Tag Archives: man vs. woman

Co-What?

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I once worked with a woman who firmly held to the notion of co-parenting. She and her husband rotated 24 hour caregiving shifts, each transitioning every other day into active duty. Every ride to school, every packed lunch, every nocturnal disturbance was handled by the parent on call while the other went about their activities as planned. It seemed to me like eating at a restaurant at your own table beside a couple that you know. You may nod and acknowledge each other, but you keep your appetizers and tabs separate and try not to listen too closely to their conversation. Their schedule was so regimented that I found myself often fantasizing about the mayhem that would ensue should a crisis occur during the changing of the guard. Would they just pass the baton in the middle of the X-ray series at the hospital? She was equally baffled at the way my household was managed. So I forced myself to take note of the duties that my husband and I share with total equality. I was shocked by how many things we do together!

Co-respirate

Co-steal chargers

Co-wear shirts

Co-order Pad Thai

Co-fight over television

Co-sit in chairs

Co-have legs

Co-pump gas

Co-disturb sleep

Co-misplace keys

Co-create laundry

Co-lose kids’ shoes

Co-overdraw checking account

Co-sneeze weird

Co-hate running

Co-eat Nachos

Co-clog sinks

Co-need stamps

And we co the shit out of not hearing each other.

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This Truck Will Go On And On. Like Celine Dion’s Heart.

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Each week a neighbor raps my door to tell me that the interior light of my husband’s truck is on. I follow this conscientious resident to the driveway where I wait for him to turn heel before I dash back into my house. See, I can’t fix the light. I have strained to turn it off countless times, but it runs on some kind of paranormal power supply existing apart from the battery. This light is a tribute to the truck’s dogged persistence to stay alive, to keep rolling back miles on the odometer so long as we remain willing to fill its tires with air and to find mechanic shops lax on emission regulations.

Right after we got married, G decided he wanted to indulge in the utmost of New York City extravagances: a car. Owning a vehicle in Manhattan is a fruitless proposition. Contending with street sweeping schedules and parking regulations  even the police don’t fully understand is a menace few have the constitution for. G, however, decided it would make him feel less marooned on the isle of Manhattan if we could flee over the bridges in a car of our own. The problem was that G didn’t buy a car. He bought a very large and old truck. Not old enough to be vintage and interesting, but just old enough to have an unfortunate number of miles and red upholstered seats. I’ll never forget the sight of G pulling into the parking garage attached to our apartment building. The doorman, who had extended us plenty of allowances in the way of oversized deliveries and loud gatherings, took one glance at that truck and said, “Oh, hell no.”

We finally found domicile for that truck in a neighborhood far flung from ours, making the process to fetch it more arduous than any journey aboard the trains and buses our fellow urban plebeians were relegated to. Circling our block while waiting for the other to emerge with weekend bags was like being on a Boeing 747 put into a holding pattern by Air Traffic Control. When the runway would finally clear, the one waiting at the curb would heave the belongings into the back and attempt to project himself into the cab. Much like air travel today, all passengers understood this was a no-frills mode that came with no pillows or legroom and a checkered maintenance history.

Determined to see the fruits of his investment, G sought opportunities to drive that truck anywhere. When I opened the invitation to a wedding to be held in the neighboring state of New Jersey, sent by a woman who worked for me, G declared with conviction, “We’ll go in the truck.” Despite my strenuous objections to turning up to a country club in a truck even the landscapers wouldn’t drive, his mind was fixed. I reminded him of my recent appointment to Group Director of a division within the media company I worked for, germane because the attendants at this wedding would be largely comprised of the people who report to me. He stared at me blankly, and I grimly realized there was no shaming a man about his truck. Like I felt about my crimped hair in grade school, he felt nothing but pride despite the jeers from those walking by.

We pulled into the manicured drive of the country club, lavishly lined with tilting maple trees. G’s arm hung casually out the open window as he inhaled the breeze coming off the well-tended grass of the golf course, oblivious to the engine’s deafening grumble. I shrank into my seat, noting the ridiculous contrast of my dress against the threadbare seats and my heels against the dirt-laden floor mats. I mentally reviewed my affirmations: I can’t be fired for driving an F250. I can’t be demoted for leaking engine oil all over the parking lot. If anyone sees me leave in this truck, I’ll scream from the passenger seat as though I’m being abducted and then I’ll bring a fake police report to work.  I continued with my mantras as the valet opened my door and extended his hand. The blood pounded in my cheeks as he pulled me from my chariot, which was, in its idle state, filling the foyer with noxious fumes. I cringed as he grunted against the heft of my body free-falling from the height of the passenger seat.  I offered a foppish apology and muttered something about Cinderella being a malcontent hooker for worrying about the impression she would make arriving to the ball in something as sweet as a pumpkin. G strode to the front and tossed the valet the keys as though he had just exited a Lamborghini.

During the reception, while G was sidled up to the oyster station, turning his plate into the deck of a deep sea fishing vessel, I looked up to see a few members of my new staff walking toward me, led by the one I suspected may be organizing a violent coup d’etat. Our eyes locked and I could see the glint of knowledge in his pupils. He knows, I thought with dread. “Hey Erin,” he said. I smiled graciously, straining to loosen the grip of paranoia. He leaned in close as if he was about to share something intimate.

