okay, here's your laugh for today: my badge is now swimming with the fishes.
or at least it is trying too. my id badge and security pass fell out of my pants pocket and into the toilet this morning at work and is now lodged in there requiring facilities to come and remove it.
and for me to get a replacement for it, 'cause that's just nasty.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
adventures in deutscheland
Okay, so this is the story of a family vacation, you see. Just your average, ordinary summer travel abroad experience – losing children, sweating through death marches over mountains, dodging life-threatening lightning strikes and being held at the airport looking down the barrel of machine gun. Well, average for my family, at least.
From the front, my brother’s hair looked like a jack o’ lantern’s smile. What remained of his shaggy brown hair lay mashed against the curved, inside window of the airplane as he stared at the patchwork quilt below us. The center part of his bangs had been cut away – “you’ve been scalped,” my mother exclaimed when she first noticed his hair – the result of a haircut he decided to give to himself one day. The same one he gave his precious ALF doll, too. With the hedge clippers. He said he had to do it; the hair kept tickling his face.
As our plane ascended through the clouds, he began to hum to himself when he could no longer make out the tiny city below while attempting to find our street, our house and the people who looked like the ants he liked to stomp on at home. As our altitude climbed, his excitement over heading to see mountains, real mountains in Germany began to bubble outwardly. “Head for… the MOUNTains of … Buschhh… beeeeer…” he hummed softly to himself as he continued to watch the friendly skies. Somewhere a weary marketing exec formed a tear – his jingle had firmly planted itself into the psyche of an unsuspecting person. The fact that it was a 5-year-old wouldn’t matter so much. One day he would be of legal drinking age.
Meanwhile I sat in the aisle seat, gripping the armrests as we tipped back in our seats, ears popping as if underwater. Between us sat our mother, eyes fixed on the lighted sign above our heads, waiting for the “ding” from the ‘no smoking’ sign to tell her she could now light a cigarette from the ones tucked in her handbag beside her.
The year was 1985. The Cold War was hot. People still feared an evil empire lurking behind the Iron Curtain. AIDS was slowly being recognized as more than just a gay disease. “New Coke” failed to revolutionize the soft drink industry.
And people were still smoking on planes, something my little lungs got to experience for the full six- and one-half-hour flight to Germany that summer. Hell, the Berlin Wall was still standing when we arrived on Germany’s soil. It was just my family that was breaking down at the time.
I was 9-years-old and chubby young girl with a long, blond ponytail that swung behind me when My parents were still together the summer we decided to visit my favorite aunt and uncle, the only relatives not living in our soon-to-be ghetto fabulous neighborhood. At the time they lived in a small town in West Germany. Stationed, really, because that is what it is called when the military tells you to move someplace.
But for me, any time spent with my childless aunt and uncle was special. Excluding the disastrous summer spent with them when my aunt vowed she would teach me how to swim. Or die trying. As if teaching a chubby girl straight out of an urban jungle how to swim would not be a traumatic experience. I feared sinking like a lead weight with only flimsy Styrofoam blocks strapped to my round little spandex-clad belly; the YMCA instructors’ feared summer could not end quickly enough.
But on this visit, my aunt and uncle weren’t childless any longer. Another chubby cheeked girl joined our family with the arrival of my cousin, Sarah, who at only a month old was the sole reason for our transatlantic journey. My mom had wanted to visit her younger sister and see her niece. If by doing so, she got a chance to do it overseas, all the more reason to go. “We’ll make a family vacation of it,” she said.
Completely ignoring the fact my father hated to fly.
Let me put it this way: as much standing on the edge of diving board looking down into the water made my blood run cold, flying did the same for him. A gripping, icy fear that refused to shake loose until it decided to take your bowels with it along the way. But my father, rather than throw the tantrum that I did from the edge of the diving board, crying and screaming until one of the instructors agreed to get in the pool to “catch me” while the other instructor pushed me off my perch on the diving board – he merely decided to stay home. He said someone needed to stay home to feed the cat. This is the same cat that would have preferred to have us leave her alone permanently. She would have seen our abandonment as a true sign of her authority over all humans had we left her behind with say, a few full bowls of food and a house of solitude. No, my dad pledged to stay home if only to just remind the cat exactly who was boss.
So at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, I began making memories of my family as a three-member unit, even though it would take nearly four more years before we officially became one.
When my mother handed me a few crumbled dollar bills to purchase them from a street corner vending machine, it didn’t seem like a big deal. She had sent me numerous times before to the corner pharmacy at home to buy them for her so this routine trip didn’t seem to faze her.
My mother wasn’t a bad mother; she was clueless sometimes.
I took the money and walked out of my aunt’s apartment on the U.S. Army base in Garmisch-Partenkirchen where they were living while stationed in Germany. I walked along the Army base’s circuitous and blindly similar streets. I walked right off the base, past towering chain link fences, topped with barb wire, past stores of olive green tanks and other machinery and past low, mirrored glass buildings hiding secrets only my little mind could imagine.
Wandering along and listening to the sounds of crickets chirping and lawns being mowed I must have become lost in my own thoughts because I never did find that damn cigarette machine. Somehow in my head, the route that my mother described, and same one I saw in my mind’s eye as I nodded along with her directions, failed to materialize.
So I kept walking.
Goddess knows where I walked to that morning. I remember crossing over a large intersection after leaving the confines of the base into the little town where the buildings took on ancient feel with their painted scenes and wooden shutters and flower boxes filled with colorful displays. Eventually, I recognized a little yellow hotel where we boarded a bus for a daytrip earlier in our stay. The crowd of blue-haired ladies waiting to board a bus gave it away.) The hotel, I thought to myself, it had to sell cigarettes. Undaunted, I walked into the hotel lobby to buy that elusive pack of cigarettes that my mother sent me in search of.
Somehow, I failed to remember I was in a foreign country and as smart as I thought I was, I couldn’t speak German. Why the front desk clerked didn’t try to send me back to the institution for mentally handicapped after repeated attempts at communicating my need for cigarettes after realizing the language barrier – hands in my face waving about, making big dramatic puffs on my imaginary cigarette before giving up, and showing him my crumbled dollar bills – I’ll never know. (Why the clerk didn’t try to call German social services for a strange child wandering about by herself I’ll never know, either. Of course, it was 1985.)
After sneaking one last quick look around the dark lobby for a vending machine, I darted back outside into the bright sunlight, defeated and began to backtrack to my aunt’s apartment.
I managed to wind my way back onto U.S. soil before I felt threatened for the first time that day. But the figure running toward me bid me no harm, the sweaty, red-faced body was my mother. Panic-stricken when I didn’t come back right away, her mind began to wrap itself around what she had done. Her young daughter. Alone. In a foreign country. Who doesn’t speak the language. Walking the streets ALONE. BECAUSE SHE TOLD HER TO.
Realizing her chance of winning the mother-of-the-year award was probably shot to hell, she did what she does best – freak out. While my imaginative waters may run deep, my mother’s runs as wide as the Mississippi. I feared my cheeks being pinching by a pack of blue-hairs as I made my way through the parking lot and into the hotel lobby; my mother feared kidnapping. Her blue-eyed, blonde little girl would be scooped up by a childless, East German couple, forced to live the dull gray existence that Communists lived, not the Technicolor world of democracy and the good, ol’ U.S. of A. Or worse, she feared her daughter was smashed by hooligan cars like those we saw on the Autobahn and would be carried off to some German hospital, unable to speak for herself (that language thing again), or even worse still … unable to speak at ALL. Yes! Her daughter would be completely incapacitated and –
By now, my aunt had finally reached her limit. “Go look for her already if you’re that worried. Don’t just sit there,” she told her. My aunt was always the more pragmatic one of the two sisters. (Of course, she was also sleep-deprived and only one month into this whole “mothering thing”, but I’d like to believe it was more of her nature showing through rather than her maternal instinct just hadn’t kicked in yet.) And with that needed swift kick in the pants, my mother set out to find me.
In reality, I have no idea how long I was gone. I don’t remember getting sunburned on the adventure which surely would have been the case had my pale little self had been traveling too long in the mountain sunshine, and it certainly was not weeks or days. But it did eerily foreshadow my teenage years, when after thankfully finding me not dead in a ditch somewhere; she would then threatened to kill me for making her believe I was. By the time, my red-faced mother caught up with me, her panic had reached a crescendo with each ditch she passed that I didn’t lay face first in.
Her panic was palpable as she screeched from fifty yards, “Where were you all this time?” (I would revisit this exact phrase again as a teenager many times.) But hearing it now for the first time because – 1.) I had never ventured this far alone before, and 2.) I had never ventured so far alone in a foreign country – made me take it to heart. She suddenly made me afraid for things I hadn’t realized, all the dangerous possibilities she saw in her mind.
In my innocence, I set out on my simple task to deliver cigarettes to my mother at her request. I never feared for my safety. One long, sweaty hug later, she led me by the arm, quickly dragging me back to my aunt’s apartment before my aunt alerted the authorities of my disappearance. Along the way I listened to her litany of things that could have happened to me.
But somehow for all the crap she put me through (though if asked, she would swear that I put her through much worse), it obviously did not stop her from letting my brother and I play at the playground within a few days of nearly losing me to the East German kidnapping rings. Never mind that this was West Germany, the land where Mercedes were as plentiful as Hondas are today and we were seconds away from heavy artillery the U.S. Army needed to store there.
