06.09.07
Schadenfreude
Couldn’t resist.
06.02.07
It’s a mad house. A mad house!
Tonight, I had an epiphany. As far as epiphanies go, it is well below E=mc2, but slightly above this.
I was in the kitchen preparing my nightly bowl of vanilla ice cream with hot fudge. I had already placed the jar of hot fudge in the microwave to heat. While I was scooping the ice cream out of the cardboard box, Hailie jumped up on the kitchen counter. She began pacing in front of the sink and meowing. To remind her that she isn’t allowed to be on my counters, I swatted at her with my spoon and she gracefully leaped to the floor. I continued to furiously scrape the last few molecules of ice cream from the package and Hailie again jumped up on the counter and walked in front of the sink.
I decided to ignore her for the time-being, as the microwave beeped three times to announce that the hot fudge was now heated. I poured the fudge on the ice cream just as Hailie meowed loudly and startled me. My hand jerked and I spilled a large amount of fudge on my counter. I silently pondered the wisdom of keeping a cat that just caused me to waste a whole ounce of warm gooey chocolate. This wasn’t the epiphany.
I yanked some paper towels off the roll and impatiently flicked them in Hailie’s direction. I cleaned up the mess that the cat made and grabbed my bowl. I bounced onto the living room couch and took my first bite of ice cream.
“Mrrrawwwwow!”
I looked up from my spoon and saw my tabby sniffing at a glass of water sitting on the coffee table.
Cue the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and switch on a couple dozen light bulbs.
I grabbed the glass of water and took it to the sink and filled it up. I then poured the liquid into Hailie’s empty water bowl as her furry form dashed between my legs for her first sip. She then looked at me with a glare that clearly said, “Damn woman, if only I had opposable thumbs, I would have drawn you a picture!”
And the epiphany of the story is: if Hailie had opposable thumbs, she would be my owner.
05.26.07
How We Met
It was a Sunday night in January. I don’t remember the exact date, but I have always remembered it was a Sunday. If I hadn’t just quit the job from Hell, I never would have gone out on a work night.
A night or two prior, I had been chatting online when the conversation was hijacked by a young woman named Monica with low self-esteem. She was sending a JPEG of herself to everyone in the chat room and asking all, “Am I pretty?”
Picture of Husband from 2001, looking very pretty.
In a rare display of Internet affection, many of the chatters were agreeing that yes, she was pretty. The more honest people in the room were diplomatically suggesting that the photo was bad and they really couldn’t calculate how attractive she was.
What Monica lacked in self-esteem, she made up for in perseverance. “We should all meet up! And then you guys can tell me if I am pretty or not.”
I agreed to join in this ludicrous undertaking, mostly out of unemployed boredom. As I wouldn’t be working the next day, when Monica suggested meeting on Sunday at a Denny’s in Pacific Beach, there wasn’t any particular reason to say “no.”
Several people in the chat room began begging for a ride to the meet, and I offered my services. A guy named Jay and I sent private messages back and forth for a few minutes to nail down the logistics. He wrote that he needed to talk to me on the phone before he would accept a ride, for safety reasons. This seemed sensible enough to me, so I got his number and called him up. Jay and I talked on the phone for a few minutes until he felt assured that I possessed a vagina. Thusly assured, Jay felt comfortable enough to ride in a car with me and to also offer the news that he and his wife had an “open” marriage.
Thusly discomforted, I yelped into the phone, “Dude! All I am going to do is drive you to Denny’s!”
“All I am saying is… you know… hey, if you don’t believe me I’ll put my wife on the phone and she’ll tell you tha…”
“DUDE! You are married and I am not cool with that! Not that I wasn’t even thinking of this as a date!”
Finally realizing that I was serious, Jay defeatedly said, “Okay! okay! Are you still gonna give me a ride?”
“Yah, I guess so…”
Before I started my car on Sunday night, I reached under my seat to make sure that my five pound Maglite was still there. Just in case Jay wanted to discuss in person his marital situation.
I drove to Jay’s house in Mira Mesa and pick him up and then we headed to Pacific Beach. The particular Denny’s in question was located at the end of Garnet Avenue and about a block from the ocean. It featured an outdoor patio where diners were bathed in the glow of the green neon that lined the perimeter of the restaurant’s roof. The effect of which made each person look about twenty seconds from upchucking a “Moons Over My Hammy.”
