That's My Bix!

It all started last week when my mother asked me to watch Jonathon overnight while she finished the interior of someone’s cabin four hours north of GB. I agreed, but then she called back and said that the guy didn’t want them to come yet because his son was in the high school championship football game or something like that. Why she needed to impart this story to me over ten minutes is beyond me, but then again, why I need to write two thousand word entries on the nothing I did all weekend is probably beyond most people too. Fine. Whatever. Then on Tuesday night, when I walked in the door after driving home from Milwaukee, a little cranky and tired, Esteban said ‘Why didn’t you tell me that we were watching Jonathon tomorrow?’ I was immediately stymied and replied ‘who what now?’ To which Esteban then relayed the strange phone conversation he had just had with my mother, in which she breezily told him that everything was all set for tomorrow night and she would be leaving at 7 am and Jonathon would be walking to our house after school at 3.

Since it was a few minutes shy of 9 pm (and I am ridiculously adamant about people not calling other people after 9 pm unless it’s a weekend or they have received special permission), I called Mom and repeated ‘Who what now?’ And she acted surprised that I didn’t somehow intuit that the date had been changed to Wednesday and she had even made special consideration that I had class on Tuesday so they scheduled it for Wednesday and why was I acting all put out? Fine, whatever, Crazy.

So Esteban made arrangements to be home for Jonathon and when he got home, Jonathon balked at being made to do homework, but finally realized that it was a lost battle and settled down to read ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’, an endeavor I can hardly find fault with. I got home at 5:30 and suggested that we go out to dinner because I didn’t want to make anything, and it was very pleasant. Afterward, Esteban went to his anime thing and I took Jonathon grocery shopping and then to his house to pick up clothing. Then I went home and told him that he had to finish his math homework before he could watch TV. What? Rules? Restrictions? He couldn’t live like the feral child he normally is? He looked directly into the camera and cried ‘Oh the humanity!’ Then, while I checked his work (and to his credit, it was almost all right), I did the same trick as last year and checked the papers stuffed in his book for any progress reports. Lo and behold, there was one and the kid is flunking math again because he doesn’t do his homework. Gah. Here we go again, with letters to the teacher and tutoring sessions and he’s not doing his homework in the other classes too. Fuck all. So then I gave him the ‘ding fries are done’ lecture, complete with my favorite ‘This is your job! Homework is your job!’ which might have been more effective had I dropped my words into a bucket of water and made him bob for ten dollar bills, hoping for the old osmosis trick, as he is fifteen and so completely not interested in what his sister has to say to him. And why should he? It’s much easier to just go back to the system of mutual avoidance that he has at home, where no one notices what he does and the lip service of ‘I did my homework at school’ has no accountability, even when the report card comes in with all crappy grades.

When he finished his homework, I made him brush his teeth (what??? What is this teeth brushing of which you speak, woman?), artfully deflecting his ‘I didn’t bring my toothbrush’ excuse by shouting ‘Voila!’ and unsheathing a fresh new toothbrush like a saber. Then he could watch a little television before he went to sleep, which made him happy.

Until morning came, that is. I figured that since I lived two blocks from his school, I would let him sleep in an extra ten minutes, but apparently, since he’s accustomed to always being late, this was cruel and unusual punishment. When I reminded him that I had to be out the door at 7, and it was at that very moment, quarter to 7, I naturally assumed that this logic would compel him to, oh, I don’t know, quicken up the pace a little.

What followed was an act of prolonged slow movement worthy of Cirque Du Soleil. Every movement, every word, every very thought, was lengthened to the point where he was almost in suspended animation. It was like time lapse photography, in which the world (AKA me) zipped around him at high speed while he existed in a different time space continuum. Perhaps it was a different plane all together. I don’t know. It took him five minutes to put on his sweatshirt. Five minutes. How is that possible? I mean, it just went over his head. That is it. A simple sweatshirt. Sure, it was a hoodie, so maybe that upped the difficulty a little, threw some confusion into the mix’. Is that a sleeve? No, wait, my head goes there. I mean, that should take, what, a minute tops, right?

Did I mention that he put on exactly the same clothes he had worn the day before? I argued with him that he could not go to school in the same clothes as yesterday, unless he wanted to be the smelly kid who wears the same clothes every day, and look, he HAD other clothes to wear. But he didn’t want to wear them, he wanted a sweatshirt. Fine. I went into my bedroom, hauled out one of his Christmas presents (an Independent hoodie, which was infinitely more cutting edge than the Aeropostale sweatshirt he was wearing at the moment) and handed it to him. With sloth-like agility, he wandered back into the living room and I continued trying to brush my hair and get ready. I could tell he was just sitting there zoning out, so I clapped my hands at him and told him to get moving and stop dawdling. And then I realized that in one quick sentence, I had just turned into someone’s mother. Certainly not mine, as she never worried about being on time to anything, but definitely someone’s mother. Gah. I asked him to get the yogurt he had picked out at the grocery store and start eating it because we had to go.