The day she let my brother and I out of her sight again was a few days after my sojourn through West Germany alone. This time, though, she let us go to the park by ourselves, being too tired to make the trip with us after the death march we had taken the day before.
Being in the Army, my uncle was required to be physically fit, and a good match for my aunt who managed to get the “good genes” in the family with her slim, athletic build. On the other hand, we had my mother who got smacked with the bad genes – the ones which give a round, curved appearance which when packed over her solid frame implied sturdiness; had she been more athletic, she would have been a force to be reckoned with. Instead she was soft and squishy. All traits she then shared with her children. (Lucky us.)
The Germans, though, loved their outdoor activities. Living nestled between looming mountain ranges, crystal blue skies and large, clear lakes provided year round opportunities for outside activities. Skiing. Biking, Hiking. Mountain-climbing, even. So when my uncle suggested we take a hike – walk is how he probably phrased it, my mother would have never agreed to a hike – we agreed to go along. “When in Rome…” and all that crap.
My uncle, saddled with my newborn cousin on his back like the big old Army packs he was used to, blazed the trail with my brother, who nervously kept a watchful eye for “snow snakes”, those elusive – and imaginary – albino creatures who lived in the mountains of Germany my uncle had warned him about. My aunt, mother and I followed next but it didn’t take long for my mother to lag behind my aunt and me. Smoking a pack a day, being overweight and hoofing it up the side of a mountain doesn’t prepare you for the Olympics of hiking.
We were fine until about halfway up, when we realized the friggin’ mountain grew taller with each step. “Oohh, look at the view of the valley below” grew old after about the fifth or sixth mile (or so it felt). “Think of how beautiful nature is” crap lost its appeal soon after. What remained was five sweaty, hunger, and tired Americans zig-zagging up a dirt path in the middle of a hot, humid August air.
Our feet grew heavier, our breathing got more deliberate the higher we went. Whether it was from being out of shape (my family of three), being a smoker (my mother and aunt), or from the thinning air (my uncle), we gasped for air like fish out of water, and found ourselves stopping more and more frequently to throw ourselves back under water again to stop our freaking lungs from screaming. Somehow, we willed ourselves to the top of that sucker.
Our reward for such heroic efforts? Beer (or more the specifically, Spatten) poured for the adults and dessert for the kids topped with deliciously puffy, whipped cream clouds. Which tasted remarkably like shaving cream. My aunt neglected to tell us another one of Germany’s odd-ball fascinations – unsweetened desserts. Lovely to look at tarts and pies, but tasteless mouths of foam to eat.
So after our adventures in hiking (both up and down a mountain, which down is surprisingly not as easy as expected) and dining al fresco, who could blame her for letting us head to the swings by ourselves. My poor mother could hardly move by that point. Muscles she hadn’t moved in years screamed in agony. Now, it was better for her and my aunt to tend to my baby cousin, the only one I might add who enjoyed our little jaunt on the mountain, riding atop my uncle’s aching shoulders.
We had to play nicely with each other and STAY TOGETHER. Normally, we would have never been caught near each other on the playground at home, that whole boys, and especially brothers, having cooties thing. Amazingly, once isolated from having other children to occupy ourselves with, we got along with each other.
Of course, the reason why there were no other children on the playground could have something to do with the pending thunderstorms rolling in across the sky.
Tucked between two larger mountains when the pockets of cooler air which rolled down their sides, the warmer temperatures found in the valley where my aunt lived made the area a hot bed for wicked weather patterns. Storms rolled in quickly, with great flashes of light filling the sky and deafening clashes of thunder. Having already witnessed Mother Nature’s fury a few nights earlier, I realized hanging around the metal monkey bars any longer signaled a quick trip to hell.
On that night I was certain that lightening bolt had my name on it when I was sent out to the patio to gather the cushions from the furniture. My hair stood on end, and for that brief one second before the night sky’s light switch was turned to the on position, I thought, “uh oh. This can’t be good.” So as soon as my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, I took off – running out of my slippers, throwing cushions to the wind, and high tailed it out of there and into the house, screaming all the while.
So when we realized the sky had turned dark that afternoon on the playground, signaling the next storm on the horizon, my brother and I decided to head for home. Grabbing hands, we took off for home dashing in between the fat rain drops the sky unleashed.
There is something monotonous about how Army bases are laid out. Precise and methodical, each building was identical to the next. Row upon row of rectangular, Lego-like buildings. Dull brown roofs and white, painted stucco fronts housing multiple floors of the same apartment, same layouts, same kitchens and same front doors.
As my brother and I made the mad dash to our aunt’s, we hadn’t realized we had entered the wrong Lego house. Once inside, there was nothing to tell us we had entered the wrong building as we climbed the stairs. So when we knocked on the door and it opened, I walked right in. My brother of course, was more apprehensive. “Car – wait!” he whispered as he tried to pull me back from entering, “I didn’t hear the dogs barking when we knocked. I don’t think we should go in.” He was referring to my aunts’ two dogs who noisily announced each fart or knock on the door. It was silent in the few moments after we knocked. But I was not about to stop for his crazy talk. My aunt could have had them out for a walk. Or my uncle finally made good on his talk of making them into sausage for all that barking.
Walking in, I realized why the door just opened wordlessly. There was a party of some sort going on inside. Lots of adults lingered about, talking amongst themselves, too busy to realize the little girl who wandered about or the little boy hanging on the door, observing the scene. “Sharon?” I asked meekly as unfamiliar faces began to see me and I saw them. After deducing we weren’t in Kansas any longer, I grabbed my brother’s hand and ran past the door. Downstairs, we quickly analyzed our situation and decided to take a stab at another look-a-like building. This time we were met with the happy barks of the dogs when we knocked. Good for us, but bad for the dogs who yapped themselves one step closer to the sausage maker.
Our fascination with all things German and exotic grew weary. We were ready to go home. Packed and loaded, we said our goodbyes and my uncle dropped us off at the Munich airport. Suddenly, our suitcases seemed fatter, filled with booty acquired on our trip. Our carry-on bags were filled with all the items necessary to occupy two children for seven hours in a confined space. As we made our way through the pre-9/11security checkpoints, we breezily put our many bags and what felt like mini-toy chests on the x-ray conveyor belt and walked through the metal detectors. On the other side, we picked up our things and continued to the gate, ignoring the yelling going on behind us.
Airport maneuvering is a learned skill; airport maneuvering with two children alone is heroic. In my mom’s defense, having gathered her little ones AND our belongings without leaving anyone behind was a success. However, being whirled around by armed airport security, brandishing loaded weapons, screaming at us in German quickly killed that moment of triumph.
“Halt! Halt!” which only seemed to get louder as they swarmed around us.
“Vhat eez dees? Vhat eez in he-yere? Open-zee. OPEN!”
They pointed their guns towards to the black-and-pink poodle lunchbox my brother carried. My mother quickly popped the latches to show the menacing guards just what metal contraband we were smuggling aboard the plane. Out spilled hundreds of them – little metal and plastic toys known as Transformers, G.I. Joe soldiers carrying guns of their own, playing cards, crayons. Neatly and strategically, we managed to pack an elephant in a breadbox, the contents of which now lay strewn all over a table, having been questioned for its ability to bring down the airplane at 35,000 feet. My mother was flushed with embarrassment over the scene we seemed to be the center of in the airport. In hushed tones, she yelled at us, “to just grab it all, we can repack it later. Throw it in another bag, let’s just get out of here” but any thoughts of hoping to slink away from this were slim. If you ask me, there’s probably a G.I. Joe man or two that got left behind in the melee.
The rest of our trip, well the last seven or eight hours of it, was relatively unimpressive. What with having landed in one piece and all. Jetlagged, we groggily made our way to our car where my father and grandfather were waiting to pick us up from JFK in New York. The three of us dozed in the car for the rest of the drive home, happy to go to sleep to dream and resume the normalcy of our lives.
* * *
From the front, my brother’s hair looked like a jack o’ lantern’s smile. What remained of his shaggy brown hair lay mashed against the curved, inside window of the airplane as he stared at the patchwork quilt below us. The center part of his bangs had been cut away – “you’ve been scalped,” my mother exclaimed when she first noticed his hair – the result of a haircut he decided to give to himself one day. The same one he gave his precious ALF doll, too. With the hedge clippers. He said he had to do it; the hair kept tickling his face.
As our plane ascended through the clouds, he began to hum to himself when he could no longer make out the tiny city below while attempting to find our street, our house and the people who looked like the ants he liked to stomp on at home. As our altitude climbed, his excitement over heading to see mountains, real mountains in Germany began to bubble outwardly. “Head for… the MOUNTains of … Buschhh… beeeeer…” he hummed softly to himself as he continued to watch the friendly skies. Somewhere a weary marketing exec formed a tear – his jingle had firmly planted itself into the psyche of an unsuspecting person. The fact that it was a 5-year-old wouldn’t matter so much. One day he would be of legal drinking age.
Meanwhile I sat in the aisle seat, gripping the armrests as we tipped back in our seats, ears popping as if underwater. Between us sat our mother, eyes fixed on the lighted sign above our heads, waiting for the “ding” from the ‘no smoking’ sign to tell her she could now light a cigarette from the ones tucked in her handbag beside her.
The year was 1985. The Cold War was hot. People still feared an evil empire lurking behind the Iron Curtain. AIDS was slowly being recognized as more than just a gay disease. “New Coke” failed to revolutionize the soft drink industry.