Several other people from the chat room were already seated on the patio. However, Jay was the only one I knew in person and I was already giving him the cold shoulder. Everyone say around the long table in complete silence. The social strategy of the evening seemed to call for staring at your knuckles or winding plastic straws around your fingers. The gentleman to my right declined either option and began trying to set the soles of his shoes on fire with his Zippo.
I sat in silence for a few minutes. I heaved a sigh and asked my neighbor to the left if he had a pen I could borrow. He handed me a blue ballpoint. I wrote on my napkin, “Meretrice: A/S/L? :)” and handed both pen and napkin back.
My neighbor laughed and wrote something on the napkin and passed it to his left. Soon the napkin made a complete circuit back to me. Everyone at the table was laughing at making small talk. Several “private messages” were also being delivered as individuals took their own napkins and passed them around — folded, of course.
About the time my disposable chat room had complete its second circumnavigation of the table, I looked up from my knuckles to see that someone new had arrived. Without saying a word, he went up to the guy sitting across from me and thrusted out his tongue. The tongue was decorated with a freshly installed piercing.
I hindsight, I wish I could say that my reaction was something along the lines of, “There is the man I am going to marry!” or even “You so crazy! I wanna have your baby!”
Rather, I rolled my eyes and muttered under my breath, “Oh, that’s mature!”
Nonetheless, the skinny man with piercings would indeed become my Husband. Almost exactly two years after that fateful Sunday night, I gave birth to his Daughter. Today is our fifth wedding anniversary.
Happy anniversary, honey. I love you.
Husband and I two years ago at Megan’s Bay in St. Thomas. Irrefutable proof that he never smiles (anymore).
Postscript: Monica never did show up that night.
Postscript 2: Edited to correct some horrendous grammar and to add a picture from about the time we met of Husband looking thuper thexy. THUPER!
05.23.07
Bunch of Sick-o’s
This weekend sucked.
On Thursday, when I arrived to pick up Daughter from daycare, she was sitting at one of those miniature children’s tables with her head down. At first, I thought maybe she had gotten in trouble, but when I got on my knees and looked in her eyes, I knew that she was not feeling well. Daughter said that her tummy was hurting.
I wasn’t feeling spectacular either, but I couldn’t take us straight home because I needed to drop off some survey cards at the Sangaree Crime Watch meeting. I handed off the survey cards and Daughter and I went home. I promptly took Daughter through the Standard Mommy Medical Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol. It goes something like this:
- Take child’s temperature. If child lies passively with the thermometer under his/her tongue, the child is definitely sick. If child twirls the thermometer with his/her lips, resists having his/her temperature taken, or fidgets during the process, he/she is healthy. The actual temperature of the child is largely irrelevant.
- Administer the standard dosage of Children’s Tylenol. Daughter took her medicine willingly and without a fuss. Something was definitely wrong.
- Now that Daughter came up positive for illness, so did her lunch and most of the Tylenol. All over the couch and me.
- Daughter was given a bath, and at her request, she was put to bed at 7:30 p.m. Her father and I began figuring out who would get her stereo if she passed away.
In a rare moment of energy, Daughter tried to fit her sandals on her knees. Note the circles under her eyes and the blue sheet on the couch. The cushion covers were in the washer due to events from Step #3.
The rest of the weekend was spent much the same way. Daughter was doing lots of thermometer action, Tylenol drinking, and sleeping. What Daughter was not doing was eating or drinking. Just as her fondness for her bed was alarming, this was disconcerting also. The girl loves liquid refreshments. It is a rare moment that she is not sucking on a sippy cup. However, in the midst of all of the puking, bathing and sleeping, Husband and I didn’t notice her lack of thirst and appetite until Monday morning.
That morning, Daughter woke up with a disturbing red rash on her cheeks, arms, and thighs. Her bottom lip was dark red, swollen, cracked and bleeding. Daughter’s fever rebounded from a low of 99 degrees the night before to 102 degrees. On top of that she had a sickening belly-busting cough that was clenching her entire little body every time she hacked one out.
Husband called the doctor and he said that Daughter was likely dehydrated from the vomiting and fever and that we needed to get her to drink lots of water and juice. Easy enough, our kid if the Olympic champion of Juice Pounding. We loaded up her sippy cup and handed it to her with expectant smiles.
Daughter looked back at us with empty eyes and begged, begged!, us to let her go back to bed. For FOUR YEARS, this child has been drinking me out of house and home, and now that it is vital for her to suck down that juice, she wouldn’t do it. I can’t stress how frustrating this was for Husband and I. Our baby looked like a hunk of rotisserie gyro meat, and there was nothing we could do about it. All she wanted to do was go to sleep in a pita pocket.
