plow this, baby

oh gary. wherefore art thou, gary gilbert?

my last phone number was previously owned by gary gilbert. gary owned a snowplowing business. so whenever so much as a flake was forecast, our phone rang off the hook. why did gary leave an obviously successful snowplowing business? who knows but he left the phone number behind quite swiftly (at least according to his customers).

"is gary there?"

"i want to make sure gary is coming tomorrow to do my driveway."

"hello, hello, gary? gary? it's mrs. putz again. gar-r-r-y?"

nevermind that these messages were left on our answering machine. my husband's laid-back drawl very specifically says who you had reached and it wasn't gary. we were dealing with blue-hairs. if their phone book says this is gary's number, well, who were we to argue any differently?

we felt bad for these elderly women. they rarely left return numbers in their messages so that we could call them back and let them know that gary wasn't coming. most of the messages were of them wondering how to leave a message..."hello, is this recording? can you hear me gary? gar-r-r-y?"

i had visions of elderly women trapped in their mile-long suburban driveways. old women sharing cat food with fluffy because they couldn't get to acme to load up on milk and bread. all because of damn gary.

we tried calling the phone company about how to track down gary. the few callers we actually spoke to were peeved that we didn't know gary's new phone number. how many people actually call their old number and let the new owner know where to forward their calls? but like i said, we were dealing with older women and the phone company couldn't (or wouldn't) give out his new number.

"these are old women," i pleaded with the phone rep, "they need to reach this guy or else they will be eating cat food."

privacy rules, they argued. they couldn't even tell me when he last owned the number. since we inherited the number in october, we could at least pinpoint it that far back. and the callers we spoke to remember using gary the previous winter.

gary had to be in over his head. why else run out on his steady stream of blue-haired customers? instead, we were left holding gary's bag of business without a plow.

if either my husband or i drove a car that could handle a snowplow, we could have made a ton of money those two winters we lived in that place. when we moved, we were a little sad (and a little relieved) to see the number go.

we had a new home without any of gary's guilt.

until last winter, when we got the first forecast of snow. "gar-r-r-y? hello, gary?" the phone company put a forwarding message with our new number on the old number we shared with gary.

the old ladies desperately seeking gary managed to update their phone books with our new number. i gotta get a snowplow.

agitation. frustration. creation.

what the hell is the connection between being fired up over something and practically bursting at the seams until i can get my thoughts down on paper? (or laptop.)

does frustration fuel the creative process? is that why in my painting days i was so prolific, because i walked around just waiting for someone to drop-kick with my doc martin?

and what better time for cranky people than christmas?

fa-la-la-la-la. la-fcukin-la.

thank-yuh jeee-sus!

uggh... the christmas letter.

this is not your typical christmas letter, although it contains much of the usual parts. what we did this year, an update on travels throughout the year, yadda, yadda, yadda.

this one is from holy rollers. born-again christians. how do i get into these things? praise the lord!

the couple's connection with us can only be blamed on my husband. the guy is HIS coworker.

at first they seemed nice, the guy was new to my husband's company and at the time, the closest one in age to my husband. we lived relatively close to where he and his wife did. we both got married in the same month. we both like dogs.

and that is where the similarities ended. it was probably the 2nd or 3rd meeting before i realized they were thumpers. bible-thumpers.

at first they were somewhat discreet about their religion. (as it should be.) it wasn't until they kept asking us about what church we went to that the hairs on the back of my neck went up. my tail started swishing. that's when i knew i was in a bad place. we don't go to church. we're heathens. and we were about to be preached to. praise jeeessus!

i feel worse for my husband though. he has to listen to this guy's 'sermon on the mount' everyday at the office. he was more than a christian, he was eee-van-glical. born-again. believes the bible at face value. if jesus said 'hop on one foot and rub your belly' this idiot would be doing it.

so obviously this guy and his wife need to send us a christmas letter with an update of the past year. every year. because we care sooo deeply.

