Holiday Housewife

I will buy a trashy magazine and sit and read it while eating a Whopper at the mall when I should be shopping for Christmas gifts.
I will read that trashy magazine, cover to cover, including the letters to the editor, when I should be reading the New Yorker.
I will read the New Yorker when I should be reading a book.
I will read a book so as to not have to write.
I will write to get out of taking a shower.
I will shower rather than addressing Christmas cards.
I will address Christmas cards instead of folding laundry.
I will fold laundry to get out of decorating the tree.
I will decorate the tree in order to put off cooking dinner.
I will cook to not wrap gifts.
I will wrap gifts to not put away laundry.
I will put away laundry to not vacuum.
I will vacuum to not, wow, that's a hard one.
I just don't vacuum. That's all there is to it.

Happy Holidays!

Christmas Miracle

Hallelujah, Jesus, Mary, Gladys Knight and the Pips. I have witnessed a Christmas miracle.

After seven magical years of marriage, Jim and I put up the tree last night without a single fight. Holy Moly Mother of God, can you believe it? We bought it, lashed it, drove it, leaned it, watered it, carried it, eye-balled it, and lit it without so much as a glare. Nary a snarky comment crossed our lips. Not even a sigh. You almost would have thought that I'd hired a nice non-English speaking Mexican, or to be more precise, Irish/Swedish gentleman to set it up for me. That's how well we got along.

Does this mean our marriage is going to make it? Can a marriage really fail if you can get a tree up without incident. It seems that last night's Christmas miracle could and should stand as a metaphor for our whole lifetime's pledge to each other, right? I mean, looky here:

The tree could symbolise our kid, our house, our love, any of them, all of them, our car, it doesn't matter. And reaching an agreement and deciding on the right tree, which was effortless by the way, could be the two of us taking equal responsibility for our lives and our future together, planning and participating in the unbridled joy that is a marriage between adults. Overlooking life's irrefutable flaws and looking on the cheery bright side, you know, that ever-present humdinger, "Compromise." Right, right.

The lashing with the twine to the roof of the car could symbolise sex, yeah, sex, with the communication and the give and take and the "Careful, you don't want to hurt the branches," and the holding on and hoping it makes it all The Way HOME! YEEE-HAWW! And the watering, is of course the literal and metaphorical nurturing of the family and our relationship. You know, money in the bank, hugs all around, milk and Mallomars in the fridge. Or is that milk and eggs. What-ev. The carrying the tree in the house together represents shouldering life's burdens as a unified front. All that crap, you know, taking life as it comes but on the same page, as a team player and whatever other inane sports/corporate lingo comes to mind. And then there's the lights.

The stringing of the lights could be allowing for the little things, life's bright little moments, to make us deliriously happy and remind us that we should be GRATEFUL, DAMMIT, for every tiny gift. And I mean every gesture, every everything that we each do for each other from every dish that gets scraped into the wet garbage to each time a car is warmed up or coat is helped on. Let's sprinkle some pixie dust on them and line 'em up on a string like so many fireflies playing red rover, for us to gape at with awe and wonder. What a marvel is our marriage! Each individual light, so seemingly insignificant, yet so simple and perfect. Right there in a tower in our living room, every single "God-bless-you" and "I'm getting a glass of water, do you want one?" wound round and round a dying tree. Not a dying marriage, a dying tree. In this instance, a tree is just a tree, O.K? O.k.

So we plug em in and back up and we turn out the living room lights and sit down next to each other, or one of us sits in front of the TV so that he can watch the last quarter of the game, and I sit on the couch, but that's OK, really, because we just witnessed a Christmas miracle and so who's counting. And there are the lights twinkling their little asses off and here am I enthralled with the magic of Christmas and proud of myself for reigniting, in the bowels of my heart, the spirit of hope once again.

It's all down hill after this moment as I recall from last year. Nah, I'm just kidding. But for a moment I seriously consider, as I kiss my TV-glazed husband and head up to bed, that maybe we should keep a tree in our living room all year round. What the hay.

Omen

Is this a bad omen? I can’t get into my blog to post. Something about turning on cookies. But my cookies are turned on, damnit. Always, baby. Why can’t the computer see that? I am fuming with hands on hips and eyes flashing, “Why can’t you see that, Mister Computerman?!" I assume that my computer is a man because it’s linear and unforgiving and only does what I tell it to do if it agrees with my intentions and their promised outcome. And now Angela, who was only trying to be a good, supportive friend has been saddled with the title of IT Ho as I email her and ask her to help me circumvent the mote of programming snafus that have hobbled me in my quest. Jeeze. Maybe I should stop all this bloggery. Maybe it’s a sign.

