The Winter of Our Discontent

All the snow has almost melted. You can tell I don’t live in the Boston area because their snow is never going to melt. But here in South Carolina, it’s almost all gone. Staring out the window, I watch the small patch in the yard grow ever smaller as I listen to the trickle of the melted snow gurgle down the gutters. And you know, I don’t really care. We were supposed to get a school closing four to seven inches. We ended up with a measly inch and a half of wet slushy snow and temperatures well above freezing. I bet your kids are disappointed, aren't they?

Snow days aren’t like they were when my kids were little. I remember us getting all excited and having a serious plan about how to tackle a snow day. We made sure we had hot cocoa and movies and popcorn and board games or puzzles. We would be up and out the door by eight at the latest to tromp around in the yard, making pathetic lumpy snowmen or dragging the kids around in a laundry basket with a jump rope looped through the handle. We would stay outside until our fingers and toes burned from the cold wetness, then come inside and unbundle, hanging all the wet things on a drying rack my husband would set up by the door. If we were lucky, there would be a nap, but if not, there was always that movie to provide some down time before a second round of outdoor play would begin.

We don’t get significant amounts of snow where we live so we never invested in a good sled. We did break down and get a plastic snow disc, which was perfect for the gentle slope of the driveway and even the less than gentle hill near our neighbor’s house. We broke it last year, and none of us remembered that we needed to replace it.

Why is that? Well, now that our kids are officially teenagers, they don’t really care so much about rushing outside to play in the snow. One of my daughters spent the night at a friend’s house, while the other one slept in so long that the snow was all slush by the time she even opened her bedroom door. She decided that starting her homework was more important than going outside to look at puddles of melted snow. She also decided that staying in the same sweatpants she slept in sounded better than bundling up and getting wet. She did have a cup of hot cocoa, but truthfully, she didn’t earn it. I didn’t even offer to make her snow cream. And as quickly as the snow melted, so did the mild excitement, as the reality of another school day loomed on the horizon. Mostly, she felt cheated out of an extra-long weekend.

I made turkey chili in the crock pot. I did some laundry. I read a little of my book. It wasn’t even noon yet and I finished all the things I had planned to do.

My husband debated about opening his office while he played on his laptop, iPad, and phone simultaneously. In the background, the television blared the jarring sounds of CNBC. We all silently thanked the power for staying on, praised the internet for functioning, blessed our neighbors for not hogging the bandwidth.

Here is a conversation that we just had:

Me, walking into the family room: Whoa, did you fart?

My husband: No, I didn’t fart.

Me: It smells horrible in here. Are you sure you didn’t fart?

My husband: I would know if I farted, and I didn't. Maybe you farted.

Me: How could I have farted? I was upstairs folding laundry.

My husband: Well, I didn’t fart.

Me, silent judgment.

My husband: It’s probably the chili.

I only mention this conversation because my daughter, who was upstairs in her room doing her homework, yelled at us for arguing about who farted.


This is what happens when a family sits inside all day and doesn’t venture out to play in the snow.

Only one of us made it outside to stick a foot in the melting snow, and it was the indoor cat. We have a tradition of tossing her in the yard. It is for her own enrichment and does not warrant a call to Animal Control. I like to think of her as Puxatawney Phil. If she runs back in the house, we will have six more weeks of winter. And if she just doesn’t care for the snow, then spring is just around the corner. As usual, she hated it and us for continuing this senseless tradition.

 

If you still have young kids who like to play in the snow, be sure to join them. Have fun. I can’t very well go outside alone and play in the snow because that would be weird. My kids would make a vine of me and post it on their Instagram page, and my neighbors would drive by and wonder, yet again I’m sure, about the status of my mental health. It just isn't fun by myself.

I hate to be one of those moms who tells other moms to enjoy that time with their young kids because it is so fleeting. It’s true, but I refuse to say it. My teens would rather go back to bed or go out to Target than go in the yard. No one wants to snuggle up and watch a movie. They rather hide in their rooms and play on their phones. And in a few years, they will be at college playing drinking games or some other such inappropriate activity, and I will be lonely and worried about slipping and breaking a bone.

