Go Along for the Ride

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Don't Get Me Wrong

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Him: I am contacting you in reference to my October 31 concealed weapon class. If I am interested, call back.

Me: Wrong number.
Him: Please excuse.
Me: It’s fine.

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

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

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

Me: No thanks.

Him: If you change your mind, call or text me back.

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

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

Olive's Fair in Love and War

I have two teenage daughters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

Say It Ain't So

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

Rather than slip into a daytime television or vodka habit or allow myself to just sit and do nothing as if that were even an option, I decided to look into doing more freelance writing. I’ve been writing on a freelance basis for a long time, really, but most of the time the work found me. It’s very different when you are looking for the work.

I’ve spent a number of hours researching and applying on various websites, and I have to say, the prospects are pretty dismal. While fast food workers in more progressive cities are demanding and getting up to $15 an hour, a lot of freelance writers are looking at significantly less than that. The standards for these two lines of work are pretty different. I’m not saying that fast food workers shouldn’t make a living wage. I am just concerned when unskilled work is valued more than an education and years of experience in allegedly desirable communication skills.

But I digress. I polished up my resume a bit and attempted to put myself out there. Looking for work online is considerably less fun than watching porn or cat videos. It’s tedious; it’s time consuming; and it’s also disheartening. Even if you find a website that looks reputable, you can’t count on the job postings also being legitimate. The amount of legwork, er, sitting on my ass on my laptop work, well, it’s just like looking for any other job. Which means it sucks.

On one website, which requires you to bid for jobs against other desperately underpaid people who rather work on the couch in sweats, I received an invitation to apply for a one-time assignment. The pay was, seriously, $10, but there was a chance it would lead to more work. What the hell, I thought.

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

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

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

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

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

Secretly, I was a little excited.

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

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

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

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

Walkabout

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

When we left off, my family and I had arrived and spent our first partial day in London. We managed to take in a good bit of the airport, a wee bit of the natural history museum, and a flaky bit of Harrods’ pastries.

Our first full day in London became a quest to fulfill my husband’s desire of recreating a walk from our Lonely Planet guide. It promised to be a meandering sightseeing stroll that would take us from one side of the Thames to the other. No one in my family is very skilled in the art of map reading, although only one of us is woman enough to admit it, so we weren’t entirely sure how long the walk would be, especially since there were many sights to see along the way.

We began our morning at the Tower of London. The Tower is where the crown jewels are housed, guarded by a few of the Queen’s own guards, with their festive red coats and tall furry hats. The rest of the staff are Yeoman Warders, but we know them as Beefeaters. They too wore fabulous uniforms, but my family disappointed me by refusing to pose with any of them.  I kept pointed out that we were tourists and therefore it was not only acceptable to do touristy things, it was expected of us, but they were having none of that.

The tour book recommended taking a tour led by a beefeater, which began just behind the main gate, in what at one time was probably some moat or reservoir of blood and disembodied heads. What they don’t tell you is you wait with three hundred of your closest strangers to begin the tour. All those people with their selfie sticks and annoying children kicked up my autism, so we skipped the informative portion of the tourist attraction and opted for the more confused and less organized system of going the wrong way and trying to avoid the crowds.

Spoiler alert: the Tower doesn’t have as much torture as you might hope for, unless you count that tour at the beginning.  It is perfectly fascinating in other ways. Medieval graffiti carved on the stone walls. A collection of body armor for both man and horse.  Ravens, which are big AF and not crows at all, so suck it, you dumb Yanks.  What the Tower doesn’t have is good feng shui, air conditioning, or gin.  Keep that in mind when you plan your visit.

After we had exhausted ourselves and grabbed a snack at the Tower café, we, along with a million other out of towners, crossed the Tower Bridge to get to the other side. The Bridge is an engineering marvel and really cool in a Disney sort of way. It’s also not that old, and also not that bridge. London Bridge is actually in Arizona, in case you forgot. The Tower Bridge is probably the one you thought was London Bridge, so that’s good news, I suppose.