And people were still smoking on planes, something my little lungs got to experience for the full six- and one-half-hour flight to Germany that summer. Hell, the Berlin Wall was still standing when we arrived on Germany’s soil. It was just my family that was breaking down at the time.
I was 9-years-old and chubby young girl with a long, blond ponytail that swung behind me when My parents were still together the summer we decided to visit my favorite aunt and uncle, the only relatives not living in our soon-to-be ghetto fabulous neighborhood. At the time they lived in a small town in West Germany. Stationed, really, because that is what it is called when the military tells you to move someplace.
But for me, any time spent with my childless aunt and uncle was special. Excluding the disastrous summer spent with them when my aunt vowed she would teach me how to swim. Or die trying. As if teaching a chubby girl straight out of an urban jungle how to swim would not be a traumatic experience. I feared sinking like a lead weight with only flimsy Styrofoam blocks strapped to my round little spandex-clad belly; the YMCA instructors’ feared summer could not end quickly enough.
But on this visit, my aunt and uncle weren’t childless any longer. Another chubby cheeked girl joined our family with the arrival of my cousin, Sarah, who at only a month old was the sole reason for our transatlantic journey. My mom had wanted to visit her younger sister and see her niece. If by doing so, she got a chance to do it overseas, all the more reason to go. “We’ll make a family vacation of it,” she said.
Completely ignoring the fact my father hated to fly.
Let me put it this way: as much standing on the edge of diving board looking down into the water made my blood run cold, flying did the same for him. A gripping, icy fear that refused to shake loose until it decided to take your bowels with it along the way. But my father, rather than throw the tantrum that I did from the edge of the diving board, crying and screaming until one of the instructors agreed to get in the pool to “catch me” while the other instructor pushed me off my perch on the diving board – he merely decided to stay home. He said someone needed to stay home to feed the cat. This is the same cat that would have preferred to have us leave her alone permanently. She would have seen our abandonment as a true sign of her authority over all humans had we left her behind with say, a few full bowls of food and a house of solitude. No, my dad pledged to stay home if only to just remind the cat exactly who was boss.
So at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean, I began making memories of my family as a three-member unit, even though it would take nearly four more years before we officially became one.
* * *
When my mother handed me a few crumbled dollar bills to purchase them from a street corner vending machine, it didn’t seem like a big deal. She had sent me numerous times before to the corner pharmacy at home to buy them for her so this routine trip didn’t seem to faze her.
My mother wasn’t a bad mother; she was clueless sometimes.
I took the money and walked out of my aunt’s apartment on the U.S. Army base in Garmisch-Partenkirchen where they were living while stationed in Germany. I walked along the Army base’s circuitous and blindly similar streets. I walked right off the base, past towering chain link fences, topped with barb wire, past stores of olive green tanks and other machinery and past low, mirrored glass buildings hiding secrets only my little mind could imagine.
Wandering along and listening to the sounds of crickets chirping and lawns being mowed I must have become lost in my own thoughts because I never did find that damn cigarette machine. Somehow in my head, the route that my mother described, and same one I saw in my mind’s eye as I nodded along with her directions, failed to materialize.
So I kept walking.
Goddess knows where I walked to that morning. I remember crossing over a large intersection after leaving the confines of the base into the little town where the buildings took on ancient feel with their painted scenes and wooden shutters and flower boxes filled with colorful displays. Eventually, I recognized a little yellow hotel where we boarded a bus for a daytrip earlier in our stay. The crowd of blue-haired ladies waiting to board a bus gave it away.) The hotel, I thought to myself, it had to sell cigarettes. Undaunted, I walked into the hotel lobby to buy that elusive pack of cigarettes that my mother sent me in search of.
Somehow, I failed to remember I was in a foreign country and as smart as I thought I was, I couldn’t speak German. Why the front desk clerked didn’t try to send me back to the institution for mentally handicapped after repeated attempts at communicating my need for cigarettes after realizing the language barrier – hands in my face waving about, making big dramatic puffs on my imaginary cigarette before giving up, and showing him my crumbled dollar bills – I’ll never know. (Why the clerk didn’t try to call German social services for a strange child wandering about by herself I’ll never know, either. Of course, it was 1985.)
After sneaking one last quick look around the dark lobby for a vending machine, I darted back outside into the bright sunlight, defeated and began to backtrack to my aunt’s apartment.
I managed to wind my way back onto U.S. soil before I felt threatened for the first time that day. But the figure running toward me bid me no harm, the sweaty, red-faced body was my mother. Panic-stricken when I didn’t come back right away, her mind began to wrap itself around what she had done. Her young daughter. Alone. In a foreign country. Who doesn’t speak the language. Walking the streets ALONE. BECAUSE SHE TOLD HER TO.
Realizing her chance of winning the mother-of-the-year award was probably shot to hell, she did what she does best – freak out. While my imaginative waters may run deep, my mother’s runs as wide as the Mississippi. I feared my cheeks being pinching by a pack of blue-hairs as I made my way through the parking lot and into the hotel lobby; my mother feared kidnapping. Her blue-eyed, blonde little girl would be scooped up by a childless, East German couple, forced to live the dull gray existence that Communists lived, not the Technicolor world of democracy and the good, ol’ U.S. of A. Or worse, she feared her daughter was smashed by hooligan cars like those we saw on the Autobahn and would be carried off to some German hospital, unable to speak for herself (that language thing again), or even worse still … unable to speak at ALL. Yes! Her daughter would be completely incapacitated and –
By now, my aunt had finally reached her limit. “Go look for her already if you’re that worried. Don’t just sit there,” she told her. My aunt was always the more pragmatic one of the two sisters. (Of course, she was also sleep-deprived and only one month into this whole “mothering thing”, but I’d like to believe it was more of her nature showing through rather than her maternal instinct just hadn’t kicked in yet.) And with that needed swift kick in the pants, my mother set out to find me.
In reality, I have no idea how long I was gone. I don’t remember getting sunburned on the adventure which surely would have been the case had my pale little self had been traveling too long in the mountain sunshine, and it certainly was not weeks or days. But it did eerily foreshadow my teenage years, when after thankfully finding me not dead in a ditch somewhere; she would then threatened to kill me for making her believe I was. By the time, my red-faced mother caught up with me, her panic had reached a crescendo with each ditch she passed that I didn’t lay face first in.
Her panic was palpable as she screeched from fifty yards, “Where were you all this time?” (I would revisit this exact phrase again as a teenager many times.) But hearing it now for the first time because – 1.) I had never ventured this far alone before, and 2.) I had never ventured so far alone in a foreign country – made me take it to heart. She suddenly made me afraid for things I hadn’t realized, all the dangerous possibilities she saw in her mind.
In my innocence, I set out on my simple task to deliver cigarettes to my mother at her request. I never feared for my safety. One long, sweaty hug later, she led me by the arm, quickly dragging me back to my aunt’s apartment before my aunt alerted the authorities of my disappearance. Along the way I listened to her litany of things that could have happened to me.
But somehow for all the crap she put me through (though if asked, she would swear that I put her through much worse), it obviously did not stop her from letting my brother and I play at the playground within a few days of nearly losing me to the East German kidnapping rings. Never mind that this was West Germany, the land where Mercedes were as plentiful as Hondas are today and we were seconds away from heavy artillery the U.S. Army needed to store there.
The day she let my brother and I out of her sight again was a few days after my sojourn through West Germany alone. This time, though, she let us go to the park by ourselves, being too tired to make the trip with us after the death march we had taken the day before.
Being in the Army, my uncle was required to be physically fit, and a good match for my aunt who managed to get the “good genes” in the family with her slim, athletic build. On the other hand, we had my mother who got smacked with the bad genes – the ones which give a round, curved appearance which when packed over her solid frame implied sturdiness; had she been more athletic, she would have been a force to be reckoned with. Instead she was soft and squishy. All traits she then shared with her children. (Lucky us.)
The Germans, though, loved their outdoor activities. Living nestled between looming mountain ranges, crystal blue skies and large, clear lakes provided year round opportunities for outside activities. Skiing. Biking, Hiking. Mountain-climbing, even. So when my uncle suggested we take a hike – walk is how he probably phrased it, my mother would have never agreed to a hike – we agreed to go along. “When in Rome…” and all that crap.
My uncle, saddled with my newborn cousin on his back like the big old Army packs he was used to, blazed the trail with my brother, who nervously kept a watchful eye for “snow snakes”, those elusive – and imaginary – albino creatures who lived in the mountains of Germany my uncle had warned him about. My aunt, mother and I followed next but it didn’t take long for my mother to lag behind my aunt and me. Smoking a pack a day, being overweight and hoofing it up the side of a mountain doesn’t prepare you for the Olympics of hiking.
We were fine until about halfway up, when we realized the friggin’ mountain grew taller with each step. “Oohh, look at the view of the valley below” grew old after about the fifth or sixth mile (or so it felt). “Think of how beautiful nature is” crap lost its appeal soon after. What remained was five sweaty, hunger, and tired Americans zig-zagging up a dirt path in the middle of a hot, humid August air.
Our feet grew heavier, our breathing got more deliberate the higher we went. Whether it was from being out of shape (my family of three), being a smoker (my mother and aunt), or from the thinning air (my uncle), we gasped for air like fish out of water, and found ourselves stopping more and more frequently to throw ourselves back under water again to stop our freaking lungs from screaming. Somehow, we willed ourselves to the top of that sucker.