And seriously, we are all just ready for spring.

(Pod)Casting Doubt

Our family friend, SS, came to town over the holidays. We love it when SS is in town for a while. We get coffee and hang out and catch up on each other’s lives or interests or just what’s new. It is always a good time with SS.

What’s new in SS’s world is an obsession with podcasts. Podcasts have been around years, but it seems just recently that SS has decided to devote all of his free time to the very diverse world of podcasts, even foregoing music in the pursuit of always listening to a tale or a tidbit voiced by someone who knows much more about something that I ever will.

I was kind of surprised about it, to be honest, because SS was always someone like me when it came to music. No matter how old the two of us get, we still try to stay current with new music. He attended concerts like a promoter, not a casual fan, always discovering some new artist before the mainstream did.

Now he doesn’t know any of them. We drove to get coffee together, and not only did he not recognize any of the songs on my playlist, he didn’t even recognize the band names. That has never happened in the over quarter century of our friendship.

“What the hell has happened to you? Who are you? What are you even listening to?” I asked him.

“Podcasts. That’s where it’s at," he said.

Rather than judge him too harshly for his choices, I felt I should at least give a listen. I decided to go with Serial, a twelve part podcast that was a spinoff from This American Life, is a staple on public radio. Serial, hosted by Sarah Koenig, is an exceptionally popular podcast that was number one on iTunes before it was even released. The first season, which ended in December, examined a murder trial from 1999 to see if the evidence warranted the guilty verdict in that case.

Spoiler alert: There is no spoiler alert. I am not going to spoil it for you. Listen to it if you haven’t or if you want to. What do I care? You waste plenty of time on less interesting things. You know you do.

From the first episode, I was hooked. Sarah Koenig’s mesmerizing voice, the level of detail, the constant struggle with being objective. It was the kind of investigative reporting from days gone by, when a reporter could really delve into the facts and examine them and present them. She had a whole team to devote to the task of scrutinizing testimony and evidence, and with every episode, she would speak about it, sounding like she was speaking to only me.

I listened to Serial the way most people watch Netflix or eat Oreos, one big binge. I started carrying ear buds with me so I could continue an episode while I ran errands. I began to drive with my glove box open, plugging my iPhone directly into the USB port in my car so I listen to it through the speakers.  I turned it on while I soaked in the bathtub, and turned it up extra loud so I could hear it over my sonic toothbrush as I got ready for bed in the evening.

I wondered, was this kid guilty? Was he wrongly convicted? Reasonable doubt, reasonable doubt as far as the ear could hear. I would think of a question, and then next episode, bam! Sarah would ask it. It was so validating. I was critically thinking in a way that reality television shows like Honey Boo Boo and Gypsy Sisters never seem to challenge me to do.

As soon as I couldn't live without Serial, I finished it. Season one was over. Twelve episodes might seem like a lot, but not when I listened to them during the many hours I spend driving my kids around in the car. I texted SS, desperate for a replacement to fill the podcast void my life now had. He texted me a few ideas, but so far, none of them sucked me in the way Serial did.

And then, one night while waiting for my daughters to finish their showers, I sat down to check my email, turning on the television for background noise. Dateline NBC was on, and Lester Holt was laying out the case for that evening’s episode. As I listened to his voice, I realized that the Serial podcast is just a longer and cooler version of a regular old true crime television show.

The case they covered could have been the same one from Serial, a murder, a convicted killer maintaining his innocence, a sense of disbelief, some jury members that weren’t entirely comfortable with the decision or the sentencing. It was the same damn thing, and man, was I disappointed. I had spent a good twelve hours of my time and what limited brain function I had left to a podcast that was in essence no better than an episode of Dateline, which really is just a half step up from Judge Judy. My disillusionment was profound.

The next day, I went back to listening to music.