“Listen, we couldn’t find anywhere to throw our cigarettes in the parking lot so we tossed them in the back of your truck. We saw the empty beer cans and figured you wouldn’t mind.”

Thankfully the reception had an open bar.

 

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One Woman’s Fat Pants Are Another Woman’s…Fat Pants.

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I knew a girl in college who was always entrenched in a multi-level marketing scheme. She was looking to scare up some cash, but beyond that she seemed to genuinely enjoy introducing herself as an Independent Consultant to hungover classmates before inviting them to an event at her home to showcase her wares. The invites to these parties were so insidious, so stealthy, that trying to avoid one was as futile as hoping you wouldn’t get the shits while backpacking in India. One could feel the invitation brewing even if she was not immediately present. I’d be standing in the cafeteria, ladling batter into the waffle maker when my extrasensory perception would pick up on a change of frequency, a ripple in matter, and my fight or flight reflex would demand I pluck the half-cooked waffle from the machine, wrap it in a napkin, and make haste out the door. Fumbling down the aisle cluttered with backpacks, I’d walk directly into her.

“You know, I still haven’t gotten around to ordering those Dead Sea exfoliants from the last party you hosted, but I will…”

“Erin,” she’d interrupt with a jubilant tone, “I’m an Independent Consultant for a new company now. Here’s a special invitation for you to see this new line.”

I sat through parties spotlighting tupperware, stationary, skin care, and swimwear. It was the lingerie party, however, that I still credit as the most awkward adult setting of my life. I have taken great pains in my quest to self-actualization to expunge the things I saw and heard that night. Prior to that evening, the raciest thing confessed from the mouths of my conservative and genteel midwestern friends was that one preferred to sleep without underwear to allow some air exchange to her personal region. I sensed the topics might run a little tawdrier when our host opened the door in a black negligee with matching robe. I spent the evening loudly complimenting the bean dip and feigning interest in the photos on the wall as girls who couldn’t possibly be sexually active given how many roommates they shared their living space with pored over diaphanous slips and polyester garter belts. When the chatter between attendees turned to flush-cheeked whispers of fantasies – wild horses galloping through the surf, Phantom of the Opera masks, and late-night tutoring sessions with a European exchange student – I seized upon my opportunity to slip out the door before I was forced into something I would forever regret, like boy shorts, and vowed to never again return to a product party.

When a friend recently asked me to join her at a clothing exchange, my first impulse was to decline, but upon taking stock of the grease spots splashed across my shirt, I inquired tentatively after the rules behind a clothing exchange. Having grown up with only a brother, my knowledge of trading clothes is limited to the occasional ankle sock. After receiving assurances there would be neither order forms nor cocktails named after characters from Sex & The City, I committed to go. After all, one woman’s fat pants are another woman’s treasure.

I drove alone to the home of the woman hosting the exchange. I had been there once before, but the fog roosting upon the roads made everything seem unfamiliar. I pulled into the driveway, feeling very uncertain I was at the right home. The curtains were drawn, making it impossible to discern the activities happening inside. I imagined myself standing at the wrong door, awkwardly explaining to a nice family of Christians why I had arrived at their door bearing a pile of slutty tube tops.

I crept along the bushes until I could peer through a gap in the curtains. The first figure I could make out was that of a woman in a lacy white thong.  I gasped and crouched below the window. The memories long repressed from that lingerie party nearly ten years ago flooded my mind. As I sat there in a garden bed, rubbing my temples, a pair of high beams threw its incandescent glare over my face. Please, don’t be a cop investigating a peeping tom. I swear, I actually hate looking at naked women thanks to my membership at the YMCA.

A friend stepped out of her car and called out a greeting.  I waved and pretended to be searching for an earring buried in the mulch. She lugged her bag of clothing up the walk to join me at the stoop. “Are we supposed to change in front of everyone at this thing?” I asked with a tone of forced indifference. She replied, “How else will you know if something fits?” I nodded in agreement as we stepped into the living room, which was littered with bodies in various states of undress.

“I just wish I’d known,” I muttered. “I would have worn underwear.”

With that I veered off to the kitchen to get my cellulite pockets a stiff drink.

 

—

 

They’re Trying To Disown Me

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I once attended an auction while my husband, G, was out of town. I’d never been to an auction and had no idea what to expect. I knew they were the playgrounds of the upwardly mobile and that if I wanted to fit in, I had better look the part. By the time the event rolled around, I was in a full-on body sweat induced by the utter void of pastels and mother-of-pearl accessories in my closet. The closest thing I had to a WASP-y ensemble was a bottle of Lithium and that was all but emptied upon checking my online bank account before rushing out the door. I felt calmer once I was there and camouflaged against a line of people appraising the items on display for bidding. I drew comfort in chortling and saying things like, “Don’t you find chicken such a pedestrian choice?” After an hour of mingling with the other guests and jotting down an offer underneath an item with a determined casual air, I was ready to go home, feeling confident I had handled my first auction with poise.