the countless times i've turned down going to her crazy woman-spiritual retreats weren't enough to tell her to scram. retreats where the wives sit around and discuss 'how an unused uterus is a sad uterus'. the last time she asked i told her i was sick. i knew i would be sick 3 weeks in advance. god told me so.

anyway, the letter comes today in the mail. here's what gets my panties in a wad... these folks have now adopted a full vegan diet. because god told them to.

normally as a vegetarian, i would be happy for someone who decides it's right for them. but not these people. i am thinking about mailing them an unsigned box of hot dogs.

this guy -- every year -- is sat at the same table as my husband and me for company dinners or events. each year for the last 7 years i get intrusive questions on why i am a vegetarian and why else would god make animals but for them to be on your plate, hahaha... and why aren't you going to church.... you catch the drift.

for those who know me well, you know at times i can be called upon to act like a lady and graciously smile through clenched teeth. keep my tail in check, too.

if you know me well, you also know at times i can howl like a she-devil and taking shelter is the safest bet if you wish to survive. #*&%!!#

but i kept my feelings in check with this guy. all those years! wasted opportunities to sink my fangs into him and give him a real response to his up-my-butt questions. man, what a rip.

maybe with the hot dogs i'll write my vegetarian wo-manifesto and mail it to his house. thank-yuh jeee-sus!

smoke gets in your eyes

one thing about having great friends is knowing you can always count on them to sympathize with you, no matter how rough it gets.

having great friends who experience similar fcuk-ups in their own relationships, well, that's priceless.

it's not that i wish bad things on my friends, it just makes you feel less alone if they have weird run-ins with their in-laws, too.

so this weekend, while i suffered through a sunday drive to hell with my in-laws, one of my best buds was undergoing similar difficulties of her own.

she invited her in-laws and her husband's siblings to dinner at their new house. expecting some level of wackiness is normal from this cast of characters. we had the pleasure of spending lots of time in their company before her wedding and it was always interesting. (notice i didn't say fun?)

this dinner definitely ranks up there with the best of 'em. not one, but two members of her new husband's family tried to burn down her bathroom.

poor gal. in her newly outfitted bathroom, her strange (very strange) brother-in-law knocked over a lit candle in the bathroom. wax went everywhere you'd expect (the shower curtain, bath rug, towels) and even those places you wouldn't expect (the toilet seat?). leading to some awkward question as to how said candle got spilled in the first place. her b-i-l is a weird guy, if he were polishing off some dance moves in front of the bathroom mirror, that could explain how the candle got knocked over. of course he could also be doing some kinky stuff in there too which would make me never want to use her bathroom again. ever. but we'll never know for sure.

when her b-i-l walked out of the bathroom, i can only imagine my friend's reaction. she'd swallow her anger, her eyes would circle around in her head a few times and then she'd go about resolving the issue, quietly steaming.

now, when her equally, if not more so, strange sister-in-law emerged from the bathroom claiming to have knocked over the same candle, well, she exploded. it ain't the bathroom's fault that her in-laws are insane. and trust me, my friend is not the type to place a lit candle on carefully balanced pick-ups sticks. knowing her, it was on very solid footing.

why then do her in-laws insist on torching the place? are they that mentally unbalanced themselves? or are they simply closeted pyromaniacs that couldn't resist the urge?

the reaction of the rest of her ill-spawned clan to her outburst doesn't bode well for the rest of the holiday season. we all know the holidays are a time of mass-family-togetherness that we manage to avoid the other 11 months of the year. so i'll be thinking of her this weekend as i partake in the filet o'dinner.

yet, no matter how unfortunate our troubles with in-laws may be, we know we share stories with sympathetic ears. we also provide comic relief to our singleton friends.

and provide powerful reminders to only marry orphans. without siblings.

scritch is back

i listen carefully but don't want to look.

the soft scritch is back. and it can only mean one thing. we caught a critter.

one of the downsides to living in a house that backs to the woods is when the weather gets cold, things start seeking shelter in warmer places. like my kitchen.

as a vegetarian, i walk a tough line between wanting them out of my house and the squishing them approach that others often take. unfortunately my dogs don't scare the little furry things away like a cat would. and allergies prevent my house from being a kitty haven.