Half as Much but not Half Enough

Yesterday was my half birthday. I am forty five and a half years old. Remember when it was your half birthday when you were a kid? It seemed like the kind of thing that should call for at least half of a celebration. Maybe a cupcake, or an extra hug or at least someone remembering it was your half birthday (Happy half birthday to my sister LM, whose half birthday was a mere four days ago). I’m not the only one who feels that way; if you don’t believe me, mosey on over to Pinterest. Now that I’m, well, more middle-aged, maybe it’s the sort of thing I don’t need to announce to the world, even if I am writing about it now and thus, essentially, announcing it to the world.

Instead, this half birthday of mine will be used to sort of reflect on the past half year, to check in with myself and see how I’m doing. After all, this is my twelfth of the twelve blogs of Christmas, and a little recap isn’t such a bad thing.

For the past few years, I have set myself a goal of writing twelve blog posts for the holidays, allowing myself from the beginning of December until roughly Epiphany, January 6, to complete this task. It isn’t as easy as it sounds, if it does sound easy, and if it does, you are either extremely prolific or extremely misinformed. I generally write 1000 words or so per post, so twelve posts is 12,000 words, because math. 12,000 words is roughly a children’s chapter book or a good chunk of a slim novel, so it isn’t a small amount of writing. It’s no month in the life of a James Patterson or a Stephen King, mind you, but chances are the likes of them aren’t in charge of all the holiday preparations in their house. Just a wild guess, but I bet I’m right.

In addition to trying to write 12,000 words in a month, I also plan celebrations for both Hanukkah and Christmas. That means I do all the planning, shopping, cooking, wrapping, and giving for two big holidays that occur roughly at the same time. If you think the holidays are overwhelming on their own, try coming up with twelve different topics describe and share at the same time. Nobody asks me do this, and even sadder, nobody pays me to do this. I put this on myself. I am the one who turns a fun little hobby into a stressor.

This year was different, though. This year, in addition to the two big holidays, and the relatively minor New Year’s celebration (because, let’s face it, I am not twenty five and in love, so who cares about New Year’s Eve, I just want to get some rest for fuck’s sake), I also planned and hosted my younger daughter’s bat mitzvah and mourned the loss of my mother in law. That is a whole lot on one plate. Shit, a platter couldn’t hold that buffet of stress, both happy and sad.

So, I am reflecting on all of this, right now, more for me than for you. Maybe you would like to reflect too. Just pretend it’s your half birthday, and join me.

·         I am pretty good at what I do. I don’t have a job outside of my house. I do, however, have almost all the jobs inside the house, except for the home repairs. I tackle these jobs regularly and repeatedly. They are mostly thankless, but honestly, if I didn’t do them seamlessly, everyone would notice. I run a tight ship, whatever the hell that means. I don’t know much about sailing, but I do know what is for dinner tonight and how much milk we have and whether we have enough food for the cats and the hamster. I know when the last load of laundry was completed and when the next will be started. I know who hasn’t done the homework, and I also know that we have plenty of white poster boards, paint, and glue sticks in case we have an emergency project. I know all the things in the house. If you can’t find it, come to me. I know exactly where it is, even if I haven’t seen it in two years.

·         All of the family’s health needs are current. No one needs any prescriptions. All the doctor’s visits have been either completed or scheduled. If there are runny noses, I have plenty of Sudafed, Mucinex, and Kleenex to cover them. I maintain a complete pharmacy at all times, and almost none of it is expired.

·         My daughter’s bat mitzvah was a beautiful thing. She was amazing, and her day was amazing. She had exactly what she wanted. I did not exceed my budget. I loved all my guests for attending, and I understood those who couldn’t be there. I enjoyed the day, no matter how stressful the days leading up to it.

·         I am glad my mother in law is at peace. I have been making dinner for my father in law several days a week since she has passed, and he has been joining us at our table. He gets out of his house, even if I don’t really like him driving. I love to have him over. He sees us as we are, discussing politics, history, whatever odd topic comes up at the dinner table. I am giving my children a gift in this time with their grandfather. We put down our cell phones, we turn off the television, and we are a family, like an old fashioned one, only without the pearls and post dinner cigar, and yes, with the occasional F word. My younger daughter burped last night in front of him, my southern father in law. He is part of the family, and she is comfortable to be a person, and he laughed and was okay with all of it.

