Kim Foster

How Was Your Day?

2010-05-21T21:49:00.002-04:00

The other night, Brandon and I were both in the bathroom. I had just come home from visiting my mother in the nursing home and was about to take a bath, and he, having seen little of me that day, was just in there chatting with me.

BRANDON: So how was your day, Mama?

ME: (wearily) Ohhh... it was fine, I guess.

HIM: Except for the part where you had to work?

ME: Yeah. And the part where I went to the nursing home.

HIM: (stating the obvious, as if to a fool) Mama, that's all you've done all day.

ME: Oh. Then I guess my day sucked.

HIM: (laughed heartlessly)

Sex Lives of the Old and Portly

2010-01-06T19:41:00.002-05:00

Last night I was huddled over my laptop, working, while my husband sprawled nearby, reading. He closed his book, yawned, and mentioned that he’d run into a friend of ours earlier in the day. The friend had seemed unusually cheerful, Brian said. There was quite a spring in his step.
“It’s ‘cause he’s getting some,” I told him. “He’s got a new girlfriend.”
“He does?”
There was a brief pause during which I suppose we both imagined what such a relationship might entail for our very overweight, over-fortyish friend.
“So you think they’re doing it?” my husband wanted to know.
“I imagine so,” I said, stopping to push up my glasses. “And I really need to have a discussion with him, because I need to know how in the hell he took his clothes off in front of somebody new.”
“Why's that?”
“Because personally, I’m pretty well figuring that if something ever happens to you, I’m never having sex again.”
“Really? So you figure you’ll just ask him for some tips?”
“Yeah, I mean what’s the secret, you just go out and find somebody even fatter and worse-looking than you are?”
He started laughing. “I guess.”
“Then why would I want to have sex with somebody like that?” I screeched. “It’s like that thing Groucho Marx said about not wanting to join any club that would allow him to be a member. Anybody that’d have sex with me, I wouldn’t want.”
“Well, this really says a lot about your opinion of me,” remarked Brian.
“Doesn’t it? Of course,” I considered, “you and I declined together.”
“Hmm, we declined together,” he repeated. “Interesting.”
“We did,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I’d be way hotter than I am right now, except I was just trying to keep up with you in your declining process.”
“Wow,” said my husband. “Well, you're keeping right up, I have to tell you.”

My Brain Has Been Rewired

2009-10-11T09:40:00.005-04:00

I'm convinced that excessive computer usage has rewired my brain, and maybe yours, too. And not in a good way.

Yesterday morning I got up and of course (!) checked Facebook before I even had coffee. I was surprised at how many other people had posted that they were already up and had been unable to sleep. I'd had another unsatisfying night, myself. After going to bed I'd been bothered by restless leg syndrome (previously only experienced in times of extreme stress). I had to get up around midnight, take a hot bath and a Tylenol PM in order to get some rest, and I was still the first one up in my house the next morning. Also on the subject of sleeping/not sleeping: twice this past week I've dreamed of web surfing.

At work at my regular job, I check my office email over and over and over, a million times a day. I could set it to automatically notify me; but no, I'd rather obsess. In short moments of downtime, such as when I'm waiting for my printer to spit something out, I check my personal email or look at Facebook or hit a website for whatever topic has crossed my mind in the last few minutes. (My mother-in-law has mentioned that she can never think of anything she wants to look up. To me this is incomprehensible. I can't STOP thinking of things I want to look up.)

Saddest of all, and I've heard this expressed by other readers, is that my relationship with books has been altered. Books have been the love of my life and until the past year or two, I dove into them and easily became absorbed. But lately I find it much more difficult. At present I'm reading a new book--one I had long looked forward to--by a favorite author, and instead of savoring the beautiful prose I'm impatient for the story to get moving, already, and show me some action. I still do pretty well when I return to favorite books from the past, but NEW characters and stories have their work cut out for them, trying to wrest my attention away from this magic screen in front of me.

It's almost as though we've conditioned ourselves to have ADD. No longer is it a way of life to concentrate on one thing at a time; EVERY job description uses the term "multi-task." We go through our days trying to do one main thing while flipping back every few minutes (seconds?) to another. I find this all disturbing. You?

Ruby Slippers

2009-10-05T20:17:00.002-04:00

When my daughter Bliss was little, Target used to sell sparkly jewel-encrusted red shoes that reminded me of the ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz. Every time I went in the store I would look at them and think how thrilled she would be if I bought her some. But then I'd think, Don't be frivolous. That's ten dollars, or whatever, that could be spent on something more practical.

A hundred times I looked at them, a hundred times I never bought them.

Eventually Bliss got too old to be delighted by such things as ruby slippers from Target. And then one day I realized that I would never in my whole life have another little girl to buy them for.

Moral of the story: that's ten bucks I should have spent.

Belated Good Idea

2009-07-06T19:32:00.006-04:00

The Sewanee Writers' Conference is about to crank up again. Last year's conference seems like yesterday in that I can still remember every detail of every room I entered, etc. I'll just come on out with it--I didn't have a great time at Sewanee. I did find it a valuable experience, just not in the ways I expected to. Anyway, I don't feel like going into all that, I was only going to mention that I was struck by an idea today, approximately one year too late.

I was reading a book by Margot Livesey, who was on the faculty at Sewanee last year, and I was thinking that I guessed she and my own workshop leaders, Jill McCorkle and Tony Earley, would all be convening again pretty soon. And I thought, wouldn't it be neat if the story I took to be workshopped last year had been published since then. I'd mail Jill a copy and she'd get it after breakfast one day, on that table in the dining hall where they leave your mail.

And what made me mad was that if I'd had this brilliant thought right after I came home last year, I could have made it happen. The thought of Jill McCorkle picking that package up from the mail table would have been inspiration enough for me to actually submit the thing to the requisite four million places until somebody took it.

Instead, what really happened was that I procrastinated for months before I FINALLY revised it in light of the comments everybody in the workshop had made, and then one day in a burst of energy I had about ten copies made of it, and then I dumped them on my office floor where they've been gathering dust ever since.

I'm not sure whether to say that the Sewanee workshop dampened my enthusiasm for the story I took, but I don't know that I'd ever care to participate in another. I dislike dissecting the work of others--I always have, even in literature classes. And I'm afraid it's been detrimental to me to picture a roomful of people dissecting mine.

Before, when I sent out a story, I imagined a lone editor reading it (sometimes, I know, only a paragraph) and either tossing it on the "not my taste" pile, or continuing, liking it, maybe fighting to get it into an issue of the magazine. Now I'm afraid that the workshop--the one and only workshop group of my life--will stick in my head forever like a Greek chorus muttering. Passing judgment.

I think it's one of those life situations where I was happier when I knew less.

Career Move?

2009-05-17T18:46:00.003-04:00

I am developing such a collection of hoochie shoes that I'm thinking about starting a website for foot fetishists. (That's just a joke but believe you me, if I thought I could make a living at it...)

Ya like these? I do. I wish the zippers were silver, but I still like 'em.

Still Sick

2009-05-03T15:52:00.002-04:00

Five days later, I think I'm worse. Still coughing, sneezing, sniffling, and generally unable to breathe right. Throat feels OK sometimes, other times like I swallowed a razor blade. But most unpleasant are the earaches which sometimes decrease my hearing so much I feel like I have earplugs in. Also, I've barely slept.

Now for a tally: How many bowls of chicken soup have been made for me? How many times has my husband soothed my fevered brow or favored me with a sympathetic glance? How many times---in SPITE of the fact that he ADMITTED reading the previous post---has he so much as seemed to notice my proximity to the valley of death? You guessed it. ZERO.

But how many times has he said, "Did you start the laundry?" Approximately 4,927.

When Your Wife Doesn't Feel Well

2009-04-28T22:24:00.003-04:00

I always think that if a man can't figure out how a woman wants to be treated, just look at how she treats her kids. However we mothers treat our children (if we're mentally normal and all) is bound to be our idea of what pure love is. How do we greet them? How do we talk to them? Comfort them? Hold them? Feed them. Whatever.

With that in mind, let me just say that when I am sick I would like the following:

I would like you to look at me with tender concern. (Fake it if necessary.)See if I have a fever.

I would like you to tell me to lie down and rest. Cover me up with a blanket. Ask me if I want anything to eat or drink. Ask me if I have taken any medicine and if I have not bothered, insist that I am going to take some and right now. Then bring it to me.

Touch me. I understand that you don't want my cooties. But my body aches, and you are better than Tylenol. I promise not to give you my germs if you just let me put my head in your lap, or if you hold me for a few minutes or rub my back. Maybe a kiss on top of my head would be nice.

If you fussed over me in this manner for about five good minutes, I would feel all warm and fuzzy and would then insist that you go do whatever you want to do. Which is what you do anyway, only I do not feel warm and fuzzy.

If you wait until I have a heart attack or stroke to hover by my bed, I'm not going to know it. Take care of me when I'm just lightly-to-moderately sick, and I will love you for it.

The Great Pretender

2009-03-29T20:45:00.002-04:00

My son Brandon is a big Beatles fan; also a big pretender. He's growing out of it somewhat at 7, but when he was little he was always in a costume or carrying a prop, "being" somebody else.

Today he was apparently being Paul McCartney, and Paul was writing in his diary.

PAUL McCARTNEY (it said at the top of the page.)

Then it said:

"Today I will have fish and tea, and other British foods."