sure we've caulked and put brillo pads in the holes they may have used to enter the house. but let's face it, we live in an older house with lots of little gaps that let hot air out and mice in.

so we set out humane traps that do not kill or squish the unfortunate mouse who moves in. but if we catch one we need to get it out of there or it will die from starvation or thirst.

my husband takes the trap out to his car and drives them across the highway from where we live and lets mickey loose in the woods. really. he knows he would let loose in the woods if he was lying to me.

so now that a scritch is back, i need to get mike to check the "mouse house" to see if anyone has checked in. i feel guilty looking into the clear top to see the little eyes saying, "uhm, excuse me but the door has locked from behind. please be a love and let me out, will you? i have littles one to feed."

instead, i scrub the kitchen with disinfectant again.

christmas nazi

i am a christmas nazi. my husband just laughs at my insane rules of engagement for the holidays.

"there are rules", i say to him each year. "there are standards for decorating your house for the holidays. we are just not colored-light people."

i tell him, when in doubt, just ask yourself, "what would martha do?" if a white pine roping near the front door is what martha stewart teaches -- then go for it.

martha does not espouse plastic, light-up figurines of toy soldiers, candles or candy cane lights that provide a runway entrance to the land of gawdy christmas decor. mangers that serve as dog houses the other 11 months of the year are not allowed to be called in to serve as the birthplace for a plastic baby jesus whose face is rubbed off from exposure to decades of snow, ice and petty vandals.

i also find fault with those huge inflatable lawn items. part of the reason i am not allowed to own a gun is because i would most likely be found wandering around less than sober taking aim at the army of inflatable santas invading my neighborhood.

the funniest inflatable was a homer simpson dressed as santa on my neighbors lawn. homer was knocked over with his usually waving hand just reaching upright like he was passed out on the lawn from a night of too much duff's beer.

last night on the way home from my dreaded in-laws, we passed a fallen santa laying face first on the roof of a business. normally welcoming passersby, this time santa decided he had to get his groove on. the gentle wind last night made santa bob up and down like he was humping the storefront roof.

"that has to be illegal", my husband said, "what if some family with kids drove by and saw that?" i just said it's just another reason to ban bad christmas decor.

martha would never allow a humping santa.

i could learn to like this

knowing full well my body would need a day of rest after PMD, i scheduled a mental health day.

this morning, i slept in until 10 am. the dogs -- thankfully fed and let out by my husband this morning -- were sleeping soundly next to the bed.

the sunlight woke me this morning -- a far cry from the squawk of the alarm at my normal, dark 5:45 am awakening.

i made coffee and ate breakfast. read the newspaper in my pjs and not in a suit on the train. the cold has not yet reached my bones from walking down jfk boulevard face first into wind. i have not checked my blackberry to answer emails or respond to any non-eventful crisis brewing in my office.

and i am sitting here telling my story in my jammies. i could learn to like this.

welcome to my nightmare

how long into a visit to my in-laws does it take to drive my blood pressure through the roof?

apparently, they are able to raise it now before i even step foot in the door. i woke with a headache like no other yesterday morning. against my bitter prayers leading into this day, the sun did rise on pierogie-making-day (PMD).

okay, i will admit, on occasion i can be a bit dramatic. but i can assure you, i am NOT dramatizing the insanity of PMD. i am NOT that good of a storyteller.

besides i have witnesses -- my mother attended once and swore to never set foot in there again. my sister-in-law can sympathize as an outsider to the defective gene pool but she's more easygoing than me... when she goes for hugs, i scream for drugs.

granted this year has been rough on my husband's family -- my father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer and given estimates of only about a year to live. as stubborn as a mule, his determination to prove the doctors wrong has remarkedly given him a new reason to live and is now successfully beating back the cancer.

my husband's uncle went in for surgery on his hand and walked out with a brain tumor. poor uncle john who was caretaker for my sick in-laws (mother-in-law only mentally and not officially) now needed a caretaker of his own after undergoing brain surgery.