·         I need to learn to stop setting crazy ass goals for myself like writing 12,000 words in a month and a half. Seriously, why did I even come up with that in the first place? Why not the 8 blogs of Hanukkah? Isn’t that good enough? Isn’t any of it good enough? Writing is not my career. It is something I do that makes me happy, when I have or make time for my happiness. I shouldn’t allow it to become a chore, unless I start to do it for money, in which case let me add it to the to-do list. It is very difficult to know when to set big goals, and when to give yourself a break. I need to work on that.

Don’t worry about me. I have plenty to keep me busy now that the holidays and the bat mitzvah are over. Don’t feel like you need to give me a call and ask me to do anything else, no matter how small or how much I like you. I don’t want to do more. My new goal is to do the right amount, and hopefully I will figure out what that is.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

 The nice part about my daughters having a two week break from school is that we all get to sleep a little later. Granted, we are all also staying up later, but it still feels like catching up on missed sleep. It might be that I don’t have to wake up at 6:30 every morning, or maybe the lack of rushing around all day, but I definitely seem to be getting more rest. For me, more rest means more dreams, and the more rest I get, the more vivid and bizarre the dreams.

Seriously, these aren’t your run of the mill dreams. Every night is a new indie film, not the good story kind, but the ones full of weird shit that is weird just to be weird. I attribute it to the tremendous deficit of sleep on which I normally function, so it is nice, really nice, when I can aim for more than six hours a night for a couple of weeks. The downside to the weird ass dreams is that I wake up exhausted from a busy night of mind fucking, so I question how much rest I am actually banking.

A few nights ago, I had a dream that I was babysitting a friend’s child. This was no particular friend or child, just sort of a generic one my mind created. Really, it wasn’t a dream about your kid. I had to watch the child in a hotel room, but for some reason I still had to go back to my friend’s house in order to take care of her pets. The child had a mass of curly hair on its head, more mop-like than bowl cut, but the style was so gender neutral that I had no idea if I was sitting a boy or a girl. Whatever it was, it was a real brat, whining and abusing the hotel fixtures and such. I threatened to tell on it if it didn’t go to sleep, and I left it alone at the hotel room to go check on the pets.

I don’t remember what one of the pets was, but the other one was a kangaroo. If you aren’t up on your Australian marsupials, then you might not realize how big kangaroos can be. This one was fucking huge, yet my friend kept her indoors and expected her to use a litter box, which are designed for cats that normally weigh less than fifteen or twenty pounds.

The kangaroo could not fit in the box. She sort of turned around and aimed for the litter box, but urinated all over the floor instead. I don’t know the output of the average kangaroo, but this one pissed so much it left about an inch and a half of urine flooding the floor of the laundry room. Which, incidentally, was the laundry room of my childhood home. I grabbed a couple of old towels from a pile on a shelf above the dryer and threw them on the ground to try to sop up the kangaroo piss, but they just floated on the surface until they were saturated. And as I was swishing the old towels around to absorb the urine, I thought, I am only getting paid ten dollars an hour to watch this kid and the kangaroo, which is not nearly enough to deal with this shit.

That’s all I remember.

The next night, I had a dream my husband decided to go back to school. He left the girls and me to go live near college, but was living off campus in an odd townhome. It had multi levels with stairs that required you go up and then down to enter a room, then a separate stair case that also made you go up and then down to get to the next level. It was the dream version of an Escher drawing, except for his bedroom. it was in a separate building, but only the top level, like a garage apartment. In order to access it, you had to climb a rope with a small plastic disc on the bottom.

E, my older daughter, tried to get into the room, but she didn’t have the upper body strength to climb the rope. I tried and was able to climb the rope all the way to the hole in the floor that was the portal to the bedroom. In the real world, I couldn’t do one pull up, but in this dream I was a bad ass.