That was apparently as far as Paul got before he went out for a snack; a British one of course, old bean.

Only A Man Would Think of This Phrasing

2009-03-18T20:35:00.006-04:00

Brian was in a recording studio this weekend doing a voiceover audition, and while there he went into the restroom. He told me he saw an interesting sign taped to the restroom wall. I may not quote it exactly right, but basically it said this:

If you are driving a long freight train,
Flush once and THEN use paper.

Not doing so may cause the train
to jump the tracks and flood the station.

How Alarming

2009-03-14T17:40:00.006-04:00

At 1:30 this morning our house alarm went off, and if there had been an actual bad guy in the house, I would have rushed directly into his arms, so intent was I on silencing that piercing noise. I mean really. Our bedroom is mere steps from the kitchen, back door, and alarm control box thingy, and when my conscious memory of last night begins, I was already a few steps out of the bed and the phone was ringing and all I was thinking was STOP THAT NOISE. I turned the kitchen light on and noted that the kitchen door was OPEN a couple of inches, and still I was thinking SHUT UP, SHUT UP, how can I make this thing shut up. I closed and locked the door, maybe locking a bad guy inside with us, for all I knew. Brian had not arisen from the bed, where apparently he was having a chat with the alarm people and giving them the secret code word without bothering to ascertain that everything was actually okay. Although everything was, I guess.

It worried me, though. I had been in bed, but still awake, when Bliss came home at 11:25. I heard her turn off the alarm after her own entry and then reset it for the night. Then I guess I fell asleep while she was rattling around the kitchen fixing a snack. But the thing is, the door has to be shut for you to reset the alarm, so how did it come to be open two hours later? Brian theorizes that Bliss didn't shut it completely (much less lock it) and that our cat, who's always trying to make a break for it, worked on it bit by bit until he finally got it open. Pretty good theory, except that if the cat did painstakingly work until he got the door open, why was he still inside the house?

I had another alarm scare years ago that went like this: I was hugely pregnant with Bliss, and my then-husband worked at night, hence the whole decision to get an alarm. So on the evening after we got it installed, there I sat on the sofa, nervous, pregnant and alone, when suddenly a piercing BEEP, BEEP, BEEP caused me to leap up and then just stand there, paralyzed with fear, and wait for the intruder to appear. When he never did, I eventually figured out that the alarm company man (who had unplugged various appliances during the installation process) must have accidentally hit the button on big loud alarm clock in my kitchen, setting it to go off several hours later.

These incidents together suggest to me that the only thing an alarm is good for is to give me a few seconds' notice that I'm about to be murdered. Seriously, what we should have done last night was jump up and lock the bedroom doors, get the gun and wait for the cops to show up. Instead, I go running into the kitchen to silence the alarm so as to be killed more quietly. And to think I pay twenty-seven bucks a month for this protection.

Religious Cousin Cleans House, Finds Sex Toys

2009-03-11T19:11:00.004-04:00

I have this dear first cousin who is very religious. (I apologize to her for encapsulating her in that one sentence, but I think her religiousness is the main quality that pertains to this dream.)She has also been known on at least one occasion to clean something in my house while visiting me. "TEN YEARS AGO," she'll yell when she sees this. Anyway.

So I had this dream a couple nights ago that she had come for a weekend visit. I was getting dressed to go someplace while she and my kids were outside. I looked out the window and saw that she had raked up a big pile of leaves. Next thing I knew, I heard a lawn mower start up. Thinking it was a neighbor, I looked out again, but here came my cousin, marching along behind the lawn mower, wearing a little a straw hat to keep the sun off. I rolled my eyes (which by the way is a lifelong trait that I learned from her). What visitor takes it upon herself to cut her host's grass? I wondered. But whatever--I don't ask her to do these things.

Still in the process of getting dressed, I went into a little vanity area of my house that normally has framed pictures all over the walls. But the pictures had all been taken down--for dusting, I assumed--by my cleaning cousin. I was beginning to feel irked by all this, when I noticed, on a shelf (which doesn't even exist in real life) a bunch of SEX TOYS that had been left lying around for all the world, including religious cleaning cousins, to see! I particularly noticed an oversized black one of the manly-shaped variety. My face burned with embarrassment, but of course I was mad at HER. I was all set to go out in the yard and give her a piece of my mind for having the nerve to clean my house to begin with. But I woke up.

You ask me, I'd say there's lotsa symbolism in this dream.

Gina Bingo

2009-03-07T21:23:00.003-05:00

Gina is my very repetitive, very annoying chronic complainer of a coworker. As if it didn't suck enough to have to work in general, I have to sit right beside her. When she is not hacking and sneezing in my general direction, she is talking, which may be worse. She cannot stand to think that the rest of us may have failed to notice her for a moment, so she keeps up a stream-of-consciousness monologue all day.

There is not a lot going on in her brain, but whatever IS going on, we hear about it. So, since they don't allow us to play drinking games at work, I've decided to get some bingo cards printed up, to try to help us normal people survive the days with her. I think there could actually be several forms of Gina Bingo. We'll each keep the cards on our desks and put a little token on the square every time she says one of her trademark things.

The first game could be COMPLAINT BINGO. The squares on the cards could say: God, it's hot in here. God, it's cold in here.My husband's out of work. I'm broke and can't pay the bills. Mama's in the hospital again. I'm sick. My head/tummy/throat hurts. No matter what you do around here, it's not enough. This computer is so slow. This printer is so slow. This customer just chewed me out. I'm starving but I don't feel like eating anything. I'm hungry but I don't feel like going anywhere. Of course she doesn't feel like going anywhere--it's much more fun to stay in the office and complain! With any luck, someone will pay attention to her!

Once somebody has won a round of Complaint Bingo (which should only take a minute) we could play REPETITIVE ANNOYING STATEMENT BINGO. The squares on those cards could say, for example: I'm a Georgia peach all the way! I live in a lake community. I'd be more than glad to. The computer automatically does that.

Finally we could play VOCABULARY BINGO. Gina pronounces things however she wants to, and clings to her mistakes no matter what anybody tells her. The Vocabulary Bingo cards would say: "I was belivid." (livid.) "It was a hox." (hoax.) "I got tickets for Circus Delay." (Cirque de Soleil).

My only concern now is what the winner of each round will get to do. Oh, I know what we'd all LIKE to do. But that would be illegal, and not very nice either.

Our Hot Lingerie

2009-03-03T19:47:00.003-05:00

So the other night we finished watching TV and got ready to clear out of the living room, and I felt compelled to remark upon Brian's appearance. His sleeping attire (he has several identical sets) consists of a gray t-shirt and a pair of white boxer shorts. He takes out his contacts at night, too, and wears these black-framed,nerdy-on-purpose Drew Carey kind of glasses.

It was the shorts that got me, though. The waistband of them always manages to slink down lower than his tummy, while the front of the shorts gets all wrinkled up and the fly gapes open. And once he's been sitting around in a chair for a while, the whole business tends to be sort of crooked on his body.

I shook my head at the sight of him. "God," I said, starting to laugh. "We've got to get you something to wear around the house that's not so terrible-looking."

He looked over at me--me, in my bleach-stained navy blue thermal pants topped by non-coordinating t-shirt and sweatshirts, neither of which disguised the fact that my chest was six inches further south than it is when I have a bra on. "Well, you know," he replied, "you ain't exactly setting the world on fire yourself."

Put These in Your Dictionary

2009-03-02T21:27:00.003-05:00

I'll let you in on a couple of new words my daughter Bliss and I have coined. I like them so much that I wish I could find some way for us to get paid for thinking them up, or at least get the credit for them, but I've pretty well given up on that, so I hereby release them into the wilds of the English language.

The first one is hers--which figures, since she's in high school--and the word is IMPREGNITO. When you're pregnant but you're trying to conceal it, you're impregnito, see?

The other word, mine, is SARGASM. That's when you get finished having unfulfilling sex and your partner says "How was it?" and you roll your eyes and go, "Woo-wee, that was really something."

And come to think of it, it would really suck if you wound up impregnito when all you had was a sargasm.

My Son the Famous African American

2009-02-27T23:46:00.002-05:00

A note came home from school with Brandon the other day. "Help us celebrate Black History Month," it said. "On Friday, dress your child as a famous African-American."

Why must they tempt me to mischief so?

Do you think they only gave us one day's notice due to rampant senses of humor in the Foster family which are liable to run amok if we had a little more time? That's my theory, but we still put our heads together to contrive a costume on one day's notice. Brandon does a hilarious imitation of Dave Chappelle doing Samuel L. Jackson, but it entails too much cussing. We had a lot of other great ideas for him--he could be JJ from Good Times, or Redd Foxx, or even Beyonce. I personally was voting for Flava Flav, since it would have been pretty easy just to tie a clock around his neck.

However he decided he'd be Barack Obama. He has a suit that used to be the Clark Kent part of a Superman costume, and an old cassette tape carrier that could be a mini-briefcase. All he needed was a mask. I called Party City and Spencer's. Nothing. All that was left was a rather uppity costume shop, but since we happened to wind up having supper at the Blimpie right beside it, we popped in to check.

An old fat queen--think Truman Capote without the voice--was sewing something when we walked in. His back was turned but after a few minutes he deigned to glance over his shoulders at us. "May I help you?" he asked boredly. I didn't like him already, but y'know, you do anything for kids, so I politely asked, "Would you happen to have a Barack Obama mask?" "NO," he snorted, as if this were the most obscure thing anybody could want. He then proceeded to recommend some oddball place in midtown or whatever, because he didn't get that I needed the mask right then.