for any family, this would result in a normal disruption of everyday and traditional events. for my in-laws who are already living far west of normal, this bordered on the land of make-believe and flying unicorns.

my m-i-l will never win the "clean house award". in fact, if ed mcmahon shows up with a large check and balloons to her front door, she will promptly slam the door in his face to prevent him from walking across the threshold. if i were ed, i would run back to the van. my first interaction with her included a similar event, i rang the doorbell to see if my future husband was home, she answered it, said no and slammed the door in my face. if i only knew then what my life would be like now...

regardless of the past year's events, their house is disgusting.

as my s-i-l babyproofed the living room for li'l oscar to crawl about without worry of him putting a petrified pizza crust in his mouth or pulling himself up by a stack of newspapers from 1992, i went to work on the kitchen.

before we could begin PMD i needed to clear a workspace in the kitchen from various pots and pans, bags, dirty and clean what-have-yous that take up residence in what is supposed to be a kitchen table and chairs. before we could begin PMD i needed to scrub the floors and counters to remove a years worth of crud (i scrubbed it before last year's PMD, too) before we lay a new layer of flour, sauerkraut, and potato blobs on it.

my m-i-l just stood in the kitchen and watched. hovered. but neither acted or moved in shame, remorse or even with any gratefulness of what was happening. my blood pressure boiled as i scrubbed away at filth, anger seething from my pores. my husband hovered too, i think partly to keep me from sinking my fangs into her once and for all.

there were no christmas mix tapes this year and production of pierogies were cut back (only about 15 lbs worth of stuffing ingredients -- potato, saurkraut and mushrooms & cheese down from the usual 25 lbs).

we moved rapid-fire through the process trying to maintain some resemblance of normal through out the day as my f-i-l determinely rolled out dough, and assembly-line workers like myself stuffed and crimped the 15 lbs of fillings into the little circles of dough. and my m-i-l continued to hover, moving from task to task without accomplishing anything.

SNAFU at its best -- situation normal, all fcuked up.

smelling like a cigarette butt

aahh, nothing says christmas like coming home smelling like you smoked a pack a marlboros. all your new toys and clothes would be covered with the stench so potent you secretly hoped they left a reciept in the box so you could return it.

not because you didn't like it. but so you could get one without a nicorette patch attached to it.

my childhood christmas eves were filled with smoke rings blown from the lips of my parents, grandparents and assorted visitors. how i picked up the filthy habit myself in my teens, who knows? (actually, i do know but that's another story.)

a fake, white christmas trees packed with plastic ornaments and lights of every color of the rainbow. a plastic village of 60's brady-bunch homes arranged by my pop-pop in some new urban experiment under the tree. a plastic doll carriage ornament that i was told was from my first christmas but i was never allowed to touch. sure you could let me play in a busy street but break a 99 cent ornament and you break out into a cold sweat.

toys and gifts were stacked under the brady bunch homes. each year your picture was taken while sitting with your brother on top of the life-sized, statue of a deer lying down in the living room. the one whose hoof was broken and taped back into place with athletic tape, each year the camera caught the deer's permanent injury along with bad hair, braces and clothing styles of wonderfully clueless children of the 80's.

polaroids and cigarettes butts. that's what christmas means to me.

filet o' dinner

pierogie-making-day (PMD) is quickly approaching. with less than a week away, i started to stockpile the xanax.

(i just realized that by the time that PMD is upon us, i won't be in class anymore. hmmm, if you are interested in my freak life, i plan on continuing this blog, although it will probably be on a new url. leave a comment with your email address if you want me to notify you of its new url.)

but in writing about my dreaded day, i forgot to give the reason WHY we undergo the insanity in the first place. an explanation for the family tradition.

it's filet o'dinner, the traditional polish christmas eve dinner that packs us into my mother-in-law's completely cramped and utterly cluttered kitchen.

filet o'dinner (not really how it's spelled but with the polish language it's easier to write it phonetically that listen to the butchering that occurs when letters that normally aren't used together -- d's, c's, j's and z's -- appear in most words) is the polish version of my italian 7-fishes dinner. still with fish but missing about 4 other courses. and pierogies, lots of pierogies.