Then it was announced that the auction was beginning.

Just as G had once learned at a ritzy wedding reception that he needn’t empty the whole of the raw bar into his mouth because a four-course meal was still to come, I discovered that a silent auction is merely the appetizer to the main event. And I couldn’t afford to eat.

I spent the next two hours stress-chewing my cuticles and tearing parsley into pieces while contemplating an escape route that involved setting fire to a section of the building. I called G once I was home to report my winnings from the silent part of the auction. A sailboat cruise for $40. He questioned how I could have procured a two-hour boat ride for only forty dollars. He wasn’t impressed when I told him that my winning strategy involved a placing an hors d’oeuvres plate on top of the entry paper.

He concluded a dogmatic speech about the objective of fundraisers and the importance of educational materials for young minds tersely, “You can’t represent our family at these sort of functions anymore.”

So I let him claim his rightful seat, stoically representing our clan when it came to writing donation checks and telling the Girl Scouts we’ve had enough of their trans-fats. I was permitted only to sully our reputation in a restricted capacity, mostly by tipping poorly and delaying the grocery line while I finish articles about botched liposuction.

Thus I couldn’t have been more shocked when G named me our family’s official representative to compete in a 5K race.  The last race I had attended was a fun run for children that our son wanted to partake in. When we arrived to the starting line of that event, a friend called out, “We’re running, not yachting!” I was wearing boat shoes and white jeans because it had failed to occur to me that one doesn’t just turn a three-year old loose on the trail and await their crossing at the finish line. I traversed the next mile in a hobble, being discourteously passed by toddlers in soggy diapers.

Still I was going to attend this 5K, and, by God, I was going to win it for my family. After all, I had been carbo-loading 32 years for this day.

As I pulled my car into the parking spot, I saw two men jogging toward me, breathless.

“Did I miss the race?” I called to them.

“No, no. We just ran the course to warm up for it,” one of the runners called back.

Fuck you, I muttered, which must have sounded like ‘good luck to you’ because they gestured with one of those waves that are meant to be uplifting between exercisers. It was becoming abundantly clear I wasn’t going to be winning any Sportsmanship trophies – or first place ones, for that matter – this day.

I sidled up to the registration table where a refined older gentleman was posted to gather race fees and information in exchange for an official number to pin to my Lycra. I noticed the other registrants entering into their preparatory modes, hopping and stretching hamstrings. I did a few cursory swivels of my trunk, straining to look athletic and imposing as if I had just climbed Annapurna with no oxygen and with a catheter bag to catch my urine tied to my leg. I was transferring into my visualization phase, in which I imagined myself crossing the finish line and leaping into a vat of cream cheese with a bagel as my inner tube, when the man at registration curtly informed me I was five dollars short in paying my race fee.

I began to explain that I had only brought twenty dollars because that’s what I had been told to bring and that walking back to my car would likely expend any energy I have stored because all I had eaten for breakfast was a spoonful of Gorgonzola and some chocolate sauce.  I was attracting an audience curious to see who was defrauding a charity. A gracious onlooker, moved by pity, paid my balance and escorted me to the starting line. I took my place toward the back of the crowd, acknowledging myself to be more of a slow gazelle that will only exert real energy once a tiger has ripped away part of my haunch. Plus, I’d forgotten to blood dope as I had meant to.

The whistle blew and the racers lurched forward as if there were piles of money and injured babies to be found along the trails. I stopped participating exactly 90 seconds later, opting instead to walk with a friend who had her toddlers with her. As we passed the halfway mark, the two men who had warmed up for the 5K by already running a 5K were on their return leg, each one’s chest heaving as he strained to overtake the other.  I caught the eye of one and shrugged my shoulders and gestured to the kids at my heels as if to say, “Kids! Just won’t let me win this race!”

As we descended the steep grade that would usher us toward the finish line, far behind the others who had dashed up an unforgiving hill, I realized that I was going to have a very unimpressive race story to relay to G and the kids. When my foot hovered over the ending line, where the last volunteer had been abandoned to stand in the cold to wait out my safe return, he said dryly, “Anyone behind you?” I turned and looked up the road by which I had just come. It mocked me by its barrenness.

While I warmed up with a hot chocolate, the caloric content far in excess of what I had burned, I contemplated how to convince G that I had finished the race in an earnest show of competition. A friend tugged my arm, “You just won the best prize in the auction! They called your name!”

Armed with my free paddleboating session and t-shirt, it occurred to me that I could weave a believable yarn about finishing in the top of the heap. My family didn’t need to know that I had come by my loot by a random drawing of my name. Yes, I could tell them that I had won it, honorably and nobly, nobody the wiser. It’s their fault for decreeing me the envoy of cardiovascular activity when I only possess a dexterity at receiving paper cuts and eating off other peoples’ plates.

I entered the house, forcing a slight limp and making my breathing ragged to enhance the authenticity of the fraudulent tale about to escape my lips, and G came to meet me in the hallway.

“They posted the times online already. You really came in last?”

 

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I Raise My Glass To The Drinker!