“I don’t know where it is.” He drawled.

“Your yogurt, I said.”

Pause.

“I know. I don’t know where it is.”

“Jon… where do you think yogurt would be?”

Pause.

“I don’t know!”

My brain, at this point, suggested slapping him upside the head because clearly his brain was like a pinball machine and we were on full Tilt.

“Think.”

“The garage?”

Yes. That is where we keep the yogurt. Between the power tools and the snow blower.

“Try the refrigerator?”

Pause.

“Oh.” He replied, managing to give the word seven syllables.

Pause.

I heard him get up and shuffle into the kitchen. I’m certain aging tortoises on their final walk have hoisted their ancient bodies across the shore with more agility.

“You know what? Just forget it. You’re taking the yogurt with you. It’s ten after and I’m going to be late.” I walked back into the kitchen. He was still wearing the Aeropostale sweatshirt. “Why didn’t you change?”

“Oh… what?”

“Your sweatshirt.”

He sighed, because the weight of the world certainly rested upon his shoulders, and tried to gather enough strength to make the lugubrious journey back into the living room. “Never mind! We don’t have time.” I thrust my hand into the silverware drawer and pulled out one of the horrible food service spoons that June purchased for us (for the princely sum of $6 for 30) after she heard us complain that we had lost all but three of the teaspoons from our silverware. “Here… just throw this spoon away when you’re done.”

“Wha–“

“MOVE!”

And with that I corralled him out the door like a damned herding dog nipping at the heels of a reluctant calf.

This is why I do not allow my loins to bear fruit. Right there. Because that fruit turns into a surly teenager and even if you clothe them in all the coolest brands and buy them $80 shoes, they still make you crazy. I was very thankful to escape to work, where there were no children.

However, I had forgotten about my coworker.

I know. I’ve bitched about her before (and then locked the entry because I started to feel like I was becoming a mean person and a hypocrite, since I wouldn’t actually say it to her face) but to sum up, she’s a post-menopausal ditz who is always chattering, always narrating her day aloud to no one (complete with random “Now why is that happening?” as though she expects you to know what she’s doing and somehow answer her), always inviting herself into conversations and trying to change the subject back to herself. She’s like Phoebe Buffay without social graces, like an annoying aunt who gives you underwear and then laughs when you open it and blush, like the person seated next to you in the airplane who takes off their shoes and then starts talking about their bunions. With visual aids.

When she comes in, she usually gives me an uninvited verbal rundown of her evening, her observations about the evening, and usually a pointed anecdote about her sister who has lost so much weight after gastric bypass surgery (note to coworker: subtlety is an art best left to people who are not dumb as cattle). This morning, she asked me how the evening went with my brother, so I told her how hard he was to get up in the morning and how he had made me late. She laughed, because she is wise like the mountains and also her sixteen-year-old son is perfect (but no mention of her teenage daughter dropped out of school after she kicked her out of the house and has now made her an early grandmother) and then finally quieted down to her normal level of malapropisms.

Later in the morning, I received a personal call from a friend. I started telling him about how bad my morning was and about the dawdling and the use of the word “dawdling” and then the clapping like I was a psychotic Brownie troop leader. We were laughing and it was a jovial conversation and helped to vent some of the stress of the morning. However, as I was relaying the story, from the other side of my wall, the coworker decided that she too wanted to be part of my personal phone conversation. She started hurtling comments over the wall of the cube. “Now you know how your mother feels! Tee hee!” and “I’m sure glad my son is perfect! Tee hee!” and “You better tell him that he won’t always have someone to wake him up! Tee hee!”

The audacity.

I mean, I realize that this isn’t exactly a private atmosphere, but at very least have the grace to pretend that you’re not eavesdropping on my conversation, instead of playing Statler and Waldorf in the next cube. She’s one of the people who theoretically backs me up if I’m out of the office, but fiercely resents the fact that she do any work which is not her own. It goes without saying that I back her up and she has three times the number of clueless people than I do, to the point where one third of the phone calls I get in a month are from her clients, while she might get one of mine in a week. And when she’s on the phone, I happily back her up, answering her client’s questions. Once I was away from my desk, talking to my sister across the cubicle farm. She got one of my calls and started bellowing over the fake walls “Weetabix! Weetabix!” Because it’s just that tough to take a damned message. Or actually provide back up and answer the damned question.

