Tag Archives: wife vs. husband

Free WHAT?

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Free French Nanny. That was the subject of the email that landed in my inbox. I checked the sending address, sure it was from a spammer trying to dupe me into providing my routing number. I was surprised to see it had come from a friend. Free French Nanny. I considered the words. I liked all three of them very much.  I moved the arrow over the ‘read’ button and held it there, reluctant to open the message as though the free French nanny herself might burst through my computer screen. Like Mary Poppins but holding a cigarette instead of an umbrella. I steeled my nerves enough to click it open, already convinced that this serendipitous proposition had found its way to me in error. When you’re a natural-born cynic, as I am, you don’t believe things that are free, and French, and nannied come to you because you are meant to have them. Your first impulse is that your friend just got a free French nanny who she cannot fetch at the airport and would like for you to collect on her behalf.

My eyes scanned the lines of the email, awaiting the part in which my friend is wondering if I might like to have lunch and a manicure every day this summer since her tether to the house was just cut by a free French nanny. Instead I gleaned that my friend had enrolled in an exchange program through which she agreed to host a teenage girl from France in her home and to show her a good old American time for a few weeks. The quid pro quo came in the form of free childcare. My friend was no longer able to take in her gift from abroad and was wondering if I might like to avail myself of her services. My breath caught in my diaphragm. Was the Universe handing me a nanny? The closest I’d ever had to having a nanny was actually being a nanny. And that situation saddled me with two children whereas this one had the power to liberate me from three.

I called my mother to enlist her perspective.

“Well,” she started cautiously. “Can you get references?”

“I have her references already. I can’t check them, though, because all the vetting is done by the agency. It’s like those Sally Struthers babies. You can only trust that the photo they’re sending you of the baby covered in flies is really your baby.”

“Is she attractive?” My mom asked pointedly.

“I don’t know,” I said after an uncomfortable pause. “I got so excited at the free part that I didn’t even look at her picture. I’ll check and call you back.”

I pulled up the forms that had been attached to the email. Several photos depicted a girl with a generous smile, sparkling eyes, and hair that seemed to be blowing in ever-present wind. She appeared self-possessed and happy. In a word: Gorgeous.

I called my mom back, knowing exactly where this conversation was headed. “I don’t care,” I insisted. “If she folds laundry, he can have her.”

And with that, the forms were hastily filled out. I dredged up the only photo in which each member of this family is smiling and has their genitals covered. I offered some flowery description of the ways we will show our free French nanny a proper American time. I wrote of strolls along the crashing surf, picnics over sprawl of blueberries, and drives through the pastoral hills of New England. I vowed wholesome meals of American staples and clean sheets made with a respectable thread count.

But if the French knew me at all, they’d know that all I can really promise is a shitload of Us Weeklys and that I’ll do my best to send her home not pregnant.

—

 

If We’d Been Co-Pilots, We’d Have Crashed

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I didn’t plan my own wedding. I did virtually nothing to execute the event beyond select the dress and lick icing from china plates. I did go out of my way to call the DJ my mother had hired to make sure he knew I wasn’t being sarcastic with my list of dance songs. When Mom asked me if I wanted to fly out to Arizona to meet officiants, I said, “I guess you could just call Father Dale; He was my childhood priest, after all.” To which she replied, “He’s in prison, doll.” So I authorized her to choose an unknown pastor from the phone book, preferably one without a mug shot, and I promised I would be satisfied with his or her ability to recite words and sanctify our union.

Because I have always been masterful at outsourcing the planning of these types of events, I remain, to this day, blithely clueless about the etiquette behind addressing invitations to couples with different last names, the proper location of a salad fork, or what a person should do with Jordan almonds beyond certainly not eat them.

Given the status quo, no one was more surprised than I by my offer to plan and host my sister-in-law’s baby shower. I must have been overcome with resounding joy that someone other than myself was pregnant that I felt I should be responsible for commemorating the occasion. After a quick clean urine catch to ensure her pregnancy had not been transmitted to me – I’m convinced it happens this way for some – I was ready to assemble some over-complicated task lists and buy some gender-neutral newborn shit.

