Yes, I am Tired

I’m tired. I’m tired of thinking about rape. I’m tired of reading stories of sexual violence against women. I’m tired of men who commit these acts of violence getting the minimum of consequences for their actions. I’m tired of women being victimized, diminished, and blamed for what they must suffer at the hands of perpetrators. I’m tired of the privileged culture in which we live straddling the line between tolerance and fairness and the oppressive and inherently unfair good old days.

Is this about the Stanford rape case? The one with the young, white Olympic hopeful who can never recover from the effects of a party culture that led to twenty minutes of action? The one whose father is worried about his inability to enjoy a steak? The one who will serve three hard months in prison of a six-month sentence because the judge does not want him to suffer any more?

Yes and no.

About a month ago, something horrible happened that involved my daughter’s middle school. You may have heard about it on the national news. It was kind of a big deal. An eighth grade girl from my daughter’s school and a boy from a different middle school hung out on a Sunday afternoon. They drank alcoholic beverages. They had consensual sex. They drank some more. The girl passed out, and the boy continued to do sexual things to her. He decided to share what he was doing by Face Timing at least one person. That individual, or possibly more people, saved the FaceTime video and shared it with other people. Some of those other people saved it as well to show it to even more people.

The girl was allegedly naked from the waist down and in her own vomit. She had to have her stomach pumped at the hospital. The boy was charged with second degree sexual assault. I don’t know if these details are accurate as reported in the news or just from the pieced-together version of the rumors.

The other people who saved and sent the video are also middle school students. Some of them go to my daughter’s school, and others are enrolled at other middle schools in the county. Four of those people, all middle school girls, were charged with disrupting school and possession of child pornography. Other students had their phones confiscated by police detectives for forensic testing. 

It was all anyone talked about for the last few weeks of school. Students talked to each other about it. Parents tried to figure out details. The only ones who remained silent were the school administrators, hiding behind the fact that the assault did not take place at school and therefore they were not obligated to address the rumors or provide support for students troubled by the assault or those rumors. We were all supposed to ignore it or pretend it didn’t happen, or worse, that it didn’t affect us.

When the students talked, they seemed to focus on the wrong information from the story. They discussed this girl’s already bad reputation. They said she was asking for it. They said what did she expect. They said she should have known better, and that she is just as much to blame. She drank. She had sex. She deserved it.

My daughter came home and shared these conversations with me, about how the girl never came back to school, how badly she felt for her, and how she tried to tell other students that it wasn’t the girl’s fault. My daughter was in the minority in her beliefs.

And that makes me tired.

Clearly, the two stories have similarities. Girls were drinking. Boys were drinking.  Girls passed out. Boys did things to them that they did not have consent to do. We all act shocked when we hear about it, and a percentage of us will try to make sense of it by blaming the victim.

I have two teenaged girls. They are both tall. They have some curves. They dress like most girls their age, which means skirts and shorts are short, and arms are bared, and bra straps frequently show, sometimes intentionally, sort of like an accessory.  They are not whores. They do not dress likes whores. They don’t know any whores, and they are also unsure of what whores wear. Nothing about their clothing means they are asking for unwanted attention. They dress like many girls their ages, and they are comfortable in their garments and in their skin, and they should be comfortable.

My daughters are good people. The Stanford victim and the middle school girl might be good people too. They might not. They might just be human. They did not deserve what happened to them.

The boys who sexually assaulted them are not scrutinized in the same way. They too drank, but they weren’t assaulted. They need to be held accountable for their actions. I don’t know if they are good people. They are also human, but they committed crimes and owe society, and women, a debt for their actions in order to return to the community.

I am tired of other people not understanding this simple fact.

Some of us call it rape culture. Some people say men can’t help that they are visually stimulated. Other people say that women need to be careful and stop putting themselves in potentially dangerous situations. But rape happens everywhere. It can happen at someone’s home, or at a party, or behind a dumpster. Alcohol is available in homes and groceries stores and restaurants and bars. Dumpsters are behind most every commercial property. What situations are women supposed to be avoiding?

It is always, at every level, about consent. If you do not have consent, you have no right to initiate further action on another person.

Some people also say that women who lie about being raped are part of the problem. I’m tired of that too. One person’s lie does not discredit many people’s truth. Instead, let’s concentrate on the men, because by and large, the men are entirely the problem.  Women who rape, like women who lie about rape, are not the issue. They are an anomaly. Men rape women, and other men, and children. It is by and large a male-perpetrated crime.