Our reward for such heroic efforts? Beer (or more the specifically, Spatten) poured for the adults and dessert for the kids topped with deliciously puffy, whipped cream clouds. Which tasted remarkably like shaving cream. My aunt neglected to tell us another one of Germany’s odd-ball fascinations – unsweetened desserts. Lovely to look at tarts and pies, but tasteless mouths of foam to eat.
So after our adventures in hiking (both up and down a mountain, which down is surprisingly not as easy as expected) and dining al fresco, who could blame her for letting us head to the swings by ourselves. My poor mother could hardly move by that point. Muscles she hadn’t moved in years screamed in agony. Now, it was better for her and my aunt to tend to my baby cousin, the only one I might add who enjoyed our little jaunt on the mountain, riding atop my uncle’s aching shoulders.
We had to play nicely with each other and STAY TOGETHER. Normally, we would have never been caught near each other on the playground at home, that whole boys, and especially brothers, having cooties thing. Amazingly, once isolated from having other children to occupy ourselves with, we got along with each other.
Of course, the reason why there were no other children on the playground could have something to do with the pending thunderstorms rolling in across the sky.
Tucked between two larger mountains when the pockets of cooler air which rolled down their sides, the warmer temperatures found in the valley where my aunt lived made the area a hot bed for wicked weather patterns. Storms rolled in quickly, with great flashes of light filling the sky and deafening clashes of thunder. Having already witnessed Mother Nature’s fury a few nights earlier, I realized hanging around the metal monkey bars any longer signaled a quick trip to hell.
On that night I was certain that lightening bolt had my name on it when I was sent out to the patio to gather the cushions from the furniture. My hair stood on end, and for that brief one second before the night sky’s light switch was turned to the on position, I thought, “uh oh. This can’t be good.” So as soon as my fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, I took off – running out of my slippers, throwing cushions to the wind, and high tailed it out of there and into the house, screaming all the while.
So when we realized the sky had turned dark that afternoon on the playground, signaling the next storm on the horizon, my brother and I decided to head for home. Grabbing hands, we took off for home dashing in between the fat rain drops the sky unleashed.
There is something monotonous about how Army bases are laid out. Precise and methodical, each building was identical to the next. Row upon row of rectangular, Lego-like buildings. Dull brown roofs and white, painted stucco fronts housing multiple floors of the same apartment, same layouts, same kitchens and same front doors.
As my brother and I made the mad dash to our aunt’s, we hadn’t realized we had entered the wrong Lego house. Once inside, there was nothing to tell us we had entered the wrong building as we climbed the stairs. So when we knocked on the door and it opened, I walked right in. My brother of course, was more apprehensive. “Car – wait!” he whispered as he tried to pull me back from entering, “I didn’t hear the dogs barking when we knocked. I don’t think we should go in.” He was referring to my aunts’ two dogs who noisily announced each fart or knock on the door. It was silent in the few moments after we knocked. But I was not about to stop for his crazy talk. My aunt could have had them out for a walk. Or my uncle finally made good on his talk of making them into sausage for all that barking.
Walking in, I realized why the door just opened wordlessly. There was a party of some sort going on inside. Lots of adults lingered about, talking amongst themselves, too busy to realize the little girl who wandered about or the little boy hanging on the door, observing the scene. “Sharon?” I asked meekly as unfamiliar faces began to see me and I saw them. After deducing we weren’t in Kansas any longer, I grabbed my brother’s hand and ran past the door. Downstairs, we quickly analyzed our situation and decided to take a stab at another look-a-like building. This time we were met with the happy barks of the dogs when we knocked. Good for us, but bad for the dogs who yapped themselves one step closer to the sausage maker.
* * *
Our fascination with all things German and exotic grew weary. We were ready to go home. Packed and loaded, we said our goodbyes and my uncle dropped us off at the Munich airport. Suddenly, our suitcases seemed fatter, filled with booty acquired on our trip. Our carry-on bags were filled with all the items necessary to occupy two children for seven hours in a confined space. As we made our way through the pre-9/11security checkpoints, we breezily put our many bags and what felt like mini-toy chests on the x-ray conveyor belt and walked through the metal detectors. On the other side, we picked up our things and continued to the gate, ignoring the yelling going on behind us.
Airport maneuvering is a learned skill; airport maneuvering with two children alone is heroic. In my mom’s defense, having gathered her little ones AND our belongings without leaving anyone behind was a success. However, being whirled around by armed airport security, brandishing loaded weapons, screaming at us in German quickly killed that moment of triumph.
“Halt! Halt!” which only seemed to get louder as they swarmed around us.
“Vhat eez dees? Vhat eez in he-yere? Open-zee. OPEN!”
They pointed their guns towards to the black-and-pink poodle lunchbox my brother carried. My mother quickly popped the latches to show the menacing guards just what metal contraband we were smuggling aboard the plane. Out spilled hundreds of them – little metal and plastic toys known as Transformers, G.I. Joe soldiers carrying guns of their own, playing cards, crayons. Neatly and strategically, we managed to pack an elephant in a breadbox, the contents of which now lay strewn all over a table, having been questioned for its ability to bring down the airplane at 35,000 feet. My mother was flushed with embarrassment over the scene we seemed to be the center of in the airport. In hushed tones, she yelled at us, “to just grab it all, we can repack it later. Throw it in another bag, let’s just get out of here” but any thoughts of hoping to slink away from this were slim. If you ask me, there’s probably a G.I. Joe man or two that got left behind in the melee.
* * *
The rest of our trip, well the last seven or eight hours of it, was relatively unimpressive. What with having landed in one piece and all. Jetlagged, we groggily made our way to our car where my father and grandfather were waiting to pick us up from JFK in New York. The three of us dozed in the car for the rest of the drive home, happy to go to sleep to dream and resume the normalcy of our lives.
greetings from the sick ward
normally when i get sick, i only manage to take myself out of the game for a few days or weeks. this time, and with this cold, i'm taking hostages.
goddess girl liz laughed when i told her a coworker told me that i infected her with my cold, only i had only spoken to her over the phone since i came down with the plague.
"car, there's no possible way you could have infected her over the phone," she tells me, being all practical, and future-nursing student-like. "maybe you saw her before you were symptomatic or you both ran into whoever made you sick."
"yeah, i guess that's possible. we have been in constant contact since "project rock-and-a-hard-place" began," i offer. "but she managed to get the oozy eye, too. so far, i've been the only person to get that part," i continued, referring to the swollen, bloodshot eye-gunk oozing that made me look and feel particularly attractive last week. like quasimodo with a smoker's cough. only i don't smoke anymore.
liz was a little more receptive to the possibility of my new germ warfare when her throat became increasingly sore after our conversation. "i'm laying in bed and can't sleep because my throat is so red hot and sore, i think, 'i'm gonna kill her if i get sick'," she recounted the next day.
take that telemarketers, you may be next. think i won't?
* * *
the only reason i can attribute to feeling better at all this week has to be because i managed to share the love, err, sickness with others. i thoroughly take stock in the idea that until my germies, like elvis, have left my building can i ever hope to recover.
normally, this plays out like this: i get death-bed sick -- cough, congestion, fever, strep throat, bronchitis, hanta virus. mam, with whom i share everything, maybe gets a slight cough. NOTE: this scenario also plays out in the reverse - mam gets the sniffles, i get pneumonia.
last sunday, when the one-two-punch of fever and sinus headache knocked my ass back in bed, i figured i was in trouble when mam rolled over and told me he wasn't feel any better. "shit," i muttered in between fever chills and chattering teeth, "i'm screwed." if neither one of us was in a position to accept the new germs and we just kept passing them back and forth, then those sumbitches are going to grow fruitful and multiply, and quite possibly kill me as they got stronger.
besides, if both partners are sick, who is going to take care of the other?
as a take-charge, forward adult, it would probably surprise most people that i am a complete puss when i get sick. it's as if i'm a toddler again, throwing irrational tantrums, prone to crying because my head or throat hurts, or bitching because i can't breathe. my legs cease working, too, and i cry out for someone to bring me more juice or more tissues. i throw one mean pity party, i tell ya.
but with mam nosing in on my turf, who was taking care of who? surely, mr. hacking-cough is no match for a 160 degree fever, right? (even in sickness i'm one competitive bitch.) somehow i managed to win our little tete a tete, probably when my core body temperature reached near nuclear levels did he concede my victory and got out of bed to get me juice. hah! he probably feared singed flesh if he stayed under the covers with me any longer.
(this is also precisely why we are NOT fit to be parents, either. my dogs can be trained to bring my slippers, aspirin and i'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to teach them to open the fridge and help themselves to a meal.)
mam was really sick, though -- sick enough to take three sick days in a row -- something that has not happened ever in the 16 years that i've known him. in fact, after last week, he probably now has somewhere in the range of 4 months worth of days still accumulated from his years of good health.
on day three of my plague, when i could no longer stand the razor blades i surely swallowed ripping my throat to shreds anymore, and called the doctor, mam decided to tag along. actually, he rode my coattails to an appointment. with all my medical melodrama, i was coded as a "priority patient" at some point which simply means this chick is so fucked up, you better see her sooner, rather than later or else the medical mystery only gets more complicated. i don't think in the last decade, i had to wait longer than a day to get an appointment. it's like being a rock star and getting into an exclusive club only nowhere near as fun.
"how do you know all these people?" mam barks, as we signed in at the doctor's office, "they all know you by name, for crying out loud."