Around 3 pm, I received a call from Esteban. “Has your mom contacted you?”

“No. Why?”

“Because Jonathon is here. No one is answering at home and her cell is turned off.”

I started to hyperventilate. Immediately all of the old battle wounds of sitting alone with teachers waiting for my mother to show up long after events, bubbled to the surface. I was pissed. “She was supposed to start back first thing this morning. That’s what she told me.”

“I mean, it’s no big deal. Maybe the job went long. Luckily I was here. He can sit here and do homework while I work. I just wanted to know what was going on.”

I told him I would find out and then called Mafia Grandma, who was watching my mom’s dog. MG then went into a very long tirade about how my mother had told her that she didn’t know when she’d be back and if she wasn’t in town when school let out that Jonathon could just walk to my house. I explained to MG that I was upset because she had never bothered to tell us that and it just so happened that Esteban had been home to let him in the house. Otherwise the kid would have been stuck outside in the 40 degree misting rain with no way to even get to his own house where he could have let himself in. And then MG asked if it would be a problem for me to keep him overnight one more night if she didn’t show up, which I said it wouldn’t be but I shouldn’t have to wonder if she was going to show up. MG cynically suggested that I shouldn’t really be surprised by this and then took a dramatic puff off her cigarette. Over the phone, I could actually hear the face she was making, which, you have to admit, is pretty impressive.

During this conversation, which was fairly upsetting, the coworker got a call. I could hear her over the wall “Weetabix… Weetabix… this is your client…” she said, reading the caller id. I ignored her, concentrating on my dysfunctional family dynamic. Finally she answered the phone and while I was straightening out the details with my grandmother, trying to compare cell number’s, I could hear the coworker saying “Weetabix is on the other line right now… but it sounds like she’s finishing up Let me just check.” And then she stood up and peered at me over the wall and then started talking at me. “This is for you…I told him you’re almost done.” With the implication that I should wrap it up so I could take the call off her hands.

“Hold on Grandma….” I said into the phone and then directed her with a concentrated look of death. “I am on a phone call right now. If you can’t help them, then please just put them into my voice mail.” Except that the tone of voice I used said “You dumbass bitch, I am NOT finishing up, so perhaps you can take your phone and go fuck yourself heartily.”

Her eyes got enormous and then she prairie dogged back down, mumbled something to the caller and hung up. I finished my call with Mafia Grandma, called Esteban again, formulated a game plan, ordered my brother to walk back to school and get the homework that he had “forgotten” (Score one for living two blocks from the high school!) and then asked Esteban to get him a snack. Yeah. Mean old sister makes him do homework and procures some E.L. Fudge cookies for him. During this time, I receive an email from a client. When I got off the phone, in a very measured and professional tone, I asked the coworker who had called earlier. She replied that she didn’t know and he would be sending me an email. I mentioned that I had received an email and was it from the same person? She replied that she hadn’t bothered to take their name. “Ok, thank you for taking that call for me!” I said graciously, knowing that I had achieved just enough sincerity that the sarcasm would be lost on her. Or, rather, I didn’t care if she got it or not.

Then later, a different coworker started nagging me that I should have the kid move in with me and how he needs me and how I owe it to him to give him a better life. I withstood this for awhile, but the fact of the matter is that even though I WANT to do that, it is out of my control, short of involving the legal system, which is not something I’m willing to do. And it’s not bad enough that I’d felt overwrought and helpless all day but here was someone whose business it distinctly was not, trying to convince me of something that I am already feeling guilty about. This is another of those people who keeps trying to convince me to have kids, as though it would be something that you should be able to talk someone into. It’s one thing to tell someone that you think they’d be a great mother (because, honestly, that’s a very nice compliment) but it’s another entirely to remind you that you’re not getting any younger and your husband is an only child and you’re preventing his parents from getting a grandchild. This is the same woman who I shut down a few months ago by saying “Why do you care so much that I don’t have kids?” But she seemed to have gained ground with this new crusade, repeating “Come on, Weet… your brother needs you! You have the room, you’ve got that DINK income! Come on! Think of how much you could help him!” until I finally said “Look, this is something that I feel very emotional about so please just…” and then didn’t finish the sentence, but she seemed to get that she had long ago passed polite conversation. Which just irritates, because I am so tired of passive-aggressive behavior from people who are supposedly my friends.