So we were screwed, and Brandon just went to school in regular clothes this morning. Only tonight did we recall that he ALSO does a hilarious imitation of Lil John. So next year, we're gonna be ON the costume thing in advance. Get him some long dreads and dark shades and a grill and he'll be all set. YAY-uh!!

Product Recommendations

2009-02-23T20:52:00.004-05:00

Three products have I to recommend unto you this evening.

The first, which somebody purchased for our restroom at work, is LYSOL CITRUS spray. I don't know whether it kills any germs, but it smells so damn good you'll be hoping one of your family members will get in there and stink up the bathroom just to give you an excuse to spray it.

The second product is ARM & HAMMER WHITENING BOOSTER. Or maybe it's called "tooth whitening booster." Anyway, it costs about four bucks and you put it on your toothbrush right on top of your regular toothpaste. Brian and I could both tell a difference in our teefs within a couple of days.

The final recipient of my kudos is KABOOM TUB & SHOWER CLEANER. It's not quite so miraculous as my beloved Mr. Clean in the pink and blue bottle, which they abruptly snatched off the market (after hearing how much I liked it, no doubt). I don't want you to get the idea that I like to clean things--in fact scrubbing a bathtub is my very least favorite household chore. That's why I like to buy a product that doesn't screw around. Don't mix it up with that Arm & Hammer stuff, though.

In all fairness I have to mention a product that sucked. I wasn't surprised that it sucked, but it did suck in that not only did it not work, at all, but it cost me twelve dollars. I am speaking of Garnier Nutritioniste Skin Renew Anti-Puff Eye Roller. WHATEVER. This fancily-named cosmetic thingy did nothing whatsoever to lessen my resemblance to an alcoholic racoon who just went a few rounds with Mike Tyson.

Do you have any recommendations for me?

Workplace Tale 4: Joanna and the Speculums

2009-02-19T18:56:00.004-05:00

One time I worked in a doctor's office. We had this one nurse named Joanna who I guess maybe wasn't what you'd call a clean freak... though most of her failings were dog-related. I mean she had these dogs and she let them ride around in her car and get their fur all over it and mash their noses up against the windows and all, so we never went to lunch in Joanna's car.

Joanna also had some white nurse-pants that her dogs jumped on with muddy feet one day. At the time we figured that was the last we'd ever see of those pants, but no. The mud stains never came out but she continued to wear the pants at least once a week.

Still I can't say that her work habits were dirty, at least so far as I knew.
But one summer Monday I arrived at the office to find the waiting room doors propped open by electric fans, the patients gagging, and an aggressive smell in the air--a downright shocking odor suggesting that perhaps a corpse had been stuffed with expired tuna and left to decompose behind the magazine rack.

Joanna had forgotten to clean the speculums.

Apparently once speculums were used, the nurses dropped them into a container of cleaning solution temporarily and then sterilized them all at once when the day was over. Joanna had neglected this little duty, and the result, after a weekend of marination, was a smell so thick it made you embarrassed to be a girl.

I don't know if she got into trouble for it or if the doctors figured she was suffering enough already. I just remember thinking that I hoped it wasn't a first visit for any of the patients that morning. No excuse in the world could have convinced me to be examined in that office after one whiff.

Things We Talk About In Bed

2009-02-18T17:41:00.004-05:00

"Hey," I said to Brian last night, in the dark. "If we were contestants on The $20,000 Pyramid and the category was "Things Associated with Rednecks," what clues would you give me?"

"Skoal," he answered immediately. "Nascar. Country music. Big belt buckles."

"Hmm," I said. "Those are good. I was thinking of camouflage clothes. Wrestling. Smoking." I paused, then added, "An unreasonable love of American-made cars."

He laughed, then we thought of some more: Rebel flags. Skynyrd. Bumper stickers about Jesus.

These are the kinds of things we talk about in bed.

Workplace Tale 3: The Pursuit of Employment

2009-02-15T16:48:00.004-05:00

This is a 3-in-one post about job interviews. The first two are my personal stories while the third is a friend's.

I used to be a bartender. I went to Georgia School of Bartending which offered lifetime job placement, so whenever I was out of work I could call them up and they'd send me on interviews. One time, they advised me of an opening at a strip club that I believe was called the KitCat Club. Of course as a bartender I would keep my clothes on, so I thought, What the heck, I might make good money at a place like that. At the time I had never set foot in a strip club in my life but the guy at the bartending school told me to just ask for Jane. I got there and walked up to the door, and I told the guy who was collecting the cover charge that I had an appointment with Jane. He called her. I was picturing every other female restaurant manager I'd ever met--middle-aged, overweight, stern. Well. Jane soon appeared: long, lean, brunette, and topless. I found it quite hard to have a conversation with her and ignore her large naked breasts. The bartending job had already been filled anyway, but I got an interesting experience for my trouble.

Another time, the bartending school sent me to interview at a country club. The guy who interviewed me was either the food and beverage manager or the golf pro--I can't remember which, but anyway in my memory he looks and sounds just like John Madden, if that gives you a mental picture. It was a pretty standard interview; fill out an application, tell a little bit about where you worked before, etc. Then the guy followed up by asking me, "You never got caught f---ing any ni-g-rs in the back of a car or anything like that, did you?" I seem to recall that the club was closed that day; anyway there weren't many people around, and this question made the hair on my neck stand up, it was so creepy. I was like, No, dude. Now let me out of here before you come unhinged anymore than you already are. Needless to say, I didn't take the job.

Last story: Brian and I once had a friend named Jerri. She was a large woman, both tall and heavy. She shared the story of sitting down for an interview in a leather chair, and ripping a fart so loud that her interviewer could not control his laughter. He held a manila folder in front of his face to try to hide his mirth, but unfortunately the sound was not the only problem: "The man needed a gas mask," Jerri said. She hauled herself out of the leather chair, ran for the nearest restroom and burst into tears. But the interviewer eventually got himself together and sent his secretary to get Jerri, and he gave her the job anyway.

Workplace Tale 2: Psycho Christian Wife

2009-02-14T15:33:00.003-05:00

One time I worked at a company that manufactured styrofoam boards. It was a small company. I was the receptionist and general office chick; I entered orders into the computer and stuff like that.

We had three outside salesmen who called in to the office numerous times daily, so I quickly got acquainted with them. Two were in Atlanta and actually came into the office fairly often. The other, whose name was John, was based in Alabama and never came in. Although I joked around and talked trash with both of the Atlanta reps, the FIRST thing I was ever told about John was that he was a "born-again Christian." To me this pretty well equates to "tight-ass stick in the mud," so I was never any more than mildly friendly and courteous when talking to him.

Once a week I put together a package of various reports and things to mail out to each sales rep. I felt rather sorry for John, stuck off by himself in Alabama and having no camaraderie with the rest of us, so I used to stick a Post-It note on top of his reports. It would say....brace yourself..."Hi, John!" Sometimes when I was feeling especially wild, I'd draw a smiley face.

So one day the office phone rang, and when I answered it, a lady asked to speak to one of my coworkers [who, it turned out, she wrongly thought was my boss]. The coworker was unavailable, so the lady then identified herself as, oh, let's call her Chrissy Christian--John's wife.

"Oh, HI, Chrissy!" I said in delighted surprise. I was just tickled pink to get to talk to her, since unlike the other salesmen's wives, she'd never called in before.
Turned out, though, that Chrissy had an agenda. She wanted to know what was the meaning of these notes I was sending to her husband. What was my intention? She and John had discussed it, she said, and he assured her he had never given me any encouragement. She didn't like it, didn't appreciate it, and wanted to know what it was all about. Oh and by the way, how old was I?

I was about twenty-three or -four, I guess, and COMPLETELY MORTIFIED. The very idea of these two married people sitting around their living room having a heated discussion about my inappropriate (???) notes to her husband! The very idea of HER (not John, who worked there) trying to call my BOSS over it! What was my intention? A friendly hello, you crazy bat.

I assured her that she would NEVER have to worry again--which was an understatement, because I was a frickin' iceberg to her gonadally-challenged husband from that day forward. When I hung up after her call I marched straight into the office of the lady she'd been trying to call about me, and bawled my eyes out, I was so embarrassed and so mad.

I wonder sometimes if these two lovely Christian folks stayed married. For all their fine principles, I think you'd have to be the most nightmarish kind of an insecure psycho shrew to call your husband's job and mess up his relationships with his coworkers over a Post-It note that said "Hi."

COMMENT, damn you!

2009-02-13T21:19:00.000-05:00

You people are not fooling me--I know you're reading because my hit counter goes up.
So quit lurking around and speak up, whoever you are! I changed the settings so if you tried to comment in the past and it was a hassle, it should be easier.

Now please enjoy the first in my new series of anecdotes from my numerous jobs.

Workplace Tale #1: The Drive-Thru

2009-02-13T21:09:00.000-05:00

This is a quick one--that's why I chose it for tonight. And by the way, if you know me personally you might have heard some of these tales before. But anyway:

One time I worked at a bank, and the building that it was in had previously been a Del Taco. It still had the Spanish-tiled roof, and once in a while people would walk in, look around in a dazed manner, and then exit without saying anything. We never knew but assumed they had been in search of a burrito rather than a car loan or whatever. I mention this only to establish that the bank was set amongst a bunch of fast food restaurants.