When I got to the top of the rope, I had to move the petal-life covering over the entryway. They felt like some firm plastic or aluminum siding, but they were covered in silver duct tape, and you had to lift each one out in order to uncover the opening. The floor of the room was wall to wall mattress, with pillows thrown everywhere. A small lamp was attached to one wall, and the rest of the walls had windows with small blinds and long cords. I looked around and thought, what if he had to go to the bathroom? My husband would have to climb down the rope in the middle of the night and then go up and down all those stairs to get to a bathroom. What was he thinking, renting this stupid townhouse?

The next night, I had a dream that I corrected everyone’s grammar throughout an entire conversation. I don’t recall the conversation itself, to whom I was talking, the setting, any other details. Just that the grammar was atrocious, and I couldn’t stop myself. I am sure somewhere in the dream was a bathroom or someone going to the bathroom, because if it doesn’t involve a bathroom trip, it isn’t one of my dreams. I just don’t remember that part, unless the conversation was about going to the bathroom.

Now that the school break is over, I can go back to being sleep deprived. Sometimes it’s just more restful to be too tired to dream.

Shit Just Got Real

A few months ago, I didn’t feel too swell. I had an achy dull spot right near where my gallbladder used to be. It felt worse after I ate, and it didn’t want to go away with a tums or a heating pad or any of the other things that are supposed to make you feel better. I decided to see my doctor about it.

My doctor wasn’t available, so I scheduled an appointment with the physician’s assistant, and then I did exactly what I shouldn’t have done; I looked up my symptoms online. After a quick consultation with both WebMD and the Mayo clinic website, I decided I might just have a common bile duct blockage. Apparently, even if you don’t have a gallbladder anymore, you can still make gallstones, which then can still block your common bile duct and cause some pretty wicked pain.

Maybe you are lucky enough to have a functional gallbladder and don’t really have a reason to know what gallbladder pain feels like. Take two fingers on your right hand. Try to hook those fingers under your rib cage about two inches down and one inch towards your midline from your right nipple. Really dig those fingers in there. That’s where it hurt. Now imagine someone shoving a golf ball in that spot, just under the ribcage. Bingo.

I had my gallbladder removed about six years ago, and before that, I would have the occasional gallbladder attack. I knew this pain. It felt like my gallbladder, my phantom gallbladder. My online research indicated that if I did have a bile duct blockage, I could have it roto rootered during an endoscopy instead of actual surgery with the cutting open of the body and such. It seemed worth investigating to me, seeing as I was uncomfortable as hell and couldn’t bear to eat any more Tums. Tums are just not good enough to pass for after dinner mints.

I met with the physician’s assistant a few days later, who let me know that while she frowns on online self- diagnosis, I might be onto something. She ordered some bloodwork and sent me on to the next level of medical care, the GI specialist. Of course the GI specialist was very busy, which meant seeing physician’s assistant number two if I wanted to get this weird gallbladder-like pain checked out in the next six months.

By the time I got to my appointment a few days later, I was feeling much better. I had decided in my own head that I probably did have a little duct blockage of some sort, but whatever it was worked itself out, leaving me with only some mild discomfort. I kept the appointment more as a piece of mind thing rather than an urgent situation, and in hindsight, I probably should have cancelled it altogether.

This physician’s assistant didn’t really seem to listen to what I said about my symptoms, instead focusing on the fact that I had an upset stomach for a day or two and some nausea, symptoms that would be typical of any sort of digestive thing including a bile duct blockage or a gallbladder attack. She was more concerned about the nausea and upset stomach than the pain that made me go to the doctor in the first place.

Go back to those fingers under your rib cage. Poke them about a few times a day and see if you don’t feel a bit like throwing up or crapping yourself.

The physician’s assistant decided more bloodwork was in order. And an ultrasound to see if there was anything to see. And then, possibly, if all that was bad news, then we would do the endoscopy. But first, because she wasn’t convinced it was bilious in nature, she wanted me to get a stool sample.

No scarier words exist in the English language.

My first thought was I’m not that sick. You can tell when you are really sick because you are willing to do almost anything to feel better. Well, I wasn’t that far gone. I was feeling better, so much better that shitting in a cup didn’t seem necessary.