The danger in planning a baby shower when you live with someone both related to the guest of honor and who knows firsthand of your ineptitude at managing a budget and deciphering a catering menu is that they self-appoint the title of co-planner whether you want them to or not. Matters are further complicated when this person is a male. While he may possess prodigious ability to spend prudently and point a confident finger at crabcakes over shrimp skewers, he has neither endured a pregnancy or, arguably more grueling, a baby shower. He doesn’t speak stork. He doesn’t appreciate a crustless finger sandwich. He doesn’t value an infused sparkling water. He doesn’t appreciate a Lilith Fair party mix. And he sure as hell has no capacity for talk of crowning.

Alas I was stuck with my husband as my shower co-planner. We were not just planning a Jack and Jill baby shower; We were Jack and Jill planning a baby shower. And in this nursery rhyme, Jill fell down and broke her crown.

And Jack stepped right over her to go buy a party keg.

If you find yourself mired in party planning with a man who is not Colin Cowie, take heed because this process is going to be like the Invasion of Normandy: Nocturnal parachute landings with potato chips and sour cream dips, massive air attacks with Styrofoam coolers, and amphibious landings of sheet cakes with footballs piped onto it all while you lay huddled against your bunker of Martha Stewart brand paper decorations.

Theme

You must overcome his dead-eyed stare at the mere utterance of the word theme. In his view, themes are reserved for pornos or computer desktop wallpaper. Unless you want a baby shower designed around barely legal Asian cheerleaders or Bald Eagles, you’ll need to establish this unilaterally and keep veto power at the ready.

Parking

You needn’t trifle with hiring a valet service or alerting the neighbors to the flotilla of parked cars in front of their homes. He will point out, prosaically, that the best place for guests to park is on the front lawn.

Beverage

The notions you had of an assortment of oversized glass containers dispensing vividly colored spritzers fade into the ether as you see him exiting the grocery store with two carts loaded with 30 packs. When you chide him for buying beverages befitting a Super Bowl party, he combatively unsheathes a few bottles of White Zinfandel.

Food

Not that you are an expert in the arena of intricate party foods, but you know the table should be a harvest of edibles that are cumbersome to pronounce or, at very least, to spell: Radicchio, Frisee, Arugula, Fennel. And it all has to be festooned with sauces that are even more complicated: Pico de Gallo, Pesto, Aioli. Don’t even think about a pasta or potato salad because that shit needs to be Quinoa or Couscous, and it had better be Israeli Couscous because the regular kind is so passé. As you labor through the order with the caterer, defaulting to pointing at the items over articulating them, your co-planner will interject his demands for verboten food stuffs every caterer disavowed upon getting licensed. Pizza, Buffalo Wings, and Meatballs. You smile meekly as he explains that the guests who are not pregnant, not female, and not worried about consuming copious amounts of nitrates would like to be considered too.

Favors

There is no money left for favors because he understood that element from the list to be favors that he can ask for during this process, like backrubs and picking up his dry cleaning.

In the end it will all turn out fine, as ours did. The guests were given food and drinks, and a good time was had by all just chatting and reminiscing. My co-planner even made a few game-time decisions, like to rent a tent due to the ominous cloud cover, that eclipsed my fear he was going to convert the presents table into one for beer pong. And, really, what baby shower guest doesn’t want to leave with a couple of Coors Lights for the road tucked into their bag?

 

—

 

 

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?)

 

 

 

 

 

Why I’ll Never Be A Chosen Person

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I’ve been spending a lot of time watching Telemundo. My purpose is educational since I’m trying to reclaim my Spanish language skills which have disappeared much like the tostada from the Taco Bell menu. What keeps drawing me in to the telenovelas more than the lusciousness of the trilled R and the waxed chests is the ubiquitous Triangulo De Amor.

The love triangle.

Latin television would cease to exist without it. And, as it were, so would my marriage.

Before I stumbled into my own love triangle, my dating geometry had become much like a complicated polygon. I needed a change. And so my mother told me sagely, “Jewish men are very good to their women.” She said it matter of factly, as though everyone knows this and not just from watching Fiddler On The Roof. If I wanted to find a man I could settle down with and be happy with, he should be Jewish.

The shortest distance between two points was a straight…Jew.

