No Sole

OK, you know what? I get it. You just redid your floors. Or you're obsessive compulsive and you have issues with the squirrel poop I may trod through your house on the soles of my shoes. Or perhaps you're like those talk show hosts who have their chairs rigged to be eight inches higher off the ground than their guests. Maybe you just want to be taller than me.

But do you also have to be more comfortable than me?

Please don't ask me to take off my shoes in your home unless you're Indian or Asian. And even then, don't make me look longingly down at your fluffy sheerling lined Minnetonka moccasins as I slip off my own wumphy sheerling-lined Merrells and stand nakedly on your hard wood floors with only a thin pair of wool socks separating me from hypothermia. Unless of course you're planning on offering me a size 7 1/2 pair of Ugg slippers with the flexible sheepskin upper and wool fleece sock liner for my own delicate and deserved tootsies.

And no, I'm afraid your basket of complimentary black cotton Chinese slippers-in-many-sizes won't come close to the business of keeping me warm like the sheepskin lined L.L. Bean indoor/outdoor slides you're sportin', pal. If they did, then you would be wearing them, too. But you're not, are you. Do you know why? Because then you'd be cold. And in February no one conscientiously chooses to be cold unless you're an idiot or an Inuit. And if you've guessed that I'm neither, you would be correct.

You know, you could remind me to bring my own slippers. I'm happy to oblige. Put it right there on the party invitation. I could toss them and the gift onto the front seat without a second thought. And then we could both be cozy. And I could enjoy that piece of ice cream cake while standing on your stone floor. And I wouldn't have to covet your slippers.

Showdown

Recently I was finishing up a post and my son, who wanted me to play pirate with him said, "Mommy, what are you doing?"
"I'm writing," I said.
Without blinking an eye he said, "But, Mommy, writing's not important."

I looked over at him. I remained calm.

Leave it to a four year old to get at the heart of my twenty-five year old internal struggle as if he's adding grapes to a grocery list. Not, "Mom, I think you should sit down for this. What I'm about to tell you may rock your world and render you emotionally and spiritually bereft, not to mention creatively neutered. Are you ready Mom? Are you sitting? Can I get you a sedative?" But no.

So I said, "Writing's important to me." I tried to sound authoritative when I said 'to me,' like I imagine I would sound if I were a judge.

He countered as if stating the obvious, "But it's not important." He stressed the word 'important' like a smartass D.A. addressing the jury. His jury.

I squared my shoulders, shifted in my chair and looked down directly into his cruel eyes. "Writing is important to me because I love to write," I said.

He looked blankly at the computer screen, unable to read, unable to write, unable to see my heart crushing in upon itself like a palm-sized ball of aluminum foil. I continued, "If you love to do something, then it's important to you. You love to build spaceships with Legos, and so that's important to you. I love to write, so that's important to me."

This time he paused. "Mommy, can we just play pirate?"

I sighed. Sure, kid.

When Kids Swear

A comedian friend once told me that there's not a man alive who doesn't think it's hilarious when someone, could be anyone, steps in poop. Dick Cheney doubles over. James Lipton slaps a knee. Bono snickers and Stephen Hawings curls his lips into an almost imperceptible nanosmile. But they all love it. Deep down they're in near hysterics.

That's how I feel about little kids swearing.

Is it all Moms or is it just me, but I think it's hilarious when little kids swear. Give me a three year old who says, "Dammit," when they can't get their zipper and I'm happy for a week. Not that I condone it. No, sirree, there will be no swearing in my house. But secretly I love it.

My son, Johnny, went through his shit phase when he was three and it was excellent. We'd be driving along and he would drop his banana down by his feet and say, "Shhhit." His timing, cadence, the delivery was spot on. It was a perfect read. If he'd been shooting a commercial for Chrystler the director would have yelled,"Cut! Print!" into a bullhorn.

Then came the conversations that went like this:

Mommy gets all the way to the highway on ramp before remembering that she forgot the gift she was bringing for her niece's birthday party 2 hours away. "Shit," she says with equal parts, I'm-a-nitwit and now-I'll-have-to-mail-it-which-means-it-will-sit-around-my-house-for three-months-then-in-the-way-back-of-my-car-for-another-two. Great.
Johnny says, "Mommy, you said shit and you're not supposed to say shit."
Me, "Yes, dear, you're right. I shouldn't have said that word."
Johnny reinforces, "Because shit is a swear word."
"It certainly is," say I.
Johnny continues, "And so we shouldn't say shit."
"That's correct," I say, "and we should stop saying it, shouldn't we."
"Ok," he says, savoring his last morsel, "I'll stop saying shit now."

If I could pull the car over and rest my head on the steering wheel to laugh I would, but I have to summon all of the cells in my body to unite as a team to keep my mouth from smiling. It's not easy but I do it.

Some months later:

Mommy nearly misses being taken out by a Toyota because she's stopped on a hill and the jerk on the corner has invited all her fennel-eatin' SUV-lovin' friends over to park all along the street and right up to the corner thereby obscuring who's coming and nearly totaling her car, killing herself and her child and says, "FUCK!"

Johnny pipes in from the back seat as my heart performs Riverdance in my chest cavity, "Mommy, you're not supposed--"
I snap, "I know, I know, but don't say it, just don't say the word, OK? Mommy knows not to say the word, but in extreme circumstances it is the favored standby, but only by adults, OK? So never say that word in school or on the playground or to any of your friends. Never. You can say, darn it, fudge or fiddlesticks, but not that word, got it?"
"Ok, Mom," he intones. One day he'll roll his eyes at such a cliched speech but today it's accepted with quiet resignation.

