polo by Ralph Lauren.

 E stood up and said, “I’ll Google it real quick."

 “No!” MJ, my husband, and I all yelled at her.

“I’ll do it,” I said. I hopped up, almost knocking over my chair, and quickly rushed over to the desktop computer. Everyone else continued eating their breakfast. “It says right here that lots of animals have exhibited gay behavior.”

 “Seriously, it’s breakfast,” my husband said again to no one in particular.

“All across the animal kingdom,” I continued. “10% of male rams won’t mate with ewes. That might be about the same as in humans. It says here all sorts of animals have shown homosexual behavior. Bison. Snakes. Fish.“

 “What about pigs?” S asked.

 I ignored her and rejoined my family at the table. “How does one get from breakfast sausage to gay animals?” I asked out loud.

 E thought for a minute and said,” I don’t have any idea. I was just curious, I guess.”

“Gay curious?” MJ said, stifling a laugh.

“Anyone for more sausage?” I said, holding up the plate with the links. Of course, the answer was no.

Shock and Awe

Last night, I came home late after a meeting. I went upstairs to say good night to my daughters, E and S, who had already gone to bed. I kissed my tween and then went into her sister’s room. S was crying softly to herself in the dark room.

 “What’s wrong, baby? Why are you crying?” I asked her, rubbing her back.
“Everyone’s been mean to me all night, and I’m just frustrated,” she told me.

I like to think I can go to a meeting for a few hours and not have the house fall apart in my absence. In fact, when I came in, I noticed the kitchen had been cleaned, the lunches packed, and the kids in bed. I was thrilled. I planned on showing my husband just how thrilled I was after I made sure the kids were asleep. So I was surprised to hear how upset S was, given that everything looked pretty pulled together to me.

“Who’s been mean to you? Do you want to talk about it? Tell me what happened.”
 “Daddy was mad at me and I spilled my water twice.”
“Sweetie, I don’t think Daddy would be mad about spilled water. It’s just water; it dries. It’s not like you spilled a bucket of latex paint.”
S smiled through her tears. “No, but he yelled at me and I had to clean it up myself.”

S is ten. She is perfectly capable of cleaning up a cup, even two cups, of spilled water.

“I doubt he would be mad at you for spilling water. He seemed like he was in a good mood when I left.” I tried to let her know I sympathized with how she felt, but also that perhaps she was overreacting. Overreacting runs in the family, both sides, so the kids were blessed with a double dose of melodrama. 
“He wasn’t crabby when you left,” she said.
“Maybe he’s just tired. He had a long day.”
“No, he got crabby after he electrocuted himself,” she said.

Wait, what?

 A couple of days ago, the fluorescent lights in the downstairs bathroom fizzled out. You know what I mean, don’t you? When you turn on the light switch and the fluorescent bulbs blink and flicker and then allow spirits to communicate with you through the faint twitchy glow? Well, try running in the house to pee with Haunted Mansion lighting. It’s just creepy, like you expect to see the kid from The Ring behind you in the mirror. We were all out of the lifetime supply of fluorescent bulbs we discovered in the attic after we moved in, so one of us had to go to Home Depot to get some more.

My husband had left the label from the box of bulbs on the counter. I thought that if I ran that errand for him, he would be so pleased that he would change the bulbs in the bathroom and I could stop feeling like I was at a séance every time I took a crap. So I decided to surprise him with a fresh box of bulbs. That might sound like a surprise to you, but to me, going to Home Depot is worse than going to the gynecologist, the dermatologist, and the ophthalmologist combined, while being forced to watch a football game. I saw it as a sincere effort to help on my part.

 I stopped by the Home Depot on the way home from the gym, thinking I had the label, so it would be a quick dash in, dash out stop. As usual, I was wrong. It turns out you need a fricking electrical engineering degree to buy fluorescent bulbs. 32 watts, 40 watts, 60 watts. 48 inches, 60 inches. I checked my label, which was from bulbs purchased in 1993, and tried to match it with today’s newfangled bulbs, which was like trying to buy an MP3 to play on your 78 speed turntable.