After a full night of begging, pleading, and blackmail failed, Husband and I took Daughter to the nearest Wal*Mart. We purchased a small jug of PediaSure, milk, grapes, kiwis, and lunch meat (if on Death Row, I’m pretty sure this would be Daughter’s Last Meal). When we got home it was 4:30 in the morning. The girl had finally cracked and began drinking the PediaSure and snacking on grapes and lunch meat. I collapsed on my bed at 7:00 a.m. this morning.
When I woke up around noonish, Daughter’s rash was completely gone and she was alert and smiling for the first time in three days. Today, we played outside together, she assembled two jig-saw puzzles, and drank about a half-gallon of various juices, water and milk. My girl is back.
As I reflected on the irony of Daughter’s refusing to drink in the one moment that it was vital for her to do so, I turned to her and said, “Daughter, you sure know how to drive me crazy!”
Indignant, she snapped back at me, “Mama! I do not!”
“Uh, huh”
“Nuh uh!”
“Uh huh!”
She settled the dispute with this perfect summation of her mother’s complete idiocy, “Mama! I do not drive you crazy. I don’t even know how to drive. You know that!”
I relented. “Yes, baby, you are right. I’m sorry.”
05.20.07
That’s Amore
Just for fun, here is a picture of the moon that I took this weekend.
The Moon (click to enlarge)
05.15.07
Flick Her
At her daycare, Daughter’s teachers have been insisting that she call them, “ma’am.” Growing up in California, the only people who were called “ma’am” was an 85 year old grandmother, and usually not even then. Needless to say, Husband and I have been amused and bemused to hear our little one call me “ma’am.”
Last week, when she wasn’t feeling his boobies, Daughter started calling Husband, “Ma’am!” We explained patiently to her that grown-up women are called, “ma’am,” but grown-up men are called “sir.”
She has yet to call him, “sir.” Not sure what that’s about.
This morning, Daughter asked me to help her put on a necklace and I replied, “Yes, ma’am!” (I’m funny like that)
Daughter replied indignantly, “I’m not a Mannnnn!”
“I didn’t call you a man, I called you a ma’ammmm.”
“Oh.”
Then the lightbulb turned on, “Is that why you were calling Daddy that? Because you thought you were saying “Man?”
“Yes, Mommy.”
Great. For a month now, my daughter has been calling me a man.
P.S. I added Flickr to the sidebar of the blog.
05.12.07
I Don’t Know Who Taught Her the Word "Boobies."
As I was making dinner last night, I listened to Husband and Daughter playing in the living room. They were engaged in a rollicking game of “Supergirl.”
You probably remember that game. Your father or older brother lays prone on the floor with his legs in the air. Then you balance somewhat precariously on his knees, or if you are really adventurous, on his feet. With both arms stretched out in front, you pretend to feel the wind in your face as you fly faster than a speeding bullet. Of course, when your partner’s legs start to get tired, balancing yourself becomes more difficult and you topple down onto the floor, or in Daughter’s case this time, on her daddy’s chest.
I listened to Daughter’s raucous giggles as she exclaimed, “Daddy, I felt your boobies!“
Daddy, who honestly does not have any man-titties, was indignant and replied sharply, “I do not have boobies!”
Daughter wasn’t buying this. “Yes, you do! I grabbed your boobies! Daddy has boobies!”
Husband called for reinforcements from the only family member who genuinely has breasts and could explain to Daughter that he did not have boobies. “April! You need to handle this one!”
I came into the living room, and got down on my knees so that I could look Daughter squarely in the eyes. “Daughter… do not grab Daddy’s boobies. Those are private parts and you should never grab or touch anyone’s boobies. Do you understand?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Now Daughter, you need to tell Daddy that you’re sorry.”
“Sorry, Daddy.”
Husband gave me a look that clearly meant, “That’s not what I needed you to say,” and then looked back at Daughter.
He sighed, “That’s okay.”
05.07.07
I Have Famous Dishes
Mi familia y yo went to see Spider-man 3 this weekend at the super-cheap theater this weekend. ($7.50 for all three of us!) It was hella fun to be there with Daughter. She absolutely loves Spider-man and Tobey Maguire, much in the way her old lady had a crush on Christopher Reeve back in the day.
The movie was just okay. It was about three hours long, and while I understand why it needed to be longer than the first two in order to set up the Venom villian, the pacing was just sloooow. I can think of at least three areas that the filmmakers could have and should have cut. Namely, almost everything to do with Sandman, Mary-Jane’s celebrity angst, and the dance scene *mild shudder* About two hours into the show, Daughter was nudging me with her empty Sour Patch Kids box and saying, “I want to go home!”