I imagined my style of pursuit would need to be modified. Less talk about my upbringing in the Ozarks where kosher refers only to pickles. More talk about my love for Barbra Streisand. I would need to feign a taste for lox since a Jewish man would never tolerate my preference for bagels festooned with tofu scallion cream cheese. Finding a Jewish man in New York City proved easy enough, a lot like shooting Gefilte fish in a barrel, but I wanted the Sturgeon.

I found it when I met Asher Fineburg. He was smart, funny, had a successful career, and – evidenced by name alone – was clearly one of the Chosen People. He also ate bacon, a strike against him by Jewish standards but a boon by mine given the only dish I knew how to prepare with any confidence was a BLT. He happened to live in the highrise across the street from my office, making a run-in after work appear casual when, in fact, completely orchestrated.

Marooned in that very office one night, working late yet again, my phone rang. The delivery man was downstairs with my dinner. I leapt from my chair, noticing that my feet were bare as I’d kicked my heels off during the day. I peered under the desk, but the shoes were lost, the glare of the computer not enough to illuminate the void. I padded down the hall, taking stock of the empty cubicles as I passed. Surely someone, like a skanky intern accustomed to rolling out of a stranger’s bed before turning up to work, would have a pair of shoes stowed at their desk. My cursory search proved fruitless as the only pair of shoes I encountered were a pair of men’s running shoes residing on the feet of the only other employee there that night. I considered asking him if I could borrow his shoes, but stopped short when the image floated into my head of Human Resources chiding me for improper conduct as it applies to footwear and Manager level personnel in my yearly review.

Mindful of the limited patience of delivery men, I determined to collect my dinner without shoes. It felt strange to make contact with the tile floor with my naked feet, to feel the vaguely sticky tile beneath. I stepped off the elevator, into the darkened lobby, to meet my favorite delivery man. We exchanged food for cash while he gesticulated wildly at my feet and chortled a stream of indecipherable Thai. It doesn’t take a Rosetta Stone to know that he was saying, “Crazy white lady; why you get pedicure if you run around with no shoes?” He walked out the front door, still chuckling, and I turned to take the elevator to my floor. I pushed the button and waited for the doors to spring open. I waited longer.

Like a cold bucket of water thrown over my head, I realized the doors were not going to open without my employee card, which was probably having a torrid three-way with my wayward shoes and cell phone underneath my desk.

While I should have set about sending up a smoke signal with some chopsticks and the residue from the floor tiles, all I could think was ‘if only I’d borrowed the IT guy’s shoes, he’d have reason to come looking for me.’ My fog of despair lifted when I looked across the street to the beacon of upper-crust residential living: Asher Fineburg’s apartment building.

Of course! He will help me. He was a Jewish man, and Jewish men are very good to their women, even if they lay no actual claim to her. I rushed headlong into the bustling foot traffic of midtown. Now newcomers to New York City always marvel at its dirtiness, but if you live there, you become inured to its grit and the grime fades away.

That is until you are standing on 6th Avenue without goddamn shoes.

I tiptoed across the crosswalk as though walking on my toes would impart an air of normalcy to the situation. Only a truly crazy person would walk sure-footed across an avenue paved with flesh-consuming microbes without shoes. I went mostly unnoticed since New Yorkers are instructed to tune out the demented faction of the citizenry unless one begins to urinate directly upon you. It wasn’t until I was standing inside the lobby, appealing to the doorman to notify Asher Fineburg of his unexpected guest that my rational self appeared, like a Jiminy Cricket on my shoulder when I needed Jimmy Choos on my feet.

What exactly is Asher going to do to help you?  Even if he descends from a long line of Jewish cobblers from the old country, he’s not going to fashion you a pair of shoes!  Love stories never start out with ‘there she was with blackened callouses in my apartment.’

I held up my hand in a gesture of apology to the doorman who was waiting for the phone to connect with Asher’s room. I backed away from the desk and toward the revolving door when you can imagine who strutted right into the lobby.

The most tragically uncomfortable conversation between two humans who actually speak the same language ensued, culminating in an Oscar-worthy performance in which I pantomimed utter shock to see that I was not wearing shoes before excusing myself with a grand wave of my delivery bag. I walked briskly back to my office building where I ate cold Pad Thai at the abandoned security desk and waited for the IT guy to disembark the elevator.