Men need to know they must have permission, even in a relationship, even in a marriage. Women need to know they have the power to say no. Men need to believe women when they say no. Men need to tell other men to believe women. Women need to tell other women that they believe them. Men and women need to talk about what no means with each other. They should discuss it with their children. Their children should understand what sex is and how it can only occur if both people say yes.

When you think children are too young for that conversation, remember my daughter’s middle school.  Stop wanting our society to return to the good old days. Rape was around then too, and women were property, and consent didn’t matter. Now it still is, and they aren’t, and it should, and everyone needs to talk about until we can all agree that it does not matter what a woman wears or drinks, it only matters if she said yes, and that any man, of any race or socioeconomic class or age or athletic ability, needs to accept her answer, or in the absence of one, realize that if she did not say yes, then it is a no.

And we should not stop talking about it until rape stops, until punishments are fair and enforced, until victims are no longer blamed, until we can all agree that consent is key.  Until we are all tired of the ways things used to be, and the way they are now.  If you want to make the world a better place, start with this issue, and don’t stop until everyone understands. Only then, after being tired for so long, can we rest.

There Will Be Blood

I have two teenage daughters, and I am a woman at the end of the childbearing bell curve. We spend a lot of time in my house menstruating, talking about menstruating, complaining about menstruation, preparing to menstruate, and recovering from menstruation. All totally normal.

Brace yourself. I am going to talk about menstruation.

I can commiserate with my girls. I see them suffer from cramps, and I remember that misery as I microwave heating pads and dole out fistfuls of ibuprofen to offer them some relief. I buy an endless supply of pads in at least three sizes and tampons and panty liners, none of which are ever on sale at the same time, and all of which are taxed as a luxury item, because there is nothing more luxurious than shoving overpriced chemically enhanced cotton wads in or near a cooch. I scrub panties and the crotches of jeans with hydrogen peroxide or a paste of baking soda and vinegar, making volcanos out of all the stains. I also endure the tears and rudeness and lethargy that one of us is constantly subjecting the rest of us to; misery loves company but hates everyone indiscriminately.

I’ve been doing this period thing for almost ¾ of my life, and while I would love to not deal with it, I don’t like the implications of breaking up with my lady friend. I actually thought that the dreaded M word had begun because I went from my current regular irregularity to a total uterine strike.

My period is all over the calendar. Not literally because what? Gross. I mean it’s not every month and then it’s twice in one month. It’s never a 28-day cycle like in the birth control ads. Sometimes it’s every 40 days, or every 22 days, or every 15 days, which is a real treat if it lasts 8 days or so. And then, out of the blue, it was over 75 days. It wasn’t my normal.

Naturally, I started to freak out. I’m old. This is it. I don’t know the first thing about hormone replacement. I’m going to wither and dry up and then fill out in all the wrong places. I will become invisible, as women of a certain age do, no use to anyone but not ready to shove out in the middle of the ocean on an ice flue.

I turned to the Internet, the source of the best and most accurate information in times of panic and worry.  Here’s what I learned: the definition of menopause is cessation of menstruation for a year in women of a certain age. I had 290 days to go.

Lucky for me, I needed to see my gynecologist for my annual exam, so I didn’t have to go out of my way to discuss it. I could just wait another week and then casually mention it with my feet in the stirrups. Deep down inside, I was convinced I was going to need a D and C, that fun procedure where they dilate you and scrape all the ick off your uterine walls. It’s an old school abortion, well, not wire hanger old school, but pre-medically induced abortion, back when women and their doctors could still make reproductive decisions together.  Naturally, I freaked out some more.

My appointment started out totally normal. Sit and wait. Pee in a cup. Finger stick. Sit and wait some more, only this time in a room filled with pregnant women. Feel old because you think you are in menopause and these women are all still fertile and youthful and you don’t want to be them but you don’t want to be you either.

I followed the nurse to the exam room. She asked me the usual medical history update questions, and then she asked the first day of my last period. I told her 80 days ago. She handed me some pamphlets and told me to disrobe and don my paper drape and vest.

These are the pamphlets:

 

They burned my flesh, just holding them in my hand. I stuffed them in my purse, got undressed, and assumed the position on the table.

My gynecologist seemed a bit surprised to hear I was on period sabbatical, because, get this, I am too young to be in menopause. She wanted to know about my mother and grandmother’s menopause experience, but they were of the generations who had unnecessary hysterectomies because something was wrong with every woman who was no longer having children.  Basically, we had nothing to go on except the 80 days part.