She asked me what lab service my insurance covers, and when I told her, she sighed and told me that I would have to stop by one of the lab's locations to get one of their specimen containers because they only like to use their own. I don’t blame them, really. Don’t we all have a preferred place to do our business?

I stopped by the lab on the way home to pick up my stool container and drop off my blood work order. The front desk clerk took a look at the order form from the doctor’s office, including the stool sample request, and asked me if I have ever given one before. I told her no, and she had me sit in the waiting room until she was free to explain the process to me.

After about a fifteen minute wait, which was enough time to start a really good panic attack, she called me into a consultation room in the back. I sat down, and she took out a bag containing five prescription bottle sized vials and a plastic tub with ounces marked on it. Oh, and a plastic spoon.

“You've never done this before?” she asked me.

“No,” I said.

“It’s horrible. I’m not going to lie,” she said. “You start with the collection container.” She held up the plastic tub. “This fits under the toilet seat that you sit on. You go in there.”

“Can I, um, urinate in it too, or will that cause a problem?” I did not want to have this conversation, and yet, clarification was needed.

“That’s fine if a little gets in the container. It shouldn't mess up the results. So you go in here. Do not return this. We do not want it back. Do not bring back this container."

I got the feeling that a lot of people try to give back the collection tub.

She lifted one of the five vials. “This one you should do first. Fill this container to the fill mark.” She indicated a line labeled near the top of the vial. “Do not fill it past that line. This vial has to be frozen. Do you know what happens when you freeze a container that is overfilled?”

It explodes?” I asked.

“Yes. It explodes. You do not want to clean this out of your freezer. The next one has red dye in it.” She lifted up another vial. “This one only needs a tiny scoop added to it. Again, do not overfill it. In fact, do not overfill any of these. This one goes in the refrigerator. See the cap that has a little spoon attached?”

I nodded yes.

“If you use that spoon, you will be filling it up all day. It’s like one of those spoons they used to give you at McDonald’s to stir the coffee. You don’t want to be making tiny little scoops all day, do you?”

No, I did not. I did not want to be making plastic spoon scoops, or thinking about McDonald’s coffee stirrers, or having this conversation.

“The other three you just fill up like normal, to the fill line. They don’t need to be cold. Or fresh. They have formaldehyde in them, so you don’t need to be concerned about a time limit.”

I made a “hot n now” joke, to myself, in my head.

“Also, we don’t need the spoon back. Just the five vials, not overfilled, whenever you’re ready. Do you have any questions?”

I did. I wanted to know if they all needed to be from the same stool, or could they be from more than one bowel movement. I wanted to know if they would be able to tell if I snuck something from the litter box and skipped the step where I shit in a plastic tub and used my plastic spoon to scoop and fill five vials. I wanted to know if they had a special drop box where I didn’t have to make eye contact with another human when I brought it in for testing. I had so many questions.

Instead of asking anything, I just thanked her for her help. Then I went out the car and tossed my hazardous specimen bag with the measured container, the five vials, and the plastic spoon in the back,  behind the yoga mats and the extra grocery sacks and the half empty water bottles, where I would never find it again.

Suddenly, I felt much, much better indeed.

Almost Perfect

We are two and a half weeks away from the tween’s bat mitzvah. It is almost crunch time, which makes me think of tacos. Mmm, tacos sound good, and appropriate too, because the theme for the bat mitzvah is a Mexican fiesta, the most Jewish party idea ever. We were able to find THE PERFECT DRESS, which honestly is a story for another day, but trust me, it’s exactly what a bat mitzvah should wear for her own fiesta. PERFECT it is, except it needed to be hemmed, so maybe not entirely PERFECT, but damn near close.

Then we had to find shoes to go with THE PERFECT DRESS, which we needed in order to get it hemmed. For those of you who don’t have to get things hemmed, and fuck you if you are one of those, you have to have the shoes you plan to wear with the pants or dress so you know where the hem should be. If you don’t believe me, look at women with boots. You can always tell a woman who knows about hems from where the hem of her pants hits the shoe of the boot. If the pants are tucked into the boot, she is very familiar with hems.