Note to people with kids: the fertility of your friends is none of your business. Assuming that it is something you can somehow affect is just rude and beyond obnoxious. For all you know, the person might be tragically unable to have kids and you’re dredging up painful feelings of guilt and unfullfillment. Don’t give me the “I only mean well” shit. You don’t mean well. If the person is such a sheep that you can actually talk them into making another person, are they really fit to bring up that kid for eighteen years? Gah. Can I get a Gah, brothers and sisters?

For the record, Mom picked him up at 5:30 and hadn’t been able to call because they were so far north that they didn’t have cell transmission.

After work, I had intended to go to the holiday open house at my favorite spa, because they had 10% off Aveda stuff, but I was just going to skip it after the drama of the day. However, Esteban suggested that I might enjoy it so I should just go. When I got there, I was nervous because there were a million cars parked out several blocks away, but I noticed a spot open up right by the door and I wanted to stock up on stupid Hand Relief as it is now the only thing that makes my hands happy. They had free wine and lots of hors oeuvres and yummy sushi rolls, and also provided a bunch of free mini-spa services, but the lines were incredible and very not-relaxing and then I started getting my mild agoraphobia in which I hate people and crowds and started sweating even though it wasn’t overly warm and I had purposely left my jacket in the car.

Finally, I just grabbed a bunch of stuff, checked out and then went home where I managed to keep myself from collapsing into an emotional heap by the sheer force of my will. Esteban suggested that perhaps I wasn’t taking things in perspective due to my impending estrogen happy hour and my mother hadn’t actually been horribly late, and was really only a few hours late. I suggested that maybe I just needed to bite the heads off some more coworkers elf cookies and perhaps work on my holiday card exchange list for a few hours, which was remarkably therapeutic and I highly recommend it.

As you can tell, I’m still a tad het up over the whole affair, even though it happened twenty-four hours ago. Luckily, however, I will be going to the Bad Bar this evening and am going to help comment’s section regular Jennifer celebrate her 21st birthday. And I need to think about what to wear, instead of familial dysfunction, which is how it should be. Yup. This calls for serious outfit planning. In fact, I’m thinking it’s time to resurrect Feather Boob Girl. And yes, the camera batteries are charged. Have the liver transplant team standing by!

Oh! Mark your calendars! On the first weekend next March, the place to be is Green Bay, WI. You can read all about it here.

It has been the week from hell, which culminates with my hell day at work. Goody. Today, my blood pressure was so high that my hands-free phone set, which has an earpiece that goes into your head like a hearing aid, was bobbing up and down and then I realized it was my PULSE. I have become an ad for Sanka.

The best part was when I was arguing with the Indians who have taken the jobs of my coworkers and they assured me that they would ‘intimate the client about this the status.’ Yup. It’s a seamless transition. I so need another job.

There were some highlights, however. I continue to love escaping work on Tuesdays to go to my class. This week, I got to Milwaukee an hour early, despite pulling over for a half hour to participate in a conference call. It was just surreal, sitting in the car next to a trout farm in one bar of reception BFE, talking about deadlines and whatnot. I love technology. So with an hour of time to kill, I somehow convinced myself that I could make it from the lakeshore to the distant suburbs and have a ton of time to shop at my favorite diversion Mayfair Mall. Except that really, I couldn’t. Not with rush hour traffic and road construction. Perhaps with a jaunty time machine that looked like a police call box (hi, married to a geek boy, thank you very much) but not with a slightly dusty Chrysler. But instead I endeavored onward, running through the kiosks, speed dating the shirts at Torrid and making it out of the Aveda store in 3 minutes flat. I had planned to only do a drive by in Pottery Barn, but I ended up seeing the perfect black shelves for my kitchen and also, they were on sale. On SALE! And not available on the website. Arrgh! I was torn, but finally, I decided that I would just be a few minutes late to class because if I didn’t buy the shelves, I would be mad at myself for a long time and they would be the Shelves That Got Away forever and ever amen. So I bought them and then was told to pick them up ‘at the back door’. Um, sure. Ok. Whatever. But apparently the ‘back door’ was actually a loading door and I had to drive to a large garage door, which opened automatically as my car approached, and then led into a series of tunnels underneath the mall. Creepy! Then the doors shut automatically behind me and my radio went static and all signs of daylight were replaced with eerie yellow light. I expected rats or possibly zombies (Braaaaains) to stagger out at any moment. The things a girl will do for her 10 inch Pottery Barn shelves! Girls are obviously dumb. Or at least, this one is.