“Are you having menopausal symptoms?” she wanted to know.

“I don’t know what they are,” I said. And it’s true. I knew about moodiness, hot flashes, and no periods. Was there more to expect? “I mean, I could have hot flashes, but how do I know? Sometimes I get kind of hot for no reason.”

“Are you waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and have to change your nightclothes?”

“No, nothing like that,” I told her.

“Crying for no reason?” she asked.

“I have two teenage daughters. There is always a reason,” I replied.

She ordered a blood sample to check my hormone levels and then prescribed Progesterone, which would make me have a period if I was still supposed to have one. She instructed me to wait for the lab results before taking the medication, but that I would need to take if for 5 days in order to make my period start. Apparently, if you are supposed to menstruate but you don’t, that can also be a problem, although she didn’t elaborate. I made a mental note to look it up on the Internet when I got home.

“So, I don’t have to have a D and C?” I asked her.

“Where did you get that idea? Of course not,” my doctor said.

“My own head. And the internet. But mostly my imagination,” I replied.

“Stop doing that. Stop looking up things, and stop thinking,” she recommended.

Two days later, the nurse called me to report that my hormone levels are normal. Totally normal. I am what is considered perimenopausal, which is totally normal for a woman of a certain age.

I took the damn pills. After yet another week, I got my period. It was not the massacre I expected. It was totally normal.

Since then, times are back to my 45 day, 30 day, 19 day routine. Perimenopause. I don’t really know what else to look for because I threw away my pamphlets. I imagine most women of a certain age do the same, and it’s totally normal.

Is This Organic?

Do you ever think some people take the organic food trend too far?

I started buying predominantly organic food for my family about seven years ago. When I first had my girls, I bought organic milk because I was concerned about the added hormones. I didn’t want my daughters to start first grade and their periods at the same time or fatten up for slaughter. As our household income went up, I started adding more organic and local foods to our weekly grocery shopping because we could afford it, gradually replacing most of the conventional food we ate. That organic shit ain’t cheap, my friends.

Nowadays, my weekly grocery shopping has turned into an almost every day errand. I rotate between three to five stores, depending on what’s on sale and what I am planning to cook. With the amount of fresh produce I buy, I do have go shopping more frequently because we either finish it all or it spoils without all those chemicals to keep it in pristine condition past its prime. It’s practically a full-time job, all the grocery shopping and cooking. I don’t mind really, unless something goes wrong, like when the free-range chicken is spoiled or when I crack open an avocado and find a giant pit surrounded by dark brown bruises mocking me.

Sometimes, it’s something worse.

Last night, I made what I hoped was a healthy and tasty meal for my people. I had vegetarian Italian sausage, which I happen to love because it doesn’t contain gristle or indeterminate white hunks, and a large bunch of green kale. I sliced the “sausage” and sautéed it with chopped onions and red pepper strips. After I stripped the kale from the thick stems, I rinsed the leaves in a colander, shook off the excess water, and chopped them before adding them and minced garlic to the pan. Salt, pepper, a splash of chicken broth, also organic, went into the pan to simmer while whole wheat rigatoni boiled in a pot of kosher sea-salted water.

I made up dinner like I usually do, pretending I am on “Chopped” or some other cooking show where you have a few random ingredients and have to make a tasty entrée to present to the judges. In my case, the judges are my family, none of whom particularly like any of the same foods. One hates the fake sausage. One detests kale. One thinks rigatoni is stupid. My goal isn’t so much to impress my panel, but rather to see if I can create a dish that none of them thoroughly enjoy, except for me, because I pretty much love everything I put in it. That’s the benefit of doing the cooking. If they don’t like it, they can take a turn at the stove.

I do get some comments, usually in the form of a backhanded compliment, like “this sausage doesn’t have a funny aftertaste” or “the kale doesn’t taste as bad as I expected.” You can imagine how motivating the feedback is.

Three of us sat down to eat the rigatoni with Italian vegan sausage and kale, presented in lovely porcelain pasta bowls, with a sprinkle of chopped parsley and shredded parmesan. The missing person, S, was at her dance class, but rest assured there would be plenty for her to sample when she got home. Everyone enjoyed it.

My husband devoured all of his, even though he doesn’t really care for any of the foods individually, including the pasta. I am married to the only man I know who hates noodles of all shapes.