It was that very night that I formed the love triangle, adding the third angle, as I joined Match.com and emailed my future husband. Under my profile where you’re instructed to highlight the things that turn you on, I did a resounding double-click to reject ‘barefoot is a turn-on’.

No. No. No. Me gustan los zapatos.

—

(I’m embarrassed to even recall this story. And I’m scrubbing my feet again just to be safe.)

—

 

Today I Turned Deaf and Fat

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For the politically correct, I should rephrase as ‘I became both hearing challenged and plus sized.’  Either way, I woke up deaf in one ear this morning.  I went to bed with the omnipresent ring of child whining and dog barking in both ears yet awoke to a muffled ultrasound-like quiet in my right ear.  My first thought was, “Now I have a very valid reason to never respond to the baby monitor in the middle of the night again.” I went along merrily with my new half-deafness, ignoring pleas for waffles and inquiries into recent debits to the joint account.  ”I can’t hear you,” I would declare happily to everyone.  When I couldn’t hear the phone ring and realized that I’d die half-deaf before I could ever learn sign language, I started to wonder if this was more like an ailment than a miracle from God.

I called a physician’s practice in my new town (with my good ear) and gave the very rational and highly medical diagnosis of “I seem to have gone deaf in one ear.  I thought it was due to so much whining, or a pregnancy symptom I would have known about had I read ‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting’, but Google seems to think those aren’t likely explanations.”  After an awkward pause that even a deaf person can perceive, I was told to come in immediately.  I suspect these physicians were hoping they’d discovered a medical anomaly, a condition sure to cement their names in medical journals read by nerds with stethoscopes across the globe.

Little did we all know it would turn out to be…

Wax.  A wax plug.

Can you believe the horror of those two words?  The power those two words wield when combined is staggering.  Wax is a disgusting in all forms – written, aural, and when dribbled on Ricky Martin’s body in a music video.  A plug is never a good thing when suspended in anything other than a wine bottle.  Or a child’s mouth.  When wax is compacted and melded into a plug residing in your ear canal, it is the the most revolting diagnosis a girl could hear (in her non-plugged ear) save genital warts.  I then suffered the indignity of having a doctor shoot hot water at high pressure into my ear, steadily eroding the petrified wax, while my son looked on in horror. The experience recalled the scene from Armageddon when Bruce Willis’ team of oil riggers mangled their drills against the strength of the meteor.  The doctor would take a break, do a few knee bends and shoulder stretches while I threw fruit snacks at D and hung my head in water-logged humiliation.  She finally broke through after reinforcements were called in.  She advised me to routinely drizzle olive oil in my ear to help wax production.  Olive oil, like I’m a chicken cutlet or a Caesar salad.  My hearing was instantly restored just in time to hear how ‘gnarly’ a wax plug is from my very unsympathetic husband.

As if my self esteem balloon could deflate any further, I visited the OB for a routine prenatal check.  As any pregnant woman knows, each visit is begun with two doses of humiliation:  a urine sample and a weigh in.  With my previous physician, the urine sample occurred first, which helped me cut 11 pounds of weight before stepping on that scale.  My new physician prefers to have the weight assessed first despite my urgent pleas that my bladder contents and shoes weigh at least as much as an Olsen twin.  As I stepped on to the scale, she placed the tab near the marker of the last reading taken 4 weeks ago.  The level thudded against the scale base with an echo that filled my newly cleared eardrum.  She ticked it forward and forward, making a little ‘tsk’ noise with each increment.  Finally, she and that scale conspired on an evil number that was written in my chart and tattooed across my nose.

I said to the doctor, “That number seems quite a bit higher than the last time I was here, and I’m pretty sure the ultrasound you did last week would have caught a twin or a couple of new organs I might have grown.”  She eyed me up and down and then scrutinized my chart.  ”Hmmm, you did gain 9 pounds since last month.  That is more than I would advise.”  A crushing blow.  Self esteem balloon popped.  ”I’m sure it’s the fact that you’re new to town and adjusting by eating a lot of seafood and pastries.  We’ll keep an eye on it and make sure you’re not showing any signs of gestational diabetes next visit.”