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I once met a guy who legally amended his name to Trout Fishing In America. I don’t recall the events that led to his decision to change his title because those explanations are always very long and circuitous and filled with personal revelations that I just can’t attend when I’m fixated on the to-go bag of food getting cold in my hand. It’s like when people want to elaborate on the significance of their ancient symbol tattoos. It’s not that I don’t find Sanskrit and Celtic emblems enormously fascinating, particularly when imprinted on the lower back where a future assisted living center nurse can feel inspired every time she wipes a sponge over it; It’s just that I don’t require the justification. I assume these things were done during a time in your life when you were very drunk.

I don’t mean to be condescending about that. In fact, I sort of admire it. As a person whose head begins to throb after a glass of wine and whose dry heave reflex fires at the mere tingle of beer on my lips, I wish I had the constitution to go tie one on and make some regrettable decisions. I envy all the bad drunken outcomes: piercings, unadvised sexual partners, stolen cars, quit jobs, confessed love, lost money, dilated pupils, tube tops. Even pregnancy. You can always spot that woman whose kid was probably conceived after too many Whiskey Sours, and not just the women reading Seventeen magazine and licking a Blow-Pop. When my gaze falls upon that woman, I think, There ain’t no shame in a lot of bubbly and R&B on continuous loop and that is a lot more romantic than what people think when they view my gaggle of children: She must be Amish and needs helping hands around the farm.

At least drinkers have stories. Even those who die from drinking. Their family members memorialize them through fond tales of the booth they tried to steal from a diner and the time they fell from the roof pretending to be Santa. I will probably die in a most unmemorable way, in front of my computer, trying to redeem a free shipping code, which absolutely no one will want to talk about. As for the living and breathing drinkers, they may not have a functional cerebrum to recount the stories, but they give the gift of storytelling to friends and bystanders for a lifetime.

If it weren’t for one of my best friends from college, I would never be able to entertain colleagues with the tale of the time he entered a stranger’s home, fell asleep on their couch, and woke to the glare of a policeman’s flashlight in his face. If I’m at a wedding reception and placed at the table for people with social handicaps and severe food allergies, I can always rely on the rousing tale of the time a study partner woke up naked in the middle of the Campus Crusade for Christ house for it has all the gripping elements of a great epic – intrigue, nudity, and probable eternal damnation.

I can’t compete with my own tipsy yarns because they begin with a glass of sparkling wine and conclude with me falling asleep with half-chewed sheet cake in my mouth. Or involve a misguided purchase, like gladiator sandals. Although there was once a very boisterous night at a Mexican restaurant with my husband when I had an entire margarita. After we paid the check, I wasn’t ready to go home. I was feeling a little woolly, teetering a little close to the edge. So I suggested…a movie. On a Tuesday. No matinee. Full fucking price. However, we never made it to the show because I disappeared while G was buying the tickets. He found me across the street in a cafe, sitting alone at a table making s’mores. It may have looked like a benign scene, a contemplative girl partaking in a little dessert, but make no mistake, my actions meant that two other people nuts enough to see a movie on a Tuesday night were shit out of luck because we’d bought those tickets and didn’t claim our seats.

Before I even get to the part about how incautious I was being with an open flame, the other guests at the cocktail party are swallowing their Lunesta and interjecting with statements about how early they have to wake up in the morning. And so I resume my post in the corner, eating garnish and adjusting my Spanx with the crotch the dog chewed out, wondering why everyone at the party seems to think Sue is such a riveting raconteur when all I’ve ever heard her talk about are actuarial tables. Then I listen more closely and determine that Sue is slurring her way through a story of the time she was detained at a Canadian border crossing, wearing only a bathing suit, after drinking a dozen Molsons with a Saskatchewan hockey team.

On a Tuesday.

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I’ve Reclaimed a Coat from Coat Check Before

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To know me at all is to know that I despise my kitchen floor. The loathing I feel for that floor has given me much perspective into the great conflicts of the world. Just as terrorists look upon the infidels and seethe with fury, I see my kitchen floor and want to chuck a pipe bomb at it. I understand why India hates Pakistan, why the Republicans and Democrats can’t call a ceasefire, why Demi can’t even make eye contact with Ashton. Each factor in these equations views the other as black and white checkered linoleum.

Just as seniors loudly discuss the medical complications afflicting their Bridge group, I do the same when it comes to my kitchen floor. Instead of telling strangers about my gout flare-ups and my compression hose, I talk about each stain, every crack, and the way its porous surface can’t hold up against tomato sauce. It eclipses every conversation so that when friends open up about the bleak matters of life they’re struggling with, like lost jobs or dying pets, I take their hands gently in mine and whisper, “Chin up; You have tile flooring.”

If we entertain at our house, I am moved to apologize effusively for the eyesore underfoot, a curious hosting concession my husband likes to point out since I feel no chagrin over serving freezer food on paper plates. G realized there was no reasoning with a woman scarred by linoleum when his plea for me to “be more glass half-full,” was met with the retort, “Then it would spill and stain the floor.” I was a hopeless case.

Then we got into a car accident.