I left the mall catacombs with about ten minutes to get back on the highway, through downtown, and then three miles through a residential area, park under the Union, run through campus, up the stairs and into my seat. Except that it took me fifteen minutes just to get to the highway and then the traffic was going 10 miles per hour for no perceptible reason. Meanwhile, my Type A brain was freaking out, because I hate being late. Having grown up being the kid who was perpetually picked up last from every event and always missed the morning bell because her mother couldn’t be bothered to move any faster in the morning, I have a perpetual fear of being late. In fact, in college, if it looked like I was running late, I would just not go to class. Even if I was looking for a place to park at campus and could make it to class only a few minutes late, I’d rather take an absence than have to walk in after the professor started teaching. And God help me, I considered just skipping all together rather than have to make the horrible flake-style entrance after the three-hour class had officially begun. But no. No. I knew that we were workshopping a truly awful piece of fiction, full of ridiculous punctuation errors and painful stilting dialogue (‘I invited you into my bastion and you imbibe my libations and comestibles!’ Eeek! Drop the thesaurus and no one will get hurt!), and my wicked sense of schadenfreude prevailed. I just couldn’t miss watching the PhD lit snobs struggle with a polite way to say that the story sucked harder than Jenna Jameson during her close up. And luckily, when I breezed into class a whole half hour late, the professor immediately piped up and said ‘Don’t worry Weet, we just started so you didn’t miss anything.’

And then, in an attempt at damage control, he prefaced the workshop by telling us to not focus on the errors, which were many, and then accidentally commented that some of the problems were like nails down a chalkboard. He also had to remind the author that they weren’t supposed to be talking during the workshop something like eight times, and even still, the Chatty Cathy Doll had to keep trying to tell us why we were wrong and make excuses for the problems in the story, until one of my favorite people in the class (in fact, I think I have a girl crush on her. She invited me out for a beer after class in two weeks and I got a little giddy and started writing her name on my notebook) started making a pinching motion with her hand, saying ‘Shhhh! Zip it!’ because the woman just would not shut up.

I am a bad person, but it was the best class EVER.

Over the weekend, I cooked a gigantic butternut squash and have about sixteen quarts of unused squash in the refrigerator. One would think that I would then use it for something, such as squash soup or squash gnocchi or squash squash, but instead, the only thing I’ve cooked since then was tandoori chicken and naan bread, neither of which involved squash but did made us feel very cosmopolitan. Except that it’s not fair that something which takes kneading and an hour to rise will taste like forty-cent pita bread. Esteban liked it, but I don’t think I’ll try my hand at naan again anytime soon. I also had a rare transmogrification of events in which I made great headway on the (fucking) laundry and only have maybe 1.5 hampers of dirty stuff left to wash, as opposed to my normal metric ton of ass-smelling clothing. I’m pleased with myself, however, I just realized that five days have passed since doing laundry and I’m sure that the backlog is again reaching metric ton quantities. I also scrubbed the tub, decided to hire a housekeeper, and made an inaugural visit to our new Bed, Bath and Beyond, where I purchased a stainless steel trashcan and with that, may have reached the top of Maslov’s pyramid as the last empty place in my soul was filled. With a trashcan.

In other news, Death Lung 2004 seems to have abated and I am breathing with quiet whimsy, rather than with slide whistles and other Warner Brothers sound effects. Also, I have a story due next Tuesday, so now I’m panicking because I have to write and I think I sort of hate writing because it’s somewhat painful like child birth (the kind in which you are shrieking that you hate men and want more drugs, not the kind where you play whale songs and someone eats the placenta), but then, that’s nothing new. At least I have new shelves and a trashcan.

PS. It was ten years ago today that Esteban asked me to marry him and slipped a diamond ring onto my left hand while we were pulled to the side of the street downtown. And even though it was the third time he asked, that time it took. Happy engagement anniversary, baby!

Warning: this entry will NOT be a reaction to the political climate of the US. It will be about panties and perhaps something other stupid thing. If you want political punditism, type something blindly into your browser’s navigation tool and I’m sure that you’ll hit a page that talks about recounts or Ohio or crowing about four more years of morality and keeping wolves from eating our babies. But not here. Not today. I’m done.