We had the shoes, we had THE PERFECT DRESS, so off we went to the alterations shop. We didn’t just go to any old shop; we went to our friend SS’s mother’s shop. SS is one of my husband’s dearest friends, the fool who introduced us, and an honorary uncle to my children. While he no longer lives in our town, his mother still does, and she has owned an alterations shop since forever. SS had given his mom a heads up to expect us, so when we arrived, she quickly grabbed her bowl of pins and instructed the tween to change into THE PERFECT DRESS.

The tween emerged from the dressing room, a vision with a dragging hem. SS’s mother quickly got her to stand before the three paneled mirror as she knelt on the floor in front of her and eyeballed the right length and fold of the hemline.  After a few pins, she stood back to check the dress length, which was, of course, PERFECT. She sat down on the floor again and began to pin around the dress, taking into account the train, having the tween turn a bit at a time while she worked.

As she pinned, SS’s mother asked all the small talky questions to catch up from last we had seen each other:  how the girls were, their ages, how my husband’s business is doing, even the health of my ailing mother in law. Then she asked my least favorite question, “Do you work?”

I hate that question. The answer is always wrong somehow.  I do work, I work very hard. I just don’t earn a paycheck. People don’t want to know that. They want to know if you have a job. You either have a job or you don’t. Being a wife and mother is a lot of work, but the pay is shit, and nobody counts that as a job, except maybe for other stay at home moms. I volunteer too, but volunteering doesn’t count because you do it for free. The longer I stood there not knowing what to say, the more awkward I became.

“No,” I finally said. “No, I don’t work. Outside of the home. I don’t work outside of caring for my family.”

“So you don’t work?” she asked me again.

“No,” I said quietly. She stopped pinning and looked up at me.

“Good,” she said.

Around this time, a short, round man came into the shop, carrying two pairs of jeans. He wanted to get the inseams measured, which I found odd since most men’s jeans have the measurements right on the labels. He figured if she just measured the pants, she could cut off a couple of inches and he would be saved from the standing in the mirror and getting his little stubby legs pinned.  SS’s mom had him sit and wait while she finished working on the hem of the tween’s dress.

“She looks very pretty,” the man said as he sat down. “It must be prom season.”

It was late December. No amount of being polite would make this prom season.

“Thank you. But not quite. It’s for her bat mitzvah,” I said.

The man said nothing, which meant he didn’t know what a bat mitzvah is or he doesn’t like Jews, or, possibly, he had nothing left to say. SS’s mother finished pinning the hem and stood up.

“Quick question,” I asked her. “What about this?” I pointed to the tween’s chest, where the dress hung empty.

“I have just the thing,” she said and went behind the counter. She came back with two push up bra inserts, which she proceeded to shove down the tween’s dress. She arranged them just so, by both plunging one hand into the bust area while squeezing it into place from the outside of the dress with the other hand. All this took place in front of the man sitting with his pile of denim. I waited for the tween to start crying.

“Don’t mind me,” he said, sensing how uncomfortable my daughter was. “I can close my eyes.”

After a few more manipulations, SS’s mother asked how we thought it looked. The tween and I agreed it improved the lines of the dress, and she took out a few more pins to secure the inserts in place.

“Perfect,” the fat man declared.

“It is,” I agreed. “That’s why we call it THE PERFECT DRESS.”

I helped the tween back to the dressing room, and unzipped the back of the gown and undid the other strap.

“That was so embarrassing,” she whispered. “She stuck her hands right down the front of my dress, and that man sat and watched it all.”

I took the dress from her and hung it on the hanger.

“Today,” I said to her,” you are a woman.”

When the Party's Over

Look around your house. Are the decorations still up? Are they starting to look sad and lonely, now that the presents have all been opened? Are you tired of eating the candy out of your stocking? What about the cookies that were fresh five days ago, but now taste slightly stale, just like a few days after Christmas feels?  Are the winter blues kicking in, even though winter isn’t even ten days old yet?

