Monthly Archives: March 2012

Wife Words – Vol. 7

Posted on by

If you receive an email from a former boyfriend, curious about how life is treating you these days, it’s important to play it cool. Respond with an air of breezy indifference and smug contentedness. I recommend the following statements to close the letter and assert your self-actualization:

I still fit in my college pants with a pair of Spanx and a bungee cord,

My therapist said he’d do me if it weren’t for the patient-doctor trust we’ve established,

Our wireless network is called BigDaddy10 (wink),

No, I don’t listen to Toni Braxton and cry anymore…much,

If you want to know more about my rich and blessed life, here’s a link to my blog…,

A homeless man in an eye patch saw me holding my wrapped restaurant meal and told me I look like Angelina Jolie recently,

Sorry it took me 6 minutes to respond; I’m extremely busy with the demands of life and a startup jewelry business,

You may have been right about that Anthropology major but I have 340 friends on Facebook,

You don’t need to apologize for ending things like a dick; I only waited at the airport for you for 14 hours,

Just to clarify, I didn’t sleep with your older brother. And if that wasn’t a cloudy point for you, just forget I mentioned it,

Size 0 (the 1 is silent),

Maybe my husband takes me on dates to the Chinese buffet where one of us dines free, but at least he takes me out in public,

Your wife is pretty. If you’re into that sort of look,

 

—–

Requiem For a Facial

Posted on by

9:00am – Am I ready for my Renewal and Rejuvenation? Am I still getting a facial or have I enrolled in Mormon Bible Camp?

9:02am – Place my things in this locker. I like that they think my purse holds valuable stuff instead of a bunch of maxed out credit cards and errant chapstick caps.

9:04am – I’ve been here 4 minutes and have no clue where the locker key went.

9:05am – I can’t believe I have to walk through the lobby in this robe. I’m feeling gusts of lavender-scented air in dark places.

9:06am – Saunter casually. Lift your chin. Gaze with disinterest. This is the only way to walk in waffle weave.

9:07am – Sit in that chair. It faces the least number of other chairs in case you forget that you’re wearing a robe the length of Lindsay Lohan’s courtroom skirts.

9:09am – Why didn’t you get yourself a glass of water with fruit floating in it when you entered the room?  Look around, everyone else is sipping that floating fruit water. What kind of animal are you, not drinking water with fruit floating in it?

9:11am – Stop talking to yourself about the fucking floating fruit water. Just get up and get it. Carefully, now. It wasn’t a good day to forget underwear.

9:12am – No, no, no!! There is a kiwi or a hunk of that star fruit or whatever it is at Whole Foods stuck in the spigot. Stay cool. Just give it a little nudge, not like a vending machine kick. Like a delicate, “Free my star fruit and let the water poureth forth into thiseth irritatingly diminutive glass in my trembling hand.”

9:16am – Why am I still sitting here sipping infused water and staring down the black corridor of this man’s thighs across from me? What does he have to be so smug about? Judging by the thicket of hair on his legs, he’s got plenty more where that came from. And maybe eczema.

9:18am – What do you say, weird lady who coerced me into this robe? My facialist is just preparing the essential oils? Is that spa talk for ‘her Ford Focus wouldn’t start and she had to wait for her Guatemalan boyfriend to finish smoking a bowl before he could drive her here?’

9:20am – Oh, Jesus. What if I’m not even supposed to be in a robe right now? Think about it, everyone else placed in this waiting room is awaiting a full-body massage. I’m just having some zits popped and a lot of Country Crock rubbed on my face. I should change back into my clothes…

9:23am – I’d be more comfortable in a red FUBU track suit at this point. I’m going to just slip back to the locker room to – OH! Yes, hello! Your name is Ula. Of course it is.

9:25am – Hmm, let me think about that…When was my last facial? It involved a tub of Noxzema, some French Braiding, and Belinda Carlisle on loop.

9:26am – What? Would I like to receive extractions? I think the question is do you like drilling for crude oil?

9:28am – Do I enjoy aromatherapy? I prefer regular therapy. Which scents? Ummm. I have to make up aromas now because I cannot think of a single legitimate one…Green Tea…or other kinds of tea…dill weed…Cinnabons…Bounce fabric sheets…Drakkar Noir…petrol…They’re really most acknowledged in Europe. Like David Hasselhoff. Which you should know as a European-Scandinavian-Ukrainian-Facialistian.