I was attempting to mindfully eat my food, enjoying the contrast of textures and flavors, taking time to chew thoroughly and really taste it.

My oldest daughter, E, tends to unhinge her jaw and swallow whatever is on her plate in one breath. The pasta was no different, except she left a small pile of vegetables at the bottom of the bowl, which she moved around with her fork. We chatted about our days, and she sat, listening to or ignoring us, playing with the few leaves of kale.

Then she freaked out.

She threw her fork down and stood up, open mouthed, hands on either side of her face.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” my husband, her father, asked.

“Bug! Oh my god, there’s a bug in my bowl! There’s a bug! I almost ate a bug!” She paced around the kitchen sink, open mouthed, not really gagging, but you could tell she wanted to. “I’m gonna be sick! I almost ate a bug! Didn’t you wash it? What if I ate its eggs? I’m going to die!” E was giving an Oscar-worthy performance.

“Of course I washed the kale! I washed it and dried it and then chopped it. Are you sure it’s a bug?” I defended myself, feebly, because it really didn’t matter what I said. She was already over the edge.

“Look at it! It’s got legs and eyes! I know what a bug looks like! I almost ate it! I’m going to be sick!”

“Just calm down,” my husband said. “Lots of cultures eat bugs all the time. Protein. We have a certain allotted amount of insects and feces in all of our processed foods. You don’t think you eat bugs in every bowl of cereal, anything that contains flour?”

“You’re not helping,” I said. I picked up her bowl and took a peek. All I saw were chopped leaves of kale. Except one of them had an interloper, a small oddly shaped insect with its legs compactly folded against its exoskeleton. “Yep. It’s a bug. I think it’s a stink bug.”

“I’m going to be sick!” she shrieked and ran upstairs.

I showed the bowl to my husband, who pushed it away. “I don’t want to see that,” he said.

“I kind of wish she ate it, She would have never know it was there,” I said, looking at my own bowl, which contained the rest of my dinner. “I really liked that. I guess we have to throw the rest away.”

“Well, I’m not eating it,” he said.

“So, I guess I can’t really save some for S when she gets home from dance, huh?”

He gave me a look.

I got up and dumped the rest of the meal into the garbage. Then I went upstairs to soothe E, who was in her bed, looking at her phone.

“Are you okay?” I asked her.

“I could have eaten that. I probably ate its eggs. It’s probably infesting my intestines as we speak. I’ll be dead before breakfast.”

“Seriously?” I said. “There are no eggs implanting in your digestive tract.”

“How can you be so sure?” she asked.

“Because I cooked it. No eggs would still be viable. I suppose that’s the end of kale for a while, huh?”

“Six months at least. No leafy greens for at least six months,” E declared.

“But it’s salad season,” I said.

She gave me a look.

“At least you know it was organic,” I said before gently closing her bedroom door and going back downstairs to clean up the dinner dishes and mourn the rest of the meal, lying in the top of the trash can.

When S got home from dance, she ate a frozen dinner, but it was also organic. 

Kids Say the Darndest Things

When kids are young, they love to share things they’ve learned with their parents. I remember those days well. My daughters, E and S, always seemed eager to tell me about school. Maybe it was something that happened on the playground, or a lesson about their favorite animal, or maybe learning about the moon or the planets. Everything was new to them, and they were pure and innocent and curious.

Now, my two girls are teenagers, and while they probably tell me way more than their friends tell their parents, it is just not the same. Maybe it’s because, at 16 and 14, they are already a bit jaded and burned out from too much homework and being able to tell when assignments are a waste of time. Maybe it’s because they are not learning anything new that’s worth mentioning. Truth be told, there is less excitement over, say, logarithms then there would be over manatees. Even the stories of their classmates are more shocking than amusing. Let me illustrate that point for a second.

S (about two weeks ago): Hey Mama, you know that boy who is always looking at my butt? Well, he got suspended for a week for making Lean in the bathroom. I won’t have to deal with him breathing on my neck in math! Praise the Lord!

Lean, for those of you who are neither the parents of teenagers nor in the hip-hop community, is a recreational beverage involving codeine cough syrup, Sprite or Mountain Dew, and a Jolly Rancher candy. Also, this boy likes to make my daughter uncomfortable regularly. It’s not just her and not just that boy; it’s kind of how a lot of middle schoolers interact with each other. Perhaps you remember?

Here’s another one.