Great.  Let’s recap my list of medical maladies I developed in one day:  Temporary deafness, wax plug, overweight pastry eater, and diabetic.  I think she missed paranoid schizophrenic with leprosy.

When I returned home, arms pumping and knees raised high in my new speed walk that I will be doing everywhere, I confronted my husband, eager to hear about his female progeny growing (fatly) within me.  I immediately began to cry tears of lard and carbohydrates.  When I told G what the doctor had said, his reaction was entirely unlike what my mother or best friend would have said.  They would have said something like, “That doctor is insane! Or she’s jealous of you! Clearly that scale was faulty!  You’re underweight compared to most pregnant women!  Are you sure you’re not giving birth to a lemur in there??”

G looked at me and said, “Well, you have been eating more ice cream with this pregnancy than you did with the first two.”

Watch it, man.  Me and my homeboys Ben and Jerry are about to roll your ass.  And then stick a wax plug in an orifice.

(Did you care about weight gain when you were pregnant?  I won’t ask if you’ve ever had a wax plug since I know I’m alone there.)

Telephonically Challenged

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Any one who appreciates a good country song knows that Reba McEntire has produced some genius songs.  I can’t be the only one who has danced by herself in a bar to Fancy.  Am I?  But her most brilliant lyrics might have been from the song, Why Haven’t I Heard From You.

Back in 1876 an ole boy named Bell

Invented a contraption that we know so well

By the 1950s they were in everybody’s home

As a crazy little thing they call the telephone

Now there’s one in every corner and in the back of every bar

You can get one in your briefcase, in a plane, or in your car

So tell me why, why haven’t I heard from you?

This song should have been the song we danced to at our wedding instead of ‘At Last’ or whatever requisite wedding song people who lack a true anthem of their own choose.  These lyrics define our communication.  It’s a benefit to the world that I never became a songstress since my own prose would be a little less rhythmic than Reba’s.  Mine would go more like:

Cell phones were made for an emergency.

Or to hear the latest ‘I’m gonna lose it’ plea.

Endless ringing and your voicemail piss me off.

Till I wonder if I need to call the cops.

Worried about going into labor.

I’d have an easier time reaching Justin Beiber.

Wow, maybe I’m wrong.  I think those lyrics have Grammy written all over them.

Now that I’ve hoisted my white flag of surrender to living in the La Quinta and bouncing around to various homes, I’ve decamped to California to be with my family. I’ll be here a couple of weeks, which means phone communication is the sole means of conversation for me and G. We are just not good phone ‘partners.’  Some couples are great on the phone.  My parents, for instance, talk every day on the phone when they’re separated, and they don’t just cover off on the basics, like, “yes, the children are still registering vital signs.”  They talk  to each other like BFFs from high school. They cover respective agendas and humorous incidents.  They talk about weather, their golf games, and what the dog ate.  I once even heard my mother recounting a dream in vivid detail.  If I attempted that with G, I’d hear dead air until he’d say something like, “Can I actually call you back in a little bit?”

There are many reasons G and I cannot even aspire to this level of communication since:

a) He insists on holding a cell phone so far away from his head, due to fear of brain cancer, that I can never hear much of what he’s saying.

b) He begins every conversation with, “Hi Erin, it’s G…”  Yes, I know. Even without caller ID.  That’s what living with someone for 7 years enables.  I’m irritated within the first 2.5 seconds.

c) A child usually breaks into spontaneous hysterics due to a severed artery or brain contusion.

d) If you ever read this entry about my husband’s inappropriate telephone decorum, you know that I’ve attempted the ‘lover’s conversation’ to no success.

e) My days are like something out of Groundhog Day, starting with the same oatmeal breakfasts, mid-morning tantrums, macaroni lunches, juice box warfare, and dinner refusals that talking to me once will pretty much suffice for months on end.

And these factors only arise if we actually manage to reach each other. He is one of those people who may seem technologically plugged in given the presence of an iPhone in his pocket, but it so rarely reaches his ear or fingertips that he’d really be better off with a can and a wire.

If today’s conversation doesn’t get off the ground better than the 5:48 am call he placed yesterday, I’m defaulting to carrier pigeon and written letter till I return.

