Yesterday, Esteban and I went to the Farmer’s Market and bumped into one of my favorite Wives Of Esteban’s Friends, CC. I think we relate on a decent level because she recognizes that I’m not just a snipey bitch concerned with filling the conversation with how I/My Husband/My House/My Car/Life is better than everyone else’s (Notice that the other Wives fail to gloat about their careers’ heh) and, while CC may not realize this, I had a fruity hippy liberal upbringing. CC’s parents ran a homeless shelter/political asylum/whatever it was that they called it back when I was working for another local homeless shelter, but the difference was that they actually lived in the place too, shared all of their meals with them, killed the cockroaches that their residents brought with them in their belongings. Now that’s some serious liberalism. The two weeks that Greenpeace took over our house one summer really can’t compare. I mean, the worst that happened (other than the fact that the FBI tapped our phone) was that the hippies used up all the hot water. (Which, actually, always made me a little perturbed, because we were specifically chastised for abusing electricity and water when I was growing up and then the Greenpeace people came in and sometimes took two or three showers in a day. And they ate Skippy while we were slogging through Arlo’s All Natural Peanut Butter/Cement stuff. Fucking posers.)
I love that CC is the only wife to unapologetically keep her own name when she got married, too. I actually took Esteban’s last name when we got married, for several very complicated reasons, but mostly because it was something that he felt strongly about and he seemed to want us to share a name and that I become Weet Abix than I did about remaining Weet Woohoo. In weeks before our wedding, I was flush with impending nuptial hormones or something and was feeling very generous. And it certainly has made things easier. Before we were married, we had joint finances and whenever I dealt with banks or businesses, they were very skeptical and perhaps thought I was trying to scam them by paying some guy’s electrical bill or depositing money into his account. Once I had that Abix suffix, problems dissolved like a drunken Vegas ‘I Do.’ It was like some kind of societal reward for playing along with the patriarchal bullshit, a pat on the head by kindly white-haired bankers, offering me a lolly while calling me sweetheart. All of my writing, however, is credited with my maiden name, which was part of the original agreement, and in some strange psychological afterburn, while I no longer have to think about signing my name Weet Abix, if I am asked to initial anything, I will automatically sign with my original set of initials. Apparently, while my conscious understands my very rational decision to become absorbed by my husband’s surname and the fact that I believe feminism is about the freedom to make choices that are not specifically related to societal pressures or expectations, my subconscious is currently planning a Burn Your Bras rally. While my inner princess crosses her arms and snips, ‘Absolutely not! Do you have any idea how much those things cost?’ Besides, all of that whale boning and Kevlar certainly couldn’t be good for the environment. But I digress.
Which is pretty much to be expected.
I had walked right past CC and didn’t recognize her because she was carrying her grandchild, Ava. That hardly seems possible. I didn’t even know, but apparently CC’s youngest had gotten married at 19 and now had a baby of her own. Not only does it seem impossible that I am friends with grandparents, legitimate grandparents, but also, I remember when CC’s daughter was, like, seven years old or something. I mean, I don’t feel as though I’ve grown up enough to have a baby, how is this twenty-year-old doing it?
I held little Ava for a few minutes, to relieve CC, who had pishposhed the need for a stroller and then was carrying not only little Ava around, but also three loose peppers. Seems that she had visited one of the flaky (her word) organic people, asked for three green peppers, and the long bearded flaky organic farmer guy, taking notice of the fact that her arms were already full of a very adorable twenty-pound baby, very nicely stacked the big peppers in the crook of her elbow. Now, he did actually have paper bags available, but apparently the elbow method of pepper transportation made more sense to him at the time.
Ava, however, was cranky and was not susceptible baby kryptonite that is my buoyant cleavage (normally, a child in my arms is out within minutes, because apparently my shelf is the gateway to dreamland and also, I have a professional grade baby bounce walk, highly tuned after Jonathon joined our little dysfunctional clan) and wanted nothing more than to eat and sleep (and well, who doesn’t). Given that my magic breasts are not THAT magical, I handed her back to her wee mother, who then trailed off through the streets toward their minivan. It was a sweet baby moment, however, before the squinchy mouth started.