E: Hey Mom, guess what happened at school today. This girl got into a big argument with this asshole boy that no one likes and today someone spray painted a large blue dick on the side of her car and it was probably him cause he’s done that kind of thing before. And her car’s white! Ha! That shit isn’t coming off without a fight.

These are the teenage equivalent of what happened at school today. It’s enough to make you not want to ask anymore. The stories tend to involve girl fights, drug arrests, or naked snapchats from the 8^th grade mattress back that the whole school sees. We have moved past the conversations about showing kindness and compassion or not joining in on the gossip because what if it were them. According to both of them, all the stories are true, all the time. And sometimes they are documented, so even if they do sound fucking ridiculous, they can still be true.  They reassure me they don’t talk like this at school, but save it up for me when they get home.

I don’t really feel reassured.

For the record, my kids go to pretty good public schools. Mostly affluent area of town, lots of overachievers and competition for good colleges and honors and AP classes. Also lots of entitled brat narcissists with Jeep Wranglers and a pocketful of Mom and Dad’s prescriptions. Seriously, what is the definition of a good school today?

Every once in a while, however, they will come home with something new they learned, and it’s almost magical, that despite the fact that they, nay, all teenagers, know everything, they can still learn something new.

E, who is almost finished with her sophomore year, came home all excited a few weeks ago. Normally she comes home and scowls, eats anything she can find in the pantry, and then lumbers upstairs to sleep it off. Sometimes, she comes home and cries. Excited is not usually what the coming home looks like.

E: Hey Mom, do you know how sloths mate?

Me: Um, no. Should I?
E: Yes, you should. I’m going to tell you all about it. It’s really cool. The female sloth gets all worked up, but she is too lazy to leave her tree, right?
Me: Right.
E: So to let the male sloths know she is ripe and ready, she starts to scream, like this.

E emits this high-pitched screech. It was quite unpleasant, like a girl who sees a bug in her bathroom or when two girls run into each other at Target. Here is an actual sloth making the same sound:

Me:  I get it, you can stop now. So then what happens?

E: Well, she just hangs from the tree, screaming like that. And then a male sloth might hear her and think, oh snap, it’s time to smash…
Me: Where did you learn this, exactly?
E: Just wait, so he gets out of his tree and follows the scream sound until he finds her.
Me: And then what happens?
E: They smash.
Me: When did smash become a thing?
E: You’re old. It was always a thing.
Me: So what do they do?
E: They mate. I told you.
Me: Well, what’s so special about sloths mating? I thought that was the point of the story.
E: It was mostly the scream.
Me: Ah. Thanks for sharing that. Great story.
E: Why don’t we have anything good to eat?

If you have little kids, talk to them every day. Act interested in all the stories. Comment and really participate. Because one day in the not -too-distant future, those stories will either stop altogether or morph into something you aren’t sure you want to hear.

 

Going Above and Beyond

If you are one of the few, the proud, who read my blog regularly, you may already know I am not a fan of flying. Unfortunately, I seem to have passed on this fear to my teenage daughter, E.  She has been scared of flying since early childhood and has not really gotten over it, even after our trip to Europe last summer. Like me, however, she can tolerate a few hours with the help of a Valium or Xanax, because at the end of the day, if you want to go anywhere, sometimes you have to nut up and strap in.

Spring break was a few weeks ago, and E really wanted to visit her best friend, AJ, who had plans to spend the week at her father’s house in southern Florida.   Last summer, E flew down to spend the week with AJ, and it went well, so well that she was ready to fly again. I bought her a plane ticket and lamented the fact that this was the first time she would be going on a spring break trip without us. I wasn’t too worried about any sort of “girls gone wild” scenario because AJ’s dad doesn’t put up with too much. All I had to do was get her on the plane, and I knew things would be fine.

The Friday of her 5:30pm flight on Allegiant Airlines, E spent most of the day packing, repacking, showering, and putting on make-up. She also allowed plenty of time to get extremely nervous and snap at everyone. About an hour after lunch, she received a text saying the flight was delayed and would not leave until 6pm. It wasn’t a major problem, more of a minor inconvenience, especially since my husband and I were supposed to close on our mortgage refinance at the same time.  We figured she had to be there early anyway, so it wouldn’t present a conflict.