Does your mate give good phone?  Or are you also wondering if the phone was invented just for women to appeal to other women, much like Twitter and footwear.

The Spelling Bee Is My Dream

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I’m a good speller.  I’m going to misspell something in this post, like an ass, as Karmic punishment for beginning a tale by lauding myself an expert speller.  It’s just something I’m good at.  I spent most of my elementary school years whiled away with VC Andrews books, I mean The Babysitters Club if my mother is reading this.  I was also one of those dweeby kids who loved diaries and stationary sets.  Had Santa presented me with the choice between a flashy bicycle or a set of pretty pieces of paper with matching sharpened pencils, I would have chosen the latter and been writing my thank-you note to him on that very paper a few moments later.

But don’t go jumping to conclusions.  Just because I had my nose in a book and like writing, I’m no rocket scientist when it comes to solving some of life’s more complex issues, like geometry. Or word puzzles.  Or how to work a Garmin.  Despite my love of words, I’m also tragically average at crossword puzzles and Scrabble.

My husband, on the other hand, is my foil.  G solves mathematical puzzles for fun.  He reads dense law and tax code that makes me want to start tying a noose and looking for a stool.  He also rocks Scrabble and crossword puzzles, although often with BS maneuvers like the word ‘jo’, which to me is a cheap attempt at spelling a nickname for coffee.  To him, and to Webster’s, it is a “Spanish Lover,” which is also worth like 40,000 Scrabble points.  He also can remember whether you’re supposed to run in a diagonal, play dead, or climb a tree when being chased by a lion, a bear, or an alligator.  I would be doing all three, and with no impressive speed, until I received the jaws of death to the back.

Despite all these virtues, he is a terrible speller.  He just can’t visualize words before they need to be typed or written.  I will hear things like, “How do you spell ‘Sincerely’?” three times a week.  I don’t usually wield my power to spell better than he for evil.

That is…until recently.

We had been moving bulky waste, as it’s known, to the curb for collection by the Township.  But we had way more articles of waste than a 12 pack and a $20 were going to compel two trash men to take.  So we began putting items out in advance of the collection day in hopes that scavengers (they really were more like buzzards in this case) would haul them away.  I actually watched a man drive 100 feet past our curb, reverse the entire distance, to take…a red bucket.  I’d been putting crap out there for days without any problem.

Then G moved to the curb a filing cabinet that had been in our barn since 1940.  Literally.  It was ugly and heavy.  It looked exactly like the kind of filing cabinet you see in a detective’s office in old movies.  It sat there.  And it sat there.  So, in typical form, the filing cabinet’s lack of desirability became MY problem.  G started pestering me to put a FREE sign out there so that ‘people will know it’s free.’  As if someone might knock on the door and offer us cash for the relic.  I was having one of those days with the kids where I could barely take a sip of water, so digging out a piece of cardboard and a Sharpee from a house that had been 95% packed into boxes was not high on my priority list.  By the evening, G was so annoyed that I had not made his sign that he stormed into the house and declared loudly, “How hard is it to put a few letters on paper, Erin??  I’ve asked you 90 flipping times to do one thing while I’m…(blah blah, you get it).”

He disappears back out the front door with his arts and craft items only to peek his head in one minute later.

“Is this how you spell FREE?”  he asks while holding up his sign.  “Something looks funny.”

It was spelled correctly.  But I was feeling burned.

“No, that first E should be an I.”

Ha ha ha.  At least we gave the neighbors one last thing to talk about.  Or people thought we were storing a new form of Brie in our roadside filing cabinet.

 

Free Sign

 

(What powers do you yield for evil?)

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Moving Makes Me Cry More than a Michael Jackson Fanatic

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We are moving.  To an unknown location.  Like Venus.  Or the underpass of a highway to live out of stolen grocery carts.  We haven’t exactly figured it out yet as we unexpectedly sold our home and the deal seemed on the verge of combustion the entire review period.  Now that we have moved past the haggling over things like termites and nonfunctional trash compactors, it appears we will be handing over our first home to new owners.  It leaves me sad in a way that no future home will, no matter how beautiful, since this is the house that my children were born into.  And, no, not in the bathtub or in a pile of clean sheets on the floors, surrounded by my husband’s barking mongrels.  I just mean that it’s the first home I ‘nested’ within and prepared a nursery for the babies I would bring home.