"i have people, man," i croak, because my throat really balks at the feeling of air rushing over it to form syllables and words, "you don't come to the office weekly for tests without knowing the staff. remember, you got this appointment today because of me."
after some excellent deductive reasoning ("some tenderness in your neck and throat, i see," after i moan and wince as he examines it), the doc concludes we have the average, run-of-the-mill virus, wrecking havoc on our area, and not some form of "hoof and mouth" disease i thought my brother back with him from scotland.
"your throat does look a little red, though, so i'm going to test for strep just in case. we can get the results in about 5 minutes and if you do have it, we'll get you started for treatment," he tells me as i begin to pout at just having an "ordinary" virus. doesn't he know me by now? "ordinary" has never been an adjective used to describe my medical history.
oddity, i'd accept. ordinary, not so much. after gagging me with a tree branch wrapped in cotton to get a culture, mam and i head out to wait the results in the lobby. the very germ-y lobby where i try to never touch anything, except when i'm sick and really trying to share the love, err, germs with others.
but this time, i was so tired and yucky feeling, i couldn't even take pleasure in someone picking up a magazine i touched and getting this plague. so when results came back negative (something very loudly announced to the rest of the waiting room i might add. goddess knows what they others waiting with me thought i didn't have -- the hiv? pregnant?)
on the drive home, mam tried to brighten my spirits on not having strep and coming home with loads of pills to knock this out of my system. "think of it this way, hon, at least you can take advantage of the weight loss benefits not eating solid food affords for a longer period," he tells me, hacking once for good measure because he walked out of there without any drugs either.
oh, i'm sick alright.
goddess girl liz laughed when i told her a coworker told me that i infected her with my cold, only i had only spoken to her over the phone since i came down with the plague.
"car, there's no possible way you could have infected her over the phone," she tells me, being all practical, and future-nursing student-like. "maybe you saw her before you were symptomatic or you both ran into whoever made you sick."
"yeah, i guess that's possible. we have been in constant contact since "project rock-and-a-hard-place" began," i offer. "but she managed to get the oozy eye, too. so far, i've been the only person to get that part," i continued, referring to the swollen, bloodshot eye-gunk oozing that made me look and feel particularly attractive last week. like quasimodo with a smoker's cough. only i don't smoke anymore.
liz was a little more receptive to the possibility of my new germ warfare when her throat became increasingly sore after our conversation. "i'm laying in bed and can't sleep because my throat is so red hot and sore, i think, 'i'm gonna kill her if i get sick'," she recounted the next day.
take that telemarketers, you may be next. think i won't?
* * *
the only reason i can attribute to feeling better at all this week has to be because i managed to share the love, err, sickness with others. i thoroughly take stock in the idea that until my germies, like elvis, have left my building can i ever hope to recover.
normally, this plays out like this: i get death-bed sick -- cough, congestion, fever, strep throat, bronchitis, hanta virus. mam, with whom i share everything, maybe gets a slight cough. NOTE: this scenario also plays out in the reverse - mam gets the sniffles, i get pneumonia.
last sunday, when the one-two-punch of fever and sinus headache knocked my ass back in bed, i figured i was in trouble when mam rolled over and told me he wasn't feel any better. "shit," i muttered in between fever chills and chattering teeth, "i'm screwed." if neither one of us was in a position to accept the new germs and we just kept passing them back and forth, then those sumbitches are going to grow fruitful and multiply, and quite possibly kill me as they got stronger.
besides, if both partners are sick, who is going to take care of the other?
as a take-charge, forward adult, it would probably surprise most people that i am a complete puss when i get sick. it's as if i'm a toddler again, throwing irrational tantrums, prone to crying because my head or throat hurts, or bitching because i can't breathe. my legs cease working, too, and i cry out for someone to bring me more juice or more tissues. i throw one mean pity party, i tell ya.
but with mam nosing in on my turf, who was taking care of who? surely, mr. hacking-cough is no match for a 160 degree fever, right? (even in sickness i'm one competitive bitch.) somehow i managed to win our little tete a tete, probably when my core body temperature reached near nuclear levels did he concede my victory and got out of bed to get me juice. hah! he probably feared singed flesh if he stayed under the covers with me any longer.
(this is also precisely why we are NOT fit to be parents, either. my dogs can be trained to bring my slippers, aspirin and i'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to teach them to open the fridge and help themselves to a meal.)
mam was really sick, though -- sick enough to take three sick days in a row -- something that has not happened ever in the 16 years that i've known him. in fact, after last week, he probably now has somewhere in the range of 4 months worth of days still accumulated from his years of good health.
on day three of my plague, when i could no longer stand the razor blades i surely swallowed ripping my throat to shreds anymore, and called the doctor, mam decided to tag along. actually, he rode my coattails to an appointment. with all my medical melodrama, i was coded as a "priority patient" at some point which simply means this chick is so fucked up, you better see her sooner, rather than later or else the medical mystery only gets more complicated. i don't think in the last decade, i had to wait longer than a day to get an appointment. it's like being a rock star and getting into an exclusive club only nowhere near as fun.
"how do you know all these people?" mam barks, as we signed in at the doctor's office, "they all know you by name, for crying out loud."
"i have people, man," i croak, because my throat really balks at the feeling of air rushing over it to form syllables and words, "you don't come to the office weekly for tests without knowing the staff. remember, you got this appointment today because of me."
after some excellent deductive reasoning ("some tenderness in your neck and throat, i see," after i moan and wince as he examines it), the doc concludes we have the average, run-of-the-mill virus, wrecking havoc on our area, and not some form of "hoof and mouth" disease i thought my brother back with him from scotland.
"your throat does look a little red, though, so i'm going to test for strep just in case. we can get the results in about 5 minutes and if you do have it, we'll get you started for treatment," he tells me as i begin to pout at just having an "ordinary" virus. doesn't he know me by now? "ordinary" has never been an adjective used to describe my medical history.
oddity, i'd accept. ordinary, not so much. after gagging me with a tree branch wrapped in cotton to get a culture, mam and i head out to wait the results in the lobby. the very germ-y lobby where i try to never touch anything, except when i'm sick and really trying to share the love, err, germs with others.
but this time, i was so tired and yucky feeling, i couldn't even take pleasure in someone picking up a magazine i touched and getting this plague. so when results came back negative (something very loudly announced to the rest of the waiting room i might add. goddess knows what they others waiting with me thought i didn't have -- the hiv? pregnant?)
on the drive home, mam tried to brighten my spirits on not having strep and coming home with loads of pills to knock this out of my system. "think of it this way, hon, at least you can take advantage of the weight loss benefits not eating solid food affords for a longer period," he tells me, hacking once for good measure because he walked out of there without any drugs either.
oh, i'm sick alright.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
starting small, very small
i could apologize to any readers i've thoroughly miffed by not posting for the last, oh say, 4 months. but i won't. part of being unabashedly bitchy is never having to say you're sorry. there are simply times when being bitchy is the only way to fly.
(although i will apologize to any readers not in the inner circle who may have been concerned that my absence meant i was in jail for actually holding the pillow over my mother's head during her long, long, looonngg stay at casa michalski over the holidays.)
now, where was i? ahem, yes, being bitchy. my birthright. but even i can keep my forked tongue in my cheek from time to time. take for instance the night at dinner, when after my mother picked up my pepper shaker with hands as slick as professional wrestler's chest, only to watch it shatter into a million little pieces as ceramic shaker met ceramic tile floor. sneezing and choking, we picked up the shards as pepper dust filled our lungs. finally sitting back down to eat, she leans over to ask me if i have any more pepper.
ahem.
or the night she wore a path into my hardwood floors, pacing circles in the loop between my living room, dining room and kitchen in her nightgown as i washed dishes at the sink, waiting to talk with me. i quickly grabbed my glass of wine from dinner, topped it off and headed upstairs to the "no-mom" zone of the second floor where our master suite is.
speaking of, final cork count for the forty two days of her stay? 14, including wine served at the holiday dinner at my house, otherwise i would be averaging a bottle every three days and my liver is just not that far gone. yet.
but i don't apologize for any of those behaviors. i'm bitchy and i'm baaaaaccck. did you miss me?
(although i will apologize to any readers not in the inner circle who may have been concerned that my absence meant i was in jail for actually holding the pillow over my mother's head during her long, long, looonngg stay at casa michalski over the holidays.)
now, where was i? ahem, yes, being bitchy. my birthright. but even i can keep my forked tongue in my cheek from time to time. take for instance the night at dinner, when after my mother picked up my pepper shaker with hands as slick as professional wrestler's chest, only to watch it shatter into a million little pieces as ceramic shaker met ceramic tile floor. sneezing and choking, we picked up the shards as pepper dust filled our lungs. finally sitting back down to eat, she leans over to ask me if i have any more pepper.
ahem.
or the night she wore a path into my hardwood floors, pacing circles in the loop between my living room, dining room and kitchen in her nightgown as i washed dishes at the sink, waiting to talk with me. i quickly grabbed my glass of wine from dinner, topped it off and headed upstairs to the "no-mom" zone of the second floor where our master suite is.
speaking of, final cork count for the forty two days of her stay? 14, including wine served at the holiday dinner at my house, otherwise i would be averaging a bottle every three days and my liver is just not that far gone. yet.
but i don't apologize for any of those behaviors. i'm bitchy and i'm baaaaaccck. did you miss me?