Around 3pm, E got another text from the airline. The flight was now delayed until 7:30pm. Her anxiety could handle a small delay, but the second one pushed her into the world of panic. She was convinced she wasn’t going to be able to leave, and Allegiant doesn’t fly every day, which meant the next flight wouldn’t be until Monday, two days before AJ was going to leave her father’s house. Therefore, spring break, and life, was ruined. Tears followed, lots of them.

I tried to get her to calm down. We did the best we could with the chilling and relaxing and reapplying of makeup until about 5:30. She never got another text from the airline, so I drove her to the airport, armed with a Valium to take around the time she made it to the gate so it could kick in around boarding time. I had plenty of time to get back home for the refinance closing.

Before she got out of the car, she received a text from the airline. The flight was delayed by ten more minutes. I told her everything would be fine, to take a deep breath, give me a hug, and get out of the car.

I hated to leave her there alone, but she is sixteen, and a fairly experienced traveler.  She knew what to do. She could handle it. She had her ID and her boarding pass and her carry-on luggage with the proper dimensions and weight. She also had a special gift bag I hid in her suitcase, filled with Easter candy and travel sized beauty products for a fun surprise on Easter morning.

Unfortunately, the TSA ruined the fun surprise. After her bag was scanned and she walked through the screening thing at the security check, they pulled her to the side and asked her what was in her bag that was obstructing the scanner.  She said she had some feminine hygiene products in there.  The TSA agent doubted the pads were a red flag, if you will, and made her unzip the suitcase. He saw the Easter bag, peeked inside, and asked her if she knew what was in it. She admitted she did not. He said thanks to that bag he had to pat her down, which is the most action she has ever gotten.

After the TSA was satisfied she wasn’t going to bring down the airplane with a Cadbury Crème egg, she made her way to the gate, and about ten minutes before boarding, she took her Valium.  As she sat there in a bit of a haze, shit got real.

The gate agent began boarding the flight by zones. E was in the last zone, so she sat and watched and waited. About 2/3 of the people boarded the plane.  Suddenly, the pilot came storming through the gate door, turned around and yelled for everyone to get off the plane, and then screamed that the flight was cancelled because the crew flew too many hours. He stomped off towards the exit before anyone had a chance to ask what was going on.  The gate agent picked up her PA microphone and announced that the flight had been cancelled and that no compensation would be given for stranded passengers, who should head to the ticket counter for more details. She thanked everyone for choosing Allegiant and put down the microphone.

Everyone was not thankful they chose Allegiant. People started yelling and screaming at each other. One man pushed his wife into the gate agent. She shoved back. An angry man punched a hole in the wall. People threw water bottles.  It was E’s first riot.

By this point, E was well under the influence and did not think to take out her cell phone to record it. She tried to gather up her purse and luggage, but she tripped and her bag dumped everywhere. She got down on her hands and knees to collect her things around the same time most of the passengers angrily headed to the ticket counter. Her things, and indeed her person, were trampled in the process. She shoved her stuff back in her purse and got on the escalator. When she tried to put her suitcase down on the step in front of her, she lost control of it, and it tumbled down to the first story. When she got to her, she grabbed it and started to cry.

One man noticed her in tears and asked if she was okay. She snapped, “Do I look okay to you?” and sat down to cry more and text me.

I was signing my name a million times on a bunch of meaningless papers when she texted, but luckily we quickly finished up and got to the airport not long after the riot. My husband stayed in the car at the curb (we live in a small city, where such things are still possible), and I found E standing in line with the rest of her flight mates. One ticket agent was at the counter, yelling at a passenger who was yelling at her. We stood there a while trying to figure out what was going on, and then the agent barked at the line to come back at 9:30 in the morning for boarding passes because the flight was rescheduled for the 11:30 the next day.

She left the next day, after waiting in the ticket line for over an hour, because even though the Allegiant representative said to be there at 9:30, the morning’s ticket agent didn’t start to check in the passengers until after 10:30. She had another Valium, and it wore off by the time she was on the beach in Boca.

I don’t like to fly because I don’t like the way it feels. I don’t like the noises, and I don’t like being trapped with a bunch of coughing strangers and crying, seat-kicking children. What I really don’t like, however, is how unpleasant air travel has become. Gone are the days when flying, nay, travel was an event. People don’t dress up anymore. There is no silverware or little plates or even food. No one speaks with a mid-Atlantic accent.

Instead, it is like a Greyhound in the sky. If you are lucky, no one is strung out on bath salts next to you. Hopefully the toilets still flush. If you are lucky, you might arrive the same day, but one never knows, does one? It all sucks, from the first vague text to the nonexistent customer service to the belligerence of the other passengers. And no amount of Valium can fix any of it.