That everyone managed to exit the wreckage unscathed inspired in myself an ethereal optimism. Seatbelts! Carseats! Insurance! Nothing was going to dampen my gratitude. I gripped the hands of my children as we pushed open the door to our home, ever appreciative to have a sturdy and warm place, and stepped across the threshold. My foot landed in a puddle. I looked down and saw the sheen of water cascading across the floor from underneath the dishwasher, a sight that left me more unhinged than the one of crunched car hoods. Blades of grass, forgotten toys, and remnants of breakfast bobbed by. My kitchen was a few mullets and packs of Coors Lite short of a goddamn Lazy River. My paradigm shift toward positivity floated away in the tributary of my kitchen as I watched from the shore, muttering, “This had better get me out cooking for awhile.”

Like the surging force of water that cut a way through the Grand Canyon, a rivulet had doggedly forced a path underneath three layers of linoleum, each one a shocking testament to the poor taste of humans. As G strained against the weight of a crowbar to pry away the damp planes of sub-floor, I prayed like the wife of a prospector, fervently wishing that pick would strike gold under all the rubble. Finally the dust settled and G wiped the sweat from his brow. He pointed at a spot I could barely make out amidst the demolition and huffed, “That’s wood.”

And so the process to reclaim a wood floor began. I had never considered us the sort of people to reclaim anything other than our places in front of the television. Reclaiming a floor is for people who read architecture magazines and can properly identify in the photos what is actually a chair. Before I could even recite from Google the process to follow and precautions to take, G was well into the project, leaving asbestos rattling around our lung cavities and sawdust coating the living room, which now bore a likeness to the bar in Road House. Since our appliances had to be moved, the perishable foodstuffs were relocated to drifts of snow in the front yard. There’s a reason home and design shows put the displaced family up in a hotel, and that’s so neighbors don’t have to see them in their threadbare pajamas, pouring milk into baby bottles, in the middle of the front yard while naked toddlers bleat for oatmeal there is no way to prepare.

The floor is finished now. Reclaimed. The food is back in the fridge and the microwave is again functional. Reclaimed. I’m working on my sanity, but there’s no quick-dry varnish for that.

 

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Yeast Meets West

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I am too old to feel squeamish about buying feminine products. After all, I am closer to the onset of menopause than I am to the advent of menstrual. It’s not like I’m still in high school, passing the grocery checkout boy in the hall, forcing myself to meet his glance, as if to telepathically say, “Would I be looking at you straight in the pupil if I were straddling dry weave?” I’ve had years to overcome this chagrin, and I was squarely on the path to righteous feminine product purchasing when we lived in New York City. Nothing will make you feel safer, more camouflaged, than a big city Rite Aid. Those checkout ladies wouldn’t flinch if you dropped your pants, peeled the adhesive backing to a panty liner, and applied it to your underwear in plain view of customers.

Having had three children in close succession, which plunged me into a non-menstrual state lasting nearly as long as a Celine Dion encore, I’d fallen out of practice buying vaginal accessories. My first time back at it was a harrowing experience. The whole feminine hygiene industry seemed to have changed, the makes and models reconstructed and re-branded, forcing me to linger much longer than desired in front of the towers of colorful boxes. I felt like I’d spent years overseas, having returned to the States to find that no one eats Snackwells anymore and everyone drives a hybrid. By the time my anxiety had receded, and I was standing in the checkout line, pretending to read a Prevention magazine article about probiotics and the senior body, my periphery registered something amiss in my cart. “Look! Baseball bats,” my kids exclaimed jubilantly about the tampons they had unsheathed and were swinging like a couple of Derek Jeters ready to hit their uterine lining out of the park.

With that I began seeding my feminine products among the more pedestrian items in the grocery list I would give to my husband, G. Avocados, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, Tampax Pearl Multipack 40 Count, McIntosh apples, wheat bread. Twenty minutes later I would receive a text message reading ‘This is the last time.’ I’d exhale with relief that I’d bought myself another 28 to 32 days of anxiety-free shopping.

As business repeatedly called G out of town, I relied on the dubious measure of prolonged single tampon usage and pads made of Brawny paper towels. I didn’t mind it; I felt a connection with the women of the Old World, but that could be the Toxic Shock Syndrome talking. This was all well and good until I was spiritually and anatomically tested with the ultimate walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

The yeast infection.

There is no way to outlast a yeast infection nor is there any way to compel a member of the male gender to return home so that he may help to quell one. As the discomfort mounted, I knew I had to take up arms against the occupying Candida that laid claim to my Gaza Strip. The Antifungal Intifada had to begin. The uprising was a stalled one, though, as my attempts to spy the desired brand in the Feminine Care aisle from my bunker in the Baby Needs section proved futile. Just as my eyes trained upon the Monistat Combination One Day Ovule, my advancement was impeded by the friendly fire of a friend’s husband. Crimson-faced, I determined to continue my counter-revolution from the privacy of my home.