Friday, November 23, 2007
'tis the season to consume some valium
fa-la la la la, la la-laaaah!
gentle readers, please excuse my absence for the last four months. and i apologize if anyone was left to worry that mam and i met our untimely demise at the hands of our white-trash neighbors after playing "dude, who hit my car" one too many times. and quite sadly no, white-trash neighbors did not sell their house (damn you, bursting housing bubble!) and until the day the bank forecloses on their property, white trash momma continues to share our driveway.
but that's not really why i have been so negligent in posting here... i think i alerted folks to the other housing nightmare i would soon be embarking on -- helping my mother sell her house.
in the midst of talking my mother out of her own self-induced anxiety attacks, i also managed to pull together 3 sample chapters and full book proposal for the idea i pitched to a literary agent i met last year. it only took 12 months and whole lotta chutzpah to hit the send button on that one.
but really, the most pressing reason why i have neglected this space is my mother. between talking her out of buying a double-wide trailer in a 55-and-up ghetto fabulous development to avoiding her phone calls -- not once or twice a day, but upwards or three and four times(!), to dealing with her meltdowns when i don't help her take out the trash right now, well, she's one step away from having a fatal accident with her pillow if you catch my drift. as much as i probably needed to write about those events (and i may still in a few months when it's less painful and i can see the comic value in the experience), sadly, i must say i tipped back a few slugs of crown royal on the nights most worthy of such instead.
this latest asault, though is what causes most people that i've told to physically wince -- WINCE -- as in actual facial distortion at my impending doom.
my mother is coming to stay with us. for 6 weeks until she can move into her new place on january 4th, 2008.
SIX WEEKS, FORTY TWO DAYS and way-too-many hours to count. during the already touchy christmas season because for me, even the "regular" family get-togetherness the holidays bring is no day at the beach with all the leftover sand in the va-jay-jay irritation.
fa-la-fcucking-la. seriously, what gods have i pissed off to endure this? (true, there are probably so many...) and i know this sounds horrible, but what irritates me the most is the loss of freedom, and quite possibly, my adulthood that my new house guest will rob me of. "what time are you coming home tonight?" "are you still sleeping?" "what time will you be home from work?" i'll be a teenager all over again, only this time, i'm married with a mortage.
oh goddess, that's not the worst of it. save me from all of the talking!
mam and i have two loves -- sleeping in and silence. there are evenings where we don't speak to each other becuase i'll be writing in one room and he'll be watching tv in another. less talk-y, more do-y of other stuff. my fear is that my house guest will latch herself onto my earlob like a leech and force evil words into my head about such exciting topics as what she and her coworkers ate for lunch, who won dancing with the stars?, and the likes and dislikes are of the newest QVC host or hostess. if my head doesn't explode first, what's left of my brain my just leak out of the ear she's not presently attached to. shudder
say what you want about how evil i sound, but when she called me at work (cornered, if you want my honest opinion) and dropped her bomb, "i can stay with you, right? you're not going to leave me homeless, are you?" well, what do you say to that?
if my life was an episode of ally mcbeal, i'm sure what would follow would be a dream sequence of me screaming into the phone, "yes! by all means, bring your crazy-ass, stalker self directly into my home so then maybe, i won't think i'm crazy when i see a white car parked outside in my driveway that shouldn't be there just because i chose not to pick up your 7th phone call of the day to remind me of the dialogue in call number 6!"
instead, when trapped like a rat in a cage, i accepted my fate. there was no escape. if i said no, what are the alteratives for her? a hotel for 6 weeks? my brother's tiny condo? and goddess forbid, what if i did say no? it would have been less painful to brand myself with the scarlet BD (for bad daughter, natch) than to suffer what was sure to be the most egregious assault against a mother to date. all the breederly types in mothers-against-drunk driving and mothers-against-lead-based toys would surely pop my picture on billboard with such witty slogans as:
"what breaks a mother's heart? a bad daughter who refuses to shelter her homeless mother", or "pure evil" splashed against a particularly hideous picture of myself.
so in accepting my fate, i slowly said into the receiver. "yes, mom. you can stay here until your new house is ready." and ever since, i have been stockpiling wine like vineyards all over the world had simultaneously blew up, taking the world's supply of wine with it.
the moral of this post is if i'm not too drunk to hide with my laptop in a closet, i'll try to post more frequently. bear with me. momma is coming home.
dare i even say it, pray for me?
gentle readers, please excuse my absence for the last four months. and i apologize if anyone was left to worry that mam and i met our untimely demise at the hands of our white-trash neighbors after playing "dude, who hit my car" one too many times. and quite sadly no, white-trash neighbors did not sell their house (damn you, bursting housing bubble!) and until the day the bank forecloses on their property, white trash momma continues to share our driveway.
but that's not really why i have been so negligent in posting here... i think i alerted folks to the other housing nightmare i would soon be embarking on -- helping my mother sell her house.
in the midst of talking my mother out of her own self-induced anxiety attacks, i also managed to pull together 3 sample chapters and full book proposal for the idea i pitched to a literary agent i met last year. it only took 12 months and whole lotta chutzpah to hit the send button on that one.
but really, the most pressing reason why i have neglected this space is my mother. between talking her out of buying a double-wide trailer in a 55-and-up ghetto fabulous development to avoiding her phone calls -- not once or twice a day, but upwards or three and four times(!), to dealing with her meltdowns when i don't help her take out the trash right now, well, she's one step away from having a fatal accident with her pillow if you catch my drift. as much as i probably needed to write about those events (and i may still in a few months when it's less painful and i can see the comic value in the experience), sadly, i must say i tipped back a few slugs of crown royal on the nights most worthy of such instead.
this latest asault, though is what causes most people that i've told to physically wince -- WINCE -- as in actual facial distortion at my impending doom.
my mother is coming to stay with us. for 6 weeks until she can move into her new place on january 4th, 2008.
SIX WEEKS, FORTY TWO DAYS and way-too-many hours to count. during the already touchy christmas season because for me, even the "regular" family get-togetherness the holidays bring is no day at the beach with all the leftover sand in the va-jay-jay irritation.
fa-la-fcucking-la. seriously, what gods have i pissed off to endure this? (true, there are probably so many...) and i know this sounds horrible, but what irritates me the most is the loss of freedom, and quite possibly, my adulthood that my new house guest will rob me of. "what time are you coming home tonight?" "are you still sleeping?" "what time will you be home from work?" i'll be a teenager all over again, only this time, i'm married with a mortage.
oh goddess, that's not the worst of it. save me from all of the talking!
mam and i have two loves -- sleeping in and silence. there are evenings where we don't speak to each other becuase i'll be writing in one room and he'll be watching tv in another. less talk-y, more do-y of other stuff. my fear is that my house guest will latch herself onto my earlob like a leech and force evil words into my head about such exciting topics as what she and her coworkers ate for lunch, who won dancing with the stars?, and the likes and dislikes are of the newest QVC host or hostess. if my head doesn't explode first, what's left of my brain my just leak out of the ear she's not presently attached to. shudder
say what you want about how evil i sound, but when she called me at work (cornered, if you want my honest opinion) and dropped her bomb, "i can stay with you, right? you're not going to leave me homeless, are you?" well, what do you say to that?
if my life was an episode of ally mcbeal, i'm sure what would follow would be a dream sequence of me screaming into the phone, "yes! by all means, bring your crazy-ass, stalker self directly into my home so then maybe, i won't think i'm crazy when i see a white car parked outside in my driveway that shouldn't be there just because i chose not to pick up your 7th phone call of the day to remind me of the dialogue in call number 6!"
instead, when trapped like a rat in a cage, i accepted my fate. there was no escape. if i said no, what are the alteratives for her? a hotel for 6 weeks? my brother's tiny condo? and goddess forbid, what if i did say no? it would have been less painful to brand myself with the scarlet BD (for bad daughter, natch) than to suffer what was sure to be the most egregious assault against a mother to date. all the breederly types in mothers-against-drunk driving and mothers-against-lead-based toys would surely pop my picture on billboard with such witty slogans as:
"what breaks a mother's heart? a bad daughter who refuses to shelter her homeless mother", or "pure evil" splashed against a particularly hideous picture of myself.
so in accepting my fate, i slowly said into the receiver. "yes, mom. you can stay here until your new house is ready." and ever since, i have been stockpiling wine like vineyards all over the world had simultaneously blew up, taking the world's supply of wine with it.
the moral of this post is if i'm not too drunk to hide with my laptop in a closet, i'll try to post more frequently. bear with me. momma is coming home.
dare i even say it, pray for me?
Monday, July 30, 2007
it takes two
most folks in healthy relationships share some common traits; if they did not, most folks would never hook up in the first place. but it's in the differences where most folks find the interesting parts.
take mam and i for example: he is cool and level-headed in stressful situations. i, on the other hand, have some genetic code triggered that results in piggish, extreme and often violent behavior.
like this afternoon, when i have sat home and plotted my revenge. seems we had the pleasure of being visited by the hit-and-run fairy last night in our own driveway. when we questioned our neighbors this morning about it, considering they share the friggin driveway with us, they may have heard something. or maybe even remember hitting our car since they were the only other flippin' vehicles in it last night.
the old poor thing with a million scratches already and a permanent stale odor of impending death did not deserve an asshat backing into it and tearing its poor mirror from the car. nor did it deserve the long metal on metal scratch that tore through the length of its passenger door. while mam's old car was being ravaged in the dark, we sat watching television and when we heard the crunch and tires squeal, we honestly thought nothing of it.
despite giving it a valiant effort, our neighbors decided they weren't going to pursue this whole marriage thing after all. i mean, he only sent her to the hospital once in recent months, and her alcoholic binges have been somewhat under control lately. but anyway, since they put their house on the market, they've been throwing out junk at all hours of the night with loud thunks and crashes as they decide their flea market finds aren't worth paying to move.