25% Off

All I wanted was a new dishwasher. Instead, I am hiding in my office while my husband uses his professional grade Dremel tool to grind out a quarter inch chunk of wood from the support beam holding up my granite countertop. Do you know how loud a Dremel tool is? No wonder the man is deaf.

After a few months of my dishwasher not working as it should, I insisted we get a new one. I had done all the things I could think of to improve its function, including cleaning around the disgusting soap scum slime-covered seal and running the rinse cycle with an assload of white vinegar. Nothing worked, including the washer itself.  It had a good run, having been with us for 8 years and who knows how long before we bought the house. Plus, it was black, and I don’t want to sound racist, but I wanted it to match my newer stainless steel kitchen appliances, although why I don’t know because all of them have a crime scene’s worth of fingerprints and smudges, none of which were noticeable on my vintage 90’s dishwasher.

We needed to pick out a replacement dishwasher. There is no such thing as an impulse purchase in my house because my spouse is one of those researcher kinds of guys.  Instead, there are months of review browsing and comparison shopping and debating and weighing of pros and cons. I generally don’t get too involved in his process. I don’t have strong feelings one way or the other. I just don’t want to hand wash my dishes. I want a machine that does it for me with minimal noise and no weird chalky film on everything. He looks at the bigger picture, the energy efficiency and internal capacity and a bunch of other crap I would never think to investigate because I just don’t want to hand wash my dishes.

After careful review, he selected a Bosch unit, last year’s model that was on sale at a national home improvement retailer. He ordered it online and made arrangements for installation after it arrived at the local store. Yay, right?

Last week, the dude came to the house with the new washer. He must have been an independent contractor that works with the store because he showed up in his old minivan with a new washer in the back, which looked a little shady. He came in and was polite and all that stuff, asking for an old towel and for one of us to turn off the power at the breaker box before he removed the old, malfunctioning washer. A trail of water, nay, tears, was left across my hardwoods as he rolled it out to his creepy van where I am sure others have also been left to die.  When he came back in with the new one, he got down to the installation part of the work order. I had to leave as the car pool line was calling my name, but my husband stayed home to provide any assistance and also to surf on his laptop.

When I returned home with a child, the van was gone and my husband was waiting for me at the door.

“Guess what?” he said.

I wanted to be positive, but I know tone, and I was positive that was not a good guess what.

“What?” I said, bracing myself.

“He installed the wrong fucking dishwasher! It’s a Whirlpool, not a Bosch. It’s not even a good one. I looked online and it’s way cheaper than the one we ordered. Plus, it’s a piece of crap. It’s all plastic inside. Can you believe that shit?”

In fact, I could not believe that shit. That shit was downright unbelievable. I am still convinced it was a bait and switch.

My husband got on the phone and had an argument with the customer service lady who insisted that the only way to resolve the problem was to have a work order to remove the wrong washer, then reorder the correct one and wait for it to arrive for installation. He insisted that we would not be without a dishwasher while she corrected the problem, and then he insisted that he needed a supervisor because he wasn’t wasting his time on someone with no authority.

After that, he spoke with the manager at the local store who verified they did have the washer and would have it installed when it could be arranged, in about a day or two. Only that turned into another long wait because the store never arranged it with the local contractor with the serial killer van. It felt less and less like a mistake.

At the end of the week, my husband followed up again with the manager, who did an excellent imitation of a person shocked at his employee’s piss poor customer service skills. And today, the installer was back around lunchtime with the Bosch.

He unhooked the loaner dishwasher and dragged its cheap ass out to the van, then brought in the correct machine and commenced installation.  He was down on the floor lying on an old towel and sweating profusely and looking around and rearranging hoses and finally got up and went to make a phone call outside. When he came back inside, he announced that the machine did not fit. It wasn’t his fault or the washer’s fault or even my husband’s fault. It was because of the metal anchor strip attached to the top of the unit. It was exactly one quarter inch too tall to squeeze into the allotted space.

Apparently, our countertop doesn’t have the normal kind of support; it has a thick wooden beam that takes up a quarter of inch too much motherfucking space. The technician said he wasn’t authorized to continue because he was concerned if he forced it, it would crack the granite countertop. Our options were to contact a carpenter or…

My husband took a look at the wood and said,” Couldn’t you just chisel out a little sliver and it would fit?”