9:30am – Oh, you need my bra off too? I was trying to remain covered up. Which is silly since we’re not having sex.

9:33am – I wish they would just play a musical track of digestive noises that way I wouldn’t have to worry about my own.

9:38am – Don’t laugh at the word décolletage. Don’t laugh at the word décolletage.

9:40am – I’m glad she’s not a talker. The only thing worse than having sebum extracted from your dermis is having to talk about The Biggest Loser while it’s happening.

9:45am – Wait, whoa, there. Where is she going? Why is she walking down to my feet?  Why is she taking off my socks? I feel like it’s senior prom night again. Repress the memories.

9:46am – She’s massaging my calves. I haven’t shaved since the Bush Administration. Is this a pity massage? Why am I receiving a massage when I booked a facial? I KNEW IT. It’s the robe. I’ve confused everyone.

9:51am – What layer of shellac can we possibly be on? My face feels like Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress.

9:53am – This poor woman. She probably needs a B12 injection and a wrist brace.

10:00am – Ahh, we’re finished. Oh, you’ll make some product recommendations and leave them at the desk? Thank you, Ula. Now go home and tell your boyfriend how much you hate your job and hope you get deported soon.

10:05am – Yes, it was wonderful, weird robe coercion lady, thank you for asking. Ah, my product recommendations. Look at that. How considerate of Ula to recommend every goddamn product in the most available ounces.

10:07am – You know, I’m really going to have to see how my skin responds to these exotic ingredients because I just don’t know how…photosensitive…guava and honeydew might make my skin. It’s very sensitive. And I have a very careful skincare regiment that involves expired face wash and some Pam spray. I’ll just take this sample – thanks – and my self esteem balloon with its gaping hole.

And some more of this fucking floating fruit water.

 

—

 

 

 

 

 

 

Choose Your Field Trips Carefully

Posted on by

Some people would be surprised if their mother inquired about their interest in touring a miniature horse farm. In my parent’s house, however, this line of questioning has come to be expected. I’d be much more disarmed if my mom asked me what I’d like for dinner. We Donovans are always seeking an outing to pilot us away from the mundane responsibilities of domesticated life. We’re a restless lot, incapable of sitting around the house, with fingers stained by the ink of markers used to circle events listed in the paper. It’s a genealogical anomaly considering Italians are known for lazing around and the Irish have legendary aptitude for doing little more than drinking. Whatever the genesis of this unrest, it drives us into peculiar realms. I knew our latest misadventure fell into such a category when we arrived at the property of a technicolor-painted farm on the far side of Tucson’s Saguaro National Park. We were greeted by the aging proprietor and promptly whisked through the stables to peruse miniature horses and their also inadequately sized goat counterparts. The tour, which was billed as educational, instilled absolutely no knowledge of animal husbandry but has provided 90% of the scenes of a comedic movie I will one day write.

Scene: Weirdest Fucking Farm Ever.  Actors: Farmer. Myself. My mother. My children, ages 4, 3, 1

—-
Me: So these goats – these Nigerian Pygmy goats – hail from Africa then?
Farmer: No, ma’am. They come from the other side of town.

—-

Farmer: Take care not to disturb that mare over there. She’s about to give birth.
Mom: How do you know?
Farmer: She didn’t eat breakfast. And that’s how you know.
Mom: That’s how you know she’s going to give birth today?
Farmer: Or die. One or the other.

—-

Farmer: Do you have a sandbox for these kids at your home?
Me: Yes, we do.
Farmer: That’s good. I can’t tell you how many of these mothers I get out here who tell me they would never let their kids get dirty.
(pause for awkward nod)
Farmer: Kids gotta play in the dirt. Hey, kids! Pay attention to the horses and stop playing in the dirt!

—-

Mother: Are you the only breeder of miniature horses in the area?
Farmer: Oh, no, ma’am. There’s a real classy operation on the other side of town.
Mother (forlorn): I see.
Farmer: But they don’t do what we do.
Mother: And what is that?
Farmer: Educate! See, that one there. That one’s name is Glenn Beck.