While my husband did so many things in this home that will live on in infamy (blogfamy), like transforming the dining room into an ‘Irish pub’ complete with billiard table and building a giant ‘fire pit’ so close to the back door that I had to fear our home would go ablaze should a westerly wind blow in.  Or the time he decided to burn an entire Christmas tree in our fireplace, which sent soot and ash over the walls and ceiling, leaving me feeling like 2009 was about to be the worst year ever.

But he also did a number of wonderful things that I will always remember fondly.  He made a picket fence, cutting and painting each slat like a modern-day Mark Twain.  Unlike Mark Twain, he didn’t wear tattered pants or suspenders, but he also didn’t wear a shirt, which brought out the lemonade-making abilities of all of my old lady neighbors.  He constructed a sandbox that our kids have spent summers in.  He even built a daybed out of reclaimed barn wood that we put in the nursery.  Before he dropped the new mattress on top of it, I noticed he had painted a heart that read GD+ED.  Even when I’m seething at him and decamp to the baby’s room to sleep because I’d rather not sleep next to him, I feel my anger subside as I lay atop that painted love note.  ‘Don’t go to bed angry’ is a mantra rarely employed after a fight in this house, but ‘wake up forgiven’ is and it must have something to do with the power of that heart.  Or the fact that I’m so grateful for shut-eye that I forget I was about to go cage fighter on him the night before.

So now we find ourselves looking for temporary housing that doesn’t scream ‘soup kitchen’ while we look for a permanent residence.  G knows I’m agonizing over where we’ll live so he likes to rub salt in the wound by saying things like, “That looks pretty spacious,”  as we drive past a pile of discarded utility boxes left out for collection on the side of the road.  Or he asks if my office has a “lobby with a couple of couches?”  Sadly, these hilarious references still make me feel better than when he forwards me a listing for a ONE BEDROOM apartment in all earnestness.  “This looks pretty decent till we figure out the next steps.”  I realize I’ve gotten pretty adept at managing a household on my own, but sometimes I think he’s honestly forgotten that we are a family of four and have two dogs.

Just as I am about to remind him (with brutality) of this fact, I remember this is the same man who wanted to create a ‘giant playpen’ out of the sun room where we would all sleep nightly on the floor.  Children could wake early and play on their own without supervision from their slumbering parents because the room would be padded and limited to toys that wouldn’t impale anyone.

So I button up and look for something that won’t make us wish we were the family asked to live in the hotel from The Shining.

(Anyone moving or recently moved?  Did it nearly kill you?)

The Universe Dumps (Fluids) on Everyone

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I allowed D to ‘help’ pour the milk into sippy cups that were being packed and sent to the sitter’s house this morning.  Like an overdone clip from America’s Funniest Home Videos, his hands slipped while holding the cup and icy milk cascaded down my work pants.  I employ the description ‘work pants’ deliberately since my normal garb would have had a crusty milk shellac that the new milk would have instantly beaded up against and run right off.  But my work pants are dry clean only and made of a material that wouldn’t be used in your average sweatpants.  They are  black and slenderizing and possibly even stylish (at least 5 years ago).  Faced with the possibility of wearing my stained sweats to work, I realized I had to dry my pants and continue on to work, even if coworkers would wrinkle their nose at the smell of sour dairy every time I passed by.

As predictable as the river of milk down my pants was the river of sympathy that poured out of G’s mouth.  As I ripped the bath towel from his waist, I believe I heard something muttered about “the brilliance of allowing a 2 year old to pour milk.”

As I returned from the car for the 38th time to retrieve last minute items, I witnessed G about to flop into his favorite chair in front of ESPN for a little last minute sports watching.  Just as he landed, the mug of coffee that was perched on the arm of the chair, fell right into his lap.

His standards for business casual attire must be higher than mine because he actually changed his pants.  The moral of this story is that if you smirk at your wife for having pants soaked with Organic whole milk, the Wizardess behind the Universe (probably a married woman) is going to dump a big mug of coffee down your own pressed khakis.

Near Public Humiliation and Meals on Tractors

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Where have I been?  I dropped out of the blogoverse for a few days due to a bunch of reasons that are not exciting nor that can be blamed on my husband (thus generating multiple rapid-fire posts).