When Jim and I were on our way to get our marriage license a few days before our wedding, the pick-up truck we borrowed broke down on the side of the interstate. I was following him back from a rummage sale where we’d just purchased a couch (or was it a bureau) hence the borrowed truck. He settled in with his book and I drove up to the next town and called AAA which was a clusterfuck in it’s own right. The spot the truck broke down was firmly ensconced in a cell phone dead zone, so I had no way of reaching Jim to ask which mile marker he was at and I was too much of a dope to make note of it. I had remembered the name of the last exit and the land bridge he was near but AAA didn’t have records showing land bridges. AAA hadn’t heard of land bridges.

So I explained, “There is a bridge that crosses over interstate 78 right near the Berkely Heights exit that is covered with dirt and trees and allows for the animals to migrate over the highway without getting squished on the road. There are only two of them, and we’re next to one of them. Don't you have the land bridges on your map? Or is it only car bridges that have earned that right."

I love the land bridges. I love watching the shrubs and weeds grow out of control as I approach at eighty miles an hour. In a matter of seconds I see the forsythia bloom and the leaves turn and imagine how incredibly heavy all that dirt must be, so I speed up as I drive under them. And then they're gone, behind me, forgotten until the return trip. I remember thinking how cool the land bridge concept was when I78 was first opened. How thoughtful of the Big, Bad Highway Developers to think of the witty bitty dears and squirrels just trying to make it in this big, bad world. Such compassion. They must have hearts of gold under their shiny vests with gold pocket watch chains dangling. Now that I’m a homeowner with a back yard and a garden, I harbor fantasies of blowing up the land bridges if only to slow the onslaught of deer and squirrels armies out to reclaim my yard and devour my garden. Compassion, not so much.

When we first moved out to the ‘burbs from Gotham Town, Jim actually thought that we had only one very persistent squirrel. Someone he could give a name to, like Phil for instance, and effectively hate. Looking out the kitchen window he’d say, “There’s Phil again,” and slip outside in his pajama pants and bare feet in February to scour the ground for just the right rock. Then using his boyhood aim, he’d smack the tree branch close enough to scare Phil, but not maim him. He’d come inside, feeling dejected and beaten mumbling, “If I could get a pump action bb-gun, I could nail him.” Yeah, and that would be that. He could wipe his hands of the whole menacing problem and case closed, problem solved. No more holes in the lawn or seeds eaten out of the birdfeeder, ever. I tried to explain to him that our one squirrel, you know, Phil, was in fact hundreds if not thousands of different squirrels. But he wouldn’t bite. He loved his enemy even as he picked up a pinecone. Phil made him feel alive, aggressive, manly. Not much else made him feel that way these days. So he threw rocks and I mooned, “That was close, sweetie. You almost got him that time.”

Occasionally he would try to ensnare the neighbors in his plight.
“We could go in together and get something with some real fire power,” he would say, their eyes twinkling with pioneer days delight.
Then I would remind him, “Our houses are only about twenty feet away from each other, front and back, side to side.”
“I know,” he’d say, annoyed.
“And there are kids spilling from every orifice of this neighborhood,” I said.
“Yeah, I know. I know,” he’d say walking away.
I’m such a killjoy, not letting him get a shot gun to take care of our Phil. It’s not like he’d hit anyone’s kid. Not on purpose anyway. I ruin everything.

Eventually he came to see that Phil was just a Phigment of his alpha yearning. He stopped hatching war plans with fellow besieged neighbors. He even stopped picking up pinecones and rocks. I wouldn’t mind if he still did. I liked watching him throw. He has a good arm and it reminds me of one of the reasons I was attracted to him in the first place. He’s a real guy. A stone-skipping, ball catching, lawn-mowing kind of guy, tough enough to withstand the harsh realities of February for a full minute in his bare feet. It’s sexy. And I need to remind myself of that more often.

“Sorry M’am,” the AAA operator said, “but we don’t have land bridges on our maps.” No, you wouldn’t, would you. That might be too helpful, might laden you with too much information. And that would be too much effectiveness. Actively Arcane Asses. Actual Asses on Acid.

The tow truck finally found us and Jim was calm and reasoned throughout the whole ordeal, a real peach. We didn’t make it to town hall before they closed and then it was a three day holiday weekend and of course there’s the seventy-two hour turnaround and things got dicey and tense on top of the shit heap of other wedding tensions, but we did evenually get our marriage license. And we did get married. I think Jim even had to make a special 2 hour round trip drive back up from the Jersey Shore to pick it up. My hero.

I need to remind my self of that. And I guess I shouldn't heed every sign. Not all omens are bad, are they? Jeeze.