When we crossed over the Thames, we started to sort of lose our way, because none of us can read a map, whether it’s in a book, on a giant piece of folded glossy paper, or Google maps on an iPhone. We worked our way up and down some streets, passing fish and chips shops which all boasted the best, but really, is that possible? Afternoon fatigue and jet lag settled down on us, a fishing net of bitch and moan.  

 

 

Finally, under a portion of a railway bridge, we found the perfect oasis: the Borough Market. If you like to eat food, look at food, smell food, shop for food, or just be anywhere near food, Borough Market is the place for you. It’s loosely divided into categories, the breads and pastries, meats and game and fish, dairy and cheeses, teas and flours and spices. We wandered, overwhelmed by the freshness and the plenty.  Everything, even the things we don’t like, looked amazing and fascinating. Paella pans bigger than my kitchen table. Indian street food that met food safety standards. Chocolates made by magical elven hands. I wanted to sing and dance with a large umbrella and pick up Scotch eggs and mushroom logs to show someone, anyone, and then I wanted to eat until I exploded.

If you go to London, you should check it out. It’s pretty cool.

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

The walk, much like this blog, wasn’t yet over. We strolled down garbage scented alleys and back up to the water’s edge, stopping to marvel at the patch of modern buildings, an interesting juxtaposition to the older and more iconic landmarks of the London skyline.  Our feet hurt. We paused to rest in front of the historic Globe theatre. Check! Seen it!

 

 

I secretly delighted that no one wanted to see any ‘Speare in its natural habitat.

Finally, we reached the end of the walk and my husband’s main goal for the day, the Tate Modern Gallery. Located in the South Bank area in what used to be a power station, the Tate appeals to his aesthetic. He’s really into old power stations and modern art. It was perfect for him.

If you want to experience a modern art gallery to its fullest, I recommend taking two teenage girls who have been walking all day.

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

My husband opted to appreciate the art on his own. My children found every available seat and took selfies of their pissy faces or pictures of detritus on the floor. Art, they said.

 

I want to thank the person who created that walk for the Lonely Planet guide. Anyone who thinks one day should be spent going from early English monarchy to awesome food under a bridge to modern art in a power house has a real spirit of adventure.

It was another perfect day in London.

It's a Magic Number

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

1. Last week, I took my cat Yoko to the vet. It was time for her annual exam, but she also had a lump on her side, close to her abdomen, that worried me. She isn’t getting any younger, and she isn’t a fan of the vet, so the idea of regular medical supervision is off the table. I still wanted to know what the lump was, even if I doubted doing anything about it.

Yoko demonstrated why at the vet’s office. After attacking him and refusing to leave the relative safety of her carrier, she ripped two claws out fighting the exam. She didn’t just leave a couple of broken fingernails on the table; she also left smears of blood all over, even on the old towel they threw over her head. The towel is supposed to somehow make her feel more secure, but it just pisses her off. At least it provides some protection for the vet from her angry and sharp parts.

After fighting to get her on the scale and back on the table and then of course to figure out the source of all the blood, the vet had to examine her for that lump. PSA to all of you cat owners: Cats don’t get lumps. It’s not their thing. If your cat has a lump, you should get it checked out, if you are feeling brave enough.  He palpated her and she resisted. The towel fell off and had to be repositioned. The more he felt around her, the more agitated she became, and still, he couldn’t locate the lump.

So, long story short: Yoko’s lump turned out to be a blocked mammary gland. He was able to take care of it, but I won’t go into how. I referred to it as her nipple zit, and he requested that I not tell anyone that, nor should I let anyone know he is our vet.  This is the much abbreviated version of this story. You’re welcome.

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

2. My young driver, the teen, had her first fender bender. I shan’t go into too much detail about this one either, as it is a long way from resolution.

I knew how she felt.  I had a minor accident the first day I drove my car to school when I was seventeen. It is a rite of passage, unfortunately.