Researching ‘natural cures for yeast infections’ yielded immediate relief as the unanimous kryptonite of yeast infections is yogurt. Who can’t eat a little yogurt if it meant avoiding the indignity of publicly buying a box with the words ‘Vaginal Antifungal’ emblazoned on it? Hell, I’d shower in yogurt if it would curb this burn. Then I read closer and learned that showering in yogurt is much closer to the antidote than eating it. The experts behind these websites recommend applying yogurt to your vagina.

Like a Head On commercial. Yogurt! Apply directly to the vagina! Yogurt! Apply directly to the vagina!

A few sites even recommended dredging a tampon in yogurt before insertion. Once the smelling salts brought me back to consciousness, I took the kids out for a cleansing walk to appraise the situation in my head.

Alright, yogurt is a superfood. Not the way croissants are, but it’s known to have healing attributes. It’s natural so long as we steer clear of Columbo and that kind endorsed by Dora the Explorer. I’ll make sure it’s organic. Christ, if the overalled folks of Stonyfield Farm only knew what I was considering. Okay, let’s do Greek yogurt then. Europeans are far less prudish about this sort of thing. Although if the end game is to deliver the yogurt load, I could probably just use a Go-gurt. The yogurt-drenched tampon is going too far for me. What if it got stuck and then I needed to have it removed and during the surgery the surgeon is all, “Why does her reproductive system look curdled and smell like Vanilla Mango?”

As my mind pored over the possibilities, a serendipitous moment of kismet and small town living put me face to face with one of our doctors, who was out for a jog. As we chatted and she admired my brood, it occurred to me that this was my forum for a consult with an advisor bound by the privileges of confidentiality. I approached the topic circuitously.

That’s a great sweatsuit; That’s a wicking fabric right? Breathable. That’s what I look for in my underwear – good ventilation, circulation. All cotton. None of that lacy stuff because that leads to problems. You know what I mean. The kind that rhyme with ‘beast minfection’. Well, we’re out for a little walk before breakfast. About to go home and have some yogurt. Good healing stuff, yogurt. Good for lots of things in the body. Yes! Like the digestive tract, but other tracts as well? Ones that are related. Or proximal anyway…

As she trotted away, surely mentally filing away a note to update my chart with signals of mental illness, I felt a pang of agitation in my nethers, a reminder that aerobic exercise during an unseasonably warm fall was a poor decision. I pushed the stroller home with a John Wayne-like limp, still undecided if I was about to make the world’s grossest breakfast parfait, when my phone rang. It was G calling to inform me that his meetings had wrapped up early and he was jumping an early shuttle home.

“Could you stop at the drugstore before you come home? ” I asked casually.

“I’ll text you the list.”

—

(With this piece, I’ve lost the whole of my mother’s golf group.  And just to protect myself, this essay was not sponsored – nor even appreciated – by anyone in the yogurt business)

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Textual Relations

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The local paper ran a piece that got me thinking. This is rare since their reporting is usually limited to fascinating announcements like the fudge shop is now offering a staggering 17 flavors or that 5 out of 5 polled residents would engage in sexual relations on the Fenway field if given the opportunity. This particular day, however, they printed a list of text acronyms that would appeal to the middle-aged cell phone user, such nuggets as ROFLCGU which means Rolling On The Floor Laughing, Can’t Get Up.

Reading the list got me thinking about my dreadful telephone relationship with my husband, G. I’ve written before about the many ways G and I are ill suited to remote communication. Neither of us particularly enjoys speaking on the phone in ideal conditions, but introduce – on my end – three children trying to kill themselves in the bathroom the instant I bring the receiver to my ear and – on his end – a bunch of people in suits clamoring to get sign-off on budgets, and you’ve got a couple praying that a cell phone-induced brain tumor makes one of us drop dead immediately.  As a result, we’ve taken to texting each other. Because nothing says romance like the red blink of a blackberry containing misspelled questions and commands.

Here is a list of handy text shorthand for your marriage.

—

HIM:  HAK?  (How are kids?)

YOU:  CFV  (Crying, fighting, vomiting)

—

HIM:  SFC?  (Stop for Condoms?)

YOU:  NSFIC  (Nah, Stop for Ice Cream)

—

HIM:  RL  (Running late)

YOU:  REL  (Running even later)

—

HIM:  BGOT  (Big game on tonight)

YOU:  TWSBWC  (That’s why sports bars were created)

—

HIM:  AYSM?  (Are you spending money?)

YOU:  LTAWIS  (Let’s talk about what I’m saving)

—

HIM:  WAYW?  (What are you wearing?)

YOU:  SWTFE?  (Sweats, what the fuck else?)

—

HIM:  WLT  (Working late tonight)

YOU:  SYBPOYJIYDLN  (Sending your boss photos of your junk if you don’t leave now)

—

YOU:  ATNA?  (At Target, need anything?)

HIM:  NAEHTC  (No, and empty half the cart)

—

HIM:  AKA?  (Are kids asleep?)

YOU:   NTHSLAW2B  (No, they have the stamina of Lance Armstrong with 2 balls)

—

HIM:  WRU?  (Where are you?)

YOU:  SEWIGSPL  (Stress-eating and weeping in the grocery store parking lot)

—

HIM:  WFD?  (What’s for dinner?)