"are you calling me a liar?" the white trash momma screamed at mam from her front porch. "all i want to do is get the bottom of why my car's mirror has been sheared off and there's a huge scratch down the side of my car when you have some surprisingly similar scratches on the back of your truck," mam replied, quite calmly.
i had been tied to a piece of furniture while this was happening to prevent me from going outside and going all ghetto, and thus breaking down these peace accords. in my head rolled images of taking a louisville slugger to her windshield a la the american idol country chick who inspired my fantasies at the moment. since they are trying to sell their house because neither one can afford it alone, i plotted ways to drive them into bankruptcy. i could stand in my front lawn in nasty short shorts and bra top, my white flabby flesh reflecting the sun's rays so brightly that folks wandering into the see the property would be blinded instantly upon entering the driveway.
the driveway! yes, this afternoon i began thinking of how to best sever their access to the driveway at all. if those redneck-tonka truck driving idiots can't figure out how to park in a driveway, then i'd line the driveway with alligators who'd chew at their asses if they tried to even enter it. besides, all i need is for the *official* survey results to tell me what we already know -- the length of the driveway is on my property. only the paved section by their garage is theirs. and no, i do not need to grant them access to it via my portion of it. (that's why i need the alligators.)
"hon, all i want is for them to accept financial responsibility for their actions," mam explained to me in the car. "all i want," i tell him, "is blood if they choose not to. i mean, c'mon, we're going to be out the deductible regardless. i am just willing to recoup my losses with bloodshed, that's all i'm saying."
"at least call the cops on 'em," i continue. "hit-and-runs carry more weight in the justice system." and if they did hit our aging car, that's exactly what had happened.
when mam came back from trying to rationally talk with them, i could tell by his face things hadn't gone well. "fcuk them," he said. "fcuk those white trash rednecks. i'm calling the cops now. and the insurance company. let them sick their lawyers on them. i'm done."
"there, there, honey," i cooed as he untied me, "just remember a firebomb works much quicker."
take mam and i for example: he is cool and level-headed in stressful situations. i, on the other hand, have some genetic code triggered that results in piggish, extreme and often violent behavior.
like this afternoon, when i have sat home and plotted my revenge. seems we had the pleasure of being visited by the hit-and-run fairy last night in our own driveway. when we questioned our neighbors this morning about it, considering they share the friggin driveway with us, they may have heard something. or maybe even remember hitting our car since they were the only other flippin' vehicles in it last night.
the old poor thing with a million scratches already and a permanent stale odor of impending death did not deserve an asshat backing into it and tearing its poor mirror from the car. nor did it deserve the long metal on metal scratch that tore through the length of its passenger door. while mam's old car was being ravaged in the dark, we sat watching television and when we heard the crunch and tires squeal, we honestly thought nothing of it.
despite giving it a valiant effort, our neighbors decided they weren't going to pursue this whole marriage thing after all. i mean, he only sent her to the hospital once in recent months, and her alcoholic binges have been somewhat under control lately. but anyway, since they put their house on the market, they've been throwing out junk at all hours of the night with loud thunks and crashes as they decide their flea market finds aren't worth paying to move.
"are you calling me a liar?" the white trash momma screamed at mam from her front porch. "all i want to do is get the bottom of why my car's mirror has been sheared off and there's a huge scratch down the side of my car when you have some surprisingly similar scratches on the back of your truck," mam replied, quite calmly.
i had been tied to a piece of furniture while this was happening to prevent me from going outside and going all ghetto, and thus breaking down these peace accords. in my head rolled images of taking a louisville slugger to her windshield a la the american idol country chick who inspired my fantasies at the moment. since they are trying to sell their house because neither one can afford it alone, i plotted ways to drive them into bankruptcy. i could stand in my front lawn in nasty short shorts and bra top, my white flabby flesh reflecting the sun's rays so brightly that folks wandering into the see the property would be blinded instantly upon entering the driveway.
the driveway! yes, this afternoon i began thinking of how to best sever their access to the driveway at all. if those redneck-tonka truck driving idiots can't figure out how to park in a driveway, then i'd line the driveway with alligators who'd chew at their asses if they tried to even enter it. besides, all i need is for the *official* survey results to tell me what we already know -- the length of the driveway is on my property. only the paved section by their garage is theirs. and no, i do not need to grant them access to it via my portion of it. (that's why i need the alligators.)
"hon, all i want is for them to accept financial responsibility for their actions," mam explained to me in the car. "all i want," i tell him, "is blood if they choose not to. i mean, c'mon, we're going to be out the deductible regardless. i am just willing to recoup my losses with bloodshed, that's all i'm saying."
"at least call the cops on 'em," i continue. "hit-and-runs carry more weight in the justice system." and if they did hit our aging car, that's exactly what had happened.
when mam came back from trying to rationally talk with them, i could tell by his face things hadn't gone well. "fcuk them," he said. "fcuk those white trash rednecks. i'm calling the cops now. and the insurance company. let them sick their lawyers on them. i'm done."
"there, there, honey," i cooed as he untied me, "just remember a firebomb works much quicker."
Friday, July 20, 2007
costco goodness and other random thoughts
at least this year i am ahead of the game and may actually have purchased my husband's birthday present BEFORE his birthday actually gets here. go me!
before you think i'm some wicked wife, to my defense, i was hospitalized last year for the week before his birthday and by the time they released me, i really wasn't in the mood to go shopping.
this year will be different although i am determined to buy mam's birthday present at costco again. instead of ordering online a really cool hammock like last year that got to see more of the united states than i could ever dream on its delivery to casa mc-clotsky before it managed to get lost in transit, i plan to purchase his gift in the store.
just as soon as the item comes back in stock.
see i could tell you what the item is, but then i'd have to kill you. after i finally tracked down a live, honest-to-goodness costco employee that wasn't either carding at the door like a bouncer or stuck behind a huge line as a cashier (try it, i bet you go as crazy as i did trying to find one) and drug him back to the display, he merely shrugged his shoulders and told me i was outta luck.
"sorry, lady. we don't have anymore in stock of those. i could sell you the display but if you want a box, you'll have to wait until tomorrow." as i contemplate the number of scratches on the display and whether it would bug the shit out of me over time because i didn't want to wait until morning, he added, "or i can just write you a raincheck."
nope. a raincheck just will not cut it this year. last year's blood clot gave me a reprieve on punctuality, i have no such excuse this year. (nor do i want one, fcuk you very much.)
"how many are you expecting in?" i ask, trying to gage if i need to make the return trip on saturday or if it can wait until sunday while i mentally rearrange my schedule in my head.
when he says "24", i begin to relax. i have plenty of time until he continues, "but you're the 20th person to ask me that today." damn.
knowing that they open the store at ten, i'm afraid i'll be camping out tomorrow morning, like it's tickets for some sort of super-fantastic-rock-legend-straight-out-of-hell-one-night-only concert. normally, i'm too lazy to be that cheap but it's a whole lotta smackers i'd save by getting at the warehouse of holiness, costco.
seriously, i'll be at the store at 9:30 to stake my claim on one of the 24 "things" due in stock tonight. if you catch the news tomorrow night and see a story about a suburban-assault-vehicle running through a crowd in a parking lot, you can safely bet i was gonna be number 25 in line.
and a random thought for a day...
what marketing genius decided to come out with strawberry-flavored blunts?
i couldn't believe my eyes at wawa while i waited for helga (my nickname for the old, gruff lady who works behind the counter) to take her good old time ringing up the people in from of me.
the pink carton stared out at me while all i could think about was how did this affect the marijuana most people use the friggin' blunts for in the first place? is the strawberry-flavor in the cigar wrapper or in the tobacco?
are the gangs hip to the new pink packaging? it doesn't exactly scream tough urban thug if some g-boy were to pull out a pink box before rolling a fattie joint.
is this the new gay version of blunts? something to entice the gangstas on the down-lo? a new replacement for the ol' friend of dorothy to signal that someone was homosexual?
as i got back into my car and drove away, i shook my head and thought what's next -- blueberry?
before you think i'm some wicked wife, to my defense, i was hospitalized last year for the week before his birthday and by the time they released me, i really wasn't in the mood to go shopping.
this year will be different although i am determined to buy mam's birthday present at costco again. instead of ordering online a really cool hammock like last year that got to see more of the united states than i could ever dream on its delivery to casa mc-clotsky before it managed to get lost in transit, i plan to purchase his gift in the store.
just as soon as the item comes back in stock.
see i could tell you what the item is, but then i'd have to kill you. after i finally tracked down a live, honest-to-goodness costco employee that wasn't either carding at the door like a bouncer or stuck behind a huge line as a cashier (try it, i bet you go as crazy as i did trying to find one) and drug him back to the display, he merely shrugged his shoulders and told me i was outta luck.