—-
Mother: This must be a lot of work for you to tend all these animals out here by yourself.
Farmer: Well, I got a 4-H girl who comes out here couple a times a week.
Mother: She probably loves the experience.
Farmer (eyeing my 4 year old son with disdain): She’s a hard worker, that girl. I tell you what, I get a boy out here, I’m lucky if he lasts 30 minutes. We’re a nation raising a generation of namby pamby boys. Worthless sacks of shit. Amazon girls. Sacks of shit boys.
Me: That’s an enlightened point of view, I guess. Many still view men as superior in this class of work.
Farmer: I tell this girl to do anything and she does it. She cuts down trees, shovels out stalls, digs a ditch.
Me: I changed out a light bulb this morning. A really high one.
Farmer: What?
Me: Nothing.

—

Farmer: Want to feed the chickens, kids?
Me: That sounds great.
Farmer: It’s BYOB.
Me: What does that mean?
Farmer: Bring Your Own Bread.
Me: Ah, yes, your wife mentioned that over the phone before we came. Hope they like Ciabatta.

—–

Farmer: How do you like to eat your chickens?
Me: I’m actually a vegetarian, but when I cook chicken for the –
Farmer: Why on God’s green earth would you be one of those?
Me: Oh. Well, I guess it’s a bit of inertia at this point, I’ve been-
Farmer: What did you say?
Me: I just mean the reasons have probably changed over the years, but I’ve been one so long now. I don’t really miss meat especially when I see the way it’s handled and processed.
Farmer (sitting down): You have dangerous ideas. DANGEROUS.
Me: I do?
Farmer: Do you know how many people would starve to death if we didn’t have commercial farming?
Me: I understand that food needs to be produced on a grand scale as fewer and fewer people want to grow their own food, but I still believe in higher ethics when it comes to slaughtering animals and preparing their meat for people to eat.
Farmer: Tell me, where do you get your eggs?
Me: I just buy them at the store, but I buy organic.
Farmer: Why the hell would you do that?
Me: Because it makes me feel better about the food we’re eating and the industry I’m buying into.
Farmer: Oh, Jesus Christ, Mary, and Joseph.

—-

Farmer (revisiting the topic):  I take it you’re one of these Farmer’s Market types?
Me: I can’t buy the bulk of my grocery list at one, but I like to buy local produce when I can.
Farmer: Next time you go to one, I want you to study the crates those farmers keep in their trucks. It’s all from the wholesaler where they buy cheap produce and then charge you 4 times as much because you’re stupid enough to believe that he’s out there picking it with him family.
Me: Aren’t you a farmer?
Farmer: I’m a business man.
Me (under my breath): I maybe would have traded in diamonds out of Africa instead of goats then.

—-

Farmer: I just want you ladies to know one thing before you go.
Me: What’s that?
Farmer: It don’t matter what you eat. And it don’t matter what these here chickens eat. It all boils down to the genes that you got.
Me (muttering): Like overalls?
Farmer: Me and my wife had 5 kids, 3 of ‘em mine, 2 of ‘em hers. If you put two bowls in front of ‘em all, one with candy and the other with fruit, her kids would pick the candy every time. Mine would have picked the fruit.
Me: I see that in my own kids, too. But that’s why I force them to eat good food.
Farmer: Well, that’s a waste of time.
Me: Okay.
Farmer: My wife in there – she just went to the doctor and got a clean bill of health. They said she’s real healthy. You know what she eats?
Me: No.
Farmer: Three things. You know those lemon cakes from Costco? Those. And the chocolate chip cookies from Costco. And skim milk.
Me: That’s all she eats? All day, that’s all she eats?
Farmer: Yep. And occasionally a taco from Taco Bell.
Me: Wow. Is that the South Beach Diet?

—-

(Fire truck pulling into the dirt drive)
Farmer: You folks have got to excuse me now. Fire Department’s here.

—-

The Big Crapple

Posted on by

I now live in a sleepy harbor town in Maine, but I still receive correspondence from young adults at the precipice of moving to New York City. Most are from the kids of family friends who have been coerced into calling me because their parents are convinced they must be homicidal or homosexual for desiring to live in a place like New York. The others come from seniors of the remote Missouri university I attended, who have never traveled east of the Mississippi River. They’re usually wondering if I have any career insights for the average East Asian Civilizations major and if I might recommend a roommate or seven willing to split rent. I tell each the only thing I know about New York: If you’re good to the city, it’ll be good to you.