YOU:  Pretend your phone died

—

(Which ones do you need?)

 

 

 

 

 

The Anything But Royal Couple

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London dislikes me. I do mean London, the city in England, not some toddler with a bizarre New Age name. It harbors some kind of resentment that I can’t pinpoint. Perhaps I’m being paranoid, but I suspect London doesn’t care for me and would prefer some other visitor. A thinner, smarter visitor with whiter teeth, not that its own residents are renowned for their dental work. See, the first time I was there I came disastrously close to being struck by a taxi. I stepped off a sidewalk, looking down the street in the direction cars would be approaching in America, when I felt an onslaught of steamy air against my backside and heard the grinding of brakes in my ears. I snapped my head around just in time to put my hands, defensively, upon the hood of an oncoming taxi.

Then there were the occasions that food nearly killed me in London. When I went to visit my cousin, who was studying there, I had my first tango with Indian food. I was young and unadventurous when it came to worldly cuisine. The korma, the saag, the naan, the paratha. It lit up my palette and made tastebuds that had never before been activated spring to attention. And it was so cheap, a multi-course meal had for a Bollywood song.  Following the meal, during the first act of Les Miserables in the famed West End, my digestive system issued that first gastrointestinal warning shot. A slick of sweat covered my forehead moments later sending me fumbling frantically down a cramped aisle, praying my bowels wouldn’t release upon the knees of my fellow theatergoers. Between wondering if little Cosette could scrub her mop and bucket on over to the bathroom and hallucinations of the Beatles dancing through a rainbow of peace signs in my consciousness, I vowed to remain on the straight and narrow of ethnic cuisine for the balance of the trip.

This meant resorting to baguette sandwiches with no mayonnaise at every meal. But in the UK, there is little else more difficult than procuring something without mayonnaise. I could have more easily become the Prime Minister of England irrespective of being an American who can’t identify Simon Cowell in a lineup. After two weeks of ordering my sandwich sans mayonnaise, receiving it slathered with mayonnaise, sheepishly requesting a new sandwich again without mayonnaise but now in a British lilt with the vain hope of surmounting an accent barrier, finally scraping the mayonnaise off the bread of the new sandwich, I had exhausted my patience vis a vis condiments. I called the waiter over to bear witness to my second mayonnaise-coated sandwich. I expected him to seize the plate and offer a sincere and foppish apology, like Hugh Grant would have, but instead he groaned with irritation and said, “Is it really important to you, love?” I’ll spare you the transcript of the exchange that followed, suffice it to say that the word ‘wanker’ escaped my lips numerous times and mostly out of context until I was escorted off the premises.

After the unsubtle messages London has sent me over the years, I should not have been surprised when a terrorist attack was executed as G and I arrived across the pond. Homemade bombs packed into rucksacks detonated aboard public transit systems in staggering succession while we rode the Underground in blithe oblivion. I was utterly unaware of the tragedy that had befallen London because I was completely absorbed in the fallout of the other explosion rocking the city: Jude Law had been cheating on Sienna Miller with the nanny. Accustomed only to the invasiveness of American celebrity press, I reveled in the British no holds barred slander of their media darling. As G marveled at Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, I was clucking my tongue at OK Magazine’s reporting that the home wrecking nanny was at least 3 stone heavier than Sienna Miller. G snidely pointed out that I hadn’t any clue of the unit of weight that a stone referred to, but that didn’t faze me. Nothing did as I walked, nose buried deep in a glossy, over the cobblestone. The entire city could have slid into the River Thames, and I would have been clinging to a piece of driftwood, like Kate Winslet in Titanic, gasping, “Jude told the nanny he was in love with the way she cared for his kids. No shit, she’s a nanny!”

Despite my tepid reception by London, I was bitterly envious when G announced he would be traveling there for a weeklong business trip. Any woman straining to keep her head from bobbing under the water’s surface of potty training, upper respiratory infections, and toddler Gladiatorial disputes would be itching to escape to one of the world’s great cities. Alas, it was a pipe dream since no one, family included, returns phone calls from the woman who has three children under three years of age, no matter how many plastic Harrods bags you promise in a voicemail. So G went unattended, but he checked in often. The first time to say that he was staying in the chi chi hotel The Savoy. That revelation stung, but easily enough assuaged by his promise to loot all the bathroom toiletries. Then he called again to say he’d seen Pink Floyd in the lobby. My celebrity radar registered a spike but mostly because I was impressed anyone could identify the members of Pink Floyd. I’d even thought the band members were dead so that notion served to intensify my envy since his hotel was so posh that even dead rockers were checking in. A day later, he rang to tell me Victoria Beckham had checked into The Savoy. I gritted my teeth, falsely bemused by his good fortune to run into a high-profile female celebrity who is pregnant, the Holy Grail of paparazzi objects.

But when he called at the midpoint of his trip to report that a model convention – yes, a convention of the world’s models – was underway in one of the conference halls of the hotel, I hung up the phone violently but not before telling to choke on a meat pie.

—

 

Maybe He Could Babysit?