The technician said, “In theory, yes. But I can’t do it.”

They devised a plan. My husband would cut out the quarter inch from the beam, and the technician would come back tomorrow and try again, if he could fit it into his schedule.

So here I am, hiding in my office because the noise from the grinding thing is horrible, like a wounded cat ready to fight to the death. I’m not the only one who thinks so. My cat, Yoko, also thought it sounded vaguely threatening. She just attacked my husband, claws out, grabbing him on the back of the leg and scratching and biting the fuck out of him. Unfortunately, I didn’t witness the assault, but I did hear him scream, which freaked me out something fierce. It’s always scary when a man who works with his hands for a living yells his head off while working with power tools. Yoko is with me, trying to calm down. I am nursing a tension headache brought on by jaw clenching and Dremel vibrations.

And in the kitchen sink are all the dinner dishes, waiting to be hand washed, because all I wanted was a new dishwasher.

The Girl Scouts Always Ring Twice

Here’s a cautionary tale for your evening.

This afternoon, while I shopped for overpriced organic food at Earthfare, my older daughter, E, called me on the phone. This was indicative of something being catastrophically wrong. Teenagers do not call unless they have broken hearts or fender benders. I knew she was at home, still half-dressed (or half-undressed, depending on your worldview), so it couldn’t be the car accident. Chances were pretty good it wasn’t the heart ache either because she has yet to let any boy get close enough to have an emotion. I answered the phone, and she was squawking about girls and cookies and something about the stairs and no pants. I couldn’t tell if she was laughing or crying, but either way, it didn’t sound good. I interrupted her to make sure whatever it was could wait until I checked out and got home. She hung up on me, which meant it could.

When I pulled my car in the garage, my younger daughter, S, met me at the door.  She looked excited.

S: Girl Scout cookies are here!

Me: Those little girls delivered them today? Cool! Who paid for them?

About a month ago, a couple of neighborhood girls actually went door to door selling Girl Scout cookies instead of having their parents just take the order form to the office. They were so cute and sincere and naïve, so I purchased two boxes, Peanut Butter Patties, which were better when they were called Tag-Alongs, and Thin Mints, because the law requires a minimum of one box per order. Today appeared to be delivery day.

S: I did. You owe me 8 bucks.
Me: I don’t have any money right now. Thank you though.
S:  That’s cool. I’ll get it from Dad. Did E tell you what happened?
Me: Well, she called me, but I couldn’t understand what she said. It sounded like she was crying.
S: She may have been. They rang the doorbell, and I answered it and took the cookies in the kitchen. I had one in my mouth when I went back to the door with my money.
Me: Which flavor?
S: Thin Mint.
Me: Sweet.
S: I gave them the money and closed the door. E heard me pay for the cookies, so she ran downstairs…
Me: Did she fall? No wonder she called me crying. E! E! Are you okay?

I screamed this last part at the top of my lungs so she could hear me from the garage doorway.

S: No, worse.

E, screaming: What do you want?
Me: How worse?
S: You know how she never got dressed today?
Me: Yeah.
S: So she’s still in a t-shirt and underwear. And when she ran downstairs to get at the cookies, the Girl Scouts rang the doorbell again. With their parents. I must have given them a dollar too much, and they came back to return it and say thank you. When I opened the door, E was in the middle of the stairs in her hot pink panties.

I’m sorry but I kind of felt that detail was necessary, not so much that you needed the visual, but more so that you could understand what that unsuspecting family saw through the open door. That almost adult child of mine buys her own underwear now because she doesn’t want me to have any input on her choices. I do not have veto power when it isn’t my money. I am not saying she needs to stick to the six pack of Hanes in original granny pant white, but damn, girl, no one even sees those strips of flimsy cloth. When my husband folds the laundry, he doesn’t know if he should have an erection or a heart attack.

Me: So what did E do? I’m guessing she didn’t fall down the stairs, as I had originally assumed.
S: She stood there like a possum, paralyzed with fear. It was awesome.

I started dinner, and E sauntered into the kitchen, still wearing a t-shirt and underwear. She went to the pantry and grabbed a Girl Scout cookie out of the open package.

Me: Have you learned nothing today?

E, with a cookie in her mouth: mumble mumble

And…scene. The takeaway here is that you should always have pants at the ready during Girl Scout cookie season. You never know when innocent children will arrive at your doorstep with cookies and possibly a couple of parents. Don’t scar them for life.