She is fine. The car is drivable. It wasn’t her fault. I don’t think either of us has recovered yet.

3. Sunday morning, I was fussing at my husband. He was lying in bed and asked when S, our younger daughter, needed to be picked up from a slumber party. I told him he was asking the question wrong. He needed to ask what time he needed to pick up S from her slumber party. Then I walked into the chaise lounge in my bedroom and smashed my toe with such force and speed I heard a loud pop.

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

I threw myself face down on the carpet and cursed a blue streak. Blue streak is also an apt description of the current state of my right pinky toe.

 

My husband said “karma” to me from the bed. I got up and hobbled down the stairs to ice my foot.

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

If bad things happen in threes, then what exactly is the number of good things?

Dress to Kill

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

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

I wish I understood how this game is played.

Before school started, we did the whole back to school shopping thing. She has pretty high standards in attire, which I indulge due to a combination of Jewish guilt and a childhood of wearing hand me downs or just going without. There was no such thing as back to school shopping in my childhood experience, so I admit, I overcompensate for my girls. I prefer things be on sale, but I understand that some jeans cost a hundred bucks, and I rationalize buying two pairs if they last the whole school year.

Despite the trips to Anthropologie and Lucky Jeans, my daughter claims, falsely, to have nothing to wear. Honestly, when you look at a lot of her clothes, her Birkenstocks, her ripped jeans, her oversized beige cardigan sweater, she looks like a wealthy homeless person.

What she does have, in addition to her Big Lebowski chic, is an entire wardrobe of summer only clothing, things that don’t follow the rather specific school dress code. The code involves things like no spaghetti straps and no shorts more than three inches above the knee and no yoga pants or leggings and no jeans with tears or shreds or rips and absolutely no midriff showing ever because bare stomachs are like windows to your vagina.  I don’t know if you have gone shopping for teenage girl clothing lately, but the only things available are specifically what the school prohibits.

I would like to point out that the dress code issue is primarily one for girls. The boys don’t have to worry about spaghetti straps or yoga pants or short shorts. They might have an issue with inappropriate graphic t-shirts or wearing loose pants too low, but other than that, they don’t generally get sent home for being a distraction. Not that there’s a double standard or anything.

What would solve this problem, in theory, are uniforms. If we went in the khaki pants and polo shirt direction, we might have the issue of mine is nicer than yours, but we wouldn’t have the problem of how short is too short in a dress.

The other morning was particularly rough.  At 7:30, the exact moment my daughter is supposed to back out of the driveway, she stood upstairs at the balcony overlooking the family room and said, “Does this look good?”  She was wearing an old stained white cami top, an unbuttoned chambray shirt, and a pair of pants that she got from a friend who outgrew them. They are somewhere between a yoga pant, a sweat pant, and a pajama pant, none of which meet the dress code.  I refer to them as her clown pants.

“It looks okay, I guess,” I said.

“That’s exactly what Dad said,” she groaned.

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

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

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

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

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

“Then why did you put it on?” I asked her.

“It’s really short. I know I’ll get in trouble for it.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. I am pretty sure she was waiting for me to say it was fine or not to worry, which I was not about to do.

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

“Why did you take off the clown pants?” I said.

“You didn’t like them, but they fit dress code,” she snapped.

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

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

I just stared at her. “Sure am glad I took you shopping for things you could pick out and then reject,” I muttered.

“I don’t have time for this!” She finally reached the yelling stage.

“Make time for it,” I said. “Now. Go change into something that isn’t going to get you in-school suspension. I am not about to bring you a change of clothing because you wore something you know you shouldn’t.”

She stomped back up the stairs and slammed the door. I continued to eat my breakfast.

Five minutes later, at 7:40, she came barreling down the stairs. She had on the original cami with the chambray shirt and a pair of jeans.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” I asked.

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

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

“I don’t have time to stop for it,” she said.

“But you have time to have a fight about it!” This time I yelled at her.

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

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

I blame the school dress code.