I finally figured out the right length and wattage, but then I had to make the most important choice: what kind of lighting? Did we want soft white, natural light, bright light, work light, multi-purpose, day light? Oh my God, I am too stupid to buy a light bulb.

I didn’t even know how many I needed to buy because I don’t know how many of those tubes fit in the box light over the sink. I felt like my husband probably does at the grocery store. I tried to call him, which is what he would do to me in the reverse situation, but he was busy, so I had to make an executive decision. I bought a box of ten bulbs so that, on the off chance I had guessed correctly, I wouldn’t have to attempt to do it again for at least a few years, or seven, if the information on the box was true. By the grace of the lighting gods, I was correct on all accounts. I left the box in the bathroom, and asked my husband to please change the bulbs while I was at the meeting.

 My husband, who is normally very handy, did in fact change the bulbs while I was gone. He stood on the sink top to change them, and unfortunately, something happened, causing him to almost slip. He accidentally touched the metal end of the bulb in an effort to not fall and break his neck or drop the tube and expose us all to mercury poisoning. And presto! He got shocked. He released a string of obscenities, and yes, he admitted to me later, he was not a happy camper after his near-death experience.

What my daughter didn’t tell me was that at the same time her father was accidentally killing himself in the bathroom, she spilled one of the two cups of water, then yelled to him to help her clean it up. So he yelled back at her to do it herself. Because nothing makes electrical burns more fun than getting one while touching water.

“Well, S,” I said to her while still rubbing her back, “why don’t you give your dad a break? If I got electrocuted, I think I’d be pretty crabby too. Wouldn’t you?”
 She laughed a little and said,” Yeah, you’re right, Mom.”

Why does all the good stuff happen when I’m not at home?

Eavesdroppin'

In the mornings, my two daughters take over my bathroom in a flurry of teeth brushing and hair fixing before school. Usually, the two of them argue over who gets to use which sink or the magnifying mirror or the electric toothbrush charger. Today I caught them in a rare moment of cooperation and conversation, so I sat quietly and tied my shoes on the edge of the tub while listening intently to them. I didn’t know if I should be proud or horrified.

E: I hope no one laughs at your leggings at school today.
S: I hope your skin doesn’t break out during PE.
E: I hope someone wants to talk to you.
S: I hope you have to make a poo at school.

Is it just me, or are these cleverly disguised insults the most polite form of sibling discourse ever? I especially like the horror of a bowel movement in public. Does anyone poop in a public restroom without fretting about it first? Just in case you didn’t realize it, that fear does start in childhood, and not just yours. I am sure there is a name for that phobia, but I couldn’t find it easily, and I knew if I spent any more time looking on Google I would find the names of things I didn’t know people actually feared. For example, apotemnophobia. Fear of people with amputations. Who knew?

 I had a supervisor once who would go to the bathroom every morning with his newspaper tucked under his arm. He would stroll casually towards the men’s room without an ounce of embarrassment. As gross as he was, I loved that routine. We all had a good thirty minute break in his absence, which we generally used to talk about how gross he was.

 E: I would never do that. I would hold it in until I got home. I don’t even like to pee at school.

 She doesn’t. I have never met a human who could hold her urine the way my twelve year old can. I am both appalled and jealous of her. It’s not like I pee everywhere I go, but at the same token, I am queen of the UTIs. Holding it is not an option. I know one day this habit will catch up with her, but until then, I let her enjoy the freedom that goes along with her infrequent trips to the bathroom.

 S: I do that too, but sometimes you have to go anyway.
 E: Sometimes you can disguise it so no one knows what you’re doing.
 S: How can you disguise poo? Excellent question, I thought.
 E: PS told me that if you float a square of paper on the water first, it won’t make a splash.