There was a Pizza Hut on one side of us and a Church's Chicken on the other. One day a particularly unobservant and nasally-voiced woman evidently turned into the wrong parking lot by mistake. Not to be deterred by the lack of a menu or speaker box, she pulled right up to the drive-thru teller window and drawled, "I want two chickin bray-usts and a Co-Cola."

The Pet Peeves I Promised You

2009-02-07T14:45:00.000-05:00

I'm only posting this because I said I would, and I only said I would because I found this list stuck in my desk recently. I'm really all excited about what I'm going to post NEXT--because I had already planned a series of posts about crazy-ass things that have happened to me on various jobs over the years, but in the meantime, Brian has stunned me with a dirty confession that you'll probably like to hear about.

But for now, the pet peeves. Let's count 'em down. (I can't believe I haven't listed ten, since I'm so easily annoyed by so many things, but I've only got eight.)

8) People who sit right beside me in empty restaurants. (I know I've mentioned this before, that's why it's number 8.) And to this one I'll add those people who must sit directly in front of me at a movie when there are only about six couples in the whole place.

7)Cashiers who put coins on top of bills when giving me change. It's backwards.

6) People who blow their noses in public. God knows what debris from my snot-filled coworkers has landed on me, but I despise this practice in restaurants even more. I have seen people blow their noses in linen napkins at restaurants. I always want to go over and say,"Pardon me, but would it offend you if I vomit on you and ruin your meal the way you ruined mine?"

5)People who casually work things into conversation to let me know how much money they have. I don't begrudge anybody who's rich and happy about it but I'd rather they came right out and said "Hey, I'm a rich sonofabitch, whaddya think of that?" Then I could respond in kind and say, "Must be nice." But if they casually drop a comment about how they had a flat on their Jaguar, I'm just going to stare at them like they're speaking a different language, because I'd rather die than go, "Wow, you have a Jaguar?!COOL!" That would satisfy them too much.

4)People who make plans with me and then blow me off. I have permanently broken ties with more than one friend over this. I understand that things come up unexpectedly sometimes, or sometimes we just change our minds, but we all have telephones.

3)Nervous laughers. People who laugh after everything they say, even if it's not the least bit humorous. It's almost like they're apologetic for having spoken at all, so they add a laugh to everything in case anybody takes offense or disagrees. Then they can say, "Just kidding!" I think they should either grow a pair or shut up.

2)People who write YOUR instead of YOU'RE. This is just plain stupidity.

And my number one pet peeve of all time...is...

1) When people (other than Jim) say to me, "SMILE!" Jim is my friend and my old boyfriend, and he gets a pass on this one because he's been saying it to me for twenty-six years. But WOE BE UNTO STRANGERS who dare to insinuate that my facial expression does not suit them. It may not surprise you to hear that goody-goody, perky friendly nice people are not my favorite people anyway, but when they take it upon themselves (and really, they actually call out to me in parking lots and such)to demand that I rearrange my face, I am struck with the desire to rearrange theirs.

Public Admission

2009-02-01T19:06:00.000-05:00

Here is a short list of things that I like, that I am not supposed to like. For various reasons, it is not cool to like these things. Liking them means that some people may consider me bourgeois. Luckily, I do not care. So here they are:

1)American Idol. Turn your nose up all you want--this show helps me get through the loathesome cold, dark nights of winter. I have loved it from day one, because I like to sing and I like to gossip and judge people, so the attraction is obvious. Thank you, Idol, for helping my winter weeks go by. You're a lifesaver.

2)The Olive Garden. I am sure that if I were privileged to dine in actual Italy, I would recognize this restaurant as a Disneyland sort of facsimile. I might be able to tell whether their entrees were authentically Italian. Fortunately I am ignorant of all such things, and so I love to go there. They bring me something good (and meatless) to eat, and the atmosphere is plenty Italian enough for me, because what do I know from Italy?

3)Canned Biscuits and Instant Potatoes. A can of Hungry Jack biscuits costs about a dollar and I can do about six things with them to create about three full meals. They are light and airy, they split open easily, and they taste good. Instant potatoes are just good comfort food when you want something warm and savory, and they also cost only a dollar or two for a big honking box that will keep in your pantry for the next couple of years. Hey, and while we're at it, I like buttermilk and cornbread, too. That is, you put cornbread in a glass and pour buttermilk on it. Call me a hillbilly, I don't care.

Conversely, here are some things that I am supposed to like, and don't.

1) Red wine. I'm not overly fond of any wine, but red wine is served at room temperature and tastes like dirt. What's to like? It doesn't even get you drunk very fast, I don't suppose, though I've never been able to choke down enough to tell. Sushi and caviar are also heinously gross, by the way.

2) Classical music. I don't mind a little Canon in D if I'm, oh, in an elevator or something, but I would never under any circumstances actually choose to sit around listening to classical music.

3)Christmas.

Next time I'm going to list some pet peeves I've been saving up.

Why Can't This Be My Life?

2009-01-30T16:26:00.000-05:00

Today has been one of those good days when a kid is sick, but just a little bit. Just enough of a bona fide temperature to keep him home from school (and of course, me home from work) but not enough for any actual suffering to go on.

Here's what I did today. We were already dressed to leave for school when I kissed Brandon and discovered how hot he was, so we went on over to Publix and bought cold medicine and soup and stuff. We came back home and got into bed and I finished reading Revolutionary Road. After that I straightened up the house and took my sheets off the bed to start some laundry. I checked emails and fixed Brandon's lunch. The mail came. At 3 we went to pick Bliss up from school and to transact some business at the bank since ordinarily my weekdays are all tied up in golf ball hell. Then we picked up Bliss's new contacts that had been waiting at the optometrist's office, and came home.

See, now that's a life I can deal with. It would make perfect SENSE to me if my days were spent taking care of people and things I actually CARE about, and doing little things that would make life smoother for the whole family. It makes sense to me too, quite frankly, that there should be some time in there for things I want to do, at times of the day when I have the energy to do them.

I don't care if I'm 44 years old, I will never accept or understand who arranged the world in such a way that I have to spend all day every day doing something I hate, surrounded by people who irritate me, just to make enough money to enable me to get up and do it again. It makes me crazy to even consider the phrase, "spend my life." I'm literally SPENDING it--throwing huge handfuls of days at the least desirable thing I can imagine.

When I stayed home and lived off my severance pay for a year or whatever it was, it was one of the best times of my life. Life was just better for the whole family. I got the kids to school, I wrote, I took care of the house and the pet. If a child needed to go to the doctor, no problem. If an errand had to be done during business hours, I was on it. Brian came home to a meal on the table and no work waiting for him to do around the house.

And see, I'm not what you'd call high maintenance. I'm not a shopper, I don't need to get my hair and nails done, I don't care about driving a new car. All I really want to do is stay at home and have an existence where I'm not resentful and exhausted all the time. Why can't I have that?

Awards Ceremony

2009-01-17T07:33:00.000-05:00

Brandon won some awards at school the other day, and I went to see the ceremony.

It's strange; I'm not the mushiest mother in the world, not that much into kid stuff generally, but school programs tend to turn me into a pitiful weepy ball of emotion. My heart fluttered, just watching Brandon and his first grade classmates lined up across the stage holding their certificates so proudly.

Think of it: their loved ones assembled to watch, applaud and photograph them as the biggest boss of the place shook their hands and said "Great job!" and handed them an award. The beaming children have no idea that life will only be that way for a little while, but the parents know it and I think that's why we cry.

The principal asked us to turn off all cell phones. "For the next little while, your boss doesn't need you," he said. "Your kids need you."

Then the first grade teachers took turns standing at the podium, calling the names of children who had perfect attendance and whose grades were admirable. A glamorous-looking daddy in a long black woolen coat had taken time from his day to be there. He intercepted his little girl as she descended from the stage and presented her with a beautiful bouquet of fresh flowers. All of us flashed our cameras and our smiles, and gave our children hugs when the ceremony was over. We told them how proud we were.

"Brandon got a birthday present today," his teacher told me. That night, when Brandon showed us the gift he'd received from his friend Robert, I turned to mush all over again. In a tiny Christmas gift bag, Robert had placed an obviously-loved stuffed lion of his own. Onto a piece of notebook paper he had taped a pretty Christmas pencil, and under that he had drawn and colored a lion. "Happy Brday Brandon," his note said. The very idea of that little boy thinking of Brandon the night before and going around his own home gathering things to make a gift for him was enough to break my heart--in a good way. As my mother-in-law said, it almost gives you hope for the next generation.

But back to the topic of school programs: when Bliss was in elementary school, she sang in the talent show every year. I always went to see her and she did a great job, but the moment that stands out in my mind from all those shows involves a child I didn't know.

The performer was a tiny blonde girl who must have been in pre-K. She wore a light pink ballet leotard, tights and ballet shoes. Her mother stood to one side of the stage for moral support, and put on a CD of classical music. The little girl raised both arms gracefully over her head and simply ran, rather slowly, 'round and 'round in a big circle. That was all. She was too little to do anything fancier, but the rapturous look on her face was enough to kill me in my seat. She was so lovely and innocent it made your throat ache just to watch her, because you knew that in her future--like everybody's--there would eventually be troubles and heartaches of some kind. But she would always have this one moment where she stepped onto the stage and did a very simple thing, and everybody loved and applauded her for it. That time in life is so brief.