Yesterday was the day I get to go to class, but it was a weird day. First of all, I was alternately starving and also not at all interested in food. Also, there was the demonic worm of a migraine trying to wiggle its way into my right temple, which normally would be fine, especially when I can nestle down into the driver’s seat in my car and listen to Rhett Miller and other non-angry tunes on the iPod and wear sunglasses. However, the sun itself was toying with the world, coming out and going back again with agonizing frequency. It was a dark kind of day and I was wearing my very dark DKNY sunglasses, so it was too gloomy to keep them on when the sun was behind the clouds but it was much too bright to leave them off completely. Also, I couldn’t just flip them up onto my head during dark moments because they sort of squeezed my head and made the demonic worm chortle in its joy. And also, hungry! Not hungry! I really wanted something from McDonalds, so I got a Diet Coke which turned out to be regular Coke, which tastes like malted battery acid and then I worried that it was a portent of doom for day’s events, but then I was back on the highway and was making such good time that it seemed stupid to turn around and demand a replacement for a $1.30 cup of soda. And besides, I was hungry! So hungry that I wasn’t! Ow, the sun.

Aside from the strangeness that was Tuesday, I really didn’t have much to say in class, which is unlike me. I think it was the headache, although I was also tossing around my future educational plans and how dismayed I am to now learn that UWM only offers an MA and you must get an MA before enrolling as a PhD, but the PhD basically replicates a bunch of the MA classes, in fact, you have to repeat the first 30 credits or so verbatim. So it just seems like rolling a big rock up a hill again and again and again, only to have a crow eat out your liver when you get up to the top. And then the professor let us out early, ostensibly to get to the polls, but since I was in line ten minutes before the polls opened (and still managed to be voter #41 in my normally sleepy little ward), I had already done my part to turn Wisconsin blue on the big electoral map. I just hit the road and did not even stop at one of the delightful yuppy grocery stores to goggle at their decadent cheese displays (because seriously, there is only so much snooty cheese you can have in your house, especially when one of the residents of said house is allergic to milk fat, thank you very much). Well, and also because one of the stores is all natural and vegan foods and I would have felt weird walking around wearing my leather jacket and shoes.

I managed to make it home in an incredible 80 minutes (which must break some kind of space/time continuum, because I wasn’t going THAT much over the speed limit), had an Oreo ice cream sandwich and watched Celebrity Poker on Ricky Fitts and marveled at how Chevy Chase was a stone cold bitchass sore loser to Shannon Elizabeth instead of making myself tense by watching election returns.

Then Esteban got home from setting up Ward and June’s wireless network (look at the parents being all twenty-first century! Aren’t they cute?) and started ranting about the election until I asked him to stop because he was depressing me. So then he freaked out because the bed was damp, thinking that the roof or perhaps the cat had leaked, but then I realized that it was damp because my t-shirt was wet. Why? Because of The Soap and The Splashing and apparently it is not physically possible for me to bend over far enough to rinse as directed by The Soap without drenching the fun pillows as well as most of the bathroom vanity. Or perhaps there is something I don’t understand about The Splash. I can’t figure it out. It’s a mystery. I was willing to accept this as a mystery, and Esteban didn’t care about the wet t-shirt because “well, hello, it’s really hot!” but dislikes the wet mess that I leave all over the vanity, and being a technology geek, suggested that I videotape myself washing my face. Ladies and gentlemen, my husband. The solution of wiping it up apparently evades my fragile mind after the next step in my regime, which involves deep and personal introspection with my Tweezerman and my lighted magnification mirror. Seriously, I think I go into a religious trance in front of that thing because don’t talk to me, don’t expect me to answer, can’t you see that I’m plucking! And that’s when the revelation came that Esteban has been using my precious tribe of Tweezermen to battle his thickets of man hair. Who knows what kind of dark ops they’ve had to endure. They probably have posttraumatic stress disorder. And then I use the very same instrument on my eyebrows? Can I get a “Gah”, brothers and sisters? Hallelujah.

I’ve offered to buy him a machete from the J. Peterman catalog, but he scoffed. I don’t think he believes I’m serious. I’m sorry, but I will share many things. I will tolerate the yellowing of one half of my 400 thread count pristine white sheets until it looks like I’m sleeping with that guy who posed for the Shroud of Turin. Not to mention two words: pee schmeng. But I must demand respect for my collection of Tweezermans. If he covets them so much, he can go buy one for himself. And this totally negates his ability to talk smack about my expensive Soap, since he’s apparently also standing there in front of my girly magnifying mirror, going into the plucking trance on his own. From a purely anthropological standpoint, however, I find it interesting that apparently you CAN turn a country boy into a metrosexual, if you have enough time and patience. Or five gay men and a corporate spending account at Diesel.