if i were an atkins-addicted, carb-counting person, my heart would stop pumping as a result of this dinner. long underused fat cells would dance on my thighs with glee over the pounds of pierogies (potato & cheese or sauerkraut stuffed dumplings for the uninformed), the pounds of boiled potatoes cooked to add thickness to an always watery mushroom soup, the italian bread served -- i think as a way to remind me that i'm NOT with my family for their dinner (as if the italian bread served up by acme is any equal...) and the dessert of chris-chickies (again the phonetic way) which are -- you guessed it -- strips of dough, fried and sprinkled with sugar.

the only slightly healthful thing is the mushroom soup. but with most things polish, there's something backwards about it. the soup is made with vegetable broth, some light cream and poisonous mushrooms. at first when i heard family members speak of it, i thought they were kidding. ha ha, play a joke on the non-polish one. real funny.

then i thought about it some more and thought, this is how my m-i-l plans to get rid of me! she's going to off me with poisonous mushrooms and make it look like its my lack of tolerance to the polish stuff that killed me. after i told my husband (then boyfriend) he laughed and called me cute. bleah! i don't want to be cute, i want to live, dammit!

after carefully explaining that the mushrooms won't kill me, it's just a nickname for some of the more exotic ones used, i calmed down. only slightly, though.

that still didn't answer why after each filet o' dinner, i would drive home in gastric distress. with white-knuckles and rolling stomach cramps, i'd drive to my house, praying that i wouldn't:

a) poop in my pants, or
b) blow chunks all over the steering wheel.

neither of which you should have to clean up on christmas eve.

the reason for my beanie belly (as my husband calls it) was the sauerkraut pierogies. as a vegetarian, i haven't eaten anything with a face in more than a decade. the sauerkraut (cabbage cooked in beer and other accoutrements) used to make the pierogies was precooked when we got there to make them on PMD. so i would have never known that part of the seasoning used to cook the sauerkraut was friggin' BACON FAT.

my belly never knew what hit it. the annual crisis it suffered on christmas eve finally had an explanation. it was so unaccustomed to consuming animal products - bleech - it reacted the only way it knew how - "abort, abort! all hands abandon ship, abandon ship".

and my m-i-l said she didn't know that was it would cause a problem. i thought i was dying each christmas eve. over and over again. gurgle, gurgle.

i bet she figured if she couldn't kill me with the poison mushrooms she would just send me to the emergency room to get fluids 'cause i was pooping myself inside out.

so no, filet o'dinner is not my family tradition. it's not even a fun tradition.

and even though i know there is less carbo-riffic things for me to eat, my fat cells still get excited. there's always the acme-brand italian bread to scarf!

a costco christmas

in what is now becoming a tradition, deb, hope and i have once again decided on a date for our costco christmas celebration.

we really do go to costco, the initial reason for our trip last year. on a friday night. disclosure needed: we have all become suburban geeks now.

when people first asked what we were doing and we told them we were headed to costco -- knowing the three of us -- the assumption was we planned something juicy and just were not into sharing the details. even our hubbies and significant others thought we were up to no good. (which must say something about us...)

the guesses people made about our activities far exceeded our expectations for the night. male strip club, dancing all night at a club, going to the casinos for some texas hold 'em. soon, we decided not to share that indeed, we really were going to costco to pick up a few things before going to dinner. at the olive garden. ho hum.

we had a good time despite our seemingly innocuous activities. we laughed at each other's acts of stupidity. we enjoyed our dinner. we leisurely strolled through the costco, analyzing the usefulness of a 64-pk of anything.

our train-forged friendship deserves to celebrate this new found tradition. especially, since hope promises not to lick any of her utensils at dinner OR dessert. a small change from last year when she licked someone elses.

no "christmas card" from W

the postman will not bring me a christmas card from W this year. not that he has in years past.

frankly, i would let chloe the destroyer loose on it if i were to receive one.

but what has me excited is the how W's own camp is calling for his head after receiving the christmas card without the christmas on it. tee hee hee.

the uber-conservative religious rights love of cramming religion down everyone's throats has a new battle cry.