PS is MJ’s boyfriend. Remember my friend MJ? Of course she would be romantically involved with a man who offers my child fecal camouflaging techniques. I don’t know who exactly that speaks to the most, except to say that it’s wonderful they found each other, and that they are free to share their expert knowledge with my children, and that is it any wonder we are all friends?

 S: By the time I get the paper on the seat and then an extra square on the water, I will be in there forever and everyone will already know what I have been doing.
Me: Did PS have any advice on how to hide the smell?

Both my daughters looked at me like they forgot I was in the room. Also like I had a work boot on my head.

E: You’re gross, Mom.

I employ the same listening technique while driving my kids around to and from their various after school activities. It’s best when they are together, and not overtired, and forgot that I was there. That’s how I find out who likes whom, and who got suspended for doing what, and any other school or child related news I might want to know without asking.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall? Hell, I am that fly.

Panty Raid

I don’t much like it when my kids dig around in my purse. It’s such a violation of my privacy. The other day my older daughter, E, hunted for some gum in my purse, which by the way does not go well with braces, when she pulled out a wad of cloth from the bottom and asked me, “Are those your panties? Gross!”

I looked in my purse and saw she was right, those were indeed my panties. The bright red pair with tiny clusters of stars, like constellations, all over them. “I’ve been wondering where those were. Thanks!” I said to her, shoving them back into the bottom of my bag.

 “Why do you have panties in your purse, Mom?” she asked me, which reminded me of two things. First, never ask a question you don’t really want the answer to. And secondly, I am not obligated to answer every question my children ask.

 “That is an excellent question,” I answered, thereby not answering at all.

My panties had been forgotten in the bottom of my purse for about two weeks, which was the last time my husband and I went out, sans children, on a date. We have been married a long time, and like a lot of couples, we tend to focus more on raising our children and less on our marriage. We had no parties or other social obligations, so we decided to get a babysitter and go to the movies.

 When our babysitter arrived, we rushed out the door, eager to enjoy a little adult time. We got to the theater and before exiting the car, I hiked up my skirt and took my panties off. I showed them to my husband, then stuffed them in my purse.

“What are you doing?” he asked me.
 “Taking off my panties,” I told him. “Dark movie theater, no children, endless possibilities.”

I don’t know why I like to think my life should read like a Penthouse Forum letter, but every once in a while, I prefer that option to the reality of grocery shopping, dinner cooking, laundry folding, and chauffeur driving that makes up the majority of my time. If all it takes to make a regular day feel like a vacation for two is losing the undies in a parking lot, well, then, seems kind of worth it, doesn’t it?

We rarely go see a movie that doesn’t involve animation, and the only movie I had heard of that was playing was a George Clooney film called “The Descendants.” I knew next to nothing about the movie other than George Clooney was in it and that is was set in Hawaii, and that seemed like reason enough to slip off my panties. We skipped the popcorn because A. we weren’t hungry and B. I didn’t want to smell like fake butter down there if anything untoward were to happen. (And for those of you who think/know I don’t have a filter, let the record show I didn’t take that particular image any farther. I made no comments about seafood and melted butter, or big greasy tubs or slippery fingers or anything.)

Spoiler Alert!! Have you seen that movie? Well, again, I didn’t know what it was about. Now I do. It’s about an emotionally distant man and his dying cheating wife and his shitty marriage and worthless children and oh my God, the last thing anyone should do during that movie is anything involving fingers and removed panties. Even my husband wiped a tear or two from his eye. After the movie ended and the audience composed itself, we all left in a solemn line towards the parking lot. The fact that I was going commando was totally forgotten in the emotional aftermath of that depressing fucking movie. We went home, paid the babysitter, and watched the news. I might as well have put on a flannel nightgown and mended some socks.