I am a sucker for certain baby types and the pale little round faced babies with the light blue eyes and the flaxen hair are absolutely adorable, and that’s probably the only reason that I offered to hold her, despite CC’s green pepper conundrum, because I’m somewhat guarded about babies. I think babies are great. I truly do. But if you are right this moment thinking ‘Well, why don’t you have one then?’ that’s the reason. If I try to hang out with a baby for any amount of time or otherwise express interest, I’m almost positive that a group of middle-aged women wearing cheerleader costumes designed by Christopher Banks will jump out of nowhere, shouting ‘B’A’B’Y! You don’t need no alibi! You’re fertile! Yeah, yeah, you’re fertile! Woo!’ And it’s too bad that I cringe so much at the prospect of having to have that same discussion or plead my case in the Reproduction Injunction with people whose business my uterus distinctly isn’t, that I’d rather just eschew that opportunity to smell baby hair and remain anxiety-free about my childlessness. And also, babies love my face. So yeah, anyway, if people could manage to keep from voicing their assumption that occasionally liking to hang out with babies automatically makes one an excellent parent, perhaps I’d do it more often. Until then, I keep my distance unless I am assured that no one is going to make a smug ass comment. But luckily, CC is cool that way and would never try to foist her own agenda under the guise of ‘just trying to help’ or whatever the hell is going through the minds of otherwise normally sane people who feel compelled to comment on the status of my uterus, so Ava and I could chill. Until she started crying, that is. Maybe she was sort of disappointed to not see the human pyramid, complete with baton fallopian tubes.
I spent the rest of the day doing house projects. Esteban had a list, you see. I had a list too, of course, but my list ended up being abandoned in favor of assisting with Esteban’s list. The reasoning here is that I know if I did not do my ‘clean out the laundry area’ on Saturday, I would certainly be doing SOMETHING to improve the state of general nomadic disrepair that exists in our bungalow, and I didn’t need help to do my thing, but if Esteban didn’t get help putting in a storm window on the front computer room window, then it would simply not get done. And if not on Saturday, then it would probably not get done ever because that window has been without a storm since’ a depressingly long time. I suspect that the year began with a 19, quite truthfully. (Note to Reproductive Cheerleaders: and why exactly do you want these people responsible for a helpless human?) Tilly quite enjoyed licking the three-inch thick layer of frost that developed over the winter months.
Thus, the window needed to be scraped, primed, and painted, which I would do while Esteban took apart the bathroom sink so that I wouldn’t have to brush my teeth over the kitchen sink and go to work with a white ring around my mouth. Esteban wondered about re-glazing the window. Absolutely! I volunteered, as I had glazed the garage windows when we replaced those storms. Sure, that was something like’ 1997, but certainly my experience glazing two windows seven years ago has left me a window glazing artisan! We made an appropriate stop at the Hundred Dollar Store for $60 worth of little odds and ends, went back home and began our projects.
Three bloody gashes later, Esteban announced that the bathroom sink was finished, but leaking and he was going to call Phil and have him look at the sink. I had just finished taking off my first strip of antiqued cracked glaze. The stuff was’ well, amazing. It is a wonder that I didn’t break any panes of glass (not to mention, a fingernail!) Esteban and Phil left for two rubber ring doohickey things and I put in an emergency call for single-edged razor blades. Hell, if it didn’t work on the glaze, I could always slit my wrists. The afternoon sun beat down and I felt as though God had placed a magnifying glass directly over my head.
Finally, at 5:00 pm, I had finished with the bottom half of the window. That’s when I asked Esteban if they came out of the frames. Imagine my surprise when I learned that they did. In fact, I think I almost puked. The spot where I had accidentally jammed a copper wire brush into my skin started bleeding again in sympathy. I handed Esteban the razor and said ‘I’m going out for burgers for dinner. Work on this for a bit.’ I then hopped into the car, blew ice cold air conditioning in my face, cranked up the iPod, and blew ten miles out of town to pick up High Maintenance Burgers. Thirty minutes later, Esteban had made three inches of progress on the window. Then we realized that we had purchased the wrong kind of primer. We ate dinner, hopped back into the car, went back to the Hundred Dollar Store where Esteban assured me that a $70 Dremel tool (and another $40 of supplies) would do the job. Of course, I wanted to point out that a brand new window with attached storm window would be about $200 and I wouldn’t have to scrape or glaze or paint or do anything else involving my blood. But I’ve learned that making sense in such situations is not really a good idea.
The fucking window has become our Vietnam. But at least the bathroom sink now drains. I’ve exchanged one wicked house pain for another. The cheery whoosh of our waste water as it disappears down 16 little holes can make me forget about the evil squinty eye on the front of our house. At least until the body count is tallied.