Holiday Office Party

They were getting drunk, my two best pals, and told me to start a blog, damnit.
"And don't tell your husband," said Sylvia.
"Yeah," said Angela, "don't tell him," then she took another swig of her take-no-prisoners cosmopolitan. She meant it, too.
She had chosen the bar, ordered for us, and we were doing as we were told. Even the fried calamari had us on our knees all Kean-eyed. And we were eating it, which goes to show you how balzy the calamari was. Who was I to put up a fight?

Sylvia offered her graphically inclined husband for a little graphic panache. Now they were drunk. That part was my fault. When the mynxy waitress with enviable posture returned to our leetle square table I told her they would have another round. And they mewed, grinning a half-assed, "No, goodness, another round? I simply couldn't." But I knew they wanted it. Like prom night they wanted it. I would have had another but I was only half way done with my first. Slow drinker, fast driver, cold hands, big mouth. So they drank on and waxed about my blog and the conversation boiled down, in essence, to "for chrissake, what the hell."

"Where's my balls?" Angela said with just the perfect pitch and nuance of Horny Truck Driver meets Larry King. We laughed and agreed that that would have to be the tag line. More slurps and another bowl of high falutin' popcorn, please.

This was my office Christmas party. Just my two best pals in The Big City drinking fancy drinks in a fancy bar in my dumb clothes because it was more important for me to be warm and cozy than hip and now. My shoes were horrifyingly comfortable. My slacks were flannel-lined for crying out loud. I'm not even going to tell you who makes flanel lined pants, but suffice it to say, it aint Seven for All Mankind. Even my hair was dumb, all flattened down by the new hat I just had to buy because of my interminable fear-of-bitter. (There is a warm hat and mittens on just about every surface and counter in my home, just laying about waiting for me to put them on and be warm once again. In every bag, in the way-back of my car, just in case, everywhere.) But here in this bar, I was toasty.

It was a low lit, steamy affair, this speakeasy-esque back-alley type joint. When we arrived in our big puffy coats and me laden with shopping bags, there was nary a soul at the 15 odd tables but a seasoned couple making out on a banquette in the corner. I suggested we sidle right up and plant ourselves next to them but the girls didn't think that would make for very funny. So we snuggled in elsewhere and deferred to Angela. She'd gone to this particular bar for ages with her husband back in The Day.

You know, The Day. Back when we all lived in Manhattan and had no kids and waited over an hour for the priveledge of eating in loud, overpriced restaurants and regularly bought expensive poorly built shoes. Angela explained, "Richard and I used to come here after shopping all day and spending too much money." She glanced around. Was there another couple doing that very thing here tonight? Were they pickling their regret having spent too much nest egg by ordering drink after drink the price of a medium sized ham? Could they have ever imagined that they might need that money some day for corrective shoes or gutter cleaning? Did any of us? Are you kidding? If we had, we would have been savants. Aliens. Friendess and most certainly boyfriend-less. So we shopped up and we drank up in dark, luxurious places like these. (Have I mentioned dark?) Sylvia and Carl had theirs. My husband and I had ours.

Alone together in a dimmly lit lair, candy-coated by alcohol, in a three man huddle with his wit and shoulders, Jim and I shut out the world, the future, the check. "Another round," I said back then. I drank faster then, surrounded by background extras cast in our movie beautiful enough to make me feel like one of them, but not too much so that I felt goofy. Those were the days. And being here now with my girl peeps made me happy because it brought me back. Not to the exact spot, I'm not delusional, you know. But close enough that I could get a good look, a sneak peak. If I craned my neck and stood on tippy toes, I just might be able to catch the faintest whiff, cup it's soft face in my hands. Of what. Of hope? Optimism? Slack-jawed wonder? I know it sounds sappy as hell, but would you believe me if I told you-- Ah, youth.
Truer words were never spoken.

So Angela and Sylvia and I drank and laughed and spoke in hushed tones about our complicated marraiges and not-so-solid futures and I had a ball because I am a stay at home mom and for my kind, there aint no holiday office party unless you cowboy up and git yerself one. The kinds of companies my husband works for can't afford to invite the spouses along, so i'm outta luck and so are the girls. Angela works out of her home and Sylvia is on an extended maternity leave. So this was our party. A day in the big city with three very funny women, a little shopping and lots of stops for tea and scones and changing tampons. And the lovliest tryst with my youth in a steamy, dark bar (where I couldn't have looked a day over 32) and later on, a delicious dinner in a loud, overpriced restaurant, where we waited an hour to be seated and then towards the end of our meal, were asked to vacate our table with still a half a beer in my glass. Perfect.

My First Post

I have a pudenda agenda.