After that, I realized I was too het up about man hair and had also forgotten about my inability to sleep while taking the ‘sone, so I popped back up and took some of my codeine cough syrup. However, this new prescription tastes incredibly bad. Like, instead of Robotussin, they mixed codeine into some hair spray or something.

I don’t understand it. Past codeine cough syrups have tasted fine, just like a more tangy version of regular Robotussin. And it’s not like I can’t swallow anything (wakka chicka wakka chicka) because I can chug NyQuil like I’m at a white trash fraternity party. The interesting thing is that the last batch of codeine cough syrup that I had (or maybe it was Vicodin cough syrup) tasted beyond nasty as well. So now I’m wondering if my doctor is now flagging my prescriptions to have them make it taste bad so that I don’t OD on it or something. Has my file been flagged as a codeine whore? Did one of you guys rat me out? Did you? Last night I took my teaspoon of syrup, then rinsed my mouth out twice and then finally glugged some strong dark wildflower honey directly out of the jar and I still had a bitter aftertaste. It’s almost awe-inspiring that something could taste THAT bad.

When I was living in England in 97, almost our entire group of 30 students (excluding me, strangely enough) contracted what we started to call “black lung disease”. No one seemed able to get antibiotics while they were in England, but they were often given an over the counter syrup that had some narcotic which was not available in the US. Apparently it was truly noxious stuff and in a malicious twist, was so viscous that you couldn’t really swallow it and one was forced to pull it off the spoon with one’s teeth, like an angry slime mold. I once was reduced to cruel hysterics by watching one of my friends wrangle the sludge onto a spoon and then contort his face as he tried to negotiate it down his throat without letting it touch his tongue, finally announcing with a strangled voice, “Oh my god, why do I have to CHEW it?”

So either my doctor is afraid that I’m turning into a codeine junkie (seriously, who snitched?) or this is retribution for laughing at Brian’s narcotic bile taffy. So each night is a decision between gagging followed by happy golden sleep or taking the palatable NyQuil but walking around dazed and somewhat comatose for several hours in the morning.

And also, I swear that the codeine is making me smell like I’m bathing in Ben Gay.

Karma is such a spiteful bitch. Which is probably why I admire her so.

Oh, and the panty thing I mentioned in the Warning above: Today I am wearing boy cut panties and you know what? They looked so cute on the rack, especially with their cotton candy pinkness and white polka dots (which matches, of course, my pink cami and white hooded sweatshirt, thus completing a perfect panty matching triumvirate). I had grand hopes but wearing them, not so good. So much material, so little zigga zigga, to quote the immortal words of one Ms Scary Spice.

Ah the Spice Girls. The world was a much more simple place back then.

Lots of changes and discussion on the Bad Bar Con here.

I have the beginning of nasty Death Throat happening, so on Thursday night I paid a visit to Dr. Perky to hopefully stave off the impending misery. She prescribed me the usual Zithromax without the Prednisone chaser, as my lungs hadn’t quite given up the fight yet. I felt somewhat vindicated in that my temperature was batting 100.1. It always surprises me when I’ve managed to diagnose myself correctly. If I think I’m feeling under the weather and start telling myself that ‘Ok, you might be getting sick’ then I will certainly have vague free floating yucky feelings that may or may not have anything to do with the state of my actual health. It’s a curse, this having an imaginative brain. I could probably talk myself into a tumor if I’m not careful.

I also got one of the mythical flu shots. Love my doctor. Not only can she see me at quarter to eight on a Thursday evening and tell me that I’ve lost ten pounds (which had been plus pounds before, so nothing terribly exciting, but fun just the same), she also unlocks the flu shot vault. Of course, it’s because of my asthma that I got the flu shot and it’s because of Dubya that you can’t get one. Oh shit. I didn’t say that.

However, I did decide to take a sick day on Friday, given my general feelings of hoarky chills-n-sweats. I slept late and woke up around 10 am, to wander with a stuffed head into the dining room, where I encountered my mother painting doors. For a second, I wasn’t sure if I was still dreaming, but no, she was really there working. I stood in the shower for a half hour, then got dressed and stumbled into the computer room. My mother followed me and commenced painting those doors and prattling to me about the antics of Jonathon’s friend’s parents or something. I don’t know. It was sort of hellish, as though the prattling coworker that I had escaped for one day had followed me home in the guise of my mother. Or I might have been imagining it all.