Yes, I forgot I wasn’t wearing panties that night, and for the next two weeks, until the tween discovered the evidence of my attempt at marital spice in the bottom of my handbag. My purse is not that different from my gym bag, or a black hole; whatever makes its way into any of them gets sucked in and forgotten, never to be seen again. Unless a nosy kid starts poking around, in which case I either have to fess up or deflect.

 What I have learned is this: never, ever eat anything from the bottom of a purse. No old cough drops. No unwrapped mints. No stray Skittles. Nothing. In fact, don’t even carry edible things in your handbag, so that way no one will think of it as a pantry. And also, next time, I am shoving my panties in the cup holder of his car. Then he can answer the question of why are Mom’s panties in the car console. That is, if there is a next time.

That's Hot!

(The name of the shorts has been changed to protect the innocent.)

 I am not one who easily succumbs to get thin quick schemes, but I have to admit, I was intrigued by the HOT STUFF shorts, a recent daily deal offered by Groupon. They looked like a regular pair of exercise shorts, black and fitted, but they claimed they could help you lose ten pounds in two weeks just by wearing them. I didn’t believe that, but it was still a decent price for exercise shorts, so I perused their website. The shorts, at $26, were about fifty dollars off their regular price, which means they weren’t at all like regular exercise shorts, at least not my usual fifteen dollar ones. I went ahead and bought the shorts.

 All I had to do was pay a little extra for shipping, and my HOT STUFF shorts would arrive, ready to send me on my way to slimness. I have to admit I was surprised to learn when I used my voucher that my HOT STUFF shorts were coming to me all the way from the United Kingdom. I expected to pay for shipping in dollars, not pounds. I hope those won’t be the only pounds I lose, I thought as I submitted my order.

 When they arrived, I cut open the shipping bag and my HOT STUFF shorts slipped onto the floor. The strong smell of skunk and rubber also slipped out of the shipping bag. It was coming from the HOT STUFF shorts. They weren’t made out the latest engineered fabric. They were wet suit knickers. Thick, smelly neoprene. They had a wide waist band and a bright yellow printed logo on the lower left thigh. HOT STUFF, they said. I left them on the edge of my tub, which generally acts as a shelf for things that don’t have a permanent home.

 “What’s that? A new computer case?” my daughter asked me that night.
 “No, my new exercise shorts,” I answered.
 “Why do they smell funny?” she asked.

After airing them out for a couple of days, I decided to try on my HOT STUFF shorts. I squeezed my thighs into them, then hopped the rest of the way into the legs until I could stretch the waist band reasonably close to where my waist is supposed to be. They were tight, but they approximated my size. And I was already sweating just putting them on. I could tell I had made a wise purchase. Then I walked.

You know that sound thighs make when rubbing together in corduroy? A sort of swshh-swwsshh sound? Well, the wales of the corduroy help absorb some of the volume of that friction. Neoprene, on the other hand, is not sound absorbing. It is sound amplifying. Especially when the sound it amplifies is coming from your inner thighs. There was no way I was going to wear my HOT STUFF shorts to the gym. Everyone was going to hear my thighs before I even entered a room.

 Every morning for a week, I looked at my HOT STUFF shorts sitting on the edge of the tub but decided against them. Not today, I thought before selecting normal active wear made out of spandex and cotton. And every evening, my daughter asked me if I wore my new HOT STUFF shorts yet while she put her dirty clothes in the hamper in my bathroom.

“Not today,” I answered her.
 “Then why did you buy them?” she asked me.

Last Thursday, I looked at the shorts again. They looked back at me. I thought about how loud the music is in the fitness classes. No one is going to hear me, I thought. Besides, people fart and grunt all the time at the gym; how could my swsshing be any worse? So I squeezed into them. I selected an appropriate shirt to hide the resulting muffin top and shushed my way downstairs to make breakfast.

 “What’s that noise?” my daughter asked me.
 “Me. Now eat your waffles,” I answered her.

 I had already worked up a light sweat by the time I brushed my teeth and drove my daughters to school. I walked into the gym and quickly set up my equipment in the group fitness room for the weight class.