Here in the Southeast, we are having quite the rainy Christmas season. We didn’t get a white Christmas, but we did get a wet one. The sky is grey, the temperatures are in the damp fifties, and all of it makes for some pretty significant seasonal affective disorder. The only light most of us are getting is the glare from the television or from the screen in a darkened movie theater, which is only as good as the movie itself and only lasts as long as it takes for you to find your car in the parking lot.

Near my Christmas tree, with the skirt bunched up and wrinkled like an old drunk whore’s, are a few piles of Christmas gifts. They are loved and appreciated but they have yet to find a home. I bet you have those piles too, don’t you? Presents that are adored, but not necessarily easy to put away. The reason, inevitably, is that there is no room for more stuff. You needed new socks and underwear, but you didn’t clean out the dresser drawer because for some reason you can’t seem to part with the old ones. And it seems wasteful, doesn’t it, to just throw the stuff away, but does anyone really want your old underwear, with the faulty elastic or just the tiniest of holes? Are the socks that are worn thin on the heels something that should be added to the donation pile?

I asked a local charity that question once, as a volunteer helped me unload the back of my SUV. I felt guilty at the shoddy quality of some of my donated items, which are easier left quickly outside a donation site so no one can see that the pile of unattended shit was yours. She assured me that all donations are welcome, and that if the items are more than gently used, they could still fetch a decent price by the pound, making every donation one of value. I still don’t believe it. I contend that donating your old corn chip smelling sneakers constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, not for you, obviously, but for the unlucky Goodwill employee who has to sort through them and the other nasty things you dropped off in exchange for your tax deductible form, minus your old crusty socks and underwear that you were too lazy to take out of the drawer and put in a pile.
So the sky is grey, the tree is sad, the presents are sitting unused, the cookies are stale, and yes, you are sick of everyone that lives in the house. You have all attempted to get along for the past week, probably because you are still afraid of a phone call to Santa, even though you stopped believing in him about thirty years ago. Sure, you and the rest of the immediate family have bickered and snapped at each other, but you’ve made a concerted effort to keep it to a minimum so that you can enjoy the holidays. As my now twelve year old used to say back when she was in preschool, I’ve used up all my good. Now I, and I bet the rest of you, am tired of making the effort to get along. I don’t want to look at my family’s faces anymore, certainly not with those shitty expressions. Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

The holidays are over, unless you count New Year’s Eve, which I don’t. Why is that even a holiday? It’s just the changing of a calendar year, so there is really no need to celebrate it. Why not move that waste of a holiday to a month that really needs it, like August. Trust me, New Year’s Eve would be much more fun in the middle of summer. You would feel better in that fancy dress because you aren’t full of stuffing and cookies, and it would make sense to be wearing it strapless because it isn’t thirty fucking degrees outside.

Tired of shopping yet? Yeah, me too. I know there are good deals to be had, but I don’t want to fight the traffic or the return lines. The joy and friendliness that made all the shopping a joy last week has been replaced with nastiness, impatience, and frustration as whatever items forgotten on your wish list are nowhere to be found, along with the gift receipts you needed to return your blender and really ugly sweater.

Men, listen up. Don’t buy your wife a blender, ever. Not even if she asks for one. A blender is never a gift for your wife. And don’t even think of getting a vacuum, unless you want your testicles sucked up through the HEPA filter.

You have eaten more in the past week than you thought humanly possible, am I right? Well, guess what, someone still has to make dinner, and that someone is probably you. No one wants any more ham or turkey. Those leftover mashed potatoes? Just toss them. The cranberry sauce too, because if you don’t do it now, you will find it next thanksgiving in the back of the fridge.  In my house, no one has provided input on what to make for dinner, but they have provided plenty of negative feedback on the options I have suggested. I have decided on soup. It’s cold and rainy, and I don’t care if anyone eats it. They can fight over the last two stale chocolate chip cookies for all I care.

I just wanted you to know that you are not alone. You are not suffering from depression. You don’t need to talk to somebody or make an appointment with your doctor. You are suffering from late December. We all are, so stop thinking you are so fucking special.