Brian and Brian and....

2009-01-09T20:39:00.000-05:00

(In a previous post I mentioned that I had written this one but had taken it down in case I hurt Brian's feelings. He saw that and of course demanded to read the possibly-offensive post, only he thought it was funny and said I should put it back. So here it is.)

I usually don’t use my blog to poke fun at my husband because I fear his retaliation. He’ll say some shit that isn’t even funny, just to get me back. Oh and it won’t be TRUE, either. Yeah. But in the case of what I am about to tell you, I simply feel that the world needs to know.

My husband’s name is Brian. Let’s call him, for the purposes of this post, Brian F. He has a friend whose name is also Brian; let’s call him Brian L. These two guys have odd things in common; things that make a normal person go Hmmm. The biggest and most obvious thing (aside from their names, of course) is that they love game shows. I don’t just mean that given a choice of several types of TV shows, they would choose a game show. I mean they LOVE them. They belong to internet discussion groups about them. They read books about them. They sit around watching old game shows on tape. They have the home games. They make scornful references to failed hosts and crappy sets and burned-out light bulbs on the Family Feud board. Their brains are crammed with game show trivia.

Their brains are also crammed with more general trivia. They’re both terribly observant about things that regular people (like ME) either don’t notice in the first place, or notice in passing but don’t retain for long. For instance, they can tell you who recorded every song known to man, and who wrote it, and what year it came out, and what label it was on, and what year it was re-recorded and why, and blah, blah, blah.

I tend to leave the house when Brian L comes over.

But if all this isn’t weird enough, allow me to share with you the other thing they have in common: They love empty stores. You know, like when a store goes out of business? And there’s nothing in there but some old crappy shelves and racks and some dust bunnies on the floor and old tape on the windows? That gives them a woody. They press their nerdy little noses against the glass of such places and say Wow. Remember when the creamed corn used to be right over there?
Right now you’re probably wondering, as I often do, what kind of a person gives a damn about old empty stores. I can report that Brian F says he thinks it has something to do with nostalgia for a bygone era. Well, now, I can see how it would be cool to wander through a closed-up amusement park or perhaps a school one had once attended. An old hospital might be interesting, or maybe a prison no longer being used, like Alcatraz. But a store you were just inside a couple weeks ago? I don’t get it.

They are not alone in their freakiness, however. In fact there is a whole website, oft-mentioned by the two Brians, called Dead Malls [dot] Com. It is the cyber-gathering place for those rare souls who get excited by the phenomena of closed retail establishments. I looked at it just now, as research for this post. And I learned that the guy it belongs to is named… BRIAN.

I can’t tell you how disturbing this is to me. What do you want to bet he likes game shows?

My Marriage is Financially Weird

2009-01-06T21:05:00.000-05:00

I hear about how one of the big issues that married couples fight over is money, and I think, well, they're just stupid. Money disagreements are ever-so-easily avoided, if only you are willing to be the complete weirdos that Brian and I are.

Before we got married, I was the type of person who would anxiously move money from savings to checking to avoid an overdraft, because I couldn't be bothered to balance my checkbook. Brian struck me as such an organized person that it seemed like a good idea to open a joint account, you know--like regular married folks do--and let him handle all the finances.

This turned out to suck. For all of his organized ways, we learned that Brian is much freer with a dollar than I am. He looked at a suddenly-double checking account balance and thought "Wow! I can buy things!" while I suddenly felt as though I needed permission to access my own earnings. Yet once this became apparent, did we fight? Did we whine about the unfairness of it all? Did we get a divorce? No, we did not. We got separate checking accounts, and that was only the beginning.

To this very day, we each write a check for half the mortgage. He pays the electric bill, I pay the gas. He pays the satellite and cable, I pay the water and garbage. We take turns paying for Brandon's after-school care. We each pay our own life insurance and cell phone bills, and of course we maintain our own vehicles. When we need a new appliance or hire somebody to do the yard work, we split that.

You wanna laugh? We go dutch in restaurants. We go up to the grocery checkout with one cart, and Brian takes out everything he selected and pays for it, then I take out what I selected and pay for that. "All in the same cart?" the store employees ask us. "Yep," we say.

Now in a way, I'm getting screwed on this deal. Brian makes about $15K more than I do a year and he still seems to have plenty of fun money to throw around while I, for all my miserliness, can't pay off my Mastercard to save my soul. But there are benefits, too. For one thing, it keeps me strong. If anything ever happened to him or to our relationship, I wouldn't be overwhelmed at the idea of having to manage my budget. Another benefit is that we both have the opportunity to say Yes, I think we can afford a new TV (in which case we split the cost) or No, I can't spare the money for a weekend trip (in which case the one who wants to spend can either pay for it all him/herself or wait until such time as the other one can afford it). There's really a lot of freedom in this arrangement and I don't know why more people don't do it. It's hard to whine about what you have and don't have when you are free to manage your own earnings however you want to.

Another good thing is that when Brian gives me a gift, it's really from him. When I give him a gift, it's really from me. I always thought it was odd for my dad to open his Christmas gifts from my stepmother and have to thank her for them when he'd paid for them all. And it must be weird for the dependent spouse too... thanks for my birthday gift, oh, um, and the roof over my head and clothes on my back and this tube of toothpaste you also purchased for me. I actually think that is a weird way to run your family finances.

In the Restroom of The Pink Pony

2008-12-02T19:05:00.000-05:00

Here is what it's like in the ladies' room of The Pink Pony, which is a strip club. Yes, with female strippers. Don't worry how I know these things; just read.

First of all, if you are a female customer, you will be sharing a restroom with the strippers. Just outside the restroom is a rack with all manner of costumes hanging on it, but you never really get to look at it because you're trying to act like you're very cool as you stroll into the strippers' domain. You also wait as long as you possibly can to pee, which actually works out well because by the time you finally have to, you're too drunk to care that you're the least attractive woman in the vicinity. Oh and you are--I can promise you.

As you walk into the restroom, to your left there is a bank of small lockers, just big enough to hold a purse, maybe. The lockers are decorated with stickers, with names written in sparkly nail polish, with photos of babies who are presumably sleeping peacefully at home. To your right there is a counter with sinks in it, and a big mirror that you never ever look in, again not wanting to know how you compare to the strippers. All over the counter are bottles of perfume and lotion, a hundred bottles, or two hundred. Strippers always smell good.

There is an older black lady (hmm, wait a minute, you might be as cute as she is) who sits under the paper towel dispenser and will hand you one when you finish washing your hands. And of course there are strippers in there: talking on cellphones, changing, smoking, fixing their hair and makeup. Stripper wannabes are filling out job applications. All these people ignore you, not unkindly.

There are only two stalls in the bathroom and neither has a lock. You pull your shirt down to cover as much of yourself as possible, just in case somebody accidentally busts in on your fat ass, but nobody does. A sign on the wall says, "Only one person to a stall, please." You have to wonder about that. Do people go in together to do drugs? To have girly sex? Hmm. Signs on the inside of the stall door instruct the strippers as to what drinks to order if a customer offers them one (high-priced champagne cocktails). You make a mental note to share this tidbit with your husband. Then you sashay back to your table where your husband has no idea what you just saw.

Shopping for Clothes with Bliss

2008-11-28T20:31:00.000-05:00

Bliss needed some "date" clothes. Her taste in everyday-wear dismays me, as I've mentioned before. She likes beat-up Converse sneakers, holey jeans, and silly T-shirts with pictures on them.

But we were in agreement that she needed something a little more upscale to wear on actual dates with actual boys, and she had such a date coming up on a recent weekend. It wasn't my pay week and I'm diligently trying to pay off my credit card, so I figured I had about $40 I could spend.

"Can we go to the mall?" she asked. Though my bargain-loving heart sank, I agreed. But first, I suggested, maybe we could try Plato's Closet, which is a "gently-used" store that seems to cater to young people. She didn't seem too interested, but (probably to avoid irritating me) she said she'd take a look.

We went in and she quickly gathered an armload of clothes and disappeared into the dressing room. At one point she asked me trade the jeans she had taken in for a size larger, and when I went up front I caught sight of my reflection in the glass door. I looked old. My hair looked bad, and my clothes had done that trick where they look fine in the mirror at home and terrible out in public. I also looked exhausted, which I was.

I went back to the dressing room and handed Bliss the jeans. Then I stood nearby, waiting for her, and began to feel bad about things in general. What kind of mother was I to send this beautiful young girl out on a big date in thrift store clothes? What kind of life do I live where I work so hard all day and don't feel able to buy her something new? The excitement of her date would probably be diminished for her by the knowledge that she was dressed in second-hand clothes, and that would be my fault. I got a lump in my throat.

Then Bliss came out of the dressing room. "Both the jeans fit," she said. "But should I get this shirt or the other one?"

"How much are they?" I asked. We added up the cost of everything she liked. Two pairs of jeans and three shirts came to thirty-eight dollars. I shrugged. "You can get them all."

"Oh my gosh, this store is AWESOME," she said, with stars in her eyes. "I want to come back here all the time!"

Leaves

2008-11-11T19:54:00.000-05:00

We have what they call a “wooded lot.” Real wooded. We’re knee deep in leaves right about now, and just for the record, I ain’t rakin em. I work really, really hard all week, and since my enjoyment of yard work is less than zero, either we’ll hire somebody or we’ll stay knee deep in leaves. I don’t care either way.