 “Is that you? I keep hearing a squeaking sound. Are your shoes wet?” a lady on the other side of the room asked me.
 “No, it’s my inner thighs,” I answered her.

 Other people came in and set up their equipment, and the weight class began. The class moves from one muscle group to another, fatiguing one area before starting the next. We began with squats. Squats were good because my thighs were not in direct contact with each other. Next we reclined on our step benches for the chest track. As I did my chest presses, sweat began flowing up from between my breasts, puddling around my neck. Occasionally I will have a little rivulet of sweat travel this reverse path up my neck. This was no rivulet; this was a river cresting, near flash flood stage. Luckily we stood up for most of the rest of class. I wiped my forehead a few extra times with a towel, but nothing unusual. By the time we cooled down, though, my face, chest, arms, and legs were bright red.

I stayed and did a dance class, which I love, after the weight class. I feel slightly sexy and coordinated when I do that class, even though I probably look like I’m having a seizure. By this point, my HOT STUFF shorts were no longer making noise. They were so wet from my sweat that they had suctioned onto my thighs like sausage casings. But even casings can hold so much before they burst, or at the very least, leak, which is what happened to my HOT STUFF shorts. They had reached maximum sweat capacity, and sweat was now pouring out of the leg holes down the fronts and backs of my thighs. Pouring, like I had a hose in my shorts. At first I thought I might have peed myself, but it was way colder than urine.

 As we danced, I flung sweat in a circle around my body like a sprinkler. I got scared I might slip in my own puddle and scaled back my enthusiastic twitching. Not only was I sweating from my torso and legs, but sweat was now pouring out of places I didn’t know had sweat glands. Like the inner corners of my eyebrows. Who knew the inner corners of my eyebrows could sweat like that?

Remember that part about my HOT STUFF shorts compacting me like sausage casing? Well, you can only compress your lower abdominal region for so long before it stimulates another weight loss technique. About the same time the class ended, I was pretty sure I was going to crap myself. I used a gym rag to mop up my sweat circle on the floor before bidding a hasty retreat to my car. Once safely inside, I felt a little less intestinally unstable. I left the parking lot and got on the highway, mopping sweat off my forehead so I could see the road. Since I was all alone, I thought I would attempt to pass gas to alleviate the tremendous pressure building up inside my body. The problem was, with all that compression, there was nowhere for the gas to pass. I farted. The fart traveled up the front of my nether regions and channeled across the top of one thigh before finally expelling out the edge of my HOT STUFF shorts. How do I know this? Because I could see the gas as it attempted its escape like a mole tunneling under the grass.

 When I got home and out of the car, I left a puddle of sweat in my car seat that could have been measured with a rain gauge. I took off my shirt and sopped it up, then headed inside and straight to my bathroom. I removed my wet sneakers and my drenched socks before rolling down my HOT STUFF shorts; think trying to put a condom on a watermelon. I held the shorts over the tub and wrung the sweat out of them. I don’t even want to tell you what my panties were like. My entire body was clammy and red, and I really wanted a donut or some IV fluids. I can only imagine what my blood pressure was.

 I don’t know if HOT STUFF shorts will really make you lose ten pounds in two weeks. They have to be hand washed and air dried in the shade, so unless you own multiple pairs, and why would you, you can’t really test that theory unless you wear them still damp from the previous day’s workout. As for me, I haven’t worked up the nerve to squeeze back into them for a second test run. I’m just glad I didn’t have a stroke in my HOT STUFF shorts. Maybe they should come with a medic-alert bracelet or a DNR order. I wouldn’t recommend them for summertime use or in humid climates unless you are feeling suicidal. I can see the medical examiner’s report now: Cause of death: HOT STUFF short dehydration and asphyxiation. And dysentery.

 I lost a half a pound, which I promptly gained back after I drank a gallon of water.