I lived by this maxim from the moment I stepped over the threshold of my first apartment, which I placed a deposit on sight unseen, till the day I moved away, watching through eyes brimming with tears as the looming skyline grew faint in the rearview mirror. Where others decried the streets strewn with refuse and its faceless bustle, I regarded every tenement, every puddle of indiscriminate fluid, and each wad of gum clinging to my shoe’s sole as a vivid tile within the mosaic of urban dwelling. Always regaled with cautionary tales from those wearied by city life, I heeded their advice with the same interest a teenager reserves for counsel from his grandparents. I defied all their opining as rapidly as it was expressed. Stay above 14th Street. So I moved downtown. Don’t take the subway late at night. But I could always get a seat late at night. Every choice ending harmoniously, piloting my course into an intractable state of mind in which I believed no place was as harmless as the quaint island of Manhattan.

My husband, sure there were indeed many places more harmless than Manhattan, wanted desperately to move. G longed to have our children expert in things like catching fish and climbing trees rather than knowing good falafel and hailing a cab. Even though we moved, G continues to work in New York, still trapped in the furious boil of finance while we remain in a town in which the only notable happenings are the release of new flavors of fudge offered by one of the gift shops.

Every couple of months, breathless to again whiff air containing a trace of Anthrax and to behold schizophrenics who urinate in front of onlookers, I load our three kids into the car and make the southward trek. While it feels odd to enter the city in a car packed to the hilt with luggage and to check into a hotel, often one facing an apartment building in which we had once lived, I quickly transmute into my former self albeit with more cellulite and footwear that should be kept tucked out of sight at restaurants.

After arriving last week, I took a city sort of walk, one with purpose and elbowing. I gaze straight ahead as a local would, not like a rube assaulted by the visual stimulation. A tourist (with whom I cannot possibly identify) asks for directions, which I offer with a pitying smile that says, “You wish you had the key to this city, but I cannot give it to you because it’s mine and it’s sitting at the bottom of this absurdly large hobo purse I bought when they were de rigeuer here, like a decade ago.” I raise my chin and plunge forward, feeling sure I’ve still got that swing.

It was at that moment that my motherfucking wallet was stolen.

More grievous than the realization I’d been hoodwinked was the awareness I’d lost my driver’s license, an item I was going to need in order to fly to my parent’s home in Arizona in just two days. One alarmingly unstable phone call to the airline later, I had heaped the kids into a stroller bound for a police station, bent on procuring a police report, something the customer service representative indicated he’d seen green-lighted before. In Las Vegas. Before 9/11. Before Pantene Pro-V could down a plane.

We emerged on to the sidewalk when it occurred to me that I didn’t know the cross streets of a police station as I’d never before needed to utilize one. A patrolman fortuitously passing by said, “Your best bet is Times Square. They deal with yous all the time.” I winced at the way he said ‘yous’, cop talk for ‘Morons from Ohio with mace spray keychains and subway maps.’

We were buzzed through a door made of welded metal and plated glass at the Times Square Precinct. A German Shepherd, looking as though he enjoyed a steady diet of other German Shepherds, rested on his haunches as he sniffed the aroma we’d brought inside, a bouquet of desperation and poorly wiped bottoms. I scrawled my name across paper after paper as officers came and went, hoisting machine guns over the heads of my toddlers. Eyes wide and unblinking, they whispered, “Are those real or toys?” Before I could lie, the door banged open and two officers forced a man in handcuffs inside. “Keep this joker here till we can transport him downtown,” one of them barked as he pushed the perpetrator into a chair and cuffed him to it. The kids hid between my legs, peeking out to behold everything they’d ever seen in snippets of verboten television play out before them. I looked pleadingly at the officer taking my testimony, hopeful he’d understand that the kids were innocent to the realities of artillery and criminals and dogs that eat humans.

“Here’s your report, ma’am. Good luck getting on your plane. If you decide you’re brave enough to visit the big, bad city again, try a fanny pack.”

 

—

(Yes, we made it past TSA. With less documentation than a terrorist)

—