But I digress. I was in my bedroom the other day when a whole bunch of leaves fell from the tree right outside the window. Something about the way they looked reminded me of people jumping from a building, so then I thought of the way it seems like a great tragedy when a number of people die all at once… in a natural disaster, or a terrorist attack, or a plane crash or whatever. But really, whether three hundred people die or just one, it doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. Whether one leaf falls or a whole tree full, we were knee deep already.

I thought about that Bible verse that says if God cares about a sparrow falling, you can rest assured he cares about you, too. But I have this tendency to turn Bible verses backwards and look at them another way, so I thought, yeah, that’s about right… people are about as important to the universe as sparrows. I can picture a bunch of people crowded around the deathbed of some loved one bawling “Oh Lord, please save my mama/daddy/husband/wife. We need him/her so much.” But the dying person falls off the tree anyway and joins the umpteen zillion others that have fallen, and nobody really cares but their families.

I have a theory about people who pray not to die and then die anyway. I figure maybe it’s like when children cry and beg for something ridiculous and parents ignore them. I was telling Brandon the other day that we’d like to move from where we live, and he got all worked up about negative aspects he imagined. I tried to tell him that if we moved at all, it would be to a BETTER place, but he can’t imagine it because all he knows is THIS place. Maybe dying’s like that, so God pays you no attention when you whine about it.

Anyway, as I’ve said many times, if something happened to me or any of my coworkers on the way to work one day, the survivors would all be shocked and horrified.We'd weep and moan for a while. But by ten o’clock we’d be thinking about where to go for lunch.

Not real uplifting today, am I? You should really go read Amanda. She’s much cheerier than me. www.nazarativity.blogspot.com.

Family Heirlooms

2008-11-09T20:34:00.000-05:00

When my mother was sick recently—so sick we all thought she might die—she mentioned some pieces of family furniture she wanted to make sure were passed to me. Luckily, she got well and is now at home using her furniture herself.

But this afternoon while making gingerbread men with my son Brandon, it occurred to me that the items of my mother’s that mean the most to me have already been in my possession for many years. Her set of heavy glass mixing bowls, faded pink in color and decorated with a very retro design of some indistinguishable fruit or vegetable, were passed down to me when her remarriage (when I was twenty) led to my striking out on my own. One bowl is big, one is little and they both have handy pouring spouts. I use one or the other practically every time I cook, never without remembering all the times I saw her use them.

My mother—though she was a working woman of the 70’s with a wretched, evil husband, an elderly grandfather in residence, and me—put an awesome meal on the table every night. I had to grow up to realize the talent and creativity that went into that, not to mention the energy.

I’m glad to have been able to have her pink bowls for so many years. Using them now enables me not only to look back at my mother’s life, but also to view my own at various stages: I made tuna casserole in the big bowl as a single girl on a budget, I mashed up sweet potatoes in it the first time I hosted a family holiday as a young wife, and now I mix gingerbread dough in it to entertain a child. The years go by so fast.

When I’m gone I might expect my kids to want to keep copies of my written work or valuable items (like there are any) from my house. But wouldn’t it be special if one of them took the pink mixing bowls home and used them to prepare meals for their families, and thought wistfully, as I always do, “I remember Mama using this all my life.”

Don't Even Start

2008-11-02T15:28:00.000-05:00

Of all the asinine topics of conversation that have bugged me throughout my life, the most moronic of all is the question of whether we DREAM IN COLOR.

Right off the bat, before I can delve any deeper into the topic, let me answer it by saying Don't even start with me--OF COURSE we dream in color. I do, and by God so do you and so does everybody else with normal vision, so don't make me lose my mind by even insinuating otherwise.

My half-brother, when he was little, once asked our father, "Was everything in black and white when you were a kid?" And it's funny when a kid reasons that just because all the pictures he has seen from 1940 or '50 are in black and white, it indicates that life itself was colorless. It is senseless, however, when grown adults seem to think their dreams are on FILM.

You SEE in color, don't you? Well hell, when you remember the sandwich you ate for lunch, do you REMEMBER it in color? Then who do you suppose swoops in and magically turns your DREAMS to black and white?

I nearly wrecked my car the other day when some news report came on the radio announcing that older people, who grew up watching black and white TV, are more likely than the younger generation to dream in black and white. AARRRGGHH!! Following this brilliant theory, I wonder what people did before there was TV at all. Maybe around the turn of the century their dreams were silent, with subtitles. Perhaps people of Van Gogh's day dreamed in frickin' OIL. I suppose cavemen dreamed of rudimentary drawings instead of thundering herds of real buffaloes.

Just don't start even start.

Strangers Like to Dine with Me

2008-10-23T08:24:00.000-04:00

Try to have a little sump’m & cain’t.

That’s a hangdog expression (culled from my in-laws and their parents) that my husband and I jokingly use on occasions when some modest attempt at enjoyment goes wrong.

Well, this past Sunday, my husband, son and I decided to have lunch at Taco Bell—and I think you’ll agree that enjoyment doesn’t get a whole lot more modest than that. There were maybe three other families eating at the same time and we were all on one side of the restaurant, so that means the whole other half was completely empty. Brian and Brandon were seated in chairs, but on my side of the table was a long bench, serving several tables which were separated by no more than a foot of so of empty space.

So there we were, minding our own business, when a lone Pentecostal woman decided to ignore the entire empty side of the restaurant… and plop herself down beside me on the shared bench-seat. Sure, she had her own table-top, but the point is, she was mere inches away from me. She was invading my personal space! Also, since she was by herself, there was nothing for her to do but listen to our conversation. Brian was talking, but we both widened our eyes at each other, telegraphing, “WTF?” Then we fell silent, and shook our heads in disgust. Try to have a little sump’m & cain’t.

This stranger-in-my-space thing happens to me often. Brian and I once nearly spewed our lunch from trying not to laugh out loud at the sudden invasion of an uninvited table-sharer at Mamie’s Kitchen. And just last week, I was trying to write at Dunkin Donuts—a place I had especially selected for its lunchtime emptiness. With my notebook and papers spread in front of me and earbuds plugging both ears, I was doing everything short of posting a sign that said Leave Me Alone when another Pentecostal woman once again ignored the entire empty restaurant and chose the table right next to mine, which makes me nervous when I’m trying to write.

I originally feared that both of these women were working up their nerve to proselytize me, but that was not the case. The lady at Taco Bell did alarm me momentarily by slumping into a sudden seizure-like prayer over her burritos. She was probably just blessing the food, but I for one hoped that she was whispering, “Dear Lord, please get all those stray cats out of my house so my clothes can quit smelling like old urine.”

Goats

2008-10-22T20:08:00.000-04:00

My new friend Amanda lives in New York City, and though I haven’t seen her in her home environment (we met elsewhere), I’ve started to think of her whenever something especially Southern crops up in my life. Of course, you have to be careful about talking to New Yorkers as though they’ve never seen a blade of grass—I imagine such assumptions are as insulting to them as are assumptions that Southerners have never seen a big city.

(Once at my former job, a bigwig from the corporate office in NY came to join us for a holiday meal. His idea of a way to get acquainted with us bumpkins was to gaze glumly around the table and ask, “So. What’s the farthest from here you guys have ever been?”)

Still, I keep finding myself thinking, “I wonder what Amanda would think of this.” Or, “I bet this would seem weird to Amanda.” Congratulations, Amanda, you are my official representative of the city of New York.

So I could not help but think of her when, one day last week, a coworker of mine received a telephone call from a neighbor, alerting my coworker that her goats were on the loose. It was raining heavily that day, and the mental picture of my short, round coworker stampeding around the yard trying to rustle wayward farm animals was hilarious to me. (Though she told me later that they actually began turning circles of joy as soon as they spotted her car.) It must be hard, I suppose, for one to maintain a professional demeanor at the office, knowing that one might be called away at a moment’s notice to corral one’s goats. I bet that never happens in Manhattan.

Props to the Hubs

2008-10-20T20:08:00.000-04:00

Yesterday my husband said the perfect thing, and I am so proud of him that I want to tell it to you.

Since I was a teenager I've struggled with depression of various kinds, but most particularly seasonal depression. Fall is doom to me--everything is dying, the world outdoors seems dangerous and unfriendly, and there's nothing to look forward to but increasing cold and the expensive hassle and stress of Christmas. (BAH, humbug!)

So yesterday, partly due to legitimate life circumstances but also probably because the weather felt chilly, I really sank into a low mood. So many things have been running around in my mind for the last couple of weeks that I felt the need for somebody to talk seriously to, but I couldn't figure out who the perfect person would be. My mother is in the nursing home...my favorite coworker is many years younger than me...my best friend has five kids and enough problems of her own. I have no siblings and I ruled out my cousins for various reasons. I imagined myself talking to a counselor, but that's only a fantasy because I actually tried it once and found it totally icky.

It occurred to me that Brian was the person I wanted to talk to, but at first this made me feel worse because I thought he wouldn't want to listen. I thought if I approached him and said I needed to talk(because we all know men dread those words), he would say (or think) "Oh God, what now? What is it this time?" I thought he'd be defensive and think I was blaming him for things that were bothering me, or that he would argue back that some circumstances can't be helped or tell me that his life wasn't a bed of roses either, so I should just deal with it. Without him saying a word, and without even giving him a chance, I had cast him in the role of my adversary.