"put the christ back in christmas" is sooo last year. especially after we removed christmas entirely from the occasion and replaced it with "holiday" -- the all-inclusive name for the shopping blitz now upon us. or my personal favorite -- chrismahannakwanzaa -- which for some reason isn't catching on as it should...

you'll find holiday everywhere -- the capitol's decorated tree is known as the "holiday spruce"; shopping circulars will be inundated with snowflakes, bright lights, and ornaments as decorations. personally, my own department has a holiday dinner and luncheon. i think we are running out of ways to use a blue, non-denominational snowflake on the invite.

i am reminded of the song from the broadway play "rent" (and no, i haven't seen the movie yet):

no stockings, no candy canes, no gingerbread, no yuletime, no rudolph, 'cause santa claus ain't coming, no, santa claus ain't coming. no room at the holiday inn, oh nooooo, and it's beginning to snow...

with sincerest apologies to other rentheads for butchering the lyrics...

open letter to santa

dear santa,

i know it has been a while since i believed in you but at this point, hell, one more letter can't hurt.

i have been a good girl this year. (sort of.)   sure, i got snagged on the usual items -- but no lawsuits, fights or accidents this year. wahoo!

this christmas, i was hoping you could bring me a few of the items on my list. as you can see, my wishes are not really just for me... and i really don't need more socks or another rudolph sweatshirt!


santa can you:
+ end the war in iraq and bring our soldiers home safely to their families who miss them;

+ end the bickering and partisan posturing in our government; while you're at it, stuff a sock into the holy rollers' mouths, would ya;

+ ensure that women continue to have the right to control their bodies without meddling by outsiders and politicians;

+ decrease the number of homeless and help them gain access to the services for drug addiction, mental health, job training that they need;

+ protect animals from those who would abuse either through ignorance or malice and put those animals to the hands of those willing to help them find warmth, love, shelter, and medicine;

+ protect children from the same abuse and lead them to the same end result;

unfortunately this list could go on forever. santa, let's see if this year we can scratch some of these items of this list. we can worry about the rest later.

xoxoxo,
carleen

pgmc2pc?

saturday evening i attended my friend flug's christmas concert. i look forward to the annual event even though my attendance has been hit or miss recently due to conflicts with the holiday party circuit.

the holiday production this year by the philadelphia gay men's chorus (pgmc) was a hit in all regards -- music selection, performance and ability to put people in the holiday spirit.

the only thing that buggered the whole production in my eyes was the use of a sign-language interpreter for the concert. (all hearing-impaired homies in the house) say what?

explain this to me in a way my blonde, idiot-girl-self will understand -- if you are hearing impaired -- what exactly do you get out of a concert?

i pretend to be deaf sometimes...usually when my hubby is blathering on about something. i just cannot imagine what sense there is for me to be at a concert.

sure, i understand the whole "i want to see my partner/friend/family member perform on stage" but you can not tell me the interpreter with fingers a-flying is picking up all the nuances of a song.

choral music contains multiple vocal sections layering sounds and words to round out a song. it is the vocals that make or break the musical experience, not the words.

and if you are not getting the full exposure of those audible nuances -- visually, it's just a bunch of guys in tuxes. trust me, you can only stare at the stage and scan for weird audience members for so long before you get completely bored.

so aside from the spastic interpreter and the rude man in front of us who kept turning around to give us evil looks ... the concert was excellent. (and the rude man who changed his seat got his when two teenaged girls moved into the seat behind him and chattered for the whole section half. HAH! who is annoying YOU now, buster?)

the rousing rendition of jingle bells -- complete with handbells for jingling, percussion to mimic the clip clop of a clydesdale and a leather man to give out the paddling -- provided an encore to remember.

and what says "home for holidays" more than a leather vest and a paddle?

the quote that best fits my life right now

The best brands are built at the intersection of what the consumer wants and what the brand offers. How you find that meeting point is research.

-Amy Palmer
Senior Planner, Leo Burnett