"sorry, lady. we don't have anymore in stock of those. i could sell you the display but if you want a box, you'll have to wait until tomorrow." as i contemplate the number of scratches on the display and whether it would bug the shit out of me over time because i didn't want to wait until morning, he added, "or i can just write you a raincheck."
nope. a raincheck just will not cut it this year. last year's blood clot gave me a reprieve on punctuality, i have no such excuse this year. (nor do i want one, fcuk you very much.)
"how many are you expecting in?" i ask, trying to gage if i need to make the return trip on saturday or if it can wait until sunday while i mentally rearrange my schedule in my head.
when he says "24", i begin to relax. i have plenty of time until he continues, "but you're the 20th person to ask me that today." damn.
knowing that they open the store at ten, i'm afraid i'll be camping out tomorrow morning, like it's tickets for some sort of super-fantastic-rock-legend-straight-out-of-hell-one-night-only concert. normally, i'm too lazy to be that cheap but it's a whole lotta smackers i'd save by getting at the warehouse of holiness, costco.
seriously, i'll be at the store at 9:30 to stake my claim on one of the 24 "things" due in stock tonight. if you catch the news tomorrow night and see a story about a suburban-assault-vehicle running through a crowd in a parking lot, you can safely bet i was gonna be number 25 in line.
and a random thought for a day...
what marketing genius decided to come out with strawberry-flavored blunts?
i couldn't believe my eyes at wawa while i waited for helga (my nickname for the old, gruff lady who works behind the counter) to take her good old time ringing up the people in from of me.
the pink carton stared out at me while all i could think about was how did this affect the marijuana most people use the friggin' blunts for in the first place? is the strawberry-flavor in the cigar wrapper or in the tobacco?
are the gangs hip to the new pink packaging? it doesn't exactly scream tough urban thug if some g-boy were to pull out a pink box before rolling a fattie joint.
is this the new gay version of blunts? something to entice the gangstas on the down-lo? a new replacement for the ol' friend of dorothy to signal that someone was homosexual?
as i got back into my car and drove away, i shook my head and thought what's next -- blueberry?
Monday, July 16, 2007
queen of stupid
as we tossed the unmarked glass bottle into the women's bathroom trashcan, we stupidly believed we got rid of the last piece of evidence. especially considering we drank the rest of it.
lisa and i were freshmen. high school freshman. which makes us the just about the smartest people in the lunchroom. i mean, did anyone else see upperclassman finding ways to drink in the cafeteria at lunch?
obviously, we had stumbled upon an idea no one else had thought of before.
lisa lived down the street from me, moving in during the summer between eight grade and freshman year. i was so excited! my street held very few other kids my age, and of the few there were, usually had a penis. so the thought of sharing my teenage years with another girl living closeby - someone to try hairstyles with, experiment with makeup, and talk about the boys on the block, had danced in my head.
the day we first met, lisa tossed her long brown hair and asked me if i smoked cigarettes, very casually, as if every 13-year-old girl smoked. with my wannabe bad ass tendencies, i knew we would be fast friends.
(before anyone wonders what happened to the goddess girls during these formative years in my life, we knew each other separately but had not yet fully discovered our goddess-like tendencies.)
as summer turned to fall, lisa and i braved the halls of freshman year together. although having very different rosters, we shared a lunch period, the walk to and from school and even our similarities at home. lisa and her mother her lived alone, about ten houses down from our red-bricked rowhome. no dad, no siblings. just like how my mother and i, save for the sibling part. i would have gladly traded in my brother for a pack of chewing gum at the time.
i don't remember whose idea it was but one day we decided what a good idea it would be to bring a bottle of vodka with us to school. but the big ideas did not stop then! nope, we decided we need to drink it, too. what could be more perfect than those little single, serving-sized orange juice containers for making screwdrivers?
besides, getting a little tipsy at lunch could only ease the rest of the school day. for lisa, this meant getting through whatever remedial class she was placed in. for me, it meant trying to ease the pains of honors english with mrs. o'kane.
a whole week had gone by, and with a slightly sleepy stupor, i enjoyed mrs. o'kane's class for the first time that year -- "great expectations" and ms. haberstram or whatever the decrepit old lady's name was in the book made sense to me. the exact details of the book escape me (still) but for the first time, i relaxed in her class.
but as teenagers are wont to do, i'm pretty sure we could not keep our genius quiet. "i'm buzzed," i'm sure i whispered to the kids around me. and i'm pretty sure lisa blabbed about our discovery that the little orange juice containers could double as old fashioned high ball glass.
so on the morning we saw the deans beginning to circle our lunchtable like a pack of hungry sharks, we shouldn't have been surprised. with the rest of the gals at our lunch table panicking -- even those who did not drink with us -- lisa and i calmly disposed of the evidence. in the days before csi, we were left with having to devise our own methods of subterfuge, the best we could come up with was do down the clear bottle's contents and dispose of the unmarked bottle.
by the time the deans swallowed our lunch table for punishment, there was nothing left behind. except for a few drunk teenage girls.
their interrogation techniques involved separating us, to keep us from sharing one brain in talking ourselves out of our punishment. but i broke like a cheap crayon, smearing contraband mascara all over my face, before finally tossing my cookies into the dean's trashcan when i saw my mom walk in the door.
grounded for life. or what nearly felt like it. detention for most the remainder of freshman year. saturday detention which is nothing like breakfast club movie. there were no hot guys, only juvenile deliquents and future drop-outs and teenage parents. there was no talking because the friggin' moderator would not leave, like the asshat principal in the john waters' flick which would allow us to discover our shared wounds which our teenager years stabbed us with and learn more about the walls, self-erected or otherwise, we built around each other.
nope, it was merely hours wasted staring at the mural of the high school mascot, counting the number of cinderblocks in each wall.
but i was a good student, so my punishment finally subsided and i was able to get on with my academic career, despite the black mark on my permanent record. i can be so smart sometimes, but don't be fooled. it's all just a cover, i am the queen of stupid.
lisa and i were freshmen. high school freshman. which makes us the just about the smartest people in the lunchroom. i mean, did anyone else see upperclassman finding ways to drink in the cafeteria at lunch?
obviously, we had stumbled upon an idea no one else had thought of before.
lisa lived down the street from me, moving in during the summer between eight grade and freshman year. i was so excited! my street held very few other kids my age, and of the few there were, usually had a penis. so the thought of sharing my teenage years with another girl living closeby - someone to try hairstyles with, experiment with makeup, and talk about the boys on the block, had danced in my head.
the day we first met, lisa tossed her long brown hair and asked me if i smoked cigarettes, very casually, as if every 13-year-old girl smoked. with my wannabe bad ass tendencies, i knew we would be fast friends.
(before anyone wonders what happened to the goddess girls during these formative years in my life, we knew each other separately but had not yet fully discovered our goddess-like tendencies.)
as summer turned to fall, lisa and i braved the halls of freshman year together. although having very different rosters, we shared a lunch period, the walk to and from school and even our similarities at home. lisa and her mother her lived alone, about ten houses down from our red-bricked rowhome. no dad, no siblings. just like how my mother and i, save for the sibling part. i would have gladly traded in my brother for a pack of chewing gum at the time.
i don't remember whose idea it was but one day we decided what a good idea it would be to bring a bottle of vodka with us to school. but the big ideas did not stop then! nope, we decided we need to drink it, too. what could be more perfect than those little single, serving-sized orange juice containers for making screwdrivers?
besides, getting a little tipsy at lunch could only ease the rest of the school day. for lisa, this meant getting through whatever remedial class she was placed in. for me, it meant trying to ease the pains of honors english with mrs. o'kane.
a whole week had gone by, and with a slightly sleepy stupor, i enjoyed mrs. o'kane's class for the first time that year -- "great expectations" and ms. haberstram or whatever the decrepit old lady's name was in the book made sense to me. the exact details of the book escape me (still) but for the first time, i relaxed in her class.
but as teenagers are wont to do, i'm pretty sure we could not keep our genius quiet. "i'm buzzed," i'm sure i whispered to the kids around me. and i'm pretty sure lisa blabbed about our discovery that the little orange juice containers could double as old fashioned high ball glass.
so on the morning we saw the deans beginning to circle our lunchtable like a pack of hungry sharks, we shouldn't have been surprised. with the rest of the gals at our lunch table panicking -- even those who did not drink with us -- lisa and i calmly disposed of the evidence. in the days before csi, we were left with having to devise our own methods of subterfuge, the best we could come up with was do down the clear bottle's contents and dispose of the unmarked bottle.
by the time the deans swallowed our lunch table for punishment, there was nothing left behind. except for a few drunk teenage girls.
their interrogation techniques involved separating us, to keep us from sharing one brain in talking ourselves out of our punishment. but i broke like a cheap crayon, smearing contraband mascara all over my face, before finally tossing my cookies into the dean's trashcan when i saw my mom walk in the door.
grounded for life. or what nearly felt like it. detention for most the remainder of freshman year. saturday detention which is nothing like breakfast club movie. there were no hot guys, only juvenile deliquents and future drop-outs and teenage parents. there was no talking because the friggin' moderator would not leave, like the asshat principal in the john waters' flick which would allow us to discover our shared wounds which our teenager years stabbed us with and learn more about the walls, self-erected or otherwise, we built around each other.
nope, it was merely hours wasted staring at the mural of the high school mascot, counting the number of cinderblocks in each wall.
but i was a good student, so my punishment finally subsided and i was able to get on with my academic career, despite the black mark on my permanent record. i can be so smart sometimes, but don't be fooled. it's all just a cover, i am the queen of stupid.
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