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The police came to our home yesterday. I saw the officer amble across our front porch before he rang the bell. Judging by his advancing age and his rickety gait, I figured him to be the old sea captain who once owned our house, who townspeople tell me about and forewarn of his likelihood to drop by unannounced to ensure we’re taking good care of his abode. As I walked toward the front door, preparing my speech about how we cherish the cramped rooms and atrocious kitchen appliances, I noticed that he was wearing a badge instead of the captain accessories I imagined he would don, like a telescope and symptoms of scurvy. Upon spying his gold medallion, my chest felt heavy and my throat constricted in the flight-or-fight response the body undergoes when confronted with something alarming.

I took a mental inventory of the humans I live with and live for. My husband, G, was upstairs in his office, safely droning on about corporate debt on a conference call. Liv was in my arms. Dom and Eve were at school. Please, God, be at school. Be at school.

I wrestled with the iron skeleton key required to open the door, even from the inside, cursing its function and muttering apologies through the window to the officer. “Don’t worry,” he called, “there’s no emergency.” With that reassurance, all the breath I’d been storing deep in my lungs rushed from my nostrils in a cathartic release and my hands stopped quivering so that I could summon the appropriate motor ability to turn a key. As the door swung open, I thought, I knew I was going to get nicked for parking in handicapped spots. Will he believe that paralyzing self-doubt and a bad skin day are legitimate handicaps?  I wonder if they allow a breast pump into prison?

I straightened my spine and raised my chin in a show of refinement and law-abiding confidence. “What can I do for you, officer?”  Why did I say that? That’s what the suspect in crime movies says right before an officer discloses the babysitter they’d last hired was found in a river holding a piece of paper with this address on it.

With that, the officer pulled a flyer from a stack I hadn’t noticed he was carrying and flipped it around, dramatically displaying a photo.

“Ma’am, it’s our duty to inform you that a sex offender has moved into the neighborhood, just a street over,” he pointed to the expanse behind him, “All the neighbors are being notified and given this flyer with his picture on it.”

He handed me the flyer, and I studied the picture like I’d just been given a cache of files from Roswell or the identity of Tupac’s gunman.

“I see you’ve got children,” he nodded at Liv before putting a finger up, “You may want to consider putting strollers away rather than leaving them in your driveway.”

My mind raced, neurons firing but failing to bridge gaps in logical processes. Why?  Sexual predators like double joggers? If anyone can actually do anything that approximates jogging with that thing, they’re welcome to it.

“You should go about your life as usual but be cautious about any obvious signs that children live in the home.”

I looked over his shoulder, taking stock of the evidence of children inhabitants that littered my yard. Strollers. Bicycle. Plastic gardening tools. Shoes. All I needed was an oversized banner announcing: Woman with 3 young kids lives here alone most of the week while husband travels for work. Also, no alarm system!  And, no firearm!

I felt under attack and filled with bitterness, and, for once, not as a result of the two croissants I’d eaten for breakfast. And possibly not even because a convicted criminal with a history of hurting children had moved into the vicinity of my home, but because I was going to have to put our shit away.

I closed the door and watched the officer walk to the next house. G cleared his throat, signaling his presence behind me. I slammed the flyer into his chest and stormed past him, urgently compelled to find more French pastries. “We moved to a small town to avoid this sort of thing,” I muttered. G followed me into the kitchen, watching as I rummaged through cabinets and checked expiration dates on whipping cream canisters. G shrugged his shoulders, “This happens everywhere. I grew up in a small town and these flyers went around there, too.”

I remind him that I was nearly sexually assaulted by a paraplegic in camouflage and a wheelchair at the watering hole in his hometown. Not exactly surprising.  He defaults to the one kernel of sagacity he employs across the entire parenting spectrum, from choking hazards to too much Disney Channel.

We will just need to be vigilant.

Vigilant? As in hiring the Navy Seal outfit responsible for clipping Bin Laden to sit on our roof? As in digging a moat around our home passable only by gondoliers armed with retinal scanners?

With a mouth filled with egg salad and oatmeal cookie, I began an impromptu tour of our home, showcasing the security susceptibilities to G. The front door is made of a rotting wood, probably reclaimed from the Mayflower. It’s weathered, ancient, and includes a window made of glass surely blown by glassmiths of the first century. The only thing older than this door and its glass window is our dog. Only an intruder concerned about lint-rolling their all-black jumpsuit for years to follow would take pause at a twelve year old Samoyed.

Between dismissive eye rolls and glances to the Blackberry, G nodded with disinterest as I prattled about the siege brought down upon our home. Why can’t he cop to fear or even remote inconvenience that a convict has arrived to our neighborhood?  This isn’t a minor convict, a darling of Liberals, who protested the closure of a Planned Parenthood or National Park. This is someone who preys on fragile people, a predator, like a Velociraptor, or a Tiger Shark, or Nickelback. He is lurking in the tall grass, lying in wait, as our children frolic blithely by the thicket, their toys rolling ever closer.

Their toys, I recalled with a slap to my forehead, as G slips out sight.  I yelled after him:

“And now I have to go put our shit away.”

—