What redeems the movie for me (yes, I get cheap thrills out of stuff like this), Aunt May has my dishes! If you go to see the movie, pay close attention in the scene where Peter visits Aunt May’s apartment. She serves him coffee in Kensington Balmoral cups. If you look carefully, as I did since I was stoked and all, you can see a plate with pill bottles on it, and the sugar bowl too.
I originally inherited these dishes after my grandmother died. She had them as long as I can remember, and just like her I use them every day. And apparently, so does Aunt May!
04.23.07
Why I Believe
My husband is an agnostic. I call myself a Christian. Husband doesn’t know if there is a heaven or a hell - and he doesn’t care. To his way of thinking, if you make the best of life on earth, it doesn’t matter what happens when you are buried under it.
I suppose if I had lived Husband’s life, I wouldn’t care either. Husband has already spit the Devil in his eye and climbed out of the fiery pits. What Husband doesn’t realize, and would probably make him laugh, is that when I doubt, when my faith waivers, I think of what he has been through and I am restored.
Husband was born with the cards stacked against him. He is almost completely deaf in one ear, and partially deaf in the other. He refuses to wear a hearing aid (macho pride!), yet most people never realize that he is hearing impaired. Husband taught himself how to read lips and somehow to maintain his balance perfectly. His hearing impairment was the least of his childhood problems.
Husband’s parents both failed him through a systematic program of neglect, abandonment and physical abuse. Their myriad sins are impossible to enumerate here. I don’t even know what all of them are, although I am cognizant of what Husband’s father did every time I hug him. Thanks to my father-in-law’s “wrestling” with Husband, I can not squeeze Husband as tightly as I would like because his ribs were broken numerous times and never healed properly.
Husband’s mother - I hardly know where to begin, or where to stop. I think the best way to describe her is “sociopath.” His mom does what she wants, whenever she wants, with no care how it affects others, including her children. She abandoned Husband’s father and her two children when Husband was a toddler. A formerly successful engineer, she has lost everything due to her selfishness and never ending search for the next high.
By the age of thirteen, Husband was short for his age and wiry. Husband was also an alcoholic. I have heard three separate stories from different family members about finding him literally passed out drunk in the gutter. Evidently, in his family, this was a source of amusement for them. The stories weren’t told with sadness or guilt, but as if they were describing how their son and brother blew up his science project in the basement. Cue the laugh track.
At fourteen, Husband turned to his mother’s choice of drugs, crystal meth. He was a tweaker. About the time he started tweaking, he escaped his father’s house and became homeless. On a good night, Husband would crash on a friend’s couch. On the bad nights, and most of them were, Husband slept in the sewers. The streets are not kind to anyone, but they reserve special tortures for slightly-built pubescent boys. While Husband generally doesn’t hesitate to talk about his past, he has never told me much about those times. Part of me doesn’t want to know.
Then at the age of 17, Husband received news that would change his life forever. His girlfriend was pregnant. Husband realized that he was in no position to be a father, but he would do what little he could. He contacted a friend in South Dakota and he asked if he could live with her while he tried to get clean. As he told me years later, “I figured in South Dakota, there were no drugs.”
Husband’s friend agreed, and he left San Diego. Husband lived in South Dakota and did indeed get clean. His oldest daughter will be 12 years old this July.
When I reflect on Husband’s life, I praise God for seeing him through those hard times and bringing Husband to me. Husband bears his scars with grace and dignity - most people would never guess all that he has been through.
Husband is by no means perfect. He remains an addict, although now his drugs of choice are Dr Pepper and cigarettes. When we argue, he uses the defense mechanisms of the addict: manipulation and redirecting the blame. But when I call him on his bullshit, he will sit quietly for a minute and then we can begin to work through the problem.
The miracle of Husband’s story is that despite the hell Husband survived, he is a loving and trusting spouse and father. I have met many of the people he knew when he was a tweaker. Many of them are still doing illegal drugs, and/or have HIV or some other STD. Some I will never meet because they are dead. At best, they are surviving, but are incapable of functioning in a relationship with their partners and children. They are the new generation of abusers and perpetuation that demon cycle.
Furthermore, Husband has forgiven his parents and loves them without blame or resentment. If God can work such a powerful miracle on Husband’s heart, I know there is nothing that He can’t do and nothing that He can not heal.