I powered through a bunch of cranberry/grape juice, but was really spent and worthless all day. Friday evening entailed lounging on the sofa watching a DVD. On Saturday, I was starting to feel a little better, but the weather was absolute shyte. Dismal rainy crap. I had to watch my niece so I decided to employ my favorite ‘Pretend you feel fine, and do not allow yourself to dwell upon your misery’ technique and get dressed and go about my plans. I managed to do one and a half loads of laundry (technically one load, because I left a load of jeans in the washer and they became infected with the dreaded basement funk and thus must be rewashed four hundred times to eradicate the smell) and also put the handles back on the refrigerator. With, I might add, an actual screwdriver. I know! I mean, sure, it was touch and go for a few minutes there when I kept unscrewing one instead of screwing it in (because an upside down screw somehow defies the ‘lefty loosey, righty tighty’ mantra) but I persevered and now we have handles on our refrigerator again. Apparently I am a handy girl! Who knew?

I picked up Abby from her cousin’s house and then caved under hardcore manipulation tactics and took her to see the abysmal ‘Shark Tales’ movie. Have you ever noticed that when Pixar comes up with a clever idea, Dreamworks follows up with a similar project? Bug’s Life, meet Antz. Toy Story, meet Small Soldiers. Big scary monster teaches the world that what counts is on the inside. Is that Monsters Inc? Or Shrek? Not to mention’Finding Nemo and its counterpart Shark Tales. It wouldn’t be so offensive if it weren’t following almost the exact same development timeline. Gah, Spielberg, get your own ideas.

After Mo picked up Abby, I started on dinner, which was a Martha recipe for tenderloin stroganoff and, quite honestly, not any better than my normal method for inventing stroganoff without a recipe, the only difference being the inclusion of cognac and Dijon mustard and about an extra half hour of prep time waiting for the stock to reduce. This endeavor basically wiped me out, and for the rest of the evening, it was all I could do to hold my head upright and micromanage my Sims while Esteban cranked away at his never-ending backlog of analytical work.

On Sunday, however, the ill feelings that had plagued me two days earlier came back and with a vengeance. We attempted to go out for bagels at the Hippy Mafia deli, but when we got there, I could only sit in the car feeling green while Esteban braved the throngs of self-righteous liberals. I nibbled on my bagel afterwards but then curled on the sofa under a quilt and watched the Detroit game with complete apathy tinged with hints of nausea and sprints to the bathroom. Around three in the afternoon, I decided that the only thing that would make my stomach feel better was a green caramel apple from the delicious Seroogy’s in De Pere, so with this delight in front of me, I managed to get up, slip on some shoes and drive the ten miles to the confectionary. However, when I got there, there was not a caramel apple to be had. Apparently, they had made 200 that morning and sold out by 2 pm. Curses. Foiled again. I actually stomped my feet in frustration, right in the store. There is nothing like getting a glimpse of salvation and then have it dashed by happenstance. Mickey Fickey caramel apples. Instead, I trudged home, walked directly into the bed where there was a pile of clean laundry waiting to be folded, heaved it onto Esteban’s side and then fell into a deep coma, broken only by the ghostly shrieks of my wheezing lungs.

I woke up at 8 pm, freaking out a little that it was now dark. I made myself get up and managed to eat a roll with peanut butter and then drink the broth out of a bowl of chicken and stars soup (because I may not be feeling well, but damned if it will keep me from ingesting unhealthy levels of sodium!) and continued to make visits to the bathroom every fifteen minutes. Then I realized that Esteban had finished the last of our precious Nyquil the night before, so if I had any hopes of sleeping through my wheezy lungs, I would have to go out and get more. So if you’re wondering who that crazy lady with the slept-in hair and white socks with black loafers, angry groping her Nyquil and E.L.Fudge cookies (because angry tummy loves it some Elfin’ Magic), that would have been me.

Now that Saturday Night Live has proven what everyone should have suspected all along, Ashlee Simpson should sort of sink back into her role as ‘Jessica Simpson’s Sister’ because she’s only marginally talented (about as much as, I’m sure, Kato Kaelin is or perhaps Tom Arnold). Also, I hate to say this, because I hate to reduce people to the sum of their physical parts, but she’s sort of fug. And when faced with a technical difficulty, instead of just sucking it up and singing the wrong song like a professional because she was on live television and that is what you do, she did this weird little Dosey Do maneuver and then ran off the stage where I hope Lorne Michaels yelled at her for it and made her cry. Then afterwards she did a Home Alone ‘Oh No!’ face, as though she oopsied and we should forgive her for being an untalented hack because just look at how damned cute she is. Except that you’re not, Ashhhleeeeigh. You’re not cute. You’ve got a hooky beak nose and you look like you should be a character in a Lemony Snicket book. Stop believing your own PR.

Have a lovely, non-congested week.