It's only weeks later when I hear him saying it at Angela's house with her daughter, Chloe. I call him in to ask what he just said and he assures me he said "funker."
"What's funker?" I ask.
"It's our word," he says, very blase about the whole thing. Chloe nods.
"Really," I say through my eyebrows.
"Yeth," he says and I let it go at that because his worsening lisp has once again caught my attention and has managed to trump the "funker" issue. I'm reminded of Fwankie Giwson, the red-headed, freckled, immensely popular captain of my high school football team who not only lisped until graduation day, but still sported it at our 10th high school reunion. 'Note to self, don't let your child's adorable lisp go untreated for too long,' I remember thinking as he ordered a Tham Adamth.

Johnny is four and change now. Not long ago we were at the Central Park Zoo together, just Johnny and me out for a big adventure on one of this winter's more infamous, globally-warmed days. We had just wandered through FAO Schwartz where I really broke the bank by buying him a three dollar Playmobile pirate action figure. Now we were sitting in front of the seal tank, me preening in the sun, enjoying the gentle splashing of the circling seals, Johnny happy with his new acquisition when a perfectly harmless little girl wandered over to check it out. Sure, she got a little close to the new pirate toy, but she didn't touch it or even say much before Johnny looked up and said crisply and clear as a bell, "Funker!"

She ran away.

I thought about it. Running away that is. That's not my kid, the one who just said fucker. And then it hit me. He didn't say, fucker, he said funker. He said his word, but he said it so fast that it sounded to me and the nine or so other families around me, complete with silver-haired grandma's just in from the Midwest, that he indeed said, fucker.

Now that I'd realized what really happened it actually crossed my mind to try to take everyone aside, one at a time, starting with the little girls' mom, and explain. Wont they think it's adorable? Like lisps! But I didn't. Instead I channeled that scarce late afternoon energy to summon the will of Sisyphus to keep myself from rolling down the cement steps in a fit of laughter.

After a moment I quietly asked Johnny, "What did you just say?"
"Funker," was his unabashed answer.
"Right," I said.

I take a moment to form the next sentence making sure to look straight at Johnny, resisting the urge to sweep the audience for a headcount of who got what.

"Sweetheart," I say, "you're going to have to make up a new word. You can't use funker because when you say it fast it sounds much too much like a really bad swear word, probably one of the top five worst swear words that grownups sometimes use, even though they're not supposed to. Can you make up another word, please?"
"Ok," he says, clicking a little pirate sword into the open fist of the little pirate toy. I consult my database of past gibberish faves which include, Pucci, for no apparent reason.
"How about you say 'manko-man' or 'pucci' instead?"
"Or how about poopie?" he says, looking me dead in the eye.
I do not think before answering, "Sure, honey, poopie's fine."

And so the day goes. A detente has been reached although deep down we both know that I've lost this one. But what he won't know until he's much older, nor will any of the offended families who've moved on to the polar bear tank, is that he just made me happy for a week.

Only In New Jersey

--could you walk up to the Chanel counter at the mall (I had a Lord & Taylor gift certificate to spend) and have the following exchange with a woman wearing so much black eyeliner, pale lipstick and base, that she looks like an aging understudy for the lead Kit Kat Club waitress in the retirement cast of Cabaret. Or, really, let's be honest, the head waitress at the airport Marriott circa 1967.

Me, sheepishly: "I'm looking for a particular lipstick color: velvet dusk."
Chanel Lady, disgusted: "We don't carry that color any more. That was discontinued a long, long, looong time ago."
Me: "Um, I know it existed in 2000, that's only seven years ago."
Chanel Lady: "Well, for us, that was a long time ago, we're a very forward thinkin' company."

Right, no flies on you, Chanel Lady. When I think cutting edge, avant garde pioneers in make up, I think Chanel.

Me: "What about all those ladies who are 90 and have been wearing the same shade for 70 years and have come to expect some level of consistency?"
Chanel Lady: "We just force them to change with the times. It's good for them."

Oh, boy. I bet they just love that. All those society ladies on the upper east side charity circuit putting on their Chanel suits, incidentally the same ones they've been wearing to DAR meetings since 1961, with their strings of pearls, and their final net helmet hair and their shiny Chanel purses. I bet they love being told by their personal assistants that they have to change their lipstick color because it's good for them. Builds character. My mother, who is a scant 65, is apoplectic over the new light bulbs. I can just imagine how amenable a vain woman in her eighties is to being strong armed into changing lipstick colors at this point in her life.

Me: "Yes, yes, change is good."
Chanel Lady: "That's what we at Chanel believe."

If Chanel had any idea you were including them in the royal we, Coco would roll over in her grave. And that's when she said what she said that made me demote her from Chanel Lady to Chanel Broad.

Chanel Broad: "Isn't your old lipstick all smelly and rancid by now?"

Did she just say rancid? Did she mean with dark moldy spots and maggots slithering about? Does she think that I pull it out of my purse and smell it first then jerk my head away in disgust before applying it anyway? Couldn't she have used the term "tired"? I pictured Coco committing Harri Kari in her smelly, rancid grave, with maggots slithering about. Her number 5 parfum doing little to smooth out the situation.

Me: "Um, no. It's not smelly and rancid."

And with that I bought another color. A lesser color. A lousy color. Way to go, Coco. You would be so proud.

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.