Though I made a very compelling case as to why you should not ask women about the outcome of their Mother’s Day, I will go ahead and reveal some detail about mine.  If Mother’s Day is to be measured in hours slept past 6am and the number of seaweed pieces applied to your body by a man named Domenico, then my day would ring in really low.  Because I was expecting to still change a dozen diapers and fix ½ a dozen meals, I was not surprised to have started Mother’s Day at 5:55am with the plaintive cries of our 1 year old.  Nor was I surprised to be chipping encrusted macaroni from my shoulders, rather than a chemical peel from my face, 14 hours later. But in between was a nice day spent with family, both immediate and my husband’s extended members.  It felt oddly appropriate to be coaxing D to eat ham while sitting atop an uncle’s tractor as a house full of people mingled and laughed inside.  After all, motherhood is what I signed up for, even if it means shivering alongside your child, seated on stationary farming equipment.

But the day was with two highlights, both of which actually came the night before.  The first:  G bought me a pretty necklace of funky stones that I didn’t have to ‘fake it’ over. The second:  because we have my sister-in-law in town, we did what has become as exotic as taking an African Jeep safari…we went out to dinner by ourselves.

We had a grownups-only meal out, which included a few lazily consumed courses rather than the normal pleas to the waitress to bring everything ‘as soon as it’s finished for the love of Christ.’  I think we managed to fight about the doomed sale of our home and our thwarted vacation plans only 6 times.  And no one was stabbed with a fork for swiping food off the other’s plate as we each ordered exactly what we wanted without thinking of how to share and divvy up portions.  Other than my very badly assembled outfit (thanks to days of undone laundry), which screamed Mom’s Night Out, the night was almost a perfect success.

ALMOST.

There had to be one thing.  I’m sure G doesn’t even recall this trespass as he did throw back a few Jack n’ Cokes along with his ‘lobster cigars’ and  oysters.  As we were leaving the restaurant in our little hamlet of Montclair, the town’s ‘celebrity’ was standing outside.  We have a few notables in town, like Stephen Colbert and Yogi Berra (who I’m told played baseball), but the one that I get goosey over is none other than makeup extraordinaire Bobbi Brown.  I exalted her to celebrity status when my aunt took me to Sak’s before I transplanted myself to New York City.  She determined I needed a ‘big girl’ makeover from Missouri college geek to New York paralegal.  From the moment that Bobbi Brown artist took to my face, her products became like a chalice of holy water to me.  And, as any fatigued woman can attest, if you find a cover up stick that can reverse your undereye circles, you become the leader of a cult following.

So I saw her and I made the critical mistake of whispering to G, “Look, it’s Bobbi Brown!”

To which he DOES NOT whisper, “BOBBY BROWN??  IS WHITNEY HERE TOO??”  That joke is not funny when we’re alone in our living room, but becomes an act worthy of lethal injection when yelled in public in front of an icon.

I rapidly set off toward the car, widening the gap between us, when he says, “Come on, you love her!  Let’s just go say hi.”  And then he starts doing that thing your father would do when you were confronted with a humiliating situation in junior high school, and he starts walking toward her with his eyes turned tauntingly toward me.  I leap after him, sinking my claws into his forearm, and begin pulling him backward, feeling more and more juvenile by the moment.  It was like we were Heidi and Spencer, and Spencer was about to go ask a perfect stranger who did her breast augmentation because Heidi thought they looked bigger than hers.

I finally released my grip and ran toward the car, taking solace in the idea that at least Bobbi Brown could not associate me with the very strange ‘fan’ encounter she was about to have.  Only at this point, when realizing his worm had wriggled off the hook, did G relent and return to the car.

And I spent the car ride home trying to return my heart rate to a normal beats per minute while G laughed at his brilliant comparison to Bobby and Whitney.

Ahhh, Mother’s Day.  If I see Yogi Berra on Father’s Day, I’m going to ask him to show G how to improve his batting technique in the middle of a crowded diner.

(Anyway, how’d it go for ya’ll?  Any public humiliation?  I hope just pretty necklaces and dinner out.  Or massages by Domenico.)