But then he asked, simply: "Why are you acting so down?" And something about that phrasing allowed me to answer him and tell him all the things on my mind. See, there are some things that are not good to say to a depressed person. "What's wrong with you? Who pissed in your cornflakes? What's your problem? Why are you acting like such a bitch?" For me, "What's wrong?" will always be answered by, "Nothing," because the question (when I'm feeling low) is just too big. And "Why are you acting like a bitch?" or anything along those lines only makes me feel kicked-while-down. The most perfect question was exactly what Brian asked me yesterday... to paraphrase him: I notice that you seem depressed and I wonder what has you feeling that way?

So good job, Brian. You made me feel better without even having to get all squishy about it and risk losing your man card. You saved the day.

Surely Nothing...

2008-09-16T20:40:00.000-04:00

I knew a lady one time who'd had, before I met her, a set of twin girls. When these twins were toddlers, one of them was killed in a household accident. Their mother's grief was such that she wound up with an ulcer, which ruptured one day. She called an ambulance, and the ambulance--I swear--wrecked on the way to the hospital and left her more injured than she was before she called it. Plus, by the time I met her she'd had a mastectomy, and now after battling some other kind of cancer (I believe it was), she's dead.

I always think of her when I'm tempted to say, "Surely nothing else can happen."

This past June my family spent a week in Myrtle Beach, courtesy of George Bush and the US taxpayers, and there was not one thing in the world for us to complain about. We went to a lovely place with plenty of things to do; the weather cooperated; we got along nicely and didn't have car trouble or lose our wallets or anything. It was so lovely, in fact, that I tossed aside superstitious caution and finally (in a hesitant whisper) voiced the thought that I'd been having for months: that we ought to stop and take notice of the fact that all was going well. We had jobs, a house, cars. We were all healthy and the children were not having any trouble. Our parents were alive and living independently.

By mid-July, of course, things had changed as both of our mothers were diagnosed with serious illnesses which have altered (primarily) their lives, but also (no comparison to what they're going through, but still--) ours. So break out the violins and let me tell you that due to various circumstances, last week was really hard. From white-knuckle drives back and forth to the hospital and late-night stays with my severely compromised mother, to a fight with my husband, to work pouring in on me so heavily that I couldn't even return all my calls, much less accomplish the other hundred things my scary boss expects of me--it was a just an exceptionally hard week. By Friday I was so exhausted I felt as though I were underwater, slowly going through the motions of tasks but lacking the energy or concentration to do any of them very well. All I could think of was how much I wanted to get to bed early.

So. Around 10:30 PM I had my jammies on, we'd vacated the living room and brushed our teeth and were just getting ready to crawl into bed when Brandon, my six-year-old, casually and cheerfully mentioned that he had stuck something ("a little piece of foam") into his ear and couldn't get it out. Initial annoyance soon gave way to dull shock as a flashlight revealed an object the approximate color of his Grover hand puppet, waaaaaay down deep in his ear canal. You might be interested to know that tweezers, when held up to a child's ear, suddenly look enormous and deadly. There was no way we could get the little blue thing out.

So my husband started yelling and stomping about the stupidity of it all, and Brandon got hysterical when he realized we couldn't fix him, and I, nearly bursting into tears of self-pity, got to put my clothes back on and drive him (sans husband, you'll notice) across town to the emergency room...where--remember how exhausted I had been even before this happened?--after a stay in the freezing waiting room and after the usual discussion of allergies and copayments and social security numbers, we saw a doctor who eventually used a high-powered suction thingy to pull the piece of foam out of the ear while Brandon cried and I helped hold him still and tried not to faint.

This experience has gotten me thinking. If having a very sick mother and a hellish work week does not mean that my kid won't poke foam down his earhole, then I should consider myself reminded that one crisis does not preclude another. Just because you're riding in an ambulance doesn't mean it can't wreck. I should never take false comfort in the idea that "surely nothing else can happen." Tired as I am, I still have to stop and take a moment to notice all the things that aren't disastrous--the really hard job that hands me a regular paycheck, the kids who do ridiculous (yet typically kid-like) things, the mothers we can still hold in our arms. I'm glad to have them all. I'm just not going to say it out loud anymore for a while.

She's Not There

2008-08-06T20:52:00.000-04:00

For those who don't know, I left town on July 15th to attend the Sewanee Writers' Conference in Sewanee, TN. (www.sewaneewriters.org) The trip was a big deal to me, and I figured I'd be blogging all about it by now, but other matters have eclipsed the conference.

Within a day or two of my arrival on the Sewanee campus, my husband reported that my mother had left a completely unintelligible message on our home phone. He and my daughter had each listened to it several times and still had no idea what she was saying. I called my mom's house but although it was 10 PM or so (Eastern time--I was on Central), nobody answered. Fearing the worst, I called the hospital and learned she had been admitted.

Just before I left for TN, Mama had come down with shingles. (www.shinglesinfo.com) I understood that this wasn't a pleasant condition to be in, but it hardly seemed critical so I left for my trip as planned. But when I located her at the hospital, I learned she had fallen and broken her foot as well. Nobody realized at first that it was actually broken, but my stepfather observed that Mama got increasingly disoriented over the next few days and he decided she should go to the hospital. By then she couldn't make it to the car so he called an ambulance.

Again, the condition didn't sound life-threatening. Worrisome, maybe, but I was calling from TN every day, and nobody ever said, "You ought to come home." Doctors said my mother's confusion and disorientation was due to some swelling of the brain membrane, brought on by the shingles, but it'd soon be back to normal. I talked to her, sometimes, and sometimes to other family members who kept me updated. Sewanee is a long conference, and as I overheard one participant saying, "It's a tough conference. Not for the faint of heart." Still, I tried to hang in there. But when I got the news on Friday the 25th that Mama was being moved to a nursing home--and especially, when I spoke to her and she was childlike and sobbing and asking when I would be back--I went to my dorm and started packing.

Before Sewanee, I had called on the phone and said Bye, see ya later, to my Mama--the same mama I'd always known. I returned less than two weeks later to a sick, injured, terrified woman huddled in a nursing home bed, a woman who cried and couldn't understand how I had known where to find her, when she herself did not know where she was.

She's still in the nursing home, and we--that is, my stepfather and I, not the medical staff--are still working on the mystery of what has happened to her mind. A stroke? Head injury? Problematic medicine for the shingles? Is the nursing home now keeping her doped up so she'll be less trouble to them? That would be another story in itself, and it's not the one I'm writing tonight.

I really said all of the above just to tell you this: I miss my mother. I've lost count of the times that it has run through my mind to give her a call at home and see what she's up to. She'd tell me what she was cooking for supper and whether her Braves were winning. She'd tell me all the news of her friends and neighbors that, by and large, I've never even met. She'd ask what her "babies" were doing.

I prefer to keep in touch with most people by email, but Mama is the one person I frequently call. Nowadays, even though I may have just left the nursing home, I find I still have that same impulse to call Mama... my regular old Mama... but she's not there.

No Title for this One

2008-06-01T14:29:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I had to mail a large envelope and also buy some stamps. I stood in line at the post office, idly observing the clothes and shoes and mannerisms of all the other people who were waiting, when I happened to notice a man whose arm was in a sling. It brought back a memory that, within thirty seconds, had me close to tears, sternly telling myself to get a grip before my turn at the window came.

What I had thought of was this: in 1990, during my first pregnancy, I had a job that required me to go to the post office daily and handle the company's mail. Every day I stood in line, and when my turn came, I exchanged pleasantries with a friendly, kind-faced man named Gary. He never knew my name, but we always chatted a bit. Towards the end of my nine months, the conversation centered around my due date and how I was looking and feeling. Whether I was tired. Whether I was ready.

There came a day when I didn't show up at the post office, and I guess, if I crossed Gary's mind at all, he would have assumed I was on maternity leave. But then after several weeks I appeared again, with a non-pregnant belly and my arm in a cast and a sling. Gary, bless him forever, was cautious in his friendliness. "What in the world happened to you?" he asked.

"Car accident," I whispered.

His face was concerned. I knew he was wondering about the baby, but I could tell he wanted to phrase it carefully. "Everybody all right?" he asked.

My eyes got wet, and I could only shake my head. No.

"I'm sorry," he said. And then he took care of my mail.

I remember, too, a lady who had owned the convenience store nearest to my home in 1990. Sometime shortly after the accident, I ran into her in the back corner of a grocery store. She was Asian and her English was poor, but she asked me excitedly, "Where your baby?"

Euphemisms don't always translate well, I didn't know whether she would understand me if I said that we lost him, or he passed away. I had to stand in the grocery store and try to explain that he had died, and then the lady and I just looked at each other, neither one having the vocabulary to continue.

There's no moral or tidy ending here. Except maybe I should say thank you to Gary for not needing the details, and thank you to the convenience store lady for caring, and thanks to all the other random people like Sherry the hairdresser who put their arms around me and said, "I'm sorry about your baby," when there was nothing else to say. Eighteen years now, and I haven't forgotten any of you.

****AMAZING UPDATE TO THIS POST: I'M WRITING THIS ON JUNE 9TH. JUST HAD TO SHARE WITH ANYBODY READING THE ABOVE POST THAT YESTERDAY, OUTSIDE OF TARGET, WHO SHOULD I RUN INTO BUT GARY FROM THE POST OFFICE!!! AFTER 18 YEARS OF NEVER SEEING HIM, THERE HE WAS. NOW I HAVE CHANGED A LOT BETWEEN THE AGES OF 25 AND 43 BUT HE INSTANTLY RECOGNIZED ME AND SPOKE. I TOLD HIM WHAT A COINCIDENCE IT WAS THAT I HAD JUST HAD HIM ON MY MIND RECENTLY, AND I REMINDED HIM OF MY STORY (THOUGH I NEARLY BAWLED DOING IT) BECAUSE ALTHOUGH I COULD SEE HE RECOGNIZED MY FACE, I DIDN'T KNOW IF HE'D REMEMBER THE REST. BUT HE DID REMEMBER, AND SO DID HIS WIFE WHO WAS WITH HIM. HE HAD GONE HOME AND TOLD HER ABOUT ME, AND PRAYED FOR ME, HE SAID. I THANKED HIM IN PERSON FOR PUTTING KINDNESS AND COMPASSION AHEAD OF HIS OWN CURIOSITY. I TOLD HIM I HAD TWO CHILDREN NOW AND ALL WAS WELL, AND HE GAVE ME A HUG. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT??!!

Global Warming--SOLVED!

2008-04-20T14:20:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to tell y'all this for a while... I actually solved the mysteries of global warming a month or two ago and I know it seems like this is an important discovery that I should've gone public with right away, but what can I say. I'm a busy person. Idol is on at least twice a week.

Anyway, as you all know, it's only too clear to people my age and older that global warming is a real phenomenon, in spite of what some stubborn scientists claim. We know it's real because we distinctly remember that when we were younger, it was MUCH colder than it is now! Just stop for a moment, and I'll bet several examples pop into your mind. Personally, I always remember the early November day in 1982 when I was riding around with my new boyfriendish-type-person, freezing to death in my oxford shirt until he detoured by his home and presented me with his letter jacket.

But in that very story lies a clue to the mystery I have unlocked. Are you ready?? Here it is: It seemed colder when we were younger because we were too stupid to wear a coat! If you have children, the truth of my discovery will have you smacking your forehead right now. "You need a heavier coat," I tell my kids. "I don't wanna carry it," they whine. "It won't fit in my bookbag. It makes me too fat for the carseat." And so forth. "Okay," I shrug. "Be cold, then." And lo, THEY ARE COLD.

When I was 19 years old I bought a car with a non-working heater, and all that winter I drove to work--fifteen miles or so--shivering, with a blanket across my lap. I did wear a coat, at least, but the blanket was necessary because every morning, like an idiot, I got up and put on a DRESS, PANTYHOSE, and PUMPS. I look back now and wonder what kind of a fool would not put on some nice warm pants, comfortable socks, and a pair of boots. A YOUNG fool, that's who. Look around and you will see it--grown people dress for the weather and kids don't. That's all it is. Scientists, you can pack up your gear and go home now.

Next month, stayed tuned for my enlightening explanation of why it is that "most car accidents occur within two miles of home." If I'm feeling really crazy I'll also tell you why "most shark attacks occur in less than four feet of water." That's a joke. You DO know why these are true, don't you? Please tell me you do.

What I Didn't Have for Supper Last Night

2007-12-09T10:20:00.000-05:00

When I started this blog, my aim was to update it once a month with something similar to what might appear in a newspaper column, if I had one. What I vowed not to do was blab about the boring details of what I had for supper last night, as so many bloggers seem to do. (Geez, I never knew that even FAMOUS people in whom I'm reasonably interested could be so mundane.) However, December is slipping by and I haven't been struck with a great literary inspiration, so I'm afraid we'll just have to make do.

So, umm... guess what? If my mother reads this, she'll drop dead on the spot, but it seems I have become a vegetarian.

Over the last several years, I have enjoyed meat less and less. Granted I've gobbled many a delicious entree... a steak from Ruth's Chris Steakhouse springs to mind especially... but any form of fast food was grossing me out. Hamburgers? Yuck. My formerly beloved Chik-Fil-A sandwiches? Long since deserted. The last time I ordered a roast beef sandwich from Subway, I wound up removing the roast beef because it just looked too shiny, the way meat does when it's been in the fridge too long. In short, I was constantly so worried about meat containing streaks of fat, gristle or other undesirable components, or I was afraid it had been handled in some way that rendered it unfit to eat, that I basically had to choke it down it real fast before I had time to think about it much.

Now that's stupid.

Luckily, in Target one night I just happened to flip through the pages of a book entitled Skinny Bitch, by Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman. (check out www.skinnybitch.net) I'm sure that on any of a thousand days in my past I would have opened the book, caught the general idea of it, and scoffed, "Ha! Not for me." But somehow, the information imparted in this book came to me at just the moment I was ready to hear it.

If I thought I had been grossed out by finding fat or gristle in my meat, I believe I have now been sufficiently revolted by what happens to even a "good" piece of meat before it reaches my plate to swear it off for life. I have never been a bleeding- heart type of person, about animal rights or anything else. My previous opinion would have been along the lines of, "What else does a cow have to do with its life besides make my milk or become my steak?" It ain't like a cow is going to run for President. However, if I had taken much time to really examine this vague notion, I would have realized I assumed that they and other farm animals and fowl were at least living a reasonably happy life, cared for by dear old Farmer Brown, until that day came.

I have learned that this is FAR from the truth. Turns out, they generally live torturous lives in sort of concentration-camp conditions (except that instead of being starved, they're given growth hormones and overfed until sometimes their under-muscled, non-exercised legs won't even support them). Some animals never take a breath of fresh air or feel grass under their feet in their whole miserable lives. And if you still don't care about animals' FEELINGS, then consider this: under those conditions, animals are nasty, and they are sick. We've all heard about antibiotics in meat--now why do you suppose animals are given antibiotics? Hmm, well when do YOU take antibiotics? They are given antibiotics to keep them ALIVE long enough to slaughter them. Yum, yum--eat up, y'all. And if you think conditions are disappointing at Old McDonald's Farm, you oughta do a little research into how the fine professionals at the slaughterhouse are handling your future meal. Linda McCartney is credited with saying, "If slaughterhouses had glass walls, we'd all be vegetarians." I now agree. Of course, nobody thinks the process of slaughtering animals is pretty, but I suppose we all hope it's halfway sanitary. Well, think again.

I could go on and give you many more graphic examples, but I suggest you read the book, or for a shorter and equally convincing introduction to this topic, go to www.goveg.org and watch a shocking video entitled "Meet Your Meat." You may find it life-changing.

All Right, People. Listen Up.

2007-11-03T19:31:00.001-04:00

There are some words you are all mispronouncing, and I frankly cannot live another day without straightening you out.

Evidently I am the only creature on God's green earth who can pronounce the word FAMILIAR.It is FAH-miliar, not FUR-miliar. Think about it--who looks more familiar than anybody else? Your damn family, of course. FAMILY-AR, get it? It's got nothing to do with FUR, unless you were raised by cats or something.

Next on my list is RIDICULOUS. It is RID-iculous, as in, "You are so ridiculous I must get RID of you." The word is not RE-diculous, as in "Please RE-read the dictionary because I am afraid you are RE-tarded."

Weathermen take note of this news flash: the word TEMPERATURE has TWO R's in it! It's temp-RA-ture, not temp-A-ture.

Similarly, Tom Shane please be advised that although you have marred the best years of my life with your boring jewelry commercials, you are mispronouncing the word jewelry. Stop calling it JEWL-A-RY. No A between the L and the R, see?

People please, oh please, stop saying SUPPOSABLY. The word is SUPPOS-ED-LY, and don't even kid yourself that you're getting away with saying it wrong. It's not that nobody notices or minds that you're mangling the word. It's just that we thought you were fairly bright until you said that, and now our disappointment in your intellect or the lack thereof has rendered us temporarily mute.

This is a usage, rather than a pronounciation, but I would like to surprise every redneck in Georgia by announcing that a LICENSE is an IT and not a THEM. Do not say, "I lost my license but I can git 'em renewed later." You can get IT renewed; it's just ONE license. I know that "s" sound at the end confuses y'all, but if you're smart enough to drive a car, you ought to be able to master this little concept. (Note: if what you have is a hunting license, feel free to go ahead and call it a "them." Your friends aren't going to notice.)

Please be advised that the phrase A LOT consists of two separate words. Do not write "alot," as in, "I don't read alot."

I feel very sad for the poor word TOO. Everybody seems to understand what TWO means. And everybody uses TO when numbers are not involved. But the poor, unloved word TOO gets left by the wayside. Folks, that's the one we use when we mean ALSO. As in, "I'm glad you don't read a lot 'cause I'm ignorant TOO."

And finally--now that we're onto spelling--the granddaddy of them all. Apparently a whole lot of people were absent from second grade on the day they taught us the difference between YOUR and YOU'RE. And it's so simple; look at the handy little apostrophe (that's the little thingy between the U and the R) that fills in for the left-out A. YOU ARE, get it? And it does matter--I swear it does--unless you just don't mind being considered dumber than a second-grader. See, YOUR is the possessive--as in, "You neglected YOUR education."

By now you're probably thinking, "YOUR a boring snob." And I just want you to know that--well--YOUR SUPPOSABLY my friends, you know? And your RE-diculous attitude has hurt my feelings. ALOT.